[Raiding] Affliction (41/2/18) Raiding Kara/ZA DPS Help

[Arevyn]

Character Name: Arevyn
Armory Profile: The World of Warcraft Armory
Wowhead link of current build in use: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Wowhead link of proposed build: To be honest, Im trying to figure out if my spec is workable with my current gear or if a Destro/Afflic combo would be better. As to what spec exactly, Im not 100% sure at the moment. Im sorry that i dont have a specific spec in mind.

PvE Play style and Requirements of build:

My guild has Kara on farm status and we have ZA mostly down and farmed except for Zul'Jin. We run Gruuls on occasion as well. Ive only run Kara and Gruul's on Arevyn so far, since my +damage isn't quite high enough for ZA.
I have only played Arevyn as affliction since level 10 (with a little variation here and there but hes always been affliction/destro )
My rotations have varied because Ive been trying to achieve better DPS in my guild raids. But I seem to sit right above the tank, with the occasional rise due to long drawn-out fights with bosses where I can get into a nice rhythm, and then I do ok. But the most recent rotation I have been trying is: Curse of Agony (Amped when up)=> Corr => UA => SL => SB and refresh as needed. Then throw in a few darkpacts and/or LT. I usually stick to the idea of one LT per rotation, and I seem to do fine on mana.
PvP Play style and Requirements of build:


I play PvP mainly for gear, to be honest. I will run anything, WSG/AB/EOTS/AV. Im on a 2v2 with a BM hunter. Its mainly to get points, and I havent played on my 3v3 yet, as I just got into it the other day. Im not a very serious PvP'er most of the time, but Ill do it with friends once in awhile.

Additional Comments:

Up until I hit 70 with Arevyn, my main has been a rogue by the name of Clothahump. So as to play style, Ive gotten used to playing melee and spamming 2 or 3 macro buttons. Also, Im not sure if it matters a whole lot, but Im playing with keybindings as opposed to clicking with the mouse. I find it to be pretty quick, esp. compared to the fact that I used to play with clicking on my rogue up until about 3 or so months ago. My guilds gear (at least the ones that Im running in raids with) all have pretty good gear, relatively speaking. Badge/Kara/Gruul's loot is what most of us wear with a few sporting BT BoE recipes.
Ive run my numbers thru the spreadsheets that has been on the forums, and found that "technically" I should be doing much better DPS. Ive tried changing my rotations, moving talent points around a bit, but staying Affliction, and Im still hanging out with the tanks for DPS.
So I guess one of the main things Im wondering about is, with the gear that I have, should I be affliction, or should I be something else entirely? Would it help my DPS to change specs?
Thanks you guys for taking the time to read this, and if you have any questions or anything, please let me know.

[Akasha]

An absolutely superb example of a talent build thread! Thankyou!

[Pantoloons]

There are a few things I can see right off of the bat.

1. Use Immolate. Its very good Casttime-per-Damage, and even as Affliction you should be using it.
2. Until you get a substantial amount of +shadow damage, Amped CoD will outDPS Curse of Agony. It also increases DPS by making more effecient use of your global cooldowns
3. With your cast rotation, youre best to be linking a spell with a casting time to a instant-cast spell. It makes more efficient use of the GCD, once again. My rotation is usually CoD -> UA -> Corruption -> Immo -> SL. Notice the linking.
4. Is that damage (being right above the tanks) overall, or just on bosses? Because affliction is never going to reach its potential on trash, the fights dont last long enough

Those are the things I can think of atm, more may come to me later

[mcgee84]

And because you won't be using Curse of Agony, you can do something like..

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Your spell hit is now high enough you can take points out of Suppression and still be hitcapped on Aff spells. Also, if you'd like to improve your DPS, I'd consider dropping iHoT. I'm not sure what spells you're rocking on trash, but it shouldn't be the same as your boss rotation. And depending on how fast things are dying, you might do better with CoS+Corr+SB on trash.

[levinho]

Originally Posted by Pantoloons

3. With your cast rotation, youre best to be linking a spell with a casting time to a instant-cast spell. It makes more efficient use of the GCD, once again. My rotation is usually CoD -> UA -> Corruption -> Immo -> SL. Notice the linking.

I've never really agreed with this. You're not really making better use of a GCD because a channeled spell usually takes longer to cast then the GCD and therefore doesn't have a delay afterward. Casting in this sequence makes UA/Corr/Immo all expire around the same time. Not good in my thinking. I would slap up Immolate after the curse.

On trash I would probably just not curse unless they are staying up long enough for a couple casts to make that GCD for the curse equal to the damage a shadowbolt would do based on the 3% damage increase. Just do Corr/immo and sb spam.

As far as being something else, I don't think you're there yet; however its not too far out of reach. One thing I didn't see you post info on is your use of addons. Do you have a dot timer? If you are refreshing early or letting things expire and taking too long to refresh you will lose dps.

[Arevyn]

First Id like to say thank you to those who have posted thus far, its much appreciated. Also as an edit to my old post (and in case others didn't see it on my armory) I'm at 965 + Shadow damage self buffed with fel armor.

As to addons that I use for my lock. I use Ash for dot timers and notifications. its just one I randomly found while looking for some kind of timer.

Some of you have made mention in other posts as well as this one about casting a long cast then followed by an instance cast to make use of the GCD. I know this is probably going to sound noobish, but bear with me. Do you make a macro that casts both things at once? I.E:

/cast Unstable affliction
/stopcasting
/cast Curse of Agony

Or something like that? Because no matter what order I seem to push the buttons to cast, theres still a GCD on all my casts. so I don't know how to cast where it only uses one GCD for two spells.

Im not too knowledgeable as to macros, other than a few cast sequences I made back for grinding.

Thanks again for the info everyone :-)

[levinho]

You DO not need stopcasting. The important part is the order in which the dots end so that you don't have them all down at once. I used to use a macro something like this when i was affliction:

/castsequence [reset=target, nocombat] Curse of Agony, Immolate, Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life

Of course it may not be the best. This is what I found on WoWiki and it resets in 10 secs:

/castsequence reset=10 Immolate, Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life

So about order of buttons and GCD. That was kind of my point. The GCD is never gone. It just feels like it. That doesn't mean you're gonna do better that way because too many dots will expire at once. Once you begin a cast the GCD starts. So if you have a 2.0 cast spell the GCD will be up 0.5 secs before you are finished casting; therefore, you can instant cast a corruption or something and start another GCD and make it feel like you got more for your time casting. However, since you are going to have the same cast times on your channeled spells and the same GCD on your instant cast spells -It doesn't matter what order- because the time casting will be the same no matter what order.

I guess what it really means is not that you cast both spells at once but that they will both be on the target at the same time because of the instant mechanic.

[Arevyn]

Ok, so I moved some points around in my talent trees and re-gemed a couple things to add to my spell damage. Im now at 996 shadow damage with Fel Armor. I have been using a macro to use either of my trinkets (depending on which is up) and then cast CoS. My spell rot is now Imm=>Corr=>UA=>SL=>SB

Heres my new spec:
The World of Warcraft Armory
( Took points out of ImpCoA and iHoT and put them into Imo CoS)

As to my re-gemming, I took out a few of my +hit gems and put in +12 damage to raise me from 965 to 996 Sdmg.

Have not raided yet, just did a couple 5 mans and my DPS was better. But its hard to tell from 5 mans and a couple of those were normal runs;not heroics.