[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Tweetster]

Just look up warcraftlogs, such as this https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...pec=Affliction. This will always be up to date.

Yea that's what I have been doing to be fair.
Just last night during raid WC logs refused to load data for certain bosses..

Cheers for the reply though

[Count Zero]

Just look up warcraftlogs, such as this https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...pec=Affliction. This will always be up to date.

Does that list of "top talents" at the top ... is that just the talents of the person with the single highest parse, or is it a list of which combination averages the highest ?

[pappaslop]

Does that list of "top talents" at the top ... is that just the talents of the person with the single highest parse, or is it a list of which combination averages the highest ?

The list at the top is the most widely used, as in the most frequent...

If it was the person with the single highest parse, it would clearly have WIA and not MG in the first row as the highest (public) affliction mythic goroth parse (thus far) is with WIA.

[Kirroth]

I was lucky enough to get The Master Harvester out of a Blingtron box a week ago. After a couple raid nights of messing with my rotation I think the playstyle it rewards is pooling to 4 Soul Shards before doing a big UA dump. That maximizes your chances of combining a Soul Harvest proc with a large UA stack. Even with Afflic's damage more evenly spread out and using WiA, UA is enough of your damage that trying for that overlap will pay off.

Disclaimer: This is going by gut and personal performance, not math or sims. But it sees to be working for me.

[Deleted]

Worth remembering that parses can be bent by random procs. That was the reason that Soul Conduit tended to show the highest parses in Nighthold, even though Soul Effigy was consistently slightly better (but a lot more work, meaning, the parses also showed how SE would screw you if you messed up, whereas SC is a passive effect)

[Deleted]

I was lucky enough to get The Master Harvester out of a Blingtron box a week ago. After a couple raid nights of messing with my rotation I think the playstyle it rewards is pooling to 4 Soul Shards before doing a big UA dump. That maximizes your chances of combining a Soul Harvest proc with a large UA stack. Even with Afflic's damage more evenly spread out and using WiA, UA is enough of your damage that trying for that overlap will pay off.

Disclaimer: This is going by gut and personal performance, not math or sims. But it sees to be working for me.

I just got this legendary yesterday and am also thinking along those lines, I'm trying absolute corruption and soul conduit to bait getting loads of UA + the soul harvest proc.

EDIT: After simming different talent combinations, contagion/siphon life (3111211) sims by far the highest though..

[Kirroth]

EDIT: After simming different talent combinations, contagion/siphon life (3111211) sims by far the highest though..

MG and Contagion sim very well on relatively static single target fights. Which might be fine for Goroth, but that's about the only fight like that in Tomb. Everything else has cleave or adds or heavy movement or some combination of all of the above. Those sort of fights make WiA and AC shine.

I also think Master Harvester and MG work at cross purposes. MG wants controlled 2 UA bursts so you can buff every tick. Harvester wants big UA dumps as you fish for a proc on the stack.

[gyrados]

MG and Contagion sim very well on relatively static single target fights. Which might be fine for Goroth, but that's about the only fight like that in Tomb. Everything else has cleave or adds or heavy movement or some combination of all of the above. Those sort of fights make WiA and AC shine.

I also think Master Harvester and MG work at cross purposes. MG wants controlled 2 UA bursts so you can buff every tick. Harvester wants big UA dumps as you fish for a proc on the stack.

so wait on every fight besides first dude we should be using writhe in agony? and ac?

[Kirroth]

so wait on every fight besides first dude we should be using writhe in agony? and ac?

I don't know about "should be". I know that I am and I'm satisfied with the meter results and playstyle feel. It's still too early for controlled comparisons that allow for player skill and raid comp and so on. So all I'm really saying is, don't just run the "static single target" sim and take it as gospel. Try things out for yourself, and maybe run multiple sims for different encounter types.

[Deleted]

Quick question on TOS Inquisition (mythic):

When the adds spawn at Balec while he is doing his "Don't attack me"-cast, and you put a Phantom Singularity on the adds (not the boss), does the damage it does to the boss cause you to get torment? Same with Seed of Corruption (cast on an add!): When it explodes and puts a corruption dot on the boss, does that count as if casted by you on the boss, thus give torment?

[Mascotte]

AC for me is a no-brainer.
Perhaps on a pure ST fight i could see going Contagion but there is sooo much cleave/spawned adds etc nowadays the fire and forget nature of AC just feels so much smoother.
Tab Corr/Agony, Tab Corr/Agony and then either repeat drainingcycle on main-target or put up some UA's on adds if you got the soul-shards to spare.

I like the WiC concept but having to go through an 1.5 Agony cycle to get full effect of a talent seems a bit weird.
Either extending it to 15ticks or ramping up the earlier tick speed would make it alot less annoying.
Guessing that with Hood even on ST WiC might become a serious contender over MG tho?

[Deleted]

Can it be that Simulationcraft does not include the buff from The Master Harvester?
I just checked The Master Harvester vs Reap and Sow and with Reap and Sow I got higher dps than with the chest. If I sim with Ask Mr Robot the chest sims higher.
Can anybody help me?

[SpikeySquad]

Can it be that Simulationcraft does not include the buff from The Master Harvester?
I just checked The Master Harvester vs Reap and Sow and with Reap and Sow I got higher dps than with the chest. If I sim with Ask Mr Robot the chest sims higher.
Can anybody help me?

Check the buffs. Simming is a personal thing, the best leggos depend on your replacements, stats and so on.

[Deleted]

Thank you, I've downloaded the newest version of simcraft and will check it again. ^^

[Syncharmony]

Level 100 talent question:

In guides like Lockonestop, it advocates going for Siphon Life as the de facto single target talent. Says that Soul Conduit is nice and sims well but too RNG dependent to take. However, when I look at https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...pec=Affliction it seems like all the single target encounters the top parsers are going with Soul Conduit. Siphon Life is barely represented on any of the top parses for any encounter, seems to be DE or SC as main options.

So, is this just a function of the risk/reward mechanic that Soul Conduit has baked in? Are the majority of players going for Siphon Life on Goroth for example, but the cream rising to the top of the parses is using SC because they happened to hit the lottery and have great RNG for SC on those fights?

Or is there a gear breakpoint where SC becomes the best choice? As in tier set completion or certain trinkets or just pure stats?

[Deleted]

So, is this just a function of the risk/reward mechanic that Soul Conduit has baked in? Are the majority of players going for Siphon Life on Goroth for example, but the cream rising to the top of the parses is using SC because they happened to hit the lottery and have great RNG for SC on those fights?

That's basically it. You'll see SC overrepresented in the top parses because those were the parses that had great procs during that try. SL is more consistent between pulls, but never spikes as high as SC when rng is in your favor.

[Kirroth]

SL is more consistent between pulls, but never spikes as high as SC when rng is in your favor.

I've also seen a reasonable argument that SC has more synergy with certain gear abilities. One type would be things that proc off UA casts, like Afflic's T20 4pc and the Master Harvester legendary. Another would be the Soul of the Netherlord legendary ring, since Death's Embrace flags specific spells rather than being a blanket effect and SL isn't on that list. The argument was that SL is a solid baseline choice but SC overtakes it if you're using some of those specific gear pieces.

[Deleted]

Level 100 talent question:

In guides like Lockonestop, it advocates going for Siphon Life as the de facto single target talent. Says that Soul Conduit is nice and sims well but too RNG dependent to take. However, when I look at https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...pec=Affliction it seems like all the single target encounters the top parsers are going with Soul Conduit. Siphon Life is barely represented on any of the top parses for any encounter, seems to be DE or SC as main options.

So, is this just a function of the risk/reward mechanic that Soul Conduit has baked in? Are the majority of players going for Siphon Life on Goroth for example, but the cream rising to the top of the parses is using SC because they happened to hit the lottery and have great RNG for SC on those fights?

Or is there a gear breakpoint where SC becomes the best choice? As in tier set completion or certain trinkets or just pure stats?

In a nutshell. It's exactly the same reason that the top pre-7.2 parses were soul Conduit, even though Soul Effigy was on the average better.

The top parses hit the lottery for soul Conduit shard procs, but on the average Soul Effigy was a better shard generator (which was th eonly real reason to use it). Also, of course, Effigy was much easier to fuck up, whereas you can;t get Conduit wrong.

Likewise, Siphon Life delivers a predictable amount of damage, on the average it's better, with Conduit maybe highe rif you;re luckly or lower if you're not.

Moreover, Conduit syngerises slightly better some legendaries, for example the chest which gets better the more UA's you cast.

Death's Embrace, too, benefits more from Conduit because DE does not increase the damage of Siphon Life. So if you have the ring, you'd use Conduit also. One of the reasons the ring isn;t actually a very good legendary IMHO.

Lastly, again Conduit is less prone to fuckups, although Siphon Life is naturally much, much easier to maintain than Effigy ever was.

I'd suggest that Siphon Life is probably better if you are minmaxing repeatable and reliable performance, whereas Conduit is less reliable but more versatile, since you can use it in most situations (such as seed-spamming). Oh and of course, the self-healing from SL isn't negligibile either.

[muto]

Single target wise; Siphon Life is the talent you take if you have crap gear. Once you have decent gear like UA Belt, and Netherlord Ring, Soul Conduit pulls way ahead mainly because you don't have time to weave in Siphon Life, and DE ring doesn't synergize with SL.

[Apero]

Did they hotfix the small adds on demonic inqusition to give souls now? Killed him on the 5th of july and got no woc stacks, but every log after the 6. shows woc and souls. (thats why there is no log in the top 300 prior to thursday last week).

Was this mentioned somewhere? Can anyone confirm?