Don’t go to meetings mid post.
I finally got around to doing some things I had planned on. First was downloading decursive for my mage. Used it in OS25 and it worked great. Didn’t have to re-aquire my target after de-cursing someone. increased my dps a bit. #2 was writing a macro to drop all 4 of my Cooldowns at once. (trinket for +SpPwr, Mirror Image, Arcane Power, Icy Veins), sped up my burst damage too!
Now if I could only win a roll I could get my second Tier piece and get the bonus dmg when I use my mana gem. sigh It might even push me over the 2k avg for myself.
I am only level 30 so a levelling perspective. Looked it up and Life Tap relies on Spell power and as I haven’t got much gear that improves my spell power this is probably the reason it isn’t doing much for me.
Indeed, yes. This is new to WOTLK such that once you’re honored with some faction, say the Kirin Tor, you can go to the quartermaster, purchase that faction’s tabard and wear it while you’re in level 80 dungeons. Each kill in said dungeon will apply rep towards that faction. Some factions are excluded, like Sons of Hodir.
A good place to pick up frostweave is in Scholazar Basin at the little dig site. You should get, well have by now, Northrend Scavenging (or something like that name) so that you can “occasionally” find extra cloth on humanoids. I will grind that place for about an hour at a time and come out with 5-10 stacks of frostweave. I also farm there because of the mines, since my mage is also a miner; she’s lesbionic that way.
I would strongly recommend moving some talents from the frost tree to the arcane tree. You’ll find a great upgrade in your dps by taking up through 3/3 Torment the Weak (TTW), in the classic frost/TTW build. 3/3 Spell impact is a 6% increase in your damage straight off, plus 12% with TTW nets you an 18% increase in your dps.
Warlocks get a variety of pets; the utility of anyone of them is entirely dependent upon the task at hand. If you need control and you’re working against humanoids, the succubus can seduce one. If you’re against casters who either a.) have cast times, or b.) place magic debuffs, the fel hunter is your guy. If you just want to pull a few guys at once and kill them, then the voidwalker is the pet to have (until you get the felguard anyway). And then there are the doomguard and inferno, whose uses are largely for novelty, but they can still be quite handy at times.
the fel hunter isn’t a pet you’d want to use to distract mobs from hitting you; that’s not his thing. For that, get out your blue berry (voidwalker).
You’ll use either the felguard (if specced) or voidwalker for most soloing. The other pets are force multipliers in dungeons and raids; essentially by freeing up one utility spell/ability of another class so they can focus on dps since your pets’ abilities don’t share any GCDs (global cooldowns) with any of yours.
Of course, in PvP, each pet has an upshot and many downshots. The fel hunter can pretty much shut down an opposing team’s healer for 8 seconds while also eating their HoTs and buffs. The succubus can seduce an enemy player, but it shares a cooldown with fear and breaks upon any damage. The voidwalker can give you a shield as well as reducing spell damage of an enemy player. The felguard hits like a truck and has a stun. The imp, well, unless you’re deep destruction, he’s not your best bet in PvP.
30% or more of an aff locks damage comes from shadowbolts. 20% comes from UA (unstable affliction) which has a cast time, 20% comes from Corruption, which is cast once. Haunt (20% increase to your shadow DoTs, refreshes Shadow Embrace and Corruption) must be kept up and has a cast time. Every 24 seconds you cast CoA (Curse of Agony), which does more damage per tick the longer it’s up, so you really don’t want to clip it (it’s also only about 6% of your dps).
Once the boss is below 35%, you want to keep DS (Drain Soul) on it instead of Shadowbolt. DS is a channeled spell, and 13% of your dps.
As destro, I can usually get my immolate below my GCD, so I can take a step there. I get to conflag every 10 seconds provided immolate is up, which being instant gives me a full gcd of movement without costing dps. Also my nuke, incinerate has a faster cast time than aff’s shadowbolt, so I can often finish a cast before moving.
As demo, you want to keep Corr and CoA up (each instant cast), and a fair amount of your dps comes from your felguard. It costs you less to move than the other two specs.
For high level raiding if you’re not casting or in a gcd, you’re losing dps.
Even deep destro usually avoids the imp in PvP. The crit buff isn’t enough reliable burst compared to the puppy’s lockdowns. With the glyph, the puppy becomes even better, and is the best choice for non demo locks in PvP.
The infernal and doomguard are better dps than any of the other lock pets (other than, iirc, felguard, and even if they are better, they don’t give the demo lock all the buffs a felguard does), but they can’t be summoned often, and only last a short time. Mostly they’re used by aff locks, but I’ll drop an infernal every now and then to push a boss we’re close on.
note: dps percentages based on what our aff lock did on our hodir kill last night. this is not an EJ (elistist jerks) level analysis.
Redwing, the question from **Demo **wasn’t “do Warlocks suffer a loss of DPS during movement fights,” but “do Warlocks suffer *less *of a DPS loss during movement fights *than other caster classes *because their DOTs keep ticking.” Obviously, *any *class is going to be able to do its best DPS/healing/tanking in a fight where they can just sit still and hammer buttons.
I thought it was more why did spec X suffer more of a dps loss than spec Y. Locks are weird that way, aff is hurt more than destro, and demo is hurt least. Yet aff is the DoT heavy spec.
As for other classes, melee classes only suffer dps loss when they run away from a boss, chasing it around costs nothing (no cast times). Hunters have a fair number of instant cast abilities, though I don’t know how movement affects their white damage, I believe if they need to stop moving for an instant when their autoshot goes off, but that the counter doesn’t reset on movement. Since we are using them to keep singe up, they drop pretty far in hodir, which has nothing to do with movement (they probably move less than anyone else, but they don’t get many moombeams or storm powers)
I know spriests, boomkin, and mages only marginally. I know our spriests dps doesn’t seem to get crushed by movement, but the differences I see between some of our mages and boomkin make it hard to tell if somethings a movement issue or a player issue.
Thanks for the clarification, on both points. I think affliction deserves another dot. 
Doesn’t Vanish produce the same sort of threat wipe for Rogues (albeit with a longer cooldown).
IIRC, doesn’t the Nightelf Shadowmeld produce similar results?
They really don’t need another DoT so much as most locks simply need to learn to use the ones they do have. An affliction lock, while capable of putting out substantial dps, is also a utility class, which means that s/he debuffs a target in the best way possible to min/max the raid’s dps overall. Individual, while not unimportant, isn’t the do-all end-all of raiding.
For instance, I raid as a fire mage not because the individual dps is the best (fire has never been capable of more damage than arcane, ever). Fire only merges ahead in extremely long fights because arcane is a very, very mana intensive, which is to say that arcane will always have higher DPS, but lower DPM, equal gearing of course. I raid fire because of two major reasons: 1.) I enjoy being fire more than any other spec, and 2.) the improved scorch debuff allows my raid to min/max.
Back to affliction locks. Locks have an entire host of curses (though not as many individual ones as times past) which can be used according to the raid makeup. While it’s true that CoA can account for a significant portion of your DPS, it generally pales in comparison to using CoE, excepting the situation in which there’s a boomkin in the group, of course. Also, good affliction locks* will always beat out good destruction locks in highly mobile fights merely because a substantial part of their dps isn’t contingent upon direct damage spells. Also, if you’re going deep affliction, you might as well max out nightfall and glyph to get the 8%(?) chance for a free shadow bolt proc per tick of corruption.
*This requires very good management of cooldown timers. Very, very good.
Where destruction has the edge is in that their shadow bolts and incinerate will hit hard because their spec is balanced around direct damage spells.
An affliction lock whose bulk of dps comes from his shadow bolt has probably got some questionable itemization going on, which is to say that he’s likely got too high a crit chance and too low a spell power rating. With destruction locks, like with magi, there are two ways to gear: spell power, or crit. Some prefer to be a crit lock, or mage, while some prefer to crit less often, but a lot harder. How you gear depends on what drops, and your playstyle. But as an affliction lock, you’re going to want to get up around three thousand spell power, while a crit lock can get by with far less spell power, but will require at the very least a 30% crit rate. 45-50% crit rating would be ideal.
My guild is only me and my Alts, it provides me with a communal bank for all my characters on a server. I never run out of bank space.
The current Shadowmeld mechanic is NOT a threat wipe. What it does is temporarily “hide” your threat on the mob’s table: while you are Shadowmelded, the mob doesn’t “see” your threat, but it stays the same. When you come out of Shadowmeld (or it’s broken), you’ll have exactly the same threat coming out as you had going in.
Never mind. Apparently I was wrong about Shadowmeld in combat.
jayjay, they changed Shadowmeld shortly before Wrath dropped. It used to be that it could only be used out of combat, so it was pretty much only useful for going AFK. Now it can be used in combat, but you can’t eat/drink while Shadowmelded. It will drop you from combat when you are the last person left alive on the hate list of whatever you’re in combat with.
ETA: Can’t go back and edit my previous post, so I’ll put it in here. Obviously, the threat will only be restored when you come out of Shadowmeld if you’re still in combat with the mob in question. So, for a boss fight, you’ll get the threat back if you break stealth before the boss is dead, but out in the world, if you aggro a bunch of mobs and then Shadowmeld, you’ll drop combat, they’ll reset, and you can safely come out of Shadowmeld.
Vanish does the same threat wipe as Feign death.
Shadowmeld restores threat when cancelled.
Okay, I wasn’t aware of the change. Probably because I always considered Shadowmeld one of the least useful racial abilities and haven’t used it since probably very close to when I first started playing the game.
(Most useful: Escape Artist (gnome), Every Man For Himself (human), Will of the Forsaken (Undead), Gift of the Naaru (Draenei)
Moderately Useful: Berserk (Troll), Command(?)(Orc), Warstomp (Tauren)
Least Useful: Shadowmeld (Night Elf), Stoneform (Dwarf), Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf))
No kidding? It’s the only racial I’ve ever actively used. I have NElves, Humans, and Draenei. I occasionally use Gift of the Naaru, never even think about Every Man For Himself, but I use Shadowmeld constantly. It’s fantastic for soloing, especially in dangerous areas. It’s an instant and almost completely safe reset button.
Now that it can be used to reset combat, yes. My assessment of it is pre-change, since I haven’t used it since well before they changed it. Now I have to go make a Nelf to check it out, dammit…
I wonder how close I am to the 50-toon ceiling right now?
Arcane Torrent got changed, too. It’s now a single ability that simultaneously does an AOE silence and restores Mana/Energy/Runic Power (not Rage, though, according to the WoWWiki page, which is WTF lame if it’s accurate). And Stoneform clears all poisons/diseases/bleed effects when used now (instead of granting immunity), so that’s still really useful, too.