Aff PVP Stat Priority

[Roided 3]

I am having a hard time deciding whether to go mastery or haste as priority stat for pvp. I have seen different high ranked players pick different stats. I was originally thinking mastery would be better for higher dmg (since everyone has 75% resil). I have seen though ppl go haste instead and perform well.

 

What should i go and why? Any insight on this would be great. If haste is better, can you explain why it beats mastery? I'll be running 3's with a resto shammy and unholy dk so would this change what stat i choose? Thanks in advance for any comments!

[Eddie 16]

You are a warlock. there is no magical way to do your stats that are better than any other ways. you could go full crit as aff and not see a statistically significant change in damage. only fixing your playstyle really matters, PvP or PvE. Haste is nice to get extra ticks of dots, but is worthless after certain breakpoints, so generally, find a breakpoint you are comfortable with, then go full mastery.

[Deadlylocks 2]

I would have to say Mastery.  I have yet to do much pvp on my lock yet, but Mastery: Potent Afflictions increases the damage by your Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction.  Haste lowers the GCD and give extra ticks on dots.  Wouldn't you go for more burst damage than less sustained damage?  Just my opinion though.  

[Lockybalboa 618]

You are a warlock. there is no magical way to do your stats that are better than any other ways. you could go full crit as aff and not see a statistically significant change in damage. only fixing your playstyle really matters, PvP or PvE.

 

I disagree. For PvE secondary stats are not a make it or break it but for PvP it matters a bit more. Although game play will always be 50 times more important then stats I feel stats to have more of an impact in PvP then anywhere else.

 

 

Haste lowers the GCD and give extra ticks on dots.  Wouldn't you go for more burst damage than less sustained damage?  

 

I've been doing a SHITLOAD of PvP lately since I don't have a raid group atm.

 

Granted, I'm not doing high end PvP but from what I've seen after doing a lot of reading and a lot of PvP watching and a lot of playing is that sustained damage is better in 3s/5s/RBGs but burst DPS is better in 2s. This is not to totally devalue burst in 3/5/RBG but the ability to keep a massive amount of pressure going, especially as aff, is normally a better niche for a warlock to fill since it's hard for most other classes to do so; soul swap is just stupid OP for this situation.

 

Personally I don't play aff in 2s because destro is so blasted OP for 2s, I normally go aff for RBG and 3s - although I haven't done an RBG in a really long time. If/when I go aff I normally go for as high of a haste cap as I can get without going to far, normally within a few 100 stats at most, then put the rest in to mastery.

[Roided 3]

Thanks for the responses so far. One of my worries is having your dots dispelled constantly. I get that if someone dispells UA, they take a little bit of dmg and are silenced for 4 seconds. My only thought behind going haste over mastery is that the dots will tick faster meaning more hits before they are dispelled and also quicker fears. My biggest worry is still that id be giving up too much dmg. i havent yet run the numbers for dmg on a player with all mastery vs all haste. Im going to have to do some more reading on this today.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Thanks for the responses so far. One of my worries is having your dots dispelled constantly.

 

 

The best thing for a Aff lock is to get them dispelled on CD. I've seen my UA get dispelled and hit for 200k. I love it when scrubs dispell that.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrQh-MU2V3s

 

3:47 is the important part. 

[Deadlylocks 2]

My only thought behind going haste over mastery is that the dots will tick faster meaning more hits before they are dispelled and also quicker fears.

Dots wouldn't tick faster just have extra ticks on the back end, right?  And yes, the fear cast time would decrease the more haste you have

[Calol 5]

You will only get about one extra tic. Affliction's primary job in pvp is to apply pressure to the healer(s) by multi dotting. With resil our dots aren't gonna hit worth a damn, no damage=no burst. No burst= no pressure

[Omaric 246]

Dots wouldn't tick faster just have extra ticks on the back end, right?  And yes, the fear cast time would decrease the more haste you have

 

They definitely tick faster.  When you reach a point that you gain 3 ticks on a given DoT, you're now fitting in 3 extra ticks into the same time frame.  So you'll see your ticks sooner and with more frequency.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Dots wouldn't tick faster just have extra ticks on the back end, right?  And yes, the fear cast time would decrease the more haste you have

 

The way haste works is that everything happens faster. Agony does 12 ticks in 24 seconds, taking 2 seconds per tick. When you start adding haste, it ticks faster and 12 ticks takes lest time. When you get enough haste that whatever speed you're ticking at finishes ticking before 24 seconds with enough time for another tick at that speed, you add that tick. 25% haste is an extra 3 ticks in this case, because you're ticking at every 1.6 seconds. The first 12 ticks only take 19.2 seconds, leaving enough time for 3 more.

 

As far as PvP stuff goes, the best place to look is on Arena Junkies. It's where I looked up stuff before I started doing some PvP. Your haste breakpoints are going to depend on your comp. If you have spell haste, you go for the 6637 break point. If not, go for either the 5320 break point or the 7078 one, depending on your gear. After your chosen break point, you want mastery. You should be gemming yellow, orange, and green. If you're just starting to gear up and have a lot of lower level (especially crafted) pieces, you'll only go for the 3040 (3043 with haste) break point.

 

There are two scenarios when you throw your DoTs up: they either get dispelled or they go their full duration. If they get dispelled, you are presented with a good opportunity for your team to destroy the healer quickly. If not, you're going to wear down the healer's mana over time as they have to heal through your DoTs. Affliction in PvP doesn't do burst; it does pressure. You make the healer have to spend mana healing everyone until they eventually run out. That's your mindset.

[Deadlylocks 2]

Learn something new every day.  I thought the extra tics were added on the end making it last that many more tics making the up time of the dot longer per cast

[Mit213 20]

As an affliction lock, you pretty much just stack all the mastery in the world while hitting the closest breakpoint (see above posts) in terms of gear. Gear really does matter, squeezing out that much more pressure on the enemy team is required to get wins and push past certain rating, otherwise a team that plays just as well as you has an advantage of better stat priorities and can usually put out more pressure, etc etc etc. As an affliction warlock team comp pretty much determines what your goal is.

 

A few popular ones that rely on you just dotting up and keeping the enemy team locked down to build up pressure and have your teammate secure the kill are lock/warrior/healer, lock/ele shaman/healer, and lock/dk/healer. Another kind of team is lock/mage/healer which is pretty much full control of the match the entire time through cross-CC and such.

As was said by Locky, AJ is a decent place to start, but if you can figure out what you're looking for, worldofwargraphs is a really good website used to find exactly what you want. Either by finding the top players or by finding the gear/enchants/gems/talents that everyone 1.8k+, 2k+, or 2.2k+ uses of specific specializations, you can pretty much find most of what you need there, it is just harder without some background information.

Edit: About the gear thing, it is important, but I'm not taking emphasis off of being able to play your class, and knowing every other class and pretty much everything they're capable of because that is required to be a good PvP'er. Experience is invaluable. You learn what works and what helps. You learn swaps are required or those HoT's just keep someone up through a long CC chain, or that you can Clone someone at low hp if you have no followup CC, and stuff like that.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Mit213