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.