Warlock Talents in Antorus

[nToxik]

Hi all,

New (again) to playing a Warlock.

I've been following this guide by Yipz on which talents to use on which Antorus bosses. It sees to work pretty well but just to bounce this off of you guys for any advice.


Garothi – Malefic/Contagion - single target
Felhounds – Writhe/Contagion -cleave
High Command – Writhe/Contagion
Portal Keeper - Writhe/Contagion
Eonar – Writhe/Absolute Corruption
Imonar – Malefic/Contagion
Kin’garoth - Malefic/Contagion or Writhe
Varimathras – Malefic/Contagion
Coven – Writhe/Contagion
Aggramar – Writhe/Absolute Corruption (if dotting adds) otherwise Malefic/Contagion
Argus – Writhe/Contagion


I also just got my 4pc T21 so haven't tried Syphon Life yet. Which bosses would you take Syphon Life over Soul Harvest? Is it just cleave and AOE type encounters where you use Syphon Life and take Soul Harvest for single target? What about Mythic+?

Keep in mind I only have Prydaz and Helm leggos at the moment.

Thanks.

[SpamHealzu]

So for ST siphon life replaces soul conduit (not soul harvest) for ST bosses anytime you basically are not swimming in shards (ie - for mythic varimathras SC >/= SL bc all the extra shadows you can soul drain on at last second to generate a free shard) The reason being your 4 piece buffs SL damage and SC obviously becomes better with the more shards you can spend.

Basically anytime you can get drain soul uptime > 40% MG beats out Writhe. This really only happens on single target fights. For M+ it obviously depends on the week and the level of the key and what comp you are running with but unless you are doing stupidly high level keys with fortified as an affix the standard single target build is good because you will do insane boss dmg and typically trash wont live long enough to get to 15 stacks of agony.

So just for summation:
1) Single Target - SL > SC unless there is some sort of shard generating cheese method
2) Two-Three target - SL > SC
3) Three+Target - If you arent running class ring run Deaths Embrace as that point it gets very difficult to manage all three dots on that many targets and reliably keep your 4p bonus debuff up and not capping soul shards

[SpikeySquad]

Hi all,

New (again) to playing a Warlock.

I've been following this guide by Yipz on which talents to use on which Antorus bosses. It sees to work pretty well but just to bounce this off of you guys for any advice.


Garothi – Malefic/Contagion - single target
Felhounds – Writhe/Contagion -cleave
High Command – Writhe/Contagion
Portal Keeper - Writhe/Contagion
Eonar – Writhe/Absolute Corruption
Imonar – Malefic/Contagion
Kin’garoth - Malefic/Contagion or Writhe
Varimathras – Malefic/Contagion
Coven – Writhe/Contagion
Aggramar – Writhe/Absolute Corruption (if dotting adds) otherwise Malefic/Contagion
Argus – Writhe/Contagion


I also just got my 4pc T21 so haven't tried Syphon Life yet. Which bosses would you take Syphon Life over Soul Harvest? Is it just cleave and AOE type encounters where you use Syphon Life and take Soul Harvest for single target? What about Mythic+?

Keep in mind I only have Prydaz and Helm leggos at the moment.

Thanks.

What difficulty are we talking? I will assume heroic (and or normal).

SL and SH are not on the same tier anymore. It's probably quicker to list the bosses I would not take SL on. They are AHC, PKH (though could be better if you go up), Eonar and Coven. Don't think I have missed any.

Peronally I play WiA-AC-DE on AHC and Coven.

Felhounds my preference is WiA-AC-SL. WiA-Contagion is viable and seems to have a higher top end but the results are pretty close and I will probably get better results with the former set up.

Kingaroth and Aggramar I definitely have had better results with MG-Cont-SL so far. However, WiA is super close to MG and probably easier to play so experiment.

Have a play and see what suits you. You have been super lucky with leggos!!!

Mythic + depends on different factors but SL is just way too many globals in my opinon.

Generally if running a DoT build and T21 I will take DE.

If I am running a StS build I will use T20 and SC. If you are running seeds with t21 I'd also lean towards suggesting SC but I haven't tried this yet.

[nToxik]

Thanks guys. Yeah I meant to say Siphon Life vs Soul Conduit (not Soul Harvester).

[Brewhan]

the only thing i hate right now is using up to 9-11 tomes per raid clear with my heroic guild while other ranged classes don't have to change their talents at all. It's about 2500g per week in tomes alone which isn't much but it is annoying to say the least.

[Deleted]

the only thing i hate right now is using up to 9-11 tomes per raid clear with my heroic guild while other ranged classes don't have to change their talents at all. It's about 2500g per week in tomes alone which isn't much but it is annoying to say the least.

I kinda do all bosses with WiA/Cont/SH/SL and have 0 issues with DPS. Might not be top tier sometimes, but far from required to change it every boss.

[SpikeySquad]

the only thing i hate right now is using up to 9-11 tomes per raid clear with my heroic guild while other ranged classes don't have to change their talents at all. It's about 2500g per week in tomes alone which isn't much but it is annoying to say the least.

Expensive server you play on. They're only 100g here and pretty cheap to make from Dreamleaf.

Like Tinuvial says that's a decent cookie cutter build and DPS tends to matter little on farm unless you're trying to parse.

[bigsuirlife]

the only thing i hate right now is using up to 9-11 tomes per raid clear with my heroic guild while other ranged classes don't have to change their talents at all. It's about 2500g per week in tomes alone which isn't much but it is annoying to say the least.

2500g it's one class hall mission.
just 1 sec work

[Trend]

the only thing i hate right now is using up to 9-11 tomes per raid clear with my heroic guild while other ranged classes don't have to change their talents at all. It's about 2500g per week in tomes alone which isn't much but it is annoying to say the least.

I can't decide if I like this dynamic (having different talent setups required for different encounters) or not. As others have mentioned, on my server the tomes are only ~100g and I have an alt that can make them anyway, but sometimes it is annoying to have to stop and be changing talents when seemingly nobody else needs to. On the positive side, it does make for more variety in playstyle.

And I don't personally re-talent for every single boss unless it's for progression or bosses that may still give us a bit of a hard time. For heroic I'm down to 3 tomes per run, and it could be less. Not worth the hassle to keep changing for a little more dps on an easy kill. If I could macro it like my equipment sets I would do it, but whatever. If you're using 9-11 per week though, I would say you're worrying a bit too much about parsing on trivial content because there definitely shouldn't be 10-12 bosses giving you a hard time. And I'm not suggesting not to contribute ... you should still be one of the top damage dealers with any reasonable talent setup if you're trying at all.

The whole tome thing bothers me more because it feels like an arbitrary throwback to the old reagent days for the sole purpose of making inscription suck slightly less. Sure, I still have to remember flasks, pots and food, but this feels more like the stupid shit they got rid of like ankhs and powders. Maybe that's just me though!

- - - Updated - - -

I've been following this guide by Yipz on which talents to use on which Antorus bosses. It sees to work pretty well but just to bounce this off of you guys for any advice.

<snip>

I also just got my 4pc T21 so haven't tried Syphon Life yet. Which bosses would you take Syphon Life over Soul Harvest? Is it just cleave and AOE type encounters where you use Syphon Life and take Soul Harvest for single target? What about Mythic+?

Keep in mind I only have Prydaz and Helm leggos at the moment.

Thanks.

One thing I do that I think is helpful is to look at warcraftlogs.com and pull up the talents/trinkets/legendaries that are rated by usage and dps for each of the specific bosses. It's not a perfect guide, but it does give a broad insight into what other people have been running for these encounters. I would look at mythic because that's more where ppl need to be thoughtful about their setups ... by this point heroic is just a stompfest for so many groups that I think it would tend to be less helpful.

And btw, helm and prydaz is a pretty strong combo ... if those were your first 2 that was pretty good fortune.

[Scroff]

I can't decide if I like this dynamic (having different talent setups required for different encounters) or not. As others have mentioned, on my server the tomes are only ~100g and I have an alt that can make them anyway, but sometimes it is annoying to have to stop and be changing talents when seemingly nobody else needs to. On the positive side, it does make for more variety in playstyle.

In case you haven't come across it, the addon talent set manager lets you swap talent sets and gear sets at the push of a button. I've set up the various combinations I use and it's then a simple matter of popping a tome and hitting that button.

I completely agree about the increased variety in playstyle, and I value that particularly on farm bosses to keep me interested. I think if I was playing a class where the way you play is always the same then I'd be having way less fun. In this respect I think that the current design of afflock has been successful in providing talent choices that let you adapt to a variety of circumstances - which I think is Blizz's intention.

[vaeevictiss]

im no pro or anything (~80% perf. avg according to warcraftlogs) so dont take my word for it but i made a little cheat sheet of the talents i use for each boss and the legendaries used and it works out well. utilizing sephuz on portal keeper and agg are helpful too. we only have 2/11 mythic so im not sure if these will work for every mythic boss.

[Biomega]

im no pro or anything (~80% perf. avg according to warcraftlogs) so dont take my word for it but i made a little cheat sheet of the talents i use for each boss and the legendaries used and it works out well. utilizing sephuz on portal keeper and agg are helpful too. we only have 2/11 mythic so im not sure if these will work for every mythic boss.

A solid list (love the color coding), though of course there's some flexibility here and there depending on how your guild wants to approach things, and whether it's heroic or mythic.

I'm personally liking Soul ring over Belt on Mythic, because the execute phase lasts longer - on Heroic, though, fights tend to be substantially shorter so you may gain more out of the Belt. Same is true if your guild happens to be very good at execute, like idk if you're running with 3 Warriors on mythic or whatever; and, conversely, if your guild SUCKS at execute because 4 DPS are dead each time, the Ring becomes much more valuable.

Also keep in mind that as a general rule, you will want to use Sac ring when you are using Absolute Corruption - it tends to overperform with a lot of Corruptions ticking. I suppose you can make the argument that heroic AHC doesn't need AC because adds just melt but on Mythic I very much prefer AC + Sac ring. I am also not a fan of Sow the Seeds here - on heroic adds tend to die too quickly for you to be spamming Seed a lot, and on Mythic priority damage is more important than pad. With the amount of DoT spam going on here, I'd also run DE over Siphon. Too few globals available to refresh it reliably when you're trying to snipe Drains and DoT up everything.

Also not liking Siphon on Eonar. I generally like to pair Sow the Seeds with Soul Conduit as a rule, since taking Sow means you will be wanting to spam Seed a lot. And trying to put up Siphons on 10 bats is just not a winning plan imo when you could be chain-casting Seed instead. Sephuz is also great here!

Portal Keeper it depends on what your job is, if you are on add duty then Siphon is probably not a great pick. DE or even SC should do better.

On the later ST bosses on Mythic (Imo/Kin/Var) I've seen many people run Helm + Prydaz, as it makes things much smoother and cuts down on silly deaths considerably. But I suppose there's many options for the second legendary, Helm should come out ahead quite clearly for the first, though.

On Coven it appears most people are in fact running DE over Siphon once again. I'm not there yet on Mythic so I can't speak to personal experience, but I do notice that on Heroic it can sometimes get hard to maintain Siphon during add phases when you're trying to DoT up everything. The less uptime on Siphon you have the worse it becomes and it's also hard to maintain t21 4p on everything if things are very spread out.

Aggramar is also one for DE > Siphon from the looks of logs, though with more Siphon people so it's not THAT clear-cut. In Heroic Siphon seems to be a very clear pick, but Mythic apparently things are different. No personal experience here either. Maybe execute phase is just a lot longer because of stuff going on? Sephuz on Aggramar is another thing. Since most guilds use Banish on adds Heroic but will NOT use it on Mythic and slow them instead, you'd use Sac ring over Sephuz there if that's how your guild does it.

[vaeevictiss]

/snip.

all good points. I think the reason i mostly use siphon is because with SC it seems i cap shards WAY too fast. Hell, even without SC there are times where i cannot dump shards fast enough. Sometimes lucky streaks arent good haha. If there was ever a time to use DE it seemed better to just use the ring and then get a free talent out of it.

I wasnt sure about sow on AHC but i got my highest parse while using it. I start casting seed when the reinforcements timer is at about 2 seconds so it pops right when they spawn, then i put agony on all of them to take advantage of the 4P. Then i just spam seed until they are dead which keeps the 4P buff active. They do die fast but each set of adds is a big jump in dps. I can see on mythic this is probably not the case.

Also a good point with eonar. i think ill try SC this weekend and hopefully not just stay capped.

[Biomega]

all good points. I think the reason i mostly use siphon is because with SC it seems i cap shards WAY too fast. Hell, even without SC there are times where i cannot dump shards fast enough. Sometimes lucky streaks arent good haha. If there was ever a time to use DE it seemed better to just use the ring and then get a free talent out of it.

Using the Soul ring isn't free though since you lose another legendary. And if you're drowning in shards, do you really want more GCDs taken up by SL? >_> Or perhaps you just need to rearrange things a bit to free up time for dumping shards. I know from personal experience that can help a lot, it really changed up how I handled AHC and made me much better at that fight.

I wasnt sure about sow on AHC but i got my highest parse while using it. I start casting seed when the reinforcements timer is at about 2 seconds so it pops right when they spawn, then i put agony on all of them to take advantage of the 4P. Then i just spam seed until they are dead which keeps the 4P buff active. They do die fast but each set of adds is a big jump in dps. I can see on mythic this is probably not the case.

If you just want to parse high, I suppose that can definitely change some talent picks. I'm not here to tell you or anyone how they approach parsing - you do you. Personally I don't care too much about logs on fights like this (or Mistress last tier) and I just go with what supports our guild strategy best. But that's not for everyone, and guilds can handle a lot of pad if it's done right. The adds on AHC aren't exactly a super limiting factor anyway imo, and just spamming them down with Seeds is often a totally viable approach.

Also a good point with eonar. i think ill try SC this weekend and hopefully not just stay capped.

It really helps if you prioritize dumping. With hight haste levels you can squeeze in a lot in between casts, and a lost shard is usually a bigger DPS loss than whatever else you'd be doing (though not always, of course).

[Unlockmyhrt]

There is a comprehensive fight guide on the lock one stop shop with talents, Recommended leggos, strats ect

[Deleted]

I'm actually having success running WiA for single target over MG.

Reason being is i have two agony relics so its boosting agonys damage quite a lot, so much so that for my gear it is only simming 30k less than MG, so unless you play MG perfectly and dont fuck up any drain cycles from movement etc, i find that my writhe build nets me more high parses as it is far more consistent. For 2T cleave on hounds or coven i'll switch in AC.

I run the Hood and Cloak, which really really helps with bad reap rng for both ST and Cleave, yesterday i parsed at 90% Perf 95% ilvl for garothi and 92% 96% for hounds, so it does work if you have the relics.

Portal keeper i switch out the cloak for prydaz as reap is always up cause of the imps and just the sheer amount of stats prydaz provides, tho i will be trying the execute ring next time. Talents wise its my ST writhe build with PS instead of SH.

Command i run sow and AC as my guild is low on strong AoE so i get a lot of mileage out the talent again with prydaz for the stats and DE for the extra seed damage when the adds are low and stacked.

So even tho there is kind of cookie cutter way to spec for the fights, its not always whats could potentially be best for you and your itemization as the way your guild may approach certain fights could wildly sway how you are going to do damage.

[Halwyn]

im no pro or anything (~80% perf. avg according to warcraftlogs) so dont take my word for it but i made a little cheat sheet of the talents i use for each boss and the legendaries used and it works out well. utilizing sephuz on portal keeper and agg are helpful too. we only have 2/11 mythic so im not sure if these will work for every mythic boss.

I'd say Kingaroth by design leans more towards Helm/Prydaz, since the main part of the fight is burning down the robots, and the conditions for the Belt to meet are rather difficult, unlike Prydaz with the tons of stats and that little bubble, making mages and priests running away from the swirly circles even more heartwarming than it is by default.

[Deleted]

I'd say Kingaroth by design leans more towards Helm/Prydaz, since the main part of the fight is burning down the robots, and the conditions for the Belt to meet are rather difficult, unlike Prydaz with the tons of stats and that little bubble, making mages and priests running away from the swirly circles even more heartwarming than it is by default.

These charts are wrong anyway, no sephuz for eonar makes no sense (except if hes playing on hc only?)
Talking from a progress point of view , garothi is Helm + Ring for execute (help for last phase where you lust) or Prydaz
Dogs is helm + corruption ring playing WiA and AC
Antorean is AC WiA ring / helm
Eonar sephuz/slow ring + execute talent for the sweet seed spam
Hasabel WiA Contagion Sephuz + Helm
Imonar Helm + either Prydaz or Belt
Kingaroth is Helm + Belt or Prydaz (no execute ring since you need to burst when the adds spawn)

And then IDK, but advising Helm on Antorean makes absolutely no sense, you are already swimming in shards and if you already have a lot of cleave Banking on corruption is a safer bet, same reasoning for NOT taking soul conduit on high command

Eonar sephuz is required if you wanna get anywhere in the top rankings

Belt for dogs sounds good, doesnt work (if you are on the red dog, your movement will be restrained)

Dont take siphon life except if its a ST fight from start to finish as a rule of thumb (siphon life is a good build if burst is not needed , which is not the case on kingaroth / garothi, its what i'd call a leech build)

[Caprix]

I'm a bit confused about the belt as best leg (or second best) on some fights. It's mainly recommanded (and played) for ST, with MG/contagion talents. The way MG is played (drain cycle), more than half of the UA casts can not trigger it. From my poor-alt-learning-to-play logs, the result is that most of the time about 10% of the shards used comes from the belt, or more or less 1 shard gained per minute. All in all almost always less than 4% damage increase from the legendary effect, most of the time in the 1.5% to 3% range.

I checked a few top logs on ST fights with belt equipped, and this is the same. Perfectly playing MG works very good but doesn't make the belt shine.

Ironically i get more from the belt in multitarget fights (until today i didn't have choice in legendary) but i understand other legendaries can still be better for cleave.

Well now i'm asking because i got the bracers in my weekly chest. Which are not recommanded nor played in ST. But the thing is even in those top ST MG logs, UA uptime is at 100% or near it. Which means well... bracers would be a near 4% damage value... so on par if not better than belt? Stats wise the belt slot has a bit more weigh though...

Most of the time that 1.5% to 3% damage from belt is much lower than the gain from the execute talent (my other leggo was the talent ring), which again makes sense with a rough estimation of 25% average damage increase for a third of the fight... (or even counting only 20% increase over 25% of the fight because execute time... well can be shorter because more overall raid dps).

So what is it that i don't get about that legendary popularity?

[Biomega]

I'm a bit confused about the belt as best leg (or second best) on some fights. It's mainly recommanded (and played) for ST, with MG/contagion talents. The way MG is played (drain cycle), more than half of the UA casts can not trigger it. From my poor-alt-learning-to-play logs, the result is that most of the time about 10% of the shards used comes from the belt, or more or less 1 shard gained per minute. All in all almost always less than 4% damage increase from the legendary effect, most of the time in the 1.5% to 3% range.

I checked a few top logs on ST fights with belt equipped, and this is the same. Perfectly playing MG works very good but doesn't make the belt shine.

Ironically i get more from the belt in multitarget fights (until today i didn't have choice in legendary) but i understand other legendaries can still be better for cleave.

Well now i'm asking because i got the bracers in my weekly chest. Which are not recommanded nor played in ST. But the thing is even in those top ST MG logs, UA uptime is at 100% or near it. Which means well... bracers would be a near 4% damage value... so on par if not better than belt? Stats wise the belt slot has a bit more weigh though...

Most of the time that 1.5% to 3% damage from belt is much lower than the gain from the execute talent (my other leggo was the talent ring), which again makes sense with a rough estimation of 25% average damage increase for a third of the fight... (or even counting only 20% increase over 25% of the fight because execute time... well can be shorter because more overall raid dps).

So what is it that i don't get about that legendary popularity?

It's mostly popular in heroic, because the shorter fights mean less value for the execute ring. On Mythic, on the other hand, the final phase of a boss is often very important, and people are prone to being dead at that point further prolonging it - both increase the relative value of the execute ring.

Personally, I'm gravitating towards using either Prydaz or Sephuz instead (paired with the Helm on most fights, of course). The Sephuz scaling is quite nice at high ilvls, even if you can't trigger it (and it's of course ludicrously good when you can), and Prydaz' defensive value just makes so many Mythic mechanics so much more comfortable to deal with (and it also has very good stats).

However, I suppose you can get more out of the Belt if you play well, and time UA casts for minimum gaps (not THAT hard to do with a good DoT tracker addon that projects the current UA cast time, e.g. SPTimers). And many of the good legendaries are quite close in value.