I don't think it's right.Interrupt MG to refresh haunt. Haunt has a cast time + a travel time, so you may want to refresh it with approx 3 seconds left or so.
I don't think it's right.Interrupt MG to refresh haunt. Haunt has a cast time + a travel time, so you may want to refresh it with approx 3 seconds left or so.
I am running with hitcap as affliction because of two reasons:
a) I like to remain sane. Spells landing when I cast them keeps me sane.
b) I don't believe in luck...
And my dps is fine. It could be better if I reforged all of it to mastery and got a lucky try for sure, but I much prefer to have a reliable performance over a shaky one.
The biggest mistake I see locks make is not paying attention to your temporary buffs. While your dots WILL update automatically with your target's debuffs, they won't with your own buffs. So, if your trinket procs, and you have dots already up and running, those dots will not be updated to match that trinket's extra spellpower you were given. You will need to recast your dots so your trinket buff also applies to your dots.
A good affliction lock (or any lock or dot class, really) as a result knows when to refresh their dots. Logically, this means this is not only when they're about to expire. For example: If you use Dark Soul, you refresh your dots right after, and again before it expires - after all, if your Dark Soul expires, but your current dots have been cast while under the Dark Soul buff, they will retain this buff for the duration of the dots, even if Dark Soul on yourself has expired.
With this in mind, get some addons to properly track your procs and cooldowns, such as Windsong, tailoring procs, trinkets, etc. Use powerauras, weakauras, needtoknow, anything so you can keep an eye on them. Once you feel a bit comfortable with this, I'd recommend you get a way to track Internal Cooldowns as well. Knowing WHEN your trinket is going to proc is way more effective than being reactional ("oh fuck my trinket procced where's my shards to reapply and haunt?!" as opposed to "well, looks like my trinket is proccing in about 10 seconds, so better save up that shard for now"). Reapply dots and haunt them based on your procs and not at random just for the sake of it.
This is crucial to proper DPS and exactly the reason why the majority of pug locks (those I meet anyway) seem to be so terrible. And honestly, for the comfort and accessibility of the class something long overdue to be 'fixed'.
---------- Post added 2012-10-22 at 04:21 AM ----------
I'd like to add Quartz, as far as I'm aware, still does not update dynamically with your haste changes. I'd suggest Gnosis instead.
If Quartz finally does this, disregard the post.
---------- Post added 2012-10-22 at 04:23 AM ----------
Also, it is true Affliction seems to not value hit so much. The dps difference between being hit capped and not capped, however, are rather minimal for those not interesting to min-max perfectly. For exact numbers you're better off simming your own character. As a rule of thumb I'd suggest to go for 14% hit, 1% below the cap, enough to not go insane by misses (because it IS infuriating to burn a soulswap and miss one of your dots... Or worse, a haunt).
in regards to this, and I imagine this only applies to the initial pull: Do you want to wait until Haunt actually lands on the target before applying your dots since they way the tooltip seems to me is it's a buff? Or is haunt a debuff? If haunt is a buff should you be reapplying dots each time it's applied?? This has been bugging me for a while!
- Do you wait until haunt land to apply your haunt : NO. Haunt is a debuff on your target. Like dots . If you want you can try this : Put corruption on a target dummy and look at the numbers. Then (assuming you removed your trinkets and whatever can proc, it's for a test) apply haunt and look at the new numbers. If they are greater, then you have your answer
That's not true. They changed some things in Cata, like debuffs on the boss affecting dots and the way crit interacts with DoT's. However, DoT casts still take a snapshot of your Int/SP/Haste/Mastery and the entire duration of the DoT uses them. This is why most of Blood Legion's DPS are Engineers and proc trinkets are so highly valued, as long as you take advantage of them being up you can gain a lot more than you would from static stats.
No just no. Using example dot#1 which has a duration of 20 seconds.
You apply dot#1 and because of pandemic this dot can have a max duration of 30 seconds when refreshed.
So when you refresh it is entirely irrelevant so long as it has a current duration that is less than 10, which will yield you a 30 second dot, with a 20 seconds refresh which is the maximum you will ever get.
In short, refresh dots when they are below half of their initial duration (without counting pandemic).
You don't spend any more gcds this way than you would if you refreshed them at 1 second remaining, since refreshing it at 10 seconds yields a 30 second dot, while refreshing it at 1 seconds yields a 21 second dot.
Don't waste a soulshard on instantly refreshing the dots at the wrong durations. Unless you're insanely lucky that will almost always be a dps decrease.
RNG=RNG. When you decide to forget about the hitcap , it can happen that you'll get more dps when rng is good , but it can also mean that you miss 1 out of 6-7 casts. Its a thing you should do when you're comfortable with the fact that your dps isnt stable throughout the entire duration of a fight. it can boost your dps when you get a good rng and dont miss alot , which is obvious because of your higher stats.
Hit Cap should always be aimed for in reality.
As a dpser in a raiding environment you must have a reasonably stable dps output. Especially as an affliction warlock, since we have a very stable output by default imo. There is no reason to ruin this by an insignificant theoretical dps increase.
If your guild is progressing on "insert fight", then you will want your abilities to land when you cast them. Adds need to be killed quickly, the enrage timer needs to be met. You should never, unless your guild is seriously that desperate for the 0.001% dps increase it might yield, reforge out of hit in favour of any other stat. And then even if you are, then you'll probably still be worse off due to simply missing.
Not being hitcapped is a stressfactor that I would recommend anybody who likes their sanity intact to stear clear of.
But you just go ahead and watch your Agony fall off and fail to refresh on the last second of heroism and then wipe to a 0.01% enrage on Gara'jal HC. Enjoy. I'm sure RNG will smile on you next attempt!
Umm, no. DoTs do not update dynamically with ANY of your stats - you were completely wrong.
Please watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-RH__DvKJ8&feature=plcp
This was posted earlier in this thread:
"- Try to avoid using soul swap active (when glyphed) instead use soul shards to place dots on each target and swap only when you run out of shards. Once you become proficient you can fully dot 5 mobs in about 4sec and by this time you would have proced another shard to place a haunt on one (after a fel flame to refresh) and channel malific grasp/drain soul."
I just started fiddling around with afflic after playing demo for ages and I don't see how it's possible to fully dot 5 mobs in 4 secs. In this case, I'm assuming that fully dotted is UA, Corrupt, and Agony...though maybe it includes Haunt also?? Regardless, other people have mentioned dotting up a ton of mobs really quickly so I guess I'm missing something. How do you do it? If you know, can you please explain?
Also, what does soul swap active (fully glyphed) mean? I'm missing something...arrghhh..
Keybind Soul Burn/Soul Swap and just tab target and cast. At least, that's how I'm doing it now that I've started levelling my lock.
To be perfectly honest, after levelling a mage, multi-dotting + tanky pet is just lolworthy in terms of difficulty. On my mage I had to be on my toes the whole time. As a lock I just stand there, dot everything in sight, soul drain, dot some more, ???, profit. That's why I sometimes switch to Grimoire of Sacrifice instead of Supremacy. So much more fun to do multi-dotting while kiting with SB -> CoE when i feel like it. I just switch back when I want to do some relaxing stuff.
Granted, this is just about levelling since I have no lvl 90 experience on a lock.
Probably means Glyph of Soul Swap. Glyphed soul swap doesn't erase the DoTs from the target but it does give SS a 30 sec CD. You can't spam it if you've got it glyphed. I hate that glyphAlso, what does soul swap active (fully glyphed) mean? I'm missing something...arrghhh..
Ohhhhh...I get it now. I do have it glyphed thus my confusion. So it's best not to glyph it then? Hmmm....icy veins and even the guide here suggest we do. Interesting. Gives me something to fiddle around with at least. Thanks.
This probably benefits from being restated a few more times. As long as your DoTs have less than half their duration left, you lose nothing by refreshing them.
In contrast, trying to refresh your DoTs at the very end will cost you DPS. For example, you can refresh Agony when you have to move (and it has less than half its duration left), and you will have lost zero DPS from having to move. Similarly, refreshing UA when you can stand still prevents the situation where it's about to expire but you have to move.
Diplomacy is just war by other means.
No this was fixed weeks ago. If you have Glyph of Soul Swap, SB:SS (soul burn:soul swap) does NOT put a cool down on Soul Swap.
However, if you do a normal Soul Swap with the glyph, it applies a cool down to Soul Swap AND you cannot do SB:SS until SS comes off of CD.
You can spam SB:S with the glyph, you just need to be mindful that a regular soul swap cool down impacts SB:SS as well.
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