Alysrazor HC 25 warlock reforge / gemming / talenting questions

[Deleted]

Wanted to ask warlocks that are experienced with alysrazor HC 25 (our next kill target) about ideal reforges / rotation while on fly duty. At the moment I'm thinking of, instead of going for a full haste reforge to go to a full mastery reforge / gem of gear, since the haste /crit buff you get from being on fly duty overcaps you by tons (as in, the gcd limit is kicking in a lot).

I have also been using CoA instead of CoD as it benefits from the added haste. Is there any other tips that experienced locks could give (or could give insights if they think the mastery reforge is very much worth it or not), which they use on the fight (been wondering about using drain life vs shadowbolt for instance, and I'm using drain soul while running/avoiding hurricanes in the hurricane phase).

Any trinket choices that are particularly good? I have a choice of DMC:volcano, Necromantic Focus (normal), twilight ascendant council trinket (HC), the molten front on-use mastery trinket and the revered firelands intellect-on-use trinket.

Are there any tips to avoid loosing your felhunter while flying, apart from not flying out of range?

Thank you for your time.

[Delia]

-Once you hit high stacks, you should swap shadowbolts for drain soul (not drain life), that makes the GCD haste cap a non-issue, meaning haste is still > mastery even when flying for affliction warlocks.

-Yes, BoA > BoD at high stacks.

-DMC: Volcano and Rune of Zeth for trinkets, same as when not flying

-You can avoid losing the felhunter by not grabbing high rings, but you risk falling, or at the very least not stacking as quickly in doing so, better to just grab rings as they show, and soulburn summon yer felhunter if he despawns when your demon soul is ready.

TL;DR
Spec/gear for aff lock is the same when flying as it is for everything else... if anything you could ditch Bane for something, though what I'm not really sure...

[avengingbt]

Use shadowbolt until it becomes GCD capped, and then switch to Drain Soul.

Use BoA instead of BoD, and glyph it. I usually drop the UA glyph because it'll take you longer to GCD cap Shadowbolt than UA.

Mastery will be higher value than crit, so reforge appropriately.

I'm not entirely sure about trinkets, but Volcano is obviously BiS, besides that I'm not too sure. Necromatic Focus or Moonwell Chalice seem like the best options given the huge dps buff to mastery, and the 2min cooldown on chalice will make demon soul a pretty incredible dps boost.

There's not a huge amount you can do about the felhunter, if you fly out of range it will despawn and theres nothing you can do about it. If a ring happens to be too far, you'll lose your felhunter. It's unlikely it'll happen more than once or twice per fight, just summon it back when you need demon soul. If you're already at 25 stacks you could just ignore the ring and hope the next one is in a better position, but only if you're confident you won't miss a ring and fall out of the sky.

Be aware of Shadow Embrace stacks during/after the hurricane phase. Once you start with drain soul you will only be refreshing it with Haunt, so it could quite easily drop off while dodging hurricanes. Two quick shadow bolts can fix this as soon as you enter the burn phase if you messed up.

[Delia]

Full mastery is indeed better than haste/crit while at 25 stacks, so reforge appropriately.

The 200% haste multiplies (not adds) with the haste from gear (and haste from DI and haste from a Spriest if they stay within range), so I'm pretty sure haste would still beat out mastery even with DS as filler.

For instance, if you have 20% haste from gear, you'd get 1.2 x 1.03 x 1.05 x 3 = 3.89 or 289% haste

vs

Say 15% haste from gear would get you 1.15 x 1.03 x 1.05 x 3 = 3.73 or 273% haste

meaning while flying, each percentage point of haste is actually worth about twice as much as it normally would be, effectively doubling its point value, where as using DS as filler does not double mastery's value (though it does increase it beyond crit)

[avengingbt]

The 200% haste multiplies (not adds) with the haste from gear (and haste from DI and haste from a Spriest if they stay within range), so I'm pretty sure haste would still beat out mastery even with DS as filler.

For instance, if you have 20% haste from gear, you'd get 1.2 x 1.03 x 1.05 x 3 = 3.89 or 289% haste

vs

Say 15% haste from gear would get you 1.15 x 1.03 x 1.05 x 3 = 3.73 or 273% haste

meaning while flying, each percentage point of haste is actually worth about twice as much as it normally would be, effectively doubling its point value, where as using DS as filler does not double mastery's value (though it does increase it)

I've already simmed it while artificially inflating my haste/crit by the buff values and modifying the rotation. Mastery came out ahead of haste, and crit was miles behind.

The only problem is that I don't know how to model the ramp-up of the buff, so that does definately affect the value of the stats and maybe haste will catch back up with mastery. Either way, the standard affliction reforging is definately not correct.

[Delia]

I've already simmed it while artificially inflating my haste/crit by the buff values and modifying the rotation. Mastery came out about 20% ahead of haste, and crit was miles behind.

The only problem is that I don't know how to model the ramp-up of the buff, so that does definately affect the value of the stats and maybe haste will catch back up with mastery. Either way, the standard affliction reforging is definately not correct.

When you "artificially increased haste" did you just add 200%? 'cause that's wrong. It doesn't make sense for mastery to go above haste if you are multiplying haste from gear. Swapping SB to DS should increase the value of mastery from its normal amount by about 20-30%, putting it well above crit, but still well below a doubled haste value, unless there's something glaringly off that I'm missing.

Disclaimer: You may be right, but it hurts my brain to see how it could make sense...

[Penguin FTW]

You don't have any other classes that can fly? Because Affliction is not ideal

[Deleted]

Thank you already for some insights this gives, we do have other classes that will go up too, namely a shadow priest and 2 moonkins + 2 affli locks. Our mages seem to be semi-fixed on arcane instead of fire (and I will hence not send them up).

[Delia]

Thank you already for some insights this gives, we do have other classes that will go up too, namely a shadow priest and 2 moonkins + 2 affli locks. Our mages seem to be semi-fixed on arcane instead of fire.

Make him go fire, arcane is a baddie at flying, they GCD cap too quickly.

[Jellospally]

Spriest, Lock, Fire Mages are best...we send 5 people up on our heroic kills.
Though our mages lag in the air so we send rogues and frost dks with myself and a spriest.