When to go Affliction and stat priority

[Artunias]

Little confused here. Hoping someone can clear it up.

What ilvl do you people start to go affliction? It seems like you might also need to at least have the meta for it to be worth it?

Also for Affliction it seems like some locks in top guilds are prioritizing haste fairly low...which seems...odd I guess and a lot of sims value haste really high for Aff.

I currently play destro at 535 ilvl and it performs really well, affliction seems like a fun spec but I don't think it's worth it for me to change yet. What do some of you think?

[Baconeggcheese]

Meta is pretty freaking huge for aff so I wouldn't recommend it pre-meta.

Reason you see a lot of people with odd reforges is probably because a lot of us are on farm so we just do a mid-way reforge so we can switch back and forth between destruction and aff without too major of a loss in either. Top guilds players are usually not the best example of what to do months into farm as people get lazy or start doing silly things just because.

[nsgid]

Meta is pretty freaking huge for aff so I wouldn't recommend it pre-meta.

Reason you see a lot of people with odd reforges is probably because a lot of us are on farm so we just do a mid-way reforge so we can switch back and forth between destruction and aff without too major of a loss in either. Top guilds players are usually not the best example of what to do months into farm as people get lazy or start doing silly things just because.

so what would you recommend for a 566ilvl lock 8/16 heroic? im currently at the 18k haste bp with int/haste, exp/haste gems? im putting up good numbers but I'll be staying full time aff since my aoe destro cleave isnt needed since my 25man raid has a crazy amount of op aoe classes. I also only have like 105% mastery raid buffed(lol)

[Deleted]

105% mastery buffed is very very low and personally, i would never dream of going that high on haste as it is going to hurt your dps dps for multidotting. id try to reach the 9778 or 13737 hastebreakpoint and then the rest into mastery.

[Shangrolam]

My rule of thumb was the 9778 haste cap and be able to have a good 95% mastery buffed. You do have to have Meta though. Good luck

[Baconeggcheese]

so what would you recommend for a 566ilvl lock 8/16 heroic? im currently at the 18k haste bp with int/haste, exp/haste gems? im putting up good numbers but I'll be staying full time aff since my aoe destro cleave isnt needed since my 25man raid has a crazy amount of op aoe classes. I also only have like 105% mastery raid buffed(lol)

Contrary to what people have been saying for most of this xpac pandemic made it so breakpoints are fairly irrelevant, so really you can go for whatever arbitrary amount of haste and you'll be fine. I'd still stack mastery over haste, not entirely sure why you're going for such high levels of haste though realistically it'll probably not make that much of a difference since haste is so valuable for aff.

Destruction still has comparable single target to aff and it's actually stronger the longer the boss lives. Affs single target is only strong for short fights where your off the pull burst bloats your numbers when the boss dies in 3-4 minutes. Outside of that if you're not soulswapping everything and its mother (I'm assuming you aren't because you're saying you don't need cleave in your raid) destruction is going to be the stronger spec on a lot of fights. Especially the last 3 fights this tier which are head and shoulders more difficult than the first 11.

If you just like playing aff though I'm sure you can get away with just playing aff for ever fight and you'll still be fine.

[TheShade]

I currently play Destro / Affliction this tier. 565 ilvl. I sit around the 10157 haste cause I don't need an extra tic of Corruption also it is very decent amount of haste for Destro too. The only real fights I use affliction for is Protectors and Klaxxi, every other fight I am destro.

I aggree with the above statements. Affliction you can dump everything into Mastery and hover at 9778 haste and be fine. Get rid of all those Haste gems lol Haste was good last tier. This tier it doesn't benefit our trinkets or w/e. So why bother staying with it. Hit your break point and move on into mastery.

[nsgid]

105% mastery buffed is very very low and personally, i would never dream of going that high on haste as it is going to hurt your dps dps for multidotting. id try to reach the 9778 or 13737 hastebreakpoint and then the rest into mastery.

I thought it would hurt my dps for multi target fights as well, but it seems pretty well. I've picked up some ranks on nazgrim, 700k on protectors, was ranked on norushen, about 350k on galakras. so it seems fine. however, that just may be because i got better at managing dots with buffs and using soul swap more effectively(still need a lot of practice with the SS trick).

- - - Updated - - -

Contrary to what people have been saying for most of this xpac pandemic made it so breakpoints are fairly irrelevant, so really you can go for whatever arbitrary amount of haste and you'll be fine. I'd still stack mastery over haste, not entirely sure why you're going for such high levels of haste though realistically it'll probably not make that much of a difference since haste is so valuable for aff.

Destruction still has comparable single target to aff and it's actually stronger the longer the boss lives. Affs single target is only strong for short fights where your off the pull burst bloats your numbers when the boss dies in 3-4 minutes. Outside of that if you're not soulswapping everything and its mother (I'm assuming you aren't because you're saying you don't need cleave in your raid) destruction is going to be the stronger spec on a lot of fights. Especially the last 3 fights this tier which are head and shoulders more difficult than the first 11.

If you just like playing aff though I'm sure you can get away with just playing aff for ever fight and you'll still be fine.

oddly enough, my haste build got higher sims than the 13k bp with full mastery. but, that may be because i screwed something up on simcraft. I got higher sims with single target patchwerk and higher multi dot with hecticadd 3 and 4 targets

i wanted to try it because i saw a post on the affliction thread saying he was getting great results with the 18k bp so i was just like screw it i'll test it out.

[Baconeggcheese]

Realistically the difference between haste and mastery are minor for aff, but I wouldn't entirely go off of sims since they're not realistic to what a fight is like. They also always over value haste which got worse with the amp trinket.

A multitarget sim assumes you have all of those targets up the entire fight, which is rarely the case. It's not taking into account that the mob died 10 seconds after you applied your dots and that extra tick you got from said threshold never actually happened etc. That's where mastery pulls ahead of haste, in that it is a static dmg increase to every.single.tick so on any random mob which survives any random length your dots are going to be X% stronger as opposed to hoping the mob lasts long enough for the haste to cause an extra tick to make up the dmg.

[nsgid]

Realistically the difference between haste and mastery are minor for aff, but I wouldn't entirely go off of sims since they're not realistic to what a fight is like. They also always over value haste which got worse with the amp trinket.

A multitarget sim assumes you have all of those targets up the entire fight, which is rarely the case. It's not taking into account that the mob died 10 seconds after you applied your dots and that extra tick you got from said threshold never actually happened etc. That's where mastery pulls ahead of haste, in that it is a static dmg increase to every.single.tick so on any random mob which survives any random length your dots are going to be X% stronger as opposed to hoping the mob lasts long enough for the haste to cause an extra tick to make up the dmg.

Shit. Good point about the mob not dying in simc. So is it more beneficial to go with the 9k haste or 13k haste? What are the perks of both? and cons.

[Baconeggcheese]

Personal preference / gear.

For instance when I reforge mastery > haste >>> crit I end up with something like 19k+ mastery and 12k+ haste, personally I never bother with the breakpoints these days as they don't really do anything for your dps because of pandemic and the way we snapshot these days.

If you really want to go for a breakpoint just go for whichever one you end up closest to

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...ZmFYa0E#gid=12

I've never figured out why people obsess about the 9778 and 13737 BPs as they're both just arbitrary ones and there's a bunch of them in-between. For instance UA has one at 12.4k, and agony has one at 13.1k. All the breakpoints are too far apart for you to really see a filler up time benefit for going for any specific one, I imagine people are just focusing on the highest ones before major leaps in haste but in all honesty it really doesn't matter. Just go with whatever one floats your boat since you'll be putting dots up with random meta gem procs as well as unbuffed ones and then snapshotting procs randomly with RPPM on top of pandemic working the way it does it really doesn't matter which BP you end up at.

[nsgid]

Personal preference / gear.

For instance when I reforge mastery > haste >>> crit I end up with something like 19k+ mastery and 12k+ haste, personally I never bother with the breakpoints these days as they don't really do anything for your dps because of pandemic and the way we snapshot these days.

If you really want to go for a breakpoint just go for whichever one you end up closest to

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...ZmFYa0E#gid=12

I've never figured out why people obsess about the 9778 and 13737 BPs as they're both just arbitrary ones and there's a bunch of them in-between. For instance UA has one at 12.4k, and agony has one at 13.1k. All the breakpoints are too far apart for you to really see a filler up time benefit for going for any specific one, I imagine people are just focusing on the highest ones before major leaps in haste but in all honesty it really doesn't matter. Just go with whatever one floats your boat since you'll be putting dots up with random meta gem procs as well as unbuffed ones and then snapshotting procs randomly with RPPM on top of pandemic working the way it does it really doesn't matter which BP you end up at.

so basically just go w/ whatever i end up at lol

also, if i'm really close to one of these "great haste breakpoints" is it worth reforging/gemming for it?

[Baconeggcheese]

If you're really close you might as well, its not going to hurt to get it. I just wouldn't go out of my way to get one that's not close. But if you end up at 12.2k haste there's no real reason not to just get that 12.4k UA breakpoint.

[Bonkura]

A multitarget sim assumes you have all of those targets up the entire fight, which is rarely the case. It's not taking into account that the mob died 10 seconds after you applied your dots and that extra tick you got from said threshold never actually happened etc. That's where mastery pulls ahead of haste, in that it is a static dmg increase to every.single.tick so on any random mob which survives any random length your dots are going to be X% stronger as opposed to hoping the mob lasts long enough for the haste to cause an extra tick to make up the dmg.

Do you even know how haste works for dots? Even if you didn't get all those ticks you still got more ticks during that time frame where the dots ticked on the target. The extra ticks you get through having more haste are being dealt all the time, either by ticking faster or more frequently. Sure, mastery might scale better, but your example looks very odd to prove your point.

Using your example we can make the same argument for going crit instead of haste, but we all know crit is bad (compared to mastery and haste). All math that has been done (at least what from what I've seen) shows that haste and mastery scale almost equally well. And that's in most scenarios.

I agree mastery is a more reliable stat, but I wouldn't go tell everyone it's what you should go for because I can't prove it so I might be wrong. You should be more careful when making statements like the one I quoted here.


Honestly, regarding haste breakpoints, the only thing I can comfortably vouch for is trying to catch as many of them at the same time. Because it saves us GCD's by having to refresh our dots less frequently. Besides that do whatever, it doesn't make a big enough difference to be worth your effort trying to optimize even further.

[Baconeggcheese]

I don't see how it doesn't make sense to you, what I'm trying to say there is no different than the fundamental idea behind dot break points in general. Yes your dot ticks faster, but if your dot ticks every X seconds you need to hit a specific *break point* based on exactly how long that mob is going to live to see that extra tick. If you aren't hitting that break point for arbitrary mob life expectancy then you didn't gain a tick and you didn't gain dmg on the mob for having haste where as mastery will always give you a static amount of increased dmg on a per tick basis instead of assuming you're getting an extra tick on any random mob dying at any random speed.

also I'd like to note that I did say repeatedly that

Realistically the difference between haste and mastery are minor for aff

though realistically it'll probably not make that much of a difference since haste is so valuable for aff..

[Bonkura]

That's called RNG. Again, the same could be said about crit.

[Baconeggcheese]

... Except its not... rng is like crit where on any random tick the event could occur... there is no RNG factor to haste in that regard, you wouldn't consider the mob dying in X time RNG in the way you would consider a crit or a trinket proc rng at all.

[Xandy]

Haste is better for Affy single target so I try to keep my Haste within a few thousand of my Mastery since I play Affy on most single target fights in Siege, right now I'm at 19k Mastery and 15k Haste. Just never let your Haste go above your Mastery and generally, you should be good.

[nsgid]

alright so question for baconeggsncheese and bonkura. the aff 4 set sucks, imo but I have a question about a couple pieces of gear I have. for weapons I have the wand from spoils and the off hand from iron jug and thok. but I also have the normal boa sraff from garrosh. which should I use? also, for my chest I have the regular tier chest and the heroic(non wf) chest from protectors. which of those should I choose? im 568 ilvl if that matters

[Baconeggcheese]

Wand + thok offhand will probably be best there, and yes the protectors chest is BiS for aff with 2p.

Just maintain 2p with aff and then go for ilvl for tier slots. If you don't have warforged pieces for the slots and its the same ilvl no reason not to get 4p. In an ideal world you'll end up with tier hat + gloves, protectors chest / shoulders, jug pants and for general races it would be spoils wand + garrosh offhand.

Really though the difference between the staff and MH / offhand will probably be minor if you don't have the valor to spend on your weapons assuming everything is equal ilvl.