Does anything change with 4p & Trinket?

[vaeevictiss 17]

So our guild finally got Archimonde Normal down this weekend. About time really, we were already 9/13H. I ended up getting my trinket, and im wondering if anything should really change. 

 

After our Archy kill we got our first Heroic Fail Lord kill which i think i did fairly well on; https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/A6qL7wFrJm3nfXKk#fight=20but didnt seem to be that much of a boost as i was hoping for with the trinket. Im currently running Serv:Serv, and am wondering if i should be using SB:H now. 

 

Currently i use Aff on Iron Reaver, Fel Lord, Soc (due to us having a lot of ranged burst for adds) and recently, Tyrant. Sac:CR destro on all other bosses. Im considering now using Aff on more fights since our add control has gotten really good. On Kormrok, hands die within about 2 seconds so i can probably go aff there. I dont like aff on council as it feels its just padding the meters. Teron and Kilrogg it still seems crucial for me to stay destro as there are a lot of SB opportunities. Iskar is obviously a destro fight with the aoe phase. Our Xhul kills can get sketchy and i find im rarely ever doing anything to the boss till the last 20%.  

 

 

 

TLDR: with 4p and Trinket, should i stay Sac:CR for destro and Serv:Serv for aff or do i have more options now.

[Curinir 4]

SB:H always for Affliction. It'll do much more damage than serv/serv even with no T 18 bonuses.

[spikeysquad 50]

Yeah you definitely should be SB: Haunt now (or even many item levels ago) and GoSac is meant to be better dps too (on one or two targets and/or priority targets I think it is). For some people and especially on higher movement fights the extra support of a pet will give better results though. 

Edited September 2, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Lockybalboa 618]

I use GoSup for HHC and Archi, rest is GoSac

[vaeevictiss 17]

so aff is good for HHC then? It always seemed to me you would risk pushing bosses too soon. I know its normally a no no, but should i soul swap on that fight? With this trinket, the dots fall off so much quicker and seems like UA is always having to be recast. I would think trying to keep up dots on 3 adds would be just that...only keeping up dots and never having time for filler.

 

I wasnt sure about SB:H but i will respec into it. I remember reading the guide a while back that said Serv:Serv was much better for movement fights and it seemed every fight i used it on was a lot of movement.

 

Is the strat still the same? basically only use haunt to keep the buff up and/or prevent shard capping? Is it safe to ever just dump haunts if you do cap?

[Lockybalboa 618]

The play style sucks but it works. You spend 99% of your time recasting dots, it sucks but it works.

 

Pushing the bosses depends on your comp and their intelligence level. If you are DoT/cleave heavy or dumb/lazy then you might be screwed and need to destro. But *normally* you should be fine.

 

Keep SB:H up, DoT everything, if you happen to get to DS go for it but don't think it will be often until Dia.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dM8yV3WnBFpGQLar#type=damage-done&source=8

 

Those are my logs of this morning, you can see how little DS there is.

[vaeevictiss 17]

yea thats pretty crazy haha. Insane they do that much w/o DS.

[vaeevictiss 17]

so basically what i am doing is haunting only to keep the buff up and to prevent capping? im not trying to keep it up for dots when the actual haunt debuff wears off?

[Lockybalboa 618]

Correct. I normally cast my SB:H Haunt on the main target to help with burning and just in case I get to DS a little it will be there for me.

[spikeysquad 50]

I had a long sleepness night so was thinking on this and I wonder why you call Affliction on Council padding Vaeevictiss? Padding is a mindset rather than spec choice in my opinion (at least on this fight). Of course if you send the bosses into execute and you are still putting up DoTs on all that is a different matter but that applies to any spec/class. 

 

For me Affliction does better overall DPS (so a shorter fight giving more dps overall to the raid and less healing needed) and when I need to push a boss I burst much higher with it as well (on average). I do not have the class trinket though so your results may be a lot better with Destro and to be clear I am speaking of farm now and not progress though not sure there would be any major changes.

 

For my guild we have never had an issue with pushing bosses too much but it's easy enough to watch out for.

 

I also did think on your movement fight comment. A lot depends on the RNG of mechanics and how often you get targeted but on the whole I find the fights you mentioned are actually low movement with the exception of the last phase on Tyrant. Oh that is such an Affliction fight in my opinion. Why did you go Destro?

 

Anyhow, my point before I went off was are you using your gateway and teleport to its best advantage? Are you positioning properly for the least amount of movement required? Or perhaps does your guild have annoying tactics then? Sometimes mine has a habit of moving say 30 yards when 15 will do. It is frustrating!

 

P.S. Hopefully you take this post in the way it was intended and do not think that I am not picking on you! I just had way too much time to think.

[vaeevictiss 17]

Haha, no offense taken. 

 

I was just going off the old adage of fights that allow you to pad meters and people tending to frown upon it. But it is a good point that if it helps kill bosses, why does it matter :/ ?

 

I dont care about padding, i just wouldnt want to be frowned upon by doing it or having my guild just think im trying to cheese the meters and not be doing top dps where it needs to be done at the time it needs to be done...its all politics really haha.

 

I actually just started using aff on Tyrant this weekend after i got my trinket and it def feels a lot better. I was destro in the past so i could havoc tyrant while dpsing the 1st add...and now that i think about it, that was stupid. The second add is handled by raid cleave alone and the 3rd add there is no point cleaving...so i was really only utilizing destro to its potential on one short part of the fight.

 

I do use portal and gateway...when i remember lol. Its very handy on Socrethar P1 for the charge especially. It has usefulness on Teron for the puddles as well. A lot of times to me it does feel clunky and like you really need to plan ahead with it. I may put it somewhere but in the course of the fight, there may be something that is going on in that spot that prevents me from using it at that time. During progression, i find i use it a lot to set up "out of bounds" for wipe protection lol.

[Curinir 4]

I do think Aff can be considered padding on Council, but only if you use it a certain way. In Mythic HHC you are required to do constant priority damage, so dotting all three bosses the entire time is a very inefficient use of your damage and would be padding in my eyes. Instead, you start off doing single target damage to Gurtogg and maybe keep up Agony on the other two. This way Gurtogg takes considerably more damage from you and you still pull decent numbers.

 

If you have everyone in the raid multidotting all the bosses while Gurtogg is up, then Mirror Images will kick in while everyone is still getting Blood Boil and it will most likely result in a wipe. This is my guild's very first kill on Mythic, and you can see where all three warlocks were letting dots drop off to push priority instead of overall dps.

 

Like I said in the Help My DPS forum, overall DPS matters very little these days. Instead it's all about priority damage and "doing your job". If Affliction hadn't gotten that huge buff two weeks into the patch, I would have played Demonbolt for our first kill because it did much higher priority damage at the time.

[spikeysquad 50]

Ah yeah I was definitely only referring to LFR/Normal/Heroic and I agree priority damage>overall damage on progress.

[Liquidsteel 279]

It's not really so cut and dry to be honest. We killed Council in the first week and me and the other lock flip flopped between Demonology and Affliction, eventually settling on the latter with encouragement from the officers. We multi dotted until 30%, after which is was pure nuke whilst maintaining Agony to not drop stacks. We still made the timer on Mirror Images and even had a healer get the first Fel Rage which slowed things down. 

 

This meant that Blademaster (and Dia) was a fair bit lower going into the Mirror Images, and we knew we could afford to do it because we were making the push into the split phase so easy.

 

That was with 705-710 ilvl and no ring. Now you have guilds doing this fight at 715-720 ilvl with 20 members all with 750+ legendary rings. 

 

For reference, here's my old guilds first kill from back in July 7th. Both our guilds took the same amount of time to kill Bloodboil despite us having 6 less ilvl.

 

If you're pushing Gurtrogg fast enough you may as well make full use of the class. Only if it becomes a problem would you scale it back.

[Curinir 4]

If you're pushing Gurtrogg fast enough you may as well make full use of the class. Only if it becomes a problem would you scale it back.

 

I definitely agree with this, but my guild is quite a bit lacking in skill compared to yours. As will other guilds compared to mine that are going into this fight in a few months. It really depends on how well your guild can push priority damage. If not this week, then next I will probably start multi-dotting everything because of the fact we now kill Gurtogg much faster than we did the first week. But in a progression based setting, I'd stick with priority damage>overall damage.

[Liarparadox 5]

To the OP, aff is not padding the slightest on heroic council, which I think is what you're talking about. Not in the slightest unless you're somehow ignoring the burn phases. You'd have to have a very odd raid group to have THAT much spread dmg for your dots to mess up the fight; and in that case, the RL needs to start smacking a bunch of you around, not just aff locks/spriests. Stick with affliction and don't feel the slightest bit guilty. Only suggestion I'd have is making sure you burn the target when appropriate, pop DS/DS/pot/terrorguard for the burning. And this might mean letting some of your dots fall off the other two. Rot on this fight is helpful. You can get excellent overall and priority dmg. There's no need to pick between them.

Edited September 4, 2015 by Liarparadox

[Toffees 5]

.... Instead, you start off doing single target damage to Gurtogg and maybe keep up Agony on the other two. This way Gurtogg takes considerably more damage from you and you still pull decent numbers.

What he said.  Priority on the main target, gets all the dots and then just stick agony on the other two.  The duration is long enough that you can get some reasonable DS on the priority whilst maintaining all your dots.  Just make sure you have times showing the other two bosses with their agony dots to make sure they don't drop.  With the mirrors, dot up the 2-3 closest and repeat, keeping the priority on the closest at all times.