Bringing back my Warlock

[SolSphere]

So as the title states I'm bringing back my warlock. She was my BC main until I wanted a Blood Elf Paladin so very badly... now I'm alliance and finally leveled her to 80. Wish I had before now though. The class is insanely fun to play. Anyway back on topic....

So A few things I find myself having questions about even after reading around (EJ and here mainly) - I'm Demo.

GEMS

EJ forums (iirc, I'm not currently on the site) state that I do not want to use hybrid gems (to match sockets) unless the socket bonus is >= 7 spell power. On the other hand the tool RAWR is telling me to use reckless even with 5 sp sockets. In fact RAWR seems to go out of its way to gem all socket bonuses even using sp + sprit gems more than required by the meta. So I'm trying to get some insight on that. Actually I probably just need to find a conversion formula of Spirit to SP (with glyph of LT) and I can use that to figure out what would result in the highest SP return. Reckless will be harder than that though as it is dependent on if the haste will drop my cast time.

So I answered my own question about the spirit gems in that, but is there a way of doing something similar with haste?


Casting

One of my favorite things about my warlock is the molten proc we get. Every time I get it I notice something though. I'm in the middle of casting a shadow bolt when it pops up. So my question here is pretty simple. I think it's an obvious answer, but it's been a while since I played a DPS caster. Should we stop and go for the proc? I would assume no for two reasons.

1) We are in the middle of a cast that is going to do considerable damage.
2) The proc has a timer that is long enough to finish our SB and come to the Proc next.

But here’s one big reason why I am even asking this question

1) It can proc on top of itself, but only refreshes back to 3

So basically if I don’t stop to cast incinerate (SF) then I could theoretically lose an entire proc due o it proccing back to back. However in a situation where this would matter I would lose 1 – 2 stacks regardless since it does still take time to cast incinerate. It doesn’t happen too often though. But it does happen.

Curse of Agony

Should we be using this spell? In BC I used it. But I’ve seen 0 mention of it in the EJ thread. I would only use it if Doom was not going to be able to tick off of course. But that is often in heroics and what not. Agony has a certain amount of time that a mob has to live for it to be truly effective as well though, which I am aware of. It is still shorter than doom though. So any reason to not use it?


So thanks for taking the time to read the post.

[ComputerNerd]

Not having played demo since mid tbc I cannot comment too much from experience. Some of this is only from vague recollections, so I am sure someone will correct me if wrong.

Really the only time you should interrupt a cast to change to another, is to do so with a channel just after a tick.
There is no need to interrupt shadowbolt.

A curse should be applied yes, but if there is no other effect producing it, or no other warlock is applying it, then you would be using curse of the elements.
CoA is not equal to 13% of your damage, so the 13% buff is far superior.
If you can apply CoA, then it is my understanding that its good to keep it up for the most part, but can be safely dropped in the execute phase with little impact.

[Ravemstr]

Gems: match a 5 SP single socket bonus. Eg: if you have 2 sockets with a 7 SP bonus and one is red then the other one is worth the 7 sp bonus- match it. If none is red each socket is worth 3.5 sp - don't match them. Oh and SP > Haste = Spirit > Crit for Demo locks - from a pDSP PoV!

Casting: don't cancel your cast. You should have a lot of haste and that will make your SBolt a 1.5-1.7 cast time in raids. It's not worth it to cancel your cast. But cancel any Incinerates if you get a Decimation proc with Molten Core up.

CoA: If Doom isn't going to tick use it! If CoA isn't going to finish don't use it!

[SolSphere]

Excellent. Thanks you to both.

Thanks for the extra comments on Soul Fire/Incinerate and CoA with execute.

Cheers

[Meejum]

Im personally not wasting a GCD during decimation to cast a CoA. I want as many SFs getting thrown in as I can.

The way i understood it, CoA is basically worthless because Demo doesnt talent it like Aff, and because free, fast and sometimes empowered SFs are just too juicy. I can't link the math or where I read it, but I have not cast a CoA in ICC, or any raid really, as demo with the exception of gathering Dark Nuclei on Princes, and even then it was a rank2 CoA and only cause it was instant cast and did enough aggro to keep them on me without doing enough damage to kill them too fast.

If the boss has obviously more than 1min left, yes I use CoD. But if its getting down to where it is most likely less than 1min, i don't use any curse at all.

My 2c.

Edit: either you, or an another lock, needs to absolutely use CoElements in the absence of an Unholy DK or Boomkin. And try really hard not to interrupt any cast. Exceptions would be maybe switching to adds, spikes, disco balls, getting transitions in PP smooth, etc....but if you are focusing on a boss with no other immediate concerns, let the SB finish off, you should have plenty of time after it fires to finish your 3 incins in time. If MC procs on top of itself, its bad luck. There will be times where you barely proc it at all.