Affliction vs me

[Purpleisbetter]

Well then, there are a few couple of things that i'm not grasping very well with affliction.

Given i was a shadowpriest 'till the MoP shadowdisgrace, i hastly setted up a lock to just sit my priest in the darkest corner of my account. Now i tried to raid with a pug yesterday night with quite a few doubts during the first boss.

Soul shard...when&where? I've read it all: save SS for HAunts, save SS for insta dotting, balance of the two things. This got me confused, because i really want to min-max my toon so i'd like to go for the best option available. What should i do?

Stats is the second one: i still have to run SimC to get something more out (going to change ferw things in a few hours) but before going for a more precise reforging, i couldn't find any hints on how much haste should i aim for (thresholds) My fear is that i could actually follow too much what the tool says reforging away the bit of haste i've to keep my Corr/Agony/UA +XX plateaus.

Then gemming. I'm really fresh to dailyponyreppygrindy-pandalandaria, so i'm lost when sometimes i read that 80int+120secondary are better then 215 int, as i'm gemmed full 215int in every red socket (wich are...2 LOL.).Where's the truth behind this :P ? Is something changed with INT - to SP/crit conversion?

p.s.: i will never reforge to hit cap. It reminds me so much the days i was crushing the meters while missing loads of spell. I'm way too used, addicted and abused but that playstyle. I really like to leave that as the very-last-resort.

[skitzin]

Firstly you should be using soul shards via SB: SS in your opening sequence to get all dots (except haunt) up on the target. From here if I have all/most my procs up I will usually through out a haunt as well to get the ball rolling. You should then ensure you use haunt on every nightfall proc to avoid wastage as you will want to avoid being capped on shards as this is an overall dps loss.

When you enter the execution phase, boss HP <20%, you are now using drain soul and not MG which results in an abundance of shards enabling you keep haunt up almost 100% of the time and use SB: SS to maintain dot uptime. As to when and how you use your shards outside of this it is basically a matter of what fight you are on and what you are trying to do. Nobody can really tell you this because it is quite variable but other pointers to have would be that if you can drain soul on an add then you can afford to be more heavy handed with haunt etc. Effectively good soul shard usage is what will separate you from the average Joe warlock.


Secondly, if you bother to read around and do a little thinking on the matter you will understand that we lack specific haste caps because corruption, UA and agony all have different haste plateaus and hence there is no specified limit to reach. This means when you run simcraft you will need to look at what reforges (read: reforge plots) will produce the highest theoretical dps and bother with a specific haste limit, not to mention that as your gear gets better mastery starts to over take haste.


Thirdly, unless I am missing something there is only +160 int gems (or +320 int gems as JC) available for red sockets. The only +215 int gem of any kind is the meta gem ...
As for why the split stat gems are worth more, it is a matter of simple mathematics really.

Lets pretend these stat ratings exist for a character:

-Intellect: 4
-Mastery: 2.8
-Haste: 2.6

So a +160 int gem = 4x160 = 640
but a +80 intellect & +160 Mastery gem = (80x4) + (160x2.8) = 320+ 448 = 768

Thus by stat weights the hybrid gem is worth more dps wise than the straight up int gem for these stat weights. So yes there is maths behind it.


PS I find that around 12-14% hit is fine anything lower than that I feel may risk impacting your quality of life as affliction.

[Slure]

Skitzin, i agree with everything you have to say, but the being capped on soul shards thing..... how often do you get enough nightfall procs to actually have full shards? I find the regeneration rate extremely lacking leaving me sitting with no haunt. I find myself saving my shards to simply give haunt the most amount of up-time possible. Now of course if i see i have an abundance of then i use them when it procs, but that's so rare its not even worth mentioning.

[Purpleisbetter]

ooops. YEah i meant 160 int. Lol my bad sorry again.

If there's anything like precise thresholds to catch absolutly (for example, the VT+2 i must had with SP during cata) i think i'll go more toward mastery, i guess.

Btw i didn't really understood what you meant.

At start of the pull, on (let's say) the "main" dog i'll execute the usual opener (CoE -> DS -> SS:SB) then a regualr SS (CoE->SS) to the second dog.

Once the dogs are dotted up, i switch back on the main dog and start MGing, saving SS (if, for any miracolous reason, at this poit i get the 4th shard back, ofc i'll land in a Haunt) for later on add switches. I skip the part where i SB:SS just before DS falls off at least once, because i'm afraid to waste a shard in case i refresh dots on the targets who will be off tanked; but i'll instead SB:SS the "newer" dogs as soon as it loose its 90% dmg reduction buff.

Since i last pulled 55k (wiped at 50%, no BL, no pre pot and got no enchant + alchemy trinket wich rarely procs on affly [bug?]+p.torrent because the new weapon enchant NEVER WORKS) i don't feel like its the proper way to execute this encounter; i'm missing a huge uptime on Haunt+MG, and i guess it hurts me even more when i do pop my CDs. Still, considering the gigatomic DPET from all the 3 dots together, i just don't know if i'm doing it wrong either.

I need so much help :<.

[skitzin]

Skitzin, i agree with everything you have to say, but the being capped on soul shards thing..... how often do you get enough nightfall procs to actually have full shards? I find the regeneration rate extremely lacking leaving me sitting with no haunt. I find myself saving my shards to simply give haunt the most amount of up-time possible. Now of course if i see i have an abundance of then i use them when it procs, but that's so rare its not even worth mentioning.

Basically what I am getting at here is that if you have say 3 shards, nightfall procs and you don't use it then you are robbing yourself of the dps potential of any subsequent nightfall procs. You generally speaking (take the fight in account of course) want to avoid this situation where you are capped on shards mid fight. Is this situation likely? Probably not a lot but it is a risk which I felt should be mentioned jsut to help give the OP some ideas as to how the shards are used.

It basically comes down to what I concluded with that the players abilities in determining when a good use of haunt is available will separate them from the rank and file warlocks performance wise. But yes it does seem very low for shard regen prior to the execute phase.