Afflic Warlock w/ Inconsistent DPS

[Victorie]

Hello!

I just went Warlock, and chose affliction as my spec. I enjoy it, but I'm confused. For some reason, my DPS is very inconsistent. When I was in BOT and in Blues, DI up on a Spriest, same rotation as I do now, I did about 15k DPS. I was on Nefarion last night, better gear, more hit, and I could barely pull 13k (DI up on same spriest). I have less crit on my gear (most is reforged to hit) but more Haste and I have a helm with a meta-gem now. I do worse DPS than I did in all blues!

However, miraculously, on one attempt on Nefarion I did 17.2k DPS (DI on same spriest). I was pulling a consistent 15-16k at low gear level and now I'm doing less in much better gear. I do basically the same rotation every time but for some reason it seems to hit harder than others. Is it the order in which I'm putting up my spells, or just the weirdness of my gear? I assume I should be doing a consistent 17k DPS yet I'm not. I have pockets of brilliance and I can't figure out how to stay consistent in that.

Spell Rotation:

Curse of Elements > Haunt > Corruption > Bane of Doom > Unstable Affliction > Shadow Bolt

Shadow Bolt spam, keeping Haunt, UA, and BoD up. I pop my trinket and Demon Soul together whenever they are up. Switch to Drain Soul instead of Shadow Bolt at 25%.

Pet of Choice:

Felhound


Armory Link:
My gear is not great but I just got the toon to 85 like two weeks ago. Working on it

Armory is down; I'll link when it's back up. For now, I'm Victorie on US - Ysera.

[Aggathon]

when are you refreshing haunt? when the spell itself is on cooldown or when the debuff falls?

affliction is also fairly dependent upon when you use your cooldowns (hint, very often). Nef is also probably a bad fight to judge DPS on also b/c of all the downtime between phases. Do you have any logs?

Also, when you apply CoD can be very important, you want to try and put up CoD when you have spell effects like power torrent and/or trinket procs up. I can't see your armory, but if you don't have a Dark Moon Card: Volcano yet, you should get one. They're still BiS even in heroic firelands content (well... 2nd BiS, Rune of Zeth is BiS... it's stupid).

How I do my rotation:
CoE -> Shadowbolt for crit -> haunt -> UA -> Corr -> shadowbolt again unless all my procs are already up, then CoD -> back to shadowbolt -> haunt whenever it comes off cooldown -> UA when duration < 3 secnds left -> shadowbolt.

Below 25%, drain life + haunt when it's up, but don't clip a drain life short, wait for it to tick, then haunt, but hit haunt as close to "on cooldown" as possible.

If there's two targets that you're soul swapping between, then switch from CoD to CoA, since CoA can be on multiple targets but CoD can't (the tooltip is misleading on this point).

I guess always make sure fel armor is on? lol I know that sounds dumb but sometimes I'll be doing a 5 man or something going, "wtf why is my dps so low?" then realize that I haven't had fel armor on.

Can you maybe post here what spec you use by using wowhead since armory is down for maintenance?

[Bovinity]

Below 25%, drain life + haunt when it's up, but don't clip a drain life short, wait for it to tick, then haunt, but hit haunt as close to "on cooldown" as possible.

Drain Soul?

[Victorie]

Wow thank you for your feedback

CoD = Bane of Doom and CoA = Bane of Agony, correct?

Yes I always have Fel Armor on. From my days as a shaman, neurotically hitting my weapon enchants and water/lightning shield, I flick Fel Armor at least 40 times before a pull

I do need to get Darkmoon Card: Volcano (I'll have my scribe make the cards as soon as realms are back up). That will take me a while, though, and a lot of farming I'm sure.

So I shouldn't apply BoD (or CoD) until I have my trinket/Demon Soul up? Does it work with all dots like that, or just that particular one?

http://www.wowhead.com/profile=us.ysera.victorie

I hope that helps!

[Aggathon]

ya sorry, drain life = drain soul under 25%, I just kinda wrote that hurriedly, and CoA was Curse of Agony, before they made it bane of agony in this last patch, it's force of habit to call them CoD and CoA.

Anyways, Bane of Doom is the only one you should wait for procs/cooldowns for. I have a rune of zeth (revered with avengers of hyjal) which is conveniently a 1 minute cooldown, and I have it bound to incinerate, so I just make sure that whenever the trinket pops I put up CoD, keeps the uptime pretty high too.

[Victorie]

What is your gear/DPS like? What are my stat priorities? It seems that the more hit I have at the expense of other stats, the worse my DPS is. I also stacked haste (per Elitist Jerks) but that doesn't seem to be working as intended. Perhaps because I don't have enough of it yet to add extra ticks, but I'm not sure. Shadowbolt takes too long to cast.

[Aggathon]

that is the correct stat priority, basically Int = Hit until close to 17%, you don't have to be right at 17%, but get within a half percent at least. Then after hit cap, the priority goes Int > Haste > Crit > Mastery.

I'm personally fairly well geared. Average ilevel is about 375 and my dps is around 23k-24k-ISH, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the fight. I go destro for a lot of fights too though for the utility. I also raid lead though so often times my DPS is lower than it should be b/c I'm just not paying attention to my rotation.

Irylath of Antonidas if you want to look me up.


It should be noted that you shouldn't use 5 mans as a gauge for if your DPS is going up or down, it doesn't sound like you are, but in 5 mans the hit cap is only 6%, so you're sacrificing a lot of stats for hit that are kind of "wasted" in 5 mans, but they are absolutely essential in raids.

[Tengenstein]

There shouldn't be much down time on Nef during transitions you can keep your dots rolling on him from the point he first lands to the point he falls over. the problem with the nef encounter is that it has a tendency to bug out the fel puppy; if you summon it and then jump down into the area it willl sometimes stand at your feet the entire time as if nef/ony/ are not targetable, the same thing happens again when you jump on the pillars for P2 except the adds are untargetable now, and then again for P3. I found the only way to circumvent this bug was to soulburn>resummon the pet each time i changed level, so once i'd jumped down, once i'd gotten up on the pillar and then once again after jumping down for the last phase.

[Aggathon]

during transitions you can keep your dots rolling on him from the point he first lands to the point he falls over.

Unless you're about to push him to an electrocute and you don't want to. The pet advice is good though.

[Victorie]

Yeah I definitely have been doing that pet thing on Nef once I noticed he would NEVER attack after I jumped down. Blizz really needs to fix that... what a waste of GCD's.

[Tschus]

This is what I use for opening:
(While running into position) CoE -> Bane of Doom -> Corruption -> (Stand still) Shadow Bolt -> Demon Soul + Trinket -> Unstable Affliction -> Haunt -> (If trinket procs) Bane of Doom -> Then to normal rotation.

The BoD at the very beginning is to let it start ticking earlier, and when refreshed with all buffs it ticks 5 times. Shadow Bolt before UA and Haunt is to get the 5% crit debuff on before the dots start rolling.

When you are in blues with low hit your dps is kinda like gambling. If you don't miss a lot of your spells then you'll see a good dps on that fight.

Extra ticks aren't that much important for warlocks. Just get as many haste as you can while maintaining hit capped.