Good clip here guys of the 25 man Halion encounter.  Looks funky! there is certainly enough things to not be standing in.  Also this guys UI, I want that, give me that UI baby!

Welcome to the first edition of Wipe Insurance, Waranvil.com’s new raiding column. This will be posted every monday, so make sure you come back every week for new strategies, tips and tricks! This week we are going to discuss when you are ready to raid. So you’ve just dinged 80 and all you’ve heard about since level 5 is endgame raiding – many people will tell you its where the real game is, you level up and may even do some raids at your level along the way. But entering the current endgame raiding is different. Theres tiers, caps, stat weights, enrage timers, gearscore, jerks, death knights in full tier 9 doing 2k dps (Theres a lot of them…), casual, hardcore, no-lifers, hard modes…its enough to make your head spin.

What should you run?

The number one thing I can recommend to people who want to start raiding is to know your limits.
The way blizzard tunes instances (Gearwise anyway) is so that it is just hard enough for people wearing gear from the last tier of content (and assuming a reasonable amount of skill). The problem with this is…people want the newest gear and freshly dinged 80’s want to run ICC. If you get into that ICC 10 group in your Naxx 10 or Uld 10 gear, there is a very (very) good chance you will not be up to the minimum requirements for that instance. This, boys and girls, is a carried player. Being carried will not get you invited back to runs, and it will most likely put you on a few players ignore lists, hurting your future raiding attempts – even after  you have the gear to pull your weight. Stay in your bracket and get gear, it doesn’t take long to move up the ladder.

Disclaimer: The badge leap

When WotLK first came out, there were 2 badge types you could get: Heroism and Valor. You got heroism from running heroics, and the 10 man tier 7 raids. The gear you got from badges was on par with running the raid content. These days, you can get a full set of tier 9, and its 25 man counterparts (245 gear) just from chain-running heroics. Thats great, its a great way to gear up -  but I still suggest doing the tier 7/tier 8 raids before jumping straight into ToC or ICC, they give excellent experience in your class and in raiding techniques. Below are the raid tiers and a dps mark of where you should be to do them. These are numbers are based on the way the encountered are tuned and failure to meet them may lead to your raid having difficulty. Think of it this way – if you dont meet the minimum, everyone else in the raid has to work harder to make sure it succeeds.

Tier 7

• Tier 7 is the entry level raiding tier in wrath – as such, the gear requirements are lax and you can pretty much jump into these raids with heroic gear.
• This tier comprises of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and The Eye of Eternity. To run tier 7, you can pretty much be a fresh 80. A few heroic drops, some level 200 craftables – your good to go. The main purpose for these raids is to wet your feet in raiding, give you a taste of its glory. By the time you have completed these raids and gotten a few pieces – you will be ready for the 25 man version of tier 7 and the 10 man Tier 8 stuff.
  • Fasttrack: The ToC 5 man dungeon will drop Naxx 10 level gear in normal mode and Ulduar 10 in normal. The ICC 5 man dungeons also drop Ulduar 10 level gear on normal. These are a great way to get gear without raiding the tier 7 stuff.
  • DPS Mark: 1.5-2.5k

Tier 8

• Tier 8 is comprised of the Ulduar raid, which is an amazingly well done raid that most players these days will never do. The prerequisites for this tier are gear from Tier 7 or higher.
  • Fasttrack: The ICC 5 man dungeons drop ToC 10 level gear on heroic. If you are in mostly Tier 7 or ToC 5H/ICC 5N gear these heroics are manageable and an excellent way to gear up.
  • DPS Mark: 2.5-3.5k

Tier 9

• Tier 9 is comprised of Trial of the Champion , which gets a real bad rep, and Onyxia’s Lair 2.0 (Which is easy if you understand the basics of movement) . Once you have farmed tier 8 or heroics, this will probably be where most of your upgrades are. As I said before, I highly suggest you do the previous tier raids before this. There is not a whole lot of room for error in these fights – you need to know how to play your class, what your utility is and how not to stand in the fire/slime/cloud.
  • DPS Mark: 3.5-5.5k

Tier 10

• Tier 10 is the final tier of raiding in Wrath, and is comprised of Icecrown Citadel and the soon to be released Ruby Sanctum.|
  Icecrown Citadel is the culmination of all that  you have done in wrath, and the fights are great – but some of them come with serious gear and skill checks.
  • DPS Mark: 5.5k-7.5k

With the badge changes in this expansion, it will be easy to get geared in a matter of time, but until you meet the gear requirements – try to resist the urge to go into runs you are not ready for. Now, I am a firm believer that skill heavily outweighs gear, and that a 200 piece can be better itemized than a 219, it happens. This brings me to my next point.

Know your class.

I know you know your class, but do you really know your class? Do you know what buffs you bring to the table? Is your spec giving you the best tools you need to do your job? Are you stacking stats that give you more of what you need to do your job?

Ok, I’m probably going to catch some flack for the numbers above, but if you are in a gear setup that the instance is tuned for (see above), you should not have problems meeting these numbers. If you are in all ToC 10 and 25 gear and can just barely hit 3k, ask yourself – “Do I really know my class?”. Blizzard tunes the enrage timers and add health around what they expect (from lots of data gathering) players wearing a certain gear setup to put out.

If you happen to be a tank, here are some numbers that are good checkpoints to START tanking a specific raid.Keep in mind these numbers are unbuffed. As you can see, health requirements scale up significantly, this is due to bosses progressively hitting harder as you go up in tier.

Minium Tank Requirements per instance: (ALWAYS at least 540 defense.)

• Heroics/Naxx 10: 20-23k health, 20-30% avoidance, 20-23k armor.
• Naxx 25/Ulduar 10: 23-25k health,30-40% avoidance, 22-25k armor.
• Ulduar 25/ToC 10: 27-29k health, 40-50% avoidance, 25-27k armor.
• ToC 25: 33-35k health, 45-50% avoidance, 27-28k armor.
• ICC 10: 35-38k health, 45-55% avoidance, 29-30k armor.
• ICC 25: 39-44k health, 50%+ Avoidance, 30k+ armor. (The icecrown numbers reflect the current 20% buff).

Be prepared.

There are mountains of information out there regarding raids, bosses and abilities. Videos, if you like to watch – text guides otherwise! Its all out there, It will even be here in this column. Theres no excuse for going into a run dry – if you have at least a passing familiarity of what the encounter is like, it will go a little smoother when you attempt it. Also, if this is content that is challenging for you (or geared towards you) be prepared with consumables. Bring your own flasks, pots, elixirs and food. Most groups will provide fish feasts, but is that the best food buff you can get? Always try to do your best.

Ok,I’m Ready! I got my flasks, know my class, and studied the encounters!

Great! Come back next week when we discuss the art of being a good pug, and until then happy raiding!

Hi there, as you may already know, we here at Waranvil.com want to make this site better, and we want to give you more content! A good way to start would be some regular class specific columns for you guys and girls! So welcome to the brand new Waranvil.com hunter column Double Killshot, making its debut here and continuing every wednesday! Ok, thats enough exlamations (thats what the kids like now, right? Exclamations?) To kick this column off we are going to do a standard “get to know your class stats” rundown.

Keep in mind these stat explanations are for PvE, leveling and beginning endgame. Extreme soloing is a different matter, and will most likely be discussed at a later time. There will also be a lot of talk about itemization points,and  that article will follow next week.

Base stats: We call these the base stats since they are basically our bread and butter. Pretty much every piece of gear you get from level 10 on will feature at least one of these.

• Agility: Agility is your number one stat. From just one point of Agility you get .012% crit and 1 attack power.
• Intellect: Intellect is a stat you will never gem for, but you will miss it at the early levels of endgame and leveling. Intellect, like all caster stats, will give you a bit of mana, a bit of mp5, and a small bit of spell crit. From a pure dps standpoint, int is nice because it lets us have less time in aspect of the viper, and less viper time = more damage. Also keep in mind that 1 point of intellect is equal to 1 ap if you took careful aim in the marks tree.
• Strength: Strength gives you MELEE ATTACK POWER. You don’t want strength. Move along. No, I don’t care that your pet uses your melee attack power and you specced beast mastery. Move along.
• Stamina: Stamina is tricky. If you are specced survival, it will provide a small dps boost (and piss off the druid tank you keep rolling against staves on). Other than that its only real value is giving you more padding against unavoidable damage. Avoidable damage is avoidable and you really don’t need to stack stamina.

Secondary stats: These are the secondary stats that appear on your gear (the green text), most of these you will not deal with until level 25 and higher, and are more of the contested and varying levels in your set.

Hit: Hit is important, you want to cap it at 8% (7% if you are, or know you will run with, a draenai). Anything over 8% is wasted itemization. Try to balance your gear around the hit cap if you can.

Crit: Critical Strike Rating is very important to us as hunters, a great deal of our trinkets and talents proc off of crits, so you want to make sure you keep a high crit rate to keep dps up.

Attack Power: Attack power is good. It scales our dps (like agility) very well. Not as good as agility, but close, due to the fact that you get double the itemization points.

Expertise: Like strength above, expertise is for melee classes. I understand there are some pieces that look pretty great when just gearing up (Uruka’s Band of Zeal, I’m looking at you.) and they are ok to take them as a stepping stone to better gear. Its just wasted itemization in the end though. (In case you are wondering about your pet, they get expertise equal to your hit rating.)

Spellpower: Back in Burning Crusade, Arcane Shot scaled from spellpower because…its arcane. Anyway, it doesn’t anymore, so stay away from spellpower-it does nothing for us.

Haste: Haste is not a bad stat, but not a great one either. It will speed up your steady shots and auto-shots (It becomes more valuable with 2t10, where more auto-shots = more procs), but it’s not worth gemming for.

Armor Penetration: Armor penetration, to put it simply (because the real explanation is very mathy) reduces the amount of armor your target has, thus increasing the amount of physical damage they take. It also gets better the more of it that you have! I do however have to issue the following big red warning label:

>>IF YOU ARE NOT IN FULL ICC 25/ICC 10 HEROIC GEAR, YOU SHOULD NOT BE GEMMING ARMOR PEN, YOU SHOULD NOT STOP USING ARCANE SHOT<<

Let me explain. There is a special spot in gearing for Marks hunters where ArP actually becomes worth more dps than agility. This is somewhere around the 850-950 ArP mark from gear alone. It also requires more than 4k attack power and over 50% crit. At this point, its usually more dps to drop the improved arcane shot talent and drop arcane shot from your rotation in order to get more steady shots off. It also comes with the condition that if you have to move, you will lose a good deal of dps.

I cannot tell you how many times I have zoned into a ToC or Ulduar run just to see a hunter with 100 ArP from gear, all gemmed up for ArP, just leaving potential dps on the floor.
Bottom line for ArP: Gem Agility, but take whatever ArP you can get from gear – as long as stat wise – its an upgrade.

Not all stats are created equal and we will go heavily into stat weights and itemization points next wednesday! All feedback is welcome in the comments, including column topics.

For those who are interested in my credentials: Armory

I kid, I kid. Icecrown is a challenging instance, or at least, it was. About a month or two ago, I stepped into the grand Light’s Hammer hall and gazed upon Tirion Fordring and the knights of the ashen verdict. The Damned clashed against their might just down the hall and a giant skeleton with the words “Lord Marrowgar” lied in wait at the end.

We quickly set forth in taking down the guards, making our way past Marrowgar and Deathwhisper, boarded the funship and spent a good hour learning how not to get hit by a blood beast before bringing the Deathbringer to his demise.

The next week, I went in again to notice King Wyrnn standing there and a nice fuzzy 5% boost to damage, health and healing taken. Honestly, that 5% felt right. For people in 10 man ToC gear and some 245 badge gear – it was enough to make it through. The 5% pushed us into some of the harder bosses, since the 5k/6.5+ required for festergut was no longer an issue.

Then came the 10%. We pushed through to the Blood Queen, Putricide and Sindragosa, and most pugs should now be able to clear festergut.

Yesterday, we welcome the 15% buff. This will almost certainly increase the chances of me seeing the Lich King (without being in a hardcore guild) and bring a lot of the people who are undergeared into the second wing.

My only concern now is – is it too much? I know the new blizzard philosophy is for everyone to be able to see the content, and I do agree with that. But a lot of the fun of raiding, at least to me, lies in its challenge.  Its set to be at 30% by the end of this buff cycle, but at that point it would be pretty hard to NOT one shot the first 2 wings, even with a bad pug.

The sky is falling! But Ill be enjoying my 15% buff anyway, and I hope all you people who are struggling on a boss push through this week. Good Luck and let me in the comments how you do, what your thoughts are, etc…

Last week I went over the stats of the new legendary healer mace Val’anyr.  A lot of people have been unsure of whether the proc on this mace is worth the effort and who should get it in their raid. Bornakk was nice enough to give us a good overview of how the proc actually works over in the official forums.

Here’s a quick TL;DR:

• It can proc off both HoT ticks  and Direct Heals (as long as they actually heal the target).
• It has a 10% proc chance and a 45 sec internal cooldown.
• The healer gets a buff for 15 secs that allows them a chance to cast the shield on any targets they heal.
• The shield absorption is 15% of the heal, rather than just what the player received. [This means overhealing will still produce good shields.]
• The shields  stack. Meaning if you have a 1500 damage shield up on someone, another heal will proc another  shield (lets say also for 1500) which would be a total of 3k damage absorption. All heals cast on a shielded target contribute to the shield while the healer is buffed.
• It stacks with Power Word: Shield.
• The shield last 8 seconds and is refreshed on each heal while the healer has the buff.

(Source)
So thats the official word. Now, opinions on over or underpowered?
I know I would be pretty happy to have my pocket healer carrying one from the tank standpoint.

We have come to the start of a new era in the World of Warcraft. With the implementation of Dual Talent Specialisation, everyone can do everything that their class was made for. Mages can go down the Frost tree for some PvP, leave the Battleground, hit a button and be ready for raiding Ulduar, Frostfire build and all. Paladins can switch from healing to tanking in five seconds. Warriors can either be useful and do what they were intended for, or DPS instead. But in all of this wonder and diversity, there is a very, very serious problem lurking in the background, just waiting to destroy that decent PuG run you’ve been enjoying.

“It’s for my other spec.”

With every player and their dog running around with two specs on hand, the question of loot has become even more problematic. For instance, my Priest has Shadow for levelling, and Discipline for instances. Discipline calls for crit and intellect, mainly. Shadow calls for spirit, and a hell of a lot of it, as does Holy I believe. Already, I have an issue. I have two specs, and they require two different types of gear. Technically speaking I require two different sets of gear, and so I could say that I need every piece of cloth that drops in a given run.

I don’t need to tell you that that is unacceptable. It astounds me that some people believe that just because they’ve spent 1000 gold voluntarily, that they deserve twice as much loot as everyone else. There are people already saying that they intend to need on anything that drops that fits their two specs. Why stop there? 50 gold is all it costs to respec one of their specs again, so why not need on everything? My Paladin can tank, heal and dps. So, by the reasoning of others, I should get first choice of cloth, leather, mail and plate, regardless of the stats on them. I should also be allowed to need on every weapon I can use.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Well, I’m afraid to say I can see this sort of behaviour becoming standard practice for some.

With this in mind, I think its worth drawing up rules when you go into groups. I was discussing this issue with Grim as we slaughtered our way through Grizzly Hills yesterday, and we both came to the same conclusion:

You need on the spec you’re using now. If something you need drops, and it’s for your other spec, you get second choice. If no-one else needs it, you can take it. That has been standard practice for us, and no doubt millions of other players for years. Attitudes shouldn’t change; unless stated otherwise, your “other” spec is your offspec. At the moment, I need on gear that’s relevant for my levelling spec. Tanks we’ve run with have needed on gear for their tank spec.

Don’t let other people who have a fale sense of entitlement take more than their fair share.  You wouldn’t have let them do it before, don’t let them do it now. Nothing has changed.

A bit of digging through the official armory over at MMO-Champion has revealed the stats for the new legendary healer mace.

The stats have been updated into wowhead – but here they are anyway.

Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings

• Main Hand (93-298 dmg)
• 1.8 Speed/108.6 dps
• +52 Stamina
• +54 Intellect
• +47 Critical Strike Rating
• +46 Haste Rating
• +587 Spellpower

On Equip: Your healing spells have a chance to cause “Blessing of Ancient Kings” for 15 seconds, allowing your heals to shield the target, absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed.

Tooltip: “The power of creation courses through this weapon”

Ghostcrawler’s comments included:

The proc is probably better than you guys are assuming (even for druids). I’m not going to spoil it though.

and

It’s our intent that it is useful to all four healing classes. That’s about all I’m going to say.

(source)
I’m not a healer myself, so I can’t pretend to know if this is amazing or poorly done … your thoughts?

As many of you may know, there is a slight war going on regarding raid content. I’m speaking of “the casuals” versus “the hardcore”. Now I don’t believe too much in these extremes…everyone who plays this game is casual and hardcore in their own way. But that is not todays topic, todays topic assumes you are an officer who has just been tasked with leading your ragtag group of semi-casual heroes into the fray of a 10,20 or even 40 man raid! These people may not have the gear, but they have heart! So let’s talk about how to get your casual guild raiding and keep interest long enough to get things done.

Join me after the break!

The Attitude

These days, all you seem to hear about is how easy the content is. But let us take a step back. IT IS EASY….for people who min/max, know their class very well, are familiar with the concept of “don’t stand in the fire”. But for those who have never stepped foot in a raid…who don’t have Best-in-slot gear..are not seasoned fire-movers…it can be very hard and frustrating to do.

What you can do for your raiders:

1. Have a positive attitude. First and foremost – remember – you are the leader, and these people are expecting you to lead. Not just into the dungeon, but as a beacon of light to slice through the darkness ahead. That means not saying “YOU GUYS SUCK – IM OUT!” after that 10th wipe. Instead – take a look at what you guys are doing wrong and see if you can swap roles for people or try a new strategy.

2. LISTEN to your members. This goes for any leadership role, your members are your people and they deserve to have a say. Maybe one of them has done this raid with a pug and knows a trick, or maybe they just have a creative new strategy no one thought of. Either way, the raid leader does not know everything and should be open to suggestions.
This also goes for picking the raids – listen to which raid your members really want to do. (If they are completly not ready for it – then say so nicely but pay attention to their wants too.)

3. Squash the seed of doubt. There is always that one member who after the aforementioned 10th wipe will insist “We can’t do this”. It is at this point that a few more of the raiders will chime in with “yea….I don’t think we can either…”, and by the 11th wipe the seed of doubt will have bloomed and people will start leaving, disheartened. As with any leader – this is your time to inspire them back to the vigor they had when they came in. Make sure to keep on top of this – nobody likes dying, and many will bail after the first wipe. If people are quitting over the repair bills – offer to pay out of the guild bank.

4. They will get better. Most players, in their first raid, will be abysmal. It’s not their fault, its new to them. You have to remember this. These members will need extra encouragement. Just make to remind them ahead of time to stay out of the fire.

5. Schedule.
Most people are not in raiding guilds because they cannot commit to it. Thats perfectly fine – IRL > WoW – and we as leaders need to accept that. If the nature of a guild is a casual one, you cannot get mad at your members for having prior obligations or new plans the night of the raid. It happens. Try to find a night or two that everyone can agree on to raid. This will help people. In my guild we typically run Friday and Saturday nights after 7 server, so as not to interfere with people’s dinner and homework duties. And be ready to pug or cancel if need be. You cant run Naxx with 3 people, don’t try.

6. Strategy.
As the raid leader – do not expect your members to be reading the strategies right away. Be prepared to go over it pre-fight and expect to be asked a lot of questions. Posting the strategy on the guild site is a great way to get people reading too.

7. Loot.
Ah shiny pixels…the glory and the bane of our wow existence. Whether your constantly grasping for purples or you hate the pixel war, you can’t ignore new gear. As is the nature of a casual guild…you cannot expect 100% attendance on the raids. In fact, some people may only ever attend 1 or 2 nights out of 7 or 8 in a month. You must remember to be fair to everyone. In my guild I have adopted a “pugroll masterloot” system. Meaning the master looter will simply raid warn the group to roll need or greed and award based on that. Its fair to all who attend for that night. All greens or reagents get placed in the guild bank.

8. Poaching.
It happens, you have been running successful raids for a while and everyone is getting pretty good at it. Next thing you know you just lost a healer and a tank to a hardcore guild who raids 5 nights a week. Well, unfortunately I can’t help you much with this one. It’s going to happen. The best thing I can tell you is to convince your players to stay based on the friendships they have developed within the guild – are the friendships worth more shinies? There is also a good chance – and it has happened before – that said members will return after they have gotten their fill. If your raid is full, I suggest not bumping anyone for these members, but letting them wait til a slot opens again before putting them back in.

9. “Ive got my loot, I’m not going tonight”. Ok, so I know what I am about to say goes against #5 again, but this is a different situation. This person has been a mainstay at all your raids and is now all epiced out. They have also decided that they no longer need to run because of this. Make sure to remind them that their absence will adversely affect the rest of the raid. By not attending they are leaving an empty slot (which depending on your group – you may not be able to fill) and setting a bad example for the other raiders. This will make your job much more difficult.

10. Old Raids.
Don’t be afraid of the old world raids. A lot of your members have probably never seen them, and would be aching to get the achievements. These are GREAT ways to train them. UBRS, Onyxia and Molten Core are great for team coordination, listening to directions, and creative strategies. And again – do not be afraid to wipe – skill develops over time.

11. Class knowledge.
Openly encourage questions about gear choices, stats and other character concerns. Your members want to do their best, but maybe they just don’t know about the synergies of their character. Help them out. Appointing class leads is a great way of doing this.

12. Recruit Recruit Recruit.
In a game of 11 million players – there are a lot of casual raiders out there. Keep recruiting, a big pool of potential raiders will serve you better than a few who miss half the raids.

Thats all I can elaborate on today, but if you have any questions, comments or flames to throw my way – please don’t hesitate to put them in the comments I hope this has inspired some officers to take their group in, or helped out someone.

Ederlinban / Scarlet Crusade

For us here at WarAnvil, this is fantastic. It’s very heartening to see our server getting some proper use, but we want more! If your guild needs a channel, email me! If your friends guild needs a channel, email me! If you just want a channel for your 3v3 Arena Team, email me! Hell, if you register on the Teamspeak server you can create your own passworded channel, and it’ll be there permanently from that point on, so you don’t even have to talk to us at all if you just want a basic no frills channel! Remember, this is a totally FREE service we’re offering here. Your guild could have a raid ready Teamspeak channel TONIGHT.

If you want us to set up a channel, email me with the desired channel name and password. If you just want to try it out, log on and create one yourself! You can access the server by clicking the big old Teamspeak link at the top of the site. Now get in there and make some use of it!

Oh yeah, and did I mention you can email me?

Following on from my previous article on gear to collect outside of raids, we’re now going to take a look at talent builds that you may wish to consider. I’ll let it be known from the get go that I don’t have extensive experience in these specs, so what I’m really showing you are the popular ideas that are floating around the message boards. What’s more, take these ideas as just that, ideas. Use them as templates and tweak them if you feel it necessary. This seems to be the done thing from research I’ve done, and for that reason, there are many variations upon the builds I’m going to list.

Read on and let’s get down to business.

FG/Ember – 0/41/30

This my current spec and I’m enjoying it very much. I believe it is one of the highest damage dealers currently only beaten by a deeper destruction spec which uses the imp. Things you may wish to change in the Demonology tree are moving a point from Master Conjuror to Demonic Sacrifice. Even with the avoidance boost all our demons received in patch 3, they can still suffer considerably on certain fights, particularly because this spec ommits Fel Synergy. So in these situations you wish to sacrifice an imp for that extra fire damage. Come patch 3.0.8, the Glyph of Felguard should be getting buffed from 10% to 20% attack power bonus. Something I need to investigate is which is better between Glyph of Curse of Agony, or Glyph of Corruption. Currently, Glyph of Curse of Agony is not actually a dps increase, it only decreases the frequency at which you need to cast it. Come patch 3.0.8, the glyph will actually become a dps increase. I like Glyph of Corruption because you should be using both Curse of Agony and Corruption in your spell rotation to proc Molten Core. Glyph of Corruption gives you the tier 4 affliction talent Nightfall, an instant cast shadowbolt. Very nice indeed. But when the next patch comes around, it may be better to use Glyph of Curse of Agony as the dps increase should also be increased by Demonic Spellstone which I think you should be using over Demonic Firestone.

So to summarise, the spell rotation for this build will be: CoA > Corr > Immo > Incinerate and popping Demonic Empowerment whenever it’s available. When I start a fight I pop in between CoA and Corruption because it’s not connected to the global cooldown. What you’ll find with the dots is that you can renew Corruption and Immolate as a pair as they have a similar duration (something which Blizzard are considering for simplifying the Affliction tree). This pair along with CoA will fade in and out of sync with each other after only a few rotations. So it’s a simple spec to play but is still good fun and keeps you alert to things going on. Your felguard should be cleaving automatically, don’t worry about CC, it won’t break anything anymore. Anguish should of course be switched off as should Intercept imo. I save that ability for emergency situations for example in a heroic where a loose mob is running after a clothy to give the tank a chance to taunt it back. You’ll only ever want 1 point in Mana Feed in my opinion. Given the new mana regen mechanics in raids, your pet should never have a problem. Given the amount of times you’ll be life tapping if you have the 4xt7 bonus, your pet will always be topped up. And remember with patch 3.0.8, you’ll probably want to swap Glyph of Corruption with Glyph of Curse of Agony.

Meta/Ruin – 0/56/15

This spec I played for quite a while during gearing myself up through heroics. It works very well for short fights but unfortunately for raiding it doesn’t cut the mustard. Metamorphosis is too infrequent and the Demonology tree itself isn’t a good damage dealer because you don’t gain any direct spell buffs or new dots or direct damage spells. This is something Blizzard are looking into improving in the distant future (perhaps in 3.1) by increasing pet damage output. I’ve put it here though because it may something to keep an eye on for the future and is kinda cool to play if you’re still working through heroics. The spells I used were the same as above, just using Shadowbolt instead of Incinerate.

MD(Imp)/S&F – 0/31/40

I guess all the old 0/21/40 raiders of BC just couldn’t let go of Shadow and Flame because it is after all a super talent. I believe this is the current top damage dealing spec. But from what I’ve read, it’s only really noticeable until you’re geared up in the best heroic raiding gear currently available from Naxx, Malygos and Obsidian Sanctum. I shall certainly give this spec a try when I’m closer or at that point. When patch 3.0.8 arrives, it may be worth getting yourself Conflagrate and adding that into your spell rotation. The reason is, currently, Conflagrate is not working with Emberstorm. That’ll be getting fixed and also, Glyph of Conflagrate shall be getting changed to something along the lines of “Your Conflagrate spell no longer purges your Immolate spell from the target”. So you’ll want to put this in place of Glyph of Corruption. That’s is you choose to invest a point in the talent. I’m quite sure I will as I expect it will be a dps increase, but it’ll also make the build a bit more interesting to play. You’ll still want to use CoA and Corruption to proc Molten Core remember. And the Imp now has almost the same amount of health points as a Felguard which is great for survivability, providing your pet isn’t getting meleed.

Standard Destruction – 0 /20/51

This is how I would go about a full destruction build. The standard template from Elitist Jerks is this and I’ve filled in how I would do it. I haven’t considered whether to put a point in Fel Domination or not but if I did it would have to come from Unholy Power. With patch 3.0.8, I’d have to change the spec to something like this as Conflagrate and subsequently Backdraft will become very nice dps increases. You’d also want to use a Firestone instead of a Spellstone as the vast majority of your damage will be coming from direct damage spells now. You should still use CoA and Corruption however to proc Molten Core. Thrown into the mix are Immolate, Chaos Bolt and Conflagrate (post 3.0.8). I haven’t tried this spec at all yet but may well consider it in the future. It may prove really nice on fights like Patchwerk because you never have to move from your spot. So you could have it in your dual spec setup whenever that comes around.

Haunt/Ruin – 56/0/15

This is another one of the top damage dealing builds according to many theorycrafters. It’s own downfall is it is too complicated to pull of really well. You’ll be juggling lots of timers and only firing off a few Shadowbolts in between. As mentioned earlier, this is something Blizzard are addressing in possibly making dots around the same duration as each other. This would give Ruin a much better chance to come into play also. With 3.0.8, Glyph of Curse of Agony will also become a dps increase. I don’t think Glyph of Shadow Bolt will be worth it as 10% isn’t a giant amount, especially in the current form of Affliction. You also have Nightfall now, but Glyph of Corruption will stack with this talent so it may still be worth going for if you wish. That choice is up to you. There are certainly a few options when it comes to glyphs for Affliction so think it through. Perhaps when playing this spec you will discover which glyphs will be more beneficial. As for spell rotations, to me it’s too confusing right now and I won’t be trying this tree in depth until Blizzard have simplified it. If you’re running through 5 man heroics right now this spec won’t do so well because fights are too short. But for 10 and 25 mans, it’ll definitely put you up at the top of the damage meters provided you play the spec right.

Those are the builds I think are worth mentioning right now. There are many variations of these which you can find by hunting around www.wowmb.net and www.elitistjerks.com. One generalisation I make personally with specs right now is not bothering with Improved Healthstone. Pre Wrath, it was a really good idea to bring warlocks along that had varying points invested in this talent so you could carry all 3 healthstones. Now that you can only carry 1, I see them as more of an emergency button that you use to keep you on 2 feet, regardless of precisely how much health it gives you. I don’t often find myself using them nowadays.

A couple of other resources you may be interested to check out are Leulier’s Spreadsheet. This is a fan made Excel spreadsheet that is able to draw your character information from the Armory and output your expected dps, taking into account latency and human reaction times. Although it is impossible to be 100% accurate, it does give you a very good idea of what to expect. Most importantly, you can see how different talent specs compare under the same conditions and parameters. You can change gear, gems and enchants to see how much of a dps increase you’ll be getting this way too. It’s very well made and I highly recommend it. You don’t have be a hardcore theorycrafter either as it’s very user friendly. Just remember if you’re using Excel to Enable Macros when the warning comes up.

Something the more hardcore theorycrafter may interested in is SimCraft. This a modeler that shows you how different talent builds scale alongside builds from other classes. You can create a talent build on wowhead.com, obtain the direct link to it, and punch it into the input plain text file. You need to use a DOS command prompt to run the exe. The raid_80.txt file tells you what to do at the top.

Lastly, something to keep an eye on is Rawr Model Development. It’s similar to SimCraft except it is more flexible and comes with its own GUI, making it a lot more user friendly. The only annoying thing is it currently doesn’t have any models for Warlocks which is a shame. Must be coded by a Mage. So if you’re interested, keep an eye out and hopefully it’ll be added in the future.

That’s all folks, hope you had a nice new year party.