Aff - Drain Life

[welko]

I just got a few question about the drain life spec.


What is a good starting rotation? Do you use SB to get 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace at the start? Do you use drain life and wait for nightfall procs and haunt to make 3 stacks?

I use castbars so it tells me when drain life ticks. I was wondering do i let it tick 2 times or do you let it finish channeling? Say haunt came out of CD and your shadow embrace stacks about to come off and you are in the motion of casting drain life. Would you let it tick once then cast haunt or let it finish?



Not related but is it me or is seed still lower then most AoE from different classes. My guild just did Herioc Maloriak and our feral druid swipe was owning the aoe meters. His swipe crits were around 61k little insane in my book. It was 58% of his damage.

[Angor]

One shadowbolt during pull to get Shadow and Flame on the target, then Haunt and DoTs, then Drain Life filler.

If you're going to be casting another Drain Life, then you can hit it before the last tick with the way DoT clipping has been changed. If you're casting another spell, wait for the last tick first.

Unless it's Haunt. Haunt I cast on cooldown immediately after whatever DL tick I'm on. You do not want Haunt falling off.

Wait for DL to finish for Nightfall procs.

For AoE damage you want to Jinx, Shadowflame -> SoulBurn: SoC -> SoC same target repeatedly and Shadowflame on cooldown. Once the corruptions fall off you can switch targets. Or switch to demo.

All of this is pointless anyway, since it looks like DL may be going the way of the dodo. I think I'll go back to Shadowbolt filler for this week.

[welko]

All of this is pointless anyway, since it looks like DL may be going the way of the dodo. I think I'll go back to Shadowbolt filler for this week.

Why you say that? I been looking at WoL and most of the high AFF locks are using DL as filler?

[Angor]

I've been using DL myself but looking to the future, the 4p12 bonus appears to be a nod toward the idea that Blizzard would prefer we use Shadowbolt. Then again, who knows what Blizzard thinks any more?

[Tankbound]

Why you say that? I been looking at WoL and most of the high AFF locks are using DL as filler?

I'm not 100% positive on this, and was thinking of starting a thread to promote some discussion on the topic, but DL is about even with sbolt at low latency and with 359 gear, heroic gear pushes it past sbolt as long as you have a low enough latency to handle it.

Although next tier it may go away as our 4pc bonus is more damage on a proc from shadowbolts and incinerate only, which may make using DL a thing of the past, but using DL may also out perform gearing for 4pc, I don't know yet. Any thoughts on this are appreciated.

[Jessicka]

There are likely to be further changes in 4.2, it would be completely unheard of for them to not touch the class at all going into new content so it's probably too early to speculate on how things will change.

Personally, I simply don't like the DL playstyle, I find it too clunky with too much focus on getting the filler right to overcome the latency issue enough to exploit the theoretical advantage it holds. The focus causes me errors elsewhere which just make for a bigger loss, so I stick with Shadow Bolts which I can spam without thinking and focus on the more important things like fight mechanics and higher priority spells. I'm lazy, so what. I only really use Affliction on Atramedes, Ascendent Council and V+T anyway.

[Big Baz]

Generally I find Nightfall procs keep Shadow and Flame up 100% anyway, I almost never have to hardcast a shadowbolt beyond the opening cast. DL as a filler benefits from haste more, sims with higher Dps provided you have a low ms and counts as a DoT which increases your felhunters Shadowbite damage.

[Amarynth]

I tried out the drain life spec and it was very funny. But: If my instant SB procs, should I interrupt DL to cast SB or simply ignore it?

[Entropic]

If you want the full benefit of Lock T12, specifically 4pc bonus then you'll have to use SB as a filler. Of course this won't be for a while. I think I read somewhere that a blue post stated Aff Drain was never an intended spec. Regardless, Aff Drain's DPS gain over Aff SB is only marginal.

[Amarynth]

Ok, thank you. I still have T11 as set, so I will have SB for a while. But I am still fighting with my dps. Yesterday at Magmaw, Maloriak and ODS both hunters where in front of me on stats, even our rogue.

I posted in the "Please, fix my dps"-thread, hoping to get some help and learn what I'm doing wrong.