When to go affliction??

[Pandorox]

Pretty much I'm just curious when would be a good time to go Afflic from Destro in SoO.

Here is my armory if it helps. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ndestro/simple
This is just my alt that I have been playing more often lately.

[Extremity]

I'm wondering the same thing. I've been swapping to Affliction now and then and Destruction is always higher DPS. I feel like I am doing something wrong. I am currently ilvl 525 - I'm gearing up this toon still so some pieces are not optimal, but I feel like Affliction should still be taking over at this point?

I do an average of about 165-170k DPS as Destruction on the Raider's dummy in Shrine as Destruction. When I go Affliction, I'm LUCKY if I can maintain 90k. What am I doing wrong? I'm using AffDots and keeping Agony, Corruption, and UA up with about 99% uptime. I keep Haunt up as much as possible and fill with Mal. Grasp. I refresh DoTs during cooldowns or procs. Isn't that... pretty much all that there is to the spec? Am I being completely ignorant and over simplifying it?

[Haegr]

So realistically what it comes down to for gearing for Affliction versus Destruction is when you start to approach the GCD cap of incinerate during Backdraft procs. Usually this strongly correlates with the legendary meta gem, so as such that is usually a good place to start thinking of switching over. However, more specifically it comes down to your relative values of haste versus mastery.Obviously as your gear increases, your values of both haste and mastery increase proportionally, so really what it comes down to is:

Are you able to reach the 9778 Haste breakpoint without sacrificing an abhorrent amount of mastery (usually you want ~7k+? Would like some validation of that one way or another, more just a random number i feel is relevant)?

Do you have the Legendary Meta Gem?

If both of these are fulfilled, more likely than not, you will be doing more damage as Affliction compared to Destruction.

However that being said, I would definitely recommend simulating yourself in order to see how each spec matches up, as well as relevant scale factors and if you are feasible able to obtain corresponding breakpoints.

[Deleted]

I'm wondering the same thing. I've been swapping to Affliction now and then and Destruction is always higher DPS. I feel like I am doing something wrong. I am currently ilvl 525 - I'm gearing up this toon still so some pieces are not optimal, but I feel like Affliction should still be taking over at this point?

I do an average of about 165-170k DPS as Destruction on the Raider's dummy in Shrine as Destruction. When I go Affliction, I'm LUCKY if I can maintain 90k. What am I doing wrong? I'm using AffDots and keeping Agony, Corruption, and UA up with about 99% uptime. I keep Haunt up as much as possible and fill with Mal. Grasp. I refresh DoTs during cooldowns or procs. Isn't that... pretty much all that there is to the spec? Am I being completely ignorant and over simplifying it?

When switching from dest to aff, are you also swapping all your gear or re-gemming / enchanting / reforging ?

Affliciton is Int >Hit > Haste (to break point) > Mastery > Crit
Destro is Int > Hit > Mastery > Crit > Haste

your Break points (from memory so may be off)

9778 Agony
12439 UA
13157 Agony
13737 Corruption

it can make a huge difference to your DPS if your gear is properly optimized for it, so if you can hit these haste break points through gemming, reforging, enchants, then your good to go affliction.

[Haegr]

I'm wondering the same thing. I've been swapping to Affliction now and then and Destruction is always higher DPS. I feel like I am doing something wrong. I am currently ilvl 525 - I'm gearing up this toon still so some pieces are not optimal, but I feel like Affliction should still be taking over at this point?

I do an average of about 165-170k DPS as Destruction on the Raider's dummy in Shrine as Destruction. When I go Affliction, I'm LUCKY if I can maintain 90k. What am I doing wrong? I'm using AffDots and keeping Agony, Corruption, and UA up with about 99% uptime. I keep Haunt up as much as possible and fill with Mal. Grasp. I refresh DoTs during cooldowns or procs. Isn't that... pretty much all that there is to the spec? Am I being completely ignorant and over simplifying it?

Truthfully, no matter what gear level you are at, I do not see a gap that large ever really being feasible, so realistically I would attribute that to player error more than anything else.

That being said, I would also state that there are a number of things that can improve your dps as affliction dramatically. Most prominent among these are: Haunt uptimes, dot clipping, and actual time spent casting/riding the GCD.

Haunt uptime is obviously very important as it is a large buff to your single target damage for its duration, as such one should strive to maximize uptime of it during fights. I personally shoot for ~60-65% uptime on Haunt, however that is also factoring execute phases, so if it's just a target dummy I can't really give you an uptime percentage to shoot for

Dot clipping is also a very integral part to affliction. As you currently have Aff dots I can assume that you aren't terrible at this, but also be aware that clipping DoTs early is a REALLY bad thing, and if you do it consistently it will have a tangible negative effect on your damage output. Try to keep the strongest DoTs you have running for as long as possible (This is usually when in regards to the pull, where everything is procced). However, that being said, if a buff is going to expire in the immediate future, and you have a proc that is going to expire soon as well, it may benefit you more to clip a relatively more powerful DoT that has say, 6 seconds remaining, in exchange for a DoT that is still somewhat powerful for the next 25 seconds, as opposed to letting the extremely powerful DoT tick the full remaining duration then having a relatively extremely weak DoT ticking for the next 25 seconds.

Lastly is riding the GCD. As anyone who has really ever played a melee knows, the better you are at riding the GCD, the more numbers you are going to pull. This is less prominent in Warlocks, but still definitely present. A number of your dots are instant cast or below the GCD itself (Haunt during hero, UA, Agony, Corr, CotE), and as such if you are able to squeeze and extra .1 seconds out of your abilities 10 times, that is a full GCD that you have essentially just "gained"

I apologize for the wall of text, I was hoping to keep this more concise, but I hope that everything was relatively clear.

[Pandorox]

Well I don't have the LMG yet.. so that's out the window.

I could maybe push 8k haste with 6-7k mastery. But my trinkets are terrible. I seen that trinkets are very important for Afflic.

As destro single target I'm pulling maybe 130-140k .
As Afflic I couldn't get above 80k. My haunt uptime was pretty terrible tho. (Destro mindset)

[Deleted]

Well I don't have the LMG yet.. so that's out the window.

I could maybe push 8k haste with 6-7k mastery. But my trinkets are terrible. I seen that trinkets are very important for Afflic.

As destro single target I'm pulling maybe 130-140k .
As Afflic I couldn't get above 80k. My haunt uptime was pretty terrible tho. (Destro mindset)

No LMG means you can't play Affliction and have decent dps. You have to wait for that in any case, and then I would say at least 1 reasonable trinket.

[Deleted]

Affliciton is Int >Hit > Haste (to break point) > Mastery > Crit

Little bit Offtopic...
Isn´t it more like Int>Hit>Haste (9778)>Mastery>Haste>Crit?

[Deleted]

No LMG means you can't play Affliction and have decent dps.

That's not true. I don't have LMG on my lock alt and still I can easily burst 200k+ with all trinkets procced and dark soul and can sustain 120-150k dps single target. This is with ~525ilvl gear and me being terrible at the spec since I haven't played it much yet.

[Bonkura]

After finally getting my 2 set yesterday SimCraft is showing Affli and Destro to be roughly equal on single target. Before that Destro was ~10% ahead. However, fight mechanics makes Destro a worse spec on fights where you can't dump most embers during your procs. Galakras Heroic is a good example of where Affli is still stronger on single target, even if you use KJC with both specs. Shorter fights makes Affli stronger as well because the spec benefits way more from Bloodlust.

[FurtyIRL]

The specs are competitive enough that just play whatever you are more comfortable with. Definitely want your LMG before you consider affli though, and maybe ~540 ish to see comparable numbers to destro.

[Vuhdo]

Is legendary meta really that good for affliction? Simcraft shows me about 6K dps difference between legendary and the regular one in my gear (531 ilvl).

[FurtyIRL]

Is legendary meta really that good for affliction? Simcraft shows me about 6K dps difference between legendary and the regular one in my gear (531 ilvl).

It is Dark Soul Misery on a proc. Need I say more?

[JV Chequer]

LMG, IMHO it's A MUST for affliction, I would not dare play as affliction without this beautiful gem.

[Badahs]

I'm wondering the same thing. I've been swapping to Affliction now and then and Destruction is always higher DPS. I feel like I am doing something wrong. I am currently ilvl 525 - I'm gearing up this toon still so some pieces are not optimal, but I feel like Affliction should still be taking over at this point?

I do an average of about 165-170k DPS as Destruction on the Raider's dummy in Shrine as Destruction. When I go Affliction, I'm LUCKY if I can maintain 90k. What am I doing wrong? I'm using AffDots and keeping Agony, Corruption, and UA up with about 99% uptime. I keep Haunt up as much as possible and fill with Mal. Grasp. I refresh DoTs during cooldowns or procs. Isn't that... pretty much all that there is to the spec? Am I being completely ignorant and over simplifying it?

Some notes:

• How are you reforging/gearing? ie, changing secondary priorities when trying out each spec, trinkets used, etc.
• Your destruction dps (assuming you aren't raid buffed) seems too high, are you by chance using Rain of Fire in your rotation and it's hitting the other dummies?
• If you are reforging for haste breakpoints, your dps on raid dummies for affliction will be much lower than in a raid because haste breakpoints take the 5% raid haste into account and destruction doesn't have this issue since it doesn't have breakpoints.
• Affliction scales better than Destruction, especially with raid haste and bloodlust, so once again it will benefit much more from raid buffs
• Once again, due to affliction scaling better, destruction will probably do better dps at your ilvl. The trinkets you are using and how you use them are key. ie. Chaos Bolt/Shadow burn on trinket procs and having bindings for destruction as oppossed to blackblood/Wush for affliction and dot snapshotting/pandameic extension/haunt while they proc
• Your affliction dps seems too low for your ilvl, probably because you don't have the legendary meta.

[KaiHuolo]

i was wondering the same. because my gear is soo full of mastery/crit, destro seems to sim higher...even though i want to play affliction

[Rhodianni]

It is Dark Soul Misery on a proc. Need I say more?

Wow... Never looked at the proc like that.

I was playing mostly Demo ( pre-UVLS nerf ) and later Destro because I just couldn't put good numbers as Aff, but I'll finally get the gem this week ( 19/20 ), so it's going to be fun to finally raid with my favorite spec.

[Cebel]

for a very general area, around 550 ilvl is when im noticing it being a gain single target to go to affi.

[Deleted]

for a very general area, around 550 ilvl is when im noticing it being a gain single target to go to affi.

seems very dependent on trinket/tier set setup IMO. I'm 551 without a bigger int proc trinket (Wush or BBoY) and no t16 pieces and Destruction sims a full 30k DPS ahead of Affliction for me.

[Badahs]

seems very dependent on trinket/tier set setup IMO. I'm 551 without a bigger int proc trinket (Wush or BBoY) and no t16 pieces and Destruction sims a full 30k DPS ahead of Affliction for me.

I also have a significantly higher sim as destro. My only problem is trying to figure out if it is actually raid viable. Destro is great for everyone on aoe and great for me single target, but unfortunately, the majority of SOO fights seems to have 2-4 mobs dispersed around the room. Affliction shines on those while that setup isn't as optimal for Destro.