[Archived] Affliction Warlock 5.4

[Zagam 1,982]

I'll be doing that as soon as I put together the raid loot table. BiS will be difficult to say since there will be several places to grab gear from, plus staggered raids. I'll do my best, though.

[Guest Darkvault]

As Afflic, do we not use Soul Swap:Exhale ever?

[Damien 1,514]

As Afflic, do we not use Soul Swap:Exhale ever?

You can use it to transfer your DoTs to a new target, which can be beneficial if you had an Agony with 10 stacks ticking. I'll make a mention of this in my next update of the guide, thank you :)

[Guest Ocassus]

Why is hit not the second most important stat anymore?

[Guest Christian]

Hi, great work you guys are doing here, but Mr. Robot is reforging everything into haste and not mastery. Can you please tell me why?

thanks

[Zagam 1,982]

Mr. Robot is also telling me to reforge out of Hit and put it into Haste and Mastery leaving me at 7% haste, or 8% off of the hit cap. I'm unaware as to why. I personally don't use Mr. Robot. I use wowreforge and Simcraft, setting my own limits which include being hit capped.

[Guest Chotch]

There's got to be some threshold of hit you need. I know you're not supposed to trust tests on target dummies, but I'm seeing a marked decrease in dps when reforging everything to mastery/haste in pre-raid gear.

[Guest Kinjin]

I use Simcraft and wow reforge. Chardev is useful for creating profiles to compare in Simcraft. I don't use Mr. Robot. It's only as accurate as the stat priorities put into it. Which they always seem to take a long time to get correct. That's why it gives terrible advice putting you half way to hit cap. The Simcraft Warlock comparison for HT14 are all hit capped. Destruction and Demonology both have Hit valued as a higher stat than Mastery Haste or Crit. The Affliction profile has Hit valued under Mastery over Haste and Crit. The important thing to note though is that the profile for Affliction IS hit capped.

Tl;dr

The stat priorties on this site and Mr. Robot aren't correct. GET HIT CAPPED.

[Guest Iceypop]

Awesome guide. I just picked up my Warlock after a long absense and this thread is a life saver. So much has changed since beginnings of WOTLK when I played it last.

Also, I don't know if any locks used PolMonitor as an addon for dot management back in the days, but I used to swear by it. Maybe better stuff available these days, but I have permission from the old author to update it and I just put it on Curse if anyone is interested.

Thanks again for the awesome guide.

[Guest Guest]

A question about soul shard management: if you're an afflic warlock, do you want to always use Drain Soul in order to get a Soul Shard available for a Haunt as it's running out? Or is it better to continue with refreshing DoTs / MG and once you're out of shards, only rely on the freebies you get from Nightfall? I don't know if it's worth interrupting your channel of MG to grab a shard, just to refresh Haunt.

[Damien 1,514]

Why is hit not the second most important stat anymore?

My guess is that DoTs contribute to your DPS to such an extent that the important thing is to increase their damage, which is what Mastery Rating (by increasing your Mastery) and Haste Rating (by increasing their ticking speed and adding ticks) do. Also, once a DoT is applied, ticks will not miss. So for a class relying on instant-cast DoTs (Unstable Affliction is not technically instant, but a 1.5-second cast is more or less the same) like Affliction Warlocks, missing spells is not as performance killing as it is for Arcane Mages (for example).

Now, we mostly get the stat priorities from Simulation Craft, so there is always the possibility of a bug critical enough that it completely changes the stat priority. Given who maintains the Warlock modules in Simulation Craft, this seems kind of unlikely.

Hi, great work you guys are doing here, but Mr. Robot is reforging everything into haste and not mastery. Can you please tell me why?

thanks

This is due to Simulation Craft giving Haste a higher weight. Mastery becomes slightly better when you reach about 8,000 Haste Rating. As far as I know, it's just that each new point in Haste Rating is not as efficient as the previous one.

Mr. Robot is also telling me to reforge out of Hit and put it into Haste and Mastery leaving me at 7% haste, or 8% off of the hit cap. I'm unaware as to why. I personally don't use Mr. Robot. I use wowreforge and Simcraft, setting my own limits which include being hit capped.

In pre-raid gear, Mastery is slightly better than Haste, so maybe that's why they're making you reforge everything into Mastery.

There's got to be some threshold of hit you need. I know you're not supposed to trust tests on target dummies, but I'm seeing a marked decrease in dps when reforging everything to mastery/haste in pre-raid gear.

It's always possible that there may be issues with the Warlock module in Simc.

I use Simcraft and wow reforge. Chardev is useful for creating profiles to compare in Simcraft. I don't use Mr. Robot. It's only as accurate as the stat priorities put into it. Which they always seem to take a long time to get correct. That's why it gives terrible advice putting you half way to hit cap. The Simcraft Warlock comparison for HT14 are all hit capped. Destruction and Demonology both have Hit valued as a higher stat than Mastery Haste or Crit. The Affliction profile has Hit valued under Mastery over Haste and Crit. The important thing to note though is that the profile for Affliction IS hit capped.

Tl;dr

The stat priorties on this site and Mr. Robot aren't correct. GET HIT CAPPED.

I'm not sure I'm following you on the profiles being hit-capped. How do you think it influences the results?

Awesome guide. I just picked up my Warlock after a long absense and this thread is a life saver. So much has changed since beginnings of WOTLK when I played it last.

Also, I don't know if any locks used PolMonitor as an addon for dot management back in the days, but I used to swear by it. Maybe better stuff available these days, but I have permission from the old author to update it and I just put it on Curse if anyone is interested.

Thanks again for the awesome guide.

Thank you for this nice comment :) Regarding DoT management, I'm sure Zagam would have some tips to give :P

A question about soul shard management: if you're an afflic warlock, do you want to always use Drain Soul in order to get a Soul Shard available for a Haunt as it's running out? Or is it better to continue with refreshing DoTs / MG and once you're out of shards, only rely on the freebies you get from Nightfall? I don't know if it's worth interrupting your channel of MG to grab a shard, just to refresh Haunt.

Currently, it is better to rely only on procs from Nightfall.

[Guest lfgnjrp]

I just wanted to say that before IcyVeins.com I was "preforming" in raids. But I was more or less getting by. It didn't matter my gear, it always seemed I was missing something. Our guild was one of the higher guilds on our server, we were one of the first to complete DS, and we could do Heroic DS in basically one go of it. Some weeks we relaxed and made it two days. In those raids I was towards the bottom of DPS.

After a short break of about a month or two before MoP coming out I was determined to improve the best of my ability. One of my guildies said, check out IvyVeins and just work some kinks out, maybe start fresh with the new exspansion. So I did... and I am happy to say that this week I went from being 8-9th in DPS to 2-3rd in DPS. I have used a combination of Wowreforger, AskMrRobot, and a bit of tweaking myself.

So, thank you for making these in depth, easy to read guides. They really do help. I been playing since the first week of WoW being released. And I am just now finally feeling like "I get it." I knew how to do everything, I knew the whys, but now I know how to apply it. I really appricate the hard work you all do on these guides.

Finally my question is this - I am a bit torn with my Teir 6 talent choice. I don't know the numbers, or any way to generate the numbers at least - on if Archmondie's Vengence or Kil'Jaden's would be better over all. I mean, on the one hand they do lots of AOE attacks and I think the added damage would be good during boss fights when you know a large attack is coming. But then again in the 3rd fights you could kill the adds quickly with a well placed Rain of Fire. And with all the mobility needed in all 3 of the fights, I don't know if the cool down of the movement talent is the best choice. What in your opinon would be the best. I play both Afflicion and Destruction Based on the fight.

[dooms 1]

is it ok to reforge all my hit into mastery / haste ??

im currently have 5.86% hit.. and its pain in the ass to put some DOTs on boss T__T

is it not a DPS loss ? if i keep missed apply coruption about 5-6 times ?

[Zagam 1,982]

is it ok to reforge all my hit into mastery / haste ??

im currently have 5.86% hit.. and its pain in the ass to put some DOTs on boss T__T

is it not a DPS loss ? if i keep missed apply coruption about 5-6 times ?

My friend, according to some, you don't hit cap and shove all stats into Mastery, then Haste, then Hit. Generally, you reforge all Crit into Mastery then Hit into Mastery or Haste. Some people including MaxDPS, wowreforge, and askmrrobot push for not hit capping. I personally believe in coming super close to hit capping (I'm at 14.97%) to avoid the frustrations you are suffering now. Bad RNG can absolutely devastate your DPS. I'd rather be consistently amazing than super stellar 1 out of 10 attempts.

[dooms 1]

do you know the DPS differents between less hit rating vs near cap hit rating?? is it BIG ??

[Zagam 1,982]

If I simulate my character according to Mr. Robot, I do 73.5k DPS (8% hit)

If I simulate my character according to my stat weights, I do 72.8k DPS (15% hit)

The 700 DPS loss is neglible to me in terms of not worry about Haunt or a DoT missing during execute phase.

[Guest Phatdaddy]

Is using doomguard at the start with all your buffs active > then using it when the boss is at 20 or 25% health? I know it lasts for a minute duration so you might want to cast it a little before 20% for full duration of him but he also does 20% more dmg passively on things below 20% health, plus buffs can still proc during this time since u save a pot for 20% normaly anyways. Depending on fight Blood Lust or Heroism may be used at end of fight aswell. What do you think? Start of fight for huge burst or end of fight?

[Zagam 1,982]

It's hard to say, really. It depends on fight mechanics. For Stone Guard, I pop him at the beginning after I use my trinket, have my other trinket proc, have my tailoring enchant proc, and I've used a potion. I then use him and call for Bloodlust (being the raid leader has its perks :D ). It's hard not to justify using him when my spell power is around 38.5k and hold him for the end, but it depends.

On Feng, I use him on the 2nd phase to shorten it while on Gara'jal I wait until the execute phase to use him. On Spirit Kings, I use him when we lust on the last boss, and during Elegon, I use him at the end when the boss is taking 100% more damage. On Gara'jal during execute phase, my Doomguard did 9k DPS during that minute for an overall effect of about 1500 DPS. Using him in optimal settings would theoretically gain you a maximum of 500 DPS under most mechanics, so using him to help your raid group through a phase faster is likely your optimal choice.

[Guest Ashensoul]

Sorry about the newbness of this question but why is tailoring the best profession for casters?

I was contemplating going enchantng/jewelcrafting but have postponed due to the above information. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Damien 1,514]

I just wanted to say that before IcyVeins.com I was "preforming" in raids. But I was more or less getting by. It didn't matter my gear, it always seemed I was missing something. Our guild was one of the higher guilds on our server, we were one of the first to complete DS, and we could do Heroic DS in basically one go of it. Some weeks we relaxed and made it two days. In those raids I was towards the bottom of DPS.

After a short break of about a month or two before MoP coming out I was determined to improve the best of my ability. One of my guildies said, check out IvyVeins and just work some kinks out, maybe start fresh with the new exspansion. So I did... and I am happy to say that this week I went from being 8-9th in DPS to 2-3rd in DPS. I have used a combination of Wowreforger, AskMrRobot, and a bit of tweaking myself.

So, thank you for making these in depth, easy to read guides. They really do help. I been playing since the first week of WoW being released. And I am just now finally feeling like "I get it." I knew how to do everything, I knew the whys, but now I know how to apply it. I really appricate the hard work you all do on these guides.

Finally my question is this - I am a bit torn with my Teir 6 talent choice. I don't know the numbers, or any way to generate the numbers at least - on if Archmondie's Vengence or Kil'Jaden's would be better over all. I mean, on the one hand they do lots of AOE attacks and I think the added damage would be good during boss fights when you know a large attack is coming. But then again in the 3rd fights you could kill the adds quickly with a well placed Rain of Fire. And with all the mobility needed in all 3 of the fights, I don't know if the cool down of the movement talent is the best choice. What in your opinon would be the best. I play both Afflicion and Destruction Based on the fight.

Thank you very much for this testimony and sorry for not replying earlier.

There is no best talent, they are all viable, for the reasons you mentioned. Now the nice thing is that you can switch talent before any fight, so you should go for the one that you think is the most suited for the fight you are about to start. If you are unsure what talent to use for a given fight, you should refer to Zagam's posts in our Warlock forums ;)

Sorry about the newbness of this question but why is tailoring the best profession for casters?

I was contemplating going enchantng/jewelcrafting but have postponed due to the above information. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It used to be the case that Tailoring was the best profession for casters. However, things changed with MoP and the Intellect bonus given by Tailoring is now on par with the bonus given by other professions.

[Guest Robert]

This guide is so wrong. You start always with soulburn and soulswap to get the dots up. And you also refresh them as same.

[Damien 1,514]

For the first issue, please read again section 1 of the rotation page.

For the second issue, I don't believe that DoTs should be refreshed with Soulburn and Soul Swap, unless maybe if you get a proc of Nightfall when you've just applied Haunt (anyone thinks this should be added to the guide?).

The next time you say one of our guide is "so wrong", you need to substantiate your claim a little. Your post is a trademark of criticism that doesn't lead anywhere.

[Zagam 1,982]

This guide is so wrong. You start always with soulburn and soulswap to get the dots up. And you also refresh them as same.

No, sir, you are wrong. You do NOT use Soul Shards to reapply DoTs without taking a moment to look at your situation. If you have one Soul Shard, you do NOT use it to refresh your DoTs. You manually recast them. If you are swimming in Soul Shards like in execute phases, you use SB:SS to reapply DoTs. You're either wrong or the luckiest Affliction Warlock in the world with a constant flow of Soul Shards you can't find a better use for.

[Guest Kravn]

I believe professions are pretty much all balanced now, as long as you're not taking a gathering profession.

Leatherworking technically offers 10 more points of int for its special bracer enchant than you get with the other non-gathering professions. e.g. 330 vs 320.

A caveat - I believe Synapse Springs still clashes with trinket cooldowns, but I'm not certain. If so, this can diminish the benefit of the proc, or enhance it if it does not clash as it can be timed to coincide with other cooldowns.

What I'm curious about is racials. In the past, Orc was hands down the best Affliction race because of the pet bonus in addition to the Blood Fury "trinket." Since Affliction now runs petless, Blood Fury must stand up to Berserking from Trolls, Time is Money from Goblins, or Touch of the Grave from Undead on its own.

Has anyone seen any discussion on this?

Well sort of...Wands still count as "unarmed" so you do get that extra point of hit from wielding a wand as an Orc, which is not too shabby.

[Zagam 1,982]

Racials are pretty much up to you to decide.

Goblin = 1% haste (multplicative) so it makes it easier to reach the 10.00% haste threshold (4250 rating instead of 4717), mobile personal bank, rocket jump, better vendor prices before exalted. This is, in my opinion, the superior Aff Warlock class right now.

Orc = small spell power buff, 2% pet damage (not really beneficial at all anymore with Grim of Sac), stun reduction -15%, 1% hit with wands. The 1% hit to wand is nice until you realize you'll be replacing the wand from Elegon with a Sha-Touched staff or dagger from Terrace soon. Blood Fury is ok. Orcs and Trolls are likely close in comparison.

Troll = powerful haste buff for 10 seconds, movement imparing effects -10%. The haste is nice to stack with Dark Soul and other things, but the 3 min CD and 10 sec duration makes for a rather crappy uptime which is ok because it IS a racial.

Undead = Touch of the Grave. This is pretty much the reason you'd play Undead. Besides their amazingly awesome looks, TotG does a decent amount of damage and healing.

Blood Elf = I see so many BE Warlocks and I'll never understand why. I guess if you think they're pretty, play them.