@ VM Warlocks

[mageman]

Hey guys I had a question about the gems your warlocks use.
I've seen the trend in some top world guilds, the warlocks are using + crit gems.
One of your locks uses all crit gems, but the other locks either use crit and damage, or just pure damage gems. Which is more effective? Considering you all have the same gear basically, does stacking + crit gems come out superior or no?
thanks in advance for your advice..

[Reedu]

I'm specced fire destro now. As fire, it's all about haste. I'm going to be swapping my gems over to haste as I get new gear or when the shattered sun badge vendor spawns.

I'm aiming for:
16% hit
314 haste rating (at this point i'll be at gcd cap for incinerate + heroism)
damage/crit

[mageman]

how is fire working out for you, the locks in my guild are considering it. Does the damage from fire destro make up for the damage the shadow priests would be getting from ISB? That seems to be a huge discussion.

[Reedu]

Depends on the raid comp.

If you have 2 warlocks, 1 sp, 2 mages --> coe + incinerate
If you have 2 warlocks, 2 sp, 2 mages --> cos + shadow bolt
If you have 3 warlocks, any number of sp and mages --> just have at least 1 warlock use shadow.

And I was in error when I calculated 314 as the max haste rating I want for gear. It's 675 haste rating from gear that will cause heroism + skull to reach gcd cap for incinerate/shadowbolt.

[Fellora]

I dont play a warlock or anything, but I am curious as to the spell rotation for a fire destro warlock. I know that affliction has none really (due to dot times) and shadow destro is immolate+shadowbolt, but Ive actually never heard of the one, or lack there of, for firedestro locks?

[Reedu]

In t6 quality gear with the t6 set bonus, immolate is less dps than sb, so I actually drop it from the rotation for both shadow.

As a fire destro lock with 4pc t6, it's better for every lock to keep up their own immolate. 1) every lock can use conflagrate when they're moving to avoid wasting GCDs. 2) no risk of drastic dps loss if the "immolate bitch" is suddenly unable to do his job (stunned/silenced/running for his life/etc). 3) immolate is higher dps than incinerate

[Fellora]

"immolate bitch"

:D

Awesome, thank you for the reply

[tehkogga]

Serious question:

Why would a warlock with any sense gem for crit? I mean, unless you have a glaring mental neurosis, or just don't understand the values of damage>haste(in most situations)>crit, no matter if you're shadow or fire.

I saw in another thread a VM warlock questioning the value of Cataclysm. I'm assuming you have shadow priests, but no matter the returns on VT, Life tap is one of the biggest detriments of dps.

How about a wws parse of Brutallus to see how those numbers are working out.

This probably sounds harsh, but your warlock's gem selection defy much of the "known" ways of effectively using your slots, even if you were gemmed that way just for ISB.

What are you thinking?

[Reedu]

No one in this thread has said gemming crit is a good idea. I currently have some crit gems in my gear left over from when I switched from affliction to destro in early BT. Maybe your guild has an abundance of spinels, but mine sure doesn't!

[Metzer]

it's all about haste. I'm going to be swapping my gems over to haste as I get new gear

I'm aiming for:
16% hit
314 haste rating (at this point i'll be at gcd cap for incinerate + heroism)

thendamage/crit

I think this is the only mention of crit gems, which Reedu plainly states, will be swapped out. And if you want to back up your argument yet with profile searches on Armory, make sure the warlock you look up still raids. For instance, Metzer is stacked with 1200dmg, almost maxed hit, and 33%? crit. But no haste because I haven't logged online since Jan9.

[tehkogga]

Haste is getting just as overrated as crit was early in tier six. You're getting a ton from gear in Sunwell, and assuming haste = 1.1 damage...

10 haste gem = 11 damage

6 damage 5 haste = 11.5 damage

Both inferior to a spinel.

Now granted, there're some yellow sockets granting three damage+ that'd be great for a reckless gem, but otherwise...

Haste = mana dump, nerfing your dps when you're forced to tap. (Making Cataclysm a GREAT talent)

-Random warlock
1430 shadow damage as snf/sac. 2353 dps on Brutallus without lucky RNG... oh, without four piece.

[Reedu]

You can't just assume haste = 1.1 damage. It's a LOT more complicated than that. =P

[tehkogga]

Enlighten me.

Edit:

http://wowwebstats.com/nobp5jnh2xcgg?s=16101-16453

You should do more than a non-glaive rogue.

Incinerate is still terrible, check leaderboards.

[Reedu]

We swapped from shadow to fire at 20% for mage executes for more raid DPS. We're recruiting warlocks so we don't have to do this, because it's obviously sub-optimal for warlock personal DPS.

If you check my debuffs you'll see that I also got burn twice on that kill. So, yes, my damage was low because I was running around.

Fire theorycrafts as higher personal DPS than shadow. The main reason we can't go fire is because of raid synergy. We've experimented with dropping to one shadow priest and running 2 fire locks (coe/cor) and stacking a better hunter group, but since then we've started using a boomkin (benefits from cos) and found that we really missed having 2 shadow priests. Because of that, we really have to run 3 curses, and if we're going to run 3 curses, we might as well be casting shadowbolts for ISB.

[Infinitii]

Hey Reedu, I'm a decently geared lock on Darkspear (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... =Infinitii) and I was curious what trinket's you and your locks are using. Prefierably I'd use skull/hex, but we haven't recieved many skulls so in the meantime there is the darkmoon card/icon/sextant avaliable to me and I'm not sure which I like better. I've seen the wowwiki breakdown for trinkets and I don't know how they awarded dps points, but yeah I don't agree with that so much. I then also used a lock spreadsheet with my personal stats. I even tested the efficiency of the sextant at dr. boom for half an hour to determine proc rates and what not. Lastly, I tried taking into account the actual way that most boss encounters happen to go. Trying to think beyond the question of "which trinket theortically will do the best?" to thinking which one actually will. This sorta turned me on to the dual use trinkets cause I figured if there is movement I can maximize my dps with the use when I'm not moving. Also, that would give me the full 40 secs of heroism with an added 180 sp. Anyhoo, as you can see I've done some research and thinkin on the matter and was just curious as to you and your locks point of view.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read my rambling and respond if you can. :)

(As for gems, I'm currently in the process of switching most of my crit/dmg gems to sphaste/dmg gems to keep socket bonuses which are mainly + dmg and bolster my haste instead of crit. It's not that I don't think crit is an amazing thing to have, I just don't like how variable your crit rate is from one fight to the next.)