Affliction Help Please

[oRie 0]

Currently I'm confused which direction to go with my gem and reforge strategy. I'm not sure whether or not to stack haste up to the 6637 breakpoint or forgo the haste and stack mastery leaving haste at the 4717 breakpoint.

With my two LFR RPPM trinkets at first glance I thought putting more into haste would be more beneficial but after doing more research perhaps at my ilvl it would be better to go with mastery over haste. Some opinions on where you think I should go would be greatly appreciated.

Armory:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/thrall/Scittles/advanced

My rotation needs a lot of work I still make mistakes refreshing dots etc. I know should I go look at logs I'll have a lot of work needed there so I won't waste anyones time by posting my logs. Just curious on whether or not I'm approaching the gem/reforge properly for my ilvl.

Thank you.

[Rrasis 13]

Haste = Mastery > Crit is the best way for you to reforge, this gives you the best stat optimization for all fights. certain fights haste will rank higher and certain fights mastery will, Crit is the devil

Haste breakpoints mean jack shit to warlocks due to pandemic

[Omaric 246]

Haste = Mastery > Crit is the best way for you to reforge, this gives you the best stat optimization for all fights. certain fights haste will rank higher and certain fights mastery will, Crit is the devil

Haste breakpoints mean jack shit to warlocks due to pandemic

You have learned well my son. The time of your ascendance is nigh upon us.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Omaric

[Cruzan 71]

Hi,

So to answer your question about haste breakpoints, don't worry about them. If you intentionally are letting your DoTs run their course and expire, then haste breakpoints become a factor, but under proper execution and aiming for ~99.5% uptime on your DoTs Haste breakpoints don't exist.

Haste is still something that needs to be addressed though. Keeping Haste and Mastery about even in rating was the go to move at the end of 5.1. With RPPM trinkets Haste is becoming more valuable, but were talking about very minor differences in theoretical dps.

My advice would be to stack the crap out of Mastery. It really slows the gameplay down quite a bit and will make executing proper gameplay much easier through longer MG channel times. That was always the beauty of Affliction for me was having the "downtime" while channeling MG to take note of the situation and collect my thoughts. Once maintaining DoTs becomes second nature then adding more Haste will be perfectly okay. Even using Haste = Mastery at your ilvl will give a fairly fluid feel to the gameplay.

tl;dr Don't worry about breakpoints, H=M>>>C

Side Note: If you have or can buy the Volatile Talisman it would be a safe purchase as it will stay equipped until you get Normal Mode 522 trinkets. Also if you like Unerring Vision you might want to experiment with the Glyph of Everlasting Affliction.

[gahhda 95]

There seems to be a misunderstand of how breakpoints work with pandemic.

Pandemic in no way effects the value of breakpoints.

If I have a 5 tick immolate (base without haste), and reapply below 50% of the duration, the net result will be 10 ticks in totality.

If I have a 6 tick immolate (first breakpoint), and reapply below 50% of the duration, the net result will be 12 ticks in totality.

In both cases, you get 1 more tick everytime you cast immolate, assuming you don't apply it above 50% duration. That means, more damage.

[Zagam 1,982]

For Affliction, you don't really want to bypass a big proc just because you won't fully benefit from Pandemic. There is no reliability as to WHEN you will reapply meaningful DoTs (Agony, UA) because of proc randomness. In order to see 1 additional tick through 50% of the duration of a DoT, you'd need to hit the threshold for 2 additional ticks over the entire duration of the DoT. This would only be the case if you always refreshed when 50% of the DoT remained. If you waited at all past the 50% mark, then the value of the haste breakpoint starts to fall off as all you're doing from that point on is decreasing the time interval between ticks without really adding an additional tick. Any excess time between when you applied and your next tick will be added through Pandemic.

[schmearcampain 0]

My advice would be to stack the crap out of Mastery. It really slows the gameplay down quite a bit and will make executing proper gameplay much easier through longer MG channel times. That was always the beauty of Affliction for me was having the "downtime" while channeling MG to take note of the situation and collect my thoughts. Once maintaining DoTs becomes second nature then adding more Haste will be perfectly okay. Even using Haste = Mastery at your ilvl will give a fairly fluid feel to the gameplay.

You know, I hadn't actually thought of this. It would really cut down on the human error factor and in my case, I'm taking more of a "leadership" role in raids (calling out stuff to watch out for), this might be a really good idea. Plus, I haven't gotten a single RPPM trinket yet.

Thanks for enlightening me :)