Affliction: Learning to corrupt

[Warlocomotif]

Although the thread title might have bit of a hint of role-playing, that's really not what this thread is about at all. Instead, this thread is aimed to detail the nuances of corruption (The spell), and how to get the most out of this spell as an affliction Warlock. Why does this subject need a separate thread? Don't you just cast it and keep it up? Unfortunately, no. There's a lot more that goes into ideal use of this spell- for the most part due to a bug in the way everlasting affliction works.

You might think, a bug? We'll I'm not going to exploit it! That's really a shame, because you'll be missing out on a ton of DPS, and it's a bug that Blizzard has openly stated they do not consider a real problem / will not fix. Oh and, they also said they wouldn't ban you or anything like that for using this "bug". So really, there's not a lot of good reasons for not making use of this other than not caring too much about your DPS to begin with.

Whether you decide to use this bug or not, know this: Affliction is and will be balanced around how well it performs in the real world. That is, affliction will be balanced around the fact that people do in fact make use of this bug. Blizzard knows about the bug, and they consider the existance of the bug for balance purposes.

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INDEX:
[1] How does it work
[2] Which buffs / debuffs do / don't work
[3] Tips and tricks
[4] Test results / Hard data

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HOW DOES IT WORK:

The basic principle is fairly easy: When you cast a spell, the attributes you had at the time that you casted that spell will be used for that spell until it expires or is replaced by another spell, or even the same spell. The talent "Everlasting affliction" does not replace the corruption you have on a target (if it did then it would also reset the ticks). What everlasting affliction does however is take the existing corruption and change the time left on your current corruption to it's full duration.

Now this has lead to some pretty big issues, and the biggest issues that it lead to have since been resolved. IE: Spellpower and Haste have been "fixed" with some band-aids, the reason I call them band-aids is because it was never a proper fix, if it were then it would've worked for all stats/buffs etc, but it doesn't. So as a result, currently mostly anything other than spellpower and haste will "roll".

[Warlocomotif]

WHICH BUFFS / DEBUFFS, DO / DON'T WORK:

General rules:
- Buffs/debuffs on self roll
- Buffs/debuffs on target update

Exceptions:
- Spellpower / haste update
- Crit % on target does not update
- Certain encounter specific damage % buffs update

Specifics:

- Shadow Embrace:    Updates.
- Curse of the elements: Updates.
- Haste rating:     Updates.
- Haste % player buff:  Updates.
- Spell power:      Updates.
- Crit rating:      Rolls.
- Crit % player buffs:  Rolls.
- Crit % target debuffs: Rolls.
- TotT:         Rolls.
- Death's Embrace:    Rolls.
- 4pc Tier 10 proc:   Rolls.
- Spellstone damage:   Rolls

Things I have not personally tested / do not have test data from:

- [Ulduar] Hodir, Storm Cloud:          Updates.
- [Ulduar] Flame Leviathan, System overload:   Updates.
- [Ulduar] Mimiron, Magnetic Field:       Updates.
- [TotC] Northrend Beasts, Staggered Daze:    Updates.
- [TotC] Twin Valkyrs, Empower light/Darkness:  Updates.
- [Naxxramas] Loatheb, Fungal Creep:       Rolls.
- [Naxxramas] Thaddius, Polarity charges:    Rolls.
- [Ulduar] Yogg-Saron, Sara's Fervor:      Rolls.
- [TotC] Twin Valkyrs, Light/Dark Essence:    Rolls.
- [ICC] Blood Queen, Essence of the Blood Queen: Rolls

Source for the things I did not test / do not have test data from:
http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=23642

[Warlocomotif]

TIPS AND TRICKS:

Nevermelting Ice Crystal:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50259

Depending on the fight, this trinket can out-perform Icecrown Citadel 25 man heroic trinkets. You can get it in Pit of Saron Heroic. This is a very big one.

Weapon swapping:
If the fight is reasonably 'tank and spank', you're unlikely to let corruption drop off, and your weapon does not have a lot of crit- it might be an idea to eep a weapon in your bags with a lot of critical strike rating, use it until you've casted corruption, and then swap to your normal weapons.

Tricks of the Trade:
We all know that rogues will want to TotT eachother, after all- they get TotT from eachother in return. However if you can coaxx one of your rogues to give you just 1 TotT early during the fight, you should be able to get 15% extra damage on corruption throughout the entire fight. I highly recommend power auras or alike to notify you of this buff. Affliction DPS takes a short while to build up, so unless your tanks are terrible this shouldn't lead to theat issues. Note: You'll have to be somewhat near the rogue for this to work.

Pre-combat Potion:
If you use a potion before combat starts, it won't trigger potion illness. Essentially that means you'll be able to use another potion during the fight. So use a wild magic potion as the pull is about to be done, and try get corruption casted while your potion buff is still action.

4pc Tier 10 proc:
If you have this setbonus it might be worth delaying your full corrupted wrath until you get a proc, this will make it harder to synch up with a pre-combat potion- but it's another 10% damage for corruption, which isn't minor. If you'd like to add this to your corruption you might want to consider not popping a pre-combat potion, and instead simply popping the potion before you use corruption. Reason being that although out of combat potions don't trigger potion illness (preventing you from using another potion until combat ends), they do still have a cooldown- meaning that popping a pre-combat potion could well result in not having the buff while potions are on cooldown when you get your first 4xT10 proc.

Focus Magic:
This is a very minor one, so don't worry about it too much if you don't get it (Or don't worry about it at all really); however mages typically trade out focus magic amongst eachothers (Which frankly is silly if they're arcane). If you can get focus magic for long enough to put corruption up you gain a tiny bit extra DPS.

Removing corruption:
Sometimes when you're trying to re-cast corruption (because your current one isn't very powerful and you have some buffs available or whatever), you'll run into "A more powerful spell is already active", this is a huge pain in the ass- however if you really want to, you can remove your currently active corruption by casting seed of corruption instead. This will wipe off your current corruption allowing you to cast a new one.

Let your guild / raid leader know:
If you're going to be doing half of this stuff, you'll need to fairly accurately know when combat is going to start. Make sure you know this, and don't waste 4 potions and a trinket /use just because the raid leader is shooting blanks.

Macro's:
#showtooltip
/cast [btn:2,@focus][mod:shift,@focus][]Spell to refresh corruption
/stopmacro [btn:2]
/focus

#showtooltip Corruption
/use [btn:2]Nevermelting Ice Crystal
/use [btn:2]Potion of Wild Magic
/cast Corruption

[Warlocomotif]

TEST RESULTS & DATA:

General modifiers:

CoE: 13%, Imp Corr: 10%, Shadow Mastery: 15%, Contagion: 5%, Siphon Life: 5%
Emp Corr: 36% spellpower (6% per tick), Everlasting affli: 30% spellpower (5% per tick)

General test setup:
Spellpower: 2763 sp
Base damage: 1080 (180 per tick)
Base Co-efficient: 120% (20% per tick)

Expected damage per tick:
180 + (2763*0.31)=1036.53 (Base damage + spellpower scaling)
1036.53*1.13*1.1*1.15*1.05*1.05=1633.53876 (CoE, Imp Corr, SM, Cont, SL)

Modifiers to test:
- Shadow Embrace, 5% dot damage, 2 stacks
- Death's Embrace: 12%
- Tricks of the Trade, 15% damage
- Crit rating / %

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Corruption does not have a damage range for it's base damage, which makes the calculations pretty simple. The damage we're going to see is either full damage, or full damage -10%, or -20%. That is because magic resistance happens in steps of 10%, the level 83 boss training dummy has a chance to either resist 10% or 20% of a spell. In our actual test results you'll find that damage is typically about 5 damage away from what we'd expect, I attribute this to the server simply rounding the numbers a few times down the line- either way the results are consistently extremely close to what makes sense- so it's not a real issue.

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Shadow embrace:

[ Expected results ]
-- Normal Max dmg: 1634, dmg 10%: 1470, dmg 20%: 1306
-- 2x Shadow Embrace: Max dmg: 1798, dmg 10%: 1617, dmg 20%: 1437

[ In-Game results ]

-- Normal:
Max dmg: 1629
Min dmg: 1302 (=20% resist)

-- Apply corr as SE is about to drop off:
Max dmg: 1629
Min dmg: 1466 (=0xSE 10% resist)

-- Apply 2xSE after Corr:
Max dmg: 1792
Min dmg: 1302 (=0xSE 20% resist)

Conclusion: Corruption's damage will increase even if Shadow Embrace isn't applied until after corruption is.

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Death's Embrace:
Casted Corr above 35%, max tick: 1629
Casted Corr below 35%, max tick: 1824
Casted corr above 35%, refreshed below 35%, max tick: 1629

Conclusion: Corruption does not benefit from death's embrace until really refreshed.

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Tricks of the Trade:

Gained TotT, Casted Corr, Refreshed corr, 0% resist tick damage: 1873
Casted Corr, Gained TotT, Refreshed corr, 0% resist tick damage: 1629

Conclusion: Tricks of the trade rolls through when corruption is refreshed.

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Critical strike rating / chance:

These tests were done naked, or started as naked. This is because you need a much smaller sample size to be confident with your results this way.

General naked crit % test: Naked: 100 ticks, 5 critical ticks.

Started naked, swapped gear in after applying corruption, refreshed corruption continuously using drain soul:
100 ticks, 5 critical ticks

Started with gear, swapped to naked after applying corruption, refreshed corruption continuously using drain soul:
100 ticks, 41 critical ticks. (Critical strike rating definitely rolls.)

Naked, Apply improved shadow bolt, wait until it's about to drop off, apply corruption- keep corruption rolling:
400 ticks, 41 critical ticks (10.25%)

Naked, apply corruption, apply improved shadowbolt immediatly after corruption, keep corruption rolling:
400 ticks, 19 critical ticks (4.75%) (Improved Shadow Bolt crit % debuff also rolls.)

Conclusion: Crit rating and chance buffs/debuffs both roll.

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4 piece Tier 10 proc:

I currently do not have this set bonus yet, so I can't provide you with test data. It however has been fairly obvious through other people having this set bonus aswell as a general trend in this type of mechanics that this will roll. If someone could provide some actual data for this that would be great. The data I need is basically: CoE on target, no spellpower procs or gains, a difference of 20% damage between min and max damage on both, with and without 4 piece data sets.

[Warlocomotif]

Reserved just in case.

Feel free to post below.

[Screwtape]

You know I just had the idea yesterday to go into the fight with firestone and then swap to spellstone quickly. Your idea of changing out weapons is much better though. ;D

[Ocet]

Thanks for clarifying tricks of the trade issue, i haven't been sure about this one. Very nice post

[Bigslick]

Tricks of the Trade:We all know that rogues will want to TotT eachother, after all- they get TotT from eachother in return. However if you can coaxx one of your rogues to give you just 1 TotT early during the fight, you should be able to get 15% extra damage on corruption throughout the entire fight. I highly recommend power auras or alike to notify you of this buff. Affliction DPS takes a short while to build up, so unless your tanks are terrible this shouldn't lead to theat issues. Note: You'll have to be somewhat near the rogue for this to work.

Like rogues and their buffs, mages generally exchange Focus Magic. In extended fights where you will be able to maintain your corruption on the target, it is worth the effort to have a mage place their focus magic on you for the first few seconds of the fight as it will provide another 3% critical strike chance for your corruption for the duration. This does require them to expend another GCD reapplying FM to their preferred recipient, but the loss of a the dps they might achieve in that single GCD will be quickly recovered by the additional damage done by your corruption.

[Warlocomotif]

Like rogues and their buffs, mages generally exchange Focus Magic. In extended fights where you will be able to maintain your corruption on the target, it is worth the effort to have a mage place their focus magic on you for the first few seconds of the fight as it will provide another 3% critical strike chance for your corruption for the duration. This does require them to expend another GCD reapplying FM to their preferred recipient, but the loss of a the dps they might achieve in that single GCD will be quickly recovered by the additional damage done by your corruption.

This is a pretty minor one really, you'd gain maybe ~0.4% DPS (thats 40 DPS if you're doing 10k), 1 GCD for a mage doing 10k dps costs them around ~12k damage (assuming a 1.2s GCD, which should be reasonable), means that over a 6 minute fight the mage loses 33.33 DPS, the person that the mage would put FM on also loses a minor amount of DPS, making the raid dps benefit probably less than 5 DPS overal. Frankly, I don't think this one would be worth it, however I'll add it to the list anyway for completion's sake.

[Bakis]

4pc Tier 10 proc:
If you have this setbonus it might be worth delaying your full corrupted wrath until you get a proc, this will make it harder to synch up with a pre-combat potion- but it's another 10% damage for corruption, which isn't minor. If you'd like to add this to your corruption you might want to consider not popping a pre-combat potion, and instead simply popping the potion before you use corruption. Reason being that although out of combat potions don't trigger potion illness (preventing you from using another potion until combat ends), they do still have a cooldown- meaning that popping a pre-combat potion could well result in not having the buff while potions are on cooldown when you get your first 4xT10 proc.

Havent tested how 4set work yet (proc/corruption) but assuming it work I guess its cycle would be a gambling one by starting with popping potion, starting with UA then the regular critroll cycle and hope for a 4set proc while wild magic is still active, if not just wait for 4set proc, pop NMIC and its drugdealing as usual.

[Warlocomotif]

Havent tested how 4set work yet (proc/corruption) but assuming it work I guess its cycle would be a gambling one by starting with popping potion, starting with UA then the regular critroll cycle and hope for a 4set proc while wild magic is still active, if not just wait for 4set proc, pop NMIC and its drugdealing as usual.

I think you'd do more damage on average just popping the pre-combat potion, the chances of you getting a proc within the first 10 seconds of a fight (accounting for popping the potion about ~5s before combat starts) are about 1-(0.85^3)=~39%, which is pretty low. More often then not you'd be better off not making the gamble and to just wait.

Besides, if you ignore the pre-combat potion and potion just before corruption, all you end up losing is 1 mid combat potion (lets say 700 DPS for 15s=~10.5k damage), which is pretty insignificant (over a 6 minute fight thats about 30 DPS), where as if you do the opposite you stand a 61% chance of lacking 5% crit on your corruption for the whole fight.

[Morgromir]

Hmm i thought this got fixed? there was a fix where people would BL and potion of speed or something to have insanely fast corruption ticks that would never fall off.

are you 100% sure it still works today? (30/01/2010)

[Bakis]

Hmm i thought this got fixed? there was a fix where people would BL and potion of speed or something to have insanely fast corruption ticks that would never fall off.

are you 100% sure it still works today? (30/01/2010)

Only haste is fixed cos it was as you say too good. Critrolling is still avilable as well as the TotT, Potion of Wild magic etc etc.

[Warlocomotif]

Mind you, crit rolling is also really too good; a possible 10%+ boost in overall DPS is too much for a bug like this. I think Blizzard didn't think too much of it initially because spriests have had it thoughout TBC, and while affli locks have also had it the spec hasn't been powerful enough since naxxramas to be worth the effort (Back in naxxramas, corruption couldn't crit and didnt scale with haste either). The reason it 'is' a significant issue for affli as opposed to spriests is because affli locks do a lot more of their damage with corruption than spriests do with shadow word pain (between 2.5 and 3 times more).

I think Blizzard kind of realized that this is a 'big enough' issue when they read through the 4pc T10 thread.

[Bakis]

To be honest I hope BLZ nullify all crit and damage buff rolling of corruption. It is becoming absurd and even more prove that affliction need way more buffs than those planned.
If my walrock is to be competative with other pures I need to critroll and use two potions, tricks of the trade will make me pull ahead, well I wont beat the op hunters but the rest.

If the following was fixed and could not be used any more:
critrolling (wild magic pot, weapon swap, NMIC etc)
tricks of the trade
rolling 4set bonus
then affliction would be rockbottom every pure and most hybrids beating only boomkins and some shamans.

We tolerate this now and even encourage players to do this but if we step back a bit all this is simply a reflection of poor game design from BLIZZ part. Warlocks suffer from this more
than other classes simply cos dots are very complex.
Myself I would rather see they fixed all this so it wasnt avialbale and buff affliction further untill its balanced. Simply removing these features with no additional buffs will make afflicion lose about 10-15% damage done.

Corruption now became a minigame within the game and its just bad bad code.

[burek]

i agree with you there, but i guess they find it difficult to buff affliction without impacting pvp

[hellar]

Conclusion: Corruption's damage will increase even if Shadow Embrace isn't applied until after corruption is.

Are u sure about this one? i have tested it countless times a a dummy and it always seems like i get higher dps and my corruption ALWAYS ticks harder if i apply X2 SB on the traget first

[Warlocomotif]

Are u sure about this one? i have tested it countless times a a dummy and it always seems like i get higher dps and my corruption ALWAYS ticks harder if i apply X2 SB on the traget first

Yes I'm sure, wether it's a DPS increase to have higher DoT uptime vs higher shadow embrace uptime however is a different matter. Also no need to bump this while it's still on the first page really.

[Screwtape]

Pardon me if this was answered somewhere else (I think it may have), but what is the consensus oh how to take advantage of Death's Embrace? If this will not come into effect until after corruption is reapplied, won't that make us choose between Death's Embrace and all the other buffs we worked so hard to pack into corruption with pots and weapon swapping?

Also, I assume that TotT must be on you when you initially cast corruption or will it update if you refresh it with tricks later on?

[Warlocomotif]

Pardon me if this was answered somewhere else (I think it may have), but what is the consensus oh how to take advantage of Death's Embrace? If this will not come into effect until after corruption is reapplied, won't that make us choose between Death's Embrace and all the other buffs we worked so hard to pack into corruption with pots and weapon swapping?

Also, I assume that TotT must be on you when you initially cast corruption or will it update if you refresh it with tricks later on?

If you have a good portion of buffs on your initial corruption, don't let it drop off for Death's Embrace. You should only really consider taking advantage of this for corruption if your current corruption is pretty weak anyway.

You must have the TotT buff when you cast your intial corruption, it will not update later on. I highly recommend a power aura of some sort.