As always, the latest version is at Elitist Jerks, but this should get you started.
A note on the Compendium itself
Finding, compiling, formatting and reposting all this information is a LOT of work.
Consider this post a work in progress for the coming days(or weeks even).
I´m personally thankful for any comments, useful additions, gear set changes and stupid questions(preferably into Warlock: Simple Questions/Simple Answers) - keeping track of it all is very time consuming.
Setting up the BiS gear set is always a lot of work - I've already done it once for 3.2 and now I've done the initial versions for 3.3 so people have something to work with.
I would rather wait for the promised warlock buffs(as of 7.1.2010) but before that happens people should know the good choices of gear already and into which stats they should invest.
A note on the Compendiums goals(and the reason why I write it):
People do not come to EJ to get ultimate answers - you come here to understand the fundamentals and get better knowledge on your class.
"Tell me, what spec does best DPS and what glyphs shall I use".
That is not a question you can answer or this Compendium will answer for you. Specs perform different per encounter, per task you take and per gear you have.
Understanding the ups and downs each spec has over another, the benefits and drawbacks - that is what this Compendium is trying to teach you in short version. We seek to answer questions with prove, not with sarcasm and ignorance.
Simcraft is but a guideline and a tool. Using it to get numbers is great, being able to analyse those numbers and make educated suggestions from them is a gift. Simcraft is NOT the ultimate answer, keep that in mind when you discuss numbers.
Pre-emptive information
Destruction
I have tested through 3/13/55 and 0/18/53 - they both have worse results than 0/13/58.
You will find a comparison with all options(gear and glyph) for 18/53 further down in the Compendium.
Affliction
56/0/15 outperforms 55/0/16 in most(thats like 90%) of the samples I took.
I will list both - but I suggest to take the 56/0/15 spec as affliction.
Demonology
We have tested through pDPS and rDPS simulations of 56/15. For the sake of interest, I will keep both.
56_15p will refer to the build that optimizes on personal damage only, with less raid benefit.
56_15r will refer to the build that is specifically optimized to offer high raid gain(Demonic Pact) while keeping the personal DPS loss at a minimum.
Regards to Warlcomotif for this optimized build, you can also read up on the details here and here.
I will test through the pDPS profile soon again.
Patchwerk comparison
DPS ranking is down for the time being - Demo and raid needs a proper recalc.
I will probably do a total recalc once 3.3.2 and LK loot is out.
I'm not a friend of telling someone "this is the spec you should have" - Blizzard ideology wants all specs to be viable and certain specs have benefits over others depending on the circumstances.
A few notable examples:
Affliction 56_00_15 and 55_00_16 differ themselves in play style only in the way they regain mana. LT vs DP.
However, if you let your pet die in the DP spec, you loose the benefit that spec brought with itself and have to resort to LT - which relies on very different stats on your gear.
Destruction 13_58 and 18_53 are literally identical in playstyle, but 18_53s Soul Link might be a necessary benefit in a fight.
1] BiS gear choices
I added the gear sets I found best onto WoWhead. These are suspect to change still as myself and other volunteers optimize them as good as we can. They do NOT include any LK loot.
You will find the currently most updated version on the Simcraft homepage.
Note:
Why Tusker's Vitality?
It is a personal believe that movement speed will increase your DPS on many fights over just damage.
I'm getting strange hit ratings.
The hit ratings are all very fine - it is WoWhead that at times displays wrong numbers.
The affliction profiles are just under hit cap - there is no other way to fill it up with items.
The destruction profile is slightly over hit cap - it uses 2x10 hit gems though which any alliance character can safely remove.
Affliction 56/00/15
Affliction 55/00/16
Destruction 00/13/58
Demonology 00/56/15 pDPS
Demonology 00/56/15 rDPS
Has anything changed from 3.2?
One of the noteworthy things is that Destruction gains barely any benefit from the LT glyph.
In fact, running it with Imp or Immolate as 3rd glyph instead gives small gains.
We will retest this matter though before we give a final suggestion.(This is likely to be affected with the incoming changes aswell)
The Demonology changes to Decimation and Molten Core greatly affect the playstyle(courtesy of Warlocomotif and Turturin):
Decimation
As of 3.3 the buff simply lasts for it's duration, it's not consumed, and throughout it's duration you can spam Soul Fire. That means that if you proc Decimation on an add and it dies, you can continue decimation for a short while on the next DPS target. This eliminates Soul Fire- shadow bolt weaving and range issues under 35%. Soul Fire can be spammed at that point while continuing to maintain corruption and immolate on the target as a priority
To get the most out of decimation, the first thing you'll want to do is get some kind of addon to tell you when it procs.
Something to keep an eye on is that if decimation expires while you're casting Soul Fire, the soulfire *will* consume a Soul Shard. It's okay if this happens once, but if it happens a lot its going to cost you a lot of soulshards in a talent spec that requires 1 soulshard for every wipe already anyway.
Molten Core
If the boss is above 35% one should switch to incinerate (from shadowbolt) when Molten Core procs until all charges are used (it can proc over itself so its not always 3).
If you fancy a more visual explanation, Optec has made great movie about Demonology here.
What stats should I focus on?
Anything that has spell power and haste is good, take crit/spirit based on the specs.
A noteworthy thing to know is:
00/13/58 and 56/00/15 both are almost identical in gear, focusing on crit as the 3rd stat.
55/00/16 and 00/56/15r use spirit over crit items.
What are the awesome items you should focus on?
All specs:
[Dislodged Foreign Object]
[Rigormortis]
Death Surgeon's Sleeves (granted, ICC lacks a SP/haste/crit bracer)
All but the rDPS Demo:
[Shadow Silk Spindle]
[Crushing Coldwraith Belt]
[Corpse-Impaling Spike]
2] The Trinket Discussion
For now I will disregard scaling values - unlike in the 3.2 version - and just compile the BiS profiles without and with single trinkets + the best possible combination. So in short, I run the BiS profile without any trinket - get a base DPS.
Then I add all trinkets, 1 by 1 on their own, take their values. And as last step I compile the top 2-3 combinations to see which comes out best. Adding the best 2 single trinkets together does not mean that together they will be the best option.
Demonology 00/56/15 pDPS
| Dislodged_277 + Phylactery_277 |
12004 |
| Dislodged_277 + Reign_258 |
11956 |
| Dislodged Foreign Object_277 |
11477 |
| Dislodged Foreign Object_264 |
11402 |
| Phylactery_277 |
11355 |
| Reign of the Dead_258 |
11321 |
| Muradin's Spyglass_264 |
11307 |
| Phylactery_264 |
11293 |
| Reign of the Dead_245 |
11275 |
| Muradin's Spyglass_251 |
11247 |
| Nevermelting Ice |
11077 |
| No trinkets at all |
10847 |
Destruction 00/13/58
| Dislodged_277 + Reign_258 |
11676 |
| Dislodged_277 + Phylactery_277 |
11640 |
| Double Reign |
11462 |
| Dislodged Foreign Object_277 |
11047 |
| Dislodged Foreign Object_264 |
10981 |
| Reign of the Dead_258 |
10957 |
| Phylactery_277 |
10924 |
| Reign of the Dead_245 |
10887 |
| Muradin's Spyglass_264 |
10870 |
| Phylactery_264 |
10862 |
| Muradin's Spyglass_251 |
10808 |
| Nevermelting Ice |
10602 |
| No trinkets at all |
10364 |
3] General noteworthy posts and information
How much are the set bonuses worth?
For this question I ran the BiS profiles with the respective options and manually disabled the 2pc/4pc bonuses.
Please be aware, this only gives us numbers that apply to the BiS sets - so I also added the %-deviation.
While the "_no2" parse is impossible to create, it serves it's job as recheck.
| Spec |
DPS |
% |
Deviation from max |
| 56_00_15 |
13298 |
100% |
0 |
| 56_00_15_no2 |
13050 |
98,1% |
248 |
| 56_00_15_no4 |
12914 |
97,1% |
384 |
| 56_00_15_no2_no4 |
12683 |
95,4% |
615 => 2pc = 231 |
| Spec |
DPS |
% |
Deviation from max |
| 55_00_16 |
13178 |
100% |
0 |
| 55_00_16_no2 |
12937 |
98,2% |
241 |
| 55_00_16_no4 |
12812 |
97,2% |
366 |
| 55_00_16_no2_no4 |
12571 |
95,4% |
607 => 2pc = 241 |
| Spec |
DPS |
% |
Deviation from max |
| 00_13_58 |
11676 |
100% |
0 |
| 00_13_58_no4 |
11242 |
96,3% |
434 |
| 00_13_58_no2_no4 |
11079 |
94,9% |
597 => 2pc = 163 |
| 00_13_58_no2 |
11509 |
98,6% |
167 |
Which gear pieces should I swap out first?
This is a personal suggestion, so please take it with a grain of salt:
With T10 gearing, we want to focus as on as much haste as possible as it benefits all 3 specs best(after SP).
The ideal items to replace, granted you had access to full T9 and TotGC gear would therefore be:
Head(spirit -> haste), Shoulder(spirit -> haste), Hands(crit -> haste), Chest(hit/spit -> crit/haste).
I personally use
[Skyweaver Vestments] as the off piece on my warlock - as many others also do.
The first switch I made was head/shoulders - trading an awful lot of spirit to haste.(155 emblems)
The BiS T10 gearing suggests to get legs/hands as off piece.
The problematic switch with T9 to T10 is chest and legs.
T9 chest has hit/spirit - T10 chest crit/haste. T9 legs have crit/haste - T10 legs have hit/crit.
Whichever piece you switch out - you either gain useless hit or loose a lot of hit in the process.
I therefore suggest you wait with badges till you can make a double swap of chest/legs(that's 190 emblems) and then take the off piece gloves. It sounds like an awful trade off - but so far this is the best solution I found.
Another reason to buy head/shoulders first is the fact that they are parts in all possible specs.
How does 4p T9 245/258 compare to 2p T10 251/264 and 2p T9?
<tba>
Note: This is a hard one, I appreciate input with live gear sets tested.
Tell me something about T10 4p bonus
It does not have any ICD as of 27.1.2010.
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/187....
Which off gear pieces should I aim for?
There is only the gloves and the legs one should set his eyes on - it will be down to personal preference and demand.
[Gunship Captain's Mittens]
[Plaguebringer's Stained Pants]
Affliction uses either of the 2 items - both result in very much the same gain.
Destruction does currently not use any off-part because of the haste-issue - we will look into it and see if we can make a good suggestion there as well.
Demonology pDPS does not use any offpiece either right now - but this profile is suspect to change still.
Alternative gear list - swappable parts
All these suggestions are within minimal changes to the BiS list.
Just for the records, in case of the
back - TotGC Insanity cloaks will obviously do their job as well.
Please keep the spec specific guidelines in mind. If for example you happen to get a lot of spirit gear - 56_00_15 will perform worse than 55_00_16 with it.
Why is Nevermelting Ice Crystal so good for Affliction?
Haste and spell power reset when Corruption is refreshed. However as of now(7.1.2010) crit is not.
So if you, as an arbitrary example, have 100% crit, cast Corruption and then drop down to 0% crit - your Corruption will keep rolling with 100%. NIC adds 20% crit - which is a lot and therefore ups your Corruption DPS by quite a bit.
Addition:
A good example can be found
here where a player compares Abyssal Rune to NIC.
Abyssal rune:
corruption Count= 1.1|448.86sec DPE=877393|24% DPET=659783 DPR=1730.6 pDPS=1975 Miss=0.00% TickCount=209 MissTick=0.0% Tick=3141|2221|4050 CritTick=6564|4641|8466|
45.9%
Nevermelting Ice Crystal:
corruption Count= 1.1|447.27sec DPE=1016073|26% DPET=751274 DPR=2004.1 pDPS=2201 Miss=0.00% TickCount=205 MissTick=0.0% Tick=3128|2277|3680 CritTick=6531|4760|7690|
65.7%
This is a valid game mechanic as stated per
Blue-Post.
Why Crit as 3rd stat in 56_00_15(compared to 55_00_16)?
The thing with 56/00/15 is, spirit only affects your glyph of LT in this spec.
In 55/00/16 you use LT to get mana, in 56/00/15 you use DP.
LT scales on spirit, DP scales on SP.
So, spirit looses a LOT of value for 56/00/15.
The
[Glyph of Life Tap] however still works with DP, which grants you a steady gain in SP - and my tests found that all other possible glyphs are just way worse.
Why 00_13_58 over other warlock specs?
Issue 211 - simulationcraft - Warlock T10 profiles - Project Hosting on Google Code
Please check this comparison of specs - it includes detailed scalings as well.
Which spell for AoE?
There is a lengthy maths post starting
here that goes through numbers but the current answer would be, if you AoE - then
use Seed of Corruption over Rain of Fire.
Situational differences(like increased fire damage taken etc.. aside).
How to Affliction at the start of the fight - with [Nevermelting Ice Crystal]
X.
Additional pre tasks Use a weapon with high crit. Get a mage to give you Focus Magic(which he can then place on anyone else). Get a rogue to give you Tricks of the Trade.
0.
Pre-combat Life Tap Rank 1 - spellpower boost, if you have the Glyph, which is still worth it.
1.
Pre-combat [Potion of Wild Magic] (5% crit, pre-combat to allow for another potion during Bloodlust/Heroism).
2.
Shadow Bolt (Applies 5% crit Shadow Mastery, only need one. First stack of Shadow Embrace).
3.
Haunt (Applies 28% glyphed damage boost to shadow. Second stack of Shadow Embrace).
3a.
Haunt is travelling now. Gently.
4.
Curse of Agony or
Unstable Affliction. Which spell you choose here will depend on the fight, your latency, your distance from the target, etc.
5.
Activate [Nevermelting Ice Crystal]. Gives you a 5-stack buff that amounts to 20% crit at 5 stacks. Yay. You don't want to activate the
[Nevermelting Ice Crystal] until
after Haunt lands, because Haunt can crit, and remove one stack of the NMIC's buff (4% crit).
This is not theoretical: It happens! Proc NMIC after Haunt lands if you want the full 20% crit.
6.
Corruption. By now, you should have 39% more crit than your base: 9% malediction, 5% potion, 5% ISB, 20% NMIC.
7.
UA or CoA, whichever you didn't cast earlier.
8. Rotation.
Thanks to
Aaryndon and
Ralimenua for this addition.
Notes for retests:
I run the 95% of the tests with Latency low, 1000 iterations, 300 secs, 0% vary length, patchwerk style and player skill elite. For the other 5% I use 10000 iterations - which usually doesn't give any different results though.
Be careful when doing a WoWhead profile and blindly importing.
Socket bonuses are not found on some items, sockets can be missing and some items are still not properly imported in the current Simcraft release (V7).