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Tethane
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re: Warlock raiding guide

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Shamelessly stolen from my lovely Ren friend Warlocomotif, he pretty much taught me everything I know and now I am passing it on, as Lock class leader I expect all my lovers of all things evil to read this ESPECIALLY the part on spell hit, I have been through the armory and some people are still gemming/enchanting for spell power when not hit capped... NAUGHTY LOCKS!!! I also expect you (if you have your heart set on raiding) to start grinding the Sons of Hodir rep for your shoulder enchants....

[PVE 3.1] Warlock Raiding guide
----------------------------------------------------

This is an WotLK 3.1 raiding guide meant to help those not sure of what specs work best and what glyphs they should be using- and the spells consumables or gems. This thread is not meant to be an extensive raiding guide for every imaginable talent spec, more of a side by side comparison and otherwise useful information.

Index:
01] Training dummys
02] A raider's mindset
03] Dont do rotations
04] Talent specs
05] Decimation
06] Glyph of Life Tap
08] Hit rating
09] Crit rating
10] Frequently asked questions
11] General tips

----------------------------------------------------

+ Training Dummys:
You will often see people asking "what is your DPS on a training dummy with this spec?", or "how much dps did you just do?" when DPSing a training dummy. What this section is here to tell you is to entirely disregard what DPS you do on training dummys. Put simple, it will never be important.

The reason you can't take a training dummy as a dps benchmark is because each different talent spec will scale differently with the various buffs and debuffs that will be present in a raid. Not only that, but even more so when your talent spec provides a raid buff, it will hugely unbalance the comparison between different talent specs.

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+ A raider's mindset:
This has been a strong belief of mine for a long time. There's nothing at all- anywhere, that will have a bigger effect on a raider's performance than the raider's mindset, their mentality. It's not gear that's going to put you ahead of everyone else, it's walking that extra mile that will give you an edge.

Using consumables- all of them- the best of them. Paying good money to get the best glyphs available, and educating yourself about how you should be playing your spec. If you do not really really want to do what it takes to do a lot of damage, odds are you're not going to.

----------------------------------------------------

+ Don't do rotations:
I'm currently in one of the better guilds on my server, and am a regular poster on these forums and the Elitist Jerks forums- plus im pretty vocal in general. As a result, people will very often ask me questions. And of all questions there's only 1 question that really annoys me; that being "What is your rotation?".

There is no rotation, if you're following a rotation you're doing it wrong. If you want to do high dps, you're going to have to go by a priority que. What this means is that you prioritize your spells based on how much damage they'll do in total relative to the cast time spent on them. This might sound complex, but in practice it's not too hard to accomplish.

Some general tips are to not refresh your dots before they've expired, and that if the fight is likely to end before the end of the dot you're about to place- it's likely not worth casting it.

+ Talent specs:
There's a hand full of different and viable talent specs- and generally speaking it is as of right now too early to tell which is "best". More over you won't really be able to say what is best, since it ultimately depends on what your raid needs from you.

[*] Deep affliction - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IfxMbzMAoVA0IktZE0RV:cIT

- Pro's: Fairly pet independant, stable DPS, 3% hit from talents, Can provide 5% crit
- Con's: Poor burst.

- Pet to use: You can be fairly flexible in this spec with what pet you decide to use. The spec is optimised for use of the succubus, however as we know she's pretty fragile- and may not be an option in certain raid encounters. The Fel Hunter or Imp are good alternatives that this spec still performs with.

- Stone to use: Spellstone. Dot's are a major part of your damage output, the spellstone enhances this and gives you haste instead of crit.

- Priority: In this spec its important to always make sure you have Shadow Embrace stacked- This is procced with shadow bolt and haunt, so start a fight by popping one of each spell. After that, make it a priority to keep haunt up, if both of those are up, get your dots up (Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony). Fill the gaps with Shadow Bolts, or drain soul below 25%.

- Stats: Hit > Spellpower >> Haste > crit = spirit >>> intellect
All of these stats have some value, so don't disregard an enormous amount of crit for a small amount of spellpower.

[*] Deep Demonology
Raid DPS: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IZ0GchkAdiosguAoE00V:oqT
Personal DPS: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IcZ0GchkAdibsguhoE0oV:oqT

Raid DPS Spec: Feeds your spellpower to the raid, only 1 person of this spec should be in a raid at any point- and it should be your best geared Warlock.

- Pro's: Superiour raid utility, high burst
- Con's: DPS is distance dependant, extremely pet dependant

- Pet to use: With very rare exception, the anwser is simply the Felguard. The felguard simply does more DPS than any other pet by a large margin, this imp or alike are not worth it -- unless the pet can not dps otherwise (IE: Mob is flying). This however is extremely rare- you should use the felguard.

- Stone to use: Due to having the talent "Master Conjurer", the most significant part of the stones is the Haste/Crit part. As such, since haste is the superiour stat (and you get more of it) the spellstone is the stone to use.

- Priority: Curse of Doom, Immolate, Corruption. Shadow Bolt. Note that during decimation time (35%) it is no longer worth using corruption.

- Metamorphosis: When you pop meta morphosis has a big impact on your overal DPS. There's a few basic rules that you should follow when it comes to metamorphosis:
1] Pop it as often as you can
2] Pop it when burst is required (Like when Kologarn grabs someone)
3] Pop it during "vulnerable" phases or other damage boosts (Deconstructor's heart, heroism, etc). This abbility will take some getting used to before you perfect it.

- Stats:
Raid DPS spec: Spellpower = Hit >> Haste = Spirit >> Crit >>> Intellect
Personal DPS spec: Hit >> Spellpower = Haste > Spirit > crit >>> Intellect
For the raid dps spec, the value of spellpower depends on your raid setup (it's value is low in 10 man raids), also the value won't translate directly into personal DPS- but rather in raid dps.

[*] Deep Destruction
Personal DPS: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IcZfM0h0hZVbGVrcuVoAcst:z0T
Replenishment: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IZfM0h0hZVbGVdcuVsAfct:zq0

* * Note, Once you gather a decent amount of Best in Slot gear the replenishment spec will start to outscale the "personal dps" build. Also while these are the cookie cutter builds, talents like Shadowfury and Destructive reach are still great talents, if you wish to pick them up (as I did) the talent you'd best take the talents away from is Backlash. Also if you are doing hard modes, it may well be worthwhile to pick up soul link- it will cost you 1% of crit, however it will provide you with a ton of survivability when tanking Mimiron's head or just dealing with the heavy raid damage on Freya / Thorim.

- Pro's: Great single target burst, Replenishment
- Con's: Some pet dependency

- Pet to use: The imp. Simply too many buffs in this talent tree that make this pet the must have pet in this spec.

- Stone to use: This is the only talent spec that benefits more from the firestone than the spellstone. The reason hehind this is that, since you don't have master conjurer- the more significant part of the stones is wether it enhances direct damage or damage over time. Since this spec provides far more direct damage, the fire stone wins.

- Priority: Immolate, Conflagrate, Curse of Doom, Chaos Bolt, Incinerate
** Although this is the order of priority, client/server lag will prevent you from casting conflagrate immediatly after immolate. It's usually a good idea to throw a filler spell in between (IE: Immolate > CoD > Conflagrate). Also while corruption isnt in the rotation, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it when you're moving.

- Stats: Hit > Spellpower > Haste >> Crit > Spirit > Intellect

[*] Hybdrid (Felguard/Emberstorm) - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IZ0GchkAbibcGzZVdhVrzuV:o0T

** Note, When 3.1 was first released there was a lot of talk about a variation to this talent spec that picked up conflagrate instead of the Felguard. At the time this spec was great. Since then however, Conflagrate has been nerfed quite heavily and the spec is no longer really worth it.

- Pro's: Good overal spec, high DPS and simple rotation.
- Con's: No raid utility, very pet dependant

- Pet to use: The Felguard, it blows all others out of the water.

- Stone to use: As we have master conjurer, the haste gained from the spellstone easily outweighs the benefit from the firestone. So, use the spell stone.

- Priority: Immolate, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Incinerate. Note that during decimate time (below 35%) it is no longer worth it to use corruption in your rotation.

- Stats: Hit > Haste > Spellpower >>> Spirit > Crit >>> Intellect

+ Decimation:
There's a handful of talent specs listed above that use the decimation talent. At first glance this talent might seem fairly straight forward, but most people find themselves annoyed with this talent after playing with it a little bit. In general- this is because they don't know how to use it properly, using it properly is quite a task.

That's why I decided to create a separate section decicated to this subject. To get the most out of decimation, the first thing you'll want to do is get some kind of addon to tell you when it procs. I personally have set up my scrolling combat text addon (parrot) to make a "ping" noise when it procs, but different people will find different methods preferable.

Once you've got that sorted out it's a matter of knowing how to use it. The general idea is this: So long as you stand far away enough from your target, you can cast soulfire before the shadowbolt you casted before it hits the target. So let's say you have a decimation proc active, what you would do is:
You have decimation > Shadow Bolt > Soul Fire > Decimation consumed > Shadow Bolt hit's the target, Decimation applied

But once you get it down you'll learn to love this talent.

----------------------------------------------------

+ Glyph of Life Tap:
One glyph pretty much each of the talent specs have in common is glyph of Life Tap. Put simple, this is one of the best glyphs available, **esspecially** if you also have 4xT7.

The idea is that, as a Warlock of almost any spec you're going to need to lifetap roughly every 20 seconds in order to keep your mana up. This means that so long as you spread your lifetaps out, you can keep the buff procced by this glyph up almost all of the time.

Like Decimation, using this to it's maximum potential may take some time. You'll likely need to life tap slightly more than every 20 seconds. Typically the best time to do that is before 35%, and if you have 4xT7 popping the extra lifetap somewhere during the end of the duration of that buff is ideal.

Don't mix this glyph too solidly into your rotation though, if you do you risk missing out on getting lifetaps in during movement. If your glyph buff expired, but you have to move 4 seconds later- lifetap can wait those 4 seconds.

The reason that the replenishment spec does not use this glyph lies in improved soul leech. This talent provides so much mana back that the Warlock will not need to lifetap every 20 seconds to sustain his/her mana pool, the glyph as such loses most of it's value- and other glyphs surpass it for this spec.

----------------------------------------------------

+ Hit Rating:
Rating rating should be on the top of the list of every beginning Warlock. It's something to gem for if you don't have enough of it. You might not have seen your spells miss a lot- the reason for that is most likely that you haven't been fighting boss level mobs (level 83), and that you need significantly less hit rating against lower level mobs.

The reason you need hit rating until you're hit capped (More on that later) is simply because no other stat will increase your DPS as much as hit rating will.

So, what is the hit cap? This depends on a number of things, as there's a couple of outside sources that increase your chance to hit- In general though, you need 17% hit to 'cap' it.

- The first thing that can increase your chance to hit is Suppression, increasing your chance to hit by 3% (Talent).
- The second thing that can increase your chance to hit is being in the same group as a draenei (Draenei), this increases your chance to hit by 1%.
- The third thing that can increase your chance to hit is having a Boomkin or Shadow Priest in the raid (Raid Debuff). Be careful though, Boomkins do not always pick up this talent, so if there's no Shadow Priest, but thereis a boomkin- have a quick look at his talents and look for improved Faerie Fire. If he doesn't have the talent, you don't gain the 3% hit.

So how much hit rating do you need?
17% = 446 Hit Rating.
16% = 420 Hit Rating. (Draenei)
14% = 368 Hit Rating. (Talent or Raid Debuff)
13% = 342 Hit Rating. (Draenei and Talent or Draenei and Raid Debuff)
11% = 289 Hit Rating. (Talent and Raid Debuff)
10% = 263 Hit Rating. (Talent and Raid Debuff and Draenei)

+ Crit Rating:
I still very often find people over valueing critical strike rating. This is often against the memory of TBC, where haste rating didn't really exist through most of the expansion and you needed a certain amount of crit to provide high uptime on improved Shadow Bolt.

Put simple, crit rating isn't that stat anymore. haste and now spirit aswell are available in good abundance, and there's not really any talent at all that makes you "need" critical strike rating. There are some that make it a more valueable stat- however none that make it a great stat.

- Why? There's a 3-part anwser to this question:

1] The stat is too expensive. If you want to gain 1% crit, you need to invest 46 critical strike rating into that. Compare it to the 33 you'll need for a percent of haste, or the 27 you need for a percent of hit- and it's just too expensive.

2] Not all spells are effected. Put simple, it doesn't matter what spec you play, not your entire arsenal benefits. If you're affliction, curse of agony and your pet won't benefit. If you're destruction, immolate and curse of Doom won't benefit (and neither will your imp). There's no spec in which all of your damage will benefit from the stat.

3] Relative scaling. This one is slightly more complex to understand, but what it comes down to is that as you get more of 1 stat, your other stats will become more valueable. Warlocks get a lot of critical strike chance through talents (anywhere between 10 and 18%), in addition we get 13% crit from talents, and about 7 or 8% from the intellect we have on our gear. As a result, we have a high critical strike chance before we even get critical strike rating- and this decreases the value of critical strike rating relative to other stats like haste or spellpower.

----------------------------------------------------

+ Frequently asked Questions:

Q: How much crit do I need for destruction?
A: None

Q: What Meta Gem should I use?
A: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond

Q: What rotation do you use
A: Read the section about rotations

Q: I won't use my succubus with affliction, can I move the 2 points out of demonic power into [x]
A: Yes, I've done this myself aswell for my dual spec.

Q: What potion should I use?
A: If you're an alchemist- go for crazy alchemist potions. Otherwise you should use a potion of speed.

More coming as questions get asked frequently.

----------------------------------------------------

+ General tips:

1] Kreegs stout Beatdown. You can get this in dire maul north, it stacks with all other consumables and is cheap as dirt. Pick up about 200 if you go there.
2] Flame Caps. If you're really serious about doing DPS and you're in a fire based DPS spec, use these. Granted, they're really hard to come by, I wouldn't spend them on farm raids if I were you.
3] If you've only just dinged 80, make getting the deathchill cloak a priority. It's cheap and it will last you a very long time.
4] Addons can really help you perform well- just make sure you've got screenspace left to see what's going on aswell.
5] If you're affliction- it's okay to refresh haunt slightly early. In fact below 25% it's recommended for the sake of making sure Shadow Embrace stays up.
6] Make sure Soul Shatter is on an easy access button that you're not likely to press on accident. For me this is the ~ button.
7] Macro your cooldowns to include a spellcast. Things like potions, metamorphosis, flame caps, or whatever- they don't consume a global cooldown. Create a macro to use these, and add a /cast [spell] in there. For example:

#showtooltip Potion of Speed

/use Potion of Speed

/cast Shadow Bolt

This ensures that there's no time wasted between popping your potion and casting your next spell.


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Sycamorechaz
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re: Warlock raiding guide

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Do you know how long this will take me to read???


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Tethane
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re: Warlock raiding guide

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chaz_No.1 wrote:
Do you know how long this will take me to read???


Do you know your not a warlock!!!


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