Most Difficult Spec

[Deleted]

Easiest to hardest
Destro -> Demo = Affli(SB) -> Affli(DL) (shadow embrace)

Most forgiving to least forgiving :
Destro -> Demo -> Affli(SB) -> Affli (DL)

But yeah i guess it's kind of subjective.... depends on the amount of cleaves to introduce, and also your distance from the boss for Affliction.

[Deleted]

Tbh the most challenging thing I find about playing demonology is convincing my raid leader it's okay for me to stand in melee range so I can make effective use of Immolation Aura and Shadowflame but, again, it's going to vary.
Also, I get 10 of those casts (CoE, Meta, Immolate, Hand, BoD, S-Flame, Aura, Corr, Demon Soul and S-bolt) but what are the other 4 spells you cast at the start of a fight?

HoG, Immolate, Corruption, BoD, Shadowflame, Metamorphosis, Demon Soul, Soulburn, Summon Succubus, Immolation Aura are my starters.
To clarify: Demon Soul(Felguard) is still active when you summon Succubus, so a swift Soulburn+Summon Succcubus right after Metamorphosis+Demon Soul gives you the highest single-target pet while having the best Demon Soul buff available. Resummon Felguard for execute phase to receive Demon Soul(Felguard) buff while casting Incinerate(Molten Core) or Soul Fire(Decimation).

[Jessicka]

To get the most out of Demonology you have to play it with the fight, timing your cooldowns and movement appropriately; this is why it suffers so much in high movement fights. The rotation itself isn't overly difficult, but everything has to be done right at the right moment or you loose out a lot.

Affliction is much more forgiving in high movement fights, but should you screw up for whatever reason (missed Haunt on Chimaeron, DoTs dropping to stuns etc elsewhere) especially if you loose your Shadow Embrace stacks, it takes that bit more to ramp things back up.

Destruction's rotation simply never changes, keeping your short-term cooldowns tight is all you really need to concern yourself with. You have a more instants available for movement, and you really don't loose much if you mess up, and can get back into your stride very quickly if you do.

The skill gap between each spec isn't huge, it's just different.

[Deleted]

demon > destro > affli

imo, destro is mage 2 button spamming = affliction, demon keeps me using more keys

[Shawaam]

demon > destro > affli

imo, destro is mage 2 button spamming = affliction, demon keeps me using more keys

Using more keys does not equal it to be harder.

[bobsmith06]

Easiest to hardest
Destro -> Demo = Affli(SB) -> Affli(DL) (shadow embrace)

Most forgiving to least forgiving :
Destro -> Demo -> Affli(SB) -> Affli (DL)

But yeah i guess it's kind of subjective.... depends on the amount of cleaves to introduce, and also your distance from the boss for Affliction.

Pretty much this. Aff drain is hard to manage imo but I like the challenge so I stand in melee range and use shadowflame on cd so its one more thing to manage

[Veriu]

Tbh the most challenging thing I find about playing demonology is convincing my raid leader it's okay for me to stand in melee range so I can make effective use of Immolation Aura and Shadowflame but, again, it's going to vary.
Also, I get 10 of those casts (CoE, Meta, Immolate, Hand, BoD, S-Flame, Aura, Corr, Demon Soul and S-bolt) but what are the other 4 spells you cast at the start of a fight?

Shadowflame is in the priority for all specs...so really, every warlock should be standing in melee range....


OT: I agree it's all subjective
I can get within 300-500 dps of what simulationcraft says a perfect player could do as affliction drain and I don't even feel like I'm trying. Whereas when I try destro, I'm lucky to be within 3-4k and somehow I can never keep ISF with a higher than 70% uptime :/

Demo is just annoying, I've never liked demo...and while I did offer to try it for the raid buff, my raid leader knew that demo was lower single target dps, and so said "no" (we normally don't have many caster dps, and our healers are way better geared than our dps somehow)

[nocturnus]

If you meant to ask 'hardest to top dps charts with', just pick whichever spec comes out lowest in the EJ simcraft thread. That would be mathematically correct

This is incorrect and illogical. Demo is lowest on the EJ charts because its theoretical maximum is lower than both other specs. Therefore it's not harder to top the charts with demo, but impossible in equal circumstances.

A Ferrari is faster than a Golf GT on the charts, so the Ferrari wins the race. Does this mean that driving a Golf GT is harder than driving a Ferrari? No it doesn't. It's simply impossible for a Golf GT to win the race in equal circumstances because its output is inferior.

you don't have as many timers to line up.

I'm afraid you haven't played destro to its full potential if you think the quoted is true.

The major upside of affliction is the self healing

Scrutinize your logs and closely look at how much you have to LT as affliction and how much incoming healing you received. Afterwards do the same fight as destro and check again. If you've used SF and NW correctly, you'll quickly notice reality is the complete opposite of what you seem to believe.

Soloing Rohash doesn't say anything. I soloed him as destro without any backup back when we did it on normal regularly. Destro's damage mitigation and healing is usually more useful than affliction's.

I'd like to know which timers you have to 'monitor carefully' as affliction according to you Dacio. I can only think of Haunt and UA. Corruption refreshes automatically and Doom has such a long duration that it shouldn't be counted as an actual dot. Sub 25%, you needn't worry about refershing UA either.

So yea, the 'affliction has to monitor timers' bit is bullshit. Naxx, was a long time ago buddy.

[Meejum]

Yea and if you let haunt fall aff you're a moron. The moment you say something ignorant like "this is spec IS more forgiving than this spec" you stop making sense.

I can reach my max potential (pretty close to simcraft) as aff while watching an episode of Boardwalk Empire on my second screen. I can't do that as destro. Therefore for me, making a mistake as destro is much more realistic and punishing than making one as affliction.

If you think letting immo or ISF fall off is what makes destro more challenging than aff, you either never played the spec, or never played it the way it's supposed to be played.

In the end, don't forget that we're discussing which spec is easiest and not which one is hardest. Yes, there is a difference.

Remember, these aren't facts, but an opinions.

blue phase, worships, lightning conductor, air phase, blackout, furious roar, and that's only normals and not even the full list of things that can screw up reapplying haunt. Yes, those mechanics can mess up the prios of any of the specs, but its not as if you can haunt early if you knew anything of those situations were coming, like you can with SF or Immolate.

For an newcomer to the class, as the OP seems to be, I would consider it far more more difficult to do "adequate" damage in the current raid tier as affliction, which was the OP's original qualification of damage output. I am not in disagreement that if "adequate" were changed to "max potential", that destro is more difficult, and I said that in my first post.

[Deleted]

I would first like to thank everyone that has responded to my question. Some background of me might help this out a bit. I am normally a healer. My wife and I are going to make Goblins and I decided to try something different. She loves playing rogues, So I already know her class. I had decided on Warlock and was trying to figure out a good spec to go with her. However, I also wanting something that is a bit more difficult for people to learn and become good at. Example, my first time (going old school here) healing in Kara, my guild ended up with Wizard of Oz for Opera event. Half our raid, including the other healer, died during the fight with the first four. However, my guild ended up finishing the event, with only 1 other DPS dying during it. I was the healer that stayed alive and solo healed for my guild. I can learn quick. If you feel a different class would work better, that is cool also.

With this background out of that way, I return now to the question. Based on this info, what spec (or class for Goblin with spec idea) would be the most difficult to learn and duo well with rogue?

[Ozteck]

Really the only thing you need to have is a desire to play any spec to the best of your ability.

As a full time demo, I have a hard time managing destro...wheras my destro friend can't stand demo.

They're all competetive when played well, you just have to find the one you want to spend time with.

[Velocet]

imo destro > demonology > afflic

loads of people underestimate destro and those are usually the ones who only get 70% of possible conflags into their gameplay.
isf is a bit harder than haunt to keep up due to longer cast time which can easily be interrupted due to boss mechanics.
demonology can be annoying cos of RNG on meta cd, i find it annoying to use it optimally sometimes.

anyway theres different things about different specs that can make them "harder" or more annoying to play. destruction needs a lot more focus to play well than the other two specs in my opinion.

[mkivtt]

Affliction is by far the easiest now. Destro and destro are harder and it depends on the fight which is most difficult.

I remember when affliction meant pre-potting before the pull, casting seed when t10 procced to clear corruption, using NMIC, quaffing a wild magic potion, recasting corruption, trying to keep it up the entire fight, not clipping dots, etc.

Now all affliction does is keep up a few dots which can be clipped, most of which are auto-refreshed by your filler and which are assessed per tick for changes to SP etc. It's cake.

Destro has much more to watch and you're weaving that long cast soulfire into everything. If you think that's easy, try P1 of Nefarion where you put up immo, corruption and two banes on both dragons while keeping up your main rotation on one of them while dodging skeletons.

Demo is much harder than affliction as well. Demo uses, what, twice the number of spells that affliction does? My screen looks like the NASA ground control with all the addons and timers for procs etc.

[Dacio]

This is incorrect and illogical. Demo is lowest on the EJ charts because its theoretical maximum is lower than both other specs. Therefore it's not harder to top the charts with demo, but impossible in equal circumstances.

A Ferrari is faster than a Golf GT on the charts, so the Ferrari wins the race. Does this mean that driving a Golf GT is harder than driving a Ferrari? No it doesn't. It's simply impossible for a Golf GT to win the race in equal circumstances because its output is inferior.

I kinda feel like I'm being flamed here. Driving a Golf GT may not be any harder than driving a Ferrari. As you pointed out, it's harder to go really fast in a Golf GT. Stipulating "equal circumstances" kinda glosses over the entire point of the OPs question. For example, if I or the OP were driving the Ferrari and you were driving the Golf, you might still beat us because your skill overcomes our equipment advantage. A Ferrari may be a superior machine, but that certainly doesn't mean it's easy to get the maximum performance with it.

My post was framed on an assumption of what the OP meant by "Adequate". I interpreted the question to mean "which warlock spec will I find challenging to play and still be able to contribute meaningfully to my raid?" My answer tried to convey what I found challenging about each spec and what I found to be advantageous about each spec.

I'm afraid you haven't played destro to its full potential if you think the quoted is true.

I haven't played destro to its full potential. As you probably picked up from my post, I don't play any spec to its full potential. I am a casual player, I don't go for hard modes, I don't min-max my dps, I don't reforge and regem every time the stat priorities change, and I don't change specs to increase my dps. I play what I enjoy and what I find successful for different encounters. You've obviously had different experiences and I'm comfortable admitting that you're probably a more skilled player. You're clearly more familiar with the Destruction spec than I am, so I thank you for contributing that knowledge and advice.

However, I thought it was pretty clear that the OP was still new to the warlock class and just stepping into Cataclysm raids. Perhaps it is the first time the OP will be raiding as a warlock in WoW. As such, I still think I am qualified to comment and that my opinions are valid responses to the OPs question.

Scrutinize your logs and closely look at how much you have to LT as affliction and how much incoming healing you received. Afterwards do the same fight as destro and check again. If you've used SF and NW correctly, you'll quickly notice reality is the complete opposite of what you seem to believe.

Soloing Rohash doesn't say anything. I soloed him as destro without any backup back when we did it on normal regularly. Destro's damage mitigation and healing is usually more useful than affliction's.

I had forgotten about Nether Ward and Nether Protection. I don't have any logs to scrutinize because I'm not currently raiding as destruction. I'm curious what you do to solo Rohash without healing, although I can pretty clearly see how Nether Ward/Protection would cut down on incoming damage. As for "SF", what are you referring to? Do you spam soul fire/chaos bolt for the 2% total health restore from Soul Leech?

I'd like to know which timers you have to 'monitor carefully' as affliction according to you Dacio. I can only think of Haunt and UA. Corruption refreshes automatically and Doom has such a long duration that it shouldn't be counted as an actual dot. Sub 25%, you needn't worry about refershing UA either.

So yea, the 'affliction has to monitor timers' bit is bullshit. Naxx, was a long time ago buddy.

The timers I was referring to, as I mentioned, are the DoT Timers. I wasn't aware that Bane of Doom had edged out Agony for affliction DPS and having that at a 1 minute refresh instead of the BoA 24 second refresh would make it easier to keep dots up. I stand by the point that Affliction requires near 100% uptime on Haunt (and corruption, obviously), Bane of (w/e), Unstable Affliction and Shadow's Embrace to achieve adequate dps. I also maintain that this is can be difficult for a new warlock player, especially one who is still learning encounters. Both of those qualifiers apply to me and I suspect one or both of them apply to the OP. Missing one of these timers for even one second can be a noticeable dps loss. Having to ramp up again mid fight because you were running around, trying to stay alive and pressing the wrong buttons (which happens a lot for less experienced players), will be punishing to your DPS, which ties back into the OPs qualifier of "Adequate".

I freely admit that you are in all likelihood a more skilled and experienced Warlock player than myself, but if anything, that makes your opinion on what is easy or hard to learn about the Warlock class less valid. Regardless, I find your tone abrasive and your post quite rude, neither of which are necessary for this discussion. My apologies if I am reading hostility where there is none, but invoking car analogies and throwing around words like 'bullshit' and 'buddy' all set a negative tone.