Is it even possible to see all the dots on a target? Doesn't the UI only show like 16 debuffs? If this is true, a solution could be that the UI prioritizes showing your debuffs.

You don't need to see all debuffs, since it already shows yours first. Ever since your own debuffs had duration information attached (via the Blizzard API), the default UI has shown your debuffs first and enlarged. In 3.0 the duration of all debuffs/buffs are usually known on units within your sphere of interest, but so far as I know, it still shows your debuffs first and enlarged.

(I use custom unit frames, so I'm not really the first to know on the status on Blizzard's default unit frames)

This isn't always true. I'm not sure what causes it but I've seen my debuffs get pushed into the middle of the second row before on Archavon and KT. Makes tracking your debuffs a lot harder and while it isn't something that occurs often it does happen. I'm assuming it's a bug of course because what you cited is how it works 95% of the time.

Needing a timer to play the spec is not broken, timers are handy for many classes (rogue rupture, hunter serpent sting etc).
What comes down to me as broken is basicly the total lack of crit scaling and the manageability of pets combined with the fact you are always going to be less able to be "aware" of your fight cause the complicated juggling of spells and therefor I have yet to see any affli warlock raid leading and doing great dps at the same time.
Another broken thing is that we need at least 15 points in destro to make us raid viable and the best glyph we get is for a destro spell.

I am not trying to recap all previous mentions of what is or would be wrong and wether or not blizzard fails or whatever, but at the moment the complicated rotation of affli is the least that worries good affli warlocks, in fact, most of us actually enjoy it a lot.

For a while I went with ruin over UA in TBC and dropped immolate, that alone made fights that much more boring.

They should allow dots to stack in 2s, where the second dot takes over once the first is finished, and where you can only apply a second dot when the first dot has 50/20% left.

Figuring out whether a dot can be stacked could be done by adding a frame or making it blink in the default ui.

Then the "fun" complexity is maintained, but the player has more freedom(with timing the dots) and the default ui should be sufficient. This would also make it possible to maintain a good/perfect uptime and lag/casttime/traveltime would have less influence.

One could even add Dotimer bars, they would then show the window where you need to apply the dot, not when the dot ends.

I really like that idea Exog, it would possibly boost lock DPS too much though. Imagine never clipping or having your DoT's fall off for a short while, would probably be worth 300-400 DPS easily.

Well, we know Siphon Life will be applied by Corruption (and very likely renewed by Everlasting Afflictions) If that's as far as they're gonna go I can honestly say I don't have any complaints. Siphon was the longest duration DoT so really this change is one of the least impacting ones they could have made. On the plus side it's definitely positive from a soloing perspective. Corruption, CoA, next mob!

I have been having a rough go with affliction, and have seen plenty of other locks that I out gear by a little bit do more dps than I. It is frustrating. I can touch 5k on patchwerk, and I do well on most very rooted fights. But for many fights which require a lot of movement, I slip down the damage meter pretty bad. To me, this is a failure in affliction right now...

One of the greatest things about affliction through the years was the ability to move, and not suffer a huge dps loss.... while now, it destroys it.

One of the things I think would make this better, is a simple change to haunt, similar to what has already been mentioned.

My Rotation is: SB, Haunt, UA, Imm, CoA, Corr, SL, SB Fill (Drain Soul under 25%)

I feel changing Haunt to either be an instant cast, or increasing the length of its duration, coupled with the refreshing of both Corruption AND Siphon Life would make a huge difference.

I often lose corruption and have to refresh manually because I start the refresh of haunt 1 GCD too late, and with travel time, corruption drops. This causes the need to waste another GCD on Corruption. Plus, Siphon Life having such a long length in comparison to the other dots, it makes it come up at odd times, that it often becomes the sacrificial DoT that waits a few casts in the rotation before being put back up.

You must be doing something wrong if you are not topping movement-based fights such as Heigan. The advantage of affliction dps is resilience from player movement, because up to 70% of affliction dps can be kept up through rapid stop-movement. Up to 24% of total dps (coa/corr/sl) can be kept up if the player is forced to move 100% of the time.

Affliction is one of the very few specs that do not take massive hits when the player is forced to move. As compared to frostfire spec, in which any movement basically denies dps time.

THe problem with affliction is the huge setup time, in which significant delay intervals such as maexxna web wraps will completely undermine performance.

With Haunt, UA and Immolate having a cast time, I don't think that affliction is as movement independent as you describe it. Factor in the loss of Shadow Embrace, and you are left with the base damage of SL, Corr and CoA. If you can cast again, you need some time to put up all your debuffs again.

Affliction might still be the spec least inflicted by movement, but you will no longer be Top-dps like in Gruul's Lair where the only drawback were some missed shadow bolts.

Wrong. Show me a fight where you can't stop to cast a sub 1.5 second spell. You're just assuming that movement means nothing with cast time will be cast.

It is not impossible, but at times can be difficult, and regardless, the rotation suffers a great deal.

Anyhow, that was not the point of my post. My post was simply to point out a couple things I think would help simplify the rotation, and improve those situations.

Everyone suffers some dps loss when moving. It's just that affliction actually suffers the least amount.

Also to make everything instant cast means Blizzard will lower the damage the spell can do to make up for it being instant cast.

Affliction may be fine with minor movement, but since the haunt/SE change major movement royally screws affliction since it takes 11 seconds to get affliction to full DPS where most other classes are up and running much much quicker.

This change will reduce that number to 9.5

No offence, but, learn to recast Haunt sooner? You can hardly call it a failing of the design if you have the chance to refresh Corruption in plenty of time and your choice makes Haunt land slightly too late, can you?

Affliction dps on the move is difficult, but it's a lot more possible than a lot of other specs. Maybe even all of them. Heigan is a good example - you should be easily able to keep Corruption, Siphon Life, Curse of Agony and Haunt up on him while you dance (refresh the dots while you're running, cast Haunt when you turn at either side of the room). What can everyone else do? Hunters have a few instant shots and will get some autoshots, fair enough. Moonkin can keep up two dots and maybe get a Wrath or two off. Mages can.. ice lance?

It's hard, no doubt, to keep track of what needs to be refreshed and still successfully Move Out Of The Fire. But it's far from impossible, and quite rewarding when you manage it, I think.

If all your dots and Haunt are up and you're left with SB spam as an option, are you even moving? And again, as others have said, if you do have a full round of Haunted dots ticking while the raid runs around, you're doing a lot more damage than the mages/moonkins/etc nearby.

I've gotten into the habit of recasting haunt if its off CD, even if in theory I have enough time to cast something else before it drops off. The reason being is its not worth mistiming it, or having lag etc. cause it to drop, especially if i have to recast corruption.

I don't think Afflicition needs much changing (I do like the SL change), but i would like to see the folowing changes to haunt:

1. increase its duration
2. eliminate its travel time
3. reduce its cast time (instant?)

Making haunt friendlier would in effect "simplify" affliction and make the spec far friendlier.

Well, it really depends - assuming the reduce Siphon's duration to eb the same as corruption, but do the same amount of damage over the new duration, it'd be fine - as long as Haunt refreshed it with corruption.

They really need to get rid of the bug, too, when corruption is on a mob, and for some reason you go to recast it as it's about to fall off, and you get the "more powerful effect..." error text...hate seeing that

Only doing one of those things would be fine and make it easier to play.

There are plenty of fights, where you sometimes can't manage a 1.x sec cast with travel time in a 4 sec windows. If this never happened to you, and you have a near 100% dot-uptime on all bosses, then you are a better player than I am. Or you die more often while casting "just this 1.x sec spell".

I didn't say that affliction is useless on movement fights. I didn't say that you can't cast anything while moving. I just said that affliction is more dependend on spells with cast-time then it was in BC.

But still much less dependent on them than other casters. In a boss fight where there really isn't time to cast a 1.5 second spell (and I don't think I agree that there are plenty of those), you should still be able to do more damage than many.

May I attempt to sum up the various issues surround affliction and movement?
1. Optimal affliction DPS in a high-but-not-100%-movement situation (ie you can cast haunt) is noticeably higher than other DPS classes.
2. Achieving this optimal DPS is much harder than for other DPS classes.
3. Suboptimal affliction movement DPS is still better DPS and as easy as other classes' mobile DPS.

So, we agree that 1 is true, and we agree that 2 is true but are debating its relevence. 3 has not so far been mentioned, and I don't know if it's true or not, but it is worth considering. If we can get the same or better reward for the same effort, and have the opportunity to improve upon that with more precision, then our situation is strictly better than other classes, since our worst-case matches or excels their best-case. Given that, I think 2 is a fair price to pay for 1.

The balanced line consists of slightly simplifying the rotation, read Slightly. Combining the SL effect with Corruption is a great start, that means Haunt does a lot of the work for us. Would love to see Haunts travel time eliminated as it's ever so frustrating to refresh haunt with 2-3 seconds left on Corr then watch it fall off. Sure there is user error involved there, but it's happened to all of us at one point or another.

As for the crusade against Immolate being part of an affliction warlocks rotation. What in gods name are whining about, UA / Immo are the easiest things we have to manage / master, the difficulty of affliction comes from having to deal with CoA / SL / Haunt (Corr) while maximizing SB / DS time.

As for all of the talk about expanding Everlasting Afflictions effects, this talent does enough already, I seriously don't see them adding more to it. They have plenty of talents to work with, Dark Pact, Grim Reach, Amp Curse all could be utilized to make minor tweaks. Not to mention replacing / changing Improved Felhunter.

ps : Leil, you should seriously invest some time into reading the other Warlock threads on these forums pertaining to gear / talents. 481 Hit rating is astronomical, 3/3 Eradication is useless, and 0/2 Soul Siphon is just absurd.