[6.1] Affliction Warlock Guide

[FurtyIRL]

However it'd impact balance, I'd just like to see SB:SoC spread SoC instead of Corruption, and lose the cast and/or flight time. That way it'd just work better; like Living Bomb being spread by Ignite, or Fire Novas through Lava Lash. These things exist, I'm just not sure why Affliction has such a convoluted, slow build and thus wholly ineffective version of it.

Living Bomb Seed! That would actually be pretty insane, if they could pull it off it would be fun to see!

[Deleted]

They need to sort affi's single target before worrying about the aoe, its abysmal.

[Deleted]

Yeah but as mentioned, it's hard to straight up buff Aff's damage because of PvP, especially single target damage.

I guess they could add some db/chaos bolt style mechanic to haunt making it, or its debuff, weaker in pvp than pve, and then buffing dots appropriately. That's all i can think of and i'm not sure it would work very well.

[xuros]

They need to sort affi's single target before worrying about the aoe, its abysmal.

Then you are doing something wrong my friend. Afflictions ST may not be best in game but its far from bottom barrel.

[Deleted]

Then you are doing something wrong my friend. Afflictions ST may not be best in game but its far from bottom barrel.

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T17M.html says otherwise. thats standing still even. any movement and down you go even more.

[Keile]

http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T17M.html says otherwise. thats standing still even. any movement and down you go even more.

You realize that chart only shows a difference of about 400dps between Destro/Demo and Afflic, right?

That is....a negligible amount and on top of that simulations and actual performance are completely different. Soon as you add movement to the mix that Destro will go way down, and Afflic will sustain a bit better (yes it will also go down, but not as much as Destro).

Overall, it isnt that Warlocks are under performing, it is that Hunters and Mages are over performing. Notice that the majority of the DPS are in that 43-46k dps range. Then you have Hunters, Ferals, and Arcanes who are just dominating the top of that chart.

If anything those higher dps need to be brought back down in line with the rest of them.

[Nutri]

I was conversing on the WoW forums about SB:H vs DemServ. Someone stated that if the fight is less than 4 minutes you should take SB:H, if it's longer than 4 minutes you should take DS.

Is this true or false?

Thanks!

(my ilvl is 680 while writing this, if that's a factor)

[Joryy]

@Drekha

Your exact gear levels matters, as does the constraints of the fight. For my gear, (685, 4pc, gems/enchants for mastery), the DS takeover point is closer to 7 minutes.

For real fights, blackhand has the opportunity to get an extra ~3 shards, which will matter slightly more to SB:H, but has a decent bunch of movement too. I decided on SB:H for blackhand, because Doomguarding during phase 3 puts a lot of damage where it needs to be. Gruul is probably close enough to PW to just sim both for 6 minutes and go with it. Mythic butcher you go with SBH because of all the shards to gain, Don't think I'd consider playing affliction on any of the other fights.

[Nutri]

@Drekha

Your exact gear levels matters, as does the constraints of the fight. For my gear, (685, 4pc, gems/enchants for mastery), the DS takeover point is closer to 7 minutes.

For real fights, blackhand has the opportunity to get an extra ~3 shards, which will matter slightly more to SB:H, but has a decent bunch of movement too. I decided on SB:H for blackhand, because Doomguarding during phase 3 puts a lot of damage where it needs to be. Gruul is probably close enough to PW to just sim both for 6 minutes and go with it. Mythic butcher you go with SBH because of all the shards to gain, Don't think I'd consider playing affliction on any of the other fights.

Thanks for your reply :-)
I've never ran Sims before but I'll give that a try one of these days, it sounds interesting!

[Ease]

Some of the recent new kills have warlocks playing affliction for Mythic Blackhand (wowprogress). How does it measure up to Demo for that encounter? I guess it is better dps in p1 but lower execute in p3?

[FurtyIRL]

Some of the recent new kills have warlocks playing affliction for Mythic Blackhand (wowprogress). How does it measure up to Demo for that encounter? I guess it is better dps in p1 but lower execute in p3?

Probably just flavor/preferred spec. It's pretty much inferior to the other two specs in every way.

[Deleted]

Wow progress track the spe you have when you disconected after the kill not the spe you have when you kill the boss.

[Ease]

Wow progress track the spe you have when you disconected after the kill not the spe you have when you kill the boss.

I've checked some of the warlocks they actually have haste gems/enchants so I think they actually went afflic for the boss. Also the french guild was restreaming their kill earlier with an afflic warlock POV

[Deleted]

However it'd impact balance, I'd just like to see SB:SoC spread SoC instead of Corruption, and lose the cast and/or flight time. That way it'd just work better; like Living Bomb being spread by Ignite, or Fire Novas through Lava Lash. These things exist, I'm just not sure why Affliction has such a convoluted, slow build and thus wholly ineffective version of it.

Give. Me. Now.
Affli needs some kind of aoe and this seems to be cool

[Count Zero]

Hrm, latest SimC results have Afflic on top for single target as well as sustained aoe. At the bottom for intermittent aoe but pretty close.

wat

[FurtyIRL]

Hrm, latest SimC results have Afflic on top for single target as well as sustained aoe. At the bottom for intermittent aoe but pretty close.

wat

It was already okay on Gruul and Affli scales well w/gear so presumably it's pretty competitive on low movement sustained ST now. Still an awful progression spec since long duration sustained ST is a useless niche. I really wish they would address cleave for this spec so it felt relevant again.

[Deleted]

Hrm, latest SimC results have Afflic on top for single target as well as sustained aoe. At the bottom for intermittent aoe but pretty close.

wat

Those sims do really bizarre things. Destro and Demo on AoE use Cata and DS respectively just to name one. It could also be a case of optimizing the APL a bit.

[Jessicka]

It was already okay on Gruul and Affli scales well w/gear so presumably it's pretty competitive on low movement sustained ST now. Still an awful progression spec since long duration sustained ST is a useless niche. I really wish they would address cleave for this spec so it felt relevant again.

The sims aren't including the double-procs of Nightfall; we don't know what causes them and we don't know if those phantom procs only manifest as doubles, it would make sense if they're also occuring singularly but we just don't notice those - so even while it's simming best, it's also being underestimated and should be showing somewhat higher.

I'm not sure where you're going with 'low mobility' either, because that is patently untrue when so much damage is from DoTs which are broadly instant cast, as well as pet damage.

Sure it's not good for fast cleaving or short term AoE, we know that, but that's the only part in your statement that is true. Even there though, there is scope for sniping additional shards to dump more damage on the primary target.

[FurtyIRL]

I'm not sure where you're going with 'low mobility' either, because that is patently untrue when so much damage is from DoTs which are broadly instant cast, as well as pet damage.

~30% of your damage comes from Drain Soul + Ghost Ticks and obviously you'll get maximum benefit if you're channeling during Haunt uptime. Now if you think 30% is insignificant then you're not optimizing at any level, and if you don't then you're just arguing semantics for whatever reason when you say 'patently untrue'.

[Count Zero]

I'm surprised but not shocked it randomly jumped up in ST (APL adjustments and all). What is just boggling me is how it's simming so high (relative to other lock specs, at least) for sustained (ahead of both by a fair bit) and intermittent (slightly below the others) aoe.