World of Warcraft

[Kalbear]

Our guild is blessed(cursed) with more ranged than melee dps. We don't have a rogue, dk or retri pala. We only have 1 fury warrior and 1 enh shaman. Our main tank is paladin (no reliable interrupt) OT is druid, not hit capped.

You only have to have 5% hit to be hit capped for interrupts on Nef. That's not that hard, and can be done by trinkets or just a bunch of enchants. Seriously, fix this. I don't see why this would ever be up for discussion on something to allow your players to do.

[Inigima]

Valiona and Theralion down after a few attempts. Much better communication. I like to think my calling out of raid events was helpful too but mostly we just executed better.

I am mediocre at afflic as it's my first try -- I did some rotation practice on dummies, and a dungeon, before the raid to practice -- but I still saw a 2k+ DPS improvement on that fight. Thanks for the advice. I'm enjoying afflic.

[RaceBannon42]

Our guild 10 man got Nef down last night. I missed 25 on sunday as I was watching the Steelers advance to the Super Bowl. But they hit 8% on the first go then went backwards from there. Hopefully we get him down this week on 25's

[saint777]

Took down LK normal last week. We are not a raiding guild but we do schedule weekly raids. Doing Ulduar this week. We almost have enough to start the Cataclysm raids. We are in prep mode now(flasks, food, bandages, etc.).

[Solmyr]

Just gonna mention a few things about affliction rotation, if you have already figured them out don't mind me, if you haven't - enjoy ;).

Corruption -> BoA -> UA -> Haunt -> CoE -> Instant Soulfire -> Doomguard (if applicable - some fights you should save him for later phases).

From this point on priority is: never let UA or Haunt expire (refresh the first with Fel Flame) -> never let BoA expire -> refresh improved soul fire (best is if you begin casting the new soul fire when the old is at 1c or 0sec remaining on the buff). The last one is very tricky to manage, especially on top of the rest, don't worry if you forget about it, but if you see it gone recast it even if it takes 2.6sec. Cast shadow bolts in the little remaining time between dots and soulfire refreshing.

Contrary to popular belief, Succubus>Felhunter. You need to use Glyph of Lash of Pain as prime, but it's worth it. The other 2 prime glyphs should be Haunt and Corruption. As for majors, Soul Swap is a given, the other two you can play around with, I use Soul Link and Life Tap most of the time and change to Fear/Shadowflame when I need to do kiting/cc'ing.

Make the following macros and put them where Shadow Bolt and UA used to be on your bars:

#showtooltip Shadow Bolt

/dismount [mounted]

/petattack [target]

/use 10 [10=gloves, use this if you're engineer and have synapse springs or shocker]

/cast Demon Soul

/cast Shadow Bolt

#showtooltip Unstable Affliction

/dismount [mounted]

/petattack [target]

/cast Unstable Affliction

Feel free to add a usable trinket to the first macro (before /cast SB) if you have any. I'm using Heart of Ignacious and this one requires manual usage.

By using these macros you can safely put your pet on passive, remove Demon Soul, gloves and possibly trinket to free up to 3 bars.

Can't think of anything else atm, if I do, will add it later.

Edit: Gz on the 10man Nef kill, RaceBannon.

[Inigima]

Congrats Race!

Solmyr, thanks -- some of this I had figured out, some of it is new and helpful, and some of it contradicts EJ. Questions etc. below:

Just gonna mention a few things about affliction rotation, if you have already figured them out don't mind me, if you haven't - enjoy ;).

Corruption -> BoA -> UA -> Haunt -> CoE -> Instant Soulfire -> Doomguard (if applicable - some fights you should save him for later phases).

From this point on priority is: never let UA or Haunt expire (refresh the first with Fel Flame) -> never let BoA expire -> refresh improved soul fire (best is if you begin casting the new soul fire when the old is at 1c or 0sec remaining on the buff). The last one is very tricky to manage, especially on top of the rest, don't worry if you forget about it, but if you see it gone recast it even if it takes 2.6sec. Cast shadow bolts in the little remaining time between dots and soulfire refreshing.

EJ recommends opening with... Well, a Soulburn-charged Soul Fire, but then Haunt, Bane of Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Shadowbolt filler. I do try to keep Improved Soul Fire up but it is taking some adjustment and sometimes I fail at it. From then on I keep Haunt and UA up as priority. Haunt auto refreshes Corruption. I refresh BoA manually. I do indeed attempt to cast my Soul Fires in such a way that I retain the haste buff but it's in the air as it falls off, if I remember that I need to do it I'm usually on target.

This stuff differs slightly from your priorities, I'd be interested to know which is better and why. A few specific questions:

After the initial soul burned Soul Fire, I tend to save my remaining shards for in case I miss casting it with the haste buff, so I can get it back up without needing a full time SF. Is this wise?

Do I need to worry about recasting DoTs after spell power (e.g. trinkets) or haste buffs kick in or will the DoTs already on benefit automatically? Please say it's the second, the rotation is complex enough to worry about while observing raid gimmicks.

Below 25% health EJ says to switch to Drain Soul filler instead of Shadowbolt (recasting Shadowbolt every 30sec if no one else can apply the spell crit debuff, not an issue in my raid). It also says to keep Haunt up. Do I keep up all the other DoTs too.

Why do you have Curse of the Elements so far into your opening rotation? Isn't it better to start with it? I've been doing it as the opener, partly to maximize its impact on raid DPS, partly because it's another instant that I can cast while moving to my position, and partly to give the tank a threat lead.

I've been using Doomguard as you say, but after the raid I noticed that for affliction EJ recommends Infernal for both AOE and single target. Any idea why this is?

Contrary to popular belief, Succubus>Felhunter. You need to use Glyph of Lash of Pain as prime, but it's worth it. The other 2 prime glyphs should be Haunt and Corruption. As for majors, Soul Swap is a given, the other two you can play around with, I use Soul Link and Life Tap most of the time and change to Fear/Shadowflame when I need to do kiting/cc'ing.

Yeah, I saw that on EJ and have been using Suc/Lash, though I was surprised to see the puppy wasn't the the thing any more. I'm using the same prime glyphs you are. For major I'm using Soul Swap, Shadow Bolt and Life Tap, swapping in Fear if I'm going to need to CC. I hadn't considered Shadowflame because I haven't had to kite but I will definitely keep it in mind. I was initially skeptical about the Life Tap glyph being worth a shit, but with how much mana I go through as affliction compared to demo, and with how tight my rotation timing is, it's really helpful.

I've been putting off getting a timer bar add-on, but after seeing the rotation in effect on a dummy, I picked up ClassTimer on a friend's recommendation. OMG so helpful. I can't imagine being Affliction without a DoT timer.

Great macro advice. Thanks man.

[Solmyr]

The opening rotation isn't that big of a deal, especially on raid fights, which last 5+ minutes. If you just throw them in any order you will still notice no change in your overall dps at the end.

The reason I use this order is common sense: I throw the instant dots first while moving to position myself (I usually manage to do that in 2 GCDs, if I don't I move while casting the other instant spells later on), from the 2 instant dots Corruption does more dmg, can proc Nightfall and so on, naturally it's a first. From the castable dots UA deals most dmg, so it comes before Haunt. Furthermore, Haunt by itself is not a good dmg spell, its dmg comes from the 23% boost it gives to all other dots. If you open with Haunt and then start casting the other dots it will take you up to 3secs to get all 3, and 3 more seconds for them to actually tick. One can argue that I am wrong on this point, since on encounters where the boss is far away from you (Al'akir for example), Haunt's projectile travels for 2-3secs, but as I mentioned earlier 0 it doesn't freakin' matter :P. The opening rotation is irrelevant the longer the fight gets. The same argument for Haunt I apply for CoE - it's a booster to your dmg, having it first is a waste since it has nothing to boost, whereas the dots deal plenty of dmg on their own even without the booster. And once again, same for Soulfire, the haste boost it provides is applied to already-cast dots and the actual casting time-decrease in UA and Haunt it will provide if used first is negligible.

Saving shards for missed soulfires is fine, there is nothing better do do with them (maybe Healthstone on occasion or Demonic Circle: Teleport, but thats one in a million). Try not to waste all your shards fast, especially if the fight denies you the refill (no adds), sometimes it will be better to cast the 2.6sec soulfire and save the instant for when you're hard pressed to refresh several other things fast and comply with the encounter (say, run from the fire). Knowing the fight, how long it is and what will happen during that time is a big helper.

DoTs take your current haste, spell power and so on. I am 99% certain of that ;).

Drain Soul below 25%, but you need to keep all your DoTs up. Corruption and UA are set, BoA is easy to recast, you need to take care of Haunt tho. If you don't have one, get a casting bar addon that shows when channeling spells tick. Try cancelling Drain Soul right after a tick, else you're losing dmg. Also, shoot those instant shadow bolts when they proc, they are still a good dps per GCD.

I strongly recommend you consider Glyph of Soul Link, on some fights (Nefarian for example) it's invaluable. Shadow Bolt provides a very small increase of dps - it basically gives you more time before you need to Life Tap, but since you already have improved LT and glyph of LT, tapping can be fitted nicely in your rotation (I usually do it as soul fire is about to expire and I have <2 sec so I can't rly cast anything else). Bear in mind that over 50% of your mana is drained by stuff other than Shadow Bolt too.

P.S. I haven't read EJ since cata came out, I like figuring things for myself. I spend a lot of time on the dummy, yesterday I sustained my rotation for 25mins. EJ might have some answers right-er than me, but overall the cookie cutter is easy to figure.

P.P.S. Forgot about the Infernal. Haven't tried it yet, but I will. I'm skeptic it can outdmg the Doomguard, but it's worth the try.

Edit: Tested it, seems like Infernal deals more dmg indeed.

[Inigima]

Makes sense, thanks. And yeah, I open with DoTs/CoE while moving to position as well. I do CoE early because I'm not the only one it affects, though, as well as being another spell I can cast on the move as opposed to Haunt or UA.

Note that Infernal is only recommended for single-target use for Affliction -- Demo still uses Doomguard for single-target, Infernal for AOE. I'm not sure what destro uses but I assume EJ has that info too. I'm not sure what makes the difference,

[TerraPrime]

You want drain soul at >25% because of the multiplier. That multiplier plays off of how many affliction spells are on the target. So, you need to keep the haunt/BoA up to get the maximum benefit of drain soul. Otherwise, it is worse off than sbolt.

What I'm curious about is the drain life vs sbolt filler. I'll have to try it out myself once my lock gets to 85. I've been playing my alliance shammy.

[Kalbear]

It seems like it'd be super easy now to level to 85 given how much xp you get from archaeology and things like cooking and fishing dailies. My wife's toon hasn't done a single instance, hasn't done more than the starting quests for a couple of the new zones, but she's halfway to 85 just from archy.

Even better with arch, you can do old world zones as long as you want.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

I've actually got my DK alt up to 66 purely from instances so far. It's a lot less painful with the DK than it would have been with my catbear, because, dude, when Ini told me DKs were initially OP, he wasn't fucking kidding.

[RaceBannon42]

love me some gutrot

[Inigima]

Congrats to Max on his first 85!

[Cot]

Don't mean to piss the fanboys off, but I've found myself once again at the stage of the cycle where I'm bored stiff with WoW (been playing on and off since Beta).

Bunch of friends and I have been playing the Beta of Rifts of Telara - very wowish but with enough differences to make it seem fresh.

Worth a stab if you're getting slightly jaded with WoW, open beta should be out soon.

Apologies for thread hijack.

[Solmyr]

Don't mean to piss the fanboys off, but I've found myself once again at the stage of the cycle where I'm bored stiff with WoW (been playing on and off since Beta).

Bunch of friends and I have been playing the Beta of Rifts of Telara - very wowish but with enough differences to make it seem fresh.

Worth a stab if you're getting slightly jaded with WoW, open beta should be out soon.

Apologies for thread hijack.

Omg, bloody treason!

Now lock this thread before the idea spreads its evil roots all over the forum :).