TBC Player versus Environment Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the FAQ? 

Right here. You can share this file easily in the discord with the following command: !pins

Fire or Shadow Destro? 

If you have a fire mage, fire is clearly ahead in t4/t5, and the DPS loss to an aff lock/spriest is not enough to offset 2-3 warlocks doing more DPS as fire. 

That being said, you have to craft the more expensive spellfire set, be willing to swap pet buffs based on whether you’re AOEing or not (so it may not perform as well in a speedrun environment), and in T5 your mage will be looking to go arcane, and how much DPS is lost going arcane/fire vs arcane/frost is an open question currently. 

For now, unless your mage goes arcane early which should be rare, it’s a pretty safe bet to go fire, and we’ll wait on more mage sims to discuss overall raid DPS in t5. Fire is definitely more personal DPS in t5 though, either way as long as the scorch is provided.

How good is Demo?

We don’t have any pet damage sims yet, so more precise answers will likely need to wait until beta, but it should be competitive in t4/t5 at least, being clearly better on some fights and worse on others. 

Gruul and Magtheridon are examples of fights where it performs well, with a lot of forced movement/silence/cc/downtime where your pet ignores mechanics and keeps swinging.

How good is Affliction vs Destro?

Single Target it lags behind Destro, though it’s pretty close when compared to a Destro not in the warlock group (IE. You have 4 warlocks, and your typical warlock party is 3x destro, ele, boomkin), and with Malediction it will usually pull ahead of a destro in the same spot in terms of raid DPS. 

It also provides 5% reduced physical damage done by bosses which, with pre-nerf bosses, gives your tank more breathing room to play around with threat gear, and its performance relative to Destro will improve on fights with movement/silences such as Gruul/Magtheridon or multiple targets. 

My personal advice is don’t force someone to play affliction if they’re going to do it poorly, but if someone is willing to put the work in, it’s worth the spot.

How much more DPS is Orc than xxx race?

For gnomes, it depends on your gearing, but between the int racial and the 1% hit from a Draenei shaman, you come close to the value of the orc racial. If you don’t have any way of making use of the hit, which may happen in some cases such as mid/late t6 gearing, the gap does widen a bit. 

For non-gnome warlocks, the difference between blood fury or not is in the 1% neighborhood, less in later tiers. This does not include the 5% pet damage, which is useful primarily for demo. 

Orc is clearly the best race, but it isn’t so far ahead that you can’t compete for top parses as other races, so whether it’s worth rolling/rerolling is up to you.

What Talent build should I be playing?

The following is obviously over simplefied but should give you a good guess.

‍

Is Immolate worth casting?

1. Fire Destro - Always.
2. Shadow Destro - Most of the time, unless a fight is close to being Patchwerk (something like Teron Gorefiend). If the extra mana cost of Immolate pushes you past a breakpoint of 1-2 more taps it can be a DPS loss, but if not it’s a DPS increase at least until t6 4pc. With Scorch it’s always a DPS increase. This is assuming you are using improved Immolate/Emberstorm as talents. Also always worth as the 1st or 2nd cast both due to threat but also because weaving takes time to stack, so at the start of a fight or any time weaving falls off Shadowbolt loses DPS relative to immolate.
3. Affliction - As either UA or Ruin, if you don’t have scorch, I only suggest casting immolate to smooth your rotation out - for example, a dot will fall off in 1s after finishing Shadowbolt but you don’t need to tap, either because you’re near-full on mana or you expect movement/downtime soon, I would immolate so you can reapply that dot 1s sooner compared to casting another Shadowbolt. The same comment about always being worth with scorch and casting if weaving is low stacks is true here as well.
4. Demo - Always. 

When do I Shatter (50% threat drop, 5m cd)?

Generally, you require judging whether you should just stop DPS or shatter based on how far into the fight you are. Shatter reduces your threat by 50% of the total you have, so if you cast 2 bolts and you’re threat capped, a Shatter only reduces the threat of one Shadowbolt, clearly not worth it. 

Meanwhile, if you’re a minute into the fight, you’ll need to judge whether you will catch back up and be threat capped again if you Shatter. This will come largely from experience and fight familiarity. 

Season 2 PvP and Arena

https://seventyupgrades.com/set/rQSDVAnrSAfMnS8VGvjNU3

Best buy-order for PvP: Off-hand (This has insane value) > Armor > Weapon > Wand

If you can't get The Seal of Danzalar just use the S1 ring instead, works fine.

VST vs Icon - They are both strong trinkets however, it would be recommended that people who are inexperienced play with Icon. It is easier to establish pressure and also makes you more focused on pet control, VST shouldn’t be used as a trinket so you don't have to care about your pet movement. Additionally, VST might be more useful in 3s and 5s where cc is unavoidable on pets.

Meta + Boot enchant - Same as S1, If you want 5% stun resist use the Stamina/Stun resist meta (or Ogri'la meta with 14SP/stun resist) with Boars Speed, if you prefer 5% snare/slow/root resist use 12SP/run speed meta and Surefooted enchant on boots.

Is X PvE item better than Y PvP item - In terms of PvP value there is nothing you will get in P2/T5 that will have higher value for overall gameplay as a warlock than what you see in the BIS list. There might be some very specific cases when playing certain comps (like dbl healer / lock) where you can sneak a PvE item in, but even then I personally wouldn't do this unless I know what I'm facing and what their strat is.

TBC S1 Warlock Gearing This prob also belongs here

Added prof command to prof section up above, just gone import and edit stuff later for now

What is the AOE Cap, and how much is it for spell X?

AoE Cap is the max amount of total damage over all the mobs a AOE spell can do, ignoring crits and debuffs.

• Seed: 13,580
• Hellfire: 5,200 per tick
• RoF: 6,710 per tick
• Shadowfury: 9,780 

For example: Seed of Corruption = 13580*X/(X+1)

X = amount of enemies seed explosion will damage

Debuffs (coe, misery, weaving, isb) increase the AOE cap: https://discord.com/channels/253210018697052162/823471727081422849/899656341767987211

Can I snapshot spells? If so which?

All spells snapshot internal modifiers (things that increase your damage done) such as PI, TOEP, Elixirs, etc, when the spell finishes casting. Only life-leeching spells (Siphon Life and Drain Life) snapshot on external modifiers (things that increase the target's damage taken) such as Shadow Weaving, Improved Shadowbolt, Nightfall (the axe), Curse of Shadows.

How does Spell Resistance Work?

That is a bit too in-depth for this simple FAQ. Please refer to the following source.
This source can also always be found in the discord via !resist

Should I cast x [instead of my filler]?

Use this spreadsheet to get more precise answers

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BnhO7Raym-_WHq1U8287WEjM7sAyozXUkspsteYbp20/edit?usp=sharing

What does this post mean?

When you see a spell you may ask, "will casting this spell be a dps increase?" In order to get the answer you have to not only see how much damage it does but compare it to a spell you could have cast instead. A common example is conflag; on it's own you may think "well conflag does more damage than the tick of immolate that it consumes, so it's a dps increase." This would be true on its own, but instead of casting conflag you could have cast sbolt/incin (more precisely a fraction of them), and choosing to cast those instead would have actually done more damage. Now, where this is true is movement; while moving there is no trade-off since you couldn't have cast sbolt/incin anyway.

Note about moving: If you will need to lifetap during the fight, doing so during movement is better than conflag or sburn.

Note about shadow burn: Due to shadowburn taking debuff slots and stripping ISB charges, it is advised not to ever actually use. The below answers are quantified ignoring these caveats.

Shadow Destro (compared to shadow bolt):

immolate: almost always

corruption: sometimes (T4 4pc)

moving conflag: always

moving conflag instead of sburn: never

stationary conflag: almost never

stationary sburn: < 1405 spellpower (see note)

Fire Destro (compared to incinerate):

immolate: always

corruption: almost never

moving conflag: always

moving sburn instead of conflag: sometimes

stationary conflag: almost never

stationary sburn: never

Demonology (compared to shadow bolt):

immolate: always

corruption: always

stationary sburn: always (see note)

‍

‍Affliction (compared to shadow bolt):

immolate: almost always

stationary sburn: always (see note)

siphon life: almost always (always if ISB is up)

Command: !filler

Credit: Ghostowl

What is the Gruul Safespot?

Read here for more info.

PROFESSIONS

What are BIS professions?

Normally, Tailoring and Enchanting so you save gold not having to re-level it multiple times for rings, or you can take Engineering to use arcanite dragonling if in a raid with fire Mages/Firelocks and to use the 2.1 Engineering helm when P2 (BT) launches.

You are choosing between +24sp passively vs arcanite dragonling and sappers. BIS WPVP/BG: Engi #1 by a mile. Then, Ench. Tailor has a 3s net consume but it shares cd with engineering grenades. BIS Arena: Ench. Then, maybe Engi is good, or at least useful, for S1.

What tailoring spec should I go?

If you go Fire and want to use the Spellfire gear, you will have to be Spellfire spec

If you go shadow and want to use the frozen Shadoweave gear, you will have to be shadow spec.

You can still play both specs, you will just have to make some gearing changes for the  "wrong" spec.

You can respec tailoring specialization for 150g at level 70.

If you are relying on farming and using your own cooldowns, consider the total amounts of cloth you need for all your crafted items (including items such as Girdle of Ruination and Bracers of Havok) and work out what is the fastest way to get all the cloth you need, then go that spec. If you want to know what specializations make the most money, check your AH and work it out yourself.

What level do I need to be to make the cloth?

Level 50 is enough to make all 3 cloth types, level 60 is required to choose a specialization that allows you to make 2 cloth of one type each time you make it as well as gain access to the matching armor set.

How do the Profession Cooldowns work?

Lvl 50: You can level professions to up to lvl 375. Alchemists can use TBC transmutes. As usual, transmutes share some measure of CD with other transmutes. Tailors can create each of the three TBC special cloths: Spellcloth, Shadowcloth, Primal Mooncloth. Unlike transmutes, these 3 cloth CD's are fully independent of each other.

LvL 60: You can do a quest to specialize into ONE of your cloth CDs. This will make that one specific cloth CD return 2 cloths instead of 1. The other two cloth CD's function normally.

Lvl 68: You can do a quest to specialize your alchemy crafts. This will boost your returns with that specific specialization by about 20% on avg by randomly giving you extras some time.

If you pay a certain trainer 150g, you can immediately swap your specialization. This cost scales cheaper the farther you are below lvl 70.

Command: !profcd
Credit: Korvo

Are grenades/sappers better than seed? Where are the explosives best used?

No they're basically not, but grenades are best used after a life tap, during the GCD (you can use them even during it). Sappers just pop them whenever mobs happen to be close to you (which is not that often, but some people swear by it). So yeah you can see why for me engineering is nice to have but not the end all be all.

Credit:Ryusei

GEAR

Where are the BIS lists? 

For BIS guides, refer to the TBC Warlock Discord Best in Slot document in the discord, these guides should be accurate given the stated assumptions, this includes pre-raid guides. 

In classic the pre-raid bis list generally just had the best item in each slot, so regardless of what MC gear you got, it was still useful, but that isn’t really the case for TBC. Because of this we highly recommend learning how to use the sim tools developed in the discord along with these guides. See: !sim

What are Stat Weights?

You won’t find stat weights pinned anywhere, this is due to how individual stat weights are based on your talent build and relative gear. Use the sim tools that can be found in the discord.

See: !sim

How much Hit Rating do I need?

1% Hit Chance = 12.6 Hit Rating

No Ele shaman

Vs lvl 70 - 38 hit rating

Vs lvl 71 - 51 hit rating

Vs lvl 72 - 63 hit rating 

Vs lvl 73 - 202 hit rating

With Ele shaman

Vs lvl 70 - 0 hit rating

Vs lvl 71 - 13 hit rating

Vs lvl 72 - 26 hit rating 

Vs lvl 73 - 164 hit rating

N.b. You will need 12.6 less hit rating with a Draenei

How does Chaotic Skyfire Diamond work?

Any talent build with Ruin wants to use Chaotic Skyfire Diamond. This is done by using the T4 helm; this means giving up on the Spellstrike set bonus.

Instead of the Spellstrike set we go for 2 piece T4. You keep using the Spellstrike pants unless you can get world boss pants or T5 pants. 

As Demonology or UA Affliction (no ruin) you can go for Mystical Skyfire Diamond. This does have other harder-to-reach gem requirements. CSD is not far behind MSD for these specs and gives greater flexibility. You could also opt for Spellstrike head instead, but this is slightly less DPS.

Its weird but the way it works is CSD increases crit damage by 3%: so crit goes from 1.5 to 1.5*1.03=1.545. Now ruin doubles your crit modifier which with csd is .545 and with ruin is now 1.09. Which makes your total crit damage 1+1.09=2.09 or 9% more than the normal 2

Aldor or Scryer?

Aldor offers a slightly better shoulder enchant (1-2 DPS), but Scryer’s offers the Bloodgem, a trinket with big hit useful for gearing fresh warlocks, less useful if you have Nelth’s tear, and a crit ring at exalted that can be useful for early gearing if you don’t need a hit ring in that slot. 

You can change faction later, but it’s pricey, requiring a repeatable quest for a turn-in of mats multiple times to reach neutral, then buying all the rep mats to hit exalted again.

How much Fire Resistance do I need to tank Leotheras?

Aim for a 285 fire resistance unbuffed set using the Badge of Justice items while keeping a healthy HP pool. Use the following set as a reference.

Once you have gotten a feel for the encounter, you might be able to get away with using less.

What about the Jewelcrafting Necks I keep hearing about?

Basically, you have 3 necks, ‍

• Chain of the Twilight Owl
• Eye of the Night
• Jade Pendant of Blasting

They all give a bonus, but when the holder dies/switches group/changes neck it disappears. The necks all have 10 charges which cannot be replenished so you need to get a new one. The 3 bonuses stack with eachother but you cannot have two of the same one. The two blue ones have durations of 30 mins with 1hr cd, so you need two people to rotate them. The green one can be dropped indefiinitely. You ideally lob the green one on your elesham, then the blues on the owl and the lowest parsing lock, but likely you just lob the two blues between elem and owl.

How good is Blade of Wizardry?

An extremely strong weapon and useful for Seed Of Corruption sets for trash. It is not bis for single target and is about equal to the Thrallmar/Honor Hold exalted weapons.

How does The Lightning Capacitator work?

The Lightning Capacitor has an ICD on the Damage Dealing Proc itself. This means if seed explosion crits 3 or more targets you will gain three charges resulting in one lightning proc. Does 750 Damage and can Crit. Scales with Crit but not with Spell Power.

When do I replace Atiesh?

Once in phase three and you get Zhar'doom or Archimonde sword + OH, the stats outweigh the benefit from the Atiesh group buff

Is Belt of Blasting worth it to break Spellfire?

As always you should sim your specific situation. That being said in general Belt of Blasting will not be a DPS upgrade over Spellfire Belt with the set bonus. It most likely won’t be a significant DPS loss either.

So if you can get your hands on Belt of Blasting it is a good item to future-proof yourself. It be for going Shadow or for when inevitable you do break the Spellfire Set. Until that time you can keep Belt of Blasting in your bank.

Command: !bob

Should I be casting Immolate during my Tier four, two-piece proc?

If you have all shadow gear (fsw boots/chest/neck/offhand/soulfrost) don't cast immolate during t4 2pc proc.

If you have only fsw boots as your shadow damage, which is t4 bis, always cast immolate even during the start of t4 2pc, but you prob delay casting it towards the latter half of the t4 2pc proc .

If you have scorch always cast it, this should hold true until t6 4pc

What are my trinket choices at AoE Cap?

• Threat reduction
• Mana trinket
• Crit (shiffar/sextant)
• TLC
• Quag

Are threat trinkets from Classic good?

They are somewhat nerfed in terms of % reduction from classic, but still serve the purpose of enabling you to more aggressively start seeding without threat concerns. 

Swapping them, as with other trinkets, incurs a 30s cooldown before it can be used, and often you will use tranquil air totem (stacks with Salvation for 44% reduction total), so how much use you get out of it will depend on what you’re doing (speedrunning, etc) as well as factors such as how large your pulls are (once AOE capped, threat concerns go down because paladin threat isn’t affected by the cap), how much your paladin gears for threat, etc. You may as well get them if given the chance, but you likely aren’t missing much if you forego them.>

What other items from Vanilla should I get/keep?

• Nelth’s Tear, 
• Black Book, 
• C’thun ring, 
• Naxx cloak/wand, 
• Sapph trinket/offhand, 
• KT trinket
  are all items that you may find useful as competitive with pre-raid bis gear. 

Of those, KT trinket will be bis on Magtheridon/Kara, and t6. It will still be strong in Sunwell Plateau, but by then you may have Hex Shrunken Head from Zul’Aman and Skull of Gul’dan from Illidan, which is considered the bis trinket combo. 

For consumables, Brilliant Wizard Oil is still bis, and strength/agility scrolls are used if you want to DPS with Succubus or Fel Guard, and there’s no replacement for Dark Runes unless you’re fire destro, in which case you use Flame Cap instead.

‍