5.0.3 Affliction pvp discussion

[junn]

Just wanted to share/discuss my findings from a week of 5.0.3 and the new affliction talents/glyphs/etc. Here is what has been working for me, let me know if you have been finding the same thing or something different!

I have been having a great time in bg's with Affliction. Topping (or near top) dmg/kills every bg. The ability to run in, SB:SS 4 targets, is lots of fun and puts out some huge #'s.

Talents:
-Tier 1 is pretty clear with dark regeneration.
-Tier 2 exteremly situational. I currently have mortal coil as I am dueling a lot and it is imo the best in duels and for scoring kills. Shadowfury will be great for burst comps & RBG's but it DR's with everything, and Howl will be good for RBG's and other comps as well but again, it DR's with everything. Howl's problem is that its got no range, so even if it is a long fear, it gets used far less often.
-Tier 3 also has 3 legit choices. I have been using soul link because it appears nobody has figured out when we soul link they have to kill our pets. Once they do (and they will) Sacrificial pact will be great for when you dont necessarily have a hearer, and dark bargain will be awesome when you do have a healer.
-Tier 4 has 2 great talents (I have tried burning rush but it simply does not cut it for me. Sprints only work against incompotent people, as anyone else will keep you slowed the whole time). UW and BF are both great. I find myself using BF because I feel like I dont have enough kiting ability without Coil/Howl/Sflame.
-Tier 5 I love them all. I think once I train myself how to use it service will be the best. It offers similar overall dmg, but with burst, and a blanket silence (the lockout part isnt working atm). Sacrifice is super strong too if you can be left alone to channel MG.

Glyphs -
I would argue Soul Shards & COE are mandatory. I didnt take COE at first, but without Shadowflame, I cant deal with melee at all. I also have healthstone and macro it to dark regen because it heals me for about 110% of my health. If I dark bargin during this, I am nearly unkillable.

As a side note, does anyone have an addon that tracks ticks for MG & DS. Something lightweight like drainsouler, but that would work for MG as well would be ideal. Thanks in advance.

[Bogdan]

Pets with Soul Link can't die if either of you are getting healed. And if your pet dies and you have SL you will die too, mate, that's how SL works now. Your Soul Linked pet can't die and you still live, if the pet dies, you die, if you die, the pet dies. Both the pet and the warlock share a common health pool; SL reduces the pet's HP by 50%, wich means your shared health pool is around (I say "around" 'cuz pets have different HP) 20% bigger (reason for wich you get 20% extra HP if you go SL+GoSac) than your normal health.

[Metaslave]

As a side note, does anyone have an addon that tracks ticks for MG & DS. Something lightweight like drainsouler, but that would work for MG as well would be ideal. Thanks in advance.

http://www.wowace.com/addons/castbars/

[junn]

I understand how soul link works. You took my comment too literally. Intelligent players will see you have soul link up and swap to your pet, who has no survivability cd's, will take more dmg than you will, and unless you're micro-managing it perfectly, will almost always be in worse positioning than you will. I dont know how your pets armor and reslience scaling works, but that may make them even more attractive targets to swap to.

Talimar, that looks exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much!

[Bogdan]

I understand how soul link works. You took my comment too literally. Intelligent players will see you have soul link up and swap to your pet, who has no survivability cd's, will take more dmg than you will, and unless you're micro-managing it perfectly, will almost always be in worse positioning than you will. I dont know how your pets armor and reslience scaling works, but that may make them even more attractive targets to swap to.

Talimar, that looks exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much!

Wrong, pets take the exact same % of damage you take, therefor both you and the pet take the same damage compared to your own HP and the pet's HP. If you take 10k damage without SL, with SL, you'll take around 80% of that damage, and your pet takes the rest, and works the other way around. If your pet takes 10k damage without SL, your pet will take 20% of that damage, and you will take the rest... Damaging the pet or damaging the warlock it's the same thing from a single target PoV, on the other hand... dot cleaves, or spliting melee cleaves will double the damage you and your pet will take.

So again, killing a pet with SL will result in your death.

[junn]

Bogdan, I understand you take the same % of damage. If you read up, I clearly posted (twice) that I undestand how soul link works. The difference I am questioning is not the % of damage you take, but it is the amount of overall damage you take. I am not clear on how relience and armor scaling (among other things, potentially) works for pets. So lets say I have 60% mitigation, but my Felhunter only has 40%, a 10k hit will deal 4k dmg if dealt to me, but 6k dmg if dealt to the pet.

AFAIK this dmg is split AFTER the total hit is calculated. I could be wrong on this, so correct me if I am.

Furthermore, I can kite a lot better than my Felhunter can. If I portal to LOS from who I am fighting, they can still hit my Felhunter to do damage to me, making me overall far more exposed to someone who knows the soul link mechanic.

[Bogdan]

No... that's not how it works... The mitigation from resilience, armor and wtv, is calculated before the damage is being done... I don't know how to explain it the way I would want to, english's not my primary language, but... if you have 60% mitigation (assuming it's both from resilience and armor, no?) and a spell does... let's say... 50,000 damage... you'll take 20,000 damage... in the same scenarion but with SL, you will take rougly 16,000 damage, and your pet will take 4,000 damage...

To your scenario: with 60% damage reduction and a spell that does 10,000 damage... you will take around 3,200 damage and your pet will take 800... Yes, pets have more armor than warlocks, but I wasn't aware the damage split from SL from the warlock to pet, is reduced by the pet's armor... No... if they hit you, your armor is the only thing that matters, not the pet's armor...

But overall, you are right, a player obviously can kite better than a pet, lol... so if you LOS, they can go for your pet.... I was merely trying to explain how the actual damage is being split between the lock and player, not how SL will work in arena. It's a double edge sword for sure.

[Deleted]

The ability to run in, SB:SS 4 targets, is lots of fun and puts out some huge #'s.

I must admit, I'm doing the same thing - but is it really doing huge damage? Dots don't seem to be anywhere near as potent as they used to be without MG also being on them, I used to be almost assured top place on the scoreboard with how affliction played before, now I'm usually in the top 5, but not topping the board by the huge margins I did pre-patch where dots were stronger, multidotting then seemed much more productive.

I'm taking prettymuch the same talents as you, the first tier I've mainly been using the "heal on damage done" talent due to the CD on dark regen screwing me over regularly in random BGs, I also run with sacrifice usually, though I can see all of the talents in that tier being great.

Not sure about glyphs - currently using SS, Siphon life and alternating between healthstone and COE glyph - I like the increased HS heal, but the HOT as opposed to burst can can you your life at times, great when you use it while you have the dmg reduction CD up - can stay alive long enough for the hot to go through. COE likewise is hard to figure out - COE feels completely impotent without it, but the reduced time and CD can bite you on the arse sometimes. Blizzard have certainly managed to makes glyphs interesting choices, the pros and cons make them really hard choices.

Overall, have some decent games - have some absolutely terrible ones where I'm being CCd / exploded to death / unable to get healers down - we seem really squishy when our surviability CDs are on CD, our dots feel neutered without channeling MG and I'm unsure on drain life - it's not really viable to use as filler like it was pre-patch since it's so weak compared to MG, but using it in an emergency it never really seems to heal enough to save me.

I'm left preferring pre-patch pvp, which is far from what I was expecting, I found pre-patch pvp a bit hit and miss, I thought the talent revamp would make me enjoy it much more - but I find tools I considered baseline I'm now having to cherrypick from talents and our survivability has went down the pan once our CDs are over, but I've posted plenty of those worries in the [MoP] Warlock CC and survivability thread.

Always open to hearing how people faring better than me are doing it though, I'm by no means a pvp pro.

[halfawake]

I know this is about affliction but for all the complaints about destro I found that it was much better vs melee. Even with long casts, I found that I was able to get away/get a fear/stun off and keep them slowed. You have all the same cooldowns as affliction with the exception that you can fall back on ember tap if you need to and all you really need is to get them to around 60% with two embers and enough space to get one chaos bolt off (might change at 90) or two if it doesn't get them below 20% (was able to do it against a pally in a duel at least, dk and warrior may be more difficult) then insta kill them with shadowburn. Vs the pally I was able to survive after he bubbled my initial dark soul/chaos bolt attempt with cooldowns and ember tap until dark soul was back up, kited him around as much as I could alternating fears and shadowfurys to maintain some distance, then when cooldowns were back up and his trinket and bubble were on cooldown, I killed him fairly easily with dark soul/chaos bolt/shadowburn. I'm topping kills and damage done in bgs as well with shadow burn being such a reliable way to secure a kill. I try to stay with and behind people and if any melee finds their way to me I pop my cooldowns and use my teleport to which I always try to have up. Vs casters it's mostly a juking game trying not to get any of my casts interrupted, if they are getting them then I just use fel flame, which does decent damage and I can use as I am LoSing them.

As for affliction, I'm finding that if you can get agony stacked up to 10, the damage is really punishing. I think the reason that people see lower multi dot damage is because of the ramp up time on it. In pve at least agony is my top damage. So it might take some time but if you can keep agony up on people and refresh it manually, you'll start seeing bigger numbers... Sorry for not having more info on affliction, I'm just in love with destro atm in pvp. In pve, I'm in love with affliction. I'm sure things will change at 90 and destro will be less of a duel/bg spec at first but hopefully it gets better in later tiers. I also see affliction doing better in arena with dot cleaves. Although there may be a great comp with lots of peels/cc that allows a destro to get off his absolutely punishing chaos bolt/shadowburns off.

[sugarfree]

I don't know but Affliction tops for me against melee. Maybe because I'm also quite geared. But I really can go toe to toe against a DK or a warrior as Affliction. I used to just bend over to them since I can't do jack against them. Now I'm always smiling because it now amounted to skill since we basically have same cooldowns as DK's, which makes the platform more balanced.

[junn]

I tried destro last night, and althought it was fun, but Affliction still feels like it will be more effective.

With the imbalance, it has been kinda weird that we now have a fighting chance (1v1 at least) against DKs, Warriors, Ferals, Rogues etc. Nice change of pace after being annihilated by them for 4 years.

I agree too that 'off-dots' arent as strong. I worry about how effective we will be at burst because we will need to be channeling MG to really do any dmg. Against anything that can decurse, they will quickly learn to dispel agony before it stacks up, and we will be screwed.

Luckily we will still be brought to RBG's for UA (and potentially the glyph depending on how the dmg scales at 90) as the silence will be even more effective because it will not be spam-dispelled as effectively. Fmage x 2, Afflock x 2, Spriest x 2, healer x 3 & FC is what I predict for the new dot-cleave. I havent seen a lot a boomkins in BG's and havent heard much from them (or complaints about them) so I assume they will not be the top overall dmg anymore.

[Supernex]

I am LOVING Affliction post-patch personally. I just can't stop smiling when playing it, (my Fire Mage is fun too, but it's OP right now, IMO, lol.) I am messing around with different talents & glyphs, but for BG's I am usually using the following:

T1 - Dark Regen (this pairs VERY well with Glyph of Healthstone!)
T2 - Shadowfury (in 1v1 I would rather have Mortal Coil personally...and I really miss HoT too, but regardless, I am LOVING the class more now than ever, so no complaints here!)
T3 - Dark Bargain (All three talents here are great, but situational. Dark Bargain has saved my tail MANY times over, and when getting tunneled by multiple enemies, this paired with DR/HS, then followed by TW (to absorb some of the DB DoT) and then even UR if I find it necessary.)
T4 - Burning Rush (I am loving this in Flag Cap BG's, but for Arenas I will most likely use UW. I don't like the CD on BF, so I haven't tried it yet.)
T5 - Sacrifice (I think all three are definitely viable, I just haven't cared for our pets much since Cata - I've played lock since early vanilla, FYI - and I am really enjoying it!)

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T6 - I will likely go with KJC, as the ability to lock on a channel (MF/DS/DL) and then run out of LoS is really appealing to me.
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For glyphs I am using the following:

Soul Shards - Need I say more?
Healthstone - LOVING the HUGE heals, especially when paired with DR.
CoEx - 30% is rubbish and nearly unnoticeable. 70% is great.
(UA is decent too, but I just couldn't give up one of the others.)

Also, I am getting A LOT of use of Eye of Kilrogg now!

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Edit: Shouldn't the thread title read, "5.0.4 Affliction PvP Discussion" ??

[Deleted]

T1 - I picked Soul Leech, the constant passive healing appealed to me more than Dark Regeneration, I will do some arena games at 90 with both to test which provides the most overall healing.

T2 - Mortal Coil, losing the ability to have Howl and Deathcoil left me feeling pretty gimped, but Mortal Coil doesn't DR fear for setting up healer kills, and it also provides a sick heal if needed.

T3 - Sacrificial Pact all the way. Soul Link is horribly flawed in PvP and requires way too much micro-management for way too little payoff. Dark Bargain is alright if you have a healer but Sacrificial Pact is super OP in my opinion. this talent becomes even more powerful if your pet dies, it's a mega-absorb which works as a PvP taunt because everyone will switch to you with a 150k bubble because you're at half health. such a good talent.

T4 - Blood Fear. Blood Fear so hard. 15 second interrupt cooldown + unending resolve + blood fear = so difficult to hardlock a good Warlock. we're doing so much damage as Affliction right now, I don't need to cast Malefic Grasp unless I'm setting up a kill, leaving only Haunts to worry about juking for. Blood Fear is so, so, so strong in arena.

T5 - honestly, I'm using Supremacy right now, but certainly for arena I think the only option is Service. the option to have disarm/seduce/dispel one GCD away at all times (if on 'smart cast') is so, so, so strong. like, batshit crazy strong for arena. the only reason I'm not using it right now is a) arena season is over and b) I am too lazy to set up 4 extra binds plus focus binds for it. but soooo good.

[loki504]

Edit: Shouldn't the thread title read, "5.0.4 Affliction PvP Discussion" ??

yes it does. but no1 probebly want to ditch him.

[sugarfree]

Affliction is in a good place. Our damage is pretty much on par to a lot of dps specs out there. Warriors, DKs, Rogues, Ferals, Elemental, Shadow, etc. The cooldowns we have is there to give us a fighting chance. I love it now, we actually have a chance against them. It basically on a matter of skill now, not bending over to your counter class when you get ambushed.

[rdkrichard90]

I understand how soul link works. You took my comment too literally. Intelligent players will see you have soul link up and swap to your pet, who has no survivability cd's, will take more dmg than you will, and unless you're micro-managing it perfectly, will almost always be in worse positioning than you will. I dont know how your pets armor and reslience scaling works, but that may make them even more attractive targets to swap to.

Talimar, that looks exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much!

I was wondering if Lock pets Taunts work on Enemy pets, if they do not they really should. iv been playing mainly lock for a few years and i really never thought about it till now if you know let me know thank you in advance.