[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Deleted]

Could you explain why GoSac is 33% weaker in Affliction and why it's important to have as many DoTs as possible to optimize it's damage?

I thought it's RPPM and even though Destro has a +50% dmg trait for it, Affliction has Reap and other overall +% damage traits.

[Deleted]

True enough, we definitely need better burst aoe in live atm.

Because everythin gin live is massively overgeared so classes that have instant AOE like Barrage kill everything - in Legion affliction will start with very good aoe, because you can dump Sow the Seeds and have Corruption running on everything + Phantom Singularity + Sacrifice Demon which makes all your DOTed targets do AOE too.

But as time goes on affliction's edge for sustained AOE will fall as gear levels increase until we get a new content patch out

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Could you explain why GoSac is 33% weaker in Affliction and why it's important to have as many DoTs as possible to optimize it's damage?T's it's

I thought it's RPPM and even though Destro has a +50% dmg trait for it, Affliction has Reap and other overall +% damage traits.

I would assume because GoSac multiplies for affliction, each of your dots can proc it and you can stack Agony+Corruption+Siphon Life+UA...and you can stack them on multiple targets

At least that's how it seemed to work when I tried it on target dummies, fully dot thre eof them and the numbe rof ticks of everything goes crazy

[CuchuCachu]

Sorry I had a class project due last week and I'm traveling for The International so I haven't had the time to update things. Going to be doing that this week.

TLDR though (Keep in mind this is all in perspective of 110):
Corruption is actually a better ability to use on adds at certain points. Agony kind of "Soft Caps" on shards after 4 targets, going from 4 to 5 targets with agony only increases the shard gen rate by about 10%, and its damage isn't great until after about 6 stacks. Basically it entirely depends on the scenario and I'll be updating things.
1) If these adds will live 15-20 seconds and you're at 4 agonies already its better to corruption them and move along with other things. This is simply for the damage from corruption, Harvester of Souls procs (Which can do fairly nice damage) and Compounding Horror procs.
2) If you dont have the 4 agonies, its better to agony then corruption.
3) If the adds are going to die within 10 seconds its really not worth it to do any dots other than UA. The biggest thing though is you want to time applying UA so it has 1 or 2 ticks left to get the shard back.

Add fights are weird so i'll talk about them more when i update the guide later this week.

Oh, this was just to make sure my suggestion wasnt lost. Since you said it was a good one.

[Deleted]

I would assume because GoSac multiplies for affliction, each of your dots can proc it and you can stack Agony+Corruption+Siphon Life+UA...and you can stack them on multiple targets

At least that's how it seemed to work when I tried it on target dummies, fully dot thre eof them and the numbe rof ticks of everything goes crazy

I'm not sure if it works like that, the numbers of targets doesn't seem to increase the rate its procs on a per minute basis.
I noticed that it'll proc like 3-4 times in the first 5-7 seconds if you have like 8 targets afflicted with DoTs and then it'll have a "downtime" for the the next 5 seconds, while at the same time, if you only have one target, it'll proc 3-4 times over the course of 10-12 seconds.
I'd like to have that either busted or confirmed. (It doesn't explain the comment about it being 33% weaker either)

[Fallensaint]

Demonic Power, the AoE proc from GoSac, has a 20+haste rppm chance to proc. So, you'll see an average of one proc every three seconds before factoring in haste.

[HorrorCosmic]

I have a question about the level 60 Tier. Namely Siphon life vs. Soul Harvest. how I understand it is Soul harvest is (at minimum) 14 seconds with a 2 minute CD, Lets say most boss fights lasting around 4 minutes, you get 2 procs that'll increase you and your pets dmg by 20% obviously you want to use that with trinkets, Bloodlust, weapon enchant proc etc. But that still leaves the remaining 3m 36s of the fight without the but, so wouldn't Siphon life (being just as strong if not stronger than corruption) and its synergy with contagion if taken (it will receive the 15% increase as well) wouldn't it pull out ahead in sustaining dmg on long fights? And Soul harvest also states that it increases pet damage, so does that affect GoSupremacy as well?

lets say a patchwerk fight, which of the 2 is a better option straight dps wise? you have SH thats a CD or SL thats sustaining dmg.

Also in the guide you said that SL pulls out ahead in fights with 3-4 targets, but wouldn't SH benefit more as that increases the time you have with the buff maximizing it utilization?

I'm just alittle confused by the wording of the guide as stating SL may be the most unused talent when it seems like it can pull out ahead in sustained damage.

Maybe alittle more incite into the someone thats done more testing than I have can help me because this is actually and argument between a coworker and myself.

[Dundebuns]

Got a very nooby question, but how do you track your dots on multiple mobs?

[Sinj]

Got a very nooby question, but how do you track your dots on multiple mobs?

You can make custom dot-trackers in weakauras using the group/dynamic group feature.

[Scroff]

The addon Enemy Grid is a good solution to tracking dots on multiple mobs (need to post a bit more before I can link it; it's on Curse tho)

[Deleted]

You can make custom dot-trackers in weakauras using the group/dynamic group feature.

While this is solid advice, it is by no means something you should tell someone who doesn't know how to keep track of them, since such a person probably has no knowledge whatsoever of how to operate weakauras, one of the most complicated addons in the game.

As a far as Dundebuns' question is concerned: Get a good nameplate addon (KUInameplates, for example) or Enemy Grid. I've never tried the latter myself but I've seen a good few people suggest it. If you intend to "git gud", you should look into how to work with weakauras as that is probably the single greatest addon ever created for this game.

[Dundebuns]

Thanks for the information. I have a little experience with weakauras, so I'll look into making something with that. Cheers!

[wooters]

I wonder why on earth we should waste 3 points into the "useless" long dark night of the soul to get to soul flame. might sound tempting first...but those are three slow points to make up for close to completing the map.

if one work around long dark night.. its 546 000 points before we have all dmg enhancing traits

with guides route.. its 1 234 840 points before we reach equal dmg lvl

[Terryn]

I wonder why on earth we should waste 3 points into the "useless" long dark night of the soul to get to soul flame. might sound tempting first...but those are three slow points to make up for close to completing the map.

if one work around long dark night.. its 546 000 points before we have all dmg enhancing traits

with guides route.. its 1 234 840 points before we reach equal dmg lvl

Simply because SF is going to be super helpful for the gearing process. It does silly amount of damage with reap active, so you want to get it as soon as possible. If you are going to just run destro in most of your early 5 mans (Honestly recommended) you can go With this build which is even less points.

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Could you explain why GoSac is 33% weaker in Affliction and why it's important to have as many DoTs as possible to optimize it's damage?

I thought it's RPPM and even though Destro has a +50% dmg trait for it, Affliction has Reap and other overall +% damage traits.

GOSac is 30% weaker because each dot has a chance to proc it. When you have corruption + agony rolling on 5 targets, on top of a UA and seeds going off, the amount of GoSac procs are silly.

Also you can position your Soul Effigy on the boss and have it gain procs off of the boss's GoSac procs and it will reflect onto the effigy, dealing more damage to the boss.

[Deleted]

And why is it 33% WEAKER then? It says both 100% Spellpower in both specs. And is it really X RPPM per dot and not just X RPPM per warlock?

[HeavenDenies]

I apologize if this was asked and answered, but I browsed through the pages and didn't see it. At 110 what round about is the dps loss from taking Soul Conduit over Soul Effigy? Is it a huge difference or a moderate one?

[Kirroth]

I apologize if this was asked and answered, but I browsed through the pages and didn't see it. At 110 what round about is the dps loss from taking Soul Conduit over Soul Effigy? Is it a huge difference or a moderate one?

Under what fight conditions and at what skill level? Different situations favor different talents; single target is not the same as council is not the same as many adds. Effigy also has a sharp threshold where if you hit a point that the fight is so chaotic you can't reliably maintain your DoTs on the Effigy and the boss at the same time its value craters. Which encounters cross that threshold will be a subjective determination based on personal skill, where a mythic raider with a lot of fancy Weak Aura strings will be able to do it in situations most of us absolutely can't.

So a pure single target fight with no adds and no location switching? Effigy is a huge 10% or better DPS increase. Anything else, which is almost everything else because Patchwerk fights like that are many one an instance these days? Reply hazy, ask again later.

[HeavenDenies]

Under what fight conditions and at what skill level? Different situations favor different talents; single target is not the same as council is not the same as many adds. Effigy also has a sharp threshold where if you hit a point that the fight is so chaotic you can't reliably maintain your DoTs on the Effigy and the boss at the same time its value craters. Which encounters cross that threshold will be a subjective determination based on personal skill, where a mythic raider with a lot of fancy Weak Aura strings will be able to do it in situations most of us absolutely can't.

So a pure single target fight with no adds and no location switching? Effigy is a huge 10% or better DPS increase. Anything else, which is almost everything else because Patchwerk fights like that are many one an instance these days? Reply hazy, ask again later.

Council and Adds, since there's not that many straight forward single target encounters, iirc.

[Deleted]

I wonder why on earth we should waste 3 points into the "useless" long dark night of the soul to get to soul flame. might sound tempting first...but those are three slow points to make up for close to completing the map.

if one work around long dark night.. its 546 000 points before we have all dmg enhancing traits

with guides route.. its 1 234 840 points before we reach equal dmg lvl

Because all levelling and talent systems in Warcraft have junk fillers to pad the system out!

[Deleted]

Under what fight conditions and at what skill level? Different situations favor different talents; single target is not the same as council is not the same as many adds. Effigy also has a sharp threshold where if you hit a point that the fight is so chaotic you can't reliably maintain your DoTs on the Effigy and the boss at the same time its value craters. Which encounters cross that threshold will be a subjective determination based on personal skill, where a mythic raider with a lot of fancy Weak Aura strings will be able to do it in situations most of us absolutely can't.

So a pure single target fight with no adds and no location switching? Effigy is a huge 10% or better DPS increase. Anything else, which is almost everything else because Patchwerk fights like that are many one an instance these days? Reply hazy, ask again later.

Effigy was fine for me on Council fight. I use effigy on Dia in HFC + Absolute Corruption. As I don't have Siphon (don't switch talents in raid for now), I only need to maintain 4 20 stack agonies and some drain life in between UA's. Not really that hard tbh. Sure I tailored my talents around minimal DoT casts, but it works fine.

Taking Effigy really promotes taking the middle talents in the first 2 rows for double stack agony and permanent corruption.

[Kirroth]

Effigy was fine for me on Council fight. I use effigy on Dia in HFC + Absolute Corruption. As I don't have Siphon (don't switch talents in raid for now), I only need to maintain 4 20 stack agonies and some drain life in between UA's.

Right, and that's the trade off. You get Effigy but you lose Siphon and Conduit. Are you actually coming out ahead in that trade? I honestly have no idea, that's some advanced theorycrafting shit that's probably going to need to be simmed on a fight by fight basis.

If you're a bleeding edge progression guild you'll absolutely be switching your talents on every boss. If you're not, there's probably a lot more room for running the most broadly useful talent selection, or even the talent build you find most fun to play.