Shadow Puppets

On the Warlocks Den forums, I found an interesting post the other day that got me thinking. The forum post is found here: http://wowmb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=26423&highlight=Affliction. Essentially, CanadianPimp talks about using WWS to work out where you are lacking in a fight, what you missed out on doing, etc. I wanted to focus on one point that he made, and that is: DoT Uptime.

(Using my WWS Report thats found here http://wowwebstats.com/qe1yqf4ls4zdk) as a working example.

Looking at the above image, we can see that my DPS time was 4 minutes and 45 seconds. This translates into 285 seconds.
All DoTs tick every 3 seconds, so we divide the number of seconds by 3 to see how many ticks we should have.

285 / 3 = 95

Now we look at the actual amount of DoT ticks I had, per DoT:

Corruption: 89 [93.6%]
Siphon Life: 92 [96.8%]
Unstable Affliction: 87 [91.5%]

In a perfect world, all these DoTs would have had 95 ticks, however, circumstances do change. Two Dots might finish at the same time, one might finish in the middle of a ShadowBolt cast, or during a GCD. I am happy enough with these results, even though I do understand that they are not a real world example. I will be recording all Boss Fights from here out, and will attempt to analyse them in the same way.

What is a good number to aim for? I can’t really answer that, since I haven’t collected any actual boss-fight data, and I dont want to use just my Dr Boom test. Currently, I am going to be aiming for a 90% DoT Uptime, since that’s my bread and butter as Affliction. I won’t cancel a current SB cast to refresh a DoT, nor will I refresh a DoT that hasn’t expired yet. I was fortunate in this test in that I rarely got two DoTs finishing at the same time. I will see tonight before shutdown what happens when I introduce Immolate into the equation.

Something wrong with my math? Did I assume and make an ass of myself? Let me know!

As you may have read around the internets, the biggest DPS spec for raiding warlocks is the DS/SnF spec. This goes into the Demonology tree far enough to get Demonic Sacrifice, and takes the other 40 points in the Destruction tree, ending up with 5/5 in Shadow and Flame. The basis behind this spec is to sacrifice your Succubus for the 15% Shadow damage boost, and spam Shadowbolts all day long (with the obligatory Curse of Shadows). I have been an Aff-lock for a long time now, occasionally flirting with a Felguard spec, but I haven’t had the guts to try the DS/SnF spec, fearing my crit chance wasn’t high enough (at a self-buffed afflock spec of 11.39%, I am right).

Last night, I had nothing important to do after dailies, so I headed out to Dr. Boom and proceeded to wail away.

The parameters I had set for myself were:

1. Only curse with Curse of Shadows
2. Only Shadow spells to be used
3. Test will run for the duration of one (1) Curse of Shadows (5 minutes)
4. DS/SnF spec will be 0/21/40 - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZbxszIbzZEx0tr0khhi
5. Afflock spec will be 41/2/18 - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IVMrcRctVtcokZxx0tM [Edit: fixed]

DS/SnF

This test was probably the least Real-World in my eyes, as I didn’t move from my safe spot in the entire 5 minutes. In theory, it would also be the most boring, too, but the reality was I was squeaking over Vent about my 5600 Shadowbolt crits, especially when I crit two or even three times in a row. With the DS/SnF spec, my crit got up to just over 14%, which is still waaaaay too low.
Link to WWS Report
The problem with this test is that WWS shows the fight going for 9 minutes. I had a false start and ended up waiting for a long time for an Orc Hunter to kill him off, but after a few minutes I realised that it wouldn’t make any difference if he was attacking the good Doctor at the same time.
DPS: 870
SB%: 100%
Crit%: 17%
Miss: 3.8%

Afflock

Normally, I include Immolate in my rotation, but for this test, I wanted only to use Shadow spells. Affliction has the additional bonus to the Curse of Shadows, making it 13% instead of the normal 10% increase to shadow damage. In my Affliction spec, I have Dark Pact (less healing from Life Taps required) and I still have Improved Shadow Bolt.
Link to WWS Report
I have had the most experience with this style of fighting. Most of my DoTs are Instant cast, meaning I can cast them on the run, if I need to be.
DPS: 823
SB%: 53%
Crit%: 15%
Miss: 0

Conclusion

For an increase of 47DPS, I make myself more vunerable to lost DPS in mobile fights, lose alot of raid buffs/debuffs. At my current gear level, I will be staying Afflock specced (and to be honest, if I can raid in Tier 5/6 raids as Affliction, I will). Although, I will be recording data from boss fights as much as I can from now on, so I may find that DS/SnF is better in the long term.

PS: An interesting thing to note is that as DS/SnF, my tooltip crit chance is 14.56%, and WWS showed me critting 17% of the time. Whereas as Affliction, my tooltip crit is 11.39% and WWS said I critted 15% of the time (granted, I cast less SBs as Aff than DS/SnF).

Newly-minted level 70 Warlocks are generally wanting to run Karazhan and Heroics straight away, in order to get “teh phat purp lewtz”. But unless you have been doing your research and gearing for these events in your travels to hit the level cap, you aren’t ready.

It’s been explained in alot of places, by lots of people. WowWiki has a good write up on it, found here. In essence, though, Warlocks are going to want to have a +Spell Hit Rating of 202 to reach the ‘cap’ (Against a level 73 raid boss, you have a 17% chance to miss. 202 HR gives you +16% chance to hit, leaving the unavaiodable 1% to miss). Affliction Warlocks can put 5/5 into Suppression, a Tier-1 Affliction talent, but this only affects Affliction spells (Curses, Corruption, Drains, etc). Now, you can go into Kara without having hit this cap, but you should gear for spell hit first and foremost, because it does most definately improve your DPS; whatever spec you may be.

I have been striving to hit the cap, gemming everything I have that has a socket with +8 Spell hit gems, and slowly obtaining gear that brings me up. On Friday night, I got the last piece of gear that brings me to the lofty peaks of Spell Hit Rating.

Moroes was kind enough to drop Brooch of Unquenchable Fury, which has a healthy +spell hit rating of 15. Combined with my gems and my Jewel of Infinite Possibilities, I now have 206 spell hit rating (slightly over the cap).

I am not going to be re-gemming my gear anytime soon, because until I get more gear that has +spell hit, if I take out a +8 spell hit gem, then I go below the cap again, and I am worse of than I am now. However, my main focus is now changed to be +spell crit and +spell damage (and maybe +spell haste). My low, low crit rating of 11.30% is shocking, so I won’t be able to try out the Shadow Mage spec just yet, but soon, with some ZA, TK and SSC runs, I could be in a position to start killing off my Succubus.

Sorry for not writing much of late, have had things crop up both at work and at home that have prevented me from doing anything interesting enough to write about. Sure, I could describe how I do my dailies, since that’s about all I can commit to doing on WoW, but it wouldn’t be very interesting to most people.

I did get pulled into a Magtheridon attempt on Friday night, and was one of only two warlocks there. Both of us kept getting yelled at for not taking care of the Infernals, even though we tried to explain that we can only Banish one at a time, and Fear one at a time, and that doing this eats into our DPS considerably. As this was a guild/pug group, due to us not having the numbers on the night, we kept having difficulty taking down the last two warlocks, and the main tank wasn’t grabbing aggro from Mags fast enough, so he always went for a healer as soon as he released. Not a fun time, really. Hopefully, we can get a few more guildies to come with next time, who understand each others skills and limitations.

I have been levelling my baby shaman up, with the intent of having her as a raid healer at 70. Currently, she is Elemental spec, but at level 40 I want to take her to Enhancement with Duel Wield. Once I have done my dailies (or all the dailies I can stand to do) on Shastarian, I generally log onto her for an hour or so until RL intervenes.

Patch 2.4.3? I dunno, let’s see what the FINAL patch notes are. I will be holding off buying my shaman her mount, even if she hits 40 before the patch comes out, just for the chance of a reduction in mount training cost. That’s about all that interests me (I am unsure if the CoS/CoEl change will stay).

Thanks for sticking with me over this break. I promise you that I will try and do something interesting enough to write about in the future. Maybe even try my hand at some Pee Vee Pee!

Since hitting level 70 with Shastarian, I have been looking forwards to raiding. Having never had to opportunity to raid pre-Burning Crusade, I was very excited about seeing Karazhan: not so much for the loot, but for the chance to see content that some people wouldn’t see. Obviously, Karazhan is no Mount Hyjal or Sunwell Plateau, but still, it was exciting. I didn’t stop giggling from entering the gates for the first time, all the way through downing Attumen and getting my first piece of epic-quality loot, and even through the 4 or 5 wipes on Moroes before calling it, until about 3 days later.

Having been through Karazhan many times since then, and being able to confidently down every boss (save Nightbane) each week, I can still say that going to Kara is just as exciting as it was way back then.

Every gearing guide I have read says that the priority for stats for the raiding Warlock are something like the following (assuming Affliction spec):
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Last night, I went through Zul’Gurub on my level 64 rogue with his guild for a non-serious, fun raid. We had a few level 70’s, and a mish-mash of people from 62+. It was more focused on giving people who haven’t had a chance to raid yet a chance to see what it’s like. It was also my first experience with raiding on my rogue, as well as raiding with this guild. I was curious to see how it would go.

Zul’Gurub is a level 60+, 25-man raid instance in Stranglethorn Vale. It’s much like Zul’Farrak, in that it’s Troll based, and an outdoor instance, so mounting is available. It also has ties, lore-wise, to Sunken Temple, but that’s neither here nor there. For strategies, lore and other information, go check out wowwiki.com/ZG

Most of the mobs are level 60-62, as is the norm with a raid instance set for level 60’s. I had no issues with hitting these guys (being level 64 and having enough +Hit raiting), although some of them were able to resist my poisons pretty well. We didn’t have any troubles with our DPS or healing, although the tank was finding it difficult to hold aggro. We didn’t down every single boss, and alot of the raid died to Hakkar (deciding to DPS him down quick instead of getting poisoned and doing it the normal way). In any event, a fun time was had by all.

We had a level 70 warlock with us who was carrying some gear that made me scratch my head. I didn’t want to talk to him about it, since I haven’t been with this guild for very long and don’t want to come across as a know-it-all, but maybe I should.

This warlock has a mixture of quest greens and blues for gear. Their mainhand weapon is a sword, which is fair enough. Shastarian Herself ran with the Greatsword from Murmur for awhile before getting her Mindblade.
This sword, however, was this: Edge of the Cosmos. With an Icy enchant.

About the only time I ever melee since level 10 or so is during Kara, with those annoying mobs after Curator who you can’t cast spells on. Sometimes I’ll whale on a banished mob, just to be funny, but I won’t go out of my way to gear for melee. I don’t know of any warlock who does. If we wanted to be melee casters, we would have rolled shaman.

Now, to be fair, I haven’t spoken with this warlock about it. He may have a very nice caster weapon that he uses for important stuff, and just pulls this Edge out for silly occasions. I myself am planning on roll on the Suneater from Heroic Mechanar if I am ever there with a group who doesnt need it (one of our tanks has ground his way to Exalted by running through there, waiting for it to drop, so if I can get it, I will tease him with it) but I certainly wont be trying to raid with it, or even do my dailies.

What would you do in a situation like this? It doesn’t directly affect me, since I don’t raid with this guild (yet) on my warlock, but I do feel a responsibility to help this warlock learn abit more about his class. Im confused. Any ideas?

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, we have been kept quite busy on the home front, and when I get a chance to spend some time on the computer, I tend to actually play rather than blog. Hopefully, I can change that situation in the near future.

With the exception of the previously-mentioned Quagmirran’s Eye trinket, I am now fully epic’d out. I only had a few pieces of gear to obtain for me to get to this position, and I collected them in various ways over the weekend.

Friday Night - Karazhan

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I was running Heroics with some guildies the other day, and we were in Slave Pens. I can remember doing this instance pre-70 on Normal, and thinking it was abig blah, to tell the truth. Anyway, Heroic isn’t much better, but we got through it OK.

The end boss decided that he was going to drop his Eye, which gives the following stats:
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 37
Equip: Your harmful spells have a chance to increase your spell haste rating by 320 for 6 seconds

The +spell damage is nice, and is the reason I rolled on this trinket, even though it’s only a rare. I haven’t had a whole lot to do with +spell haste until now …

I’m still hoping to get out to Dr Boom and do some tests with this trinket, test it’s proc rate for myself, etc, but here is the lowdown so far, based off running Heroic Underbog last night and Gruul’s on the weekend:
It procs off Shadowbolt hits, Dot hits (not ticks, as far as I can tell), anything that can be called a “harmful spell”. Lasting only 6 seconds, it changes my ShadowBolt cast time from 2.5 seconds to 2.06 seconds. Not a great deal, I hear you say, but that’s .44 seconds that can add up over time.
The proc rate is kinda low. When I get to have a go at Dr. Boom, I’ll have a better idea of it’s proc rate and DPS increases/decreases.

Looking in my bank now, I have 4 trinkets that are sitting there. I can’t bring myself to throw any of the them away, because some are situationally useful. There’s one that’s just an on-use +spell damage, one that increases my +spell crit rating and gives an on-crit-hit chance to increase spell damage by 225, and my Violet Eye Trinket, with +36 stam and +45 arcane resistance (made for Curator).

It’s all a juggling game, trying to work out what fights you might be facing, and which trinkets will help the most. I normally take the trinkets with me to every fight, just in case, but it’s eating into bag space.

Has anyone had any experience with Quag’s Eye? Is it worth holding onto, since I will be (eventually) getting some other +spell haste gear? Or shoudl I bench it until later on in the game/permanently?

Hi Everybody! Your favourite friendly druid is back, feeling much better, thanks for asking! Oh Boy, have I got some news for You!

When I was feeling better, I went to Stormwind to see what those old guys could teach me. One of them, when I asked him what he could teach me, made a really rude comment! I couldn’t believe it! I went to the Union and told them about it, and they laughed at me, and said “it’s the only way to get ahead in this game, sister”. Can you believe it! Not only is it rude and digusting, but a dirty, pervy dwarf calling me “sister”? Eww. Gross.

I shifted into travel form and ran away, crying. Somehow, I ended up at the enchanter’s store, where some very nice people gave me a drink and calmed me down. One young man offered to go to Old Town and sort those perv’s out, but I said that’s OK. My mum always said “Lost business hurts more than a face-pounding”. We started talking about what they did (enchanting teachers) and why they liked it (playing with magic and destroying things, apparently it’s safer than Engineering), and so I dropped that dirty leatherworking and started my training as an Enchanter! I kept skinning, though, because I like to say my little goodbyes to the animals that I have to kill.

They told me that I would have to get some pretty good items and do whats called “disenchant” them (which basically means I get to break it apart with some magic and see what it’s made of), and I use whats left to enchant other good items. I didn’t have any good stuff in my bags that I could disenchant right away, and they said that a good place to go for starters is Deadmines. Being a fair way along my Pathway, I didn’t have any troubles at all, sneaking in past all the meanines, and taking out the bosses that drop the good stuff. Trix laughed when I told her what I was doing, and said that that is called “assassinating“, but I don’t think it is, that sounds like a meanie thing to do, and I’m not a meanie!

I kinda got bored going through Deadmines, so I headed up north to a place that I had heard about called ShadowFang Keep, which is a really gloomy place. On the way there, I reached my 40th level of my Path, which I was very excited about. Finally, I’m mature enough to learn how to ride a tiger! Yay! I went to Moonglade, and learned my new skills (the big one of which was learning how to upgrade my Bear form into a bigger bear, called Dire Bear), and then flew to Darnassus where I said Hi to Mum and Dad. We caught up on things, and they congratulated me on reaching 40, and we all went out to choose a Sabre for me. I ended up picked the cutest little Striped Frostsaber, he is so adorable! He’s actually faster than I am when I”m in travel form, even with me on his back!

I did make it to ShadowFang Keep, and yeah. When everyone said it was gloomy, they weren’y kidding. It’s filled with these weird wolf-men and dead people who aren’t really dead. I am able to sneak through there like I did at Deadmines, but sometimes I just get so annoyed with being there that I turn into a Dire Bear and take out the lot of them. I don’t think I’m a meanie for doing it, since they are evil and everything.

My big plan was to stay tanking until I was old enough to go to that new planet everyone is talking about, Outland, and then change to be a healer. But, after talking with an awesome druid called Sepai, and having a tanking experience in a mine called Uldaman (I did a totally awesome job, everyone said so, even though, well, see below for details), I have decided to stay tanking until I finish my Pathway, and see if I like it then.

So yea, we went to Uldaman. I was doing the best job at tanking, we didn’t die once or even get close to it, and everything was going smooth. We got to this big lady giant, called Ironaya, when all of a sudden, the Universe froze. Trix and I didn’t know what was going on, people were complaining about “Damn Patches” and “Rolling Restarts”, but I don’t understand any of that. I do know that when the Universe started again, it wasn’t normal enough to keep going, so we decided to come back another time.

I have a quest to do in Scarlet Monestary, but Trix won’t come with me. She says that last time she was there, some old monk grabbed her … you know, … her bum (*giggle*), and she had to cool him off with a Frostbolt or seven. I said to her “they can grab all the bear butt they want, I’ll Swipe ‘em!”.

I’ll be doing alot of travelling nowadays, having a mount and all, so Trix and I will get to see alot of the world. If you see us in our travels, don’t be shy! Say Hi!

(omg, Trix, I’m a poet!)

Bye!!

- Shasmo

It never rains, it pours.

I’ve been asked to pass on a message from Shasmo, who has been sick lately, and so hasn’t been playing at all. Here is it:

Hi! I’ve been quiet lately, as you may have noticed *giggle*, that’s because i’ve been sick, and can’t come out of the Inn that I’m at. I should be better soon, though, thanks for asking!

My bestest best friend, Trixiana, has learned how to ride one of those big, scary-loking elekks! She’s gotten to level 40 in her Pathway, and I don’t think she’s let that poor elekk rest since she bought him! I wanted to go for a ride on him, but I need to learn how first, and they won’t let me learn until I get to MY level 40. *pouts*

Thanks for all your cards (Shastarian, I’m looking at you, you cutey-pie!) and I’ll see ya round the countryside!!

Shastarian went through Heroic Mechanar last night again, to help out a guildie who has been trying for his Sun Eater for the past four weeks, and alas: it still didn’t drop for him. Nothing of note was looted, and all was sharded. I did an OK job on the enslaves this time, but I was on another PC and didn’t have my macros set up, so I was working double-time to get it working.

Why am I on another PC?

The video card in my computer (Ati Radeon 2600XT) has always had issues, and the night before last, I updated the drivers, and so it decided to not work at all. I can load up WoW, get into the game, but as soon as I attempt to move, the GPU craps itself.

So, for the next couple of days (read: weeks), I will be without a computer of my own to play WoW on. Couple that with an email from Blizzard saying my time is about to expire, and I think I’m going to miss our 25-man foray into Gruul’s Lair with Knights of Honour.

Hence, I might go silent for awhile, until I have something new to write about. It’s not you! It’s me!

(Oh, respecced last night to a 44/0/17 Raiding Support build, now all I need is a computer and a raid to test it out on :P)