Kilydan

Members
  • Content count

    230
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Kilydan


  1. since if im right did someone check the database, and it was not yet there for us. even on atlas loot it states its there but its black on the icon etc, which does probably state the fact it does excist but not yet implemented i guess

     

    besides that is this a general suggestion for all expansions, and not only for pandaria/WoD and idk how that works with the account shared mounts thing


  2. some retail screenshots i made on the highmaul/BRF tier:

    most of these screenshots are taken from my videos i made just for myself to check on it etc. note that this was on retail and no on the current ashran server but it will atleast show you that they are not bad at all if played correctly :)

     

    Spoiler

  3. welp double posting cus i can't edit;

    forgot to add 'just like it was in mop'

    i wonder why ask mr.robot doesnt have haste breakpoints anymore then, since it was removed. have never seen anything about breakpoints in wod neither (or does it simply reduce the duration of the debuff resulting in same amount of ticks but in less amount of time)

     

    but yea idk if this topic will turn into a wod pve guide suddenly, but i wanna keep it oriented to MoP only if you understand :) i've to agree that the current forum layout does fuck up expansion related stuff like that atm.


  4. well this guide is ment for MoP i've no clue about WoD cuz i didnt like the changes in there when i hanged to retail for a few months awhile ago. i cannot help you with anything WoD related, it didnt state for nothing: "[mop] 5.4" in the beginning of my guide


  5. not, they completely snapshotting and haste breakpoints in wod if im right, so there is if im right no benefit from speccing into haste if im right, but im not 100% sure since i never played warlocks in wod/retail, only enhancement shaman on retail


  6. stop casting on my shadowburn is because you might want to kill of a target that dies rly quick, if you have to finish your cast you might miss the shaduwburn which results in 1 ember loss which you dont want, since embers are really powerfull for destruction warlocks to deal damage or to heal up yourself in some scenario's :)

    for the focus macro: easy answer: you have adds... maybe sometimes more important then the boss itself, but you also want to keep track of both targets, a great example is sha of fear

    you want to kill off the adds at the side, and still watches the boss his energy which you can easily do if you have the boss on focus, if you want to put out some extra dps to the boss while not losing any dps on the adds, you can easily use a focus macro to use a havoc for example so you can damage the add and the boss at the same time, pushing your dps higher. this way you are not only increasing your overal dmg output on the adds and the boss together but you are also keeping track of his energy bar


  7. i have noticed that a lot of players do think affliction isn't working or just really bad. but that's all false information/hope affliction is actually working pretty fine, or even better! its even working better then destruction and demonology!

    ***this is a very long guide and I've actually no idea why i put so much time in it but ill cut everthing in parts with spoilers so you just click on a subject you want to visit rather then 1 big post***

    i will tell you why affliction is now better then it used to be, and that is the mechanics to play with to play affliction properly, a few bugs that made the affliction warlock less good have been fixed (pandemic, haste and soul swap for example) and because of these fixes affliction warlock is back to shine again!

    destruction guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/41204-destruction-54-pve-guide/
    affliction guide: (you are looking at it)
    demonology guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/41704-demonology-warlock-pve-guide/

    i will cover the next things in my guide:
    1.1: Stat Priority
    1.2: haste breakpoints
    2: gear and addons
    3: snapshotting
    4: talent choices
    5: and a small rotation guide
    6: useful links


    1.1: Stat Priority.

    affliction warlock does have a strict stat priority and that has everything to do with haste, affliction is a DoT based class that benefits from haste to gain additional ticks to do more and frequent damage in the same amount of time. 

    for example: if you have 0 haste your Unstable Affliction will tick 10 times in 1 seconds. if you have 5000 haste your Unstable Affliction will tick 11 times in 10 seconds grating additional damage which is absolutely insane!

    so now we know that that affliction warlocks relays heavily on haste we can start showing the stat priority which will look like this:
    (there are a few breakpoints included in here that will help you for whatever item level you have for new warlocks OR warlocks in the feature on SoO gear!)

    <510 Item level
    Int > 15% Hit (5100) > Haste (6637) > Mastery > Haste > Crit

    <560 Item level
    Int > 15% Hit (5100) > Haste (9778) > Mastery > Haste > Crit

    >560 Item level
    Int > 15% Hit (5100) > Haste (13737) > Mastery > Haste > Crit


    Critical strike chance isn't that good for a dot class like us you might say it will double your damage output on a dot tick, but in general a dot isn't really hitting that hard yet so a critical strike wont be noticeable in your damage, especially while haste and mastery is way more powerful for us!

    Mastery gives you a % amount of extra damage on your Damage over time effects (which is your main damage output with agony corruption and Unstable Affliction which is a good way to flat out increase your damage output.

    Haste will be your main secondary stat  even after mastery i added another haste, because haste is just soo good, not only for your dots but also for your general cast time on haunt AND (don't forget) malefic grasp tick speed (3 ticks but the channel time will be shorter with more haste increasing your single target damage a bit)

    hit rating is always needed to be 5100 (15%) abit over that number is fine but keep it as close as that number as possible, do NOT go below this number because it will affect your dps by just missing on damage. 

    another thing to keep in mind is that you can also go expertise instead of haste if you can fit that in better for capping on hit rating (1 expertise = 2 hit rating) it is possible that you see casters with expertise (but keep in mind that this is not the preferable gem or especially reforge! (avoid reforing into it, unless you need to reforge into hit) 


    1.2: Haste breakpoints

    as I've stated before there is a breakpoint (i used a rough example) but there are a few sites (sadly askmrrrobot doesnt work anymore with the removal of haste breakpoints in WoD) that will help you out reach some of your breakpoints and some addons who are amazing to help your reforge into that, but i'll cover that later!

    a good site to help you find your breakpoint is:
    http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=44

    how a breakpoint works is like this:

    as I've stated if you are below item level 510 its better to cap out your Haste at 6637, and the next breakpoint is abit ahead on 9778 haste (keep in mind that this number also on the stat priority is a breakpoint you will reach while having a raid buff that provides haste! but that usually happens in any raid comp.) so between the 6637 and 9778 there is a gap of nothing. and if you are reaching for high haste and you reach for example 9000 haste, you will lose that amount of haste that could have been mastery which would increase your damage, while the 2.4k~ haste you spend did nearly nothing for you! but keep in mind that haste is your best stat, and if you are able to spec into full haste to reach the new breakpoint, then go for it! the reason for this is quite simple and i will try to make the next example as clear as possible (this is not a real test I've done, but it will state the same)

    Example:

    you have 0 haste and 10% mastery, that means your dot damage is increased by 10% on top of its base damage. so if you have a Unstable Affliction ticking for 50k it will now tick for 55k, if the dot is ticking 10 times it means you did a total damage of 550k
    if you swap out all your mastery and go for a breakpoint so you will for example have 10% haste and 0% mastery now, it will give that 1 extra dot tick, now you will have 11 ticks of 50k and that means you have 550k damage. you might say nothing has changed but it did! if you are on the spot like this example it will indeed barely to not do anything for you. but if you find a new item that gives extra mastery but keeps your haste the same, it will now increase the damage of 11 dots instead of 10.

    (new example withing the example)

    if you gain 10% extra mastery we can do the calculation again:
    0 haste and 20% mastery, that means a dot will tick for 60k and a total of 10 times so you get a total of 600k damage

    if you have 10% haste and 10% mastery that means a dot will tick 11 times for 55k each and that will result in a 605k damage, it doesn't sound like much but its still better then nothing! (rough example but it will show the difference on reaching a new breakpoint in combination with just pure mastery!)

    2: Gear and Addons

    Gear is of course really useful for everyone but for affliction you cannot just flat out grab whatever gear you want, the best is to have haste on your gear to reach for the breakpoints as i talked about if you cannot find anything with mastery as second secondary stat then go with Hit or Crit since if you are over capped on hit you can reforge that into mastery, and if it has crit you NEED to reforge this into mastery since mastery is way more beneficial then crit! of course after you are hit-capped (which will be easier as gear scales up) its ideal to have Mastery AND Haste on your gear so you dont need to reforge (until you are low on hit but high on haste for the next breakpoint you can trade some of your haste into hit)

    as for Addons there are a few addons i really recommend that will help or make reforging and your gameplay easier

    first one is ReForge lite
    http://www.wowace.com/addons/reforgelite/files/

    take the first link for 5.4.8 but it works for us on pandashan. what this addon does (helps for any class but gets more useful and easy for us as warlocks to choose our breakpoints) whenever you go to a reforge NPC you get a new pop-up window which is your new addon, dont get scary by the big pannel and tables and stuff. open the next link for a small mini guide:

    part 1:


    w8P14BF.jpg

    if you press on Preset you can see standard presets for warlocks which i really like to use (the haste on those 2 are abit higher because this addon is made for 5.4 (SoO content) then they used to be, so if you press Custom you can fill in your haste number you want in the haste tab below it, then if you press calculate below that it might lag for a few seconds because its calculating your gear and your haste and gems so it can make the best reforge possible for you!, if you have done that move to part 2.

    part 2:


    XomqzYX.jpg

    you have to scroll down to the bottom abit and you can press the "show button" and it will pop up a new window that will show you what has already been reforged (marked with yellow like you see for me) if it isn't reforged yet it will be a empty mark. if you press the "reforge" button on the new window it will automatically reforge every unmarked gear for you while you just sit back and relax while your gear is getting its optimized reforge! and that's how you optimize your reforge


    the second addon i use to play better as affliction is (one amazing addon) TellMeWhen:
    http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/tellmewhen(choose 5.4 download version in view older versions of course)

    this addon is scary aswell to see for the first time, since you will get a new window of 4 buttons that you cannot do anything with and stuff but i will explain why this addon is usefull and put a small guide of it aswell.

    what does this addon do? it let you be able to track cooldowns and even better: internal cooldowns! you can even track specific debuffs on some bosses if you struggle with spotting the debuff but you will have to play with it to figure that out yourself, for now our use of this addon is to track internal cooldowns like trinkets that proc on time (since you dont know when it will proc), it shows the cooldown as soon as it procced and you will know when you are able to get a new trinket proc again which will be a HUGE dps boost if we play around with it as affliction!

    small guide:

    few screenshots again and a small explenation on how to instal a internal cooldown

    you do need to research yourself abit on your trinkets and cooldowns you want to track but it will pay of in the end!

    here you can see which trinkets and cooldowns im tracking and how it looks when it procs:
    ysEtWcS.jpguBAzQte.jpg you can see my trinket has procced and its going on the internal cooldown now which i told him to track down! (which is amazing so you can plan your next move in combination with your trinket!)

    now we are looking how to setup 1 trinket (in this case the relic trinket is what i will cover because alot of people have it or can get acces on it, on top of that is it a REALLY good trinket for a affliction warlock (better then the timeless trinket which gives useless crit!, nearly 60 item levels lower and still better, ofcourse if you find a better trinket then use it)

    start with writing /tmw in your chat box and you will see you can finaly over over your 4 buttons and they glow up and stuff (they are on a diffirent icon from what i have and i'll explain how to change it now aswell)

    this is the screen you get if you right-click one of the icons:
    bppLQKs.jpg

    you barely need to touch anything anything besides a few things:

    first you make sure you press "internal cooldown" in the left upper corner, press the arrow and a dropdown menu shows up where you can show it

    then at "choose spell(s) to check you enter the BUFF of the trinket (not the trinket itself, so you have to google it up, wowhead is usually a good source)" in this case its blessing of the celestials, and while you are writing it a new window pops up at the left which will filter all results what the game does recognize, click the trinket icon you want to see and you are good to go! then after the double dot: you will have to write down what the internal cooldown is, once again google is your friend on this and with some research you will find something (and i can tell you that it worked for me) so in this case with this specific trinket the internal cooldown is 45 seconds, so put in a 45 and you will be fine. now that you have chosen your trinket and buff you want to track we are going to mark some stuff

    now you have to enable the red "unusable" so you can see the cooldown actually start, at the right part you have to enable "show timer, and show timer text" and in general your tracker is completed, so whenever you close this and start hitting the combat, and the trinket procs you will see that that exact trinket will go on its cooldown that you usually didn't see. now if you are out of combat the icon shows back to the stopwatch again which we don't want. so we simply open up the screen again and at custom textures you fill in the name of your trinket buff again and it will now have the trinket appearance when you are out of combat. 

    that's how you set it up!
    (1 small other thing, jade spirit enchant is not trackable by internal cooldown because it doesn't have one, even tho it doesn't proc as often as the other trinkets its still track able by doing the exact same as above, but instead of choosing a internal cooldown you choose a buff/debuff!)

    3. Snapshotting


    snapshotting is a quite complex system that will benefit you as a affliction warlock VERY VERY much, and the idea a s a affliction warlock is to make as much out of this system as possible.
    what it basically comes down to, is making your dots strong and keep them strong, even a strong dot of 30 seconds can now last 40 seconds with not much work! 

    what is snapshotting exectly?

    snapshotting is a moment of time when you press your ability where the game tracks down your stats and provide that stat to your ability, and thats the key for a affliction warlock to make our dots strong! 

    small example:

    normal dot hits for 50k
    if you have a trinket proc while your dot is ticking it keeps ticking for 50k, BUT if you reapply your dots you will suddenly deal 60k damage each proc, and if your dot last longer then your proc lasts, you will still deal 60k damage each tick, because the moment you pressed your ability it was looking at your stats that where benefiting from that trinket, and it will apply to your total dot!

    your dots in general are not hitting as hard as you want them to hit, but if you combine them with snapshotting it will be a lot stronger suddenly! and that's what we want to do, making your dots strong with buffs and procs and cooldowns and stuff, so the stronger you can keep your dot, the better you will perform as a affliction warlock. there is not much of a rotation for affliction warlock because you are playing more with your trinket procs and stuff then with your spells itself, because your goal is to keep your dots really strong over the fight and dont lose as much dps on letting a powerfull dot "dry out" and fall of. 

    for the best use of snapshotting you are going to to apply your dots whenever you have as much procs and buffs as possible, then apply the dots, so they instantly benefit from the new stats due to snapshotting, once your powerful buffs are about to fall of, you will have to reapply all your dots again to make use of snapshotting again. you might ask why i would reapply my dots basically twice in a row while the dots are lasting longer then the procs right? but that's because if for example your buff lasts for 10 second and your dot for 30 seconds, that means the moment you apply the dot at first you will benefit around 10 seconds of the buff on your new applied dot, and at the last second you reapply the dot again you gain another 30 seconds of the strong dot, so you suddenly made your dot 40 seconds strong because you are adding the trinket proc to your time of the dot aswell. thats what you need to do as affliction warlock to keep your dots as strong as possible as you can.

    i just did a test on my corruption, and unbuffed my corruption did hit for 8.2k non-crit with not a single proc or buff, and whit as much proccing and buffs as i could get myself (didnt have a 1k int flask with me, but i did use a burst potion) and i did a non-crit with my corruption of: 15k (couldnt manage to proc everything i could at once because i was lagging alot at the moment of the test) this damage bonus wasnt even affected by raid buffs which add to it aswell on top of haste buffs that will increase the breakpoints to gain even additional ticks. (keep in mind that corruption is your lowest hitting DoT) but it still can get a 100%+ damage increase only from self buffs and snapshotting!

    4: talent choices

    its really simple, i want to keep it short from here on so i wont cover that much on what is not needed to affect your damage!  the first 4 talent choices are quite optional on what you like and prefer to have and play with, however the last 2 talents are going to affect your dps in raid and stuff. the level 75 talent will be Grimoire of Supremacy and then summon your shivarra pet. shivarra pet is probably the best single target pet the is and will give you the best damage boost. grimoire of service doesn't give that much of a dps boost to you (still slightly a boost but not a big one)  and grimoire of sacrifice will barely do anything for you at all, since the single target damage of malefic grasp will get boosted and not the extra 30% additional dot damage and the base damage of malefic grasp is just bad, so this talent is bad for us!

    the level 90 talent is quite important and will affect your dps significantly! whatever talent we choose, it doenst matter and long as it isnt mannoroth's fury because its just bad for us, whatever reason you might thing of, dont do think about it forget the idea and look at the other 2 talents...

    archimonde's darkness will help you alot on single target fights and on long lasting AoE fights like Council of Elders so you can use that buff to gain additional haste to your character incase your missed a dot or something

    kil'jeadan's cunning is the best talent for heavy movement fights (especialy single target oriented) or in some cases aoe fights but not much, in AoE fights like council of elders you are using your soulswap to play and not your malefix grasp, malefix grasp is mostly a single target spell filler if all your strong dots are running.

    5. rotation guide

    its basicly using the mechanic of snapshotting to play your spec, its more deciding if it is worth it to put a new dot and think if it will be stronger then the previous dot your have applied (which you tried to apply with snapshotting and make it powerfull)  you realy need to keep track of the internal cooldown to see if it is worth it to wait a extra second for a trinket to proc so you can empower your dots again with snapshotting. NEVER reapply a dot that is empower while you don't have any trinket procs unless you don't have a choice but reapply the dots as soon as possible once something procced. you dont want to have a low dot on your enemy, its your worse nightmare (this might happen often if you are unlucky with procs on single target fights) 


    now we know that we know how to use snapshotting i'll show you how i deal with single target fights and AoE fights (in this case Council of Elders (which is an absolute amazing and fun fight to play affliction on)

    Single target:

    if you have a good guild you will probably do a pull countdown so you can pre-pot and pre-cast abilities so it will land the moment you are pulling the boss.

    so make sure to pre-pot at around 2 and then start casting a haunt, once the haunt is finishing casting the boss will probably take aggro from the tank and you want to apply your dots with soulburn and soul swap (applying all 3 dots) i do this so the dots i apply to the boss will benefit from haunt whenever haunt lands on the target giving me a little head-start on my (for now low dots) and then you want to use your malefic grasp and look/wait for trinket procs once you have some good procs you want to empower your dots with you can use you burst macro mostly  involving your racial (if horde) darksoul: Misery and any profession related bonus damage. then reapply your dots again with soulburn soul swap combination if you are still having some time left on your trinkets then use a malefic grasp and try to get the very last out of your trinkets and maybe hoping for the last trinket proc (that might have not procced yet) and if it does proc in time the quickly react to it again and apply your dots again! (yes a lot of re-dotting in the first 10 seconds of the fight) but that means your dots are now running at full potential, maybe even doing 200%+ damage of what they used to do if you didnt do all of it!!! and then just keep filling your rotation with malefic grasp, react to trinket procs again due to snapshotting (unless you have move powerful dots on the target and they wont run out yet) and keep casting haunt as often as you can (preferred at 2+ soul shards so you can quickly react to trinket procs with soulburn and soul swap rather then wasting 3 global cooldowns which you could have spended on malefic grasp)

    incase your single target fight involved little adds you can make huge benefits from them, if you have your dots running strong on your  main target you can inhale these dots with soulswap, and exhale them on the add that has spawned, and then you can re do the same back to the boss, which will add a fully new empowered dot back to your main target, so even if they where about to expire (the powerful dots you can still keep them for along time on your main target without having to worry about reapplying the dot)

    for AoE fights (like Council of Elders 4+ targets for most of the fight)

    on the opener you want to do the same as I've described on single target damage openers but stop doing the malefic grasp to gain procs, you instantly want to start swapping this dot to the other targets (2 targets on low dots for the first few seconds are giving more dps then 1 target and trying to drain for the procs) dots will tick twice now and your chance on procs have been doubled as well once you got your procs do your burst thing again and you are going to inhale and exhale with soulswap till all targets have a fully empowered dot on them from the snapshotting, soulswap will just copy the dot and bring them over to the other targets as long as you want! (your strong dots are going to start strong during the WHOLE fight which makes long lasting aoe fights for affliction extremely good!) while you have all dots running on your main targets you want to apply haunt to them while still making sure all targets are running with max empowered dot since you have alot of targets you barely need to worry about your soulshards because of your corruption that has a chance to give a shoulshard whenever it ticks (10% each tick) and lets say it ticks 1.5 times a second, so basicly 6 times a second its a 60% chance per second to gain a soulshard to spend a haunt on again. besides that there is not much to do for you, just a really hectic opener to keep a look at your trinkets at all time!

    6: Useful Links.

    to begin with a video i made myself (crap quality) but still good enough to see what is happening etc. but this shows what affliction can do in aoe situations on pandashan right now!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80UyjzkwBLI

    i didn't cover the gear and BiS (Best in Slot - many people don't know this shortcut while it is commonly used in PvE!) slots but thanks to some sites it will help you decide what is the best for you to get!

    here is a few sites you can use to gear up:
    http://www.mop-veins.tk/affliction-warlock-pve-dps-gear-loot-best-in-slot

    and for our current 5.2 tier:
    http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/1433-52-warlock-t15-set-bonus-bis-list/

    i have to add to this that i don't 100% agree with this guys list (as shown below in the comments as well) personally i would swap his 100% crit trinket with mageara's breath trinket which gives you a good amount of intellect on proc which is way more beneficial then haste! Wushoolay's Final Choise is currently broken which is quite disappointed for us because it is one of the best trinkets in the game for dot classes and will even be better then some of the early non heroic SoO trinkets! i would highly recomand the valor item level 522 trinket buy-able in the cave near Throne of Thunder for the haste proc which will grant you a few extra ticks with the high haste proc!

    his weapon choice is indeed really strong and provides a double socket bonus (1x main hand and 1x offhand) which will in the end be abit stronger the the staff from twin consorts fight as soon as they are kill able for us this staff is a good weapon to use and provides our 2 best secondary stats (haste and mastery) and this is a great (one of the best) 2 handers you can get until you get the main hand and offhand weapon combination or something with a higher item level ofcourse

    a site and a person i learned affliction trough is sparkuggz and Fragnance (both top tier warlocks from method) Fragnance doesn't have a active youtube channel as sparkuggs does and currently doesn't main his warlock anymore, but he did main his warlock in SoO and on his stream he did often help you when you asked for some warlock help!

    here is a link to sparkuggz own site and youtube channel where you can look up alot of things for the warlock class in general and ofcourse affliction aswell!:
    http://sparkuggz.com/
    https://www.youtube.com/user/Sparkuggz

    there is 1 video from Fragnance on Twitch which just blows my mind of the power of affliction and will always motivate me to play affliction more and more especially on AoE fights like this!

    http://www.twitch.tv/fragnance/c/4158083

    I really hope i could inspire people to play affliction and try it out over the destruction spec over and over again which doesn't require as much knowledge of the game/class as affliction does. affliction is a harder spec to play but it pays off doing it correctly!

    if you have anything to add or you still have questions, don't hesitate to ask them on this topic or send me a PM!

    thanks for letting me waste your time? :P (joking ofc, its the best guide ive made so far i think!!!)

    1 person likes this

  8. sry if the list is kinda bad, i have to get used to the new forum, so the "reveal hidden contents" are abit buggy for me and rly hard to adjust since i cannot reach the source code of this... i'll try to fix it whenever i figured out how!


  9. Demo guide:

    i have noticed that a lot of players do think Demonology isn't working or just really bad. i've to admit that demonology is one of the more buggy specs to play as warlock, but not mechanical wise. its only a few synergizing problems like with the 100% crit change trinket which would be godlike if Doom worked correctly. i will cover the normal and pandashan way on play demo lock so you will still be able to do great dps!


    i personally like Demonology over the Destruction spec (gosh i realy hate destruction tbh) the last time i played destruction and compared to Demonology there wasnt even a big diffirence, maybe a 5-10k dps lower on some fights but also higher on other fights, so they are equally the same on dps if you manage demonology correctly (and the good thing is is that demonology can only get stronger due to a few bugs!) 

    ***this is a very long guide so ill cut everthing in parts with spoilers so you just click on a subject you want to visit rather then 1 big post***


    destruction guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/41204-destruction-54-pve-guide/
    affliction guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/40013-affliction-warlock-pve-guide/#entry220634
    demonology guide: (you are looking at it)

    i will cover the next things in my guide:
    1.1: Stat Priority
    1.2: haste breakpoints
    2: gear and addons
    3: snapshotting
    4: talent choices
    5: and a small rotation guide
    6: useful links


    1.1: Stat Priority.

    intellect > hit(15%) > Haste (breakpoint) > Mastery => crit 
    you can pretty much ignore crit currently, and after the doom fix you should only ignore is whenever you have the 100% crit trinket to synergize with your doom.

    haste to around 3036 as lowest breakpoint for your first doom breakpoint to gain a additional tick on doom (or somewhere in the 8k but don't worry about this breakpoint till end game gear! (i'll go more in depth about this in the next section)

    currently there is a bug with haste breakpoints which counts for all classes if i'm not mistaking, a bug where you need 1.5% haste EXTRA to benefit from your breakpoint. so in our case the 3036 haste will go up to 3686 (total of 650 haste is needed extra because of this bug)

    Mastery does benefit your overall damage and especially in metamorphosis!


     

    1.2 Haste Breakpoints


    i basically already mentioned this in the section above, but i will go a little more in depth about it in here. about further breakpoints as well! 

    your first and general haste breakpoint is at 3686 for the first doom.  i found a guide online which did exactly feature which breakpoints are available and which one to take.
    a general rule for demonology and affliction spec is to always go for the highest possible breakpoint you can go for. a breakpoint for us is the same as upgrading a weapon for a warrior because it will increase our dmg output etc by so much that it cannot be compared to mastery anymore, it will be way better!

    here is the breakpoint list i mentioned (first number is retail, second number between the brackets [] are the numbers you need here on pandashan:

    i will already mention here that a "imp" breakpoint means that you will be able to get a extra imp swarm from the imps warm glyph in and reduce the cooldown drastically, i'm not 100% sure how breakpoints on this ability work but im pretty sure it comes from a good source :)
    however the demonic calling buff will be disabled while impswarm is on cooldown
    6072 [6722] imp breakpoint
    8097 [8747] doom / shadowflame breakpoint
    13153 [13803] doom breakpoint (not yet worth going for even on BiS ToT gear, same goes for anything below this point)
    14166 [14816] doom breakpoint
    14873 [15523] imp breakpoint

     

    2: Gear and Addons


    with gear you basicly just wanna go for the what i call "basic" warlock gear setup, which just involves ALOT of mastery and haste to gain your breakpoints and such, a site you can easily follow to gear up as BiS list is: http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/1433-52-warlock-t15-set-bonus-bis-list/?p=15802

    also aim for the http://www.wowhead.com/item=94524/unerring-vision-of-lei-shentrinket because of the 100% doom i was talking about earlier and will talk about later how to properly use it

    3. Snapshotting


    snapshotting is a quite complex system that will benefit you as a Demonology warlock VERY VERY much, and the idea as a Demonology warlock is to make as much out of this system as possible.
    what it basically comes down to, is making your dots strong and keep them strong.

    what is snapshotting exactly?

    snapshotting is a moment of time when you press your ability where the game tracks down your stats and provide that stat to your ability, and this is really useful for demonology warlocks especially if you are going to play with the http://www.wowhead.com/item=94524/unerring-vision-of-lei-shen trinket, this trinket is extremely powerful in combination with Doom because you can have a 100% crit chance on your doom for 2 minutes!!!
    small example:

    whenever your 100% crit trinket procs, you only have a 4 second window to do your stuff, in our case it is going into metamorphosis form, and cast doom TWICE in a row, so it will last 2 minutes instead of 1. your doom will not crit 100% of the time and spawn a wild imp whenever your doom crits. (still good to practice this, but sadly this part is broken and WONT correctly spawn a imp whenever you crit with doom. this is indeed a big problem for demonology warlocks and i want to see it fixed asap, but i cannot promise anything!)

     

    4: talent choices

    its really simple, i want to keep it short from here on so i wont cover that much on what is not needed to affect your damage!  the first 4 talent choices are quite optional on what you like and prefer to have and play with, however the last 2 talents are going to affect your dps in raid and stuff. the level 75 talent will be Grimoire of Supremacy and then summon your shivarra pet. shivarra pet is probably the best single target pet the is and will give you the best damage boost. grimoire of service doesn't give that much of a dps boost to you (still slightly a boost but not a big one)  and grimoire of sacrifice will barely do anything for you at all, unless you are playing with the 100% crit chance trinket, but sadly do the imps not scale with that buff and therefore is this talent also quite useless for us. (i will keep you guys updated here whenever it is possible to use it because of a fix)

    the level 90 talent is quite important and will affect your dps significantly! whatever talent we choose, it doenst matter and long as it isnt mannoroth's fury because its just bad for us, whatever reason you might thing of, don't do think about it forget the idea and look at the other 2 talents...

    archimonde's darkness will help you a lot on single target fights and on long lasting fights, it is however a really bad talent if you need to move alot.

    kil'jeadan's cunning is the best talent for heavy movement fights (especial y single target oriented) or in some cases aoe fights but not much.

     

    5. rotation guide

    rotation is quite simple yet so complex, especially if you are going to play with the 100% crit trinket which your should whenever you can use it properly (the trinket does work, just the synergy doesn't)


    for single target its quite simple but also quite hard because you need to manage our trinket procs correctly! the openers are quite hectic to begin with because you need to manage all your trinket procs and rotation perfectly, you can basically make no mistake or it will result in a hug damage loss!

    as of the opener i pre-pot with a burst potion so it will go on a cooldown so you can use it a second time in the fight then pre-cast a shadowbolt so it will hit the target whenever the boss is pulled and follow that by a hand of gul'dan. at this point some/most of your trinkets might have already been procced so its a good moment now to cast a corruption on the target followed by a shadow bolt (you can change the order of corruption and shadowbolt if your trinkets didn't proc yet, so you can try to get a trinket proc now) then cast your second charge from hand of gul'dan. the reason i didnt cast it directly twice in a row is because the shadowflame dot will have its moment to do damage and right before it ends you cast another hand of guldan to refresh the total duration from shadowflame and bringing it to 2 stacks. there is a hard/time managing problem now here because you want to press your burst macro b4 you cast the second hand of gul'dan. after you did cast your hand of gul'dan you want to step in metamorphosis form immediately. the reason why you want to do this is because your hand of gul'dan will start to calculate its damage whenever it hits the target, that exact moment is the moment it will snapshot all your stats and because you are in metamorphosis form before the hand of gul'dan did hit the target it will benefit from that metamorphosis damage boost. this results that your second stack of your shadowflame will do insane and crazy damage!. then in demo form you want to do use doom twice in a row so it will last 2 minutes so you dont need to worry about it. if you are playing with the 100% crit trinket you are hoping to have the trinket procced by now. if it didn't proc you can still use it but make sure to safe some demonic fury for whenever the trinket procs. if the trinket procs really early you have to react to it immediately and swap into metamorphosis form to cast doom twice. 

    this was basicly your hectic opener and i will write it down in short now:
    pre-pot > pre-cast shadow bolt > hand of gul'dan > corruption/shadow bolt (in the correct order regarding trinket procs) > burst macro > 2nd hand of gul'dan > metamorphosis > 2x Doom > dump your fury 

    after your dumped your fury with touch of chaos / soul fire (only use soul fire with the molten core procs) you are just going back to normal rotation which basically is just spamming shadow bolt and keep your corruption up. only try to use hand of gul'dan/corruption combined with trinket procs otherwise these 2 dots will barely deal any damage! if you have good trinket procs, have enough fury and dont have just refreshed your corruption/hand of gul'dan you can go into metamorphosis form to make the best use of your trinket procs combined with the damage modifier from metamorphosis form. which in my case is nearly 70%! 

     

    for AoE fights (like Council of Elders 4+ targets for most of the fight)


    AoE fights can be split into 2 sections actually, long lasting AoE and short lasting AoE. I will start with short lasting because its slightly easier to explain.

    Short Lasting AoE:

    if there are a couple of mobs with a lower health value you can apply this tactic to help clearing them, for example the snakes near the brige after jin'rokh and before horridon. those are dying quite fast but still counts as AoE because there are 5-6 snakes.

    what you want to do is cast a hand of gul'dan or twice if you have the time. then go into metamorphosis form and use a immolation aura. if you are using your wrathguard pet which is highly recommended in Demonology AoE let him use his wrathstorm by using command demon. If the targets are still alive and you have enough demonic fury to spend use it on void ray in Metamorphosis, if you don't have enough demonic fury to sustain yourself use the normal version of immolation aura (they can stack and will deal a lot of AoE damage together!) that's basically what you need to maintain in short AoE fights.

    Long Lasting AoE:

    Long lasting AoE fights are a bit more complex and are basically the same as single target fights you will still be able to cleave but not as much as other targets, your main goal on those fights is to prioritize on the main target while also keeping pressure on the other targets. How you can do this is quite simple:

    You basically start the same as the Single target Opener because hand of gul'dan does insane damage in the opener, so imagine that on 4 targets or more! for the rest of the encounter you want to have doom and corruption up on all of your targets at all times. In case you are playing with the 100% crit trinket you want to apply the same as on single target, but then a bit different because you do not have time to use doom twice on every targets (lets take council of elders fight for example with 4 targets) you want to use it once on every target if possible, but this will be a bit hard because you have 4 seconds to react to this procs and a global cooldown usually takes 1 second, if you are fast enough you can make it but it will not always be possible. Sadly the synergy of this trinket doesn't work as i described earlier but if it works it will pay of REALLY good which i can show you in a video after the rest of the explanation. if you are not using the 100% crit trinket (which you shouldn't in the current state of the demonology warlock) you can still use other good trinkets like breath of the hydra for example. you still want to try to have a good and strong uptime on your corruption and doom because the damage output of those dots will still help you in your dps alot because of how snapshotting works. if your corruption is VERY strong on all 4 targets you can try to maintain them abit by using touch of choas on each target and rotate that so your corruption wont fall of and you are extending its duration now so they don't fall of immediately. besides that is it really strong

    in this case you want to use a wrathguard over the shivarra pet (counts for anyfight where you can cleave on 2 or more targets) because the wrathguard is just alot stronger on cleaving fights especialy with his wrathguard spin to win ability.

    a video i prommised where you can see how strong demonology can be on aoe fight if doom did synergize correctly with our 100% crit trinket: 
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFqCnF4aFBs





    6: Useful Links.

    i didn't cover the gear and BiS (Best in Slot - many people don't know this shortcut while it is commonly used in PvE!) slots but thanks to some sites it will help you decide what is the best for you to get!

    here is a few sites you can use to gear up:
    (works basicly the same for demonology aswell, you can easily follow this list)
    http://www.mop-veins.tk/affliction-warlock-pve-dps-gear-loot-best-in-slot


    his weapon choice is indeed really strong and provides a double socket bonus (1x main hand and 1x offhand) which will in the end be abit stronger the the staff from twin consorts, this staff is a good weapon to use and provides our 2 best secondary stats (haste and mastery) and this is a great (one of the best) 2 handers you can get until you get the main hand and offhand weapon combination or something with a higher item level ofcourse

    a site and a person i learned affliction trough is sparkuggz and Fragnance (both top tier warlocks from method) Fragnance doesn't have a active youtube channel as sparkuggs does. Fragnance doesn't main his warlock anymore, but he did main his warlock in SoO and on his stream he did often help you when you asked for some warlock help!

    here is a link to sparkuggz own site and youtube channel where you can look up alot of things for the warlock class in general and ofcourse affliction aswell!:
    http://sparkuggz.com/
    https://www.youtube.com/user/Sparkuggz

     

    I really hope i could inspire people to play Demonology and try it out over the destruction spec over and over again which doesn't require as much knowledge of the game/class as Demonology/Affliction do. Demonology is a harder spec to play but it pays off doing it correctly!

    if you have anything to add or you still have questions, don't hesitate to ask them on this topic or send me a PM!


    despite all the bugs we still have to affect our dps negativly with our wild imps is this spec still as vailable in pve as Destruction/affliction is. i personally pull abit more dps in demonology if i play it correctly, but you will be punished on the meters if you dont do it correctly!

    1 person likes this

  10. Destru Guide:
    i made this guide for players in guilds i used to be in, but i'll release it for everyone now because, why not? if something is not clear yet plz ask it below so i can update/answer it i understand its alot and i tried my best and i still think something is missing!

    i will look if i can make a demonology pve guide on how i like to play the spec and how i deal with the class etc. but that might need some time because demonology is one of the more complicated specs to play its not as organized as my affliction guide

     

    destruction guide: (you are looking at it)
    affliction guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/40013-affliction-warlock-pve-guide
    demonology guide: http://community.pandashan.com/index.php?/topic/41704-demonology-warlock-pve-guide/

    *note! i'm not a pro retail player, i'm speaking about my own experiences which where comfortable for me and which worked out for me.*

    i will go trough the following things in this guide:

    1. all classes 1 by 1
    2. stat priority
    3. posible reforge/gem tips
    4. rotations (both AoE and single target)
    5. macro's i like to use
    6. enchanting/glyphs

    lets go


    Destruction.

    right now the best way to go single target wise

     

    priority:

    Spoiler

    hitcap (15% (wait till the spell caster fix)) > int > mastery > crit=haste

    you want to stack the hell out of mastery because it is the best way to improve your damage AFTER intellect. critical hit chance and haste rating does only affect your damage in a small way, it isn't worth stacking it.

     

    reforge/gems:

    Spoiler

    always aim for the 15% hitcap at least, you cna use expertise reforging to achieve easy hitcaps (1 expertise counts towards 2 hit)
    after the hitcap try to reforge everything to mastery if you have a hit overcap, if you lack on hit reforge haste/crit to hit rating, if you have items with haste+crit (wouldn't recommend it, but it might in some cases be better) reforge one of these 2 stats which one you think you don't want to have into mastery so you keep having the mastery as high as possible.

    a Great addon i can recommand for reforging is ReForge Lite. it will try to min-max your reforge so you will stay as close as possible to the 15% hitcap and thus giving the rest into your main stat to gain the most benefit from it!

    (choose the correct version ofc)
    download link: http://www.wowace.com/addons/reforgelite/files/

     

    rotations single target:

    Spoiler

    for single target i like to pre-cast a incinerate which will hit when the boss will be pulled, immediately cast curse of the elements to gain the benefit of the curse while your incinerate is still traveling, then cast a immolate and 2x conflagrate, you will have 6x the backdraft proc cast a couple of incinerates to let your trinket proc and then go(mostly in the very start of the raid everyone is bursting, so i have the most use of my burst together with other bursts) and then cast 2x a chaos bolt from the embers you have build up. then for the rest of the encounter > just make sure you have immolate up on the target at all time, and spam incinerate > DONT build up 4 embers then consuming and repeat for the rest of the fight, this might even lose in dps because you could miss on a double chaos bolt (havoc on add) or you could lose dps because you didn't use chaos bolt on some strong procs you might have meanwhile trying to build up embers. i like to use chaos bolt only together with one of my trinket/enchant procs or together with my cooldowns (or even better combined)
    as soon as your target goes below 20% hp don't cast chaos bolt anymore and use shadowburn instead, it might have a lower damage if it doesnt crit, but does deal more damage when it crits + it is an instant cast which over time will give your the small dps improvement

     

    rotation AoE:

    Spoiler


    do NOT use this in boss fights unless its a very heavy aoe boss fight which you doesnt meet very often!

    try to keep an uptime on rain of fire at ALL time because it is ONE of your main damage of AoE, im saying *one of your main damage* because 90% of the destruction warlock uses this spell as only AoE ability.

    after you done rain of fire spam fire and brimstone + incinerate/conflagrate till rain of fire nearly loses it duration, then refresh and repeat (i will make a fire and brimstone macro/explanation in the next section)

    when the targets drop below 20% then i consider using shadowburn over fire and brimstone + incinerate/conflagrate becouse when you cast a spell and the targets dies before you could finish your cast you would have lost dps because it interupted the cast, use shadowburn + rain of fire for the ensured dps

     

    Usefull Macro's:

    Spoiler

    fire and brimstone:
    /cast Fire and Brimstone
    /cast Incinerate

    (*little tip: there is currently a small bug where you can use a fire and brimstone empowered conflagrate directly after you casted a incinerate > when you pressed the macro just spam conflagrate aswell, you will have 2 fire and brimstone affected spells casted on all the enemy targets

    shadowburn:
    #showtooltip shadowburn
    /stopcasting
    /cast Shadowburn

    what this macro does is interupting your current cast if you are not sure if you will finish the cast and cast a shadowburn, this interrupts it and uses shadowburn, in most situations casting a shadowburn is more effective then your current cast

    havoc:

    #showtooltip havoc
    /cast [target=focus] havoc

    does does cast a havoc on your focus, i take my off-target as focus, use this button and use incinerate/chaosbolt w/e is needed in my case (building or spending embers)

     

    enchants and glyphs

    Spoiler

    something im not a huge fan of is telling other players what they NEED to do like its the only way to go > for example taking intellect or hit on your cape, it just really depends on if you are hit capped or not, just follow the stat priorities on picking up enchants, for glyphs just take what ever you like, there is not a single glyph in destruction that greatly improves your dps, only 1 i rly prefer to take which is:http://www.wowhead.com/item=42464 for clearing small packs of mobs/thresh the rest is just something you like to have, myself i like to take the curse of elements glyphed and other 2 major glyphs for survivabilty for example health stone + siphon soul (if im correct, the one who heals 0.5% of your immolate dmg, just a small way of sustaining yourself)

     


  11. Hello everyone, im Kilydan the Warlock class master for the MoP servers and because there is a new forum etc i had/wanted to re-upload this list

    Listing of Bugs 5.4 Warlocks

    Hello, you might have noticed some bugs on your class which is normal on a private server. i put this list together with alot of help from the other class master for warlocks (abie / phell)
    Feel free to post on this topic if it is not listed yet (please make sure you provide a bugtracker link aswell which will help out ALOT!!!

    Please correct me on bugs aswell. some bugs come from the ptr aswell and are diffirent from the live servers, i mainly copied this list from the french forum where the other class master did work on. my translations may not be correct and should be changed if it is needed. Let me know in a comment if i did mess something up and what i should change on it.

    A few rules on posting here:
    I - Provide as much information on the bug. With calculations if required. Posts with bugs that are allready listed here will be ignored and invalid bugs aswell!.
    II - Always report something with wowhead link. (Wowhead.com or fr.wowhead.com)

    Warning: I do not want to see ANY form of post that just says: "it does less damage" or "please fix this spell:" because that is not what this topic is ment for. It is ment for the devs and other warlocks to see what is broken and what isnt. just a bigger and better overview of bugtracker (but it doens't mean bugtracker is not needed anymore, instead it is still realy usefull if used correctly)

    A few extra notes:

    Mention  the urgency of a bug: its highly recommended to  add the correct urgency on a bugtracker post and reply on this topic. it will help out the organization for the bugs and gives us less work to correcting it. 
    Low: mostly visual bugs. they wont bother you in play style as most other bugs do
    Normal: Bugs that are affecting your play style abit but its not a realy big deal (for example glyph of demonic training, it is not working but barely anyone uses it to benefit from certain things. you can easily play without it aswell)
    High: Bugs that are affecting your play style alot. this can mean in a negative but also in a strong and overpowered way!
    Urgent: Bugs that are abuseable, for example a trick to do instant chaos bolt while it should never be instant cast (it's not possible but just an example of something that can be marked as urgent)

    Baseline (affecting all specs):


    Hit rating is still abit bugged, even with 15% do you still have a chance to miss!
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=86091/nethermancy : Does not work at all.
    haste bug: you need 1.5% more haste to get a  haste cap / Breakpoint.
    Spells of warlocks, even after reaching the Hit cap, can still sometimes miss their targets: This bug is not specific to warlocks only.
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=6358/seductionc and http://www.wowhead.com/spell=115268/mesmerize , when put on auto cast the demon will cast this ability to your marked target, it will never stop doing so. normaly this spell should only be used on the target who did CC or damage their master (warlock).
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=111771/demonic-gateway :  if you have another warlock casting the gateway right next to yours. will let your demonic gateway to fail.
    http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Curse_of_Weakness : Does not reduced the speed of all the cast, does not reduce the physical damage by 10%.
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=143395/item-warlock-pvp-set-4p-bonus does not work.
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=5512/healthstone : Can not have critical heals. 
    http://wow.gamepedia.com/Fel_Flame : doesn't have correct mana costs.

    Demonology:


    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77219/mastery-master-demonologist : does not affect your wild imps.
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=114592/wild-imps has several bugs :
    1: does not benefit from http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77219/mastery-master-demonologist .
    2: does not snapshot
    3: does only fire 8-9 bolts instead of a fixed amount of 10.
    5: is not affected by http://www.wowhead.com/spell=108503/grimoire-of-sacrifice

    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48020/demonic-circle-teleport :  does not work in metamorphosis
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=689/drain-life does not heal you in metamorphosis
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=6353/soul-fireis sometimes a instant cast but sometimes also increased in cast. this only happens after casting it alot of times

    Affliction:


    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=74434/soulburn + http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48020/demonic-circle-teleport does not grant you the snare immunity. 
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48181/haunt does not give you a soul shard on dispel, and does give a 35% damage bonus rather then 45% (not 100% sure)
    pandemic should not affect dots that where soulswapped

    Destruction:


    (no bugs from what i can tell :D)

    Glyphs:


    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=56232/glyph-of-nightmares Does not work correctly.
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=42466/glyph-of-havoc Does not work.
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=43391/glyph-of-eye-of-kilrogg Does not grant you the ability to fly in areas where the warlock is able to fly, and does not let you create a demonic circle
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=135561/glyph-of-gateway-attunement Does not work
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=57267/glyph-of-subtlety Does not work.
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=42459/glyph-of-felguard Does not work.
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=42453/glyph-of-hand-of-guldan Does not work.
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=45789/glyph-of-crimson-banish Does not work.

    Talent:


    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=159024/grimoire-of-sacrifice Does have a tooltip bug, the damage is correctly applied for your spec tho! (so dont worry about using this, just a visual bug) 
    http://mop.openwow.com/spell=16918 (Demon Breath): Applies Shadowflame when it should be a simple slow effect.
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=111397/blood-horror Can be triggered from pet attacks while it should not (since patch 5.3)
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=108508/mannoroths-fury Does grant you the 500% aoe and 100% damage bonus but the Visual part of the AoE is not shown but it works correctly (tested with hellfire/immolation aura from demonology only so far)

    Pets:


    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=30146/summon-felguard
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=111898/grimoire-felguard Too low damage. The mastery is can not be taken into account.
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=30213/legion-strike -25% to heals from this ability will not refresh the debuff

     -
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=112922/summon-abyssal the impact damage does not get increased by procs etc..

    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=112869/summon-observer
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=19505/devour-magic Should purify the last effect applied instead of a random effect.
    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=115284/clone-magic Should purify the last effect applied instead of a random effect.

    http://www.wowhead.com/spell=112867/summon-voidlordhttp://www.wowhead.com/spell=115232/shadow-shield stacks operate but the damage is too low.http://www.wowhead.com/spell=115236/void-shield

    The damage stacks work but are too weak.


    http://www.wowhead.com/npc=58963/shivarra does attack with both weapons while it should only hit once 

    1 person likes this

  12. i found mine at a other private server which i wont mention due to ban possiblities, but its related to fire. someone posted it on the forums there with correct download link for 5.4 in my case. just try to google something like: "ElvUI <insert patch version> download" and just browse around abit


  13. maybe replacing your health bars to the middle like i have, ofc its just personal preferrence but i find it more comfortable to have it in the middle since you look at the middle of the screen anw, its easier to spot yours and the enemies hp. + it looks nice to have a cleaner screen :)


  14. i just really like elvui cuz you can change so much settings for the targets and the raid frames, my raid frames are still clear but i dont need a big section of my screen filled with it as dps, i can still quickly target someone for a battle res and other stuff etc, the thing i also configured is fast transitionings of the healthbars and smooth transitions which you can see in this vid:

    https://youtu.be/80UyjzkwBLI?t=42s