New to affliction, having a hard time maintaining soul shards in longer fights.

[eculley]

So I am level 89 now, and until now I've leveled destro. While questing, there is no issue with soul shards.. at all, because I can use Drain Soul. However, in longer fights, I can't drain soul.. and a lot of fights (such as the dungeon where pandas just surrender rather than dying) I can't re-obtain the soul shards I used to stack dots. This basically kills my dps.. about half way through any given fight I run out of soul shards and am forced to just grasp the rest of the fight.

Any ideas or suggestions for me? I've done research on rotations but nothing really gives any help on how to regain shards midfight when you're unable to kill adds with drain soul.

Thanks!

[Hatelocker]

You aren't supposed to have 100% uptime on haunt. General rule of thumb I believe is 70% uptime on haunt and manually recast your dots. The only time you will ever stay full on shards and can just SB:SS and haunt your butt off is fights like will of the emperor where adds or dying constantly.

[CclassicL]

I can't re-obtain the soul shards I used to stack dots. This basically kills my dps.. about half way through any given fight I run out of soul shards and am forced to just grasp the rest of the fight.

As long as you have Corruption up on a target you will gain Nightfall procs, which grant shards. Also at 20% health you should switch to Drain Soul as a filler and not use grasp.

[PutressFIRST]

The affliction lock sticky shows you what to do in your rotation. In regards to shard usage: 1. SB+SS (Soul Burn + Soul Swap) to immediately put your dots on the boss. 2. Put haunt onto the boss. 3. Before DS (Demon Soul) wheres off generally about 1-2 seconds before it expires use SB+SS again to reapply dots onto the boss so they run their full duration while benefiting from DS. DO NOT re-use haunt over and over again unless Demon Soul is active or you have multiple intellect procs available, in your case since you won't have any intellect enchants that are proc specific since you are level 89 make sure to keep haunt up during Demon Soul, thats it. You should only be using SB+SS at the start of a fight when you use your Demon Soul and roughly 1-2 seconds before demon soul expires, same thing goes with Haunt, only use this when DS is active or you have multiple int procs available.

So during a boss encounter you should immediately be using 3 shards, SB+SS - Haunt - SB+SS. If Demon Soul has expired and for some reason you have 4 shards available either use one of them for a Haunt or reapply dots with SB+SS. You should never have 4 shards.

For fights like the one with the pandas, just simply dot the mobs up, you know Unstable Affliction, Corruption and Curse of Agony. These guys have low hp so using a haunt really wont be beneficial. Drain Soul gives you full shards when you kill an enemy that offers experience or honor as well as refunds shards ever 2nd tick so the panda dudes don't actually die they just hit 1 hp, so Drain Soul won't work unless you immediately start to drain them at 100% hp.

[Shodan30]

Try thinking about baseball!

[Femto1]

So I am level 89 now, and until now I've leveled destro. While questing, there is no issue with soul shards.. at all, because I can use Drain Soul. However, in longer fights, I can't drain soul.. and a lot of fights (such as the dungeon where pandas just surrender rather than dying) I can't re-obtain the soul shards I used to stack dots. This basically kills my dps.. about half way through any given fight I run out of soul shards and am forced to just grasp the rest of the fight.

Any ideas or suggestions for me? I've done research on rotations but nothing really gives any help on how to regain shards midfight when you're unable to kill adds with drain soul.

Thanks!

You'll notice a big difference with Shadow Trance, the proc from Corruption ticks that reward Soul Shards, after you ding 90 and spend more time channeling Malefic Grasp in a raid setting with spell haste and an extra corruption tick from your first haste plateau.

[PickleballAce]

Try thinking about baseball!

Margaret Thatcher on a cold day.

[Deleted]

also the optimal way to use haunt isnt to simply cast it when you have a shard, but rather to spend it when you have supercharged dots up(meaning when you have casted dots while have 1 or more procs going, the affdots addon will work wonders for you when you do this) that way your dot dmg buff from haunt works when your dots are doing more dmg, look at it this way, +25% dot dmg is better when your dots tick for 12k as opposed 8k, so when you use haunt, make them count. ofc if you have 4 shards up, you should always use a shard on haunt, so your nightfall procs isnt wasted.