[6.1] Affliction Warlock Guide

[FurtyIRL]

Further expanding on Grimoire choices, is there ever a circumstance where GoServ is better than GoSup? I've been messing with sims and I can't find a formula or a specific situation in which I'd always bring out GoServ over GoSup. Maybe you could shed some light on this?

Yeah there are quite a few situations. With 4 set I imagine the relative strength of service is diminished because you would no longer be pairing it with every Dark Soul, but in every other tier service was great in situations where you needed more damage on a specific add or phase. Definitely not your go-to grimoire but it has its uses. Unfortunately affy is kind of in the gutter (in terms of flexibility) so you would generally just spec swap instead of choosing service. If your raid ever needs just a bit more burst and you refuse to play another spec I would consider service as a potential filler for this.

[gruxxar]

I haven't really looked into Affliction yet but for 6.1 it seems Affliction with SB:H or Destro with sac & CR will be better than demo for ST ( with 4piece). any idea which one of the two is going to be better? Personally i've been leaning towards Affli because i have more Haste/mastery than crit/mastert but i have no idea on how to Sim this :s

[Dhuzgan]

After playing with Cata as Demono for the first time, I can't help but think that if ever (the 6.1 buffed) cata becomes useful for affli, Demo is going to majorly outperform anyway. Maybe on Iron Maidens Afflic + Cata might be an interesting choice.

[Advo]

I haven't really looked into Affliction yet but for 6.1 it seems Affliction with SB:H or Destro with sac & CR will be better than demo for ST ( with 4piece). any idea which one of the two is going to be better? Personally i've been leaning towards Affli because i have more Haste/mastery than crit/mastert but i have no idea on how to Sim this :s

I have to give it to affliction. Even if CR/Sac and SB:H are pretty much equal in a turret sim, afflictions damage on the move is much higher not for what you can do while moving, but that all your dots are ticking and your pet is attacking while you move. When you move as CR/Sac destro, your damage stops cold.

That said there are niches. Destro performs better when you can havoc snipe adds that will die in the short term. Aff is better for multiple static targets that you can run full courses of dots on. Neither is particularly good or better than the other for fast, ST burst.

[Didrah]

Anyone else feeling frustrated with affli? The fact that your dps solely depends on nightfall procs it's really annoying. There are times that it procs like crazy and I can reset DS really quick and then there are times that I'm sitting on 1 shard waiting for the damn thing to proc so i can SB:H.... the latter happens too often imo.

[Reshiah]

Anyone know how 4pc SB:haunt compares to cata demo on ST and multi target fights like flamebender/maidens/hans & franz?

[VladimirM]

Trying to resolve one issue:
am i supposed to save all shards for soulburn haunt and only cast naked haunt if i have odd number of shards (including having 4 while spirits buff is already up and running) ?
I have 2set bonus and I am trying to maintain 100% of spirits buff but it is only impossible if I cast only few naked haunts through entire fight.

found another same question one page earlier, but no answers still.
Notice us please <3

[Koragon]

I think the general idea is to prioritize SB:H over haunt. meaning you need to bank 3 shards and only cast a naked haunt when you cap at 4.

[xuros]

having trouble getting tellmewhen to show the soulburn haunt buff. Worked before 6.1. Anyone know how to get it to work?

[Advo]

having trouble getting tellmewhen to show the soulburn haunt buff. Worked before 6.1. Anyone know how to get it to work?

This shouldn't have changed. The buff is called Haunting Spirits, all you have to do is have the icon track a Buff on you with that name. Anything else like showing duration, etc, is up to you.

If it isn't working, you may want to update the addon.

[xuros]

This shouldn't have changed. The buff is called Haunting Spirits, all you have to do is have the icon track a Buff on you with that name. Anything else like showing duration, etc, is up to you.

If it isn't working, you may want to update the addon.

Yeah. They updated the addon for 6.1 finally and it works again. Got it done last night 8).

[sumonoki]

Since 6.1 I've been trying to see how well I can do with Aff. Hanz&Franz and Flamebender are both going well, but I realized I don't understand Haunt as well as I'd like. Some quick dummy tests seems like the effect of Haunt and Drain Soul are multiplicative. E.g., if you have full sets of dots on two targets and haunt on one, it's better to drain soul the haunted one. Can someone confirm this? If this is the case, it makes optimizing dps more complicated than I thought. E.g. With dark soul/lust up in multi-add fights, is it better to haunt all targets that have full dots, or only haunt the target you're going to drain soul to save shards?

[striderZA]

Since 6.1 I've been trying to see how well I can do with Aff. Hanz&Franz and Flamebender are both going well, but I realized I don't understand Haunt as well as I'd like. Some quick dummy tests seems like the effect of Haunt and Drain Soul are multiplicative. E.g., if you have full sets of dots on two targets and haunt on one, it's better to drain soul the haunted one. Can someone confirm this? If this is the case, it makes optimizing dps more complicated than I thought. E.g. With dark soul/lust up in multi-add fights, is it better to haunt all targets that have full dots, or only haunt the target you're going to drain soul to save shards?

That's correct, think about it. Correct me if I am wrong, but Haunt increases the damage of DoTs on its target, this is factored in when drain soul ticks on that target, since it causes DoTs to tick for a percentage of their damage.

[Reshiah]

One thing to remember about affliction is that drain soul refunds a soul shard when killing a target so you might want to keep in mind that on bosses like blackhand and flamebender when you can drain the adds for a shard.

[ScreddyLoix]

Can someone explain to me Blizzard's thought process in keeping seed so weak? This spec desperately needs something to make it stand out. It's got somewhat acceptable single target but it's absolutely nowhere on cleave fights anymore, and even worse in aoe.

[Jessicka]

Can someone explain to me Blizzard's thought process in keeping seed so weak? This spec desperately needs something to make it stand out. It's got somewhat acceptable single target but it's absolutely nowhere on cleave fights anymore, and even worse in aoe.

Its dominance in 3s Arena put it in an extremely difficult place when considering buffs.

[Tramzh]

Its dominance in 3s Arena put it in an extremely difficult place when considering buffs.

not like SoC is used in pvp and they could help PvE affli without affecting pvp by buffing the pve set bonuses

[FurtyIRL]

not like SoC is used in pvp and they could help PvE affli without affecting pvp by buffing the pve set bonuses

SoC was used in PvP, haven't done enough arena this season to know whether that's still a thing. Any time you wanted to 'burst' the maximum amount of damage onto a single target in one global last expac, you would put up SoC, inhale strong dots off one target, haunt, then exhale. Wasn't efficient for long term damage but it was used for a little extra killing power, the same way WWs would run RJW.

[Deleted]

SoC was used in PvP, haven't done enough arena this season to know whether that's still a thing. Any time you wanted to 'burst' the maximum amount of damage onto a single target in one global last expac, you would put up SoC, inhale strong dots off one target, haunt, then exhale. Wasn't efficient for long term damage but it was used for a little extra killing power, the same way WWs would run RJW.

Pretty sure that's not a thing anymore. I remember someone at a decent rating explicitly mentioning that (Possibly Wâllirikz? He was doing a QA thing I was listening to while fishing recently).

Still, it's not as devoid from pvp balancing risks as you'd think at first glance.

[Jessicka]

However it'd impact balance, I'd just like to see SB:SoC spread SoC instead of Corruption, and lose the cast and/or flight time. That way it'd just work better; like Living Bomb being spread by Ignite, or Fire Novas through Lava Lash. These things exist, I'm just not sure why Affliction has such a convoluted, slow build and thus wholly ineffective version of it.