New warlock, i would appreciate help.

[Deleted]

Hello.
I recently started playing again and i switched from rogue to warlock.
After 11 days of /played i cleared 3/9 mythic. The only mythic raid i did was 3 weeks ago, i couldnt attend last week and this week my guild didn't raid yet.
I hope thats enough of unnecessary introduction. Now to important stuff.

Item level:925
4set
Legendaries: I have Head, belt, wrists, back and boots. Currently wearing head and belt on all fights, will switch to netherlord and shuffle between head/belt depending on fight.
Trinkets: Whispers in the dark (900ilvl), Arcanocrystal (910ilvl)
Stats: 24% crit 20% haste 131% mastery 5% versatility 56388 intellect
Logs: w w w. warcraftlogs.com /character /id/ 23748916

I always was that type of player who thought my DMG is limited by gear and im doing everything perfectly. Now i know i don't and i'm willing to learn. I'm doing 1M/1.1M DPS on fights where other warlocks do 1.4M-1.5M DPS. Some of them better geared some of them worse but i feel i should do way more with gear i have currently. Im bad at comparing logs and looking at what should i do differently.
I asked few warlocks for advice but everyone says something else. One guy told me to get 20% haste, around 20% crit and go full mastery, use artifact before spamming affliction + drain soul. Then other guy told me he ignores crit, goes full haste+mastery and has 32% haste and around 100% mastery. When i check his logs he also uses artifact right after using afflictions and before using drain soul. Im confused and can't identify my problem.

Sorry for the wall of text. Thank you for your time.

[Biomega]

I would suggest checking Lock One Stop Shop for questions regarding talent choices, rotation, etc. "Magical threshold" values as has been suggested to you are quite simply untrue. There is no "get 20% haste", the value of a given stat fluctuates a lot with how much you have of all the others. Realistically, Haste + Mastery should indeed be your go-to's, but you should frequently sim yourself to see what your scaling is like when it comes to a new (or prospective) gear piece.

As for legendaries, you've identified it pretty correctly for your setup. Do you have T19 2p? That can influence legendary choices significantly, particularly once you have the Ring. As always, sim yourself to be sure.

Aside from your rotation, though, I have found that one of THE biggest factors in maximizing your DPS is fight mechanics. I don't just mean "soak this or we wipe", but planning your DPS rotation, cooldowns, etc. around what you can expect is going to happen at what point in the fight. When is Bloodlust being used? How long are your kills usually (pop 2nd potion so you get full value)? What mechanic is going to come when, and what can you do with it? If there's movement coming, try to spend more shards so you don't cap. If you're going to be out of range, refresh DoTs early so they don't fall off. If you've got some time standing still coming up, dump an extra UA cycle. And so on. That sort of thing can't be distilled down easily, as it varies a lot with your guild's approach. So try to be smart and PLAN AHEAD!

[Deleted]

First there is no predefined stat weight, you need to sims it for your char.
Use https://www.raidbots.com/ to get your statweight and "Top gear" to get the best setup.

In general :
-Mastery is good when multi-dotting, good in ST
-Haste is good in ST to get more shard and in AOE
-Crit is good in AOE, but you still need some in ST/multi-dotting
-Versa is always bad but you still need to bit of it.

For the artifact usage :
-you want to have the buff up when the UA fade (to double the % of chance that it will re-applied itself)
=> if you have only 1 charge, use it after your second or third UA.

[Deleted]

Is using soul shards without artifact/drain soul worth it? I thought its dmg loss.

[Scroff]

Is using soul shards without artifact/drain soul worth it? I thought its dmg loss.

It's always better to spend shards than over-cap them, even if you can't reap/drain the UA for whatever reason

[Biomega]

Never ever ever allow your shards to cap.

Ever.

That's the number one rule for Affliction Warlock. Everything else starts from there.

Well, unless it's for raid mechanics I guess, but even there you probably should have played differently so you're not put in a position where you risk capping.

[Tikishock]

I don't know if it's correct anymore but I basically

Apply agony, corruption (siphon life, phantom singularity if talented in that), any trinkets I want to use, then Unstable Affliction x2 (possibly more to prevent soul shard capping), Reap and then drain soul. Keep drain soul up when UA is up but never drain soul anymore over re-applying DoTs when you need to. I think the last patch or so they nerfed MG and buffed our DoTs so our priority is to maintain high uptime in all of our DoTs and to break drain cycles if we need to in order to refresh them.

That's the basic version--I'm not a pro player so if I'm wrong somebody feel free to correct me.

[Imkilo]

Going o chime in on this thread as well, what are aff locks openers on single target?

[Realmerc]

"I always was that type of player who thought my DMG is limited by gear and im doing everything perfectly"

pretty delusional considering you dont even know how to sim your own stat weights which is very basic for a player who wants to min/max their dps. Generally if you're a trihard person, you will sim your stat weights and dps every single time you get a new piece of gear.

you did have couple of purple parses which are decent, but that doesn't necessarily means you're doing fine, maybe just because you got lucky with whisper procs, and shard regen.

So my suggesion is that, before you get your all ORANGE PARSES, just consider yourself as a noob and be humble about it, that way you can actually learn and improve.

BTW, although you're only 925 or something but you have 955 weapon+ 910 arcano and 900 whisper which are the most important slots for aff. dont expect much of dps increase with more gear because all you gain is intellect at that point which is the most undesirable stat amongs all.

also pretty curious that you mentioned you're " new player" but your artifact weapon is level 74. which is higher than majority of the people who main warlock all along. Does that mean you have been sucking for quite a long time before you realize you need some helps and tips?

[Fossfjell]

The legendaries you really want to get to increase your damage is the netherlord ring , sarcolash(for inqusition and host) and the chest.
If i personally had your stats i would try to get a little bit less crit, a bit less mastery and put that into haste, other than legendaries your gear seems to be pretty good. Could also try and get yourself the t19 2set bonus as its a pretty good boost for singletarget fights

Going o chime in on this thread as well, what are aff locks openers on single target?

What i am usually doing is prepot on 1, agony->corruption->2-3 UA (depending on procs) and popping reap souls after the 2nd ua

[Deleted]

also pretty curious that you mentioned you're " new player" but your artifact weapon is level 74. which is higher than majority of the people who main warlock all along. Does that mean you have been sucking for quite a long time before you realize you need some helps and tips?

No, when you level an alt/new character you get current AK so all quests, suramas, balance of power give more AP so this character usualy has the same/more artifact level than main character. I also spam mythic+ and do all WQ

Going o chime in on this thread as well, what are aff locks openers on single target?

Im doing prepot-racial-agony-soul harvest-corruption-UA rotation. I don't know if its 100% correct but it works for me.


Thank you for advice everyone. I didn't know about lockonestopshop site and it helped me a lot. My UA rotation was a mess before now i'm playing better. Did 99 ilvl% on goroth heroic so i guess all my DMG loses are just from boss mechanics/movement. I'm gonna practice on that.

[SpikeySquad]

No, when you level an alt/new character you get current AK so all quests, suramas, balance of power give more AP so this character usualy has the same/more artifact level than main character. I also spam mythic+ and do all WQ


Im doing prepot-racial-agony-soul harvest-corruption-UA rotation. I don't know if its 100% correct but it works for me.


Thank you for advice everyone. I didn't know about lockonestopshop site and it helped me a lot. My UA rotation was a mess before now i'm playing better. Did 99 ilvl% on goroth heroic so i guess all my DMG loses are just from boss mechanics/movement. I'm gonna practice on that.

And a weak opener, no point doing cooldowns/buffs before you spend your globals on applying dots.

[Biomega]

also pretty curious that you mentioned you're " new player" but your artifact weapon is level 74. which is higher than majority of the people who main warlock all along.

Higher, in fact, than the world's highest AP character (who is at 73). So I assume you mean 64, which isn't exactly amazo-tier at this AK level.

Im doing prepot-racial-agony-soul harvest-corruption-UA rotation. I don't know if its 100% correct but it works for me.

What do you mean by "works for me", exactly? Because there's incredibly simple ways to improve on that, which will just, you know, be strictly better DPS. Does that NOT work for you? This isn't meant to be an insult, just a clarification - unless you're consistently ranking in the Top X world on logs, there's room for improvement (and even if you are, there probably still is). "This works for me" is a fairly poor argument to get that improvement, because there are mathematical models at work here that can tell you what is better and what is not. If you don't have the ambition or desire to perform to the max (which is totally OK by the way, almost no one is cut out to be a bleeding-edge top-tier player; I certainly am not) that's one thing, but brushing things off with "this works for me" is a bit facile for my taste, and doesn't help other people who read it.

I can only repeat to check good resources like LOSS, where very smart people have made an effort to share the information they have come up with, often through painstaking testing and modeling. I don't presume to know more than they do, and I honor their contribution to the community by at least listening what they have to say - whether or not you then decide to put it into practice is, of course, entirely up to you.

[FelPlague]

Hello.
I recently started playing again and i switched from rogue to warlock.
After 11 days of /played i cleared 3/9 mythic. The only mythic raid i did was 3 weeks ago, i couldnt attend last week and this week my guild didn't raid yet.
I hope thats enough of unnecessary introduction. Now to important stuff.

Item level:925
4set
Legendaries: I have Head, belt, wrists, back and boots. Currently wearing head and belt on all fights, will switch to netherlord and shuffle between head/belt depending on fight.
Trinkets: Whispers in the dark (900ilvl), Arcanocrystal (910ilvl)
Stats: 24% crit 20% haste 131% mastery 5% versatility 56388 intellect
Logs: w w w. warcraftlogs.com /character /id/ 23748916

I always was that type of player who thought my DMG is limited by gear and im doing everything perfectly. Now i know i don't and i'm willing to learn. I'm doing 1M/1.1M DPS on fights where other warlocks do 1.4M-1.5M DPS. Some of them better geared some of them worse but i feel i should do way more with gear i have currently. Im bad at comparing logs and looking at what should i do differently.
I asked few warlocks for advice but everyone says something else. One guy told me to get 20% haste, around 20% crit and go full mastery, use artifact before spamming affliction + drain soul. Then other guy told me he ignores crit, goes full haste+mastery and has 32% haste and around 100% mastery. When i check his logs he also uses artifact right after using afflictions and before using drain soul. Im confused and can't identify my problem.

Sorry for the wall of text. Thank you for your time.

"new warlock" "925 ilvl"
I need to get back to progression raiding... im 933 and been playing a fuck ton.. *Cries in corner*

[Biomega]

"new warlock" "925 ilvl"
I need to get back to progression raiding... im 933 and been playing a fuck ton.. *Cries in corner*

Unsurprisingly, ilvl jumps a fuckton if you get carried in m-ToS >_> For heroic raiders, 935ish is about as good as it gets (barring exceptional luck with forges/weekly chest).