Ish

Agree, Having tried 40/31, 55/16 and 3/13/55 sofar on yogg and while 40/31 offered high single target dps on yogg in p3 Affliction just rocks the boat due to being able to completely ignore the dps loss the other specs have, along with being able to help out with immortal dps.

Last kill our aff lock ended up on 7k. While weaker in p1, it destroys the other speccs in p2 and p3

 

supplicium

here's the deal, now that we can talk about yogg, though I still won't very much, I think it's a fight you really just need to see, you shouldn't loose any dps time on yogg if you understand the basics of the mechanics. It's a simple turn, you can turn while casting and turn back. If you are loosing more than 2 sanity while doing this there is something very wrong. That being said Very short casts have issues but, nothing that can't be dealt with. Long story short, mouse>keyboard.

 

Alefica

While I do agree with you about it being a fight you really just have to see, I feel that affliction does have a strong edge, especially in p3. Being able to channel a drain soul throughout the entire length of Lunatic Gaze, without getting hit once, is leaps and bounds above having to wait a couple seconds between soulfires and incinerates without risking sanity. Also, being able to use an Imp and have him nuking crushers the whole fight helps as well. As 41/30, I can't even count the amount of times my felguard would get owned by a green beam or accidently get killed by a crusher; In terms of quality of life, Affliction definitely has an upperhand.

Hopefully as time goes on it will be easier to manage the Felguard; though from the looks of it Destro will be the spec-to-be soon, so it probably won't be an issue anyways hehe.

 

Ish

You cannot get away from the fact that there is a dps loss, while affliction even have a dps gain from the added targets, no matter how good you are at timing twists. And half of your casts should be decimated soulfire.

What was the discussion about again? Either way, affliction will beat any other spec on Yogg hands down

 

Nnayr

I don't see why you are having dps loss issues with your felguard at all. Just stick your felguard on corruptors while you DPS crushers. That way you'll be ahead on them and still can do single target on crushers, our metalock does perfectly fine.

 

supplicium

Except in a good yogg attempt your mele should have killed most of them any how, and your Imp gains far more from attacking a debuffed target than your felguard does from a non debuffed tenticle

 

Nnayr

Yeah very true. Just trying to get across that you can't completely say that FG specs are gimp. Our metalock does perfectly fight on the fight.

 

Neron

Since we're talking about Yogg, what I'm doing is I've bound my Felhunter's Devour Magic to Clique, have him on passive and help with dispels.
I'm playing affliction, so it's not like I'm losing that much dps, and at least in my raid another dispeller helps a lot. Besides, there's something deeply reassuring about topping the damagemeter AND dispelling more than the players suppposed to be doing it.

 

Asilpop

deleted

 

• fallenman

I think what some of you are missing is that your job is to DPS crusher tentacles. If your pet is either on passive or attacking something else, then you're losing DPS where it is needed most.

 

krisp

I beg to differ. In my experience, phase 3 was by far the easiest one to master, only requiring 2 transitions before we downed yogg himself. In essence, it's a straight out dps race with little or no movement required, in fact the only skill required in that phase is turning around for the DPS and fast taunting for the tanks. And if your raid doesn't have the required DPS to get through that phase then maybe you shouldn't be doing Yogg in the first place. If they do, the fact that you'll down him, say, 10 seconds faster due to 1-2 of your locks being affliction will only matter little.
The hardest phase by far, as far as i've seen, is phase 1, followed closely by phase 2. In that phase, a few seconds may very well be the difference between a wipe and a kill, since we usually got Sara to 0% within 2-3 seconds of another guardian spawning. That guardian may be the one to wipe your raid (even more so on hard modes where you do less damage), and even if you kill him quickly you already lost valuable time which could have been spent on crusher tentacles.

So in phase 1, burst is king and affliction suffers, and it's pretty much an issue in phase 2 too with all the constrictors hanging around killing your healers (not that it should ever happen). This is why i prefer destruction's extra burst for yogg-saron. I can only see a greater value in affliction if you're trying him without Thorim and have to beat phase 3 asap before you get swarmed by guardians.

The trick is to look at the fight itself and less at the DPS numbers. It's just like AoE-ing the adds on Noth when he's at 10% instead of DPS-ing him just to get yourself higher on the dps meters.

 

• Heeno

P1 is only difficult to master due to the coordination requirements. The actual DPS requirements of P1 are not high. Generally I find myself holding back in P1 to both, allow the tank to pick up the guardian, and to not blow up the guardian in the raid. On the other hand, P2 and P3 become much easier with a high amount of DPS. Affliction is dominant in P2 and P3, where DPS matters.

 

Thuze

Does anyone have any experience with this? Looking for something with good pet tanking and drain tanking and thinking either deep affliction / light demonology or vice versa. Realize it's a rather esoteric PVE question. Seems like siphon life and a pimped felguard might do fine.

 

Nnayr

It also depends whether or not you're on yogg or adds.

 

brashar

+1 for affliction, there is too much room for error as meta or any other spec other then Affliction.
Phase1 DPS does not matter, in fact If I can even get my full rotation off once theres enough dots to usually help kill the add on Sarah so our clean up crew doesn't have too.

Affliction for Phase2-3 is great, you can dot all the little tentacles up on the way to the crushers. Like mentioned earlier by Fallenman and Supp. Your job is to get the crushers down.

Sure your meta lock can do well, great! But getting those crushers down is key.

I would hate to have my nubguard die and loose dps while regaining sanity etc.

 

Dagaves

I know it is a bit of a silly thing to argue about but I am not sure how someone can think that affliction is not the best spec for yogg. Phase 3 it is clearly better, Phase 2 you may have a small argument that destro has an advantage, phase 1 being able to dot the beasties to help finish them off is priceless.

 

Indaria

I have not tried this for Outland soloing, but a spec I have successfully soloed MC with (and should thus be good for Outland content as well) is a 30/41/0 hybrid spec, with felguard and shadow mastery.
This offers a high dps 'tank' as well as boosting your corruption alot, via both demonic knowledge and the improved corruption talents. Furthermore, siphon life is a godsend to have in these areas and your drain life should be able to keep you up quite well, should you choose to tank instead of your pet (this is how i had my first solo kills on Onyxia, since the wing buffet will eventually put you below your pet on threat).

Final arguments i have for this spec is that you get 3% crit reduction on your pet out of the 5.6% necessary for boss level mobs which would make it crit immune to most heroic stuff(?) as well as bringing the benefits of master demonologist.

This totally depends on how you execute your fights though. If you rely heavily on kiting at all times, sure deep affliction is most surely better. For pet tanking you want the deep demo talents.

 

Evidicus

I'm sure Affliction does very well, if you happen to like that playstyle. I've ran both FG/Emberstorm and full Destro on Yogg with no issues and actually have done quite well (normally beating our Affliction lock in damage done, but YMMV). P1 DoTs may be great, sure, but when a Guardian absolutely has to die RIGHT NOW, a big instant Conflag crit gets the job done (as does a well-timed Chaos Bolt). In fact, our Afflicion lock doesn't even bother with finishing off adds, rather he swaps to the newest spawn as soon as the old one heads to the middle in order to let his DoTs cook on the new Guardian for as long as possible. When the clouds are cutting your raid in half, and your tank has a Guardian ready to pop on top of Sara while a new one is spawning nearby, don't underestimate the value of on-demand burst damage.

P2 we normally have someone up top assigned to helping portal people get out of Constrictors. A simple /assist macro with a /pettattack thrown in has worked well for me as a way keep my Felguard being productive while I burn down Crushers. If I'm running Destro, then the imp is just on the Crushers along with me and fast casting nukes settle any issues we may have with poorly timed Constrictors.

In P3 we normally burn the first few Guardians down to a managable number before ranged opens up on Yogg. Meta form + Immo aura + RoF is brutally effective for that task. Not only that, but Meta is up again for our final Bloodlust on Yogg, which is just good times for Soul Fire weaves. For Destro, fast casting nukes and Conflag are again great DPS, and I just put up CoD and Corruption when I have to turn away from Yogg (normally wouldn't bother with Corruption, but I end up with a "free" GCD anyway since I can't nuke at that moment).

And don't even get me started on the utility offered by Shadowfury for hard modes. YMMV, but I've made a believer out of several of my guild mates when it comes to add control.

 

Nnayr

Nothing you said had anything to do with my post.

I was simply saying if you're on adds p3 the spec for the fight highly changes. Because to be honest you should be able to perform top5 on almost every fight as a warlock regardless of the spec. Weaving becomes somewhat useless if you're on adds. The only thing you can do as affliction is haunt/sbolt adds.

 

krisp

It's usually the melee on brain and adds for us, and i can think of better classes to set on the immortal guardians than affliction warlocks, all things considered. Aff locks should not be on adds.

Phase 3 it is clearly better, yes. Phase 2 it is not. Running around dotting all the corruptors means less time spent doing DPS on crushers, and unless it's a concentrated group effort you won't kill the corruptors anyway (face it, your dots won't do 600k damage). Destro can pull up to 40k damage within 3-4 GCDs (assuming crits), even more right now that 3.1.2 is up.

And how is dotting a mob with a medium life expentancy of ten seconds considered "priceless"? I don't know which planet you come from, but damage over time doesn't mean burst here on earth. I would bury my head in shame if i ever dotted one of those with something else than immolate (and that's only for conflag).

Sure, it's nice to have 1-2 affliction warlocks for p3, but for the most part affliction is just "hey look at me i can rock dps meters".

EDIT: by the way, i see no real reason to use felguard/emberstorm or similar builds on this fight. Sure, you can do it, but you bring nothing special to the table other than meager dps, while other specs each have their own strengths for this fight. Whereas destruction can be used in the brain room if, say, you don't have enough melee and affliction really shines on phase 3, the only thing FG/ES brings is a less efficient felguard that can't dps crushers and a crappier version of weaving in phase 3 where you get interrupted by lunatic gaze. Only reason to use that spec on this fight is if you're a die-hard FG/ES fan, your second spec is pvp, and you can't be bothered respeccing for just one fight.

 

olindra

First off I believe he said doting the mobs on the way to a crusher, which will help when it is time to burn down said corruptors since you are not doing anything else but running by them, also corruption can crit as high as 8k in yogg mabey even higher so you could easily get more than 40k from an aff lock in 3 gcds ( UA has crit for around 7k as well). And as for doting the guardians, we get to p2 with one guardian left (so I assume we are going at a decent pace dps wise) and I am usually around 4 or 5 on the meters until p3 hits.

 

brashar

1 or 2 guardians up at the beginning of PH2 is fine, any more then that you loose brain time.
You should be holding #1 or 2 for Phase 2 as well, make sure you are using Drain soul on the crushers. Also you can DPS your own little tentacles if you happen to get stuck in one.

 

krisp

Even if corruption can crit for 8k (which i doubt), dots don't tick instantly.

 

olindra

First off I did not state that they would tick instantly, but in 3 gcds which would be free while running towards a crusher an afflic lock could easily gain another 40k damage, and for a destro lock or any variant that uses conflag you would have to stop to get that extra damage. Also it would be cast/gcd for you to get the 40k because you would have to cast immolate first.
And in regards to your disbelief of 8k corruption ticks my normal corruption crits on a target dummy self buffed is upwards of 5k, add in raid buffs and the extra damage done during yogg with the buffs from the npcs and 8k is a modest estimate.

 

nuibank

Not that they will be 4k or crits, but all locks have access to CoA and corruption which could help them bridge some of the gap you are claiming.