3/22/10

Affliction Warlocks

RANT:
Afflocks are still king in 3.3.3!

Honestly, if you are a Destro Warlock and are pumping out 6-8k DPS, switch to AFFMODE!!

Your DoTs are more helpful than your Direct Damage in ICC.

Furthermore, Survivability is a HUGE benefit in ICC due to the massive AoE damage in that frozen-over hellhole. Affmode provides that! :)

Try this spec out if you've never tried Affliction before.

Explanation:
~ This is the most commonly accepted Affliction spec and is my personal preference to raiding. It offers the best survivability in ICC for the Warlock class and still pumps out the DPS required for all of the fights.
~ Very powerful Seeds of Corruption
~ Extreme Health Regeneration
~ Powerful DoTs

Rotation:
The combat rotation is fairly simple and you can really go about it however you want.
~ The most common rotation is: Haunt, UA, Corruption, CoA, SB ~~~

I hate that.
I do it differently.

~ The very first thing I like to do is cast Curse of Agony because it has the longest duration.
~ Then I cast Unstable Affliction, Corruption, and then Haunt (yes, you do miss out on a few initial boosted DoT ticks but that's ok)

~ My Rotation: CoA, UA, Corruption, Haunt, SB ~~~

Reasoning:
~ By the time UA and Haunt are reapplied, CoA has about 6 seconds left and is doing it's maximum DPS. This technique allows me to focus directly on CoA's timer without having to worry about anything else! You do not want to cut the last few ticks of CoA short because CoA escalates it's damage over the duration. The last few seconds are doing the most damage.
~ After CoA is reapplied, you have free-time to launch a bunch of Shadow Bolts and Insta-Bolts without having to worry about your Global Cooldown messing up your DoT casts.
~ Haunt and UA will be coming up next in the rotation, after those are cast, you should have about 6 seconds of Shadow Bolts before your next CoA.

It's like having 2 phases - DoT phase and Bolt phase.

The "common rotation" is theory crafted for maximum flawless DPS in a perfect world, which we all know doesn't ever happen. It sets the DoT re-casts between Shadow Bolts and can really get confusing, costing you a major DPS loss if you lose track. You will be reapplying DoTs individually between your Shadow Bolts in other words. While that may be appealing to some, it is definitely not the way I like to roll.

But it's really up to your style of play and I encourage you to try both or make up your own.

No comments:

Post a Comment