at level 80... now what spec?

[Aetheron]

Hey all

So I finally hit 80 today. The guild I am GM of is a casual raiding/instancing guild, and we are going to start running instances next week, gearing people up for heroics and then beyond.

For now though, I am looking at spec.

Currently i'm at 21/50/0, Siphon Life/Felguard, worked great for soloing (which I will still be doing, dailies, pvp, quest cleanup,e tc), but not sure it will be truly effective for instancing.

Was thinking of either going full Affliction (like a 51/10/10) or full Destro. Or is Demo the way to go?

A few other notes:
1 - I have played all three specs, I can handle anything in all three
2 - I only ask this because I am NOT a theorycrafter - too many of you have run the numbers before and can tell me which one is more effective by the numbers
3 - Skill level of the people I will be grouping with is above average to excellent. All are ex-raiders who rerolled with us on fizzcrank when the server first launched.

[shatter2]

While I'm not a warlock anymore, a lot of the warlocks I have seen at 80 have been raiding as 0/41/30 in a Felguard/Emberstorm spec.

I have seen a few with a full Affliction spec though.

[Vanthere]

For raiding at a 10 or 25 man level with good heroic gear or better 53/0/18 is the best if your doing heroics or just 5 mans then felguard emberstorm is best.

Destro doesent currently scale as well as affliction. And demonology is only good for heroics because shit doesent last very long.

[zey]

Affliction does pretty poorly in 5 mans (having said that, I run heroics affliction no problem). So if you are really just at the gearing up stage, I would go 0/41/30 untill you start raiding, at which point you can evaluate if you want to keep 0/41/30.

[Aetheron]

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

[jjam6217]

I was deep destro from new at 80 and I can say it does fairly good dps in heroics etc, backdraft is great for sneaking in casts quickly on trash to push up your dps.

[Namon]

If u can pull off aff its the best spec out there atm, yes even in heroics u just have to think a bit more. If ur more comfortable with a demo/destro build i would stick to that. if u need help w/ glyphs, spec's, theory crafting hit, haste, crit, etc. leme know

cheers

[skojten]

How does 0/41/30 look like?
i want to keep my felbaby but put the rest of my points in destro. Cant get my dots to tic in HC.

[Potence]

Skotjen, it looks something like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...h=071204020506

yummm, FG/Emberstorm

There's a couple choices you have there. The point that I have put into mana feed in the demonology tree can be placed elsewhere if you raid with people that provide replenishment. In that case, you could put it into demonic sacrifice for some extra utility on high mobility fights, or anywhere else you like really. The one point in shadowburn is a personal preference. It's a necessary point needed to reach the next tier of destro, so you can put it wherever you like. Many put it in shadowburn, many others put it into aftermath.

The idea around this build is that so much crit and sp are awarded by demonology talents that the spec works very well for lower gear levels, but deep destro or deep affliction ultimately scales better with better gear. The basic rotation for this build is CoA (if no boomkin or other lock with CoE), corruption, immolate, incinerate spam until immolate is up, and then just keep refreshing everything from there. Oh yeah and use demonic empowerment whenever possible.

[skojten]

thanks a million