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(latest update: June 2010)
An affliction warlock's damage is based on several spells with very high damage per cast time which do damage over time instead of having a cooldown.
Shadow Bolt is used as a filler spell in between those DoTs. He's completely lacking burst abilities, but damage goes up significantly when the target goes below 35% and again below 25%.
==Key Stats==
Our interest is damage, and lots of it. While surviving is important in raids, it is usually based on what you do rather than what your equip is like as long as you are not the tank. The stats that influence your damage output are:
Hit Rating
Spell Power
Haste Rating
Spirit (via fel armor & Glyph of Life Tap)
Crit Rating
Intellect (via crit rating)
I ignore MP5 as it has nearly no effect for warlocks.
For a Naxxramas starter gear / Ulduar Starter Gear / Colliseum Starter Gear / Icecrown Starter Gear, the stat-to-dps ratios of these are:
[table]Stat | early T7 | early T8 / high end T7 | early T9 / high end T8 | early T10 / high end T9
hit rating | 1.72 | 1.74 | 1.97 | 2.50
spell power | 1.52 | 1.66 | 1.72 | 1.85
haste rating | 0.98 | 1.37 | 1.62 | 2.04
crit rating | 0.61 | 0.86 | 0.97 | 1.23
spirit | 0.78 | 0.85 | 0.88 | 0.94
int | 0.23 | 0.32 | 0.35 | 0.44
[/table]
The most important stat is hit rating as long as you do not reach the hit cap. Afterwards, spell power is by far the strongest stat. Haste rating come next. For high amounts of spell power, haste rating becomes the best stat (somewhere in the T10 region).
Crit rating ist still a lot worse than these and comes in third. Due to Fel Armor, Glyph of Lifetap and finally the way Lifetap itself scales, Spirit has become a very strong stat as well. Intellect is still inferior to all other dps stats as it's only benefit is a slight increase of your crit rating and your replenished mana. All of these ratings come from the damage model discussed later.
A short note on hit rating: A miss will not only cost you considerable damage, it will also screw up your "rotation". Reaching the hit cap is highly recommended (as it has been recommended at level 60 and 70 as well). As you see above, it is the best dps stat anyway, so there is no reason not to be near the or slightly over the cap. As the value of hit becomes zero when reaching the cap, don't waste any item points after you reached it.
===What do you mean by "starter gear"?===
The starter gear sets are a viable compilation of gear attainable at the given tier level. For example, the T7 starter gear is a mix of ilvl200 rares and 5-man-epics, the T9 starter gear is a 4pT8.5 gear with some hard mode items from Ulduar25 and so on. You can see the summed up stats in the math part under "base stats". None of these sets is perfect, but they are all "good", meaning there was not much room left for improvement in the given tier level. The idea of this is to have a realistic base for the dps computation for an average player. While we all strive for "BiS" gear, only very few actually reach it, and when they do, the content is outgeared and cleared anyway.
===What do those colors mean again?===
Numbers written in green color refer to Naxxramas starter gear (around gearlevel 200 epics), blue numbers refer to Ulduar starter gear (ilvl 213 epics), blue numbers refer to Colliseum starter gear (ilvl 226 epics), purple numbers refer to ICC starter gear (ilvl 245 epics).
==Common specs==
55/0/15 +1:
The base spec covering everything really important looks like this.
The two points in Suppression could have been in Improved Drain Soul or Improved Life Tap as well, depending on gear and personal preference.
===Dark Pact or Life Tap?===
As of 3.3, the Glyph of Life Tap is affected by using Dark Pact as well. With the arrival of 3.33, both now scale with spell power, Dark Pact giving (1200 + 0.96 x SP) mana while a talented Life Tap gives (2400 + 0.6 x SP). This means that Dark Pact becomes better at roughly 3300 SP which is easily reachable in T10 gear.
==Key talents==
The most important talents of affliction specs are covered here.
===Affliction===
[table=head]Tier|Talent|Notes
1|Improved Curse of Agony|Decent boost to your standard curse.
1|Suppression|If you need more hit rating, this is where you get it. One point saves you roughly one hit item. The mana part is not important but a nice addition.
1/4|Improved Corruption / Empowered Corruption|Both give a huge boost to your 100%-Uptime-Dot.
2|Improved Drain Soul|10% aggro reduce from affliction results in roughly 5-6% aggro reduce total. While this is not exciting and aggro is not an issue in many fights anymore, it might save you from death (or even damage stops!) in some fights.
2|Improved Life Tap|The Glyph of Life Tap forces you to use Life Tap every 40s. In my experience, this won't suffice to keep your mana pool constant, so this talent will actually save you time by life tapping less often. However, as affliction is leaning towards Dark Pact now, it might be obsolete or at least personal taste.
2|Soul Siphon|Drain Soul is your finisher, and this is the only talent directly improving it, and it improves it a lot.
3|Amplify Curse|The Curse no longer benefits from haste, so this talent has diminishing returns: It will save you less time the better your equip becomes. At the current state, it is still worth its point, even with high-end equip.
4|Grim Reach|Range does not give DPS. However, having higher range simplifies a lot of movement and grouping in more complex fights. The only drawback is that Shadow Bolt is unaffected by this.
4|Nightfall|It does surely improve your DPS, but not as much as one would think (see math part).
5|Shadow Embrace|As ~50% of your damage comes from dots, this one is definitely worth it.
6|Improved Fel hunter|This talent has been changed significantly in 3.3 and is now a very strong damage boost to our all-time pet.
6|Shadow Mastery|As all of your damage is shadow damage, this is a 15% damage boost.
7|Eradication|Gives an average 1.3% haste per talent point, see math part.
7|Contagion|Increases damage from Corruption and CoA and is needed for UA anyway.
7|Dark Pact|Gives more mana than LT.
8|Malediction|+3% damage as well as a boost to your crit dots? Sure.
9|Death's Embrace|+12% damage for roughly one third of the fight, so about 4% overall damage for three talent points. While this seems mediocre, one shouldn't underestimate that the sub 35% phase is most often the crucial phase of a fight and your dps in this phase will probably be higher anyway because of Drain Soul, giving this Talent an edge.
9|Unstable Affliction|Another dot, sure!
9|Pandemic|Makes Corr/UA scale with crit and increases Haunt's crit damage.
10|Everlasting Affliction|Full points -> never cast Corruption again as long as you cast haunt/SB/DS often enough. The Spell damage coefficient part is misleading.This talent adds a total 25% spell power coefficient to UA and 30% to Corruption (equals 5% per tick). This is a very huge amount and makes this talent the center of your dot damage.
[/table]
===Destruction===
[table=head]Tier|Talent|Notes
1|Bane|Makes your filler spell significantly faster.
1|Improved Shadow Bolt|An important raid boss debuff as well as a boost to our main nuke.
3|Ruin|Makes Shadow Bolt hit significantly harder.
4|Destructive Reach|Only affects Shadow Bolt, so use it only in conjunction with Grim Reach.
[/table]
==Pets==
DPS: Fel Hunter > Infernal > Doomguard > Succubus > Imp > Voidwalker.
The usual DPS pet is the Fel Hunter who is boosted by the affliction talent Improved Felhunter. Aside from dealing considerable damage it has high survivability and supports the raid with Fel Intelligence.
Neither Succubus' nor Imp's damage can compete with that, and both are quite squishy.
The Doomguard and Infernal are actually usable now but are not able to beat a fully buffed Fel Hunter of a decently equipped Warlock. Furthermore, you would not be able to use Dark Pact if you used one of them.
===Pet food===
Pet buff food increases the pet's dps only very slightly and does not affect your own dps. However, when you want to squeeze out every point of dps possible, use it.
===Pet Macroing===
While it was useful to macro the Fel Hunter's ability Shadow Bite into our spells, it no longer is needed as the Fel Hunter uses it on cooldown now. The only pet left to macroing is the Imp because it uses a spell with cast time.
==Spells==
In a normal tank and spank scenario these spells will be used:
- Haunt (A very important debuff and a Corruption refresh)
- Shadow Bolt (filling the gaps when everything else is applied)
- Drain Soul (same as Shadow Bolt when the target is below 25% hp)
- Corruption (bread and butter dot)
- Unstable Affliction (dot)
- Life tap
- Curse of Agony (strongest dps curse in game) OR
- Curse of Weakness, Elements, Tongues (depending on the raid situation)
=Itemization=
==How does item comparison work?==
Take as an example. Ignoring armor and stamina (no dps increase), it has the following stats:
- +52 Intellect
- +48 Spirit
- +38 haste rating
- +76 spell power
These results base on some given stats (Naxx starter gear) and the given damage model.
There are two problems about this model:
- The ratings for the equipment are affected by the equipment. However, these effects are small, e.g. the value of spell power increases by less than eight percent for a whole tier of gear and all of the ratings know only one way: up! Every upgrade of the equipment increases the stat values. As all of them increase roughly by the same percentage, this effect can be ignored. However, there is one exception, spell hit, which changes to a zero value when you reach the cap.
- It's just a model. However, even an easy to understand model will be more accurate than using no model at all.
==Gems==
I did only include epic quality gems and metas. First of all, if you socket low quality gems into epic raid gear, you should die in a fire. Second, if the epic spell power gem is better than the epic crit gem, the same is true for the lower quality ones.
I did not include gems that make no sense for warlocks, like hit+mp5 when hit+spirit of the same color is available, or green gems except for spirit/hit and so on.
Meta:
===Chaotic Skyflare Diamond===
The 's special effect increases the damage coefficients for critical hits from 150%/200% to 154.5%/209%. This also affects DoT crits, increasing our DPS by 50.37 / 79.98 / 125.19 / 185.69. So, the effect itself completely outdamages every other Meta Gem, making CSD a clear choice.
The runspeed Meta Gem is no alternative: It does not stack with the boot enchant and even the special effect of the CSD gives a lot more dps than the whole boot enchant does, so if you want runspeed, put it on your shoes.
Red:
33.42 / 38.51 / 41.25 dps
Yellow:
33.36 / 38.39 / 48.90 dps
31.20 / 39.42 dps
Purple:
24.85 / 28.63 / 30.67 dps
Green:
24.04 / 27.73 / 33.60 dps
Orange:
34.07 / 39.29 / 45.97 dps
26.45 / 35.69 / 41.23 dps
==Socketing==
As a meta gem, use the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.
If you want to match the socket colors...
Red slot: .
Blue slot: or .
Yellow slot: or .
===When to break the socket color?===
Things have changed here. When reaching about 3300 spell power unbuffed, and have nearly the same dps value, so filling those into red or yellow slots is always the right choice. Furthermore, you will need two s to activate your meta gem. Breaking the socket color is now only useful if it is a blue socket, you already have activated your meta and the socket bonus is worth less than ~11 dps (per blue slot), which is equivalent to 6 spell power, 6 haste rating or 9 crit rating (spirit and intellect bonuses will never be high enough). Only in those cases you should break the socket color.
When your gear is way below 3300 spell power, this line shifts (spell power becomes more valuable compared to other stats) and you should break as many socket colors as reasonable to get more spell power.
Examples:
The heroic Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff has three blue sockets and a +9 spell power socket bonus. As this is only +3 spell power per socket, one should break the socket color. has one blue socket and a +7 spellpower socket bonus. While it would have been reasonable to break both the blue and the yellow socket and use two into them before 3.3, this is no longer the case - From the current point of view, the best choice would be ++7 spellpower.
==Gear==
I will give some Lootrank links here.
Link for Naxxramas Starter Gear: Loot Rank
Same ignoring hit: Loot Rank
Link for Ulduar Starter Gear: Loot Rank
Same ignoring hit:Loot Rank
Link for Colliseum Starter Gear: Loot Rank
Same ignoring hit:Loot Rank
Link for Icecrown Starter Gear: Loot Rank
Same ignoring hit:Loot Rank
Empty sockets are expected to be filled with the best gem available, even socketing the wrong color if the result gives more dps. As long as your meta is still activated, that's fine.
Set bonuses are not included. There is a dps estimation about the set bonuses in the math part.
Meta Gems are not included. Just ignore head pieces without meta slot, they are not good.
A very handy tool for finding a good gear compilation is OptiGear.
==Glyphs==
The computation is based on the model used in the second post. Some comments on the glyphs are found there, too. More on the individual glyph is found there or in the Glyph Discussion Thread.
The clear choices here are Quick Decay, Life Tap and Haunt.
- Glyph of Quick Decay
- Glyph of Life Tap
- Glyph of Haunt
- Glyph of Curse of Agony
- Glyph of Corruption
- Glyph of Shadow Bolt
- Glyph of Unstable Affliction
===Glyph of Life Tap===
The Glyph of Life Tap is considered to be the second best affliction warlock glyph available. The interesting question is: Should I life tap even if I don't need the mana? The answer is yes. When comparing the dps value of one and a half GCDs (needed to maintain the buff for one minute) to the dps value of 100 spell power for one minute, the buff wins easily. So tapping just for the buff is a dps win. Do your healers and yourself a favor and have Rank-1 available for that case. In two cases you shouldn't keep the buff up: If it would kill you or if the remaining combat time is less than 20s.
==Enchants==
[TABLE]Head:
Shoulders: Master's Inscription of the Storm ,
Cloak: Lightweave Embroidery, Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed
Chest:Enchant Chest - Major Spirit, Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats
Wrist: Enchant Bracers - Superior Spellpower
Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower
Waist:
Legs: , Sanctified Spellthread
Boots: Enchant Boots - Icewalker, Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality
Weapon: Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower, Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower, Enchant Weapon - Black Magic*
[/TABLE]
*It is rather unclear whether Black Magic is better than Mighty Spellpower. According to some tests, the uptime of the buff is in the 25% range, giving an average 62.5 haste rating. This would in fact be slightly better than the spellpower for T10 gear. Still, I would call this a personal preference issue.
==Professions==
Alchemy:
Mixology will increase the spell power gained from your Flask of the Frost Wyrm by 47. Additionally, you are able to use Crazy Alchemist's Potion which can have any potion effect (from +500 haste to +1200 armor ...) and your flasks/elixiers will be active twice as long.
Blacksmithing:
Blacksmiths can socket Bracers and Gloves with an extra gem slot, giving 2x23 spell power (as this is the gem of choice).
Enchanting:
Enchanters can improve both of their rings with Greater Spellpower, giving 2x23 spell power.
Engineering:
Engineers can improve their Gloves with Hyperspeed Accelerators.
Unfortunately, this will overwrite an existing enchant, so the average 320/5 = 64 haste rating have to be compared to the 28 spell power enchant, which is a significant dps increase.
They also get Springy Arachnoweave, a spell power enchant for their cloaks, which is slightly better than the normal haste enchant.
Finally, you get a boost device for your boots instead of the runspeed enchant. In summary, the profession is at least equal if not slightly superior to the other raiding professions now.
Herbalism:
Herbalism offers Lifeblood, which will not help you when raiding in 99.999% (period, of course) of the situations.
Inscription:
Inscribers/Inscriptors/Inscription-Users get an own Shoulder Enchant that is definitely better (46 more spell power) than the epic one from the Sons of Hodir.
Jewelcrafting:
Jewelcrafter can socket three times, which is 3x16=48 spell power more than the rare quality gems would give.
Leatherworking:
Leatherworkers have no drums anymore at level 80, but gain Fur Lining instead. This is 47 more spell power than the best possible enchant.
Mining:
Miners are pretty tough, but this does not really help when raiding as a warlock.
Skinning:
Skinners become Masters of Anatomy. 40 crit rating is of course weaker than the "usual" 47/48 spell power from other professions.
Tailoring:
Tailors can enchant their cloaks with Lightweave Embroidery.
Summary:
Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting and Engineering are fine. As haste became very powerful with 3.3, Engineering has a slight edge over the other professions. Skinning is okay, but definitely worse than the above, Mining and Herbalism are simply useless.
==Gear Optimization==
This part shows different approaches to get an optimal or nearly optimal gear set for your character. Nevertheless it is my personal opinion to take any decent upgrade anytime you can instead of waiting for "BiS". No boss in the game will be impressed by your DKP account, ever.
===What is the optimal T7 equip for me?===
It's not enough to take all the "best in slot" items and be done because of the hit cap and the set bonuses from T7.
So first decide whether or not those set bonuses are worth it to you. From my calculation, the 2p bonus is worth ~35 dps and the 4p bonus ~100 dps. Probably, the 4p is weaker in reality as you lifetap less than I computed and do not always benefit from its buff. So I just estimate the 4p as ~65 dps, meaning every T7 piece is actually 25 dps higher except for the fifth - If this does NOT lead to 4 T7 pieces, change the bonus to 18 dps per piece for the first two of them. If that does not lead to two pieces equipped, ignore the set bonuses and just take "best in slot" everywhere.
The above made me equip all the best in slot pieces plus T7 head, shoulders, chest and hands.
Now you're over the hit cap.
To solve this, search for a piece giving less hit while losing as few dps as possible. Replace it. Repeat this until you reach your preferred hit rating.
See this post for some similar results with a different approach.
Example:
My first replacement was ->. 43 hit rating less, 21 dps less.
Second was -> . 49 less hit, 31 less dps.
Third was -> . 37 hit less, 28 less dps.
All of these replacements are quite logical as they replace a hit item with a non-hit item of a higher item level.
This brought me down to 334 hit rating (12.78%). As I am Alliance and was aiming for 13%, this should be my dream gear.
Of course, if you think different about the T7 bonuses, are horde, for some reason want to spec the hit talents or just can't get an elemental shaman or balance druid for your raid, your perfect equip will look different, but the way to find it is the same.
===What is the optimal T8 equip for me?===
When trying to find the best T7 equip, I suggested taking all the best in slot items, taking the T7 set bonuses into account and smoothing out the hit rating afterwards. With the new loot tables, there are too many hit items and most of them give very high amounts of hit rating (ranging from 50 to 100), so it seems reasonable to do it the other way around: Choose the best nonhit items, then replace some of them by hit items. Next to that, the T8 set bonuses are considered as 160 dps for 2p and 80 dps for 4p. As the T8 items are among the best items even without the set bonuses, this makes 4pT8 a clear choice.
best in slot, clear choice.
44 dps below the best in slot helm .
44 dps below .
43 dps below , but giving 73 additional hit.
123 dps below , but giving 65 hit.
So when ignoring hit and aiming for 4pT8, we'll leave out the gloves first. If they prove to be a very good hit item (they won't), they'll have their comeback.
Choosing best in slot nonhit plus 4pT8 leads to
Head:
Neck:
Shoulder: (+4 hit socket bonus)
Back:
Chest: (+73 hit)
Wrist:
Hands:
Waist:
Legs:
Feet:
Finger: t &
Trinket: &
Weapon: (+39 hit) +
Wand: (+29 hit)
Next, I choose the hit rating I want to reach with my equip. As I plan to take the hit talents, this would be 288.55 (giving 11% hit).
From the above items I already get 141 hit and a 4-hit socket bonus, leaving 143.55 points.
To find out which items give a lot of hit without losing too many other stats, I increase the value of hit dynamically until the best hit items pop up among the best nonhit items.
1 hit = 0.1 dps changes nothing, neither does 1 hit = 0.2 dps or 1 hit = 0.3 dps. When I reach 1 hit = 0.4 dps the become the best in slot legs but I don't want to ruin the 4pT8 bonus and the gloves are still too weak. I increase the value of hit to 1 hit = 0.5 dps, nothing changes. At 1 hit = 0.6 dps, the becomes the best waist item. +43 hit, 100.55 to go.
1 hit = 0.7 dps makes appear among the best in slot items. I substitute the old amulet and get another 46 hit. Still 54.55 hit missing, but becomes the best offhand. There are still 3.55 hit rating missing, but that does not call for another item change (you could exchange a gem if you really want to reach 100%), so I'm done now.
This results in the following gear:
Head:
Neck:
Shoulder: (+4)
Back:
Chest: (+73)
Wrist:
Hands:
Waist: (+43)
Legs:
Feet:
Finger: t &
Trinket: &
Weapon: + (+90)
Wand: (+29 hit)
If you cannot obtain any of the items above and/or aim for more hit rating or don't like the 4pT8 or whatever, just adapt this method to your gear style. E.g. leaving out Algalon loot would change:
Weapon: (-90 hit)
Back: (+43 hit)
Hands: (no change)
and one of the rings becomes (+42 hit).
===What's the best T9 gear compilation?===
With exactly the same method as for T8, I found this gear set. Of course, almost every piece of it is hardmode gear as the amount of hardmode items is a lot bigger than in T8. This time, I chose 289 hit rating (11%) as a goal.
Most players won't be able to get even half of the stuff, so I suggest sticking to the Lootrank-Lists and just get anything that increases your dps. Almost all items in ToC are itemized good enough to be worn.
===What's the best T10 gear compilation?===
First of all I ignore nonheroic items, so this is kind of a confront-LK-HM equip. I also ignore LK-HM drops for roughly the same reason.
[TABLE]Slot: | Item: | 2nd Best | Hit/nonhit alternative:
Head | | | none
Neck | | none |
Shoulders | | |
Back | | | none
Chest | | |
Wrists | | |
Hands | | |
Waist | | | none
Legs | | |
Feet | | | none
Ring1 | | none | none
Ring2 | | |
Trinket | | | none
Trinket2 | | | none
Weapon | | (nh) |
Offhand | | |
Ranged | | | [/TABLE]
I only show alternatives if they are reasonable, as well as hit alternatives. For example, there is no good hit trinket in Icecrown (or even ToC) that is worth mentioning. In those cases, you'll just see "none".
This aims at using DP and 2 points in Suppression. The easiest way to adjust the hit rating is to use the instead of in case you don't want to spend the hit talents. With 3.33, Life Tap will probably be back again and change the spec slightly.
As far as my calculation goes, leaving out the hands of T10 has a slight edge over leaving out the pants, but the difference is very small. In both cases there are very good hit and non-hit alternatives.
=General playing tips=
==How much hit rating is best?==
See here for the main discussion. The short version is: Basically, you need +17% hit. As 26.232 points of hit rating give 1% at level 80, that is 445.94 Hit Rating. In a 25-man raid, there is most likely a debuff placed upon the boss that gives another 3% hit rate. That leaves 14% (367.25 rating) up to you. If you happen to be an alliance player and a draenei is in your group, you also get their racial, leaving you with 13% (341.02 rating).
It is your choice whether to use Suppression to reduce the amount by another 1-3%.
You can improve your hit rating by food. As long as you need the hit rating, this is the best choice for the food buff.
So, assuming raid debuff on the mob:
[table] points in suppression | Alliance | Horde
0 | 342 | 368
1 | 316 | 342
2 | 289 | 316
3 | 263 | 289[/table]
Hit rating is the most effective rating available until reaching the cap and completely worthless afterwards.
==Casting Sequence==
As many classes, we do not have a rotation anymore but rather a priority system. There is no fixed sequence (or rather: the fixed sequence would be very long) because of different timers, some of them having random elements (like haste procs, Nightfall etc.). The general rule of thumb is: Highest DPCT first. Almost no matter what your equip looks like, your DPCT list will always look like this:
- Haunt
- Corruption
- Unstable Affliction
- Curse of Agony
- Drain Soul @ <25% HP
- Shadow Bolt
Haunt has the lowest DPCT, but casting haunt reapplies Corruption. So consider Haunt as "I'm reapplying Corruption and do some direct damage and apply / refresh two very important debuffs", making it the best DPCT spell.
For the beginning of the fight or a new target, see below.
This list is the beginning of solid DPS, not the end. There are many tricks and traps to it.
===I reach 100% uptime just by clipping my dots, right?===
"Clipping" a dot means reapplying it before its last tick. Although this increases your uptime (no more dot gaps), this is VERY bad for your dps. Why? Imagine a dot ticking every 3s. If you reapply it in the moment of its last tick, it is like resetting its tick counter, meaning there will be a gap of ~6s between two ticks instead of 3s. That is as bad as not reapplying it for 3s. Actually, it's even worse: You shortened its duration by one tick, meaning you have to reapply it more often, losing even more dps. So don't clip dots.
There are exceptions: If you know your target will be unreachable within a few seconds (e.g. Noth in Naxxramas porting to the other group), reapplying all dots is actually a good idea. If you are running around unable to cast anything but instants, clipping dots will save you time when you stand still again, and so on.
===I could cast a Shadow Bolt, but CoA has only 1s left, what to do?===
Situations like that will happen all the time during fights. The general rule is: You should always be casting. Always. If you are able to fill gaps like that with a clever Life Tap, fine. But there is nothing wrong about dots ticking for the last time while you are casting a shadow bolt. Remember that while the dots have very high DPCT, they don't have high dps. Applying them a second later won't hurt. Not casting anything for one second will reduce your damage by the dps of Shadow Bolt.
===What about temporary buffs/debuffs and dots?===
When you apply a DoT, your current values of spellpower, critchance etc. are written into the spell, meaning any changes to your stats won't affect it anymore. Debuffs on the boss on the other hand will affect the spell immeadiately, e.g. hitting the boss with a dot followed by a Haunt will have the same effect as the other way around (in both cases, the dot WILL be affected by Haunt and Shadow Embrace). Contrary to this, casting a dot and chugging a Wild Magic Potion afterwards will NOT affect the dot, while using the pot beforehand will work, of course. The same applies to debuffs on you: When a debuff is applied after the spell has been cast, it will NOT affect the spell. This can easily be seen at the Thaddius Encounter in Naxxramas. Corruption is a very special case due to its refresh mechanic, see below.
===What is the optimal start?===
The optimal starting sequence is Shadow Bolt -> Haunt -> Unstable Affliction -> Corruption -> Curse of Agony and sticking to the priority list afterwards. The only reason for this sequence is Corruption's strange refresh behaviour, see below.
==Can I have too much haste?==
The reason for this question being asked many times by affliction warlocks is the following: Most of your spells (all of them except shadow bolt and drain soul) have a 1.5s casting time or are instant casts, meaning they have a 1.5s global cooldown following the cast. Haste reduces both in the same way. But there is a hard cap, neither the casting time of a spell nor the GCD can be reduced below 1s (In fact, the casting time can be reduced below 1s, but this triggers a short GCD, extending it to 1s). This means that the majority of your spells won't benefit from haste anymore if you reach this cap.
The first question should be: Can I actually reach that cap with "normal" gear?
The formula for is:
Real Casting Time = Original Casting time /(1+Haste in percent).
As an example, 100% haste would change a two second cast to a one second cast ("100% faster").
To reduce a 1.5s cast to 1s, you would need 50% haste.
There are different sources of haste, one of them being your haste rating. Different sources of haste are multiplicative, not additive.
In a raid situation, there are probably an elemental totem (+5% haste) and a moonkin aura or a retribution aura (+3% haste) present. Those multiply up to 1.05*1.03=1.0815 -> 8.15%. To get 50% haste, you would need 1.50/1.0815 = 1.387 -> 38.7% haste from haste rating, which would be 1268.97 rating points. Simply unreachable, even when you did not forget to apply your spellstone.
However, there are effects like Bloodlust/Heroism and Eradication increasing your haste by a large amount.
When Eradication procs, you would only need 1.50/(1.0815*1.20) -> 15.6% haste or 511.5 haste rating. I would consider this to be the "very soft" cap.
When Bloodlust hits, it's only 1.50/(1.0815*1.30) -> 6.7% haste or 219.3 haste rating. Obviously, when both hit at the same time, you'll need nothing: 1.50/(1.0815*1.30*1.20) -> -11.1%, so you're already way over the cap.
Does this mean we're haste capped? Not really. Most of the damage haste brings comes from casting faster shadow bolts, not from casting faster dots. In my simulation, the dps per haste rating went down to 6.04 from 7.61 when I reached the point where 1.5s casts become 1.0s casts. That's a 20% decrease in the value of haste and does not devalue haste in general as you won't have eradication/bl/heroism up all the time and even if you had, haste would still be a lot better than crit rating.
==The proper use of Drain Soul==
First of all, Drain Soul does not "recheck" the percentage of the target. This means that if you start casting it when the mob is at 26%, you won't get the 4x damage bonus for the whole casting time. If the mob heals itself after you applied drain soul, it WILL do 4x the damage for the whole casting time (have fun in the arena!). So start casting when the mob is definitely below 25%.
The main problem about Drain Soul is its channeling time: Within 15s (or whatever it is after your haste is applied), your dots will probably need a recast. Every dot has a higher dpct and does contribute to the damage of Drain Soul by the Talent "Soul Siphon".
The Shadow Embrace effect from Haunt and SB also improves Drain Soul's damage. This means that you have to reapply dots and haunt almost immediately when they fade off / don't have a CD left.
This forces you to clip your Drain Soul cast most of the time.
Now...
- The wrong way is to not reapply the dots and haunt.
- A bad way is to reapply all of them when they have all faded.
- A good way is to just reapply dots and haunt as soon as there is one of them fading off.
- A very professional way is to reapply dots and haunt immediately after the next Drain Soul tick after they faded off.
==Rolling Corruption Crits and Modifiers==
When Corruption is refreshed, the crit rating is not updated to the actual crit rating of your character or the actual crit debuffs on the mob. Instead, the crit rating you had when you applied the first Corruption keeps "rolling" as long as you keep refreshing it. The same is true for percentual damage increases, namely Tricks of the Trade and Death's Embrace. This has lead to a rather unintuitive way of maximizing corruption damage: Pre-Pot (), cast SB and Haunt, cast UA or CoA while Haunt is in the air, activate , then apply Corruption. If you have 4pT10, try to prolong this sequence by filler spells to get that proc as well. When the boss hits 35%, reapply Corruption while using NMIC and a pot again. Ideally, get Tricks of the Trade on both occasions and bribe your RL to announce heroism at 35%. The damage difference is significant: The Corruption damage will rise by roughly 30%, increasing the total damage by more than 10%.
This trick has been mentioned in a blue post, saying it is actually NOT an abuse, but clever use of game mechanics.
Even if you don't want to use it, it is good to know that applying Corruption before your first shadow bolt hits is actually a bad idea. This is the reason for the starting sequence: Make sure (someone's) Shadow Bolt already hit the target when you apply Corruption.
==Delaying Haunt==
Haunt itself has an 8s cd while the debuff(s) it applies last(s) for 12s. This leads to the idea of delaying Haunt (which has very poor DPCT itself) until the last possible moment. However, in this thread's simulation the difference between using haunt on cooldown (7.5 times per minute), which is actually more often than possible in a real situation because you are probably casting another spell or suffering a GCD while Haunt comes of cd, and using haunt in the latest possible moment (5 times per minute), which is impossible as well because it has a flight time of nearly 2s and you would completely ruin every benefit when even a single dot tick goes of without the haunt debuff, is an overwhelming 58 DPS in BiS-Icecrown gear. This is an absolutely ridiculous amount and does not justify any risky actions. So reapplying a single dot when Haunt is off cd is fine because it improves your dot uptimes, but don't try to fit two more shadowbolts in.
==Multiple targets==
When facing a situation with more than one boss target where it is actually useful to dps more than one of them (e.g. the two Jormungars of Northrend Beasts in Colliseum or Mimiron P4), the best way to go is keeping the usual dps sequence on one boss target while putting Corruption, UA and CoA on the other(s) during filler time. Even without the Shadow Embrace and Haunt debuff, the dots' DPCT are high enough to outdamage Shadow Bolt and Drain Soul. Try to hit as many bosses as possible with Shadow bolts during filler time to apply crit debuffs and shadow embrace debuffs and refresh corruption. Of course, you won't be able to keep Haunt up on multiple targets. Theoretically, switching the Haunt target every CD would be the best choice as the debuff is longer than the CD. In practice, there might be debuffs missing which negates the effect.
This assumes that all the targets live longer than the dots tick, of course. A "/target lasttarget" macro or hotkey is very useful for situations like that.
==Short fights and adds==
There are two very insightful posts in the simcraft thread, this one and this one. The essence of these posts is: When a target is supposed to live less than 10 seconds, just shadow bolt spam it. If it will live longer than 10 seconds, the normal rotation (meaning dotting it up completely, using haunt and shadow bolt as a filler, using drain soul in the end) is actually the best dps you can get out of the situation, regardless of dots not ticking for their full duration. By the way, this simulation shows very clearly that affliction loses a lot more dps than other specs for targets that live less than 15s, a fact that most of us knew from practice but that has not been shown that clearly before.
==Is movement speed worth it?==
Post 3.1 there is no longer any raidwide movement speed buff available. This leads to the question whether or not enchanting movement speed on your boots or socketing the movement speed meta (these do NOT stack, don't do both) is helping you.
First of all, the crit meta gem effect gives just too much dps to ignore, so unless you simply cannot use it for some strange reason, we're talking about the boot enchant here, the meta is untouchable.
Obviously, if you stand still from start to finish, movement speed is useless. But most encounters force you to move, at least from time to time. To get a dps estimation of movement speed, I just calculated how much dps I would loose when casting half a second less shadow bolts within a whole minute (dots still ticking). The result is 59.95 dps. While this is not game breaking, it is actually pretty much for a boot enchant, and saving half a second per minute seems to be a reasonable, small value - on some encounters, the enchant will probably bring a lot more dps as you move "all the time" - and don't underestimate the added survival, either.
==Useful addons==
Necrosis LdC
Although it is a little outdated, it has some nice features, like sound announcement of Shadowtrance, Mini-Popups for spells you don't want to hotkey (like Summoning spells) and a Dottimer.
It has some minor issues (e.g. you can't turn off some parts of it), but all in all it's a helpful addon and I just like the sound of "Shadowtrance!".
DoTimer
Configurable Timers.
ForteXorcist
Timers, Raid Announcements, Warning sounds. Many ways to configure each and every aspect.
Most of the provided information is not important enough to be on your screen in my opinion (like a ritual of summoning mod for example), but there are some nice ones.
TellMeWhen
Freely configurable buttons for fading debuffs, cooldowns, item cooldowns. Easily configurable.
I found this to be exactly what I was looking for for situations where you just don't want to stare at timers. The common alternative is PowerAuras, giving a lot more flexibility but taking a lot more customizing.
DrainSoulTimer
Offers a sound and raidwarning when the target reaches the 25% mark and a sound warning every time Drain Soul ticks, making the clipping a little easier. Every aspect can be turned off for itself. Definitely a helpful and light-weighted addon.
=Damage model=
In this part, the stat weights used above are calculated by an easy to understand yet hopefully accurate damage model.
==Base stats==
unbuffed:
[TABLE]Stat | starting T7 | starting T8 | starting T9 | starting T10
spell power | 1400 | 2267 | 2617 | 3344
Hit Chance | 10% | 12.5% | 13.45% | 13.5%
Haste Percent | 10% | 17.8% | 13.03% | 18.2%
Crit Percent | 10% | 13.8% | 21.5% | 23.75%
spirit | 250 | 468 | 668 | 909[/TABLE]
This should be more or less what your stats could look like when you step into Naxxramas/Ulduar/the Colliseum/Icecrown Citadel for the first time.
An optimal raid setup (and almost all setups are nearly optimal now) gives you:
==Raidbuffs==
- +3% damage (Sanctified Retribution, Ferocious Inspiration)
- +91MP5 (Blessing of Wisdom)
- +5% crit chance (Moonkin Aura, Elemental Oath)
- +5% spell haste (Wrath of Air Totem)
- +3% haste (Improved Moonkin Form/Swift Retribution)
- +144 (or more) spell power (Flametongue Totem, Totem of Wrath, Demonic Pact, Improved Divine Spirit)
- (+1% hit chance if you are alliance and have a draenei in your group.)
- Stat multiplier 110% (Blessing of Kings)
- +64 (or more) spirit (Divine Spirit, Fel Intelligence)
- +48 (or more) intelligence (Fel Intelligence, Arcane Intellect)
- +37 (or more) to all stats (Mark of the Wild)
==Self buffs==
- Fel Armor: (180 + 30% spirit) spell power
- Flask of the Frostwyrm +125 spell power
- Good food gives 46 spell power.
- Professions: Two "good" professions will give about 48 spell power each, so this is another 96 spell power.
- Grand Spellstone: +60 haste rating plus the dot improvement.
==Debuffs==
- +13% damage (Curse of Elements, Earth & Moon, Ebon Plaguebringer)
- +5% crit chance (Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill)
- +3% Crit taken (Totem of Wrath, Master Poisoner, Heart of the Crusader)
- +3% hit chance (Improved Faerie Fire, Misery)
==buffed stats==
This changes the stats fully raid-buffed to:
[TABLE]Stat | starting T7 | starting T8 | starting T9 | starting T10
spell power | 2157 | 3139 | 3609 | 4463
Hit Chance | 16% | 15.5% | 16.5% | 16.5%
Haste Percent | 25.4% | 34.1% | 28.9% | 34.6%
Crit Percent | 23.0% | 26.8% | 35.7% | 38.1%
spirit | 345 | 585 | 836 | 1101[/TABLE]
==Talents==
For all tests the spec including Dark Pact is used. For the starter gear, there are more points in suppression to compensate for the lack of hit.
- +10% damage done by Corruption (Improved Corruption)
- +0/1/2/3% hit chance (Suppression)
- -0.5s GCD for Curses (Amplify Curse)
- 4% Nightfall proc chance (Nightfall)
- +36% spell power for Corruption (Empowered Corruption)
- +15% periodic damage (Shadow Embrace)
- +5% damage Corruption and Unstable Affliction (Siphon Life)
- +15% shadow damage (Shadow Mastery)
- +5% damage for CoA and Corruption (Contagion)
- +3% damage, +9% crit from UA and Corruption (Malediction)
- Corr and UA can crit, Haunt crits for 100% (Pandemic)
- Corr ticks can give 20% haste for 12s, 6% chance, no internal cd (Eradication)
- 12% more damage when target is below 35% health (Death's embrace)
- +5% bonus spell power PER TICK for Corr, UA and SL. (Everlasting Affliction)
- -0.5s casttime for Sb and Immolate (Bane)
- Shadow Bolts deal 10% more damage (and apply crit debuff) (Improved Shadowbolt)
- Destruction Crits do double damage (Ruin)
- Drain Soul (and Drain Life) deal an additional 18% damage when your debuffs are up (Soul Siphon)
- Life Tap generates 20% more mana (Improved Life Tap)
==Boss scenario==
Does patchwerk dps matter? It does. When you can't deal damage in a Tank&Spank; scenario, you won't deal damage anywhere else. The opposite might not be true, but that depends on you, not your class or talents. How much dps will you loose when moving? I honestly don't know. I don't care. You will loose dps when moving, so minimize your moving while surviving to maximize your dps, and that is all you need to know.
==Glyphs & Meta Gem==
I currently assume Glyph of Quick Decay, Glyph of Haunt and Glyph of Life Tap as they are all clear choices. Not using Glyph of Life Tap affects the value of spirit drastically.
As a meta I assume Chaotic Skyflare Diamond which now affects Corruption and UA crits and thus has become the best available Meta Gem.
==Set bonuses==
For the Ulduar starter gear I assume 2pT7, for the Colliseum starter gear I assume 4pT8, for the Icecrown starter gear I assume 4pT9.
==DPS and DPCT spell by spell==
===General rule of thumb===
Damage done = Absolute Coefficients * (base damage + ( (sum of spell power coefficents) * Spelldamage))*Hit chance * (1+Crit chance)
Note that the coefficients from talents (like Contagion and Shadow Mastery) are additive, the only exception is Malediction.
I handled the way hit affects the damage of dots with a different approach suggested by Kalle: When you don't hit with a DoT, you will have to recast it. This increases the casting time of the dot and decreases the uptime of the dot.
===Corruption===
Absolute coefficients:
+0.15 (Shadow Mastery)
+0.10 (Improved Corruption)
+0.05 (Contagion)
+0.05 (Siphon Life)
+0.01 (Spell Stone)
1+0.23*hit chance (Haunt)
1.15 (Shadow Embracex3)
1.13 (CoE/Earth&Moon;/Ebon Plague)
1.03 (Malediction)
1.03 (Sanctified Retribution)
(1+0.12*0.35) (Death's Embrace)
Spell power coefficients:
1.2 Base Coefficient
+0.36 (Empowered Corruption)
+0.30 (Everlasting Affliction)
Crit:
+0.09 (Malediction)
+Meta Gem effect (1.09 with Pandemic)
Glyph:
assumed.
Damage done:
(1+0.15(Shadow Mastery)+0.10(Improved Corruption)+0.05(Contagion)+0.05(Siphon Life)+0.01 (Spell Stone))*(1+0.23*hit chance)(Haunt)*1.15(Shadow Embrace)*1.13(CoE)*1.03(Malediction)*1.03(Sanctified Retribution)*(1+0.12*0.35) (Death's Embrace)*(1740(base damage) + ((1.2(Base Coeff)+0.36(Emp Corr)+0.30(Everl. Affl.))*(spell power)))* (1+1.09*crit chance) = 37502
cast time: (1/hit chance)*1.5s*(1/(1+haste)) = 1.12
damage / second = 2083
damage / cast time = 33489
damage / (3s-)tick = 6250
===Curse of Agony===
Absolute coefficients:
+0.15 (Shadow Mastery)
+0.10 (Improved CoA)
+0.05 (Contagion)
1.15 (Shadow Embracex3)
1+0.2*hit chance (Haunt)
1.13 (CoE/Earth&Moon;/Ebon Plague)
1.03 (Malediction)
1.03 (Sanctified Retribution)
(1+0.12*0.35) (Death's Embrace)
Spell power coefficients:
1.20 Base Coefficient
Crit:
CoA can't crit.
Haste:
Amplify Curse sets casting time to 1.0.
Glyph:
no Glyph assumed.
Damage done:
(1.0+0.15(Shadow Mastery)+0.10(Improved CoA)+0.05(Contagion))*(1+0.23*hit chance)(Haunt)*1.13(CoE)*1.15(Shadow Embrace*1.03(Malediction)*1.03(Sanctified Retribution)*(1+0.12*0.35)(Death's Embrace)*( 1740(Base) + 389*2 (Glyph) + (((1.20(Base))+0.2(Glyph))*2000) = 16285
cast time: (1/hit chance)*1.0s = 1.01
damage / second = 678
damage / cast time = 16203
(average) damage / tick = 2035
===Unstable Affliction===
Absolute coefficients:
+0.15 (Shadow Mastery)
+0.05 (Siphon Life)
+0.01 (Spell Stone)
1.15 (Shadow Embracex3)
1+0.23*hit chance (Haunt)
1.13 (CoE/Earth&Moon;/Ebon Plague)
1.03 (Malediction)
1.03 (Sanctified Retribution)
(1+0.12*0.35) (Death's Embrace)
Spell power coefficients:
1.00 Base Coefficient
+0.25 (Everlasting Affliction)
Crit:
+0.09 (Malediction)
+Meta Gem effect (1.09 with Pandemic)
Damage done:
(1+0.15(Shadow Mastery)+0.05(Siphon Life)+0.01 (Spell Stone))*1.15(Shadow Embrace)*(1+0.23*hit chance)(Haunt)*1.13(CoE)*1.03(Malediction)*1.03(Sanctified Retribution)*(1+0.12*0.35)(Death's Embrace)*( 1150(base) + ((1.00+0.25(Everlasting Affliction))*spell power)* crit chance = 23932
cast time: (1/hit chance)*1.5s*(1/(1+haste)) = 1.14s / 1.14s / 1.17s / 1.12
damage / second = 656 / 890 / 1052 / 1242
damage / cast time = 9779 / 14118 / 16189 / 19978
damage / tick =2362 / 3207 / 3790 / 4474
===Haunt===
absolute coefficients:
+0.15 (Shadow Mastery)
1.13 (CoE/Earth&Moon;/Ebon Plague)
1.03 (Malediction)
1.03 (Sanctified Retribution)
(1+0.12*0.35) (Death's Embrace)
Spell power coefficients:
1.5/3.5 base coefficient
Crit:
+Crits do 100% more damage (Pandemic)
+Meta Gem effect (1.09 with Pandemic)
Damage done:
(1+0.15(Shadow Mastery))*1.13(CoE)*1.03(Malediction)*1.03(Sanctified Retribution)*(1+0.12*0.35)(Death's Embrace)*( (645+753)/2(base) + ((1.5/3.5*spell power))*hit chance*((1.09(Meta))*(1 + 1.09*crit chance)) = 5284
cast time: 1.5s*(1/(1+Haste)) = 1.5*(1/1+0.15+0.0421+0.0183) = 1.11
damage / cast time = 4742
===Shadow Bolt===
Absolute coefficients:
1.15 (Shadow Mastery)
+0.05 (Improved Shadow Bolt)
1.13 (CoE/Earth&Moon;/Ebon Plague)
1.03 (Malediction)
1.03 (Sanctified Retribution)
(1+0.12*0.10) (Death's Embrace)
Spell power coefficients:
3.00/3.5 base coefficient
Crit:
+Meta Gem effect (1.09 with Ruin)
+Crits do double damage (Ruin)
Damage done:
(1.15(Shadow Mastery)+0.05(ISB))*1.13(CoE)*1.03(Malediction)*1.03(Sanctified Retribution)*(1+0.12*0.10)(Death's Embrace)*((690+770)/2(base) + ((3.00/3.5) * spell power))*hit chance*(1+1.09*crit chance)= 9730
cast time: (3.0s-0.5s(Bane))*(1/(1+haste)) = 1.86
damage / cast time = damage / second = 5239
===Drain Soul===
absolute coefficients:
+0.15 (Shadow Mastery)
+0.18 (Soul Siphon)
1.13 (CoE/Earth&Moon;/Ebon Plague)
1.15 (Shadow Embracex3)
1.03 (Malediction)
1.03 (Sanctified Retribution)
4.00 (Target below 25%)
(1+0.12) (Death's Embrace) (additive to Target below 25%-effect)
Spell power coefficients:
2.14 base coefficient
Damage done:
(1+0.15(Shadow Mastery)+0.18(Soul Siphon))*1.13(CoE)*(1.15)(Shadow Embrace)*1.03(Malediction)*1.03(Sanctified Retribution)*(4(Target below 25%+0.12)(Death's Embrace))*( 710(base) + (2.14*spell power)) * hit chance = 75342
cast time: 15s*(1/(1+haste)) = 11.14
damage / cast time = damage / second = 5239
damage / tick = 15068
Note that this is based on 3 of your affliction debuffs on the target and a target below 25%.
===Life Tap===
+Improved Life Tap: +20% Mana generated
cast time = 1.11
mana generated: 1.2(ILP)*(0.5*spell power + 2000) = 4231
===Dark Pact===
cast time = 1.11
mana generated: 1200+0.96*spellpower = 5484
==DPCT-Charts==
- Corruption
- Unstable Affliction
- Curse of Agony
- Drain Soul @ <25% HP
- Shadow Bolt
- Haunt
==DPS-Charts==
- Drain Soul @ <25% HP
- Shadow Bolt
- Haunt
- Corruption
- Unstable Affliction
- Curse of Agony
Conclusion: Every single DoT is worth being kept up as long as possible, even during the <25% phase. The only reason to cast shadow bolt is having nothing else to do or to apply the crit buff.
==Computing the DPS==
Let's look at a whole minute mid-fight:
Corruption will be up from start to finish. A recast will only be needed when a haunt misses.
CoA and Unstable Affliction will be refreshed as often as possible. I consider an uptime of 95% minus the cast time of the dot (Meaning 0.95*60s - (# of Casts * DoT cast time) is the uptime of the DoT during one minute). The cast time of the dot includes the possibility of a miss - assuming you immediately recast that dot as fast as possible when it misses. This is (roughly) how the lacking of hit rating affects dots: more cast time, lower uptime.
I ignore the additional mana usage when a dot misses as the effect is very small. Haunt will be refreshed as often as needed. I assume casting Haunt about every 10s, and an DoT Uptime of 95% (except for Corruption, of course).
Let's first fill in all the dots and NF procs. Their accumulated cast times after one minute are (according to the above model):
2.15xCoA:2.09s
3.3xUA: 3.70s
7.5xHaunt: 7.8s
1.1xNF procs: 1.2s
0.02xCorr: 0.02s
Replenishment: Assuming ~25k-28k Mana and an uptime of 75%, you regain ~3100 Mana per Minute.
Including the mp5 and replenishment for the whole minute, so far 3307 Mana have been used, resulting in 0.60 Dark Pacts (0.067s).
The rest of the time (44.39s) is used for shadow bolts / drain souls.
To compensate the mana use of the shadow bolts, I calculate "0 mana shadow bolts" by adding a small percentage of the GCD to their casting time. The 0 mana shadow bolt has a casting time of 2.01s (SB casting time + Dark Pact casting time * (SB mana cost / Dark Pact mana regeneration).
So, the rest of the minute is filled with 22.14 0-mana-shadow bolts.
This only applies to about 75% of the fight's length. In the last 25%, Shadow Bolt will be exchanged by Drain Soul as it has significantly higher DPCT. I kept using the NF-procs in the simulation below 25% as their DPCT is still in the "ok-zone". I ignore the fact that you might even be forced to keep up the crit buff.
In the remaining time, you can cast 3.94 0-Mana-DS.
This sums up to 566868 dpm or 9447 dps including complete mana regeneration and without pet dps, Heroism and Pot usage.
==Known errors of this model==
- I do not include pet dps as they are of no importance for equip comparison or talent specs.
- The model assumes perfect execution and zero lag
- The mana regeneration is more complicated, I use a constant value for replenishment and a constant mana pool.
==How much haste is Eradication==
Eradication has a 6% proc chance per Corruption tick to increase your haste by 20% for 10s. It has no ICD anymore.
Assume Corruption is up all the time on one target. If we are somewhere in between two corruption ticks (and we always are) then there is a chance of 6% that the last tick gave the buff. If it didn't (94%), there is a chance of 94%*6% that the one before gave it, and if it didn't, there's a 94%*94%*6% chance that the one before did. If we are less than one second from the last corruption tick (this is the case 1/3 of the time) we have to take even one more tick into account (94%*94%*94%*6%). This sums up to
So the uptime is about 18.6% giving an average haste multiplier of 18.6%*20% = 3.72%.
==How often does Nightfall proc?==
Let's assume corruption is up 100% of the time (on one target). The chance of a NF proc is 4% every 3 seconds. Let's further assume that you will use every NF proc immediately, so you never "lose" any procs. Then you will just have an average 0.80 NF procs per minute. Of course, you can have two in a row, but normally, you won't. The proc reduces the casting time of one sb to your gcd, so it saves about a second, meaning this will save you an average 0.80 seconds per minute. By the way, this DOES stack with Glyph of Corruption, giving 2x 4% proc chance.
==CoA or CoD?==
Switching from CoA to CoD in the above scenario loses ~22k damage, but saves you 1.51s. To compensate this loss you would need a filler spell that has more than ~14k DPSC. As nothing like that exists, do not use CoD except if you will be unable to reach the target again for a whole minute (As far as I know, there is no fight where you could use this behaviour).
==Should I use Drain Soul when the mob is below 25%?==
Yes. Drain Soul deals almost 40% more damage than Shadow Bolt does when the mob's HP are below 25%. This is a very decent dps increase. The only drawback is: With a good ten second channel duration after haste, the spell will make it rather difficult to reapply dots in time without clipping it. So clip it! The perfect moment to clip it is right after a tick, there is a huge discussion atm how to support this difficult timing with addon timers. In general, as long as you don't clip it right before a tick, your dps will be fine.
==How much damage is Death's Embrace?==
If the hit points of the boss go down linearly (meaning it takes the same amount of time to go from 60% to 50% that it takes to go from 20% to 10%) the talent will apply to exactly 35% of the fight. Although in reality the linearity is not given (for example because of talents like Death's Embrace!), I'll stick to it because it's the best model I have. So, for all shadow spells, it will do 0.35*12% more damage. Well, actually not for all the shadow spells, because you will use Drain Soul only below 25% and you will stop using Shadow Bolt then (except for NF-Procs). So Shadow Bolt gets only 0.10*12% (Between 35% and 25% percent) bonus while Drain Soul gets the full 12%.
==Which potion should I use?==
There are three dps choices here: Wild Magic, Speed and Mana. Alternatively, there is the Alchemist's variant and a Heal Potion. As usual, I take a look at a whole minute midfight.
The Potion of Speed makes a clear first place with a ~179 / 220 dps increase (880 dps while active).
The Wild Magic Potion increases the dps by ~130 / 150 for the minute (meaning it gives about 600 extra dps while active).
The mana savings from Runic Mana Potion give ~64 / 73 dps (assuming that you actually need mana).
So when it comes to pure dps burst, the Potion of Speed is clearly the best choice. For survival, there is no real alternative to the Runic Healing Potion except for very situational uses.
Alchemist are in an unclear situation: Their Crazy Alchemist Potion can be the best potion if they get the right effect, but also turn out as as a useless armor increase. As you cannot rely on anything but the heal/mana part, it probably has to be considered as a cheap rejuvenation pot with a mostly small side effect.
==Glyph comparison==
Glyph of Quick Decay 471.24 / 648.38 dps
Adding haste rating to Corruption - the best glyph by far at the moment.
Glyph of Life Tap 248.97 / 324.74 dps
As you would lifetap 1.5 times a minute anyway, this glyph gives a huge spellpower increase at no costs. Even when you don't need the mana the GCD is worth it (think of general vezax here. Downgrading the spell to rank 1 is a smart action for situations like that). As a side effect, the impact of this glyph makes spirit an even better damage stat.
Glyph of Haunt 88.36 / 89.87 dps
Increasing the Haunt effect by 3% is an 2.5% increase to all your dots and results in about 1.2%-1.5% overall damage increase, which is quite good for a single glyph.
All other glyphs are inferior to these:
Glyph of Curse of Agony 30.51 -> 37.04 -> 62.86 dps
There are two more heavy ticks when you use this glyph. The damage amount coming from spell power does NOT change per tick (but of course the DPCT changes). The damage plus from the additional ticks is constant and can be computed like this: base dps unglyphed = 1740/24s = 72.5 dps. base dps glyphed = (1740 + 2x389)/(24+4)s = 89.93 dps. So the glyph gives a constant 17.43 dps increase here. Furthermore, you gain (60/24 - 60/28)s = 0.358s per minute because you have to recast CoA less often. In this time, you can cast your filler spell, giving you another 784.6 / 1176.3 dpm or 13.08 / 19.61 dps.
Glyph of Corruption 12.49 dps -> 19.47 -> 36.01 dps
This glyph increases the proc chance of Nightfall by 4% (or by 3.96% if it really is multiplicative and you have talent points in Nightfall - it does not make a measurable difference and none will ever know). The effect is not very good dps-wise. As a side note, this means that the talent Nightfall is not very good dps-wise, either.
Glyph of Shadow Bolt 10.94 dps -> 14.14 -> 20.24 dps
This one is quite weak - mana costs are just not really important to a warlock.
Glyph of Unstable Affliction 0 dps -> 0 dps
Decrease Base Casting time of UA by 0.2s (before haste. This works like the talent bane for sb/immo.) Unfortunately, it does not lower the GCD for Unstable Affliction. Your cast will be followed by a 0.2s GCD and so, the Glyph will not give any DPS increase.
==Set bonuses and procs==
===2pT7 and 4pT7===
2pT7 procs Demonic Soul. The proc chance seems to be 15%, it has no internal cooldown. The question here is: How much "real" crit rate is this for our shadow bolts? Within a minute, there are 20 Corruption ticks and rougly 18 Immolation ticks (90% uptime). So, this should proc 5.7 times per minute. According to the simulation, you will cast rougly 16-18 shadow bolts in a minute, depending on haste and so on. So assuming the buff is always used (never fades, never procs again before a shadow bolt is fired), roughly one third of your shadow bolts will benefit. So, the bonus is in fact like "increases the crit chance of your shadow bolt spell by 3.3%". This is worth roughly 23.85 / 35.93dps, which is nice, but not overwhelming.
4pT7 procs Spirit of the Damned after each Life Tap (not stacking, of course). According to the dps model, 300 Spirit increase your dps by ~130. The more difficult question is how much uptime the buff will have. There are, of course, fights where you don't Life Tap, where you Life Tap only in non-dps situations and so on - but ignoring these, in our model you use 5.7 Life Taps per minute to restore your mana. If you place the Life Taps ideally distributed, that means the buff is up 57 out of 60 seconds, which is basically all the time. Thus, the damage increase would be ~120 dps.
With high end T7 equip, you would only need about 4 Life Taps per minute, meaning the buff is up for about 2/3 of the time, equaling roughly 100 dps.
This amount is reduced by anything that improves your mana-regeneration, for example Replenishing buffs from Shadow Priests.
So when it comes to equip comparison, keep in mind that Tier7-pieces have a built-in ~25 dps each if you use your Life Taps correctly. But also keep in mind that better equip means fewer Life Taps, meaning the value of 4pT7 is high when you start in naxx, but will be significantly lower when you leave naxx.
Side note: Someone pointed out that using Life Tap twice may still be an option as the second one benefits from the buff. I won't compute anything about it, my guess it that it doesn't work out to throw away about 8s of buff time just to get some extra mana. Prove me wrong!
Someone else pointed out that a good warlock tries to be oom when the boss hits 0%, meaning you won't Life Tap in the last minute of the fight. This, of course, makes the buff weaker, especially for short fights. (Three minute fight -> buff loses 1/3 of its value).
So as a general rule: The T7 pieces are not bad on themselves, and the set bonuses increase their value. But neither the 2p- nor the 4p- bonus seems to be mandatory. If you can replace your T7 pieces with best-in-slot pieces, e.g. the few iLevel 226 items, it is definitely worth considering. Nevertheless, do not underestimate how easy you can get the T7 pieces as they come from tokens and basically drop "all the time".
===2pT8 and 4pT8===
2pT8 increases the damage done by Unstable Affliction by a huge 20%. This gives a dps boost of 159.85 / 189.5 dps, making the 2pT8 the best set bonus so far. 4pT8 increases Shadow Bolt's crit chance by 5%, giving a solid 77.48 / 84.59dps increase.
===2pT9 and 4pT9===
2pT9 increases pet critical strike chance by 10%. Unfortunately, this does not affect an affliction warlocks own dps. Simcraft shows around 600 pet dps (succubus), so this bonus should be worth roughly 60 dps (bad estimation). Not a very good set bonus for affliction warlocks.
On the other hand, 4pT9 increases both Corruption and UA damage by 10%. This is even better than 4pT8 and gives a sparkling 224.51 / 361 dps bonus. So 4pT9 is an unavoidable gear choice as it seems.
===2pT10 and 4pT10===
2pT10 increases the critical strike chance of Corruption and Shadow Bolt by 5%, resulting in ~196 dps in ToC gear, so losing upgrading from 4pT9 actually hurts your dps.
4pT10 gives a 15% chance of a 10% damage increase for 10s everytime UA ticks. The uptime of this buff is therefore ~41.7%, resulting in a 4.17% damage increase and making 4pT10 a must-have as expected (366 dps).
===How do on-cast trinkets work?===
The value of trinkets with an on-cast proc depends on two invisible numbers, their internal cooldown (ICD) and their proc rate. The proc rate is the chance that the trinkets actually procs on a cast, the ICD is the amount of time the trinket just cannot proc again after a proc. More or less all trinkets have a proc chance of 10% or 15% and an ICD of 45s.
The average proc time is ICD + average proc time when no ICD is up.
The "average proc time when no ICD is up" is
(time of first proc chance) * (proc rate) +
(time of second proc chance) * (proc rate) * (1-proc rate) +
(time of third proc chance) * (proc rate) * (1-proc rate) * (1-proc rate) +
(time of fourth proc chance) * (proc rate) * (1-proc rate) * (1-proc rate) * (1 - proc rate) and so on and so on.
The "time of n-th proc rate" is just (n-0.5)*average casting time. You can be lucky and hit a spell the moment the ICD is gone and get a proc, or on the next spell, or the one after that, and so on. The "0.5" helps to get an "average" moment.
For example, a 15% proc chance gives an average time of 10.88s between procs (if there is no internal cooldown present). A 10% proc change gives an average time of 14.32s. With an ICD of 45s, trinkets generally proc once per minute, roughly.
===On-use trinkets===
On-use trinkets usually have a two-minute cooldown. Even when used immediately when the CD is up, the on-use abilities usually give less dps on the same item level in the average, mainly because the use-bonus is only slightly higher than the proc bonus, but the proc occurs twice as often.
On the other hand, you get the option to use them in the best moment possible, e.g. when other buffs like heroism or your wild magic potion hit.
=Review of WotLK=
==What did 3.0 bring?==
In 3.0, Affliction became THE warlock dps spec. It was rather complicated to play, but as content was not too difficult, many players were able to juggle 5 different dots (Corruption, UA, Immolation, Siphon Life, CoA) and beat the meters on almost any given encounter.
==What did 3.1 change?==
3.1 reduced the difficulty of playing affliction by a large amount, mainly by reducing the spell priority list by two spells, Immolation and Siphon Life. The patch also reduced the damage output of Affliction, mainly by changing the way and the amount of Drain Soul's scaling (It became less and it became independent of other warlock's curses).
==What did 3.2 change?==
The playing style remained unchanged, although slight changes buffed the damage output a bit (e.g. Haunt became a 100%-Crit).
==What did 3.3 change?==
The general playing style remained unchanged, yet the buff to pet scaling via talents as well as the new increased the damage output significantly. As a consequence, Corruption can now be refreshed by Shadow Bolt and Drain Soul, making the rotation more forgiving especially in the sub-25% phase. Currently, Affliction seems on-par with Destruction when it comes to single target dps.
==What will 4.0 bring?==
According to the vague blue posts there will be several changes to the warlock class and affliction, to name a few of them:
- All DoT effects will scale with haste and crit naturally. Haste scaling will not decrease the duration but simply increase the tick frequency.
- Casting a DoT on a target that is already afflicted with this DoT will simply refresh the duration. While clipping DoTs will probably still be bad, it will be less bad this way.
- Curse of Agony becomes Bane of Agony, thus giving more freedom in using general purpose curses like CoE.
- Shards are now limited cooldowns, the only one interesting for PvE seems to be an instant Soulfire.
- Drain Soul refreshes Bane of Agony and Unstable Affliction in execute range, easing the rotation a lot (basically, it will be Drain Soul -> Haunt -> repeat).
- New spell: Fel Flame is an instant refreshing Unstable Affliction. This might replace casting Unstable Affliction completely, giving more mobility (as it is an instant cast).
- New spells: Dark Intent is just a single target buff that buffs ourselves as well (like Focus Magic), Demon Soul seems to be a spec-specific burst cooldown on a short CD (2 min).
