WotLK BiS warlock low dps in icc

[holyraider169]

Im full BiS PvE warlock..i was in 25hc and i had only 7k dps ...People flamed me cause of that,but im not sure what i doing wrong..
My rotation :
Life tap,Curse of elements or doom(boomkin,dk) Immolate,corruption,shadowbolt until i get proc (molten core) and under 35% Soul fire spam all time..I try to refresh Dots always when i can..
Hit rating: 10.03%
Haste around 1100
I also used Fel Guard but they told me to use Imp cause of more dmg,im so confused now and im thinkin to sell this warlock for points cause im frustrated..
help...

[pirania]

Hit cap for spells is 17% so you need to have 14% hit if you play horde and have spriest/bala in raid to be hit capped there's your biggest dps loss.

Secondly 1100 haste in bis gear seems wrong, paste your armory link. And yeah, change talents and glyphs to use imp instead.

[imchuggs1]

Here's mine for reference, BiS (minus offhand) for demo with hit cap. http://armory.warmane.com/character/...ecrown/summary

Without spellstone my warlock has 1200 ish haste, with it it has 1539. My guess is you forgot your spellstone, coupled with felguard which is bugged and low hit rating, I'd say those are your problems right there.

The other thing to do is make sure you're optimizing rotation with Metamorphosis, cleave, and immo aura. Also, as demo, you should be always looking out for adds/targets to proc soul fire off of.

[holyraider169]

http://armory.warmane.com/character/...ecrown/summary I did for imp..
Spell hit around 11.02%
Haste 1226

[pirania]

so..
you play with imp but you don't have glyph for imp + you put 1/2 in Demonic power which makes your imp does even less damage -> glyph of imp + 2/2 Demonic power (take 1 point from Intensity)
you have 329 hit -> you need 369 hit to be capped
your gear is not bis. items with crit+haste are much more valuable than spirit+haste
undead... -> be an orc for extra sp buff and extra pet damage
put firestone on your weapon (demo warlocks shouldn't use spellstone with your gear)

[Unao]

It s only worth going for firestone when your SB < 1sec cast otherwise never do that lol
Pirania could you explain how crit is better than spirit ? coz i really don t see how

[grobain161]

Pirania could you explain how crit is better than spirit ? coz i really don t see how

How is it not better than spirit? Spirit is a part of your SP, not boosting it by 200%, just a part.
Crit causes your crit chance to increase, and critical hits deal way more damage, don't they? And increasing pet crit also increasing your dps and party by proccing the SP Buff sooner.

Spirit is not found on any of the bis items, you set up your bis list with spirit, try it out either on a server or in a simulation and it still wont come close to crit/haste bis list.

Spirit is "eh ok" when no healer wants the item and you got something from dungeons on you. Otherwise healers get it, then the dps.

[pirania]

How is it not better than spirit? Spirit is a part of your SP, not boosting it by 200%, just a part.
Spirit is "eh ok" when no healer wants the item and you got something from dungeons on you. Otherwise healers get it, then the dps.

spirit is not even 'eh ok' - in bis there is not a single item with spirit.

It s only worth going for firestone when your SB < 1sec cast otherwise never do that lol
Pirania could you explain how crit is better than spirit ? coz i really don t see how

http://forum.warmane.com/showthread....=1#post2852961 last posts
as for firestone.. you're just wrong abouth this one. just no. you can read more about this where I explained in other threads

[grobain161]

spirit is not even 'eh ok' - in bis there is not a single item with spirit.

Yea, but if you had a fos nm waist and had lingering illness drop, well sure it'd be an upgrade. That's where I'd go for it and say it's 'eh ok', replace it with icc 10 one (i think prof has sp/crit/haste).

I'd like to have a thread sticky to the homepage explaining to casters not to ***** bout spirit being "good for sp/mage/lock" cause it appears to have some use when healers benefit from it more than dps do.

[DarkenedHue]

put firestone on your weapon (demo warlocks shouldn't use spellstone with your gear)

This looks like the intuitive thing to do when you consider the relatively meager contribution from dots demo has compared to other dot-based specs, but Spellstone still comes out superior. The reason being that not only is Haste more valuable to you than Crit, but the Spellstone also has a good amount more Haste on it than the Firestone does Crit. The extra 240 haste also helps a lot in those situations where you're trying to force a Decimation proc off a low HP mob before it gets killed by stray damage - in that it helps you get done with your current cast quicker, as well as reduces the cast-time of the rank 1 shadowbolt you use to proc it. Obviously the rank 1 shadowbolt is going to already be GCD capped but adding more Haste is always going to reduce the amount of time it needs to get to its target. It also lets you cast maybe an extra Soul Fire in that Decimation window.

spirit is not even 'eh ok' - in bis there is not a single item with spirit.

That's a disingenuous way to present spirit's value.

As far as Spirit's value, even if we're totally neglecting the contribution from spirit your raid gets, it's still well on par with Crit. Why wouldn't it be? It's basically just spellpower in a more undistilled form. Spellpower is what you should see when you look at spirit, with the caveat of course being that it converts to spellpower at only a 0.65x rate. From a personal DPS standpoint, 1 Haste rating beats 0.65 spellpower, but 1 Crit rating is virtually neck to neck with that. And bear in mind we are also drastically downplaying the spellpower benefit here by considering only your personal DPS.

Yea, but if you had a fos nm waist and had lingering illness drop, well sure it'd be an upgrade. That's where I'd go for it and say it's 'eh ok', replace it with icc 10 one (i think prof has sp/crit/haste).

Again, keeping personal DPS as your sole point of consideration: every Spirit piece is going to be straight up better than any non-Spirit piece that's 1 tier or more below it in ilevel. You make it sound like moving from a 232 crit/haste belt to a 264 crit/spirit belt is just a minor gain. It's a pretty massive difference. Lingering Illness (spirit/crit) is just around 3-4% behind Crushing Coldwraith (haste/crit).

Non-spirit gear only becomes preferable when the stat in place of Spirit is Haste. If you kept the Haste a constant and instead compared only the Spirit against the Crit, there's almost no difference. For instance, the DBS 25 cloak (Haste/Spirit) is virtually worth the same amount of DPS as the VDW 25 cloak (Haste/Crit). If you dispense with the idea of looking at Demo DPS in a vacuum, and actually factor in the benefit to other caster DPS, the DBS cloak becomes undeniably superior. That just can't be contested.

[Unao]

Finaly à smart post so basicly 1) never do firestone 2) if you wanna nerf raid dps for your personnal dps take affli bis / if you re looking for bis aka best overall raid dps go for spirit (spirit > crit no questions ask )

[Unao]

And just go on elitist jerks before spreading icecrown bull**** science next time you will do yourself and other warlocks a favour thx

[pirania]

I don't even..

This looks like the intuitive thing to do when you consider the relatively meager contribution from dots demo has compared to other dot-based specs, but Spellstone still comes out superior. The reason being that not only is Haste more valuable to you than Crit, but the Spellstone also has a good amount more Haste on it than the Firestone does Crit. The extra 240 haste also helps a lot in those situations where you're trying to force a Decimation proc off a low HP mob before it gets killed by stray damage - in that it helps you get done with your current cast quicker, as well as reduces the cast-time of the rank 1 shadowbolt you use to proc it. Obviously the rank 1 shadowbolt is going to already be GCD capped but adding more Haste is always going to reduce the amount of time it needs to get to its target. It also lets you cast maybe an extra Soul Fire in that Decimation window.

First of all you don't cast shadowbolt rank 1 to proc Decimation if one needs to do so then it is just bad gameplay. Quick targetting of <35% hp mobs and casting 1.7sec shadowbolt is not that difficult so you basically don't waste 1dcg for a spell that does no damage at all. I always start casting shadowbolt at DB's adds long before they get under 35% because they die very quickly and I always proc soulfire from that.
Next, how is spellstone superior to firestone really? 1% od direct spells alone is like 300-500 extra dmg from every soulfire crit and the more crits the better because correctly boosted soulfire with flame cap and whatever you got (engi gloves, speed potion/wild magic) crits for more than 55k+ so extra 4.5%(or was it even 4.7%?) crit is much more valuable.

Finaly à smart post so basicly 1) never do firestone 2) if you wanna nerf raid dps for your personnal dps take affli bis / if you re looking for bis aka best overall raid dps go for spirit (spirit > crit no questions ask )

N/C. Remind me again how much spellpower does the whole raid get from your spellpower? You do more good to the whole raid when you gem and gear yourself correctly than wasting the potential of demo dps which can easily do 20k at multiple bosses in icc.

[DarkenedHue]

If it's an add that needs to be killed and it wouldn't just be meter-padding on your part, then obviously you use your regular shadow bolt. What I was speaking of was those less ordinary occasions where you have to game it by hitting an otherwise irrelevant target like a ghoul on LK p1, one of the inactive blood princes, etc. That should have been easy enough to surmise from the context. Either way my point about the 240 haste stands and what spell you force a Decimation proc with isn't the focal point of the discussion.

Haste is more valuable than Crit because spreadsheets say so. The question of Haste or Crit is really just an elaborate math problem. Spreadsheets are a better judge of stat weight than player intuition. I mean yeah, the spellstone vs firestone debate for demo is an exceedingly trivial one as far as min-max discussions go, but mathematically, there's an objectively correct answer. Haste stomps all over crit and the sheer stat budget worth of Haste on the Spellstone makes it a worthwhile alternative over the Firestone despite not giving you 1% direct damage. Also I made my arguments about Haste serving Decimation better when you have to force a proc off an add and you know the buff is only finite. There's also the fact that Seed of Corruption is a spell that only has a 1.5x crit multiplier, so any time this comes into play (which is LK, Halion), crit just loses even more of its value. On top of that, meta-gem interactions with crit multipliers are slightly bugged right now, causing abilities to crit for a small amount less than they should. These are all reasons to think that realistically crit would have even less value than spreadsheets actually suggest.

[rc100]

I`ve been playing/working around with several tools and end up with this numbers. All tho im not claiming its 100% correct, but this is what i get from the research i made. This will help you decide what type of gear is upgrade for this two specs.

Dps increase 1 point of:

Demonology spec -

Hit - 3.9232 dps - untill hit cap!
Spell power - 2.1498 dps
Spirit - 1.4138 dps
Haste - 1.3641 dps
Crit - 1.1953 dps
Intelect - 0.6981

Affliction spec -
Hit - 2.6842 dps - untill hit cap!
Spell power - 2.4315 dps
Haste - 1.7520 dps
Spirit - 1.3256 dps
Crit - 1.2446 dps
Intelect - 0.5843

If we follow that for the stones
For the example lets say that the warlock is doing 10k dps and 20% of that damage is from dots.


Spellstone 240x1.3641 = 327.384dps + 20 dps from 1% more damage on dots from the stone.
Total = 347.384 dps

Firestone 196*1.1953 = 234.2788 dps + 80 dps from the stone on direct damage spells.
Total = 314.2788 dps

If warlock is doing 15k dps Firestone and Spellstone are equal. But when we burst aka demo form, BL, PI stuff like that we are pulling alot more that 15k i think Firestone is better but you need to pull more than 15k on bosses to make it that way. Decent Demo warlocks are pulling more than that in 17 - 19k range, some bosses a bit less other a bit more, but we are always over 15k. The value on Firestone is increasing a lot more on burst phase <35% the soul fire spam with good rng 85%+ crit on that spell, on the other hand Spellstone lose even more value here if that happen.

If you are finishing bosses in dps range like this:
Spellstone < 15k lesser
Firestone > 15k more