Ramblings behind a gnome Warlock

After many many attempts and nerdrages, we finally got Algalon the Observer down and got the “Herald of the Titans” achievement.  To put this in perspective, Only 1 other guild on the server has this achievement, Infallible which is currently the top guild.  Out of every level 80 Player in WoW, only 0.06% of the 10man teams have this achievement.

Note: make sure to select 720p Hi Def to see the video in High Definition.

In light of the major changes to warlock DPS in 3.3, I tried searching for some updated guides on EJ and ensidia.  Unfortunately, all I found were mostly outdated guides, or guides which were too lite in content.

In light of the major changes to warlock DPS in 3.3, I tried searching for some updated guides on EJ and ensidia.  Unfortunately, all I found were mostly outdated guides, or guides which were too lite in content.

One guide which I found to be useful was lilsteele’s brief 3.3 guide

While looking at his guide I decided to verify his findings and see how close they were to my findings for my particular gear / playstyle.  For this I chose Simulationcraft,  which allows a player to simulate a bossfight (aka patchwork) and plug in their gear, spec, buffs, debuffs etc to see their potential max dps, and allows a player to see whats their most efficient spell, rotation, and my favorite, graphs on dps increases per stat point.

Simulation discussion on warlocks at Elitist Jerks and I also found a general guide on using simulationcraft. Also a bug I noticed is make sure you set your settings to High latency under the general simulationcraft options, as low latency tends to skew the results with regards to haste, discussed later.

The reason I prefer to run my own simulations as opposed to taking someones word for it is that a spec or rotation might be better for -your current gear- or increasing a particular stat might scale better -for your current gear- better than another stat simulated by the elite EJ people with all BiS. I was able to find a rotation which is different than suggested on EJ, which theoretically provides more dps for my current gear.  Here is what I found.

Affliction

Spec: 55/1/15 Affliction

Pet: Felhunter

Stone: Spellstone

At the start of the fight, i cast Life Tap > Curse of Doom > Haunt > Corruption > Unstable Affliction, then spam shadowbolts.  After my initial rotation, I go into a priority system which includes.

1. Keep CoD, Unstable Affliction up

2. if both are up, and haunt is off cooldown, cast Haunt

3. If CoD, UA, and haunt are good, then use your standard spell, shadowbolt

4. When the boss is going to die in less than 60 secconds, then cast Curse of Agony instead of CoD.

5. If the boss is below 35% health, use drain soul as your filler spell (but cast shadowbolt after every drain soul to keep the  Improved Shadow Bolt buff up.

Unlike lilsteele, I like using the corruption glyph instead of the improved haunt glyph.  With corruption ticking faster due to the quick decay glyph, there are more chances to proc free shadow bolts with the corruption glyph, especially when there are two targets and you can keep two – three targets dotted up with corruption at once, free shadowbolts for all!

Also unlike lilsteel, I like to add 1 point into Fel Synergy for pet healing instead of cataclysm.  With the life tap glyph, you will be casting life tap enough times to make 4% better mana efficiency on shadowbolt worthless, and with all the AoE boss damage, your pet could use the extra healing.

Here is the simulationcraft results for that spec and rotation. The most important data that can be used from the mass of information is the stat weight figures.  The stat weight figures gives an itemization of each stat and correlates it to a numbering system similar to the warcraft item level (ilvl) system.  With an addon like Pawn, you can input the values given, in my case ( Pawn: v1: “Xandivh”: SpellDamage=1.5811, HasteRating=1.3421, Spirit=0.9830, CritRating=0.8257, HitRating=0.4964, Intellect=0.3403 ) into the addon and it will give you a specific value to all gear tooltips, to make quick upgrade choices easier.

The simulationcraft output also gives you links to the Lootrank website which gives a list of all available upgrades itemized in how good of an upgrade they are and where they can be found.

The output also shows a chart for the scaling of stats and illustrates why everyone always says “stack spellpower!”

As you can see from the chart, spellpower provides the best dps increase per 1 point increase, then haste, spirit, and crit.  The high spirit number assumes that glyph of life tap.

Demonology and Destruction will be up soon!

Here is a video I made to showcase my UI and Addons.

Got some new stuff in the works…