Warlock Thread: Tips, Tricks and just plain evilness!

[Silchar]

Guys, I invite all warlocks and all who have input to give on the class to add to this thread. We need a thread to help the progression of our evilness "Mwahahahaha!" I would like to see any advice that would help the effectiveness of our class (Gear, Spec, Spell Rotation, etc...). Lets be open and frank about our comments but not negative. I feel that its important to get the best information gathered in one place to help all move forward in endgame.

[Silchar]

Topic: + Spell Hit Rating vs Critical Strike Chance

Currently I am at 136 (10.78%) Spell Hit Rating vs 18.86% Critical Strike Chance. During our last raid on Magtheredon, I missed almost 10% of my best spell Shadow Bolt! Should I replace some of my stamina gems with +spell hit gems to help get my Spell Hit rating higher? And what should I set for a realistic goal for a max + spell Spell Hit?

[Tarenth]

For some reason that just seems wrong to me. It might be because Magtheredon is a demon and has some natural shadow resistance. I know I have a sliver over 5% +hit and I missed 3.7% of my autoshots. Jest, for some reason, missed 0% which is statisically impossible with 321 recorded hits (80 crits) and the minimum miss rate of 1%.

The shadowpriests (Pistos and Xyris) have a resist rate of 0.3% and 1.6% for mindflay respectfully. If you times that by three (three ticks of mindflay hits vs a single recorded resist) then they have 0.9% and 4.8% resist rates.

Gnopaine seems to have had a 2.7% miss rate so you might want to emulate him with the +hit.

Is curse of shadows up? Did you have additional +hit affects (dreanei aura, shaman totem)? Yadda yadda yadda.

[Gnopaine]

For warlocks and mages, the magic +spell hit number is 202. This produces a 99% hit rate against a level 73 mob (all bosses and trash in the 25-man instances are counted as level 73 for purposes of this calculation). No matter how high your +spell hit is, there is always a 1% miss rate that cannot be overcome. Note that shadow priests can get away with stacking a lot less +hit due to talents.

Resists are a very confusing topic. Basically there are two ways that you can be resisted. One is for you to miss your base to-hit roll, which is what we are talking about here. Your base hit chance is 83% against level 73, modified by your +spell hit gear. If you fail that roll, the spell counts as a resist.

Even if your roll succeeds, however, you may still be resisted. The mob gets a separate resist check based on its innate resistance to the school of magic you're employing. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling precisely what level of resistance a mob has, although there are addons that attempt to infer it by monitoring resists over time. Your spell may be fully resisted, or mitigated at a 25%, 50%, or 75% level. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell a full resist of this type apart from a resist due to missing your to-hit roll.

Contrary to what some people believe, taking 5 points in Suppression (Affliction tree) does not equate to +10% spell hit on DoTs. It doesn't affect your spell hit at all. Instead, it lowers the mob's spell resistance by 10%. Hopefully the difference is now clear from the above discussion.

Many of the mobs in the 25-man content have quite a bit of spell resistance. Fortunately, we have some "spell penetration" tools to overcome this. For DoTs, Suppression helps as just discussed. Curse of Shadows reduces arcane/shadow resistance by 88, and Curse of Elements does the same for fire/frost. Beyond these "old school" assists, we now also have the [Elixir of Empowerment] to get an additional 30 points of reduction in spell resistance for all schools of magic, applied only to your spells on each mob you attack. Fortunately this counts as a Guardian Elixir, so you can still use whichever offensive Elixir you prefer in combination with it. You can also stack on some spell penetration gear if you like, although typically it's hard to find any of that that's itemized well.

When I raid, I always run with an [Elixir of Major Shadow Power] and an [Elixir of Empowerment], rather than any flasks. This is a lot more expensive than flasking, since you have to reapply them after each death, so it's up to you to decide whether it's worth it. But I find that stacking +spell hit gear and using the elixir of empowerment really helps me keep my resists down and my DPS up.

Spell hit is king for casters. Each 1% miss rate is roughly a 1% reduction in your spell damage. You can stack on all the +crit gear you like, but if your spell doesn't land, you don't get a crit roll. No matter what your spec, +hit ought to be on the top of your wish list. Destro locks will find +crit to be the next most important stat, while affliction locks will concentrate on +shadow damage. All 3 are important to everybody, but you should prioritize according to your spec and playstyle.

I hope this is helpful. And thanks for opening this thread!

[Gnopaine]

Since Celltar asked about gems, I'll give my opinion on the best readily-available gems to use until your +hit is maximized:

Red/Yellow = [Veiled Noble Topaz] (+4 sp hit, +5 sp dmg)
Blue = [Glowing Nightseye] (+5 sp dmg, +6 sta)
Meta = [Swift Starfire Diamond] (+12 sp dmg)

I think these are the best to use regardless of spec.

A while back I did some calculations when I was Destruction to determine how to value items for offensive capability, and came up with a Damage Estimate formula:

DE = (spell damage) + 0.7(spell crit) + 1.22(spell hit) + 0.19(int)

I should probably rerun the calculations sometime and redo them for my current spec and gear level, but basically the coefficient for spell hit will probably be about the same and the coefficient for spell crit a bit lower. Anyway, using this formula to compare gear has worked pretty well for me. Note that my calculations bore out the general view that +spell hit >> +spell crit.

[Gnopaine]

Originally Posted by Silchar

Topic: + Spell Hit Rating vs Critical Strike Chance

Currently I am at 136 (10.78%) Spell Hit Rating vs 18.86% Critical Strike Chance. During our last raid on Magtheredon, I missed almost 10% of my best spell Shadow Bolt! Should I replace some of my stamina gems with +spell hit gems to help get my Spell Hit rating higher? And what should I set for a realistic goal for a max + spell Spell Hit?

Just wanted to point out that your 10.78% spell hit means you have a 100% - (83% + 10.78%) = 6.22% base chance to miss, while your observed resist rate was, as you say, about 10%. My base chance to miss is currently 2.49%, and my observed resist rate was 2.7% -- much closer to the theoretical base resist. Part of the difference may be attributable to luck, but I am guessing that the major difference was the elixir I was using to reduce the mob resists. That (along with CoS) was apparently enough to knock down a number of the full resists to partial mitigations.

Regarding Stamina vs. Spell Hit: Although stam is more important for destro locks than it is for affliction locks, I still consider it a secondary stat for raiding purposes. Most of the time the extra stam doesn't make a difference between whether you live or die in a given encounter. It does give you more of a buffer for Life Tap, and on healing-intensive fights where the healers may not even be able to spare you the occasional HoT, Stamina does equal DPS. But I still feel that Spell Hit is far more important...who cares if you can Life Tap more often if your spells aren't landing?

I also recommend that warlocks bring [Super Rejuvenation Potion] for recovery during fights. It provides more mana than a Super Mana Potion and more health than a Super Healing Potion using one cooldown. Yeah, it's more expensive, but it's really worth it, and can make up for any reduction in stamina.

[Silchar]

Topic: Alchemist Potion and Elixir Specialty

Currently we have a great deal of alchemists available in the guild. Within the Warlock class we have two options for getting our chemicals. Gnopaine is an elixir specialist and my priest Lightshow is a potion specialist. We should always use one of our guilds specialists so that we may benefit from the bonus potions/elixirs that they may create.
FYI:
[Super Rejuvenation Potion]: 2x Mana Thistle, 1x Dreaming Glory, 1x Netherbloom, 1x Imbued Vial
[Elixir of Empowerment]: 1x Netherbloom, 1x Mana Thistle, 1x Imbued Vial
[Elixir of Major Shadow Power]: 1x Ancient Lichen, 1x Nightmare Vine, 1x Imbued Vial
Special Note:
I would be up to getting a farming party together to go kill the big tree guardians in Skettis because they drop a ton of herbs! I could use my priest or pally. Great information lets keep it going!

[Silchar]

Topic: Food

I am 375 cooking and my current favorite food is [Blackened Basilisk] because I can go to Terrokar Forrest and tear up those Basilisks along the river banks. I also have about every other food recipe available. I am also 375 fishing and use these materials in my cooking. If anyone needs something cooked or would like to donate materials send them my way. I will bring these extras for the warlocks to use during our raids.

[Silchar]

Topic: Gems

Great news! We have a guildmate who has the ability to make [Great Dawnstone]! I am sure that we could enlist the services of Crimsonbow the alt of Crimsonite. He is a great guy and is always willing to help out when needed.

[Tarenth]

Wait...you mean you can't solo those guys by yourself? They're fully crowd controlable so for a warlock it would be fear/dot/dot/dot/fear/dot/dot/dot/fear/dot/dot/dot loot. You could even banish and bandage if you felt like it.

Much easier than the hunter trap, kite, trap, kite, trap, kite.

[Gnopaine]

Originally Posted by Silchar

Topic: Food

I am 375 cooking and my current favorite food is [Blackened Basilisk] because I can go to Terrokar Forrest and tear up those Basilisks along the river banks. I also have about every other food recipe available. I am also 375 fishing and use these materials in my cooking. If anyone needs something cooked or would like to donate materials send them my way. I will bring these extras for the warlocks to use during our raids.

Same here...I usually have 2 or 3 stacks of the basilisk food with me at a raid, so if anyone hasn't had time to farm their own or doesn't have the cooking skill, just let one of us know!

[Silchar]

Tarenth my holy priest is my herbalist.

[Daxx]

Single most important point about Warlock: Go Gnome or Go Home!

[Gnopaine]

/signed

[Iliana]

/petition Laud is one hot momma thank you very much!