Video Tutorial I made to Increase Caster DPS in WoW using AHK, Enjoy.

Working on a video tutorial on how all caster DPS can increase their DPS with an outside program. Will be posting on youtube and linking here. Should be done in 1hour or so, YouTube takes a while for video to get uploaded though. I'll keep you posted

Destruction in Cataclysm PTR Patch 4.0
Talents, Glyphs, and Playstyle


Talents


So yesterday after I finished writing and posting my Affliction in patch 4.0 post, I decided to get started on my Destruction thread. Here is what I found. First off, after finishing this test, I realized that I could have made a better choice in talents. I had been playing with demonology and affliction for the past couple days and didn't have a mana problem at all. However, mana is definitely a prominent issue that you will inevitably face if you decide to roll destruction. I specced 2/2 into nether proection which was what I thought a good choice, for a raid cooldown if a lot of raid spell damage goes out. I now realize this should have gone into improved life tap, for that extra mana back. If i'm looking at things correctly, I don't see Destruction warlocks using corruption and any other curse than Curse of elements, or any other bane besides bane of havoc. So we will most likely have a few points to play around with once we fill out our main tree for replenishment, Nether Ward, Shadowfury, etc...
So here is a screenshot of the talents that I used:

And in case you can't see, or need it, here is a direct link to the build:

http://wowtal.com/#k=fy57fJO.a2y.warlock

Glyphs

Just like the other spec threads, I wasn't able get any glyphs besides the ones I already had, it's complete price gouging (glyphs 3000-4000g each). And that's if you happen to find the one you are looking for.

So I was only able to get:

Just a simple time saver in your rotation, had I been fully properly glyphed, no doubt I would have at least 1,000 more DPS.

Playstyle

Destruction in 4.0 is essentially, destruction in 3.3.5 with a few changes.

#1 Empowered Imp is now an instant soulfire proc. Not on crits but completely random. This means, put soulfire on your bars.

#2 You should wait till there is 1-2 seconds left on immolate before hitting conflagrate. This is a simple tactic to maximize your DPS by a good 900-1200 points. 

#3 Improved Soulfire, I assume doing one soulfire every 30/seconds in the early stages of a boss fight will make this a good talent choice, however, it is not working in the PTR and I wasn't getting the haste buff from it. So the effective DPS of this talent is unknown.

Rotation

Immolate - 100% uptime, Curse of Elements - 100% uptime, Bane of Havoc - 100% uptime

Chaos Bolt - Every CD, Conflagrate - as close to letting immolate fall off as possible. Incinerate - Filler, Soulfire - empowered imp.

Here is the damage breakdown:

No surprise here, Incinerate our #1 damagining talent 50% of overall damage.

The closer you hit conflagrate to the expiring time of immolate, the more damage it does.

Immolate's DoT, can crit, since it is up all the time it's always doing damage.

A nice bomb from destro, just use it every CD, not much else to say about this.

This is a new DoT, which comes from Imp's Firebolt and our Soulfire, it's always up as long as our imp is attacking. Now damage DoT but always doing damage.

All from Empowered imp, another nice bomb, it's instant cast like conflagrate with this proc, don't use it unless you have the proc.

Finally, here are my modified stats with Destruction:

The point that I can't stress enough with Destruction is, be hit capped, I lost a lot of DPS for not being hit capped. Also, gemming critical strike is a lot more beneficial versus haste.

I will be posting a video tutorial on how all casters can increase their DPS by using an outside program, as well as a PvP thread, one of our specs is really overpowered and i've been 2 shotting most everyone, and it's not the usual suspect.

Happy Decimating,

-BeerandChips

Destruction in Cataclysm:
So I've finished running the numbers and I'll be posting it tomorrow morning/afternoon.
Stay tuned,
BeerandChips

Affliction in Cataclysm PTR Patch 4.0:
Talents, Glyphs, and Playstyle


Talents
I had a nice amount of time today to work out the kinks on my patch 4.0 spec for affliction. For the purposes of the dummy DPS test, I had to spec out of Soulburn: Seed of Corruption, for the simple fact that it is used for AoE and not for single target DPS, plus I needed every free talent point I could get, so many great talents. Had I had just 4 more talent points I would have finished off Bane specced it 3/3 and spec Dark Arts for Tier 1 Demonology Tree 3/3 which would increase 5% Damage on my Felhunter's Shadow Bite. Below is the spec that I used for my DPS test.

Glyphs
Like I noted in my Demonology thread, Glyphs are impossible to find. Luckily, I many of the glyphs I had copied over just fine. Here's what I used:

Glyph of Corruption, basically gives you an instant shadow bolt every once in a while. Don't really need to manage it since Shadow Bolt is your main nuke anyways.

Glyph of Haunt, just increases 3% from the 20% it already provides, basically a DoT damage booster. Again, nothing to maintain or worry about, it just takes care of itself.

Playstyle
Basically, Affliction as we know it has stayed the same, except there are a few added things, such as cooldowns, which I will get to in a moment, and there is now room for error without risking any DPS loss. In my opinion, this spec has become just a bit "faceroll" in that, there is no need to worry about clipping DoTs or maintaining proper durations, etc...
However, like I said there are a few chnages. First off, as every spec has the new SoulBurn ours isn't an instant cast and it isn't an ability that we use in PvE very often. Our Soulburn is Drain Life, it channels twice as fast for half the duration. This allows it become a pretty powerful cooldown when things are getting tight. It is a good idea to have these two buttons right next to each other on your affliction bar, or either binded to two keys that are very close to each other, this will allow for you to use it as touch and go.
The Opener: Shadow Bolt, Haunt, DoT load (unstable affliction, bane of agony, corruption, and curse of elements [if not already up].
Rotation
Maintain 100% Uptime on: Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Bane of Agony, and Haunt.
Use Haunt every CD, and shadow bolt as a filler, Summon Doomguard when extra dps is needed, as Well as Soulburn >> Drain Life.
That's basically all it is for affliction. I did a 9 minute DPS test, and these are my results.

Shadow Bolt Damage, 40% effective crit avg hits ranging from 6k - 8k and crits hitting for 12k-18k. The main source of damage for Affliction Warlocks, makes up of 40% of total damage. No doubt 1 more point into Bane would make this a more powerful spell.

Corruption, our strongest DoT, 20% of our overall damage. Also procs Eradication, and shadow trance. Also has its duration reset to full every time the target is hit by haunt drain life or drain soul. 

Unstable Affliction, 2nd most poweful DoT has a 1.5 sec cast time, 1.3 if glyphed, 50% crit.

Bane of Agony, used to be Curse of Agony, but now crits, 15% of overall damage, not high damage, but hits often.

Haunt, basically only in the rotation because it boosts the damage of our DoTs. Used every 8 seconds when it falls off CD.

Drain Life, used exclusively with Soulburn. Can now crit and does a ton of damage when combined with Soulburn. Don't use unless you press Soulburn first.

Character Stats

Pet Stats (FelHunter)

Fun spec to play as always, few nice changes. Gets more of a benefit from spell crit versus spell haste, as was in patch 3.3.5.

-Happy Draining,

BeerandChips

Cataclysm PTR Update:
Affliction and Destruction PVE DPS thread coming in 1-2 hours. Working on them right now. Keep your eyes peeled.

-Cheers,
BeerandChips

Demonology in Cataclysm:

So i've been playing in the 4.0 PTR for a while and i've come up with a pretty decent single target and AOE rotation, i'll share them with you today. As well as the spec that I used. Unfortunately there is a lot of chaos in 4.0 with random invasions and things like the auctioneers and training dummies being removed at random times, so being able to find a glyph is virtually impossible. I only had the ones that existed in 3.3.5 when I copied my main over. In 3.3.5 I was doing right about 7k single target DPS on the boss dummy, it has been significantly increased here in 4.0

First, here is the spec that I used:

I created this spec myself from what I thought would produce the highest net DPS. I don't haven't done any math on these talents but i'm pretty sure this is going to be the 4.0 raiding spec once Cataclysm is released. I'll wait to see what some other Theorycrafters such as Elitist Jerks might say before I make my any decision. (Remember i'm only level 80 not 85 So I wasn't able to spend all the talent points that I wanted).

Glyphs:

Like I mentioned earlier, the PTR is complete chaos and finding any item, whether it be a glyph or a gem is virtually impossible, especially because people are all given 5k gold for making a premade character so there is price distortion like crazy.

The two glyphs that I had were the Life Tap glyph:

The .5 sec taken from the cooldown is a nice time saver when doing your rotation, but to be completely honest, the PTR has about 300ms of lag for me, so I barely get to take advantage of the difference.

The second glyph that copied over from 3.3.5 was:

The 5% extra damage given to Legion Strike is a fairly nice damage boost, especially since your Felguard's damage already scales with your gear.

The rotation that I created seems to be a bit complex, but once you practice for a while you get used to it.

100% uptime - Immolate, Bane of Doom, Curse of Elements (if not already provided)

Fillers - Shadow Bolt, Incinerate, Soul Fire

Cooldowns - Summon Infernal (AoE preferred), Summon Doomguard (Single Target preferred), Soulburn. Soulburn is the CD you've been hearing so much about. Basically, it has 2 uses in PvE.

Soulburn use #1: DPS increase Instant SoulFire

Soulburn use #2 Pet Dies: Instant summon.

I use the instant SoulFires when I have a spell power proc, either my heroic phylactery, or my heroic DFO stacked up to 9 or 10.

Both summoned Infernal/Doomguard, share the same 10minute cooldown, and essentially can only be used once per encounter. 

So what I was doing on the dummies was:
Immolate - Bane of Doom - Curse of Elements, shadow bolt spam until either immolate falls off, or Molten Core procs, Use Hand of Gul'Dan every single time it falls from Cooldown and use it to make sure immolate doesn't fall off your target, if MC procs, just slam out 3 incinerates as you normally would. 

Below is the result (unfortunately, I wasn't able to copy a lot of addons over that I would have liked, such as Power Auras or anything similar) However, I was able to get recount to work on the PTR, below is the DPS  that I was able to get over like 9 minutes or so of testing non stop. I'll post my comments with each Screenshot.

I was able to get about 9.6k dps sustained for about 9 minutes, I peaked at around 10.5k when I had my Doomguard.

If you notice the Shadow Bolt Damage has a pretty high crit %age now, it used to be about 7% lower than that with full 25man raid buffs, so this is definitely a nice change. Also take note, that it is ~50% of my total damage, so putting that last point into Bane will be a nice DPS increase.

Just like Shadow Bolt, Incinerate's crit %age jumped about 7% from 3.3.5. However being #2 on the list and it only provides 15% of my overall damage done. (Remember Incinerate is only used on Molten Core Procs).

Immolate, our main DoT ability is the same as before and the damage vs 3.3.5 is just about the same, not much to say here.

Probably my favorite ability, Hand of Gul'Dan, has a black hole type effect and lasts for about 5 seconds. If you notice, its crit chance isn't as high as some of the other talents but even without being a crit, it is hitting around 10k per blast and 20k per crit which is nice. Remember, this ability refreshes immolate (Creamation) and has a 12 second cooldown.

Bane of Doom, it's essentially what Curse of Doom was except it has no cooldown. 21 ticks over 9 or so minutes isn't bad at all. makes up a small portion of overall damage and has 40% crit chance (with my gear of course).

I wasn't able to get the boss dummy below 35% HP because it just stays at 100% hp the entire time now. But I tested out Soulburn which made the SoulFire instant cast, so this damage, isn't execute style damage, just regular.

These is my gear and spell stats page, mostly 277s, and some i264 tier 10 pieces.

I hope this can shed some light for some of you guys on the chaotic mess that is patch 4.0. If you guys have any questions for me, feel free to ask in the comments section.

Happy Murdering,

-BeerandChips

Writing Demonology in Cataclysm blog post now, will be up with in the hour.

-Cheers,

Beerandchips

3.3.5 Demonology Warlock Talents, Glyph Choices, and Playstyle

Talents:
The average demonology spec for 3.3.5 generally leaves you with 1 point less than you would like to spend, the 0/56/15 spec is optimal in virtually any gear set. The 15 points into the destruction tree are absolutely 100% necessary. The 56 points spent in the demonology tree spent the way I did below provide for the possible amount of DPS. The only talent left with 1 talent point missing is Improved Demonic Tactics. Not having this talented is 10% less crit rating for your felguard. This is ok because virtually all the other talent points spent in that tier and below provide significantly more DPS Than that particular talent that is the reason it is only 2/3, had warlocks had 1 more free point it would probably go there.

Here are the optimal talents for 3.3.5:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IZ0GchkAbihsgdAoE00V:oTnVzM

This spec is good for fights with not a lot of movement and with bosses with high health and not a lot of adds. This is because the execute starts at 35% and is extremely powerful. 

Fights in ICC that this spec is good for: Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut, Blood Queen Lana'thel, Blood Prince Council, and The Lich King.

Glyphs:

The spec above has got the 3 top glyph choices for demonology.

Glyph of Quick Decay is not so much for the damage from corruption, but to increase the frequency of getting the molten core proc. This is especially beneficial during the execute when this can potentially rack up to a fairly high amount of extra damage.

Glyph of Felguard, this is nothing more than a pet DPS boost, it increases your Felguard's AP by 20% which is a fairly high amount and amounts to a moderate DPS increase.

Glyph of Life Tap, as always this glyph is good because our main nuke for the majority of the fight is shadow bolt which has a fatty mana cost so you will be going Out of mana fairly quickly if you aren't life tapping constantly, so if you're life tapping to get mana back it's a good idea to get some Spellpower out of it.

Playstyle:

Demonology is very different in playstyle versus Destruction or Affliction. This spec has a proc which should be reacted to everytime you get it, and buttons to hit every single cooldown.

Since it's a bit more complicated than either spec i'll go over everything so it is easiest to practice and get used to it.

The two things you have on the boss at all times are immolate, and corruption. Those need to be up 100% of the time. You need to be hitting demonic empowerment every single cooldown, it does not use a GCD but you can't be casting anything when you press it, so when you are applying your DoTs is the optimal time to press this button. Once your two DoTs immolate and corruption are up, you start spamming Shadow Bolt, make sure to watch your mana, it gets drained very quickly. The two other things to watch our for are Molten Core and Decimation.

If you get molten core without decimation, you bang out 3 incinerates consecutively.

If you have just decimation, or decimation and molten core, you Soul Fire. Soul Fire is your execute nuke, once you have Decimation, do nothing but maintain Immolate and Corruption, and spam the heck out of Soul Fire. 

The last thing demonology locks need to watch for is Metamorphosis, this is our main DPS increasing cooldown and should be used to maximize DPS as often as possible,  the best scenario is to time this with Bloodlust/Heroism and with your execute. And as with any other warlock spec, be sure to not clip your DoTs and let every tick fall off.

Your rotation should look something like this:
Immolate - Corruption, Shadowbolt spam (if MC procs) - 3 incinerates, target hits 35% and you get Decimation > Soul Fire Spam.

My PTR experiences will be posted fairly soon, as well as a script that I use running an outside program that will help increase your DPS and that should be used by every caster.

Happy Soul Burning,

-Beerandchips

3.3.5 Affliction Warlock Talents, Glyph Choices, and Playstyle

Talents:
As an affliction warlock, after spending the neccesary talent points for maximum damage we are left with just one  talent point to "play around with". This can go anywhere you like but my personal preference is into Cataclysm, this single talent points reduces the mana cost of our destruction spells by 4%. This may not seem like a lot but our main nuke is shadow bolt which has a high mana cost and talenting  this point will allow you, over long encounters, to life tap less, which is a frees up a Global Cooldown. 

Here are the optimal talents for 3.3.5:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IfxMbzMAoiA0IktZE0oV:nITzV0

This spec is especially good for Halion, Putricide (more benefit on heroic), Sindragosa, and Lady Deathwhisper.

The reason that this spec is good for these encounters is because these fights generally require a lot of movement which means you cant be casting as much so the talent trees that depend on being mobile and casting the entire time are not as effective.

Glyphs:

The spec linked above has the top 3 glyphs for affliction, but i'll go over them briefly.

Glyph of Quick Decay: This glyph allows your corruption spell to benefit from your haste and out t9+ gear level this glyph provides substantially more DPS versus other glyphs.

Glyph of Haunt: This glyph is pretty plain and simple, instead of being a 20% increase on our DoTs, it is increased to 23% which essentially provides 3% extra damage from our DoTs.

Glyph of Life Tap: Even without stacking spirit gear, or without any spirit gear whatsoever, general raid buffs such as Prayer of Spirit and Blessing of Kings increase your spirit making which effectively provides you with about 100 spellpower, depending on your gear and raid setup. It is also a good choice because affliction warlocks depend a lot on this ability since Shadow Bolt is such a mana intensive spell.

Playstyle:

The opening: At the beginning of the encounter if it is a fight where you are running in, such as Marrowgar and not starting from a mobile position, Corruption and curse of agony should be casted first. This allows for trinkets such as Muradin's Spyglass to stack up and allows you to be doing a nice amount of damage while getting into position. 

If the fight is starting from a stationary position, such as Deathbringer Saurfang, your opening rotation should be:
Shadow Bolt - Haunt - Unstable Affliction - Corruption/Curse of Agony.

After opening you should be maintaing close to 100% uptime on Curse of Agony, and Unstable affliction. Corruption have its duration reset with every Shadow Bolt and Haunt hit. Haunt should be used EVERY COOLDOWN. The cooldown is short and having to put it up every 8 seconds is really annoying but it provides the maximum DPS. Make sure not to "clip" your Curse of Agony or your Unstable affliction, doing so will be a DPS loss. Make sure you allow it to fall completely off before reapplying it.

The Execute: Once the target's health is at 25% your execute starts here. From this point forward, ignore shadow bolt unless you get a Nightfall proc. In this execute you are maintaining your Curse of Agony, Unstable Affliction, and still using Haunt. You cast Drain Soul in place of Shadow Bolt and maintain your DoTs. 

This is it for now, I will post a demonology thread either tonight or tomorrow morning.

Also, i've been playing on the PTR and will post some possible rotations for demonology within the coming days.

Happy Soul Shredding,

-Beerandchips