Malefic Grasp

[Deleted]

Hi my WL just reached lvl 90 and i play Affliction.

With most other casters you have instant and cast-spells and i'm kind of confused how to use Malefic grasp. Right now i wait for it to run out and refresh my dots/cast another Malefic grasp afterwards in contrast to mashing the next button i want to use while i'm casting my current spell. I have the feeling that i lose a lot of dps due to my use of that spell but when i do my usual mashing, Malefic grasp gets interupted.

Thanks for help.

[Tetramental]

get a cast bar addon like quartz so you can track your MG ticks.

[Nekrosislol]

Malefic grasp is your filler. You use it when you dont need to do anything else (This changes sub 20% with drainsoul)

You want your dots to have 100% up time. Before you haunt you want to make sure your dots will last long enough for the full effect. You want to chain malefic grasp with haunt up for as long as possible. With pandemic, it is okay to clip your dots early. So if they are sub 9 seconds reapply them then haunt and spam malefic grasp. If you have 0 shards to haunt keep your dots up and channel malefic as much as you can and hope for procs. When you get a proc use it or save it with getting its full use.

Malefic grasp will get interrupted if you cast anything else during its channel.

This macro will help you some, it makes is so you can mash malefic grasp when its coming close to its end but will not recast till it gets the final tick

#showtooltip Shadow Bolt
/cast [nochanneling:Malefic Grasp] Malefic Grasp

However if you cast something else like agony or corruption while channeling it will stop your channel, you'll get used to this. If your having a hard time still and want to get the full channel out while being able to mash your next ability simply make a macro for every spell you mash

#showtooltip Corruption
/cast [nochanneling:Malefic Grasp] Corruption

#showtooltip Agony
/cast [nochanneling:Malefic Grasp] Agony

^ just some examples, what these do is if your channeling Malefic grasp it will not stop channeling it even if you hit this button, this button will cast corruption after malefic is finished channeling if you mash it. Same with the agony.

IF you want more macro's like these simply just add the name at the end of the script

#showtooltip >SpellNameHere<
/cast [nochanneling:Malefic Grasp] >SpellYouWantToCastIfNotChannelingMaleficGrasp<


(The >'s and <'s are not a part of the macro!)

Hope this helps some and if not let me know what else is wrong and we can go from there!

-Nekrosislol

[Gobuchul]

#showtooltip Shadow Bolt
/cast [nochanneling:Malefic Grasp] Malefic Grasp

This is a terrible idea unless you play with zero lag. Channeled spells work like dots in that recasting them before the final tick doesn't interrupt the tick timer and lets that final tick carry over into the new channel. If you use this macro you're unable to take advantage of that, and you end up with a gap between each channel due to network latency.

[Killem]

I would not use the macro:

#showtooltip Shadow Bolt
/cast [nochanneling:Malefic Grasp] Malefic Grasp

It implies you have zero lag and are pressing it permanently, what you are obviously not doing.

The besser solution is the knowledge, that the last "tick" of MG can be clipped and will be added to the next MG cast. I don't know if Quartz fully supports this, but Gnosis does. (But bugs with KjC)

[xskarma]

Using nochanneling macros would definitely not be my idea of a good plan either. You'd never be able to stop your channel short when you want to refresh a dot for whatever reason, but have to use esc or something to interupt the cast. That seems awefully convulated to just achieve your desire of being able to mash buttons. It's probably a better idea to learn to NOT mash your buttons when playing a warlock, and put some thought into what buton you press when.

[Descolada]

You need to stop mashing buttons if you want to be any good an Affliction. I think what you are saying is that you are more used to spells with a long cast time that allow you to start hitting your next spell while it's casting. A channel will feel awkward compared to that, mostly because you don't just click it and wait for it to finish. Sometimes you will clip it in order to cast a Haunt or refresh something else, and sometimes you will let 2 of them channel the entire duration. Think of it like those people that keep all the plates spinning.

[billafin]

This is a terrible idea unless you play with zero lag. Channeled spells work like dots in that recasting them before the final tick doesn't interrupt the tick timer and lets that final tick carry over into the new channel. If you use this macro you're unable to take advantage of that, and you end up with a gap between each channel due to network latency.

is this true? does this mean there is no need for addons like drain souler to track MG/DS ticks?

[Gobuchul]

Sure there is... you don't want to recast until the next-to-last tick occurs, or you'd be wasting mana. Also, you frequently want to recast dots in the middle of a channel, in which case it's better to interrupt it immediately following a tick than halfway between two ticks or immediately before another tick.

[Jessicka]

is this true? does this mean there is no need for addons like drain souler to track MG/DS ticks?

Absolutely. They've been working this way since Cataclysm because it was a major issue for Shadow Priests previously, that made the above macros necessary. They realised using macros for your basic filler was bad design and fixed it accordingly.

I would still however recommend such addons to track ticks so you know when is a good time to clip the channel to recast DoTs/Haunt.

[Deleted]

I would still however recommend such addons to track ticks so you know when is a good time to clip the channel to recast DoTs/Haunt.

This. MG ticks more frequently and for less, so clipping it at the wrong moment isn't that terrible, but DS ticks slowly and for much bigger numbers, so it's good to have some control over it.

[Deleted]

is this true? does this mean there is no need for addons like drain souler to track MG/DS ticks?

It's true, but it doesn't mean what you're suggesting it does.

Casting MG -> Recast MG close to end -> Get your extra tick added onto the next MG.

Casting MG -> Refresh a dot -> waste any time you spent between Mgs last tick and the upcoming tick.

What you quoted only helps if you're casting an MG over an MG, if you cast anything else it's still better to wait for the next tick before doing so.

[Xandy]

I thought there was no DPS loss to clipping MG? I use Quartz and have tried other add-ons and but they don't seem to track MG ticks unless I'm missing something. Regardless I generally clip MG as close to the end of the channel as possible.