Warlock Affliction 5.4.7 -- Feeling weak

[Deleted]

Hey everyone,
I really enjoy playing affliction but I feel likes my dots doesn't do enought damage.

Here is my char : http://eu.battle.net/wow/fr/characte.../Duczer/simple
I saw lots of "top rated" warlock talking about haste being better than mastery. What to do then ?
My corruption / agony dots currently make between 5000 to 9000 damage/tick and people die really slowly. On 550k HP it takes age to actually kill someone.
It's ubber low damage no ? If I go full haste, my fucking dots are going to be even weaker but do damage quickly.

I just feel like something isn't right... Any pro tips for affliction would really help.
Thx

[Kals]

I don't play lock but just from your armory you can gain a lot of mastery or haste (whichever you're actually going for) by reforging out of hit, you're a good bit over the PvP spell hit cap (6%).

Standard enchants would be good too obviously, try and save some cash and get Jade Spirit on that Prideful, you'll have it until the expansion.

Not sure why you would go staff over MH/OH when MH/OH offers a good chunk more intellect.

Aff isn't meant to kill quickly, though it can put out some insane pressure if played well. You're playing around slowly burning down the entire enemy team's health while your teammates assist with their damage (usually bursty) and you all CC to keep the healer from being able to keep your DoTs from being healed up. Dark Soul Soulswaps can put out insane pressure across the entire team if lined up with Jade Spirit and Trinket procs (hell, even without that really).

Other than that I can't help much, I haven't played lock in over a year, and never anything serious, only to ~1800 or so.

[PrairieChicken]

Play a healer and you will reconsider your opinion

[zenga]

If you want to get better at dealing damage as lock, you really need to micro manage your dots and keep track of them, preferably with an addon like affdots. A mistake many locks make is popping dark soul right away and start swapping around without a full stack agony. You want to make sure that you gain control over the game first and that you have curse of the elements up, and have a 10 stack agony on a target. Ideally you have dots up on most players/pets. Then pop dark soul along with trinket proc, and start swapping around followed by a haunt on the healer and a dps. That's the moment where you'll see the health over your enemies dropping and where you have to bank on. While having my strongest dots out, I pretty much constantly soul swap them around to cover for dispells.

Also important: try to cover every fear with an unstable affliction. The healer will have to eat the dmg + silence.

All in all: not micro managing your dots means you miss out on a lot of damage. I'd even go as far as to advise to practise in a pve environment first. Also, when you can play with unbound will you can play with 2 dps trinkets, which is a big dmg buff. And obviously knowing when to play sac spec and when to play with a pet.

As lock you are there to control the game, by cc and by means of dots. The actual target calling/switching should be done by your dps mate.

[asb]

I know where you're coming from, but you're sort of missing the big picture. Warlocks don't land kills on their own, but healing through their multitarget damage actually does take quite a bit of effort. Aside from that, a warlock makes their team very hard to kill. As if the fears weren't enough, gateway and healthstones are both very game-changing. Warlocks are easily the strongest caster, but they're almost a support role rather than your main damage.

As for the stats, I'm not a warlock but I can give an experienced guess. Yes, mastery is more direct damage in a pve scenario. Haste is preferable for pvp though because of how limited your acting time actually is. The more haste you have the easier it is to fully maintain dots. With mastery you'll likely have less dot uptime, which outweighs the gains you'd see from mastery. Also faster casts in general are pretty nice--high haste makes juking far less difficult. Secondly, haste gives you more frequent nightfall procs (or so I would think). Haunt is your burst and you really want to have it available when your partner's going for a kill. The more shards the better.

If you want to go mastery, there's no reason not to try it. After playing with both stats you should have a better understanding of the differences than me.

[gestapo]

If you want to get better at dealing damage as lock, you really need to micro manage your dots and keep track of them, preferably with an addon like affdots. A mistake many locks make is popping dark soul right away and start swapping around without a full stack agony. You want to make sure that you gain control over the game first and that you have curse of the elements up, and have a 10 stack agony on a target. Ideally you have dots up on most players/pets. Then pop dark soul along with trinket proc, and start swapping around followed by a haunt on the healer and a dps. That's the moment where you'll see the health over your enemies dropping and where you have to bank on. While having my strongest dots out, I pretty much constantly soul swap them around to cover for dispells.

Also important: try to cover every fear with an unstable affliction. The healer will have to eat the dmg + silence.

All in all: not micro managing your dots means you miss out on a lot of damage. I'd even go as far as to advise to practise in a pve environment first. Also, when you can play with unbound will you can play with 2 dps trinkets, which is a big dmg buff. And obviously knowing when to play sac spec and when to play with a pet.

As lock you are there to control the game, by cc and by means of dots. The actual target calling/switching should be done by your dps mate.

Listen to this guy. He covered all the basics. Basically in group pvp you're doing spread damage and UA + fearing people. If you're solo queueing in random bg's just go destro. You'll be able to nuke people and survive better in 1v1 or 2/3 vs you situations better than affliction. Aff is more for RBG & 3v3.

[Deleted]

My corruption / agony dots currently make between 5000 to 9000 damage/tick and people die really slowly.

That's not bad at all. Try Shadow Priests Dots: only do for 3k to 5k ldmg per tick lol. DoTs in MoP are more like cosmetic mechanic. You can put them to all enemies around you and you will do no presure at all. Better keep them on one person and use Hunt, MG, if you can while CCing other enemy players. Affliction can be very bursty if you focus on one target.

[Inay]

That's not bad at all. Try Shadow Priests Dots: only do for 3k to 5k ldmg per tick lol. DoTs in MoP are more like cosmetic mechanic. You can put them to all enemies around you and you will do no presure at all. Better keep them on one person and use Hunt, MG, if you can while CCing other enemy players. Affliction can be very bursty if you focus on one target.

What? The whole point of affliction is to make huge pressure by spreading the dots and it is far from weak with the dispel protection that can't be even countered with mechanics that mitigate magical damage.
If you want to burst play destruction.

[Deleted]

Affliction Warlocks are FAR from bad at the moment. They currently have a very good place in both competitive arenas and rated battlegrounds
due to their INSANE amount of spread damage and constant pressure along with great survivability and CC.

I play my Affli for fun and it isnt even in half prideful and i still wreck everyone on damage done.

Make sure you have Elements up then pop first DS and then dot Agony>Unstable Affliction>Corruption
Soul swap onto the whole world (except for cc-target) then refresh when needed and
when going for kill apply haunt after corruption in above rotation.

Its reeeaally good!

[zenga]

Make sure you have Elements up then pop first DS and then dot Agony>Unstable Affliction>Corruption
Soul swap onto the whole world (except for cc-target) then refresh when needed and
when going for kill apply haunt after corruption in above rotation.

(dark soul/soul burn) without having a full stack of corruption makes you miss out on a ton of damage. I can't stress enough how important it is to micro manage dots if you want to do good damage as affliction.

Edit: meant dark soul instead of soulswapping

[Deleted]

Soulswapping without having a full stack of corruption makes you miss out on a ton of damage. I can't stress enough how important it is to micro manage dots if you want to do good damage as affliction.

So you would recommend dotting one target and wait for agony to reach 10 stacks and THEN soul swap to a second target?

[Cirayne24]

So you would recommend dotting one target and wait for agony to reach 10 stacks and THEN soul swap to a second target?

Read a post on AJ that one method was

Soul Burn - Soul Swap Target 1
Pop CDs
Soul Burn - Soul Swap Target 1
Soul Swap Target 2,3,4.

Or for AoE Damage

Pop CDs
Soul Burn - Seed Target 1
Seed Target 1
Soul Burn - Soul Swap Target 1
Soul Swap Targets 2,3,4.

Refresh dots to maintain Agony at 10 stacks and win.

Just what I read... I find Destro more fun in BGs. But I dont play Aff much, it seems like I do no damage, but I'm pretty high on overall damage (not that it means much, I know what effective damage is)

[zenga]

So you would recommend dotting one target and wait for agony to reach 10 stacks and THEN soul swap to a second target?

I actually meant that popping dark soul before you have a full stacked agony can be a waste according to what you said in your previous post. Apply dots on target 1, soulswap to 2 and 3, wait for full stack and apply curse / fear meanwhile (soulswapping doesn't eat shards). If you have a full stack: pre-haunt then dark soul (ideally with int procs), soulburn/soulswap to apply the strong dots for its max duration. From there swap onto the other 2 targets again. I try to be as conservative as possible with my shards at the start of a game. So I rather apply my dots manually at first instead of soulburn/soulswap. You can get cc'd when you pop dark soul, the dots can be immuned/dispelled, and having spare shards make your life easier in that case. Or you can use haunt on a 2nd target.

Of course, if you play vs e.g a TSG where they rush you at the start and keep training you it's worth it to use soulburn to apply your first dots.

- - - Updated - - -

Or for AoE Damage

Pop CDs
Soul Burn - Seed Target 1
Seed Target 1
Soul Burn - Soul Swap Target 1
Soul Swap Targets 2,3,4.

This requires you to play with Mannoroth's Fury and the idea is that you can soulswap 2x seed of corruption around (1 applied normal, and 1 applied through soulburn) along with your normal dots. It's tricky to pull it off though since your main dots can't break the seed threshold.

The perfect scenario is that you play with the lei shen trinket that gives you a 4s 100% crit window (it can proc early and then not for another 10 minutes, but you can swap trinkets in rbg's). I pulled it off once and pretty much 1 shot their whole team: got berserker buff, dark soul, blood fury, on use trinket and jade spirit, combined with the lei shen trinket proc: seed of corruption + normal soulburned dots: soul swap around in combination with mannoroths fury and see them literally explode. Obviously a total gimmick, but oh so fun when it works out!

[Rgthreex]

Soul Burn - Soul Swap
Wait for procs(jade spirit,proc trinket)
Pop DS and Personal CDs
Soul Burn - Soul Swap
Than just tab soul swap people and your off to the races

The key to aff is rolling super buffed dots, and not wasting shards I.e haunting with no buffs.

[Deleted]

Hello everyone,

Thank you guys so much for answering my noob thread.
I readed all your reactions and I realized that I was never using the following spells : Soul Burn / Soul Swap / Dark Soul.

I didn't get how important thoses spells are. I was playing my affliction like I was playing it in Burning Crusade, with Drain life / Soul Link / Void.

Now I totally get the new mechanism system, which is really powerfull. I'm now constantly in the top damage and I usually score lots kills.
I love the affliction playstyle, even for solo queue BG's, I'm having lots of fun by putting an HUGE pressure on ennemies. It's amazing, under 10 sec I get 10 peope fully buffed dots, the healer is all fucked up lol


Thank you guys.