Warlock question. Follow

I've looked around the forum and at the stickies and I can't seem to find the answer to my question.

I want to follow this build for SM/Ruin

# Improved Corruption - rank 5/5
# Improved Life Tap - rank 2/2
# Improved Life Drain - rank 3/5
# Fel Concentration - rank 5/5
# Amplify Curse - rank 1/1
# Grim Reach - rank 2/2
# Nightfall - rank 2/2
# Siphon Life - rank 1/1
# Curse of Exhaustion - rank 1/1
# Improved Curse of Exhaustion - rank 4/4
# Shadow Mastery - rank 5/5
# Dark Pact - rank 1/1

Demonology Talents - 8 point(s)

# Improved Imp - rank 3/3
# Demonic Embrace - rank 5/5

Destruction Talents - 11 point(s)

# Improved Shadow Bolt - rank 5/5
# Bane - rank 5/5
# Shadowburn - rank 1/1

The above bolded part is not in the talent tree. I think he means soul syphon, but that would leave 3 extra points not accounted for in the build. So am I correct or am I blind? Also is there anything I should be speccing at a certain level? I am already 5/5 Improved Corruption and 2/2 Lifetap.

Thanks in advance.

If you have something better I should be looking at then by all means please link me to it.

The stickies in this forum are very, very, very old. Improved Curse of Exhaustion doesn't exist any more either.

Also, note that your SM/Ruin Build appears to lack Ruin. That may be a slight problem.

please link a build from a talentcalculator, it is so much easier
to keep an overview.
You might also want to include an armorylink, especially for the build you linked.

The build focuses on heavy SB crits and less on dmg from the affliction-tree,
but what i noticed is that you put 3 points into surpression.

I actually wouldn´t advice on this build, unless you have around 140+ spellhit
and a decent amount of crit ~18% including talents.

Ah i see, well next time, please use one.

So your saying completely cap every skill in the affliction tree before moving on to destruction? What is UA? What should I be putting points into for destruction and why is the talent calculator so important?

Thanks again.

On this note...is there a plan in the near future to put up a new sticky for us young warlocks? I mean, the builds used nowadays seem to be pretty much brand new from the sticky (or even what it links to as far as I can tell), so I can't refer to the sticky for a cookie cutter on things like SL/SL. All I got then is wowwiki, which is sometimes way off (most of the warrior builds didn't include talents that were considered essential, and included talents that were pure crap compared to the skipped ones). Thus, it's my best guess as to what SL/SL should have, besides the obvious 2 points (or in this case SM/Ruin).

What ARE the top raid builds? What are the top PvP builds? Maybe even some levelling builds thrown in. It would really help to have a compendium of these in a sticky.

There will be a "break even" and a point where ruin becomes better than Unstable
Affliction.

Thmpax: Your stats seem fine for leaving out UA and going for Ruin.

Edited, Feb 20th 2008 4:40am by Oakenwrath

you're about 18 months to late looking at those talents. bad lag? :P

The problem is leveling, grinding, and max raid damage are 3 completely different things. Some things that are nice for 1 are crap for the other 2.

For example, every endgame affliction build should have empowered corruption, but due to it being affected by + damage it is a wasted talent until lvl 60ish and you can start stocking up on it. Likewise, improved CoA is nice for lvling, but it only affects your base damage, so once you can stack +damage the increase becomes to small to notice.

So it kinda depends on what your doing with the toon at the time. There are also some magic numbers to hit when it comes to pure damage out put before ruin will out power UA.

When lvling I would suggest going all the way down the affliction tree to UA something likethis. Learn to drain hunt or tank to maximize your speed.

As a fresh 70 I would go with this for grinding and regular/heroics.

Once you get into raiding gear and utility become more of a factor. Suppression is a nice talent but should only be used as a place holder until you can max out your spell-hit. If your going into a raid with 75 or less spell hit you want 5 points in it to max your hit. For every 25 hit you get take a point out. The problem with suppression is that it only accounts for affliction, so stuff like shadowbolt and immolate will still be very low on the hit. Seeing as how you should be casting immolate in your rotation and spamming SB's when not refreshing dots you'd be losing to much damage if you ignored spell hit.

The same goes for malediction. If other locks in your raids already have it, don't worry about it. If no one has it, pick it up. No use having 4 regular raiding locks all with malediction, seeing as how there's only 2 curses it benefits.

This would be what I would use for raiding, switching points out for suppression/malediction as needed. For Ruin to be more of a damage output that UA I believe the magic numbers are 202 hit, +1,000 dmg, and 15% crit before devastaion. Then, for the build your going for, it's a simple switch UA for ruin.