i'm not going to quote anyone on this, as it is more of an answer to generally being affliction. there are some problems with the starting rotation you guys are using, as it does not make the best use of GCD's and some seem a little unnecessary.

yes, you're going to want 2 points in CoA, as it does more damage than CoD.

affliction is iffy right now because there's no actual rotation. i tend to throw off corruption first, and depending on how long it takes to position i will go ahead and throw off CoA and siphon life as well. you want to open with shadow bolt to get your first stack of shadow embrace up, followed immediately by UA and Haunt. you want to do it in this order because UA won't tick before Haunt is applied, even with the cast and travel times. starting with corruption also means you will get maximum up time/use out of your glyph, nightfall, and eradication for the fight. then it's a matter of juggling globals and reapplying DoTs (yes, including immolate if it is convenient) as fast as you can - but always have priority in mind.

i find myself starting to recast Haunt when it has 4 seconds left. not only because it has a high priority, but also because you should get it up as soon as you can recast it to prevent it from falling off at all costs. this allows for you to get a shadow bolt or two off before you need to reapply UA, since you need to wait for it to fall completely off anyway.

my reapplication priority from highest to lowest is: Haunt, UA, immolate, and siphon life. Haunt reapplication is the only thing you should interrupt a shadow bolt cast for.

here is the spec i will most likely be using at 80

as you get more spirit, using your global for life taps instead of dark pacts becomes better - especially since there is so much mana regen going on in 25 man raiding environments from a variety of different sources. fights aren't long enough for mana to be a problem at 80, while managing globals is always prevalent. if i move anything around in finding myself having issues with life tap over dark pact, i will take a point out of eradication and move it over.

about imp ISB: this is a huge nerf. it feels like affliction and shadow priests were indirectly punished for destruction being so powerful. it boils down to just how useful molten core is. one of the fundamental set backs of affliction is that many power gains will not have an effect on 60+% of your damage until your DoTs have been reapplied. there is also the fact that you will most certainly be casting a lot of shadow bolts, while immolate is situational and very low on the priority list. getting that 10% on two spells you will be casting without a doubt throughout the fight - haunt and SB - is far better than the 10% on a spell that may not only be unused, but the proc may occur at a bad time for you to reapply immolate. not to mention it scales so much better with shadow bolt when you take Ruin into account.

if you look at my spec, you'll notice that i pick up the glyph of immolate regardless. this is because nothing else is a DPS increase that i haven't already picked up, and the glyph of fel hunter just isn't good enough.

as i run more tests, i will certainly post in game numbers for people to look at. affliction is just one of those things that i don't feel a spreadsheet will do justice, as it is easily the most complex and situational tree to play in the game right now.

haven't tested this, but you'll want to be using shadow bolt to keep shadow embrace completely stacked. imp SB still seems to be worth getting, and having 5/5 points in shadow mastery should make shadow bolt scale better than incinerate regardless.

Simple question: what is Buzzkill's spec about now? (Armory Lite - The WoW Armory Alternative: Buzzkill of Magtheridon)

No improved imp talent and empowered imp at the same time is confusing.

CoA CB/incinerate spam with weakened imp in favor of stamina? Strange...

Question: Does anyone have a suggestion on how to watch for drain soul ticks under 25%? I'm having trouble with it and sometimes feel like I'm clipping it right before it does another tick.




3 things here:

First, crit for affliction warlocks still falters when being compared to pure spell haste and spell dmg. While I don't have the actual math available, I'm just going off the assumption that because our crit is so low, getting DoT's up quicker and more shadowbolts in a fight is very valuable. The other big problem is that Ruin does not scale Pandemic. It's not actually registered as a "crit," so anything that scales your crits won't actually affect them. Lastly, you can't get Devestation with Haunt. This is a big one, as that 5% crit that destruction gets for free is a huge part in their build.

I really don't see crit scaling that well when compared to spell dmg and spell haste. I'm absolutely loving how easy spell haste is to get, and I think it'll probably be one of the "definers" in the affliction build.

In Naxx 10-man last night, I easily topped the charts on every fight while clipping DoT's and forgetting Drain Soul sub 25% on one of the bosses. The thing that really did it was insane spell haste (450 and still going up).






I agree with this. Haunt will keep you healed, 2/2 for the Felhunter will keep you very high in mana. The only thing you have to remember is to occasionally stop running so that your felhunter can catch up.

For leveling, I would open with Haunt, then UA, start running, Corruption, Siphon, CoA, lifetap or dark pact, then move onto the next mob.

As a warning, all my testing only involved corruption, but it should be consistant across all dots:
The first class of talents consists of Shadow Mastery, Improved Corruption, Contagion. These are all additive.
All other talents provide multiplicative effects. So the overall multiplier on a fully debuffed mob is 1.3*1.03*1.1*1.2.

Also, note that empowered corruption adds a straight 6% of your spellpower per tick, and everlasting affliction adds a straight 5% of your spellpower per tick.