[5.4] Affliction Warlock and Encounter Specific Guides

[Livendula]

I have seen more consistant dps with Breath and Wush over UVLS now. Without the soul swap bug you have to get lucky on RNG and proc timing period. Sadly to say affliction dps is dropping on most fights in TOT atm ;-(.

I'm not seeing this personally. I agree with you that Breath and Wush is more consistent, but it doesn't seem to have the same potential as UVLS.

[Cyberthug32]

Yah and i'm not sure still about this not stacking haste builds. I have tried many attempts even just on lfr Jinrokh and see a lot higher parses consistant with stacking of haste.

[Deleted]

I have seen more consistant dps with Breath and Wush over UVLS now. Without the soul swap bug you have to get lucky on RNG and proc timing period. Sadly to say affliction dps is dropping on most fights in TOT atm ;-(.

I'm playing affliction for about half of the bosses at ilvl 528, never had uvls neither the legendary meta yet. My dps is fine. The only fights where affliction would not be favoured is niche fights like tortos, magaera, primordius and lei shen. But we have offspecs for that

[Deleted]

I have seen more consistant dps with Breath and Wush over UVLS now. Without the soul swap bug you have to get lucky on RNG and proc timing period. Sadly to say affliction dps is dropping on most fights in TOT atm ;-(.

the soulswap "bug" as you call it or soul swap "trick" as i would call it still partially works and is still OP in most heroic encounters as affliction (horridon, council, tortos, megaera, dark animus, twins).
with this trick and depending on your race/professions you want to balance mastery/haste around an UA break point (because the aim in to inhale just before the last UA tick)

here is an updated sheet showing UA breakpoints with all haste buffs (opener) when setting the trick up :
docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoPgK690GruIdENnaFRaVFRoR2ZHX2g0eWlmblFCYkE#gid=12

[Deleted]

Yah and i'm not sure still about this not stacking haste builds. I have tried many attempts even just on lfr Jinrokh and see a lot higher parses consistant with stacking of haste.

afaik haste is king for single target and when using GoSup so ofc you're going to get better results haste stacking on a single target boss when it comes to dps, however you wont see a noticable increase in proc uptime by stacking haste, atleast nothing that cant be contributed to RNG.

[Deleted]

Yah and i'm not sure still about this not stacking haste builds. I have tried many attempts even just on lfr Jinrokh and see a lot higher parses consistant with stacking of haste.

For Jin'rokh the best is GoSac, and bursting everything in pools. So LFR timings of damage in pools with skullbanners, stormlashes and hero / you being at the right place the pool land isnt optimized in this scenario. The faster the boss dies, with saving everything in the first pool can be GG.

+ Mastery can give you higher parses since mastery scales better in the pools. If everything is not timed around pools you wont notice much. Neither is superior to the other, but the diff is not really noticeable unless you had the same trinket uptime with both playstyles all tries!

[Bonkura]

For Jin'rokh the best is GoSac, and bursting everything in pools. So LFR timings of damage in pools with skullbanners, stormlashes and hero / you being at the right place the pool land isnt optimized in this scenario. The faster the boss dies, with saving everything in the first pool can be GG.

+ Mastery can give you higher parses since mastery scales better in the pools. If everything is not timed around pools you wont notice much. Neither is superior to the other, but the diff is not really noticeable unless you had the same trinket uptime with both playstyles all tries!

Haste and mastery have been scaling equally with GoSac in the past, so I don't see why it would be any different now. On a fight like Jinrokh where we never have to interrupt channeling MG I don't see why haste would be any weaker just because we're getting a damage buff. Legendary meta is the only thing that comes to mind that would actually affect the value of haste compared to mastery. Either way, I'm sure the difference is very low no matter how far we take this argument.


Regarding trinkets I'd probably take anything over Wush atm. At pulls with BL I get Alysrazor channel time on my MG's together with DS, 2/2 valor trinket and LGM. When all that is gone I haven't reached 10 stacks on Wush . I've only had it for a couple of days but it's given me some serious headaches already

[Deleted]

Yeah wushoolays + cha yes is driving me up the wall, 10 stack is only worth it for refreshing ua.

[Deleted]

idd, its quite annoying, having all those 10 sec haste procs up, with the wushoolay proc, coz you cant get the optimal amount of the int stacks out of it, so you can at best reach 5-6 stacks, and then thats its. no point in refreshing at 10 stacks coz your dots are already more powerful with the haste procs than they ever would be with the last 4-5 int procs from the trinket.

[Deleted]

While wush indeed won't be at max stacks before the other procs fall off at pull, having it at 6 or more stacks already beats the amount of intellect that any other trink gives.

[Deleted]

you'll be lucky to be able to put dots up with 6 stacks tho, most of the times it will be at 5 stacks tho.

[Bonkura]

you'll be lucky to be able to put dots up with 6 stacks tho, most of the times it will be at 5 stacks tho.

or even that. at that point you've already maxed out your dots duration with other procs to focus on full MG'ing while haste buffs are up. as someone else said I usually just hardcast UA and maybe a quick corruption at 9-10 stacks of wush to extend the burst opening.

[Cocobutters]

the soulswap "bug" as you call it or soul swap "trick" as i would call it still partially works and is still OP in most heroic encounters as affliction (horridon, council, tortos, megaera, dark animus, twins).
with this trick and depending on your race/professions you want to balance mastery/haste around an UA break point (because the aim in to inhale just before the last UA tick)

here is an updated sheet showing UA breakpoints with all haste buffs (opener) when setting the trick up :
docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoPgK690GruIdENnaFRaVFRoR2ZHX2g0eWlmblFCYkE#gid=12

Back during when all of the dots crit, what did you do to get your numbers so high on Megaera?

[weakdots]

Back during when all of the dots crit, what did you do to get your numbers so high on Megaera?

based on the log i think he was keeping dots on the venom head while swapping around the buffed dots. like bounce them from kill target to venom then back to kill target, then throwing an sb:ss up on venom

[Surutcra]

Now in ToT there is like no fights you would ever stack haste on, where mastery is just superior. So all this haste stacking is in theory but when it comes to most fights mastery imo scales better

Actually that's really what it comes down to. I should have made the disclaimer even clearer. The difference is so slight that any actual fight-specific perturbation to the patchwerk environment will be sufficient to make it irrelevant.

Now I can understand why you might be tempted to say that the additional RPPM procs from haste should be ignored in the evaluation of haste, but there is really no rational reason not to. You can say that it is still a small effect and the bump to haste value is small, but you should not disregard it for the sake of its randomness. If you would, then you could also discard the impact of RPPM procs completely (they are just as random !), but no one will because this time around their effects are huge.

Side question, for the RPPM experts :
- RPPM scales with your haste, and according to blue posts your highest (melee, ranged, spell) haste. Pretty unexpectedly, with the melee buff being 10% and the spell one only 5%, your highest haste will be the melee one. Does anyone know for sure which one actually is used for computation ? (This is pretty annoying to test !)

[Deleted]

Back during when all of the dots crit, what did you do to get your numbers so high on Megaera?

got ToTs, lust on pull then it's all about having correct professions (herbalism + eng) and balance haste/mastery around an UA breakpoint (to gain more ticks in-between each inhale-exhale) i didn't waste time doting venom head it's dpsloss if you exploit soulswap nor nether wyrms just 100% mono/
And you have to play GoSAC with soulswap trick because you were constantly spamming malefic grasp on 50k+ intel dots which made GoSAC far superior to GoSUP.

[TheShade]

soulswap trick

Did they hotfix that yet? Haven't heard.

[Woz]

Did they hotfix that yet? Haven't heard.

They did for UA and Corruption - not Agony though.

[TheShade]

They did for UA and Corruption - not Agony though.

Wait. So at the pull of the fight one can get their Agony dot all buffed to hell and sustain just agony?

[Rife]

[Soul Swap trick] is still OP in most heroic encounters as affliction

Agree with that OP statement, judging by your WoL's.

IIRC they've tried fixing it already but it still carries over haste # and crit %. Won't be long until they hammer that nail down.