My (soon to be irrelevant) warlocking article
As some of you know and even a few actually care, my main played character on World of Warcraft is a warlock. Prior to the sweeping changes that were made with the major patch that was released towards the end of October, I had achieved a certain noteriety for providing high damage-per-second (DPS) in raids. After the patch, well... not so much. I eventually figured out what I wanted to do with it and wrote an article to help fellow warlocks. A patch last Tuesday made a significant change in my play experience and I updated my article. I thought I'd post it here as well.
Of course, on Thursday, Wrath of the Litch King is released, the level cap raises to 80, and none of this matters because ten more levels is ten more talent points, not to mention there will be new ranks of old skills and the new "Welcome to the level cap" skill (which I haven't looked up) will turn this all on its head.
But anyway, if you'd like to poke around in my theorycrafting, by all means continue past the cut.
Warlocking post patch 3.0.2
by Celadrithien, Warlock for the Tamarack Order, Earthen Ring-US
I've done a lot of respeccing since the patch dropped, and my general reaction to the warlock changes was *dismay*.
Now, I'm new to Warcraft (relatively) and I've gotten an awful lot of "meh, it's just what mages had to deal with after TBC" and "Warlocks were OP anyway." Maybe that's true on both counts, but I gotta say it's really painful having invested as much time and effort and gold into my main character to have her gimped so severely.
I'm kind of holding out hopes that those last 10 talent points we'll get at level 80 will fix the problems. However, in the mean time, it looks like the only viable spec for people not all decked out in T6 gear is affliction.
From some testing I read about over on elitistjerks.com:
Now, I'm not sure if that number at the end is supposed to be DPS, or if it's just some sum of status number that the simulation uses to rank things. They simulate perfect conditions - perfect gear, perfect rotation, perfect raid buffs, yadda yadda.
My own testing (what little I have been able to do with the massively unstable servers thus far) has borne this out, however. Affliction was the last spec I tried, because I thought that the DPS from Destruction's new Chaos Bolt would reign supreme (it is epic fail) and then after that I thought that the new Demonology Metamorphosis talent with its buff to damage as well as other nifty abilities would give me the DPS I was missing (It doesn't - it's a lot of fun, and would probably make a great leveling spec from 70-80 if you're not going to raid, but for raiding, 30s duration 3m cooldown = fail). So, somewhat begrudgingly I returned to Affliction - begrudgingly because Affliction has been horribly gimped as long as I've been playing Warcraft, from a purely raiding perspective.
However, the introduction of the new 51 point Affliction talent, Haunt, and some mechanics changes and tree re-arranging makes Affliction not only viable, but actually elevates it to the raiding spec of choice, at least until WotLK is out and we get more talent points to play with. Your mileage may vary, but here's what I'm going with:
Celadrithien's 56/0/5 Affliction Build
Some points I wouldn't have spent if I'd had the choice, but needed them to get deeper in the tree. I'll try to explain my logic for what talents I chose.
On Tier 1, I'm skipping Improved CoA, because I won't be casting CoA and the points are better used elsewhere. Filling up the rest for the increased hit chance & lowered mana cost, and extra Corruption damage.
On Tier 2, skipping Frailty because I never cast CoW or CoR (I used to use CoR for controlling feared mobs in instances, but it doesn't cancel fear effects any more, and even if it did, I wouldn't care about the stat the talent improves.) Filling up the rest of the talents - this is a nice tier with good benefits from 2-point investments. Especially nice is the threat reduction for Affliction spells from Imp Drain Soul.
On Tier 3, we have a big ol' bag of useless. I needed 1 point to get deeper, so I threw it into the completely changed and now almost completely pointless 'Amplify Curse', which no longer actually amplifies anything, but reduces the GCD on your curses. lolwhut?
On Tier 4, I'm skipping Grim Reach. Sure, 20% increased range is nice and all, but you're always going to be including Shadowbolt in your rotation, and there aren't enough points to get Destructive Reach over on Tier 4 Destro. So you're always going to be moving up to SB range, making Grim Reach a waste of talent points. Le sigh. Nightfall is *key* to our DPS with this build, along with the Glyph version (I'll explain later). The last talent on this tier, though, is great stuff - 36% of your spell power damage increase on Corruption.
At Tier 5, we have the newly buffed Shadow Embrace. Now, I liked this talent before, back when its main usefulness was preventing 5% of the target's melee damage on your tank, but it was difficult to get folks to understand the utlity. Now, it's an easily maintained debuff on your target that makes your DoTs cause 10% more damage, and prevents 30% of HoT healing to your target. Great stuff. Siphon Life's a no brainer of course, it's part of our rotation and we need it to get into Shadow Mastery on the tier below.
Tier 6 brings us Improved Felhunter - which we will be taking. The felhunter is now the pet of choice for affliction warlocks. Paranoia has been replaced by Fel Intelligence, a raid-wide buff to intelligence and spirit that is far more useful, IMHO, than Blood Pact ever was. The felpuppy's DPS has been improved and the mana regen it has both from the spirit buff and its own abilities means that you can use it as a mana battery better than the imp. Good times. Shadow Mastery is unchanged, and is still a no-brainer. 10% buff to my shadow spells across the board? Yes please.
Ah, Tier 7. We have a new talent, Eradication, that sounds REALLY COOL. However, it is not. I have a point in it because there really was no better place to put it. It was the last point I spent when I was putting this build together. Here's why it is fail: "This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds." I read a math-laden explanation of the details, but the short version is that the cooldown gimps the proc rate so badly that its placement in the tree and 3 available ranks are out of balance with expectations. Contagion is unchanged, and of course we fill it up since it's required for UA down on tier 9. But it's a good talent, 5% extra damage on Corruption, which will always been in our rotation. Dark Pact, is of course, the prize we get for being deep into affliction - free mana. Huzzah!
On Tier 8, much as I would like to have Imp Howl of Terror for the instant cast AoE fear, I just don't have the points. Maybe at level 80. But Malediction is a must-take - it's *why* I said above that i wont' be casting CoA - because we're always going to be casting Curse of Elements. It was buffed in 2.4, and buffed again in 3.0.2 - it now affects *all* magic damage, druids, shamans and priests are no longer left out of the party. So, with this talent filled up, we get an across the board 13% damage increase, and so do all your casters.
Tier 9 - the original endgame tier. Of course, we're taking Unstable Affliction, but the two new talents that share its tier are great stuff too, and we're filling them up. Pandemic, which feeds off UA, is Ruin for affliction locks. Death's Embrace gives you a 12% damage buff when your target is below 35%, helping to finish them off quickly.
On Tier 11, we only have Everlasting Affliction to take - but it's great stuff. An extra 5% damage for Corr, SL & UA, *plus* Drain Life and Haunt, which you'll be casting anyway, will refresh the duration of your Corruption - so you don't have to worry about keeping that one up in your rotation, which saves you effort, mana, and keeps one of your most consistent damaging DoTs up from the time you cast it till the mob dies.
Finally the holy grail of the tree, Tier 12's Haunt. The spell effect graphics are really cool, and the heal is nice (giving you a free Life Tap per cast) but the great things are - good direct damage, it refreshes your Corruption, it refreshes your Shadow Embrace, and it puts a debuff on the mob increasing the damage done by your DoTs by 20%.
That's 56 points in Affliction. We've got five points left, and the best place to put those is in Bane, in Tier 1 Destruction, to cut 0.5 second off your Shadowbolt casts.
Let's follow Corruption through the tree and look at our damage modifiers:
Tier 1: +10% damage
Tier 4: +(your spell power * 36%) damage
Tier 5: +10% damage
Tier 7: +5% damage
Tier 8: +13% damage (10% from CoE, 3% from Malediction)
Tier 9: +12% damage while mob below 35%, (your crit rating)% chance to deal 100% extra damage
Tier 10: +5% damage and duration reset by your main rotation spells
Tier 11: +20% damage
And that's just corruption.
So how do we play this build? I'll warn you, you won't get much DPS out of it if you don't embrace Affliction's strengths - DoTs, DoTs, and more DoTs! That means knowing what DoTs you have on your target, refreshing them when they expire, and choosing intelligently which spells to use vs. each type of target.
Before we go any further, ask your guildies or hit the auction house and get the Glyph of Corruption and apply it. I'll wait for you.
Got it? Good. This glyph, combined with the talent Nightfall, will allow us to hurl instant-cast shadowbolts. A lot. The glyph gives you a 4% to proc Shadow Trance "after damaging the target." Yes, that means every tick of every DoT you have on the target gets a chance to proc Shadow Trance. Nightfall gives you an additional 4% chance to proc Shadow Trance on Corruption ticks and Drain Life ticks, which coincidentally damage the target, so for those ticks you get *two* 4% shots at Shadow Trance procs.
Therefore, our strategy is to get as many DoTs ticking on our target as we can, then use Drain Life (which, remember, resets our Corruption duration thanks to Everlasting Affliction) until Shadow Trance procs, then zap our target with an instant-cast Shadow Bolt. Hit Drain Life again, wait for the proc, oh wait, our target's dead. Remember that our Death's Embrace talent makes our Shadow spells do 12% more damage when the target is below 35%, so you don't even need to feel bad about casting Drain Soul if you're running low on soul shards, and you still have a chance from Corruption ticks at the extra 4% Shadow Trance proc (which, if it does, will give us an instaShadowbolt that does 12% more damage. Win!)
This ends up working *really well.* Shadow Trance procs a lot. I use the warlock add-on Necrosis, which gives me an audio warning when Shadow Trance procs, making it easy to tell when I can loose an instashadowbolt.
Maintaining our DoTs means that you will want an easy way to know what DoTs are on, and where they are in their durations. Necrosis has DoTtimer functionality, but I actually prefer the Quartz cast bar replacement, both because it's pretty, and because it stacks the DoT timers right there above the casting bar where I can easily watch them and I find its presentation easy to track DoTs with.
So how do we cast, and it what order? We end up needing two basic rotations, one for boss-type targets, and one for trash mobs. It's not time or mana efficient to cast our long-cast spells on trash, so we stick to instant casts except for Haunt, which is just too nifty not to use every chance we get.
For boss mobs, we want to take full advantage of our various talents that increase damage. We open with Curse of Elements, then we lay on both stacks of Shadow Embrace by casting Shadow Bolt then Haunt, then our instant-cast DoTs Corruption and Siphon Life, then the slow-cast but worth it (due to Pandemic) Unstable Affliction, then we start the Drain Life/instaShadowbolt cycle, refreshing our DoTs (except for Corruption, which is reset by Drain Life & Haunt) as needed. Remember to recast Haunt every time its cooldown is up, you want to maintain that 20% increased damage from DoTs debuff on your target, not to mention the nice amount of direct damage it deals, and the Ball of Healing that comes back to you, which can cover a life tap.
That's a lot to do, considering many of us were used to the ol' "cast CoE, Corruption, then spam shadow bolt" destruction 'rotation'. I found that it was time to make a macro.
To be honest, I've never been much of a macro person. I put the spells I use most on my hotbar where I can easily hit the # key with my left hand while I direct targeting with the mouse. However, the need to quickly apply many different DoTs was straining my fingers (and brain) so I finally broke down and looked up how to make a castsequence macro.
This one has worked out fairly well for me for the boss-type mobs:
#show tooltip Afflict
/castsequence reset=target/combat Curse of the Elements, Shadow Bolt, Haunt, Corruption, Siphon Life, Unstable Affliction, Drain Life, Drain Life, Drain Life
And since it was so convenient to just press the same button over and over and know that the correct spell would be applied next, I even made one for trash mobs:
#show tooltip Trash
/castsequence reset=target/combat Curse of the Elements, Corruption, Siphon Life, Haunt, Drain Life, Drain Life, Drain Life
The way I have these set up, the boss-type macro I don't end up using as much, so it's on one of the right-side action bars and I click it with the mouse when I'm starting up my rotation on a boss-type mob. I have the trash macro in slot 1, Shadow Bolt in slot 2, Drain Life in slot 3, and Haunt in slot 4. I spam the trash macro until it starts the drain life, then I end up hovering my fingers over slots 2, 3, and 4, so I'm ready to throw shadow bolt when Shadow Trance procs, Haunt when the cool down's up, and go back to Drain Life if the channel finishes or I've stopped to hurl a shadowbolt or Haunt. Your mileage may vary, find the keybinding set up that works for you.
In other news, the patch notes for 3.0.3 are out on the PTR, and there are some warlock goodies included. The big ones for this build is that they fixed the bug that was preventing more than one warlock in the raid from getting the benefit from Shadow Embrace, and they lowered the cooldown on Haunt to 8 seconds and fixed some bugs that were preventing its heal from going off sometimes. Huzzah! Of limited interest - Inferno can now be cast indoors. I suppose for this build, that could be a back up if your felpuppy dies in the middle of a fight.
Addendum: Post patch 3.0.3
I'm a much happier warlock.
Part of the reason is the change to Haunt in 3.0.3, but also it's just practice. The change to Haunt is huge though - the cooldown is now only 8 seconds, and they've fixed the annoying bugs that would sometimes prevent you from getting the heal. Also, if you hit Haunt again before the first debuff is done, you get the heal from the first Haunt right away.
I spent a couple hours grinding the Scourge Invasion undead to get the cloth set, not because i needed them, but because I wanted them for novelty's sake. However, if you don't have T4 gear yet for your warlock, I would suggest taking advantage of the Scourge Invasion loot while you can. It's T4 equivalent stuff. Anyway, what a couple hours grinding did was let me really get my groove rolling playing this spec. My DPS is back up to 1200 or so without working at it too hard. *dance*
Your mileage may vary, but here's what I've been doing. As I said, I've pretty much stopped using the macros I championed above, although i still have them on the hotbar for raiding. I do think I'm going to take out the Shadow Bolt casting, though. I don't cast Shadow Bolt anymore UNLESS i have a Shadow Trance proc.
On weak trash, I'm not even bothering with Curse of Elements, although if I have a free spot between DoT casts I do throw it up there. I'm opening with Corruption, then I throw Haunt, and start Drain Life. If Shadow Trance procs, I hurl an insta-Shadow Bolt then go back to Drain Life. Every time Haunt's cooldown is up, I recast it.
On stronger trash and bosses, I open with Curse of Elements, then hit Corruption, then Haunt, then Siphon Life, then Unstable Affliciton, then start the Drain Life/Shadow Bolt/Haunt cycle, watching my DoT timers and refreshing Siphon Life and Unstable Affliction when they're up.
On fights where this generates enough threat to risk pulling off the tank (and it will in a 5-man unless you've got a well-geared tank, this is a HIGH THREAT spec, let me tell you) as soon as I notice my threat creeping too high I'll use Soul Shatter then STOP doing the Drain Life. I still hit Haunt whenever it's up, throw shadow bolts when Shadow Trance procs, and refresh Siphon Life and Unstable Affliction when they're low. If that's still too much threat, I might stop refreshing Unstable Affliction.
In other news, they did change Inferno to allow casting inside. So even if you never carried the Infernal Stones before, go pick up a 5-stack and put Inferno on your bar somewhere. If your felpuppy dies during a fight due to boss AoE or whatever, go ahead and throw Inferno. You get an ON-LEVEL INFERNAL (soooo glad they fixed that bug that was summoning a level 50 only) that lasts for one minute, does a respectable amount of damage, and then de-spawns. By that time, the boss should be dead and you can resummon your felhunter while the casters are drinking.
Anyway, i'm having fun on my warlock again. I hope you are too, and with WotLK just around the corner, it only gets better from here!
Enjoy.
Of course, on Thursday, Wrath of the Litch King is released, the level cap raises to 80, and none of this matters because ten more levels is ten more talent points, not to mention there will be new ranks of old skills and the new "Welcome to the level cap" skill (which I haven't looked up) will turn this all on its head.
But anyway, if you'd like to poke around in my theorycrafting, by all means continue past the cut.
Warlocking post patch 3.0.2
by Celadrithien, Warlock for the Tamarack Order, Earthen Ring-US
I've done a lot of respeccing since the patch dropped, and my general reaction to the warlock changes was *dismay*.
Now, I'm new to Warcraft (relatively) and I've gotten an awful lot of "meh, it's just what mages had to deal with after TBC" and "Warlocks were OP anyway." Maybe that's true on both counts, but I gotta say it's really painful having invested as much time and effort and gold into my main character to have her gimped so severely.
I'm kind of holding out hopes that those last 10 talent points we'll get at level 80 will fix the problems. However, in the mean time, it looks like the only viable spec for people not all decked out in T6 gear is affliction.
From some testing I read about over on elitistjerks.com:
Now, I'm not sure if that number at the end is supposed to be DPS, or if it's just some sum of status number that the simulation uses to rank things. They simulate perfect conditions - perfect gear, perfect rotation, perfect raid buffs, yadda yadda.
My own testing (what little I have been able to do with the massively unstable servers thus far) has borne this out, however. Affliction was the last spec I tried, because I thought that the DPS from Destruction's new Chaos Bolt would reign supreme (it is epic fail) and then after that I thought that the new Demonology Metamorphosis talent with its buff to damage as well as other nifty abilities would give me the DPS I was missing (It doesn't - it's a lot of fun, and would probably make a great leveling spec from 70-80 if you're not going to raid, but for raiding, 30s duration 3m cooldown = fail). So, somewhat begrudgingly I returned to Affliction - begrudgingly because Affliction has been horribly gimped as long as I've been playing Warcraft, from a purely raiding perspective.
However, the introduction of the new 51 point Affliction talent, Haunt, and some mechanics changes and tree re-arranging makes Affliction not only viable, but actually elevates it to the raiding spec of choice, at least until WotLK is out and we get more talent points to play with. Your mileage may vary, but here's what I'm going with:
Celadrithien's 56/0/5 Affliction Build
Some points I wouldn't have spent if I'd had the choice, but needed them to get deeper in the tree. I'll try to explain my logic for what talents I chose.
On Tier 1, I'm skipping Improved CoA, because I won't be casting CoA and the points are better used elsewhere. Filling up the rest for the increased hit chance & lowered mana cost, and extra Corruption damage.
On Tier 2, skipping Frailty because I never cast CoW or CoR (I used to use CoR for controlling feared mobs in instances, but it doesn't cancel fear effects any more, and even if it did, I wouldn't care about the stat the talent improves.) Filling up the rest of the talents - this is a nice tier with good benefits from 2-point investments. Especially nice is the threat reduction for Affliction spells from Imp Drain Soul.
On Tier 3, we have a big ol' bag of useless. I needed 1 point to get deeper, so I threw it into the completely changed and now almost completely pointless 'Amplify Curse', which no longer actually amplifies anything, but reduces the GCD on your curses. lolwhut?
On Tier 4, I'm skipping Grim Reach. Sure, 20% increased range is nice and all, but you're always going to be including Shadowbolt in your rotation, and there aren't enough points to get Destructive Reach over on Tier 4 Destro. So you're always going to be moving up to SB range, making Grim Reach a waste of talent points. Le sigh. Nightfall is *key* to our DPS with this build, along with the Glyph version (I'll explain later). The last talent on this tier, though, is great stuff - 36% of your spell power damage increase on Corruption.
At Tier 5, we have the newly buffed Shadow Embrace. Now, I liked this talent before, back when its main usefulness was preventing 5% of the target's melee damage on your tank, but it was difficult to get folks to understand the utlity. Now, it's an easily maintained debuff on your target that makes your DoTs cause 10% more damage, and prevents 30% of HoT healing to your target. Great stuff. Siphon Life's a no brainer of course, it's part of our rotation and we need it to get into Shadow Mastery on the tier below.
Tier 6 brings us Improved Felhunter - which we will be taking. The felhunter is now the pet of choice for affliction warlocks. Paranoia has been replaced by Fel Intelligence, a raid-wide buff to intelligence and spirit that is far more useful, IMHO, than Blood Pact ever was. The felpuppy's DPS has been improved and the mana regen it has both from the spirit buff and its own abilities means that you can use it as a mana battery better than the imp. Good times. Shadow Mastery is unchanged, and is still a no-brainer. 10% buff to my shadow spells across the board? Yes please.
Ah, Tier 7. We have a new talent, Eradication, that sounds REALLY COOL. However, it is not. I have a point in it because there really was no better place to put it. It was the last point I spent when I was putting this build together. Here's why it is fail: "This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds." I read a math-laden explanation of the details, but the short version is that the cooldown gimps the proc rate so badly that its placement in the tree and 3 available ranks are out of balance with expectations. Contagion is unchanged, and of course we fill it up since it's required for UA down on tier 9. But it's a good talent, 5% extra damage on Corruption, which will always been in our rotation. Dark Pact, is of course, the prize we get for being deep into affliction - free mana. Huzzah!
On Tier 8, much as I would like to have Imp Howl of Terror for the instant cast AoE fear, I just don't have the points. Maybe at level 80. But Malediction is a must-take - it's *why* I said above that i wont' be casting CoA - because we're always going to be casting Curse of Elements. It was buffed in 2.4, and buffed again in 3.0.2 - it now affects *all* magic damage, druids, shamans and priests are no longer left out of the party. So, with this talent filled up, we get an across the board 13% damage increase, and so do all your casters.
Tier 9 - the original endgame tier. Of course, we're taking Unstable Affliction, but the two new talents that share its tier are great stuff too, and we're filling them up. Pandemic, which feeds off UA, is Ruin for affliction locks. Death's Embrace gives you a 12% damage buff when your target is below 35%, helping to finish them off quickly.
On Tier 11, we only have Everlasting Affliction to take - but it's great stuff. An extra 5% damage for Corr, SL & UA, *plus* Drain Life and Haunt, which you'll be casting anyway, will refresh the duration of your Corruption - so you don't have to worry about keeping that one up in your rotation, which saves you effort, mana, and keeps one of your most consistent damaging DoTs up from the time you cast it till the mob dies.
Finally the holy grail of the tree, Tier 12's Haunt. The spell effect graphics are really cool, and the heal is nice (giving you a free Life Tap per cast) but the great things are - good direct damage, it refreshes your Corruption, it refreshes your Shadow Embrace, and it puts a debuff on the mob increasing the damage done by your DoTs by 20%.
That's 56 points in Affliction. We've got five points left, and the best place to put those is in Bane, in Tier 1 Destruction, to cut 0.5 second off your Shadowbolt casts.
Let's follow Corruption through the tree and look at our damage modifiers:
Tier 1: +10% damage
Tier 4: +(your spell power * 36%) damage
Tier 5: +10% damage
Tier 7: +5% damage
Tier 8: +13% damage (10% from CoE, 3% from Malediction)
Tier 9: +12% damage while mob below 35%, (your crit rating)% chance to deal 100% extra damage
Tier 10: +5% damage and duration reset by your main rotation spells
Tier 11: +20% damage
And that's just corruption.
So how do we play this build? I'll warn you, you won't get much DPS out of it if you don't embrace Affliction's strengths - DoTs, DoTs, and more DoTs! That means knowing what DoTs you have on your target, refreshing them when they expire, and choosing intelligently which spells to use vs. each type of target.
Before we go any further, ask your guildies or hit the auction house and get the Glyph of Corruption and apply it. I'll wait for you.
Got it? Good. This glyph, combined with the talent Nightfall, will allow us to hurl instant-cast shadowbolts. A lot. The glyph gives you a 4% to proc Shadow Trance "after damaging the target." Yes, that means every tick of every DoT you have on the target gets a chance to proc Shadow Trance. Nightfall gives you an additional 4% chance to proc Shadow Trance on Corruption ticks and Drain Life ticks, which coincidentally damage the target, so for those ticks you get *two* 4% shots at Shadow Trance procs.
Therefore, our strategy is to get as many DoTs ticking on our target as we can, then use Drain Life (which, remember, resets our Corruption duration thanks to Everlasting Affliction) until Shadow Trance procs, then zap our target with an instant-cast Shadow Bolt. Hit Drain Life again, wait for the proc, oh wait, our target's dead. Remember that our Death's Embrace talent makes our Shadow spells do 12% more damage when the target is below 35%, so you don't even need to feel bad about casting Drain Soul if you're running low on soul shards, and you still have a chance from Corruption ticks at the extra 4% Shadow Trance proc (which, if it does, will give us an instaShadowbolt that does 12% more damage. Win!)
This ends up working *really well.* Shadow Trance procs a lot. I use the warlock add-on Necrosis, which gives me an audio warning when Shadow Trance procs, making it easy to tell when I can loose an instashadowbolt.
Maintaining our DoTs means that you will want an easy way to know what DoTs are on, and where they are in their durations. Necrosis has DoTtimer functionality, but I actually prefer the Quartz cast bar replacement, both because it's pretty, and because it stacks the DoT timers right there above the casting bar where I can easily watch them and I find its presentation easy to track DoTs with.
So how do we cast, and it what order? We end up needing two basic rotations, one for boss-type targets, and one for trash mobs. It's not time or mana efficient to cast our long-cast spells on trash, so we stick to instant casts except for Haunt, which is just too nifty not to use every chance we get.
For boss mobs, we want to take full advantage of our various talents that increase damage. We open with Curse of Elements, then we lay on both stacks of Shadow Embrace by casting Shadow Bolt then Haunt, then our instant-cast DoTs Corruption and Siphon Life, then the slow-cast but worth it (due to Pandemic) Unstable Affliction, then we start the Drain Life/instaShadowbolt cycle, refreshing our DoTs (except for Corruption, which is reset by Drain Life & Haunt) as needed. Remember to recast Haunt every time its cooldown is up, you want to maintain that 20% increased damage from DoTs debuff on your target, not to mention the nice amount of direct damage it deals, and the Ball of Healing that comes back to you, which can cover a life tap.
That's a lot to do, considering many of us were used to the ol' "cast CoE, Corruption, then spam shadow bolt" destruction 'rotation'. I found that it was time to make a macro.
To be honest, I've never been much of a macro person. I put the spells I use most on my hotbar where I can easily hit the # key with my left hand while I direct targeting with the mouse. However, the need to quickly apply many different DoTs was straining my fingers (and brain) so I finally broke down and looked up how to make a castsequence macro.
This one has worked out fairly well for me for the boss-type mobs:
#show tooltip Afflict
/castsequence reset=target/combat Curse of the Elements, Shadow Bolt, Haunt, Corruption, Siphon Life, Unstable Affliction, Drain Life, Drain Life, Drain Life
And since it was so convenient to just press the same button over and over and know that the correct spell would be applied next, I even made one for trash mobs:
#show tooltip Trash
/castsequence reset=target/combat Curse of the Elements, Corruption, Siphon Life, Haunt, Drain Life, Drain Life, Drain Life
The way I have these set up, the boss-type macro I don't end up using as much, so it's on one of the right-side action bars and I click it with the mouse when I'm starting up my rotation on a boss-type mob. I have the trash macro in slot 1, Shadow Bolt in slot 2, Drain Life in slot 3, and Haunt in slot 4. I spam the trash macro until it starts the drain life, then I end up hovering my fingers over slots 2, 3, and 4, so I'm ready to throw shadow bolt when Shadow Trance procs, Haunt when the cool down's up, and go back to Drain Life if the channel finishes or I've stopped to hurl a shadowbolt or Haunt. Your mileage may vary, find the keybinding set up that works for you.
In other news, the patch notes for 3.0.3 are out on the PTR, and there are some warlock goodies included. The big ones for this build is that they fixed the bug that was preventing more than one warlock in the raid from getting the benefit from Shadow Embrace, and they lowered the cooldown on Haunt to 8 seconds and fixed some bugs that were preventing its heal from going off sometimes. Huzzah! Of limited interest - Inferno can now be cast indoors. I suppose for this build, that could be a back up if your felpuppy dies in the middle of a fight.
Addendum: Post patch 3.0.3
I'm a much happier warlock.
Part of the reason is the change to Haunt in 3.0.3, but also it's just practice. The change to Haunt is huge though - the cooldown is now only 8 seconds, and they've fixed the annoying bugs that would sometimes prevent you from getting the heal. Also, if you hit Haunt again before the first debuff is done, you get the heal from the first Haunt right away.
I spent a couple hours grinding the Scourge Invasion undead to get the cloth set, not because i needed them, but because I wanted them for novelty's sake. However, if you don't have T4 gear yet for your warlock, I would suggest taking advantage of the Scourge Invasion loot while you can. It's T4 equivalent stuff. Anyway, what a couple hours grinding did was let me really get my groove rolling playing this spec. My DPS is back up to 1200 or so without working at it too hard. *dance*
Your mileage may vary, but here's what I've been doing. As I said, I've pretty much stopped using the macros I championed above, although i still have them on the hotbar for raiding. I do think I'm going to take out the Shadow Bolt casting, though. I don't cast Shadow Bolt anymore UNLESS i have a Shadow Trance proc.
On weak trash, I'm not even bothering with Curse of Elements, although if I have a free spot between DoT casts I do throw it up there. I'm opening with Corruption, then I throw Haunt, and start Drain Life. If Shadow Trance procs, I hurl an insta-Shadow Bolt then go back to Drain Life. Every time Haunt's cooldown is up, I recast it.
On stronger trash and bosses, I open with Curse of Elements, then hit Corruption, then Haunt, then Siphon Life, then Unstable Affliciton, then start the Drain Life/Shadow Bolt/Haunt cycle, watching my DoT timers and refreshing Siphon Life and Unstable Affliction when they're up.
On fights where this generates enough threat to risk pulling off the tank (and it will in a 5-man unless you've got a well-geared tank, this is a HIGH THREAT spec, let me tell you) as soon as I notice my threat creeping too high I'll use Soul Shatter then STOP doing the Drain Life. I still hit Haunt whenever it's up, throw shadow bolts when Shadow Trance procs, and refresh Siphon Life and Unstable Affliction when they're low. If that's still too much threat, I might stop refreshing Unstable Affliction.
In other news, they did change Inferno to allow casting inside. So even if you never carried the Infernal Stones before, go pick up a 5-stack and put Inferno on your bar somewhere. If your felpuppy dies during a fight due to boss AoE or whatever, go ahead and throw Inferno. You get an ON-LEVEL INFERNAL (soooo glad they fixed that bug that was summoning a level 50 only) that lasts for one minute, does a respectable amount of damage, and then de-spawns. By that time, the boss should be dead and you can resummon your felhunter while the casters are drinking.
Anyway, i'm having fun on my warlock again. I hope you are too, and with WotLK just around the corner, it only gets better from here!
Enjoy.