[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Moggie]

You'll still want Perdition after the golden trait.

[Dwill]

For artifact talents is it worth going through Drained to a Husk to grab Fatal Echos after I've taken my 3rd golden trait? Or is it still recommended to pick up Perdition?

You'll want Perdition. Fatal Echoes really is just the last thing to get.

[Deleted]

Watched the Finalboss show, Terryn do you still stand by going Wrath->Soul Flame ->Harvest of Soul in 7.1? I logged in on my lock after 7.1, and the first 13 points I have is wrong (7.0 path), and as I have some artifact research and 7k AP is not really a lot, I considered respeccing to the proposed path.

Also, where do you go after Harvester of Soul (for compound, or fatal echoes?)

[Mongosaurus]

Ran as affliction for heroic clear last night. Really wasn't all that bad. I no longer crushed the charts like I do on demo (thanks sindorei sprite), but it did well enough.

I was like 4-5 most fights and honestly, i left a lot on the table as affliction.

I think realistically I could get to #2 or 3 in our raid with affliction. Our enhance shaman and mage will probably be tough to beat though.
My soul effigy placement was horrid and I would range myself from it at times.
No macro setup prior to going in to focus effigy. Just wasted time and concentration to do it manually.
A few times i let agony drop from effigy.
UA usage was not flawless with compounding horror at all.
Bad trinkets for affliction.
Only 84% mastery.

I truly think it is viable if i had min/maxed gear for it and had over 20 points in the weapon.

I dislike destro as its boring and sad I got that as my off-spec up to 25 points.

[Halwyn]

Any thoughts on Nightbane's stat stick?

[Dwill]

Any thoughts on Nightbane's stat stick?

It's pretty good and rivals Titandforged WQ stat sticks, Unstable Arcanocrystal and i880 Unlucky Charm.

[EqualWin]

so should i go affli? my main is destro and i have literally 0 points on demo/affli (artifacts)

I'm not sure if i should switch :/

got the destro cloak and pants

[Deleted]

Only if you really want to. Affliction and destruction are equally bad on pure single target, but destruction wins out on a cleave fight, and it is far more useful on killing priority adds quickly because it has far less ramp and a relatively high burst damage output.

Affliction's rampup times make it very bad at killing low-health but important adds. You will find they just die before you startdoing anything significant to them. Indeed if the raid permits it is better to have affliction continue to tunnel the boss.

Destruction can simply use wreak Havoc to burst those adds down and do a lot of continuing boss damage.

There is absolutely no performance reason to switch to affliction from destruction. I play affliction as an inferior spec because I despise destruction and always have. I never saw the point of what is essentially playing a warlock as a mage.

[Tatuin]

Is haste and mastery more important then ilvl? this is something really confusing for me

[Deleted]

Generally speaking yes. No use having a higher ilevel if the stats are rubbish for you, e.g. versatility

[Tatuin]

so if a chest i have got mastery and haste on it and ilvl 840. then i get a drop for a 870 chest with crit and haste, should i use it then?

[Deleted]

so if a chest i have got mastery and haste on it and ilvl 840. then i get a drop for a 870 chest with crit and haste, should i use it then?

870 should be miles better, the secondary stats are not that much apart.
singletarget stats weights are for me (simed) mastery=1.11 haste=1.05 crit=0.93 vers=0.82

best get the addon pawn, sim your char with simcraft and feed pawn with that.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure whetehr to sink my banked AP's into Inherently Unstable or Drained to a Husk?

They noth have things going for them. I guess DtaH is a quicker way to Fatal Echoes, which is better than it was but still pretty poor imho.

[Cainium]

Generally speaking yes. No use having a higher ilevel if the stats are rubbish for you, e.g. versatility

I would say the opposite. Bad stats are not worthless. People should stop interpreting Mastey > Int > Haste > Crit > Vers as 1 > 1 > 1 > 0 > 0 in value, thats plain wrong.

I recommend using the addon Pawn with proper scale factors to get a good overview. Usually a Crit/Mastery or Crit/Haste item can beat a Haste/Mastery Item with just 10+ ilvls, or if it has a socket, quite easily.

[Dwill]

I'm not sure whetehr to sink my banked AP's into Inherently Unstable or Drained to a Husk?

They noth have things going for them. I guess DtaH is a quicker way to Fatal Echoes, which is better than it was but still pretty poor imho.

If you went with Perdition, Inherently Unstable is better.

[MonsieuRoberts]

Leveling a Lock (in my Sig) and I've found just one question about the play style: How do I use Unstable Affliction?

Right now I'll throw it on the target along with all my other DoTs at the start of the fight, but I don't re-cast it unless I have at least 1 stack of Compounding Horror, and I'll cast it regardless of what the stack is if it reaches ~2-3 seconds left. When the target is at ~15-20%, I spend all of them, just to get that damage on the target.

What should I change, what should I add?

[GameFX]

I'm stuck between a stat stick 855(1292 Intellect/950 Haste) & Chronoshard 845(1177 Intellect/Proc of 5020 Haste) - My gut tells me stat stick is better

[Skaiz]

I've been going real hard on mastery and haste. I currently have 19% haste and 123% mastery and virtually no crit or versatility. Now I know crit has it's place among our stats due to Perdition so I decided to throw a sim at my profile. And the results were.. odd.
Im showing,
Int: 1.00
Crit 1.00
Haste: .92
Mastery: .92
Vers: .79
Is simcraft just really pissed off at me for neglecting crit or did I mess something up somewhere along the way lol

[Deleted]

anybody have a good Pawn scale that can upload ??

[Cainium]

anybody have a good Pawn scale that can upload ??

The ones in this guide (1st post) are pretty good. I have them in conjunction with my own calculated scale factors and no matter how good the % increase is on my own ones, if those from the guide show an increase then usually all others show up too.

I've been going real hard on mastery and haste. I currently have 19% haste and 123% mastery and virtually no crit or versatility. Now I know crit has it's place among our stats due to Perdition so I decided to throw a sim at my profile. And the results were.. odd.
Im showing,
Int: 1.00
Crit 1.00
Haste: .92
Mastery: .92
Vers: .79
Is simcraft just really pissed off at me for neglecting crit or did I mess something up somewhere along the way lol

Your traits and talents affact the weights heavily. For example if I spec into Sow the Seeds and Phantom Crit goes really high as well. But thats ignoring the fact that Phantom is not so good on ST compared to the other ones and that Sow the Seeds doesnt have any value in simulations at all (seed of corruption is absent from the ACL, so it is never used, even in AoE sims).

For example: Siphon Life is not affected by Perdition (the highest Crit benefit trait we have) [IF the tooltip is correct, correct me if im wrong here], reduces the effectiveness of Drain Life and its uptime (more GCds spend for DoTs), and synergizes very well with Soul Effigy, inreasing the value of haste and mastery a lot (so does Soul Effigy 'cause more DoTs = more value from mastery).