State of Affliction in MoP Beta (Grasp & Rotation figured out, for now)

[Zinnin]

Yea, basically thats how I feel. Affliction besides bugs, which are annoying, feels like its in a pretty solid spot right now.

Destro and demo though...idk whats going on there.

I really hope blizzard doesn't tweak affliction too much from where it is now because right now its pretty damn fun, quite a bit more fun then it is on live IMO.

I am also looking forward to affliction execute on boss fights, I have a feeling that basically unlimited shards sub 25% is going to make the execute burn way more fun then it currently is.

Edit: Jessika, I would prefer them actually go the opposite way and get rid of utility being tied to soul shards, and make it so DPS is tied to them, adding in a secondary resource just so they can provide some utility is really lame on live and my opinion of that hasn't changed in beta.

Also you should never be casting MG for more then the haunt duration, so it doesn't feel nearly as long as DS, and in that 8s you need to press it twice to keep it going.

[xskarma]

Wouldn't surprise me if Blizz have actually thought hard about this and said that the most interesting choices are when you have to sometimes choose between DPS and Utility. I mean 90% of the time we will use it for DPS but when the shit hits the fan we have some tools available.....it's just going to cost us some DPS. I'm not altogether up to date about other classes, but I think Druids and Pallies also get choices to sacrifice a bit of their normal effectiveness in a role to have some capacity in another? Like using Holy Power to throw a heal on someone instead of using it for DPS?

[Sockmaster]

Yeah they tried the whole "Soul Shards are for utility and nothing else" experiment at the beginning of cata and we did nothing with them. You either cast 3 instant soul fires or you ended the fight with 3/3 shards left.

Now it's going to be, "use your soul shards on haunt 99.9% of the time, but your pet just died so you might want to trade some Haunt DPS to insta-summon him in a sec, or risk losing even more DPS."

[Bigtimmy]

Wouldn't surprise me if Blizz have actually thought hard about this and said that the most interesting choices are when you have to sometimes choose between DPS and Utility. I mean 90% of the time we will use it for DPS but when the shit hits the fan we have some tools available.....it's just going to cost us some DPS. I'm not altogether up to date about other classes, but I think Druids and Pallies also get choices to sacrifice a bit of their normal effectiveness in a role to have some capacity in another? Like using Holy Power to throw a heal on someone instead of using it for DPS?

Yeah, it seems like a lot of classes have gone to a model similar to holy power. Monk's Chi is kind of like that as well. There may be others, but I haven't bothered trying everything yet.

The idea of choosing between damage and utility isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as generating the resource you need to spend isn't too much of a hinderance. I don't really care much about PvP, but I can see trying to channel DS in arena being really annoying. For PvE, I think it's an interesting balance.

[Zinnin]

Yeah, it seems like a lot of classes have gone to a model similar to holy power. Monk's Chi is kind of like that as well. There may be others, but I haven't bothered trying everything yet.

The idea of choosing between damage and utility isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as generating the resource you need to spend isn't too much of a hinderance. I don't really care much about PvP, but I can see trying to channel DS in arena being really annoying. For PvE, I think it's an interesting balance.

Maybe they could throw in a glyph for pvp that gives you a shard back if DS gets interrupted, that would get rid of the annoyance there for the most part.

As for using shards for utility, I don't mind it at all. However, I don't like the shard for AoE Curse of Elements, that feels lame to me.

[Count Zero]

I also like the idea of having a choice between dps and utility. I wish that were more ingrained in player culture. But, I dunno, I'm more of a team player than most folks I know -- if our Druids are either on cd or can't switch from their task (tank, healer), I'm always the first to call out I'll do a necessary battle rez. I play Demo rather than Afflic because our other lock prefers Afflic and we only have one Ele sham, so I take one for the team and play my least-favorite 'lock spec so we have a backup for the spellpower buff if our Ele sham can't make it (or if we have to downshift to two 10's if attendance is low [which it has been lately ]).

Don't get me wrong, it feels amazing to score 95th+ percentile on epeenbot, or to rank top 200 / top 100 on WoL, but at the end of the day as long as we get that kill, if a task has to be done I'm the first to volunteer to do it, because I don't mind whereas I know other of our dpsers get a lot more pleasure out of maximizing their dps.

That being said, yeah, I would love if others were as quick to volunteer for utility purposes, so, again, I'd really love it if the idea of dps being a multi-function job (damage + utility) was pushed harder by Blizz.

[xskarma]

Maybe they could throw in a glyph for pvp that gives you a shard back if DS gets interrupted, that would get rid of the annoyance there for the most part.

As for using shards for utility, I don't mind it at all. However, I don't like the shard for AoE Curse of Elements, that feels lame to me.

Just thought of something. How are we going to SB: CoE and then SB: Seed of Corruption if there is a 15 sec cooldown?

[Fallensaint]

However, I don't like the shard for AoE Curse of Elements, that feels lame to me.

Hey, it could be worse. It could cost you an ember.

[Zinnin]

Just thought of something. How are we going to SB: CoE and then SB: Seed of Corruption if there is a 15 sec cooldown?

We arn't, there is a reason I think SB: CoE is retarded and that we should just have Jinx

[xskarma]

We arn't, there is a reason I think SB: CoE is retarded and that we should just have Jinx

Ah yeah, no Blizz thought ahead SB:COE spell on Wowdb

[Zinnin]

Ah yeah, no Blizz thought ahead SB:COE spell on Wowdb

Well damn, thats a change I didn't notice

[xskarma]

Well damn, thats a change I didn't notice

Still costs us a shard though. I find it a bit weird we have to spend an expensive shard on a utility spell, but the SoC one gets refunded. I'd have changed it around and made CoE refund and SoC cost a shard. But that might have confused players a bit, so meh. =/

[Brusalk]

However, all that does is force us to macro soulburn->CoE. They might as well simplify it and just make CoE apply to every target near the primary target when you cast it normally. There's no difference and one is less confusing to new players.

---------- Post added 2012-04-14 at 03:06 AM ----------

So I just did some basic, not in any way shape or form significant testing on DS or no DS. I basically found it was a wash on my warlock which I copied over. I ran both for about 500-600 seconds on an 85 target dummy.

This one I haunted till I couldn't anymore, only MG'd when Haunt was up, and DS'd when I couldn't
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/t...um/damageDone/

This one I just tried to keep as much haunt uptime as I could with just nightfall procs. Never DS'd, just did it when I could
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f...ne/?s=44&e=479

It's just heresay, but it seems to me to be a wash just looking at it this way. (With not DS'ing slightly better (+250)) (At the moment, and with my lock) I don't know which one's better, but I had similar uptime on dots and haunt both ways. It's entirely possible that I just got lucky with nightfall procs when I wasn't DSing.


The only thing I know for sure, is that the rotation where you DS when you can't haunt to gen shards is going to be way more consistent than if you just wait for nightfall procs.

[Xorn]

Consistency in a rotation is typically a good thing. Just ask a fire mage about rng XD

Regardless, blizz can easily crush the channel weaving if things get out of control by making DS ONLY usbable on enemies with less than 25% health, the way Shadowburn functions.

[Jessicka]

Consistency in a rotation is typically a good thing. Just ask a fire mage about rng XD

Regardless, blizz can easily crush the channel weaving if things get out of control by making DS ONLY usbable on enemies with less than 25% health, the way Shadowburn functions.

It's more likely they'd just rescale the damage either side of the execute, half it above and put the modifier below back to 4x, that way we wouldn't loose the mechanic to regenerate shards in combat at will, but it would be absolutely clear that it wasn't optimal.

[Zinnin]

I think if they did crush channel weaving there isn't much left that I can like about their current design. Taking out channel weaving not only makes the 100-25% rotation far less more interesting it also turns it into a RNG disaster and good parses and ranks will never be about who actually played better at all. So there would go affliction as a decent spec, leaving us with destro...nevermind...maybe it leaves us with demo, but they are still redesigning that so who knows...

[ComputerNerd]

I think if they did crush channel weaving there isn't much left that I can like about their current design. Taking out channel weaving not only makes the 100-25% rotation far less more interesting it also turns it into a RNG disaster and good parses and ranks will never be about who actually played better at all. So there would go affliction as a decent spec, leaving us with destro...nevermind...maybe it leaves us with demo, but they are still redesigning that so who knows...

The problem there is the RNG and the forced solution for it.
There are good RNG mechanisms are those which are just poor.
Molten Core was an example of one done pretty well, where it was a worthwhile dps increase to react to it, but not one that would seriously gimp you if you missed your chance.
If poor RNG really can really have that impact on the dps then that is where the solution should lie, and not requiring extra work to overcome it.

[Zinnin]

I am fine with some RNG, I think it adds to game play. However if they are designing a spec around the idea that you have a meaningful secondary resource you shouldn't be relying on RNG to give you more of that resource.

Imagine Paladins only getting holy power as a 4% chance on hits.

Or Death Knights only gaining runic power as a 4% chance when their diseases are ticking.

If they want Haunt to be controlled by RNG it needs to be JUST RNG, and it needs to be more often. So instead of a 4% chance on corruption ticking it needs to be closer to 10-12% and then it also needs to have absolutely nothing to do with soul shards.

If they want to tie it to soul shards like they have then we need to have meaningful control over our secondary resource and not just depending on RNG, and im not just talking oh you can drain soul if you are getting terrible RNG but it is still a dps increase, it needs to be something we are thinking about during the whole fight and as a part of our normal rotation.

Why even tie Haunt to soul shards if their design is to just make it where you cast Haunt when you get a nightfall proc. That just seems like bad design.

[Fallensaint]

I've done two tests to compare the differences between DS-weaving and non-weaving.

Core priority: CoE > DoTs > Haunt if shards are available > channeled filler

At the start of combat, I used Soulburn: Soul Swap to instantly apply DoTs, and to open a empty slot in case of early Nightfall procs. For DoT refreshing, I used Fel Flame since it syncs up well with 6 seconds of channeled filler. Since FF doesn't refresh Agony, that was manually recast. For my weaving rotation, I used Malefic Grasp if was at 3 or more shards, and Drain Soul if I was at 2 or less. For my non-weaving rotation, I used Haunt whenever I had an available shard and the debuff was not up on the dummy. I did not have Dark Intent up (forgot it on the first test), and I did not use Dark Soul. Also, I did have the glyph for 4 shards, but not the Glyph of Doom (since that buggs out badly with MG, and would skew results). Both tests were done over about 5 minutes.

The results?

Weaving: 18,869 DPS
No weaving: 18,647 DPS

Not a very big difference there. So, why use one over the other? Well, weaving's consistent shard generation makes the use of Soulburn for utility a lot more accessible and a lot less harmful to your DPS. However, it's not very easy to perform in heavy movement due to Drain Soul's long tick time. Non-weaving is a lot more movement-friendly due to MG's faster ticks, but it's also a lot more reliant on Nightfall's RNG. Its lack of consistent shards makes shard use for utility a lot less possible, but I would guess it's burst is pretty good if you can store up the shards. Ideally, a good 'lock would probably use both methods depending on the situation.

Given how close the two rotations are, and how close Destro's rotation options are, I'm really eager to see Demo after they release the new changes.

[Jessicka]

Why even tie Haunt to soul shards if their design is to just make it where you cast Haunt when you get a nightfall proc. That just seems like bad design.

If it only lights up with a certain proc, it's bordering on a tertiary resource, because obviously you'd want that proc to stack like the new Molten Core. Then you have this psuedo tertiary resource generated by random procs, and a secondary resource for utility that seldom gets used - it's not really any different to your examples of Holy Power or Runic Power coming from random procs, so that tertiary resource may as well be packed up with the secondary. I don't think either option is good design, but then I don't think the third option of Haunt on a cooldown is a great idea either since it risks becoming too much like Mind Blast. It kinda feels like the spec has painted itself into a corner; but then I've been saying for a long time MG should have been replacing Haunt, not Shadow Bolt. /shrug.