[Affliction] A Guide (4.2)

[kargar]

Hey i just hit 3103 haste and simcraft is saying for me to reforge is this common or is it just something that's happening cause i have Vplc and if it is normal from which point should i reforge to crit instead of haste

[Colshodaw]

Affliction is looking for (2,681 [2,527 goblin]) haste, haste threshholds beyond that are not reachable at this time:
UA & DS (15sec 5ticks) haste levels share the same thresholds-
2,589 / 2,437goblin
= 7 tickets normal, + 1 with ICM proc
= 8 ticks w/BL, +2 with ICM proc
2,681 / 2,527goblin
= 7 tickets normal, + 1 with ICM proc
= 9 ticks w/BL, +1 with ICM proc
4,951 / 4,776goblin
= not reachable
Corruption (18sec 6 ticks) haste levels-
1,993 / 1,846goblin
= 8 tickets normal, + 1 with ICM proc
= 10 ticks w/BL, +2 with ICM proc
3,970 / 3,804goblin
= not reachable

So, (2,681 [2,527 goblin]) is the target level for haste, you will not reach the next threshold levels and the additional haste above this will not be enough of a factor to effect the Global Cooldown or the Shadow Bolt cast time enough to out weight the additional stat reforge to Crit.

Example: Haste of 3,000 vs 2,681 changes a cast time of 2.5 to 1.87 & 1.91 (4 hundredths of a second), so in a 6 min fight the 3,000 haste level would potentially get 3 additional casts off, where as those additional points above 2,681 could raise the crit % by 1.78% for the duration of the fight and effect every DoT and SB cast, including DS, by doubling the damage each of those abilities put out. In my opinion the Crit increase is the way to go.

[Khadjid]

You seem to be ignoring the fact that haste affects the dot tick frequency. Haste doesn't only decrease GCD, cast times and add dot ticks at certain thresholds, haste will also make your dots tick faster.

While you gained 1.78% crit in your example, you gained it at a loss of 2.49% haste. Those 2.49% haste won't only give you 2.49% faster Shadow Bolts, but it will also give you 2.49% faster dots, which is roughly 2.49% more Shadow Bolts and dot ticks.

Yes, crit is a good stat and I don't doubt the fact that there are point at which crit might turn out as a slightly better alternative over haste. However, haste is generally better than crit even at large values above 3k and is thus the generally advised stat to go for. If you want to be picky about it and find those sweetspots where you gain a bit of dps by trading haste for crit, I encourage you to simulate your own profile. I show great respect for those to who make that kind of effort to maximise their dps. For a general guide, however, I'll just go with what is best most of the time.

Here's the result I got from doing a reforge plot on the T13H Affliction profile showing that haste is still strong even at 3091 haste rating:

[Colshodaw]

I stand corrected.

[holybandaid]

great guide, it helped me alot

[gakpad]

Just thought I'd share that I've been playing around in simcraft and found that the drain life filler spec was within 300 dps of the standard spec for me...close enough that I'm gonna try it out for raids this week because I enjoy that playstyle so much more than the standard shadowbolt one :P

[pechkin]

if you got drain life spec, you can build 31/7/3 spec, which will give you unlimited mana, because you dont need improved shadow bolts anymore, also drain life refreshes corruption, which can be useful in multitarget fight. Tho drain life will not deal as much damage on targets without haunt.

[gakpad]

Yeah it was just a goofy thing I felt like doing since I'm getting so bored of the current three specs' rotations. Ended up being super meh in practice, not unexpectedly

[gruxxar]

I just dusted of my old affliction spec and was wondering about the following thing

when you're multidotting 2 targets for a long time ( eg. Blackhorn HC P2, or Madness on the 4 platforms)

Should I aim to keep Shadow embrace up on both targets? i can see it being possible but with my current UI i'm having trouble keeping Shadow embrace going on BOTH targets. it causes me to lose dots several times instead of refreshing them before last tick + i tend to lose track other cooldowns because i have to pay attention so much to my dot timers & SE timers. on top of that I imagine in a real Raid environment this is even harder with stuff going on around you.

thoughts :/?

[Khadjid]

Yes, keeping 2 sets of fully stacked SE is a dps increase in situations of extended multidotting. The easiest way to manage that would be to keep Haunt on cooldown on one target and use Shadow Bolt purely on the other. Realistically you can't do that though because of kill priorities of main targets and you need to focus both Haunt and the majority of fillers on the same target. Another thing you can try to do is to try perform a rotation of every third or every other Shadow Bolt to hit the off-target, by doing that you're just keeping a mental note of who to SB instead of focusing on a timer for SE. Remember that as long as Haunt is kept on cooldown on your main target, you don't have to worry about SE at all on that target and you only need to make sure you hit the second target with a SB every 12 seconds.

[gruxxar]

cheers for that! time to practise dummies :P

[IronArms]

Hello, I've been running Demo for a long time, and i'm between Demo and Affliction... I've seen on World of Logs that Affliction is actually competing with Demo, but I've not been able to really test this because there are no other Warlocks in my guild. So I thought about trying Affliction again but I'm wondering if I should bother with the SB spec or the DL spec. Also, the guild I'm in does 25m Heroic 8/8 if you're curious about the content I'm doing to suggest something correctly. I also do not have the legendary staff.

[Lambicoldforged]

Nicely made!

[Keren]

Hello, I've been running Demo for a long time, and i'm between Demo and Affliction... I've seen on World of Logs that Affliction is actually competing with Demo, but I've not been able to really test this because there are no other Warlocks in my guild. So I thought about trying Affliction again but I'm wondering if I should bother with the SB spec or the DL spec. Also, the guild I'm in does 25m Heroic 8/8 if you're curious about the content I'm doing to suggest something correctly. I also do not have the legendary staff.

The DL specc isn't up to date anymore since t11 content and the followed nerf. Thus use the normal SB specc.

[AaronduhBaron]

Affliction and Demo are both good but ive always liked affliction much better.

[sneyk]

Hi all!

Sorry if my English is not quite right, I'll try to do our best.

Although we only have 1 month of Cataclysm, I wonder ... if I should reforjarme speed, however critical. Since I have the feeling that I lack critical.

What do you suggest I use?

eu.battle.net/wow/es/character/sanguino/Sneyk/simple

Greetings, and thanks.