Dots and you: The Affliction Warlock Thread - Page 46

duffry · 10/19/09, 2:35 PM

Originally Posted by mwaf

In a raid situation I'd go with a SB first rotation though.

That's assuming nobody else is throwing up the debuff.
From your earlier numbers it looks like a demo lock is going to be SB spamming the portals anyway. Though I wonder what impact a Immolate or Corr in there would have.

Machinator · 10/20/09, 11:48 AM

I have recently begun playing my lock seriously again as an alt. For a while I had a certain amount of haste that SB fit in perfectly with the rotation between dots. After a couple big upgrades with haste I noticed a lot more gaps where there isn't enough time for a SB before I have to refresh a dot. I don't clip dots, but it makes me wonder if there are 'sweet spots' of haste to minimize this or where haste's value is increased because it allows for an extra SB/GCD that wouldn't be worth it before.

Liania · 10/20/09, 12:58 PM

More haste is always more beneficial. (Up to a certain point where you hit gcd ofc.)

Eiffeltower · 10/21/09, 6:02 AM

The easiest answer is the truest: don't look for a haste 'sweet spot' as you describe it. Just stack it high.
In affliction, you wanna be casting all the time to maximise your dps.
That means not waiting for CoA to fall off. Cast your SB, then refresh CoA. 0 cast downtime is what you should aim for, not for a haste sweet spot.

ksb1082 · 10/22/09, 4:33 PM

Originally Posted by olgamaster

Increasing the number of ticks would be an awkward mechanic, would it not? They'd have to end up rounding up or down to the nearest whole number of ticks since you can't have a "half tick." The only way to prevent corruption from not being refreshed at least once or twice in a raid would be to just increase the damage of corruption by a percentage equal to your haste %, or only have it scale with a fraction of your haste rather than all of it. I wouldn't mind them changing Glyph of UA instead because its pretty horrible right now, and it would be a straight up dps increase because there aren't any talents to screw with the results like EA does with corruption. Granted, it wouldn't increase other specs dps, but as it is now destruction has two glyphs for destruction only spells (conflag and CB), demonology has two (meta and felguard), but affliction's other glyph besides haunt (unstable affliction) is absolutely horrible. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to fix that while at the same time avoid having to deal with an overly complex haste mechanic on corruption.

There was some discussion about this on wow.com about how to deal with the mechanic of adding haste to dots. Someone in thier forums made the suggestion that rather than changing the timing of damage ticks or shortening the dot to have haste affect damage. In the way that you may have enough haste to get a "half tick" of damage, the suggestion was to take that damage from that tick to increase the overall damage of the dot ticks. I imagine there would be some scaling issues if dots increased in damage that way though.

Darkknight5585 · 11/02/09, 5:22 AM

I noticed that my immolation no longer stacks with my UA. When did this change or has this always been the way it is?

Jenren22 · 11/02/09, 6:56 AM

I presume you mean immolate? If so, this change happened back at 3.1. Affliction warlocks should thus drop immolate from their rotation and use UA instead.

Darkknight5585 · 11/03/09, 3:52 PM

Originally Posted by Jenren22

If so, this change happened back at 3.1. Affliction warlocks should thus drop immolate from their rotation and use UA instead.

So at that point what is the benefit of the 53/0/18 build? You're going for a talent that provides benefits to you're destruction spells but from what I see does not benefit you're affliction spells. Would those 18 talents be better served in the demonology tree maybe in improved succubus or demonic aegis?

Kurotowa · 11/03/09, 4:09 PM

Originally Posted by Darkknight5585

So at that point what is the benefit of the 53/0/18 build? You're going for a talent that provides benefits to you're destruction spells but from what I see does not benefit you're affliction spells. Would those 18 talents be better served in the demonology tree maybe in improved succubus or demonic aegis?

The benefit is to Shadow Bolt. While it may be filler it still contributes a significant percentage of your total DPS. Checking the logs of my last few raids it does in the range of 24% to 29% of my total damage, depending on the fight. The effect of Bane and Ruin on that are not insignificant.

krilz · 11/04/09, 8:16 AM

He might be referring to Aftermath which indeed is a wasted talent for Affliction locks. These points are better spent in Demonic Power (for increased DPS), Destructive Reach (higher utility) or maybe even Molten Skin (better survivability) or something entirely else, depending on your playstyle.

Rubadub · 11/08/09, 8:27 AM

Wouldn't this be a good time to have Shadow Bolt rebranded as an Affliction spell (and adjust the talent trees accordingly)? Introducing Incinerate at beginner levels would allow this, and make a lot of sense.

For one, it would solve the problem of Affliction having to spend a whooping 8 talent points if they want extended range and pushback protection for their whole arsenal of spells. Maybe it could even allow Affliction to pick up those Demo talents that Destruction warlocks can afford.

Not that I am so terribly opposed to Affl/Destro having different talent tree structures. As an big fan of Affliction though, I'd really like to see Shadow Bolt be made "our own" spell.

Kurotowa · 11/09/09, 12:02 AM

That's a whole different can of worms. The Warlock trees are remarkably redundant. There are separate Affliction and Destruction talents for range boosting, threat reduction, and crit multiplication. Heck, there used to be separate +Hit talents for the two trees. It's a clumsy legacy design, and one I suspect will get tossed in Cataclysm.

That said, the reason Shadow Bolt is a Destruction spell is that they are Destruction and Affliction spells, not Fire and Shadow spells. Warlocks are not Mages and shouldn't envy their design.

Jenren22 · 11/09/09, 9:19 AM

Originally Posted by Darkknight5585

So at that point what is the benefit of the 53/0/18 build? You're going for a talent that provides benefits to you're destruction spells but from what I see does not benefit you're affliction spells. Would those 18 talents be better served in the demonology tree maybe in improved succubus or demonic aegis?

Well initially you should always have at least 15 points in Destruction, in Bane, Improved Shadow Bolt and Ruin. The other points i'm guessing you're referring to Demonic Power and perhaps Destructive Reach? Aftermath is useless for affliction. The only reason you would spec into Demonic Power is for the extra damage from the Succubus. With 3.3 approaching, it is likely the spec will have more points in Affliction with Improved Felhunter instead. I am currently running 55/1/15 as my offspec for when we don't have a mage purely for the Felhunter buff.

Personally at 3.1 i always ran with 53/1/17 anyway for the Fel synergy. I struggle to think why you would need any more than 17 points in destruction, unless you have severe threat problems.