[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Deleted]

Hello guys, I recently switched from destro to aff, currently 49 points. I Have read most guides but I feel I am doing something wrong, currently progressing on mythic star auger, some attempts im at 750k but most im below 600k.
Our logs are private but ill try to log an attempt or a boss on LFR at some point.
my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kromarz/simple

If you guys could take a look at it and let me know if I am doing something wrong or any mistakes, I really should be doing more than this IMO.

Thanks in advance

[Fearzigdots]

Alright i have a question about Simcraft. I regularly SIM different gearsetups to see what is the most DPS gain. To do that i just import the data out of the game using the SimC Addon and then import it in SimC and hit simulate. So i use the standard setting in SimC, which is a Patchwerk-style fight without Scaling enabled. My question is: should i enable Scaling or does SimC automatically use the appropriate scaling factors for your specific class and spec?? Once i simmed with scaling enabled just to see what happened and it gave me statpriority's that are almost identical to the statpriority for Affliction, so that's why i was wondering. So in other words, do i need to enable scaling and adjust the statpriority manually in order to get the best SIM Results for my gear or can i just SIM all possible gearcombinations i have (like i did) and just go with the one that Simmed the highest DPS without enabling Scaling?

For example, when i sim 2 different gear setups (both with the same trinkets and legendaries) WITHOUT enabling Scaling i get:

Setup 1: 16% Crit, 16% Haste, 131% Mastery, 1% Vers and 48075 Int = 650k DPS
Setup 2: 21% Crit, 14% Haste, 113% Mastery, 4% Vers and 48075 Int = 663k DPS

And these results are what surprise me because Mastery is supposed to be valued higher than Crit and yet the Simulation says that a loss of 18% Mastery in favor of a Crit gain of 5% result in a higher overal DPS???!!!!!

[Rorixis]

So I got my 4th legendary and the first 2 were demo and now I have prydaz+burning wish for my other specs and I wanted to put a bit more time into affli, mainly for dngeons but also some for raiding so I've been trying to figure out what the best talent combinations are. Now obviously malefic grasp and supremacy are not important discussing but I feel like the other 3 rows have a lot of combinations that can be strong (the synergy between contagion and soul conduit seems obvious for one) so I tried simming combinations (I included some with triple seeds to see the damage loss for dungeon bosses)



So for me the best Soul Conduit setup comes in at #5 heavily outclassed by effigy talents, even beaten by a high variance option in Contagion+Soul Harvest+Effigy.

So I'm wondering why exactly so many high damage logs include soul conduit when it seems to be significantly worse?

[Deleted]

Because (1) it's much easier to screw up Soul Effigy than Soul Conduit and (2) for some bosses Soul Effigy is a total pain in the arse and not worth using even if it would be hpothetically better. Obvoius examples of these would be Chromatic Anomaly where the room is very large and you move enough to put it out of range or Tichondrous where the fucking thing despawns when you go through a bat phase and then out again

Sims are only a useful guide. Soul Effigy demands more perfection and will punish you for a mistake; Conduit is just easier to get right and particularly if you're doing a progression boss and you get distracted by what's going on around you. It's always been the case that many players will get a better result by using a more forgiving talent build than they would using a talent build that sims highest but gets fucked up because you're a human and not a computer which neve rgets anything wrong and can time things to microseconds.

Also I believe I;m correct in saying that Effigy builds benefit a lot from the tier 4-set becaus eof the increased shard procs off Agony, and they finally amended Effigy so that it has the full normal chance to proc shards from Agony (whereas before it had a reduced procrate unique to Effigy as a target). It's possible some of those high logs were players who didn't have the Tier 4-sets

[Lucrece]

You look at top ranks for affliction and it's mostly soul conduit and contagion, for good reason. It's all about UA empowerment. Soul Effigy's value goes down the less dots you invest on it, and since Siphon Life/Corruption suck so badly (they're just terrible, as is Agony pre-10 stacks; our 3 dots outside UA do less damage than Vampiric Touch+SWP combined), it's a lot of effort trying to maintain soul effigy in Elisande/Gul'dan/Anomaly with the constant shifting of bosses from one opposite side to another, and you sacrifice even more drain soul uptime on UA while trying not to lose that already with all the movement those fights involve.

With MG Aff's niche has shifted to a ST boss spec anyways.

[Orwell7]

So I'm wondering why exactly so many high damage logs include soul conduit when it seems to be significantly worse?

Those logs would be even better with SE.
The easiest way to track this is to look up how many drain cycles is being cast. How much the lock stood still with 0-1 shards unable to drain properly? How much Contagion uptime lost?
Check on shards gained from SC, and when did they come - with a few lucky procs I can easily find myself sitting at 4 shards, doing 2xUA and still at 4. A few seconds later I'm at 5 in the middle of a drain, and I need to do a suboptimal 3xUA drain cycle just to not overcap.
With SE, you get a miniscule damage from another 35% agony the whole fight, but the point is the increased shard generation, but this generation is a lot smoother than SC's luck.

(I hate luck)

On the downside, SE is a lot easier to fup by positioning. A maximum crit from a 10xAgony on SE is not much more than an average hit from Corruption, so letting it drop is not a big waste.

- - - Updated - - -

You look at top ranks for affliction and it's mostly soul conduit and contagion, for good reason. It's all about UA empowerment. Soul Effigy's value goes down the less dots you invest on it, and since Siphon Life/Corruption suck so badly (they're just terrible, as is Agony pre-10 stacks; our 3 dots outside UA do less damage than Vampiric Touch+SWP combined), it's a lot of effort trying to maintain soul effigy in Elisande/Gul'dan/Anomaly with the constant shifting of bosses from one opposite side to another, and you sacrifice even more drain soul uptime on UA while trying not to lose that already with all the movement those fights involve.

With MG Aff's niche has shifted to a ST boss spec anyways.

You don't play with SE properly then.
Just maintain Agony on it and nothing more. Ofc you have to find a good position for SE, but for Elisande and Gul'Dan you can drop it somewhere in the middle and you can reach it from everywhere. Chronomatic Anomaly is not a good boss for SE, tho.
The main point of SE is the shard regen!

[Lucrece]

Those logs would be even better with SE.
The easiest way to track this is to look up how many drain cycles is being cast. How much the lock stood still with 0-1 shards unable to drain properly? How much Contagion uptime lost?
Check on shards gained from SC, and when did they come - with a few lucky procs I can easily find myself sitting at 4 shards, doing 2xUA and still at 4. A few seconds later I'm at 5 in the middle of a drain, and I need to do a suboptimal 3xUA drain cycle just to not overcap.
With SE, you get a miniscule damage from another 35% agony the whole fight, but the point is the increased shard generation, but this generation is a lot smoother than SC's luck.

(I hate luck)

On the downside, SE is a lot easier to fup by positioning. A maximum crit from a 10xAgony on SE is not much more than an average hit from Corruption, so letting it drop is not a big waste.

- - - Updated - - -



You don't play with SE properly then.
Just maintain Agony on it and nothing more. Ofc you have to find a good position for SE, but for Elisande and Gul'Dan you can drop it somewhere in the middle and you can reach it from everywhere. Chronomatic Anomaly is not a good boss for SE, tho.
The main point of SE is the shard regen!

Yeah, everybody knows with MG you just keep Agony on it.

You won't reach SE in some instances when tanks decide to pull to other range edge of the room to keep the singularities away from center (and you're expected as range to be hugging walls before singularities come out), even if you pop it right by the Nightwell it can sometimes be out of range, or when you go soak orbs on the opposite side of the room. You either end up renewing early for the agony not to fall of effigy, which is a loss of globals over time..

With gul'dan you're better off without SE anyways since you're taking sow the seeds there. You can put effigy on center and still be out of range from it when you get knocked out for bonds.

It's a 4% difference as per Gahdo, 4% is nothing given the practical limitations. Same reason destro warlocks ACTUALLY parse higher without running roaring blaze or CDF and stick to a BD-SC build.

[Deleted]

So i have a stat-related question. So far i am currently geared with the following stats:
Int: 46910
Crit: 17,20%
Haste: 14,53%
Mastery: 125,05
Vers: 2,13%
I have the T19 4-set and i have the Gul'dan Trinket and the Helya Int/Mastery trinket and i have two worthless Legendarys in terms of direct dps increase (Pants, Boots)

I have simmed a lot of setups, including switching with Trinkets like Star Gate, Pheramore Grimoire etc. But i always end up with this setup being the strongest, although the difference is always only like 2-6k dps in SIMC. But i have the idea that my Crit and Haste are a bit low compared to a lot of Highprogress Guild Warlocks that have over 20% Crit. Should i keep this setup or maybe try to aim for more Crit and Haste at a loss of Mastery?? Your advise would be much appreciated.

You don't have Arcanocrystal.

Only people with arcanocrystal have really amazing stats. Your stats are fine. The problem is that arcanocrystal is too strong and people with bad RNG are punished for it.

[Necropotence]

Newbie warlock here - hope it's okay to ask a very basic question here. My other alts are all melee, but I really like dot classes and am trying to make this work. I'm just a little stumped right now comparing my 868 lock with my 870 DH. Both have just one legendary, neither of which are a DPS increase.

Practicing on the raid dummy - My DH single target bursts for about 700k at the start of the fight...and then tapers off to 350k before the next metamorphosis comes off CD. Meanwhile my warlock with a MG/AC/SL/Effigy build starts off a bit slow, gets to about 320k and then just sits there. Given that affliction warlock legendaries are not that game breaking...do they just scale really well with gear? I am currently only at 83% mastery and have seen 120% as a nice target to aim for...just looking for some guidance on whether you start to see a nice damage spike once you get to a certain gear level.

[Zaroch]

So for me the best Soul Conduit setup comes in at #5 heavily outclassed by effigy talents, even beaten by a high variance option in Contagion+Soul Harvest+Effigy.

So I'm wondering why exactly so many high damage logs include soul conduit when it seems to be significantly worse?

Reason for that is; you can get extremely lucky with Soul Conduit in a fight and do much more dps than what you would do with a Soul Effigy build. And it only takes one pull to get lucky enough to beat all SE builds in the rankings.

So the reason you are seeing so many more SC builds above SE in rankings is because those people got good RNG on those pulls and also what other people said; Soul Effigy is harder to pull off.

[Gohzerlock]

You don't have Arcanocrystal.

Only people with arcanocrystal have really amazing stats. Your stats are fine. The problem is that arcanocrystal is too strong and people with bad RNG are punished for it.

You don't get punished too bad since the boss is up every few months to farm for one chance at it.

[SpikeySquad]

Newbie warlock here - hope it's okay to ask a very basic question here. My other alts are all melee, but I really like dot classes and am trying to make this work. I'm just a little stumped right now comparing my 868 lock with my 870 DH. Both have just one legendary, neither of which are a DPS increase.

Practicing on the raid dummy - My DH single target bursts for about 700k at the start of the fight...and then tapers off to 350k before the next metamorphosis comes off CD. Meanwhile my warlock with a MG/AC/SL/Effigy build starts off a bit slow, gets to about 320k and then just sits there. Given that affliction warlock legendaries are not that game breaking...do they just scale really well with gear? I am currently only at 83% mastery and have seen 120% as a nice target to aim for...just looking for some guidance on whether you start to see a nice damage spike once you get to a certain gear level.

There's no soft caps so it's not a true spike but yes your mastery is way too low for your DoTs to hit decently at this point in time. Also get your 35 points in your arty level if you haven't yet.

[Deleted]

You don't play with SE properly then.
Just maintain Agony on it and nothing more. Ofc you have to find a good position for SE, but for Elisande and Gul'Dan you can drop it somewhere in the middle and you can reach it from everywhere. Chronomatic Anomaly is not a good boss for SE, tho.
The main point of SE is the shard regen!

Indeed, is it not a symbol of bad design where Soul Effigy has no use other than a shard generator? I agree that for most fights SoulEffigy is usable by correct positioning, and whilst Elisande and Guldan are large rooms with lots of movement, you can drop Effigy right in the middle and stay in range for the most part.

It's quite hopeless for Anomaly and Tichondrous though. The Anomaly room is way too big and the middle is blocked, the the Tichondrous phases cause Effigy to despawn

Luce is quite correct though, Shadow Priests are way better at multidotting than we are, even if you take Writhe. Priest dots are not only more powerful but whilst affliction has to sweat it;s tits off manually reapplying them, a SP just dumps dot son everything and refreshes them all with one ability.

also, remember that Conduit builds can push very high numbers if there's a short fight and you get lucky with RNG shard procs. Effigy builds take more time but should proc more shards over a given period on average, the longer thatis the more this effect will show, particularly if you have the T19 4-set

[Rorixis]

Reason for that is; you can get extremely lucky with Soul Conduit in a fight and do much more dps than what you would do with a Soul Effigy build. And it only takes one pull to get lucky enough to beat all SE builds in the rankings.

So the reason you are seeing so many more SC builds above SE in rankings is because those people got good RNG on those pulls and also what other people said; Soul Effigy is harder to pull off.

Surely the sim would show that variance then?

[Sunlighthell]

They actually nerfed this shitty t20 bonus on ptr, guess it's another "double down on strengths"

[jba252]

SE/AC, Con/SE, or Con/SC for krosus mythic? Thoughts?

[Sunlighthell]

SE/AC, Con/SE, or Con/SC for krosus mythic? Thoughts?

Tried all those builds. Come to conclusion that it really doesn't matter which of those builds you play because damage output is the same. Fight is really rng for locs: standart souls+ shards and also paired with Krosus sphere. SE/AC may be better because of it (more souls/shards, while also dealing more damage while running away with sphere) but on last section of bridge I had issues with reaching effigy (needed to stay on the edge or recast it)

[crysilaero]

SE/AC, Con/SE, or Con/SC for krosus mythic? Thoughts?

IMHO
You should go with Contagion/SE unless you're drowning in shards (too many haste in gear / too many haste procs). If that happens, you should switch to AC/SE.

Keep in mind that most top parses will be from people using Soul Conduit with great RNG, but at the end of the day using SE will grant you a steady and higher overall dps.

[Gohzerlock]

Empowered life tap buff doesn't go away when you talent contagion, does anyone know if this buff is cleared as a boss is pulled?

[Zaroch]

Empowered life tap buff doesn't go away when you talent contagion, does anyone know if this buff is cleared as a boss is pulled?

No it isn't cleared. Just pulled this log;

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...uras&source=24
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...mary&source=24

You can check his build in summary tab, empowered life tap on buffs tab.