"Most Complicated" DPS Rotation

Last week, I was emailed a very interesting post by Flyv making a case for how Cat Druid DPS is possibly the most complicated DPS rotation in the game. You can find the Post Here, but I wanted to make the case for warlocks.

Now, before you turn this into a contest of "who's is bigger", my point is not to try and out do the post, but only to point out that we, as warlocks, also have a very complicated rotation that should be respected.

My first comment on this discussion is that I think any spellcaster rotation is going to be more unforgiving than any melee rotation inherently. That is to say, caster classes don't have the "white noise" component of damage. We aren't up there doing melee attacks automatically, every portion of my damage comes from a specific button click. As a warlock, if I don't apply the DoT, it doesn't do damage. It's not like I can go into "auto-attack" mode at any point. Thus, if I hit the wrong button, miss a button, or just plain space out... I get ZERO damage per second (sure you can have DoTs running, but I would have had to apply them first). My point here is just that melee classes will always have some portion of their DPS which is automatic, and this makes their rotations a little more forgiving if they mess up.

On the flip side, I think the decision making issues are equivalent across most class BY DESIGN. Ideally, I don't think Blizz wants "facerollers" to put up the best numbers (except apparently with DK's... jk sorta :P). I would expect that if we looked hard enougth, most DPS classes would have at least a moderate amount of difficulty in order to put up high numbers. Again, this is how it is meant to be. DPS is NOT just a cake-walk on auto-mode. For the most part, it does take skill and brains. Thus, if someone is putting up big numbers, I will respect them as a player, regardless of class. Even hunters have to use their brains sometimes :-).

With that being said, Affliction Warlockery has long been held to be the most difficult DPS area, at least in my experience. Affliction warlocks are seen to be the brainy, theorycrafting type I think, especially with more recent rotations. Destro may sometimes have been accused of shadow-bolt spamming their way to the top, but I don't think an affliction warlock has ever been accused of facerolling to put up good numbers. Our tree just doesn't work that way, and that is what I love about it. Is this envisions sense of respect entitled? You decide, but I think we can all agree that warlock rotations have long be respected.

Here are a few things I thought about when reading the article (keep in mind this is comparing an Affliction Warlock spell rotation to a Cat Druid Melee DPS rotation as laid out in the article I referenced)

Looking at the effects a druid has to balance, I think we have to balance the same kind of things. While a druid would be looking at energy and combo points... I'm watching my mana and health bars (when to life tap, when to demon tap). Recall that 'locks are not very mana efficient by nature. This is further complicated because where druids are in complete control of their energy and combo points, my health bar can take weird spikes of damage sometimes making it very hard to judge when to use a life tap. This may get harder when a life tap glyph is introduced which gives a spirit bonus, but the point is just that I can't always control my own fate here.

Affliction warlocks have to immediately gauge how fast something will die. This is a learned skill, not something all players inherently have and will make a huge difference when it comes to trash DPS and what rotation to go into. This has to be an almost immediate decision too. Sometimes, I think melee classes are spoiled with being able to basically start every fight the same and then balance it as you go, especially when you rely on energy or rage to open up your abilities. Each playstyle has its difficulties, and I just wanted to point out that this is a skill that I think is often overlooked.

I think there are equal positioning pros and cons for melee and caster classes. In a kiting fight, its probably more difficult for a melee class. In a fight with avoidable AoE and stuff like that, the movement is on the casters. Each boss can really slant to a different strength, but I would call this area a straight wash. I don't care what class you are, you need to be aware.

The article I referenced lays out 9 different heirachal steps for Cats. Affliction warlocks currently have to manage 7 debuff timers alone. This is not inlcuding spontaneous decisions like when to life tap, when to soulshatter, or any pet management at all. Each debuff has its own priority as well. For instance, I know I can't cut off CoA, so that one has to be pretty much applied as soon as it hits its last tick in order to avoid downtime. Most of the others can be cut off with the only downside being mana inefficiency (which increases the decisions when to tap and decreases overall DPS), but balancing when they all run out is certainly a headache. We try to prioritize based on which do the most damage, but a lot of times you just paint yourself into a corner and just have to let a few drop to keep up, and that is REALLY annoying.

Oh, and did I mention how difficult it is to manage damage over time spells? This is another underappreciated skill IMO. I mean, it's one thing when you just put up the occassional DoT, but when they make up the entirity of your offensive offering, simple game mechanics can become exremely trying for you. Take, for instance, aggro drops, or any other mechanic that neccessatitates a call for "halt DPS". We can't just shut it off like a faucet, we leak a bit. There is no button to just "stop" our DPS, it takes planning and understanding of the flow of a fight. It also usually results in a lot of warlock deaths when the tank isn't ready to throw down a taunt immediately after an aggro drop. Our DoTs aren't insurmontable, but you have to be ready for them. I'm sure every Affliction warlock has bit the dust at least once when a boss dropped aggro and ran at you before the tank figured out what was going on.

Luckily, having levelled with our normal MT, she's very good at anticipating this. I just realize that that isn't neccessarily the norm... and no one likes to get called out on vent: "why'd you pull aggro?" What am I supposed to fire back with? Because I was still attacking the boss while it was impossible for anyone else including the tank to attack the boss through no fault of my own? And, as we all know, vent commands are almost always given with plenty of time to respond accordingly... yeah, right.

I think the bottom line is that for each "ying" in cat DPS there is at least a comparable "yang" for warlock DPS. Even though my bias shows in my thoughts, I really don't think one is that exceedingly tougher than the other, especially if your goal is to top the charts. It would make sense that both require a decent amount of skill to be "the best".

I do stand by the point that I think Kitty DPS is more forgiving, however. Like the author even pointed out, you can do a sub-optimal rotation that is simpler and still do decent DPS. You can't really do that on a Warlock. All of our attacks all sort of synergize together right now with stacking buffs, debuffs, etc. 3.1 may bring a simpler rotation where there will be more wiggle room to be able to keep things up, but not really a whole lot less to pay attention to; maybe one less debuff, if we're lucky, two.

I think the case Flyv was making was that when you get the difficult rotation down for a cat, you're rewarded with some impressive numbers. You HAVE preform at that level as a warlock or you're bottoming out the DPS charts in my experience. There really isn't an inbetween right now. Maybe that'll change with upcoming patches, but who knows?

The short answer though, is this: it takes skill to be a good DPS'er. Contrary to popular belief, we don't just sit back in auto-mode when compared with tanks and healers, and that should be the main point you take from this and Flyv's articles. If you're a tank or a healer, give your DPS a pat on the back sometimes when the put up good numbers. After all, if stuff dies quicker, it helps you out in the end too.

Continuing With My Commenting Trend

There was another comment I responded to today over on a dual spec post at Fel Fire, which was in response to a whole 'nother issue I have with the way dual speccing is being proposed. I apologize for beating this dead horse, but I think its more interesting and widespread than recounting the fact that I dinged exalted with Sons of Hodir or picked up a 25 Emblem neck piece last night (and once again wondered aloud why the purple badge gear seems to be worse than my heroic blue drops).

Anyways, the suggestion was made in comments that as an Affliction Warlock, doesn't dual speccing really give us the fringe benefit of being able to spec, say, destro for trash mobs now. That way, we can stop complaining about how much we suck at trash, and just swap. In a way, some people already do this with gear now, but it is hardly a spec swap, as the suggestion intoned. There is a lot of validity to this argument, but here is my response.

The problem with that point of view arises when I don't *want* to play destro/demo. I specced Affliction because that is the playstyle I enjoy. If the tree is fundamentally broken for trash, shouldn't they fix that instead of just saying "lol spec destro/demo?" It's a cop-out. And like Elleiras said, I'm okay with not having great trash DPS if I can blow it away on the bosses. That's what I like about my chosen spec. Why should I be expected to swap from the way I enjoy? I want my tree to keep its identity and I want my small community of die hard afflictionados NOT to be expected to do just what you suggest. However, as it stands, why shouldn't we right? There would be no barrier to stop us from switching on the fly and then staying affliction through trash could be construed as selfish since you're not helping the raid as much as you could had you swapped. I, for one, rebel against this whole concept.

I'm all for playing the spec and playstyle that fits you, and then getting good at it. I don't care if you're a hybrid or not... if you like to heal, then heal. Tank, then tank. DPS... well you get the idea. If you happen to be good at multiple roles, then go you, but should all of us be forced into roles we don't want to play just because its now completely easy-mode?

Perhaps this is all a bit dramatic, but do you see the point I'm getting at? Stubborn? Sure! Wrong? You decide.

Short and sweet for sure, but what else is there to say? I don't want to go roll a fire mage any more than I want to respec destro. I'd love to try a demo PvP spec just to be able to pop meta and scare people, but that hardly has anything to do with raiding trash. In the past, Affliction has been awesome on bosses, mediocre on trash, and thus can fight for the top spot on overall meters. If we're just mediocre on bosses and sucky on trash, we can no longer fight. The solution then to just swap specs to be mediocre and mediocre would solve the "not being able to fight" problem, but at what cost? It's just a band-aid for the larger problem of the tree needing some work.

It looks to me like Blizz is still planning to pay proper attention to individual trees, so hopefully it stays that way. I'm just scared we'll start sweeping real problems under the dual spec rug.

Some Of My Best Work Comes In Comments

For some reason, I find I write more poignantly when inspired by the comments of others. There is a very interesting "dance" going on between Larisa over at Pink Pigtailed Inn and Gevlon at the Greedy Goblin. The basic question is do you choose a skilled player who is an asshat over a friendly player who is unskilled and the justifications thereof. It's probably pretty obvious where I might stand on the issue and to get the full context you should probably head over to the post linked above, but I think the comment is a valid read in its own right.

Very interesting and glad I caught this. For some reason my blog list doesn't like telling me when you write a new article. I'll have to look into that. I have two very long comments (apologies in advance).

1. If you have every played a sport, especially at higher levels, or follow a sport, you KNOW that any great leader makes those around him better. Look at Michael Jordan. He was amazing, but he also made everyone around him better. A team is never just robots doing their job, but a very dynamic group of interpersonal relationships intertwined to either succeed or fail as a group. Henry Ford's interchangeable parts theories won't function in a true team environment. Is this what we have in WoW? For me and my raid teams, yes. For others... maybe not.

2. Regarding Maslow's hierarchy of needs (In case you're wondering, Maslow's Pyramid is a theoretical structure used in psychology to indicate the hierarchy of human needs, putting the basics at the base like breathing and eating, and indicating social needs have far less importance, such as friendship); Maslow himself wrote: "By ordinary standards of this kind of laboratory research... this simply was not research at all. My generalizations grew out of my selection of certain kinds of people. Obviously, other judges are needed." Generalizations; pause for a moment and reflect on that word. If you take any classes in psychology, you'll quickly learn that, like the English language, there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rules. I would point to close familial bonding as one such exception to Maslow's generalizations. Love breaks this "rule of thumb" every time, hands down. The very essence of love is putting someone else before yourself, shattering the very foundation upon which that pyramid is build. Do you love the game and the people you group with? To some extent, I certainly do, but that is another personal question you need to ask yourself. And if you don't love what you're doing in an optional hobby, why do it? What do you get from WoW if not enjoyment?

This game, like many other things in life is most certainly what the individual makes of it. I maintain that you're going to get out what you put in. Feed it love, compassion, and hope... you'll get those returned 10-fold. Feed it malice and hate? Well, you do the math.

Naxx Picture Book Vol. II

Another picture book post today, and I probably won't have time to make a real one. It's a busy week for me. I did want to post about choosing a character name and complicated DPS rotations at some point. We'll see if I get the chance.

Below you'll find more pics of Naxx firsts for our alliance that I need to link. We cleared two full wings last night, one-shotting almost everything we'd done before. It was really nice. The instructor, which we had struggled on before, was a cake walk after we figured out that "exit vehicle" DOES NOT WORK. That's right, if you're mind controlling, don't try to use that one as it doesn't work. You have to use the manual pet dismiss method. That is to say, you much right click on your raid frame that shows you mind controlling and select "dismiss". If you've ever had a combat pet before, it is the same thing. Then, you basically can have your tanks to a 2 taunt rotation, where every two taunts they dismiss and reacquire. This gives plenty of room for overlap so that the boss doesn't run wild through your DPS. Also, it helps to drop heals off of the mind controlled fellas at the end to make them easier to kill. All in all, it was a good night.

Kel'Thuzad Cliff Notes Version

I was given the opportunity last night to help with some tries on Kel'Thuzad (25-man). The guild I ran with was very much a progression guild with focus on 25-man content, so there were a lot of good players here and it was much more of a "hardcore" environment that I normally run in. Still, everyone was sharp, polite, and it was fun although we did not taste success. I wanted to relate a sort of "cliff notes" version of the fight for future reference, so see if you like this summary from a ranged DPS perspective:

KT is a two phase fight.

Phase 1 - The entire group will run together into the large circle in front of the big guy. This will start the encounter. Trash will begin to come slowly from all sides. The group remains in the circle and kills the trash as it comes. There are three basic flavors of trash here. Skeletons are easy kills, Abominations must be tanked when they reach the circle (or have a DK pull them in), Banshees will remain at a distance and can be ranged down. After a set amount of time, phase 1 will end.

Phase 2 - Kel'Thuzad himself now joins the fight. The MT must pick him up and position him accordingly (normally near where he started), DPS must finish off any remaining adds and then spread out, giving at least ten yards of space between each ranged member. Melee will be behind the boss. At this point, after the tank has aggro, you unleash the beast on KT. You have to watch out for a few things:

1. He will mind control two random members of the group. They need to be CC'ed accordingly (sheeping, etc...).
   
2. He will put a "bomb" on a random member that explodes with a 10yd range. If you get this bomb, it is your job to make sure you don't kill anyone else with it. If you're spaced right, should be okay, but you really do need to check.
   
3. He will ice tomb random members as well, this is reason two for spreading out, because I believe it has a similar 10yd radius of effect.
   
4. He will do lots of AoE damage to keep healers on their toes. About halfway through the fight (depending on DPS speed), adds will join the party. These need to be picked up by tanks and managed as the DPS stays on KT to burn him down. If all goes well.. success!

I must say, we were only able to get him down to 14% with this strategy, but it was just bad luck here and there it seemed. The group I was with was still very much in the learning stage. Feel free to recommend pointers, but I just figured I'd pass this along while it was fresh.

Group Screenshots

Pay no mind to this post... I'm putting this pictures up so that I can link to them on our alliance website.

Future Rotations and Other Ruminations

Last night saw my first true raid leading experience in Naxx. This week, our raid alliance is getting split off into two groups, so right now we kind of have a "lead by committee" approach, with different capable people leading each run just to get "back in the swing". Last night was my turn, and it went well. We saw our first downing of both Heigan and Loatheb. We have this funny trend of struggling and wiping on an early boss, only to go and one-shot whatever we try next. That's what happened on Loatheb, which can be a tricky fight, but everyone was dialed in and we have some great healers. We'll see how the split goes this week.

The loot goods have deserted me for now, so I'm stuck hovering around a 2.1k average DPS, climbing to around 2.6k average on bosses (more on some, less on others). I still have only broken the 3k mark on that one occasion, but I also have plenty of room for upgrades. I did finally pick up my T7.10 chest this weekend, which was nice. Now if I can get the shoulders... The gloves are kind of "meh" in my opinion, since I got the Gloves of Dark Gestures from Naxx already. Next on my list up emblem upgrades is the 40 badge sash.

Before I get into my thoughts on how a 3.1 rotation might shape up, I wanted to relate the following new glyph that was brought to my attention by Abi over at Fear.Win.

• Glyph of Life Tap - Using your Life Tap spell will increase your spellpower by 20% of your spirit for 20 seconds.

As Abi pointed out, this will probably become mandatory post 3.1. I, for one, will be picking this up for sure, and you'll see why when you look at my rotation.

I QQ'ed a little before, basically being scared that with the effective removal of two DoTs from our "standard" rotation, we might lose DPS. This still remains to be seen, but the ramifications of the change with respect to simplifying the rotation are growing on me.

Right now, most aff'locks are using some variation of the rotation I'm using: Corr, Haunt, Sbolt, UA, CoA, SL, Immo. I think most will put a SB first and rearrange them a bit, and I don't always follow the same order myself. I almost always throw up Corr first because it is instant and I never have to apply it again. This can very easily be done as I'm getting set up to be able to do my casted spells, thus not wasting those early seconds of a fight.

It's good to throw up H and SB right away to get your Shadow Embrace bonus up. This will not change in 3.1, just will only affect shadow spells. So far, the front end of my rotation looks the same. I will still probably follow with UA and some sort of Curse.

I feel like I must point out here that I move my curse around in my rotation a lot. I normally don't use a curse on trash because they just die too quick. Thus, I usually won't apply it right away until I can gauge how quickly something is going to go down. On bosses, I may try to put it up in that positioning window I talked about earlier, so right after Corr goes up. If I'm using CotE, I try to get the curse up always as early as possible. The long duration ensures that you don't have to watch it as much as CoA.

Now, the butt end of the rotation is SL and Immo. SL will be gone in 3.1 (most likely) and Immo will not receive the bonus from Haunt and Shadows Embrace. This greatly devalues the application of the spell. I don't think it'll be worth it any longer. Thus, you can just drop the entire butt end of the rotation in favor of more shadow bolts. This will also give you a nice window to take a quick breath between reapplication rounds. Before, it had been hard to throw even one bolt in there before needing to refresh. Post 3.1, this shouldn't be the case, giving us a little more wiggle room.

Of course, still throw some drain soul in at the end if you wish, but the basic rotation will now look like this: Corr, H, SB, CoA, UA. Simple, clean, easy.

Getting back to why that glyph is important, every time I reapply Haunt, I life tap. If you do it immediately following your Haunt spell, you will get healed up by the returning haunt right after you've life tapped, making for almost a free tap. This is great stuff already, but with that glyph... wow. Its like a nice little trinket pop every time you tap, and I tap once every rotation... this should almost always be up. With 'locks already carrying decent spirit numbers due to fel armor, this glyph is a no-brainer. Woot!

It's also important to realize that Corr will now return some life to you, so use it gratuitously. For instance, one thing we do on Grobbulus is have a lock or two throw the random dot onto a slime to help the OT with killing it. I almost always switch over and throw both Corr and SL. The life return can save your butt if you get hit by a muta and have to run through a cloud, plus it helps the healers which is good. Now, that will just be one GCD, one DoT. Yay! I'm sure this is going to be our bread and butter, if it isn't already. Nightfall, damage, and life return in one DoT... yes, please.

Anyways, that's just what I'm looking forward to about 3.1. I'm sincerely hoping there's no damage nerf, but at least the rotation will be a bit nicer. I may even welcome some more shadow bolts back into my life...