my affliction warlock sucks

[balrog78]

I am running a team together with a friend of mine, we got feral druid, 2 hunters, resto druid and affli warlock. The warlock does 15% of the damage, where the hunters deal 32%. Any idea what talent build and what spell rotation to use? I dont expect the warlock to outperform the hunters with trash mobs but at least he should do better with bosses, what do you think?

thanks

[elsegundo]

whats your spell rotation?

also, remember that affliock spells are usually dots with the occassional shadowbolt. if your mob last 10 seconds but your curse of Agony lasts 20, you've wasted 10 seconds of damage. also, as a lock, i've come to understand that its not all about damage. you have curses that slows, weakens, and causes stupidity (CoRecklessness) for others. your curse of elements will be useless for the hunters. as is their hunters mark or trueshot aura for you. what i would do it turn up the damage would be to skip the long DoTs and just Curse of Elements, Corruption, (Haunt if you have it), Drain Life. If nightfall procs (Shadowtrance), take it. If you need more dps, use the Succy. If the druid grabs 4+ mobs and swipes, a good Rain of Fire would help.

[balrog78]

Maybe we will try with the rain of fire, but its a little bit more of micro management then.
The rotation includes: corruption, unstable affliction, siphon life and shadow bolts. I tried to optimize the rotation ofc. Haunt will be available on level 80 since some points are in destruction tree. Curse of elements was planned for later when we play all of our 10 toons which include 2 mages and an elemental shaman. Drain life does a lot of damage? We skipped that one and using shadow bolt instead.

[Ualaa]

Back in BC level raids, on trash even as Affliction spec, the best dps was instant Corruption followed by S.Bolt spam, on fast to die trash type mobs. This was true in instances as well. If you do not have Corruption procs insta-bolts via Nightfall, then straight DD spam will be better then dots.

I'm not sure if Wrath dots are powerful enough to be higher dps, when the dot is only allowed to tick for 20-25% of its duration before the mob dies. I suspect, with only partial damage from your dots, like BC, you're better off with DD spam.

When it comes to bosses, or any mob who will be around for long enough to have your dots actually tick their duration and need to be reapplied, your dot rotation will be the dps method of choice.
You still have phenominal AoE as a warlock, any time you can Seed of Destruction spam on trash, the other toons will be wondering how to keep up with your dps.
Affliction brings extremely low maintanence, compared to other warlocks.. but in a high dps group, if you want to be competitive while leveling or in instances, more of a pew-pew spec might be better.

[elsegundo]

you did say you were affliction, right?

dont juggle your specs like that. if you go affliction, do affliction. i would only go into destro for improved sb, bane, and shadowburn (if its still there) and call it a day in the destro tree. the rest should go to affliction. if you're having more fun in destro, then would get enough points to increase damamge on Corruption and CoA, then use the remaining points for Destro.

I would UA, CoA, Corruption, Drain Life. (drain life refreshes Corruption, Haunt also refreshes Corruption if you decide to get Haunt). When nightfall procs, use your SB then. then go back to keeping your dots up. For short fights, i woudnt even worry about CoA.

Do you have good spell damage? as affliction, load up on spell damage, stamina, int, and crit gear. even though they've added crit in with spell damage, i wouldnt count on it as my first three stats. stamina for life tap and drain life. you need a large pool to keep your mana up.

[balrog78]

yes, its only improved sb and bane and some other talent. I needed those for questing (dont use DoTs then). The problem with drain life is, that it is channeled. Also watching the nightfall proc is quite difficult if the warlock is multiboxed and the focus is on the main :S But I gonna give it a try.
Regarding the gear I focussed on spell damage, stamina and int. Then hit and crit.

[elsegundo]

hmmm... honestly, even when questing, i dont use SB unless when i open (before i got haunt) or when nightfall procs.

quite honestly though i wouldnt worry too much about my affllock damage. its not the nuke and destory type build, plus if you end up clearing the instance, then there's really no need to improve on damage. but try the different combinations spells and see which works best for you.

[wowphreak]

meh had a whole big post on this lost it arrrgghhh :/

well basically boils down to its tough maxing affliction dps
was gonna try tab targeting and casting siphon life,coa,curuption on all targets and then seed em

with boss critters its tough keeping the dots all up even in ideal conditions need to figure out a better dot rotation :/

was even debating on a goofy off spec
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IfxrMzMAoZbgczcxoZE0hVM0z
just so I could go back to spamming sb again.

[Knytestorme]

Best rotation is purely through corruption (with all applicable aff talents) up on every mob you're fighting in a pull and then SB spam each mob in kill order. None will last long enough for a full aff rotation and corruption shouildn't tick for enough to pull agro away from an ae tank on the mobs not being actively tanked.

It's a slight cheat but it's the way we have to work and you should see your total dps in the run improve significantly.

For boss fights it's simple....use all your dots and sb spam until you need to redo them with tapping in between. You will need to sit down with a spreadsheet and play around with each dot and it's number of ticks to work out the best order for you of applying them so they all run out around the same time (so you can keep as much uptime as possible) but it's fun to do as it's a real mental challenge.

[Coltimar]

Don't do Rain of Fire. Ever. Locks have the two best AoE's in the game and RoF ain't one. I only cast SB on my lock when Nightfall procs. When I was raiding I had my macro perfect. As soon as unstable affliction ticked off I was mashing the button to reapply it. Don't forget to trinket when they are up. Link your armory.

[Barman]

We are using now: Siphon Life, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction. Then switch to next target. At boss fights those DoTs are followed by 5 (maybe 4 would be better) Shadow Bolts.
Of course the 2nd Siphon Life comes much too early then. But macro length is limited to 255 characters :(
At least we got dmg contribution up from 15% to 19% so far.

Thats the armory link ('http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Festung+der+St%C3%BCrme&n=Miggjagger')

[KvdM]

What level are you characters? At lower levels, most instance mobs will die before the dots have ended (curse of agony for instance does most of its damage at the end of its dot time).

[Barman]

They are level 73. I know about Curse of Agony, I don't care if the warlocks damage output is inferior against trash instance mobs. But the damage output is also bad against bosses. If warlocks damage contribution rises over 20% against bosses, then I am happy
I could omit the CoA against trash instance mobs, but I dont want to micromanagement a DD. I want to concentrate on tank and healer.

So far all replies which keep in mind that I want the least micromanagement possible seem to confirm my spell rotation and maxdps.com ('http://www.maxdps.com') does too. I will respec so that I got Haunt at once and will change to:

Curse of Agony , Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Haunt, Siphon Life, 3-4 times Shadow Bolt

[Barman]

Now I got the following macro

/assist focus
/castsequence reset=18/target Unstable Affliction, Haunt, Siphon Life, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt

and another one to start fight or to refresh

/assist focus
/stopcasting
/castsequence curse of elements, corruption


I tried in a duel only, looks promising :-)

[Sekij]

This is my dps macro for affi lock:

#showtooltip
/castsequence [nochanneling:Drain Life] reset=target Curse of Agony,Siphon Life,Life Tap,Haunt,Corruption,Immolate,Drain Life,Shadow Bolt,Unstable Affliction,Immolate,Shadow Bolt,Life Tap,Corruption

I know it looks bad but it works fine for me :)
ps. this macro is only for long fights because when i fight with nonelites i just use sb :)

[Barman]

Thanks for that one, especially because of the [nochanneling] I can guess what it does. Didnt know of that before.

But wouldnt it be better to reset corruption with haunt instead of casting it again? And afaik Immolate should not be used if affliction specced.

[Coltimar]

On boss fights be sure you are using curse of elements. You might pick up Soul Siphon. I would say stop using Shadow Bolt, as I never use it except on Nightfall procs, but it's hard to convince people of that. Shadow bolt is shadow damage, but it is a destruction talent. You will get the most output by keeping your DoT's all up 100%. Especially with your talent spec. The more DoT's you have up the higher your dps is because your DoT's fuel procs of other talents.

[Knytestorme]

To add back to this thread with some explanations.

I have an 80 lock that I raid with, I also multibox with him.

While boxing or running guild instances on trash I just hit every mob in the pull with corruption, that's it. It does enough damage by itself without risking agro and allows you, with both the talent and glyph, an 8% chance of proccing nightfall each tick. With the nighfall procs and weaving SB when it doesn't, there is no need to use anything but those two spells on every trash pull.

On bosses my rotation is CoA, Corruption, SL, UA, Haunt, SB spam until dots start falling off and then reapply and repeat. Drain Life is NOT as good dps as SB spam and should not be used on bosses or trash unless you need to get hp back after tapping and healers are busy, and even then you should have imp out and be dark pacting from it for mana before tapping.

You will never get 100% uptime on dots, and SL will be the usual casualty just because of it's length and the fact it's easier to just refresh it when you refresh the others but it has the benefit over something like CoA that it's damage is consistent across it's duration so you don't really lose dps when you reapply it, it's just not as mana efficient as it could be.

The final thing I'll add is that I don't use a cast sequence for my dots, I prefer the granularity of having each one a seperate button due to resists and misses. With the increase in hit rating needed as you level (going from needing 202 hit at 70 to 372 minimum at 80 if you take suppression and bane) you will find yourself missing with dots more regularly and will need to have to try to reapply them, but with them in a cast sequence you won't be able to and you will be gimping yourself more in dps. For example, at 80 now in reasonable mix of pre and post LK gear I'm still only at 286 hit and on a recent Occulus run I saw haunt and UA miss a fair few times on bosses (perhaps the others as well but I don't really pay attention to misses on instants) and if I had a castsequence macro for them I'd have been missing out on some good dps along with heals and other benefits to those spells.

Bottom line for me in helping here is:
* Get DotTimes add-on
* Don't use cast sequence
* Go for +hit gear as you upgrade unless you are hitcapped at your current level each time
* Get glyph of corruption
* Use only corruption and SB on all trash mobs, making sure to dot every mob each pull before starting to SB skull
* Never use drain life over SB on bosses unless you need to heal after tapping

Give a few instance runs a try using those suggestions and compare it to your dps using your current set up and I almost guarantee you'll see a signifcant increase to your damage output.

[Barman]

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Will this Addon help me if the Warlock is not my main? Currently I got xperl which highlights my warlocks debuffs but only on warlocks wow client :-(

[olipcs]

Well, as you are still leveling, why not try demo or destruction, to get a litle bit rid of the 'dot-problem'.
I personaly liked demo, with felguard doing good 'no-brainer-dps', and my lock simply doing only corruption and sb-spam.
A big plus point for destruction would be the chaos bolt, as for leveling in nothrend an instant cast is realy nice to quickly kill trash.

[Angea]

I am having the same problem, keep losing dps to instant or crit attacks by other classes, which makes going to dungeons a bore because I hardly get to pew pew anything. I will try what Knytestorme suggested and see what happens. Thanks for your advice, Knytestorme.

[Coltimar]

If you want to destroy as a lock just stay hit capped and go Destro :/ And, prepare to die alot!

[Vyndree]

I am running a team together with a friend of mine, we got feral druid, 2 hunters, resto druid and affli warlock. The warlock does 15% of the damage, where the hunters deal 32%. Any idea what talent build and what spell rotation to use? I dont expect the warlock to outperform the hunters with trash mobs but at least he should do better with bosses, what do you think?

thanks

The thing with Hunters is that they're a "spam button" style DPSer that likes to sit there and DPS something until it's dead. The nature of DoTs that most full-lock DPS groups utilize is the "dot and run" grinding strategy -- I personally love it. You just dot everything up in the area and keep yourself alive while doing so.

This is pretty anti-hunter, since hunters both have to stop moving and face their target in order to do decent damage.

You have two options: go AoE things with your hunters/locks by utilizing the "tap it and gorilladin aoe" -- i.e. just dot things up and make sure you tap the mob, and let your gorilla pets AoE them down. Otherwise, you're going to do the standard "straight out dps style" which works better with a single-target dps damage lock like Destro (or Demo/Destro).

It's really up to your playstyle, but if you find that your hunters are doing more DPS I have a feeling you'll get more mileage out of the destro-style straight single-dps warlock.

[Knytestorme]

Just thought I'd add a followup to this after runs last night.

Ran H UK, CoT and DKT with a guild group last night (War, DK, 2 x Shaman, Lock) and using the rotation and tips I initially gave in this thread came up with some interesting numbers. Previously I've been hovering around 1200dps for entire runs and getting out damaged and dps'd by the DK in this group by a fair margin (him usually ~1500dps and 100k+ ahead of me) so I spent some time working on my rotation and adding in immolate a lot more on bosses so I'm now at:

Boss: Haunt -> UA -> Immolate -> Corruption -> CoA -> SL -> Haunt, spam SB, interweave lifetap/dark pact and refresh DoTs as needed
Trash: Haunt -> Corruption -> CoA -> SL skull, Corruption -> CoA -> SL -> SoC each other trash in the pull (only use SoC when > 4 mobs) by the time this is done skull is usually dead and so just repeat working your way down until all dead. For single pulls I'll usually just ignore the haunt and SB after the SL

Numbers for the runs:

H UK: 1446dps, second in damage
H Cot: 1440dps, second in damage
H DKT: 1776dps, first in damage by 50k (was running around 1850dps up until the last boss)

Locks are all about your rotation on bosses and the way you handle trash pulls IMHO for getting good dps from them so just need to spend some time at the dummies to get what works for you and then go rip it up.