[5.4] Affliction Warlock and Encounter Specific Guides

[OokingDooker]

Not only does it come down to how fast you're killing bosses because affliction burst is very high, it also depends a great deal on how lucky you are. I still see kills with less than 8% uptime on black blood or kills with procs lining up perfectly right before you start soul-swapping. Kind of bummed that they are not getting rid of this system next expansion.

It really wouldn't be a big deal if trinkets aren't so powerful.

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Story of my life. I know I'm a good player. Not in an arrogant way, I just know that I'm pretty good at what I do. It's just REALLY annoying that my 10m guild (12/14H) 3 heals almost everything, doesn't stack bosses, etc. It makes me force myself not to care about how I do relative to top 10 parses.

You probably contribute enough to the total raid dps that allows them to 3 heal bosses that are normally 2 healed. Its the same thing for our group, we 3 heal a lot of fights that's usually 2 healed.

[FurtyIRL]

It really wouldn't be a big deal if trinkets aren't so powerful.

I guess the ever spinning wheel of balance is that the less potent trinkets are, the less of a difference there are between players of different skill caps. Blizzard's original intention with RPPM was to lower the skill cap but I honestly think the reactive nature requires significantly more forethought with regard to your CDs and resources. I am actually a fan of the gimmicky trinkets they added this tier though, each with some sort of unique passive coupled with a proc. Definitely helps mitigate the importance of procs when the trinket has a potent passive effect (e.g. Amp).

[EvreliaGaming]

They basically think dps would be boring if trinkets weren't RNG, which just couldn't be further from the truth.

[Werst]

They did the RPPM RNG thing for the "everyman" normal joe in LFR who is never going to be super consistent pull to pull compared to a top raider who can pretty much be clockwork all things considered. All the RPPM thing did was make specs like affliction nearly impossible to balance in the hands of the pro especially with good RNG. Oddly blizz also talked about no good way to teach better play which I think taking OP trinket RNG out of the picture would help. IE if you had to work for your numbers more than be carried by procs it would be more interesting or at least incentivize better play more.

That said for MoP I wouldn't mind if we had say 3-4 basic types of trinkets: (guess which I'm on the fence about)
*An "amp" type ie a static stat with an int proc on an ICD
*A stacking type ie IotDS from wotlk or the ones from h.spine cata.
*A static stat with an on use
*A static stat RPPM int proc but its chance should be lower than the ICD's

I mean new/fun trinkets are neat but the escalating arms race this expansion has yielded some absurd results and often skewed the game. Granted without snapshotting you can get away with doing that more readily but perhaps save it for last tier. I'd rather people who play well do well rather than people who proc well do well.

[FurtyIRL]

They did the RPPM RNG thing for the "everyman" normal joe in LFR who is never going to be super consistent pull to pull compared to a top raider who can pretty much be clockwork all things considered. All the RPPM thing did was make specs like affliction nearly impossible to balance in the hands of the pro especially with good RNG. Oddly blizz also talked about no good way to teach better play which I think taking OP trinket RNG out of the picture would help. IE if you had to work for your numbers more than be carried by procs it would be more interesting or at least incentivize better play more.

That said for MoP I wouldn't mind if we had say 3-4 basic types of trinkets: (guess which I'm on the fence about)
*An "amp" type ie a static stat with an int proc on an ICD
*A stacking type ie IotDS from wotlk or the ones from h.spine cata.
*A static stat with an on use
*A static stat RPPM int proc but its chance should be lower than the ICD's

I mean new/fun trinkets are neat but the escalating arms race this expansion has yielded some absurd results and often skewed the game. Granted without snapshotting you can get away with doing that more readily but perhaps save it for last tier. I'd rather people who play well do well rather than people who proc well do well.

I feel like on use is kind of archaic in the scheme of trinket design, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't mind one ... just wouldn't expect that from blizzard at this point. Would actually like to see some properly scaled/balanced secondary stat proc trinkets.

[Deleted]

Hey guys, currently have hc wf amp, hc ktt, wf bboy, having issue deciding which to use atm. I am about 570 ilvl. I will try to check the trinket list that spark posted later, but for now any suggestions?

[FurtyIRL]

Hey guys, currently have hc wf amp, hc ktt, wf bboy, having issue deciding which to use atm. I am about 570 ilvl. I will try to check the trinket list that spark posted later, but for now any suggestions?

BBoY is only better than itself (i.e. you should only replace it when you get a heroic version). Your second trinket is preference; amp has higher dps potential but is moer inconsistent (especially with regards to the pull). KTT sims a little lower but will always proc on the pull. On shorter fights you also have the chance to "get lucky" and get a high RPPM and cluster of procs, whereas the amount of procs you can get from amp is finite. *shrugs* take your pick. I personally prefer BBoY/Amp but have tried both combinations in the past.

[Deleted]

Alright Ty

[Deleted]

BBoY is only better than itself (i.e. you should only replace it when you get a heroic version). Your second trinket is preference; amp has higher dps potential but is moer inconsistent (especially with regards to the pull). KTT sims a little lower but will always proc on the pull. On shorter fights you also have the chance to "get lucky" and get a high RPPM and cluster of procs, whereas the amount of procs you can get from amp is finite. *shrugs* take your pick. I personally prefer BBoY/Amp but have tried both combinations in the past.

well KTT doesnt alwawys proc on pull, have tried plenty of times to have it proc 5-10 secs in, but the proc is certainly more consistent than the bindings proc but i will agree, BBoY/amp is a really good setup for afflic.

[OokingDooker]

if you get a 10% mastery increase say from 115% to 125% mastery unbuffed, this should roughly translate to about a 10% dps increase for both affliction and destro right. Purely considering the mastery alone, nevermind the increase in spell power you'd get from the item upgrades.

[Deleted]

I hope it is okay I post this here. please let me know if I should edit the video away and explain the trick in text instead.

Anyways I recently made this video showing how you can use Soul Swap in a very smart way to massively increase your DPS on 2 or more targets. So here it is

Alot of people kinda already knew about the trick, but i havent seen more than a very few people actualy using it to its full extend.



Moved to the appropriate sticky.

[Sbtrack]

In response to Evrelia, I completely agree. When trinkets are on ICD it takes so much more planning outside of a fight to figure out how to min max everything and allows players to pool resources for maximum damage.

[mitbrandir]

I hope it is okay I post this here. please let me know if I should edit the video away and explain the trick in text instead.

Anyways I recently made this video showing how you can use Soul Swap in a very smart way to massively increase your DPS on 2 or more targets. So here it is

Alot of people kinda already knew about the trick, but i havent seen more than a very few people actualy using it to its full extend.



Moved to the appropriate sticky.

Could you type out what exactly you're doing to do this? I find it rather confusing

[Deleted]

If i understand correctly, he inhales from target A, casts a filler (Haunt or MG) before the inhaled dots expire, exhales on B, inhales, casts filler, exhales on C, and so on to A again. Thus extending the duration of the overpowered dots from the pull in addition to having a lot of haunt uptime (as shards allow i presume).

[worlds]

I hope it is okay I post this here. please let me know if I should edit the video away and explain the trick in text instead.

Anyways I recently made this video showing how you can use Soul Swap in a very smart way to massively increase your DPS on 2 or more targets. So here it is

Alot of people kinda already knew about the trick, but i havent seen more than a very few people actualy using it to its full extend.

Give credit where it belongs atleast

[mitbrandir]

If i understand correctly, he inhales from target A, casts a filler (Haunt or MG) before the inhaled dots expire, exhales on B, inhales, casts filler, exhales on C, and so on to A again. Thus extending the duration of the overpowered dots from the pull in addition to having a lot of haunt uptime (as shards allow i presume).

ah i see, i'll try this out then

[EvreliaGaming]

There was a thread explaining how to do this some months ago on here

[Alarinth]

Could you type out what exactly you're doing to do this? I find it rather confusing

The concept is easy enough.
Because of the frequency of his exhaling and inhaling, every dot will last so much longer. In the process of inhaling, haunt, exhaling, the only time the dots are allowed to tick is the duration from they land until he inhales again. And this is often a very short duration. What this means in the long run is that he effectively increases the length of the dots by at least 2x their normal duration.

That is, if I understood it correctly.

[Deleted]

Give credit where it belongs atleast

i honestly dont know who to credit as i havent seen anyone explain this trick to its full extend. also only very few ppl on top ranks on world of logs uses it.

[Xyronic]

i honestly dont know who to credit as i havent seen anyone explain this trick to its full extend. also only very few ppl on top ranks on world of logs uses it.

In all fairness, worldz was the first person to have top parses using this strategy. (Fallen protectors, norushen) Personally, I knew that this was possible, I just didn't think it was practical. Clearly I was wrong.