[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Skroe]

One thing to keep in mind with UA is that its strength comes from compound interest. Compound interest can cause a single ua to do up to 75% more damage currently, and they can very easily tune around that to cause player behavior if it doesn't already.

It's actually really confusing to me as is when I see people mentioning in pve that the gameplay is to just spam ua in all situations when you'd very clearly want to use your UA's based on compound interest procs and you don't just have infinite stacks of it. The only way I'd see us wanting to spam UA is if there's just a shenanigans trinket unlike anything we've seen or if we're in a situation where we're generating excess shards and need to spend them.

UA is already fairly weak as a spender without compound interest stacks. For pvp hey could easily tune agony + corruption to be stronger, (agony already is) and then make it so you want to spread UA's for dispel protection / buffing agony + corruption with contagion. And then UA's own damage will be getting buffed by compound interest, which you're going to want to bias shard use around since its such a massive buff as opposed to just spamming weak non-buffed ua's into a target. You'd also doubly want the dispel protection because agony takes forever to stack now and with writhe in agony stacks up to 20, and I imagine we'll want the kind of pressure of 20 stack agony's out.

The mechanics have been there for getting people to play how they want, they just need to tune to cause said behavior. And frankly the current tuning might already be there or close to it and people just haven't theory crafted it out, which if that's the case would be why blizzard hasn't responded to said feedback.

It just seems like there is a big conceptual hole. With demonology there is a "flow" based around shard generation/consumption for spells. But it always seems like I am able to do something productive. You can't be "shard starved" as demo.

With affliction, at least as I've been playing it, unless the encounter is specifically designed to have several relatively long lived mobs, you're going to be begging for shards, or sitting on shards and not casting our core mechanic (UA) until we're shard capped or the one moment we make our move.

It just seems so conceptually... not right in comparison. And especially when they knocked down effigy as a shard generator / damage dealer and knocked down soul conduit. I know Blizzard said they want us to cast UA "every 8 seconds" and I guess not really stack it except for burst, which is what is driving these changes?

There just seems to be a big hole here compared to Demonology.

[courtlung]

I think we are missing part of the picture, particularly with tormented souls no longer being target-able (and presumably boosting chances of getting a shard when hit with agony).

The artifact traits focused toward on-kill procs and the shard starvation in single target make a lot more sense under the prior assumption of a multi-target world at all times. Hopefully it's not too late for adjustments based on the new reality, but of course it wouldn't be the first time something went live half-baked.

With more shards in single target, UA stacking would gain some ground back from compound interest, which seems more the likely intention.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Skroe: not sure what you mean, the "flow" is around compound interest. Our "one moment" is actually fairly frequent since compound interest procs all the time and has a tiny tiny duration so you can't sit on it.

I keep getting confused by peoples comments, its like they're only commenting on the baseline of the spec and not paying attention to any of the additional mechanics that potentially change how you play, compound interest being the biggest one. It seems to be going completely under the radar even though its easily the most if not one of the most powerful things in our kit.

[Skroe]

@Skroe: not sure what you mean, the "flow" is around compound interest. Our "one moment" is actually fairly frequent since compound interest procs all the time and has a tiny tiny duration so you can't sit on it.

I keep getting confused by peoples comments, its like they're only commenting on the baseline of the spec and not paying attention to any of the additional mechanics that potentially change how you play, compound interest being the biggest one. It seems to be going completely under the radar even though its easily the most if not one of the most powerful things in our kit.

Well I'm not sure if you saw my post on the prior page, but as I said, there is a good chance I've been playing this whole thing wrong or woefully out of date (i've looked through plenty of logs and this thread to be fair). So I'm not here staking a claim other than just asking "how does this damn thing work".

My issue is this. Look at Chromatic anomaly. I'm not sure if you did it, but the fight works like this. There is one boss. Every minute and a half lets say it spawns one 35m HP add we need to blow up reasonably fast. It occasionally spawns like 8 small adds that get AoE'd to death before we can get more than a seed off.

So we go into the fight. We start with one shard. We throw up agony and corruption on boss. We get a CI proc, we throw up UA. We probably have a couple of shards by now, but we're sitting on them because we know what's coming. About 30 seconds in, Big Add #1 spawns. It needs to be taken out of the fight fast, so we stack up UA's on it, maybe even using Soul Harvest to get more. CI is probably procing in here since we have Agony and Corruption on two targets now. Add dies. It's not a 1 target fight for 2 minutes. So now do I only ever throw UA up whenever CI procs? Do I sit on shards when it doesn't proc to stack it up when it does?

I guess that's what I'm getting at. The above is the scenario that I just feel like I'm missing some basic situational rules for. Now to be fair, when i was doing it, I wasn't watching CI at all. I guess I'm wondering now how much of CI is like the "go" flag to cast UA.

Sorry if this has been covered, but I'd figure I'd ask.

[Baconeggcheese]

I guess that's what I'm getting at. The above is the scenario that I just feel like I'm missing some basic situational rules for. Now to be fair, when i was doing it, I wasn't watching CI at all. I guess I'm wondering now how much of CI is like the "go" flag to cast UA.

Sorry if this has been covered, but I'd figure I'd ask.

With current tuning CI is up to 75% additional damage if it manages to get to 5 stacks, so I'd say its a fairly significant "go" flag being each individual stack is 15% dmg.

Dumping UA's on a target in the manner you describe likely going to be more about the encounter than what's optimal for dps. You'd sacrifice dps for the burst on the target if it was needed (making sure that you don't just keep stacking ua's on a target when its going to die before it ticks). I've suggested to them a bunch of times that they should really put haunt and drain soul on different talent rows for that exact situation as it'd give us an answer to it. Priority add spawns > 1 or 2 ua's > haunt > drain soul > get 2 shards back and haunt reset when target dies > go to next target. Unfortunately they're both on the same row and we'd have to have a fight reaaaally cater to haunt or drain soul to use them over WiA.

Situational rules are going to depend on tuning at the end of the day, so its best to just imagine the situation out now based on the mechanics and how they're looking like they'll play out. Also have to just accept that each spec has its strengths and weaknesses its not going to be able to cope with. Aff still doesn't look like its going to be very effective at fast target swaps or burst aoe and I don't imagine blizzard is looking to change that.

[Skroe]

That's supremely helpful. I'll give that a go next testing and let you know! Thanks a ton!

[Deleted]

I have some questions regarding CI:

- does it interact with Reap Souls?
- does it stack? EDIT: ok, it does - does it stack & reset duration, or are the ticks separate or what?
- how long is the buff?
- on a single target fight, are we limited by CI uptime or by shards, i.e. do we have more UAs to cast than CI procs, or more procs than UAs? how about 2 targets? 3?

These are fairly basic, apologies.

[Fearsom1992]

idk if it works with reap soul but tech it should because its a passive all i know is all 3 dots snap shot

[Baconeggcheese]

- does it interact with Reap Souls?

Haven't tested but I don't see why it wouldn't since reap souls is all encompassing.

I imagine the question is how it interacts, does it double the damage or does it double the proc chance or even both, I'd wager just the proc chance.

- does it stack? EDIT: ok, it does - does it stack & reset duration, or are the ticks separate or what?

it stacks and resets duration. I don't know what you mean by ticks separate as its just a buff you consume when casting ua.

- how long is the buff?

5 seconds iirc

- on a single target fight, are we limited by CI uptime or by shards, i.e. do we have more UAs to cast than CI procs, or more procs than UAs? how about 2 targets? 3?

Time will tell as they could still change it. I haven't tested thoroughly enough to give a concrete answer since both are RNG.

[Deleted]

Thank you for the info! By separate ticks I meant like this: CI procs, 2s later procs again, now you have 3 seconds left of 2xCI and then the first falls off and you have 2s left of single CI. Nevermind.

Btw 5s is a really short window! How often do you have enough procs to actually stack it up? I'm guessing it's a bit of a roulette: consume CI now or wait 2 seconds to try and get another proc to stack it more.

Btw do we know if dots on effigy count normally for CI, making Effigy basically double our CI proc rate on single tgt?

[garonne]

you have roughly 5-7 ticks of dots during a UA duration, each having 10% chance to proc it. depending on your lag you'd probably want to use it at 2 secs left if stacks are less than 5. this sound about right to you @Baconeggcheese ?

- - - Updated - - -

Btw do we know if dots on effigy count normally for CI, making Effigy basically double our CI proc rate on single tgt?

this is a very good question, this would make effigy more desireable than originally thought.

[wholol]

Ah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The spread pressure theorycrafting I was doing was largely based on Soul Swap copy pasting, so I can throw that out the window . Sort of disappointed but largely understandable, it'd be too strong if it copy pasted your stacks and too weak if it only took one of them.

Would like to hear more about Affli for pvp on alpha, if there's anything interesting in particular? Did you try (assuming 3s for this one) doing halfsies on UA stacks? Half of the stacks in a row on the main target, the remaining ones (+ soul conduit procs?) on the healer? I don't exactly know why I feel this'd be effective, but you never know.

You'll find most answers to your pvp related questions here : http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17611003452

The guy ( not me ) pretty much sums up everything going on about affliction pvp.

[Deleted]

you have roughly 5-7 ticks of dots during a UA duration, each having 10% chance to proc it. depending on your lag you'd probably want to use it at 2 secs left if stacks are less than 5. this sound about right to you

Assuming 7 dot ticks during a CI window, here's muh naive math: the chance of it NOT re-proccing again is 0.9^7, which is almost 50%. So you have a 50/50 chance to gain a stack of CI. Meaning that, on average, 50% of your CIs will become 2-stack, 25% 3-stack etc, up to 6% CIs refreshing themselves all the way to 5. With twice the ticks per CI window, the chance for a CI to refresh jumps up to 75% (14 ticks w/ 10% chance per tick), thus 75% of your CIs will be 2-stack, all the way down to 35% (0.77^4) of your CIs reaching 5 stacks. With 3 targets, it's 62% of CIs reaching 5. And w/ 4 targets, the chance is 81.5%.
Seems like we can snowball quite terribly at multidot fights more than ever, esp if we consider that my silly math doesn't take into consideration Reap Souls potentially doubling the proc chance.

BUT! WoW isn't naive when it comes to things like that, under the hood. There are, I'm sure, some things going on like with the Agony ticks generating shards, where it's not a real % chance/tick at all. So, is there streak protection for CI? Is there cap protection for CI? I feel these are questions someone wiser than me could ask in the theorycrafting thread.

Or am I overthinking this or sth, or just plain wrong? (I'm thinking this is a lot of ticks per 5s, so the assumptions might be wrong, still, the difference between 1 and several targets should be huge)

[Canitank]

Not done with raid testing, but I decided to have a bit of a play around with the target dummy on Alpha. Only level 105, but I have unlocked the Compound Interest trait.

- does it interact with Reap Souls?

From what I can tell Compound Interest DOES interact with Reap Souls, but only doubling the proc chance and not the damage. UA only gains the 10% extra damage buff from Reap Souls. I'm only level 105, but I have Compound Interest unlocked so unbuffed UA ticked for 14.7k, stacks of Compound Interest was 25.7k and 5 stacks + Reap Souls active was 28.3k, but with Reap Souls up the tool tip on Compound Interest changes from 10% to 20%.

- does it stack? EDIT: ok, it does - does it stack & reset duration, or are the ticks separate or what?
- how long is the buff?

It stacks to 5 for a total of 75% extra damage for the UA cast and stacks are consumed on cast. The buff lasts for 10 seconds.

- on a single target fight, are we limited by CI uptime or by shards, i.e. do we have more UAs to cast than CI procs, or more procs than UAs? how about 2 targets? 3?

To be honest I have been taking Soul Effigy for ST because it seems as though the Agony and Corruption on the Effigy also contribute to Compound Interest stacks. With my limited testing on the dummy it seems like I'm sitting at 4+ shards waiting to get a 5 stacks of CI.

I'm also not sure what is the intention with Reap Souls. I should probably report the issue, but if I test on the dummy inside the Dreadscar Class Hall it consumes my stacks on use but if I am out in the open world/ test in shrine or Org it does not consume the stacks and I can maintain almost 100% uptime on the buff.

[dholland662]

I've been away for a while. Is the spec looking good or do we need to complain to Blizzard more?

I keep seeing comments in other threads here about how Affliction is bad, bad, bad

[Baconeggcheese]

I've been away for a while. Is the spec looking good or do we need to complain to Blizzard more?

I keep seeing comments in other threads here about how Affliction is bad, bad, bad

Frankly unless they allow us to catch up all 3 of our artifacts reasonably quick or over tune it I don't see a reason to spec it over the other two. It's not that its going to be particularly terrible, it just has the same weaknesses its always had. So if you had to stick with a single spec aff wouldn't be advisable.

It's also got the "issue" of having really short duration dots, which frankly I don't think the average player is gonna be able to manage well.

[dholland662]

Frankly unless they allow us to catch up all 3 of our artifacts reasonably quick or over tune it I don't see a reason to spec it over the other two. It's not that its going to be particularly terrible, it just has the same weaknesses its always had. So if you had to stick with a single spec aff wouldn't be advisable.

It's also got the "issue" of having really short duration dots, which frankly I don't think the average player is gonna be able to manage well.

Bah. Well ty

Oh well. Hopefully disuse will encourage them to work on it better.

It seems like its been in a rut for a while but was never bad enough to justify large changes from Blizz'a POV

Seems like they had the right idea though in many cases. Having a buff or proc from killing an enemy (WoC) would rectify Affliction's biggest weakness while keeping in touch with the spec and not overshadowing the others.

However target switching is too common to simply be bad at.

[garonne]

a rough 21% increase on dot damage

[Deleted]

a rough 21% increase on dot damage

drain soul and drain life got buffed too, but i assume that is technically dots as well.

[Deleted]

Still nothing on artifact traits though. The two traits that are activated by killing something are pure rubbish ;/

I mean they should be good for add fights, but we suck on add fights. Or am I wrong and Haunt (for sniping weak adds) or DS (for killing mid-hp adds) are actually viable with the traits etc?