So, seems I've hit a wall.

[planetofjunk]

Before I begin,I would like to take a moment to iterate that this isn't a thread complaining about the current state of warlocks, it is just a few questions from one warlock to another.

I've been playing since legion release and decided to dabble in the new demonology for leveling and grinding out my starting gear, as I did so I became increasingly aware that the spec did alot of single target damage and not so much aoe, at least the cookie cutter build. When mythic + released(it required alot more cleave and aoe) I switched to destro and have been riding the destro train ever since. In the beginning I was able to top overall dmg meters and compete very well on most ST fights, life was good. I ran tons of mythic + with my friends and was highly sought after to complete most dungeons. Raids were even better, I enjoyed high ST dmg on the demo fights and the awesome cleave destro brings(I stay away from affliction mainly because I do not like the soul effigy talent , but also because destro and demo have similar stat weights.) Fast forward to today, My friends and all their characters have caught up and mostly bypassed me on all mythic plus dungeons, as the dps benchmarks have risen what once was great is barely acceptable. I have fallen far behind, and as we run mythic + dungeons at high levels , I'm not quite sure what to do. I've become the "uhh we can bring you to +14 because your warlock doesn't do enough dmg" and for the most part they are right. So, sorry for the wall of text, but the question is, do I switch to affliction or demo? Have any other warlocks found more success with those specs in high mythic plus? I've been thinking about demo with implosion , I don't really think I have the right gear for affliction. I am currently 880 equipped with feretory of souls and boots legendaries( I am at the 31% haste 21% crit sweet spot). I average anywhere from 340k-380k dps overall in high level mythic plus as destro. Should I think about switching? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Sorry posting from phone.
TL;DR
Started demo, switched to destro for mythic + cleave and had great success. Friends caught up and surpassed me recently, wondering if affliction or demo can be better overall in m+.

[Walrock]

Could you please edit your second part for a more pleasant reading experience?
I can't read it without getting headache...

[evertonbelmontt]

I haven't done more than +13 m+ but up to +13, I can tell you that afflic ST is higher than destro and aoe can be much better. In my experience, if you think pure dmg (overall) afflic will win in:

Nelth (starts with 12 souls and 5 stacks of wrath in all bosses, for the first once you get down the waterfall, kill fish to keep stacks of wrath and free souls).

VoW: lots of aoe and weak mobs that inflates your dps but are actually tough on +13, movement from boss is a non issue to afflic there.

Arcway: same as VoW, but afflic scales better with the "demon" (if you know what i'm saying)

Court: same as VoW, and better use of buffs there.

Now to the gameplay: affixes like volcanic can make destro unplayable (at least for me, can't stand canceling a 3sec cast everytime) and bolster makes you best m+ build as destro very unreliable (FnB build)

Afflic has amazing self heal and surv, less movement headache and you can take advantage of some fight mecanics (totems in nelth 2nd boss gives wrath once he's "found", corruption them and get free 20% boost from reap)

Destro on the other hand is very consistent on Halls of Valor and DHT since packs are usually 3 mobs of medium health.

DRH: afflic can get very high numbers on the stair part of the instance for more overall dmg and is much better for last boss.

TL;DR: I really like afflic for high m+ rather than destro and I showed you why, but if it's better or not I can't say, I geared towards afflic and improved/played a lot on it to compare to my destro spec nowdays.

[Laqweeta]

Could you please edit your second part for a more pleasant reading experience?
I can't read it without getting headache...

You must be dyslexic then because I read the entire thing without problem.

[Walrock]

You must be dyslexic then because I read the entire thing without problem.

It's a metaphor, saying his formatting is shit..
Not in an insulting way, it just looks like a messy wall of text, maybe discouraging people to even start reading.

But evertonbelmontt already gave a good answer, +1

[wowaccounttom]

It's a metaphor,

......o rly? i dont think it means what you think it means


but yes.. the 2nd part could use some formatting

[Walrock]

......o rly? i dont think it means what you think it means


but yes.. the 2nd part could use some formatting

Yeah i know it's not really a metaphor but you get my point.

[Skrubba]

I haven't done more than +13 m+ but up to +13, I can tell you that afflic ST is higher than destro and aoe can be much better. In my experience, if you think pure dmg (overall) afflic will win in:

Nelth (starts with 12 souls and 5 stacks of wrath in all bosses, for the first once you get down the waterfall, kill fish to keep stacks of wrath and free souls).

VoW: lots of aoe and weak mobs that inflates your dps but are actually tough on +13, movement from boss is a non issue to afflic there.

Arcway: same as VoW, but afflic scales better with the "demon" (if you know what i'm saying)

Court: same as VoW, and better use of buffs there.

Now to the gameplay: affixes like volcanic can make destro unplayable (at least for me, can't stand canceling a 3sec cast everytime) and bolster makes you best m+ build as destro very unreliable (FnB build)

Afflic has amazing self heal and surv, less movement headache and you can take advantage of some fight mecanics (totems in nelth 2nd boss gives wrath once he's "found", corruption them and get free 20% boost from reap)

Destro on the other hand is very consistent on Halls of Valor and DHT since packs are usually 3 mobs of medium health.

DRH: afflic can get very high numbers on the stair part of the instance for more overall dmg and is much better for last boss.

TL;DR: I really like afflic for high m+ rather than destro and I showed you why, but if it's better or not I can't say, I geared towards afflic and improved/played a lot on it to compare to my destro spec nowdays.

Hey man what are your talent setups, generally speaking? Do you run SOS or SL? Is SE mandatory?

[evertonbelmontt]

Hey man what are your talent setups, generally speaking? Do you run SOS or SL? Is SE mandatory?

SE is mandatory, yeah.

As for StS vs SL, it's personal preference and composition. If you're AoE heavy (DH, shaman) you want to consider going SL, except for Arcway and Nelth, IMO.

[Norzaki]

I have not tried higher than +11 on my affliction warlock, however starting from +6, StS is a bad choice over SL IMHO (even in Arcway)

Also, I'm not using SE on M+ at all. The only place I'm using SE is on raids where bosses take much longer time to kill. In m+ I'm having better success with SC instead of SE (for UA spamming).
On my affli warlock I often end up as top dps even on single target in M+ (ex. doing over 600k DPS on Ivanyr > +7 with heroism and around 500k DPS him without heroism).

Note: affli scales really well with artifact level and mine is almost 37 (about 20% left to 37). Trying to do affli with low level artifact will only give you a lot of disappointments about your DPS. With high level artifact and relatively high gear level - affli is quite capable of having top/high DPS position in raids and M+.

[TravelDude]

With Feretory of Souls and Odr cloak +10++ goes really smooth. Nothing like grabbing packs, Immolating them all. Then having constant belt procs for rain of fire over and over. Its lovely. Keep up the grind!

[Deleted]

I have not tried higher than +11 on my affliction warlock, however starting from +6, StS is a bad choice over SL IMHO (even in Arcway)

Also, I'm not using SE on M+ at all. The only place I'm using SE is on raids where bosses take much longer time to kill. In m+ I'm having better success with SC instead of SE (for UA spamming).
On my affli warlock I often end up as top dps even on single target in M+ (ex. doing over 600k DPS on Ivanyr > +7 with heroism and around 500k DPS him without heroism).

Note: affli scales really well with artifact level and mine is almost 37 (about 20% left to 37). Trying to do affli with low level artifact will only give you a lot of disappointments about your DPS. With high level artifact and relatively high gear level - affli is quite capable of having top/high DPS position in raids and M+.

wonder how that is possible, according to sims affliction ST is complete shit

[starji]

wonder how that is possible, according to sims affliction ST is complete shit

Being able to maintain dots on the move helps a lot. Aff could drop drain life entirely from the rotation and still do 90-95% of their normal damage on single target, so long as they still had a chance to dump shards with UA (assuming you're using the Writhe, Absolute, Siphon, Supremacy, Effigy talents. Other talent choices would make it harder to maintain dps while moving).

Still, I'm not too sure Ivanyr is a good example of a single target damage fight (esp if you're the only ranged and can nab all the far away haste buffs). Dresaron, King Deepbeard, Wrath of Azshara, and Hymdall all seem better with varying degrees of movement and no crazy strong fight buffs.

[Norzaki]

wonder how that is possible, according to sims affliction ST is complete shit

Sims shows raid boss fight that starts with 3 shards and without reap stacks (which is usual during progression).
On M+ fight you always start with 12 reap stacks (1 minute reap) and 5 shards. During that minute you usually get 4-5 more reap stacks. If your group doesn't suck - you kill boss while having reap 100% uptime. 600k dps on st with heroism and 500k on st without heroism is quite usual.

[Deleted]

Sims shows raid boss fight that starts with 3 shards and without reap stacks (which is usual during progression).
On M+ fight you always start with 12 reap stacks (1 minute reap) and 5 shards. During that minute you usually get 4-5 more reap stacks. If your group doesn't suck - you kill boss while having reap 100% uptime. 600k dps on st with heroism and 500k on st without heroism is quite usual.

600k dps with heroism would imply that the boss dies EXACTLY when herosim runs out, which on higher m+ is just not possible atm. Affliction is fine for everything below m+7, above that i wouldnt want to play affliction to be honest.

[Norzaki]

600k dps with heroism would imply that the boss dies EXACTLY when herosim runs out, which on higher m+ is just not possible atm. Affliction is fine for everything below m+7, above that i wouldnt want to play affliction to be honest.

That was strange conclusion about "EXACTLY"... wonder where did you pull it off? and put it in all caps.

M+ bosess above +7 until +11 (what I usually do) usually die faster than 1m30s. 600k dps means that during heroism affliction warlock DPS was above near 700k.
as for +7 to +11 - I'm doing at least one +10 or higher per week for weekly chest (not really farming high level M+). Usually end up as top DPS on most bosses with above 500k DPS being usual ST M+7-10 bosses.

[Deleted]

That was strange conclusion about "EXACTLY"... wonder where did you pull it off? and put it in all caps.

M+ bosess above +7 until +11 (what I usually do) usually die faster than 1m30s. 600k dps means that during heroism affliction warlock DPS was above near 700k.
as for +7 to +11 - I'm doing at least one +10 or higher per week for weekly chest (not really farming high level M+). Usually end up as top DPS on most bosses with above 500k DPS being usual ST M+7-10 bosses.

I am really curios what talent/trinket/Legendary setup you have for pulling that much st dps. I honestly just cant believe it. Would really appreciate logs.

[Norzaki]

I am really curios what talent/trinket/Legendary setup you have for pulling that much st dps. I honestly just cant believe it. Would really appreciate logs.

Here is my warlock on wowprogress:
http://www.wowprogress.com/character...ermoon/Norzaki

Standard sims DPS for 10 minutes fight is giving 415k. First 1.5 minutes of the fight in Sims is giving around 550k DPS. If you add 12 stacks of reap and 5 shards and couple of wrath stacks (at the start) to sims, reduce fight duriation to 1.5 minutes, it will give something above 600k DPS.

[Skylarking]

That was strange conclusion about "EXACTLY"... wonder where did you pull it off? and put it in all caps.

M+ bosess above +7 until +11 (what I usually do) usually die faster than 1m30s. 600k dps means that during heroism affliction warlock DPS was above near 700k.
as for +7 to +11 - I'm doing at least one +10 or higher per week for weekly chest (not really farming high level M+). Usually end up as top DPS on most bosses with above 500k DPS being usual ST M+7-10 bosses.

For your M+ runs are you running single target talents or AoE talents?

[Tuskchi]

gotta love all the wrath babies writting Destro ... does it sound cooler or smt? rofl