Xentro wrote:if you wear so many greens with only +shadow dmg, don't you fall a little short on other fronts such as HP/MP/regen?
In PvE raiding enviroment, your regen is not really an issue insofar that your MP is replenished by life tapping, and your HP is replenished by your healers. Sure it is true that if you had more INT you could cast a few more shadowbolts before you go OOM, but then what? You'll be lifetapping. More +shadow/spelldamage gear will allow you to tap for more mana, thus having to reduce the times you have to tap. Tapping for more mana less frequently is also helpful to your healers because your lifetaps will be spaced out. Finally, the less often you tap, the more uptime you have spamming shadow bolts
Xentro wrote:I am wondering however if your build for levelling is not also preferable in endgame PvE (his build is DS/SM basically) is the Ruin really necessary?
SM/DS would be a viable spec if affliction did not do as horrible as it does now. Also in a 7 debuff environment, there are no room for your DoTs on the mob. No DoTs, no damage. Also, when you loaded up your target with all those DoTs, now what? You'll still be spamming shadow bolts.
Xentro wrote:SM on top of DS so that's another 10% bonus dmg compared to ruin which is 100% extra dmg on crits, so this would be shadowbolts that do 300% dmg instead of 200%, right?
Crits in vanilla do 150% damage, Ruin makes our crits do 200% damage. Some other points you need to take into consideration about the destro tree. Improved shadow bolt is an overall dps boost that comes from your normal dps cycle when you crit. Devistation gives us a flat 5% bonus to critical stike chance. And the big one, Bane. Taking our shadowbolt cast time from 3 to 2.5 seconds. All those 1/2 seconds add up fast.
The reason that vanilla PvE warlocks focus all our attention on shadow bolt, is because its the most effective damage/mana spell we have that we spam. Its also the one that is effected by the most aspects of our talent trees.