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  1. #1

    Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    After looking at many different lock specs on the forums, I've started seeing some of the same mistakes (at least to me) over and over and over again. I want to say first that the majority of builds I've been looking at are Affliction builds for PvE, not PvP, though some of this can be applied to PvP. I will be commenting more on the PvE concerns, however.

    I will address the "mistakes" I've seen with other builds while making my build, talent by talent, tier by tier. Enjoy.

    The first mistake I've seen is people specing into Improved Curse of Agony. Why???? It's a complete waste of 2 talent points. Specing into Malediction is something that will greatly increase spell damage, especially after the recent +3% spell buff it got. So, why the two points in Improved Curse of Agony? It's COMPLETELY redundant, and it doesn't do anything because you're using Curse of Elements.

    They don't stack people, so unless you're in a raid that's prepared and has one lock specing for Malediction and one specing for Agony, don't waste your talent points.

    Put 5 in Improved Corruption, 3 in Suppression and 2 in Improved Drain Soul.

    While Fel Concentration can seem like a PvP talent, it's also useful in PvE for those battles with aoe. You don't want to lose casting time. I put 3 points in it.

    The next 2 points can lead to another problem I see in builds. Bluntly: choose EITHER Improved Life Tap or Dark Pact. Don't get both, because just like CoA/CoE, ONLY one is necessary, so pick one.

    I'm leaning towards just forgetting about Improved Life Tap because one, lock gear now has spirit, and two, Affliction has SO many ways to regain health now, and I think that regular Life Tap will work just as well. You will have hp coming back from Haunt, Fel Armor, and Siphon Life, not to mention those times you can Drain Life. Therefore, I leave Improved Life Tap alone. Those final 2 talent points can either go to Frailty or Soul Siphon, depending on if you're the Curse of Recklessness lock or not.

    (Don't worry about Amplify Curse, I really have no clue what's going on there.)

    For my build, I'm assuming I'm the Malediction lock, and I also put 2 in Grim Reach and Nightfall (I've seen some locks ignore this, more on Nightfall and why I put 2 in there later), 3 in Empowered Corruption, Siphon Life, 5 in Shadow Embrace (SO much more useful than in BC), and 5 in Shadow Mastery.

    Build now looks like: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Now comes an area of Affliction I see more mistakes. I want to say my opinion of Improved Felhunter first. The first part of the talent (it gets mana for its damage) is purely for PvP reasons. You're NOT going to send in your pet during a boss fight, just not going to happen. It's for those arenas where you put your pet on the healer. Blizz has buffed the Felhunter to where when it does damage (with this talent), it gets mana, and this in turns makes it useful to have Dark Pact in PvP.

    The second part is for PvE. It's an added bonus in PvP I guess because locks now get spell damage for spirit, but it's probably most important in a raid situation.

    With that explained, remember we did NOT spec into Improved Life Tap. For this reason, it's probably best to spec into Dark Pact, and you have one talent point (overall) to use elsewhere. I would not spec into Improved Felhunter because the imp is better for Dark Pact. It has more spirit (Blizzard buffed the imp's spirit even more in Lich King), and because your felhunter isn't doing any damage to utilize Improved Felhunter, your imp is even better (yes, you're losing some spirit and intelligence and therefore some spell damage, but these 2 points are utilized elsewhere once we finish with the Affliction tree, keep reading). Personally, I would maybe find a way to put those talent points into Improved Imp, so your raid has more stamina (problem also solved later on).

    Here's what the build looks like now; I put 3 into Eradication and 5 into Contagion:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Which brings us to Death's Embrace and Unstable Affliction. I've seen some builds that did not utilize Death's Embrace at all. I've been in countless boss fights where the raid wiped when the boss was under 35%. Understand, however, that I am not arguing that 3 points in this is going to guarantee the boss goes down when he hits 35%. I'm saying that your dps will increase significantly once the boss does hit 35% (by TWELEVE percent!), and the boss will go down a lot quicker. It just makes the fight easier. So 3 points in there, and also 1 point in Unstable Affliction.

    We're to Pandemic now, which I think is one of the most drastic changes to the Affliction tree. It allows, in a way, for your dots to "crit." While they don't actually crit, it gives random "crits" while the dot is ticking. The more crit you have, the more damage these "crits" do. This should solve the problem of gear. Affliction locks now need the crit gear too. Also, Haunt (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) can crit with its initial damage.

    The rest of the tree is Everlasting Affliction and one in Haunt. We're done with Affliction, and let's put the other points elsewhere.

    Talent build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    So, what to do with those remaining 13 points?

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say NOT to put them all in the destruction tree. After playing some in the PTR, I've realized a LOT of your time is going to be setting up dot rotations.

    My dot rotation will probably be CoE, Haunt, UA, Corruption, and Siphon Life. Here's how long, according to my calculations, this rotation will take: 1 second CoE, 1.5 Haunt, 1.5 UA, 1 second Corruption, and 1 second Siphon Life. This is around 6 seconds, but the next rotation will be shorter when you don't include CoE, around 5 seconds. This leaves 7 seconds until you need to start your next rotation. With 2.5 second Shadow Bolts, you can get TWO shadow bolts in (of course, in the ideal boss fight).

    If this is how Lich King level 80 will actually play out, I'm seeing Shadow Bolt being less and less reliable for an Affliction lock, especially after hearing a friend say that his dots were ticking for around 1k (can't remember if this was beta or PTR). The cast time just kills the dot rotation. This is one of the reasons I put 2 in Nightfall. This talent procs often enough that you will still get some damage from Shadow Bolt when it does proc, and with Everlasting Affliction, your Corruption dot is reset.

    I'm not saying not to cast shadow bolt at all. I'm arguing that putting the talent points into Destruction just to get Ruin is worthless, cause if you're gonna be casting one or two shadow bolts every 12 seconds or so, why do you want to waste around 15 talent points (depending on your spec) that could be better utilized elsewhere?

    Also, remember that those talents don't increase your overall crit. It increases your DESTRUCTION spells' crit. Added to that, you're have to put at least 2 points in Improved Shadow Bolt, which is nerfed down to basically nothing now. So again, you're putting those talent points just to buff destruction spells, when you should be focusing on dots.

    (As a side note: With points in Soul Siphon, which increases damage drained (or done) to the target, Drain Soul could be like the Shadow Priest's Mind Flay. If so, you could use Drain Soul in the seconds between your rotations to get hp back/help healers, reset duration of Corruption (there's another second back), and to increase chance to proc Nightfall.)

    If this is the case, then raid-buffed, an affliction lock's dps should be comparable to the destruction warlock. I could be very wrong here, I have not researched the destruction build for level 80 much or even know the numbers. My focus is the Affliction dps lock.

    With this in mind, here's how the rest of my build plays out: 2 points in Improved Imp (there's those "saved" talent points from earlier), 5 in Demonic Embrace, 3 in Fel Vitality, and 3 in Demonic Aegis (which will now improve the amount of hp you get with the new Fel Armor, and make up for those 2 points out of Improved Felhunter which I alluded to earlier!).

    So, here's what the ultimate level 80 Affliction lock build will look like, according to me:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Hope this post was useful to anyone having problems making a spec, curious about how Affliction dps might work in Lich King, or to just anyone wanting to read something on warlock dps builds. This is how I think affliction lock dps will unfold in Lich King. I'm NOT arguing it will be the BEST build at level 80. I'm saying this is the best AFFLICTION build for level 80. Even on that note, however, I look forward to the hate posts and those posts calling me stupid.

    Bring it on, feedback's how we learn best.

  2. #2

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Search these forums, or others, for posts on this subject. Would have saved you quite a bit of time. Most of your insight and/or logic is bad.

  3. #3

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    OK, here are some answers:

    1)Imp Curse of Agony, I put points there because I expect a moonkin or DK to be in raid to apply that debuff, CoE comes with a dps tax on the lock applying it, the moonkin and DK versions don't.

    2) We don't know if our dps/threat will be enough to warrant the drain soul talent.

    3) There are two flaws on you choosing Dark Pact over life tap, one is that of the two, only life tap scales now, the other is that fel armor no longer provides mana over time. I choose life tap because its less of a dps reduction than dark pact.

    4) Grim reach is very good for some situations, but its a significative dps loss when compared to other talents on its tier and above.

    5) Yes, you are frigging going to send your felhunter to dps the boss, it already has huge spell resistances and now with avoidance it takes only 20% of all aoe spells, let the destro locks take imp. Have you missed all the blue posts stating that the developers want to make warlocks a pet class again?

    6)You just spent 13 talent points to get demonic aegis (the only dps increase you can reach in demo) while ISB can give you another 10% + SHADOW DAMAGE!!!

    7) CoE and Corr aren't rotation anymore, they're long/perma debuffs, so your rotation should be UA every 15 secs, siphon life every 30 secs or every other UA, Haunt every 10-12 secs and CoA every 24-28secs(glyph) and shadowbolt between casts.


    Overall, you did a good job at getting attention but a very poor research on facts and mechanics. Added with your last sentence I'll award you with the title of Nub.

  4. #4

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    i don't want to be offensive but honestly....
    this build sucks balls... and almost eat'em too...
    <_>
    THIS is a proper affli-build
    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
    i choose imp life tap over dark pact since lock gear will have spirit (helping mana regen) + fel armor with life regen hence life tapping may prove more useful then dark pact, since you'll have your pet out dps-ing and loosing him won't mean much :P
    if it turns out that dark pact >>> imp life tap costantly, i'll switch some point :P
    i've NOT considered malediction as...
    most raid will have 1 boomkin and they loose a LOT less dps for sacrificing a curse slot for an utili slot :P
    i'll have to rely to theorycraft in order to determine how the 3% spelldmg increase work (if it's actually correct it's 60-70ish extra spellpower with 2kish spellpower, so it's nice, but i wonder if it's worth considering it since you need to give up almost 16% of your dps from coa)...

    and you gave up destru tree complitely?
    this is MADNESS!

    all in all, jthnyn13, hope you're not the touchy type, but you need to re-learn playing warlock from grounds, since your spec is garbage...

    again i repeat myself, no offense meant, but it's better to be honest :P that build isn't even worth considering :*

  5. #5

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by jthnyn13
    After looking at many different lock specs on the forums, I've started seeing some of the same mistakes (at least to me) over and over and over again. I want to say first that the majority of builds I've been looking at are Affliction builds for PvE, not PvP, though some of this can be applied to PvP. I will be commenting more on the PvE concerns, however.

    I will address the "mistakes" I've seen with other builds while making my build, talent by talent, tier by tier. Enjoy.

    The first mistake I've seen is people specing into Improved Curse of Agony. Why???? It's a complete waste of 2 talent points. Specing into Malediction is something that will greatly increase spell damage, especially after the recent +3% spell buff it got. So, why the two points in Improved Curse of Agony? It's COMPLETELY redundant, and it doesn't do anything because you're using Curse of Elements.

    They don't stack people, so unless you're in a raid that's prepared and has one lock specing for Malediction and one specing for Agony, don't waste your talent points.

    Put 5 in Improved Corruption, 3 in Suppression and 2 in Improved Drain Soul.

    While Fel Concentration can seem like a PvP talent, it's also useful in PvE for those battles with aoe. You don't want to lose casting time. I put 3 points in it.

    The next 2 points can lead to another problem I see in builds. Bluntly: choose EITHER Improved Life Tap or Dark Pact. Don't get both, because just like CoA/CoE, ONLY one is necessary, so pick one.

    I'm leaning towards just forgetting about Improved Life Tap because one, lock gear now has spirit, and two, Affliction has SO many ways to regain health now, and I think that regular Life Tap will work just as well. You will have hp coming back from Haunt, Fel Armor, and Siphon Life, not to mention those times you can Drain Life. Therefore, I leave Improved Life Tap alone. Those final 2 talent points can either go to Frailty or Soul Siphon, depending on if you're the Curse of Recklessness lock or not.

    (Don't worry about Amplify Curse, I really have no clue what's going on there.)

    For my build, I'm assuming I'm the Malediction lock, and I also put 2 in Grim Reach and Nightfall (I've seen some locks ignore this, more on Nightfall and why I put 2 in there later), 3 in Empowered Corruption, Siphon Life, 5 in Shadow Embrace (SO much more useful than in BC), and 5 in Shadow Mastery.

    Build now looks like: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Now comes an area of Affliction I see more mistakes. I want to say my opinion of Improved Felhunter first. The first part of the talent (it gets mana for its damage) is purely for PvP reasons. You're NOT going to send in your pet during a boss fight, just not going to happen. It's for those arenas where you put your pet on the healer. Blizz has buffed the Felhunter to where when it does damage (with this talent), it gets mana, and this in turns makes it useful to have Dark Pact in PvP.

    The second part is for PvE. It's an added bonus in PvP I guess because locks now get spell damage for spirit, but it's probably most important in a raid situation.

    With that explained, remember we did NOT spec into Improved Life Tap. For this reason, it's probably best to spec into Dark Pact, and you have one talent point (overall) to use elsewhere. I would not spec into Improved Felhunter because the imp is better for Dark Pact. It has more spirit (Blizzard buffed the imp's spirit even more in Lich King), and because your felhunter isn't doing any damage to utilize Improved Felhunter, your imp is even better (yes, you're losing some spirit and intelligence and therefore some spell damage, but these 2 points are utilized elsewhere once we finish with the Affliction tree, keep reading). Personally, I would maybe find a way to put those talent points into Improved Imp, so your raid has more stamina (problem also solved later on).

    Here's what the build looks like now; I put 3 into Eradication and 5 into Contagion:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Which brings us to Death's Embrace and Unstable Affliction. I've seen some builds that did not utilize Death's Embrace at all. I've been in countless boss fights where the raid wiped when the boss was under 35%. Understand, however, that I am not arguing that 3 points in this is going to guarantee the boss goes down when he hits 35%. I'm saying that your dps will increase significantly once the boss does hit 35% (by TWELEVE percent!), and the boss will go down a lot quicker. It just makes the fight easier. So 3 points in there, and also 1 point in Unstable Affliction.

    We're to Pandemic now, which I think is one of the most drastic changes to the Affliction tree. It allows, in a way, for your dots to "crit." While they don't actually crit, it gives random "crits" while the dot is ticking. The more crit you have, the more damage these "crits" do. This should solve the problem of gear. Affliction locks now need the crit gear too. Also, Haunt (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) can crit with its initial damage.

    The rest of the tree is Everlasting Affliction and one in Haunt. We're done with Affliction, and let's put the other points elsewhere.

    Talent build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    So, what to do with those remaining 13 points?

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say NOT to put them all in the destruction tree. After playing some in the PTR, I've realized a LOT of your time is going to be setting up dot rotations.

    My dot rotation will probably be CoE, Haunt, UA, Corruption, and Siphon Life. Here's how long, according to my calculations, this rotation will take: 1 second CoE, 1.5 Haunt, 1.5 UA, 1 second Corruption, and 1 second Siphon Life. This is around 6 seconds, but the next rotation will be shorter when you don't include CoE, around 5 seconds. This leaves 7 seconds until you need to start your next rotation. With 2.5 second Shadow Bolts, you can get TWO shadow bolts in (of course, in the ideal boss fight).

    If this is how Lich King level 80 will actually play out, I'm seeing Shadow Bolt being less and less reliable for an Affliction lock, especially after hearing a friend say that his dots were ticking for around 1k (can't remember if this was beta or PTR). The cast time just kills the dot rotation. This is one of the reasons I put 2 in Nightfall. This talent procs often enough that you will still get some damage from Shadow Bolt when it does proc, and with Everlasting Affliction, your Corruption dot is reset.

    I'm not saying not to cast shadow bolt at all. I'm arguing that putting the talent points into Destruction just to get Ruin is worthless, cause if you're gonna be casting one or two shadow bolts every 12 seconds or so, why do you want to waste around 15 talent points (depending on your spec) that could be better utilized elsewhere?

    Also, remember that those talents don't increase your overall crit. It increases your DESTRUCTION spells' crit. Added to that, you're have to put at least 2 points in Improved Shadow Bolt, which is nerfed down to basically nothing now. So again, you're putting those talent points just to buff destruction spells, when you should be focusing on dots.

    (As a side note: With points in Soul Siphon, which increases damage drained (or done) to the target, Drain Soul could be like the Shadow Priest's Mind Flay. If so, you could use Drain Soul in the seconds between your rotations to get hp back/help healers, reset duration of Corruption (there's another second back), and to increase chance to proc Nightfall.)

    If this is the case, then raid-buffed, an affliction lock's dps should be comparable to the destruction warlock. I could be very wrong here, I have not researched the destruction build for level 80 much or even know the numbers. My focus is the Affliction dps lock.

    With this in mind, here's how the rest of my build plays out: 2 points in Improved Imp (there's those "saved" talent points from earlier), 5 in Demonic Embrace, 3 in Fel Vitality, and 3 in Demonic Aegis (which will now improve the amount of hp you get with the new Fel Armor, and make up for those 2 points out of Improved Felhunter which I alluded to earlier!).

    So, here's what the ultimate level 80 Affliction lock build will look like, according to me:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Hope this post was useful to anyone having problems making a spec, curious about how Affliction dps might work in Lich King, or to just anyone wanting to read something on warlock dps builds. This is how I think affliction lock dps will unfold in Lich King. I'm NOT arguing it will be the BEST build at level 80. I'm saying this is the best AFFLICTION build for level 80. Even on that note, however, I look forward to the hate posts and those posts calling me stupid.

    Bring it on, feedback's how we learn best.
    TL;DR

    I can't believe you actually took time to write all this. Anyways, I always LOL at a warlock that takes 2/2 in Improved Drain Soul over Improved Life Tap just for the 10% threat reduction.

    Bad, bad, bad...

  6. #6

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    1) I did not say that Improved Curse of Agony is bad. I'm saying that using it in sync with Malediction is a waste of talent points. I'm not completely sure what you mean by "dps tax." Do you mean it's a waste of time to reapply it every couple minutes? Cause you reapply CoA a lot more often than CoE.

    2) I agree grim reach is situational, I've thought the same thing with destructive reach in BC. Most of the talents up through Grim Reach are situational anyways, especially the curses talents.

    3) I still don't buy the idea of putting in my felhunter in to dps. Maybe because I'm not used to it, just hard to imagine using my felhunter to dps...kind of makes me laugh. But the Avoidance thing I did misread. The way they have it listed in patchnotes is "Avoidance (Felguard):", and after I saw Felguard I didn't finish reading to see it also applied to other pets. Even with strength against aoe though, dpsing with your felhunter is risky, and I don't want healers wasting mana to keep him up.

    4) About Life Tap. I didn't say that I would never use Life Tap. I'm saying that the base Life Tap is fine, and you can put those points elsewhere. Reread what I said. And Ascote, I forgot about the Dark Pact not scaling, that it does a base amount now. My mistake, and with that Dark Pact isn't as useful as I thought, and I see why 2 points in Improved Life Tap is justified.

    5) Reason for the Drain Soul: I did not add it for the threat reduction...a combination of Omen and Soul Shatter should be enough for threat control. I put it in because personally, I like the added bonus of getting mana back for using Drain Soul. Since we have to use it so damn often to get soul shards anyways, I think an added bonus of +mana is nice. But that doesn't matter anyways since I took the points out.

    6) And I seemed to have done what I wanted to with the Demonology points. Here's my thing with speccing through Demonic Aegis. I hate spamming shadowbolts, and I hate the fact that the only way to do good dps is spam them (at least for before Lich King comes out). And I realized when placing the remaining talents that essentially, you're still placing all of those talent points just to improve shadow bolt. Basically, I'm sick of people telling me I HAVE to put those talents into destruction. Because it's like using a cookie cutter all over again with the Demonic Sacrifice/destro build for BC. I know that I will probably ultimately end up placing them there, but I wanted to make a case for a different build and see what happened, and as expected feedback was bad. I want to make a good dps build without shadowbolt, cause I know as soon as people start with the basic 5/5 ISB and 5/5 Bane and 5/5 Ruin, it's gonna get to where people are going to go gradually back to the shadowbolt spam. And it bugs the hell out of me because you can't make a good one without the shadow bolt crap.

    I enjoy arguing cases against what everyone thinks, ask anyone who knows me. And as I said, I know that Demonology might not be the most useful place to the put those talents. As I said in the first post, "I'm going out on a limb here..." And I knew I'd be called stupid for it, and I appreciate your feedback. I don't appreciate being called a nub though, a nub doesn't take the time to think out his spec like I did and post it to get feedback.

    Here's new spec:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    Question, though. Is the 200 or so spell hit rating going to be the same for level 80? If so, I'm gonna hate speccing into destruction even more. I know they reworked Cataclysm to try to fix the problem, but even specing into it, it's still a lot of spell hit. So will we have to get the spell hit rating for the one Destruction spell we use while Affliction?

  7. #7

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    I quit reading it after you upped the effect on every ability and said it was just a revamp.

  8. #8

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by jthnyn13
    Question, though. Is the 200 or so spell hit rating going to be the same for level 80? If so, I'm gonna hate speccing into destruction even more. I know they reworked Cataclysm to try to fix the problem, but even specing into it, it's still a lot of spell hit. So will we have to get the spell hit rating for the one Destruction spell we use while Affliction?
    Its going to be much higher, but from the gear we've been seeing it shouldn't be extremely difficult to reach. Even so, with the +3% in Affliction and Destro via talents, we will still need to be completely hit capped for 1 spell in Demo; Soul Shatter.

  9. #9

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    @op

    idea of shadowbolt spamming through another expansion sickens me. however i do have to say that the point are going to go back into destro, but with the way they have setup destro now it's possible to do fire with only a few talent points into destro.

    i think what we need to go for is something close to this.

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    with the idea being adding immo to the rotation and casting incinerate instead of SB with the advantage being that you have shorter cast time with incin while being able to use molten core procs. now imp felhunter and imp curse of agony are interchangeable depending on preference, i know that i will need to be sending in the
    felpup but i'm not putting in alot of stock in his DPS or other abilities in raiding. however ASSUMING there will be a boomkin or Blood Death Knight in raid use CoD, insta cast and forget about it for a minute. one less DoT to constantly recast for more incin spamming.

    Other people have pointed out the advantages of Imp LT over dark pact so not going to repeat it.
    Nightfall is there purely for the Free SB's. free is good, stack with glyph of corruption for more free SB's (not free but insta cast, close enough)

    use Drain life to reset corruption or your previously mentioned "free" sb's although try to save towards end of effect if possible to avoid unnecessary clipping of corruption.

    That, how i see it and how i plan to play it, is very close if not exactly how end game afflic locks will be speccing
    Druids: 50g away from being better at your job than you are.

  10. #10

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    affliction/demo is full of fail.

    ruin is your friend.
    it was made more accessible to affl for a reason.

    even at lvl70 a pandemic/ruin (with eradiction) build did wonders on ptr.

  11. #11

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by Twistedsight
    @op

    idea of shadowbolt spamming through another expansion sickens me. however i do have to say that the point are going to go back into destro, but with the way they have setup destro now it's possible to do fire with only a few talent points into destro.

    i think what we need to go for is something close to this.

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

    with the idea being adding immo to the rotation and casting incinerate instead of SB with the advantage being that you have shorter cast time with incin while being able to use molten core procs. now imp felhunter and imp curse of agony are interchangeable depending on preference, i know that i will need to be sending in the
    felpup but i'm not putting in alot of stock in his DPS or other abilities in raiding. however ASSUMING there will be a boomkin or Blood Death Knight in raid use CoD, insta cast and forget about it for a minute. one less DoT to constantly recast for more incin spamming.

    Other people have pointed out the advantages of Imp LT over dark pact so not going to repeat it.
    Nightfall is there purely for the Free SB's. free is good, stack with glyph of corruption for more free SB's (not free but insta cast, close enough)

    use Drain life to reset corruption or your previously mentioned "free" sb's although try to save towards end of effect if possible to avoid unnecessary clipping of corruption.

    That, how i see it and how i plan to play it, is very close if not exactly how end game afflic locks will be speccing
    I REALLY like the idea of incinerate. It feels different enough from spamming shadowbolt to make me like it lol. Can I ask why you exclude Death's Embrace? And what's your take on the range talents (Grim Reach/Destructive Reach)? I've said before I thought they were more of a convenience talents, but I kept them in the build I first posted because I know that in some boss fights, max range is necessary. They might just end up being the situational talents; if the boss fights requires distance, get them.

  12. #12

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by tremulant
    affliction/demo is full of fail.

    ruin is your friend.
    it was made more accessible to affl for a reason.

    even at lvl70 a pandemic/ruin (with eradiction) build did wonders on ptr.
    Yes because having hard hitting dots and the survivability of soul link, which was made more accessible for a reason, is full of fail. Good luck trying to survive without any damage mitigation, and being successful with a affliction/destro build. Go spec 0/21/40 like the rest of the scrub warlocks and spam shadowbolt all day.

  13. #13

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    How is 0/21/40 a scrub spec? Currently it out preforms any other spec for damage on live, so trying to do good damage=bad?
    This user has been banned.

  14. #14

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    no offense to the OP... but ascote was right on with many of his points

    on beta my shadowbolts are still doing 45%ish of my damage and i dont even have much haste nor did i test it when grouped with haste buffs from other classes

    malediction is still an additional 3% spell damage... i havent really done the fine tuning testing i need to as to if its still worth the points with a balance druid in my group, but im still betting it is

    as for threat... i dont have imp drain soul and im fine in 5mans... in raids with all the buffs i do push threat a little more, but its more with destruction spells

    i was in love with felhunter/darkpact till they nerfed dark pact... now DP is not in my affliction build and the scaling of LT with spirit is actually doing pretty well

    As i get more and more haste nigthfall is becoming less and less valuable... but i will keep it due to mobility
    why ? because the 1 sec nightfall saves me (instant spell is still GCD 1.5secs) starts to diminish with haste


    btw Soullink = pvp surviveability

    affliction soullink is complete fail for PVE

  15. #15

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by Dewback
    Yes because having hard hitting dots and the survivability of soul link, which was made more accessible for a reason, is full of fail. Good luck trying to survive without any damage mitigation, and being successful with a affliction/destro build. Go spec 0/21/40 like the rest of the scrub warlocks and spam shadowbolt all day.
    lol...
    first of all.. none of the affliction/demo builds posted here even took soul link...
    secondly, i'm sure i can survive in pve without soul link kthx. (I was clearly talking about pve otherwise i wouldn't have said aff/demo is fail)

  16. #16

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    So, here's what the ultimate level 80 Affliction lock build will look like, according to me:

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
    .... you do realize you don't have bane?

    Don't even argue with me about drain life surpassing shadowbolt......

    ... not going to happen.
    actually the secret to getting top damage and Hks in a BG is to eat the croissant pockets with the flaky crust... the 5 cheese ones in particular are tasty.... when the little flakes drop on the keyboard and you have to pick them out you tend to cast more dots and fears
    - MortuariusBC: during a discussion on Warlocks and Hotpockets

  17. #17

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by Dewback
    Yes because having hard hitting dots and the survivability of soul link, which was made more accessible for a reason, is full of fail. Good luck trying to survive without any damage mitigation, and being successful with a affliction/destro build. Go spec 0/21/40 like the rest of the scrub warlocks and spam shadowbolt all day.
    soul link + pve = win ?

    news to me

    edit: sorry for 2 posts
    actually the secret to getting top damage and Hks in a BG is to eat the croissant pockets with the flaky crust... the 5 cheese ones in particular are tasty.... when the little flakes drop on the keyboard and you have to pick them out you tend to cast more dots and fears
    - MortuariusBC: during a discussion on Warlocks and Hotpockets

  18. #18

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by tremulant
    lol...
    first of all.. none of the affliction/demo builds posted here even took soul link...
    secondly, i'm sure i can survive in pve without soul link kthx. (I was clearly talking about pve otherwise i wouldn't have said aff/demo is fail)
    Nobody gives a flying fuck about this games carebear pve and scripted raid fights. I bet you're the type of scrub player and has A and D still bound to turn look, rather than strafe. You might as well roll a mage, its disgusting watching a warlock think hes amazing at dps by just standing still casting one spell.

    You're all bad, learn to play scrubs.

  19. #19

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by Dewback
    Nobody gives a flying fuck about this games carebear pve and scripted raid fights. I bet your the type of scrub player and has A and D still bound to turn look, rather than strafe. You might as well roll a mage, its disgusting watching a warlock think hes an amazing at dps by just standing still casting one spell.

    You're all bad, learn to play scrubs.
    N3RDRAGE! News: WoW is a PVE game, and WoW pvp takes as much (or as little) skill as PvE. But I like your arguments, trying to win by insulting. If you don't think shadowbolt spam is good dps in beta, maybe rethink living.
    This user has been banned.

  20. #20

    Re: Mistakes in affliction builds/making the best affliction build

    Quote Originally Posted by Khamul
    .... you do realize you don't have bane?

    Don't even argue with me about drain life surpassing shadowbolt......

    ... not going to happen.
    Nope, not arguing Drain Life > Shadowbolt.

    I was arguing an affliction/demonology spec for the hell of it.

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