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Instance / Raiding Guides If your DPS sucks, look in here. If you don't know what spells to cast, look in here. If you're happy as a raider, and you really wanna be better, if you're in an instance or raid, look in here.

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November 05, 2008, 04:10 PM
Fallenman	WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide The thread here is about Affliction Raiding. This will answer very common questions such as these: Should I use immolate? Should I drop any DoTs from my rotation? What is the rotation? My DPS is really bad, what am I doing wrong? How can I get better at affliction? This will be broken up into 2 posts. The first, below, dealing with DPCTs and whether or not you should cast all of your DoTs. I'll start by clarifying what DoTs should be used. The answer simply... Click here to read the entire guide Last edited by Fallenman; December 17, 2008 at 12:44 PM..

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January 29, 2009, 03:24 PM

#70 (permalink)

Fallenman

Re: WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide

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Originally Posted by RelaxMan

here's a few comments i have after reading several of the posts (i'm no expert, just things i believe should be considered)

1 - in almost no fight have i had time to just stand and start casting a shadow bolt to begin the rotation. there is almost always something going on at the beginning of a fight in terms of "positioning" in my experience - as a result, i just don't start with it. secondly i'm almost always on CoE duty and because it provides a pretty significant raid benefit, it's my opinion that it should take priority and be cast first.

First, yes this was covered in the guide. On a fight where you cannot "pre-cast" you should start with instant dots.

As for CoE, most locks these days don't have to use it due to the fact that a boomkin or unholy DK provide the same debuff. That said, if your raid doesn't have a boomkin or unholy DK then yes you'll want to be casting CoE. That goes without saying.

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2 - casting UA & Immolate at the same time is a good idea, but you have to watch out for haste-increasing buffs (i.e. bloodlust, eradication, or trinkets). i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one noticing that re-casting Immolate too early will sometimes NOT reset the DoT effect, and only apply the initial burst. this will cause a big problem in overall damage. as a result... i often break my normal rotation when receiving a haste benefit and will either: cast a shadowbolt after UA, or refresh siphon life after UA (if needed)

Casting UA and Immolate together isn't a requirement by any means. But it helps for those who are just learning rotations. And, don't clip your immolate, and you won't have the problem of it not going back up on the boss.

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3 - every lock should know you use DS when the boss is below 25% health, however in my opinion DS should only be applied after all DoT's have been refreshed

This is very true.

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and no DoT's should be refreshed until the DS has channeled it's entire duration (causing some of your DoT's to expire before you refresh them).

This is definitely not the way to do it. Just like shadowbolt, DS has a lower DPCT than your dots, so you absolutely must refresh your dots. At best, you'll have about 9 seconds of DS channel time before you have to recast haunt anyways. What you want to do is stop casting DS right after a tick, so if a dot has to be refreshed, wait for the next tick and then refresh it.

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i have no numbers for evidence but it seems to me this maximizes my damage the most. i do not recommend using DS on trash as, in my experience, the mob loses his last 25% life way faster than the DS has time to tick once or twice... might as well life tap or something.

Well trash is trash. Just SB spam or AoE the trash. You don't need to maximize your dps on trash.

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4 - speaking of life tap... be sure you cast this before your Haunt expires. there's no sense wasting the health return you're going to receive

This is definitely a HUGE no no. Do not lifetap just to "not waste the haunt heal". Haunt healing you is not increasing your DPS. Do not cast lifetap until you are just about OOM. And then you cast lifetap once. Then cast til OOM. Then lifetap once. Wash, rinse, and repeat. The more lifetaps you cast (especially unecessary ones just to "use the heal from haunt") the lower your dps will be.

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6 - regarding drain life, this should only be used to help out your heals. i use it a lot on the sapphiron fight because of the constant damage everyone takes... this helps heals pretty significantly since we STILL have to life tap (sapph does normally stay in range when he raises up to drop the ice bomb, but you will generate some threat if you continue to refresh dot's/drain life etc)

Generally a warlock should never have to heal themselves in a raid. However, yes if you absolutely have to, or if your healers are "meh" then you can use DL. But you don't want to have to use it unless you absolutely MUST to save yourself from imminent death. It's pretty bad DPS to have to use DL.

February 04, 2009, 01:58 PM	#71 (permalink)
RelaxMan Character Info Hike 80 Undead Warlock Blackwing Lair US PvP Guild: Occam's Raiders Talent Spec: 54/0/17	Re: WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide i guess you're a stickler for wording :O on the immolate thing - yea that's what i meant. if you get a random huge boost in haste it can sometimes cause you to clip immolate if you're just mindlessly following a dot rotation, so i was just cautioning to be aware of it, even if you are just learning. trash - i guess the only reason i made a comment about doing better on trash is it reduces downtime in a raid and, overall, just helps get through the evening. it doesn't really "matter" accept that it just makes for a better use of time. life tap - wasn't implying you should cast life tap EVERY TIME haunt is going to expire. just that when you cast it, you might as well try and take advantage of the health return. i also tend to work backwards from a lot of locks i guess in that my goal is to go OOM at the end of a fight, not the beginning :l (meaning i don't use life tap at all towards the end of a fight).... exception being when blood lust is active if that happens to be somewhere else in a fight. as for drain soul & refreshing DoT's i'm not sure i can argue math so i'll go with what you said.

February 04, 2009, 05:12 PM	#72 (permalink)
Kiralyn Character Info Kiralyn 80 Human Warlock Mal'Ganis US PvP Guild: Self Titled Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0.13.58	Re: WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide A quick question about gearing your current build Fallen... What hit cap are you working around? My assumption is 13%, with 3% from IFF and 1% from cata and sup. I just wanted to be sure before I start trying to balance down to a single point in Cata and throw my hit caps off. __________________ Hell, it's about time. -Tychus Findlaw

February 04, 2009, 05:25 PM	#73 (permalink)
Fallenman	Re: WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide I'm playing around with builds at the moment, so dont take my armory. :p Normally, I have 11% hit from gear, then 3% suppression, 0% cata, 1% draenei, and 3% from shadow priest or boomkin.

March 09, 2009, 03:06 PM	#74 (permalink)
Ayale Character Info Ayale 80 Human Warlock Doomhammer Euro PvE Guild: The Praetorian Guards Talent Spec: 56/0/15	Re: WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide Hi mate, A really nice and useful guide for an afflication lock:D Ayale

April 07, 2009, 04:36 PM	#75 (permalink)
inner	Re: WOTLK affliction raiding, how-to guide I know this seems like a strange question but do you use a felhunter or VW on a PVE server... I notice you spend 1 point in Improved Felhunter.. but I didnt read where you use it