Hey guys. I am pretty noobish and my DPS in Heroics is consistently subpar. I am Affliction and just reforged today to add as much Hit as possible. (may not yet show in armory) I am expecting a DPS increase since i went from +2.86% to around +9% Hit. I plan to reach the 17% cap ASAP. That said, I still find it hard to keep my DPS up. I have been a point and clicker but really want an efficient and easy way to transition to macros and key-bindings. (Hence why I'm here)

I have been doing my best to follow the spell rotation suggestion for Affliction warlocks:

CoE
ISF
Haunt
BoA
Corruption
UA

SB and refresh haunt and UA till target is under 25% and switch to Drain Soul.

(I have Improved Lash of Pain and keep my Succy on auto)

Okay. That said, I have a few specific questions:

Is it mandatory to refresh the SF buff even without an instant cast from Soul Burn? Does the haste buff really outweigh the time it takes to cast a Soul Fire? (Do I even need to worry about this since they are supposedly making that buff out of reach in next patch)

Does anyone have any macros they use to simplify the above rotation? (Please, I have very limited experience with macros so a copy/paste macro will be greatly appreciated)

Is there anything I am missing other than popping the buff (forget the name) that varies depending on the pet and my 10 min CD Minions?

What do you guys use on trash mobs that will die too quickly for your DOTS to do any real DPS? Shadow-bolts?

Is my DPS looking worse then it really is because up till now I really allow others to kill the trash since my DOTS are not effective?

Thanks in advance!

I guess this explains why Rawr is consistently showing that through optimization, it's better for me to have more haste than crit as a fire mage? Self-buffed these are my stats:

Crit: %25.45
Haste: %7.56 (968)
Mastery: %10.99


I thought it a bit strange at first, it's optimizing to have 3% more haste with a little more mastery vs having a little more than 2% crit. I guess it makes sense since the value of crit and haste is nearly identical.

With the buff to arcane shot and the nerf to explosive shot, will explosive shot be worth it to use? Seems like arcane shot will be better dps/focus. Thanks!

@Azazel12

Improved SF is huge. The reason it is huge is because it more than likely is going to provide you with additional DoT ticks for each DoT cast. It effectively raises your dps quite well. Hard casting it is something you have to do if you want higher dps.

For trash in heroics I just put up UA and Corruption because if it ticks twice chances are that that damage is equal to a Shadow Bolt. Make frequent use of Soul Swap and glyph for it. This allows you to put BoA on a couple mobs where it will do some nice damage overall.

Demon Soul is important. I have it macro'd to either SB or Drain Soul depending on the part of the fight I need to be using it for. I have my Succubus up >25% on a boss and instant summon a Felhunter for <25% when I have demon soul off cooldown.

Macros I use are typically like:

#showtooltip
/cast Demon Soul
/cast Shadow Bolt

It's simple, and it makes me use Demon Soul because otherwise I'd probably forget it half the time. Another one I use from time to time is:

#showtooltip Soul Fire
/cast Soulburn
/cast Soul Fire

That makes it so I push one button and have my instant cast SF. It's not hard to make cast macros, so just mix and match what you want to cast.

For Prot Paladins in Cata, how many points of dodge = 1% dodge? The compendium states that there is 304.5 Agi per 1% dodge, and that dodge remained unchanged. The compendium does not state the x dodge = 1% dodge.

We should have a patch soon (probably next week) and the incoming Sudden Doom change will kill dual wielding for unholy. You'll probably do more damage right now as dual wield because of the higher ilvl 1H weapons you have, but it would be a very short term gain.

As for your question on the rotation, check out the first post in this thread.

Has anyone worked out or seen a post anywhere with some math behind how the new mastery stat will weigh compared to haste and crit come patch 4.0.6?

Well I have been a bit busy and have not posted here in like a month, but anyhow; I started reforging out of Spi a couple weeks back and have not had an issue yet. 4pc helps though but is not needed depending on your gear/healing style. I'm currently getting an average uptime of 50% on my 4pc bonus. It is quite possible to have a much higher uptime, but I haven't needed to concern myself with that much. Primarily I try to proc it right before or during a Tide along with my Spi trinket. Also monitoring your rapture CD is very beneficial as I'm sure you are aware. I'm using Ingela's Rapture to track my rapture CD and make sure I get the most out of it.

Lining up rapture/fiend with Power torrent also helps. I have a couple Power Auras that prompt me to use Fiend if Power Torrent procs and I am sub 70% mana and fiend is not on CD. With another to prompt a Fiend/Hymn combo if I am sub 15% mana and PT is up and SF is off CD. Now I don't strictly adhere to these prompts when utilizing my mana CDs. They are just to inform me of optimal usage as available. I would assume if you were forging away from Spi that you would be using PT over HS anyway for your weap chant.

Thus far I have yet to encounter any serious mana issues in any heroic 25 man content so far. I just about never use Inner Will either.

Here is a log of our last 25H Maloriak. 10m21s encounter lenght. As you can clearly see I was not carried in any regard nor did I have any healing luls that would indicate going OOM. Just the one at 23:02:28 when I was Flash Frozen and then 23:03:38 while I Cast Mind Sear on Aberattions during Green phase. I used PW:S pretty consistently as well as PoH with lots of smites between. Mainly on dark phase adds as it is extremely helpful in getting them down while keeping the lowest melee and demo locks from dying to sludge. With good rapture management I ended up gaining 216k+ from that alone which was more than all other sources combined. (213k+ from 2x Fiends, Hymn, 4x Archangel, Conc Pot w/ Alch trink and replinishment.) Of course if you subtract the cost of the shields from that its only a net gain of 135,494 from rapture. Still far above any other single source of mana gain.

IMHO if you can sustain it with your playstyle and your guild's healing needs then it is surely viable. I do not run 10 man much, but just from the BH 10 I did today I would guess it is not as good for 10 as for 25. But that depends upon your comp. I just ran a pug and was just about solo healing it so yeah.

Last time I checked, tailoring enchant was for cloak, not pants.

Hey i read this thread the tips are great but when i tryed this in a raid i felt stupid since i didn't even top 5k dps :/ and at 85 that's real embarasing since level 81's top that xD

I use Forte - it does a bit more than dot tracking, but it does help significantly with that. And it can be set up to include ISF timers. But it's not as useful, imo, as Power Auras. It just gives you better timers, so I'd use both. It also tracks dots on multiple mobs, as well as tracking your own cc's (and, really, any other spell you cast).

But I've had trouble with PowerAuras; it seems (last time I looked) to be borked (maybe just not compatible with another addon on my computer, or with my computer in general).. newest one I saw was updated pre-Cata (4.03a), which is they one that doesn't work. I saw another addon recently called WeakAuras, but I haven't tried it yet. Anyone have any suggestions? Should I try PowerAuras again? Maybe some config files got corrupted or something.

@Chaley
Does the Felpup provide that significant of a damage boost <25%? I'd think the raid-buffed Succubus would beat the Unbuffed Felpup.

Doesn't seem to me like Soul Fire should be linked to Soulburn like that - there's too many times where you might want to save the shard for a more important time, yes/no? Take Conclave; I usually use my Souburn as I'm landing so I can insta-SF the boss (assuming it falls off during the flight); during other bosses you may want to save it for BL or movement phases.

Demon Soul, I have macro'd to Shadowbolt.