Followers

Saturday, September 25, 2010

3.3.5 Affliction Warlock Talents, Glyph Choices, and Playstyle

Talents:
As an affliction warlock, after spending the neccesary talent points for maximum damage we are left with just one  talent point to "play around with". This can go anywhere you like but my personal preference is into Cataclysm, this single talent points reduces the mana cost of our destruction spells by 4%. This may not seem like a lot but our main nuke is shadow bolt which has a high mana cost and talenting  this point will allow you, over long encounters, to life tap less, which is a frees up a Global Cooldown. 

Here are the optimal talents for 3.3.5:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IfxMbzMAoiA0IktZE0oV:nITzV0

This spec is especially good for Halion, Putricide (more benefit on heroic), Sindragosa, and Lady Deathwhisper.
The reason that this spec is good for these encounters is because these fights generally require a lot of movement which means you cant be casting as much so the talent trees that depend on being mobile and casting the entire time are not as effective.

Glyphs:
The spec linked above has the top 3 glyphs for affliction, but i'll go over them briefly.
Glyph of Quick Decay: This glyph allows your corruption spell to benefit from your haste and out t9+ gear level this glyph provides substantially more DPS versus other glyphs.
Glyph of Haunt: This glyph is pretty plain and simple, instead of being a 20% increase on our DoTs, it is increased to 23% which essentially provides 3% extra damage from our DoTs.
Glyph of Life Tap: Even without stacking spirit gear, or without any spirit gear whatsoever, general raid buffs such as Prayer of Spirit and Blessing of Kings increase your spirit making which effectively provides you with about 100 spellpower, depending on your gear and raid setup. It is also a good choice because affliction warlocks depend a lot on this ability since Shadow Bolt is such a mana intensive spell.

Playstyle:
The opening: At the beginning of the encounter if it is a fight where you are running in, such as Marrowgar and not starting from a mobile position, Corruption and curse of agony should be casted first. This allows for trinkets such as Muradin's Spyglass to stack up and allows you to be doing a nice amount of damage while getting into position. 
If the fight is starting from a stationary position, such as Deathbringer Saurfang, your opening rotation should be:
Shadow Bolt - Haunt - Unstable Affliction - Corruption/Curse of Agony.
After opening you should be maintaing close to 100% uptime on Curse of Agony, and Unstable affliction. Corruption have its duration reset with every Shadow Bolt and Haunt hit. Haunt should be used EVERY COOLDOWN. The cooldown is short and having to put it up every 8 seconds is really annoying but it provides the maximum DPS. Make sure not to "clip" your Curse of Agony or your Unstable affliction, doing so will be a DPS loss. Make sure you allow it to fall completely off before reapplying it.
The Execute: Once the target's health is at 25% your execute starts here. From this point forward, ignore shadow bolt unless you get a Nightfall proc. In this execute you are maintaining your Curse of Agony, Unstable Affliction, and still using Haunt. You cast Drain Soul in place of Shadow Bolt and maintain your DoTs. 

This is it for now, I will post a demonology thread either tonight or tomorrow morning.
Also, i've been playing on the PTR and will post some possible rotations for demonology within the coming days.
Happy Soul Shredding,

-Beerandchips

21 comments:

  1. ok, i'm still trying to figure out what language this blog is in... i'm so confused!

    ReplyDelete
  2. hmmmm nice info thanks for this man
    looking forward to more in the future keep it up
    cya mate

    ReplyDelete
  3. man, everytime i read a post about wow it makes me want to play again :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. hank, get back into it dude, cataclysm beta is sick

    bear, i added you :P, you spriests are taking to dot role in cata, im demo now and the single target dps is insane

    ReplyDelete
  5. Awwh man, now I have the same feeling as Hank...

    ReplyDelete
  6. ooooo.... warlocks... POWER TO THE CLOTHIES!!!! I play a mage myself. Fire mages in Cataclysm? Oh gawd fire dots!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nice tips, I play mage as well, its going to be pertty nuts

    ReplyDelete
  8. awesome can't wait for more posts always following you mate
    keep it up
    cya

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'm have a lvl 80 driud, soon to be warrior, and trying to get a hunter to 80 before cata comes out.

    For Cata I'm either going to make a rogue, or a warlock. If I make a warlock definitely going to be around here more often.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I personally love affliction for both PvE and PvP. I do some pretty decent affliction DPS (9-10k)in PvE

    ReplyDelete
  11. Interesting read (though as a n00b, I did have to google some terms to understand it!).

    ReplyDelete
  12. Well good luck with that man. I haven't been into WoW in FOREVER. I did really like the warlock class and that seems like a solid build. I don't know the specifics about catacclsymmssss though. Lol can't spell it.

    ReplyDelete