Yes I've found a good rule of thumb is, if you can't be perfect, then err on the early side with haunt, and on the late side for all other dots. For me it is always a challenge to avoid clipping dots, which is particularly bad with CoA.

I like that, other than "all other dots" since haunt isn't a DoT. I find myself stressing so much over whether the haunt will land in time to refresh corruption or SE that I'm going to pretty much cast haunt within a second or so after its CD. Why take the chance, when recasting haunt early doesn't damage DPS other than a difference between Haunt's damage and a Shadow Bolt's.

Well I guess this would go here.

How much (or when does) latency time starts to affect DoT performance?

I have one hell of a time getting Immolate to stick unless I wait a sec or 2 AFTER it expires. No I'm not missing.

So with that said, it can make keeping a sound rotation going a pain.

I average around 250-275 latency when in raids.

Use Quartz/Dot Timers/etc Yes there are other locks in raid casting Immo.

So is it on my end or is this prob others have?

Latency has a HUGE impact on Affliction DPS. At leas from what I have noticed. If your lag is above your GCD (1.5 second delay) then it becomes near immposible to play. The only way to get around it is to have Quartz and to pre cast everything. And with Immolate, try to refresh it when it only has 1 second left, that way you will never overwrite it and get the immolate drop bug.

I'd say with latency of 250-275, your best bet it just using quartz and getting used to the rotation with that bit of time offset. Also try reduce your lag by turning down settings and testing you connection.

You might want to look into using the Ghost Pulse mod. I found out about it while researching pvp addons, and it's helped my haunt uptime dramatically. While it's extremely useful for pvp, it's also got some application in pve when you need a reminder to cast haunt next or a reminder that your demonic teleport cool down is up.

I respecced to affliction from a demo/destro hybrid a few weeks ago. Leuliers says I should be doing 2900 dps with just fel armor and my spell stone. I am using an initial spell rotation of:

SB > Haunt > UA > CoA > Corr > SL > Immo > SB Filler > renew as needed > 25% DS

On a training dummy I am barely breaking 2300 dps. I feel like I am missing some crucial part of my rotation and therefor losing a substantial part of my dps. Any suggestions would be great.

My Info

My Leulier DPS spreadsheet
My Armory info
Be.Imba.Hu

@Goetze
Did you go to the Gear_Buffs tab and de-select all the raid buffs? (including changing BoK to '0')

when you check your dps make sure that you look at each individual spell. check the number of times you missed( a missed spell is a serious loss of dps) and dont forget to include your pet.

The second thing is check your gear. make sure that you are gemming correctly for the affliction lock, as well as placing talents where they are most effective.

take a look at your dot up time. while you wont ever get 100%,(you dont want to clip) if you are not in the 90% range you are hurting yourself.

They are all off except fel armor and spellstone

There are raid buffs on the DPS tab as well. Also, setting the sheet to use DS in execute range is probably not the best for comparing to target dummy tests.

About the matter of dot scaling that me and woggle have been talking about, I have one more question.

Did anyone check how gaining crit works with dots already casted and with haunt refreshment?

I.E. if I cast corruption at the beginning of the fight and then take the crit aura at loatheb, is corruption scaling dynamically? If not, is haunt refreshing corruption transferring my new crit chance to it just like it seems (on only certain occasions apparently) to do with damage modifiers?

A good way of thinking about this is treating UA and corruption being both unaffected directly by your crit. Crit affects pandemic, and pandemic will do damage based on your crit. So every time UA and corruption tick, pandemic will then roll the dice based on your current crit. Basically as long as UA and corruption are ticking, none of your crit will ever go to waste when it comes to pandemic.

You might want to play with combining CoA and SL, with SL first (if you have the CoA glyph), since their DoT length are similar. It helps the chaos a bit, like the UA/Immo combo.

As for Drain Soul, check out the main post, "The proper use of Drain Soul" section. Basically, you should never let your DoTs sit idle during DS phase, since every one of your DoTs has better dpct than DS, and all of them (other than immolate) boosts DS' damage. If you don't have a UI that announces when a DS tic occurs, get one, and immediately following a tic, recast whichever DoT is needed, then recast DS for another tic or 2. Repeat. And, never let Haunt drop during DS, ever… since if you lose Shadow Embrace, you'll need to cast a Shadow Bolt to get the SE stack working again.

I'm really getting sick of this. I get 2.8k dps on a dummy and like 3.8k dps on patchwork, but I think that could be better. Could someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Here is the screenshot + my armory.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Why do you have 13% hit with 1 point in suppresion (so you assume you have a boomkin or spriest) but you put 3 points in cata?

Other than that, you are just quite low on gear.

3.8k for your gear isn't very bad. People like Maalakai who get insane dps on patch make sure they have a doomguard out and use potion of speed/wild magic etc and they have the best in game gear, enchants and gems.

Agree with Nacths - 3/3 Cataclysm seems overkill - you should be able to spare 2 points of to get ISB to 4/5 - and I'd be grabbing the points out of Imp DS too, unless you are having big threat problems.

Plus, you should ideally be using the TBC head enchant while you work on Kirin Tor rep.

For more help, we need a WWS - can't tell from the screeny what buffs you had, whether you had missed, what pet you used when, etc.

Edit 4/16/09: ForteXorcist cast bar takes all pushback into account (currently, this is the only mod that shows both pushback and tick marks at the same time).

I have seen a lot of heartburn regarding Drain Soul and how to properly execute the spell in a boss encounter. Because of this, I would like to show you exactly how to setup two mods which will help improve your, Affliction Warlock, DPS dramatically.

First and foremost, download and install the two mods (Drain Soul Warning and ForteXorcist) found here:

Drain Soul Warning - Addons - Curse
ForteXorcist (ForteWarlock) : WoWInterface Downloads : Warlock

Get both of these mods up and running in WoW. The following will show you exactly how to Setup your mods in the WoW UI to get the most out of them.

First, go into your ForteXorcist options by typing "/fortexorcist" in your chat bar.




Then, click on the "Spell Timer" button on the bottom of the ForteXorcist Options panel.




Then, make sure that the "Enable" and "Show Ticks" boxes are checked. Finally, scroll down a bit in the ForteXorcist Options panel and ensure that the "Drain" button is checked.




Now, I arrange these two mods right underneath my Quartz mod so they are clearly visible throughout a Boss Fight. As soon as the Drain Soul Warning turns Red and says "Drain Soul!" I immediately switch from using Shadow Bolt as my main filler to Drain Soul to the end of a boss encounter. And, with ForteXorcist setup exactly how I laid out step-by-step above, you will only see the ForteXorcist mod when you begin to cast Drain Soul. You will also now see each Tick Mark of Drain Soul so you will never clip a tick when you need to reapply your falling off DoTs. This setup will ensure that you maximize all your Drain Soul Ticks in a boss fight.

In combat, final product:




One last point to remember, treat each Drain Soul Tick as a separate cast. That should help you visualize and prioritize your spell casting during the last 25% of a boss fight.

My latest Patchwerk WWS for reference and confirmation that the above works:
Wow Web Stats

It's actually pretty easy to hack Quartz a bit and make it do the same thing as ForteXorcist for Drain Soul. If people want I can post how I did it or PM me for the file I changed. Or if you're too lazy to do this, if you change your Quartz texture to "Fifths", it has nice little lines for when your Drain Soul ticks will end up happening.

There are two problems with this method.

1) The "Fifth" lines will always be there cluttering up your Quartz casting bar even when you are not casting Drain Soul.
2) Pushback: On fights with Pushback, and you get hit while channeling Drain Soul, your ticks will not automatically re-adjust to appear in the correct locations (like ForteXorcist will).

If you don't want 4 bars for 1 spell, you can also just skip the quartztimers and only use those of Forte, which enables you to give all your dots a nice color of their own in the meantime. If you give Drain Soul a dark color it will stand out and the mark will show very clear. If Quartz can also change the color of the timers for a single spell, I have never found it.

Just wondering, how do you guys manage your key binds, do you use any macro's? or just every spell by itself on a different button. And on which buttons. Honestly "bind-management" is quite hard with so affliction

It's quite easy. Just use button close to "wasd" for spell you use the most.