H Lei Shi Tips

[Xandy]

- Your dots on Lei Shi will be wasted during hide/protect phases

That's true for all classes and specs with DoTs (including Demo)

- You're forced to use KJC

Even if that were true why would that be bad? The slow debuff? Nothing a Portal or Burning Rush can't account for.

As with any encounter during progression I would recommend playing the spec you're the most comfortable with. Granted my DPS is generally shit on this fight, but I'm in charge of Scary Fog and I've dropped KJC for several reasons; but beside that, Affliction isn't bad for this encounter at all.

[Simplexity]

We killed this yesterday on our first night (25 attempts).

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-b12tfhtyo1sqz88r/

We used myself and another lock (Affliction, he wasn't comfortable playing Demo) as Scary Fog stackers. At first we tried for both of us to stack up high stacks as the fight progressed and never drop them. That didn't work.

The strat that we switched to and killed within the next 5 attempts was for me to go for high stacks (15-20) and be the main Fog debuffer once I had those stacks (so basically after the 60% transition, I was in as much as possible), and the other lock would just get to 10 stacks, then let them drop so raid damage wasn't too high. So at first the other lock was in with low stacks while I stayed out and got high stacks as fast as I could. Then all he really did was go in when I had to go out for 10 seconds to refresh my stacks.

As for the spec, I do recommend Demo since you can do the most meaningful damage during Get Away and don't have to use KJC/BR. Obviously Demo+MF is great for Hides but also Wrathlstorm (I recommend it over Service) destroys Hide if it happens to be up. Also the Demonic Leap is nice for emergency movement to manage fog.

[Bonkura]

That's true for all classes and specs with DoTs (including Demo)

If you think that works as an argument you can't know the class very well.

Affliction gets 40% of its damage from just keeping the dots up and another 40% through MG/DS. Add rampup time for Agony and inefficient Soul Shard usage on that. It's a pretty big deal to have to reapply your dots, especially if they have been buffed by procs/haunt.

Demo on the other hand gets less than 20% through dot damage and will never waste fury.

Even if that were true why would that be bad? The slow debuff? Nothing a Portal or Burning Rush can't account for.

Because both MF and AV can be REALLY good at this fight. Besides handling the stacks the key to beat enrage is making the hide/get away phases as short as possible.

[Kael]

If you think that works as an argument you can't know the class very well.

Affliction gets 40% of its damage from just keeping the dots up and another 40% through MG/DS. Add rampup time for Agony and inefficient Soul Shard usage on that. It's a pretty big deal to have to reapply your dots, especially if they have been buffed by procs/haunt.

Demo on the other hand gets less than 20% through dot damage and will never waste fury.


Because both MF and AV can be REALLY good at this fight. Besides handling the stacks the key to beat enrage is making the hide/get away phases as short as possible.

Conceptually I'm with you 100%, but I'm not entirely sure the results support it. It makes sense to me that Demo would be ideal for this fight, with more on/off possibilities, and less damage lost in resources (shaards). In spite of this, logs (trying to be holistic here, although I recognize spec bias as well as anyone) show afflic's max at a whopping 248,992 DPS to the top demo at 205,521. At the "top", even destro is ahead of demo on logs for this fight, which is baffling to me. By comparison to the lower ranges of top 200, #200 affliction beats #37 on demo. Spec bias certainly still applies, but given the amount of discussion on this, I'm sure many top-end warlocks have worked with/tried demo for this fight.

I'm not ranked on any heroic fights (still working on getting better Q_Q) but if I'd pulled the 159,748.4 I did as affliction on our progression Lei Shi kill as Demo, I'd be ranked #73. Given that I don't benefit from double gear lockouts and +8 ilevels, #73 means a bit more than it did in previous tiers, and seems to show reasonable evidence toward affliction being ahead. It has either "overcome" the loss from losing dots, or the inability to continue the rotation (which affects everyone who doesn't just front-load damage) is not so significant as to put affliction behind on DPS compared to other specs.

I'm not completely sold on this being an accurate measure of affliction definitely being ahead, but it's not far behind if it is at all (which I have to doubt), and any main affliction shouldn't "plan" to go demo for the fight for DPS reasons unless you're struggling hard for GA damage (although you can always save DSM for those specifically). I do wish I could've used MF realistically though, closing the time lost on Hide would be nice.

[Bonkura]

I wouldn't use WoL as a source on and old content fight with gimmick mechanics. Top logs on Lei Shi are gonna come down to sick RNG, gear and stacking. We're talking about people who both outgear the fight by a big margin and also have perfected their tactics for it. They probably do the hide/get away/protect phases so fast most Affliction players still have both Agony and Corruption up on the boss. In short they are no longer struggling with the mechanics of the fight and just have a huge damage scaling debuff on the boss (probably much higher than most groups do during progress).

[Kael]

I wouldn't use WoL as a source on and old content fight with gimmick mechanics. Top logs on Lei Shi are gonna come down to sick RNG, gear and stacking. We're talking about people who both outgear the fight by a big margin and also have perfected their tactics for it. They probably do the hide/get away/protect phases so fast most Affliction players still have both Agony and Corruption up on the boss. In short they are no longer struggling with the mechanics of the fight and just have a huge damage scaling debuff on the boss (probably much higher than most groups do during progress).

Comparing progression kill affliction DPS to Demo rankings seems to be a fair comparison for determining which is likely to be ahead. I'm not bleeding edge; we killed Lei Shi for the first time Sunday: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=12449&e=12842 . You can review all 31 of our pulls to laugh at how bad I am sometimes if you're a masochist. Pretty sure I forgot to apply GoSac for a pull or two. That progression kill matches up with #73 of the best demo warlocks to record their DPS. That's not comparing top logs to top logs, it's comparing my only log to top logs, and finding myself ahead of most of them. I'm not going to compare myself to our other warlock in destro and I haven't done in-depth analysis covering the contingency for a longer end-phase because we had 9 deaths over the encounter on the kill, but if my "good enough" matches some of the top rankings, I have reason to suspect that affliction is not behind.

I'd be happy to find out I'm wrong and be given a good reason to devote hours I should spend studying on getting to be good at Demo (re-killing Lei Shi promises to be a bitch anyway), but I think my findings are sound from both top logs and subjective checking. I think that's clear enough evidence that if you're affliction MS, and you're not worried about handling stacks yourself, you should probably stay affliction.

This does prompt a few things though, that I found helpful if you're affliction for this: re-apply agony before the special if the last special was get away, and at 2% before her shield goes up. 90% of the time, you'll have it at 10 stacks coming out of the immune phase if you're successful. If your group needs more GA damage, save DS:M for it; there are precious few times you can know you'll make it count anyway (mostly directly after Hide, assuming your stackers haven't lost stacks). GA movement is key; use everything you have. If you're stacking the debuff, affliction probably isn't the way to go.

[Bonkura]

You give me the impression that I said Affliction is bad on this fight. All I've done is point out why Demo is good in comparison to Affliction. Since Affli should still be way ahead on single target under normal circumstances Demo might just close the gap to make the specs even, I don't know really. From a theoretical point of view it just looks like a better fight for Demo, but that doesn't mean the damage will actually be higher. I simply listed some pros/cons.

[kushlol]

demo seems better on paper but it's just not

[Bonkura]

Gotta love those constructive posts.

[nightfalls]

Conceptually I'm with you 100%, but I'm not entirely sure the results support it. It makes sense to me that Demo would be ideal for this fight, with more on/off possibilities, and less damage lost in resources (shaards). In spite of this, logs (trying to be holistic here, although I recognize spec bias as well as anyone) show afflic's max at a whopping 248,992 DPS to the top demo at 205,521. At the "top", even destro is ahead of demo on logs for this fight, which is baffling to me. By comparison to the lower ranges of top 200, #200 affliction beats #37 on demo. Spec bias certainly still applies, but given the amount of discussion on this, I'm sure many top-end warlocks have worked with/tried demo for this fight.

If you stack the fog, your damage will be junk, and then we have the same spec bias - Personally I would go affliction if I were not stacking the fog, but if I were, I would go demo.

That said, I don't know if killing the protectors gives you shards, but as far I remember from beta, it doesn't.

[Kael]

It doesn't, they don't make the "die" list, probably because the become inanimate or something silly like that from having been animated.

[Harsesis]

That is one thing that has bothered me about this tier is all the adds that "die" but don't actually die for the purposes of drain soul.

[Bonkura]

I've hated that mechanic all the time though. You try time it well and BOOM crit oneshot from someone else then next time you put up DS at above 30% and NOONE is touching that mob. So I don't get that upset over not being able to drain an add.

[Zeyqs]

it's all about poping the burst cooldown when the raid applies the high stacks on lei chi and watching the special ability timer so you dont waste your cd. nothing more.

[Kael]

That is one thing that has bothered me about this tier is all the adds that "die" but don't actually die for the purposes of drain soul.

Many do! Although almost randomly it seems. Feng spirits, Gara'jal spirits, Subetai's arrows, Elegon's sparks and protectors, all the adds on Will, Vizier's echo, Meljarak's adds, the amber construct, Empress's adds, corrupted waters/each protector (not sure about the sha spawns yet), all of Tsulong's adds, and all the Sha of Fear adds die. That's... a majority of adds this tier.

Oddly, charges from Elegon, Garalon's legs, the spirit kings themselves, shadow orbs, and animated protectors don't. Learning which do and don't can be costly, but it's worthwhile.

For Lei Shi... just get used to feeling like you're out of shards =/

[Harsesis]

I agree it is kinda random which ones are considered dying. Hopefully T15 will be more consistent.

[Cirque]

I did the mist thing as both specs and it's notably less stressful as demo (because I didn't take kjc), but well doable as aff with kjc anyway - especially if you drop your portal on where the boss is being tanked. Asking for movement increases during get away helps a lot too (and remember you can burn your teleport, if you have the spare shards (which you prolly don't). Additionally, I had a gateway from where we gather stacks to the boss, and I took the dark regen talent with glyphed healthstone (which, by the way, is a great thing to take for many fights, but that's besides the point) in case I needed to burning rush. It is very important to always have stacks on Lei Shi during get away, so you cannot permit yourself to slack on that ever for whatever reason, no matter what spec - so if you go demo, making sure you have meta during that is important.

In short I managed well as both specs, I'd suggest you try it out and see what works best for you.

[Ravoks]

At the "top", even destro is ahead of demo on logs for this fight, which is baffling to me.

In my group we alternate 3 people for stacking scary fog up to about 10-12 stacks each. For the first kill it was 2 mages and me (Demo). During the 1st kill, I didn't have my pet macros setup, which resulted Felguard kept breaking some of the CC's. I ended up sticking with Demo with GoSac and we got the kill. In the end, it was all about getting a kill but I wasn't impressed with my damage Because I was using GoSac and assigned to scary fog stacking duty. So the following week I swapped to Destro for the 2nd kill.

1st kill I got 113k as Demo and GoSac/ MF(Stacking SF) - http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-qo...=13630&e=14027
2nd kill I got 111k as Destro with KJC (Stacking SF) - http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ti...?s=4535&e=4961
3rd kill I got 159k as Destro with KJC (Non-stacker) - http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-bo...?s=4587&e=4998

After that week of stacking SF with Destro I've been playing it, also for our 1st Amber Shaper kill last Sunday. I love the spec and the main thing I can see it pulling out as high as it does on Lei Shi is timing high stacks of SF with beefed up Chaos Bolts. My avg's with Chaos Bolts were 808k (max 1.2m) for the 2nd kill and only 747k (max 1.4m). Our most recent (3rd) we had 2 mages and a shadowpriest SF stacking higher than the previous weeks up to 15-17. It's all about RNG though since you can get those annoying hide phases right as soon as you get high stacks on the boss oand not break it fast enough before buffs fall off.

As far as KJC imo, I love it for this boss. If you're lucky enough to have a paladin HoF you during get away it should make KJC more appealing. When I was soaking we had roars and BaS from the priest to help with KJC.

[Darkith]

How do you track the stacks on Lei Shi? I don't see them with the default IU. Anyone have a Weak Auras tracker or something similar?

[Harsesis]

The stacks show up as a debuff called Scary Fog. This debuff will only be there if a person with scary fog is close enough to him.