So I decided that I needed a new spec on the gnome. Her gear is amazing now (for the most part) and yet I just couldn't get my damage to go up much. It was frustrating as hell, and I finally decided that it seriously may be due to my latency spikes as to why Affliction wasn't working out for me.
It was suggested to me last week that I try a Demo/Destro build. I took this into consideration and thought it out... meanwhile still trying everything to make her current spec work.
To explain my latency issues:
I can have perfect nights where I'll never see my latency go above 300ms. Those nights I did pretty damn well in raids... who would've thought? BUT... especially here lately, my ISP has been a pos. I've rarely seen my latency sit below 400ms for more than an hour. It's typically bouncing between 200ms and 1000ms. That is just retarded... and trust me, I don't want to use it as an excuse... but when playing a spec like Affliction, latency can screw how efficent you can be in a heartbeat. I mean with UA in the rotation... you have CoA, UA, Corr, Immo, and SL to constantly refresh. Ideally you can watch UA start to fall and start refreshing it, Corr, and Immo basically all in one motion. Now, with my latency spikes here lately... sometimes I'd be attempting to refresh UA (even starting early because I knew my latency was shitty) and by the time the cast would go through on my end... everything else would've dropped. There's just NO way to efficiently keep that many dot's ticking on a mob 100% of the time when you're spiking up to 1k ms in the middle of the dot rotation.
Yes, I've called my ISP. Several times. I used to work tech support for them, don't lecture me on fixing shit. I live in the middle of nowhere currently... it is the only high speed service I can get out where I live. Don't even go there, I already know.
So, to conclude all of that ranting. I needed to find a spec I could enjoy playing that was latency friendly. That ruled out basically all heavy Affliction builds. This made me sad because I've honestly never raided as anything but affliction... even pre-bc. I love dark pact... I love CoEx. But... sometimes you have to compromise and so I did.
The spec suggested to me is something like this:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?0000000000000000000000350030133200100000000505000512200510430250
I spec'd a premade lock in t6 that on the ptr. Granted that gear is unenchanted, but it is socketed... I was able to get some idea of the playstyle it entails. It's very mana inefficent.. and very cookie-cutter. You basically sac a minion based on which school of magic you'll be using... throw up a curse and immo, at least, and then spam away at either shadowbolt or incinerate. Not a bad build, but not much room for compromise. If you have to become a utility warlock for one reason or another, you gimp your damage due to the fact that you may not be able to sacrifice your minion. You get a lot of neat buffing talents from the destro tree.. but it just wasn't what I was after. Nothing wrong with the spec by any means, but too mage-y to me.
So this is what I came up with about 15 minutes before the raid last night:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?0000000000000000000000350030133250100501350505000512200010000000
Being that there were only 2 warlocks present in the raid, I was using my imp all night. Not a bad deal considering that with Master Demo it reduces my threat by 20% to have the imp out. Also, with soul link active my damage is increased by 5%. With 2 pieces of t5 on, my pet gets healed for 30% of whatever I get healed for. Hmm... so if he's taking 20% of the damage from me.. but getting healed when I get healed... works out great, right? I never had to resummon a minion because it died to being soul linked... and we were clearing huge aoe packs in which I did get aggro from multiple mobs at once, many times. I watched my imps health basically stay 100% just like mine. We'd dip down... but the second I got healed, so did he. I never even had to health funnel. I was rather impressed! I'd totally overlooked the things offered in the Demo tree. It's so versatile... so I'm happy to be giving it a shot.
With the way the talents all work together in it, you can just leave a minion summoned for a raid... have it get all of the raid buffs... feed it a Sporeling Snack (nummy!), and suddenly you just buffed your damage because you buffed your pets stats.
At one point, fully raid buffed, I had 1500+ shadow damage. 1056 fire damage. 12.7k hp. 10k mana. 22% crit, and 12% hit. That's just nasty. I was throwing out shadowbolt crits that were 6.5k hits. Seed of corruption was critting for 3k at times when it'd explode. Even though I am fire dmg gimped... my immolate was critting for 1100 on inital hit at times. I mean wtf?
This is even an amazing lock tanking build due to the resists offered by the felhunter being out. I had an overkill resistance rating in my Shadow Resist gear of 403 because of my fel. Lawls... wtf?
The only downside to this spec, so far, is that it's mana inefficent. So I have to lifetap or mana pot... no more dark pact. QQ. But honestly, with nearly 13k health, one Lifetap isn't gimping me on almost any of the fights we do every week. As long as I play it smart, it doesn't matter.
Conclusion:
Even though we only spent the night farming trash for hearts (for shadow resist gears) I came out on top overall damage done. I even died once and ran back and still managed to pull it off. We did, I think, 4 or 5 full clears... and granted there were a lot of aoe packs to clear - even looking at my damage on single pull mobs I was top 3 nearly every time, I believe. From what I recall, only hunters and melee were above me in damage on any single target mob. Now... this doesn't say anything yet... I haven't had the chance to blow this up on a boss - but it has at least top 5 potential, I'd assume. Which is far better than I was pulling off with Affliction.
I love Affliction and always will... but until I move, most likely, I have to find something else that works better.. because I can't go on being that gimp on the damage I'm putting out when I know full well that I am way better than that.
On another note, I'm told this spec is godly for arena. Orly? I guess I'll have to try soon.
If you're bored and want something new to try... give this spec a shot. It's fun, if anything... so many directions it can go. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
That seems pretty versatile on paper. I think after I get done leveling in affliction I'm gonna switch to a nuking build of some kind. Backlash and soul leech look like happy fun things. Kinda like blazing speed and molten fury :D
Nice work on the dmg adjustment, Jade. Sucks that your connection creates a situation like that.
0/40/21 is a great build. Demordrah came up with it a long time ago and has only recently specced out of it for Arena play, but otherwise, he's been working with it since TBC release.
I've dabbled with it, and gg it does huge damage, but like you said, it's just not versatile. It essentially blurs the line between 'locking and Maging... a line I don't wish to cross. :)
PS - Alot of 'locks at your level of raiding swear by 0/21/40. Check it out on the PTR -- it's fun too. :)
Actually, Jago, what she said is that the 0/21/40 build was too mage-like. Reading comprehension FTW. She's right though. You basically pick a school based on whether you sack your imp or succi and go off that, and if for some reason you're forced to not sac your pet, you gimp the build's main bonus (the 15% damage buff). Aside from that, you're generally not taking a lot of physical damage in raids, so Backlash becomes next to useless. It owns in PvP though, if you don't care to be an SL/SL lock.
0/40/21 on the other hand is a *very* versatile PvE build. 20% threat reduction if you need it, 70 more resist if you need it, 10% more damage if you need it, etc.
When I was plowing over the talent calculators in the months preceeding TBC that was the build I decided on. As soon as the new talent trees were introduced, I spec'd to 0/40/11 to get used to the basis of it and prepare myself for the lvl grind. That's how I hit lvl 70 so fast. I kept my bitch by my side and nuked the living shit out of everything in sight while questing. My only deviation was to take out the tankwalker when I had to kill a high lvl elite.
As Jade pointed out, it's not the most mana efficient build on the market. However, with even just 1 HoT from a resto Druid or a Holy priest you can easily life tap a few times and be no worse off than you were to begin with. I have raided with that spec exclusively in TBC and haven't had any issues with my damage output.
For PvP, meh ... it's not ideal. It has serious drawbacks in that you have only 1 insta-cast, but if you can keep range and CC on your side you absolutely roast things.
checked 0/21/40 on the ptr... too many wasted points.
gnome has far more shadow dmg in gear currently... so specing heavy destro is a waste currently... because you almost have to take up fire talents - and there's no point for me. I'll never use Conflag... =p
Lovin' my current spec. Miss dark pact... but it held it's own on boss fights in TK and Hyjal.. so rock on.
Ah yes. But in all reality, both are pretty mage-like. Nuke nuke nuke.
I can't see myself rolling through any high level instances (SSC and beyond) anytime soon, so Affliction will probably remain my school of choice for quite some time.
Post a Comment