So I spent a bit of time raiding as a Felguard spec 7/44/10. Granted I only did Gruuls lair (and Kara), but I did spend about 6 weeks as it and feel like I understand it well enough to give an assessment on it's level of performance and raid-viability.
Definitely raid-viable. Many raid leaders forbid Felguard specced Warlocks because they think that it is a non-raid-viable spec. Demonology is a PVP talent tree. They think that it does not do as much damage as Destruction (false), or that the Felguard can't survive raid encounters (false), or that the Felguard doesn't deserve to be healed or buffed (false). Demonology does a hell of a lot of damage, more than Destruction at many gear levels, much MUCH more at certain gear levels and specific bosses. In addition, the Felguard can survive most raid encounters perfectly fine with little need for extra healing. They are not much different than a BM Hunter, which I do not see anyone preventing Hunters from speccing BM. Buffing the Felguard further buffs the Lock. Being in a Shadow Priest's group is enough to keep the Felguard up most of the time.
Insanely High DPS. At my gear level (all T5 quality, but few T6 yet), Demonology was higher DPS than Destruction. Quite a bit higher too. I gained about 12% more DPS with the Felguard over Destruction. On some fights, Demo absolutely destroys. DPS is gimped a lot if you lose your Felguard to death (Felguard does 15-20% of your total damage), so any of the melee unfriendly encounters are going to also be unfriendly to your Felguard and be more difficult for you to maintain high DPS. But on other fights you can just send it in to attack and forget about it. It's like a persistent DOT.
Fun and Challenging. Unlike Destruction, where you are just spamming Shadowbolts for a minute or two before needing to refresh a curse, Demonology has a lot more to it. Since Sbolts do a bit less damage, Corruption and Immolate are likely better to keep up than not. And, obviously, micromanaging your Felguard is crucial to successfully raiding Demonology. It's a bit challenging at first, but not at all impossible to get the hang of it. Just move pet away if it is taking some damage. Pretty much follow what the melee is doing.
Lower Contribution to ISB Uptime. This is the only legitimate complaint about the Felguard builds. Because they spend less time casting Shadowbolts than Destruction Locks (75% compared to 90+%), there is less chance for you to crit and thus you provide lower uptime for the Improved Shadowbolt, which lowers overall raid damage (Shadow Priests and other Locks.) If you have enough shadow users, the loss in raid DPS will be greater than the gain in your personal DPS. In my case, we usually did not even have any Shadow Priests in the raid, thus it didn't matter. (This hurt my DPS, but that's another story.) You can exclude Immolate and Corruption from your spell cycle and just Sbolt spam of course. Your personal DPS goes down a lot, but you will get over 90% of your casting time on Sbolts, same as Destro, and contribute equally as them to ISB uptime. Depending on your personal gear and stats, Demo still may come out on top of DPS by a little.
Finally, making sure that your Felguard gets the full round of buffs that he deserves can be challenging, depending on the guild you raid with. They may be reluctant to give your demon buffs it missed due to being cast while you were still summoning it or if it died during trash. If you are lucky enough to be in a good guild, they should be understanding of this. But even if they are understanding, it is still a pain sometimes. It also uses up a lot of shards due to the need to sometimes resummon your pet to avoid a death (and in the process keep it's buffs.)
Once getting the 4pc T6 bonus, I would imagine Destro clearly outperforms Demo at that point as Sbolts scale best with Destro. Getting more crit and haste at that level would probably benefit Destro more too. But till that time, Demo should perform very well. A lot of early T6 fights are very melee friendly in fact, so Demo should be very good.
In conclusion, I discovered with many already have (see Raiding With Felguard) - that the Felguard is a very worthy Raiding spec. It is a very fun, challenging, and rewarding experience. It's also great for farming or doing Daily's or even PVP between raids. The added challenges and potential loss in ISB uptime, however, maybe make Destruction the better build for serious raiding. At the end of the day, when I joined a new raiding guild, I didn't even ask to raid with the Felguard. I went back to good old 0/21/40 Destruction just because it is easier. There are enough challenges in raiding - sometimes you don't want to add more.
PS. There are 3 "almost" necessities for successful Felguard raiding. 1 - Having the 2pc T5 bonus. 2 - Having the Voidstar Talisman. 3 - Being grouped with a good Shadow Priest. I unfortunately, dispite having seen it get disenchanted many many times, do not have the Talisman. I do have the 2pc T5 bonus, which helps keep the Felguard buffed, and normally, in a real raiding guild, would be grouped with a SPriest, which also helps with keeping the demon healed as well as restoring mana (which felguard uses to cleave.) If I ever get the Talisman, maybe I'll try out some Felguard raiding in MH/BT.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Finishing the Affliction Leveling 40-70
By know you should be pretty familiar with how to play as an Affliction Warlock and don't need me to baby you with spell rotations and how to drain tank or when to use which pet. You just want to know what talent points are important to finish it up till lvl 70. So I am going to speed things up and finish the leveling guide of an Affliction Lock.
Your first priority is probably to get Unstable Affliction. This will require you to spend 10 more points into Affliction. You have to put 5/5 into Contagion. The other 5 can be used in Improved Howl Terror (very nice for solo leveling or PVP) and maybe a few more in Shadow Embrace. Or you may want to pick up Amplify Curse and Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx), if you haven't already. I personally do not like kiting as a Warlock - there are so many other, better, tactics that a Warlock can use, so I do not recommend CoEx. You could also put points into Grim Reach as the extra distance can be helpful. Since we are mostly drain-tanking, I skipped Grim Reach for now and went with Shadow Embrace to lessen the amount of damage I take. You can now grab Unstable Affliction.
At lvl 50 you should now have a build that is similar to this: 41/0/0
At this point, you can go several different ways to supplement your Affliction talents. You could go Destruction to increase your DPS or Demonology to increase your survivability. Or you could split points between the two. You can also respec and go full Demonology, but that's for a different post. Assuming you are staying Affliction, here is what I would recommend.
Demonology Route
5/5 in Demonic Embrace
3/3 in Fel Intellect
These increase your stamina and intellect respectively, which are very nice things to increase.
3/3 in Improved Imp
I would now abandon the succubus and use the Imp as your pet of choice to simply act as a mana battery and buff your health. Most of your DPS is coming from you anyway and you should be very effective at drain-tanking that there is very little need for the succubus. If you feel comfortable, you can start using the Imp earlier - results will vary - but at this point I definitely can say from experience that it is easy to level with the Imp.
3/3 Demonic Aegis
3/3 Fel Stamina
These buff your HP and Fel Armor, which as a result buffs your drain life ability.
Remaining points in Grim Reach or Shadow Embrace or whatever.
You are now lvl 70 and should have a build similar to this 45/16/0
The beauty of this build is that you have buffed your stamina and HP in a number of different ways and buffed your ability to drain life that you should be able to outlast just about anything. You have many DoTs at your disposal. You have tricks like instant Howl of Terror to use when you get into trouble. With this build you can easily take on and survive a group of mobs by just dotting them all up and drain tanking till they are dead.
A typically you can toss Siphon Life, COA, and Corruption on each mob. Then drain tank the last mob if you are sure the DOTs are enough to kill the mob. Otherwise drain tank the first mob to finish it off and cycle down each one. Keep using Dark Pact to keep your mana up. You can take on multiple mobs at the same time and pull new ones before current ones are completely dead and keep doing it for quite a while usually.
It's very fast and effective fighting. I once was farming Motes of Fire, which as you may know, typically involves racing 10 other farms to be the first to pull a mob and get credit for it. I would try to pull any and every mob I could and worry about actually surviving it later. I noticed that I would be able to kill 5x or more as many mobs as everyone else I was fighting with. In particular, I noticed a Paladin. I kid you not, I was able to kill 10-12 mobs in the time it took him to get one down. And I didn't even have to sit down to eat/drink afterwords. It's quite powerful.
Destruction Route
5/5 Improved Shadowbolt
5/5 Bane
These two talents make your shadowbolts better by decreasing their casting time and allowing them to add a debuff to the mob if they crit. This debuff will increase shadow damage by 20% which can be a lot of damage if you have a bunch of DOTs up and begin to drain-tank. These talents are absolutely essential to raiding as a Warlock. Thus if you plan to raid, you may wish to start getting used to using Shadowbolt more often.
You can now get 5/5 in Devastation or put some points into Demonology. Shadowburn is an option, as is Destructive Reach and Intensity.
At 70 your build might look something like this 41/0/20
Alternatives
Alternatively you can choose to lose Unstable Affliction (or skip it altogether) and go after Ruin. The thought here is that since mobs are dying so fast that you don't even need to use all your DOTs on a single mob, why bother having the extra DOTs in the first place? Instead you can open your attack with a couple Shadowbolts and then Drain-tank to finish. Or Fear and DOT and use SBolt to pull another mob and repeat.
Affliction w/Ruin 40/0/21
You can also, of course, split points evenly amongst all 3 talent trees. I don't particularly find this to result in anything especially effective or interesting, but maybe you will. Some people might find a way to put points into Improved Voidwalker and use a tank-and-spank strategy. I find this to be dull, not actually as good or easy as you would think, and just overall less powerful.
Of these Affliction builds, I would say 45/16/0 is the best for leveling. But be forewarned, this is NOT an acceptable, or even effective, raid spec. Don't get used to it if you plan to raid and then ignorantly stick with it as you move into raiding. Use it to get to 70 and begin preparing for end game raiding, but do not actually use it for raiding.
Your first priority is probably to get Unstable Affliction. This will require you to spend 10 more points into Affliction. You have to put 5/5 into Contagion. The other 5 can be used in Improved Howl Terror (very nice for solo leveling or PVP) and maybe a few more in Shadow Embrace. Or you may want to pick up Amplify Curse and Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx), if you haven't already. I personally do not like kiting as a Warlock - there are so many other, better, tactics that a Warlock can use, so I do not recommend CoEx. You could also put points into Grim Reach as the extra distance can be helpful. Since we are mostly drain-tanking, I skipped Grim Reach for now and went with Shadow Embrace to lessen the amount of damage I take. You can now grab Unstable Affliction.
At lvl 50 you should now have a build that is similar to this: 41/0/0
At this point, you can go several different ways to supplement your Affliction talents. You could go Destruction to increase your DPS or Demonology to increase your survivability. Or you could split points between the two. You can also respec and go full Demonology, but that's for a different post. Assuming you are staying Affliction, here is what I would recommend.
Demonology Route
5/5 in Demonic Embrace
3/3 in Fel Intellect
These increase your stamina and intellect respectively, which are very nice things to increase.
3/3 in Improved Imp
I would now abandon the succubus and use the Imp as your pet of choice to simply act as a mana battery and buff your health. Most of your DPS is coming from you anyway and you should be very effective at drain-tanking that there is very little need for the succubus. If you feel comfortable, you can start using the Imp earlier - results will vary - but at this point I definitely can say from experience that it is easy to level with the Imp.
3/3 Demonic Aegis
3/3 Fel Stamina
These buff your HP and Fel Armor, which as a result buffs your drain life ability.
Remaining points in Grim Reach or Shadow Embrace or whatever.
You are now lvl 70 and should have a build similar to this 45/16/0
The beauty of this build is that you have buffed your stamina and HP in a number of different ways and buffed your ability to drain life that you should be able to outlast just about anything. You have many DoTs at your disposal. You have tricks like instant Howl of Terror to use when you get into trouble. With this build you can easily take on and survive a group of mobs by just dotting them all up and drain tanking till they are dead.
A typically you can toss Siphon Life, COA, and Corruption on each mob. Then drain tank the last mob if you are sure the DOTs are enough to kill the mob. Otherwise drain tank the first mob to finish it off and cycle down each one. Keep using Dark Pact to keep your mana up. You can take on multiple mobs at the same time and pull new ones before current ones are completely dead and keep doing it for quite a while usually.
It's very fast and effective fighting. I once was farming Motes of Fire, which as you may know, typically involves racing 10 other farms to be the first to pull a mob and get credit for it. I would try to pull any and every mob I could and worry about actually surviving it later. I noticed that I would be able to kill 5x or more as many mobs as everyone else I was fighting with. In particular, I noticed a Paladin. I kid you not, I was able to kill 10-12 mobs in the time it took him to get one down. And I didn't even have to sit down to eat/drink afterwords. It's quite powerful.
Destruction Route
5/5 Improved Shadowbolt
5/5 Bane
These two talents make your shadowbolts better by decreasing their casting time and allowing them to add a debuff to the mob if they crit. This debuff will increase shadow damage by 20% which can be a lot of damage if you have a bunch of DOTs up and begin to drain-tank. These talents are absolutely essential to raiding as a Warlock. Thus if you plan to raid, you may wish to start getting used to using Shadowbolt more often.
You can now get 5/5 in Devastation or put some points into Demonology. Shadowburn is an option, as is Destructive Reach and Intensity.
At 70 your build might look something like this 41/0/20
Alternatives
Alternatively you can choose to lose Unstable Affliction (or skip it altogether) and go after Ruin. The thought here is that since mobs are dying so fast that you don't even need to use all your DOTs on a single mob, why bother having the extra DOTs in the first place? Instead you can open your attack with a couple Shadowbolts and then Drain-tank to finish. Or Fear and DOT and use SBolt to pull another mob and repeat.
Affliction w/Ruin 40/0/21
You can also, of course, split points evenly amongst all 3 talent trees. I don't particularly find this to result in anything especially effective or interesting, but maybe you will. Some people might find a way to put points into Improved Voidwalker and use a tank-and-spank strategy. I find this to be dull, not actually as good or easy as you would think, and just overall less powerful.
Of these Affliction builds, I would say 45/16/0 is the best for leveling. But be forewarned, this is NOT an acceptable, or even effective, raid spec. Don't get used to it if you plan to raid and then ignorantly stick with it as you move into raiding. Use it to get to 70 and begin preparing for end game raiding, but do not actually use it for raiding.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Drain Life vs Shadow Bolt
Overview
This is something that has bugged me for a while. There are a lot of Warlock raiders out there who completely fail to understand how Drain Life and Shadow Bolt work and, as a result, which is better. It's mostly Affliction Locks who make this mistake and I can understand why a new Affliction raider can make that mistake. There are Affliction talents that make Drain Life better and it helps keep your HP up when you use Life Tap, not to mention Suppression which improves spell hit rating on Affliction spells. Shadow Bolt is a Destruction talent, so I, as an Affliction Lock, do not need to focus on Shadow Bolt. But it's not just the newbie raiders out there who are making this inaccurate assumption, there are also those who should know better who are making this same mistake. So hopefully, once and for all, I am going to show exactly what is going on.
Shadow Bolt is ALWAYS better than Drain Life!
It really is that simple. Except in a very few select situations, during raiding, Shadow Bolt is always the better choice than Drain Life. No matter how much you improve Drain Life talents and no matter how much you neglect Shadow Bolt talents, Shadow Bolt is better. It does not matter what spec you are. It does not matter what your level of gear is. Shadow Bolt will always provide more DPS.
The reason that Shadow Bolt is so much better to use over Drain Life, even as an Affliction Lock, is because Shadow Bolt is the primary DPS spell available for Warlocks. It does high base damage. It also has a chance to crit, unlike Drain Life. In addition, Shadow Bolt scales considerably better with gear than a DoT like Drain Life does. So as you get more and better gear, Shadow Bolt improves DPS more over Drain Life.
Another just as important reason why Shadow Bolt is better is because of Improved Shadow Bolt (ISB). ISB increases shadow damage raid-wide by 20% whenever a Shadow Bolt crits. Therefore, 5/5 in ISB and 5/5 in Bane are considered essential must-have talents in ANY raid build. While Affliction Locks will have less crit and spend less time casting Shadow Bolts, the little bit they can contribute to ISB uptime is still significant. Therefore Affliction Locks are wrong to assume that they don't need to worry about Shadow Bolts. They absolutely should be casting Shadow Bolts between DOTs.
Drain Life also takes longer to channel than Shadow Bolt, esp with the Bane talent. Drain Life is 5 seconds for a full cast compared to a 2.5 Shadow Bolt with Bane. So you can get two Shadow Bolts out during that Drain Life instead. Many fights are mobile and require you to run around a lot. Affliction is nice in that you can cast a lot of DOTs on the run. So why would you then do the opposite and cast a longer casting spell between DOTs?
But what is all this without some theorycrafting to back up my claims? Well that is exactly what I am going to do. First, let me lay down my hypothesis, assumptions, and general plan of action.
Hypothesis: There is no combination of talent build and gear that makes Drain Life do more DPS than Shadow Bolt.
Assumptions: Testing against single target raid bosses. Max-DPS rotations and curse selection will be used. Stand still tank-and-spank situation where no movement is required. Improved 3/3 Curse of Shadow is kept up by someone else. This creates the ideal environment where we can focus solely on how much DPS is gained or lost when switching Shadow Bolt with Drain Life. For simplicity, I am just going to assume +shadow and +fire are the same. Most Locks will have more +shadow, but this won't taint the results at all since it only affects Immolate, which will remain static between trials of each test. I am also ignoring haste for the time being, since beginning Locks will not have much access to it anyway, Affliction Locks don't value it as much, and the mechanics of haste are being changed in the near future.
Testing Plan: Using the Warlock DPS spreadsheet, I will test the DPS results of the main Affliction raid builds using Shadow Bolt and Drain Life. I will test different levels of gear as well as different, unorthodox, spell rotations. I will even test what happens when the Lock is grouped with different classes (Shadow Priest, Moonkin, and Shaman.) Finally, I will then start to play around and try anything possible to make Drain Life out-DPS Shadow Bolt, if possible.
Theorycrafting
Format I will use:
Test: Description of what is being tested
Spec: Link to spec being used
Filler Spell: Which spell between Drain Life and Shadow Bolt is being used between DOTs
Dmg: Amount of spell damage
Spell hit: Spell hit rating from gear only
Crit: Spell crit rating
HP: Health
Mana: Mana
Spell Rotation: What spells are being used
DPS: resulting Damage Per Second time (higher is better.)
OOM Time: Out of Mana Time (higher is better)
Net DPS: DPS gained (or lost) by using Drain Life instead of Shadow Bolt.
Comments: Comments on the results found
Round 1
Test: General early T5 Affliction raid spec and gear. Spell hit capped without suppression. In tank group with Imp out. Dark Pact and Health Tap are used when needed.
Spec: 44/0/17
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1217.45
OOM Time: -
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1119.81
OOM Time: -
Net DPS: -97.64
Comments: This is the overall best Affliction based spec covering all the necessities while maximizing individual DPS potential. Note that in this spec, Locks have unlimited mana. The result is a nearly 100 loss in DPS. This is in effect over a long fight. What about if the fight is very short, or if there is a shorter "burst" phase?
Test: Using the same exact spec and gear as above, only difference is that max DPS is needed and Dark Pact and Life Tap is not allowed. Chugging mana pots is used instead.
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
DPS: 1346.46
OOM Time: 61 s
Filler Spell: Drain Life
DPS: 1186.38
OOM Time: 82 s
Net DPS: -160.08
Comments: As we can see, there is an even greater loss in DPS during a straight max-DPS burst. This is very conclusive that Shadow Bolt does more DPS and is therefore a better filler between DOTs. However, using Drain Life does allow the Lock to last longer before going out of mana by 21 seconds. Does this make a difference? Let's find out.
1346.46 DPS x 61 s = 82134.06 total damage output
1186.38 DPS x 82 s = 97283.16 total damage output
What this tells us is that by using Drain Life, the Warlock will last longer, thus allowing more time for DOTs to tick, resulting in more overall damage done before running out of mana. This is an extremely unrealistic scenario though. Locks are going to be able to Life Tap at least some of the time and likely to get some heals here and there. Thus it is far more important (and realistic) to focus on the DPS and ignore the OOM Time. Obviously you can last longer by using Drain Life, but most encounters have timers that you have to beat, thus it is stupid to think that it is better to use Drain Life just because you can do more damage EVENTUALLY given the time. The fact is, you don't have that time. You need to do that damage now.
Round 2
Test: General Affliction spec, only with less spell hit and relying on suppression to reach hit cap. Normal Life Tap and Dark Pact use are allowed.
Spec: 44/0/17 with Suppression
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1148.88
OOM Time: -
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1093.24
OOM Time: -
Net DPS: -58.98
Comments: The point of this test is that since a lot of Affliction Locks are just starting out and do not have enough spell hit from gear (or worse, refuse to put spell hit on gear) and rely on Suppression to make up the difference, they think that Shadow Bolt will miss too often to be worth it. This has just been proven wrong as even with the extra misses, Shadow Bolt still gave a higher DPS. Notice that the overall DPS lowered in both trials from the first test. This is because Immolate is not affected by Suppression. What happens if we take Immolate out of the rotation and use Drain Life over Shadow Bolt, ensuring that all spells cast are Affliction, and thus you are effectively hit capped the entire rotation?
Test: Same as above, minus Immolate and Shadow Bolt
DPS: 1048.57
Net DPS (from previous Drain Life trial with Immolate): -55.57
Comments: Huh, lost DPS there. Immolate is a good spell and has a higher damage per cast time than Shadow Bolt. Until you have a lot more shadow damage than fire, Immolate is worth casting.
Round 3
Test: Alternative Affliction/Demonology spec that supposedly boosts Drain Life. Normal Dark Pact and Life Tap use are allowed. Gear will be consistent with the previous tests. Not hit capped from gear, suppression used. NOTE: I am using the same numbers except for +crit as with the previous specs. This is because the extra stamina and intellect gained from these talents have almost no effect whatsoever on DPS, however Crit does have a significant effect. Thus this is easier and just as accurate for the purpose of this particular test.
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 15%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 996.69
OOM Time: -
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 15%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1008.94
OOM Time: -
Net DPS: 12.25
Comments: Ok, I have to admit that I was surprised with this result. I knew it would be close, but I assumed Shadow Bolt would still come out slightly on top. The reason Drain Life is closer (or in this case superior) to Shadow Bolt with this spec is not so much that you improved Drain Life enough to make it effective, as much as you gimped and neglected Shadow Bolt so much that Drain Life became effective. Look at the overall DPS compared to the 44/0/17 specs.
Both with 6% spell hit and Suppression
44/0/17 Shadow Bolt: 1148.88
44/17/0 Drain Life: 1008.94
Net DPS (of 44/17/0 Drain Life spec): -139.94
With 44/17/0, your Shadow Bolts have longer casting time and you have lower crit. Using Drain Life with this spec is superior because the Sbolts take so long to cast that it's better to use Drain Life and hope for some Nightfall procs. But overall, the same exact gear using 44/0/17 and Shadow Bolt will gain 140 DPS simply from moving those 17 points around. Not only that, but you also contribute to ISB uptime and will increase overall raid DPS more with 44/0/17.
Round 4 - Comparing differences in Net DPS at different gear levels with 44/17/0
Test: Not spell hit capped and using Suppression. Higher quality gear results in higher shadow damage and crit.
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1599.41
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1583.82
Net DPS: -16.59
Comments: This test shows how Shadow Bolt scales better with damage than DOTs (which Drain Life counts as.) By getting much better gear, Shadow Bolt has improved more than Drain Life has. With this same spec before, Drain Life came out on top by 12, but now it is behind by 16.5. Of course with this level of gear you would likely find it impossible to not reach the hit cap from gear so let's add that in.
Test: Same as above, but with being spell hit capped from gear.
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1669.80
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1606.49
Net DPS: -63.31
Comments: Shadow Bolt clearly comes out ahead when adding the spell hit that you would probably have at this gear level. Of course this spec has already been shown to gimp your DPS potential, so how would this spec, using Drain Life, compare with the better Affliction spec, using Shadow Bolt at this gear level?
44/17/0 Drain Life: 1606.04
44/0/17 Shadow Bolt: 1980.87
Net DPS (of using 44/17/0): -374.83
Comments: Wow! That is rather conclusive I would say. This round of tests perfectly illustrates that Shadow Bolt scales way better to addition shadow damage than Drain Life. This is at extremely high gear levels of course but it clearly shows the concept
Round 5 - Comparing very low level gear
Test: Very low gear, barely any spell hit
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 500
Spell hit: 2%
Crit: 2%
HP: 7000
Mana: 6000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Drain Life, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 710.01
Spec: 44/0/17
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 500
Spell hit: 2%
Crit: 2%
HP: 7000
Mana: 6000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 767.17
Net DPS: -57.16
Comments: Even at very low gear levels, probably equivalent to just hitting 70 and not having done any runs for gear yet, the 44/17/0 Drain Life build is subpar.
Conclusions
As was expected, Shadow Bolt comes out on top over Drain Life, by a lot in many cases. Shadow Bolt scales better with damage, benefits from crit and haste, and contributes to ISB uptime. Furthermore, 44/0/17 has been shown to boost DPS over 44/17/0. In fact, the only possible way to make Drain Life out DPS Shadow Bolt is simply to use an obviously subpar build and neglect spell hit rating enough that Shadow Bolt is gimped so much that Drain Life suddenly seems better. It actually isn't! The entire spec is doing lower DPS because it severely neglects and ignores the most fundamental and important damage spell a Warlock has - Shadow Bolt. That would be comparable to saying you are faster than someone driving a car, when you took out the car engine and the other person had to push the car.
44/17/0 and Drain Life are not raid worthy at all. It may be nice for solo or maybe PVP where you are regularly taking damage and are your sole healer. But in a raid setting, it is clearly inferior to other specs. The only time you would use this as a serious raid spec is if you had very low gear and were afraid of dying easily. In that case you shouldn't even be allowed to raid to begin with. Spend a few weeks in Kara and Heroics and gear up a bit.
Also note that this is ideal DPS situations and in game results will vary considerably. There is a lot of running around needed in a real raid. You will be taking some damage here and there, sometimes a lot. Actual DPS will be lower. However the point of this project was simply to show that Shadow Bolt is better than Drain Life, even as Affliction. I think this did an accurate job of proving just that.
About half of an Affliction Locks DPS should come from Destruction via Shadow Bolt and Immolate. Therefore it is also important to still work towards getting spell hit capped from gear rather than relying on suppression.
PS. I think I original said that I would show some tests on grouping with certain classes but didn't get around to it. There really shouldn't be much to test that wasn't already. Any group buff that increases crit or haste will benefit Shadow Bolt and not Drain Life. Any general damage buff will benefit either, but since Shadow Bolt already has a higher base DPS, any additional damage buff will therefore mean that Shadow Bolt still have higher base DPS. However the fact that SBolt can crit means that you actually get slightly more out of that additional damage buff with SBolt over Drain Life due to increasing the damage potential of the crits.
This is something that has bugged me for a while. There are a lot of Warlock raiders out there who completely fail to understand how Drain Life and Shadow Bolt work and, as a result, which is better. It's mostly Affliction Locks who make this mistake and I can understand why a new Affliction raider can make that mistake. There are Affliction talents that make Drain Life better and it helps keep your HP up when you use Life Tap, not to mention Suppression which improves spell hit rating on Affliction spells. Shadow Bolt is a Destruction talent, so I, as an Affliction Lock, do not need to focus on Shadow Bolt. But it's not just the newbie raiders out there who are making this inaccurate assumption, there are also those who should know better who are making this same mistake. So hopefully, once and for all, I am going to show exactly what is going on.
Shadow Bolt is ALWAYS better than Drain Life!
It really is that simple. Except in a very few select situations, during raiding, Shadow Bolt is always the better choice than Drain Life. No matter how much you improve Drain Life talents and no matter how much you neglect Shadow Bolt talents, Shadow Bolt is better. It does not matter what spec you are. It does not matter what your level of gear is. Shadow Bolt will always provide more DPS.
The reason that Shadow Bolt is so much better to use over Drain Life, even as an Affliction Lock, is because Shadow Bolt is the primary DPS spell available for Warlocks. It does high base damage. It also has a chance to crit, unlike Drain Life. In addition, Shadow Bolt scales considerably better with gear than a DoT like Drain Life does. So as you get more and better gear, Shadow Bolt improves DPS more over Drain Life.
Another just as important reason why Shadow Bolt is better is because of Improved Shadow Bolt (ISB). ISB increases shadow damage raid-wide by 20% whenever a Shadow Bolt crits. Therefore, 5/5 in ISB and 5/5 in Bane are considered essential must-have talents in ANY raid build. While Affliction Locks will have less crit and spend less time casting Shadow Bolts, the little bit they can contribute to ISB uptime is still significant. Therefore Affliction Locks are wrong to assume that they don't need to worry about Shadow Bolts. They absolutely should be casting Shadow Bolts between DOTs.
Drain Life also takes longer to channel than Shadow Bolt, esp with the Bane talent. Drain Life is 5 seconds for a full cast compared to a 2.5 Shadow Bolt with Bane. So you can get two Shadow Bolts out during that Drain Life instead. Many fights are mobile and require you to run around a lot. Affliction is nice in that you can cast a lot of DOTs on the run. So why would you then do the opposite and cast a longer casting spell between DOTs?
But what is all this without some theorycrafting to back up my claims? Well that is exactly what I am going to do. First, let me lay down my hypothesis, assumptions, and general plan of action.
Hypothesis: There is no combination of talent build and gear that makes Drain Life do more DPS than Shadow Bolt.
Assumptions: Testing against single target raid bosses. Max-DPS rotations and curse selection will be used. Stand still tank-and-spank situation where no movement is required. Improved 3/3 Curse of Shadow is kept up by someone else. This creates the ideal environment where we can focus solely on how much DPS is gained or lost when switching Shadow Bolt with Drain Life. For simplicity, I am just going to assume +shadow and +fire are the same. Most Locks will have more +shadow, but this won't taint the results at all since it only affects Immolate, which will remain static between trials of each test. I am also ignoring haste for the time being, since beginning Locks will not have much access to it anyway, Affliction Locks don't value it as much, and the mechanics of haste are being changed in the near future.
Testing Plan: Using the Warlock DPS spreadsheet, I will test the DPS results of the main Affliction raid builds using Shadow Bolt and Drain Life. I will test different levels of gear as well as different, unorthodox, spell rotations. I will even test what happens when the Lock is grouped with different classes (Shadow Priest, Moonkin, and Shaman.) Finally, I will then start to play around and try anything possible to make Drain Life out-DPS Shadow Bolt, if possible.
Theorycrafting
Format I will use:
Test: Description of what is being tested
Spec: Link to spec being used
Filler Spell: Which spell between Drain Life and Shadow Bolt is being used between DOTs
Dmg: Amount of spell damage
Spell hit: Spell hit rating from gear only
Crit: Spell crit rating
HP: Health
Mana: Mana
Spell Rotation: What spells are being used
DPS: resulting Damage Per Second time (higher is better.)
OOM Time: Out of Mana Time (higher is better)
Net DPS: DPS gained (or lost) by using Drain Life instead of Shadow Bolt.
Comments: Comments on the results found
Round 1
Test: General early T5 Affliction raid spec and gear. Spell hit capped without suppression. In tank group with Imp out. Dark Pact and Health Tap are used when needed.
Spec: 44/0/17
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1217.45
OOM Time: -
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1119.81
OOM Time: -
Net DPS: -97.64
Comments: This is the overall best Affliction based spec covering all the necessities while maximizing individual DPS potential. Note that in this spec, Locks have unlimited mana. The result is a nearly 100 loss in DPS. This is in effect over a long fight. What about if the fight is very short, or if there is a shorter "burst" phase?
Test: Using the same exact spec and gear as above, only difference is that max DPS is needed and Dark Pact and Life Tap is not allowed. Chugging mana pots is used instead.
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
DPS: 1346.46
OOM Time: 61 s
Filler Spell: Drain Life
DPS: 1186.38
OOM Time: 82 s
Net DPS: -160.08
Comments: As we can see, there is an even greater loss in DPS during a straight max-DPS burst. This is very conclusive that Shadow Bolt does more DPS and is therefore a better filler between DOTs. However, using Drain Life does allow the Lock to last longer before going out of mana by 21 seconds. Does this make a difference? Let's find out.
1346.46 DPS x 61 s = 82134.06 total damage output
1186.38 DPS x 82 s = 97283.16 total damage output
What this tells us is that by using Drain Life, the Warlock will last longer, thus allowing more time for DOTs to tick, resulting in more overall damage done before running out of mana. This is an extremely unrealistic scenario though. Locks are going to be able to Life Tap at least some of the time and likely to get some heals here and there. Thus it is far more important (and realistic) to focus on the DPS and ignore the OOM Time. Obviously you can last longer by using Drain Life, but most encounters have timers that you have to beat, thus it is stupid to think that it is better to use Drain Life just because you can do more damage EVENTUALLY given the time. The fact is, you don't have that time. You need to do that damage now.
Round 2
Test: General Affliction spec, only with less spell hit and relying on suppression to reach hit cap. Normal Life Tap and Dark Pact use are allowed.
Spec: 44/0/17 with Suppression
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1148.88
OOM Time: -
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 20%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1093.24
OOM Time: -
Net DPS: -58.98
Comments: The point of this test is that since a lot of Affliction Locks are just starting out and do not have enough spell hit from gear (or worse, refuse to put spell hit on gear) and rely on Suppression to make up the difference, they think that Shadow Bolt will miss too often to be worth it. This has just been proven wrong as even with the extra misses, Shadow Bolt still gave a higher DPS. Notice that the overall DPS lowered in both trials from the first test. This is because Immolate is not affected by Suppression. What happens if we take Immolate out of the rotation and use Drain Life over Shadow Bolt, ensuring that all spells cast are Affliction, and thus you are effectively hit capped the entire rotation?
Test: Same as above, minus Immolate and Shadow Bolt
DPS: 1048.57
Net DPS (from previous Drain Life trial with Immolate): -55.57
Comments: Huh, lost DPS there. Immolate is a good spell and has a higher damage per cast time than Shadow Bolt. Until you have a lot more shadow damage than fire, Immolate is worth casting.
Round 3
Test: Alternative Affliction/Demonology spec that supposedly boosts Drain Life. Normal Dark Pact and Life Tap use are allowed. Gear will be consistent with the previous tests. Not hit capped from gear, suppression used. NOTE: I am using the same numbers except for +crit as with the previous specs. This is because the extra stamina and intellect gained from these talents have almost no effect whatsoever on DPS, however Crit does have a significant effect. Thus this is easier and just as accurate for the purpose of this particular test.
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 15%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 996.69
OOM Time: -
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 1000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 15%
HP: 10000
Mana: 10000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1008.94
OOM Time: -
Net DPS: 12.25
Comments: Ok, I have to admit that I was surprised with this result. I knew it would be close, but I assumed Shadow Bolt would still come out slightly on top. The reason Drain Life is closer (or in this case superior) to Shadow Bolt with this spec is not so much that you improved Drain Life enough to make it effective, as much as you gimped and neglected Shadow Bolt so much that Drain Life became effective. Look at the overall DPS compared to the 44/0/17 specs.
Both with 6% spell hit and Suppression
44/0/17 Shadow Bolt: 1148.88
44/17/0 Drain Life: 1008.94
Net DPS (of 44/17/0 Drain Life spec): -139.94
With 44/17/0, your Shadow Bolts have longer casting time and you have lower crit. Using Drain Life with this spec is superior because the Sbolts take so long to cast that it's better to use Drain Life and hope for some Nightfall procs. But overall, the same exact gear using 44/0/17 and Shadow Bolt will gain 140 DPS simply from moving those 17 points around. Not only that, but you also contribute to ISB uptime and will increase overall raid DPS more with 44/0/17.
Round 4 - Comparing differences in Net DPS at different gear levels with 44/17/0
Test: Not spell hit capped and using Suppression. Higher quality gear results in higher shadow damage and crit.
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1599.41
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 6%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1583.82
Net DPS: -16.59
Comments: This test shows how Shadow Bolt scales better with damage than DOTs (which Drain Life counts as.) By getting much better gear, Shadow Bolt has improved more than Drain Life has. With this same spec before, Drain Life came out on top by 12, but now it is behind by 16.5. Of course with this level of gear you would likely find it impossible to not reach the hit cap from gear so let's add that in.
Test: Same as above, but with being spell hit capped from gear.
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1669.80
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 2000
Spell hit: 16%
Crit: 25%
HP: 12000
Mana: 12000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 1606.49
Net DPS: -63.31
Comments: Shadow Bolt clearly comes out ahead when adding the spell hit that you would probably have at this gear level. Of course this spec has already been shown to gimp your DPS potential, so how would this spec, using Drain Life, compare with the better Affliction spec, using Shadow Bolt at this gear level?
44/17/0 Drain Life: 1606.04
44/0/17 Shadow Bolt: 1980.87
Net DPS (of using 44/17/0): -374.83
Comments: Wow! That is rather conclusive I would say. This round of tests perfectly illustrates that Shadow Bolt scales way better to addition shadow damage than Drain Life. This is at extremely high gear levels of course but it clearly shows the concept
Round 5 - Comparing very low level gear
Test: Very low gear, barely any spell hit
Spec: 44/17/0
Filler Spell: Drain Life
Dmg: 500
Spell hit: 2%
Crit: 2%
HP: 7000
Mana: 6000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Drain Life, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 710.01
Spec: 44/0/17
Filler Spell: Shadow Bolt
Dmg: 500
Spell hit: 2%
Crit: 2%
HP: 7000
Mana: 6000
Spell Rotation: Curse of Doom, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Shadow Bolt, refresh DOT's as needed
DPS: 767.17
Net DPS: -57.16
Comments: Even at very low gear levels, probably equivalent to just hitting 70 and not having done any runs for gear yet, the 44/17/0 Drain Life build is subpar.
Conclusions
As was expected, Shadow Bolt comes out on top over Drain Life, by a lot in many cases. Shadow Bolt scales better with damage, benefits from crit and haste, and contributes to ISB uptime. Furthermore, 44/0/17 has been shown to boost DPS over 44/17/0. In fact, the only possible way to make Drain Life out DPS Shadow Bolt is simply to use an obviously subpar build and neglect spell hit rating enough that Shadow Bolt is gimped so much that Drain Life suddenly seems better. It actually isn't! The entire spec is doing lower DPS because it severely neglects and ignores the most fundamental and important damage spell a Warlock has - Shadow Bolt. That would be comparable to saying you are faster than someone driving a car, when you took out the car engine and the other person had to push the car.
44/17/0 and Drain Life are not raid worthy at all. It may be nice for solo or maybe PVP where you are regularly taking damage and are your sole healer. But in a raid setting, it is clearly inferior to other specs. The only time you would use this as a serious raid spec is if you had very low gear and were afraid of dying easily. In that case you shouldn't even be allowed to raid to begin with. Spend a few weeks in Kara and Heroics and gear up a bit.
Also note that this is ideal DPS situations and in game results will vary considerably. There is a lot of running around needed in a real raid. You will be taking some damage here and there, sometimes a lot. Actual DPS will be lower. However the point of this project was simply to show that Shadow Bolt is better than Drain Life, even as Affliction. I think this did an accurate job of proving just that.
About half of an Affliction Locks DPS should come from Destruction via Shadow Bolt and Immolate. Therefore it is also important to still work towards getting spell hit capped from gear rather than relying on suppression.
PS. I think I original said that I would show some tests on grouping with certain classes but didn't get around to it. There really shouldn't be much to test that wasn't already. Any group buff that increases crit or haste will benefit Shadow Bolt and not Drain Life. Any general damage buff will benefit either, but since Shadow Bolt already has a higher base DPS, any additional damage buff will therefore mean that Shadow Bolt still have higher base DPS. However the fact that SBolt can crit means that you actually get slightly more out of that additional damage buff with SBolt over Drain Life due to increasing the damage potential of the crits.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Fundamentals of Warlock Raiding
One of my main inspirations for doing this blog was to share my experiences and tips of raiding as a Warlock. Before I go into specifics about talent builds, gear, or boss strategies, I want to go over the basic fundamentals about Warlock raiding.
Role in Raid
Warlocks simultaneously serve three general roles in raiding. Those roles are DPS, Debuffing, and Utility. Every Lock of any spec serves all three of these roles. The difference in specs varies the degree or effectiveness of serving a specific role, but all Locks still contribute to each role in some way.
Talent Builds
Warlocks are blessed with three amazing talent trees. There is something to like about every tree and each one is viable in a raid setting. Let me repeat that - EVERY Warlock tree is raid viable. A lot of people think that Demonology is not a good primary tree for raiding, but they are mistaken. So many people have assumed Demo to be bad for raiding, because that's what everyone else says. But they are wrong and Demo can be just as good of a raid build as Affliction or Destruction.
Some talent builds focus more on raid utility or debuffing ability while others focus on maximizing DPS potential. Some builds are less gear dependent than others. Some are more effective at different stages of raid progression. Your goal is to learn which build is best for your gear/progression level/role in raid. Through the course of you raiding career you will probably have to switch builds several times to remain most effective.
Gearing Considerations
Gearing a Warlock is fairly straight-forward. There are different considerations to be made depending on what build you are using, but basics are similar across all builds. More importantly, all beginning Locks share the same gearing goals.
Raid bosses are a higher level and have different damage formulas and resistance levels. As such, the main goal of gearing a raiding Lock (or any raider for that matter) is to maximize your potential against raid bosses. Trash mobs are rather insignificant, but boss encounters are where guilds need to put in most of their effort and where the better your gear is the more likely you will succeed.
Most Warlocks will want to have two sets of gear - one that is spell hit capped for boss fights, and another that has only 5% spell hit and maximizes DPS for trash or AOE fights. There isn't much need for resistance gear early on. T6 raiders will need to invest in a shadow resist set but that is about it.
Gem and enchant to reach spell hit cap and then to maximize damage. Great Dawnstone gems are a great way to reach the hit cap early. Veiled Noble Topaz will be the best bank for your buck gem, while Runed Living Ruby will maximize damage after you are hit capped. Other gems, including spell crit or stamina, are not considered worthwhile except to meet metagem requirements. In that case you should have as few of them as needed.
And finally, a word of advice for times when you get new gear - save all your old gear. There are times when you get a new piece of gear and it is better than what you currently have at that piece, but later on you get some other new gear and suddenly that original first piece of gear is actually better again. This could be because of spell hit rating on pieces of gear and switching around gear is needed to keep spell hit capped, but not over. You also will find that old gear can be used for a max-DPS trash or AOE set. Or you can use old gear for maximizing stamina or resistance or anything like that for a specific boss encounter. This is not required, but it can be helpful. You will also likely need to replace gems a lot to keep spell hit capped, but not over, while maximizing damage. I know it's a pain and expensive, but do not hesitate to do this because it will keep you at your best and most effective at all times.
Grouping
This is much too complex to even begin to cover here at this time. It depends on the classes, specs, skill level, and roles of all 25 players in the raid, as well as the particular encounter. In addition, some raid leaders might just prefer one grouping style over another. And finally, you may not be the raid leader or have any control or say over any of this, so it may not matter too much to you. But there are some basics in grouping that are important to understand about Warlocks.
Warlocks have many different curses at their disposable, some which act as a DoT and others which act as a debuff. Which to use is an important skill for raiding Locks to understand. In general, Curse of Doom is higher DPS than Curse of Agony and should be used in any situation where there is enough time for CoD to go off. However, if there are enough other raiders who can benefit from the debuffs, those should be used over CoD/CoA.
Affliction locks with Malediction (which any true affliction raider should have) should be on CoS/CoE duty. Curse of Shadow is almost always going to be required. Warlocks, Shadow Priests, Arcane Mages, Moonkins all benefit from this, so more than likely you will have enough players where this is better to cast than CoD/CoA. If there are 2 or more fire mages, you should provide CoE.
CoR is more tricky because it also has the side effect of making the mob hit your tanks harder. Thus it is not advisable in every fight. But if you have 5 or more Hunters or melee DPS, you should use CoR provided it is a safe fight. If you are the sole Lock, it's probably safe to assume CoS is the curse you should use. More on curse selection and especially CoR later.
Consumables
Any true dedicated raider should come fully stocked with necessary consumables. For a Warlock the choices are easy - anything that improves DPS. This means Major Wizard Oil, Damage flasks (Flask of Pure Death), and damage foods. You may wish to use spell hit food till you get that capped. You may also wish to have stamina food for select fights. But in general you want anything that increases damage.
Shards
And finally, come with plenty of shards. You should invest in the 28 slot shard bag. But come with more shards than that. It's going to depend on what spec you are, how many other warlocks are in the raid, and what you are raiding to know how many shards to bring, but more is always better than less.
Affliction Locks should, whenever possible, handle soulstones and random summonings. Destro/Demo Locks have to use more shards for their demons and sacrifices so it is helpful whenever they can save some. Every Lock should summon a soul well, however, and often.
Make sure you fill up on shards on trash mobs so you have enough to last boss encounters, especially while learning and maybe wiping a lot.
Conclusion
That's all for now. I will give more in depth analysis of each build in future posts. For the time being this should be enough basic fundamentals to get you started in the right direction. Visit elitistjerks for more information and to keep up with current theorycrafting standards.
Role in Raid
Warlocks simultaneously serve three general roles in raiding. Those roles are DPS, Debuffing, and Utility. Every Lock of any spec serves all three of these roles. The difference in specs varies the degree or effectiveness of serving a specific role, but all Locks still contribute to each role in some way.
- DPSer - DPS should be obvious. Warlocks are a DPS class and along with Mages, Hunters, and Rogues will provide the most damage done during a raid, especially during boss encounters. Warlocks can do extremely high DPS at every tier level. They have great AOE capability, high damage nuking ability, and DoT's which increase DPS duration. Locks make great DPS on fights which require a lot of movement or have adds. They are also extremely effective on longer encounters. All things being equal, Locks should not typically be the top DPS class in a raid, but they are always up there and on some fights will be top of DPS.
- Debuffer - Warlocks provide a number of debuffs that can help the raid. Curses are the obvious debuff; these can lower the armor or resistance of a mob, which in turn allows raiders to do higher DPS on them. But there are also various talents that provide additional debuffs. Improved Shadow Bolt increases raid-wide shadow damage. Shadow Embrace lowers amount of melee damage taken raid-wide. The Felguard increases melee damage. These debuffs can greatly increase the ability of the entire raid and should not be underestimated.
- Utility - Utility is the measure of satisfaction gained from a service. Warlocks provide several services that increase the satisfaction of a raid. Healthstones, soulstones, summoning, and imp buff are all services that Locks can provide that greatly increase raid utility. None of these things are absolutely needed by a raid, but they make life a lot easier for everyone. As such they have come to be expected contributions from any Warlock.
Talent Builds
Warlocks are blessed with three amazing talent trees. There is something to like about every tree and each one is viable in a raid setting. Let me repeat that - EVERY Warlock tree is raid viable. A lot of people think that Demonology is not a good primary tree for raiding, but they are mistaken. So many people have assumed Demo to be bad for raiding, because that's what everyone else says. But they are wrong and Demo can be just as good of a raid build as Affliction or Destruction.
Some talent builds focus more on raid utility or debuffing ability while others focus on maximizing DPS potential. Some builds are less gear dependent than others. Some are more effective at different stages of raid progression. Your goal is to learn which build is best for your gear/progression level/role in raid. Through the course of you raiding career you will probably have to switch builds several times to remain most effective.
- Affliction focuses on increasing the ability of your DoTs and increasing debuffing ability. In general Affliction based builds will perform better in earlier raid progression - IE at Gruuls and Magtheridon and early T5 levels. Affliction scales worse with gear so once you get to a certain gear level, another build will outperform it. However because of the debuffing, at least one Affliction Lock is still considered necessary at every level.
- Demonology focuses on increasing raid utility as well as the effectiveness of your demons. A Demo spec will be less gear dependent than other builds. Your demon, typically the Felguard, will be central to your raiding ability. Your demon needs to get buffed and needs to stay alive for you to be effective. This makes this kind of build more difficult, especially on bosses with a lot of AOE and is probably the main reason so many people think it is an unattractive raid spec. But the DPS potential of these builds can be huge and at late T5 and early T6 levels, this is probably the highest DPS spec.
- Destruction focuses on high burst DPS potential. Destro performs less well at early raid levels because of the high reliance on shadow bolt and high mana consumption. Once you are spell hit capped and have good gear (somewhere mid T5 level) and this build starts to deliver some impressive DPS potential. Destro Locks rely on Shadow Bolt for 90% of their damage. Since Shadow Bolt scales best with gear, Destruction scales best with gear as a build. This is the top DPS spec at late T6 levels.
Gearing Considerations
Gearing a Warlock is fairly straight-forward. There are different considerations to be made depending on what build you are using, but basics are similar across all builds. More importantly, all beginning Locks share the same gearing goals.
Raid bosses are a higher level and have different damage formulas and resistance levels. As such, the main goal of gearing a raiding Lock (or any raider for that matter) is to maximize your potential against raid bosses. Trash mobs are rather insignificant, but boss encounters are where guilds need to put in most of their effort and where the better your gear is the more likely you will succeed.
- Cap Spell Hit - This is the first, and most important, stat to reach for a Warlock of any spec. You need 202 spell hit to be "capped", meaning that is the most you can get and anything beyond that is a waste. The lower your spell hit, the more likely you are to resist, which lowers the effectiveness of every point of damage you have. Thus this is the best bang for your buck till you get capped. Affliction Locks can put points into Suppression till they get enough spell hit.
- Spell Damage/Shadow Damage - This is probably the next most important stat. Affliction locks will want to focus on damage while other builds will want some crit or haste too, but damage still is more important.
- Spell Haste - Less desirable for Affliction Locks, but very useful for Demo/Destro Locks who spam Shadow Bolts. The more haste you have, the faster your casting time, which means you can get off a Shadow Bolt faster and start casting that next one earlier or move if needed in mobile fights.
- Spell Crit - Less desirable for Affliction Locks, but useful for Demo/Destro. DoTs do not crit, hence why Affliction doesn't benefit as much from this. Destro Locks who are spamming Shadow Bolts and have Ruin will see the most benefit from this. More crit also increases Improved Shadow Bolt uptime, which in turn increases the overall shadow damage done raid-wide. Still, crit is probably the least valuable stat for Locks, even Destro Locks, because of how crit is required for an increase of 1%. Destro Locks should have a decent amount of crit, but you don't want to stack either as that is less efficient towards DPS than haste or damage.
- Stamina - Unlike PVP or solo leveling, a raiding Lock does not want lots of stamina. Stamina is still more desirable than Intellect and you will naturally have higher stamina than other casters, but you do not want to go out of your way to get more stamina. The general rule of thumb is to have enough stamina to survive anything during a raid encounter and no more. It is better to have more spell damage than crit. You have tanks, they are taking the hits, if you are doing your job right and don't pull aggro, you should not be taking that much damage, if any. So it is less important to have stamina in a raid.
Most Warlocks will want to have two sets of gear - one that is spell hit capped for boss fights, and another that has only 5% spell hit and maximizes DPS for trash or AOE fights. There isn't much need for resistance gear early on. T6 raiders will need to invest in a shadow resist set but that is about it.
Gem and enchant to reach spell hit cap and then to maximize damage. Great Dawnstone gems are a great way to reach the hit cap early. Veiled Noble Topaz will be the best bank for your buck gem, while Runed Living Ruby will maximize damage after you are hit capped. Other gems, including spell crit or stamina, are not considered worthwhile except to meet metagem requirements. In that case you should have as few of them as needed.
And finally, a word of advice for times when you get new gear - save all your old gear. There are times when you get a new piece of gear and it is better than what you currently have at that piece, but later on you get some other new gear and suddenly that original first piece of gear is actually better again. This could be because of spell hit rating on pieces of gear and switching around gear is needed to keep spell hit capped, but not over. You also will find that old gear can be used for a max-DPS trash or AOE set. Or you can use old gear for maximizing stamina or resistance or anything like that for a specific boss encounter. This is not required, but it can be helpful. You will also likely need to replace gems a lot to keep spell hit capped, but not over, while maximizing damage. I know it's a pain and expensive, but do not hesitate to do this because it will keep you at your best and most effective at all times.
Grouping
This is much too complex to even begin to cover here at this time. It depends on the classes, specs, skill level, and roles of all 25 players in the raid, as well as the particular encounter. In addition, some raid leaders might just prefer one grouping style over another. And finally, you may not be the raid leader or have any control or say over any of this, so it may not matter too much to you. But there are some basics in grouping that are important to understand about Warlocks.
- In general, Warlocks can function on their own and without aide from being grouped with any specific class. Affliction Warlocks in particular are no less effective being grouped with just about anyone.
- Affliction Locks should be the one(s) in the tank/melee group for Imp buff. They have to use the imp anyway. Destro and Demo Locks lose a lot of DPS if they are forced to use an imp, so don't make them unless absolutely necessary.
- Destro/Demo will greatly benefit from a shadow priest. These Locks use a lot more mana, thus the mana regen provided by a shadow priest will help them to boost their DPS a lot more, since they will not have to Life Tap as often. Also, Felguard specced Locks will benefit from the group healing stuff. In addition, this ability to do more DPS will allow the Lock to maintain ISB uptime, which in turn increases Shadow Damage DPS. Thus it is a highly reciprocal relationship and it is strongly encouraged to group Destro Locks and Shadow Priests.
- Moonkins or Shamans using Wrath of Air totems can boost Lock DPS by being in the same group.
Warlocks have many different curses at their disposable, some which act as a DoT and others which act as a debuff. Which to use is an important skill for raiding Locks to understand. In general, Curse of Doom is higher DPS than Curse of Agony and should be used in any situation where there is enough time for CoD to go off. However, if there are enough other raiders who can benefit from the debuffs, those should be used over CoD/CoA.
Affliction locks with Malediction (which any true affliction raider should have) should be on CoS/CoE duty. Curse of Shadow is almost always going to be required. Warlocks, Shadow Priests, Arcane Mages, Moonkins all benefit from this, so more than likely you will have enough players where this is better to cast than CoD/CoA. If there are 2 or more fire mages, you should provide CoE.
CoR is more tricky because it also has the side effect of making the mob hit your tanks harder. Thus it is not advisable in every fight. But if you have 5 or more Hunters or melee DPS, you should use CoR provided it is a safe fight. If you are the sole Lock, it's probably safe to assume CoS is the curse you should use. More on curse selection and especially CoR later.
Consumables
Any true dedicated raider should come fully stocked with necessary consumables. For a Warlock the choices are easy - anything that improves DPS. This means Major Wizard Oil, Damage flasks (Flask of Pure Death), and damage foods. You may wish to use spell hit food till you get that capped. You may also wish to have stamina food for select fights. But in general you want anything that increases damage.
Shards
And finally, come with plenty of shards. You should invest in the 28 slot shard bag. But come with more shards than that. It's going to depend on what spec you are, how many other warlocks are in the raid, and what you are raiding to know how many shards to bring, but more is always better than less.
Affliction Locks should, whenever possible, handle soulstones and random summonings. Destro/Demo Locks have to use more shards for their demons and sacrifices so it is helpful whenever they can save some. Every Lock should summon a soul well, however, and often.
Make sure you fill up on shards on trash mobs so you have enough to last boss encounters, especially while learning and maybe wiping a lot.
Conclusion
That's all for now. I will give more in depth analysis of each build in future posts. For the time being this should be enough basic fundamentals to get you started in the right direction. Visit elitistjerks for more information and to keep up with current theorycrafting standards.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Drain Tank 101
At this point I feel like I should elaborate on that which I have been preaching so much about - that is the art of Drain Tanking as an Affliction Warlock.
Drain Tanking is the fighting tactic of chain-casting Drain Life to effectively "tank" a mob while both damaging the mob and healing yourself in the process. You really need 5/5 in Fel Concentration to make Drain Tanking feasible as this will give you a 70% chance of resisting interruption. Since you will be taking hits this resistance towards interruption is invaluable.
In addition to 5/5 in Fel Concentration, there are other Affliction Talents that make Drain Tanking more feasible:
Basically when you Drain Tank, you will be "tanking" the mob(s) and thus taking all the hits and damage. You will let your DoTs and Succubus do the damage to the mob while you "tank" it. So it's important to get those DoTs on the mobs quickly.
It will greatly vary depending on the type, level, and number of mobs you are facing, but the typical Drain Tanking method that I use goes something like this:
The benefit of Drain Tanking is huge - it is very mana efficient. The Warlock is very un-Mage-like. A Mage casts spells until his or her mana is gone and then sits to drink and repeats. A Warlock, on the other hand, can keep his or her mana up with Life Taps and never have to drink unless really pressed. Warlocks also naturally value stamina over intellect and generally shun spirit entirely. Thus Drain Tanking makes a lot more sense than to just stand there and nuke your mana away as a Warlock.
In addition to being mana efficient and generally faster to level with, I also personally find this method of play style to be very fun and enjoyable and still used it at later levels and even as lvl 70. At later levels (and with better gear) I just use the Imp for the extra HP through Blood Pact and being my mana battery through Dark Pact. One of my favorite things to do is to just jump into a group of mobs and DoT them up one by one and just out last them. As one dies, I pull another and keep going till I run out of mobs or health/mana after a while. My DoTs do all the work and I merely have to do some Drain Tanking in between to keep my HP up.
In a similar manner I was able to solo almost every elite mob or group quest in TBC through this method. As long as the mob didn't hit too hard or the fight didn't last too long, I could just outlast it. And if the mob is in anyway fearable, it's a piece of cake.
Tailoring offers the Frozen Shadoweave set which Shadoweave Tailors can invest in which serves as an excellent set for Drain Tanking Locks. In addition to pretty huge increases to shadow damage (considering you can get it before even going to Karazhan) the set bonus gives your shadow damage the ability to heal you. That's even more self healing for you while Drain Tanking.
Drain Tanking can be effective in PVP too, if you couple the Drain Tanking talents with some PVP type talents. I am not familiar with PVP so I will not go on with it, but I did try one PVP build that relied on Drain Tanking when I needed to PVP for a bit and found it quite effective.
Drain Tanking does have it's limitations though. Warlocks are still only clothies and can't take too big of a hit or that many. In particular you probably are going to get eaten up on dungeon bosses or trash in raids zones. While Drain Tanking will mitigate some damage till a real tank can pick the mob up, you certainly won't last long on your own. Drain Life is also lower DPS than Shadowbolt and is not recommended while grouping or especially raiding. Don't kid yourself. No matter how many talents and buffs to Drain Life you get and no matter how much you neglect Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt will still out DPS Drain Life, every time, no questions asked. You will be gimping yourself, probably highly gimping yourself, if you rely on Drain Life in a raid setting. Don't be the noob who does that.
But for leveling and solo PVE purposes, Drain Tanking is an excellent tactic and one that I have personally found to be quite enjoyable, efficient, and effective. After mastering the art of Drain Tanking and you will never be the same again, for the better. You will also find it extremely hard to play a Mage, ever! Class dismissed.
Drain Tanking is the fighting tactic of chain-casting Drain Life to effectively "tank" a mob while both damaging the mob and healing yourself in the process. You really need 5/5 in Fel Concentration to make Drain Tanking feasible as this will give you a 70% chance of resisting interruption. Since you will be taking hits this resistance towards interruption is invaluable.
In addition to 5/5 in Fel Concentration, there are other Affliction Talents that make Drain Tanking more feasible:
- Soul Siphon - Directly improves the amount drained with Drain Life based on the number of Affliction effects on target (IE. the more DoTs, the more you can drain.)
- Improved Life Tap - You will want to Life Tap to keep your mana up; this makes it better
- Siphon Life - A drain life DoT so to speak. Always good to have more life coming your way.
- Shadow Embrace - Reduced the amount of physical damage you take
- Nightfall - Gives you a chance to proc an instant Shadowbolt from using Drain Life, which you are a lot. Since you don't have time to get of a casted SBolt, this is very helpful to improve DPS or finish off a mob quicker.
Basically when you Drain Tank, you will be "tanking" the mob(s) and thus taking all the hits and damage. You will let your DoTs and Succubus do the damage to the mob while you "tank" it. So it's important to get those DoTs on the mobs quickly.
It will greatly vary depending on the type, level, and number of mobs you are facing, but the typical Drain Tanking method that I use goes something like this:
- Send in Succubus and let her "tank" for a few seconds while you get your DoTs up. (You may not want to do this if there are multiple mobs as she could get eaten up quickly)
- Cast Siphon Life first since it lasts the longest and gives you some healing done till you can start to Drain Life.
- Cast Siphon Life on other mobs (if facing multiples)
- Life Tap if needed, probably might be if facing multiple mobs. Don't worry, the Siphon Lifes will bring that HP right back up.
- Cast Curse of Agony followed by Corruption on all mobs.
- Life Tap
- Drain Life on the mob with the most health.
- Repeat Drain Life with some Life Taps whenever your HP gets full or when you need more mana.
- Refresh any DoTs if needed.
- Laugh as all the mobs die and you walk away from the fight with nearly full HP and Mana.
- Laugh some more when you see a Mage next to you sitting down to drink!
The benefit of Drain Tanking is huge - it is very mana efficient. The Warlock is very un-Mage-like. A Mage casts spells until his or her mana is gone and then sits to drink and repeats. A Warlock, on the other hand, can keep his or her mana up with Life Taps and never have to drink unless really pressed. Warlocks also naturally value stamina over intellect and generally shun spirit entirely. Thus Drain Tanking makes a lot more sense than to just stand there and nuke your mana away as a Warlock.
In addition to being mana efficient and generally faster to level with, I also personally find this method of play style to be very fun and enjoyable and still used it at later levels and even as lvl 70. At later levels (and with better gear) I just use the Imp for the extra HP through Blood Pact and being my mana battery through Dark Pact. One of my favorite things to do is to just jump into a group of mobs and DoT them up one by one and just out last them. As one dies, I pull another and keep going till I run out of mobs or health/mana after a while. My DoTs do all the work and I merely have to do some Drain Tanking in between to keep my HP up.
In a similar manner I was able to solo almost every elite mob or group quest in TBC through this method. As long as the mob didn't hit too hard or the fight didn't last too long, I could just outlast it. And if the mob is in anyway fearable, it's a piece of cake.
Tailoring offers the Frozen Shadoweave set which Shadoweave Tailors can invest in which serves as an excellent set for Drain Tanking Locks. In addition to pretty huge increases to shadow damage (considering you can get it before even going to Karazhan) the set bonus gives your shadow damage the ability to heal you. That's even more self healing for you while Drain Tanking.
Drain Tanking can be effective in PVP too, if you couple the Drain Tanking talents with some PVP type talents. I am not familiar with PVP so I will not go on with it, but I did try one PVP build that relied on Drain Tanking when I needed to PVP for a bit and found it quite effective.
Drain Tanking does have it's limitations though. Warlocks are still only clothies and can't take too big of a hit or that many. In particular you probably are going to get eaten up on dungeon bosses or trash in raids zones. While Drain Tanking will mitigate some damage till a real tank can pick the mob up, you certainly won't last long on your own. Drain Life is also lower DPS than Shadowbolt and is not recommended while grouping or especially raiding. Don't kid yourself. No matter how many talents and buffs to Drain Life you get and no matter how much you neglect Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt will still out DPS Drain Life, every time, no questions asked. You will be gimping yourself, probably highly gimping yourself, if you rely on Drain Life in a raid setting. Don't be the noob who does that.
But for leveling and solo PVE purposes, Drain Tanking is an excellent tactic and one that I have personally found to be quite enjoyable, efficient, and effective. After mastering the art of Drain Tanking and you will never be the same again, for the better. You will also find it extremely hard to play a Mage, ever! Class dismissed.
Leveling Guide: 30-40
At this point in the life of your Warlock you should begin to feel comfortable with using your pet, DoTs, nukes, and Life Tap/Drain Life. You get a new demon, the Fel Hunter. And as a reward for reaching level 40, you get the coolest mount in the game, for free! These levels, in my opinion, are the most boring to play, so if you can get past them, it will get a lot better. By time you are 40 you should be an expert in the art of drain-tanking and know and understand your Succubus.
Talent Points
We will be continuing further down the Affliction tree to gain a key DoT and improve the damage potential of DoTs and shadow spells.
30 - Siphon Life (1/1)
31 - Amplify Curse or Soul Siphon (2/2)
32 - Empowered Corruption (1/3)
33 - Empowered Corruption (2/3)
34 - Empowered Corruption (3/3)
35 - Shadow Mastery (1/5)
36 - Shadow Mastery (2/5)
37 - Shadow Mastery (3/5)
38 - Shadow Mastery (4/5)
39 - Shadow Mastery (5/5)
Abilities
Most of the new spells and abilities you gain during these levels will be improved versions of ones you already have. Some of the more noteworthy new ones are:
Siphon Life - This is a DoT that drains life from mobs and returns life to you. Very useful while Drain-Tanking or fighting multiple mobs. It has a long (30 seconds) time, so it's usefulness varies depending on how short or long a mob lasts. It would be less efficient to use it on mobs that go down in a few seconds.
Hellfire - Powerful AoE fire spell. The AoE radiates out from you and does damage to you as well as surrounding mobs. Needless to say you don't want to use this unless you have someone healing you or know you can survive the damage.
Summon Felhunter - The Felhunter demon is similar to the Voidwalker in that it has high HP and does low DPS. The difference is that the Fel Hunter has abilities that make it very effective against casters. Other than for use on casters, there isn't much value to using it over the Succubus.
Tactics
The Succubus should be your demon of choice 99% of the time at this stage as she can do a lot more DPS than either the Voidwalker or Felhunter, and neither will do an adequate job of tanking for you anyway, plus your Drain-Tanking abilities are top notch now.
Your typical fight tactic should be to open with a Shadowbolt while sending in your Succubus. Toss some DoTs on the mob, Life Tap, and start Drain-Tanking. Learn which DoTs are worth it or not worth it to cast. You may not even want to use Shadowbolt to conserve mana.
You should also be able to fight 2-3 or more (depending on their level) mobs at the same time, which is where this build shines. Just run in, or pull, and DoT all mobs, making sure to use Siphon Life (you will want that life regen.) Start with longer casting DoTs first, meaning Siphon Life, then CoA, then Corruption. After all the mobs have the 3 DoTs on them, start Drain Tanking the mob with the most health. Unleash any Nightfall procs and watch the mobs go down about the same amount of time as you would take doing just a single mob. All the while you are being healed by 3 or more Siphon Lifes plus Drain Life. If executed properly (and you didn't take on more than you can handle) you should end the fight with barely any HP or Mana lost.
Fully DoTing up one mob and keeping it feared while fighting another is also an option. The DoTs will kill the feared mob eventually while you and succubus kill the other.
At this point in the game, the point is that you should learn how powerful your DoTs are and trust that they will do their job. Drain Tanking allows you to keep your HP and Mana up, thus allowing you to move on to the next mob without wasting time to eat or drink. And should you run into adds, you can easily handle it.
Talent Points
We will be continuing further down the Affliction tree to gain a key DoT and improve the damage potential of DoTs and shadow spells.
30 - Siphon Life (1/1)
31 - Amplify Curse or Soul Siphon (2/2)
32 - Empowered Corruption (1/3)
33 - Empowered Corruption (2/3)
34 - Empowered Corruption (3/3)
35 - Shadow Mastery (1/5)
36 - Shadow Mastery (2/5)
37 - Shadow Mastery (3/5)
38 - Shadow Mastery (4/5)
39 - Shadow Mastery (5/5)
Abilities
Most of the new spells and abilities you gain during these levels will be improved versions of ones you already have. Some of the more noteworthy new ones are:
Siphon Life - This is a DoT that drains life from mobs and returns life to you. Very useful while Drain-Tanking or fighting multiple mobs. It has a long (30 seconds) time, so it's usefulness varies depending on how short or long a mob lasts. It would be less efficient to use it on mobs that go down in a few seconds.
Hellfire - Powerful AoE fire spell. The AoE radiates out from you and does damage to you as well as surrounding mobs. Needless to say you don't want to use this unless you have someone healing you or know you can survive the damage.
Summon Felhunter - The Felhunter demon is similar to the Voidwalker in that it has high HP and does low DPS. The difference is that the Fel Hunter has abilities that make it very effective against casters. Other than for use on casters, there isn't much value to using it over the Succubus.
Tactics
The Succubus should be your demon of choice 99% of the time at this stage as she can do a lot more DPS than either the Voidwalker or Felhunter, and neither will do an adequate job of tanking for you anyway, plus your Drain-Tanking abilities are top notch now.
Your typical fight tactic should be to open with a Shadowbolt while sending in your Succubus. Toss some DoTs on the mob, Life Tap, and start Drain-Tanking. Learn which DoTs are worth it or not worth it to cast. You may not even want to use Shadowbolt to conserve mana.
You should also be able to fight 2-3 or more (depending on their level) mobs at the same time, which is where this build shines. Just run in, or pull, and DoT all mobs, making sure to use Siphon Life (you will want that life regen.) Start with longer casting DoTs first, meaning Siphon Life, then CoA, then Corruption. After all the mobs have the 3 DoTs on them, start Drain Tanking the mob with the most health. Unleash any Nightfall procs and watch the mobs go down about the same amount of time as you would take doing just a single mob. All the while you are being healed by 3 or more Siphon Lifes plus Drain Life. If executed properly (and you didn't take on more than you can handle) you should end the fight with barely any HP or Mana lost.
Fully DoTing up one mob and keeping it feared while fighting another is also an option. The DoTs will kill the feared mob eventually while you and succubus kill the other.
At this point in the game, the point is that you should learn how powerful your DoTs are and trust that they will do their job. Drain Tanking allows you to keep your HP and Mana up, thus allowing you to move on to the next mob without wasting time to eat or drink. And should you run into adds, you can easily handle it.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Leveling 20-30
By now you are no longer a newbie. I mean that this particular toon is not a noob anymore. You have a decent arsenal of spells and abilities now, you have enough talent points to get something significant out of your build, and the gear is getting better and more beneficial. The next 20 levels should be about really learning the play style of the class. There are many important skills and techniques to learn and master at this time that will help you in the future.
Talent Points
Continuing along with the Affliction tree, you will get the ability to Drain Tank far more effectively, as well as improving one of your DoTs. You will also be able to gain the potential to cast instant Shadow Bolts! Here is what you should be getting at each level:
20 - Fel Concentration (1/5)
21 - Fel Concentration (2/5)
22 - Fel Concentration (3/5)
23 - Fel Concentration (4/5)
24 - Fel Concentration (5/5)
25 - Improved Curse of Agony (1/2)
26 - Improved Curse of Agony (2/2)
27 - Nightfall (1/2)
28 - Nightfall (2/2)
29 - Amplify Curse or Soul Siphon (2/2)
Again you could slightly order this around differently, but this is the order I find most effective based on what you will use more and get the most benefit out the earliest. Soul Siphon is something that is very good to have eventually, but since it gets it's greatest benefit when coupled with other Locks casting affliction spells, it can wait till later. But still it will increase the effectiveness of your Drain Life a bit right now and some people might rather have that.
Abilities
At level 20 you get a whole bunch of stuff, but the most important is the Succubus pet. She will greatly increase your overall DPS eventually, however you do not want to use her just yet. She cannot hold aggro whatsoever and her DPS is at it's absolute lowest right now, so it's better to just keep using the VW for the time being.
Ritual of Summoning will allow you to summon other players to you with the help of 2 other players. Can be useful when grouping.
At level 24 you will get Drain Mana. This sounds like it would be useful but except in rare cases, it is actually quite useless. A Life Tap + Drain Life is far superior to this since it also does damage to the mob.
You also get Drain Soul 2. DO NOT USE THIS! There is absolutely no reason to use anything greater than Drain Soul 1. The only reason you ever want to use Drain Soul is at the last second before a mob dies in order to get a soul shard. Drain Soul 1 does this perfectly and at low mana cost. I mean really, don't even bother training this or any other higher levels of Drain Soul; it just isn't worth it.
Curse of Tongues at lvl 26 is a sometimes useful spell against casters. If you PVP a lot, this might be pretty useful to you. For grouping or raiding later on, there are a few things it is very useful on. For solo leveling, it is very useless.
Level 28 brings you Banish, which is a form of crowd control against Elementals and Demons. You may not find much use for it while leveling, but it is a very valuable ability, so you should at least play around with it so you are familiar with it when you need it. The great thing about Banish is that once it is on a mob, unlike sheep, it cannot be broken by anything or anyone.
You also get Create Firestone which is pretty useless since it takes up your wand slot and Affliction Warlocks are doing 90% shadow damage. Don't bother with this.
Tactics
Same tactics apply, but as you gain in level, the more powerful Drain Tanking becomes and the more you should go ahead and use it. Eventually you also want to replace the VW with the Succubus.
By lvl 24, with full 5/5 in Fel Concentration, you can Drain Tank very effectively. DoT up the mob, Life Tap, and then Drain Tank till dead. You may need to Life Tap again. But you should end the fight with full life and mana or pretty darn close to it. Very likely you will eventually pull aggro from the VW from your DoTs, in which case the now nearly uninterruptable Drain Life will allow you to tank the mob and outlast it while your DoTs keep ticking.
With Nightfall you also get a small chance to proc an instant Shadow Bolt from Corruption or Drain Life. So even while Drain Tanking, you might also be able to cast an SBolt! It's pretty random and you shouldn't depend on it proccing every fight, but it is pretty awesome when it does. So this makes Drain Life more powerful since it increases your chance of a Nightfall.
Sometime between 26 and 30 you should switch to using the Succubus. The VW can no longer keep up with you. If you are going to be tanking anyway, via Drain Tank, you ought to have a pet that does some DPS. This is your Succubus.
The new tactic is really the same as the old one, except you will be pulling aggro faster, actually pretty much right away. So really you shouldn't worry about it and just do as much damage as you can right away. Start out with a SBolt, while sending in your pet simultaneously (or Immolate if you need more DoTs for a tougher mob), then while running away drop Curse of Agony and Corruption and do a quick Life Tap. By now the mob has probably caught up to you and is about to hit you. Now you start Drain Tanking. Keep casting Drain Life, with the occasional Life Tap to keep your mana and health even, till the mob has died. It should be dying pretty quickly because you have your DoTs ticking away and the Succubus attacking as well.
Once you get the hang of it, you will find that you are able to keep your HP and mana full most of the time while still DPSing down a mob pretty fast. Alternatively you could let the Succubus tank it at first while you DoT the mob, then Sbolt and Drain Life, but the Succy does not take a beating well, so it's really better to just take the damage yourself from the start.
The other tactic, if you have the room for it, is to keep the mob feared. The succubus will follow the mob around and do quite a bit of damage along with your DoTs and you can toss a few SBolts in there. But again, Fear is unpredictable and could aggro many more mobs, so probably not worth using in most cases.
Gear
To be added later
Talent Points
Continuing along with the Affliction tree, you will get the ability to Drain Tank far more effectively, as well as improving one of your DoTs. You will also be able to gain the potential to cast instant Shadow Bolts! Here is what you should be getting at each level:
20 - Fel Concentration (1/5)
21 - Fel Concentration (2/5)
22 - Fel Concentration (3/5)
23 - Fel Concentration (4/5)
24 - Fel Concentration (5/5)
25 - Improved Curse of Agony (1/2)
26 - Improved Curse of Agony (2/2)
27 - Nightfall (1/2)
28 - Nightfall (2/2)
29 - Amplify Curse or Soul Siphon (2/2)
Again you could slightly order this around differently, but this is the order I find most effective based on what you will use more and get the most benefit out the earliest. Soul Siphon is something that is very good to have eventually, but since it gets it's greatest benefit when coupled with other Locks casting affliction spells, it can wait till later. But still it will increase the effectiveness of your Drain Life a bit right now and some people might rather have that.
Abilities
At level 20 you get a whole bunch of stuff, but the most important is the Succubus pet. She will greatly increase your overall DPS eventually, however you do not want to use her just yet. She cannot hold aggro whatsoever and her DPS is at it's absolute lowest right now, so it's better to just keep using the VW for the time being.
Ritual of Summoning will allow you to summon other players to you with the help of 2 other players. Can be useful when grouping.
At level 24 you will get Drain Mana. This sounds like it would be useful but except in rare cases, it is actually quite useless. A Life Tap + Drain Life is far superior to this since it also does damage to the mob.
You also get Drain Soul 2. DO NOT USE THIS! There is absolutely no reason to use anything greater than Drain Soul 1. The only reason you ever want to use Drain Soul is at the last second before a mob dies in order to get a soul shard. Drain Soul 1 does this perfectly and at low mana cost. I mean really, don't even bother training this or any other higher levels of Drain Soul; it just isn't worth it.
Curse of Tongues at lvl 26 is a sometimes useful spell against casters. If you PVP a lot, this might be pretty useful to you. For grouping or raiding later on, there are a few things it is very useful on. For solo leveling, it is very useless.
Level 28 brings you Banish, which is a form of crowd control against Elementals and Demons. You may not find much use for it while leveling, but it is a very valuable ability, so you should at least play around with it so you are familiar with it when you need it. The great thing about Banish is that once it is on a mob, unlike sheep, it cannot be broken by anything or anyone.
You also get Create Firestone which is pretty useless since it takes up your wand slot and Affliction Warlocks are doing 90% shadow damage. Don't bother with this.
Tactics
Same tactics apply, but as you gain in level, the more powerful Drain Tanking becomes and the more you should go ahead and use it. Eventually you also want to replace the VW with the Succubus.
By lvl 24, with full 5/5 in Fel Concentration, you can Drain Tank very effectively. DoT up the mob, Life Tap, and then Drain Tank till dead. You may need to Life Tap again. But you should end the fight with full life and mana or pretty darn close to it. Very likely you will eventually pull aggro from the VW from your DoTs, in which case the now nearly uninterruptable Drain Life will allow you to tank the mob and outlast it while your DoTs keep ticking.
With Nightfall you also get a small chance to proc an instant Shadow Bolt from Corruption or Drain Life. So even while Drain Tanking, you might also be able to cast an SBolt! It's pretty random and you shouldn't depend on it proccing every fight, but it is pretty awesome when it does. So this makes Drain Life more powerful since it increases your chance of a Nightfall.
Sometime between 26 and 30 you should switch to using the Succubus. The VW can no longer keep up with you. If you are going to be tanking anyway, via Drain Tank, you ought to have a pet that does some DPS. This is your Succubus.
The new tactic is really the same as the old one, except you will be pulling aggro faster, actually pretty much right away. So really you shouldn't worry about it and just do as much damage as you can right away. Start out with a SBolt, while sending in your pet simultaneously (or Immolate if you need more DoTs for a tougher mob), then while running away drop Curse of Agony and Corruption and do a quick Life Tap. By now the mob has probably caught up to you and is about to hit you. Now you start Drain Tanking. Keep casting Drain Life, with the occasional Life Tap to keep your mana and health even, till the mob has died. It should be dying pretty quickly because you have your DoTs ticking away and the Succubus attacking as well.
Once you get the hang of it, you will find that you are able to keep your HP and mana full most of the time while still DPSing down a mob pretty fast. Alternatively you could let the Succubus tank it at first while you DoT the mob, then Sbolt and Drain Life, but the Succy does not take a beating well, so it's really better to just take the damage yourself from the start.
The other tactic, if you have the room for it, is to keep the mob feared. The succubus will follow the mob around and do quite a bit of damage along with your DoTs and you can toss a few SBolts in there. But again, Fear is unpredictable and could aggro many more mobs, so probably not worth using in most cases.
Gear
To be added later
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