Life drain

[Resentful]

Ah warlock's I've slaughtered you so many times yet, I love being you in pvE currently life draining is considered better then shadow bolting correct? And that's the only case if you have good ''internet/ping'' If not you go back to shadow bolting QQ'ing in the corner cause you have shitty internet ?

Thanks for clarification

- Edit

As Affliction

[Greyarea]

It depends what your asking for. PvE or PvP?

For PvE if you have a good net connection with low ping then yes, drain is better than Sbolt (it also counts as another dot i think for shadowbite damage with felpup). If your ping is over say 100ms or so, shadowbolt ends up being better (I play a US realm and I'm based in Aus, so no drain lifing for me...damned 300ms pings)

For PvP I really am unsure so cannot answer.

[Resentful]

PvE wise, thank you all. My MS is usually at 100s unfortunately

[Zenchi]

It depends on how you prefer to play.
You can get the destro specs to shorten the cast time and give the nice extra crit chance and just start spamming(and get some nice instand casts from nightfall).
I prefer health drain because it refreshes corruption, it's also nice for fights like halfus with alot of moving, when you have a moment to stand still u can start channeling(even if you have to interrupt it you will have still done some damage) instead of hoping u can finish ur cast.

[cinnamons]

I did not get an opportunity to raid much this week, but here are my thoughts:
Lets say my ping is too high to do drain life properly, and sb spec would be marginally better based on my ping. I could be self healing myself for quite a bit (especially sub 25% due to the talent). For that I would say I'm more of an asset to the raid, especially on nefarion, and chimeron (spelling). The only fight I did go in on was chimeron, where I was able to self heal for 3k hps (maybe more) and I essentially was not even worried about by the healer which makes there jobs easier. Also assuming there is a fire mage around, the s&f debuff shouldn't be an issue with nightfall as well.

[NickV]

Between Haunt and Siphon Life, you don't need to Drain Life on Chimaeron. The HPS you got is irrelevant since you only need to be above 10k when not in a Feud. Plus, Soul Link applies, so you have very little to heal to get to 10k+ health.
It basically doesn't matter a whole lot if you use SB or DL as your filler. Choose whichever you like to use.

[Penguin FTW]

Now, keep in mind Affliction is still inferior to Destruction in terms of DPS, generally speaking.

Wait wat, explain that please

[Resentful]

Between Haunt and Siphon Life, you don't need to Drain Life on Chimaeron. The HPS you got is irrelevant since you only need to be above 10k when not in a Feud. Plus, Soul Link applies, so you have very little to heal to get to 10k+ health.
It basically doesn't matter a whole lot if you use SB or DL as your filler. Choose whichever you like to use.

Even with a 100 ping or such?

[Falconys]

As I was just reading in another thread (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...fliction-Locks) it appears that the latency overwrite from clipping one drain life with another may have been fixed. If this is the case, then latency should have a much smaller impact on Aff/DL dps. It sounds like channeled spells should now be qued by the server just like a cast-time spell as long as it is a second cast of the same ability.

[Resentful]

As I was just reading in another thread (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...fliction-Locks) it appears that the latency overwrite from clipping one drain life with another may have been fixed. If this is the case, then latency should have a much smaller impact on Aff/DL dps. It sounds like channeled spells should now be qued by the server just like a cast-time spell as long as it is a second cast of the same ability.

Thank you

[Faradin]

As I was just reading in another thread (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...fliction-Locks) it appears that the latency overwrite from clipping one drain life with another may have been fixed. If this is the case, then latency should have a much smaller impact on Aff/DL dps. It sounds like channeled spells should now be qued by the server just like a cast-time spell as long as it is a second cast of the same ability.

It's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't eliminate the need for nochanneling macros. Even if someone were just spamming drain life, it requires significantly less effort to simply mash a nochanneling macro than having to worry about timing individual casts. Granted, I might be a little biased since I usually have 8 ms.

I'm away from my WoW computer right now. If anyone is bored or happens to know, does chain casting rain of fire benefit from this change?

Now, keep in mind Affliction is still inferior to Destruction in terms of DPS, generally speaking.

What makes you say that? Outside of fights where Bane of Havok can be used on generally unattackable targets, I have yet to see any indications that Destruction outperforms Affliction.

EDIT: If you're looking at Stateofdps.com, it will take a few weeks for the it to be "somewhat" accurate.

[Entropic]

Now, keep in mind Affliction is still inferior to Destruction in terms of DPS, generally speaking, so if your latency is too bad to use Drain Life, you should consider switching talent trees.

Actually, 4.1 Sims show DL Afflic to be almost 2k dps higher on single target fights with 372 gear, 1.6k higher in 359. Yes, these are sims, but they show the potential of the specs, so if you can play both effectively, then DL Afflic will edge out ahead by a fairly large margin. If they were within 500 or so DPS of each other then I wouldn't care, but almost 2k is a huge gap.

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t110222-...a/#post1811449

If anyone is bored or happens to know, does chain casting rain of fire benefit from this change?

I don't think so, I believe the change only affects channeled spells that act like DoTs, since it is essentially adapting the no clip dot mechanic.

[Vetali]

Last I read on EJ the numbers on afflic drain and afflic SB were so close that it should be considered preference. When you add more movement, afflic drain pulls ahead, obviously.

[Cairhiin]

Now, keep in mind Affliction is still inferior to Destruction in terms of DPS, generally speaking, so if your latency is too bad to use Drain Life, you should consider switching talent trees.

Yea, no. Please don't spread lies.

[HotSauce]

PvE wise, thank you all. My MS is usually at 100s unfortunately

TL;DR: I like magnificent puppies. And you will enjoy magnificent kittens. Please read a book. Please brush you're teeth. And PLEASE DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
mines at 130 and im doing better with lifedrain. i get about a 1-2.5k dps increase vs using shadowbolt. i might be doing something wrong, but i just feel alot more free using life drain because im always at less of a risk of dying (self heals!! yay) also, if i have to move in a fight i find it better to use life drain. for example =casting shadow bolt and moving would interupt the cast completely. but lifedrain = if i have to move, even mid cast, i still do some damage vs not doing any dmg at all with shadowbolt. i play my warlock mostly for fun as it is my favorite class to play, regarless of what any elitest is going to tell me. im going to spam life drain untill im oom, only to life tap and heal myself back to full again

[Falconys]

Yea, no. Please don't spread lies.

They say the proof is in the pudding... but I'm too lazy to make pudding.
http://www.simulationcraft.org/410/Raid_T11_372.html

Also, as HotSauce pointed out, having 100ms latency is most certainly NOT going to exclude Aff/DL as a reasonable option for you... The latency figure of 100-200ms is an arbitrary approximation, and if you have a stable connection with high bit rate you'll be able to tolerate several times that without significant issue.

It's frustrating that we can't "live fire test" spec changes without spending a pile of gold on glyphs and reforging, but thats really the only way to find out which will be better for you.

I tried DL spec a while back but went back to SB spec because I was finding difficulty with maintaining Shadows Embrace, which caused my DPS to jump wildly between fights. I'd rather have 18k every pull than 19k one pull and 16k the next 3 pulls. That was a personal experience though, and shouldn't be used as a reason to not try it yourself... you may be a better player than I am, after all.