Blood Legion

Hello! I just wanted to ask a few questions on the current warlocking strategies =)

I currently raid demo, but looking at your numbers and expectation during fights, it seems that it would be a dps increase for me to learn and work on perfecting affliction for the current raid content. Do you agree with that statement? =)
Thus here's my gear profile: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/b ... sun/simple
Chardev: Keesun on Boulderfist
World of Logs for demonology performance: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/bz91936w ... details/2/

Question 1. Gear set up. Currently done for Demo, but for affliction (did i understand this correctly?) I would reforge crit and master to haste (getting hit to 17% and then reforging it to haste as well), swap the int+mas gem to int+haste?

Question 2. Trinkets. If you were to choose the 2nd trinket to go with will of the unbinding out of the following list, which would it be?
1st trinket: Will of the Unbinding, any version
2nd trinket: Regular Insignia of the Corrupted Mind | OR | Heroic Shadow bolt volley

Question 3. Rotation and Strategies.
3.1 Optimal Opener. Most people I talked to believe optimal opener to be: Shadow Bolt -> Haunt -> Unstable Affliction -> Corruption -> Bane of Doom -> Shadow Bolt. Do you agree?
3.2 Tips and Tricks. You were talking about Affliction being much of a finesse spec, requiring the warlock to respond to procs and buffs. Exactly which buffs or procs are we responding to?
Do you mean refreshing dots early when you have power torrent / tailoring cloak / Demon Soul ready / Pots available in execute / lust coming out? Meaning refreshing them at half the amount of time left on the dots? Or refreshing them at *approximately* 1 tick left on any dot?
What sort of cooldown management do you suggest? Depending on raid dps, sit on the 3rd or 4th demon soul to have it be in execute range with lust and pots?
Any other general tips?

Question 4. AoE.
Soulburn seed of corruption for bloods on madness and black ooze on Yor'sahj? =) Or single dotting on madness and seed on Yor'sahj? Any other AoE tips?

Question 5. Fight specifics.
5.1 H-Zonozz. Worth it to multi-dot adds in the black phase? They seem to be dying fast enough to where it really isn't worth it? Or maybe i'm just crazy?
5.2 H-Madness. Worth it to multi-dot side platforms? Between green and yellow you can keep dots on 3 targets it seems (tentacle in the back, wing on your platform, wing on the gold platform)

Question 6. Addons.
Would you suggest specific addons to help track dots on 3+ targets? Of course Power Auras to track any buffs and procs =)

Thank you very much for reading this wall of text!
And grats on Heroic Madness =)

Hello Keesun,

Thank you for your itemised question list ; it helps me a lot in order to give you the proper responses. In my experience, Affliction has performed better than Demo this tier, so yes, I do believe it will be a DPS upgrade to respec.

Now, to answer your questions...

1/ Gear. In essence, you will want to reforge to have haste on every item whilst maintaining hit as close as possible to (but not under) the cap. In extreme cases, it's acceptable to be slightly (~10 points) under hit cap if the gain is massive (e.g., 60 haste). In general, follow this handy reforge algorithm. Sorry that it is not so professional looking - I wanted to answer you ASAP ! Also, you want to swap out your gem (try for epics !) and in your place, I'd use Lavawalker on my boots unless you are working on a specific fight where movement is not important.

2/ This is a very good question. It's actually something that I need to research and have been meaning to, so thank you for reminding me. The sims say that the Shadowbolt trinket is better, but I am unconvinced that the sims are representing the haste trinket as used to its fullest potential. Additionally, I'm fairly certain that Doomguard DOES benefit from the haste proc as it affects haste rating and I am not sure that the sims depict this. I need to do my own testing and check up on that, anecdotal evidence from logs suggests that the haste proc represets about a 15-20 % increase in Doomie's damage with t13 2-pc.

Therefore I suspect that the haste trinket is superior on single-target fights where the proc lines up with critical moments of the fight (e.g. execute range) whereas the Shadowbolt trinket is superior on multi-target fights/fights where the Doomguard is not use in synchrony with the proc/fights where the proc will have wasted uptime for any reason.

EDIT : Confirmed that he does scale from Insignia - 30 casts under the proc versus 24 without over multiple logs and my own dunny tests. So that's, baseline, a 25 % upgrade.

3/ Rotation.
3a/ I don't agree. Single target, the optimal opener is [Precombat Potion] > Prepull SB > BoD > [Cooldowns/On-Use] > UA > Corruption > [Soulburn] > Haunt > Shadowflame > Instant SF > Shadowbolt x2-3 (check proc timers) > BoD > rotation. This must all be done before your BoD ticks once. I assume you have 4pc T13 and Will of the Unbinding, specifically.

3b/ The only periodic spells that you really pay attention to in terms of buff management and refreshing at nontraditional times are Drain Soul and BoD. For BoD, you want to pay attention to Daemon Soul and any int/spellpower procs, whereas for DS you want to do the same but also consider Eradication procs and similar temporary haste effects. Here's a screenshot from our first heroic Ultraxion kill, where miraculously none of my CD's bugged out on the log due to untimely Fading Lights. I displayed uptimes for all controllable or predictables procs.

3c/ My best tip is to think through fights intelligently and get a feeling for when certain cooldowns and procs will come up, and what you will be doing in the fight at that time. With many wipes you can perfect an excellent strategy to maximise your performance within your assigned role (personally I have a much harder time optimising farm content when you only get 1 shot at a fight per week and times are always in flux due to ever-increasing raid DPS). I cannot tell you what to do precisely because I do not raid in your guild and thus do not know how your fights play out.

4/ Yes to both. Multidotting with UA on Yor'shaj adds. Multidotting with everything on Heroic Madness (adds do not live long enough on normal). Consider how Spellweave works, and thus which DoTs to prioritise, and thus how you are glyphing.

My only other AoE tip that applies generally is not to underestimate Shadowflame - within its 6-sec active window, it will net you more damage than any other spell on a fresh target.

5/ Fights.
5a/ Do you mean Yor'shaj or Zon'ozz ? For Yor'shaj, see above, but be aware that I'm talking about heroic mode. For Zon'ozz, I'm very, VERY surprised if the various adds in his transition phase are dying that fast. The adds are spread so far apart that I don't even think it is possible to kill them before you have full DoTs rolling on everything in your assigned area.

5b/Generally no. Yes, it will up your position on the epeen metre, but it will incur unneeded raid damage because each main tentacle emits an AoE damage aura that scales inversely with its health. In extreme cases this will wipe the raid. Ensure that none of your multidotters are doing it. That said, if you watch our Heroic kill, you will notice a squad of Dotters jump from Green to Blue platform to multidot the Wing Tentacle (the Arm Tentacle can be reached from that platform, but not vice-versa). In this case, we were trimming the Wing Tentacle very carefully to 91 percent health (the lowest you can take it without Bad Things happening) because we found we needed to be that bit ahead on damage in order to beat the Cataclysm timer on the final platform. This will never be a concern on Normal mode.

6/ Addons and UI are an intensely personal topic. My UI is completely tailored to work as well as possible for *me* but I don't presume that anyone else would find it quite as useful. Number one rule is to make sure that your addons let you do and know everything that you need to. For my part, I actually use Quartz procs module with custom buffs added rather than Powa to track procs. I just colour each thing differently and figure out what is running by the colour splashes above my castbar. For DoT tracking, I use DoTimer configured to display DoTs on my target and focus simultaneously. For more than that, I make heavy use of /targetlasttarget macros and my memory. I've been told that a lot of people find it useful to track DoTs on nameplates when dealing with multiple targets, and that TidyPlates has a good module for this.


I hope some of this info will be useful to you.
Best of luck and happy warlocking.
~ Shina

I appreciate the quick response, thank you very much!

5. I did mean Yor'shaj, sorry - checked and rechecked, but missed that. Specifically the black ooze adds in heroic - especially coupled with black + yellow where we get 2 sets of them.... I am just not quite sure whether to multi dot, or tunnel seeds into them.

Again thanks a lot! That answered all of my questions =)

Keesun wrote:I appreciate the quick response, thank you very much!

5. I did mean Yor'shaj, sorry - checked and rechecked, but missed that. Specifically the black ooze adds in heroic - especially coupled with black + yellow where we get 2 sets of them.... I am just not quite sure whether to multi dot, or tunnel seeds into them.

Again thanks a lot! That answered all of my questions =)

It's usually worth it to tab around UA before they are all in range of AoE.
I'm glad you found the information that you were looking for. ~

Great post, I learned a lot more then i expected to.

Thanks Shinafae for the excellent advice