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Can't decide: Aff or Demo

Post by Shadowbites

Play which ever spec you personally enjoy. Quite frankly, on light movement fights affliction and demo are just about neck in neck with demo edging out just ahead by just a bit.

I myself have been playing demo since Fireland's release. I love the play-style and aside from the rotation that I find rather enjoyable, I love the pet dancing we get to do.

Affliction, I still love as well. I rolled a warlock to play a DoT class, and that right there is my all-about-DoTs talent tree. Do what you want to do, not what others ask you to do.

But, you'll have to reforge/re-enchant to switch specs off. Each have a pretty big difference in stat priority and if you want to play both to full potential on any fight you play it as you will have to make the changes to make it work.

Post by AWildmann

I managed to get top dps on normal Shannox both on Affliction and Demo.

Its really what you like the most. I usually swap talents between same fights sometimes to test what the result would be like, I managed to be third on Rhyolith once, but as demo you are more helpful and end up at 2nd or maybe even on 1st.

Post by 493736

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Post by penguinman

Personally I've been having a lot of luck with Demo. As I am one of 2 locks in our group that regularly raid anything, I am kind of stuck for the demonic pact buff. From my perspective Demo is a bit more versatile with the insane amount of cooldowns available. Aff might pull slightly ahead on patchwerk fights, but how may raid bosses do you know of that are like that? Plus pulling 70k on aoe packs in 5 mans is massive amounts of fun. It makes our mages cry a little inside :P

Post by asakawa

Actually it's not patchwerk fights that favour Aff, it's fights with a few high health targets.

Post by lock13

Asa is correct. In my Demo spec for a patchwerk fight I cannot be touched. But if I have to move.........!@#$%

Post by asakawa

Indeed. A patchwerk fight where I can stand in melee range throughout (Baleroc) has me doing better DPS as Demo even with full Haste stacking for Affliction main spec (read: zero Mastery >.<). That said, I usually go with Aff for that fight anyway because it requires less of my attention and I'm the one calling the fight.

Post by lock13

Post by 585478

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Post by asakawa

I used to really enjoy Destro but now the very idea of it makes my heart sink. It's not that far behind on damage but the thought of hard-casting those Soul Fires just makes me sad.

Besides which, I'm only consistently using demo on Ragnaros right now and while Destro would be better than Aff for that, it's still going to be noticeably weaker than Demo. (I just want my globals back that I waste teleporting!)

Post by lock13

The way content is right now I will not go destro. I won't even think about it. The only fight it bests the others is H-Beth. On H-modes we need particular class's and specs and destro just don't cut it.

^^^What I wrote there was my thinking before yesterday. After the nerfs, these fights are absolute jokes. I mean total jokes. The nerf was way to much. We ripped through H-Shannox, Rhyo, Beth like nothing. In our first attempt ever on H-alysrazor we got her to 5%. I could honesty put on my T11 359's and still breeze through these. I've been QQ-ing since they said they were gonna nerf stuff, now I'm just livid. Nerdrage inc.

Post by ganimede

Idk if anyone has done alot of Demo testing, but currently my mastery is at 2209, haste 1461. When I sim patchwerk style my haste and mastery are even for my stat weights, but for helter skelter haste is WAY higher in priority. So I'm stuck reforging daily depending on what fight. So I either excel or fail on different fights. I wish there was a "magic number" for mastery, or for a low in haste.
I've come across some new gear like Robes of Smoldering Devastation and Sho'ravon, Greatstaff of Annihilation which could really pump up my mastery, but my haste will be nonexistent.
Btw, this is just me QQ-ing cuz I'm kinda stuck and have this stuff rotting in my bank.
Simcraft and reforging
The way I use simcraft to reforge is to use Chardev to make a non-reforged version of the gearset I want to use. (taking the piece with highest Int per slot usually, if its a crit/mastery vs hit/mastery and a tie for Int, I'll take the hit/mastery) Then I sim it with no reforges, generating stat weights from that 'blank' gear. Import those stat weights into wowreforge or Ask Mr. Robot (by hand), whichever you prefer, and then create a chardev profile with those reforges and then sim that to see what kind of gains I'll get. I normally see about 500 dps increase (from simcraft) between the two profies: no reforges -> full reforges. Significant but not deal breaking dps gains.

helter skelter sims
I think (read: I have no data to back this up, just my understanding of simcraft) But I think, with the way helter skelter fights are implemented, that simcraft will always tell you that haste is better than other stats for movement heavy fights. My point of view being that more haste means more nukes cast (as per usual) but given the 'you have X amount of time to stand still' situation, getting one more cast in is far more important dps wise than anything else, and simcraft knows this because it ran one iteration where you had Y more haste and you did a ton more dmg because you got another cast it before it had you move again.

Also, theres alot higher risk of dots not getting refreshed in time in those helter skelter fights, and when that happens the haste breakpoints will lead to dps increases. I think this is the major contributor to the variances you're seeing in the stat weights.

Here's my practical advice: If you are finding (in actual fights) that you are moving so much that immolate can't be refreshed reliably and you have to re-cast immolate it all the time, then haste really may be what you should focus on to get that extra tick, and increase the chance you'll get that HoG in before it falls off. But if you arn't moving enough to have immolate fall off frequently then I'd say stick with the patchwerk stat weights.

TL:DR I guess what I'm trying to say is you should ignore the helter skelter stat weights with respect to reforging. And this is why: moving is just interruptions in the patchwerk style fight, so by default you should be doing patchwerk style operations and reforging. Sorry for the wall-o-text but by now you all should know, thats how I roll. If anyone else has an opinion on the matter I'd be interested in hearing it.

Post by lock13

Quite the brain on you :P

Basically what I'm doing is adjusting my gear for each fight were progressing on. The $ is not an issue, so I just reforge accordingly. Example, last night for H-Baleroc I was all out mastery. Did fantastic. Maxed out at 33k. When we got to H-Domo, lol, was pulling 20k maybe? So tonight for him I will be going more haste and see how that works for me.

Post by 304001

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Post by lock13

Making demon soul spec specific instead of pet specific would help alot.

Post by asakawa

It would solve the pet-swapping issue but I agree with Zeronthe that the Felguard is iconic of Demo and it should be the strongest for Demo. They made a mistake when they buffed the Felhunter.

Post by faia

-not patch notes, just ideas to change of fel guard become demo spec demon-
"Shadow damage plus an additional 10/20% damage for each of your damage over time effects on the target. If the target is under the "Haunt" spell it is increased by 20% /10%"

buff Legion strike a little maybe to not make demo fall to far behind because they lost the pup

It's not that big job to change it but I think blizzard is very well aware of it

Blizzard will fixed it if they wanted to make felguard demo only use pet if they wanted it but I feel they wanted a singel target and a aoe target demon as part of the demo spec to use diffrent demons for different situation

either they will change it in 4.3 or we must just wait for the next expansion

Can't decide: Aff or Demo

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