First time posting here but been a long time lurker and raided a bit on a pserver that shall remain unamed.
You have the standard early tier sm/ruin: Assigned curse, Corruption into Shadowbolt spam. And perhaps if you are not able to use corruption so you go ds/ruin and just curse and Shadowbolt spam.
But the ideal (from any guide I can find) is ds/ruin, curse, Corruption and shadowbolt spam. I have been in and around the vanilla warlock community a fair bit but I have noticed something that seems off.
I never see any discussion surrounding the use of Shadowburn other than an “execute” type spell used when the trash or boss is about to die. In my experience if used on cooldown it can be a pretty substantial dps increase. I get that you will burn through shards quickly but you will only really use it on cooldown for boss fights and just get them all back on trash in between bosses.
The only reasoning I can think of for this is that people just don’t want to farm shards and then deal with the hassle of replenishing 10 to 15 soul shards for each boss fight?
Does anyone have any knowledge of testing that has been done with different rotations factoring in unlimited supply of shards? Or does anyone know of more Vanilla Warlock resources other than the pserver guides?
Would love to “talk shop” with other Warlocks and perhaps learn a thing or 2 from someone with more experience or knowledge.
The issue with using shadowburn is that it means you cannot make healthstones for your tank or anyone else. During progression when your guild is struggling to defeat a boss and you wipe 10 times you’re going to run out of soulshards.
Basically it boils down to soulstones and healthstones having a much higher priority than using shadowburn.
That still is only an issue of the number of shards needed. Last time I checked you are not limited to only 1 soulbag and soulshards DO fit in your regular bags.
I get that if you are wiping on a single boss that many times without any trash clears to replenish shards you will run out but I feel like that could just as easily be avoided by not using it on cooldown until you are at a point in progression that you are actually close to killing a boss.
I am purely talking about optimal dps output. I feel like its not talked about.
It’s theoretically possible, but not practical by any means. Even without wiping multiple times on bosses, a lot of encounters won’t have enough trash to replenish that many Shadowburns, plus healthstones, plus soulstones, plus the occasional summon or 3, etc. Shadowburn also doesn’t have as great a spell power coefficient as Shadowbolt, so at higher levels the DPS increase starts to flatten out.
If it’s Molten Core and your guild is decked out in t2 or greater gear then sure. Go nuts. For speed runs I could see shadowburn being useful.
But let’s not forget that bagspace is very limited in vanilla. Even with a few soulbags you don’t have a ton of space. And if you’re in Naxx you’ll probably have a lot of that space being taken up by consumables.
If you work really hard at it and make sure you are getting shards off EVERYTHING that dies and you start off with enough (40+) you should have more than enough shards to handle the load.
Also just curious why its never mentioned in guides. Pretty much everything else in those types of guides are all min/max but little to nothing is mentioned about rotation.
On the average raid there is 8-10ish bosses. You will use around 8-12 soul shards per boss assuming it’s a one shot. You would need 64 to 120 soul shards assuming everything is a one shot for soulburn alone. I mean… assuming everything is one shot and you use this in molten core you will need 4 core felcloth bags and take up half of your main bag specifically for soul burn.
It’s just…not practical using it unless its like the final boss fight or something. Unless you take it to the extreme and fill up your bank too and ask for a summon back hoping there is another lock in the raid.
What are you talking about? just because you use that many during a raid doesn’t mean you have to hold that many on you all the time. nice thing is, between each boss you have lots of opportunities to refresh on shards.
What do you mean what do I mean? Yes you have opportunities to replenish them but if you have consumables in your bag/other gear in your bag/free space for new loot/soul shards specifically for soul stones, healthstones, summons, you will NOT have enough space/mobs to replenish the amount of soulshards you would need to shadowburn for a whole raid.
It will cause more threat but that’s the least of our worries as a warlock starting out in mc/ony. until we get A LOT more hit and supporting dmg/crit gear(bloodvine/bwl and zg gear) and then its only an issue if you are careless and don’t watch yourself.
You only get a shard if you get the last hit on the kill. There’s no promises that you’ll get that last hit on all the trash between bosses in a 40man raid team. It may not hurt to try, but good luck.
Not true, “Drains the soul of the target, causing 455 Shadow damage over 15 sec. If the target dies while being drained, and yields experience or honor, the caster gains a Soul Shard. Soul Shards are required for other spells.”
you could have 40 warlocks in a raid together and all get a shard from 1 mob.
The only thing that requires you to get the killing blow is the imp drain soul. “Gives you a 100% chance to get a 100% increase to your Mana regeneration for 10 sec if the target is killed by you while you drain its soul. In addition your Mana may continue to regenerate while casting at 50% of normal.”
I do this in MC on any boss, so long as I’m topped off on shards to begin with(2 shard bags, 44 shards I enter each raid with)
There’s plenty of trash in MC to farm agarfs off, and you can hold off on shadowburn if you’re low on shards. I usually don’t shirk 1st boss if I summoned the entire raid to DM beforehand, for example. But I always ensure I’m topped off on shards for rag, and usually get to spam burn on a few other bosses besides.
EVERY SINGLE TRASH MOB is a shard. If you’re 1shotting bosses, which my guild has been doing for ages now, you’ll never run out of shards even sgadowburning as long as you’re smart about it. I still end up leaving MC most nights with 20+ shards even after burning domo and rag(few trash mobs between the two)
There’s a reason I’m consistently the top warlock dps(been overall top on rag 3 times as well, the latter 2 of which were phase 1 kills)
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")