A request for a Warlock

[Quark]

Your problem is that you don't have access to easy methods to increase damage. So much of your damage is tied to your weapons, and upgrades aren't easily obtained while casters get small and easier to individually obtain cumultive +dmg item bonuses.

Not really. When I got my Keris of Zul'Serrak, my damage increase was phenomenal, but it didn't stop there. Since then, I have put serious time into getting items that sacrificed my survivability (+sta and +dodge) to give me attack power and crit chance. They don't individually have the benefit that one +damage item does, but they add up. And I've gotten all this gear while I was almost always at the top of the DPS charts.

Honestly, my guildmates do much better damage than I do in the same raid. Those rogues are both skilled and well equipped. You might just need an item upgrade. Quite simply, my car's easier to upgrade than yours.

From where? We're all decked out in the non-MC/Onyxia blues. There's very little I can do to upgrade my damage anymore without getting Epics, and guess what: not everybody can do that. I still am missing Shadowcraft, but most of the equipment slots I would actually lose attack power by putting it on. How about weapons? There's a total of 4 non-MC/onxyia daggers better than mine. The reward for Alterac's BG faction - never happen on my server. The reward for massive PvPing - ugh. The Barman Shanker - ugly, still has a bad proc, and not actually that much better. Finally, there's Specter's Blade. Great, so all I need to do is follow a paladin on his quest - or ask a paladin who's already done it to summon him. It's a goal, but it's not easy. And it really won't increase my damage that much, I want it to be unique and to get rid of my proc.

There's another niche to lock damage. Lock damage is best when enemy health is > 10k when shadow vulnerability can take place. When enemies have health below that, we simply won't get the nuke casting times in.

Seems to work pretty damn well in UBRS.

Personally, I've got over +300 damage in equip, and am getting over 2.5k crits non-ruin. If I had a bit more +shadow damage, and just the right debuffs and crit, I'd imagine it'd go over 4k with ruin. Some locks have done 4.5k SB crit. My regular SB's are 700-900 w/o CoS, and varies with CoS / Shadow vulnerability.  Can be 1200 non-crit with those two.

My Ambush is 900-1500 crit based on mob AC. But it's only used once a battle, and it was decided to be too powerful to be combined with the Lethality talent. :wacko:

You're just jealous.

The stealthy Rogue is an up-close damage dealer. Like the Mage, they can rip through mobs quickly and brutally using their wide range of combination moves.

Don't see that description much for Warlocks.

In my guild damage meter comparisons, the mages/locks/rogues/hunters all shined vs different bosses, trash mobs, and groups of single target enemies. All the players being pretty darn well equipped, the relative class damage difference was actually pretty slim.

We're all equally equipped (Oh No! We're not epic! We must suck!) and the difference was never rediculous, but Rogues were the top. A respec, a patch, and a hotfix (resistance) have skyrocketed Warlocks to the top.

My own comparisons against a pickup raid were skewed because my equipment was simply superior to most of the raid's. When paired with dps classes with equivalent equipment, the damage gaps closed.

You must be kidding yourself if Lissa is ready to compare himself to Sommli. You know, Tahapenes in all blue gear while Sommli has half epics.

However, I want to leave with the note that none of the damage you do matters if the mob is NOT DEAD. No individual contribution of damage matters if you're all too dead to collect and the enemy's still alive. Eschew damage completely if it means you'll survive the encounter. I did 50k damage to onyxia in one encounter... did it matter? Not at all. She wasn't dead. Did any of the other damage matter? Nope. She wasn't dead, and we were. Never ever let dps-monkeying take predence over defeating the encounter as a whole.

Seems to me, the more damage you deal, the more likely a target is dead. You're using this as a copout, and it doesn't work simply because the Warlocks and Rogues were doing nothing wrong on the run that was my first comparison. The 'locks pulling aggro could have been simply fixed by giving them Salvation like I was given.

That is why I personally will not be taking ruin as a talent.  With my equipment this talent pulls too much burst aggro and jeopardizes raid encounters. DPS-monkeying is not worth risking everyone's extended time and effort.
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You could do what Mages have been forced to do since level 1 grouped - be smart about casting and ramp up damage as allowed. Don't ever blame a talent for gaining aggro - you could have simply waited another second to cast the spell, just like I wait on bosses to pull out the Backstab/Eviscerate until I'm Feinted recently.

Of course, all this is academic until I see more comparisons between our like-equipped players. This was only one comparison, and though I believe it to be true, it'd be stupid to make it gospel. Hence the request, we just haven't had time yet.