Shadow Bolt Spamming

[Henke]

There has been a lot of chat amongst the Warlocks about how boring our current specs are – we are all Demonic Sacrifice and Destruction(there are slight differences I have Imp Succubus for fun and CC), this means all we really do is spam Shadow Bolts – this does not make for fun raiding hitting 1 button all the time.

Winthrow has respec’d to Affliction to see if he can compete DPS wise, although I believe he would like go back to Fel Guard which he enjoyed.

So with that in mind I think there is a very real chance that I will respect Fire once I get a forth piece of Tier 5(which could be a long way away) the 4 set bonus is a nice. My likely build will be http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZbxcuI0zZVx0xrotVuV (although the 3 points in Backlash may be moved to Soul Leech depending on mana issues).

However I do not want to lessen raid effectiveness (I’m thinking SPs here) nor my own raid viability. Any thoughts? Yes I am so very, very bored.

[Bokeh]

spec whatever you like, having 2 locks with ISB is a big buff but i think winthrow will have ISB as affliction as well. But are you sure fire will change much compared to 0/21/40? You'll switch from doing shadowbolt to doing immolate/conflag.

Ultimately nearly all dps classes spam 1 or 2 buttons just because it is the most efficient rotation.

[Guvner]

I have been reading up a fair bit on Lock fire specs since 2.4 introduced some nice buffs for incinerate. In theory your personal DPS will icnrease over Shadow although a lot of this will depend on Imp Scroch being up with CoE. The basic theory goes that shadow destruction and fire desctruction are now very similiar in damage and that your choice should be based on raid synergy ie if you raid with shadow priests more use shadow and with fire mages use fire. Ofc at the end of the day you should spec whichever way you like to play. I am very interested in trying fire out however I have too many nice +shadow items so will most likely stay shadow. I think afflcition is still interesting and I am very keen to see how Winthrow does. It has obvious benefits to the raid as well.

At the end of the day its really nice to know that whether you spec affliction, Demonology, Shadow destruction or fire desctruction, they are all viable raid builds if talented carefully. Bizarely I really enjoy shadow bolt spamming after 6 months of dotting like a nutter. Ultimately my favourite spec of all time was FULL destruction with both fire and shadow talents using conflag and shadowfury. Was great for pvp if played right and really potent for 5 mans and raiding. You lose a lot of raid damage not having demonic sacrifice and a buffed fel armor though. Ah well.

On a personal note I would reccomend never replacing backlash with anything. if your going that far down the destro tree backlash is too good not too take. Its a big dps buff

[Adraorien]

For me personally, I really enjoy the bustle and business of being Affliction... that being said, my DPS obviously still needs some work (and not just gearwise although that helps) so I'm probably not the best person to give anyone tips on this.
Also, the last time I had anything other than Affliction as spec was three years ago... thinking of giving a Destro spec a try in a few months when I'll (hopefully) have graduated and have more time to take a look at things and see if it makes a great difference in DPS and whether I'd like the play style.

atm I don;t think I will like it, I like the variation Affliction brings (also, watching all my enemies die slowly and painfully helps ^^). And hey, one can spam bolts with Affliction too... just not as many in a row and mainly on trash. But still ^^

[Guvner]

I think affliction is the spec that gives you the most interesting options for sure. Shadow bolt spam still counts for about 60% of your damage so it definitely should not be forgotten. When i am affliction i miss big critting shadwbolts and when I am destruction I miss dark pact, dotting and running etc. Argh just let me have another 30 talent points please Blizz

[Henke]

I'm lucky enough(or unlucky enough ... I was gutted that +shadow dmg cloak despawned on Monday night in MH) not to have any +shadow stuff atm. Really want to kill Vash and Kael targets sitting on 3/5 T5 is getting annoying especially when my chest is average and my head is pants(not literally). I really must get a arena partner/team even if it just to farm 10 games a week. Although there is something nice about seeing 7k SBs slam home. I'll cross the fire bridge when I come to it.

[Lange_Dweil]

Hmm I'm not even a guild member (yet i hope)

But every top dps spec is simple.
And you don't even gain a extra button if your using immolate in the rotation (wich you should)
(Co* , immolate, botlspam, lifetap)
Even with a 0/21/40 imolate give's an increase in you Dammage Per Cast.
So depending on the fight you can do dmg when because of een event you can't SB and the DOT part will.
Difference with a Fire spec is the change Incinarate<>shadowbolt
Also keep in mind that there are more Fire resist mobs (imune) then shadow resist.(as far as i know)

Keeping a dot rotation up as affliction is also a pain in the * (was specced UA for a while(non T5 content btw)
@ a certain point i just made a macro so i could use 1 button for a lot of fights (actualy increased my dps) and i was self sufficient so no extra healing needed.
But the DPS is lower than ./21/40 with the same gear (again pre T5 for me)

Felguard spec ./41/20 is seems a tiny bit lower on single target dps, But on multiple targets or fights with some silence interupt it's higher.
That felguard just keeps going and have to try that sometime.
And is a lot more usefull in PVP :)

In the end concerning the lock the best DPS depens on the raid setup.
Fire mage <or> Shadow priest
But al theocrafting i have read sofar say's that boltspamming still wins because of the better scaling.

Hmm long post for a non guildy :D hope you don't mind :x
Demoniâ (normaly don't put my name there but this time i do)

[Guvner]

He he thanks for the contribution guildy or not. Yup immo when not up then spam incinerate is the fire destro rotation that should yield the best dps. My own personal experiences of the different Lock specs so far was roughly as follows:

Full destro - Was this spec pre Kara, good in 5 mans, nice for arena and bg's if strenghts are played too. Nothing can tear down an opponent like a full destro lock with all CD's ready although I would still ultimately prefer to be SL / FG for pvp.

Affliction - I specced afflic for the first time in anger when I saw the DPS that Winthrow could do on Gruul. Took me a while to get used to the rotation and dotting multiple targets but DPS was awesome at the time and you where 100% self sufficient. Dark pact is an aweome ability.

Demonology - I have personally never tried a Demonology raid spec however once we hit SSC and TK Winthrow respecced and his damage was pretty awesome. I think he recorded 1600 dps on Tidewalker. The T5 set bonus and TK class ring seems to support that Demonology should be the spec of choise for those instances.

Raid Destro (0/21/40) - I have personally chosen a shadow destruction build with no fire talents and 5 points in cataclysm. I also have 3 points in imp imp for the times I need to tank an add or buff the tank / melee grp with Blood Pact. Everything I had read suggested that this spec is the nuke spec that excels and I had played with it in TK early on for a week or 2 (10k shadowbolts on TK trash!?!). Ultimately I had affliction gear so far to little +spell hit and +crit to make it work. As we where about to hit MH I changed to 0/21/40 properly and quite frankly the raid DPS is insane (1700 sustained average on Gorefiend). Its is a one button job though so not amazingly complicated and it only really shines on static fights.

I think i will always prefer shadow to fire. I was using Shadowseer to calculate imp shadowbolt uptime and the raid buffing it brings before 2.4 and it showed such an awesome raid synergy between the spriests with misery and the locks with CoS and imp SB procs that we where buffing each other by up to 40%. Also your right there are very few shadow resistant bosses out there.

[Mariska]

IR fire :) need i say more.

respecced and cleared TK yesterday to give it a go. Its clear that the fire tree wasnt buffed enough yet to compete with shadow.

But that said, i did notice some things.
Conflagrate blows. no point in wasting talent points.
Improved Immolate has no point, dmg increase is very minimal.

I know people read and read, before reading some more. My tactic, try it all with the same gear. Im in the luxury position of a nice gear set with pure spell dmg, hit capped and good crit for fire/shadow destro.

I'll tweak this build before the next raid and give it some more tries.

Boss DPS ~1400 against ~1600 i had in shadow.

To be continued...

[sebastiaan]

At the moment im back to affliction, and im looking forward to test it out in a raid again, im very curious if the dps can compete with the 0/21/40 build i had.
The reason i was very happy to respec to demon when we hit leo was because i didnt see much of the fights because you have to keep an eye on the dot timers at all time when raiding with an affliction spec, so dont be suprised if i respec in a few weeks again :P

In that case im prob. gonna go back to felgaurd raiding, this is for me the most fun build i had in tbc raiding as long as the pet has a decent chance of staying alive.

[Lange_Dweil]

In my opinion affliction is a bit the support class in PVE Raiding.
And it is a nice build if you don't have the hit and crit for the 0/21/40 spec.
But for an affliction lock to be realy usefull to the raid het should have 3 talent points in malediction for the 3% extra on the curse (CoS or CoE) witch makes it a 13% increase.
Yeah warlock just scale realy awesom in groups but they need some support to get realy insane.

[dreaming mode] 3 warlocks with a 00mkin and shammy in a group and a supporting warlock and Spriest in the raid[/dreaming mode]
that would make a tank go insane i guess .. i would love to see what happens with a herorism popped in that group.

In my last few day's as affliction raiding i used a macro butten to see something from the fight.
You only need to manualy add a shadowbolt in the rotation when you had a nightfall proc to prevent overwriting DoT's
When i'm home again i will have a look in my macro section if i still have it.

[Bokeh]

We usually have 3 locks with a turkey and an elemental shaman in a group.

watch http://wowwebstats.com/y12vkqs4woizs for a report of how this group did on a static fight (gorefiend) with 1 heroism.

[Lange_Dweil]

We usually have 3 locks with a turkey and an elemental shaman in a group.

watch http://wowwebstats.com/y12vkqs4woizs for a report of how this group did on a static fight (gorefiend) with 1 heroism.

poor tank, just a gues but that would be 1 nice agro surf.
With a crit chain (had 8 in a row last time on tidewalker) that would be insane.
I had the luck to be in the wattery grave before so i dropped to 3Th 4Th but was back there realy fast.

[Bokeh]

yeah i need an enh shaman in the tank group to sustain that threat during avoidance streaks. 1100 sustained TPS over the whole fight (shaman died halfway through the fight :/) was enough combined with salv on locks + soulshatter.

[Henke]

I find those stats pretty valuable it does show I have to really try to improve my +spell dmg. I'm doing 2% less crit than Guv(although I got a new neck which gives me another 1.2% crit) but am doing on average 300 less dmg for each shadow bolt fired and 1400 on some crits.

I think the main reason is my trinkets - having 2 +crit trinkets isn't good I'll buy the Badge spell dmg trinket before next raid and see if I can boost my dmg.

I also have a free profession slot(skinning is handy but not really Lock essential - alchemy seems the way to go but sending Holycelt to the far flung reaches to gather mats makes me cry) but was planning to go inscriptions in WotLK.

[Lange_Dweil]

Crit is triky.
If i look @ the kill fight http://wowwebstats.com/y12vkqs4woizs?s=6700-6988 guv is a lot higher.
Then if you look deeper you see he had 41% crit's on that kill fight.
Insane i tink :p, but if i look @ the armory he has 25% before devastation.
So 25+5=30% then another 5% form the 00mkin would make 35% but he just had some luck and ended up with 41%
Because the actual code for crit's is only know bij blizz it's only an estimate and a bit random.
Somebody on the US forums (i think) tested it because he was lacking crits in a raid.
It seems to level out when you do enough bolts (more then 1000 bolts tho)
And to put it in perpective guv has done 54 Bolts on that fight.

o yeah some fun site's to do some numbers and reading
http://wowmb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23586&page=1
www.maxdps.com (http://www.maxdps.com)
http://www.leulier.com/

A summery from the head.
after you are hitcapped and have a decent amount of crit prio stats are +spelldmg and haste.
And haste seems to get the upperhand around 1200+ (shadow) dmg buffed

damn i read and post to much, but i was borred.

[Guvner]

he he same here. Yup need full spell hit and a nice whack of damage however as you say crit is tricky. 41% seems mad. I must have gotten very lucky. I am not convinced I need any more crit. I do have more crit for trash but thats only trash. There is a point where you have to carefully surf the right ratio's of crit vs damage and then spell haste makes it all more complicated again. At the moment the spreadsheet at http://www.leulier.com/ has been telling me that Haste would be my major dps buffing stat at this time but how far would I go before I need more crit and damage to level things. Depends on the gear ofc but you get the drift. Its tricky to fine tune.

Regarding threat yes it can be a problem. Thank god for Soul Shatter but even then I find myself threat capped after an SS and depending on the fight. Also on that Gorefiend kill I didn't get ghosted or hassled by spawns so I was able to nuke like mad. Could easily have been so different.

[Lange_Dweil]

For the hase it seems around 150
(with 1300 buffed shadow dmg 25% crit rating and hitcapped)
afther that the +dmg is the best stat again
150 hasterating is about 10% increase in cast speed.
so shadowbolt cast time gets around 2.28 sec a pop.

o for the lazy affliction macro

/use 13
/castsequence reset=9 Siphon Life,Unstable Affliction,Corruption,Immolate,Shadow Bolt,Shadow Bolt,life tap,Shadow Bolt,Shadow Bolt,Dark Pact,Life Tap,Unstable Affliction,Corruption,Immolate,Shadow Bolt,Shadow Bolt,Shadow Bolt,Shadow Bolt

[Guvner]

lol yes that is indeed lazy

[Bokeh]

you're forgetting 3% crit from an elemental shaman, a bit from mage buff and some from kings. That'd get you somewhere to 37-38% in total.

[Lange_Dweil]

you're forgetting 3% crit from an elemental shaman, a bit from mage buff and some from kings. That'd get you somewhere to 37-38% in total.

Yeah forgot about that one, seem to alway's mix them up.
Totem of wrath and wrath of air totem (fire and air totem)

btw maxdps.com seems to think that the backlash talent is not counted in the Character screens and add's it to the crit chance (again 3% extra)
(hmm could test that with a respec :D )

So that could explain the 41%.
Gulv must have been the whole time in the 20 yard range from all the totems and they where up all te time.
He was lucky :D either way you look at it.

tranquil air totem seems intresting for extra dps also to me (only if the casters are giving the tank a hard time agro wise)
You remove some extra damage because of the Wrath of air totem that get's removed.
But can nuke a bit more because of the extra threat reduce (don't now if it stack with salvation tho, wowwiki say's it does)

[Bokeh]

Gorefiend is a static fight so if you don't stand in range of the totems all time you're doing something wrong.

Yes, tranquil air stacks multiplicatively with salvation, but it's only worth it at the beginning of the pull, you lose too much dps by giving 1 caster group tranquil air instead of giving the tank windfury because only 1 group will benefit from tranquil air.

That only goes for single target situations though. Tranquil air is worth it in cases with lots of multiple targets.

[Guvner]

you're forgetting 3% crit from an elemental shaman, a bit from mage buff and some from kings. That'd get you somewhere to 37-38% in total.

Yup Shammy Buff + druid buff = awesome. The xtra int is nice to as it benefits crit however locks get less crit per int point than mages but even so its a buff for sure

[Guvner]

Yeah forgot about that one, seem to alway's mix them up.
Totem of wrath and wrath of air totem (fire and air totem)

btw maxdps.com seems to think that the backlash talent is not counted in the Character screens and add's it to the crit chance (again 3% extra)
(hmm could test that with a respec :D )

So that could explain the 41%.
Gulv must have been the whole time in the 20 yard range from all the totems and they where up all te time.
He was lucky :D either way you look at it.

tranquil air totem seems intresting for extra dps also to me (only if the casters are giving the tank a hard time agro wise)
You remove some extra damage because of the Wrath of air totem that get's removed.
But can nuke a bit more because of the extra threat reduce (don't now if it stack with salvation tho, wowwiki say's it does)

Yup Backlash is hidden in the char screen so thats 8% in total from talents :D

[Lange_Dweil]

Btw i think this sort of post are fun to get to maximize the dps and understanding :D


Looking @ the crits from the other warlock's 25% and 10% confirms that crit is a triky stat and not garanteed on relative short fights (aka less than 1000 bolts) because of the chance calculation.
So i think the best way to increase the dps of that class is to increase the +dmg or the cast time (haste)
Afther you are hitcapped and have enough crit together to keep that nice debuf up ofcourse.

screw that means i can go tweaking again :+
Rougly 33% crit raid buffed (should be a sweet spot) would be nice
with a B00mkin and a eShammy would mean 20% before devastation.
afther that +dmg would benefit the overal raid dps the best i think?
Now im crurious what you opinion is about that :p

[Guvner]

Yup I was standing right in the totems and in range of moonkin aura. TBH its easy to do on that fight as all the ranged DPS is together in a relatively small space when not marked for ghosting. Other fights will not be so straightforward to max your dps

[sebastiaan]

Still i have no clue why i have 10% crit on that fight, talents and groupbuffs alone give me more then that :P

[Guvner]

Btw i think this sort of post are fun to get to maximize the dps and understanding :D


Looking @ the crits from the other warlock's 25% and 10% confirms that crit is a triky stat and not garanteed on relative short fights (aka less than 1000 bolts) because of the chance calculation.
So i think the best way to increase the dps of that class is to increase the +dmg or the cast time (haste)
Afther you are hitcapped and have enough crit together to keep that nice debuf up ofcourse.

screw that means i can go tweaking again :+
Rougly 33% crit raid buffed (should be a sweet spot) would be nice
with a B00mkin and a eShammy would mean 20% before devastation.
afther that +dmg would benefit the overal raid dps the best i think?
Now im crurious what you opinion is about that :p

My dilemma at the moment is trying to not go crit nuts for exactly the reason you state above. There is no doubt about it that a Destro nukey Lock needs plenty of crit after spell hit has been capped however your right if you choose too much crit over +damage or haste you will more than likely gimp your boss dps. I have looked at locks in Nhilum etc in full T6 and all the BT epcis possible and even then they appear to have only about 26% crit in the character sheet however they do have a healthy amount of hast and +shadow damage levels of up to 1600 unbuffed. +damage is defintely a key stat. I think that for me I rate my dps stats as +dmg, +spell Hit till capped, +spell crit until around 35% unbuffed max (including devestation and backlash) and then + spell haste. Becuase of all of this I think my next stats to concentrate on will be a combination of damage and haste. I will be looking at upgrading my gems to epic at some point soon (where is that stupid gem vendor) and will be looking to swap +hit ones for +haste or pure damage.

[Guvner]

Still i have no clue why i have 10% crit on that fight, talents and groupbuffs alone give me more then that :P

Something is wrong either with the stats or what happened on that fight. very odd

[Bokeh]

remember you only shot 90 shadow bolts. The chance for each not to crit is even with a 40% crit rate 60%. While the odds are low it's not impossible that you just got unlucky.