More Warlock DPS
Scaron — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 07:45
Okay, so, my DPS was abysmal this week. Thanks to all in KB for being super-rad and not making me feel like a TOTAL idiot.
In an effort to not suck quite so much I went back to the Internets last night to see what I could find. According to simulation craft and EJ, the top theoretical DPS spec for a warlock is a demo/destro build: 0/40/31 - see the build link. However, other builds may be approximately equivalent in the field as well, but that's neither here nor there.
I made a switch to this spec last night and spent a few hours in front of the target dummy to test it out after reading the info found here (see the first build). I seem to be missing something, my DPS, while slightly improved wasn't substantially better.
Part of the trouble may be that I am having difficulty understanding this:
Our Rotation above 35% consists of the following priority list: Lifetap (use rank 1 approaching the boss) to trigger the glyph of lifetap, Immolate conflag (it is much more speedy this patch than it has been) CoA/Corruption applied for MC procs. Then from there spam incinerate and lifetap every 20 seconds to maintain the buff. You should get 3 conflags for every 2 immolates for maximum dps.
If anyone can help in parsing what this means in terms of rotation, I'd love it. Based on this info, I'll tell you what I'm thinking and we can correct from there...if you're willing.
1. Lifetap
2. Immolate
3. Conflagrate
4. CoA
5. Corruption
6. Incinerate (Spam till 3 seconds left on Immolate)
7. Conflagrate
Rinse, repeat, refreshing CoA/Corruption when needed. With the exception, of course that the cycle gets messed up by the 10s conflagrate CD. But, basically, I keep Immolate up and hit conflagrate whenever it's up.
Below 35% health things get trickier again; I think I'm supposed to be Incinerating (to proc Decimate) / Soul Fire keeping up (I think) Immolate and Corruption (and MAYBE CoA I'm not sure), popping Conflagrate when it's up but mostly keeping to Incin --> Soul Fire.
Again, thanks for bringing me this week, although my numbers don't reflect it, I learned a lot. If and when I get the chance to raid with y'all again, I hope to be ready-er.
Addendum: Oh, and one other thing. Mori had groaned a bit at my use of PvP enchants, I did some math to see if my thinking was right, turns out, on this it was.
PvP shoulder enchant = 29sp + Resil.
Hodir honored ehchant = 18sp +10crit
The question becomes does a sacrifice of 11sp for a gain of 10crit make sense. According to EJ numbers it would appear that the 11sp loss translates into a 14.52 dps loss for a 7.6 dps gain from crit. Of course, all this becomes moot in 2 days once I'm exalted with Hodir and can grab the better shoulder enchant.
All that to say, there are situations (mostly rep deficit situations) where a PvP enchant is simply better until one becomes exalted with a faction. I believe this to be the case with the head enchant as well. As always, correct me if I'm wrong.
lock dps
forshurley — Thu, 05/07/2009 - 08:15your rotation is the same as mine on the 0/40/31 build which looks good. i dont use glypth of life tap though. i use the immolate, incinerate and conflag glypth. with this spec you need to be hit capped + have alot of crit and haste. i like to have my crit about 20%-25% selfed buff. then buff up my haste as much as possible after that. this spec allows me to make a spell stone that gives me 240 haste which is nice to use. this allows me to pull3.5k dps easy some times more if am lucky =). if you ever want to theorycraft on lock stuff feel free to drag me into vent to chat. good luck and happy hunting.
Rahn or Watchesup, if either
Scaron — Wed, 04/29/2009 - 10:47Rahn or Watchesup, if either of you want to jump in here (as I'm basing this new spell rotation off your parses) I'd be grateful.
Ok. So I switched specs to match what Watchesup uses, (Rahn--no offense at all--I just happened to have enough hit on my gear not to need the suppression from affliction ATM).
Here's what I'm thinking in terms of starting rotation:
1. Life Tap approaching boss
2. Curse of Doom (might as well keep an easily manageable curse up) Rahn seemed to do this Watches did not...curious about reasoning but it seemed a low-lose option as it's easily maintainable (only needs to be recast once / 60 seconds) and it's an instant cast so not much time lost.
3. Immolate
4. Conflagrate
5. Chaos Bolt
6. Spam Incinerate until conflagrate CD is up
7. Conflagrate
8. Chaos Bolt
Then we're back to a semi-normal rotation of
LifeTap, Immolate, Incinerate Spam, popping Chaos Bolt, Conflagrate, and Curse of Doom when they're up.
I'm thinking that I'll use Firestone rather than Spellstone. 1% added crit damage sounds nice. I'm open to advice here...Rahn used spellstone while Watches used firestone.
What am I missing?
quick disjointed notes
moriella — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 16:26I has another long reply, but the web site was down and now I dont have as much time. However, I want to comment on a few things.
rotation
Jayel — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 11:52I'm currently 41/30 spec so I dont have the conflagrate, but other then that I do the same basic rotation. I have found that what makes or breaks my dps numbers is how many soul fires I can get off and how well I keep the lifetap buff up. My gear is also kinda crappy still (blue cloak, blue wand, blue hit trinket).
I think that once you get the rotation down and tweak your gear some you'll see a decent improvement in your dps.
Yea target dummy tests are
saedo — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 11:11Yea target dummy tests are pure crap for dps benchmarking. You're missing raid buffs. The various haste/hit/crit/sp buffs scale different spells differently. At best they should only be used to work out a rotation. Test out a UI mod or something like that.
dummy benchmarks
Vitriola — Wed, 06/10/2009 - 12:52I agree that dummy benchmarks will never match a raid but there is something that it will do. At least it will be consistent with itself.
Before the virus hit my machine, I had worked my dps up from about 2.2k to about 4k on the dummy. This was with only fel armor and felstone (for crits). After the virus hit, I have dropped to 3.3-3.5k with the same gear and rotation.
What does the dummy number need to be to have a rotation that is passable in a raid?
When you suggest I test out
Scaron — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 11:44When you suggest I test out a UI mod, what do you mean? Something to suggest spellcasts based on priorities?
Dot timer and necrosis
Jayel — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 14:57are two that I have used on my lock and both are pretty good. Currently I just use quartz and xperl unit frames though.
Well for a lock I'd expect
saedo — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 12:00Well for a lock I'd expect something like a DoT Timer. Not sure what exactly you'd use. But something to keep track of things that may need to be refreshed for maximum uptimes, which should consequently mean more dps.
2 mods that can keep track of
starstalker — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 14:222 mods that can keep track of dots and such are Quartz (which you could be using anyways) and Classtimers. I prefer class timers as the quartz ones are a bit hard to see. Try one of them out, I'm sure they can work for what you need.
I've been using both Quartz
Scaron — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 14:54I've been using both Quartz and DoTimer. I've seen other stuff out there but haven't found anything I'm in love with just yet. I'll check out classtimer.
Glad you posted
moriella — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 10:51I'm really glad to see you recognizing the problems and getting deeper into your class. I'll make a few comments here and lets see how it works for you.
You are at 16.6 +Hit. You only need 13%.
Get rid of blue trinket. You dont need the +hit. Buy a badge trinket.
Consider giving up some +spell for some +haste. Even with a touch lower sp, when you are weaving casts due to cast times - more casts = ALWAYS better
You mentioned that in testing your dps on the dummy didnt seem better. This might be attributed to raid buffs?
EJ seems to still be in flux on the specs atm, it may be that locks have a bit more flexibility in 3.1 for speccing. Perhaps the one you picked is a bit to intricate in it's casting and methods?
Your Spirit is much too low. Most all of your non tier pieces have no spirit at all. Warlocks get 20% bonus SP from spirit. Why would you pick so many items with no spirit
Experiment.
Finally, either level your enchanting or drop it for JC. Enchanting gives you +sp to your rings. This works out to be about a 51 dps increase. There is no excuse to not have your professions maxxed at this point.
Your issues are multifold. Your gear, your enchants, and your spec. Fixing any single one will not show the true picture until they are all brought in line.
Hope these thoughts help. Would love to see you get it all taken care of and get to the top 5 in damage.
edit : take a look here http://wowwebstats.com/d2nbon2urh2ys . Watchedup is devastating the meters on a 10 man playing a destro build. Looks like his +hit might actually be a bit low and he could reasonably hit 4k dps with a tweak or two.
Thanks Mori. I appreciate
Scaron — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 11:41Thanks Mori. I appreciate your notes.
I'd like to explain a couple things re: gear choices, expansion progress, etc.
First, part of my gear, rep, and profession deficit is due to a late start on the expansion. I only hit 80 at the beginning of February (and started playing this past summer). I haven't put enough work into my professions and rep (admittedly) because I've focused on levelling up and gearing up. That said, your advice is right and all of this is really just an excuse...and in the end excuses don't add up to more dps. So enough of that.
The spec situation has, hopefully, been fixed. Other things that should improve because of this are my haste deficit. Because of master conjurer, I get to about 740ish haste (better, could be improved but better).
Gear. Okay, I'm aware of the 20% SP bonus and to be honest I have another trink I could equip that would boost spirit by about 200 almost all of the time (it's the stacking spirit trink from OS10). I'm not sure it's better, though. Mark of the War Prisoner (my currently equipped trink) gets hit and is active for about 1/6 of the time and adds 346 sp during that time. That works out to about 57.66 SP on average, while the spirit trink would be 200 *.20 for 40 SP on average. That said, if you won't make fun of me...I can buy the healing trink because, as you correctly point out, I'm overcapped on hit and that would boost my SP. By my math I can dump about 93.6 hit...meaning I can get rid of my blue trink and regem my belt for more SP. That should bring me down to 13%.
I've been consistently raiding in Naxx and OS for about 1.5 to 2 months and am still waiting for a chance to roll on Dying Curse and Illustration of the Dragon Soul...the optimal trinks. I'll keep running there and get what I can as soon as I can to fix my trink situation.
Also, I think I need to reequip my Valorous pants. the 4pc bonus stacked w/ Lifetap glyph makes a substantial increase buff. (Note: last night at least one of you was concerned that I was Lifetapping too much and wasting heals, I was doing that to proc my LifeTap bonus which grants me substantial SP increases...so that's why I was doing that.)
Enchants: Dude. I'm totally a duchebag and didn't even realize I was missing a chest enchant. I will get this done ASAP.
Probably could regem the meta with the +2% intellect. When I gemmed that piece initially, I was running as affliction with a guild where threat was, for me, an issue. And, EJ claimed that the switch between the two was largely insubstantial. You mention that there are much better gems, is the SP +int gem what you are thinking or am I missing something?
Finally, would you suggest dropping ench for JC? Any others have thoughts on this switch?
Meta gem largely depends on spec
Kogarasumaru — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 15:51Currently the hit cap is 17% so as mori said you can drop down to 13% knowing there will always be an spriest or boomkin and that you will have a draneii in your group fro the extra 1% hit. If you may not have a draneii in group I might suggest staying at around 14% to ensure if/when you have to soul shatter there is no chance for it to be resisted.
Secondly your gear does look pretty solid, so you could easily drop the hit gem and trinket in favor or more haste. As mori said picking up spirit can be a great increase to your dps for several reasons. First warlock get 30% of spirit as spell power from fel armor, then it also increases the effeciency of your lifetaps, and when you lifetap you also recieve the spell power from the glyph of lifetap. Also as of now you should be trying to lifetap once every 20 seconds to keep up the lifetap glyph as it has been proven to be a dps boost. Now if healers are having issues keeping you healed because of the extra taps you may consider only tapping when needed for those fights because the dps increase isnt enough that you should pressure your healers.
As for specs 40/31 is currently the highest dps spec as you have said, and 41/30 is right behind it. The rotation that you talked about is basically what you want to try and maintain. i don't know what you were raiding with last night if you did but friday you were full meta all the raid utility you could possibly bring. This did influence your dps that night, but you also brought better health stones, demonic pact which is an upgrade to totem of wrath at 2800 or greater spell power, and you also had improved shadowbolt for 5% crit so mages didnt have to use scorch. Personally atm I am using a deep demo build but I have dropped imp healthstones and demonic pact in favor or more dps talents to boost my own dps, which closes the gap between the higher dps specs.
As for your Meta gem if you stay as either either deep demo or demo/destro you should probably go with the 21 crit rating and 3% increased crit dmg or the spell power and 2% int. If you have a second helm to use for affliction only then the spell power int one becomes slightly better but otherwise the just stick with the crit increased crit dmg.
As of right now JC is the highest dps boost, but enchanting is a solid profession so unless you are really concerned with min/maxing and have about 3-4k gold to spend to power level it, I would just go ahead and finish leveling enchanting instead.
Re: Hit cap. After changing
Scaron — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 16:07Re: Hit cap. After changing back to my valorous pants (for the 4pc T7.5 bonus LifeTap bonus), I'm back down to 13% where I should be. Sadly this means that I'll need to hold onto the blue trink and yellow belt gem for the time being. Unless the 4pc bonus isn't worth it...but what I'm reading says it is.
It has been the goal to bring as much raid utility as possible...so yeah, that was the thinking behind that spec and I did run it last night as well.
If it's most useful for me to come to raid in that spec, I'm happy to do it. I had just been under the impression that the most useful thing would be to pew pew like crazy. Perhaps I'll drop that lingering affliction spec and pull out the stops with a full raid utility second spec (to complement the new 40/31).
Other casters: I don't know if I'll be invited back but was the spec I raided with last night helpful to you? If yes, HOW useful?
Several things to note. Once
Tankard — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 15:05Several things to note. Once you are hit capped, the stats in order of importance are:
spell power > haste > crit > everything else
The best dps combination for professions is enchanting/jewelcrafting. Enchanting/alchemy is a close second.
I don't know what you are doing as far as consumables are concerned but for a destro build you want +46 sp food (like Tender Shoveltusk flank), a Flask of the Frost Wyrm and a Firestone on your weapon. Don't forget to keep your Fel Armor on (get a timer mod that screams at you when it expires).
For a destro build, the best meta gem is a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond which is +21 crit and +3% increased crit damage. That 3% ends up being an ass ton of dps. My crit rate in raid ends up being close to 45%.
Use the DoTimer mod.
Use an imp for a destro build in raid and spend some points on it in your talents (depending on the build you choose). Its crits make you crit. A "tweaked out" imp via talents and glyphs is about 650 DPS. A Doomguard is 1300 so you should summon one whenever you can. I think the last patch changed the cooldown on Doomguards to every 30 minutes so you should have one up half the time. If you don't have a Doomguard, look it up on WowWiki and go get it.
While it is easy to play a Warlock for levelling and questing, Blizzard has radically changed the class to make it very hard to keep up with the other classes in raid DPS. It can be done, but it's a 6 to 8 button constant juggling game while simultaneously avoiding whatever nastiness the boss is doing. Creating action bars that are in the order of your beginning spell rotation helps, as do timer mods. What I really wish someone had was an action bar that would re-order itself so that the next spell you needed to cast was always in the first location :-)
Tank, thank you SO much for
Scaron — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 15:58Tank, thank you SO much for your input.
As noted, I've been using DoTimer. I like it quite a bit. And I've been using the food buffs and flask as suggested. I'm curious about your suggestion about firestone vs. spellstone. I've been using spellstone (+300 haste with master conjurer) plus +3% DoT damage. EJ has suggested the use of spellstone, but I've been lead wrong there before.
Previously, I've been running as affliction. (And, by previously I mean for as long as I've had my WoW account.) So, needless to say, the days since 3.1 have been an incredible learning curve. As you note, I've found the recent patch changes to be incredibly challenging to keep up my dps. Where I had been doing about 3.9k dps as affliction in naxx, I'm finding that number dropping SUBSTANTIALLY.
I'll take a serious look at JC. Am I correct in thinking that basically the only tailoring benefit comes from Lightweave Embroidery?
Because of the runed
Tankard — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 17:14Because of the runed dragonseye gems (3x +32 spellpower gems), JC gives you +39 spellpower. But the benefits can be more than that since they count as any color gem and can make your gem set bonuses and meta requirements a lot easier to do. Enchanting gives you +38 spellpower from the +19 enchants to rings. All professions cost thousands of gold to level from scratch now. They made some recent changes to lightweave embroidery and it looks like it may be pretty good. I don't have solid numbers, but assuming the internal CD is still 45 secs and you have a 2 sec avg cast time with a 50% proc rate then it'll be up on average for 15 out of every 49 seconds which averages out to +76 spellpower. Somehow I doubt this is the case. Mori probably knows for sure.
can confirm
moriella — Tue, 04/28/2009 - 17:47Lightweave averages out to 76.