Data from WoWCombatLog.txt:

00.000 Corruption applied
02.954 Corruption ticks
06.204 Corruption ticks
07.610 Haunt hits
07.985 Corruption refreshed
08.907 Corruption ticks
12.204 Corruption ticks
15.172 Corruption ticks
18.110 Corruption ticks
21.172 Corruption ticks
24.235 Corruption ticks
24.235 Corruption dissipates

I know I skipped Malediction and Eradication... mainly because there were things I didn't want to give up, like the extra reach in Destruction... and there were things I wanted at the bottom of the new Affliction tree like Death Embrace.... Felt silly choosing improved CoA, and Malediction, with the almost guarantee I would never get to use CoA since I would always be asked to do CoS/CoE... spent the length of BC watching other locks spam CoD and CoA on everything I kind of wanted to make a change and let someone else pick Malediction up so I could actually throw a damage causing curse instead....:-(

Thanks, that is the behavior I know from lacerate on life so it probably uses the same mechanic. I guess for the corruption refresh it does not matter much due to the haunt cooldown (and losing the stack on lacerate is far more annoying when the debuff timer still shows 2s).

While I'm sure some monkey will be thrown into the gears before 3.0 hits, currently even with the haste and crit on the T6.5 gear, is affliction still coming out ahead? And the other question I have is, with the lack of spirit on our gear will the current warlock Dps be taking a hit or does the gained damage from aff/destro counter it?

Also...the 10 points less seems to kinda be problematic as either you shuck 10 from affliction or destro cutting out the ruin...that doesnt seem to be quite the good idea.

Is there any hard data on how much dps immolate aura adds? The theorycraft I have seen puts it at anywhere from 700dps-900dps. I did some napkin math using the numbers from the simulationcraft demo lock

2200 spell damage + 290(totem of wrath) + 170(Demonic Knowledge....guess on my part) + 80(flask of pure death) + 471( Fel armor with demonic aegies)

Total Spell Damage: 3211
Base damage of IA : 451

451 * 15 = 6765
6765 + 3211 = 9976
9976* 1.35( 20% increase from Metamorphisis, 5% from Felguard, 10% from molten core) = 13467.6 (total damage)
13467.6 / 15 = 897.84 dps

does this seem right? And if it is, is 900dps enough to make it worth the effort?

SO, with all the great info and theorycrafting floating around, what exactly are the current "best builds" for destruction and Affliction? Has anyone come up with specific casting rotations for either one yet, keeping in mind that affliction is just going to be refresh the dots when they go down and keep haunt up?

Quite different results from what I've obtained on the PTR using a 56/00/05 build. Myself, a Moonkin, and a Fire/Frost Mage, all similarly geared (T6/Sunwell) ran 15 rounds on Dr. Boom this morning, with no other players present. We were all flasked, food buffed, and wizard oiled up.

My absolute best cycle saw 2450dps, with a low 2020dps. Average over the 15 cycles was 2273dps. Felhunter was present, but passive. Those numbers looked real nice on their own, but the Moonkin and Mage were posting ridiculous numbers, with the Mage cracking 2700dps on three occasions. The Moonkin was frequently over 2500dps.

My normal rotation was <Hex Shrunken Head>, Haunt, Corr, UA, Agony, Immo, SL, SB, refresh Haunt, then the long cycle of refreshing as needed with priority always going to Haunt, SB fillers, and popping <Skull of Guldan> when I saw a long road of SBs ahead of me. I was always a great Affliction player, so I'm confident I'm on top of my DoTs and prioritizing correctly.

What I saw from the Moonkin and Mage was a little disheartening, to say the least ...

EDIT : Latest version of Recount was used as our damage meter.

That dps difference could be at least partly attributable to Pandemic not scaling with the mage spellcrit debuff. At least I'm fairly sure that's the case. Trying to get hold of Dr boom with and without a mage around is quite difficult to get some proper testing done.

Hold on, so you use Haunt first? Ive always thought you put it after you have placed the dots... Maybe thats why im sucking so hard DPS wise.


So HAUNT first then?

Using haunt first allows more dots to be affected by the haunt effect for a longer period of time, and also utilizes the GCD better (Cast time --> instant --> cast time --> instant --> cast time --> instant).

I cut Immo out of my rotation (at 70, beta), and it seemed to give me a minor DPS increase (since Immo doesn't scale with all our affliction abilities), but that might be just due to player skill

In addition to casting Haunt before dots, I'd also actually suggest opening with a shadowbolt as well.

This way you have the full 2 stack of shadow embrace on the target.


With immolate, it may or may not be worth casting at 70, but at 80, I'd wager putting points into molten core would make immolate a nice dps increase. I'll be taking 3 points out of imp isb to get molten core. With all the dots and shadow spells, it pretty much has 100% uptime from what i've seen on the beta.

According to the mage threads, partial resists now come in multiples of 10%, not multiples of 25%. As far as I am aware, average damage reduction against a +3, much less an arbitrary target, has yet to be found.

This wasn't a planned "outting" between the three of us, just something that came together happen chance. I was testing a lvl70 Affliction build for the ~2wks of 3.0 raiding. I think in that setting, with a moonkin/mage, Destro would have certainly had a chance to shine. However, I haven't been able to break 1600dps on a target dummy with a lvl70 raid-spec Destro build, so the likelihood that those group buffs would magically unearth 800dps seems far off. Although I must admit, the new Destro has at no point in time felt comfortable or natural to me. I find it much, much more awkward than a Haunt build, for some reason.

So, In the quest to keep affliction viable, no matter what we do dps wise we will always have a debuff limit (blizz has yet to up that limit and I'm not holding my breath) there has to be something we can do?

What I was wondering is which of the 8 debuffs we can put up (now down to 7 as ISB buffs you) can we skip on a boss fight. Do we need SL, it helps us but a single CD back helps as well, yea it's a long buff but w/e. As previously stated, CoA is only ~200 dps; Is it worth it to put up CoW/CoE/CoR to avoid refreshing debuffs often? or maybe just all spam CoD (not that it's spamming) or do we need every warlock to curse at all?

For those of us who have been in total min/max situations, if affliction ends up being one of the top dps classes in the game, then 3 affliction locks in a raid would yield what, 21 debuffs by them selves? this is a vast number and with DK in the raid and other classes with new abilities what are we to do?

They desperately need to up the debuff limit. Or at least do something. As it stands, several classes will suffer issues from this, with warlocks probably suffering the most.

That's a question better left unanswered at this point. We do not know what contribution each debuff is doing yet because the talent trees have not been nailed down completely. It's entirely possible the debuff limit goes up again in WotLK and it simply has not been implemented yet.

If and when the time does come to drop debuffs as affliction the question isn't 'which debuff is providing the most DPS for the debuff slot' but 'which debuff has the lowest DPCT.' When comparing lock DoTs to the DPS of other classes debuff slot fillers it's important to remember that the DPS of a lock DoT is the DPS of the DoT iteself minus the product of the DPCT of the lock's filler and the cast time of the DoT.

Another thing to keep in mind with debuffs is that many debuffs that used to stack will not in WotLK so the limit is already higher than it is on live without the actual number actually changing, assuming blizzard codes this intelegently and limits non-stacking debuffs to a single debuff slot.

I am personally of the opinion that if a debuff limit is needed to maintain balance there's a systemic problem that needs to be addressed. Not having a debuff limit should have no effect on a raid environment that's actually balanced.

Well they upped the official system stats today, so hopefully they should beable to up the debuff limit now.

Unfortunately, this Kalgan post states that the issue with debuff slots is a technical limit and not a balance one. Since they don't seem to be focusing on fixing the bandwidth issue now, I doubt they are going to change it before release. This makes Unholy DK's and Affliction locks almost unplayable in 25 man raids in my mind.

As soon as I finish downloading beta patches, I'll say whether non-stacking debuffs take up more than one slot, but my first guess is "yes".

By the way, anyone think we're gonna start seeing the buff limit on players? Like especially for tanks?

Edit: Beaten by Bismar.

It's an issue at 70 with 1 affliction lock in the raid and no deathknights. Hit the cap on Naj in BT several weeks ago by a good margin, and that was pre SPriests getting an extra dot and with out any level 80 seplls.

Side note, any one on the beta able to make a post about this? I would really appreciate it. Just another reminder that it's a laughable how bad this is.

This is what i was thinking.Since when you get haunt you can't get ruin at lvl 70.So i have been messing around with some diff specs like Ua/ruin, Felgaurd/ruin , and full destro. Seems with all the crit buffs we seem to be getting ruin seems way to good to pass up at lvl 70.

Also to regards of the haunt afflic rotation.I always used 2xsb then corrup then immo/ua>haunt so the full duration of haunt is used and i don't miss any time. Seems if you haunt fist then ua/immo your immo/ua misses some time on haunt and it just seems easier with immo/ua>haunt with rotations. Total time for UA to hit after casting haunt first would be 4.5 secs if you casted haunt right after it. With immo/ua>haunt your first tick of ua would hit in 1.5 secs. Seems that rotation would be better but this is just my dumb quick lil math I don't really know if it is better.

Sort of in line with the affliction conversation going on right now...

I did some more tests with dark pact VS. life tap at level 70 on PTR. I found some confusing results I would like to verify and perhaps this is already a known condition. I tested with 2 sets of gear, My "live" set and replacing boots/legs/chest with the Isle badge spirit gear (gear with hit rating on it). My "live" gear is the heroic MagT chest with (3) 12dmg, T5 legs with epic reckless, and boots of blasting. The new "spirit" gear was not enchanted at all. I, of course, have improved life tap talented.

My relevant solo stats (self buffed with fel intelligence and fel armor) are 1223dmg (1277 shadow) 236 spirit and 1053 healing (this is actually relevant). Dark pact produces 1859 mana each use (if pet has that much) and Life tap produces 1704 mana leading me to believe DP is worth the talents, but barely. My fel intelligence buff would be overwritten by a priest buff but wouldnt change more than 4-6 spirit, if I am correct? (as well as mages AI overwriting the intellect portion again by only a few?)

Swapping gear, my stats with the same buffs change to 1226dmg (1280 shadow) 324 spirit and 1029 healing. Life tap now produces 2021 mana however Dark pact actually went DOWN, even though my damage went up. DP produces 1835 mana each use (sometimes 1836). Since I thought DP was scaled on shadow damage, I was very confused until I noticed the +healing number actually went down. Now I dont understand why i+healing went down, but as you can see it dropped exactly the same as the amount my DP was reduced.

Dark Pact is apparently scaled on +healing. And why would my damage go up, but healing go down?

Additionally I would lose +93 crit rating by doing this, but I would gain some hit rating (allowing me to move other gear around for more haste or crit) and I also would gain atleast 35-40 additional +damage, since I dont have a spell thread on the new pants with the listed stats. Is it worth it to lose that ~4%crit effecting pandemic in order to up my damage overall and increase my LT effectiveness?

Also I would like a clarification on something. I am confused about the new "replenishment" buff. Lets say theoretically you had a 10 man raid consisting of 5 shadow priests and 5 Ret pallies. Would each person only have 1 replenishment effect on them, or does it stack assuming there isnt other mana user targets for it to fall on? How many stacks if so? I find it hard to believe that this buff would be equal to the original shadow priest amount of mana return. Is mana really not much of an issue as long as you have 2 of any combo of s.priest/ret pally/surv hunter in a 25 man? And each time the buff refreshes, it chooses the new 10 lowest mana pools? based on % or totals?

Sorry for the chain of questions on replenishment, but I have been searching online with no luck and asking in /trade on PTR and no one responds