Affliction Warlock 7.3

[Guest Neckromantic]

One small thing. the hyperlink for furty takes us to his priest instead of his warlock

[Guest pain]

Maybe I'm not reading this right, but sections "1. Ability Priority List" and "2.8. Effigy vs. Conduit" seem to be in conflict wrt how many targets should be dotted:

Quote

1. Ability Priority List

1. Maintain  Agony (on up to 5 targets, including  Soul Effigy if talented) at all times.

Quote

2.8. Effigy vs. Conduit

At 4+ targets it is no longer efficient to continue to apply DoTs to new targets. Therefore, the maximum amount of targets we will ever apply  Agony to is 3 targets.

 

[Guest Dave]

Has anybody noticed that while beeing in a Group with two Affliction Warlocks, and both of them using Soul Effigy, that cast macros for the Effigy tend to try to cast on the other Warlocks Effigy instead of your own? This sucks hard, allthough this problem may only affect _very_ few players, it's still very anoying.

[Valks 2,407]

On 18.11.2016 at 5:40 AM, Kaedis said:

The Pandemic section still mentions Unstable Affliction being a rolling DoT, though it rather ironically suggests thinking of UA as separate debuffs.  Should probably be updated to reflect the separate debuffs, and the cap of 5 per target (which also might be worth mentioning in the rotation section as well).

I've passed that on to Furty, thanks!

[Valks 2,407]

On 22.11.2016 at 4:26 PM, Guest pain said:

Maybe I'm not reading this right, but sections "1. Ability Priority List" and "2.8. Effigy vs. Conduit" seem to be in conflict wrt how many targets should be dotted:

Passing this on, thanks for notifying me!

[Valks 2,407]

12 hours ago, Guest Dave said:

Has anybody noticed that while beeing in a Group with two Affliction Warlocks, and both of them using Soul Effigy, that cast macros for the Effigy tend to try to cast on the other Warlocks Effigy instead of your own? This sucks hard, allthough this problem may only affect _very_ few players, it's still very anoying.

Personally, no, but I very rarely encounter another Aff when I do play mine. Is there any way to distinguish between the two in the macro I wonder?

[Guest Dave]

Apparently not since both have the same name. I reported this as a bug via the ingame reporting tool, too. For Encounters with single target + effigy I switch to my focus macro instead and have the effigy be my focus target. I met another Affli Lock with whom I did some Odyn HC and Mythic pluses, can get really anoying on some encounters.

[Valks 2,407]

6 hours ago, Guest Dave said:

Apparently not since both have the same name. I reported this as a bug via the ingame reporting tool, too. For Encounters with single target + effigy I switch to my focus macro instead and have the effigy be my focus target. I met another Affli Lock with whom I did some Odyn HC and Mythic pluses, can get really anoying on some encounters.

Damn that sucks. A good workaround anyway though, thanks for sharing!

[Guest Kizoja]

Are you basing whether or not the affliction is the stronger in raids based on the very top percentile of players? IIRC, I was seeing mostly affliction above the others are most percentiles except max percentile. Also, at just about every percentile and keystone level (except for 13) for mythics had demonology and/or destro above affliction. This may be an issue with not being updated recently, but what I'm seeing on warcraftlogs would contradict what you're saying about affliction being the best spec for mythics. 

[Guest Lhys]

Hi, I play an affliction lock on Kirin Tor, and I have found that I do vastly more damage using grimore of supremacy in raids over service. Granted I am not doing mythics, but I do more than the rest of my guild in heroic EN, and often find myself getting decently high rankings over all other affliction locks doing the same content according to warcraftlogs. 

When I am using service I find my average dps drops from 300-360k to 245-260k. This leads me to believe that the information you are providing in your guide is leading the majority of affliction locks to overlooking using supremacy, as most people use your guide as law. The felhunter will be doing ~42k per bite as opposed to my doomguard's 81k per bolt. The burst of using service and doomguard as cooldown abilities is far worse for my dps than having my doomguard doom bolting for 81k or higher at all times.

[Guest Xferno]

Any chance this will be updated like the destruction one has been? What about a trinket list like destro has?

[Valks 2,407]

22 hours ago, Guest Xferno said:

Any chance this will be updated like the destruction one has been? What about a trinket list like destro has?

I'm sure Furty is working hard to get the updates prepared for 7.1.5! Until then, I doubt you'll see a large overhaul to the structure of the guide, since updates are required to every guide he writes.

Instead, I would assume that once 7.1.5 is released, we can look into upgrading the structure of other guides as well :) Just hang tight, it's coming!

[Valks 2,407]

The guides are currently being updated for 7.1.5! I just wanted to leave a few notes for all of our users that might be getting ready to leave a comment:

• Some pages do not require updates. The "Last Updated" stat does not mean the page is out of date, it might just not have needed any changes. If you feel that it does, leave a comment telling us what needs changing and why.
• The process will not happen immediately - some guides will be updated faster than others simply due to the number of resources available. Be patient, they'll be ready when you need them!
• There might be some continuity errors when making small adjustments to large guide pages. If you do find one of these, just let us know in the comments and we'll get it fixed ASAP.
• "Why have you not taken into account X buff to X ability?" - remember, just because something got buffed, it doesn't mean it is now automatically better than the other options!

As always, we want to thank you all for being patient while we get things updated and I'm always available to help you all if you need it :)

[Guest Scudge]

The names and descriptions of a couple talents still aren't updated, Malefic Grasp is now Drain Soul, Empowered Life Tap is now Mana Tap. Are the talent sections still taking this into consideration?

[Guest Scudge]

Never mind that, It was my own misunderstanding

[Valks 2,407]

4 hours ago, Guest Scudge said:

Never mind that, It was my own misunderstanding

Glad to see it got resolved. 

[hyyalvin 0]

Thanks for the great and quick update for 715.

I have a question about the affliction rotation, since the best Tier2 talent now is contagion instead of absolute corruption.

The guide says: "Apply Unstable Affliction twice."

Does this mean whenever UA expires, it should be applied twice (one for the debuff, one for damage)? If it is applied earlier when the last one still exists, it could be applied only once (trying to maintain at least one UA 100% uptime)? Then, is it necessary to apply a new UA always before the last one expires?

Thanks!

[Pannix 1]

So 

8 hours ago, hyyalvin said:

Thanks for the great and quick update for 715.

I have a question about the affliction rotation, since the best Tier2 talent now is contagion instead of absolute corruption.

The guide says: "Apply Unstable Affliction twice."

Does this mean whenever UA expires, it should be applied twice (one for the debuff, one for damage)? If it is applied earlier when the last one still exists, it could be applied only once (trying to maintain at least one UA 100% uptime)? Then, is it necessary to apply a new UA always before the last one expires?

Thanks!

So the reason you want to apply unstable affliction twice is that when you apply them one after another the first unstable affliction doesn't tick for long enough that you can get a second one in. The guide is assuming you are taking maleific grasp which boosts the dot damage from all dots but especially the unstable afflictions. Thus you can hit reap souls right after the second unstable affliction cast not trigger the gcd and then hit drain soul which gives a massive buff to all the dots currently on the target. The way i see it is it is OK for ua to drop if you need to refresh dots because the important thing is to always be buffing the unstable afflictions when they are out and you have reap souls buff up, the damage from contagion, Reap, and grasp really add to a lot of extra damage. If fatal echoes procs at the end of the cycle I ignore it and just redo the rotation with 3 unstable afflictions.

So the short of it contagion up-time is not a priority buffing those unstable afflictions with all 3 buffs is a priority, don't over cap on shards. Other than that letting ua drop outside of those situation is ok.

Sorry if anything is formatted wrong or hard to read I usually just lurk.

[Guest Infin]

Great post for someone switching to affliction in the near future.

I notice that with the updates of 7.1.5. the guide has been beautifully updated, but in the rotation section still uses drain soul, with no mention of MG (which i believe is a recommendation in the talents / builds section). Would MG be used in the same manner as drain soul is used with no exceptions (except shard sniping) or is there more to it than that?

[Guest Throlley]

since the felhunter has been buffed by 20% would going Grimoire of Service be a viable/better option for the tier 6? haven't tested it out in raids yet but the felhunter seems to do be doing around the same dps as the doomguard, with Service giving 2 additional cooldowns to use(one being doomguard).

[Valks 2,407]

On 1/10/2017 at 8:40 PM, Pannix said:

Sorry if anything is formatted wrong or hard to read I usually just lurk.

It's okay, thanks for helping to answer the comment :)

[Eukray 5]

On the what changes in 7.1.5 it says:

•  Sow the Seeds now only affects 2 nearby enemies instead of 4.

But it isn't replicated on the talent section. It still says 4 targets.

[Valks 2,407]

53 minutes ago, Eukray said:

On the what changes in 7.1.5 it says:

•  Sow the Seeds now only affects 2 nearby enemies instead of 4.

But it isn't replicated on the talent section. It still says 4 targets.

Thanks, will get that fixed! :)

[Meowish 0]

In the Legendary section it still says:

 Hood of Eternal Disdain causes  Agony to deal its full potential damage 20% faster. Overall the best legendary for Affliction by a noticeable margin on both single target and cleave.

 

It has gone down to 10% now. Will this change wether it's the BiS or not?

[Valks 2,407]

15 hours ago, Meowish said:

It has gone down to 10% now. Will this change wether it's the BiS or not?

Will double check this with Furty.