@rutiene: no I didn't and assuming that I am Jewelcrafter (or will be someday ) there are no adjustments needed, on the other hand if a warlock aiming for hi-dps is not willing to level Jewelcrafting then he will need to swap 2 runed scarlet rubies (38 spell power) into 2 purified twilight opal (~23 spell power), that is a loss of 15 spell power, so after this adjustment Chaotic lost by 1DPS However 40spell power is a static increase whenever 3% is dynamic and the better gear you have, the more benefit you'll get from Chaotic Skyflare.

P.S. btw later on with better gear ISB > MC, however somebody was right, with better gear you get more hit rating and can remove some points from Contagion

I recently switched from Destro to Aff and am still trying to get my rotation and such down. Just to be clear, it's SB, Haunt, UA, Imm, CoA, Corr, and then spam SB (DL at <25%) until DoTimer says a DoT is about to expire, correct?

I haven't raided as Affliction in over a year (and even then it wasn't for a long period of time), so I'm soooo rusty.

For affliction, 1 point in MC beats 1 poiint in Cataclysm if even you aint hit capped with destruction spells and also to the previous guy, you missed out SL in your rotation. Im pretty sure every DoT we have has a better DPCT than SB.

As someone pointed out SL is better then SB filler.

Also it's DS not DL < 25% (hope it was a typo).

My rotation: SB Haunt UA Immo CoA SL Corr. Was hell at the beginning but now feels very natural

Drop infernal at boss death - 1 minute mark and you're ready to conquer damage charts.

@Aggromuffin - got any maths to prove it?

EDIT: Have anyone tested build like THIS? I'm wondering how effective would 1/3 MC be with the extreme amount of shadow spells cast.

Pandemic requires UA, UA requires 5/5 Contagion. Not sure how that "one-point-here beats one-point-there" idea is at all relevant, since 5/5 Contagion is a must.

He meant cataclysm.

Just set up four really skinny kgPanels (so that they are basically just vertical lines) and position them so that they would represent the locations on your cast bar where Drain Soul ticks occur (so you should have 4 equally spaced vertical lines). Then, inside the settings for each of the four panels you paste those scripts, with the appropriate numbers filled in. Ends up looking like this.

Ok cant really get an overview of the math part, I just want to know if you calculated the fact that haste also improves the DPS of nightfall and corruption procs, as global cd becomes shorter, thus lowering "cast time" on the instant SB. If you didnt, haste should have a higher weight as everyone have these two choices.

And how would you go about setting thos 4 lines up :>?

If usefulness of nightfall + corr properties are calculated as the time you get for extra dpsing in filler time you can calculate it by seeing how much extra filling time each haste gives you and see how much dps that corresponds to. I remember you mentioning something about 2200 dps in filler time (which is pretty bad geared though), if you have 7,1% haste it means cutting of 0,1 sec of GCD, thus giving you 0,1 sec of filler time when it procs, i.e., 220dps. This should be divided by the amount of filler time where an instant sb is up, since it only during this time you gain the extra dps. Lets say 8% chance on ticks to gain the buff, thats every 12,5 ticks we get a proc, meaning every 37,5 secs, lets say every 38th second as we used 8% even though it's a bit lower. We divide the 220 dps with 38 which is 5,7 dps increase. We used 233 haste to get this, thus each haste gives 0,024 extra dps. This scales with better gear though, higher filler dps will create a higher value of each spell haste. It's not a big change, but everything matters when typing in those values in lootrank

For me personally, I am on approximately 10+dps increase from haste on this factor.

EDIT: A damn sry, thought your question was for me, I just read about the 4 lines in the post before me now, leaving this here though as it might be useful.

Hi there,

first, thanks for the feedback! Changed some of the minor errors already.

I added a short example calculation. I think Hit is not overvalued, it just is that important, and that is not surprising at all. Being hitcapped has been very important to any caster from the very beginning of raiding.
Spirit gives a lot of spell power (10 Spirit + Blessing of Kings -> 3.3 spell power) and slightly improves mana regeneration (life tap), as spell power is very good for our dps, the importance of spirit is not surprising at all.


Changed the part about CoA vs. CoD. There are still people out there asking why CoA should be better as it is lower dpsc, I hope the new version clarifies it a bit more. The short version is: CoA is way better as it is higher DPS, not DPSC, and the casting time you could save when using CoD cannot compensate that, not even when using drain soul.
Of course the picture would change a bit when CoD would profit from Shadow embrace, haunt and other stuff, but so far, it doesn't.


Why is crit so bad?
Many posts about crit being underestimated. The point is: Crit is a bad stat pointwise. the reason for this is: 1% crit gives less damage increase than 1% hit, even on a double-damage-critting shadow bolt. The difference is not that big, however. But there are two more effects: To get 1% crit, you need significantly more crit RATING than you would need hit RATING for 1% more hit. Secondly, there are the non-critting spells. This makes crit look bad overall. I don't think this situation will change for affliction warlocks any time soon.

Eradication calculation:
Thanks for the interesting post - the main problem is that there are some more like that flying around in the internet, each giving slightly different values (including my own). I'll have another look into it :-)

ISB calculation:
The standard calculation does not hold as it is only true for a pure shadow bolt spam, and those times are gone forever. I'll figure something out for this.

Thanks for this one. Guess I won't change a lot before 3.08, but this will be where I start :-)

Handguards are 77 + 19.8 (25.74 talented), so 96.8 to 102.74 damage.
HPG are 78 damage (with RSR) + 38 crit + 48 haste.

So is 38 crit and 48 haste worth one RSR worth of damage? To me, the answer is 'probably', and definitely if the gloves will get you to 4-piece. The haste is always useful, and having *some* crit (for Pandemic procs) is still useful.

ATM I'm no close to the 4-piece bonus, but the haste would be nice, thanks.

If you can't get either, by the way, consider:

[Gloves of Glistening Runes]

from Keri in heroic Nexus. If socketed, it provides 40 crit and 87 + 13.2 - 17.2ish damage, which is plainly better if you don't have access to raid gear.

[Moonshroud Gloves] are almost exactly equivalent to Overlook Handguards if you're allergic to DTK, too.

I have been trying to follow this thread as best I can and i have taken a ton of useful knowledge from it. I would love to see all of the key points put together somehow/where. I wish I had the time to do it myself. For example how about a breakdown of: The hitcap
Best pet use
Best rotation
Haste/Crit and why?


Out of all of this I am most curious still as to what the best pet is...I have tried felhunter/imp/infernal at 1min...I havn't tried doomguard yet cause I think the idea of summoning a DG every fight is just silly. Thanks guys for anything at all on this.

Hitcap is 446 points (without any talenting)

You gain 1% of hit from 26.23199272 hit rating.

Felpuppy is the default pet for an affliction warlock because the extra spirit you get turns into a little SP. If you have a mage to buff you, you're better off using an imp, both because the felpuppy buff is less effective (because it doesn't stack) and because the imp adds to your DPS.

The 'Best rotation' is often debated, but the general consensus is:

SB (If you can pre-cast) -> Haunt -> UA -> Imm -> CoA -> Corr -> SL -> SB (refresh haunt and SB fillers, refreshing dots as they expire)

When the target is <30%, SL and Siphon Soul become a more viable DPS option than SB.

No argument that Dark Pact is worse than Life Tap when it comes to giving mana. However, Life Tap is not always viable in fights. For instance, in Sapphiron fights where the healers are already taxed, Life Tap is not a great idea, imo. Having Dark Pact handy gives some versatility in some fights.

Don't know how your situation is in specific, but thinking about it, I wonder if any other lock spec will be more forgiving? At least with Affliction, your DoTs are still ticking even if you cannot get optimal rotation. In the other specs, if you lag badly, you have complete dead space for damage dealing, it will seem.

Did some searching on this thread and couldn't find an answer to my question so here goes.
Has anyone done the math behind the tier7 four set bonus?Does the spell power boost (via fel armor) of the bonus makes life tap better to cast as an extra filler (so a typical "rotation" would be keep dots/haunt up - life tap - filler spell)?
Or even maybe consider life tap as an extra dot(only regarding the casting time which is instant) fitting inside the dot rotation?

If your healers are having trouble there, find new healers. The only fight where dp is better than lifetap is probably Loatheb, other than that you should be able to lifetap whenever. Darkpact IS a wasted talent point.

Haven't done calculations on it yet, but I suggest that if you use it in a standard rotation, you pop it just before you refresh your dots. They will benefit more from it than your sb will.

The problem is fitting it into your rotation. I have somewhat solved the problem (at least for me). I use an addon called ScrollingCombatText and whenever I hit 30-40% mana it says "Low mana!" and makes a sound which is a queue for me to Life Tap. And if I cast spells all the time and refresh DOTs and whatnot it will come almost every 10 seconds which makes it real solid.