[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[jtth]

Doesn't matter as long as it's spreading, and you need to channel DL to trigger it right after. If something doesn't have corruption and is in the pack then yes, switch to that.

[Skaiz]

http://downloads.simulationcraft.org..._trinkets.html

Thank you SO much for that list but...... why in the world is a crit WQ item so high. even above haste? I thought crit was pretty much worthless

[Kirroth]

Nitty gritty question about DoT mechanics I'm hoping someone here can answer for me. I'm assuming post-7.1 mechanics here.

So, I know that UA snapshots when cast. It's more of a delayed damage nuke than a true DoT that way. So you need to pop Soul Harvest before you start dumping SS, not after.

Does anyone know if that remains true if you're refreshing a UA stack with the PvP talent Rot and Decay? Basically, do you need to pop Soul Harvest before building the UA 5-stack and then R&D keeps the buffed DoTs rolling, or do you want to build the 5-stack first and then pop Soul Harvest to get the most damage out of it? Being a PvP talent it's a little hard to test alone, though if no one here knows the answer I suppose I can try to grab a friend and duel them for some messier testing.

[Skaiz]

Nitty gritty question about DoT mechanics I'm hoping someone here can answer for me. I'm assuming post-7.1 mechanics here.

So, I know that UA snapshots when cast. It's more of a delayed damage nuke than a true DoT that way. So you need to pop Soul Harvest before you start dumping SS, not after.

Does anyone know if that remains true if you're refreshing a UA stack with the PvP talent Rot and Decay? Basically, do you need to pop Soul Harvest before building the UA 5-stack and then R&D keeps the buffed DoTs rolling, or do you want to build the 5-stack first and then pop Soul Harvest to get the most damage out of it? Being a PvP talent it's a little hard to test alone, though if no one here knows the answer I suppose I can try to grab a friend and duel them for some messier testing.

I'd assume that Rot and decay just extends the currently snapshotted damage and does not modify it's damage. Similar to on live

[Kirroth]

I'd assume that Rot and decay just extends the currently snapshotted damage and does not modify it's damage. Similar to on live

I figure that's the more likely answer, but there's been enough unintuitive mechanics in the game's history that I want to double check. And before I start testing myself I figured it wouldn't hurt to see if anyone else had already done that and save the duplicated effort.

[Deleted]

Terryn states in his updated notes that UA will no longer snapshot.

[Terryn]

@Terryn I hope you keep the work up my man. You are the Internets last source of Affliction information on the internet. Side question here, how can I find my own gear lists? I've never really tinkered with simcraft and would like to see if certain trinkets are alright.

Also, is Bough of corruption any good of a trinket for affliction? Just got a 880 version but im weary of giving up other trinkets that have int and a mastery proc

Bough just got a massive dps boost on PTR. I'd expect it to be pretty good. Idk if they fixed the effect in SIMC yet, but I've seen recount screenshots of it being upwards of 15% of a mage's dps

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Thank you SO much for that list but...... why in the world is a crit WQ item so high. even above haste? I thought crit was pretty much worthless

Perdition is a good trait, especially with a high reap uptime :^)

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Terryn states in his updated notes that UA will no longer snapshot.

Oops. If that's the case it needs a fix. It definitely snapshots, but it no longer has other funky snapshot rules in terms of the re application because each UA is a seperate dot

EDIT: if you read the post, it does say it still snapshots, it's the extra funky haste re-snapshotting business that has been changed.

[Dwill]

Bough just got a massive dps boost on PTR. I'd expect it to be pretty good. Idk if they fixed the effect in SIMC yet, but I've seen recount screenshots of it being upwards of 15% of a mage's dps

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That's some good news, especially since I got the 865 for safe measure when they annouced they would fix them.

Perdition is a good trait, especially with a high reap uptime :^)

Yeah, I've had quite a few sims were crit and haste were neck to neck so I wouldn't be too surprised if crit overcome haste once we reach a certain haste treshold.

[Terryn]

That's some good news, especially since I got the 865 for safe measure when they annouced they would fix them.



Yeah, I've had quite a few sims were crit and haste were neck to neck so I wouldn't be too surprised if crit overcome haste once we reach a certain haste treshold.

That threshold is actually a target threshold and not a haste threshold, and last I saw from gahddo that number is 4 sustained (including effigy)

[Dwill]

That threshold is actually a target threshold and not a haste threshold, and last I saw from gahddo that number is 4 sustained (including effigy)

Since we're taking Soul Conduit at 3+ target without effigy, it's safe to assume then that crit will always be close to haste but never overcome it ?

[Deleted]

Bough just got a massive dps boost on PTR. I'd expect it to be pretty good. Idk if they fixed the effect in SIMC yet, but I've seen recount screenshots of it being upwards of 15% of a mage's dps

Oh dear. If so that's worse than leaving it as it is.

[Jimmyleggs]

The number 1 mythic Ursoc affliction parse seems to have some buggy interaction going on with UA. His UA was almost 40% of his total damage, with a 1 mil max crit tick in there. He is running SC, but it only gave him 12 extra shards in the whole 5 minute fight so there’s no way it’s that impactful.

I’m guessing there some kind of bugged out snapshotting (or perhaps just a glitch log I’m not sure) with Fatal Echoes, as I haven’t seen another log with that trait ever. If you stack a 4 shard UA, I didn’t think that if it procced FE it would roll all that damage back over.

[Skaiz]

Man.. With all this haste/crit talk i'm thinking I've got my stats all wrong. Granted im only 850 on my warlock but I've got like 110+% of mastery and not much of anything else lol. All things considered i'm doing good damage for my item level, but Maybe I'll get some more gains with a bit of focus in other areas

[Dwill]

Man.. With all this haste/crit talk i'm thinking I've got my stats all wrong. Granted im only 850 on my warlock but I've got like 110+% of mastery and not much of anything else lol. All things considered i'm doing good damage for my item level, but Maybe I'll get some more gains with a bit of focus in other areas

Crit starts becoming much better once you have Perdition which is amongst the last trait you get so for now try to aim for at least 20% Haste while working toward 140% Mastery.

[Skaiz]

Crit starts becoming much better once you have Perdition which is amongst the last trait you get so for now try to aim for at least 20% Haste while working toward 140% Mastery.

Yeah working towards the haste while stacking the mastery is a pain. Sadly it's getting hard to get into groups to get that gear being a warlock. I've been kicked from several +mythics once they found out I was affliction.

[Dwill]

Yeah working towards the haste while stacking the mastery is a pain. Sadly it's getting hard to get into groups to get that gear being a warlock. I've been kicked from several +mythics once they found out I was affliction.

Yeah it's much easier to go with your guild but I've found out that if you build your own, people tend to be much less picky about it.

[Deleted]

Bough just got a massive dps boost on PTR. I'd expect it to be pretty good. Idk if they fixed the effect in SIMC yet, but I've seen recount screenshots of it being upwards of 15% of a mage's dps

Just a reminder, mages get shitton of bonus damage for everything :P

[Deleted]

Just a reminder, mages get shitton of bonus damage for everything :P

That might be true, but the item budget for trinkets usually allocates ~3-5% for damage procs, anything surpassing that is a really strong trinket. Mages should also stack the trinket slower than Affliction does. There might also be testing necessary for the trinket benefitting from Reap(and certain traits with Reap).

[Deleted]

I wanna start leveling my affliction artifact, but I'm unsure which path to take. I'd primarily use it for raids, as I'll probably be using demo for mythic+, so I'm wondering whether the suggested path in the guide is right for me (since Terryn states that those gold traits are mainly good for gearing up). Should I go for Harvester of Souls first? And maybe then go down the left as in the guide?

[Deleted]

IMHO that path is pretyt much the one to us eno matter what, the traits he suggests leaving until last are fairly poor regardless

Just be warned, affliction as it stands is really not the spec you want to take to raids