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Critique My Characters: Pull No Punches and Post Your Own
BufordHicks
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a handful of high level Warcraft characters I would like the community here to comment on. Feel free to pull no punches if I've done something stupid with them.
My main Rotewag
Alts: Nolok
Miststrider
Terwood
My first character: Hicks
My main Rotewag
Alts: Nolok
Miststrider
Terwood
My first character: Hicks
BufordHicks on
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First off I am not sure what your raiding spec is, so this will be general.
meta gem isn't very good, get [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond]
your gems are all over the place. you are splitting colors for no reason. first thing, get rid of the stamina gems.
The best gem for both Affliction and Demonology (after hit cap) is [Runed Cardinal Ruby]
fill your yellow sockets with [Rigid King's Amber] or [Veiled Ametrine] until hit cap. Which one to choose depends on how many sockets you have available. once you are hit capped, then you can choose between either a [Runed Cardinal Ruby] or a [Reckless Ametrine], depending on the gem bonus.
blue sockets either [Purified Dreadstone] in there, or a [Runed Cardinal Ruby]. You need two purified to make your meta work. Whether to go for the gem bonus after that, is really up to the gem bonus, if the bonus isn't spellpower it is hardly worth it.
and the enhancement shaman with stamina and mp5 gems? why? dps warrior in stamina gems why do you like stamina so much. are you pvping in t9? I understand the hybrid gems are cheaper at the heroism vendor but you cant be cheap for no reason.
Your stat priority should be hit > spellpower > haste >>> crit >>>>>>>> everything else. This means that runed red gems go in your red sockets, reckless orange gems go in your yellows, and your blue sockets are occupied by either purified purple gems or more runeds. Whether you use a purified or a runed depends on your spec and the socket bonus. The 10 spirit on a purified dreadstone contributes between 3 and 6ish spellpower depending on your spec and glyphs; basically if the socket bonus is nine spellpower or better, meet it using purples. If it's less than 9 (7 is fairly common on t9 gear), put runeds in there unless you need to meet your meta requirement (two blues for a chaotic skyfire.)
The only time you would gem for hit is if 1) you are hilariously undergeared and you don't have enough hit on your gear, or 2) you find yourself slightly below the hit cap and can correct this by gemming hit in one place. #1 should never really happen anymore, especially since the triumph hit trinket has like 5% hit on it or something ridiculous.
I have no idea why you bought the int trinket.
Your talents are also a mess. Your demo build doesn't need aftermath and it doesn't need shadowburn. What it needs is 5/5 ruin and 5/5 ISB. Dump demonic resilience, aftermath, shadowburn, cataclysm and one point from imp. demonic tactics. Also dump glyphs of metamorphosis and incinerate and get glyph of lifetap and quick decay.
Aff build is pretty cookie cutter, although you should move one point from the -threat talent into imp fel hunter. I like to use the extra point in destructive reach and do 1/2 nightfall and grim reach, but that's a personal decision really.
ed: oh, and the aff build should have glyph of lifetap instead of glyph of UA.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I'll critique the shaman if you post there.
Also say what your intent is: pve or pvp.
I gem for the additional stamina because my primary spec is demonology and I aim for survivability. The more stamina I have the more life by demon has (and as a side benefit I get some spell power out of it as well) and life tap means health=mana=more spell casting w/o drinking.
I admit that I am very anal about color matching the gem slots, I always go for the slot bonuses even if that means I don't put the most optimal gem in the slot-which are the single stat gems (if I am correct on that).
I'll probably go with the chaotic skyflare meta-gem suggestion, the current gem is a care over from times when I was focusing more on the mana pool.
As for the triumph trinket with the hit on it. Its on use is is haste, I rather have increased spell power on demand than haste on demand.
I admit the shadow burn was a whimsy talent point use, however the other destruction talents were chosen because my primary spell in demonology spec is incinerate because is casts faster and takes advantage of Molten Core and the talents affecting immolate. The demonic resilience is there for both me and my demon's benefit when soloing and in five man heroics where the demon can almost be a sixth player. I rather not sacrifice a point in IDT since it syngerizes so well with Demonic Pact.
The glyphs for metamorphosis is there so I can get the most out of my tree's signature ability and the incinerate glyph is there because it is my primary direct attack.
Its not that I really wanted help, I wanted a place to see peoples' opinions on my characters and give a this sub-forum a topic for other people to do the same for all MMO Characters not just WoW.
Well, think about what gemming for stamina is actually getting you, statistically. About 100 more stamina than you'd have otherwise. That means at most an extra couple thousand health. That is not going to make a meaningful difference in your survivability in a heroic, much less a raid. When something starts hitting you either there is a heal coming or there isn't; if there isn't, all you've done is change the amount of overkill that shows up in the combat log.
There's nothing wrong with making socket bonuses, as I outlined. In ICC/frost badge gear it almost always seems to make sense to be meeting them. But in the rare cases that it isn't, all you're doing is harming your own performance for the sake of making your character sheet look pretty.
Similar to the point about gems, you need to be thinking about what your goals are. In a PvE setting your goal isn't to "get the most out of the tree's signature ability," it's to deal damage. Taking stuff like demonic resilience forces you to make pretty significant sacrifices (like not taking ruin), and you don't get much utility in return. Resilience isn't going to make much of a difference in terms of whether your felguard can tank something for a bit or it can't. Mobs in heroics and raids hit too hard for relatively tiny increases in stamina/mitigation to make any difference.
Going 2/3 in demonic tactics kind of sucks because crits are nice, there just aren't enough points to go around. It doesn't hurt pact uptime to go down to 2/3, either; the buff duration is 35 seconds or something like that, so the felguard will refresh it many times over even with the default amount of crit.
You want ISB because outside of molten core/decimation procs, it's your highest damge per cast time spell (particularly once it's applying the crit debuff.)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget