Gearing a Warlock
Q: Staff or sword/dagger + offhand?
A: Whichever gives you the best stats.
Q: Which stats should I go for?
Short Answer:
Grinding - +Dmg > +sta
Raid - +hit (up to 16%) > +dmg > +crit > +sta > +int (crit more important to Dest; all builds need for proccing Improved Shadow Bolt)
PvP - +sta = +resilience > +dmg/crit/hit (up to 4%)/penetration
Long Answer:
See Shadowbolt's raiding guide for more information on gearing for raids.
Q: How does +dmg gear work? How much does it affect [insert spell here]?
A: Thank you to the Warlocks who posted this information for me after this thread was created.
+dmg gear adds a certain % of the listed damage accordingly to the casting time and nature of the spell. The green "+21 Shadow Spell Damage" and the often seen blue "Equip: Increases damage and healing done by all/shadow/fire spells by 21" both have the same exact effect, besides the school that is being increased in damage.
Here are the coefficients for each spell in terms of how much they benefit from +dmg gear:
Shadow
Shadow bolt ~86%
Shadowburn 43%
Death Coil 23%
Drain Life: 100%
Siphon Life: 100%
Curse of Agony: 120%
Corruption: 93%
Curse of Doom: 200%
Drain Soul: 290%
Unstable Affliction: 120%
Fire
Searing pain 43%
Rain of Fire 35%
Hellfire 30%
Immolate's Nuke 20%(from the original post or 35% according to Psy, but I have never checked).
Immolate's DoT 57% (or 68%?)
Conflagrate 40%
Soul Fire 100%
Incinerate: 71%
Siphon Life, Drain Life, and Death Coil receive smaller bonuses than normal because they are drain type spells that do damage and heal you.
Talents Shadow and Flame and Empowered Corruption change the coefficients to their respective spells. They simply add another 20%/36% towards the coeffciecient; Shadow Bolt with Shadow and Flame goes from an 86% coefficient to 106%.
Q: How does spell damage work with DoT's?
A: They add towards the total damage of the spell, NOT per tick. This means that with +1000 spell damage, your CoA gets 1000 * 1.2 (coefficient) more damage applied to its entire duration.
Q: Does the resilience set bonus on the two Warlock arena sets stack if you wear two of each set?
A: Yes, but only if you're wearing 2 pieces of Dreadweave and 2 pieces of Felweave. For example, wearing 2 pieces of Dreadweave of any sseason and 2 pieces of Felweave of any season will get you the bonus. However, wearing season 2 Felweave and season 3 Felweave will grant you the 4 piece bonus.
Q: I heard that pet damage scales with your +fire gear, not your +shadow. Is this true?
A: Sort of. Pet damage scales with whatever damage tree you have the most of. The UI displays "fire" because the fire tab is the top on on the list besides holy.
Q: I'm specced Destruction for PvE. Should I get lots of +fire gear or +shadow?
A: +shadow is better for a couple of reasons. If you decide to respec, +shadow is much better for Affliction and Demonology. +shadow is also better because Shadow Bolt is a superior primary nuke to Incinerate. Shadow Bolt scales much better than Incinerate and offers superior raid synergy thanks to Improved Shadow Bolt.
