Part I of
“Saltaf’s Guide to Advancing Your Warlock”
I have two preferred specs for end-game play. This has been caused by the ability to over-cap on spell crit. The first spec will be for those players who have capped their spell crit and do not require the benefits of the str line.
I) Capped Spell Crit AA Lines
Your primary role as a warlock is dps. More specifically it is our job to bring massive aoe dps to a raid.
If you want to know how I spent my points, I am currently specced:
Sorcerer Tree:
Agility: 4-4-6-8-1
Stamina: 4-4-8-6-1
Wisdom: 4-8-4-5
Warlock Tree:
Hastenings: 3 Dissolve, 5 Acid, 5 Dark Pyre, 2 Encase, 5 Distortion, Focused Casting
Propagation: 5 Grasp of Bertoxxulous, 5 Shroud of Bertoxxulous, 5 Gift of Bertoxxulous, 5 Netherealm, Propagation
Explosive: 5 Cataclysm, 5 Dark Nebula, 5 Absolution, 5 Apocalypse, 5 Rift, Aftershock
Removals: 2 Vacuum Field
Shadows Tree:
General: 5 Hearty Constitution, 5 Enhanced Mind
Mage: 5 Runic Protection, 5 Masters Strike, 1 Bewilderment
Sorcerer: 4 Flames of Velious, 5 Sorcery Mastery, 5 Critical Mastery, 1 Thunderclap
Warlock: 5 Poisonous Aura, 5 Destitute, 5 Corrosion, 5 Warlock’s Gift, 1 Poison Mastery, 1 Plaguebringer
1. Sorcerer Tree
In order of recommendation, the best warlock achievements for raids are:
a) Agility
b) Wisdom
c) Stamina (If you are not capped on spell crit then str comes above stamina)
d) Strength
e) Intelligence
a) Agility
Casting faster gets you more spells per minute, additional chances to proc, and simply better reaction time.
As Warlocks we hardly ever have time to cast every one of our spells, so some ask why we need reuse speed? The better your reuse speed is the faster your higher efficient spells come back up. We will be talking about the concept of spell efficiency in a later section. Reuse speed is extremely important on aoe fights when you want to focus on your multi target spells primarily. With a low reuse speed you get stuck casting a lot of single target spells while waiting for aoe abilities to refresh. This will cause your dps to not be nearly as high as if you had your multi target spells coming back twice as fast.
Ambidexterous Casting is a very useful ability when you consider how it works. The tooltip shows a 0.5sec cast time but if you read the comment on the ability you can see that this is, “A melee attack that can be executed while casting a spell.” That means the moment this ability is up you can recast it regardless of if you are in the middle of a cast. This is free damage. You must spend at least four points in the ability and that is all I suggest you spend in it. Two more points will net you less than 100 more damage from the ability. The main object to this ability is taking advantage of the 100% procs. Ambidexterous Casting will proc chime of blades and peace of mind. This makes this “instant” cast “instant” recovery ability a lot more damage than the tooltip implies.
Momentum increases your run speed inside and out of combat. Most end-game guilds move very quickly. The faster you get into position, the earlier you can pre-cast, the earlier you can start dpsing, the more dps you will do. There are fights in the game that require you to keep moving. This allows less time between casts while moving from one position to another. Also, if a mob does not aoe you want to be on top of the mob in order to melee it. “Why is this?” You ask. “My melee dps doesn’t do much damage.” Much like Ambidexterous Casting (which requires you in melee range) your auto attacks will cause those 100% procs to go off giving you extra dps.
Auto attacks do not interrupt your casting at all nor does casting make you unable to auto attack. Almost all casting (spells and combat arts) have recovery time. Recovery time is the duration you must wait before the next spell/combat art starts to cast. During this time is when your auto attack (if your auto attack timer has come to its full duration) will hit restarting your auto attack timer for the next swing. This is free damage.
b) Wisdom
Base damage is the sole purpose of the wisdom line. Brainstorm will give you +4% base damage to all your spells when it has 8 points in it (evenly 0.5% per point). Even though this looks like a low number it does a lot for your dps. The only reason I am not putting more points in this over other abilities is that it is easy for high end warlocks to cap on base damage. If you are over-cap w/o procs you can spec 0 points into Brainstorm and use them to fill in some of your agi line.
(As of GU52 base damage no longer affects item procs)
Ward of Sages is a replenishing ward which only wards magical damage. This means all spell based damage (noxious, arcane, elemental). This does not affect physical damage (trauma).
Sagacity reduces the overall power cost of all spells and abilities by 12%. The benefit of this is obvious. You cannot do much damage if you are out of power. The only time end-game warlocks will have any power problems are either if you use manashield (which I will get to next) or if you are fighting a mob that has a large number of power drains. The amount of power proc items/group power proc items on team members will allow you to stay full power though almost any situation.
c) Stamina
The stamina line is a purely defensive line. So then why is it placed before strength line? How does it help my dps? First off, if you cannot cap your spell crit then you should be going down strength and ignoring the stamina line for raiding. The suggested spec for those w/o capped crit is shown below.
The reason for using stamina line is because you cannot do dps when you are dead. There are many high damaging aoes in this expansion especially if you do not have the crit mit to make them not critical on you. You can get resistances for most aoes but as a mage we have very little physical mitigation to reduce damage of high damaging physical aoes. Having 8 points in Battlemage Armor gives us an additional 960 physical mitigation at level 80.
Battlemage’s Fervor increases our casting skills by 6 points per achievement point we put into it. As warlocks we get a group buff that increases all these skills by 38 already (minus focus). And through gear it is easy to cap on our primary skill (disruption).
Static Shield is a melee dmg shield. This means that it only procs when you are hit with a melee weapon. In groups there are many times when you are tanking some adds, this will boost your dps as well as help to kill them before they kill you. In raids it is rare that you will be getting hit directly.
Manashield is a dangerous but very powerful ability. It allows you to take all damage as power damage. You take only 2 power damage for every 3 damage you would otherwise take as health damage. The obvious dangerous part of this is that your power can go to 0 very quickly. If your power gets too low you can always click the spell again to turn it off and start taking normal damage. It is very useful to be a tinkerer if you plan on using this spec as you can instant click an overclocked manastone to get your power back high enough to where your power proc items/group power procs will finish the job and bring you back up to full power. If your power gets to 0 while you have manashield running you will start to take damage normally from your health bar. Again, you can always turn this ability off to start to get your power back.
In cases where you will take slow damage, aoe dots etc, this is not a good thing to use. Your power will get killed for no reason. It is very easy for your healer to patch heal you up from getting to 50% health. This ability should only be used if you think you will be going from 100% health to dead very quickly if you did not have it on. This ability allows me to go all out on inc of a pull and have an epic add hit me once or twice before going back to the offtank. I turn off the manashield, and throw an aoe (power procs will proc off each target of an aoe. I often see my power jump from 10% to 40% from one rift on mobs like tyrannus) and I’m good to go while getting away with an early damage spike).
d) Strength
As warlocks we do not get any strength buffs for ourselves. I see some warlocks who don’t have any strength gear but carry boxes walking around. The strength stat can help your ability to carry more items. This has little importance for raid dps but I thought I should just touch on that for those lower level warlocks who want to have the storage space of boxes.
The primary importance of the strength line is Spell Expertise. With 8 points this gives you effectively 12% spell crit boost. If you are capped on spell crit (end-game raid gear makes this very easy) then you do not need this spell line.
Static Discharge is a magic based attack that does damage on up to four enemies in a frontal arc. The amount of damage that it does for its cast time is minimal. The only use of this spell is if you are fighting a group of mobs, did not have any multi target spell to cast and there are 100% proc buffs running that this could proc for you on multiple targets. Otherwise there are many other options to use. This spell was almost never used when I had it.
Deflecting Staff increases your parry %. This means that if something tries to hit you this enhancement gives you a % chance to not get hit. This only blocks melee attacks it does not affect aoes. In a raiding situation it is very important to not get hit if you do have aggro that this is a useful achievement to spec in but it is not more important than other defensive options such as the mitigation of the stamina line or any ability that would otherwise improve your dps.
Catalyst has been useless in end-game for some time now. Since we have been able to get anywhere near the cap of spell crit there has been no need for this ability. It simply costs too much to cast than what it gives you. It costs 17% health, takes 1 second to cast and guarantees your next spell to crit. If you have capped spell crit this does nothing for you. If you are not capped but near cap there is a good chance that you will crit anyway. The fact that this costs 1 second to cast means that you need to add another second of time to your total cast time in your efficiency for when you use this spell. I do not recommend catalyst to anyone who is not a low level toon. Low level toons can use this ability to their advantage since they have almost no spell crit and can take out a large group of mobs very quickly by forcing a crit on apoc or absolution.
e) Intelligence
Intelligence is a deaggro line with a defensive buff stuck in the middle. The pure +int is easy to cap for high level raiders with all raid buffs up. The amount of damage that it increases is nominal since you only get 4 intelligence per achievement point.
Confounding is a ranged based physical attack and debuff. It works like a normal spell where you have to wait for it to cast. You cannot use this while casting other spells. This will proc melee based procs, not spell based.
Kinetic Evasion boosts your defense which results in a higher avoidance check for when you have aggro. The benefit of this ability is not as strong as Deflecting Staff.
Kinetic Avoidance reduces the amount of hate that you generate with everything you do. As warlocks we can get a lot of hate on multi target encounters. Hate modifiers all cap at 50% effectiveness. Troubadors give us a hate reduction of 34% when we are in group with them. You will almost always be grouped with a troubadour in raids. In heroic situations, Guardians have a –hate% modifier which reduced your hate by 36%. At 8 points in this achievement you get a reduction of 16% hate generation. Adding the 34% from troub and 16% from achievement spec will cap you at 50% in raids. When a warlock has aggro they are typically way over the top on the hate list where a different of 16% isn’t going to do a lot. This achievement helps but does not make it more important than other lines. Useful deaggro tools will be discussed in later sections.
Concussive Blast is the only ability of great use in the intelligence line. This ability allows you to drop two positions on the threat table on all targets in area of effect. This means that if you have aggro on anything in the area and there is another person in your party that has any bit of hate on the mob you will lose aggro by using this instant cast ability.
2. Warlock Tree
In order of recommendation, the best warlock aa for raids are:
a) Hastenings
b) Explosive
c) Propagation
d) Vacuous
e) Removals
a) Hastenings
The Hastenings line is the most powerful achievement line on a warlock after the agility line in your Sorcerer tree. It is very single target oriented with the final ability offering both single target and multi target damage boost. The concept of the line is to make use of spell damage more often. Whether it be faster casting, faster recasting or faster ticking the damage of the spells enhanced in this line will be boosted greatly.
Dissolve is our worst single target ability but you must spec at least three points into it in order to spend any points in Acid. The enhancement to acid is the second most important achievement in this line. Acid in its normal state takes a lot longer to finish ticking away at its damage than it takes to actually recast the spell. At 5 points this enhancement reduces the duration of the spell by 7.5 seconds and improves its reuse speed by 2.5 seconds. Some people have asked me, “Why do I want my dots to be shorter duration, won’t that make them do less damage? Why does that make sense?” Reducing the duration of a dot means that all ticks of the dot happen faster. Your dot does the same amount of damage in less time. With a spell like acid this is twice as important. This means that if something is dying your dot will tick faster and you will get the benefit from as many ticks as possible. The main benefit for acid in this case is that it allows you to recast the spell much sooner without just refreshing the timer over the old instance of the spell.
EXAMPLE:
Acid untouched by any achievements ticks instantly every three seconds for a total of 18 seconds. This means that it hits a total of 7 times:
Cast spell:
0s tick 1
3s tick 2
6s tick 3
9s tick 4
12s tick 5
15s tick 6
18s tick 7
This means that in order to get the full benefit of the spell you would have to wait until it finishes ticking after 18s before it would be beneficial to cast the ability again. With raid buffs the duration gets into the 6second range with ticks every 1 second. This allows you to get three times the damage from acid (one of our best spells) over the course of a fight.
The reuse speed of acid at reuse cap (easy to obtain via aa and minimal gear) is 4 seconds. Making a reduction of duration from 18s to 6s critical for this spell.
Dark Pyre is our other single target dot and the enhancement does the same thing as the acid enhancement but not as dramatic. At 5 points it reduces the reuse by 2 seconds and the duration by 2.5 seconds.
Enhance: Encase reduces the reuse speed of encase by 1.5s per ability capping at 7.5s reduction in reuse time. This ability does moderate damage and is not high on our efficiency list. The frequency that you would need to cast encase in your rotation is too low that you would have a reason for a faster reuse on it. The only benefit of a faster reuse on the spell is in case you need to stun something that jumps on you during raid. This is useful for mobs that need to be killed by mages only and mages end up tanking them.
The enhancement to distortion is very useful. At 5 points it improves the reuse speed by 3 seconds and the casting speed by 0.5 seconds. With raid buffs (UT or TC) this spell is always at its capped cast speed of 1.5 seconds and sits very close to its capped reuse speed. This is a very efficient spell and is important to be capped on cast/reuse.
Focused Casting is one of our most powerful abilities. If you are low on fast cast gear it is your most powerful ability w/o question. It lasts for 15 seconds and caps your cast and recovery speeds as well as making you immune to interrupts. Recovery speed boosts are very rare in the current state of the game (as of GU 52) and this enhancement allows you to plow through your spells early in a fight and get them started on their reuse timers. This ability is best used when 100% procs are up. Potm, PoM, Gift of Bertox and Frigid Gift will offer a lot of dps while Focused Casting is running.
There are a number of raid mobs that will chain interrupt you whenever you try to cast a spell. Focused Casting is instant cast and therefore cannot be interrupted and will block the effect of the chain interrupt thru its interrupt immunity.
Recommended Configuration: 3 Dissolve, 5 Acid, 5 Dark Pyre, 2 Encase, 5 Distortion, 1 Focused Casting
b) Explosive
This is our aoe line. Enhance: Dark Nebula, Cataclysm, Absolution and Apocalypse all increase damage by 10% and radius by 75% at 5 points.
This takes Cataclysm to 13.1 meter radius pbaoe and the other three all affect all mobs in target encounter within 17.5 meters of your target.
Enhance: Rift improves reuse speed by 20 seconds and damage by 10%. This enhancement is done after all reuse speed buffs are calculated. Our set pants also improve the reuse speed further by 30 seconds. It is very easy to cap out the reuse speed of Rift. The benefit of this achievement is in the 10% damage boost it offers for the spell.
Aftershock has a chance to proc after any of the spells listed above are cast. It is a passive proc on the warlock if you have the achievement and amounts for 1-3% of your total dps depending on luck factor.
c) Propagation
All proc chance values cap at 200% (twice that) of their base (original) amount. Something with a 10% chance to proc caps at 20% chance. Something with 2.8 times per minute caps at 5.6 times per minute. And obviously anything higher than 50% caps at 100% proc chance.
IMPORTANT RATIO TO UNDERSTAND:
Times per minute and proc chance (as a percent) refer to the same thing.
1 time per minute = 8% chance to proc
Grasp of Bertoxxulous is a solid buff to use often on multiple people in your group for trash mobs and most nameds. With 5 points it boosts the proc chance by 10%. Remember this is not 10% of it’s current proc chance. This can be confusing for some. This refers to an additional 10% chance for the spell to proc.
EXAMPLE:
Lets use grasp as an example for the times per minute to % chance to proc formula.
2tpm (times per minute) base. Adding 10% buff changes the tooltip to 3.2 times per minute.
2tpm + 10%*(1tpm/8%) = 2tpm + 1tpm(10/8) = 2tpm + 1.25tpm = 3.25tpm
Everquest deals only in 1 decimal for times per minute and drops anything else leaving us at 3.2 as the tooltip shows.
Propagation adds another 4% and brings the tooltip to 3.7tpm
3.25tpm + 4%*(1tpm/8%) = 3.25tpm + 1tpm(4/8) = 3.25tpm + 0.5tpm = 3.75tpm again, eq2 drops anything past 1.0 format leaving us with 3.7 as the tooltip shows.
Shroud of Bertoxxulous is an extremely useful spell. Will discuss it in more detail in future sections. At 5 points it increase the trigger chance by 15%. This works the same way as I mentioned with grasp. It is easier to follow the improvements on shroud however since it is worded in terms of % chance. The base is 25%. +15% from aa = 40%. +4% from prop = 44%. This leaves 6% to cap. Templar/dirge can boost your proc chances, as well as bertox charm and trixy wrist proc.
The Boon of the Damned achievement will boost your trigger chance by 10% when you put 5 points into it. The base proc chance is 10% which means it caps at 20% and you get 4% from propagation. This means with 0 points in this achievement you are at 14% before any other buffs. Three points spent in this achievement will cap you for the spell but it isn’t needed as there are so many power proc items currently in game and there are better places to spend the points.
Gift of Bertoxxulous standard duration is 30s. 5 points into this achievement boosts it by 15s bringing it to a total duration of 45s before any other enhancements from group. This is a huge achievement to spend points on as Gift of Bertoxxulous is our most efficient spell and is used as often as possible.
Enhance: Netherealm improves the cast speed of the spell by 1 second and reduces the duration by 10 seconds. We spoke earlier about the obvious benefits of cast speed and we discussed how reducing the duration of dots benefits a spell but there is an added twist in this situation. Clearly it is beneficial for netherealm to tick faster because adds like to die fast and the faster this ticks the more damage it is able to put out before the mobs aren’t there to benefit from anymore.
I get more questions about netherealm than any other spell so I’ll take the time to explain how this spell works. I will be using the base duration in my explanation as that’s what the tooptip says (note: as you put aas into this spell the tooltip does not tell you how often Netherous Cascade applies).
SPELL EXPLANATION (Netherealm):
This is an aura spell. It is classified beneficial because you cast it on yourself. It’s base duration is 30seconds. Instantly and every 5 seconds (base) it casts a detrimental on all targets within 25m of you. I REPEAT!!! THIS SPELL IS ONLY EFFECTIVE UP TO 25m. In other words… the same range as your absolution, encase, dark nebula and aura of void. The moment you are done casting the spell the first 25m aoe detrimental goes out. This effect lasts for 5 seconds. If during that 5 seconds that mob is damaged with any noxious spell (any noxious spell… not just your own) it will trigger the damage on that mob. All the damage counts as yours, not as the person casting the spell. Every 5 seconds it re-applies this detrimental to all mobs within 25m of where you are (not from where you casted it). This adds up to a total of 7 ticks (Initial + 30s/5s). If a mob is not damaged for one of the 5sec periods that damage is lost, the next detrimental applies over the old one. If you precast when the mob is inc but outside 25m you lose your initial tick and any ticks after that if the mob is still outside 25m when they try to apply.
The achievement for netherealm reduces the duration by 10 seconds making the duration 20s instead of 30s. This means that over 20s you have 6ticks. 20s/6 = time between each application which is 3.33s. The detrimental will still remain on any mob for 5 seconds but if that mob is within 25m when the next detrimental tries to apply 3.33s later it will override.
Enhance: Dark Infestation increase trigger chance by 15% and increase duration by 5 seconds at 5 points. The problem with this spell is that the dot portion cancels once the broodlings spawn. They can trigger by any spell cast in raid which means that they almost instantly spawn. The trigger chance boost is useless for raiding. All you get from this aa is an addition 5sec duration to your broodlings. The broodlings chain cast pbaoes every 2 seconds resulting in two more procs from each broodling that stays alive long enough to tell the tale. The broodlings are weak and die very easily, often fail to hit their targets and do not benefit from the huge amounts of base damage and spell crit bonus that we have these days.
Recommended Configuration: 5 Grasp of Bertoxxulous, 5 Shroud of Bertoxxulous, 5 Gift of Bertoxxulous, 5 Netherealm, 1 Propagation
d) Protection
This is your defensive line in the warlock tree. The first achievement is unique in that you can spend 10 points into Enhance: Magi’s Shielding. This places a regenerating ward on the caster while magi’s shielding is active on the caster. At 10 points the ward is valued at 674 points of all damage. This includes aoes. I recommend to any warlock starting out and getting their first achievements while they are leveling up to put their first 10 points into this ability. Hate me if you want do different if you want. At low levels it is very powerful to take hits like a tank and do caster dps.
The next two achievements are enhancements for our two encounter deaggros. They are self explanatory. Both Enhance: Concussive and Enhance: Nullify improve hate reduction by 35% and reuse speed by 5 seconds at 5 points.
Enhance: Nullmail improves the reuse speed by 100 seconds and duration (post trigger) by 7.5s at 5 points.
Recommended Configuration: 10 Enhance: Magi’s Shielding, 5 Enhance: Nullify, 1 Vacuous
e) Removals
Removals is our debuff line. And offers optional utility. Warlocks have the best class tree in the game offering three solid lines for our primary focus (dps). This leaves little room for any utility abilities.
Enhance: Vacuum Field increases the debuff by 35% of it’s base value at 5 points.
Enhance: Dispel Magic improves our dispel to also affect noxious. Turing our spell into a Dispel Magic/Noxious. This allows you to dispel raid mob buffs such as Innoruuk’s Caress (previously Dark Caress).
Both our curse enhancements boost cast speed by 1 second and improves their debuff strength by 40% at 5 points.
Note: In order to spend any points in Curse of Void you must spend at least 3 points in Enhance: Nullify. You cannot get the 15 required points without spending at least 3 poitns in Curse of Void so you must spend 3 points out of the Removals line to get the end ability.
Volatility is a powerful utility for raids. Sadly there is a whole lot of fail leading up to it. Volatility increases the range and radius of all your spells by 20% and reduces your target’s spell range and radius by 20%. This means that any aoe that your raid has to joust out for has its range reduced by 20%. This allows you to stand outside aoe range w/o taking big damage.
Recommended Configuration: 5 Vacuum Field, 10 anywhere else, 1 Volatility
3. Shadows Tree
Unlike the previous trees which had direct pre-requisite skills, to progress to the next tree you must spend 10 points in the previous tree. In addition, you must spend 60 points to open up the Shadows Mage Line, 120 points to open up the Shadows Sorcerer Line, and 170 points to open up the Shadows Warlock Line. Any points spent in the shadows line count for these requirements. Also, remember that the Base Damage cap of 100% may be reached by individual spells with Base Damage improvement achievements.
General
Most of the general skills are self-explanatory. Several skills relate to tradeskilling, runspeed and harvesting. The only ones that apply any utility towards raiding are Hearty Constitution (Max Health) and Enhanced Mind (Max Power), while runspeed bonuses are an alternate choice, so spend these 10 points here in what you feel most comfortable with among these limited options to open the mage tree.
Mage
The mage tree offers better choices than the general tree for raiding purposes. The top choices are Master’s Strike and Runic protection.
Runic Protection adds approximately 218 hitpoints and 11 defense to Magi's Shielding.
The other achievements in this line are of little use but you must spend 5 more points in something. Your best choice is Master’s Strike. In raids, less than half of encounters are susceptible to Master's Strike, and having the spell up more quickly becomes pointless when you can only cast it once or twice on the mob that you can use it against, with or without points in this skill.
The only other option is Arcane Barrier if your group is typically dying to noxious aoes for some reason but I don’t recommend it.
The other skills in the Mage tree offer no real raid utility. Root is still unused in the raid setting, and Invisible-runspeed is simply unnecessary.
Bewilderment is a useful final line skill, offering a fast-casting, high-damage nuke which may be cast while moving and also reduces hate position by 1. As of GU52 it is considered a profession spell and is recommended to be cast early in the cast order both because it adds solid dps and also because it helps ensure that you won't peel aggro at the beginning of an encounter. You can also adjust it to be cast in fights where positioning is important, to be cast while moving.
Sorcerer
The best options are more dps-related skills, which is a theme of the Shadows line of achievements. The top choices are Sorcery Mastery and Critical Mastery to get the points requires to get Thunderclap and move on to the Warlock line.
The first option is Sorcery Mastery, increases the base and critical damage of Apocalypse by 10%. These stats will be explained in future sections.
The second option is Critical Mastery, which improves critical damage by 5%.
Another achievement in the Sorcerer line that you should add points to is Enhance: Flames of Velious. This should not be done until after you have spent points into the warlock line as those achievements do more for your dps.
We do not use Mana Trickle very often in raids and you do not need to waste important points on this achievement. If you find yourself using this spell a lot to help people with power then they are doing something wrong. This achievement boosts the spell by 15% at 5 points. If you find it desperate to boost this spell that is your call.
Our aggro transfer buff currently supplies 4% hate to our target at master quality. This achievement allows us to boost that hate transfer to 9%. This is useful to some degree but it is not advised to spend points in it.
Sorcerer’s Shielding adds an effect to our Magi’s Shielding which reduces all damge done to caster by 214 damage at 5 points at level 80. This effect stacks with the Enhance: Magi’s Shielding achievement in the Warlock Tree. This is a useful achievement but there are so many other great options that this one is not used for a raid dps spec.
Thunderclap works like Bewilderment but is only damage based. It has the same cast time and does less damage but is on a much shorter reuse timer. This is an extremely valuable spell for repositioning or on fights like growth where you have to move a lot. Also use this spell on mobs that knockback. It can be cast while flying thru the air.
Warlock
Every achievement on this line is useful to raiding in some way. The first two achievements that you should spec into are Corrosion and Destitute.
Corrosion is the most powerful spell enhancement on the tree. It greatly increases the damage of acid by causing subsequent ticks to do additional damage. Picture below shows the data of six separate casts of acid with the achievement. The initial damage of acid is untouched by the achievement but is higher due to +spell damage boosts.
Tick 2 is 15% higher than the base of the initial tick (pre +spell damage boosts).
Tick 3 is 15% higher than tick 2.
Tick 4 is 15% higher than tick 3.
Tick 5 is 15% higher than tick 4.
Ticks 6 and 7 are the same strength as tick 5. The data shown varies based on random generator but you can see the general concept in effect.
Destitute improves the critical damage by 5% and base damage by 10% of Absolution.
After these two are at 5 points you should buy poison mastery and plaguebringer.
Poison mastery improves the damage of all poison based spells by 5% and further reduces the duration of poison based dots. This is important for Acid.
Plaguebringer is our strongest single target nuke and a fast casting one as well. As of GU52 it is considered a profession spell giving it a large boost in dps from before.
After you have the final two abilities you should go back and spend 5 points in Warlock’s Gift increasing base damage of Gift of Bertoxxulous by 75%. As you get base spell damage gear you can remove points from this achievement and place them in other areas.
Poisonous Aura improves the base damage of Nihilistics by 30% at 5 points. This spell is incredibly useful on mobs that have damage shields and on tanks when dealing with large encounters.
Disciple of Bertoxxulous increases your max health by 5% at 5 points.
Noxious Breath increases your noxious mitigation reduction by 15% at 5 points. This stacks with the Enhance: Vacuum Field in the Warlock Tree.
II) Soloing and Leveling Up
When soloing and leveling up I find it very useful to spend points in the regenerating ward enhancement of Magi’s Shielding and the damage reduction in the Shadows Sorcerer Line. After putting 10 points into Magi’s Shielding you should work your way down the Agility line getting AGI 44681 and then going down the Hastenings line as displayed above. Focused Casting is critical for soloing as it adds both a big damage increase as well as immunity to interrupt from any mobs hitting you.
If you want to be even more defensive for leveling up you can go down the stamina line.
Line priorities in order of dps boost:
Based on final setup of:
Sorcerer Tree:
Strength: 4-4-4-8
Agility: 4-4-6-8-1
Wisdom: 4-7-4-8-1
Other two trees same as final raid setup listed above.
This is the achievement setup for those who are not capped on spell crit. Leveling up and working on getting your achievement points up you will most likely not be capped on spell crit.
Sorcerer: Agility
25pts
Warlock: Hastenings
46pts
Warlock: Explosive
67pts
Sorcerer: Wisdom
92pts
Sorcerer: Strength
112pts
(at this point Shadows Mage+Sorcerer line boosts are better so you must throw some points into general)
Shadows: General
122pts
Shadows: Mage
133pts
Shadows: Sorcerer
144pts
Warlock: Propagation
165pts
Warlock: Explosive (5pts into Dark Nebula)
170pts
Warlock: Removals (2pts into Vacuum Field)
172pts
Shadows: Warlock
Continue to respect removing the achievements from Vacuum Field, Dark Nebula and Propagation line until you have 5 points in Destitute, Corrosion and have both final abilities.
After that fill everything back in filling out all three trees with the final spec listed.
Remember, you can change your achievement spec for pretty cheap, and there's always a Mirror of Reflected Achievements should you want to save something while trying out another spec.
Part I: Achievements
