Finding Windows of Opportunities

Now, I am going to share the most important secret behind doing high DPS for a warlock. There are many names for it: Snapshotting Stats, Extending Empowered Dots.I like to call it finding Windows of Opportunities. There are four lessons to be learnt. 

Lesson One: Extending Dots when you see a Big Proc!

Let us take a look at our Legendary Meta Gem

Sinister Primal Diamond: +324 Crit & Chance on dealing spell damage to gain 30% spell haste for 10 sec.


The proc is 30% Spell Haste (BloodLust) for 10 seconds. But this does not mean that warlocks get 30% spell haste for only 10 seconds. Lets give an example. Curse of Agony lasts for 24 seconds, but you can extend its duration via Pandemic to last for 36 seconds.  This is how to do it. 

Buff procs:  30% Haste Buff for 10 seconds

• Refresh Agony immediately 
• At the ninth second, Refresh Agony again. 
• Agony now lasts for 36 more seconds with the 30% haste Buff. 

So, Agony now lasts for more than 40 seconds.  This means that we have artificially extended the benefit of the proc by more than 4 times compared to the original 10 seconds! 


Lesson Two: Some Buffs Stack together better than others

The next big idea is that some buffs stack multiplicatively. Lets explain this in a simplified manner

Case A: 
You gain a 30% Haste Buff. 
You do 30% more damage!


Case B:
You gain a 30% Intellect Buff
You do 30% more damage

Case C: You gain BOTH a 30% Intellect Buff and a 30% Haste buff. 
Do you do 60% more damage?

NO!!!!

When both the haste and intellect buff stack together, you hit very hard and very fast (TM).
In total, your new dps will be 130% x 130% = 169%. 
You do 69% more damage!

The lesson behind this is that different types of buffs (Haste, Crit, Intellect, etc) synergise together well and give you a lot of extra damage if you know how to take advantage of it.

Lesson 3: Use your most "Value for Money" Power Spells when you have lots of Buffs

I am only familiar with Affliction and Destruction. 

Affliction: 

• If you see a lot of procs active, immediately refresh all your dots! 
• Just before the proc expires, you refresh your dots again. You get to "keep" the buff on your dots until they drop off.This is called snapshotting or extending empowered dots.
• Only use Haunt when your dots are super buffed. Don't use it when your dots have no buffs on them.

Destruction 

• Only use Chaos Bolts when you have at least one proc active.
•  The only exception is that you are going to reach 4 embers soon, then you should cast Chaos Bolt since casting a unbuffed Chaos Bolt is better than wasting the embers by not using them.

Lesson 4: Have a good User Interface !

I will have a detailed post that explains the elements of a good user interface later on. I will cover this briefly for now. Some people believe that a good user interface is not important. But ultimately, I believe that a good user interface supports you and makes you a better player. Even warlocks from the Top World Class Guilds (Method, for example) are using some of the addons that I mention below. If world class players can benefit from using these addons, I believe the average player like you and I can gain greatly from them too!

You absolutely need to have an addon that tracks how powerfully buffed your dots are (Affdots). And you also need to track which buffs are active on you right now (WeakAuras). The Dot Timer that I use is NeedtoKnow. If you see a lot of buffs proc, immediately refresh your dots to take advantage of the buff and cast your good spells to maximise the damage (Haunt, Chaos Bolts, etc).