Warlock spell rotation (All Spec's)

[Corellon]

Not being one that can find what he's looking for in web pages easy, I was wondering what the warlocks in the guild use for their spell rotations. I have tried to read a few suggestions on other boards, it hasn't worked too well for me.

I would like to hear from all spec's and any level. This would be benefit everyone.

I don't see too many write ups on warlocks, seems it's a hidden knowledge. The ones I do find are from either just before WoLK or 2 years plus ago.

My ultimate goal here is to increase damage output for 5-25 man runs. Very tired of getting told my DPS is the worst any one have ever seen.

Changing spec's is not the issue, it's making the most of what the potential is for a warlock.

[Eigun]

Not being one that can find what he's looking for in web pages easy, I was wondering what the warlocks in the guild use for their spell rotations. I have tried to read a few suggestions on other boards, it hasn't worked too well for me.

I would like to hear from all spec's and any level. This would be benefit everyone.

I don't see too many write ups on warlocks, seems it's a hidden knowledge. The ones I do find are from either just before WoLK or 2 years plus ago.

My ultimate goal here is to increase damage output for 5-25 man runs. Very tired of getting told my DPS is the worst any one have ever seen.

Changing spec's is not the issue, it's making the most of what the potential is for a warlock.

This is an unanswerable question without specifically considering spec. A raid destro build will have a very different play style then a 5 man affliction build.

As a demonolog.y lock, on bosses, I send the felguard in and hit demonic empowerment every time it is up. Depending on whether I have another dps caster in the group, I'll either apply curse of elements, or, if I'm the only one and I don't expect a very long fight, curse of agony, then corruption and the fire one (forget the name). Then shadowbolt spam. Depending on the mechanics of the boss, I may run in, pop metamorphosis, set the area on fire while continuing to blast shadowbolts and refreshing the three dots. That combination of damage is generally enough to keep the demon healed up. The downside is, if I don't have awesome healers, I will have to life tap/siphon life in order to keep going. But that's my limited experience on a build optimized for soloing.

Draegloth seems to do pretty well in a raid-specific build. Check out Zu's 25 man raid thread and look at the WWS for breakdowns of his damage.

[Corellon]

Eigun, I'm just looking for any and all information I can use to determine what I can do. Most of what I have read is too old to be of any good to me. Right now, I'm affliction spec'd and it seems that in 10/25 man raids I put out decent dps, but in 5 man groups, it's severely lacking. I had been demo since I rolled him and havn't seen much in dps increase lately. It's great for solo, but I crave groups and quick runs. I'm just gathering information of any type that may help with making a better decision on spec'ing. Since now I'm running recount and it seems to line up with what gets spammed in raid or group, I can now monitor my progress better. For my spec, I've used Imolate, Haunt, unstable affliction, siphon, corruption, curse of agony then if time allows a shadow bolt or two then back to refreshing dots. This would be on a single target, on groups of 3 or more, Rain of fire is the only spell casted till down to one or two. Pet would be mainly the fel hunter and major glyphs are Immolate, siphon life and unstable affliction. This normally keeps me in the 1400 dps area in 5 mans but jumps to almost 2.3k in 25 man. Although I'm still gathering data on whats best to use in gear, I'm letting my crit go for now in favor of haste and the order of stats that I look for currently is spell power>int>stam>haste>crit. With the gear I currently have also I have a nice mana regen out of it. Like I said, just looking for other ideas.

[Scryll]

Eigun, I'm just looking for any and all information I can use to determine what I can do. Most of what I have read is too old to be of any good to me. Right now, I'm affliction spec'd and it seems that in 10/25 man raids I put out decent dps, but in 5 man groups, it's severely lacking. I had been demo since I rolled him and havn't seen much in dps increase lately. It's great for solo, but I crave groups and quick runs. I'm just gathering information of any type that may help with making a better decision on spec'ing. Since now I'm running recount and it seems to line up with what gets spammed in raid or group, I can now monitor my progress better. For my spec, I've used Imolate, Haunt, unstable affliction, siphon, corruption, curse of agony then if time allows a shadow bolt or two then back to refreshing dots. This would be on a single target, on groups of 3 or more, Rain of fire is the only spell casted till down to one or two. Pet would be mainly the fel hunter and major glyphs are Immolate, siphon life and unstable affliction. This normally keeps me in the 1400 dps area in 5 mans but jumps to almost 2.3k in 25 man. Although I'm still gathering data on whats best to use in gear, I'm letting my crit go for now in favor of haste and the order of stats that I look for currently is spell power>int>stam>haste>crit. With the gear I currently have also I have a nice mana regen out of it. Like I said, just looking for other ideas.

For Affliction, there's still no real rotation, beyond making sure your Corruption always gets refreshed by your Haunt.

[Corellon]

As Demo, I started out with corruption, curse of agony, Immolate then shadowbolted with refreshes on corruption to get glyph to proc. In heavy fights Metamorph would play a role also. Major glyphs, corruption, felguard and shadowbolt. Felguard would be the pet of choice, mostly on passive except on trash mobs. DPS out put was no different in 5 10 or 25 man runs. It sat around 1.2k, using crit>haste.

[Waldonnis]

Be sure that you only look at boss fights when you're evaluating damage output. Trash-heavy instances/raids will actually work against "overall dps/damage done" for an affliction warlock, since 99% of the trash out there doesn't live long enough for dots to run their course even on one target. Boss fights are long enough to allow affliction to actually use a rotation, though, and that's where you'll see it shine more. For trash, I always tended to just shadowbolt spam in the past with maybe a dot or two on each of the mobs...or just AoE'ed with SoC (not sure how that works out now, but shadowbolt spam seems to be still reasonable). Frankly, trash dps doesn't matter at all and isn't something to consider when it comes to figuring out if you're doing well...no matter what others say.

Another thing, always use the same tools to measure dps and damage output (Recount measures dps differently than WWS, for example...always compare apples and apples, basically). I have my Recount set up to only save boss fight segments so that I can quickly reference them even a few bosses later without having to thumb through trash segments. When I use WWS or WMO, I only look at the specific bosses or just the "All Bosses" report for comparisons. Understanding how your tool of choice actually determines "damage per second" is important in any case. For affliction builds, I highly recommend looking at metrics like DoT uptime and the damage breakdowns (WMO has a nice pie chart for the breakdown) ...then compare those to other warlocks in other reports to see what they're doing differently.

Last thing, and probably most important, is to make sure that you're not clipping your dots. There are two spells that you absolutely don't want to clip ever: CoA and immolate (if used). In CoA's case, the heaviest damage ticks come at the end, so refreshing it too early will hurt your damage measurably in longer fights. Immolate's even worse in that the back-end mechanics prevent immolate from being "refreshed" at times....the direct damage portion will hit, but the dot portion won't reapply. This tends to happen when the previous application was done while a trinket or proc buff was in effect (the newer application will be "lesser", so it won't overwrite). DoT timers help, but it takes practice.

I'll dig around for specific rotations if needed, but it's probably best to plug your gear and spec into Leulier's spreadsheet (linked on my blog) and play around with it a bit with rotations/gems/stats/etc. I know he's got some bug in his drawers about publishing updates right now, but it should be close enough. Spending some quality time with your friendly neighbourhood target dummy is also very recommended. It takes time and practice to get rotation timing down, especially for affliction builds, and it's easier to do it outside of a raid setting. Again, though, be sure not to compare target dummy results with raid results, as the buffs and circumstances in raids will differ greatly with target dummy time.

[Corellon]

Ok, so working on Affliction spec, I have found that using CoA, Corruption and SB spamming seems to keep me in the black for most 5 mans doing trash. On bosses keeping UA,Haunt, Siphon along with prior mentioned and maybe an Imoliate once in a while seems to put me into a good area of dps again for most group. I have gotten into a few that 3k of dps is required to break even. I can reach 2k on boss fights and 10-25 man raids I'm getting about 2.5k - 3k depending on buffs and crits. Yes, it does seem that Haste>Crit for my spec. I am still experimenting with various series of DoT's and SB Flame spells. Havn't seen a great deal of difference in any of them yet. I've even tried to just "faceroll" to see if that helps. Anyway, still looking for the "magic bullet" to give me that edge in dps.

[Tainish]

Agree with Waldy's summation above about trash mobs and dot clipping. Affliction locks just don't do well with trash mobs unless they are aoe-worthy.

I use a 6 spell rotation for boss fights that I cribbed from somewhere, but I can't remember the source now. It's the best I've found.

If I am in position before the start of the fight I lead off with Shadowbolt, Haunt, Unstable Affliction, CoA, Corruption, Siphon Life. If I lead off with SB and Haunt I have Shadow Embrace stacked twice which increases the output from the rest of my spells. With cast times and GCD I'm ready to cast my next SB right after Siphon Life, but I have to insert some pauses to avoid clipping dots after that. A good dot timer is useful. Since all these dots are on different timers I get some odds gaps where everything is up. I Spam SB in these gaps.

If I'm having to run into position at the start of the fight I lead off with the instant cast part of the rotation: CoA, Corruption, Siphon Life, Shadowbolt, Haunt, Unstable Affliction. I lose the benefit of Shadow Embrace for the first half of the rotation, but it's usually better than waiting to start casting until I get into place. Also, this rotation doesn't wrap around as neatly as the other one, and it's a bit of a scramble to keep all the dots up early on. Usually something in the fight distracts me enough that I can't keep all the dots up (adds, bad ######, etc) and then I just have to reload them all, which lets me revert back to the first rotation.

Aggro management is an odd thing to get used to as Affliction. Getting the 90% threat warning should be translated as "put your finger over your Soulshatter key and be prepared to press" because it's too late to stop the dots.

[Corellon]

I'm now getting strange things in different group make up's. Some groups with the rotations I have been using after patch, have been lower dps than others. Trying to narrow it down, thought it may be due to pally buffs, but some groups without pally I get great dps. Seems that when the group is caster heavy, more times than not, my dps drops. I don't see many others with that issue. I group with some of the same folks and it changes from group to group. I have taken into consideration different buffs from Shaman, pallys and DK's etc. Also I have a choice of Hit/Haste/Crit gear to play with the stats there too. I do know when in a 10/25 man that with all buffs my dps jumps to almost 3k. Just wondering if thats normal or if the rotation/faceroll is off a bit. I do tend to generate alot more agro that most other classes now too. But that's only bad with a inexperienced tank.

Talk amongst yourselves and report back to me at once!!! :nub:

[Perthes]

Talk amongst yourselves and report back to me at once!!

I have talked to yourselves and... yourselves , myself and I have come to the conclusion that... we have no idea what we are talking about!

Other then that.. i think this is the reason why there are so few Warlocks around.

[Waldonnis]

Hehehe...

Just a reminder, when reviewing your damage done and dps, don't include trash pretty much ever. Bosses are the only ones that matter for a number of reasons, the best of which is that it's a better indicator of your potential vs. real damage output. Not only are bosses a consistent level (82 heroic, 83 raid), but they're also long enough fights in many cases to establish a good sample size (heroics less so than raid) and frequently have dynamics more "friendly" to predictable damage output. Movement-heavy fights are another issue and will hamper you less as affliction, but they still hamper any caster's damage output (melee has this problem frequently). This is why Patchwerk is considered the closest thing to a "target dummy" for dps classes. No movement at all and no class is favoured due to fight dynamics (at least from a dps standpoint). It's pretty much just a several-minute-long nukefest and good for breaking down your rotations/cooldown use.

Looking at overall damage or dps including trash will yield VASTLY different results most of the time, even with the same exact people around you in the same instance.

As for buffs, 25-man buffs will generally increase your damage noticeably. It's not uncommon for me to see a 20-25% increase in my damage output with 25-man buffs vs. the limited subset we can achieve with 10 people. Additionally, the extra 15 people and class variety often provide debuffs/class synergies that benefit you even more than you could get in most decently-balanced 10-man raids. A good example of this is when I bring Tyrandius into a caster-heavy group. One debuff that I have increases magical damage taken by the target, so it inflates caster dps a bit (and their threat, but that's easy to deal with usually). When we don't have a similarly-spec'ed DK around, the caster dps is a bit lower.

Not to pimp the target dummies again, but a good rule of thumb is: if you get inconsistent results on a dummy, it's your rotation or timing causing some dps issues; if you get consistent results on a dummy and are solid on your rotation timing, it's the raid's composition or fight mechanics causing the variance. There are cases where that rule isn't exactly 100% true, but those are more corner cases than anything (starting a fight with trinkets on cooldown and things like that).

I could get more into WWS/WMO analysis and how I approach it if you'd like...may help to figure out what's going on. It also may be worth making a WWS/WMO account of your own and post test session logs so you can inspect them a bit more easily (I do this on my account at times, although I have written some log parsers to do most of it locally).

Edited April 20, 2009 by Waldonnis

[Corellon]

Just a reminder, when reviewing your damage done and dps, don't include trash pretty much ever.

I understand that, but when running pugs most of the time you run into a lot of "know-it-all's" that think differently. In some cases will not allow Locks in their group. I call that narrow minded and not looking at the big picture. Problem is that if I cannot get my dps up a bit, I will be overlooked for groups. There are nights where I can get into a few good groups and a ton of nights where I run into the "snots" of the server and end up leaving the group. Plus with the talent points getting returned now for the second week in a row, I'm getting more and more frustrated with Blizzards activity. I've lost 2 DoT's and have gained very little with other comparably equipt Locks. I test out different strats on each encounter to see what's giving me the best for my bang. I just haven't hit the right combination yet. What really ticks me off right now is that I get rated on the trash and if the dps isn't quite right, I get the boot. This happens still more than it should. I have put everyone of the group leads that boot me on ignore so I do get into group with them again. In any case, I'm still looking for more feed back on what other warlocks do in their respective areas of expertise. Trying to stick it out in affliction, but may try out destruction to see how that goes. For those that have given suggestions and have read this thread, thank you for you help. I'm still seeking the "magic bullet" for this class.