Trying to improve at Affliction

[Haize of Stonemaul]

I posted in the "Fix my DPS thread" but I'm guessing not everyone checks there often, and I was hoping to get some feedback before tonight's raid (~4hrs). Anyway, I had been Destro thru most of Wrath, and all of Cata until about 2 weeks ago, when I finally mustered the courage to try Affliction in PvP... realizing that it wasn't as tedious as it was last time I looked at it, I decided to try it out in Raids.

For my gear level, my DPS seems much lower than it should be. I see many locks pulling well into the 30k range on Baleroc, while I only did 25k & 26k.

Armory us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Stonemaul/Haize/advanced

I'm including 2 weeks of Baleroc and Staghelm if it helps to evaluate my performance.
Baleroc 8/17 worldoflogs.com/reports/6tapan40q4qk9hkx/details/5/?s=9603&e=9875
Staghelm 8/17 worldoflogs.com/reports/6tapan40q4qk9hkx/details/5/?s=10873&e=11291
Baleroc 8/9 worldoflogs.com/reports/ov6t2jg7l75balmf/details/6/?s=11195&e=11468
Staghelm 8/9 worldoflogs.com/reports/ov6t2jg7l75balmf/sum/damageDone/?s=12767&e=13183

I am guessing due to the nature of how hectic Rag is, it may be hard to evaluate, however, please let me know if I'm doing something glaringly wrong... again, I had always done this encounter as Destro previously.

Ragnaros 8/23 worldoflogs.com/reports/1l7u73aasp2mjomj/details/8/?s=11145&e=11765 ***I realized I didn't use my DG, no idea why.
Ragnaros 8/10 worldoflogs.com/reports/0wwclr78zi2ylk1h/details/0/?s=733&e=1323

Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Haize.

[Deleted]

don't have much time, only took a look at armory and first log,
you could change the mixed gems in shoulder, gloves and belt for 40int, socket bonus isn't worth it
your dot uptime looks good, can't find anything wrong

but there might be something else, at least it is a problem for me, with that much haste haunt an ua should be down to nearly 1 sec cast time, I don't know about you but I've found my 'cast-rhythm' for affli but now I seem to have a problem with global cd, like my omnicc tells me haunt is off cd, I want to cast haunt but it tells me 'spell is not ready yet',
the strange thing is this also happens when i cast sb right before haunt which has a longer cast time

does anyone else have that problem?

[Xorn]

Honestly from what I can tell you're doing just about everything right. Your damage is in the right proportions, and you have great uptime on all your dots. Keep in mind that being in a 10 man setting your dps will be a bit lower than in a 25 man setting due to the fewer buffs available.

What I think is hurting your dps the most is your raids lack of replenishment and also your lack of the 5% caster haste. Less mana returns means more life tapping, and 5% haste is a huge chunk to be missing out on, putting you well below the range for extra ticks on your dots.

In my opinion, nothing you are doing is glaringly wrong, it's your raid setup that is hurting you the most.

[Sesethi]

Find a shaman/shadow priest or moonkin to provide 5% spell haste buff. I dunno the purpose of having 2 paly healers in a 10 men raid. but if you're not running a perfect buff/debuff caster setup your dps won't change much from there.

[Vargur]

Find a shaman/shadow priest or moonkin to provide 5% spell haste buff.

And dark intent them.

[kushlol]

Went through just the baelroc log and your dot uptimes are fine and so is the dps the only thing that will give you a bigger dps boost is by having a faster kill time. I'm having a close to 3min kill time on one of my alt grps baelroc kill so over a 3min fight there is more lust uptime and you're getting to execute faster which will greatly impact overall dps in additional to the few missing buffs.

Also the lock in your raid during that baelroc kill was using his felgaurd the entire fight so you could help him out by letting him know he needs to switch to his felhunter so he's doing more dps and decreasing your fight time.

I think you guys were missing int from a mage aswell ?

[Sesethi]

why was the demo lock using incinerate as filler anyway

[kushlol]

why was the demo lock using incinerate as filler anyway

I didn't go to much into that log to notice that aswell but lol plz point that lock in the direction of these forums so we may educate him on how to demo

[Haize of Stonemaul]

Thanks for all the feedback. I was afraid it would have had more to do with our raid comp. Our guild has gone thru some hard times, and we're basically what's left over from a 7 year old hardcore raiding guild. We were running 25s at the beginning of Cata, but as time went on we slowly trickled down to 10s... although about a month ago, we started running a second 10m group that we are considering reshuffling.

Our demo lock only goes demo for the sp buff... I don't think he enjoys playing it as much unless it's an AoE situation, and he's not really a min/maxer. TBH, I think he just goes off of the outdated EJ post. And in his defense, he is much, much better at Affliction.

[Sesethi]

sorry man but all warlocks should know how to play with all the 3 specs. His rotation show lack of interest in raiding as demo, i would advise you swaping places with him and be the demo lock of your group, getting him interested in playing demo or you guys find a better dps because you will really need all the dps very aware of what they're doing if you guys wanna do heroics.

[PhilCosby]

why was the demo lock using incinerate as filler anyway

Because as cool as Shadow Bolt looks, Incinerate just looks a tad cooler.

For real though he probably just doesn't know enough about Demo to only use it when it lights up.

[Haize of Stonemaul]

I'm going to try talking to him today and compiling some info... I understand how Demo works and tried if for a day but quickly realized that if done incorrectly, it can be punishing.

[Sesethi]

I assure you affliction can be more punishing(i.e haunt).
Regarding Demonology most of the punishments come from using the wrong pet at the wrong situation and not optimizing your doomguard summon.

[Haize of Stonemaul]

I emailed him a bunch of pointers and tips about demo and WOW!!! His DPS jumped up 4k on his first boss. (Meanwhile, mine dropped, but there was a point where I thought we were going to wipe because one of our soakers died.

Here's the log
worldoflogs.com/reports/sfw2me3mx5i8zx62/analyze/dd/source/?enc=bosses&boss=53494

[Xorn]

In another thread you mentioned that you have your CDs macroed to SB, that's bad. If you make a separate button for your CDs your dps will improve as you are able to time them better throughout the fight. Also, having them macroed to SB means that during execute phase you are either A) not using your CDs or B) casting SBs when you should not be. Either of those is a dps loss, so work on having a separate button for your CDs and you should see some improvement as well.