Grawp

I am nearing 140 AAs and want to know what the current trend is for raiding warlocks for the following:


1. Acheivement distribution
2. Casting orders for Solo and casting orders for group
3. Most desirable gear to have (realistically speaking as T8 raid drops are not likely going to happen over nite the T8 instances gear/quest gear/ and T7 gear still used.

I always want to pull my hair out when i try to find this stuff on the boards.

Thanks

Wayoff

Anything that does damage

Go out and do some of that sometime...while your at it hit focused casting occasionally.

Inspect Wayoff if you ever see him.

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Grawp

hey wayoff

thanks for the reply but was hoping for something a bit more specific than that...are you by chance working for the psychic network?

Mezelline

Max damage setup is AGI/WIS/STR, Hastenings/Props/Aftershocks, with the extra points filling out Hastenings and Props even more, or enhancing our noxious debuff. (Both options are equally good IMHO) I've found that my OT can't handle AE aggro very well though, so I dropped Aftershocks, still keeping 5 points in enhance: destruction, and getting Vacous instead. The rationale being with the 10 points in E:Magi Shielding I can use the bloodthirsty choker 100% of the time, to kinda make up for the lost dps of the aftershocks proc and the couple points that I lose from the aftershocks line. So I lose some AE damage but gain some single-target damage. I'd rather be specced full dps, but its not like there's many AE encounters in RoK anyway.

There is no single best casting order. It's going to vary dramatically depending upon how many mobs are in the encounter, whether they're linked, what your cast:recast ratio is, when you're getting stuff like Jcap/PotM/Gift, how long the fight is going to last, whether the mob AEs and how long the timer is, things of that nature. As a general guideline though, in the optimal dps setup you can get to a point where *all* your relevant spells are on cooldown. If you have more than 1 relevant spell available at any moment after 30 seconds into the fight, chances are either your spell order or your cast:recast ratio could use some work.

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Mezelast - Najena's first 80 Warlock
Mezelardo - 80 Paladin
Mezelina - 80 Berserker - Retired due to SOE hate
Mezelline - 70 Defiler - Retired due to SOE love
I AE IN '08

Mezelline

Some general tips though, always keep broodlings up if the AE timer is longer than 30 mins. Even though broodling damage is not what is once was, the initial dark infestation hit is still pretty good; less than dissolve, but more than your non-devastation AEs on single targets. Netherlord is a different story, its only a good idea to use it IF the fight is going to last 45 seconds and IF the mob isn't going to AE in that time period and IF you're already positioned so you have the back of the mob and IF the mob is below level 83. Otherwise its not worth casting because it will either die before the full duration, or its hit rate will be so low you'd be better off casting a different spell.

Try to get a feel of how fast your tank pulls, so you can time an acid storm to hit as soon as the mob gets in camp. Then open up with the noxious debuff, nether+gift, hit focused casting, Freehand+Destruction and go to town, dots before nukes. I don't care much for prebuffing with nether/gift because you lose a chunk of spell efficiency when precasting them. Which doesn't matter if the fight is only going to last 45 seconds, but if it does you're going to want to squeeze all the dps you can out of the top of your spell efficiency chart.

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Mezelast - Najena's first 80 Warlock
Mezelardo - 80 Paladin
Mezelina - 80 Berserker - Retired due to SOE hate
Mezelline - 70 Defiler - Retired due to SOE love
I AE IN '08

Laretha

I disagree with Mez, dont get rid of Aftershock, how is the MT/OT ever going to learn to hold your aggro. Warlocks rock in a lot of raid encounters in RoK Overking being the most obvious.

I prefer Catalysts as last choice over the less mana cost end line aa choice. Mana in raids is not so much an issue these days.

On a single encounter I precast both neither & Gift and Acid Storm, I follow up with Focus Casting, vacuum field, Catalyts, freehand, Armageddon, aura of void, Destruction, Acid, Vacuum chamber, Flames, Encase then roll with whats up normally Destruction etc.

Last 5 seconds of fight I tend to prefer casting DD spells over Dots more DPS at that point.

Catalysts, freehand Armageddon > than Catalyst, freehand Destruction (well at ad3 it is. ).

To many raid encounters AoE near the pull so I dont cast other pets until the timers are up and being called or I have seen them go off. Trash mobs a different story and will add them into rotation.

Grawp

awesome..thanks for your info. I pretty much was in line with the AAs..though i'm thinking of switching to mana as my last choice b/c i dont always have a power cell in my group as im a "filler". And power can get to be an issue for me...lazy necros/conj bitching cause im popping shards/hearts like candy when i dont have a power cell

Saltaf

Pay attention to POTM, pay attention to dispatch, pay attention to any jesters cap you may get and pay attention to velium gift.

If you have POTM or Velium Gift you will want to spam out fast casts (w/o getting too much out of your normal order) this is the best time for focused casting... it is typically also when dispatch is generally on the mob. Cast your first armageddon when you see dispatch is on. I'd rather see it tick for 4500 than 3800.

If you get a jesters cap or the troub warns you that you will get a jesters cap, plan for it. Make sure that you aren't wasting any ticks of your dots because they come up so far in advance to their duration. Use more direct abilities.

For ae fights, don't be afraid of your deaggros. I know a lot of warlocks who just burn out dps on ae fights and ignore deaggros. Vullian line procs gift, potm and any other procs we may have on us it's fast cast and it's a deaggro. It's good dps on big groups and very helpful. Concussion I don't like as much, I like to play my sorcer as a fast caster and it's a longer cast, i'll only use that if i'm lookn at my numbers and KNOW that there is a good chance that i will be the target of a mob soon. Null Caress is fast enough imo but if there are heroics around don't use it so much. It will screw with raid dps as the melees will have to run after them to kill em down.

As for gear. Do instances every day until you have your 3%crit ring from CoA, Praetor's Guard from vaults, crit robe from maiden's, 2% reuse speed earring from maiden's (not too many use... I do), Coil of Vile Spawn (for fights w/ lots o mobs).

I'd suggestion when you are looking at gear you look to max out your cast speed as much as possible (but do not trade off 5% spell crit for 1% cast speed) Then get your reuse speed as high as possible (w/o going too high... things cap out at different reuse % so watch your spell reuse timers to find your best fit). Then crit %. Get crit as high as possible. If your crit is NOT at 100% you have room to grow. Lastly you want to consider procs. A proc could be at the top of the list or it could be at the bottom, it all depends on the quality of proc.

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~Saltaf Level 80 Erudite Warlock 140aa

~Tidoh Level 80 Ratongan Assassin 134aa

~Abomidable Level 80 Ogre Guardian 132aa

~Cure Level 73 Fae Warden 110aa

Mezelline

To be honest I've been been pretty happy so far trading the aftershocks proc, 5 points in E: Upheaval, and 2 points from E: Absolution and E: Chaostorm for vacous. Using the bloodthirsty 100% of the time with the self-ward has given me a substantial bump up on single targets, and I really haven't noticed a drop-off in my ability to AE. I can only do 8k extdps now on the 4-pulls in Vaults without a troub/illy when I used to be able to do 10k, but I could never use that spell rotation in a sane raid setting anyway. And tbh I have not noticed many long-lasting enough AE encounters in RoK raids for it to be useful. (Although I've only done T1 so far)

It looks like the bloodthirsty actually increases "base spell damage" even though it says it increases only "spell damage", ala the VWB. I need some more testing to be sure, but if its gold I'm probably not going to part with it for a long, long time.

I think a rough gear comparison would be 1% base spell damage = 2% cast increase = 3% recast/recovery increase = 3% crit = 40 SD (Assuming you're not at your SD cap). But I've been bouncing around with this formula all expansion

And yeah Laretha, I mixed up Destruction and Armageddon Got the M1 to drop after I made that post, woot

__________________
Mezelast - Najena's first 80 Warlock
Mezelardo - 80 Paladin
Mezelina - 80 Berserker - Retired due to SOE hate
Mezelline - 70 Defiler - Retired due to SOE love
I AE IN '08

Laretha

Mezelast are you saying 3% Spell Crit = 40 SD?