[Warlock] - Aff/DestroSP 4.0.1

[dallascowboys0000]

I took this guide from one of my guild members, so if you have any questions, concerns, etc I will ask him and get back to you asap.

Edit: 10/21 - Specs, glyphs, reforging, rotations
Edit: 10/17 - blue gems.

Alright well I figured I would copy remains post and slightly change it to apply to warlocks.
(BTW I'm only covering Aff/Destro while I know how to play demo our demo lock is Falaskian and I'm sure he could make a much better guide for it.)

Disclaimer
This is a basic guide about the new features for Warlocks in 4.0.1. They will change when Cataclysm comes out, and I might attempt to create a new guide at that time. The layout of this guide is based around PVE content, and not PVP content. Also things will probably be changing, and there is a chance they will change before Cataclysm is released. So be aware some things may be up to date, and some might. I will work my best to keep everything up to date.

Spec
Right now all 3 trees are raid viable Aff being under demo and destro, then destro SP on top, then demo being rdps (raid dps).

Here are the specs:
The World of Warcraft Armory - Demonock @ Duskwood - Talents
The World of Warcraft Armory - Demonock @ Duskwood - Talents

Glyphs

Primary glyphs:

Affliction:
Haunt - That extra 3% scales out to be a lot of extra damage and trumps the other glyphs easily.
Bane of Agony - Agony deals damage every two seconds and ticks harder every tick. The extra two ticks on the end give agony a little extra umphh. It isn't an amazing glyph but its what we have right now so we have to use it.
Lash of Pain - Succy is our pet right now for aff until 85 or another patch. With this in mind this buff on the succy dps is a better option than our other glyphs.

Destro SP
Immolate - Immolate is your only real dot you cast on the target as destro and not only does it buff your immolate but your conflagrate scales with it as well making it really good.
Imp - Like succy this is destro's pet for the time being and probably always will be so why not buff his dps.
Conflagrate - Shorter cd = more Back draft procs = more cast.

Major Glyphs
Life tap - Shorter gdc = less time LTing more time casting.
Shadowflame - I like this slow for valk's on LK and for a blood beast right before you port out of its range. Get this for destro.
Soul Link - Less damage you take is less damage.
Soul Swap - get this for affliction it makes switch targets really amazing.
Shadow Bolt - you can grab this over Shadowflame for aff but it doesnt really matter.

Gems
Warlocks have always been easy to gem. Red socket go for the bonus. Yellow go for the bonus. Blue go for the bonus if you need the hit, if you don't need hit don't use a blue gem. Red + yellow go for the bonus. Red + blue only if you need the hit. Yellow + blue only if you need the hit. If you arn't suppose to go for the bonus that means use a red gem to fill the socket.

Meta - chaotic skyfire diamond - 21 crit rating and 3% crit dmg. (You need to blue gems to activate this use atleast two Veiled Dreadstones in your gear!!)
Red: Cardinal Ruby - 20 Intellect
Yellow: Reckless Ametrite - 10 Int/10 Haste. This is is actually an orange gem, but usuable for yellow socket bonuses.
Blue: Veiled Dreadstone - 10 Int/10 hit. This is a purple gem works just like the orange one. Also if you are really lacking on hit and you need the 20 hit gems go for Hit>int until hit capped.

Reforging
First priority is going to be hit cap, which is now 17%. There is no longer a hit buff, so reforging crit into hit would be first priority in order to get right at hit cap. Then second priority is to be changing crit into haste or mastery. AFTER hit cap is reached. Haste is the BiS stat for affliction after hit/int reforge crit to haste, if you have gear with crit/haste on it reforge crit to mastery. Now for destro I believe haste is BiS (after hit/int of course) until 1406 haste rating. The thing is the doucher running the Simcraft on it is already at 1413 haste... Soo with that in mind he shows his haste as scaling terribly. Now I'm not positive, but I believe you should reforge crit to haste and if the item has crit/haste reforge to mastery. SO FEO if you find something that says haste<mastery pre 1406 post it.

Rotation/Spells
Our rotations are not a true rotation they are instead a set priority list

Aff
(NEW WAY TO CLIP DOTS AMG)

Haunt - OMG HAUNT WE NEED THIS IF THIS ISNT ON THE BOSS YOUR ARE A NEWB (haunt should be on the boss 100% of the time that means clip this.)

Corruption - This is a great dot it proc's Night Fall and it is refreshed by haunt don't let this fall off the target.

Unstable Affliction - Another awesome dot this one we currently have to recast until Drain Soul phase. How to re-apply UA. There is a new way to clip dots.

Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony can now be refreshed by themselves, meaning that if you hit a target with UA that already is afflicted by UA, the new UA will start right after the next tick of the old UA. (taken from EJ forums Elitist Jerks

Cool beans right! This means that you should start casting your new UA when the current one has around 3seconds or less time left on the target. Allowing for a theoretical 100% uptime on the boss

Bane of Agony - This gets the same mechanic as UA but because its last ticks are the strongest let it tick til it falls off.

Shadow Bolt - we cast this when everything else is on CD and no dots need to be re-applied. This is our "filler" spell.

Drain Soul - At 25% Drain Soul gain's an execute effect and deals massive damage. When the target reaches 25% or lower start casting this instead of SB, but remember to still refresh all of your dots and keep haunt up on on the target. When refreshing haunt, boa, LT, or a NF procced SB wait until just after a DS tick for max dps. To do this you need a cast bar mod that shows the tick intervals of channeled spells, or you could watch yellow floating text until you see what you think is a DS tick but I don't recommend it.

I could cast a Shadow Bolt, but BoA has only 2s left, what to do?

Situations like that will happen all the time during fights. The general rule is: You should always be casting. Always. If you are able to fill gaps like that with a clever Life Tap, fine. But there is nothing wrong about dots ticking for the last time while you are casting a shadow bolt. Remember that while the dots have very high DPCT, they don't have high dps. Applying them a second later won't hurt. Not casting anything for one second will reduce your damage by the dps of Shadow Bolt
(Taken from EJ forums Elitist Jerks

Destro

Soul Fire - ONLY if the target is above 80% for the IMP SF buff. NOTE this does not stack with lust so don't bother if you have lust up at the time.

Immolate - This our main dot we need it for improved dmg on incinerate and CB and to use Conflag.

Conflagrate - Cast this every time its off CD great dmg and it procs back draft.

Bane of Doom - Just like BoA always keep it up and wait for it to actually fall off before recasting to prevent clipping.

Chaos Bolt - Just like Conflag cast this every time its off CD.

Soul Fire - (Only if the instant cast is procced by empowered imp)

Incinerate - our filler spell.

Soul Burn

Our new soul shard system. We only get 3 a fight so on some fights you might want to save the cd's for certain phases.

Soul burn as aff currently the only good spell that gains the soul burn aff from aff is DL, but I don't even bother.

Soul Burn as Destro SP At the start of the fight I pop SB and get off an instant cast Soul fire for the ISF buff, but don't use it on SF if you lust at the start.

[abhorsenjay]

I haven't played warlocks for about 4 months, but wasn't it the absolute complete mega specific rule of affliction to never clip dots? (I dual speced deep destro and afflic, but I only used afflic for pvp)

[Baaja]

Dotclipping doesn't matter now because the timer doesn't reset on the new dot you put up. If a dot is a 18 second tick, and you apply a new dot 1 second before it wears of the next dot will get the 1 second added to it's time.

[abhorsenjay]

Dotclipping doesn't matter now because the timer doesn't reset on the new dot you put up. If a dot is a 18 second tick, and you apply a new dot 1 second before it wears of the next dot will get the 1 second added to it's time.

Right, new patch, got it

[dallascowboys0000]

Yea like he has said, dotclipping is no longer an issue at all. I believe this only affects caster classes, but I could be wrong (as in a druid could still clip a shred).

[Rubberduck101]

I respect your work on the guide, but nevertheless he is wrong, wrong, wrong or at least incomplete/out of date.

Searing Pain has been nerfed days before, you missed Corruption and Shadowflame for Destro and furthermore Affliction is way behind.
If someone is really interested in TRUE Information, please visit: SimulationCraft for Warlocks (4.0.1 numbers) - Elitist Jerks
Manaflask has a quite good guide as well.

[kylediener]

You need to update this guide searing pain has been nerfed and incinerate is going to be buffed plus you forgot corruption completely it especially helps in fights where you need to move around alot.
One last thing why spec Bane of havoc if you not including it in anything always use it on secondary target.

[Rubberduck101]

You need to update this guide searing pain has been nerfed and incinerate is going to be buffed plus you forgot corruption completely it especially helps in fights where you need to move around alot.
One last thing why spec Bane of havoc if you not including it in anything always use it on secondary target.

Hm.... just repeating things already mentioned bevore. Regarding corruption, it's fixed part of the prioritylist and will not only be casted while moving. You will loose appx. 800 DPS if you are ignoring this matter.

Regarding BoH: How many bosses in ICC exists where you can use this Bane? Right: Just one or two...useless atm.

[dallascowboys0000]

Sorry for the incorrect information all. I will get a new updated guide by our warlock and if I can't ill ask an admin to take this ddown/lock it.

[dallascowboys0000]

Everything should now be updated.

[bape]

Alot of this information is wrong. Too many to list. Good effort at least

[Vyre]

You forgot to mention that you need to use Infernals and Doomguards.

You also forgot to mention that if you want a red + yellow bonus you need to use either haste or crit gems in the yellow slot, if you are hit capped obv.

Adding enchants will help people who are using this kind of guide, some of them probably don't have any idea of what to enchant, this also goes for the best professions.

Adding a section about some great addons for aff warlocks would definately help them keep track of their DoTs, since it makes it so much easier, it's just stupid not to use addons for it, imo.

Just a couple of suggestions for the guide to make it better