[5.4] Affliction Warlock and Encounter Specific Guides

[EvreliaGaming]

Whilst haste does provide benefits at all points, if you can't reach the next threshold you are probably better off putting the extra points into mastery.

[attora]

i am at a strange position between pre raid and raid gear, and am Curious to which threshold I should try to reach, and where I am with my reforging and stats and etc.. Thank!


us.battle. net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/Atora/simple

[Deleted]

I played around a bit with reforging and simcraft profiles, but I cant get my head around something -

Atm I have ~4820 haste, ~6180 mastery and ~7% hit. According to simcraft, the scaling is Int > Mastery > Haste = Hit > Crit (with Haste being 0.01 point higher than hit).

I assume that mastery is still ahead by such a large margin because I've already hit the 4717 haste plateau, even though a lot of people seem to be saying that you should keep mastery and haste within ~400 of each other.

However, with some different gear I can get ~5.2k haste, ~6.3k mastery, ~10.4% hit (at the expense of about ~900 intellect). According to simcraft, this gives a DPS loss of ~2k as compared to the 1st profile, but mastery still outweighs haste by a fair bit.

So I was wondering, why are people so adamant about keeping mastery and haste within each other? My SimCraft is constantly telling me to do otherwise.

[xskarma]

I played around a bit with reforging and simcraft profiles, but I cant get my head around something -

Atm I have ~4820 haste, ~6180 mastery and ~7% hit. According to simcraft, the scaling is Int > Mastery > Haste = Hit > Crit (with Haste being 0.01 point higher than hit).

I assume that mastery is still ahead by such a large margin because I've already hit the 4717 haste plateau, even though a lot of people seem to be saying that you should keep mastery and haste within ~400 of each other.

However, with some different gear I can get ~5.2k haste, ~6.3k mastery, ~10.4% hit (at the expense of about ~900 intellect). According to simcraft, this gives a DPS loss of ~2k as compared to the 1st profile, but mastery still outweighs haste by a fair bit.

So I was wondering, why are people so adamant about keeping mastery and haste within each other? My SimCraft is constantly telling me to do otherwise.

It's usually wiser to follow what Simcraft is telling you then what some joe schmo on a forum is telling you. I was wondering the same thing about that "stay within 400 stat points" rule from 85 pre expansion patch, but I can't sim my gear at the moment to check cause SimC is broken for me. Klaxxi sword I'm using seems to be lacking the Spellpower that was hotfixed in early Mists. Took me a bit to find out that part, I can tell you. Was looking at a 9k lower Sim result in better gear, was wondering what the hell I'd done wrong. >.< But since I don't have an equivalent to the sword, due to it giving 1% expertise for free for me, I can't reliably get results at the moment and will have to wait till I either get a better weapon OR SimC/Blizz armory/Wowhead Item info gets fixed.

[Khadjid]

It's usually wiser to follow what Simcraft is telling you then what some joe schmo on a forum is telling you. I was wondering the same thing about that "stay within 400 stat points" rule from 85 pre expansion patch, but I can't sim my gear at the moment to check cause SimC is broken for me. Klaxxi sword I'm using seems to be lacking the Spellpower that was hotfixed in early Mists. Took me a bit to find out that part, I can tell you. Was looking at a 9k lower Sim result in better gear, was wondering what the hell I'd done wrong. >.< But since I don't have an equivalent to the sword, due to it giving 1% expertise for free for me, I can't reliably get results at the moment and will have to wait till I either get a better weapon OR SimC/Blizz armory/Wowhead Item info gets fixed.

You can add the missing stats by adding this line to your gear after importing your character

tabard=tabard_of_stats,enchant=5152spellpower

[Jenerena]

I think this depends somewhat on what your overall levels of each stat actually are. For example, I can only just get to 4717 haste with the gear I have, through gemming and reforging. Because I have pushed for the threshold, my mastery levels are only slightly higher. However, I have gone for 14% hit as well. If I had pushed my hit lower, my mastery level would probably be a lot higher.

Generally speaking, just trust simcraft.

[Brusalk]

I played around a bit with reforging and simcraft profiles, but I cant get my head around something -

Atm I have ~4820 haste, ~6180 mastery and ~7% hit. According to simcraft, the scaling is Int > Mastery > Haste = Hit > Crit (with Haste being 0.01 point higher than hit).

I assume that mastery is still ahead by such a large margin because I've already hit the 4717 haste plateau, even though a lot of people seem to be saying that you should keep mastery and haste within ~400 of each other.

However, with some different gear I can get ~5.2k haste, ~6.3k mastery, ~10.4% hit (at the expense of about ~900 intellect). According to simcraft, this gives a DPS loss of ~2k as compared to the 1st profile, but mastery still outweighs haste by a fair bit.

So I was wondering, why are people so adamant about keeping mastery and haste within each other? My SimCraft is constantly telling me to do otherwise.

When people ask about what stats they should go for they usually don't care about simming their own character and simply want an answer. Given all the various levels of gear at the moment the 300-400 stats with more mastery than haste is what I found to be generally true. That's not saying it's true for every gear set all the time, just what I found to be the best in most gear sets.

Simcrafting your own character will always give you the most accurate results, just be sure that if you're going more than 100 stats toward/away from a stat that you either re-sim with the >100 stat change, or simply to a reforge plot.

[Ghostburr]

I am looking for help understanding what I should do. I keep running simcraft and I keep getting the same results int>haste>mastery but I keep reading that I should keep my mastery near my haste rating staying within the ~400 rating margin. This leaves me really confused on what I should do for my character alone but every warlock that I see ranking on world of logs seems to be either geming for mastery not even shooting for the 4717 haste break point and sacrificing hit which is common at the beginning at content. Just like in the first tier of cata hit wasn't that great this I can deal with I am just looking for a more definitive way to determine what I should do in the way of reforges and over all use of Simcraft I am rather new to using simcraft so any help would be great.

Simcraft results - i.imgur.com/IPW0M.png

Armory link - us.battle.net/wow/en/character/lightnings-blade/Ghostbear/simple

[xskarma]

You can add the missing stats by adding this line to your gear after importing your character

tabard=tabard_of_stats,enchant=5152spellpower

Thanks! That's great info, trying it right away

[EvreliaGaming]

The whole "stay within 400 thing" was concocted for level 85 so that people understood that Haste and Mastery scale synergistically. As long as you know that reaching certain Haste plateaus can be a DPS increase over the strategy of "go mastery, screw haste", then you're fine.

[Deleted]

I've got another silly question that I never see answered. We all know our DoT effects dynamically update their damage done based on debuffs on the target. Now recently, someone in the guild asked me if our channeled execute (Drain Soul) does the same with health. I had no idea, so I couldn't answer.

If I cast Drain Soul accidentally at 21%, and the boss drops down to 20% one second later, will I need to recast it to gain the benefits of the sub-20% effects, or will it kick in as soon as the target reaches the threshold?

[Brusalk]

I believe that it updates automatically.

[Jenerena]

Yea I normally Drain Soul at 21% - mostly because I'm thinking ahead and the time between me deciding to cast DS next and when I actually cast is usually 1% or so.

[Deleted]

So it is confirmed that the increased damage and instant dot-tick does occur below 20% even if you start draining while above it?

[Bonkura]

So it is confirmed that the increased damage and instant dot-tick does occur below 20% even if you start draining while above it?

Yes. You could've just read the tooltip...

[Deleted]

Yes. You could've just read the tooltip...

Drains the soul of the target, causing (417 + $SP * 0.375) Shadow damage every 2 sec and energizing one Soul Shard after it deals damage twice. If the target dies, three Soul Shards are energized. Lasts 12 sec.

If the target is at or below 20% health when Drain Soul deals damage, it deals 100% additional damage and causes all of your other periodic Affliction damage effects to instantly deal 100% of their normal periodic damage.

Now, I may be mistaken, but there seems to be nothing there hinting at what happens if you start draining above 20% and the drain continues in to and below 20%.

But thanks go out to Brusalk and Jenerena.

[Deleted]

hey, one question. my lock dinged 90 last night and now i have 5 cogwheel slots (trinket + helm). since the gems are unique, what do i gem into them? haste/mastery/crit/hit/expertise is my current state, but im not sure if gemming expertise provides hit.

[Tresdallah]

hey, one question. my lock dinged 90 last night and now i have 5 cogwheel slots (trinket + helm). since the gems are unique, what do i gem into them? haste/mastery/crit/hit/expertise is my current state, but im not sure if gemming expertise provides hit.

They are unique bound into each slot. Not unique to your entire setup. For example, you can have Hit/Mastery in helm and turn around and put Hit/Haste/Mastery in your trinket.

[xskarma]

hey, one question. my lock dinged 90 last night and now i have 5 cogwheel slots (trinket + helm). since the gems are unique, what do i gem into them? haste/mastery/crit/hit/expertise is my current state, but im not sure if gemming expertise provides hit.

It does. Expertise = Hit.

---------- Post added 2012-10-22 at 04:52 PM ----------

They are unique bound into each slot. Not unique to your entire setup. For example, you can have Hit/Mastery in helm and turn around and put Hit/Haste/Mastery in your trinket.

Pretty sure that's NOT how it works. They are Unique-Equipped, meaning globally in the game you can have only 1 of them equipped at the same time.

[Deleted]

One question about seed of corruption : is it possible now to have SoC and corruption active on the same target ? I remember in wow 4.x it wasn't. Getting SoC on a target would just remove the corruption.