posted this on the beta forums as well. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11296505731&sid=2000

So, I've been playing with the affliction PVE spec for quite some time, and have always been an advocate of affliction raiding. (i'm quite poignant about it in the BC warlock raiding guide, heh) So, this is the feedback I'm offering.

Affliction is all about having what I call a heartbeat and a rhythm. In BC, you had the following to cast:

-UA and corruption. You were always able to cast corruption immediately following UA, due to the fact both had 18 second timers and with UA cast time matching the GCD, it worked out. This formed the "heartbeat" of the rotation.

-Immolate. This was what I call the "rhythm". You casted immolate before ua/corruption, but due to the 15 second duration it would work it's way through the rotations, eventually, ending up immolate following your UA/Corr combo. Thus, on the next refresh, you cast immolate first, then UA/corruption, resetting the "rhythm" rotation.

-Siphon life. This spell's DPCT was often about the same as shadowbolt, but since shadowbolt helped with improved SB uptime, you could drop this, allowing more shadowbolts overall. Plus it helped with debuff limit.

-Curse. Most afflocks were on the utility curses, but in the rare chance we got to use a DPS curse, it was CoD and was essentially a non-factor.

So, you end up with an 18 second heartbeat, 15 second rhythm, and possibly a curse thrown in, all while shadowbolting as filler and using life tap or dark pact for mana.

Now, in the xpac:

-Immolate and UA are the heartbeat. Notice the heartbeat is now down to 15 seconds instead of 18.

-Haunt is the rhythm. Notice the rhythm is now down to 12 seconds. (thankfully, corruption is refreshed by haunt)

-Siphon life is now better than shadowbolt due to higher DPCT, and since shadowbolt is no longer used for imp isb for the raid.

-CoA (28 seconds) is better than CoD, and since 2 other classes can provide the CoE utility buff, it makes sense to use a damage curse in many cases.

So, you end up with things being rushed, since your heartbeat and rhythm are much shorter. You also have a 30 second and 28 second dot being refreshed in and out, and since haunt is so important to keep up, it also makes everything feel very rushed. You live and die by the timers, and you want to puke after 2 hours of raiding.

My suggestions to help are these:

1. Increase UA and immolate to 18 seconds, thus allowing our heartbeat to be longer. things wont feel so rushed.
2. Increase haunt to 15 second duration, once again allowing the rhythm to be longer and not feel so rushed/hectic. You could increase the cooldown to 10 or 12 seconds. The 8 second cooldown might have actually made it a tad worse, since shorter durations/cooldowns means more rushed and hectic rotations.
3a. Add siphon life to be refreshed by haunt via everlasting affliction.
OR 3b. (and this might be a bit radical) Have haunt automatically put siphon life onto the target when haunt ends!

I love the spec, but it's too much crazy and hectic for even my taste. I think the above changes could make it more managable and a bit more fun, so we dont all respec something else because we have visions of dot timers in our sleep.

Also, I think affliction's dps is still behind other classes. While pandemic was a step in the right direction, I think dots need to crit. Shadowpriest now get to crit with their channels/dots either through baseline or by simply spec'ing 1 point in shadowform, which they got the critting abilities lumped in with. Meanwhile, warlocks spend 3 points much deeper in the tree, just to get 2 dots to crit. My suggestion would be to add immolate and CoA to pandemic. Unless you guys have something bigger planned ;) But, as it stands, we work our butts off on awful rotations just to come up 500dps behind most other classes who dont have near as much complicated rotations.

lastly, debuff limits are still a big concern. it's a huge chunk of our dps lost when dots get bumped off early. :(
Incredible post Fallenman.
making the CoD damage output = ImpCoA would help as well.

Let us keep using CoD on bosses. Leave ImpCoA for PvP and tough trash.

edit: but overall, you're the Man Fallenman. I feel like my game went from a one-key spam where i could look around and smell the rosey destruction around me to getting tunnel vision on the boss's debuffs.

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