[Warlock-Pve] 3.1.1 Guide to 41/30(FG/ES) Raiding!

[cangiz]

1. Spec and Glyphs
2. Rotation
2.1 Decimation and Soul-weaving
3. Gear / stats
4. Q&A

1 Spec and glyphs

Spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Glyphs: Felguard, Incinerate, Life tap.

Stone: Use Spell Stone.

2 Rotation

A lot of you may think Curse of Elements may be the bigged raid dps buff. But there are a couple of rules that need to be passed in order for you to be applying it.
1. 25 Man raid without a boomkin or and unholy dk.
2. No destro or affliction locks in thee raid.

Curse of agony is a huge damage increase for you because it has great DPCT and it procs molten core! So unless those 2 rules are satisfied use CoA.


LT: Life Tap
Immo: Immolate
CoA: Curse of Agony
Corr: Corruption
Inc: Incinerate
SF: Soul Fire.

Initial cast order: Life tap, Immolate, CoA, Corr, Incinerate.

Prioritization: LT > Immo > CoA > Corr. When and only when there's nothing else to cast, cast Incinerate.

Once you have Glyph of Life Tap, Life tapping every 20 seconds increases DPS. I use Elkanos Buff Bars to keep track of this, power auras is also reccomended.

When Immo, CoA, or Corr fall off the target, It's time to cast them again. WARNING: If you cast them before they fall off the target you will lower your DPS. Just cast another incinerate, It's ok if there's one second down time on that DoT.

2.1 Decimation -or- Rotation < 35% HP.

The spells you cast change once you have the decimation buff which you get from successfully hitting a target with < 35% HP with Incinerate. Your rotation or priorities will change as well. This rotation may not always be possible, as you will see, but when it is it is a very large DPS increase. First I think It would be useful for you to understand how soul-weaving (Inc --> SF) works.

1. You have the decimation buff.
2. You cast Incinerate1 which travels towards the target.
3. You cast Soul fire, you lose decimation.
4. Incinerate1 hits the target, You gain decimation.

^ To summarize: You have decimation, you cast incinerate and soul fire, you lose decimation, and then after all of this, that incinerate you cast finally hits the target and gives you decimation again. That is,

Travel Time of Incinerate > Cast time of Incinerate + Cast time of Soul Fire.

Naturally the factors are "distance to the boss" and "spell haste". Here is a poor illustration where you Start with the decimation buff.

(You)--------------------------------------------------------(Boss) _(Have Decimation)
(You)--(Incinerate1)-----------------------------------(Boss) _(Have Decimation)
(You)--(Soul Fire)-------------(Incinerate1)-----(Boss) _(Do not have Decimation)
(You)----------------(Soul Fire)------------------------(Boss) _(Have Decimation)
(You)--(Incinerate2)-----------------------------------(Boss) _(Have Decimation)
(You)--(Soul Fire)--------------(Incinerate2)-----(Boss) _(Do not Have Decimation)
(You)-----------------------(Soul Fire)-----------------(Boss) _(Have Decimation)

Prioritization: LT > Immo > CoA. Notice that Corruption is no longer a part of your rotation. Again, Life Tap is only if you have the glyph and only every 20 seconds. If and only if there's nothing else to do, cast Incinerate+Soul Fire. Try to think of Incinerate+Soul Fire as a single cast (assuming you are far enough away from the boss). If you are unable to get far enough away from the boss, such as when fighting Thaddius, you can either cast Soul Fire whenever possible (look at your buffs) or do the sequence Inc --> Inc --> SF. Important, So long as you have decimate and you only ever cast soul fire immediately after an incinerate from a good distance, you will never have to think about it again, and in between you can refresh all the dots and life tap if u need to.

3. Gear and stats

Hit > Spell Power = Haste > Spirit > Crit

Your hit cap is 17% (as always) except you now get none from talents. Shadow Priests and Boomkins with Improved Faerie Fire provide you with 3% hit (does not stack). If you always have one or more of these in your group, your cap from gear is 14% hit, or 368 hit rating (13% for alliance). If not, then your hit cap from gear is 17% (16% for alliance).

After you get hit capped, you'll want to be selective with your gear. Crit and spirit were roughly tied for 0/41/30 before the life tap glyph. Now Spirit is a clear choice over crit. You'll notice that just about every piece of gear generally has 3 of the 5 stats on it. Until you are hit capped, the ones with Spell power, Haste, and Hit are the best for you. After that the ones with Spell power, Haste, and Spirit are the best for you. You do want some crit (because it scales better the less you have) so a few pieces with Spell power, Haste, and Cirt are good also. A shorter way to say this is: avoid pieces of gear with SP and Spirit and Crit.

These are simcrafts scaling factors with best-in-slot-known-ulduar-gear:
intellect=0.28
spirit=0.78
spell_power=1.22
crit_rating=0.67
haste_rating=1.27

4. Question & Answers
I will put any questions that are asked here to make the reference much easier.

I will answer any questions in this thread. I may add an addon section later on.

[obox]

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> 3.1 Guide to 41/30 Raiding. hahahahahaahahaha

[cangiz]

I know you are going to find this hard to believe. But that is actually me. If anyone wants to make a toon on Twisting Nether, give me a shout.

[t1mPan]

Well as a Dest/demo warlock what stat do u preff Haste, crit, or Spellpower?

[Bowser2222]

Well being a warlock myself, I beg to differ with 41/30. I do believe the 40/31 spec is much better because conflagrate adds so much to that extra damage.
Sure a felguard can do really great, but if you use a firestone and an imp out, and your decimation procs, conflagrate can be deadly. The imp adds an extra 5% crit chance, plus fire spellpower.

My rotation goes as follows:

CoE, Corruption, Immolate, Conflagrate, Incinerate, (Soul Fire) - If decemate procs.

With this rotation, and your imp being out.. you seriously cannot be beat by a 41/30 spec. Your imps fireballs hit for 1k too, with a 2 sec cast time.. so your pet adds about 350 dps to your bar.

IMO 0/40/31 spec is much better, and I might consider writing a guide aswell, only my version of the guide, why I think its better than the other specs, what glyphs to get, how to play the rotation with videos and other stuff.. But for now it is just a consideration.

[[Soul Eater]]

Also a lock myself, been 41/30 and I must say 40/31 is much better with DPS, Felguard gives more SP total in the end but his DPS output is just lower then conflagrate, conflagrate can crit up to 10k if timed well (molten core procs and such)

Though it seems other warlocks plays different styles, as a 40/31 lock I prefer haste, tried firestone but I ended up with DPS lost somehow, it isn't much of a loss, only 200-300 dps, but haste works better in my opinion and playstyle, you want to get around 500 so that your incinerate will be 2 sec < cast, more spam = faster dps, and as a warlock you never have to worry about mana and with life tap glyph your just good to go.

By the way if you make a guide for 40/31 don't try it, someone else already had posted the guide here from another source and I don't think that anyone else can cover it much better then him. Hell I went 40/31 for the heck of it and I must say it is a fine DPS spec for starters, doing around 3.2k DPS output in most 10 man raids, 4k dps in 25.

And CoE is only if you got no boomkins nor unholy DK in your group, else you would be wasting MC procs, my rotation is more like life tap rank 1, immolate > conflag immediately, putting CoA and Corruption on and spam incinerate, main goal is to use conflagrate in 1 immolate (immolate = 15 sec uptime, conflagrate = 10 sec CD) , if calculated correctly, immolate > conflagrate is a 1 sec delay before the immolate becomes active to activate conflagrate, so you got 14 seconds left, - 1.5 rounded when you hit conflagrate because of GCD then you got 12.5 seconds left, in those 12.5 seconds you cast 2 dots, meaning 3 seconds of GCD gone, then you got 9.5 seconds left on immolate, you can get 4 casts of incinerate out if you got 500 spell haste for a 2 sec cast incinerate, so if calculated correctly you would get 3 + 8 = 11 seconds after conflagrate, conflagrate is 10 second cooldown, so after the 4th incinerate you can immediately click conflagrate because immolate would be 1.5 seconds up after the 4th cast.

Just a rough calculation, I know GCD will be affected by spell haste but I always take 1.5 GCD as a guideline for timing my DPS. Since wotlk, warlocks have a hard time topping the DPS now, so you got to time everything right if you want to do at least some decent damage. Also it is advised to use addons that shows you when a spell is up again so you won't have to check for it every time.

[cangiz]

Well as a Dest/demo warlock what stat do u preff Haste, crit, or Spellpower?

As a Destro demo/lock, as said in the guide this is the order of stats that you want.

Hit>Spell Power>Haste>Spirit>Crit

The reason why haste is much much better than crit is because you get a much higher haste % from 1 haste rating, than 1 crit rating. And spirit is actually better than crit because you get 0.59 spellpower per spirit(with demonic aegis and glyph of life tap) and you also get an extra 3 mana per life tap, which means less time life tapping.

Well being a warlock myself, I beg to differ with 41/30. I do believe the 40/31 spec is much better because conflagrate adds so much to that extra damage.
Sure a felguard can do really great, but if you use a firestone and an imp out, and your decimation procs, conflagrate can be deadly. The imp adds an extra 5% crit chance, plus fire spellpower.

My rotation goes as follows:

CoE, Corruption, Immolate, Conflagrate, Incinerate, (Soul Fire) - If decemate procs.

With this rotation, and your imp being out.. you seriously cannot be beat by a 41/30 spec. Your imps fireballs hit for 1k too, with a 2 sec cast time.. so your pet adds about 350 dps to your bar.

IMO 0/40/31 spec is much better, and I might consider writing a guide aswell, only my version of the guide, why I think its better than the other specs, what glyphs to get, how to play the rotation with videos and other stuff.. But for now it is just a consideration.

A couple things.

0/40/31 was believed to be the best spec going into 3.1, however conflagrate was nerfed to 70% of the damage due to its insane burst in pvp. Now because of that nerf simcraft simulations(tongue twister) show that the spec is far weaking than using the felguard/es build.

However, 3.1.2 is coming soon and it seems deep destro seems to beat both specs, but i highly reccommend anyone going FG/ES for the max possible dps, unless you are decked in full ulduar gear, in which case deep destro or affliction may beat this spec.

Also never ever use a firestone! Spellstone is the best stone for any spec even with just the haste. The haste actually beats out the crit and 1% damage to destro spells by itself!

Also a lock myself, been 41/30 and I must say 40/31 is much better with DPS, Felguard gives more SP total in the end but his DPS output is just lower then conflagrate, conflagrate can crit up to 10k if timed well (molten core procs and such)

Though it seems other warlocks plays different styles, as a 40/31 lock I prefer haste, tried firestone but I ended up with DPS lost somehow, it isn't much of a loss, only 200-300 dps, but haste works better in my opinion and playstyle, you want to get around 500 so that your incinerate will be 2 sec < cast, more spam = faster dps, and as a warlock you never have to worry about mana and with life tap glyph your just good to go.

As i mentioned earlier in this post Spellstone>>Fire stone, plain and simple.

And while 41/30 and 40/31 are comparable, 41/30 actually beats it out because the felguard is much better.
Here is my armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...er&n=Yawgamoth

I am actually able to do over 5500 dps in 25 man ulduar. I actually did 6300 dps on a 2min 10 second patchwerk kill. And the spec is great!