[MoP] 5.4 Affliction PvE Guide

[Kilydan]

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? (joking ofc, its the best guide ive made so far i think!!!)

[Kilydan]

same as for the demonology guide: the spoilers are not working rly good yet especially if you have a spoiler within a spoiler

[Hecks]

How does Haste affect dots in WoD? 

[Kilydan]

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

[Hecks]

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

Welll i usually do pvp, and from my experience they're like same on mop, with Dark Soul Misery  my dots tick every 1.37 sec,  so afaik, they must affect haste, and what i've read on arena junkies all affli usually go with haste. The info of haste also tells me it should increase dot dmg, but from my experience haste increases multistrike chance also, cuz of more dot ticks, and with drain soul dots tick 2 at a time and cuz of haste its more often But idk mastery or haste better, never had chance to  test dps.... im also thinking of making a "guide" since u came out w 3 lol   But locks in WoD atm, makes me cry, and sharing knowledge is like idk.. its alll on my experience and what i read through other forums and guides

[Kilydan]

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

[Poonxo]

How does Haste affect dots in WoD? 

it still affects dots.

[Poonxo]

welp double posting cus i can't edit;

forgot to add 'just like it was in mop'

[Hecks]

I'd like to get a reply on my other post   

[Kilydan]

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.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Kilydan

[Hecks]

I just made a guide for WoD, if any of you would like to check it out is it any good would be nice.  I also went through in google for haste in WoD and i think actually there are haste breakpoints for WoD too but it's not sth like that back in MoP it's just different, and for me a little bit confusing  

 

http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/2014/03/29/behavior-of-dots-and-haste-in-warlords-of-draenor/

Edited October 6, 2015 by Hecks

[Phonso]

What you said in the guide about, Soul Swapping Dots from my main target, onto adds "considering that the boss fight provides them" and soul Swapping those very same dots back onto the boss, that i will have the same empowered dots.. here is how u put it ,..." then you can re do the same back to the boss, which will add a fully new empowered dot back to your main target ..." this is not the case, they timer on the dots stays the same, you save roughly 1-2 seconds of those dots that you take from the add, but the time still is reducing from the original timer. what am saying is that soul swapping from target to target does not freeze the time, or refresh the time, it only give you a 1-2 second on the timer that you are inhaling from.

 

[Kilydan]

Its a very old quide i made awhile ago when it was still bugged, just haven't editted it and im lazy to adjust it