Currently raiding affliction in my own raid, and I can pull 2500-3k DPS depending on nightfalls and how well I pull my rotation off. And that is according to WWS, and at level 70.

I, like Maels, am not a fan of macros or Immolates. You have to drop that extra baggage and just babysit your dot timer. And do use one, I don't care which mod (I use dotimer - though the new version is a headache to configure so that it resembles what I had before I eventually figured it out), just use something.

I start a fight by casting a corruption as the boss is about to get to the tank, then Haunt the second the boss has been touched. UA right after, then CoA/Siphon.

At this point, anybody who tells you there is a rotation is nuts. There is no discernible repeating pattern to your spellcasts that is any shorter than 3 minutes long or something stupid. Any attempt to create a shorter rotation is going to mean clipping a lot of ticks of several dots, which is a huge DPS waste. I just SB, Haunt anytime it's up (as soon as I finish w/e I am casting of course), and try to time your casts of new dots to land after the last tick of the prior cast. It's better to have .8 seconds of downtime on your dot than clip the last tick.

Try dropping immolate to ease the rotation up, and try getting used to just juggling each dot as an individual without thinking about a rotation. The moment you step into actual combat, any attempt to stand there and babysit a complex rotation would be lost anyway, due to raid damage, movement, etc. Kalecgos portals, Burns, encapsulates, conflags... almost every fight will force you to abandon your DPS and move, and then the rotation would be lost for the rest of the fight anyway.

A quick note: I do not have Imp Drain Soul, and as a result our tank loves to vigilance me, which helps immensely for quick-starts on DPS. I still would not suggest opening with Haunt. It's just not worth the tiny tiny boost to risk a mishap if your tank should miss or fat-finger the wrong key or who knows.

Also, if you check my armory, my spec is there, but my gear is HORRIBLY out of date. Here's a link to a Brutallus kill in which the gear I had was (I think) the same as what you see on the armory: Wow Web Stats

I got several upgrades that day off the other sunwell bosses, and off kil'jaedan later in the week, so I'll let you know what my numbers are like after tonight's raid with the new loot.

EDIT: wanted to add another point of interest from that WWS. The other 2 locks in the raid are running Destruction builds, and landed a couple hundred DPS below me. They currently piggyback off of each others' immolates: When one conflags, he will use all 3 charges of Backdraft on nukes, and then immolate afterward. The two of them stagger their rotations a bit to make sure they don't both conflag in the same window.

I'm still not 100% convinced this is a DPS increase, and I'm curious if anybody else has tried this.

Take the durations of all the major affliction DoTs and CDs

CoA = 28 (glyphed)
SL = 30
UA = 18
Haunt = 12

Now, to find the smallest window of time for all of these to line up in exactly the same way we need to find the amount of time they all divide into evenly i.e. the least common denominator. This number is 1260 secs or 21 mins. It's pretty obvious that anyone that suggests using a macro or a strict rotation in an affliction build is loosing at least some of their DPS potential by doing so.

Aarynadon, youve got almost 18% of haste...I find your numbers a little difficult to compare to as a result of this. In fact, T6 geared locks really cannot give really accurate dps results as affliction spec because the gear at 80 will likely shift for affliction at least to be more crit heavy and little to no haste.

I'm probably just not seeing enough new item drop data at 80 to make this judgement but ive yet to see items that compare to T6 gear at level 80 in the massive amounts of crit/haste/hit and spell damage that it gives. I see lots of items that give lots to one stat and spell damage but very few of them yielding a good mixture of stats that will result in someone having a lot of everything.

Well, don't get me wrong, I'm loving all my haste ( I have 346 now, actually, before spellstone is added).

However, this is just a hold-over really from the days of destro. Haste is not nearly as big a deal for affliction as it was for pre-patch destro, though I think people underestimate the value of putting some extra sbolts into your DPS between dots.

But I'm not sure I see your point. I would gladly trade this tri-stat gear (most of haste is from gemming btw) for lvl 80 which has a lot more total point value assigned to it.

Example: Valorous Plagueheart Shoulders have 68 power, 55 haste, 35 hit and a red socket.
I currently use Amice of the Convoker, with 53 power, 30 haste, and 22 crit and 2 sockets.

Now, the weighted value of any stat is relative based on the values of your other stats at the moment and your spec of course, but for simplicity let's use the OLD rule of thumb from old destro pre-patch. Assuming standard amounts of power and crit, you can operate on a 1 to 1 ratio. We'll even say haste is in a 1 to 1 as well, with hit being most valuable until cap. But since hit has a definable, easily reached cap, I tend to just value it at one as well.

Now let's assign a socket value of 12 points. Add everything up with a value of 1:1:1, and the plagueheart is WAY ahead at 135 and 170 with the hit included. The convoker shoulders come out to 129. Behind either way.

My point is, the overall POWER of an item isn't based on a single stat. Its based on the overall contribution it provides. I don't see why you think my gear is somehow indicative of something incomparable. A lot of raiding warlocks have gear at my level. The Brutallus parse I posted I'm wearing largely T6 equivalent, with only a couple of items from sunwell.

And all it takes is a cursory glance at level 80 gear to see that it will indeed be a flat DPS boost over what you have now (don't forget the higher ranks of your spells also). You can easily use gemming to keep the ratio of your 3 primary stats in balance according to your build and get the maximum benefit from the stats present on the item itself.

Trust me, my numbers now are very attainable for a level 70 warlock. You should consider 2500 a very achievable benchmark for someone at sunwell entry level. The highest I've seen is 2967 on a M'uru pull, and we'll call that an outlier.

I'm sure they are obtainable, I'm just saying the haste makes such a huge difference due to the filler gap getting larger (due to reduced GCD and spells in general) that unless your in full T6 the gap between t5 and t6 is massively huge as a result of that. When i first started reading 70 locks doing 2-3k dps i didnt quite expect such a huge gap between T5 and t6.

I'm not QQ'ing or anything, if anything the problem is that im putting dots on things that never live long enough to get the full effect.

That has always been the main issue with affliction, especially on trash. Even in sunwell most trash mobs die too fast for dot classes. After 3.0 even bosses are dieing too quickly for proper DPS testing. Killing brut in under 3min really favors burst DPS classes with lots of cool downs, this is also the reason you see the 80%+ crit rates on some WWS reports, Fast fights + favorable RNG makes from some skewed DPS numbers

However Aaryndon is correct in the numbers we can pull as aff, and yes a lot of it has to do with gear, I’ve been in the 2600-3k DPS range as both aff and Destro, which i was capable of pre 3.0. We have similar gear based on the stats he posted (armory is blocked at work) while haste isn’t a great stat for aff it really does help squeeze off more SBs between dot refreshes.

I do agree with you that there is an even larger gear dependence now then there was before, however this will all change in a few weeks (hopefully)

I enjoy playing "whack a mole" as aff, I raided up to brut pre 3.0 as aff and don’t find the change back to it that bad, it is definitely more fun to play then SB spam. My only comment is that IMO everlasting Aff should also refresh Unstable, which would do amazing things for setting up an aff rotation as well as giving us a slight DPS boost.

As a Heavy Demonology or Destruction Build is it Worth it to cast Corruption? Generally it looks as if Corruptions DPSC is lower than the filler spell ( Shadow Bolt or Incinerate ) that would be used with these builds. Am I missing something? Because it looks as if many of the posts are advocating Corruptions use.

Weaker Shadow Bolts, instant casting, the Corruption glyph and the Molten Core talent help to make this slightly more worth while than it was pre-3.0. Though these still might not be enough of a reason to use it. As was posted in the other thread:





e: You're right, I'm silly. I meant Molten Core

Well, corruption contributes to Molten Core uptime for any fire build. So you have to add the damage gained from the MC buff to the damage done directly by corruption.

... good luck figuring that out. Incoming napkin math, lol.

EDIT: It's been pointed out a few posts down that the effect of SnF has changed. The calculations in this post are incorrect.



I think you mean Molten Core, not F&B.

I can't speak to Demonology, but for Destruction it is worth it to cast Corruption. Corruption scales with 93.6% of your spell power for a 1.5 second cast untalented. Talented and including Molten Core, Incinerate scales with 115.6% of your spell power with a 2.25 second cast.

The issue is, however, that Molten Core isn't up without Corruption (or at least, isn't up as much if you're using CoA). The DPCT of the two spells ride a vague, blurry line as you attempt to factor in different talent builds. For the sake of simplicity we'll skip CoA and assume that 5% of Incinerate's damage comes from Corruption based Molten Core procs, and that with raid buffs you'll have 50% crit.

Incinerate Scaling: 105.1% * 1.5 = 157.7% (70.1% per second)
Corruption Scaling: 93.6% + (Incinerate Scaling * .05) = 101.2% (67.5% per second)

That doesn't account for the Corruption Glyph, but I don't think the Glyph is equivalent to 2.5% scaling. Also, 5% is an overestimate anytime you cast CoA as well. Picking up talents for Corruption turns the matter around again, so this is highly build dependent.

I got a quick question, (I apologize if it was posted before I could not find it) which does the most dps out of these 3? And can you post how much DPS each of these add.:


Master Spellstone
Binds when picked up
Unique
Use: While applied to target weapon it increases damage dealt by periodic spells by 1% and spell haste rating by 40. Lasts for 1 hour.


Master Firestone
Binds when picked up
Unique
Use: While applied to target weapon it increases damage dealt by direct spells by 1% and spell critical strike rating by 35. Lasts for 1 hour.


Superior Wizard Oil
Requires Level 58
Use: While applied to target weapon it increases spell power by 42. Lasts for 1 hour.

It's not that hard, you just figure Molten Core uptime with CoA only (about 77%, assuming CoA is always up) and MC uptime with CoA and Corruption (about 91%). Corruption is worth 14% more uptime for Molten Core, or 1.4% more damage for fire spells.

Simucraft generally shows a 10 to 15 dps drop for inserting Corruption into most Destro rotations.

Of course, this is assuming no nightfall-wannabe Glyph, and never using Shadowbolts. But in general, seems not worth using.

Simulationcraft gives the MC uptimes differently, and so does some envelope math.

It was said earlier in this thread, the chance of MC being up at a given time is (1-0.85^x), where x is the number of shadow dmg events in the last 12 seconds. With CoA only, x=6 so the chance is 62%, with CoA+MC x=10 so the chance is 80%. (These numbers agree with my Simcraft-ing)
Thus the increase in damage due to having Corr up is 18% of 10% of the proportion of your damage that is fire, which for me is ~90%, so a 1.6% increase on your fire spells.

Edit: The point was not the result being very different but the MC uptimes being off.

I am wondering if haste may be far more beneficial to affliction than people are giving it credit. If you don't have ruin, crit isnt worth nearly as much as increasing your spell power and maximizing your haste to make shadowbolts hit harder overall and more often. Sure haste doesnt effect dots as much (mostly just a slightly shorter GCD, but if it increases your bolt damage totals, I think it is worth it to consider haste a main stat for affliction. As you can see from Aaryndon's WWS, in most of his fights, shadowbolts account for 45% of total damage on average. That number would be far less without the haste he has and yet you wouldnt have more damage from any of the dots, so less haste is an absolute dps loss for affliction. Another point that may have been discussed, though I havent sen it mentioned, is that haste increases DPCT of all dots. I wish it actually decreased time between ticks, but atleast it does benefit dots by lowering the cast time for the same amount of damage.

I also have a question for you Beta testers. What gear did you guys start NAXX-10 with? Did you replace gear with blues and epics from quests, 5 mans and any new badge gear? Or is a combination of T6/iL141 gear acceptable to go in and clear the place? We are about the only guild on the server still Raiding, we just enjoy it and it is even more enjoyable now that you just zerg the place. We are trying to fit out our members with as many T6 level items as we can before Xpac (and possibly doing a raid 1 night per week while leveling to continue getting gear) in the hopes it helps jump start our 10 man progress. We had a late start on T6, we got 4/5 and 3/9 twice before having guild splits force us back into T5 to recruit, regroup, and regear. We finally got back into T6 with a solid group 2 weeks before 3.0 hit and now were just zerg clearing as much as we can before leveling starts. Is it worth it to try and convince the guildmembers to continue raiding once a week for some free gears, or will it all get replaced (or have "as good as" gear from quests) before we enter NAXX-10?

Regarding corruption for demo or dest rotations:

I agree that it's probably not the best choice if you have the opportunity to stand and cast, but I usually find myself casting it at least part of the time whenever I need to change position. After all, if coa is still ticking, what else can you spend your casting time on when you're running?

Do we know if this is an intentional change by Blizzard? This is a 5-7% loss in potency, and definitely explains the lack of "oomph" I've been feeling from my Destruction spells. Logically this would also affect Chaos Bolt, which only furthers the issue of over-reducing Destruction's damage.

What most bothers me about this is that with this change Shadow Bolt can be a better nuke than Incinerate by speccing 31/0/40. Outside of Molten Core there is no synergy between the talents buffing one's Fire Nukes and the talents buffing one's Shadow DoTs. This begs the question of why we go to all the effort of buffing those aspects separately when we can cover both Shadow Nukes and DoTs together?

This spec doesn't work as well at 70, but at 80 I can't imagine the amazing virtues of F&B stacking well against Shadow Mastery. There are playstyle issues to consider as well, juggling 2-3 dots while spamming Shadow Bolt is significantly simpler than juggling 3 DoTs, a 12 second CD, and a 12-15 second window of opportunity. As much as we praise complicated play, it's an obvious truth that given two specs of equivalent DPS players will gravitate toward that one that is easier for them.

The problem with haste and affliction is that the amount of haste needed to fill a timeslot with an extra SB is variable because the size of the timeslots are variable with no only the amount of haste you already have but on how long the encounter has continued to any given point and how often the player has been forced to reposition and pick up a partially or completely dropped set of DoT priorites. Measuring the effect of haste on affliction DPS in a simulated 10 mins of stand and nuke is more than likely disscounting some of the other less tangable benifits of the stat.

Does this math apply to empowered corruption as well? Has anyone tested this?

SimulationCraft r984 available for download...... updated with recent findings on SnF mechanics.

I would guess that if you were going to go haste for affliction then the cap you would want would be 33%...that way your only getting the GCD down to minimum for most of your dots.

More might be good for SB's only but I would leave that up to eradication to go beyond that point.

Setting a artifical cap is silly. DPS stats add DPS; as long as the value of a stat does not drop to zero there is no cap on that stat. It may be true that haste after this threshold is worth significantly less than before but it will still be worth something so there's no reason to ignore it. Likewise hast before this point may be worth more but there's no reason to short change other stats just to get to it. Gear up given what drops for you and stat weights calculated with the spreadsheets, don't set artifical caps or targets for stats because nice round numbers feel good.

I don't think it's an artificial cap. Since haste > 33% doesn't affect the GCD, then with regard to casting instant spells, any haste over 33% genuinely is wasted. Just as any hit over 17% is wasted in a normal raiding situation (max level, standard level boss, etc).