I'm not sure how that only highlights your point considering the bonus is the only reason people considered Aff in the first place. It IS the reason people moved in that direction and when it was taken away they were like "ok well there's no reason to be going in this direction anymore". You can say you're watching history repeat for the 94th time if you want but the rest of us are doing the same watching someone say "aff is playable" when that's really not in question.
And I never once said Affliction isn't playable, so that was never the argument. If you read his post more clearly he said he'd rather go demo and I simply said he'd be better off going demo and Destro. How you can argue that still I'm not quite sure. Affliction can not keep up with Destro on the important stuff and it doesn't do anything other than council (and I'd even argue that) better than Demo really. So the advice I gave I'll still stand by; he'll be more useful to his raid as Destro and Demo.
People can play whatever they want, I'm just stating what is MOST LIKELY to be useful, which is what I originally said.
Last edited by Octa; 2015-07-02 at 10:22 PM.
yeah, socretar seems a bit bugged atm.
They changed the fight. So you need more phase 1s... but some how this bug got past ptr. We tried having me and our other lock to go destro and stay on adds.. which works until you phase back... everyone whose killed it this way has said they now do it in one phase which is insane!
If you control the adds with the construct well then you should be able to kill the boss without the need to repeat phase 1.
Any Haunting Spirits that do get through are easy to deal with provided everyone is stacked at the boss.
This means less padding on the Haunting Spirits and if you are in range of them as they are stacked you can FnB immo to endlessly turret CB.
Did you actually play affliction in the expansions I was talking about? The debuff cap was gone long before them and Soul Shard farming was gone by Cata. Regardless of that, when I talk about a spec having good gameplay I'm obviously not talking about soul shard farming or DOT caps.
As for the execute phase.
Previously, you hit the execute phase and you swapped from shadowbolt to drain soul, it was an incredibly different feel and (in Cata) it started pumping you full of soul shards. It felt empowering, rewarding and strong thematically - the enemy was weak, you could now start draining their soul.
Currently the execute phase has zero gameplay changes. You don't get any more soul shards from it. You don't change what spell you've been using, because you've been using Drain Soul all along - but it's not really Drain Soul, it's just malefic grasp with another name, since it does none of the things that made drain soul drain soul, it's not giving you soul shards, it's not ticking like a monster.
Our execute phase now is literally nothing but a flat number change. It has no reason to exist other than "affliction used to have an execute phase" and as an arbitrary ramp up time. We've went from having the most interesting execute phase to having one less interesting than arms swapping from mortal strike to execute.
It was far from logical how this situation came about.
Drain Soul used to serve as a fantastic ability. From it being a change in feel once you hit the execute, to even something as vital as on demand soul shard generation. Affliction is currently in a place where it feels horrible because SS's are so RNG, back when Drain Soul was a seperate spell it provided a SS from ticks - you could sacrifice damage by using it outside of the execute phase for guaranteed SS's, this let you make a choice to lower your damage output for a while to generate SS's for an important burn phase.
The only reason DS had any reason to be cut, was because they introduced MG, which wasn't needed in the slightest - even in isolation. It was downright detrimental when the end result of adding MG was that DS needed to go. I mean, yes, it's "logical" to merge the two spells when you introduced channeled filler that encroached on DS's territory and image, but that surely means MG was the mistake, not DS.
All MG has done mechanically is
- Change from throttling DOT's via SE to MG casts. I preferred SE, since at least you had grace periods where you could move without it falling off.
- Eventually resulted in Drain Soul and our execute phase dying, along with on demand SS generation
- Married our dots strength to filler being on the target even more, making dots feel weaker as a result
and thematically
- Moved us closer in image to the only other spec remotely like affliction, Spriests
- I suppose you could argue the weakening of drain soul / dots mechanically damages the thematic of the spec
I really have a hard time seeing (m)any pros from MG, and certainly don't think it was worth the cons. The only thing affliction arguably needed changing going into MOP was it's SS resource system, but when you look at where it is today (frustratingly RNG), destruction seems to have done it far better. I'd rather have our resources being useless and innocuous than relevant but asinine.
Often makes me wonder what would have happened if they'd just never coupled SS's with the rotation and output and had instead chose to make them utility based like they used to be for portals and healthstones and whatnot. The most interesting soulburn applications were always utility, SB portal, SB pet back etc. I imagine they'd have been able to do some interesting things if the idea of spending a shard on utility wasn't laughable considering the dps loss.
Yeah, happened to us. No idea if it's intentional or not since Socrethar was a joke previously. I got to AOE some ghosties though.
So instead of using the construct to do big boss DPS you have it focus on the ghosts now that they can't kill it? How do you handle the Gift of the Manari not getting out of control? We had two healers spam healing between the four targets and once we hit a 5th it was effectively GG. Just kill dominators faster?
Imo it seems dumb to cause more phase 1s but not having tested the fight this way resulting in people having to kill him in one phase 2 where as previously we had the ability to kill him in one phase 2 easily.. Either way I don't mind "padding" adds if it's essential to my raid completing a fight and is my job. The only bad padding is place like iskar where say someone could go cataclysm for the sake of burst cleave but loss of definitive ST burst (if playing demo)
The construct doesn't need to sit on the spirits he swaps between the Boss/adds and then the haunting spirits when needed with the fel charge and prisons etc.
We all stack on the boss and when you get the debuff you move out, unsure on how the actual healers deal with it though. (personals help ofc)
The dominators die within 10-15seconds so they are rarely a problem for us.
I understand that everyone may have different methods to achieve the kill but if you can avoid putting damage into them spirits and focus it on the priority targets then it will only help you kill the boss quicker without wasting damage done.
edit: I did not make sense ><
Last edited by mmoc81cc05c0ef; 2015-07-03 at 11:59 AM.
We did that last week to kill him. This week keeping the spirits in the prisons only helped us so far. Once you hit a portal swap around it becomes impossible for the construct to be in two places at once so to speak. People are saying they still do it the same way as before with a few changes but it's pretty insane..
Also has anyone got a link to a nice BiS list for destro...?
Got the Prophecy of Fear from a mission and I'm not sure if it's good or meh. Does anyone have any experience with it? There's a huge like 20+ page thread on Altered Time for mages but I can only find three posts talking about it here wrt locks.
I'm just raiding normal at the moment, since i belong to a casual guild, but i find destro awsome on Council. I focus Dia, cleave with a focus havoc macro (don't even have to change targets) CB every 15 sec on her (or SB on Blademasters' illusions and keep 2x immolate on the other two targets. With just 2pc tier 18, this works awsomely. Did almost same on Maidens (on progression i kept 3 immolates, then i relaxed back to 2).
How's destruction looking in this patch? I've been playing Afflic which I still like but I feel like destruction would be better on a few fights.
This. Switch to FnB Immo every 14-17 sec on spirits, unload unlimited CB on Dominators/Socrethar. 2pc tier17 and 2pc tier18 combo and you can't actually spend the embers you're getting.
- - - Updated - - -
Play what you like. If you're Heroic or Mythic progressing for server Firsts, go Destro.
Socretar is actually fine atm. I think gift is tuned a bit high in heroic but other than that easy peasy. You just have to have ranged kill the ghosts now. Priority is basically dominator > ghosts > casters > boss. DoTs, cleave and constuct is what was doing the boss damage. As long as you are handling adds properly you should only really do 2 p2s. We left the first p2 with the boss at 26% health.
Also I know most people are playing destro for this fight but demonbolt demo destroys the dominator. I doubled basically everybody in dominator damage for the night which really helped our p2 last a while. Hell I even beat the construct in damage dealt to dominators on most pulls. And you do good ghost damage by rolling HoGs for fury gen between Dominators as well.
Edit: also interrupts are key. These don't happen and you either lose or make the encounter 10 times harder on yourself.
Phase him back to phase 1 and say he's fine. Rofl.. The damage is far overtuned for herioc from the gift. Everyones playing destro because mostly we are on add duty not dominator duty. The boss was much much easier before this "hotfix". Which I don't mind a hard boss. But one thats overtuned and hasn't been tested completely this way is bad... The entire purpose was to have more phase 1s... But that doesn't work when you have ghosts and dominators still spawning in phase 1...
Edit: It seems the damage has been nerfed by 15%. Nothing on the ghosts spawning though.