I published the rough draft of my rotation post last week and got some great feedback. I've taken that, updated things as needed, and plugged it into what will become my MoP Affliction Warlock Primer Page. It is linked up there on the top left of the page where my old guides used to be.
The eventual goal is to have everything in there I need to be a competent Affliction Warlock. Right now, we just have the rotational discussion. I'm planning to publish a rough draft about glyphs before this week ends. Stats and spec will be covered eventually as well. If there are any other key topics I've missed, I'm definitely open to adding a section.
Again, the goal of these articles is not to be a hardcore raider, but simply to get Affliction Warlocks started. You may want to do things differently, and I encourage anyone and everyone to share these alternate methods along with the rationale behind them. As my old gaffer used to say: "There's more than one way to afflict an orc." He might have been a bit hordist.
In any case, thanks to everyone that commented. Hopefully the primer helps some of the other Warlocks out there that are looking for a simple discussion of (what I consider) the basics. If nothing else, it has helped me hone my own playing. I slapped on the shard glyph last night and, hoo boy, what a difference an extra shard makes. I ran a quick scenario and felt like I was slinging shadow errrrverywhere. It was glorious.
I have to say, I really enjoy where they've taken the class in MoP. Traditionally, I've always viewed changes from Blizz with a healthy skepticism, but I really feel they nailed it in this expansion. They updated and removed a lot of the unpleasant sides of Affliction Warlockery without sacrificing (what I feel to be) the identity of the class. Bravo!
Now I just need to work on those "Coming Soon" areas.
Showing posts with label Sequence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sequence. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Slinging Shadow in Mists
Labels: Sequence, warlocky 16 comments
Okay. So here is my attempt at organizing my somewhat disparate thoughts about the current method of Affliction Warlock Spellslinging. Eventually, I'm going to organize this information into a primer to replace the outdated articles that I have on the left. At that point, I'm sure it'll be too late to be of help to anyone. Still, I'm doing this as much for myself as any of the rest of you. Now that I'm level 90 and starting to gear up, I need to know how to play proper-like, if only so as not to embarrass myself in group settings.
Let me set one expectation straight here: My goal with this is not to become a top raider or anything like that. The idea is to capture a basic foundation of what I believe to be a respectable way to play the class I love. There are always things one could do better, but let's agree to discuss what we believe every "core" Aff'lock should do. With that being said, here we go...
A lot has changed in MoP. The Warlock class has been redesigned. I think they did a great job of keeping the old flavor that I loved about the class, and mixing it with some new niceties that fix long-endured issues.
Buffing was simplified. Dark Intent has become a buff that should always be up, and much simpler than the days where we used to need to choose which class to link with. When you've got an active pet, you should keep your Soul Link up as well. Outside of that, you have your normal choices of food and flask that generally aim to buff our major stats, and that will be important when raiding, but outside of competitive group environments, these are optional. A good Warlock will always keep goodies on hand that buff one of our top three stats. (I'll do a dive into stats later. For now, Int, Haste, and Mastery are all good choices.)
Once we're buffed, we should look to the spells we're going to keep up during a fight. There are two major phases of any combat situation for Affliction Warlocks. One is above 25% health, the second is under 25% health. There's a third option, and that is AoE fights. I'll cover all three.
Above 25% Health, Single Target
Haunt > Curse of the Elements > Soulburn+Soul Swap > Maelific Grasp Filler > Fel Fire Refresh
We want to lead off with our "buff" spells that improve DoT damage. I don't always do this (because of laziness), but this makes sure that every tick benefits from their application. I would advocate leading off with Haunt since it has a "fly time," applying only after it has traveled from your hand and hit the target. Thus, after the Global Cool Down, CotE and H can hit almost simultaneously.
I like to use SB+SS to pop all my DoTs once, but if you're shard starved, you can put them up manually. And when I say "DoTs," I'm talking about what I like to call the Big Three: Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Agony. The primary goal of Affliction DPS is going to be to keep those Big Three rolling as much as possible. Our DoT up time on any given fight should exceed 90%. If you're learning Affliction, focus your efforts here first.
I will use Fel Fire to refresh Corr and UA. It adds a direct damage component, and the GCD's wash out when you consider you only get half of the time you would get with a manual refresh (but would have to manually refresh two spells, so you get two for the price of one). The only caveat to FF usage is if there is a fight where we're mana starved, as it is not the most mana-efficient path. Manual refreshing would be better then. Agony is a manual refresh all the way, and try to keep it at 10 stacks (by not letting it fall off).
Goal number 1 is maximizing Big Three up time. Goal number 2, then, would be to maximize the up time of our filler and thus minimize "non-damaging" down time. We will want to try to keep Haunt up as much as possible, but will likely be shard-limited to some extent, so we should simply do our best. More important, maybe, is weaving in as much MG as possible. MG is the spell that replaced our old Shadowbolt filler. MG is tied much more strongly to DoTs, increasing its importance as filler. The more we can keep MG rolling (without letting other things drop off), the better our DPS numbers are going to look.
And that's pretty much it for >25%. It's a lot simpler than in years past. If you feel like you are doing sub-par DPS, my first advice would be to check your up times. I've had a few discussions about that here, and I think we're looking at average up times of >90% on the Big Three, ~50% for Haunt (generally less), and ~40% for MG (fight/situation dependent, and 40 is probably a lofty goal). These are just rules of thumb, and your mileage may vary, but can provide you with a frame of reference and basis for improvement.
Below 25% Health, Single Target
We're pretty much doing the same stuff here. Keeping the Big Three rolling. Keeping Haunt up. The big switch is that instead of MG filler, we'll switch to using Drain Soul. DrS can have some pretty massive ticks under 25%, so it is totally worth using. Simply replace MG with DrS. Since DrS ticks a lot slower, this is where an addon that shows ticks (like Quartz) can be helpful. Try to weave your various refreshers right after ticks have occurred. (You could do the same with MG, but it does not have as much of an impact since the ticks are faster and the overall spell is shorter).
I try to make use of our Dark Soul buff just prior to entering this phase. I do not believe that DaS stacks with effects like Heroism, so you may want to use the buff differently depending on when the group buffs come out. For most fights, I could use DaS at the beginning, and probably somewhere in the middle as well. I believe it has a 2 min cooldown, so a studious 'lock would be able to get ~3 uses out of it per fight. I am not a studious 'lock. I routinely forget about it, so I just try to make sure I use it at least once per fight, and I want to make sure that when I want to use it, it is ready to go. This is a personal preference. No doubt many of you do much better than me.
Finally, I have my Doomguard macro'ed to my DaS key, so whenever I pop the buff, I also bring out my bonus pet. Make sure you use this guy once per fight. It has a longer cooldown, so you're not going to be able to generally weave him in any more. I save my punches for the end, but there may be circumstance where you want to blow this stuff earlier. Maybe a tricky part where some bonus DPS is needed. Your call.
Area of Effect, Multiple Targets
Previously, we've always tried to define a certain number of units where utilizing AoE spells becomes preferable to simply trying to keep up DoTs on multiple targets. I think it may fall between 3 and 4 mobs. With 3 or fewer, you want to do single target stuff (perhaps using SS to run your Big Three on multiple targets). With 4 or more, you'll want to switch to AoE spells. For the Affliction Warlock, this means a SB+CotE (so that Elements gets put on all of the enemies), then following with a SS+Seed of Corruption (this will apply Corruption to all targets hit by the exploding seed). Plant your seed on the target with the most health, and push it toward explosion (it has a damage done trigger). I like to throw out a Drain Life here (with the AoE talent). It's probably better (when health is of no concern), to channel RoF or just do direct damage to the target to get your seed to explode. An alternate method would be to spread more seeds around while waiting for the explosion to get a chain of explosions. While this is great fun, I don't think you should do it if you've spread Corruption out, as SoC and Corr don't mix. That is, one replaces the other (still, right?).
One of the major reason I like to use the Drain Life approach is that spamming your AoE abilities will drain your mana ridiculously fast. Drain Life is a lot more mana efficient, though it doesn't pack the wallop of the others. Just something to consider. This is how I like to AoE and I think it is a solid approach. I wouldn't worry too much about being the master of AoE. Aff'locks are kings of sustained, single target damage. Let the mages deal with pesky groups.
So this summarizes my approach to Affliction Warlockery. See any major goofs? How do you do things differently and why? Consider this my first draft, so I'd love to fix any errors you notice. Like I said, this is more for me than all of you, since you're all pros already, right?
Let me set one expectation straight here: My goal with this is not to become a top raider or anything like that. The idea is to capture a basic foundation of what I believe to be a respectable way to play the class I love. There are always things one could do better, but let's agree to discuss what we believe every "core" Aff'lock should do. With that being said, here we go...
A lot has changed in MoP. The Warlock class has been redesigned. I think they did a great job of keeping the old flavor that I loved about the class, and mixing it with some new niceties that fix long-endured issues.
Buffing was simplified. Dark Intent has become a buff that should always be up, and much simpler than the days where we used to need to choose which class to link with. When you've got an active pet, you should keep your Soul Link up as well. Outside of that, you have your normal choices of food and flask that generally aim to buff our major stats, and that will be important when raiding, but outside of competitive group environments, these are optional. A good Warlock will always keep goodies on hand that buff one of our top three stats. (I'll do a dive into stats later. For now, Int, Haste, and Mastery are all good choices.)
Once we're buffed, we should look to the spells we're going to keep up during a fight. There are two major phases of any combat situation for Affliction Warlocks. One is above 25% health, the second is under 25% health. There's a third option, and that is AoE fights. I'll cover all three.
Above 25% Health, Single Target
Haunt > Curse of the Elements > Soulburn+Soul Swap > Maelific Grasp Filler > Fel Fire Refresh
We want to lead off with our "buff" spells that improve DoT damage. I don't always do this (because of laziness), but this makes sure that every tick benefits from their application. I would advocate leading off with Haunt since it has a "fly time," applying only after it has traveled from your hand and hit the target. Thus, after the Global Cool Down, CotE and H can hit almost simultaneously.
I like to use SB+SS to pop all my DoTs once, but if you're shard starved, you can put them up manually. And when I say "DoTs," I'm talking about what I like to call the Big Three: Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Agony. The primary goal of Affliction DPS is going to be to keep those Big Three rolling as much as possible. Our DoT up time on any given fight should exceed 90%. If you're learning Affliction, focus your efforts here first.
I will use Fel Fire to refresh Corr and UA. It adds a direct damage component, and the GCD's wash out when you consider you only get half of the time you would get with a manual refresh (but would have to manually refresh two spells, so you get two for the price of one). The only caveat to FF usage is if there is a fight where we're mana starved, as it is not the most mana-efficient path. Manual refreshing would be better then. Agony is a manual refresh all the way, and try to keep it at 10 stacks (by not letting it fall off).
Goal number 1 is maximizing Big Three up time. Goal number 2, then, would be to maximize the up time of our filler and thus minimize "non-damaging" down time. We will want to try to keep Haunt up as much as possible, but will likely be shard-limited to some extent, so we should simply do our best. More important, maybe, is weaving in as much MG as possible. MG is the spell that replaced our old Shadowbolt filler. MG is tied much more strongly to DoTs, increasing its importance as filler. The more we can keep MG rolling (without letting other things drop off), the better our DPS numbers are going to look.
And that's pretty much it for >25%. It's a lot simpler than in years past. If you feel like you are doing sub-par DPS, my first advice would be to check your up times. I've had a few discussions about that here, and I think we're looking at average up times of >90% on the Big Three, ~50% for Haunt (generally less), and ~40% for MG (fight/situation dependent, and 40 is probably a lofty goal). These are just rules of thumb, and your mileage may vary, but can provide you with a frame of reference and basis for improvement.
Below 25% Health, Single Target
We're pretty much doing the same stuff here. Keeping the Big Three rolling. Keeping Haunt up. The big switch is that instead of MG filler, we'll switch to using Drain Soul. DrS can have some pretty massive ticks under 25%, so it is totally worth using. Simply replace MG with DrS. Since DrS ticks a lot slower, this is where an addon that shows ticks (like Quartz) can be helpful. Try to weave your various refreshers right after ticks have occurred. (You could do the same with MG, but it does not have as much of an impact since the ticks are faster and the overall spell is shorter).
I try to make use of our Dark Soul buff just prior to entering this phase. I do not believe that DaS stacks with effects like Heroism, so you may want to use the buff differently depending on when the group buffs come out. For most fights, I could use DaS at the beginning, and probably somewhere in the middle as well. I believe it has a 2 min cooldown, so a studious 'lock would be able to get ~3 uses out of it per fight. I am not a studious 'lock. I routinely forget about it, so I just try to make sure I use it at least once per fight, and I want to make sure that when I want to use it, it is ready to go. This is a personal preference. No doubt many of you do much better than me.
Finally, I have my Doomguard macro'ed to my DaS key, so whenever I pop the buff, I also bring out my bonus pet. Make sure you use this guy once per fight. It has a longer cooldown, so you're not going to be able to generally weave him in any more. I save my punches for the end, but there may be circumstance where you want to blow this stuff earlier. Maybe a tricky part where some bonus DPS is needed. Your call.
Area of Effect, Multiple Targets
Previously, we've always tried to define a certain number of units where utilizing AoE spells becomes preferable to simply trying to keep up DoTs on multiple targets. I think it may fall between 3 and 4 mobs. With 3 or fewer, you want to do single target stuff (perhaps using SS to run your Big Three on multiple targets). With 4 or more, you'll want to switch to AoE spells. For the Affliction Warlock, this means a SB+CotE (so that Elements gets put on all of the enemies), then following with a SS+Seed of Corruption (this will apply Corruption to all targets hit by the exploding seed). Plant your seed on the target with the most health, and push it toward explosion (it has a damage done trigger). I like to throw out a Drain Life here (with the AoE talent). It's probably better (when health is of no concern), to channel RoF or just do direct damage to the target to get your seed to explode. An alternate method would be to spread more seeds around while waiting for the explosion to get a chain of explosions. While this is great fun, I don't think you should do it if you've spread Corruption out, as SoC and Corr don't mix. That is, one replaces the other (still, right?).
One of the major reason I like to use the Drain Life approach is that spamming your AoE abilities will drain your mana ridiculously fast. Drain Life is a lot more mana efficient, though it doesn't pack the wallop of the others. Just something to consider. This is how I like to AoE and I think it is a solid approach. I wouldn't worry too much about being the master of AoE. Aff'locks are kings of sustained, single target damage. Let the mages deal with pesky groups.
So this summarizes my approach to Affliction Warlockery. See any major goofs? How do you do things differently and why? Consider this my first draft, so I'd love to fix any errors you notice. Like I said, this is more for me than all of you, since you're all pros already, right?
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Protection Paladin Rotation: Max Threat Verse Survivability
Labels: Instances, Pally Power, Raiding, Sequence, Specs, Tanking 2 comments
Hey Gang!
So, it's been some time now since 4.0.1 dropped and our new spells, Holy Power, etc. had thrown our original rotations into a Cement Mixer. For many of us, it felt very foreign to us because many of the things that we took as "sacred" are no more.
After hitting 85, training all of my new spells, I was anxious to see how all of these new spells fit together. We gained Inquisition at level 81. Which at first seems pretty much only useful for our Retribution pals. It's a DPS increase when you use Holy power and scales with how many stacks we had while using it. If you use it with all three stacks of Holy Power, Inquisition lasts for 12 seconds.
My first reaction was why do I want to waste my precious Holy Power on a Damage increase? I have two extremely powerful spells that I can choose to use instead. Shield of the Righteous that does huge amounts of single target threat (currently critting for almost 20k with three stacks) and putting up Holy Shield that increases the amount of damage I mitigate by 10% and Word of Glory that gives me a very free self healing. Why do I, as a tank, give two Kodo Poops about Inquisition? Well, after further reading over at my favorite Forums, I saw theorycrafters proposing that if you use Inquisition with 3 stacks of Holy power, it will last you 12 seconds. Our rotation, from start to finish, is only 9 seconds.
This got my brain rolling...
Well, if I could have Inquisition on for the duration of my rotation in all the while working my Holy Power back up, it will last me until I get back to hitting SotR again. My brain just exploded at the thought of all that delicious threat that I would be creating. Om nom nom!
But here's the beauty of this whole entire thing. Holy power takes 9 seconds to rack up to 3. Most fights don't last very long. 18 Seconds is like an eternity when it comes to mob & boss fights. Having to wait 18 seconds to have your Holy Shield up feels like having unprotected sex with strangers and then deciding mid way that you probably shouldn't be doing what you're doing...
/gross
So brain, how do we get to play with our "Holy Shit Threat Happy Fun Time" without feeling "unprotected" for 18 seconds?
The answer is Divine Plea! When you hit Divine Plea (if Talented... which you better have it talented or I'll be sad!) It gives you an automatic 3 stacks of Holy Power right away before ever having to do anything! Hurray!
What I found to be the best single target threat rotation to be:
(Glyphed: Focused Shield) Avengers Shield-Divine Plea-Inquisition-Crusader Strike-Judgement-Crusader Strike- AS/ (Holy Wrath if AS didn't proc or off Cooldown)- Crusader Strike- Shield of the Righteous (repeat until dead... not you! The Boss!)
With this rotation you are getting the full effect of Inquisition through your entire rotation and not having to wait the entire 18 seconds to get your Holy Shield up. Best of both worlds. With this kind of threat start, it would be extremely hard for anyone to pull it off of you. This is the Ultimate front loaded threat move. Hell throw in your Wings and you have become a monster! Even your trigger happy mage would be hard pressed to pry that Internet Dragon off of you. With this kind of a lead on your threat, letting Vengence kick in will only make the ride that much easier.
Now, if you are more interested in AoE instead of Single target. It's pretty easy to make a few minor changes. Unglyph your Avenger's Shield so you are hitting 3 targets instead of 1. Replace Crusader Strike with Hammer of the Righteous and use Holy Wrath & Consecrate in your "off times". If mobs aren't hitting too hard, you could even change your Aura to Retribution (if you don't already have a Ret Pally with you).
If Survivability is what really butters your bread, then I suggest a different strategy. I would focus more on keeping up your Holy Shield up for that additional mitigation and spot healing with Word of Glory. Again, I would pop Divine Plea before the pull, Shoot the mob/boss, use Shield of the Righteous and go to town gaining back your Holy Power Stacks. Once to three, pop Word of Glory. This is really nice even if you are topped off because (again if you specced into it) will create a bubble with the over heals. Rotate Shield of the Righteous with Word of Glory and you should be golden. Healers will cheer & babes will weep at how awesome you are at Surviving the most brutal content that Cataclysm could throw at you.
Now get out there & make your healers proud!
/slaps you on the ass for good luck!
<3 Your Friendly Neightborhood Fuubaar
So, it's been some time now since 4.0.1 dropped and our new spells, Holy Power, etc. had thrown our original rotations into a Cement Mixer. For many of us, it felt very foreign to us because many of the things that we took as "sacred" are no more.
After hitting 85, training all of my new spells, I was anxious to see how all of these new spells fit together. We gained Inquisition at level 81. Which at first seems pretty much only useful for our Retribution pals. It's a DPS increase when you use Holy power and scales with how many stacks we had while using it. If you use it with all three stacks of Holy Power, Inquisition lasts for 12 seconds.
My first reaction was why do I want to waste my precious Holy Power on a Damage increase? I have two extremely powerful spells that I can choose to use instead. Shield of the Righteous that does huge amounts of single target threat (currently critting for almost 20k with three stacks) and putting up Holy Shield that increases the amount of damage I mitigate by 10% and Word of Glory that gives me a very free self healing. Why do I, as a tank, give two Kodo Poops about Inquisition? Well, after further reading over at my favorite Forums, I saw theorycrafters proposing that if you use Inquisition with 3 stacks of Holy power, it will last you 12 seconds. Our rotation, from start to finish, is only 9 seconds.
This got my brain rolling...
Well, if I could have Inquisition on for the duration of my rotation in all the while working my Holy Power back up, it will last me until I get back to hitting SotR again. My brain just exploded at the thought of all that delicious threat that I would be creating. Om nom nom!
But here's the beauty of this whole entire thing. Holy power takes 9 seconds to rack up to 3. Most fights don't last very long. 18 Seconds is like an eternity when it comes to mob & boss fights. Having to wait 18 seconds to have your Holy Shield up feels like having unprotected sex with strangers and then deciding mid way that you probably shouldn't be doing what you're doing...
/gross
So brain, how do we get to play with our "Holy Shit Threat Happy Fun Time" without feeling "unprotected" for 18 seconds?
The answer is Divine Plea! When you hit Divine Plea (if Talented... which you better have it talented or I'll be sad!) It gives you an automatic 3 stacks of Holy Power right away before ever having to do anything! Hurray!
What I found to be the best single target threat rotation to be:
(Glyphed: Focused Shield) Avengers Shield-Divine Plea-Inquisition-Crusader Strike-Judgement-Crusader Strike- AS/ (Holy Wrath if AS didn't proc or off Cooldown)- Crusader Strike- Shield of the Righteous (repeat until dead... not you! The Boss!)
With this rotation you are getting the full effect of Inquisition through your entire rotation and not having to wait the entire 18 seconds to get your Holy Shield up. Best of both worlds. With this kind of threat start, it would be extremely hard for anyone to pull it off of you. This is the Ultimate front loaded threat move. Hell throw in your Wings and you have become a monster! Even your trigger happy mage would be hard pressed to pry that Internet Dragon off of you. With this kind of a lead on your threat, letting Vengence kick in will only make the ride that much easier.
Now, if you are more interested in AoE instead of Single target. It's pretty easy to make a few minor changes. Unglyph your Avenger's Shield so you are hitting 3 targets instead of 1. Replace Crusader Strike with Hammer of the Righteous and use Holy Wrath & Consecrate in your "off times". If mobs aren't hitting too hard, you could even change your Aura to Retribution (if you don't already have a Ret Pally with you).
If Survivability is what really butters your bread, then I suggest a different strategy. I would focus more on keeping up your Holy Shield up for that additional mitigation and spot healing with Word of Glory. Again, I would pop Divine Plea before the pull, Shoot the mob/boss, use Shield of the Righteous and go to town gaining back your Holy Power Stacks. Once to three, pop Word of Glory. This is really nice even if you are topped off because (again if you specced into it) will create a bubble with the over heals. Rotate Shield of the Righteous with Word of Glory and you should be golden. Healers will cheer & babes will weep at how awesome you are at Surviving the most brutal content that Cataclysm could throw at you.
Now get out there & make your healers proud!
/slaps you on the ass for good luck!
<3 Your Friendly Neightborhood Fuubaar
Monday, November 1, 2010
HAOW: 4.0.3a Affliction Warlock Glyphs and Rotation
Labels: Gear, Patch, Raiding, Sequence, warlocky 31 comments
So we've already covered speccing, pet choice, and stat priority. Next we need to talk glyphing and rotating. This final installment on How to Afflict Others with Warlockery will cover the art of slapping stickers on your spellbook, as well as how to spin in circles with enough intensity to cause others to puke (no easy feat, I assure you).
The Glyphs
Previously, I had been running with the BoA, Haunt, and Corruption in my Prime slots. Felhunter, Soul Swap, and Shadowflame contributed in the Major area. Unending Breath, Souls, and Drain Soul rounded out my minors. You'll see I made one change after running with these for a week, but otherwise I like my original choices. Here's the breakdown.
Prime
Now that you've got your stickers on your spell book, let's bust open the blasted thing! As we've come to expect, Affliction Warlockery will continue to be dominated by rotational thinking. Some classes may rely on reactions to procs, but we are all about premeditated murder on this side of the spectrum. If you've made it this far, you probably already know that aff'locks are for dots. That's what we do and we do it well. So here's the carousel of disease.
Before you do anything, make sure your buff yourself. All 'locks should be popping on their Fel Armor, but you'll also want to make sure your Soul Link is active. All specs have it now, so make sure it's up. Good stuff.
Above 25% Health, Single Target
Corruption > Bane of Agony > Unstable Affliction > Haunt > Shadowbolt x2 > Curse of the Elements. Spam SB until a refresh of each disease is needed (monitor them individually with a DoT timer. Fortex or Xperl is great for this). Life tap sparingly. You don't have to worry about clipping for anything but BoA, so ideal refresh time is to start casing somewhere in the last two seconds to make sure you don't get any drop off.
After the initial set up, there are a few cooldowns to watch for as well. First, we want to throw in an Improved Soul Fire whenever Soulburn is off cooldown, letting us cast it instantly. ISF doesn't stack with heroism-like effects, so try to use it outside of those times. Second, we want to use Demon Soul when it is off cooldown as well. Finally, you may want to use Fel Fire to refresh your UA cast. I use it exclusively. There is some debate whether it's better to use FF or UA for a full refresh. I fall firmly in the FF-user category. When all is said an done, I think it provides me with better DPS. When maths are done, I think it comes out to about the same with a slight skew toward UA.
A lot of folks will want you to open up with a Haunt and SBx2 combo to get your SE and ISB stacks up early. I am not one of those people, and here's why. With the addition of Soul Swap to our arsenal, I believe it is in our best interest to get our "Big 3" up as soon as possible. That way, if something starts to die more quickly than expected, you can inhale a swap and be ready to go.
The aforementioned folks will try to convince you that buffless ticks on your DoTs equates to a DPS loss. I have my doubts about this. Sure in a theoretical environment, this would be the case. I mean if you just add everything up, I'm with you. But often starting out with a nuke is a bad idea. Maybe we'll crit and draw aggro. Additionally, aren't we missing full ticks of DoTs while we're casting? It would seem to me that if we slap up the DoTs quickly, it's safer from a Soul Swap perspective, and it'd be at least a wash in DPS as you'll get ticks while casting the other crap. I don't think a simulation can take things like "am I moving into position" or "is this going to die quickly" into account. And once everything is up, we're all the same. The order does not matter. There are no more rolling bonuses. All of the spell buffs are percentage based modifiers which apply to every tick individually. The only things you need to make sure to do before you start a rotation are your normal pre-fight buffs and trinket popping.
So my recommendation is to throw up the Big 3 first if they're not already there as part of a swap. That's what makes the most sense to me After that, I want to get Haunt and SE rolling. This is when an early Nightfall proc is a sweet addtion. Then, finally, I'll pop CotE on something. Usually I try to put it on a later target, since with the talent Jinx it works as an AoE debuff now. The less you have to worry about refreshing CotE, the better. On a boss, just pop it on him.
After you get your stuff set up, you should be able to just watch a dot timer and refresh as needed (Corruption should always be refreshed by Haunt, but if you let it fall off, then make sure you get it back up). Even if I were trying really hard, I realize I would never be able to perfectly line my spells up. Not matter how I slice it, I'm still going to end up watching timers for each spell individually, so I don't bother with a castsequence macro. I mean, what if fire spawns under me, then it's all gone to shit unless I sit still and literally DIAF (or am really good at macros I guess). Simply using timers makes sense to me, but feel free to swap up the order as fits your playstyle. What matters is that you use all of the spells mentioned above and keep them ticking the best you can with minimal down time. How you execute best is up to you to decide. (I can definitely offer tips and suggestions if you want to email or comment!)
For life tap, you want to use it sparingly. Basically, the goal is to life tap only enough so that at the very end of a fight you're Out Of Mana (without having any downtime due to OOM). Any extra life taps are lost DPS to Global Cool Down. When I'm going to tap, I try to weave it in right after I cast a Haunt refresh. The benefit to tapping right after casting Haunt is that you'll generally beat the fly time for the haunt spell and thus get a nice little heal to offset some of your tap. Not freaking out healers or wasting the health regen is a good thing in my book. I almost never succeed in the gold standard of OOM at the end, but I'm not ending over 50% either. We have a ton more mana now, so with replenishment and such, it's been completely reasonable to never life tap.
Curse choice used to be a problem, but since we now can do a Bane and a Curse, it's not so much of an issue. Use CotE and BoA, period, unless another 'lock is taking care of CotE, then you're off the hook. Affliction talents buff BoA enough that it'll be better for us than Bane of Doom. It's really this simple. Also, don't forget you have Curse of the Tongues if you're on Crowd Control duty for something like Faction Champions (remember that? /shudder). It's a good one to remember for any PvP like shenanigans. Oh, and one more time: absolutely do NOT clip BoA when you use it. You've probably heard it a million places, but the last tick does almost half of the spell's damage, so you'd be missing out on a lot and it still clips. Just try to time your refresh for when it's over. It'd be better to have a bit of downtime for that spell than to clip it. (The other dots are not so prissy, but BoA must still run it's course prior to a refresh).
Under 25% Health
The rotation stays the same except at this point you'll want to start using Drain Soul instead of your SB filler. Don't worry too much about keeping the Improved Shadow Bolt buff up either. DS will be doing a hell-ton of damage if your other dots are up. So keep 'em up (DS should also help by refreshing Corr and UA). The only caveat here is that if the baddie is about to die in the next 21 seconds, you shouldn't refresh BoA as it won't have time to run it's course. Other than that, keep up the Big 3 and Haunt (which should refresh Corr and SE), and CotE for sure. It's also good if you can try to time your refresh casts to be immediately after a Drain Soul tick. Just look for the abnormally large damage number on your screen (or get an addon that helps you. I don't use one, but suggestions welcome in comments).
Multiple Target Situations
If there are three or more targets, you should be thinking "Area of Effect" spells. Now, this hinges a lot on your tank and the difficulty of the mobs. If aggro is a problem, or if it is deemed best to down one target at a time (maybe CC is being used, maybe the leader wants a quick burn, whatever), then we'll just do our normal single target rotation (with Soul Swap!). The difference in this case would be that you might be able to get away with throwing corruption up on the other targets, depending on the situation (the extra chance at nightfall procs is fun). If you've specced into the Seed of Corruption talent, a Soulburn is a great (and effective) way to do that.
Also, proper target switching can really help your DPS as well. Back in the day (which was a Tuesday), when people used to use CC, it was key to know when to switch targets. Switch too soon and the first guy might not die, or the tank might not be ready and you'll find yourself munching mud. Switch too late and you're gimping your DPS and taking longer to kill things (which I guess, given the name of the blog, isn't all bad, but we still want to do our job the best we can). Being dependent on damage over time spells, Warlocks need to be highly cognizant of when to switch. There is no hard and fast rule, but the goal should be that your dots would have started dropping off the instant the baddie hits 0%. Thus, if it's got like 5% health left, dropping fast, and you don't have anything to refresh, you'll probably want to get set up on the next target.
Soul Swap makes switching a lot easier now. With one quick, instant click we inhale our Big 3 to exhale onto the next target (starting them at full duration). This really levels out our DPS into something respectable on trash and add fights. All around, the spell is just amazing, especially with the glyph. Switching targets used to count as downtime, but no more! Now it's just a chance to get a free DoT refresh with a bonus set. The ease of multiple target ramp-up now makes it more imperative than ever to watch out threat though. You don't want to be that guy.
Some of this may seem like a lost art to old warlock hands, since in the Wrath world (... of warcraft), a vast majority of your muli-target pulls were simple AoE groups. Still, I wanted to start out with the more controlled, rarer multi-target situations because it's going to become increasingly important for to know. But lets be honest: we still love huge baysplosions of damage from straight AoE spells. And for Affliction Warlocks, we have two main choices: Seed of Corruption or Rain of Fire.
Seed of Corruption tends to be the better damaging spell for us, but not as easy to control. The explosion area of seed can often reach outside of, say, a Paladin's consecrate and cause you to get unwanted aggro. Thus, our AoE spell choice should be highly dependent on the situation. If the tank clearly has everything locked down and you're not going to get stragglers, definitely make use of seed. It will explode all over the tank-led dance party and cause you much glee. Don't forget to toss in a Soulburn + SoC near the beginning to get Corruption up on all the targets too. Great times, huge numbers!
However, if you have other adds wandering around, not clearly in the tank's control, use RoF. It's sized to perfectly fit on top of a consecrate (or DnD), so if you're running with one of those tanks, you should be able to just rain on top of their aura with little fear of pulling the mobs off. You may have to be careful not to just spam if your gear is significantly better than the tank, but, for the most part, the aura abilities of a tank can outstrip our RoF. If you're running with a Warrior or Druid tank, just try to center your RoF on them as they lack for visual cues.
If you happen to be close enough, throw in a Shadowflame as well. Again, be wary of aggro pull, but when you get a chance to go wild... man, we can put up some good numbers.
Summary
So it's simple: In good AoE situations, use SoC (tossing in a SB + SoC). In shaky AoE situations (where you want more control), use RoF. Both will yield solid damage results. If you've got a crazy situation where AoE is probably a bad idea, don't be afraid to switch to your single target rotation (using Soul Swap). After all, a live 'lock has far better DPS than a dirt napper. For single targets, get your dots up, s-bolt spam, and refresh as needed. Make sure to the big 3: Corr, BoA, and UA, plus Haunt, and CotE. Under 25%, switch from SB filler to Drain Soul. Sho'nuff you'll be toppin' da meters (or at least doing your job).
As always, questions/comments are welcome and I'll do my best to clarify anything I may have failed at in this attempt at 'splainin.
The Glyphs
Previously, I had been running with the BoA, Haunt, and Corruption in my Prime slots. Felhunter, Soul Swap, and Shadowflame contributed in the Major area. Unending Breath, Souls, and Drain Soul rounded out my minors. You'll see I made one change after running with these for a week, but otherwise I like my original choices. Here's the breakdown.
Prime
- Glyph of Haunt - Chosen for the simple spell damage increase. If you're specced Affliction, this one is a no-brainer as you should be frequently using Haunt.
- Glyph of Bane of Agony -BoA should be our main bane. Longer running means bigger ticks at the end and more damage. This is good stuff.
- Glyph of Corruption - The extra Nightfall procs are only going to minimally help your DPS (to the tune of maybe 50 more DPS at 80). My alternative here would be Lash of Pain. Thanks to Poneria for pointing out my goof (LoP is Prime not Major), I will have to consider swapping this in here whenever I go Succy. Totally worth it, as long as you have your Succubus out. Luckily, glyph swapping is pretty simple and painless these days.
- Glyph of Soul Swap - A total must have for any Affliction Warlock. Soul swap makes us beastly on trash and any fight where you need to swap targets. Being able to not remove your DoTs when you swap is a great DPS bonus, plus incredibly useful. It could be bad if you switched early and something didn't die for lack of DoTs. This alleviates that concern as well.
- Glyph of Shadowflame - I got this to be able to potentially slow the Valks in the LK fight. We haven't gotten back to it yet after the forced patch reset, so I can't report much. I don't see a whole lot I'd rather have in this slow though, and I like the utility of a spell we should be throwing in every now and then. If you don't like this choice, Life Tap isn't a bad glyph, it's just that I haven't really found myself having any problems with mana right now and I'd rather have something useful.
- Glyph of Fear - Made a change here. With CC being key in heroics, I think every Warlock needs to be running with glyph. It makes Fear as good as a Sheep, and along with a nice focus macro makes you the cock of the walk. Definitely worth the slot.
- Glyph of Unending Breath - To swim quicker I guess.
- Glyph of Eye of Kilrogg - It'd be nice to have an eye in the sky?
- Glyph of Drain Soul - Doesn't hurt... See a theme here? Yep, warlock minors still suck completely. None are really gonna help your game, so just pick what you'll use.
Now that you've got your stickers on your spell book, let's bust open the blasted thing! As we've come to expect, Affliction Warlockery will continue to be dominated by rotational thinking. Some classes may rely on reactions to procs, but we are all about premeditated murder on this side of the spectrum. If you've made it this far, you probably already know that aff'locks are for dots. That's what we do and we do it well. So here's the carousel of disease.
Before you do anything, make sure your buff yourself. All 'locks should be popping on their Fel Armor, but you'll also want to make sure your Soul Link is active. All specs have it now, so make sure it's up. Good stuff.
Above 25% Health, Single Target
Corruption > Bane of Agony > Unstable Affliction > Haunt > Shadowbolt x2 > Curse of the Elements. Spam SB until a refresh of each disease is needed (monitor them individually with a DoT timer. Fortex or Xperl is great for this). Life tap sparingly. You don't have to worry about clipping for anything but BoA, so ideal refresh time is to start casing somewhere in the last two seconds to make sure you don't get any drop off.
After the initial set up, there are a few cooldowns to watch for as well. First, we want to throw in an Improved Soul Fire whenever Soulburn is off cooldown, letting us cast it instantly. ISF doesn't stack with heroism-like effects, so try to use it outside of those times. Second, we want to use Demon Soul when it is off cooldown as well. Finally, you may want to use Fel Fire to refresh your UA cast. I use it exclusively. There is some debate whether it's better to use FF or UA for a full refresh. I fall firmly in the FF-user category. When all is said an done, I think it provides me with better DPS. When maths are done, I think it comes out to about the same with a slight skew toward UA.
A lot of folks will want you to open up with a Haunt and SBx2 combo to get your SE and ISB stacks up early. I am not one of those people, and here's why. With the addition of Soul Swap to our arsenal, I believe it is in our best interest to get our "Big 3" up as soon as possible. That way, if something starts to die more quickly than expected, you can inhale a swap and be ready to go.
The aforementioned folks will try to convince you that buffless ticks on your DoTs equates to a DPS loss. I have my doubts about this. Sure in a theoretical environment, this would be the case. I mean if you just add everything up, I'm with you. But often starting out with a nuke is a bad idea. Maybe we'll crit and draw aggro. Additionally, aren't we missing full ticks of DoTs while we're casting? It would seem to me that if we slap up the DoTs quickly, it's safer from a Soul Swap perspective, and it'd be at least a wash in DPS as you'll get ticks while casting the other crap. I don't think a simulation can take things like "am I moving into position" or "is this going to die quickly" into account. And once everything is up, we're all the same. The order does not matter. There are no more rolling bonuses. All of the spell buffs are percentage based modifiers which apply to every tick individually. The only things you need to make sure to do before you start a rotation are your normal pre-fight buffs and trinket popping.
So my recommendation is to throw up the Big 3 first if they're not already there as part of a swap. That's what makes the most sense to me After that, I want to get Haunt and SE rolling. This is when an early Nightfall proc is a sweet addtion. Then, finally, I'll pop CotE on something. Usually I try to put it on a later target, since with the talent Jinx it works as an AoE debuff now. The less you have to worry about refreshing CotE, the better. On a boss, just pop it on him.
After you get your stuff set up, you should be able to just watch a dot timer and refresh as needed (Corruption should always be refreshed by Haunt, but if you let it fall off, then make sure you get it back up). Even if I were trying really hard, I realize I would never be able to perfectly line my spells up. Not matter how I slice it, I'm still going to end up watching timers for each spell individually, so I don't bother with a castsequence macro. I mean, what if fire spawns under me, then it's all gone to shit unless I sit still and literally DIAF (or am really good at macros I guess). Simply using timers makes sense to me, but feel free to swap up the order as fits your playstyle. What matters is that you use all of the spells mentioned above and keep them ticking the best you can with minimal down time. How you execute best is up to you to decide. (I can definitely offer tips and suggestions if you want to email or comment!)
For life tap, you want to use it sparingly. Basically, the goal is to life tap only enough so that at the very end of a fight you're Out Of Mana (without having any downtime due to OOM). Any extra life taps are lost DPS to Global Cool Down. When I'm going to tap, I try to weave it in right after I cast a Haunt refresh. The benefit to tapping right after casting Haunt is that you'll generally beat the fly time for the haunt spell and thus get a nice little heal to offset some of your tap. Not freaking out healers or wasting the health regen is a good thing in my book. I almost never succeed in the gold standard of OOM at the end, but I'm not ending over 50% either. We have a ton more mana now, so with replenishment and such, it's been completely reasonable to never life tap.
Curse choice used to be a problem, but since we now can do a Bane and a Curse, it's not so much of an issue. Use CotE and BoA, period, unless another 'lock is taking care of CotE, then you're off the hook. Affliction talents buff BoA enough that it'll be better for us than Bane of Doom. It's really this simple. Also, don't forget you have Curse of the Tongues if you're on Crowd Control duty for something like Faction Champions (remember that? /shudder). It's a good one to remember for any PvP like shenanigans. Oh, and one more time: absolutely do NOT clip BoA when you use it. You've probably heard it a million places, but the last tick does almost half of the spell's damage, so you'd be missing out on a lot and it still clips. Just try to time your refresh for when it's over. It'd be better to have a bit of downtime for that spell than to clip it. (The other dots are not so prissy, but BoA must still run it's course prior to a refresh).
Under 25% Health
The rotation stays the same except at this point you'll want to start using Drain Soul instead of your SB filler. Don't worry too much about keeping the Improved Shadow Bolt buff up either. DS will be doing a hell-ton of damage if your other dots are up. So keep 'em up (DS should also help by refreshing Corr and UA). The only caveat here is that if the baddie is about to die in the next 21 seconds, you shouldn't refresh BoA as it won't have time to run it's course. Other than that, keep up the Big 3 and Haunt (which should refresh Corr and SE), and CotE for sure. It's also good if you can try to time your refresh casts to be immediately after a Drain Soul tick. Just look for the abnormally large damage number on your screen (or get an addon that helps you. I don't use one, but suggestions welcome in comments).
Multiple Target Situations
If there are three or more targets, you should be thinking "Area of Effect" spells. Now, this hinges a lot on your tank and the difficulty of the mobs. If aggro is a problem, or if it is deemed best to down one target at a time (maybe CC is being used, maybe the leader wants a quick burn, whatever), then we'll just do our normal single target rotation (with Soul Swap!). The difference in this case would be that you might be able to get away with throwing corruption up on the other targets, depending on the situation (the extra chance at nightfall procs is fun). If you've specced into the Seed of Corruption talent, a Soulburn is a great (and effective) way to do that.
Also, proper target switching can really help your DPS as well. Back in the day (which was a Tuesday), when people used to use CC, it was key to know when to switch targets. Switch too soon and the first guy might not die, or the tank might not be ready and you'll find yourself munching mud. Switch too late and you're gimping your DPS and taking longer to kill things (which I guess, given the name of the blog, isn't all bad, but we still want to do our job the best we can). Being dependent on damage over time spells, Warlocks need to be highly cognizant of when to switch. There is no hard and fast rule, but the goal should be that your dots would have started dropping off the instant the baddie hits 0%. Thus, if it's got like 5% health left, dropping fast, and you don't have anything to refresh, you'll probably want to get set up on the next target.
Soul Swap makes switching a lot easier now. With one quick, instant click we inhale our Big 3 to exhale onto the next target (starting them at full duration). This really levels out our DPS into something respectable on trash and add fights. All around, the spell is just amazing, especially with the glyph. Switching targets used to count as downtime, but no more! Now it's just a chance to get a free DoT refresh with a bonus set. The ease of multiple target ramp-up now makes it more imperative than ever to watch out threat though. You don't want to be that guy.
Some of this may seem like a lost art to old warlock hands, since in the Wrath world (... of warcraft), a vast majority of your muli-target pulls were simple AoE groups. Still, I wanted to start out with the more controlled, rarer multi-target situations because it's going to become increasingly important for to know. But lets be honest: we still love huge baysplosions of damage from straight AoE spells. And for Affliction Warlocks, we have two main choices: Seed of Corruption or Rain of Fire.
Seed of Corruption tends to be the better damaging spell for us, but not as easy to control. The explosion area of seed can often reach outside of, say, a Paladin's consecrate and cause you to get unwanted aggro. Thus, our AoE spell choice should be highly dependent on the situation. If the tank clearly has everything locked down and you're not going to get stragglers, definitely make use of seed. It will explode all over the tank-led dance party and cause you much glee. Don't forget to toss in a Soulburn + SoC near the beginning to get Corruption up on all the targets too. Great times, huge numbers!
However, if you have other adds wandering around, not clearly in the tank's control, use RoF. It's sized to perfectly fit on top of a consecrate (or DnD), so if you're running with one of those tanks, you should be able to just rain on top of their aura with little fear of pulling the mobs off. You may have to be careful not to just spam if your gear is significantly better than the tank, but, for the most part, the aura abilities of a tank can outstrip our RoF. If you're running with a Warrior or Druid tank, just try to center your RoF on them as they lack for visual cues.
If you happen to be close enough, throw in a Shadowflame as well. Again, be wary of aggro pull, but when you get a chance to go wild... man, we can put up some good numbers.
Summary
So it's simple: In good AoE situations, use SoC (tossing in a SB + SoC). In shaky AoE situations (where you want more control), use RoF. Both will yield solid damage results. If you've got a crazy situation where AoE is probably a bad idea, don't be afraid to switch to your single target rotation (using Soul Swap). After all, a live 'lock has far better DPS than a dirt napper. For single targets, get your dots up, s-bolt spam, and refresh as needed. Make sure to the big 3: Corr, BoA, and UA, plus Haunt, and CotE. Under 25%, switch from SB filler to Drain Soul. Sho'nuff you'll be toppin' da meters (or at least doing your job).
As always, questions/comments are welcome and I'll do my best to clarify anything I may have failed at in this attempt at 'splainin.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
I Kissed A Raid And I Liked It ('Lock Update)
Labels: Addons, Patch, Raiding, Sequence, warlocky 4 comments
We got our first chance to raid something last night. What with many of our addons still busted, and most of us feeling like we no longer know how to play our class, we decided to aim low and hit Ulduar up last night. We figured it was a good middle ground of non-faceroll and not too hard (also not requiring us to reset our LK ID). Thus, I got two hours of very good practice in last night.
The first thing I noticed is that I do feel a little lost in my Affliction rotation right now. Just enough has changed that it's throwing me off. That, and the fact that my X-perl is broken, so I'm forced to go to the backup timers in Fortex, which aren't bad, just not what I'm used to. Necrosis is also broken. Those were two biggies for me. The things I miss about Necrosis is just the convenience of the wheeled, pull out menus. With demon summoning getting a built-in pull out, this isn't such a big deal. However, I miss the all-in-one buttons for healthstones and soulstones. I may just write up a macro for these when I get some time. I'll pass it along if I do. For X-perl, I loved the bigger personal debuffs with countdown numbers, plus I don't really like how the deault UI handles buffs and debuffs.
Does anyone have a clever addon that deals with only these things and doesn't replace the raid frames? I'm not altogether displeased with the out-of-box solution that Blizz provided, and the free colored flares are awesome for raid leading. Made fight explanation a lot easier (i.e. you stand on the green flare, we'll stand on the blue flare, go team!). Also, the role check is nice too.
Otherwise, overall I'm actually rather happy. For the first time since Wrath dropped, it feels like they've made Affliction harder to play. Not only are you juggling one more DoT (since you can chose both a Bane and a Curse), but you have decisions to make near the end of each mob. Do you soul swap? Do you drain soul? Do you blow a shard to empower your drain soul?
On a single boss, the answer is easy: Drain Soul as usual. Apart from adding BoA to the mix, your approach should really remain unchanged. Under 25%, swap in DS for your Sbolt spam. Make sure to keep your Shadow's Embrace up, but otherwise it's all DS. When you can begin to anticipate a long "spam session", (that is: when your DoT refreshes are lining up so that you can spend an extended time not worrying about them) that's when it's a good time to blow a shard, empower your DS, and go to town. I was getting huge numbers doing this, but it was rather difficult to weave in, and you really only get one shot at it on a typical raid boss due to the empower cooldown. Thus, it's important to choose the spot wisely.
Soul Swap adds another interesting mechanic to trash and fights with adds. Since I'm glyphed for it, it means that when I use it, I basically make a copy/paste of my DoTs instead of the default cut/paste. Thus, it's a good idea for me, when a trash mob is close to dying, to make sure I get a Soul Swap in there (it is even if you're unglyphed, though you want to make sure the thing is going to die or suffer the wrath of a RL). The length of time you "hold" the DoTs is longer than you'd think, and the cooldown is shorter than you'd think (at least how it felt to me), so it really seemed effective at keeping my DPS up on fights where I used to completely suck (read: Razorscale). It's important to note that, if you're using a typical rotation, Soul Swap will only swap three spells: Corruption, BoA, and UA. Therefore, I usually start right away with a CotE and Haunt, then get right into S-bolts. It might even be advantageous (if you've got the AoE CotE) to pop elements on the last target to die so that you're not having to reapply it. It's an interesting thought I'll have to play with some to get used to the range and such.
I'm thinking about changing my starting salvo to work better with soul swap. I found myself trying to get DoTs up on quick dying trash because, thereafter, I could soul swap and get three spells for the GCD of one. It's a great trade. Also, I think I want to get used to putting CotE and Haunt first, then follow with two s-bolts to get SE up, just to get in the habit of it. That way, when I swap, I'll already be reaching for those buttons. Hence, my starting rotation is working towards something like:
CotE - Haunt - SB - SB - BoA - Corr - UA - Refresh - Spam - Under 25% DS, empower at a good spot
For quick dying trash, I may just try to get my DoTs up first, I don't know. The goal is to get comfortable with something, so I can spend less time staring at my debuff timers, and more time watching the fights. I did get a chance to throw in some DSs when the boss was above 25%, and they didn't really seem as effective as shadowbolts. The under 25% bonus really makes them worthwhile, plus the empowerment makes you see some really huge numbers (I think I got average crits around 30k! Plus I was critting more than normal ticks). I just used the recount data to analyze these things, so hardly anything concrete and scientific, but still, it's something. My most significant sources or damage were my three main DoTs (mostly Corr) and Sbolts, as one would expect.
My damage output appeared pretty decent. When comparing my normal position on the charts (running with roughly the same group of folks), I was pretty much in the same place: fighting for the top spot. Mages, S-priests, even Hunters still looked pretty solid. Ret Pallies got sucker punched it seems, though one of our resident ret pallies seemed to kick it into high gear near the end of the raid. I think, perhaps, the class has just been made a bit more complicated. He said he really had to work on being more precise with a rotation/priority systems. I think I feel like my overall DPS might have been lower than normal, but also, we're hardly running at 100% efficiency at this stage of the game. Learning is still an issue, so is getting my setup back to where I want it, so I'm not sure where that leaves me in the grand scheme of things.
I think Affliction is in good shape overall. I worry that across the board we might all have gotten a slight nerf at 80, which may negatively effect raiding. I'm hoping that the all the new spells and utilities help out. I'm certainly enjoying mine. Even on trash/add fights, my DPS is far more consistent, which is pure win. Not having to worry about shards for things like summoning (both demonic and human), health stones, and soul stones is win as well. I didn't get a chance to try out the addition of a Doomguard or Infernal yet, but they're on my bar (just had other things on the mind).
I plan to update my Affliction guides within the next week to reflect 4.0 changes. I've already done some of the preliminary research that I need to do, and I wanted to pass along those links for those of you chomping at the bit. For the 4.0.1 EJ Simulationcraft data, go here. I will pull my new pawn values from here, and use that to figure out what the new stats mean to me. Affliction is coming in a close second to Destro, so it looks like a good balance. I'm more of the "affliction_drain" spec they have on there, if you look, but we've touched on the fact that I'm picking up things like S&F first because of the group utility it provides. In my typical ten man group, it's useful. You may decide otherwise. Finally, I've read that the pet comparison really hasn't changed all that much, though I haven't really seen the numbers to back it. I need to read more of this thread here at EJ. For now, I'm using my Felpup because he's my fave. I think the Succubus is a few (like 50) DPS higher. You should probably be using one of the two as Affliction.
That's all for now! I'm going to have to save up to 5k gold so I can buy 310% flight speed. I'll probably just do a bunch of Argent dailies. Especially the kill quest. That'll help me get used to the new-ish rotation. I also need to give my demo spec a run. I'll be giving a look at that early next week as well. I haven't even specced my DK yet. Oh, and also, I'm missing all of my non-80 toons from my login screen. The server still thinks I have 5 toons, but they don't show up. Anyone else having this problem? I'm thinking a ticket is in order...
The first thing I noticed is that I do feel a little lost in my Affliction rotation right now. Just enough has changed that it's throwing me off. That, and the fact that my X-perl is broken, so I'm forced to go to the backup timers in Fortex, which aren't bad, just not what I'm used to. Necrosis is also broken. Those were two biggies for me. The things I miss about Necrosis is just the convenience of the wheeled, pull out menus. With demon summoning getting a built-in pull out, this isn't such a big deal. However, I miss the all-in-one buttons for healthstones and soulstones. I may just write up a macro for these when I get some time. I'll pass it along if I do. For X-perl, I loved the bigger personal debuffs with countdown numbers, plus I don't really like how the deault UI handles buffs and debuffs.
Does anyone have a clever addon that deals with only these things and doesn't replace the raid frames? I'm not altogether displeased with the out-of-box solution that Blizz provided, and the free colored flares are awesome for raid leading. Made fight explanation a lot easier (i.e. you stand on the green flare, we'll stand on the blue flare, go team!). Also, the role check is nice too.
Otherwise, overall I'm actually rather happy. For the first time since Wrath dropped, it feels like they've made Affliction harder to play. Not only are you juggling one more DoT (since you can chose both a Bane and a Curse), but you have decisions to make near the end of each mob. Do you soul swap? Do you drain soul? Do you blow a shard to empower your drain soul?
On a single boss, the answer is easy: Drain Soul as usual. Apart from adding BoA to the mix, your approach should really remain unchanged. Under 25%, swap in DS for your Sbolt spam. Make sure to keep your Shadow's Embrace up, but otherwise it's all DS. When you can begin to anticipate a long "spam session", (that is: when your DoT refreshes are lining up so that you can spend an extended time not worrying about them) that's when it's a good time to blow a shard, empower your DS, and go to town. I was getting huge numbers doing this, but it was rather difficult to weave in, and you really only get one shot at it on a typical raid boss due to the empower cooldown. Thus, it's important to choose the spot wisely.
Soul Swap adds another interesting mechanic to trash and fights with adds. Since I'm glyphed for it, it means that when I use it, I basically make a copy/paste of my DoTs instead of the default cut/paste. Thus, it's a good idea for me, when a trash mob is close to dying, to make sure I get a Soul Swap in there (it is even if you're unglyphed, though you want to make sure the thing is going to die or suffer the wrath of a RL). The length of time you "hold" the DoTs is longer than you'd think, and the cooldown is shorter than you'd think (at least how it felt to me), so it really seemed effective at keeping my DPS up on fights where I used to completely suck (read: Razorscale). It's important to note that, if you're using a typical rotation, Soul Swap will only swap three spells: Corruption, BoA, and UA. Therefore, I usually start right away with a CotE and Haunt, then get right into S-bolts. It might even be advantageous (if you've got the AoE CotE) to pop elements on the last target to die so that you're not having to reapply it. It's an interesting thought I'll have to play with some to get used to the range and such.
I'm thinking about changing my starting salvo to work better with soul swap. I found myself trying to get DoTs up on quick dying trash because, thereafter, I could soul swap and get three spells for the GCD of one. It's a great trade. Also, I think I want to get used to putting CotE and Haunt first, then follow with two s-bolts to get SE up, just to get in the habit of it. That way, when I swap, I'll already be reaching for those buttons. Hence, my starting rotation is working towards something like:
CotE - Haunt - SB - SB - BoA - Corr - UA - Refresh - Spam - Under 25% DS, empower at a good spot
For quick dying trash, I may just try to get my DoTs up first, I don't know. The goal is to get comfortable with something, so I can spend less time staring at my debuff timers, and more time watching the fights. I did get a chance to throw in some DSs when the boss was above 25%, and they didn't really seem as effective as shadowbolts. The under 25% bonus really makes them worthwhile, plus the empowerment makes you see some really huge numbers (I think I got average crits around 30k! Plus I was critting more than normal ticks). I just used the recount data to analyze these things, so hardly anything concrete and scientific, but still, it's something. My most significant sources or damage were my three main DoTs (mostly Corr) and Sbolts, as one would expect.
My damage output appeared pretty decent. When comparing my normal position on the charts (running with roughly the same group of folks), I was pretty much in the same place: fighting for the top spot. Mages, S-priests, even Hunters still looked pretty solid. Ret Pallies got sucker punched it seems, though one of our resident ret pallies seemed to kick it into high gear near the end of the raid. I think, perhaps, the class has just been made a bit more complicated. He said he really had to work on being more precise with a rotation/priority systems. I think I feel like my overall DPS might have been lower than normal, but also, we're hardly running at 100% efficiency at this stage of the game. Learning is still an issue, so is getting my setup back to where I want it, so I'm not sure where that leaves me in the grand scheme of things.
I think Affliction is in good shape overall. I worry that across the board we might all have gotten a slight nerf at 80, which may negatively effect raiding. I'm hoping that the all the new spells and utilities help out. I'm certainly enjoying mine. Even on trash/add fights, my DPS is far more consistent, which is pure win. Not having to worry about shards for things like summoning (both demonic and human), health stones, and soul stones is win as well. I didn't get a chance to try out the addition of a Doomguard or Infernal yet, but they're on my bar (just had other things on the mind).
I plan to update my Affliction guides within the next week to reflect 4.0 changes. I've already done some of the preliminary research that I need to do, and I wanted to pass along those links for those of you chomping at the bit. For the 4.0.1 EJ Simulationcraft data, go here. I will pull my new pawn values from here, and use that to figure out what the new stats mean to me. Affliction is coming in a close second to Destro, so it looks like a good balance. I'm more of the "affliction_drain" spec they have on there, if you look, but we've touched on the fact that I'm picking up things like S&F first because of the group utility it provides. In my typical ten man group, it's useful. You may decide otherwise. Finally, I've read that the pet comparison really hasn't changed all that much, though I haven't really seen the numbers to back it. I need to read more of this thread here at EJ. For now, I'm using my Felpup because he's my fave. I think the Succubus is a few (like 50) DPS higher. You should probably be using one of the two as Affliction.
That's all for now! I'm going to have to save up to 5k gold so I can buy 310% flight speed. I'll probably just do a bunch of Argent dailies. Especially the kill quest. That'll help me get used to the new-ish rotation. I also need to give my demo spec a run. I'll be giving a look at that early next week as well. I haven't even specced my DK yet. Oh, and also, I'm missing all of my non-80 toons from my login screen. The server still thinks I have 5 toons, but they don't show up. Anyone else having this problem? I'm thinking a ticket is in order...
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
A Preliminary Look at the 4.0.1 Affliction Warlock Spec
Labels: Patch, Sequence, Specs, warlocky 24 comments
With patch 4.0.1 on our e-doorstep, it's finally time for me to acknowledge the existence of change around here. If you're a regular reader, you know I've pretty much avoided the pre-cataclysm buzz, favoring to focus on the here and now. Well, the here and now means respeccing in a completely redesigned talent tree. Eventually, I plan to rework all of my guides on the left and update them for 4.0, but until I get time to do it properly, I want to throw out some preliminary thoughts about class setup (speccing and glyphing mostly).
It is important to note that these are preliminary. That means I would love feedback. My goal is to start here, and then as information becomes more readily available at theorycrafting sites and such, to compile that information into an updated guide. So, for now, please read, consider, and respond. Leaving links to your sources of research would help me a ton too. In other words, I'm not claiming to "know it all" yet. Like most of you, I'm just trying to use the information as its presented to make the best choices I can.
The first spec we're starting with is, as promised, my Affliction Warlock raid spec for 4.0. Prot Pallys, Demo 'locks, and DK's will follow shortly. The goal of the spec I'm presenting today is to be ready to continue raiding now. This is not a Cataclysm leveling or raiding spec (there may be changes between now and then). We're still raiding, so all of my choices are made with this (and my current group makeup) in mind.
Spec
So, without further ado, the big reveal:
I'm not going to go through every talent I chose, but rather touch on those I avoided. Since I'm using this to raid, my primary goal was to do whatever I can to maximize my DPS. I choose all talents that obviously did that. I skipped the two fear modifiers, since fear is rarely used in raids, and I didn't pick up Curse of Exhaustion for the same reason. What I see as the only optional points when filling up the tree were the points spent in Improved Life Tap. You'll need to spend those points somewhere in order to advance the tree, and I figured more mana returned translates to less tapping, hence a DPS increase.
Does anyone know what happened to Dark Pact? Obviously it's not in the tree. If I can still demon tap, I may put the points spent in ILT into one of the fear mods, since that might be more useful. This is something I'll need to do some research about.
After I filled up my Affliction Tree, then the option to spend points in other trees becomes available. I went right back over to look for my old friend, Bane. You'll see a somewhat newish talent next to it called Shadow and Flame (which is mostly a re-skinned ISB, but including fire). I actually opted to fill up S&F first as it makes a target weak to spell damage. I'm assuming this would benefit all casters in the group (same as the old ISB), so it's a great raiding talent to pick up. I plan to fill Bane out by 85.
Recall that you only get 1 talent point per every 2 levels, so the level required for this spec shows up as 79. This is by design. (I forgot about this and at first thought there was some sort of glitch).
Glyphs
The glyphs I chose are as noted:
For Prime, Agony and Haunt are no brainers. Corruption has always been a minimal (~50DPS at 80) DPS gain, but I don't know how much decreasing the cast time of UA would give me either. I enjoy more Nightfall procs, so I went with Corr.
For Major, Soul Swap is a lock (I expect to love this new spell). I also plan keep using my Felpup for as long as his DPS is a solid choice for Aff'locks. Thus, the Felhunter glyph seemed to be a solid choice. Finally, I decided to go with Shadowflame over Life Tap. I'm hoping the slow effect on Shadowflame might work on the Valks for the LK fight. If nothing else, it seems like a fun modification to a situational spell, and I'm already improving my Life Tap.
Rotation
Lately, I've been doing this:
Shadowbolt > Haunt > CotE > Corr > UA > Refresh as needed, when not: bolt filler > LT as needed > Sub in Drain Soul for the last 25% filler.
It is important to note that Soul Shard mechanics have been changed, and I haven't even looked at how to use those properly yet. For the sake of this preliminary look, I'm going to assume them to be a bit situational, or something you throw in every few rotations, or a modification of what we'll use anyways, and not a staple. A.K.A - I'm going to ignore it for now until I understand it better.
With that said, the key change to note is that we should now be able to cast both Bane of Agony and Curse of the Elements. Additionally, we'll have Soul Swap to use when popping between targets. There also seemed to be some minor mechanics changes to Drain Soul and Death's Embrace that may make it worthwhile to use DS all the time (or none of the time, or just woven in with bolt filler). The operative here is that I don't believe DS gets a special bonus for under 25% (edit: was moved till tooltip, still plan to use DS under 25%). All of our spells do via Death's Embrace (and Drain Soul gets a buff when we're low). I'm not sure how the numbers will work out, but I would think we'd need to keep S-bolts going to utilize the buffs we picked up in the Destro tree.
My plan is to start with my current rotation and squeeze the new stuff in. The major mechanics don't really seem to change, but we may need to revisit this. So, in 4.0 it'll look more like:
Shadowbolt > Haunt > CotE > BoA > Corr > UA > Refresh as needed, otherwise fill with S-bolt to keep S&F/ISB buff up, otherwise DS > LT as needed > Soul Swap before target dies if you're going to switch to another target.
What do you guys think? I would love links to theorycraft numbers/data (and plan to run over to the Den and EJ when I get some time). All in all, I'm pretty excited about the changes, though I haven't even touched on the soul shard mechanics yet. Or the stat changes (just rolling with the gear I've got). Or mastery (you can get the baseline at 80). Sheesh! The blogosphere should get mighty busy here.
Also, side note: we did some research and soul shard bags are going to be "converted" into a normal bag of "roughly equivalent" size. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that means.
(edit: if you want to see some great counterpoints and further discussion, Poneria does a great job here.)
It is important to note that these are preliminary. That means I would love feedback. My goal is to start here, and then as information becomes more readily available at theorycrafting sites and such, to compile that information into an updated guide. So, for now, please read, consider, and respond. Leaving links to your sources of research would help me a ton too. In other words, I'm not claiming to "know it all" yet. Like most of you, I'm just trying to use the information as its presented to make the best choices I can.
The first spec we're starting with is, as promised, my Affliction Warlock raid spec for 4.0. Prot Pallys, Demo 'locks, and DK's will follow shortly. The goal of the spec I'm presenting today is to be ready to continue raiding now. This is not a Cataclysm leveling or raiding spec (there may be changes between now and then). We're still raiding, so all of my choices are made with this (and my current group makeup) in mind.
Spec
So, without further ado, the big reveal:
 |
| Fixed the link here. |
Does anyone know what happened to Dark Pact? Obviously it's not in the tree. If I can still demon tap, I may put the points spent in ILT into one of the fear mods, since that might be more useful. This is something I'll need to do some research about.
After I filled up my Affliction Tree, then the option to spend points in other trees becomes available. I went right back over to look for my old friend, Bane. You'll see a somewhat newish talent next to it called Shadow and Flame (which is mostly a re-skinned ISB, but including fire). I actually opted to fill up S&F first as it makes a target weak to spell damage. I'm assuming this would benefit all casters in the group (same as the old ISB), so it's a great raiding talent to pick up. I plan to fill Bane out by 85.
Recall that you only get 1 talent point per every 2 levels, so the level required for this spec shows up as 79. This is by design. (I forgot about this and at first thought there was some sort of glitch).
Glyphs
The glyphs I chose are as noted:
- Prime - Bane of Agony, Haunt, Corruption (runner up: Unstable Affliction)
- Major - Felhunter, Soul Swap, Shadowflame (runner up: Life Tap)
- Minor - Unending Breath, Drain Soul, Eye of Kilrogg
For Prime, Agony and Haunt are no brainers. Corruption has always been a minimal (~50DPS at 80) DPS gain, but I don't know how much decreasing the cast time of UA would give me either. I enjoy more Nightfall procs, so I went with Corr.
For Major, Soul Swap is a lock (I expect to love this new spell). I also plan keep using my Felpup for as long as his DPS is a solid choice for Aff'locks. Thus, the Felhunter glyph seemed to be a solid choice. Finally, I decided to go with Shadowflame over Life Tap. I'm hoping the slow effect on Shadowflame might work on the Valks for the LK fight. If nothing else, it seems like a fun modification to a situational spell, and I'm already improving my Life Tap.
Rotation
Lately, I've been doing this:
Shadowbolt > Haunt > CotE > Corr > UA > Refresh as needed, when not: bolt filler > LT as needed > Sub in Drain Soul for the last 25% filler.
It is important to note that Soul Shard mechanics have been changed, and I haven't even looked at how to use those properly yet. For the sake of this preliminary look, I'm going to assume them to be a bit situational, or something you throw in every few rotations, or a modification of what we'll use anyways, and not a staple. A.K.A - I'm going to ignore it for now until I understand it better.
With that said, the key change to note is that we should now be able to cast both Bane of Agony and Curse of the Elements. Additionally, we'll have Soul Swap to use when popping between targets. There also seemed to be some minor mechanics changes to Drain Soul and Death's Embrace that may make it worthwhile to use DS all the time (or none of the time, or just woven in with bolt filler). The operative here is that I don't believe DS gets a special bonus for under 25% (edit: was moved till tooltip, still plan to use DS under 25%). All of our spells do via Death's Embrace (and Drain Soul gets a buff when we're low). I'm not sure how the numbers will work out, but I would think we'd need to keep S-bolts going to utilize the buffs we picked up in the Destro tree.
My plan is to start with my current rotation and squeeze the new stuff in. The major mechanics don't really seem to change, but we may need to revisit this. So, in 4.0 it'll look more like:
Shadowbolt > Haunt > CotE > BoA > Corr > UA > Refresh as needed, otherwise fill with S-bolt to keep S&F/ISB buff up, otherwise DS > LT as needed > Soul Swap before target dies if you're going to switch to another target.
What do you guys think? I would love links to theorycraft numbers/data (and plan to run over to the Den and EJ when I get some time). All in all, I'm pretty excited about the changes, though I haven't even touched on the soul shard mechanics yet. Or the stat changes (just rolling with the gear I've got). Or mastery (you can get the baseline at 80). Sheesh! The blogosphere should get mighty busy here.
Also, side note: we did some research and soul shard bags are going to be "converted" into a normal bag of "roughly equivalent" size. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that means.
(edit: if you want to see some great counterpoints and further discussion, Poneria does a great job here.)
Thursday, December 10, 2009
HAOW: 3.3 Affliction Warlock Glyphs and Rotation
Labels: Gear, Patch, Raiding, Sequence, warlocky 66 comments
So we've already covered speccing. Next we need to talk glyphing and rotating. This second installment on How to Afflict Others with Warlockery will cover the art of slapping stickers on your spell book, as well as how to spin in circles with enough intensity to cause others to puke (no easy feat, I assure you).
The Glyphs
Previously, I had been running with the Corruption, Haunt, and Life Tap for majors. Unending Breath, Souls, and Drain Soul rounded out my minors. 3.3 brings more of the same, with one minor exception. Here's the breakdown.
Majors
Now that you've got your stickers on your spell book, let's bust open the blasted thing! As we've come to expect, Affliction Warlockery will continue to be dominated by rotational thinking. Some classes may rely on reactions to procs, but we are all about premeditated murder on this side of the spectrum. If you've made it this far, you probably already know that aff'locks are for dots. That's what we do and we do it well. So here's the carousel of disease.
Above 25% Health, Single Target
Corruption > Curse > Haunt > Unstable Affliction > Shadowbolt. Spam SB until a refresh of each disease is needed (monitor them individually with a DoT timer. Fortex or Xperl is great for this). Life tap as needed, but try to space 'em out so that you tap roughly once for every two haunts you cast.
In the past, and if you want to be really finicky about it, I've published the rotation like this: Corr, H, SB, UA, Curse. The different order is due to mere technicality. If you're raiding on the bleeding edge, it's probably something you want to look into, but the basic idea is that there exists a mathematically superior way in which to order your spells so as to line them up with the least amount of potential trouble down the road. This "perfect rotation" has been a discussion among warlocks for ages, and I'm sure it will continue to be. What it comes down to for me is playability. I'm not bleeding edge and I'm fair from perfect, so I'm not going to complicate the issue needlessly.
I want to throw up my instant casts first while I'm running into position. After that, I want to get haunt and my remaining dot up quick in case I'm required to move again. If I happen to get a nightfall proc in there, I'll definitely use it. Otherwise, I'll cluster all my shadowbolts together later. After you get your stuff set up, you should be able to just watch a dot timer and refresh as needed (Corruption should always be refreshed by Haunt or a Shadowbolt, but if you let it fall off, then make sure you get it back up). Even if I were trying really hard, I realize I would never be able to perfectly line my spells up. Not matter how I slice it, I'm still going to end up watching timers for each spell individually. I mean, what if fire spawns under me, then it's all gone to shit unless I sit still and literally DIAF? No, this way makes sense to me, but feel free to swap up the order as fits your playstyle, what matters is that you use all of the spells mentioned above and keep them ticking the best you can with minimal down time. How you execute best is up to you to decide. (I can definitely offer tips and suggestions if you want to email or comment!)
For life tap, I've found that if you use it roughly every two haunt refreshers, you'll keep yourself at a pretty good mana level over a long fight. In addition, you'll be able to constantly keep the glyph buff up on you. Basically, the goal is to life tap only enough so that at the very end of a fight you're Out Of Mana (without having any downtime before that) and have kept the buff up the whole time. Any extra life taps are lost DPS to Global Cool Down. The benefit to tapping right after casting haunt is that you'll generally beat the fly time for the haunt spell and thus get a nice little heal to offset some of your tap. Not freaking out healers or wasting the health regen is a good thing in my book. I almost never succeed in the gold standard OOM, but I'm not usually over 50% either.
Your choice of which curse to use should be between either Curse of the Elements or Curse of Agony. (edit: due to some wonderful research done by Nibs here, the new Rule of Thumb is to use CotE unless it's 13% buff is provided elsewhere: by another 'lock, by an unholy DK, or a Boomkin). If you're not on CotE duty, then use CoA. Affliction talents buff this spell enough that it'll be better for us than Curse of Doom. It's really this simple. Also, don't forget you have Curse of the Tongues if you're on Crowd Control duty for Faction Champions. It's a good one to remember for any PvP like shenanigans. Oh, and absolutely do NOT clip CoA when you use it. You've probably heard it a million places, but the last tick does almost half of the spell's damage, so you'd be missing out on a lot. Just try to time your refresh for when it's over. It'd be better to have a bit of downtime for the spell than to clip it. (The other dots are not so prissy, but CoA must run it's course prior to a refresh).
Under 25% Health
The rotation stays the same except at this point you'll want to start using Drain Soul instead of your SB filler. Don't worry about keeping the Improved Shadow Bolt buff up either. DS will be doing a hell-ton of damage if your other dots are up. So keep 'em up. The only caveat here is that if the baddie is about to die in the next 21 seconds, you shouldn't refresh CoA as it won't have time to run it's course. Other than that, keep haunt (which should refresh Corr) and keep UA for sure, Curse if you've got more than 20s of battle left. It's also good if you can try to time your refresh casts to be immediately after a Drain Soul tick. Just look for the abnormally large damage number on your screen.
Multiple Target Situations
If there are three or more targets, you should be thinking "Area of Effect" spells. Now, this hinges a lot on your tank and the difficulty of the mobs. If aggro is a problem, or if it is deemed best to down one target at a time (maybe CC is being used, maybe the leader wants a quick burn, whatever), then we'll just do our normal single target rotation. The difference in this case would be that you might be able to get away with throwing corruption up on the other targets, depending on the situation (the extra chance at nightfall procs is fun).
Also, proper target switching can really help your DPS as well. Back in the day (which was a Tuesday), when people used to use CC, it was key to know when to switch targets. Switch too soon and the first guy might not die, or the tank might not be ready and you'll find yourself munching mud. Switch too late and you're gimping your DPS and taking longer to kill things (which I guess, given the name of the blog, isn't all bad, but we still want to do our job the best we can). Being dependent on damage over time spells, Warlocks need to be highly cognizant of when to switch. There is no hard and fast rule, but the goal should be that your dots would have started dropping off the instant the baddie hits 0%. Thus, if it's got like 5% health left, dropping fast, and you don't have anything to refresh, you'll probably want to get set up on the next target. Especially if you know you're not going to be able to squeeze a 3 second drain soul tic in there. The sooner you get rolling on the next target, the less DPS you'll lose. Switching targets counts as downtime! Just don't switch before the tank is ready, or leave a mob hanging at 1%, hacking away still at you and yours.
Some of this may seem like a lost art to old warlock hands, and the Wrath world (... of warcraft), a vast majority of your muli-target pulls are going to be simple AoE groups. I wanted to point out the more controlled, rarer multi-target situations first because it's important for us to know, but lets be honest: we want huge baysplosions of damage. For Affliction Warlocks, we have two choices: Seed of Corruption or Rain of Fire. Gone are the days when fire damage was gimped, leaving seed our only choice. Now, both spells are equally valid choices. I'm not exactly sure how the new, still confusing, cap mechanics work (they changed this in the patch, recall, to be tailored for a maximum of 10-mobs), but they'll affect both spells equally, as well your spell stats.
It's my belief then, that Seed of Corruption is better damage, but not as easy to control. The explosion area of seed can often reach outside of, say, a Paladin's consecrate and cause you to get unwanted aggro. Thus, our AoE spell choice should be highly dependent on the situation. If the tank clearly has everything locked down and you're not going to get stragglers, definitely make use of seed. It will explode all over the tank-led dance party and cause you much glee.
However, if you have other adds wandering around, not clearly in the tank's control, use RoF. It's sized to perfectly fit on top of a consecrate (or DnD), so if you're running with one of those tanks, you should be able to just rain on top of their aura with little fear of pulling the mobs off. You may have to be careful not to just spam if your gear is significantly better than the tank, but, for the most part, the aura abilities of a tank can outstrip our RoF. If you're running with a Warrior or Druid tank, just try to center your RoF on them as they lack for visual cues.
Summary
So it's simple: In good AoE situations, use SoC. In shaky AoE situations (where you want more control), use RoF. Both will yield good damage results. If you've got a crazy situation where AoE is probably a bad idea, don't be afraid to switch to your ST rotation (maybe scattering some dots around). After all, a live 'lock has far better DPS than a dirt napper. For single targets, get your dots up, s-bolt spam, and refresh as needed. Make sure to use: Corr, Haunt, UA, and the appropriate Curse. Under 25%, switch from SB to Drain Soul. Sho'nuff you'll be toppin' da meters (or at least doing your job).
As always, questions/comments are welcome and I'll do my best to clarify anything I may have failed at in this attempt at 'splainin.
The Glyphs
Previously, I had been running with the Corruption, Haunt, and Life Tap for majors. Unending Breath, Souls, and Drain Soul rounded out my minors. 3.3 brings more of the same, with one minor exception. Here's the breakdown.
Majors
- Glyph of Haunt - Chosen for the simple, spell wide damage increase. If you're specced haunt/ruin, this one is a no-brainer.
- Glyph of Life Tap - If you're going to cut yourself, you should do more damage. That's my motto. This glyph gives you a nice little damage increase (working almost like a trinket automatically tied to your normal mana-regen spell). Totally worth it and it only takes a tap, tap, tap-a-roo. It's all in the hips.
- Glyph of Quick Decay - The newcomer to the miasma of warlocky glyphs, this should be stapled onto any good affliction warlock's spell book. Corruption is our bread and butter spell; it should be up on everything; and this glyph is a straight damage increase for it. I swapped out the Glyph of Corruption for this because I'm still going to get some nightfall procs from talents, plus the DPS increase is relatively minor (maybe around 50?) and easily overshadowed what you're going to get from Quick Decay (anyone have the DPS number for this one?). I've read that preliminary maths support this.
- Glyph of Unending Breath - To swim quicker I guess.
- Glyph of Souls - I at least get some usage out of this even if it's totally not important.
- Glyph of Drain Soul - Might as well get an extra shard every now and then. See a theme here? Yep, warlock minors still suck completely. None are really gonna help your game, so just pick what you'll use.
Now that you've got your stickers on your spell book, let's bust open the blasted thing! As we've come to expect, Affliction Warlockery will continue to be dominated by rotational thinking. Some classes may rely on reactions to procs, but we are all about premeditated murder on this side of the spectrum. If you've made it this far, you probably already know that aff'locks are for dots. That's what we do and we do it well. So here's the carousel of disease.
Above 25% Health, Single Target
Corruption > Curse > Haunt > Unstable Affliction > Shadowbolt. Spam SB until a refresh of each disease is needed (monitor them individually with a DoT timer. Fortex or Xperl is great for this). Life tap as needed, but try to space 'em out so that you tap roughly once for every two haunts you cast.
In the past, and if you want to be really finicky about it, I've published the rotation like this: Corr, H, SB, UA, Curse. The different order is due to mere technicality. If you're raiding on the bleeding edge, it's probably something you want to look into, but the basic idea is that there exists a mathematically superior way in which to order your spells so as to line them up with the least amount of potential trouble down the road. This "perfect rotation" has been a discussion among warlocks for ages, and I'm sure it will continue to be. What it comes down to for me is playability. I'm not bleeding edge and I'm fair from perfect, so I'm not going to complicate the issue needlessly.
I want to throw up my instant casts first while I'm running into position. After that, I want to get haunt and my remaining dot up quick in case I'm required to move again. If I happen to get a nightfall proc in there, I'll definitely use it. Otherwise, I'll cluster all my shadowbolts together later. After you get your stuff set up, you should be able to just watch a dot timer and refresh as needed (Corruption should always be refreshed by Haunt or a Shadowbolt, but if you let it fall off, then make sure you get it back up). Even if I were trying really hard, I realize I would never be able to perfectly line my spells up. Not matter how I slice it, I'm still going to end up watching timers for each spell individually. I mean, what if fire spawns under me, then it's all gone to shit unless I sit still and literally DIAF? No, this way makes sense to me, but feel free to swap up the order as fits your playstyle, what matters is that you use all of the spells mentioned above and keep them ticking the best you can with minimal down time. How you execute best is up to you to decide. (I can definitely offer tips and suggestions if you want to email or comment!)
For life tap, I've found that if you use it roughly every two haunt refreshers, you'll keep yourself at a pretty good mana level over a long fight. In addition, you'll be able to constantly keep the glyph buff up on you. Basically, the goal is to life tap only enough so that at the very end of a fight you're Out Of Mana (without having any downtime before that) and have kept the buff up the whole time. Any extra life taps are lost DPS to Global Cool Down. The benefit to tapping right after casting haunt is that you'll generally beat the fly time for the haunt spell and thus get a nice little heal to offset some of your tap. Not freaking out healers or wasting the health regen is a good thing in my book. I almost never succeed in the gold standard OOM, but I'm not usually over 50% either.
Your choice of which curse to use should be between either Curse of the Elements or Curse of Agony. (edit: due to some wonderful research done by Nibs here, the new Rule of Thumb is to use CotE unless it's 13% buff is provided elsewhere: by another 'lock, by an unholy DK, or a Boomkin). If you're not on CotE duty, then use CoA. Affliction talents buff this spell enough that it'll be better for us than Curse of Doom. It's really this simple. Also, don't forget you have Curse of the Tongues if you're on Crowd Control duty for Faction Champions. It's a good one to remember for any PvP like shenanigans. Oh, and absolutely do NOT clip CoA when you use it. You've probably heard it a million places, but the last tick does almost half of the spell's damage, so you'd be missing out on a lot. Just try to time your refresh for when it's over. It'd be better to have a bit of downtime for the spell than to clip it. (The other dots are not so prissy, but CoA must run it's course prior to a refresh).
Under 25% Health
The rotation stays the same except at this point you'll want to start using Drain Soul instead of your SB filler. Don't worry about keeping the Improved Shadow Bolt buff up either. DS will be doing a hell-ton of damage if your other dots are up. So keep 'em up. The only caveat here is that if the baddie is about to die in the next 21 seconds, you shouldn't refresh CoA as it won't have time to run it's course. Other than that, keep haunt (which should refresh Corr) and keep UA for sure, Curse if you've got more than 20s of battle left. It's also good if you can try to time your refresh casts to be immediately after a Drain Soul tick. Just look for the abnormally large damage number on your screen.
Multiple Target Situations
If there are three or more targets, you should be thinking "Area of Effect" spells. Now, this hinges a lot on your tank and the difficulty of the mobs. If aggro is a problem, or if it is deemed best to down one target at a time (maybe CC is being used, maybe the leader wants a quick burn, whatever), then we'll just do our normal single target rotation. The difference in this case would be that you might be able to get away with throwing corruption up on the other targets, depending on the situation (the extra chance at nightfall procs is fun).
Also, proper target switching can really help your DPS as well. Back in the day (which was a Tuesday), when people used to use CC, it was key to know when to switch targets. Switch too soon and the first guy might not die, or the tank might not be ready and you'll find yourself munching mud. Switch too late and you're gimping your DPS and taking longer to kill things (which I guess, given the name of the blog, isn't all bad, but we still want to do our job the best we can). Being dependent on damage over time spells, Warlocks need to be highly cognizant of when to switch. There is no hard and fast rule, but the goal should be that your dots would have started dropping off the instant the baddie hits 0%. Thus, if it's got like 5% health left, dropping fast, and you don't have anything to refresh, you'll probably want to get set up on the next target. Especially if you know you're not going to be able to squeeze a 3 second drain soul tic in there. The sooner you get rolling on the next target, the less DPS you'll lose. Switching targets counts as downtime! Just don't switch before the tank is ready, or leave a mob hanging at 1%, hacking away still at you and yours.
Some of this may seem like a lost art to old warlock hands, and the Wrath world (... of warcraft), a vast majority of your muli-target pulls are going to be simple AoE groups. I wanted to point out the more controlled, rarer multi-target situations first because it's important for us to know, but lets be honest: we want huge baysplosions of damage. For Affliction Warlocks, we have two choices: Seed of Corruption or Rain of Fire. Gone are the days when fire damage was gimped, leaving seed our only choice. Now, both spells are equally valid choices. I'm not exactly sure how the new, still confusing, cap mechanics work (they changed this in the patch, recall, to be tailored for a maximum of 10-mobs), but they'll affect both spells equally, as well your spell stats.
It's my belief then, that Seed of Corruption is better damage, but not as easy to control. The explosion area of seed can often reach outside of, say, a Paladin's consecrate and cause you to get unwanted aggro. Thus, our AoE spell choice should be highly dependent on the situation. If the tank clearly has everything locked down and you're not going to get stragglers, definitely make use of seed. It will explode all over the tank-led dance party and cause you much glee.
However, if you have other adds wandering around, not clearly in the tank's control, use RoF. It's sized to perfectly fit on top of a consecrate (or DnD), so if you're running with one of those tanks, you should be able to just rain on top of their aura with little fear of pulling the mobs off. You may have to be careful not to just spam if your gear is significantly better than the tank, but, for the most part, the aura abilities of a tank can outstrip our RoF. If you're running with a Warrior or Druid tank, just try to center your RoF on them as they lack for visual cues.
Summary
So it's simple: In good AoE situations, use SoC. In shaky AoE situations (where you want more control), use RoF. Both will yield good damage results. If you've got a crazy situation where AoE is probably a bad idea, don't be afraid to switch to your ST rotation (maybe scattering some dots around). After all, a live 'lock has far better DPS than a dirt napper. For single targets, get your dots up, s-bolt spam, and refresh as needed. Make sure to use: Corr, Haunt, UA, and the appropriate Curse. Under 25%, switch from SB to Drain Soul. Sho'nuff you'll be toppin' da meters (or at least doing your job).
As always, questions/comments are welcome and I'll do my best to clarify anything I may have failed at in this attempt at 'splainin.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Loosing My Inner Demon
Labels: Sequence, Specs, warlocky 6 comments
I decided to spend my hard earned 1k gold from the Argent Tournament dailies on a dual spec for my warlock. My plan is to just use the second spec for enjoyment and to try out the other trees. Believe it or not, I have actually never played anything apart from Affliction on my warlock. I never really felt drawn elsewhere.
When they added the Metamorphosis talent though, I have to admit I was intrigued by the Demonology tree for the first time. I mean, turning into a demon is just plain cool. Still, by then I'd been playing as affliction for well over a year and had no desire to raid or level as anything but affliction, it being my true love.
Lucky for us, they implemented this dual speccing shenanigans. So far, I guess it's been pretty helpful and hasn't changed the way we raid too much. If anything, its made it much easier as a raid leader. Now, when you might need that extra tank, you always get the question: "want me to flip specs?" My normal answer is "do whatever you feel comfortable with." We're not "hardcore" and, as such, I've never really cared what spec someone is, as long as they can get the job done.
Anyways, I digress. I merely wanted to point out that I'm trying out Abi's demonology spec. You can find it along with a wonderful L2Play raiding guide here. I'm using his 3-53-15 build as linked in his post. It's a Meta/Ruin/Suppressionforhit spec. It's also the one with the Demonic Pact talent since I'm not counting on being with an Elemental Shaman at all times.
I have a crap ton (or if you prefer metric, .907 shat tons) of spirit (the glyph gives me like 150 extra SP), so I may pick up another Life Tap glyph, though I'm debating because this spec is mainly for fun which for me means running around town as a demon at odd times. Thus, I may take the meta glyph along with Immolate and Felguard.
The rotation is actually fairly similar in concept to the affliction one. Both require you to do different things at low life (for demo the mark is 35% not the 25% for affliction). Both have a pretty simple "normal" rotation where you throw up some DoTs and S-bolt. This demo build adds what I like to think of as a "special" button. If you ever played old arcade fighting games, you may be familiar with the concept of a "special bar". It's kinda like that, in that it beefs you up, lets you preform a few special things, but doesn't complete change your current rotation.
I didn't get a picture, but here's how I set up my cast bar from left to right (1-5): Corruption, Shadowbolt, Immolate, Curse Choice, Soul Fire. (Recall that my Affliction bar looks like: Corr/alt-CoA, S-bolt, UA, Haunt/alt-CotE, Drain Soul). Thus, I'm almost hitting the same buttons in the same order when I swap specs and bars. The rest of the bar has some of my demon form stuff and Rain of Fire for my AoE button (always 8 on my toons). It also has my Life Tap macro on 0 which is the same (lets you LT normal and hold shift to get your fel armor on). Then I have some clickable buttons around for the "cooldown" spells that I want to watch/click.
The point here is that I find it a lot easier if you can try to put similar spells on certain buttons. My DK even sort of reflects this so that I'm nearly hitting the same buttons in the same order. That way, if I have a brain fart, I'm not completely off and it seems easier to fall into a new routine.
I love having both intercept and charge too. I was always jealous off others having things to make them speed up when warlocks only get to run around at one friggin' speed. The best we could hope for is to swim faster in water with a glyph, which, lets face it, is completely worthless. Others can run on water... we swim fast with a glyph?
Anyways, I don't necessarily plan on using this for raiding right away or anything more than just making the dailies more interesting, but it is certainly a fun spec. Abi does a wonderful job of telling you "how to" loose your inner demonologist, so I won't rewrite what's already been done better. I just wanted to point out my initial thoughts about this spec and have an excuse to link this completely awesome picture:
Blood... On the Rocks
When they added the Metamorphosis talent though, I have to admit I was intrigued by the Demonology tree for the first time. I mean, turning into a demon is just plain cool. Still, by then I'd been playing as affliction for well over a year and had no desire to raid or level as anything but affliction, it being my true love.
Lucky for us, they implemented this dual speccing shenanigans. So far, I guess it's been pretty helpful and hasn't changed the way we raid too much. If anything, its made it much easier as a raid leader. Now, when you might need that extra tank, you always get the question: "want me to flip specs?" My normal answer is "do whatever you feel comfortable with." We're not "hardcore" and, as such, I've never really cared what spec someone is, as long as they can get the job done.
Anyways, I digress. I merely wanted to point out that I'm trying out Abi's demonology spec. You can find it along with a wonderful L2Play raiding guide here. I'm using his 3-53-15 build as linked in his post. It's a Meta/Ruin/Suppressionforhit spec. It's also the one with the Demonic Pact talent since I'm not counting on being with an Elemental Shaman at all times.
I have a crap ton (or if you prefer metric, .907 shat tons) of spirit (the glyph gives me like 150 extra SP), so I may pick up another Life Tap glyph, though I'm debating because this spec is mainly for fun which for me means running around town as a demon at odd times. Thus, I may take the meta glyph along with Immolate and Felguard.
The rotation is actually fairly similar in concept to the affliction one. Both require you to do different things at low life (for demo the mark is 35% not the 25% for affliction). Both have a pretty simple "normal" rotation where you throw up some DoTs and S-bolt. This demo build adds what I like to think of as a "special" button. If you ever played old arcade fighting games, you may be familiar with the concept of a "special bar". It's kinda like that, in that it beefs you up, lets you preform a few special things, but doesn't complete change your current rotation.
I didn't get a picture, but here's how I set up my cast bar from left to right (1-5): Corruption, Shadowbolt, Immolate, Curse Choice, Soul Fire. (Recall that my Affliction bar looks like: Corr/alt-CoA, S-bolt, UA, Haunt/alt-CotE, Drain Soul). Thus, I'm almost hitting the same buttons in the same order when I swap specs and bars. The rest of the bar has some of my demon form stuff and Rain of Fire for my AoE button (always 8 on my toons). It also has my Life Tap macro on 0 which is the same (lets you LT normal and hold shift to get your fel armor on). Then I have some clickable buttons around for the "cooldown" spells that I want to watch/click.
The point here is that I find it a lot easier if you can try to put similar spells on certain buttons. My DK even sort of reflects this so that I'm nearly hitting the same buttons in the same order. That way, if I have a brain fart, I'm not completely off and it seems easier to fall into a new routine.
I love having both intercept and charge too. I was always jealous off others having things to make them speed up when warlocks only get to run around at one friggin' speed. The best we could hope for is to swim faster in water with a glyph, which, lets face it, is completely worthless. Others can run on water... we swim fast with a glyph?
Anyways, I don't necessarily plan on using this for raiding right away or anything more than just making the dailies more interesting, but it is certainly a fun spec. Abi does a wonderful job of telling you "how to" loose your inner demonologist, so I won't rewrite what's already been done better. I just wanted to point out my initial thoughts about this spec and have an excuse to link this completely awesome picture:
Blood... On the Rocks
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Affliction Rotation Update
Labels: Sequence, Shout Out, warlocky 12 comments
For today's discussion, I'd like to point you in the direction of a recent post by Nibs over at the MC regarding short term damage on mobs. The gist of it is that Haunt seems to reset the timer for a Corruption tick. Thus, my current rotation of Corr, H, SB would cause the first corruption tick to have an almost 2 second delay (depending on flytime). This is no bueno.
She lays out a couple of scenarios that are completely valid. I've always maintained my reason for casting Corruption first is my affinity for leading off with an instant cast. I just don't like wasting those initial seconds when I'm getting positioned (it's kind of like: CHAAAARGE, not WAITFORCASTBAAAR). Besides, if you're going to get that far down into the theory of the spells where you're worried about wasting 1 or 2 seconds of a Corruption tick, aren't you doing the same thing by waiting to cast anything until you get stationary.
I mean, if I begin my rotation 1.5 seconds later, then not only did I waste that initial cast time, but also delayed that GCD. Wouldn't I be, in effect, getting double dinged by that time, losing nearly 3s? And, in that case, what would it matter if Corruption resets itself? It's hard for me to wrap my mind around it, but the bottom line here is that Nibs does a great job of explaining a basic warlock spell mechanic that we need to understand in order to make the best decision for each of our own rotations.
Now, I thought about reversing SB and Haunt in my rotation as well, giving Corruption some leeway to tick. However, if you cast Corr followed by a ~1.5s GCD, followed by a ~2s SB (your corruption ticks sometime during the SB cast bar), followed by a ~1.5s Haunt cast with fly time... I think I'm going to fall in the same situation of "clipping" a Corruption tick due to refresh. So, that doesn't really gain me anything.
So, it seems that the only way to truly negate this effect is to cast Haunt before Corruption. Even then, whenever you refresh Haunt, you may run into this clipping issue, so you can only really avoid it on your opening rotation. I think this makes any overall effect on your damage minimal. Nibs seems to agree with this, pointing out that this really isn't important on long boss fights as the loss of one (really a half) tick is insignificant. The only place it may matter is on short living trash, and even then only to the tune of what one tick of Corruption might give you on the front end.
Thus, while nice to know, it's not really going to change how I do things. However, if other affliction 'locks point out to me that by leading off with Corruption, I may be clipping it with my first Haunt, I would have to agree. I've made my case above as to why I think it works out for me, but that doesn't mean everyone plays the same. If you're not casting Corruption while moving into position, for instance, it wouldn't make as much sense for you. In that case, you may think about leading off with your cast bar spells. It's just how my playstyle works, and I felt the urge to make that clear.
I'd like to finish with a /wave to Megs at Out Of Mana who recently announced her recession from the public eye. It is always sort of a shock to have our daily reading disrupted permanently like this. The warlock community in particular will surely miss her contributions. I wish her luck in her future endeavors and may God grant her the adventures she seeks. Fellow Catholic, fellow Warlock, fellow gamer, fellow blogger: /salute.
She lays out a couple of scenarios that are completely valid. I've always maintained my reason for casting Corruption first is my affinity for leading off with an instant cast. I just don't like wasting those initial seconds when I'm getting positioned (it's kind of like: CHAAAARGE, not WAITFORCASTBAAAR). Besides, if you're going to get that far down into the theory of the spells where you're worried about wasting 1 or 2 seconds of a Corruption tick, aren't you doing the same thing by waiting to cast anything until you get stationary.
I mean, if I begin my rotation 1.5 seconds later, then not only did I waste that initial cast time, but also delayed that GCD. Wouldn't I be, in effect, getting double dinged by that time, losing nearly 3s? And, in that case, what would it matter if Corruption resets itself? It's hard for me to wrap my mind around it, but the bottom line here is that Nibs does a great job of explaining a basic warlock spell mechanic that we need to understand in order to make the best decision for each of our own rotations.
Now, I thought about reversing SB and Haunt in my rotation as well, giving Corruption some leeway to tick. However, if you cast Corr followed by a ~1.5s GCD, followed by a ~2s SB (your corruption ticks sometime during the SB cast bar), followed by a ~1.5s Haunt cast with fly time... I think I'm going to fall in the same situation of "clipping" a Corruption tick due to refresh. So, that doesn't really gain me anything.
So, it seems that the only way to truly negate this effect is to cast Haunt before Corruption. Even then, whenever you refresh Haunt, you may run into this clipping issue, so you can only really avoid it on your opening rotation. I think this makes any overall effect on your damage minimal. Nibs seems to agree with this, pointing out that this really isn't important on long boss fights as the loss of one (really a half) tick is insignificant. The only place it may matter is on short living trash, and even then only to the tune of what one tick of Corruption might give you on the front end.
Thus, while nice to know, it's not really going to change how I do things. However, if other affliction 'locks point out to me that by leading off with Corruption, I may be clipping it with my first Haunt, I would have to agree. I've made my case above as to why I think it works out for me, but that doesn't mean everyone plays the same. If you're not casting Corruption while moving into position, for instance, it wouldn't make as much sense for you. In that case, you may think about leading off with your cast bar spells. It's just how my playstyle works, and I felt the urge to make that clear.
I'd like to finish with a /wave to Megs at Out Of Mana who recently announced her recession from the public eye. It is always sort of a shock to have our daily reading disrupted permanently like this. The warlock community in particular will surely miss her contributions. I wish her luck in her future endeavors and may God grant her the adventures she seeks. Fellow Catholic, fellow Warlock, fellow gamer, fellow blogger: /salute.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sometimes The Best Offense Is A Good "D"
Labels: Patch, Sequence, warlocky 14 comments
(Disclaimer: This is going to be more of a cry for help than informative. Feel free to answer and be my hero.)
Those D's being Drain Soul and Curse of Doom, both of which have seen some renewed interested in the post 3.1 world... of warcraft.
Drain soul is the obvious one. I has been buffed up to give us 10k crits and junk. Did I mention ever that you should use this jazz at 25% health? Definitely use it at 25% health and beyond. It's like, double your shadowbolts for nearly the same amount of time. Use that shizz... aight?
Here's the question I have about the first D: Do you have to make sure start it AFTER the 25% mark? Srsly, like if I start before 25%, even if it ticks into the 25% range, I'm pretty sure it doesn't get the bonus. Therefore, it is my belief that the spell damage bonus is calculated from WHEN YOU APPLY IT.
This would seem to be consistent with many of the other spell mechanics Blizz uses, but I've never seen someone explicitly say so. Therefore, I call upon the warlock community to verify that I'm correct in this. If I am, then that is an extremely important little tip there. Using Drain Soul too early will kill its destructive potential by 4x's (which is the bonus it gets under 25%). Don't do eet!
The second D... Doom. Perhaps one of the most easily forgotten yet blatantly cool spells we have. I mean, who doesn't like a huge time bomb every now and then amirite? Remember back in the Kara days when you used to queue one of these up to go off during the evocate phase? BOOM! DOOM! Woot!
With Amp'd Curse shortening the GCD of curses, I would think that CoD is well worth casting right now (especially if you're not sporting the glyph of CoA). Obviously you'd need to make sure whatever you're going to cast it on would live for more than a minute, plus you'd really need to watch your aggro for the big spike at the end of the tunnel. However, that's one less DoT to watch and worry about while you're at the beginning of a fight. Maybe it's a good thing to lead off with a CoD and then switch to CoA later in the fight... say at 25%?
See what I'm doing here? I have trouble sometimes reminding myself to make sure to switch my rotation up... however, if I tie my Drain Soul to a Curse switch as well... well that's just double reminder. I'm not sure what the maths say about that though. So I ask the community, is this a good idea?
Those are the two main things I'm going to try out tonight in my 25-man Naxx run. I mean, Drain Soul for sure, but I think I want to throw down on some CoD too. 10K ticks have got me itching for a time bomb!
Also, here are a few other things that are worth mentioning:
Pet Choice
To go along with the "D" theme... Doomguard. Use that pansy. He'll pop in for 15 mins and then run away like a little girl, but for those 15 mins he'll put out some good DPS. Remember to pick up your Demonic Figurine reagents though.
Realistically, you need to weigh the benefit of buffing the raid with your felhunter too. If you have both a mage AND a priest in your group, your FH's buff is useless. That is when you pull out the succy and go to town (or be sure to bring out your DG). The only other reason you may want to go with the felpup is to make use of his spell lock ability. I do this quite a bit to help with some messy pulls, but not so much in Naxx. Therefore, I'm going Succy/DG tonight if we have the priest and mage to overwrite me (more than likely in 25-mans).
SP Bonuses Galore?
Another new thing we need to be aware of as Affliction 'locks is the way SP bonuses work. We've always said to be sure to pop your trinkets before you start a rotation to make sure they get the bonus. Same goes for Life Tapping with the glyph (which I got yesterday). I believe I may have mentioned it before, but wanted to do so again.
After I got the glyph, I just started tapping around town because I was excited about it. Imagine my double excitement when one of the taps procced the effect of my Lightweave embroidery. Recall that they just changed this to have a chance to bump your SP up 250 too. This means, with my mostly Naxx-10 gear, I have enough spirit that the LT glyph shoots me up 15oSP and then my Lightweave shoots me up another 250SP. That's 400 extra SP! That's one helluva "trinket".
With that much extra SP, we need to be aware not only to try and get at least your LT bonus on prior to a fight, but also to try very hard not to clip your DoTs later. We've always tried not to clip things like CoA, but UA has always been open game. If you're not sporting the same bonuses you were when you started, refreshing may come at the cost of damage.
In the heat of a battle, there may not be a whole lot you can do about some of this, but it is good to know in the back of your mind, so at least sometimes you are maximizing your SP procs. I personally usually keep it a lot simpler than this (and plan to just LT at the beginning, but then just do it as needed after that until I at least get comfortable enough to have extra attention to pay to it), but I wanted to throw some of this stuff out there. The important point is to remember that damage due to SP is calculated WHEN THE SPELL IS APPLIED. Bonuses due to percentage mulitplies (like Haunt and Shadow's Embrace) will be calculated on each tick. Thus, you want to pop trinkets before applying spells, but can work in your SE and H bonuses later on.
For instance, in my rotation I lead off with Corruption. I would want to be sure to life tap and pop any trinkets before hitting Corr to maximize my SP before casting. I can and do, however, put up Haunt and SE after casting Corr without Corr missing out on those perecentage multipliers. (This is all to the best of my knowledge/observation, so if someone knows otherwise and can back it up, feel free to correct me.)
I've been having some great comments and traffic as of late, and am hoping that the trend continues. I don't always get things right the first pass, but I'm hoping by getting crap like this out there, we can discuss it a bit and really "compare notes" as Affliction 'locks. Only good (read: exceedingly evil and painful for mobs) things can come from that.
Oh yeah, and be aware that there is some patching going on today. Hopefully the servers will be stable tonight. You'll also get a refund of your spec points (after I fiddled around so much with mine too... :-/), so be prepared to respec. I'm not sure we should see any major changes...
Those D's being Drain Soul and Curse of Doom, both of which have seen some renewed interested in the post 3.1 world... of warcraft.
Drain soul is the obvious one. I has been buffed up to give us 10k crits and junk. Did I mention ever that you should use this jazz at 25% health? Definitely use it at 25% health and beyond. It's like, double your shadowbolts for nearly the same amount of time. Use that shizz... aight?
Here's the question I have about the first D: Do you have to make sure start it AFTER the 25% mark? Srsly, like if I start before 25%, even if it ticks into the 25% range, I'm pretty sure it doesn't get the bonus. Therefore, it is my belief that the spell damage bonus is calculated from WHEN YOU APPLY IT.
This would seem to be consistent with many of the other spell mechanics Blizz uses, but I've never seen someone explicitly say so. Therefore, I call upon the warlock community to verify that I'm correct in this. If I am, then that is an extremely important little tip there. Using Drain Soul too early will kill its destructive potential by 4x's (which is the bonus it gets under 25%). Don't do eet!
The second D... Doom. Perhaps one of the most easily forgotten yet blatantly cool spells we have. I mean, who doesn't like a huge time bomb every now and then amirite? Remember back in the Kara days when you used to queue one of these up to go off during the evocate phase? BOOM! DOOM! Woot!
With Amp'd Curse shortening the GCD of curses, I would think that CoD is well worth casting right now (especially if you're not sporting the glyph of CoA). Obviously you'd need to make sure whatever you're going to cast it on would live for more than a minute, plus you'd really need to watch your aggro for the big spike at the end of the tunnel. However, that's one less DoT to watch and worry about while you're at the beginning of a fight. Maybe it's a good thing to lead off with a CoD and then switch to CoA later in the fight... say at 25%?
See what I'm doing here? I have trouble sometimes reminding myself to make sure to switch my rotation up... however, if I tie my Drain Soul to a Curse switch as well... well that's just double reminder. I'm not sure what the maths say about that though. So I ask the community, is this a good idea?
Those are the two main things I'm going to try out tonight in my 25-man Naxx run. I mean, Drain Soul for sure, but I think I want to throw down on some CoD too. 10K ticks have got me itching for a time bomb!
Also, here are a few other things that are worth mentioning:
Pet Choice
To go along with the "D" theme... Doomguard. Use that pansy. He'll pop in for 15 mins and then run away like a little girl, but for those 15 mins he'll put out some good DPS. Remember to pick up your Demonic Figurine reagents though.
Realistically, you need to weigh the benefit of buffing the raid with your felhunter too. If you have both a mage AND a priest in your group, your FH's buff is useless. That is when you pull out the succy and go to town (or be sure to bring out your DG). The only other reason you may want to go with the felpup is to make use of his spell lock ability. I do this quite a bit to help with some messy pulls, but not so much in Naxx. Therefore, I'm going Succy/DG tonight if we have the priest and mage to overwrite me (more than likely in 25-mans).
SP Bonuses Galore?
Another new thing we need to be aware of as Affliction 'locks is the way SP bonuses work. We've always said to be sure to pop your trinkets before you start a rotation to make sure they get the bonus. Same goes for Life Tapping with the glyph (which I got yesterday). I believe I may have mentioned it before, but wanted to do so again.
After I got the glyph, I just started tapping around town because I was excited about it. Imagine my double excitement when one of the taps procced the effect of my Lightweave embroidery. Recall that they just changed this to have a chance to bump your SP up 250 too. This means, with my mostly Naxx-10 gear, I have enough spirit that the LT glyph shoots me up 15oSP and then my Lightweave shoots me up another 250SP. That's 400 extra SP! That's one helluva "trinket".
With that much extra SP, we need to be aware not only to try and get at least your LT bonus on prior to a fight, but also to try very hard not to clip your DoTs later. We've always tried not to clip things like CoA, but UA has always been open game. If you're not sporting the same bonuses you were when you started, refreshing may come at the cost of damage.
In the heat of a battle, there may not be a whole lot you can do about some of this, but it is good to know in the back of your mind, so at least sometimes you are maximizing your SP procs. I personally usually keep it a lot simpler than this (and plan to just LT at the beginning, but then just do it as needed after that until I at least get comfortable enough to have extra attention to pay to it), but I wanted to throw some of this stuff out there. The important point is to remember that damage due to SP is calculated WHEN THE SPELL IS APPLIED. Bonuses due to percentage mulitplies (like Haunt and Shadow's Embrace) will be calculated on each tick. Thus, you want to pop trinkets before applying spells, but can work in your SE and H bonuses later on.
For instance, in my rotation I lead off with Corruption. I would want to be sure to life tap and pop any trinkets before hitting Corr to maximize my SP before casting. I can and do, however, put up Haunt and SE after casting Corr without Corr missing out on those perecentage multipliers. (This is all to the best of my knowledge/observation, so if someone knows otherwise and can back it up, feel free to correct me.)
I've been having some great comments and traffic as of late, and am hoping that the trend continues. I don't always get things right the first pass, but I'm hoping by getting crap like this out there, we can discuss it a bit and really "compare notes" as Affliction 'locks. Only good (read: exceedingly evil and painful for mobs) things can come from that.
Oh yeah, and be aware that there is some patching going on today. Hopefully the servers will be stable tonight. You'll also get a refund of your spec points (after I fiddled around so much with mine too... :-/), so be prepared to respec. I'm not sure we should see any major changes...
Friday, April 17, 2009
Frost DPS Death Knight Spec and Rotation for 3.1
Labels: Death Knight, DK Spec, Patch, Sequence, warlocky 23 comments
-Or- How I salvaged my Frost DPS spec.
In the second part of the two part series of 3.1 speccing and information, we'll talk about Death Knightery (not as catchy as warlockery I know... I'll work on it).
The Spec
I'm rolling out 3.1 with a 20/51/0 spec. My goal with this spec was to keep as much of my previous rotation as I could, since I really enjoyed the spec prior to the patch. Thus, I wanted to make Icy Touch viable, keep Howling Blast and Frost Strike available to me, and throw some points into the Blood tree for utility and DPS help. I also wanted to focus on a 2H build for now, since I don't really have any good 1 handers to pair up. Here is the work-friendly screenie:
Okay, so keep in mind that this is first and foremost a "fun" spec. I certainly have not focus as much on all damage dealing talents here as I would have on my warlock. I wanted to pick up some useful talents that could help in casual raids and casual PvP. For instance, that is the primary drive behind picking up both Hungering Cold and Chillblains. Neither of those really help DPS, but I like having them just to mess around with.
I steered clear of unholy because I don't want to be disease or pet dependant at all. I know there is more to that tree, but for this toon I'm trying to focus more on burst AoE and burst damage in general.
Similarly, I chose to take Rune Tap for the "free" healing. You'll see in the next section that I'm also grabbing the glyph, because I've really enjoyed being able to help out party members in a pinch. Usually it's like a free pot in a raid situation if things get hairy, or can save my butt in a PvP encounter.
If you're looking for more of a straight raid DPS spec, I'd probably take the points out of Rune Tap and Chillblains for sure and try to put them to use in the unholy tree prolonging your diseases or something of the like.
Other than the points I wasted in utility stuff, the rest are straight damage upgrades to the spells I plan to use. More on that in the rotation section
The Glyphs
Here are the glyphs I'm looking for to make this spec work for me:
I pointed out earlier that one of my goals was to focus on a bursty, AoE type build. This is also reflected in my glyphs as I want DnD (I need to buy), I already have Pestilence (range extension is always good), and the new HB (might not be available for a while). All those glyphs should help my AoE damage.
Rune Tap is obviously picked for utility. If you don't like having that ability, there are definitely some other good glyphs out there. With how much I use Frost Strike, that glyph was a high contender for the spot.
Horn of Winter is a no brainer. Extremely useful, same with the Raise Dead glyph. Not having to carry around corpse dust? Yes please.
The Rotation
My rotation prior to the patch was pretty much IT > HB > BS > FS. Since this is primarily a "fun" toon, I didn't spend the time trying to match up cooldowns and come up with some perfectly fitting rune rotation. I've seen a lot of other blogs do that kind of thing and I don't really like it. It just seems to take so little to throw a lot of those rotations off. As such, I just wanted to find something that felt natural, lined up decently well, and wasn't a headache. Also, if things get hairy, I didn't want to be completely lost in a 8 button long rotation. Keep It Simple Stupid.
So my pre-patch rotation really exemplified this. It was a pretty simple priority based rotation, revolving around a few goals. First, I wanted to get my disease of choice up early since a lot of the other abilities had bonuses based off of it (this has since changed), therefore putting IT up early was a must. The bursty AoE of HB was then a next logical just to shoot every time it's off cooldown and frost fever is up.
I threw the Blood Strike in there to keep myself fresh with a death rune. I've found just doing one spreads them out nicely so I don't seem to run out of runes a whole lot. At the end of it all, I'll Frost Strike once or twice depending on where my runic power stands. Rinse, repeat. Simple.
Since IT has been nerfed and HB no longer receives a bonus based on the disease, I had to switch up my thinking a bit from before the patch. I still want to have my DoTs ticking becuase that's just a good idea. I decided though that the rotation could use a little something extra (and you'll see why), so now I'm going with this rotation: IT > Plague Strike > HB (or Obliterate) > BS > FSx2.
So this is a little more complicated. I added PS to put both of my diseases up. My OB seems to hit for a similar amount to my HB, so I mostly use HB unless AoE is a bad idea. When I do use OB though, it's good to have both diseases up. In that case, I'll throw in my BS before the OB so as not to waste the disease bonus. Otherwise, the same principles apply here and I'm usually racking up the RP for Frost Strikes quite nicely. We ran through OS-10 last night and it all seemed to flow very nicely without being too complex.
For AoE, I pretty much put up the diseases the same, then pop a pestilence to spread them, then HB. I'll throw down a DnD sometimes if I'm not worried about aggro (you have to be careful with it, since it is a high threat ability). The rotation doesn't really change a whole lot other than to make sure to get the diseases spread out. I haven't tried throwing in a blood boil either, though I might want to. Before it wasn't worth it, but it's been buffed a bit to offset the loss of pestilence damage.
It isn't the perfect gem of math that folks like The Stoppable Force might come up with, but it works and is a fun spec to play while doing respectable damage. How much? Well, lets move along to the last section I have for today.
Preliminary Damage Reports From The Field
Last night started off on my Warlock in VoA working hard on the second boss. I was very anxious to get some good, practical data as well as learn the new content. As with all learning situations, my numbers weren't going to be ideal representations of what I could do in this shiny new 3.1 world. We had a few good tries and the rotation definitely was simpler, easier to manage when you're learning new stuff. That's a perk. So was the 10k Drain Soul tick on trash. Overall though? I felt my numbers were a bit lower than expected.
I made some gear upgrades just before the patch hit that should have put me over the 3k mark for your average raid (doing a whole bunch more on gems such as Patchwerk). I expected to be above that mark, and I'm just not. I'm probably around 2.8k average. However, I have not been able to run a full Naxx yet, so its kind of hard to compare. I feel I need more data in a non-learning environment to really judge. The positive, though, was that with the simpler rotation, I felt that my damage numbers are evening out a bit. That is to say, I wasn't as abysmal on DPS even if I wasn't as high on the bosses. This gives me hope that in a better situation, I may find that I'm doing better on trash, worse on bosses, but the same overall.
When we went to OS-10, I switched to my DK to give it a try since my 'lock doesn't need anything in there. I'm still not very well geared, having about half my crap as raid items and the other half as quest blues and greens. A couple of the raid pieces are really tank pieces too. I certainly haven't gotten any tier gear yet. Even so, before the patch I was seeing numbers as high as 2.5k on my DK. It was completely OP. A similarly geared melee would be far far worse. I knew a nerf was coming and it did.
However, I'm happy to say that it really seems to be an appropriate nerf. I ran with a slightly better geared unholy/blood DK last night, and was fighting with him on the meters, hovering around a 2k average. This tells me that my spec is at least as viable as the cookie-cutter that he was using, so that's a good thing. Plus, the 2k number isn't unreasonable for my gear level. In fact, its pretty respectable. I was very pleased that I was able to keep the playstyle that I enjoy and not have found it nerfed to the ground.
In short, now that that servers seem to be evening out, I need more data. I need more runs. However, the preliminary indications are mostly positive. Even if both of my classes seem to have taken a slight hit, there are good things there and I'm confident it'll work.
(Update June 8, 2009: I seem to be getting a lot of traffic through here still, so I wanted to link to a post I made more recently in which I give an update on how I'm doing my rotation.)
In the second part of the two part series of 3.1 speccing and information, we'll talk about Death Knightery (not as catchy as warlockery I know... I'll work on it).
The Spec
I'm rolling out 3.1 with a 20/51/0 spec. My goal with this spec was to keep as much of my previous rotation as I could, since I really enjoyed the spec prior to the patch. Thus, I wanted to make Icy Touch viable, keep Howling Blast and Frost Strike available to me, and throw some points into the Blood tree for utility and DPS help. I also wanted to focus on a 2H build for now, since I don't really have any good 1 handers to pair up. Here is the work-friendly screenie:
20/51/0
Okay, so keep in mind that this is first and foremost a "fun" spec. I certainly have not focus as much on all damage dealing talents here as I would have on my warlock. I wanted to pick up some useful talents that could help in casual raids and casual PvP. For instance, that is the primary drive behind picking up both Hungering Cold and Chillblains. Neither of those really help DPS, but I like having them just to mess around with.
I steered clear of unholy because I don't want to be disease or pet dependant at all. I know there is more to that tree, but for this toon I'm trying to focus more on burst AoE and burst damage in general.
Similarly, I chose to take Rune Tap for the "free" healing. You'll see in the next section that I'm also grabbing the glyph, because I've really enjoyed being able to help out party members in a pinch. Usually it's like a free pot in a raid situation if things get hairy, or can save my butt in a PvP encounter.
If you're looking for more of a straight raid DPS spec, I'd probably take the points out of Rune Tap and Chillblains for sure and try to put them to use in the unholy tree prolonging your diseases or something of the like.
Other than the points I wasted in utility stuff, the rest are straight damage upgrades to the spells I plan to use. More on that in the rotation section
The Glyphs
Here are the glyphs I'm looking for to make this spec work for me:
Minors That Make a 'Lock Jealous
I pointed out earlier that one of my goals was to focus on a bursty, AoE type build. This is also reflected in my glyphs as I want DnD (I need to buy), I already have Pestilence (range extension is always good), and the new HB (might not be available for a while). All those glyphs should help my AoE damage.
Rune Tap is obviously picked for utility. If you don't like having that ability, there are definitely some other good glyphs out there. With how much I use Frost Strike, that glyph was a high contender for the spot.
Horn of Winter is a no brainer. Extremely useful, same with the Raise Dead glyph. Not having to carry around corpse dust? Yes please.
The Rotation
My rotation prior to the patch was pretty much IT > HB > BS > FS. Since this is primarily a "fun" toon, I didn't spend the time trying to match up cooldowns and come up with some perfectly fitting rune rotation. I've seen a lot of other blogs do that kind of thing and I don't really like it. It just seems to take so little to throw a lot of those rotations off. As such, I just wanted to find something that felt natural, lined up decently well, and wasn't a headache. Also, if things get hairy, I didn't want to be completely lost in a 8 button long rotation. Keep It Simple Stupid.
So my pre-patch rotation really exemplified this. It was a pretty simple priority based rotation, revolving around a few goals. First, I wanted to get my disease of choice up early since a lot of the other abilities had bonuses based off of it (this has since changed), therefore putting IT up early was a must. The bursty AoE of HB was then a next logical just to shoot every time it's off cooldown and frost fever is up.
I threw the Blood Strike in there to keep myself fresh with a death rune. I've found just doing one spreads them out nicely so I don't seem to run out of runes a whole lot. At the end of it all, I'll Frost Strike once or twice depending on where my runic power stands. Rinse, repeat. Simple.
Since IT has been nerfed and HB no longer receives a bonus based on the disease, I had to switch up my thinking a bit from before the patch. I still want to have my DoTs ticking becuase that's just a good idea. I decided though that the rotation could use a little something extra (and you'll see why), so now I'm going with this rotation: IT > Plague Strike > HB (or Obliterate) > BS > FSx2.
So this is a little more complicated. I added PS to put both of my diseases up. My OB seems to hit for a similar amount to my HB, so I mostly use HB unless AoE is a bad idea. When I do use OB though, it's good to have both diseases up. In that case, I'll throw in my BS before the OB so as not to waste the disease bonus. Otherwise, the same principles apply here and I'm usually racking up the RP for Frost Strikes quite nicely. We ran through OS-10 last night and it all seemed to flow very nicely without being too complex.
For AoE, I pretty much put up the diseases the same, then pop a pestilence to spread them, then HB. I'll throw down a DnD sometimes if I'm not worried about aggro (you have to be careful with it, since it is a high threat ability). The rotation doesn't really change a whole lot other than to make sure to get the diseases spread out. I haven't tried throwing in a blood boil either, though I might want to. Before it wasn't worth it, but it's been buffed a bit to offset the loss of pestilence damage.
It isn't the perfect gem of math that folks like The Stoppable Force might come up with, but it works and is a fun spec to play while doing respectable damage. How much? Well, lets move along to the last section I have for today.
Preliminary Damage Reports From The Field
Last night started off on my Warlock in VoA working hard on the second boss. I was very anxious to get some good, practical data as well as learn the new content. As with all learning situations, my numbers weren't going to be ideal representations of what I could do in this shiny new 3.1 world. We had a few good tries and the rotation definitely was simpler, easier to manage when you're learning new stuff. That's a perk. So was the 10k Drain Soul tick on trash. Overall though? I felt my numbers were a bit lower than expected.
I made some gear upgrades just before the patch hit that should have put me over the 3k mark for your average raid (doing a whole bunch more on gems such as Patchwerk). I expected to be above that mark, and I'm just not. I'm probably around 2.8k average. However, I have not been able to run a full Naxx yet, so its kind of hard to compare. I feel I need more data in a non-learning environment to really judge. The positive, though, was that with the simpler rotation, I felt that my damage numbers are evening out a bit. That is to say, I wasn't as abysmal on DPS even if I wasn't as high on the bosses. This gives me hope that in a better situation, I may find that I'm doing better on trash, worse on bosses, but the same overall.
When we went to OS-10, I switched to my DK to give it a try since my 'lock doesn't need anything in there. I'm still not very well geared, having about half my crap as raid items and the other half as quest blues and greens. A couple of the raid pieces are really tank pieces too. I certainly haven't gotten any tier gear yet. Even so, before the patch I was seeing numbers as high as 2.5k on my DK. It was completely OP. A similarly geared melee would be far far worse. I knew a nerf was coming and it did.
However, I'm happy to say that it really seems to be an appropriate nerf. I ran with a slightly better geared unholy/blood DK last night, and was fighting with him on the meters, hovering around a 2k average. This tells me that my spec is at least as viable as the cookie-cutter that he was using, so that's a good thing. Plus, the 2k number isn't unreasonable for my gear level. In fact, its pretty respectable. I was very pleased that I was able to keep the playstyle that I enjoy and not have found it nerfed to the ground.
In short, now that that servers seem to be evening out, I need more data. I need more runs. However, the preliminary indications are mostly positive. Even if both of my classes seem to have taken a slight hit, there are good things there and I'm confident it'll work.
(Update June 8, 2009: I seem to be getting a lot of traffic through here still, so I wanted to link to a post I made more recently in which I give an update on how I'm doing my rotation.)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Affliction Warlock Spec and Rotation For 3.1
Labels: Patch, Raiding, Sequence, Specs, warlocky 19 comments
(Updated for 3.2 - there weren't any Warlock changes to affect this)
All right, this is it. The big one. Everything you want to know about how to set up your Affliction warlockery in the 3.1 World...of Warcraft.
The Spec
(Edit: This spec was more of utility spec and I think a lot of people were wanting more of a raiding spec... that can be found here, as I have since revisted and cleaned up my spec for raid purposes)
First off, spec. The tree didn't get a full makeover, but it did get airbrushed quite a bit. My pre-3.1 spec was a bit messy too, as I'd been holding off for the patch to clean it up for raiding. As of Tuesday, though, its here! So, after much thought, I'm running a 61/0/10 spec. Here is the work-friendly pic of that spec (wowhead was a bit messy, so my destro stuff got a bit clipped, I think it works though):
I currently have Corrpution, Drain Soul, Souls, and UB... as well as Siphon Life and Shadowbolt. Obviously I'm going to get rid of those last two in favor of the new ones as soon as I can. I will likely not use the Curse of Agony glyph because I always want to choose glyphs that I will get the most use out of. Curses are really my lowest priority spell (except in terms of making sure not to clip and such when it is up). I don't use them on trash a lot of times because it dies too fast, and on bosses, sometimes I'm the one putting up CotE, etc. I just don't feel like popping a glyph in there that may be useless for a lot (or even some) of the time. This may be a bad idea, but it makes sense in my head.
I really wish we got some new choices for minor glyphs. I keep looking at my DK ones and seeing how ridiculously useful they are (ghouls without dust, that's like a must have for any DK... why not demons without shards or something?). However, in the absence of good minor glyphs, the ones I have are situationally useful. I would still trade just about any of them in a heartbeat.
The Rotation
As you've probably heard for a while now, the Affliction rotation was greatly simplified in 3.1. Siphon Life was changed from a spell into a talent (update your macros!!), making its healing a side-effect of Corruption. Unstable Affliction and Immolate now occupy the same "slot" on mobs, meaning you have to choose between one or the other. Shadowbolting and Drain Souling were given some buffs to compensate for the removal of spells (as well as allowing Corr and UA crits). With all this in mind, and after some fiddling with a dummy, we now see a rotation that looks like this:
Corr > Haunt > Shadowbolt > UA > CoA > SB filler until refresh
As I've mentioned in the past, I put Corruption first to "set it and forget it". Normally this is done while positioning myself (thus I'm on the move and can't sit through the cast times for H and SB yet). For more complicated positioning I'll sometimes even put up my Curse early too, just to not waste that time. Other rotations may recommend leading off with H and SB to get your shadow's embrace effect up right away. That's fine, but you're not hurting anything by leading off with a couple instants as the subsequent ticks should be affected by the embrace (and the Haunt bonus) just the same (someone correct me if they know otherwise, that is how I understand the mechanic though).
This rotation is short enough that you will probably use the same idea on both bosses and trash (depending on length of life). For shorter living mobs, I'll leave off my curse first, then UA if its exceptionally short. Also, if I'm responsible for CotE, I try to put it up earlier in my rotation for the benefit of others, but if that throws you off, you can just sub it in for CoA. As I understand it, the curse of the elements mechanic is the same as Haunt and S-embrace (that is to say, they're not like a trinket which affects your base stats of spell power, etc, they are a percentage multiplier that affects each tick as long as they are active).
While we're on the topic of trinkets, lets look at that mechanic real quick. You should always pop your trinkets BEFORE casting your fist DoTs as trinkets modify the base stats (i.e. spell power) off which your DoT damage will be determined (how's the for alliteration?). In the same vein, the life tap glyph (and T7 bonus) operates like a trinket (as I understand it), thus it is a good idea to lead off with a life tap as well. Thus your baseline spell power will be at its highest before applied your DoTs (giving them the best possible ticks).
Currently, I macro any "poppable" trinkets to my Corruption key, so that when I lead off with Corr, it pops my trinket right before the cast (put the "use" function before the "cast" function and you should be fine). I actually don't think I have any poppable ones right now though. When I get hooked up with the Life Tap glyph, I plan on "leading off" with a quick tap before setting up my Dots to get the short spell power bonus. I may even switch my trinket bind to my life tap key (!), but I'm not that crazy yet.
As far as whether you should throw in a life tap EVERY rotation, I'm not so sure. Initially, I thought: Sure! I want to keep that bonus up. However, I've been since told that math has been done (I believe at EJ) to the tune that losing extra GCDs to unnecessary life taps offsets any bonus you gain by keeping that "trinket" popped. I don't personally have the information for it, and would invite any of my readers who do have the hard math to either let me know in comments or email as I'm sure there are a lot of interested warlocks.
As it stands, I plan to just life tap as usual (as needed) and enjoy the bonus when it comes, with the exception of leading off with a life tap immediately before a fight starts (thus no GCD is wasted because you did it before the fight), and trying to insert my necessary tapping right before refreshing any DoTs if I can help it.
Finally, whenever ANY mob is below 25% health, you want to replace your SB filler with drain soul ticks. Basically, when you get to the point your rotation where you would normally squeeze in a SB, you should pop on drain soul. I believe the ticks are between 2-3 seconds (depending on your haste), so it's almost a 1 tick for 1 shadowbolt trade (not quite, but close). And the damage! The reason we wait until 25% health is because that is the point where our talents improving the spell kick in. Thus, if my shadow bolt is CRITTING for 5k, I may see a NORMAL drain soul tick around 8-9K. That's 3k extra damage!
Obviously these numbers will change based on gear level, but the point is that draining takes the place of your shadow bolt spam because it just plain hits for more at that point per tick without sacrificing much time. Recall, however, that the damage is multiplied by the number of DoTs you have up, so you still want to keep all your DoTs up (and may want to toss a bolt in there in the normal spot of the rotation in order to keep SE up too), thus you will probably need to interrupt the spell with refresh casts (especially on longer living bosses). This is okay, just try to do it immediately following a tick. Look for the 9k monster numbers popping up for indication of a tick (depending on your UI setup, mine do the normal float-above-the-head thing).
Even with all this, the rotation ends up being easier in the long run since most of this stuff is what we'd be doing anyways. You still will want to throw in your night fall procs. You still want to avoid black holes of death. We're just watching fewer timers and having more time for filler and gathering our wits.
I didn't get to raid last night because our server was flaking out (so much so that I spent the night playing EVE instead because we got stuck in three different instances without being able to do much of anything). Therefore, I don't really have good test numbers yet, only what I've done in the environment and on dummies. Also, can someone who can access wowhead double check the tooltips for the two talents that modify drain soul? The lower tier one is soul siphon and the higher one is death's embrace, I believe. I thought I remembered reading that soul siphon kicked in at 35% health and am not sure about death's embrace. If so, we want to start drain souling at 35% and not 25% (as is popularly believed). I want to make sure I'm not telling everyone wrong here :-).
As always, feel free to leave me any questions or comments and I'll see what I can do. Tomorrow I plan to have the DK version of this marathon of information up.
All right, this is it. The big one. Everything you want to know about how to set up your Affliction warlockery in the 3.1 World...of Warcraft.
The Spec
(Edit: This spec was more of utility spec and I think a lot of people were wanting more of a raiding spec... that can be found here, as I have since revisted and cleaned up my spec for raid purposes)
First off, spec. The tree didn't get a full makeover, but it did get airbrushed quite a bit. My pre-3.1 spec was a bit messy too, as I'd been holding off for the patch to clean it up for raiding. As of Tuesday, though, its here! So, after much thought, I'm running a 61/0/10 spec. Here is the work-friendly pic of that spec (wowhead was a bit messy, so my destro stuff got a bit clipped, I think it works though):
62/0/10
I didn't take the Amp'd Curse route or Recklessness, they're just not worth the points, imo. I also am not concerned about push back (especially with the new limit of 2 pushbacks per cast if you're getting hit), in a raid environment, I shouldn't get hit very much. Thus, not really worth the points either.
I'm still choosing to make up 3% spell hit with my talent choice. I've always felt it is better to spend the points here, get capped earlier, and then work on stacking spell power and other good stats instead of wasting time trying to find an excessive amount of hit, especially since it comes with a bonus mana-reduction (though that's not really a big deal). As I get better and better gear, the hit may come naturally, but I've shimmied it down in my stat priorities after capping in order to stack other stats and open up more gear choices.
I basically specced up to get haunt, getting all the talents that I felt improved the spells I planned to use in my rotation along the way, and then spent ten points in the destro tree before filling up my "optional" affliction talents. The ten points spent in destro are directly applicable to my shadowbolts, which are a must in the new rotation. Other than that, though, I didn't feel the urge to go any deeper into destro. Thus, I was sitting with some extra points on my hands.
I wanted to get my instant howl of terror because I feel safer with it, so I spent two points there. I popped one point in improved fear to be able to proc the nightmare slowing effect should I need to use fear. I picked up Demonic Pact because there are just some fights when I feel life tapping puts undue strain on my healers, or I'm just taking a lot of AoE damage and don't want to have to make a choice between dieing or being OOM. Perhaps it is because I don't manage my rotations well enough, but I've always just found it comforting to have.
At this point, I had one point left, so I slapped it in Improved Life Tap because I didn't really feel like putting it anywhere else. This is probably a questionable move since I ran without the talent before and never had issues. Plus, when I'm able to get the glyph (and maybe the T7 bonus too), extra life tapping isn't completely bad. Still, I think numbers have been shown that less life tapping is still better for your DPS. More on that in a moment.
Thus, I had 5 points that I would call "optional" for a raiding affliction 'lock. I think the other talents are all well worth the points, though I may be wrong. This is certainly the spec that fits my playstyle, and hopefully can at least get you started on your own. I'm definitely open for constructive criticism :-).
The Glyphs
Moving on to Glyphs, here is what I'm shooting for:
I'm still choosing to make up 3% spell hit with my talent choice. I've always felt it is better to spend the points here, get capped earlier, and then work on stacking spell power and other good stats instead of wasting time trying to find an excessive amount of hit, especially since it comes with a bonus mana-reduction (though that's not really a big deal). As I get better and better gear, the hit may come naturally, but I've shimmied it down in my stat priorities after capping in order to stack other stats and open up more gear choices.
I basically specced up to get haunt, getting all the talents that I felt improved the spells I planned to use in my rotation along the way, and then spent ten points in the destro tree before filling up my "optional" affliction talents. The ten points spent in destro are directly applicable to my shadowbolts, which are a must in the new rotation. Other than that, though, I didn't feel the urge to go any deeper into destro. Thus, I was sitting with some extra points on my hands.
I wanted to get my instant howl of terror because I feel safer with it, so I spent two points there. I popped one point in improved fear to be able to proc the nightmare slowing effect should I need to use fear. I picked up Demonic Pact because there are just some fights when I feel life tapping puts undue strain on my healers, or I'm just taking a lot of AoE damage and don't want to have to make a choice between dieing or being OOM. Perhaps it is because I don't manage my rotations well enough, but I've always just found it comforting to have.
At this point, I had one point left, so I slapped it in Improved Life Tap because I didn't really feel like putting it anywhere else. This is probably a questionable move since I ran without the talent before and never had issues. Plus, when I'm able to get the glyph (and maybe the T7 bonus too), extra life tapping isn't completely bad. Still, I think numbers have been shown that less life tapping is still better for your DPS. More on that in a moment.
Thus, I had 5 points that I would call "optional" for a raiding affliction 'lock. I think the other talents are all well worth the points, though I may be wrong. This is certainly the spec that fits my playstyle, and hopefully can at least get you started on your own. I'm definitely open for constructive criticism :-).
The Glyphs
Moving on to Glyphs, here is what I'm shooting for:
Out with the old, in with the new.
I currently have Corrpution, Drain Soul, Souls, and UB... as well as Siphon Life and Shadowbolt. Obviously I'm going to get rid of those last two in favor of the new ones as soon as I can. I will likely not use the Curse of Agony glyph because I always want to choose glyphs that I will get the most use out of. Curses are really my lowest priority spell (except in terms of making sure not to clip and such when it is up). I don't use them on trash a lot of times because it dies too fast, and on bosses, sometimes I'm the one putting up CotE, etc. I just don't feel like popping a glyph in there that may be useless for a lot (or even some) of the time. This may be a bad idea, but it makes sense in my head.
I really wish we got some new choices for minor glyphs. I keep looking at my DK ones and seeing how ridiculously useful they are (ghouls without dust, that's like a must have for any DK... why not demons without shards or something?). However, in the absence of good minor glyphs, the ones I have are situationally useful. I would still trade just about any of them in a heartbeat.
The Rotation
As you've probably heard for a while now, the Affliction rotation was greatly simplified in 3.1. Siphon Life was changed from a spell into a talent (update your macros!!), making its healing a side-effect of Corruption. Unstable Affliction and Immolate now occupy the same "slot" on mobs, meaning you have to choose between one or the other. Shadowbolting and Drain Souling were given some buffs to compensate for the removal of spells (as well as allowing Corr and UA crits). With all this in mind, and after some fiddling with a dummy, we now see a rotation that looks like this:
Corr > Haunt > Shadowbolt > UA > CoA > SB filler until refresh
As I've mentioned in the past, I put Corruption first to "set it and forget it". Normally this is done while positioning myself (thus I'm on the move and can't sit through the cast times for H and SB yet). For more complicated positioning I'll sometimes even put up my Curse early too, just to not waste that time. Other rotations may recommend leading off with H and SB to get your shadow's embrace effect up right away. That's fine, but you're not hurting anything by leading off with a couple instants as the subsequent ticks should be affected by the embrace (and the Haunt bonus) just the same (someone correct me if they know otherwise, that is how I understand the mechanic though).
This rotation is short enough that you will probably use the same idea on both bosses and trash (depending on length of life). For shorter living mobs, I'll leave off my curse first, then UA if its exceptionally short. Also, if I'm responsible for CotE, I try to put it up earlier in my rotation for the benefit of others, but if that throws you off, you can just sub it in for CoA. As I understand it, the curse of the elements mechanic is the same as Haunt and S-embrace (that is to say, they're not like a trinket which affects your base stats of spell power, etc, they are a percentage multiplier that affects each tick as long as they are active).
While we're on the topic of trinkets, lets look at that mechanic real quick. You should always pop your trinkets BEFORE casting your fist DoTs as trinkets modify the base stats (i.e. spell power) off which your DoT damage will be determined (how's the for alliteration?). In the same vein, the life tap glyph (and T7 bonus) operates like a trinket (as I understand it), thus it is a good idea to lead off with a life tap as well. Thus your baseline spell power will be at its highest before applied your DoTs (giving them the best possible ticks).
Currently, I macro any "poppable" trinkets to my Corruption key, so that when I lead off with Corr, it pops my trinket right before the cast (put the "use" function before the "cast" function and you should be fine). I actually don't think I have any poppable ones right now though. When I get hooked up with the Life Tap glyph, I plan on "leading off" with a quick tap before setting up my Dots to get the short spell power bonus. I may even switch my trinket bind to my life tap key (!), but I'm not that crazy yet.
As far as whether you should throw in a life tap EVERY rotation, I'm not so sure. Initially, I thought: Sure! I want to keep that bonus up. However, I've been since told that math has been done (I believe at EJ) to the tune that losing extra GCDs to unnecessary life taps offsets any bonus you gain by keeping that "trinket" popped. I don't personally have the information for it, and would invite any of my readers who do have the hard math to either let me know in comments or email as I'm sure there are a lot of interested warlocks.
As it stands, I plan to just life tap as usual (as needed) and enjoy the bonus when it comes, with the exception of leading off with a life tap immediately before a fight starts (thus no GCD is wasted because you did it before the fight), and trying to insert my necessary tapping right before refreshing any DoTs if I can help it.
Finally, whenever ANY mob is below 25% health, you want to replace your SB filler with drain soul ticks. Basically, when you get to the point your rotation where you would normally squeeze in a SB, you should pop on drain soul. I believe the ticks are between 2-3 seconds (depending on your haste), so it's almost a 1 tick for 1 shadowbolt trade (not quite, but close). And the damage! The reason we wait until 25% health is because that is the point where our talents improving the spell kick in. Thus, if my shadow bolt is CRITTING for 5k, I may see a NORMAL drain soul tick around 8-9K. That's 3k extra damage!
Obviously these numbers will change based on gear level, but the point is that draining takes the place of your shadow bolt spam because it just plain hits for more at that point per tick without sacrificing much time. Recall, however, that the damage is multiplied by the number of DoTs you have up, so you still want to keep all your DoTs up (and may want to toss a bolt in there in the normal spot of the rotation in order to keep SE up too), thus you will probably need to interrupt the spell with refresh casts (especially on longer living bosses). This is okay, just try to do it immediately following a tick. Look for the 9k monster numbers popping up for indication of a tick (depending on your UI setup, mine do the normal float-above-the-head thing).
Even with all this, the rotation ends up being easier in the long run since most of this stuff is what we'd be doing anyways. You still will want to throw in your night fall procs. You still want to avoid black holes of death. We're just watching fewer timers and having more time for filler and gathering our wits.
I didn't get to raid last night because our server was flaking out (so much so that I spent the night playing EVE instead because we got stuck in three different instances without being able to do much of anything). Therefore, I don't really have good test numbers yet, only what I've done in the environment and on dummies. Also, can someone who can access wowhead double check the tooltips for the two talents that modify drain soul? The lower tier one is soul siphon and the higher one is death's embrace, I believe. I thought I remembered reading that soul siphon kicked in at 35% health and am not sure about death's embrace. If so, we want to start drain souling at 35% and not 25% (as is popularly believed). I want to make sure I'm not telling everyone wrong here :-).
As always, feel free to leave me any questions or comments and I'll see what I can do. Tomorrow I plan to have the DK version of this marathon of information up.
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