Warlock vs Dragon Soul [4.3 GUIDE]

[Simbad]

Thank you for a great guide.
My question: You said that after the nerf we can use affliction spec for spine, how do you deal with the burst damage required for the tendons? How much damage is acceptable from an affliction warlock on the tendons on each opening? My guess is that you do a soul swap from the amalgamation, use synapse springs and DS then soul swap to tendons? Would you just drain soul after that or SB? Would you go to mele range and shadowflame on cd as well?
My understandding, generaly, DS must be applied before applying dots excluding Bane of Doom which is not affected with DS is that correct? so if i need to multi dot I should use DS then start doting?
For Warmaster fight while using affliction, an effective way to quickly damage the sapper is again using the same method above for tendons?

I have (HC) Cunning, (N)WoU and (N) IOCM. Should I use hc cunning and WoU for all fights in DS hc? for warmaster I find it a little difficult to keep WoU always up specialy for sapper as sometimes all mobs are dead before he lands.

Another question which is a bit far off: In your opinion, how much effect does a latency of say 400ms would have on my dps compared to someone with similar gear with 50ms?

Thanks in advance for your help and sorry if my questions seem too trivial.

[Sparkuggz]

Thank you for a great guide.
My question: You said that after the nerf we can use affliction spec for spine, how do you deal with the burst damage required for the tendons? How much damage is acceptable from an affliction warlock on the tendons on each opening? My guess is that you do a soul swap from the amalgamation, use synapse springs and DS then soul swap to tendons? Would you just drain soul after that or SB? Would you go to mele range and shadowflame on cd as well?
My understandding, generaly, DS must be applied before applying dots excluding Bane of Doom which is not affected with DS is that correct? so if i need to multi dot I should use DS then start doting?
For Warmaster fight while using affliction, an effective way to quickly damage the sapper is again using the same method above for tendons?

I have (HC) Cunning, (N)WoU and (N) IOCM. Should I use hc cunning and WoU for all fights in DS hc? for warmaster I find it a little difficult to keep WoU always up specialy for sapper as sometimes all mobs are dead before he lands.

Another question which is a bit far off: In your opinion, how much effect does a latency of say 400ms would have on my dps compared to someone with similar gear with 50ms?

Thanks in advance for your help and sorry if my questions seem too trivial.

Affliction damage is "low", but acceptable at this stage. You can do way more overall damage and on the amalgamations anyway.
- Soul Swap from Amalgamation or a blood, use Bottled Wishes + DS before you apply the dots.
- Shadowflame is good DPS, so be in melee
- Use Shadowbolt above 25% and Drain soul under

Cunning (HC) + WoU (N) should be your best options as Affliction. On Warmaster you can swap the WoU out for IOCM since you are right the stacks fall off (esp if your raid is fast on cleaning up adds)

Latency can / has a role on your DPS, it's not good to have 400 MS. The best you can do is use the ingame latency controller for spells, so you lock your next spell in the rotation. I havn't played much around with being suffering from high MS, so i'm not the best to seek for advices on this. But just going from 50 ms to 150/250 ms feels huge, especially when you move / cast sometimes (try to do arena / duel on beta, sometimes im not even sure if my spell was cast because you have to move after your spell :D)

Hope it helps you,
Sparkuggz

[Yayorelay]

Hi Sparkuggz,

Firstly awesome guide now that I have read through it I will be adding in those macros you mention and using the tips for next week in HM-DS.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...relay/advanced
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/g...um/damageDone/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/n...um/damageDone/

To begin with I recently starting playing a lot on this lock when I got asked to xfer to a friend's guild for their new DS group.

I used to play him always as Demo when I was just having fun, I have since switched him to being pretty much always Destro/Affliction since I just like how much faster the play style feels compared to Demo.

If you wold be so kind please let me know your thoughts on my current set up and on my most recent log; this week was our first true progression run as it was the first time we did it with all guild members; were pugging 2 people for the past month. We did very well exceeding our expectation of going 4/8 we managed to get to 6/8.

So now that we have gotten here I really want to fine tune my output and optimize where I can; I tend to favour destro due to it's amazing resilience and also since I am a primary lightning runner on Hagara and soaker on Ultra.

Next week once we get through to spine we are intending to make a push to clear it if possible or at least spend a minimum of 2 nights working on it; if possible I would like to maintain my spot for the run but if we are getting stone walled we will be shuffling to go as burst heavy as possible. For this fight I am very open to respeccing to Demo for the fight and I am going to spend this week practicing the 18sec burst in preparation. Now going this method in your opinion can I still use my current gear set up; except for swapping in MWC or BW and manage to get some competitive burst? Or to effectively compete will it require going for a full demo reforge/gem to optimize purely for this?

I do have another set up where I swap in my normal tier 13 gloves with +65 mastery and swap in the valor point belt as well which is what I pair with adding in one of the trinkets.

Thanks in advance.

[Sparkuggz]

Hey Yayorelay,

Your gear and all that jazz looks fine. You could put a 50 int gem in the ring where you have haste / int, but thats about it.

Going into the logs

Morchok: You didn't have Bane of Havoc up on the other boss? I see no damage from it atleast, but it can bug out sadly and im not even sure why.
Warlord Zonozz: Try to keep better uptime on dots on the boss if you are in range, i see a 60% uptime on immolate on him, try to keep a 100% if you can.

Ultraxion: Seems okay with uptimes and stuff, but your DPS seem a tad on the low end. Not really sure why

Madness: Try to get more spellweave damage, i don't really see much spellweave procs or AOE from you. Rain of Fire > Seed of Corr unless you do it to spread corruption on the bloods. Save Soul Burn for this. Multi dot when allowed too, and that's about it.


- As destruction just try to keep your Soul Fire buff uptime above 95%, then you did a good job.


Spine HC

with the 20% buff and 15% HP nerf to tendons it's abit oudated infomation regarding Tendons DPS. Warlocks aren't really any useful in the way that plates are getting opened too fast, so we have no chance of resetting anything. Affliction won't bring you burst, but it can keep around the same DPS throughout the fight and is good for amalgmations. You can go for a Affliction with Bottled Wishes if your guild will manage.

You can still aim for a heavy demonology setup with a MWC / BW combination. Sometimes when i have done 10 man spine HC as a warlock, i just equipped BW and went heavier haste to reset meta (multi dotting bloods since immolate stay on them) for massive incinerate procs. Though, it's really not viable with the 20% buff, but you can try to go for nuking the fuck out of 1st open, 1st open on 2nd and 1st open on 3rd with DG on 2 of them and everything for all openers. But you will be doing low damage throughout the 2nd opening. I would most likely go for MWC + Cunning if you have or WoU or if you want to do it more complicated, you can use MWC before tendon opener and BW as tendon open. It might be harsh on you to practiec this opener during progress, as you might not feel comfortable having to check the timers each time while progressing.

So if i was you i would try Affliction, if it doesn't work go for Demonology with maybe a MWC + 2nd trinket option and full nuke on each opener.

You should go full mastery if you aim to do the full out nuke on opener, it really helps a lot every single mastery point you get. Full haste demo is not good, and if you can't reset the CD of meta, there is no point. Don't bother with 25/25 mastery gems, i dont see the need for this little DPS gain for one boss.

Hope it helps you decide, feel free to ask more questions if you have

[Yayorelay]

Thanks Sparkuggz,

Yeah it does look like I failed to get BOH off on that morchuk kill; I thought something was wrong when I didn't break 30k :S.

Thanks a lot for the other tips; when I was reviewing the logs I did notice my up time on the fights as you mentioned, I will work on adjusting to get that as close to 100% as I can.

I do like the idea of keeping away from Demo if I can, so I will try going affliction for the Spine; though that will probably have to wait till we get it down consistently. I will actually be switching with our current Pally tank to bring in my Bear for our final push of our progression with him bringing his hunter in place.

I do appreciate you taking the time; thanks a lot for the advice.

Cheers,

[Gorgonzola]

Thank you for the awesome guide!
I'm using demo spec for PvE content.
After all this nerfs, what spec should I go with?
Affliction is the best overall spec for DS?

Cheers,

[Sparkuggz]

Thank you for the awesome guide!
I'm using demo spec for PvE content.
After all this nerfs, what spec should I go with?
Affliction is the best overall spec for DS?

Cheers,

Whatever you want to play really, each spec has its good and bad sides. It depends which bosses you really want to do good on. Overall Affliction is prolly the easy way out, but destruction is also good for most without AOE. If you like demonology stay demonology, but most people get bored of it over time.

But i must admit that i don't really like how it is to be affliction with all the nerfs, since your dots aren't even ticking full out on Warmaster etc (Madness AOE is non excistent now) and more.

[Gorgonzola]

Thank you for the help.
I like the way meta works and how we became the big purple thing.
But i don't really like demo when the mobs dies fast as dungeons mobs or even Madness tentacles after nerf.

What i'm supposed to do when things dies early? Only immolate, corruption and incinerate?
(I'm using the incinerate spec)

Sorry for my bad english... =)

[Sparkuggz]

Thank you for the help.
I like the way meta works and how we became the big purple thing.
But i don't really like demo when the mobs dies fast as dungeons mobs or even Madness tentacles after nerf.

What i'm supposed to do when things dies early? Only immolate, corruption and incinerate?
(I'm using the incinerate spec)

Sorry for my bad english... =)

Well depends what we talk about, but immolate always and corruption if the target stays alive for +6~ seconds. Doom is obviously 15~ seconds, and Incinerate is your filler.

[Tyraen]

Hello!
Im just wondering whats the max dmg done in HC spine on each tendon as a destruction lock?
Usually im around 1 million, tonight i achieved the max with 1,2 million but i think thats still way under what it has to be. I read everywhere that the lock is one of the worst char here. Can you suggest something to do more dmg?
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Tyraen/simple
And a log of yesterday: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/awcskfs9yv5nc6ga/
Thank you!