High DPS Spec for a lock

[creese82]

This is my MD/SnF build.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...h=000000000000

The biggest concern with imp dps is his ooming and that's why Mana Feed is a better choice than Demonic Empowerment because once your imp goes oom not only do all those imp buffing talents lose their effectiveness but so would Demonic Empowerment if he's waiting on mana regen to be able to pop off another firebolt. And since Mana Feed scales I don't see there even being a remote chance he'll oom with better gear.

Very simple rotation, Corruption, Curse of w/e(I'm usually on Recklessness to help the melee out), Immolate then spam Incinerate and just keep up your dots making sure to never clip them. Yes it appears this will be the spam build but please don't flame just for that, if it's good dps it's good dps, as the saying goes "Don't hate the player, hate the game". It is pretty cool tho knowing you imp is gonna be cranking out some beefy firebolts.

With the imp pushing 12.6k hp raid buffed Soul Link is definitely a valid option if you wanna mitigate some of your damage. For fights when the imp would have survivbility issues, i.e. Saphirron, just keep him phased out w/o Soul Link and although you'll lose his dps you still get the benefit of MD.

I have about 50 more dps with this build then I did with CB/Aegis but I was also using the Chilly Slobberknocker at the time. I'm curious tho how my MD/SnF build will scale with gear in comparison to CB/Aegis. 5% more fire damage and crit is nice but I have a suspicion the dps increase has more to do with my current gear than the spec. I would love to see some number crunching comparing the two. 13% crit from talents is nice and allows you to budget for more haste with your gear plus your imps firebolt would scale decently I imagine.

Here's my armory link so you can see what I'm working with.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...2&n=Kelgrommas

Yes I know my greens are an eyesore but I need the hit and I haven't been able to run many heroics, Naxx hasn't been kind to me this last week either. I'll pick up my T7.10 chest with badges tomorrow tho I'll probably hold out to wear it till I get another piece before I break my T6 4 set.

edit: Ignore the 1 point in nether protection on my armory, it'll be going into conflagrate should I choose to stay this spec as having an instant finisher when handy is far more useful than an almost never proccing talent. I have a couple to many blue gems I know but I wanted to keep my meta active with my heroic set and ended up making a couple bad choices there. Just trying to answer these questions to minimize troll flame and keep people focused on my real question.

[nocturnus]

http://wowwebstats.com/a1h3vhrjofw33?s=218619-260180 4.1k (Affliction)

Seen WWS tho of Destro lock pulling 5k DPS

Switch to Drain Soul at 25% and see it tick for ~10-11k. On Patchwerk I maintain ~3.5-4k dps during dot refresh and sb spam. When the boss hits 25% my dps sky rockets and I end on an average of ~4.5-5k dps. I've got 2 T7 pieces and the sunwell T6 set bonus (which sucks and will be broken asap).

Affliction is the way to go. Let's all thank Blizzard. Warlocks pre wotlk were almost as boring to play as Hunters. Now you actually need SOME skill do dish out damage.

And yes, all sad rerollers are gone now. They are either Hunters, or Pallies hehehe...

[Raqiel]

Best starting dps spec is affliction....

sadly it WILL be outscaled eventually "once again" when u start gearing up by 0/41/30 and */13/51 +7 atm which is broken since blizzard clearly stated that affliction & destruction should be our top dps specs.

(so i just hope they will fix affliction)

[typ0]

I've been using 0/41/30 for heroics/Naxx and I'm very surprised at it's DPS output. Using Imp and keep DemEmpower up as much as possible. With the high crit from Demo and the fire buffs from destro.

Incin spam has never been so fun

Why would you use an imp with 41/30?

[Gregoire]

This build is my favourite for Affliction raiding: 53/0/18
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IfxMbzMAoVq0IstZE0hV

I agree, especially for early raiding where you might not have enough spell hit rating to get to 17%. The only issue would be Soul Shatter will miss 3% of the time, unless you have some way to increase your hit from 14% to 17% before you cast it: weapon swap comes to mind... Greatstaff of the Nexus would pretty much do it on its own (assuming your Main and off-hand weapons have no spell hit and you are at 14% spell hit, buffed). Other items with spell hit that you could swap are: warlock weapons with spell hit; warlock off-hand items with spell hit. Or, I suppose, you could just accept that sometimes Soul Shatter will get resisted.

[happyPanda]

Affliction ATM is highest DPS (56/0/15) from what I’ve seen, but I’m thinking later on after gearing up a Destro build with CB will out scale it as long as DoTs continue to gain no real (aside from GCD) benefits from haste.

I have noticed the tooltips on certain spells change slightly with the introduction of haste gear: for example, drain life's duration decreased along with its tick length. I'm not sure if all the other DOTs will scale though b/c their tooltips don't change in description.

Why do you say that CB will scale better with haste? Will haste reduce the CD on CB?

Thanks for your reply.

[LASYRGEKAN]

61/61/61

Just spam Roundhouse Kick

Oh wait, that's Chuck Norris.

muahahahahahahaahaha depend on ur way game play.... 56/0/15 is nice on affliction...

[Prideaux]

Why would you use an imp with 41/30?

5% crit increase and 5% more damage maybe?

[makrinos]

5% crit increase and 5% more damage maybe?

Was wondering the same thing until I looked into it - been running 0/41/30 and I love it but the thought of switching out the FG for the imp is certainly intriguing, I'll have to give it a try

[direlock]

5% extra crit from the imp is great..but you have to ask yourself...how much DPS does a fully raid buffed feguard make?....5%?..Another point is , a raid is a group effort...is maxxing your single dps out the best contribution you can make to the raid, or is giving every caster in the raid 10% more spell power practically all the time?..Im gonna go with option #2 expecially in 25 man, you could literally be increasing 10-12 casters dps by 10%, and im sorry, your single dps build isnt going to make up for that difference. So dont totally write off demo.

[wildmandooby]

5% extra crit from the imp is great..but you have to ask yourself...how much DPS does a fully raid buffed feguard make?....5%?..Another point is , a raid is a group effort...is maxxing your single dps out the best contribution you can make to the raid, or is giving every caster in the raid 10% more spell power practically all the time?..Im gonna go with option #2 expecially in 25 man, you could literally be increasing 10-12 casters dps by 10%, and im sorry, your single dps build isnt going to make up for that difference. So dont totally write off demo.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, "10% more spell power to the raid at all times"; if you are speaking of Demonic Pact, it does not stack with Totem of Wrath... at least until you reach 2800 Spell Power(I'm not positive that is the exact number). It is however awesome if your raid doesn't have a Shaman, but goodluck with that.

[direlock]

Yeah was demonic pact, and I have to wonder why blizz is making our raid buffs cancel each other

[makrinos]

Yeah was demonic pact, and I have to wonder why blizz is making our raid buffs cancel each other

Because raid stacking got a bit out of hand at the end of TBC. Now when your raid leader has 1 DPS spot open, they can bring the skilled player instead of someone with lesser gear/skill for their buffs.

[Prideaux]

Although the buffs not stacking is a bit of a pain I can see why they have done it.

One thing I would have a concern about is the Felguard during a raid situation. Our pets do not seem to have a great deal of survivability. At the moment I am specced 00/31/40 (linked below). I find keeping my imp alive a bit of a pain. Taking AOE damage and various other things. At least with the imp I know when I am taking damage the imp is too and to move both. Moving a felguard thats at melee range at the boss and me been 36 yards away makes it hard to see whats going on. I've never tried this in a raid so maybe other could advise if this actually causes a problem or not.

I think there are a few points on my spec that can be ajusted. Not sure Demonic enpowerment is worth the point or not. Definatly worth a try though speccing this way.

(http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...as&n=Pridelock)

[Prideaux]

Just noticed my error in my spec. Appears it would be more beneficial to have Empowered Imp 1/3 rather than Demonic Empowerment 1/1 - Shame you can't get both

Or would I be better using 1 point in backdraft rather than Empowered Imp?

I really don't know

[Prideaux]

The thing with specs is that the best one (highest single dps) prob changes depending on your gear. I have a pretty low crit chance now so I have had to take more demo points than the guys in Ensida!

Have to see how well we scale with gear which by looking at it were pretty good!

[creese82]

Just noticed my error in my spec. Appears it would be more beneficial to have Empowered Imp 1/3 rather than Demonic Empowerment 1/1 - Shame you can't get both

Or would I be better using 1 point in backdraft rather than Empowered Imp?

I really don't know

How is your imp doing on mana? If he is ooming then 1 point in mana feed would be the best choice imo because all those imp buffing talents ain't worth much if he's waiting on mana regen to pop off another firebolt.

[Bakis]

imp wont go oom in a raid.
btw, anyone else that have a hard time being top1-top3 on bosses as affliction in 25man raids?
I did and i got the cycle well so dunno :/ will spec destro again and see what happens, its more fun on trash as well

[Prideaux]

I did a 10man last night with the guild and was top on the trash and bosses as 00/30/41

[Gregoire]

Well, I play a lock for 4 years now, but can't say I have this thing yet figured out..so call me a nub who should re-roll Hunter or Pally (Retri is indeed fun atm ;D ). I totally sucked with my Affliction specc in our first 25 man...I actually did better as /0/41/20. No idea what it is..the DoTs are always up, Haunt is always there..etc etc.

Det, assuming that your gear is on par with the rest of your raid group, you might want to try getting this an addon called: Ripped and the affliction warlock module for Ripped, called RippedAdvancedWarlockStrategy. If you aren't pretty much perfect on your rotations, your DPS will suffer and perhaps suffer a lot with the current state of affliction. Given that you've played your lock for a long time, if you are making a mistake in the rotation, you should see it pretty quick with these addons deployed on your system. You might also find out that your affliction rotation is fine and that apparent lack of DPS isn't your fault: it's everyone else in your raid's fault, because...

Now..for all the people who wined and claimed warlocks will never get a spot anymore because they are so shite in 3.0----we still run with 2 of them...as does Ensidia btw. And their locks are specced 0/20/51. So..shoot me, but I am somebody who likes to see what the ppl at the top do. What do those guys know that we don't - or what do you know that they and me don't know.?

Your DoTs might be getting knocked off, due to the debuff limit, which is why I suspect that Ensida locks are generally spec'ed as destruction (last I looked 3 were destro, 1 was demo).

As in TBC, I expect that at some point as locks get more haste and crit on gear, destruction will surpass affliction again in terms of maximum theoretical DPS, but I don't think even Ensida locks have the gear for that yet, because that level gear is probably coming in the next major patch.


I hope this helps and have fun. Cheers.