5.4 Affliction Tips & Quirks

[Zagam 1,982]

As Affliction (gross), you don't have a lot of options other than pew pewing the boss. You can DoT up the adds, but most of your focus will be on the boss. When the Ball Lightning comes out, SB:Seed of Corruption to get Corr running on all the balls, but your Surv Hunter and Fire Mage should totally wreck those things before Corr ticks much. Demonology's Shadowflame + Immo Aura melts those balls like no other, and Destruction allows for lots of Shadowburns + Havoc Shadowburn. For progression, consider either of those two specs before Aff.

For the first interphase, you and the Disc Priest should be together. For your platform, set your portal to the middle and stay on the right while the Priest focuses on the left part. If the blue swirlies pop in the middle, teleport there and absorb it. For the stacking/absorb, go with the standard Sac Pact + Priest PW:Shield. He can use a personal CD. If you get another one (bad RNG), use Unending Resolve and Shadow Bulwark (if you sacrifice a Voidwalker). For the rest of your team, put the Shaman healer with the Hunter (Hunter can Deterrence stacking damage), Fire Mage, Enhance Shaman, and Resto Druid together (split damage 3 ways) and your Warrior + Ret Pally on the last quadrant. Pally can Bubble first one and they can use CDs together to survive bad RNG and a 2nd split.

For the second interphase, put the Paladin with you and the Priest and the Warrior with the Hunter and Shaman Healer.

For P2, you should be using Bloodlust. This is when Ball Lightning comes into play and will for the remainder of the fight. Keep the AoE pressure up the best you can. As Destruction, you can keep Rain of Fire up for massive ember generation. It was so good, I was able to spam Chaos Bolt while the adds were alive. This is great for boss damage. Same as Demo with Hand of Guldan. Saving your two charges for these balls will generate tons of DF and Molten Core procs. Aff really lacks in this fight unless the AoE is handled by others and lets you focus on single target.

P3 is very easy. Avoid Thunderstruck, stack and AoE balls, then spread out for Whip. Always be max distance incase Thunderstruck picks you. The fight is incredibly underwhelming outside of the interphases.

[Frido 2]

Zagam and everyone who replied to me, thank you very much for taking the time, I appreciate it. I wish there was a way I could send you some gold in the game!

[obleak 10]

If I can say affliction is pretty garbage on lei shen.. I would switch to destro or demo.. personally i'm garbage at demo so I play destro.. i'm slowing learning demo, but I don't feel comfy with it yet and I was waiting on trinket from Lei Shen. I have norm wooshoo's and breath of hydra, but those are both great for afflict and little less for demo imo

[Zagam 1,982]

Yep. Wush + Breath = mega Affliction damage. Probably pretty good for Destro with well-timed CBs. I hope I get another trinket to play with instead of the stupid Volatile Talisman. My WoW luck through the past 3 tiers has been shitty for rings and trinkets. Hopefully the trend doesn't continue.

[Omaric 246]

Yep. Wush + Breath = mega Affliction damage. Probably pretty good for Destro with well-timed CBs. I hope I get another trinket to play with instead of the stupid Volatile Talisman. My WoW luck through the past 3 tiers has been shitty for rings and trinkets. Hopefully the trend doesn't continue.

I want to feel bad for you, but for some reason I don't. =P

[Zagam 1,982]

Meh, I always make it happen with what I got. I NEVER saw Heroic Cunning on my Warlock in some 300+ Heroic kills. My shit Disc Priest had 2 copies at the time. Priest also had the 410 Hagara ring which wouldn't drop for my Warlock. At least I got Lei Shen's trinket.

[obleak 10]

I played Destro on Lei Shen a few times and i enjoy it. The adds that spawn rain of fire and cb cb cb cb :D

So many numbers.. i've done afflic too and fall behind our ele shaman whom i normally beat (similar ilevel, but he has his meta gem :( )

Demo would be great with it's cleaving/snapshotting abilities..

I like how dot classes can put empowered dots on a target and still be forced to do survival mechanics with minimal loss to dps :)

[vladMTL 1]

/cast resurrect @ Affliction ... all you bitches do is disin' about demo & shit no love for this anymore ... feels deserted

/searches for aff friends

i blame zagam and his influence over his followers for this !!!

Edited May 9, 2013 by vldsb

[Sifon 25]

Since there Soul Swap doesn't snapshot your stats, I want to make a macro to make chain Soul Swapping easier. Tried some things but couldn't manage to make a macro that works. I tried lots of thing and came to conclusion that I have to Soul Swap from main target manually, make a castsequence macro for exhaling then inhaling again from focus. Then manually exhale to main target again. Problem is I cannot make that castsequence macro work. I really don't want to bother target swapping alot to make this trick work so I would really appreciate any help on the macro. Current problem with macro is, it exhales fine but doesn't inhale dots when I pressed it second time.

#showtooltip

/target [@focus]

/castsequence reset=10 soul swap exhale, soul swap

/targetlasttarget

EDIT: Tried to get rid of target lines and added [@focus] to castseqeunce, still same problem.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Sifon

[Cruzan 71]

Not sure if castsequence macros even work anymore. I would shy away from using a focus because you might not always have a constant Add/Boss to use as a focus.

I haven't tried this "bug" in a raid scenario, but when i tinkered with it on raid dummies i just used 1 button (shift mod so technically 2) on mousewheel down.

/cast [mod:shift, target=mouseover] [ ] Soul Swap

So you can use the button normally to soul swap. Then hold down shift and mouseover an add and press the button again to change targets and exhale. Release shift, press to inhale. Press shift and mouseover previous or new target to exhale again.

Pretty nifty. Now if only we could use a Punching Bag inside of a raid we could use it on single-target fights

Edit: Got your castsequence to work if you still want to use a focus.

/castsequence [@focus] reset=10 soul swap, soul swap

**Note**: targetlasttarget isn't needed with the imbedded [@focus]

A better one, with a shift modifier would be:

/castsequence [@focus, mod:shift] reset=10 soul swap, soul swap; soul swap

Edited May 9, 2013 by Cruzan

[Sifon 25]

I didn't know that you can exhale dots with Soul Swap(i mean without Exhale) it made my job a lot easier, I made a focus Soul Swap macro and bound it two F1 so I'm set now. Btw it is probably not a bug but clever usage of game mechanics because DKs can do the same too, difference is they can use it on single target too.

Also castsequences work, I used to use it for Grimoire: Felguard and Imp Swarm when I had 4pc T14 and almost no haste.

EDIT: I have a mouseover focus macro which I use every multi target situation so probably I can manage it that way.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Sifon

[Cruzan 71]

Made a couple edits, not sure if you saw em.

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, I'm sorry but I've just not been a fan of the new Affliction style. Give me back my powerful DoTs and Shadowbolt spam. If I wanted to MG, I'd have rolled a Shadow Priest. I'm staying on top of it a bit, but right now, my preference is Demo >>>> Destro > Affliction. It's just difficult to not vouch for Demonology this tier with its usefulness and manipulation of Unerring Vision of Lei Shen. I'm not sure a trinket has ever been so good for a single spec. This thing puts Moonwell Chalice to damn shame.

[Zagam 1,982]

Alright, here are some goodies about this "bug" or whatever the hell you want to call it. Gaddha and I have collaborated and he confirmed this works...

Applying a DoT right now performs a snapshot of stats. However, Soul Swap:Inhale does something a little special...it also locks in DEBUFFS on your target. Now typically this couldn't be abused, but it can be with some knowledge of how this works. This is how you do it...

1) Apply Agony + Corruption to your target.

2) Use Soul Swap:Inhale

3) Wait for Soul Swap Exhale timer to expire

4) Apply Unstable Affliction

5) Use Soul Swap:Inhale

6) Use Soul Swap:Exhale

When you Exhale, not only will UA be on your target, but the previous Corruption and Agony will also be applied SNAPSHOTTING ALL BUFFS AND DEBUFFS PRESENT WHEN YOU DID THE FIRST INHALE.

Now I'm going to let you all get a little creative with this knowledge. It works and the logs prove it. I personally won't be using this method, but you all can eat your heart out with a little extra clever use of fight mechanics. Remember that once you've locked in those debuffs, you can lock them in permanently by continuing to bounce your DoTs to one target and back to your original target.

[Zagam 1,982]

EDIT: This MAY be punishable. This takes snapshotting abuse to a different level. I'm NOT saying go do this...I'm saying the knowledge of how to do it is out there. Not sure how much is punishable by Blizz, but this wreaks of exploitation even if it is their fault.

[Omaric 246]

I smell turtle shell debuff.

[vladMTL 1]

EDIT: This MAY be punishable. This takes snapshotting abuse to a different level. I'm NOT saying go do this...I'm saying the knowledge of how to do it is out there. Not sure how much is punishable by Blizz, but this wreaks of exploitation even if it is their fault.

i find this kinda time consuming to try and do not to mention doing this on more than 2 targets is ... maybe i'm not fully understanding it but ur dmg will come from u MG-ing targets yet doing this kinda takes a good portion of the time that i'm not sure in the end how much of a gain it'll be but i suppose with practice it can be done

[Zagam 1,982]

Well here are some findings between Gaddho and I...

Loading screens seem to prohibit transfers of stuff with a couple of exceptions...

Last boss in Throne of Tides gives you a 2000% damage buff. You can transfer these DoTs with a summon to a raid boss or other target.

You can transfer the 200% increased damage debuff from Horridon to Council given that you either 1) don't attack trash on the way or 2) juggle that particular set of DoTs the entire way. If you manage to transfer it to Council, you can transfer the same set of DoTs to Tortos and then to Megaera and then to Ji'kun. You are able to snapshot DoTs with Ji'kun's Primal Nutrient and take those with you to Durumu, but you'll only have the first set because Durumu doesn't provide a reliable 2nd target.

Obviously this isn't fully tested or fully proven by a group of players. These were just findings he found while toying around with the mechanics once I told him how it worked. It really smells like abuse, so don't take this stuff into raids. LFR maybe, but don't be using them to get past bosses. If it is classified as abuse, it can be punishable.

[obleak 10]

I'm thinking snapshotting buffs within a certain boss would be acceptable but taking the debuff for extreme damage into another boss mechanic is most definetly abusing their error.. it would more then likely be a no no.. not saying you'd get in trouble, but... -shrugs-

[Vestion 8]

I feel this belongs here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-rw8m0ejq3l2bbcsn/analyze/dd/source/?s=4830&e=5240

Wondering how much better that would be if I could properly use SoulSwap to snapshot the start of the fight.

[obleak 10]

mm could be better. didn't look at your gear, but i've pushed 200k-250k on that fight. Our group has enough dps we just stack all bosses.. go the achiev and its just plain easier. :D

[Vestion 8]

What is your ilev?

Edited May 19, 2013 by Vestion

[gahhda 95]

They nerfed snapshot swapping with restarts on friday. Agony still snapshots but the other two don't, likely because of the stacking mechanism of agony. It will, too, surely be nerfed.

With just agony snapshotting, probably not worth doing anymore.

[JvChequer 43]

I feel they do it right, because players was just using it like a new-bugged and trashy playstyle for Affliction.

Next couple weeks we can see how this bug was messing with Raidbot ranks.

[Greta 0]

They nerfed snapshot swapping with restarts on friday. Agony still snapshots but the other two don't,

Verified easily on the target dummies if you have the UVLS trinket. Critrate of agony stays at 100% when swapping but the others doesnt.