Throne of Thunder 5.2 [Affliction]

[Woz]

UA and agony provide no benefit to single target damage, only corruption in aiding Nightfall procs. You should be using that Soul Shard you wasted on casting SB:SS for a Haunt. Not only are you cheesing meters but you are severely hampering your single target damage. You should be glyphed into Soul Swap, soul swapping just before execute with drain soul and then soul swapping onto your next target when it comes up and corruption the head you aren't focusing down.

You are severely overestimating the difference of single target damage I do vs "padding". Do UA and Agony provide 0 benefit towards additional single target? Yes.
The way you present your thoughts in this post show that you think me using an additional shard to dot a secondary target is going to severely hinder my single target damage is pretty silly. Considering that in T14 gear you are better off pooling shards for DS the likelihood that you will be near shard cap is high. Overlapping Haunt is no more or less of a waste of DPS than it is using that extra shard of a full set of dots.

Do I agree that "padding" on a fight where you are nearing a DPS check is not needed? Yes. Do I feel that in its current state of shard pooling it's more beneficial to not cap out your shards nor overlap Haunt and is better to use a SS:SB than waste a Nightfall proc? Yes.

With T15 extending Haunts duration during DS it will just make shard pooling even less of a hassle since you won't be "required" to pool 3+ shards which just opens up more Nightfall procs for you to play with. What else are you going to use them on? You have two options; chain cast Haunt, SB:SS or waste a proc and just overcap. Pick your poison; I know my choice.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 08:58 AM ----------

There's no reason to be using Sac on any fight with heavy multidotting.

So in other words, don't use Sac on Horridon, Council, Tortos, Primordius and MAYBE Animus

Sure. On the same token - in order to fully benefit from GoSup it's being theorized that you should go full haste; which is far less optimal for multidotting. In the end I suspect it will show barely any difference between the two even in a multidotting situation. You will, inevitably have time to channel making Sac still useful. IE: Horidon there is ample time where you have all your dots out and there is time to channel. Council there are periods where you will channel for a longer period of time than you would think. Tortos i would say taking GoSac is far better than GoSup; most of the multidotting will only last 1 though 1 set of dots then the bats are just a SB:Seed.
I could go on but I hope I painted the picture with just that.

[Jetjaguar]

If we're talking about using a shard for the sake of not capping, casting a Haunt IS better than the alternative if the alternative is not actually doing any effective damage on the boss

[Woz]

Quick question. Why would demo be better on the turtle? Hoarding fury for debuff on the boss after the kick or better burst aoe on the bats?
Same question goes to horridon. I was planning to do the fight as demo with mannoroth's fury. But will see in the evening what kind of dmg is needed in my 10man.

Demo just has more on demand burst AoE for the bats compared to Aff.
For Horridon there is just continual AoE which Demo has the steady AoE flow if you're not comfortable with keeping up dots. In 10 man it's possible that it would be a more Aff friendly environment.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 09:10 AM ----------

If we're talking about using a shard for the sake of not capping, casting a Haunt IS better than the alternative if the alternative is not actually doing any effective damage on the boss

I would still argue that wasting time (essentially) on a previous Haunts timer is worth less than usin the shard to maintain dots on a secondary target for the same time spent in a global.

I could debate the fact all day long but in the end we are talking about an extremely minuscule portion of DPS comparitavely. We are arguing apples vs apples.

[Ezzyo]

If you were maintaining dots on both via sb:ss, that amounts to alot over the 7m25s ish we put in on the fight. Lets say you were doing that every time to maintain corruption, and I'll round up to 7m 30 s, which is still probably on the faster side. So in 470 seconds of dps time / 18s corruption = About 26 times you completely wasted all of the apples you had.

26 shards is about 206 seconds of haunt uptime you wasted in favor of two dots doing nothing.. Apples to apples.

[Palmz]

Also with Torto's it's going to depend on your strategy. Most guilds I know have the bats tanked near melee for cleave and range focus more on the turtles with cleave to the boss when time is warranted. If your raid leader wants you to focus more on the turtles and the boss then affliction is going to be extremely good. Just SB:SoC when the bats come out and have a plethora of shards to spend on turtles and the boss. For effective(!) dps and using that strategy, affliction is going to be miles ahead. If you are supposed to focus more on bats or the raid leader wants you to dps w/e you can then demo will be great, but come heroic raiding you are going to have to prioritize assignments to get him down and beat the super tight enrage.

And Woz about Magera... /facepalm man, seriously. A better argument would be that adding UA and agony to a second add will slightly increase your chances at procing a RPPM trinket but the wasting of a soul shard is going to outweigh SB:SSing.

[Deleted]

If you were maintaining dots on both via sb:ss, that amounts to alot over the 7m25s ish we put in on the fight. Lets say you were doing that every time to maintain corruption, and I'll round up to 7m 30 s, which is still probably on the faster side. So in 470 seconds of dps time / 18s corruption = About 26 times you completely wasted all of the apples you had.

26 shards is about 206 seconds of haunt uptime you wasted in favor of two dots doing nothing.. Apples to apples.

cant tell it better!

[Deleted]

And Woz about Magera... /facepalm man, seriously. A better argument would be that adding UA and agony to a second add will slightly increase your chances at procing a RPPM trinket but the wasting of a soul shard is going to outweigh SB:SSing.

It won't because if you reduce the time between proc chanches the chance to procc is also reduced. The only way to increase the chance for proccing a RPPM trinket is either increasing your haste or doing nothing for up to 10 seconds

[Woz]

If you were maintaining dots on both via sb:ss, that amounts to alot over the 7m25s ish we put in on the fight. Lets say you were doing that every time to maintain corruption, and I'll round up to 7m 30 s, which is still probably on the faster side. So in 470 seconds of dps time / 18s corruption = About 26 times you completely wasted all of the apples you had.

26 shards is about 206 seconds of haunt uptime you wasted in favor of two dots doing nothing.. Apples to apples.

I hear Pandemic is a thing that we got at level 90 and I never said to maintain 100% uptime through SB:SS. Getting and keeping 10 stack Agony + keeping Corruption through Pandemic is what I am talking about.

Our kill was 7m50s (470s);
- 37 Nightfall procs
- 20 Haunts
- 35 SB:SS
- Drain Soul for 1m16s (76s) which is ~13 Shards generated + 5 on pull (1 precasted + 4 in the bank)

Total shards: 55

Go ahead and look at pretty much any other lock on that fight and you'll see a mix of both variances. The people who did what I had done obviously did more DPS due to the fact that there was more double dotting (clearly). But straight damage towards each individual target was roughly the same throughout. We are literally arguing about ~10k DPS difference in "pad". When push comes to shove and you look at straight damage towards each boss it is within .5% of each other.

There is merit to both ways of approaching the fight and (obviously) there are reasons behind each approach. You can take 1 way and I'll take the other. Really no point in furthering it much more than that since we'll just go in circles around each other never coming to an agreement.

Maybe the WoL client will stop being awful and let me upload this log so you can compare it for yourselves and see it's not as gamebreaking as you all think it is.

Edit:
Just to illustrate my point here are 2 of each playstyle...it's like they're almost the same damage spread just like I said! The faster kills (Cabanaramma's was a full minute faster than mine + Krar, same duration as Wby's) had roughly the same damage spread as each other (padder vs non padder) and the longer kills had the same result.

Wby

Krar
Cabanaramma

Can't believe you would defend your padding so much Woz
This is obviously a loss of useful DPS to use SB:SS instead of Corruption.

Yes, Zum. I am defending it because it literally makes the most miniscule portions of DPS (and I know you would defend yourself if someone called BS on Destro padding on fights in T14 [YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!]).

[Deleted]

Can't believe you would defend your padding so much Woz
This is obviously a loss of useful DPS to use SB:SS instead of Corruption.

[Deleted]

And round and round we go.

[Deleted]

Padding vs no padding, who cares.
It's up to sensible individual players to decide wether they help or gimp their raid.
Besides, as long as the raid leader is happy or the boss goes down anyway, who cares...

Thanks for the feedback anyway !

PS: please tell us if/when adds "don't die" in the encounter you meet (i kow of small turtles, but if there's more, i'd love to know)

[Lotzadotz]

Well, that escalated quickly...

Thought this was a thread informing people how affliction was fairing after the patch, not a grab my dick and scream "This is how EVERYONE should be playing affliction cause I play this way"
So what if he pads where some ppl don't... Boss is dead, everyone is happy!

Thank you for informing us "casual players" that haven't stepped foot in the raid yet and those that are hardcore :-P how our favourite spec is performing post patch.

[Viggers]

I hear Pandemic is a thing that we got at level 90 and I never said to maintain 100% uptime through SB:SS. Getting and keeping 10 stack Agony + keeping Corruption through Pandemic is what I am talking about.

Our kill was 7m50s (470s);
- 37 Nightfall procs
- 20 Haunts
- 35 SB:SS
- Drain Soul for 1m16s (76s) which is ~13 Shards generated + 5 on pull (1 precasted + 4 in the bank)

Total shards: 55

Go ahead and look at pretty much any other lock on that fight and you'll see a mix of both variances. The people who did what I had done obviously did more DPS due to the fact that there was more double dotting (clearly). But straight damage towards each individual target was roughly the same throughout. We are literally arguing about ~10k DPS difference in "pad". When push comes to shove and you look at straight damage towards each boss it is within .5% of each other.

There is merit to both ways of approaching the fight and (obviously) there are reasons behind each approach. You can take 1 way and I'll take the other. Really no point in furthering it much more than that since we'll just go in circles around each other never coming to an agreement.

Maybe the WoL client will stop being awful and let me upload this log so you can compare it for yourselves and see it's not as gamebreaking as you all think it is.

Edit:
Just to illustrate my point here are 2 of each playstyle...it's like they're almost the same damage spread just like I said! The faster kills (Cabanaramma's was a full minute faster than mine + Krar, same duration as Wby's) had roughly the same damage spread as each other (padder vs non padder) and the longer kills had the same result.

Wby

Krar
Cabanaramma



Yes, Zum. I am defending it because it literally makes the most miniscule portions of DPS (and I know you would defend yourself if someone called BS on Destro padding on fights in T14 [YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!]).

but the damage done from the non-padders was all done while that damage was relevent. some of the padders damage will not have mattered at all! your damage would have to be much higher than the non-padders on each target to convince anyone that what your doing is not a raid dps loss. on the flip side... its normal so feel free to pad, just dont argue that SB:SS isnt a dps loss compared to haunt.

and if you are about to cap shards and dont want to overlap haunt, just cast soulburn? let the buff sit there for 30 seconds until you get procs and want to refresh your dots or something

[Deleted]

Yes, Zum. I am defending it because it literally makes the most miniscule portions of DPS (and I know you would defend yourself if someone called BS on Destro padding on fights in T14 [YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!]).

Well I don't intentionally do useless damage, with the only exception of a single Havoc at the pull on Protectors, which takes 0,5 sec of my time
I just took a look at your last Protectors kill (I had a hunch !) and you do 50k on Kaolan/Regail/Asani in P1, looks like this is a strong habit you have, like the spriest and the balance in my raid that try to justify it "it improves my single target damage !!!" while they are last on the only true target
There is not even the justification of gaining shards thanks to Corruption, since you already get more than enough every 10 sec when an add dies.

But this is farm so whatever

[Bonkura]

UA and agony provide no benefit to single target damage, only corruption in aiding Nightfall procs. You should be using that Soul Shard you wasted on casting SB:SS for a Haunt. Not only are you cheesing meters but you are severely hampering your single target damage. You should be glyphed into Soul Swap, soul swapping just before execute with drain soul and then soul swapping onto your next target when it comes up and corruption the head you aren't focusing down.

Word it's completely pointless and just weird to encourage people to do the same.

[Cyner]

We will be updating this thread after we get through the next bosses after tonight's raid. The point isn't to say "you should play this way and pad more" or whatever this silly argument has been. It's more of "here is how we are playing, and this is our feedback on the bosses" We are only hoping that some people take our feedback and can apply it to their raiding situation. Whether they agree or disagree with us.
I used GoSac in some situations last night and GoGup in others, the difference (with my gear) was very minuscule. This will probably change when gear changes, but for now (lulnormalmodes) I will probably go ahead and stick with Gosac because lets face it ( i'm lazy ) and my pet names suck.

[Teye]

Thought this was a thread informing people how affliction was fairing after the patch, not a grab my dick and scream "This is how EVERYONE should be playing affliction cause I play this way"

This defines the Warlock forums pretty solidly.

[Woz]

This defines the Warlock forums pretty solidly.

Basically. Anything anyone says is gospel and is the one and only way to play.

[Cyner]

Looks like simcraft was finally updated, We will be posting some solid numbers tonight when work/school is over.

[schmearcampain]

On a completely unrelated topic; in full T14 BiS I still sim higher using LotC+EoT rather than using LotC+Wushoolay or EoT+Wushoolay.

I believe there is an issue with simming Wushoolay's and the sim's inability to properly account for the increase in int over time. Just hearsay on my part though. TBH, even if the proc rate gives us as low an uptime as 25%, I can't imagine how any current trinket could compare to 13,000+ int empowered dots. Especially since we have pandemic going too. 34 seconds of 10 stacked Agony? jebus.