[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Bartimaeus]

Personally I think it's great. It feels better to be strategic and bank and spend your shards with more thought. I dumped my warlock for elemental shaman in NH since I'm not a fan of the MG drain emphasis gameplay. I'm strongly considering coming back to warlock for tomb since a haunt + PS + SL/Embrace build could be a lot more fun. The destruction changes are really nice as an offspec too.

I agree with this, however I feel that if they want this to be the play style we need procs to play around. In the past when they changed the Warlock spec's to have more control when you spent your resources, we had solid trinket proc's to spend these resources during.

At the moment we don't really have much in the way of proc trinkets, and it doesn't look like ToS will change that.

[Apero]

Simcraft currently tells me, that i deal around 880k dps on Singletarget. This is more or less realistic, depending on proccs between 800 and 900k.

I've just been online on the testrealm and played with Haunt, Contagion, PS, Supremacy and the new (or old) execute-talent.

I was a little over 1m dps, with 4pc t19, 906 Itemlevel, with UA dealing crits above 7 digit critical hits during haunt, like now with MG. No Pots, no food.

One nice thing is, that PS is now a little ST-dmg-boost, that can be synced with adds spawning to deal even more dmg.

And you did that on a target dummy that was permanently at 0%? :P

Siphon Life will be the go to talent if they do not nerf it imho. The damage it deals is just to strong. Except for some progression fights where you actually need the execute. We will see.

Did a test on the target dummy in Og (raidboss with full health) with haunt, contagion, sh , sl build. Had around 950k dps with 909 ilvl, around 50k dps more than on live for me with much more movement and offdotting flexibilty. Seems good. Wonder if the missing 15% buff to agony and UA is a oversight or intended. Would have pushed me way over 1mio.

The damage is OK, the shard starvation is awful.

I'm guessing they want to pull some damage out of UA but by gawd it feels terrible to sit and wait and wait and wait for a shard.

Dont forget that corruption generates a few shards now (2pc) and agony will tick more often with the 15% 4pc haste. When ToS hits pretty much everyone should have hood too, shard generation difference with it is like day an night.

[Deleted]

Sure, but a tier bonus is a bad way to solve a resource issue.

I don't really care all that much so long as the damage is there, but a spender needs to feel good if you can't use it very often. Moreover, UA is our only "snap burst" although I guess PS could assume that role.

[JV Chequer]

I got Power Cord recently but I'm in doubt on which legendary I should use with it.
Sleepless Shackles or Prydaz?

Sims shows Shackles being better all alone but with belt prydaz comes ahead what I cannot fully understand. Can someone enlighten me ?

[TeabagTyrant]

Guide needs an update: "Contagion is best for Soul Conduit builds, which will not effective without specific legendaries" is missing the word 'be'.

[Terryn]

Heyyyyyy Sorry for sucking last month or so. Between constant 7.2.0 ap grind, finals, Mythic Guldan pulls, etc, finally found some time to update this. Will attempt to hit this at least once a week from now on.

[Cyberthug32]

I got Power Cord recently but I'm in doubt on which legendary I should use with it.
Sleepless Shackles or Prydaz?

Sims shows Shackles being better all alone but with belt prydaz comes ahead what I cannot fully understand. Can someone enlighten me ?

Prydaz is hard to beat due to the stats you gain from it. What I have noticed with the 10 legendaries I have currently, I seem to fall back on Prydaz again to help with my Master/Haste/Crit stats.

[Kirroth]

Prydaz is hard to beat due to the stats you gain from it. What I have noticed with the 10 legendaries I have currently, I seem to fall back on Prydaz again to help with my Master/Haste/Crit stats.

Don't underestimate the value of the shield, either. It may not appear directly on your DPS meter but the ability to stand there and ignore certain damaging mechanics can add a lot to your output. I run with Prydaz and Demon Skin and a 45% of max health absorb shield can bounce a surprising amount of things. You still have to look out for auto-one shots and stacking DoTs, but I'm shrugging off 2m damage hits without even noticing.

[Ooshraxa]

Heyyyyyy Sorry for sucking last month or so. Between constant 7.2.0 ap grind, finals, Mythic Guldan pulls, etc, finally found some time to update this. Will attempt to hit this at least once a week from now on.

Thank you for the effort - and RL has tendency to kick us all in the ass from time to time.

[SpikeySquad]

Prydaz is hard to beat due to the stats you gain from it. What I have noticed with the 10 legendaries I have currently, I seem to fall back on Prydaz again to help with my Master/Haste/Crit stats.

This (and secondly for the shield). I see so many people say they are unhappy when they get it but I love my fish bubble!

[Cheze]

are there any fights/circumstances where star gate really shines? I cached a 910 version and I thought it'd be nice for m+ at least, but the proc seems to contribute hardly any damage and it sims at about the same dps as the 885 whispers I'd been bumming around with

[Cainium]

This (and secondly for the shield). I see so many people say they are unhappy when they get it but I love my fish bubble!

Prydaz is probably the best utility legendary out there.

The cloak replaced Prydaz for me, and I had to relearn what I can soak and what not... 6 stack souls on Gul'Dan HC + Fire Debuff? No problem with Prydaz+Demon Skin, a lot harder to manage without Prydaz.

[cloin]

Thanks for the update Terryn!
I want to open a dialogue about the damage buffs section of the MG rotation section of the guide. I was doing some napkin math with a guildy (which likely has glaring flaws that I'd be happy to have pointed out), that suggests that doing two 3UA cycles with SH is the best use of the buff for single target, and seemingly by a pretty wide margin vs. UA x 2, reap/SH, UA to 5 and drain. Napkin math was done with my current gear at 5,877 haste (16%) and doesn't account for haste procs... the timings will obviously vary widely with haste buffs, but here's my findings.


Base cast time for UA is 1.3 seconds, duration is 6.9 seconds
Enter burn phase from maintenance, full pandemic time on agony and corruption, enough souls to cover the buff.
Cast 3 UA, harvest, drain til complete. Last UA expires 6.9 seconds into soul harvest, 10.1 remain.
Cast another 3UA, drain - cycle takes another 10.8 seconds, last tick is outside of soul harvest window.
Total is 24 ticks, 1 tick unbuffed by SH or MG, 1 tick unbuffed by SH (MG only), 22 fully buffed ticks.
Total damage = (22 x 1.2 x 1.7) + (1 x 1.7) + 1 = 47.58 UA tick equivalents

Compared to the method in the guide (5 UA, reap between 2nd and 3rd) - would place harvest at 2.6 seconds into the cycle, ending at 19.6 seconds
This gives 20 ticks total, all buffed by SH, 6 unbuffed by MG, cycle finishes at 13.4 seconds, 6.2 seconds left on harvest.
There's enough time for another 2 UA/drain, and 2 ticks from each can sneak under SH.
Total: 6 ticks SH only (7.2 UA equivalents) + 18 ticks SH + MG (36.72 equivalents) = 43.92 UA equivalents
If you factor the ticks after SH, you get a total of 50.72 tick equivalents, but you've spent 7 shards vs. the 2x3UA cycle's 6. If the prior method puts the 7th shard into the next drain cycle it will get another 6.8 tick equivalents with MG, for a total of 54.38.

So, it would seem to me that doing 2 standard 3UA cycles is a more efficient use of SH on single target. It also seems obvious that if you can get another 2-3 targets to prolong SH off of, that the 5 UA method will streak ahead by a wide margin, and likewise will be better with massive haste procs like lust or whispers where you can get more shards into the SH window.

This is my first foray into amateur theorycrafting, so please feel free to correct me or point out flaws in my logic or math.

[Moggie]

Ya know, I cannot make a proper suggestion to a friend whose Haste is at 9% but has both Mythic Gul'dan and Metronome trinkets which I'd think makes it mostly fine, right? to be so low but still makes me sort of cringe trying to imagine it that bottomed out. She's just up in arms over it every time I log in. (And getting on my nerves)

[Inshabel]

Question about the legiondary sims, can I see somewhere what traits they have unlocked on the Artifact? I have Hood and Cloak but recently got the trinket and that sims as a big improvement over the cloak, I was wondering if the sims are in a vacuum or do they have Rend Soul unlocked?

[EqualWin]

Started playing, thank god affli is viable.

anyway, does reap work if used after dots applied? do the dots get "updated"?



is there a trinket tablet or sth so i know which ones are good (not only BiS ones..)

is there a place to find uis? i tried wowinterface but can't find any of my liking

- - - Updated - - -

ps: best race(alliance) ?

[SpikeySquad]

http://lockonestopshop.com/ Some stuff is slightly out of date for affy but it's still very useful as a guideline.

[Beatin]

I would highly recommend checking out the warlock discord and yiparenza's videos on YouTube.
Also I would say human is the best race for alliance the 2% secondary stat bonus gets better and better with higher ilvl gear.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm wondering if it's better to use one shadow damage relic and two perdition relics? I'm currently running three perdition relics and since I have really bad luck with relics my wep is 908ilvl and I'm 901 ilvl equipped. We clear heroic every week we don't have enough reliable people to start mythic. Before three perdition relics was a 10% damage increase on crits now it's 13%. Before with three relics the last relic gave you 4% as opposed to 3% now. So I'm thinking a shadow damage or even a ua crit relic might be better.

[Apero]

Nice new ptr build, rip affli. Singletarget on a dummy feels completly overnerfed.

[App]

They've literally nerfed every single one of our lvl 15 choices. Nice job blizzard. Really sticking it to us.

Also love that they said they wanted Aff to be a multi-dot spec, and then nerf haunt lol....