[6.1] Affliction Warlock Guide

[Jessicka]

~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'.

I'm not saying it's insignificant, but you're not going to be moving for anything close to all that time, at worse you'll lose a couple of ticks during much of the forced movement this tier, meanwhile losing nothing from the opportunity presented when refreshing Agony, Corruption and Life Tap - opportunity which only increases with number of targets.

[Deleted]

Again, that's just because the Destro and Demo sims use bad talents for aoe.

[Joryy]

On the topic of double procs:

I just spent ~20 minutes fighting a dummy on my 97 warlock, who doesn't have empowered corruption. Didn't get any double procs.

Then I hopped on main 100 lock and got 5 in 6 minutes. Its not a conclusive test, but I feel pretty confident pointing at the level-up perk.

[uhhwateva]

Hello,

As the title says, I have a question regarding a specific timing of Dark Soul, with Afflictions 4 piece.

Before 4 piece, I'd normally just use Dark Soul at the same time as my Shard of Nothing on use haste trinket, lining them up for maximum effectiveness.

However, with the 4 piece, I have DS up more often than the flat 2 minute cooldown of the Shard. Should I be using Dark Soul as much as possible with 4 piece? Should I still hold it for the Shard use? Only use a Dark Soul with a RPPM trinket or 710 ring proc?

tl;dr What is the optimal Dark Soul usage with Affliction 4 piece?

[uhhwateva]

I posted a stand alone thread for this, but I'll try this thread as well:

"I have a question regarding a specific timing of Dark Soul, with Afflictions 4 piece.

Before 4 piece, I'd normally just use Dark Soul at the same time as my Shard of Nothing on use haste trinket, lining them up for maximum effectiveness.

However, with the 4 piece, I have DS up more often than the flat 2 minute cooldown of the Shard. Should I be using Dark Soul as much as possible with 4 piece? Should I still hold it for the Shard use? Only use a Dark Soul with a RPPM trinket or 710 ring proc?

tl;dr What is the optimal Dark Soul usage with Affliction 4 piece?"

[Deleted]

I Don't play much Affliction, but I think you're over complicating it.

Having the four piece just means you can use it more often, but the same rules apply don't cap it but have one ready for procs. IE don't sit there with 2 stacks waiting for perfect procs and don't just randomly blow one after the other. Its no DPS loss to hold on to one charge for a good time while the other charge regens.

[Deleted]

You have 2 charges. Save one for SoN and line the other up with trinkets / encounter requirements.

[jupiteran]

aff a good idea for m beastlord, to clean up spears before they blow up and do raid damage.

[VladimirM]

aff a good idea for m beastlord, to clean up spears before they blow up and do raid damage.

don't know what your raid setup is, but in our raid, we are using 2 moonkins to deal with spears, and elemental + warrior and hunter barrage to deal with adds. Everyone else are doing single target (including 2 of us affliction warlocks). This sounds maybe strange, but we are downing Darmac with such an ease since using this strat instead of everyone randomly aoeing/multidotting stuff.

[jupiteran]

2 arcane mages , 1 frost mage, an ele, 2 survival hunters, 1 mm hunter, another demo lock and myself, i just couldnt get anything off on the pack beasts.

[Jetjaguar]

If you have a shadow priest in your raid, you should let them solo spears because it *should* let them do more damage to the boss than anyone else in the raid. No reason to do spears unless you're demo/have no shadow priests in raid

I posted a stand alone thread for this, but I'll try this thread as well:

"I have a question regarding a specific timing of Dark Soul, with Afflictions 4 piece.

Before 4 piece, I'd normally just use Dark Soul at the same time as my Shard of Nothing on use haste trinket, lining them up for maximum effectiveness.

However, with the 4 piece, I have DS up more often than the flat 2 minute cooldown of the Shard. Should I be using Dark Soul as much as possible with 4 piece? Should I still hold it for the Shard use? Only use a Dark Soul with a RPPM trinket or 710 ring proc?

tl;dr What is the optimal Dark Soul usage with Affliction 4 piece?"

This is in response to a pretty old post, but aff's damage now is really front loaded, so I've found the best use is generally to double pop dark soul during lust in the opener and then just use dark soul every time it comes up from that point on... really the spec falls off pretty badly over time unless you get really really good nightfall RNG. There really isn't such thing as hoarding shards for CDs since you have to pretty much bank 2 for SB:H. If you find yourself hoarding shards, its usually like in the situation of having 3+ which is 1 extra haunt in reality

[Darkheart]

The enchanting recommendations from this thread's guide point out that everything should be enchanted as mastery, and that the mastery weapon enchant is identical to that of the haste enchant.

If we put aside that dual spec is demonology, and that we're only focused on Affliction DPS, why wouldn't one enchant everything with haste? 1000 iteration SIMs are fine, but practically speaking, sometimes your RNG sucks really bad with shard generation during raid. During those times when RNG is bad, wouldn't more haste be a factor to mitigate that and increase your chances, even if SIMS are close?

Take into consideration playing Affliction at Blackhand (single target long fight).

[striderZA]

Take into consideration playing Affliction at Blackhand (single target long fight).

It's been discussed in some of the other threads, Affliction in seriously lackluster when compared to Demo on Blackhand (or even to CR Destro). Double Doomguard execute is incredibly strong, and it also brings probably some of the best burst cleave in the game on the balconies where the adds are stacked up. That doesn't really answer your question regarding the enchant though, I haven't been arsed to spec Affliction since very early in Highmaul.

[Xyronic]

If you have a shadow priest in your raid, you should let them solo spears because it *should* let them do more damage to the boss than anyone else in the raid. No reason to do spears unless you're demo/have no shadow priests in raid



This is in response to a pretty old post, but aff's damage now is really front loaded, so I've found the best use is generally to double pop dark soul during lust in the opener and then just use dark soul every time it comes up from that point on... really the spec falls off pretty badly over time unless you get really really good nightfall RNG. There really isn't such thing as hoarding shards for CDs since you have to pretty much bank 2 for SB:H. If you find yourself hoarding shards, its usually like in the situation of having 3+ which is 1 extra haunt in reality

Basically this. Only difference i do is hold off on using the new charges until i get a trinket proc. So use 2 on the opener, save any remaining Dark Souls' for trinket procs or if you cap on charges.

[Deleted]

Also worth noting that with the 4pc and the double shard interaction you don't want to be sitting on 1 charge with <20s left on the 2nd. You run the risk of getting double nightfall and wasting DS cooldown.

[Darkheart]

Also worth noting that with the 4pc and the double shard interaction you don't want to be sitting on 1 charge with <20s left on the 2nd. You run the risk of getting double nightfall and wasting DS cooldown.

I am not sure I get you. Can you please explain?

[Deleted]

Affliction T17 4pc Bonus reduces the cooldown on Dark Soul by 10s every time nightfall activates.

There is also a bug that sometimes causes nightfall to proc 2 shards instead of one. When this happens DS cooldown is reduced by 20s.

If you allow Dark Soul to have less than 20s remaining you run the risk of wasting the 4pc proc and potentially capping your stacks, further delaying the cooldown.

[Duckz0rs]

Follow-up question regarding SB:Haunt vs DS.

I want to try fiddling around with Affliction to try and get used to the spec (haven't played it since ICC outside of pvp).
It was said before that item level and boss duration factor into which of the two is better, I'm currently at 681 and Gruul takes roughly 5 minutes off the top of my head.

Due to shitty RNG however, I don't have a single tier piece yet. Considering I don't have any of the tier bonuses, would it be better to use SB:H or DS?

[Taalyn]

I really don't know if this is a bug/issue or if it's all in my mind but I seem to have issue with Shard generation whenever I multi-DoT. On Iron Maidens if I keep Agony up on all three and then spam Drain Soul on the current target I'm fine. If I try to add Corruption onto them I get few Shard procs. I can't imagine the GCDs used on Corruption instead of Drain Soul affect Shard generation this much.

[kornoth]

If the last corruption you casted is not on the target you drain soul on, you're not going to have 5% increased chance to proc nightfall. And I think that's what you did on iron maiden, you cast corruption first on you target and then on the other 2. Make sure to cast the last one on your target and it will be fine.