Dots and you! a warlock guide

[Draken_crovax]

hey everybody I have decided to talk a bit about warlock dps today! seeing as irenke and lokaas went into such nice detail about their respective main classes


warlock as a role:

we are a primary ranged damage dealer, with three very unique tree's but within these tree's there are much varation and even room for hybrid specs (which is very rare in wow these days) first I will go over what each of the talent specs means, then I will post the various 'accepted' builds

Affliction:

the affliction tree is most commonly thought to be the 'warlock flagship tree' the way you imagine a warlock to be in lore. this tree focus around your DOTS more than anything else, and every spell is focused on either buffing your dots or even in the case of your primary nuke shadowbolt, providing additional effect to your dots in +crit chance and +DOT damage and -healing taken,

pros: consistent damage most logs count up time as the time your damaging the boss, with affliction you can keep a near 100% damage up time due to the fact that 55% of your damage comes from corruption/unstable affliction! also you are the only tree that gets pet choices (fel hunter if there is no priest+ mage in the group, succubus if there is, and if the fight will allow it call the doomguard) this is also an excellent PVP build with all the improved drains and the ability to have greater CC thru improved fear. curse of exhaustion and improved howl of terror, as well its one of the few caster specs to have an 'execute' type spell in drain soul which is modified by your dots, then increased by x4 at 25% or below, (and to think this is the NERFED version of the spell o_O)

cons: as with all specs this one generates tons of agro, on top of that where in the other builds you can stop dps if your Soul shatter is on cooldown, if you run into an agro situation your dots are still there... and there is nothing you can do about it, further some fights require you to stop dps and leave a target near death so 2 mobs can die at the same time you have to be REALLY careful switch earlier than other characters would (half a duration of corruption/unstable affliction could still do 30k damage if they crit enough!) the build is also rotation heavy you have to refresh dots just as they do their last damage tick, maintain a constant shadow bolt spam use haunt every time it comes off cool down. and remembering to switch to drain soul when the mob is at 25%. mess up on of these factors and your dps can plummet by 1000 (this is no joke either!) coupled with the lack of burst damage, which alot of uldar fights require (kolgorn's arms for example affliction takes to long if someone was grabbed at the right time I wouldn't deal enough damage to really be of any help) this alas makes affliction less than optimal to play in uldar

demonology

this build focus around synergy between you and your pet, your only pet option in this build is the felguard, and it makes up a good chunk of your dps, from what I have seen it also is the only warlock spec to not have issues with agro (because so much of your dps is based on your pet) its not uncommon to see a felguard produce 1200+ dps under the right conditions. this spec is also where the vast majority of warlock cool downs appear and is the only build to feature prominently in hybrid builds. usualy demo/destro (more on that later)

pros: creates less threat than other builds, brings possibly the nicest raid buff I have ever seen in demonic pact (if jack we're to spec this way, all casters would gain +400 spell power its based on the warlocks spell power and proc's every time the pet crits) and has some nice dps cooldowns in demonic empowerment and meta

cons: does the least amount of dps compared to all the other builds, if the felguard dies not only do you lose 1200dps from the pet, you also lose all your synergy buffs that go with it (aprox 25% additional damage while your pet is up) considering that most healers rarely if every heal pets this leads to alot of players refusing to play an otherwise excellent spec (same issue beast master hunters have actually :P) also pvp in this spec is totaly bunked. if you hit meta your subject to turn evil AND banish, and your pet is your most potent tool and can be easily killed/cc/stuned/anything

destruction

burst damage: that's what it comes down to with destro how hard can I hit for. this tree is most commonly associated with being a mockery of the fire tree for mages. but its not it

pros: currently the highest producing warlock tree out there, lots of burst damage with conflag hitting for a min of 15k crit in a 10 man raid buff
buffs your imp so that he becomes a little machine gun, which adds to the next fact that because he sits right beside you shooting things there is less of a chance he will die, with the improved imp talent buffed, every time the little bugger crits WE crit, which can lead to some major dps spikes, all of our spell scale bigger than the other tree's due to their longer unmodified cast time and its far and away the easiest rotation to manage (keep immolate on the target conflag when its off cool down chaos bolt when its off cool down spam incinerate until your face tuns blue)

cons: the agro OH GOD the agro, expect conflag to generate 30k threat per cast due to the massive scaling with haste, expect to pull HUGE threat during blood lust and if your mob is immune to fire... you get to sit there and cast very weak shadowbolts UGH


specs:

these are the most comonly accepted specs taken from EJ

deep destro

0/13/58]
this is jacks current build and is shown to produce the highest numbers
bear in mind that there is no hit rating talents so you NEED 17% hit rating or 446 hit rating, I always gear for max hit rating and then keep a couple non hit peices on me for when a spreist/boomkin can debuff the mob

glyph choices: immolate conflag and incinerate

54/0/17
jacks old affliction build considered the number 2 in dps with a doomguard out. but drops considerably when using a regular pet with the hit rating talents you only need 14% hit or 368 hit rating

glyph choices: haunt curse of agony life tap

3/13/53+2
this is a deep destro spec that drops IMP soul leech in favor of more hit, I tried this spec but found that without soul leech I was life taping to often and not gaining the mana I required. if I could rely on someone else to be consistently raiding with me to provide replishment I might consider attempting this build again. but otherwise I will pass

glyph choices: immolate conflag life tap

0/56/15

this is the commonly referred to meta/ruin spec, it included demonic pact for the extra raid dps, I really wish I could find a warlock who would spec like this :P and NO I wont spec like this myself

glyph choices: felguard immolate life tap

those are the three main deep specs I will now get into stat weights

1. hit rating (until capped)
2. spellpower
3: haste
4. spirit
5. crit

there are alot of variance within the gear, some do favor spirit and crit over one and the other (affliction is big on spirit while destro needs a bit more crit) but thats generaly the hard and fast rule

and finaly a word to the wise on HASTE


haste, it actually has NO cap. that being said there is an optimal amount of haste. after 550 haste we start getting close to clipping our GCD's of our spells during blood lust, (basically means wasted haste) so you wanna balance your gear around that thought. or you can do what I do with my destro build, during blood lust I proc my back draft and spam 1.5 second soul fires! (down from a 5 second cast thru talents/haste!) these bad boys hit for 15k a pop (only do this if your deep destro)


I hope all that helps kids! more to come, next up hybrid builds!