[5.4] Affliction Warlock and Encounter Specific Guides

[Deleted]

hey there.

Can someone tell me the best way to be notified for when to recast dots due to a proc?

What are typical procs? I know the misery one, then its random based on your trinkets.


Are there power aura imports to set this up quickly? Use MSBT? Might seem simple for some but its id like to start planning out when to recast the dots effectively to get the benefit.

I have a affiction dot power thing going so i can tell that the power of the dots goes up but thats still not telling me when to cast.

Also does anyone here have any comments on PVP and aff? i seem to be horrible at it and flail around aimlessly

ATM i have the Soup Swap with the /cast dark soul: misery in a macro so it will cast the misery during the soul swap. This should be fine right?

For watching procs and the cooldowns (trinkets, lightweave, weapon enchant etc) ExtraCD is a very nice addon that works "straight out of the box" so to speak. It takes no setup time at all.

[dreaderus]

For watching procs and the cooldowns (trinkets, lightweave, weapon enchant etc) ExtraCD is a very nice addon that works "straight out of the box" so to speak. It takes no setup time at all.

I have it installed now nothing seems to happen in it I will try to research it.

I would love to know the Power Aura import as well.

Also I am 87 so i have trinkets that proc mastery currently.

Sidenote: Does all this go out the window for PVP?

[Bonkura]

I would expect that the best time to use him will be sub 20% when he gets a damage boost.

Oh yeah I wasn't thinking about the Haunt uptime at end of fights. It's hard to time it though especially when you have to estimate the raid DPS to know when to pop him.

Well, the Doomguard is terrible nowadays so we're not gonna see any big differences in our overall damage output no matter how much effort we put in timing when to summon him. My GoAK on my Ret does more damage during 30 secs than the Doomguard does in 1 min (and GoAK is 5 min CD). It's pretty sad.

[xskarma]

Oh yeah I wasn't thinking about the Haunt uptime at end of fights. It's hard to time it though especially when you have to estimate the raid DPS to know when to pop him.

Well, the Doomguard is terrible nowadays so we're not gonna see any big differences in our overall damage output no matter how much effort we put in timing when to summon him. My GoAK on my Ret does more damage during 30 secs than the Doomguard does in 1 min (and GoAK is 5 min CD). It's pretty sad.

Well, looking back to the past when we had supercharged Doomguard on steroids and were always balanced on having the über version cause some players managed to game it that way, I have to say I prefer the nice bit of damage we get now, without having our output depend on getting a well procced Doomguard.

[Bonkura]

Well, looking back to the past when we had supercharged Doomguard on steroids and were always balanced on having the über version cause some players managed to game it that way, I have to say I prefer the nice bit of damage we get now, without having our output depend on getting a well procced Doomguard.

I agree it was a bit ridiculous in Cata as Demo but even though there was some RNG involved it also increased the skill cap by a lot. Tuning down its damage was good but they should've made it more than a small damage boost whenever you feel you need it. Snapshot stats, give us a buff from it or reduce its duration with same amount of attacks for a higher burst is things that comes to mind which would've made me appreciate it more. 6-700k damage in 60 seconds is like half of the DPS I saw it doing back in FL...

[Deleted]

Oh yeah I wasn't thinking about the Haunt uptime at end of fights. It's hard to time it though especially when you have to estimate the raid DPS to know when to pop him.

Nothing to do with haunt uptime, read the tooltip - doomguards get a flat dmg increase when used on targets below 20%.

[Bonkura]

Nothing to do with haunt uptime, read the tooltip - doomguards get a flat dmg increase when used on targets below 20%.

T_T ... then we'll get that skill factor added. Oh wait, he still does less than he did in Cata...

[Shauni]

Bonku, sometimes you write strange things. Me confused by strange things

[Bonkura]

Bonku, sometimes you write strange things. Me confused by strange things

I'm very good at posting before thinking. At least I keep the discussion going and manage to do decent DPS. Could be doing worse!

[Shauni]

Yes, you could play as a gnome.

[rezoacken]

Concerning refreshing dots after a trinket proc. Do you guys usualy recast them manually, with felflame (for UA and Cor) and/or do you burn some shard here and there for a SB:SS to refresh everything in one GCD (assuming no shard gained by DrainSoul on kills) ?

Currently I often refresh dots with felflame and a manual agony but I wonder if that's the best way to go about it. For example, at pull my opener is usually:
(pot),Haunt,DS,SBSS,MG
Now after around 2 ticks I usually have my 2 trinkets procs
I'll throw in a FF (clip MG after a tick) and MG,Haunt,MG,MG
At this point DS is soon to be over and one of the proc too.

I wonder if I should
-SBSS to reapply everything with max procs or (this consumes a shard )
-do 2 Felflame + Agony or (this gives something close to a full reapplication)
-Reapply each dot manually (before one of the buff wears out)

Example might be a bit imprecise since I can't verify it right now.

Last question, what kind of uptime on dots is good ? what average uptime on haunt do you have ?

[Shauni]

Concerning refreshing dots after a trinket proc. Do you guys usualy recast them manually, with felflame (for UA and Cor) and/or do you burn some shard here and there for a SB:SS to refresh everything in one GCD (assuming no shard gained by DrainSoul on kills) ?

Currently I often refresh dots with felflame and a manual agony but I wonder if that's the best way to go about it. For example, at pull my opener is usually:
(pot),Haunt,DS,SBSS,MG
Now after around 2 ticks I usually have my 2 trinkets procs
I'll throw in a FF (clip MG after a tick) and MG,Haunt,MG,MG
At this point DS is soon to be over and one of the proc too.

I wonder if I should
-SBSS to reapply everything with max procs or (this consumes a shard )
-do 2 Felflame + Agony or (this gives something close to a full reapplication)
-Reapply each dot manually (before one of the buff wears out)

Example might be a bit imprecise since I can't verify it right now.

Last question, what kind of uptime on dots is good ? what average uptime on haunt do you have ?

I would say go check the Evrelia's video. I think he covers that pretty nicely.
For the dot uptime, 100% is a good number. Yeah something like that, especially agony. for Haunt, 60% is a great number but not easilly obtainable, it depends of the fight but as usual, the highest you can maintain.

[dreaderus]

Since the power aura's info seems to be under wraps a couple of other questions until someone can share them.

whats best way to avoid soul swapping your target in error? I rarely use the transfer function of SS so the main reason I am casting it again is to refresh the 3 dots (now when i notice I have proced or DSM is up to trigger)

In fact I have DSM macro'd to the soul swap. is that dumb? I am able to cast it before SS with the macro and then gain the benefits each time its up.

[funkyB]

Dear Community,

I´m little bit confused through some postings here. I want to optimize my dps and therefore I would like to know, whether the doomguard benifit currently from bloodlust/heroism/time warp or not. If not, is it better to cast him at <20% boss life?

Another question is, does dark soul and bloodlust/herosim/time warp stack? Pls apologize if I wrote something incorrectly and for my bad english.
Thx for answering my questions.

[xskarma]

Dear Community,

I´m little bit confused through some postings here. I want to optimize my dps and therefore I would like to know, whether the doomguard benifit currently from bloodlust/heroism/time warp or not. If not, is it better to cast him at <20% boss life?

Another question is, does dark soul and bloodlust/herosim/time warp stack? Pls apologize if I wrote something incorrectly and for my bad english.
Thx for answering my questions.

Use Doomguard when you use Timewarp/Heroism, it benefits from it both if you pop it before and after. The <20% is nice, but using it with Timewarp/Heroism is always better.

Yes, Dark Soul and Timewarp/Heroism stack. You can get ridiculous DPS that way.

There is the following though, something Evralia was talking about on a previous page:

No, you are correct. Although it's still better to pre-summon him, since it would result in higher Bloodlust uptime with him up.

However, there seems to be something wrong here. After reading a post on EJ today and inspecting my own logs and many others, it appears Doom Guard casts a total of 17 bolts no matter when you summon him. His cast speed decreases, but he then waits in between casts to compensate. Something very buggy is going on here.

So there might be something buggy going on with Doomguard and Heroism. Still in theory everything should be as I said.

[MSW]

Hi, I have searched many threads and posts in forum, also searched nearly every DoT addon via curse client, but havent noticed or seen any addon that I want. Every addon shows what I casted, I want a dot tracker addon that shows DoTs I should cast and maintain all time. Tried dottracket, dottimer, fortexorcist, lockdots, etc. Please tell me an addon very usefull for affliction.

[Khadjid]

AffDots has become quite popular since it was created a couple of weeks ago. You also have addons such as WeakAuras, PowerAuras, TellMeWhen, NeedToKnow that can do pretty much anything you want with some configuration.

[EvreliaGaming]

Use Doomguard when you use Timewarp/Heroism, it benefits from it both if you pop it before and after. The <20% is nice, but using it with Timewarp/Heroism is always better.

Yes, Dark Soul and Timewarp/Heroism stack. You can get ridiculous DPS that way.

There is the following though, something Evralia was talking about on a previous page:




So there might be something buggy going on with Doomguard and Heroism. Still in theory everything should be as I said.

Don't use doomguard with heroism. It's a complete waste right now. Someone also told me that Blizzard had acknowledged the issue and that it is intended, although I don't have a source for that. Right now, use him at 20%.

[Bonkura]

Don't use doomguard with heroism. It's a complete waste right now. Someone also told me that Blizzard had acknowledged the issue and that it is intended, although I don't have a source for that. Right now, use him at 20%.

That's just... wow. Pets for other classes scale with haste so why shouldn't one of the worst big CD pets not do it? It makes no sense.

[xskarma]

Don't use doomguard with heroism. It's a complete waste right now. Someone also told me that Blizzard had acknowledged the issue and that it is intended, although I don't have a source for that. Right now, use him at 20%.

Wow, that's a pretty big thing to keep from us if it's intended design. They should have told us in beta that it was the case if this is true. Anyone with a twitter account willing to badger GC about it?