Evil Is In My Genes

Recently, my cousin (who also plays an affliction 'lock) asked me a good question about my spec. Why did I avoid points in "Improved Shadow Bolt"? Here was my response:

That’s a good question. First, lets make sure we understand what that talent is doing: 2% damage increase each time a s-bolt crits, stacking up to 4 times. Now, as an affliction lock, I don’t really stack crit on my gear. Although, with the addition of “Pandemic”, crit takes on a little more significance in DPS (before DoTs couldn’t crit). Even so, I have my doubts about how effective this is. Not to say it isn't a great change, but I just wonder how effective it will make stacking crit vs. stacking any other attributes.

So, if it IS worth it, what points would I sacrifice for this "Improved Shadow Bolt"? I choose Bane over it because obviously more s-bolts means better DPS. If you want to sacrifice the improved fear or improved Howl of Terror, which I took for utility, you could justify putting those points here. However, you could also justify putting them in improved imp or demonic embrace too, depending on what’s important to you. Those all depend a whole lot on how you itemize your gear. If you’re like me and go for hit (until capped) > spellpower >> stam/crit/int/spirit (spirit has some use now too!), then I would question how much use it’ll be in bumping your DPS, as my crit rating just sort of "happens" with my gear choices.

Also, if you’ve picked up haunt, reliance on s-bolt spam has been greatly reduced. Formerly, we were seeing about 50% of our damage coming from bolts, but that is almost cut in half with the new spell rotation and skills. In my recent Kara raid, I found that I’m shooting only 1 or 2 bolts before refreshing dots, if I'm quick about it. The new rotation really keeps you on your toes and I love it; less s-bolt spam! It’s actually difficult sometimes to squeeze a bolt in before having to refresh haunt, etc.

Additionally, I was almost always using the bolt as a “finishing” move (right before it died). So, even if it did crit, I wouldn’t see a whole lot of benefit from that skill point anyways. Also, the Death’s Embrace skill already increases your damage when the mob is near death, so, similar to soul siphon, it’s probably made up for. I would guess this is very play style dependant though, but that’s my 2 cents.

I stand by my reasoning here until proven otherwise :-). I find, in speccing, there are a lot of talent points that are "no duh's". Therefore, the real thinking comes when looking at those talent points that are "on the fence". What are you finding it difficult to choose between?

Shout Out: Malsorian

One of the good Affliction blogs that I try to keep up on is by Malsorian. His latest post on Glyphs is a great summary, IMO. Check it out.

My only comment is that I might want to try and switch the Glyph of Unstable Affliction for the Healthstone Glyph. I find that even if I get a chance to pop my Healthstone, the mob killing me is probably going to two/three shot my squishy butt anyways, and I don't know if 30% more health would help or not. A good question would be: does this transfer with your stone to other players? I'm guessing no.

Quicker UA = More shadow bolts I would think, which would mean higher DPS. I'll have to give a try to see if I likey though.

Also, for the minor glyphs, I really wanna try the Unending Breath Glyph since I'm always annoyed at how slow it is to swim. It might just be fun to have, but probably only situationally useful at best.

I Only Have So Many Fingers

Okay, as promised, here are my thoughts on spell rotations.

First of all, I must point out that I am not always a maximizer. What I look for in a spell rotation can be summed up in one word: practicality. That is to say, I don't want to have to push 20 different buttons or be so scattered-brained that I'm losing track of things. I'm a heavy macro user (being a software engineer), so I look for a spell rotation that I can condense into one button. I like having many of my other spells available without having to switch bars or do crazy stuff while raiding. Usually I try to work it so I have one button that applies my Dots in a certain order, then I use a few modifiers so I can start at different places in that rotation. For instance, holding "alt" while using my DoT button skips the curse in my rotation (in case I want to choose a different one). Thus, I will have to play around with rotations for a bit to get a feel for where I might need to put these "shortcuts" in order to minimize DoT downtime.

That being said, I put my stats into the calculator over at MaxDPS and here is what it kicked out:

As you can see, I normally do not use immolate. I haven't used immolate for some time now because, prior to the patch, I had a heavy stacking of shadow damage and couldn't really justify throwing a fire spell in there. I may need to re-evaluate that choice, but since fire seems to be more of a destro 'lock's bag, I'm going to pass for now. So this sequence is what I put into my /castsequence macro (I'll do a proper posting on macros sometime in the future too).

In a raid environment, this cycle worked well for me. On trash, I tend to shorten it up and just do Haunt, CoA, and Corr. Then finish off with some s-bolts. This heavily depends on how quickly something is dying. If its real quick, I'll go straight to the bolts. If not, then maybe another DoT or two. You just have to feel it out.

For bosses, I find this rotation particularly fun, if a little bit challenging. As we all know, a HUGE warlock no-no is to refresh CoA before it finishes its last tick. If you do that, you're wasting a lot of damage because the curse ramps up as it goes, with the last tick accounting for a sizeable chunk of damage. Thus, how can I "one-button" this sequence without committing that faux paux?

As I was fighting the bosses in kara, I was trying to time up my rotation so as not to cut off CoA. It seems that since CoA is longer than Haunt, you will need to refresh Haunt about midway through the course of CoA. What I found that works well is to go through an entire sequence first, filling up the end with shadow bolts until Haunt runs out. Then refreshing Haunt, and s-bolt spamming until CoA runs out. After that, I quickly refresh the others, for two full DoT rotations with one button. This may result in a little Corruption down time, so I'll need to fix that (may be a good place for an interrupt). I will probably just put Corr, UA, and Siphon life on my "alt" alternative so that I can refresh those as I need to. I also my place a click-able Haunt only button somewhere on my screen, since it seems a good idea to keep that up at all times. Keep in mind that early refreshing the other DoTs does not affect their DPS, but only decreases your mana-efficiency. Since I don't seem to have a problem with mana on most fights, I usually sacrifice that a bit in order to make sure all DoTs are kept up.

For boss fights that last longer than two full cycles (most of them), I just need to click off to reset my macro. This is easily done in the shadow bolt spam phase, since shadow bolts have their own key for me. Thus, this lends itself well to repetitive application. I've found that this rotation is a bit more challenging than what I had prior to the patch without Haunt. It results in needed to use my "shortcuts" a lot more. It also really cuts down on the number of s-bolts I have time to fit in, which isn't really a bad thing. As I said, it seems like with the changes, affliction warlocks are becoming less-reliant on s-bolt spam as a main source of DPS. With my DoTs accounting for 75% of my damage done and my DPS increasing since the patch, I think the talent changes support aff'locks becoming more DoT-centric. Of this, I most definitely approve.

Obviously, my rotation is still a work in progress, but I wanted to share my findings so far in case it helps. Let me know what works for you. I'm sure a lot of this depends on what is important in your playstyle. Oh, and happy 'locking!

/rant on

Blizz, I promise to view your beautiful loading screen art often over the next few months. You don't need to get your quota in ALL IN ONE DAY. Thank you, that is all.

/rant off

And all I wanted to do was run some quick dailies and I got stuck on this screen for at least a half hour :-(.

Breezy Kara

I ran Kara last night with guildies, and 3.5 hours later... we ran out of bosses. It started slowly at first. With everyone's addons being kaput, we were pretty much flying blind. But, then we just got in "the zone" and were downing mobs and bosses left and right. I'll be honest, we were completely careless. For instance, we pulled Curator while in the middle of killing some of those mana-feeders. Talk about chaos, we had mana-feeders and sparks flying everywhere. Somehow, no wipe, and one very dead Curator later... we were amazed. It felt like almost every class had been buffed across the board. I mean, I know they nerfed Kara boss health and melee power, but we were still seeing higher DPS numbers, better aggro generation (especially my lovely pally companion), and bigger healz.

As a lock, I was extremely out of my element. I used to rely on necrosis for a lot of things, and it is now borked. I got the addon "Dominos" (which I highly recommend if you like such things) and just kinda added stuff on the fly. I will make another post about the spell rotation I settled on soon, but suffice it to say I was almost giddy with noobishness. That is to say, I was just throwing spells left and right and not really worrying about what was "best" or what fit together well. I marveled at the wonderful new animations for our spells! Yay for no more boring faux lightning for drains! A quick view of recount showed me doing on average about 100 more DPS?! How could this be? I hadn't even settled on a spell rotation yet? All I can figure is the love shown to the Affliction tree is definitely paying off.

I got to play a little with the fear mechanism when I was asked to chain fear Roar for our Opera performance. I'm not going to say I'm sold, but the speed reduction was definitely nice when you have a big kitty running across the stage waiting to two shot you into the nether.

I also am in love with Haunt. Being able to shoot a spirit that flies into a mob and then returns with his health 12 seconds later is just plain fun, and why I love being a warlock. I also hardly life tapped or dark pacted. I felt very mana efficient, and when I felt a longing to tap, doing so right before Haunt returns is perfect. It's like cheating when you're 100%, tap, and still 100% but with more mana than before.

Like I said, I will post more about spell rotations, but I really noticed an absence of pure shadow bolt spam. Whereas before, s-bolts could almost account for 50% of our damage, it was almost halved on this run, with bolts only accounting for about 25% of my damage done. I often found it hard to squeeze more than a bolt or two into my DoT rotation. Of this, I approve. GG Bliz, yay more than one finger 'locking!

The only downside to last night was the mess that my UI is in. This is another item I need to work up a post on soon: addons. Right now I'm just feeling out what is working and what I can get away with. The loss of necrosis hurts, but I believe the only things I'll really miss are the friendly warnings for SS and Shadow Trance, as well as the shard manager. I'm sure I can get that stuff elsewhere. All the other buttons I can fabricate with Dominos and key bindings.

Oh, and I had always wanted to use my felhunter even before they buffed it in the patch. I have just always enjoyed the utility of it. Now, I have good reason to. The raid wide buff is nice, and I think they tweaked the AI of the pets some, as my puppy seemed much more well behaved. He seemed to "know" when to attack and when to stay without me having to order him around so much. I will have to do more expericrafting and wowreading about this some time, 'cause it could just be me, but maybe Felpup FTW? Also, if you have two locks, it may be great to have one with an Imp and one with the Felpup to get the "good stuff".

Look for less rambling posts soon on topics such as the following:
-Insane or Insightful: A revisit of why I left out some of the talent points I did.
-State of the UI: Why I'm addicted to addons.
-Spellstones: Worth paying attention to?!
-Spell Rotations and You: Digital Limitations Included.

Out on a Limb

I wanted to make a quick post about the build I'm choosing to get me to the build I want at 80 and why. This will be the short version, since now that the servers are up, I want to go actually implement it:

Here is my Build at 70:


I tried to get all the heavy hitters for PvE to raid and level without having to respec a bunch. I'm going to steer clear of Amplify Curse and CoEx, because I just don't think they're worth the points. Same with Frailty. I can't see them being all that useful for a PvE raiding/leveling spec. I also passed on Soul Siphon, because I feel that I only use my Drains when either I'm close to dying or the mob is. The new Death's Embrace gives a nice buff to these situations, so I'm guessing that any loss I would feel would be mitigated by this, plus its going to give you a better DPS number in the long run. I passed on Malediction for now because I don't find myself using CotE very much for various reasons. If this is something you use a lot for your raiding, you may want this right now. I plan on getting it on my way to 80. Its the same story with Shadow's Embrace. Its good, just not THAT good. I also didn't fill up Eradication of Fel Concentration, which totals up to the 10 points that separate 70 from 80.

I probably don't need the improved Fear, I just wanted to try it out as I'm often called on to chain Fear mobs, and it looked fun. Those points could probably be better spent filling one of the above. Same with improved Howl of Terror. Those are just the crutches I fall back on when solo'ing. I must point out that when I level, I have a static Pally with me in Fuubaar. This means I don't do a whole lot of solo'ing and she is my personal tank. That makes my decisions a little different than those of you who plan to solo to 80. Keep that in mind, but I still like to have my Fears.

I take one point in Improved Healthstone because I like to be the "odd one". Usually this means my raid can have two stones. This would probably depend a lot on your personal situation. (Edit: I plan on either dropping this point or filling the talent up as the one stone per point rule is no longer in effect. Post patch 3.X, you can only have one stone, period. Thus, this is not really valid anymore.)

I find it very nice that they moved Bane up to Tier 1... thus I'm only spending those 5 points in the Destro tree. Everything seems geared to fire, and I don't do that. Although, to be fair, with all the gear being redone, my spellpower is consistent across all of the types of magic. Before, I was far to Shadow heavy to justify using Fire spells.

All in all, I'm very happy with the love they've shown to the Affliction tree, and I can't wait to try this out. More on spell rotations and stuff later when I have a chance to play with it. My guild is going to try and raid Kara tonight if we can get enough people on to the server at one time and not have everything borked in five minutes.

I'm shooting for a final build at 80 of:

Beginnings: Much Ado About Me

Mission Statement (because every decent project must have a focus): To create an Affliction Warlocky blog for the information and entertainment of others.

Why?
Let me see. First, I enjoy writing [typing] and feel like trying my hand at this whole public blog business (I’ve had a personal online journal for some years now). Second, when I am home, I like to play. This leaves downtime at work to do most of my wowsearching and wowreading. My work adores censorship, therefore anything remotely related to WoW and gaming is blocked, except for blogs (don’t ask me why). In any case, I have noticed a distinct lack of active warlocky blogs that focus specifically on the affliction play style. That isn’t to say there aren’t any very good ones out there (there are and I shall link them early and often), but that I normally feel there are things I want to say as well. Finally, there are a handful of people who seem to ask me about being a Warlock and the theorycrafting that goes with it. I’m not claiming to be an expert, but if I’m going to be doing wowsearching and wowreading and wowcommenting and wowthinking, I might as well wowpublish some of it to get feedback and hopefully generate some good thought and discussion about my class of choice. I plan to focus on affliction warlocking mainly, discussing such things such spell rotations, macros, and specs in relation to WotLK and beyond.

Disclaimer (because every good thing has one):
1. I may discuss other things for reasons known mostly to me, but I do so with the intent of fulfilling said mission of this blog. That is, I shall focus on warlocky things, but may stray to other topics as they come up. Do not be concerned, I have medicine for this and it helps.
2. I will try to post 2-3 times per week, but the common misconception about gamers is that we have no life. That is just not the case as y’all know. More on that later.
3. Please maintain a level of respect on here. If you must be mean, I may or may not allow your comments to remain in my realm. With that said, please please please comment on things I get wrong or mess up. My goal is to help, not mislead or pass my word for truth. I try the best I can to understand my class, but not at the expense of fun. Fun has to come first. Fun for me is playing my best, so help me out and maybe we’ll all learn something.
4. I’m going to try to start with discussing things happening now. I was a late comer in TBC and a lot of really smart people covered a lot of it. With WotLK, I feel there is an opportunity to contribute to the wonderful WoW blogging community that I enjoy on a daily basis. Therefore, don’t look to me for TBC expertise, I can only point you to the places I looked.

About me (Fulguralis): I have a Fuubaar. She got me into this mess called “MMORPGs” and is my partner in crime. We are both twenty-somethings that are college educated and trying to build a RL while enjoying our shared hobby. Our MMO roots are in FFXI, but have seen us in many other online games. Apart from that, we play “normal” games as well. Who isn’t up for a good FPS or RTS game now and then? We’re also getting married soon… ding! She happens to be the Light to my Dark and plays a Pally. That may come into play on here. Also, in RL I’m an Engineer, which means I like to think a lot about game mechanics and design. However, I will try not to bore too much with those musings. My goal is to bring some humor and fun to the blogosphere while providing some good information about warlocky things. You can find me burning down mobs on the Lothar server as an Officer in the guild Generations. That is all for now, but I’m sure we’ll get to know each other more as we go along.

-Fulguralis