http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZdxczIbzZEx0tr0zuhi
Succubus Sacrificed, Curse + Shadow Bolt Spec

Is there a minimum requirement for speccing 0/21/40 (DS/SnF)?

The misconception about 0/21/40 is its a crit build. Indeed it does crit very high, and is very nice DPS when it does - but crit is a very unrelable stat, especially for warlocks. 30% crit will 'in theory' allow you as a solo lock to keep improved shadowbolt up 100% of the time, in reality this really doesnt happen.

Some recent boss fights i've ended up with with just over 15% indicated (recount) crit, when i'm geared for 31% crit (raid buffed), it can be that inaccurate. Therefore your stats should be prioritised like:

1. Spell Hit - Your max +hit is 202 (16%), bosses have a 17% chance to resist your spells and you unfortunatly can't get rid of that last 1%. You don't want to have more than a 2% chance to resist to keep your DPS at maximum (about 185) so aim for above that. When your non crit Shadow Bolts damage for 3.5-4.0k you can imagine how much DPS you will lose from just one resist.

2. Spell Damage - This is your second most important stat. If you can't rely on getting your crit rate for bosses, then the next reliable thing to go for is to keep your non crit Shadow Bolts doing constant high damage. Stack that spell damage. You'll want to have over 1000 spell damage (or just shadow damage) to make speccing destruction worth while. This is totally down to talents:

Shadow and Flame - Your Shadow Bolt and Incinerate spells gain an additional 20% of your bonus spell damage effects

Shadow Mastery - Increases the damage dealt or life drained by your Shadow spells by 10%.

Ignoring the fact one is 20% and one is 10%, and noting the fact that Shadow Mastery's 10% is added on after accounting for spell damage - you'll notice that Shadow and Flame scales better with the more spell damage you recieve due to it affecting your Spell Damage and not actual damage. This is the main reason why you see mostly destro warlocks in endgame instances (BT/MH).

SnF starts overtaking SM in respects of Shadow Bolt damage at about 750spelldamage, but the effect is noticable at 1000 spell damage.

3. Spell Crit - As noted above, this stat seems very unreliable for an endgame destro lock, since with ruin the difference between us critting and not critting is massive for our overall dps. Therefor its a stat you need to keep ISB up, and not so much for overall dps, that should be left to your shadow damage..

Just to round things off, once you hit the following stats you'll find that 0/21/40 will start doing more DPS than affliction builds:

Mimimum 0/21/40 specs
Spell Hit: 180
Spell Damage: 1000 (with Fel Armour)
Spell Crit: 20% (not including Devastation)

Then aim to get your stats as show below then only focus on getting more spell damage:

Ideal 0/21/40 specs
Spell Hit: 202
Spell Damage: 1000+
Spell Crit: 25% (Not including Devastation).

I hope this has helped some of you decide which PvE spec is best for your current gear.

Very clean, very imformative post that would clear up alot since i see people asking this question every day.

Also <3 for realising spelldamage is the way to go!

Tho maybe you should also up this specc:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZdxczIbzZxx0tr0tVuV - As an option to include immolate in your dps cycle. (mention that conflag lowers ur dps)

Very, very, very nice guide. This should be added to the informative and useful warlock threads sticky. :D

Nice written post, sums it all up in a well written way.

My stats in boss gear are 1091dmg, 196hit and 26.xx crit (with devastation). And i can really notice the increased dmg output compared to affli with my gear. Think this post can be very helpfull for locks to find out their "respec" point.

Indeed, nice post..
We should have something like this sticky'd with the name '0/21/40? See here..'
Because the amount of time this question is asked is plain silly.

Search bar: 0/21/40, voila

But thanks for taking the time to post some bright info for the newcomers of the forums =)

Haste is missing.

21/40 lock with certain stat combinations is the only exception to the hit>all rule, due to haste rating and the synergy of haste-crit.

P.S. and no, with 30% crit you will NEVER have 100% ISB debuff uptime, not theoretically and not ingame.

with 30% crit the prbability to NOT crit in a sequence of 5 casts is 0.7 to the power of 5 = 16.8 %

Meaning, with 30% crit, the probability of not critting a single SB in a castsequence of 5 is 16.8%. So the probability of ISB debuff running out is at least 16.8%.

I do more dps with 0-21-40 than affliction even though im undergeared for it.(15% crit without devastation, 131 spell hit, 1072 shadow dmg with DMC stacked) .

I guess I'm doing something wrong when playing as affliction. I kept dots up all the time (ua/corruption/CoA/immo/Siphon and never refreshed them before they had run out, but start casting UA/immo again when timer is 1.4 left until last tick etc... Dunno whats wrong but dmg sucked compared to destro. :[ Whats wrong? *halp lol*

oh and ofc shadowbolt spam while dots were ticking.

From what hat did you pull these numbers?

Umm, is the imp. imlolate/conflag/embetstorm such unnecessary for taking cataclysm?
So, is this build only about SB spamming ?

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Q u o t e:
Umm, is the imp. imlolate/conflag/embetstorm such unnecessary for taking cataclysm?
So, is this build only about SB spamming ?

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yes

his spec is exactly the one i use also

aye the spec is perfect, only changes the people speccing ds should do is swapping points from imp hs to imp imp if that'd benefit the raid more. I'll post my last post on this forum if random numbers gets stickied tho.

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Q u o t e:
I do more dps with 0-21-40 than affliction even though im undergeared for it.(15% crit without devastation, 131 spell hit, 1072 shadow dmg with DMC stacked) .

I guess I'm doing something wrong when playing as affliction. I kept dots up all the time (ua/corruption/CoA/immo/Siphon and never refreshed them before they had run out, but start casting UA/immo again when timer is 1.4 left until last tick etc... Dunno whats wrong but dmg sucked compared to destro. :[ Whats wrong? *halp lol*

oh and ofc shadowbolt spam while dots were ticking.

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Sure you're doing fine, don't believe everything you read:p

Some locks say that with the fire talents immo hast be casted even as shadow destro.

I think that immo will always lower your dps (unless you have more fire than shadow dam, which is weird for a shadow destro).

One of the reasons for not casting anything else than SB (eventually + CoD) is that youre missing the chance to reapply or refresh your ISB debuff.

reported.. for sticky :0

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Q u o t e:
Sticky this post :D! (and i don't mean add to informative / useful thread) i mean proper sticky :)

this question is asked 3/4 times a day

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very nice thread, i prefer the 5/5 cata - nether prot route too :P although i stick my remaining points in aftermath , maybe i should go do a respec :P
edit: yeah imp hs 1/2 here as the other locks in the guild are lazy bast..... hmm gunan stop before i get a month ban for swearing on this acc too =/

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Q u o t e:
Shadow and Flame - Your Shadow Bolt and Incinerate spells gain an additional 20% of your bonus spell damage effects

Shadow Mastery - Increases the damage dealt or life drained by your Shadow spells by 10%.

Ignoring the fact one is 20% and one is 10%, and noting the fact that Shadow Mastery's 10% is added on after accounting for spell damage - you'll notice that Shadow and Flame scales better with the more spell damage you recieve due to it affecting your Spell Damage and not actual damage. This is the main reason why you see mostly destro warlocks in endgame instances (BT/MH).

SnF starts overtaking SM in respects of Shadow Bolt damage at about 750spelldamage, but the effect is noticable at 1000 spell damage.

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SnF > SM at 504 shadowdamage for shadowbolt spamming
SnF < SM at 503 shadowdamage for shadowbolt spamming

Some things in this thread are just wrong.


Immolate will never, ever, ever lower your DPS as a destruction warlock. If you don't include it in your cycle then your DPS will be lower than if you had. You also need to use CoD or CoA if the raid allows it, CoD is better than CoA in most cases, though CoA starts to outdamge CoD (if you ignore the three global cooldowns vs one for CoD to simplify things) at somewhere around +1700 damage (IIRC - check elitist jerks for the maths).

Remember you only need 16% hit for bosses, you can and should drop your hit and boost your haste/crit against non-boss mobs. Dropping my hit by 6% and gaining 75 haste rating, increases my DPS by around 4-5%. You also need to have the option of doing this when you raid with a elemental shaman (totem of wrath) or a boomkin (imp faerie fire).

I managed 1700 DPS in Al'ar phase 1 in my haste gear, with a ele shaman to reach the hit cap + bloodlust. Do not underestimate haste.


My opinion: Get hit capped, and then look at getting other items which can be used to up your damage when you raid with others that reduce your +hit requirement.

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Q u o t e:
Some things in this thread are just wrong.


Immolate will never, ever, ever lower your DPS as a destruction warlock. If you don't include it in your cycle then your DPS will be lower than if you had. You also need to use CoD or CoA if the raid allows it, CoD is better than CoA in most cases, though CoA starts to outdamge CoD (if you ignore the three global cooldowns vs one for CoD to simplify things) at somewhere around +1700 damage (IIRC - check elitist jerks for the maths).

Remember you only need 16% hit for bosses, you can and should drop your hit and boost your haste/crit against non-boss mobs. Dropping my hit by 6% and gaining 75 haste rating, increases my DPS by around 4-5%. You also need to have the option of doing this when you raid with a elemental shaman (totem of wrath) or a boomkin (imp faerie fire).

I managed 1700 DPS in Al'ar phase 1 in my haste gear, with a ele shaman to reach the hit cap + bloodlust. Do not underestimate haste.


My opinion: Get hit capped, and then look at getting other items which can be used to up your damage when you raid with others that reduce your +hit requirement.

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Immolate is a touchy subject, it will nearly always improve dps to cast it, in the same sence as getting spelldamage instead of crit will nearly always increase your damage as well.
You can't ignore global cooldowns imo, CoD>CoA always.

My opinon: To theory craft on your dps as a warlock you need very good understanding on your abilities and limitation as a players, slamming numbers in leulier or whatever won't give you accurate results if you don't understand what you're actually doing. For the all the warlocks that's wondering if they are good enough to spec 21/40, just go spec it, there's nothing to learn about playing the spec that you diddn't knew as affliction, in fact alot of people that fails at keeping the dots up in an efficient way will be alot better off. After a couple of raids you can simply compare the dps you gained/lossed vs the utility you gained/lossed.