5.4 Affliction Tips & Quirks

[Megafon923 0]

Zagam thanks man! very good gaide.

Zagan question please. time that we lose to update dot, losing our DPS as it can be cut? I beat the raid doll, my DPS is not more than 68k. Stopped 68-71k. how to make more? I lose the time to update the dot and lose DPS ... ((

I do: COE>Darl soul>macros SB+SS>haunt> spamm 3MG next one Fel Flames> and it's time SB+SS> and haund and stopped 70k dps (( have the opportunity to pick it up?

haste 4780

mastery 52.60

ivl 484 ( 4sets sha) lfr :P

Edited January 8, 2013 by Megafon923

[Minkle 0]

Hi there.

This is my first post.

I've read your advice re trinkets but I've just been presented with a dilemma.

I now have raid finder Light of the Cosmos and Essence of Terror plus Relic of Yu'lon. Which do I choose? Does it depend on my underlying haste rating?

Thanks.

[Gravyspasm 70]

Hi there.

This is my first post.

I've read your advice re trinkets but I've just been presented with a dilemma.

I now have raid finder Light of the Cosmos and Essence of Terror plus Relic of Yu'lon. Which do I choose? Does it depend on my underlying haste rating?

Thanks.

If i recall correctly, the selection should be relic and light. i've sadly been in the same spot and melted my light once i got essence only to learn how wrong i was.

edit: and i went back to the trinket breakdowns and found this:

source: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/843-51-affliction-trinkets/#entry8823

14) Relic of Yu'lon (upgrade0) = 8064 DPS

15) Normal Cosmos (upgrade0) = 7971 DPS

16) LFR Essence (upgrade2) = 7690 DPS

17) LFR Cosmos (upgrade2) = 7645 DPS

18) Static-Caster's (upgrade2) = 7613 DPS

19) LFR Essence (upgrade1) = 7516 DPS

20) LFR Cosmos (upgrade1) = 7409 DPS

21) Static-Caster's (upgrade1) = 7225 DPS

22) LFR Essence (upgrade0) = 7200 DPS

23) LFR Cosmos (upgrade0) = 7189 DPS

So it seems essence is just a wee bit better out of the box, and just a hair better once both upgrades are performed.

which i'm happy to see now that i didn't screw up in melting mine.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Gravyspasm

[Zagam 1,982]

I created an entire trinket thread. Head on over there to find out which trinket you should use.

[Minkle 0]

Excellent. I'll do just that. Be gutted if I can't use my Essence as I too was excited when it dropped.

[Minkle 0]

Seems fitting that a Warlock uses 'essence of terror' rather than 'light of the cosmos' which sounds a bit priesty to me.

[Zagam 1,982]

Too bad that proc on Essence is far and few between.

[jazzycakes 0]

Hey, long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm a 499 affliction lock who's progressing in heroic msv / hof and have some theorys and questions (not all for this post thankfully)

Was reading the post about waiting for the ICD to run off on trinkets before refreshing dots and I was wondering if there is an addon that shows how long until trinket ICD's are up and maybe a running graph showing when your SP is at it's peak (similar to looking at your buffs and seeing you have 3 up - lightweave / trinket / windsong etc), and basically saying "REFRESH DOTS, HAUNT, MG, TOP DPS". I have been looking for a similar addon for vengance for my tank as well.

[Fel 42]

@ Jazzy,

I'm not aware of any addon that does it as a package, but if you run Affdots to track your stats per DoT at any given time, in conjunction with Weakauras confiigured to track your trinket/enchant ICDs, that should cover all the bases you've mentioned.

It may seem like a bit of an ask at first, but trust me if you put them together and play with them for a couple of weeks, it will quickly become integrated into your playstyle.

For weakauras configs, there are some recommendations on this forum, or you can search 'Touchymcfeel Weak Auras 6' on youtube and that will give you a vid with step by step config instructions for proc + ICD trackers.

-A

[jazzycakes 0]

@Auracle

Thanks, I'll give it a test out tonight, I'll do some research into that spell power graph tracking deely and see if anyone has made something similar.

[Vile 9]

Hey, long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm a 499 affliction lock who's progressing in heroic msv / hof and have some theorys and questions (not all for this post thankfully)

Was reading the post about waiting for the ICD to run off on trinkets before refreshing dots and I was wondering if there is an addon that shows how long until trinket ICD's are up and maybe a running graph showing when your SP is at it's peak (similar to looking at your buffs and seeing you have 3 up - lightweave / trinket / windsong etc), and basically saying "REFRESH DOTS, HAUNT, MG, TOP DPS". I have been looking for a similar addon for vengance for my tank as well.

I use Weak Auras along with AffDots. I have icons showing procs are up and the time remaining aswell as darkened icons showing the ICD cooldown.

I'm off to bed now but I can post my WA strings tomorrow night if you're interested.

[Matophilles 0]

issue resolved

Edited January 21, 2013 by Matophilles

[Cruzan 71]

Hi,

This thread has been an awesome resource for getting the most out of my lock's dps. I've got a fairly minor question relating to the opener which might be kind of a nitpicky, max/min thing. I've been following this opener fairly religiously for single target bosses: From the OP

Basically I open my rotation with Curse, SB:SS to get my DoTs up, Haunt, and Malefic Grasp. By the time MG channels twice, all my stuff has proc'd. I then reapply all of my DoTs one by one to get maximum duration, Haunt, and MG again. When Lightweave and Yu'lon are about to expire, I reapply DoTs again to get maximum durations. Then I just MG and Haunt on procs until my DoTs are about to wear off.

I've been starting to think this isn't the most efficient use of my shards and Haunt up-time though. Right around the time the first buffs (Ligtweave and trinkets) are wearing off and buffs need to be updated I still have a significant amount of Haunt time left and I miss out on a lot of it due to having to hard cast my dots to keep em going strong.

My question/proposed change is can we forgo the initial Haunt cast and save that shard for later use with our SB:SS macro?

The sequence would look more like: Pre-pot (Thx Morgaliel)

1. CoE

2. Trink, DS

3. SB:SS

4. MG(Once or twice depending on procs)

5. Hard-cast Ag/Corr/UA

6. Haunt

7. MG x2 or 3

8. SB:SS as Lightweave/Trinkets are close to wearing off.

9. Haunt

10. MG x3

The same amount of shards are used in this sequence as the quoted opener (even less if he is applying dots with SB:SS before trinkets/lightweave wear off) and only one GCD is lost while Haunt is active (refreshing dots before trinket buffs wear off).

Now this all could be irrelevant if I'm not interpreting Zagam's opener correctly. I know the basic rule of thumb is to be channeling MG 100% of the time Haunt is active, but I haven't been able to follow that rule with his opener. Using what I listed above allows for a more effective use of that rule as far as I can see. Usually I only lose one GCD while a Haunt is active which is caused by Lightweave/Trinks wearing off and using the SB:SS macro to refresh at the last second. Hard casting seems like such a waste during a period of time where we are the supreme beings of the universe in terms of burst

Let me know what your thoughts are on this and any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Edited January 20, 2013 by Cruzan

[Morgaliel 2]

I've been asking myself the same question, and I'll be happy to hear about people views on this.

One small detail about your 2. : you want to pot before CoE while not in combat to be able to use another one later. But I bet you know this. :)

[Cruzan 71]

I've been asking myself the same question, and I'll be happy to hear about people views on this.

One small detail about your 2. : you want to pot before CoE while not in combat to be able to use another one later. But I bet you know this.

Haha yes I'll change that. I wrote that up while sitting at a target dummy that I had been keeping curse up on anyways and I could just start off with Pots/Trinks/DS out of combat. In a fight, definitely pot first

Thanks

Edited January 20, 2013 by Cruzan

[Beerdrinker 0]

Hello yall,

I too am struggleing with my DPS. However the information on this site has been very helpful in understanding what needs to be done. Doing it is another thing. I have been practicing on dummies and in LFR trying to get my timing down to benefit from Pandemic which I have seen an increase in my dps but not as much as I would think. I am seeing other Affliction Locks doing much more with close to the same item level. If yall wouldn't mind please check my toon out on the armory. (Beerdrinker...Llane server..Anglez of Death guild) and let me know if I have screwed up somewhere in my build. I am pretty sure my issues are with my ability to play at the level of the players I am seeing with much better dps, which I hope will be corrected in practicing.

My questions are:

1. Am I building my toon correctly?

2. What kind of DPS do yall see on the raid dummies only having GoS and DI as buffs? I am only able to reach high 50's to low 60's by the time I run out of mana. Is that about where I should be? If this is close to normal then my issues have to be with my ability to play the game

Here is a little about how I play;

I have all my abilities keybound. The only time I click is to position Shadowfury.

I have macros to automatically trigger Dark Soul when it comes off cooldown so I never have to worry about it not being used when it comes off cooldown. I just did this today and have not tried it out in LFR yet, only on dummies.

Here is an example of my macro. It will only work if you play with keybound macros, if you try to click in this format you won't be able to click it because it will show the cooldown meter for Dark Soul.

/cast Dark Soul

/cast Unstable Affliction

My addons are:

Bartender 4

Spartan UI

Classtimers

Recount

DBM

GTFO

Thanks in advance for your help!!

[Cruzan 71]

Hi Beerdrinker,

I'm not an expert, but I have managed to pull pretty good numbers for my gear I think so I can give you a little advice.

As far as numbers go on a target dummy I have an ilvl of 479 and can usually get about 60-65k if I really try and drag it out. Simcraft says I should be getting around 63k on a target dummy with my own buffs and no bloodlust. So I'm guessing you could probably use a little extra help with your DoT power management. The addon Affdots is mentioned in this thread and it is an extremely powerful tool to use! Any Aff lock who isn't using it is handicapping themselves in my opinion. I saw my dps jump quite a bit after I installed the addon. Give it a try.

As far as gearing goes. I see you went for the 4717 haste cap which seems right for your gear level. My concern is that you aren't hit-capped. I know that you can hear from various people that hit-capping isn't important for Affliction, but at your gear level its pretty easy to get and you only take a slight hit to your Mastery (Probably dropping about 600 Mastery total or so to reach the hit cap). While the loss of mastery might be a slight DPS loss, the consistency of being hit-capped will make you better overall in my opinion. It comes down to playstyle and if you can react to missing a DoT or two or five during a fight then don't worry about the hit cap.

I can't really comment on the Dark Soul macro. It seems in theory it might be a good idea. However not being able to choose the optimal time to pop it during a fight could be problematic. Let us know what you think of the macro after using it more. I forsee problems with fight mechanics causing you to use it at a bad time (For example: For phase 2/3 of Elegon its not optimal to have dark soul popped while you aren't on the platform with the damage buff, so holding on to it for a little while might be better.

Hopefully this info will hold you over until a more seasoned lock can come by to help. I'm not sure what else can be done without combing over a log of one of your encounters.

Best of luck!

[Glorn 1]

Hey guys.

At first I wanted to say that it is an awesome thread Zagam,keep up the good work,I learned a lot from your threads :)

I've got a question about gear choices,this is my armory http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/zenedar/Glorrn/advanced and I'm wondering if I should try and even get LFR tier shoulders instead of the ones I got now just for the 4 tier bonus?Is it worth it,is it gonna be a significant dps gain?

[Beerdrinker 0]

Hi Cruzan,

Thanks for the info, I have downloaded the Affdots addon and can't wait to use it. I also have decided to go with your idea and cap my hit. We (aff locks) have so much to look out for, I reck'n it's best to be sure all dot's will land without an issue.

Thanks again and I will post later this week on how the changes has affected my dps.

[Gravyspasm 70]

I reck'n it's best to be sure all dot's will land without an issue.

this is what finally made me get to hitcap. I liked the extra dps for sure when i was at 8, 9, 10% hit...but i enjoy it even more when i SB: SS and all 3 dots land instead of one of them missing :(

[Morgaliel 2]

I can't really comment on the Dark Soul macro. It seems in theory it might be a good idea. However not being able to choose the optimal time to pop it during a fight could be problematic. Let us know what you think of the macro after using it more. I forsee problems with fight mechanics causing you to use it at a bad time (For example: For phase 2/3 of Elegon its not optimal to have dark soul popped while you aren't on the platform with the damage buff, so holding on to it for a little while might be better.

I'd tend to agree. First you want to decide when it is best to use it, depending on the fight mecanics. Also, when I press DS, I begin with SB:SS + Haunt, according I have at least 2 shards which is often the case, because I tend to save them up for when DS is ready. So linking it to UA is in this case not that useful.

You could use Weak Auras or TellmeWhen to put you a big icon on your screen when DS comes off cd.

Best.

[Zagam 1,982]

Hi,

This thread has been an awesome resource for getting the most out of my lock's dps. I've got a fairly minor question relating to the opener which might be kind of a nitpicky, max/min thing. I've been following this opener fairly religiously for single target bosses: From the OP

I've been starting to think this isn't the most efficient use of my shards and Haunt up-time though. Right around the time the first buffs (Ligtweave and trinkets) are wearing off and buffs need to be updated I still have a significant amount of Haunt time left and I miss out on a lot of it due to having to hard cast my dots to keep em going strong.

My question/proposed change is can we forgo the initial Haunt cast and save that shard for later use with our SB:SS macro?

The sequence would look more like: Pre-pot (Thx Morgaliel)

1. CoE

2. Trink, DS

3. SB:SS

4. MG(Once or twice depending on procs)

5. Hard-cast Ag/Corr/UA

6. Haunt

7. MG x2 or 3

8. SB:SS as Lightweave/Trinkets are close to wearing off.

9. Haunt

10. MG x3

The same amount of shards are used in this sequence as the quoted opener (even less if he is applying dots with SB:SS before trinkets/lightweave wear off) and only one GCD is lost while Haunt is active (refreshing dots before trinket buffs wear off).

Now this all could be irrelevant if I'm not interpreting Zagam's opener correctly. I know the basic rule of thumb is to be channeling MG 100% of the time Haunt is active, but I haven't been able to follow that rule with his opener. Using what I listed above allows for a more effective use of that rule as far as I can see. Usually I only lose one GCD while a Haunt is active which is caused by Lightweave/Trinks wearing off and using the SB:SS macro to refresh at the last second. Hard casting seems like such a waste during a period of time where we are the supreme beings of the universe in terms of burst

Let me know what your thoughts are on this and any feedback is greatly appreciated!

I'm not sure what you're opening up to, but I'm pushing upwards of 250-300k with a pre-pot and making that last for the duration of an opening Bloodlust for a solid 40 seconds. On fights like Heroic Gara'jal, I open at 275k and decrease down to a finish of about 120k. My opener is prepot, CoE, DS + SB:SS, Haunt, MG for one duration, UA, Corr, Agony, Haunt, MG x 3, SB:SS, Haunt, MG x 4. From there, you're monitoring your procs, but until that second SB:SS, all procs are live (Relic of Yu'lon, Light of the Cosmos, Lightweave, potion, Bloodlust, Jade Spirit). Any opening rotation that gets you to 250-300k is sufficient, and they all don't need to be the same. Crit RNG will have a large play into how hard you hit with your opener. Sounds like you have the right idea, so keep up the great work!

I've been asking myself the same question, and I'll be happy to hear about people views on this.

One small detail about your 2. : you want to pot before CoE while not in combat to be able to use another one later. But I bet you know this.

Drink potions to win. All the time.

Hello yall,

I too am struggleing with my DPS. However the information on this site has been very helpful in understanding what needs to be done. Doing it is another thing. I have been practicing on dummies and in LFR trying to get my timing down to benefit from Pandemic which I have seen an increase in my dps but not as much as I would think. I am seeing other Affliction Locks doing much more with close to the same item level. If yall wouldn't mind please check my toon out on the armory. (Beerdrinker...Llane server..Anglez of Death guild) and let me know if I have screwed up somewhere in my build. I am pretty sure my issues are with my ability to play at the level of the players I am seeing with much better dps, which I hope will be corrected in practicing.

Thanks in advance for your help!!

Greetings Beerdrinker. The reason I've sticked so many threads is so that we can eliminate these types of "help me" threads. I've supplied sufficient information on reforging, gemming, enchanting, gear priority, and rotations. If you have a very particular question about something in a certain fight, I can address that. Please be sure to look in the Warlock forums section for all of the sticked information threads.

Hi Beerdrinker,

I'm not an expert, but I have managed to pull pretty good numbers for my gear I think so I can give you a little advice.

As far as numbers go on a target dummy I have an ilvl of 479 and can usually get about 60-65k if I really try and drag it out. Simcraft says I should be getting around 63k on a target dummy with my own buffs and no bloodlust. So I'm guessing you could probably use a little extra help with your DoT power management. The addon Affdots is mentioned in this thread and it is an extremely powerful tool to use! Any Aff lock who isn't using it is handicapping themselves in my opinion. I saw my dps jump quite a bit after I installed the addon. Give it a try.

As far as gearing goes. I see you went for the 4717 haste cap which seems right for your gear level. My concern is that you aren't hit-capped. I know that you can hear from various people that hit-capping isn't important for Affliction, but at your gear level its pretty easy to get and you only take a slight hit to your Mastery (Probably dropping about 600 Mastery total or so to reach the hit cap). While the loss of mastery might be a slight DPS loss, the consistency of being hit-capped will make you better overall in my opinion. It comes down to playstyle and if you can react to missing a DoT or two or five during a fight then don't worry about the hit cap.

I can't really comment on the Dark Soul macro. It seems in theory it might be a good idea. However not being able to choose the optimal time to pop it during a fight could be problematic. Let us know what you think of the macro after using it more. I forsee problems with fight mechanics causing you to use it at a bad time (For example: For phase 2/3 of Elegon its not optimal to have dark soul popped while you aren't on the platform with the damage buff, so holding on to it for a little while might be better.

Hopefully this info will hold you over until a more seasoned lock can come by to help. I'm not sure what else can be done without combing over a log of one of your encounters.

Best of luck!

No need to put yourself down to comment that a 'more seasoned' Warlock will come along...all opinions are valid here! First off, Simcraft is pretty bad at simulating your maximum DPS output. Generally speaking, Simcraft doesn't have any setting for "Gara'jal" or "Elegon" to test your actual DPS in a raid setting. Simcraft, however, is fantastic at finding stat weights and spell priorities. You can alter spell priorities and mix in other spells to see a gain or loss of DPS. Try not to use it as a gauge for your DPS. I've tried to include logs on all of my kill fights in my Tier 14 Warlock specific forum post...those are the types of tools you should be using to gauge your DPS.

Hit capping is becoming the trend again. People are starting to realize that simulation can create a sticky situation where yes, your theoretical DPS would be higher, but are you really willing to trade in a 300 DPS gain to be constantly staring at your enemies debuffs to make sure a spell hit? And you don't have robotic like reactions to reapply if something misses. Hit capping removes this blunder and will provide higher DPS parses across the board by human players.

Dark Soul should be used on cooldown except in blantantly bad places. Your example of Elegon's phase 3 where you are DPS'ing pylons is one that I moderately object to. With that specific instance, what I do on Elegon is use DS at the beginning of the fight. During Phase 2 when you are killing the charges, on the last charge we kill (5th one), I pop DS, use it to burn the charge, then get free DPS on Elegon. DS lasts long enough to also multi-dot all of the pylons on my side. This makes clearing the pylons on our side ridiculously fast, especially in heroic mode. Dark Soul shouldn't be held onto to boost your "DPS numbers"...think more how you can diminish effects of raid boss mechanics. I think, however, a good instance to NOT use Dark Soul would be during Feng's Epicenter where you are likely to be missing a lot thus wasting your CD. For all other instances, I can't see Dark Soul not being useful. A general sense here is that higher DPS = you doing well. This isn't always the case. Our Mage, for example, went Frost for our progression on Elegon because Frost Orb completely trivialized the add phase going back into Phase 1. He didn't top the meters, but he WAS the reason our attempts went so smoothly...he effectively erased a mechanic. He would have done more DPS as Arcane, but he elected (I told him) to benefit the group the most. Always think about that and NOT your numbers.

Hey guys.

At first I wanted to say that it is an awesome thread Zagam,keep up the good work,I learned a lot from your threads

I've got a question about gear choices,this is my armory http://eu.battle.net...Glorrn/advanced and I'm wondering if I should try and even get LFR tier shoulders instead of the ones I got now just for the 4 tier bonus?Is it worth it,is it gonna be a significant dps gain?

Much appreciated. Glad to be of help! I'm going to spell this one out to you...Would you like Bloodlust for 20 seconds every 80 seconds or 120 seconds? This 4pc bonus is arguably the best one in the game beacuse with Pandemic and our DoT snapshot feature, we actually make those 20 seconds last about 35-45 seconds, so with the 4pc bonus, you are essentially running with Bloodlust over 50% of the time. Totally worth it.

Hi Cruzan,

Thanks for the info, I have downloaded the Affdots addon and can't wait to use it. I also have decided to go with your idea and cap my hit. We (aff locks) have so much to look out for, I reck'n it's best to be sure all dot's will land without an issue.

Thanks again and I will post later this week on how the changes has affected my dps.

I can darn near promise you'll see an increase.

I'd tend to agree. First you want to decide when it is best to use it, depending on the fight mecanics. Also, when I press DS, I begin with SB:SS + Haunt, according I have at least 2 shards which is often the case, because I tend to save them up for when DS is ready. So linking it to UA is in this case not that useful.

You could use Weak Auras or TellmeWhen to put you a big icon on your screen when DS comes off cd.

Best.

I agree...don't macro it to anything. Just use it on its own when you deem best fit for the situation.

[Cruzan 71]

I'm not sure what you're opening up to, but I'm pushing upwards of 250-300k with a pre-pot and making that last for the duration of an opening Bloodlust for a solid 40 seconds. On fights like Heroic Gara'jal, I open at 275k and decrease down to a finish of about 120k. My opener is prepot, CoE, DS + SB:SS, Haunt, MG for one duration, UA, Corr, Agony, Haunt, MG x 3, SB:SS, Haunt, MG x 4. From there, you're monitoring your procs, but until that second SB:SS, all procs are live (Relic of Yu'lon, Light of the Cosmos, Lightweave, potion, Bloodlust, Jade Spirit). Any opening rotation that gets you to 250-300k is sufficient, and they all don't need to be the same. Crit RNG will have a large play into how hard you hit with your opener. Sounds like you have the right idea, so keep up the great work!

Thanks for the reply! Yeah I'm definitely not complaining about the high peak I get with your opener . I guess I was just concerned that I might be sacrificing overall damage or more sustained damage by trying to reach that high peak rather than finding a way to stretch out the damage curve/hump we get on the charts during the opener. Optimization things like that bug me and maybe I can figure it out when I dive a little deeper in to simcraft's settings. I think I'll take what you said later in your post about doing what's best for the raid in terms of damage and mechanics however and focus less on the numbers. I won't be setting any WoL records any time soon so I'll focus on the progression. I shouldn't complain as long as I'm pulling my weight

Off-topic, but GL with Destro! I tried it out in a 5man last week and my jaw dropped the first time I saw those crits jump across my screen. Now my Haunt crits just feel weak and dissatisfying haha. I was wondering if Destruction becomes more competitive at higher gear levels when you can get more crit and mastery on your gear. My hand-me-down destro set that I'm using doesn't leave me with anything to compare to since I don't want to fully reforge/gem my current gear just to mess around in destro.

[Zagam 1,982]

No, as gear levels increase, Affliction pulls away farther. I set a couple of top 15 World of Log parses as Affliction, Destruction, and Demonology at the beginning of this tier. My gear isn't progressing as fast as it was as my only heroic piece is the belt off of Elegon, so others have that leg up on me. Affliction will get a decent nerf...the nerf to Grim of Sac will hurt about 2%, but I'm anticipating a 3-4% reduction in damage to our DoTs in someway to line us up better with some other classes. Right now, Windwalker Monks and Frost and Arcane Mages are ahead of us, but they are the only ones, and they are receiving some number nerfs soon. Arcane is being heavily worked on and I think Frost will be right behind.

The real problem with Affliction is the snap-shotting of stats in their DPS design. It's why Simcraft can't model our DPS ideally because gameplay mechanics couldn't have counted on such an add-on like Affdots to gain control and insight into all of our current buffs. Each Warlock spec has its own things to worry about...Destruction has the least. It has one DoT, and once you get into the rotation moderately well, you don't have mana issues. I don't even think switching stats around is really that necessary as Destruction focuses more on Intellect while Affliction worries about Mastery. I'm not sure Blizzard ever designed a class to have secondary stats outperform its primary stat, so I think that's why we'll see a slight nerf to either 1) all 3 DoTs, 2) Agony, or 3) mastery scaling. Our mastery scaling will go almost as out of control as Fire Mages would have without their redesign. Lots of changes coming soon, so I'll do my best to stay on top of it.

[Cruzan 71]

No, as gear levels increase, Affliction pulls away farther. I set a couple of top 15 World of Log parses as Affliction, Destruction, and Demonology at the beginning of this tier. My gear isn't progressing as fast as it was as my only heroic piece is the belt off of Elegon, so others have that leg up on me. Affliction will get a decent nerf...the nerf to Grim of Sac will hurt about 2%, but I'm anticipating a 3-4% reduction in damage to our DoTs in someway to line us up better with some other classes. Right now, Windwalker Monks and Frost and Arcane Mages are ahead of us, but they are the only ones, and they are receiving some number nerfs soon. Arcane is being heavily worked on and I think Frost will be right behind.

That's interesting, but it makes sense as far as the gear/stats goes. The strength of being able to snapshot our dots and make them last at that power for so long definitely allows for a higher ceiling to the skills that can be brought to the spec. And with how simple the "rotation" becomes once that is mastered (or at least made aware of thanks to Affdots) things become more grim for the other specs' competitiveness since the mobility issue Aff used to have (back when I played more seriously in Wrath) became lessened by KJC. I used to switch back and forth between demo and aff early on here in MoP, but after i picked up KJC i haven't needed to spec back to demo other than for the giggles during AoE.

From a non-numbers look at the patch notes for 5.2 it doesn't seem like there is that much to worry about for affliction and the new Glyph of UA might even out the GoSac nerf slightly aside from execute/Drain Soul phases where you won't be hard-casting it, Soul Leech is still effective (if not stronger) and everything else is geared towards PvP balance. If they tune things more beyond what I saw in the notes then I might see things differently, but for the lowbies like me nothing really changes.

I started to talk more about destruction, but I cut it out and will probably make a post in your "going destro" thread to stay on topic

Edited January 25, 2013 by Cruzan