I've seen a cry out for a little bit more of a "comprehensive" guide to all warlock spec and their rotations/glyphs for the approaching 3.1, and while there is very helpful information in some of these threads it all seems very spread out, and at times misinformed. So I'm taking it upon myself to compile a lot of this information into a single thread using PTR information, Blizzard Posts, and Elitist Jerks threads. This does not mean I came up with all of this.
Please, keep the QQ and PVP discussions out of this thread. I am not a PVPer nor do I care about the state of PVP, yes it does affect certain spells we have that are viable for raids (Chaos Bolt) but I don't want to deviate the point and helpful nature of this thread. You
ARE however more than welcome to either correct any misinformation I post which I will continuously edit, and feedback in general. I'm going to go over EACH valid specc EJ is testing/covering and the glyphs/rotations involved in each.
Please visit EJ on the math involved and/or theory crafting for some of these details. I will respond to questions here in the thread and/or via private messages. I'm not gonna spend a page explaining the math or why a point is here for this specc or a point is there. If it's valid however, I will correct it. HERE WE GO!
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Affliction - 53/0/18Spec Link: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=235002200102351005350033115100000000000000000000000000055001205000000000000000000Glyphs: Haunt, CoA, Life Tap
Stone: Spellstone
Pet: Primarily Doomguard, when it's on CD use Succubus
Rotation: Sbolt-Haunt-Unstable Affliction-Corruption-Curse of <insert>.
Sbolt in the beginning of this rotation is to get Shadow's Embrace stacked. At this point it no longer becomes a rotation. You are merely refreshing your dots as they fall off to maximize uptime and using the time between refresh to "fill" the time gap with Sbolt or Drain Soul. You would refresh Haunt and the other dots as needed. Sbolt is your filler spell until 25% which is Affliction's "Execute" Range. Once you hit 25% you keep up your dots and drop Sbolt. At this point you use Drain Soul due to the execute ability in Drain Soul provides.
The pet of choice is the Succubus if your Doomguard is on CD. Affliction with the Doomguard out is currently the BEST dps warlock specc at the moment. Unfortunately if you wipe he is gone. And he has a 30 minute CD in 3.1 but only lasts for 15 which means he will be out 50% of the time (in a perfect raid). Use the Succy if you can't get him out, YES she does more dps than the felpuppy and the imp. Spell stone is a duh. Haunt, Life Tap, and CoA are the glyphs used on EJ as far as the best dps increase. They should be a no brainer as well.
Useful Addons/Macros: /cast [nochanneling:Drain Soul] Drain Soul - This allows you to not interrupt your Drain Soul with ANOTHER Drain Soul, thus messing up your ticks. You can stop to cast another spell if necessary though. A good dot timer is recommended, but not required.
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Destruction - 3/13/55Spec 3/13/55: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=030000000000000000000000000003220030003000000000000000005203205220331051035031351&glyph=000000000000&version=9742 Glyphs: Conflag, Immolate, Life Tap
Stone: Firestone
Pet: Imp
Rotation: The destro rotation has changed quite a bit in the sense that we no longer need to cast Corruption and/or CoA in our rotation. We no longer need to keep up Molten Core so those tricky dots aren't needed. CoA has a lower DPCT (damage per cast time) than Curse of Doom (assuming you aren't on Elements duty), and Corruption isn't needed. So it would look like this:
Curse of Doom/Elements-Immolate-Chaos Bolt-Conflag-Incinerate as your filler.
The key to this specc is watching CDs (Conflag, Chaos Bolt) Conflag can be cast twice in one Immolate duration and with the buff to Conflag it SHOULD be your priority for a CD. It also proccs Backdraft which is teh sex for Destro. Chaos Bolt should be used as well on every CD, but Conflag has priority. Also, waiting a few seconds to cast Doom again if it means waiting for a trinket procc or a raid buff is not a bad thing either.My rule of thumb is to try and avoid using Chaos Bolt during Backdraft charges, now while you will at some point during the rotation when I start it, I wait til Chaos Bolt is on the way then Conflag. Reason being is Backdraft will benefit Incinerate's longer cast time more over Chaos Bolt's shorter cast time. BE CAREFUL not to stack too much haste cause during Heroism/Bloodlust and Backdraft you may clip your GCDs, hell during Heroism/BL you may clip it without Backdraft.
Imp is pet of choice, again no brainer. You just spent a lot of talents buffing him. Using the Doomguard with this build is actually a very marginal dps gain, and I recommend only using him on a situational basis. Firestone is the way to go with this build! Too much haste = bad for this build. Glyphs Are Immolate, Conflag, Life Tap. Reasoning is as follows! Immolate- No brainer, dps for your main dot and it affects Conflag. Conflag- Should be a no brainer. Conflag is a HUGE nuke now. However I did see a build saying to only Conflag at the end of Immolate for F&Bstone range and not to glyph for it. CONFLAG ON EVERY CD. Life Tap- Some people would disagree and say get Incinerate, now while I do AGREE with getting Incinerate people should know that Life Tapping EVERY 20 seconds to get the spell power buff is about ~100dps more than Incinerate glyph but the catch is you have to Life Tap every 20 seconds. This applies to every build using the glyph. Personally I don't LT that much and prefer not to and would use Incinerate. It's a marginal dps gain or loss so let your play style decide.
Useful Addons/Macros: I use Bartender 4 and it has an option to make your own bar. I did this and made it hold two spells. Conflag and Chaos Bolt. I also use a Cooldown timer that tracks a CD in seconds on the spell itself. Increase the size of that bar by a fair amount and set it near the middle of my screen. This way I'm ALWAYS watching those CDs
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Demonology - 3/52/16 OR 0/56/15<b/>Specc 3/52/16:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=030000000000000000000000000000320330113520253013523130155001005000000000000000000Specc 0/56/15: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=000000000000000000000000000000320330113520252013523135155000005000000000000000000Glyphs: Felguard, Life Tap, Immolate
Stone: Spellstone
Pet: Felguard (DO NOT USE DOOMGUARD/INFERNAL)Rotation: Now I will admit, some of the Demo information for these two spex and they WHY? over some of the questions I won't be able to explain. Deep demo is the specc I have the least knowledge about but not by much. Both Hybrids and Deep Demo are actually quite similar to the Pre 3.1 Deep Destro. At any rate here is the rotation with an explanation!
CoD-Corruption-Immolate-Shadowbolt
Now, to answer some questions? Why are we using 2 different spex, and one of them doesn't have Demonic Pact?! zOMG! Well to put it basically, Demonic Pact is actually a DPS loss for the PERSONAL dps. I don't have the math but if you go through the EJ link I put at the bottom of this thread you can find why but I believe unless someone has 2800 spell power UNBUFFED it's a dps loss personally, now raid wise it's still a good utility hence why there are two speccs I linked, each with their own benefits. Why are we using Molten Core when Sbolt is our main spell and not Incinerate? Immolate is actually a very high DPCT spell. MC being up will benefit Immolates damage as well as SOUL FIRE which is the new Demo execute spell in Decimation. Also, Immolation Aura is a fire spell. All these spell being buffed by MC being up, and while it's important to have up CoD's DPCT is over 10k where as Agony's is only like 5k. So we use Corruption alone to procc MC as it's not as important as the pre 3.1 Destro's MC uptime. I know, a lot of bs but for rotation explaining time!
CoD starts us out which I briefly explained, also like I mentioned before waiting a few seconds for a trinket procc to put it up is nice and worth the wait. Corruption keep rolling for MC up time, keep immolate up as well and then fill with Sbolt. It's a fairly simple rotation 'til 35% of the boss health. Use Meta on every CD and get up in melee range for Immolate Aura ticks and keep the rotation up. Now do we always use Meta every single CD? Not sure. If waiting a few moments for Heroism/BL to go then popping it is the case then yes wait. Felguard is the pet of choice, TURN OFF his taunt. The tank will appreciate it and so will the raid as well as your demon's mana. Use Demonic Empowerment on each CD. If you are forgetting to use it, macro it into a spell. Do not whip out your Doomguard because you're under the notion he does more dps. With this specc he doesn't. You will lose your Master Demo buff, your Demonic Knowledge buff, etc etc anything you get to buff your Felguard and yourself goes down the drain. Don't be stupid. Glyphs are Felguard which should be a 'duh'. Immolate, still topping the dps gains for glyphs even after the nerf to it. And again we see the Life Tap glyph! I think we are seeing a trend... Why no Metamorphosis glyph? The added time it grants is actually not worth the dps it grants! Again, I will link the EJ thread with the math, I'm just reporting it. Now for the Execute/Decimation range section.
Execute/Decimation: This is going to be referenced for the hybrid builds as well. This is NOT an easy rotation to pull off. It leads to huge dps and big numbers/crits but any fight with heavy moving makes this more difficult to pull off. It requires a fair amount of haste and near max distance from the boss if possible. Do not take the rotation or art of WEAVING lightly. Yes, we are calling this rotation Weaving. No, I didn't come up with the term.
Ok once the boss reaches 35% health we drop Corruption from the rotation, sorry but we don't have the GCD to waste and Sbolt should be enough to procc the MC we need. Immolate, Doom are still going. Now we begin to weave. Get max distance from the boss and begin the rotation with two Sbolts, then follow it with a Soul Fire. Decimation proccs off the Sbolt/Incinerate HITTING the mob. We initially use two cause the Sbolt has to have a travel time and sitting there to wait for it to land would be a dps loss. I'm going to try and document how this effect would work. I'm going to list when Soul Fire lands because it doesn't matter when it lands, just cast.
Phantasos casts Shadowbolt(1) - (travel time)
Phantasos casts Shadowbolt(2) - (travel time)
Shadowbolt(1) hits the target - DECIMATION(1) PROCCS
Phantasos casts Soul Fire (Decimation(1) is consumed) - (travel time)
Shadowbolt(2) hits the target - DECIMATION(2) PROCCS
Phantasos casts Shadowbolt(3) - (travel time)
Phantasos casts Soul Fire (Decimation(2) is consumed - travel time
Shadowbolt(3) hits the target - DECIMATION(3) PROCCS
Phantasos casts Shadowbolt(4) - travel time
Phantasos casts Soul Fire (Decimation(3) is consumed - travel time
Shadowbolt(4) hits the target - DECIMATION(4) PROCCS
etc, etc, etc
I think this shows how the Weaving works. It's pretty much a repeat of Shadowbolts 3 and 4 after the initial 1 and 2 are off to begin the rotation. Now, Decimation procc does last for 10 seconds so moving and adjusting is possible but it throws off the travel time of Shadowbolt and you have to be queuing these spells up after each other immediately, so using a macro here I thought would be a good idea, but I find manually casting them so they are queued right is better. Soul Fire has a much faster travel time than Sbolt and Incinerate which makes this possible. In between Shadowbolts/Incinerate/Soul Fire be re applying your other spells. You do need them going too.
For META lock to be honest, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work when you're in Meta form and using Immolation Aura. People have said they have been that close and pulled off Decimation Weaving but I just can't see it but don't lose hope! You may be able to step back just barely in range for it to work, but like I said I haven't tested this myself.
Useful Addons/Macros: I use a macro to use DE everytime it's off CD and attach it to Sbolt. Basically if DE is on CD it uses Sbolt, when it comes off CD it uses DE then Sbolt continues. I'll need to find it and I will post it here. other than that, a useful CD counter and DoT timer like we already went over.
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Hybrid - 0/40/31Specc: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=000000000000000000000000000003320030113520253003220000005203205210131051000000000Glyphs: Life Tap, Conflag, Immolate
Stone: Spellstone
Pet: Imp (DO NOT USE DOOMGUARD)Rotation: Now for my favorite build. This is the build I know most about. Firstly a point I'd like to make in the talent build is that 3/3 MC - 2/5 DT as opposed to 2/3 MC - 3/5 DT is only a slightly dps difference and I honestly don't know which is better. Info on EJ points to both at different times, but really it's a small amount. Demonic Empowerment is a lame spell for this specc and passed over. You won't miss or need it. Personally, I'd go with MC cause it's a heavy fire specc. We are using Agony in this build because MC uptime is vital for this build! We aren't using Sbolt here so there is no added procc there.
Corruption-CoA-Immolate-Conflag-Incinerate
Looks a lot like pre 3.1 Deep Destro with keeping MC up, Conflag on EVERY CD. Conflag's DPCT is insane people, nearing Soul Fire. Please don't be dumb and miss out on the Conflag glyph. EVERY CD. At 35% we enter Decimation range and at this point we drop CORRUPTION ONLY from the rotation. We still CoA for MC (Tick every 2 seconds > Tick ever 3 seconds), still Immo, still Conflag. We use the Imp in this build because of the fact we just buffed him up with talents and the Master Demo buff he grants is amazing for fire. Don't be stupid and go zOMG DOOMGUARD!?!?! You just screwed your personal dps hard. Glyphs are Conflag, which please I think we have gone over enough. Immolate, yes! It works with Conflag and buffing Conflag makes us all happy. And Life tap again. Now, why Life Tap over Incinerate? I addressed this in the Deep Demo section and the reasoning still applies. EJ says Life Tap, I may go with Incinerate at times. Preference.
Please see Decimation/Execute section for info regarding how we weave in this specc. The only difference is we are using Incinerate instead of Sbolt, which actually makes this easier on us because I believe Incinerate has a slower travel time than Sbolt and makes it more forgiving but only slightly. I could be wrong. I'm not in game clocking travel speed.
Useful Addons/Macros: Again, nothing new here. Dot timer, CD counter is good for me!
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Hybrid - 0/41/30Specc: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=000000000000000000000000000000320330113520252003320100005203015220131050000000000Glyphs: Life Tap, Felguard, Incinerate
Stone: Spellstone
pet: Felgaurd (DO NOT USE DOOMGUARD)Rotation: This rotation and play style is going to be VERY similar to the above hybrid build 0/40/31. The only spell missing from the arsenal and rotation is Conflag. We give up that spell for the Felguard here. Again, make sure his Taunt is off raid wise. I'd also like to point out that the talent builds come from an EJ simcraft that assumes pets/demons have infinite mana. Now, while your imp may never really oom, the Felguard might. I've seen him oom in a raid before but I don't know the build in a raid setting well enough to say 100% how he lasts. But, 1 point in Mana Feed for this build may be justified. Again Demonic Empowerment passed over. Rotation is:
Corruption-CoA-Immolate-Incinerate
Simple! Now, while I won't call this rotation "boring" it does have a lot of room for error which other builds lack. This is also a very good build for Heroics and trash dps cause you can get the Felguard in there quick and do some decent nukes without needing a heavy amount of dots. Now this build also utilized the Decimation execute.
Please see Decimation/Execute section for info regarding how we weave in this specc. We are using Incinerate here instead of Sbolt so keep that in mind. Switching to your Doomguard here is a bad idea as mentioned with the other hybrid build above. You lose more than you gain. Glyphs are not a surprise at this point I hope, yet we see Incinerate over Immolate. Why is this? This build actual uses more Incinerates than any other build. Simply put because Incinerate is not a "filler" spell here, it is your MAIN spell. You will use more Incinerates here than any other build. Destro has Chaos Bolt CDs and Conflag to worry about, and 0/40/31 has Conflag to use as well. With as much Incinerate spamming as you'll do it's more beneficial for you to use it over Immolate.
Useful Addons/Macros: Nothing new here. Visit other threads.
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OverviewI hope this gets people thinking and on the right track! I'm glad this thread has gotten positive feedback so far and continue to hope it stays it's course. It's been stickied apparently which is the first time I've seen that done in these lock forums so far so let's keep it on track. I'd like to over a couple common questions!
Who is doing the most dps? If you want to get technical, Affliction WITH the Doomguard out is however without the Doomguard the two hybrid builds pull ahead. Destruction is behind them and then Demonology behind that.
http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t48311-simulationcraft_post_3_1_specs/That link shows a comprehensive guide to the contending 3.1 spex. It's also where I got a lot of my information. A note I'd like to make though is
all the warlock spex are within 5% of each other dps wise. What does this mean? That you can technically specc however you want and if you REALLY know the specc and play it well, can do better than Affliction, or Deep Destro. Assuming the person you're up against isn't better than you. "bring the player, not the class" or specc in this situation, comes to mind.
Why Glyph of Life Tap?There seems to be a lot of fuss over whether to use it or not. yes, Life Tapping normally is a dps loss. I hope we all know that. But, with the Glyph (yes it does stack with 4pt7) and the math provided on the EJ link I pasted above, it shows Life Tapping with that glyph ever 20 sec to keep the buff is a dps gain. That is why it's featured in EVERY specc. Now, while you may not like the idea of Life Tapping every 20 seconds, hell I don't, I wanted to make it aware that mathematically it's showing it helps. However, each specc has another glyph they can go to instead of Life Tap and I hope each specc makes that decision if they choose.
-Affliction has the Glyph of Unstable Affliction
-Destruction has Incinerate and Chaos Bolt (note Chaose Bolt allows 1 extra Chaos bolt per minute assuming you nail it EVERY CD...not that great imo)
-Demonology has the Metamorphosis Glyph
-0/40/31 has the Incinerate Glyph
-0/41/30 has the Immolate Glyph
What Stats do I go for? I'm going to assume everyone taking the time to read this is raiding so it should go like this:
Hit until capped (via talents or raid buffs)-Spell Power-Haste-Crit-Spirit/Int
A helpful ratio I know for most all warlock spex between the importance of Spell power/Haste/Crit is 8:5:3 in that order. And if you look at it, EVERY build (minus Deep Destruction) uses a Spellstone. Why? Haste > Crit. No, the 1% DoT or Direct damage does not make up for. Yes, it is REALLY on 1% still talented. It's only the combat rating that goes up ie-
60 haste with Spellstone becomes 240 haste talented
49 crit with Firestone becomes 196 crit talented
Deep Destro uses the Firestone because that much haste gets out of control and can clip GCDs with current gear
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Useful LinksElitist Jerks 3.1 Warlock DPS Simcraft:
http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t48311-simulationcraft_post_3_1_specs/----
My Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sargeras&n=Phantasos
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