Demonology in 10-mans.

[hertzuk]

Hello warlocks of Paragon, and all!

A quick question, hopefully with a relatively simple answer:

When in 10-man's, under what circumstances is it better for me to be Destro/Affly than Demo?


My raid setup (caster wise) has myself, a Shadowpriest (that offspecs to disc for some fights), a Mage and Healers.

How much is that extra 4% spell power (after AI) worth, and when, if at all, would it be recommended to drop the Demo lock altogether in favour of potentially better damage offered by Destro Affliction?

Particularly on fights like Morchok, Madness (albeit normal, not HC), Yor'sahj, and Warlord.


Thanks, in advance.

Hertz

[Daewyn]

By making really rough estimations, 4% spellpower is around 400 sp. You have 3 casters in your raid so that makes it 1200 sp. I don't know the stat values of the members in your raid but if we assume that 1 sp = 3 dps, then the buff would be worth around 3.6k dps. In the fights where your sp is playing disc the value is naturally about 1/3rd less.

Because you asked a simple answer, I'd say that if you can do 5k more dps by switching out of demonology and your healers don't need the buff, it's worth it to play another spec. Of course there are other variables like survivability, aoe and burst cooldowns that affect your decision but to make it simple enough you have to look it from the dps perspective.

For encounter specific information, I'm pretty sure Manni has made quite decent guide for DS which includes his spec preferences, but if you still feel that your question remains unanswered, you can always contact me here/PM/in-game.

[hertzuk]

Thanks Daewyn, that seems a fair assessment.

The fight I was thinking about most was Morchok HC. I guess bane would net me a bit more damage, not to mention Nether Ward being pretty useful on crystals and blood phase.

But the increased healing for healers, and decreased damage taken by healers would probably outweigh this, along with us having the priest as shadow this fight so we'd be making full benefit of demo.


Guess I may as well stay demo then, just itching to try something new. Maybe it's time to 25 ;)

Thanks, again and to Manni, keep up the good work with the guides, I'd love to see a similar guide for HC fights.

Hertz

[Uzkin]

If the healers don't need Demonic Pact, 5k more dps is an over-estimate. According to Daewyn's numbers, the spriest and mage gain ca. 400 spellpower or 1200 dps each from the Pact, so together they gain 2400 dps. Therefore, if your dps increase is greater than ca. 2400 when you spec from demo to affli or destro, it will be a raid dps increase. Round up to, say, 3000 dps to be on the safe side.

[Daewyn]

The mistake I made was that I calculated the DP benefit for the warlock aswell, which indeed shouldn't be done in this kind of comparison so apologizes for that. After that I simply rounded up 3.6k to 5k which is clearly an over estimate already in itself but of course there are other factors to consider, like SP possibly being worth more than 3 dps (for warlock in BiS gear it is at least and considering how well mages are performing, I'd assume it is for them aswell) or the raid having healers do some dps (minor thing of course but still something).

This is already a personal opinion more than a fact and it already accounts for other things aswell and not just dps but I wouldn't choose affli/destro in that type of raid if the dps increase was just 3k.

[hertzuk]

Looks like I may as well stick to demo then.

Cheers for the replies, all the best!

Hertz