5.4 Affliction Tips & Quirks

[obleak 10]

well i'm sitting around 14k haste so i'll try it tonight! :) i appreciate that little tidbit of information :D makes affliction much more desireable

[Skyrge 9]

So I'm back to the greatest warlock forums for some advice again. I've had some luck on coins on our progression kills and my gears jumped up to where Affliction is simming higher for me again (this is doubly good because the spec is much easier for me to manage with my own personal affliction I've mentioned in other posts). That being said I need some help because I feel like I'm underperforming a bit as I get back into the spec. First heres my armory and I'll summarize my questions below.

http://us.battle.net...n/Skýrge/simple

1.Reforging/gemming:I ran simcraft as soon as I logged off after getting the shoulders and it actually had Haste rated above Int!

a.Is there a Haste threshold at this level I should be aware of? Using the stat weights I got from Simcraft Askmrrobot has me reforged to over 13k haste. Would I be better off capping my Haste in favor of more Int/Mastery?

b.I've always favored hit-capping but the sim has hit almost non-existant in value. I'm not worried about covering misses, but is it still just a slight increase? It seems like it might be a lot more powerful at this level to neglect the hit cap in favor of all the other stats I could stack, but correct me if i'm wrong.

2.I love Affdots, but after wailing away on the dummy and a few farm boss pulls last night I wonder if i'm using it right. I'm only getting 110-120k on the dummy self-buffed on some 6min sessions. Currently the way I use the add-on is to refresh whenever the value on the DoT is over 125% or so. I just realised that it needs a baseline set with all my raid buffs and Dots rolling? How do I pull this off without setting the almost constant procs as the baseline? I do also use Weak Auras to track my procs and I'm attempting to recast Dots before the big procs drop off, but a lot of times the value in the Affdots window will be much lower (sometimes like 50%) even with Tempus Repit and a few stacks of Wush's electrifed running. Does the add-on compute haste into the equation or just Int/SP? Basically i'm wondering how I should handle my snapshotting. On the same note I'm trying to maximise Haunt by staying around 3 charges with no procs rolling, keeping the Haunt debuff up when the dots are empowered, and pooling charges with 30sec to go before DS comes off CD (unless I get that monster proc stack).

3.Heroic Ji-kun is tonight, my experience on the fight is destro but my plan is to:

a.Small eggs: SB-Seed, MG to pop it, tab-seed spam, Drain Soul for shards. They die fast to our group so my thought is that this would be better than dotting em up.

b.Boss: Save DS for food buff and melt his face, err beak.

cTwo big eggs: Dot both, haunt both, drain mine.

d.Will Affdots account for the food buff (and also now that I think of it the buff from Jin's pools)?

Please feel free to confirm or advise.

[JvChequer 43]

http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=92-Haste

Do u read it Zagam? What do u think about the article?

[Zagam 1,982]

He says you should focus on breakpoints for Unstable Affliction and Corruption...not sure how legit this is considering how crappy Corruption's damage is and the fact he completely omits Affliction's biggest damage source, Agony. He's also talking about 500 DPS when we're looking at, and seeing, simulated and performed maximum single target DPS in the 200k-220k range. 500 is SO small when it comes to the overall picture that it punctuates my broken record statement: stat reforging/gemming isn't going to make you awesome.

Haste and Mastery do work well together, and they always have. This was my main push before RPPM trinkets, meta gems, and enchant procs came into play. Remember when we had trinkets that proc'd every 50 seconds for 15 seconds? Now, Haste plays a bigger part in what you fish for in terms of procs. I'm not extremely interested in Affliction at the moment, but I just find it a little empty to discuss Affliction's weaker two DoTs and ignore it's big hitter. It also goes without saying that procs will cause you to reapply DoTs at different times, and no pull will ever be like another one.

[Cruzan 71]

@Skyrge

Lots of stuff to try to answer here

I'll try to run down the list the best I can.

1a. Regarding Haste, your current reforge is what is going to sim the highest since the sim is patchwerk. However in ToT you'll benefit more from reducing your haste and gaining more mastery for almost all of the fights. The differences aren't game breaking however so don't worry too much about this unless you really need to squeeze out 2-3% more DPS.

1b. Reforges/Gemming. Regarding hit-cap it's actually the opposite kind of. At higher levels the value of dropping below the cap actually should be a lot less valuable than someone who is just beginning to gear up. You should be getting tons of hit on your gear now anyways so hitcapping takes very little effort and the few stats you gem/reforge out of to cap are worth it. The lowest I could get you to (without removing hit/haste gems) was 13.45%. You can hang there if you want, but I'd go for the cap. Consistency is key and the gain is very marginal. Earlier this patch we were talking about people hovering at 8-9% or 12.5% hit to game getting more mastery, but now people are complaining about not even being able to get UNDER 15%. You're almost there haha.

2. I think you are referring to the "burst" function of affdots? I don't find it as useful to use, but I guess if you're looking for a good indicator of when to use Haunt then....maybe. I'd just disable Burst in the options for affliction. Affdots does factor in haste, otherwise you'd never see it jump up when you use DS. If you want to give us DPS values you're going to need to provide logs. I have no clue what is good and what isn't good for a target dummy damage and it's hardly indicative of what you'll see in a raid. Affliction scales hard with raid buffs.

2 continued. Haunt usage and shard pooling sounds spot-on man, keep doing what you're doing there. As far as Procs and snapshotting it depends on a few things, but with the nature of RNG/RPPM nowadays you need to use a general rule of thumb since we can't track proc ICDs anymore and predict when we are going to get procs. That rule of thumb is to let those empowered DoTs roll. In the scenario you listed where affdots shows 50% the big question becomes, what is the duration left on your current dots and when are those procs you're talking about going to expire? Fully pandemic'd duration? Definitely don't refresh to 50 on affdots. Really any time you have over 5 seconds on your DoTs and Affdots shows anything below 90 it's going to be best to wait and refresh those dots right before they expire.

3. Not sure if these are questions, but here's my input

a. SB:SS, SB:SoC one egg. Spam SoC on that egg as SoC will pop before the cast of the next one finishes. No need to tab-target with SoC anymore.

b. Beakmelting, singletarget affliction woot!

c. Sure

d. As far as I know Affdots does not account for Jin's pools, tested and it doesn't. I'm not sure Affdots is set up at the moment to factor in damage multiplying "debuffs" on a player. Could probably test this on Primordius as well, but haven't done that as affliction yet. I would guess It will factor in the Primal Nutriment buff, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. Either way it's not too important if Affdots picks those up or not as long as you know the buff is rolling.

Edited June 6, 2013 by Cruzan

[Skyrge 9]

Thanks a lot for your work on that response Cruzan, I really appreciate it. In hindsight there were a lot of things that I should've known (DS=Haste, durr). Was kind of a hasty, stream-of-consciousness kind of post. I do realize that we're talking about small differences here, but we're expecting some tight races here on some of our upcoming progression (we're looking at H-Qon, Tortos, and Horridon over the next few weeks). The hit-cap thing was just kind of a last minute thought that i didnt really think through. I spent some time recently stuck well over the cap, so yeah, forgive my rambling brain .

On the affdots question I was actually just referring to the numerical value in the individual dot's window, but I've got it now. This all came about when I finally got my Meta gem and jumped back into Affliction. As far as dummy testing, I know it's useless, but I just used them to get used to the spec and my UI, felt like I was coming up short and thought "OH noes! Icy-Veins help meh!". I guess that i was really just doubting myself and maybe wondering about the accuracy of Affdots. I'm realizing that I'm just going to have to sit on some procs if I've already got longish duration dots running with a more powerful snapshot. On that note, one last question. Lol, nvm, I just erased three lines text on another rambling, yet common sense question. I'll keep making judgement calls on when to recast and will get better with a little time. Thanks again Cruz, very nice response.

[Cruzan 71]

No problem, keep the questions coming if you got em . I remember back in college I'd go to ask my professor a question and halfway through asking it I'd figure it out for myself. Sometimes just writing out a question or asking someone about it helps to break things down to where you actually solve it. If you don't, then by all means hit the "Post" button!

With regard to tight races, with the nature of RPPM trinks the DPS swings you'll see will likely cover that margin without reforging/gemming. The swings might not be as bad for you with 2x 530 trinks though so idk, but I'm jealous sitting here on my upgraded LFR trinks .

[Vestion 8]

So, im wondering, if I remember correctly I remeber people at the start on T15 going on about how affli becomes super amazing by a certain ilev, but I forget which ilev that is and when I can play affli again and outdps myself as demo. Then again, if I ever get the lei shen trinket that may be a while off.

[Vestion 8]

Oh and, speaking of the Lei shen trinket, what DoTs snapshot the 100% crit chance? Only agony?

[Zagam 1,982]

So, im wondering, if I remember correctly I remeber people at the start on T15 going on about how affli becomes super amazing by a certain ilev, but I forget which ilev that is and when I can play affli again and outdps myself as demo. Then again, if I ever get the lei shen trinket that may be a while off.

Demo and Affliction are very close in full BiS. I don't think Affliction will pull monstrously ahead until T16 and only because there can't possibly be a better trinket for Demonology than UVoLS unless they make a trinket that gives us 1000 DF per Shadowbolt cast and Imp Swarm becomes Doomguard Swarm.

Oh and, speaking of the Lei shen trinket, what DoTs snapshot the 100% crit chance? Only agony?

All of them. The "fix" you're reading about is in regards to the "Festerblight" bug where Soul Swap could abuse snapshotting of Perfect Aim. When Perfect Aim procs, any DoTs you apply will snapshot 100% Crit chance until an additional DoT cast re-snapshots your stats.

[obleak 10]

Demo and Affliction are very close in full BiS. I don't think Affliction will pull monstrously ahead until T16 and only because there can't possibly be a better trinket for Demonology than UVoLS unless they make a trinket that gives us 1000 DF per Shadowbolt cast and Imp Swarm becomes Doomguard Swarm.

All of them. The "fix" you're reading about is in regards to the "Festerblight" bug where Soul Swap could abuse snapshotting of Perfect Aim. When Perfect Aim procs, any DoTs you apply will snapshot 100% Crit chance until an additional DoT cast re-snapshots your stats.

Correction there was a Ghost Patch that fixed this.. as of now ONLY agony will snap shot across and keep the 100% crit buff. the others will not. Now if you apply with sb:ss when perfect aim is up you will get all dots @ 100% crit.. it just doesn't work with soul swapping anymore to chain up the amazingly silly dps you'd be outputting

[Omaric 246]

He knows.

We've got a lot of information floating around about that bug and it's probably confusing people.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Omaric

[HollyC 9]

Thanks for all the information. I have one question, and if any of you remember my username, you might remember I don't raid or do random dungeons. There's a very minute possibility that I'd join my guild in a "partial" LFR in the future, but that's a big if.

My Warlock is a tailor/engineer (I can grow ore on my farm, and have an alt or a guildmate smelt it for me). I've had Ghost Iron Dragonling for a while now, cogwheeled for haste, crit, and hit. I finally was able to also make my goggles (Lightweight Retinal Armor, excuse me but Wowhead link absolutely **REFUSES** to work for this item???) I put in the Mastery cogwheel and then ran into a brick wall-- as a caster DPS there was nothing put in for that fifth cogwheel an each cogwheel is unique-equipped. I was absolutely FORCED to put in a Cata haste cogwheel or else forfeit the socket bonus, and it was still a -140 drop in haste over my old ilvl 419 headgear, despite being an appreciable upgrade in int and other stats.

So my question is, would there be any point at all in putting in a MoP Expertise or Spirit cogwheel in place of that Cata one? My hit percentage is already over 8%, and cogwheel stats cannot be reforged.

Here's a link to my toon, so far I'm up to pulling about 25'ish ot 30k dps doing dailies and the rare scenario. I haven't gotten many enchants because I'm waiting for at least ilvl 458-476 gear in those slots.

(I'll undo the reforges into crit, and then re-do them into mastery. Thanks for this tip.)

[Omaric 246]

Thanks for all the information. I have one question, and if any of you remember my username, you might remember I don't raid or do random dungeons. There's a very minute possibility that I'd join my guild in a "partial" LFR in the future, but that's a big if.

My Warlock is a tailor/engineer (I can grow ore on my farm, and have an alt or a guildmate smelt it for me). I've had Ghost Iron Dragonling for a while now, cogwheeled for haste, crit, and hit. I finally was able to also make my goggles (Lightweight Retinal Armor, excuse me but Wowhead link absolutely **REFUSES** to work for this item???) I put in the Mastery cogwheel and then ran into a brick wall-- as a caster DPS there was nothing put in for that fifth cogwheel an each cogwheel is unique-equipped. I was absolutely FORCED to put in a Cata haste cogwheel or else forfeit the socket bonus, and it was still a -140 drop in haste over my old ilvl 419 headgear, despite being an appreciable upgrade in int and other stats.

So my question is, would there be any point at all in putting in a MoP Expertise or Spirit cogwheel in place of that Cata one? My hit percentage is already over 8%, and cogwheel stats cannot be reforged.

Here's a link to my toon, so far I'm up to pulling about 25'ish ot 30k dps doing dailies and the rare scenario. I haven't gotten many enchants because I'm waiting for at least ilvl 458-476 gear in those slots.

(I'll undo the reforges into crit, and then re-do them into mastery. Thanks for this tip.)

Can't tell if trolling. If not, dear lord this is intervention material.

I mean, if you just do dailies, who cares about min/max'ing? You clearly don't want to put in the effort or time (w/e the case may be for you) to improve your gear through LFR and dungeons, which is the best way to do so. I just.... just..... I...... pancakes.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Omaric

[HollyC 9]

Do me a favor, sir, and let's please not get into my reasons for avoiding LFR/LFD like the plague? If you force me to explain myself, my temper will start to flare out of control at all of the headache and heartache that made me abandon that avenue, and while I won't blame you for any of it, I'm very likely to take it out on everyone on these forums, and that will result in a serious TOS violation on my part, which I'm in no hurry to do. I'm in no hurry to find my IP banned on my next visit. So I'm asking, very politely, please, let's not go there?

I'm sorry if my post offended you. I"m NOT looking to min/max. Heaven knows, if I were, I wouldn't be asking the kind of question I'm asking about that cogwheel. Zagam (the OP on this thread) said something about being able to use expertise cogwheels even as a caster DPS. I've never heard of that, and I don't understand the mechanics behind it, so I'm asking if it would be worth it for me. The mobs I grind don't require anywhere near as high a hit rating as Horridon or Iron Qon, let alone Lei Shen, none of which I'll probably see just what they look like clear until the middle of next expansion; and as far as I'm aware, they can't 'dodge' any of my spells.

I would never dare touch randoms while alone, but my guild is in an alliance with another and they've said that together, they can put together enough people that all the reasons for my avoiding LFR, might be greatly alleviated. If this should ever become the case, because I trust my guildmates, I might try it some time down the line. If I ever DO, I have my doubts on whether I can walk into just MSV with a Cata cogwheel. The problem is-- what can I replace it with, if anything at all? All that's left is expertise, spirit, and pvp power. I could care less about optimizing or min/max, but I'd like to carry my share of the load. How big a hindrance will that one gem be?

[Omaric 246]

My apologies for being insensitive. You are just a rare person, haha. I won't ask you to indulge me.

For casters, expertise is entirely equivalent to hit. So if you'd like, you can effectively double up on hit with certain items.

Are you doing the Isle of Thunder dailies? You can get valor points every week doing those and obtain a trinket through that avenue. The crafted trinket through Inscription will also suit your purposes if you know someone who can make it or you have the resources.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Omaric

[Cruzan 71]

Hey Holly,

So the quick answer is Expertise and Hit work the same for casters like us so go ahead and toss in that exp cog.

Looking at your gear I highly recommend you finish up the Dread Wastes questlines for a quick gear boost. Check out the new 5.3 questline as well as there is a lot of good gear you can get by going through it (463-502's) and I don't think it would be too tough at your ilvl. The only caveat is two of the quests involve going to two of the new scenarios. Ask some guildies to go with you if you're concerned about playing with random people as those scenarios are quick and easy. The extra valor you get from completing the weekly quest in the northern barrens is nice as well. The entire 5.3 quest/storyline is pretty good and you get some awesome gear along the way.

[Jenaye 9]

as a goblin, after i hit the ~8700 haste cap, what's the next cap i should be looking to hit?

[Cruzan 71]

9621 for Agony, 11895 for UA. 9621 is easily reachable, but I'm not sure you could reach the next UA breakpoint yet. Stick with either 8699/9621 atm.

Mr. Robot's new Soft Cap system is pretty awesome as it lists it out really nicely. Check it out! Jenaye

[Jenaye 9]

so anything over 9621, i'm good to stick into mastery? sweet, thanks

[Narga 0]

So, how is it right now?

Is GoSac still the go-to talent for affliction locks? :)

[obleak 10]

No. GoSac is really not optimal. Stick with GoSuprem/GoServ .. stacks better with the haste and is great for almost all instances.

Our pets stats get better with haste.. and most of us that play affliction go haste+++++++.... that being the case better to head away from SAC which favors mastery.

Edited July 6, 2013 by obleak

[Narga 0]

No. GoSac is really not optimal. Stick with GoSuprem/GoServ .. stacks better with the haste and is great for almost all instances.

Our pets stack get better with haste.. and most of us that play affliction go haste+++++++.... that being the case better to head away from SAC which favors mastery.

Ah, ok. Thank you so much ^^

[Zagam 1,982]

Sacrifice only works out well (by a small margin) if your Malefic Grasp uptime is really high. Since that only happens on Jin'rokh, you're better off sticking to Supremacy.

[Juloroh 0]

Zagam, your updated Demonology 5.3 guide was really but really really good...I would really like to see an updated 5.3 Affliction guide to play much better with Affliction because i find Affliction to be much more difficult than Demonology for some reason.