I am really unsure, and honestly can’t remember which was better in TBC. Anyone know?
Be more specific. PvE or PvP? What types, Heroics vs. Raids vs. Farming? BGs or Arena? What Phase? Phase-1?
Edit: I’ll assume. Phase-1 Raid viability? 41-0-17 base. Most people grab Imp healthstone for like a 41-2-18 with Shadowburn. Ruin out damages UA after some gear upgrades. Shadow-fire annihilates deep Affliction midway through T5 etc etc
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For pve both specs have their strengths and a raid defintely wants one affliction lock.
For straight DPS it’s mostly fire destro, though fire and shadow are pretty close after t5 gear and in SWP shadow takes over.
Sorry, PVE.
41-2-18 with 2/2 Imp Healthstone and 1/1 Shadowburn is your highest raid DPS spec for the very beginning of the expansion.
In a VERY short amount of time (gear), perhaps even weeks (4-5 pieces), the Ruin talent begins to outperform Unstable Affliction heavily. You ruin respec to the 0/21/40 Shadow-Destro or “Ruin” build. That remains your top PvE DPS until you get significantly more hit and spell power gear. Late T5 until T6 the best PvE DPS is the “Shadowfire” build which is also 0/21/40 but with the Fire talents taken in Destro instead of the Shadow ones.
It’s mathy and gets confusing but there’s the cliffnotes answer to your question.
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That’s not the current status of lock.
Aff is always the lowest (even under Demo in some cases) with fire destro being top until T5 gear and about equal to shadow desro until SWP where shadow destro pushes slightly ahead.
is the current
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Feel free to disagree and write up your own response. That’s my response. UA for about 4 weeks to Shadow Destro for 2 phases into Fire Destro. If you think that’s incorrect, by all means, answer her questions with your own thoughts.
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Yeahno. People aren’t walking into their first few weeks of Karazhan average 2k+ DPS as Shadow Destro. They will be by the end of T4 absolutely. 100%. There will be 2200 Warlock parses by the end of the phase. But not the beginning, man. Most warlocks will be thrilled with 1k sustained DPS those first 3-4 weeks in Karazhan. Felhoof is the only boss I can think of with 2k lock parses at first, and that’s due to seed of corruption.
Your link is seemingly implying a fairly well T4 geared warlock. I agree 100% with the numbers, btw, just not the gear. When Noraessa walks into Karazhan in a mixture of blue dungeon gear and green quest rewards, UA will out damage Shadow Destro. By the end of T4, you’re absolutely right, Shadow Destro will be better. As we’ve said.
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And fire destro will outdps UA in pre-bis
Only thing aff is good for is lowering the hit requirement.
The biggest problem with aff is that it doesn’t scale at all with two prime dps stats: crit and haste. It gets even worse as the tiers progress as the gear increasingly allocates its budget towards both stats.
Yea, I’m going demo til i get enough hit for fire-destro
aff just isn’t worth planning around.
Just remember that for fire destro, you need an imp. scorch mage. Mages that are arcane will want to be arcane frost as that is the superior talent build for their dps. So it will be up to your guild to coordinate that. A lot of mages are planning to go arcane in P1 as it’s looking to be performing a bit better than fire, though both are equally viable.
So if your mages are arcane frost, go shadow destruction.
what spec are you guys going to play in the prepatch?
I play destro even if afflic is better, and always did well, in pve and pvp
For pre-patch, if you’re in good gear, you can try shadowfury destruction. If you’re gear is mediocre, ds/ruin is still best for single target.
I’ll be going shadowfury destruction since I’ll still have the imp and it’s something new and different. It should perform better on trash too.
My gear is going to be complete butt, so i’m going fel guard
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