[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Jessicka]

With all this contagion talk, do you guys really never use absolute corruption? Is it that much of a loss to use it?

There's talk of using it for AoE with Sow the Seeds, the seeds will refresh it naturally anyway but you might not have many globals left to spray Agonies and UAs around so the damage increase is good. I'm not sure it's a massive loss on fewer targets, but frankly your rotation starts to feel very empty with that kind of build so I've not even tried. If you have the globals and the Shards, it might even be worth using Mana Tap now for 3-5 targets.

[Skaiz]

There's talk of using it for AoE with Sow the Seeds, the seeds will refresh it naturally anyway but you might not have many globals left to spray Agonies and UAs around so the damage increase is good. I'm not sure it's a massive loss on fewer targets, but frankly your rotation starts to feel very empty with that kind of build so I've not even tried. If you have the globals and the Shards, it might even be worth using Mana Tap now for 3-5 targets.

Hmm. That's interesting to think about. I've never used Sow the Seeds myself but always use absolute corruption. Either it be Mythic+ or raids. I can see the argument for contagion on a single target or 3 or fewer fight but at that point it's probably getting busy. I feel like i've "mastered" how affliction works for keeping my flow of a fight with using reap the best I can but am looking for more proven talents to push it as far as I can go. Are there any sims that show Contagion as that key?

[Deleted]

With all this contagion talk, do you guys really never use absolute corruption? Is it that much of a loss to use it?

It's not. And afaik it pulls well ahead on bosses that have "unreachable" phases.

In fact I suspect that one of the reaons they nerfed Contagion was to align it with Absolute Corruption. Classic race to the bottom talent value levelling by Blizz.

[GameFX]

@Skaiz there are no sims - and you should never trust them any way. Check out the top Affliction Warlocks on "warcraftogs" and look at their setups per fight. You're looking at the 2nd tier incorrectly...The second tier is balanced pretty good and its not a check of 1st 2nd 3rd....the second row is more of a play style choice, like Jessicka stated earlier.

If you pick Contagion you basically think of it like the old Haunt. If you pick Absolute Corruption then you will have more free globals which you will mostly be using on Drain (which can also play into your relics and Drained to a Husk).

[Skaiz]

@Skaiz there are no sims - and you should never trust them any way. Check out the top Affliction Warlocks on "warcraftogs" and look at their setups per fight. You're looking at the 2nd tier incorrectly...The second tier is balanced pretty good and its not a check of 1st 2nd 3rd....the second row is more of a play style choice, like Jessicka stated earlier.

If you pick Contagion you basically think of it like the old Haunt. If you pick Absolute Corruption then you will have more free globals which you will mostly be using on Drain (which can also play into your relics and Drained to a Husk).

Yeah thats a great way to put it, it is just like old haunt. I guess it just seems contextual to the fight.

[Bjarkan]

Can you stop repeating this shit about stacking UAs. I'm starting to think you're not actually playing the spec and basing a lot of your comments on assumptions and hearsay; because stacking UAs is not something that happens an awful lot because Soul Shards are such a limiting factor. Please not that in that stacking it, you are wasting Contagion up-time, and blowing off all your Shards at once risks capping out Compounding Horror stacks - both of which are DPS losses; I cannot simply fathom where this idea that stacking UA is even remotely desirable outside of multi-target situations where you have an abundance of Agonies up and want to pump all those UAs into a single target.

Those talents, right there, as well as the old FE design are there precisely to discourage blowing UA like it's an old school Chaos Bolt. The fix to FE is just to fix that you could lose the 1:167 chance of a double proc if it happened to reapply itself while you refreshed manually.

I had something to point out:

Perdition 3/3 (6/3): Increase the critical strike damage of your spells for 10% (20%). (Note: dont know if Reap buff the damage.)

Right now, as the new way to stack UA, our crit chance go up something like 20% from our base crit chance, as each individual UA had chance to crit (something dont happened before because UA stacking mechanic). I dont had the proper konwledge to do the maths to see how much this can be stated as DPS, but i think as how UA works right now, is better to stack as many as possible to take full benefic for it (and not just for Perdition, puppy's Shadow Bite do more damage for this).

And, this synergy of Perdition and UA stacks, make me wonder if Contagion is actually a loss of DPS in long term, as my hold our self for stack UA... Maybe Mana Tap could be a better option, as is more easy to keep the buff and let us stacks some UA for benefic with Perdition and Shadow Bite.

I wont have a chance test this tho, i had to be off for a while, but if someone can tested and share the finding, i guess it would be benefical to all Afflock out there.

[Deleted]

Thanks alot for this guide! Helped a lot...

Just one thing, the raid coming out after ToV isnt called Nightwell. Its called Nighthold. Cheers!

[Blofeld]

What are your experiences from mythic+ so far? I've seen some really good affli locks, and that always cheer me up.

[Skaiz]

What are your experiences from mythic+ so far? I've seen some really good affli locks, and that always cheer me up.

Are you talking about really geared affliction warlocks? or just the spec in general? Affliction is pretty good all around in mythic+ It starts to shine +4 and up do to mob health being higher for your dots to ramp higher

[Joryy]

Your mileage may very, but in my experience

Aff is great for low level M+, but I am very underwhelmed by it in the higher keys.

Darkglare demo and FnB destro also do silly aoe damage, but they don't have to ramp up on trash // sacrifice huge ST damage to do so. When soul flame isn't going crazy, might as well just play a different spec.

[Skaiz]

Your mileage may very, but in my experience

Aff is great for low level M+, but I am very underwhelmed by it in the higher keys.

Darkglare demo and FnB destro also do silly aoe damage, but they don't have to ramp up on trash // sacrifice huge ST damage to do so. When soul flame isn't going crazy, might as well just play a different spec.

It's true. Playing affliction can yield amazing results (in certain situations).. but usually not the best if you want to be "the best" It's a passion project playing affliction usually

[EqualWin]

I kinda hate destro right now, its meh, but i used 99% of my artifacts on it


is affli worth it? for overall mythic etc.

[Deleted]

Affliction is great forlower Mythic+ which are all about spamming AOE

It is also very bad at higher Mythic+ when multiple afflixes mean it is all about tunneled, controlled damage and crowd control. It's stupidity on stilts that affliction doesn;t have shadowfury.

So you have no aoe stun except Meteor Strike, in fact no stun at all except that. You've got feargarbage that breaks or sends things off to come back with frriends. You got dots you can't turn off if oops one mob is getting too low, and even worse you can trigger a Soul Flame. You are useless when you have to tunnel and kill something fast

As usual, high on demand burst wins out over spread damage when it comes to advanced content. Destruction is better.

And both are crap compared to a mage on single-target boss fights.

[Psy]

Soul flame stealth nerfed?

[Flumpus]

I really really hope Blizzard brings back a Malefic Grasp-style effect. Affliction needs that back so badly for single-target. Having your filler give you advanced dot ticks meant the ramp up of Agony was easier to manage on a priority target, and Nightfall procs were more regular. In Affliction's current model, an MG style filler would mean more regular Compounding Horror stacks, more shard generation, and quicker build-up on Agony. All three of those things are the things that become a huge issue in single-target only and target-swap situations, and that's pretty much the only way Blizzard could reasonably fix them without making multidotting even more powerful.

[Walrock]

Soul flame stealth nerfed?

Could you be a little more specific?
What makes you think it was nerfed?

[Deleted]

What with the element of confusion of the Ulthalesh doubling effect due to a lot of the tooltips not updating I thought I would quickly go through them to test that they all actually worked.

As far as I could tell all the multi point traits work, only one I couldn't test was Long dark Night of the Soul which I don't have but I can't see why it would be an exception. Shadowy Incantations and Soulflame both double as you would expect and are two of the few where tooltip actually updates as well.

This seemed to be all the traits that are actually doubling though, from looking at my heroic logs compounding horror and Harvester of Souls both proc at about the rate of 10% and 15% respectively when you would expect significantly higher with reap uptime usually being 40-50%. i thought maybe Harvester would do double damage instead but that doesn't seem to be the case either. I'll have fatal echoes in about a week so I can test that too but judging by the other one point traits I'm not optimistic.

Its a similar story with Wrath of Consumption which is ironically one of the few where the tooltip actually updates to show 4% instead of 2%. I also tried triggering WoC under reap which I saw suggested as something that needed to be done to get the 20% but it seemed to only increase dots by 10% regardless. I also noticed WoC doesn't have any affect on Siphon Life or Phantom Singularity. On a slightly separate note, I don't know if its just something I never noticed but WoC and Soulflame don't seem to trigger purely from being in combat with mobs anymore, you actually need to have done spell damage to them to get the buff/detonation.

[elcapone]

Are you talking about really geared affliction warlocks? or just the spec in general? Affliction is pretty good all around in mythic+ It starts to shine +4 and up do to mob health being higher for your dots to ramp higher

Your mileage may very, but in my experience

Aff is great for low level M+, but I am very underwhelmed by it in the higher keys.

Darkglare demo and FnB destro also do silly aoe damage, but they don't have to ramp up on trash // sacrifice huge ST damage to do so. When soul flame isn't going crazy, might as well just play a different spec.

Could you guys go in more detail the status of affy for higher mythic+ like 8,9, 10. I am planning to level an alt and i use mythic+ to gear and i enjoy it a lot.

[Deleted]

You can make it work but destruction is better because the higher affixes mean you do not just spam aoe, it is more about high targetted damage and control. Affliction really suffer becaus eof one thing: no shadowfury. You have to rely on Meteor Strike. Destruction has shadowfury...and metor strike if essential. Also, dots you can't turnoff and uncontrolled Soul Flames which may kill things unintentionally can be a pain.

[Skaiz]

For artifact talents is it worth going through Drained to a Husk to grab Fatal Echos after I've taken my 3rd golden trait? Or is it still recommended to pick up Perdition?