Raiding as AfflictionFollow

I've been raiding and not until recently did I start to out dps the off-tank. This is obviously pretty bad so I've come here for help.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Darkspear&n=Benriksen

^^ Armory

To sum it up my spec is UA, with 2/2 imp HS and 5/5 Demonic Embrace. Then in destro I have 5/5 Imp SB, 5/5 Bane and Shadowburn.

I have about 800 +shadow spell dmg buffed 13% crit and only 61 spell hit.

For my cast order on trash I usually go Imm>UA>Cor.>Coa>Life Tap/Dark Pact>SBx3>repeat

Then on bosses its the same except I do Curse of Shadows/Elements before Immo.

Any help is much appreciated. Right now, my guild is only doing Karazhan but we also do heroics together sometimes.


Also, is soul fire ever worth casting?

IMO, your putting too may DoTs on the trash, just throw CoShadow, Corr for NF procs and maybe an Immo and a SL if they are staying alive long enough, then just SB spam. Alot of times on trash I don't even bother with refreshing the DoTs as they won't get to run all the way and just SB stuff down. Occasionally Life Tap if they are longer fights and SL is going to be up, SL and the FSW set bonus keep me topped off well enough, and of Course, Dark Pact when Imp is full mana so he's always regaining something.

Also, what consumable do you bring/use?

No, it doesn't overwrite enchants.

In Kara when you're first starting, stick with two DoT's for most trash (the giant robots and similar can be fully DoT'ed, since they generally live for about 30-40 seconds). As you gear up and get a better group, drop it down to one on normal trash. Stuff dies too fast to waste time fully DoT'ing.

Be sure you're not actually using a rotation on bosses, but a priority. Is your curse up? If yes, is UA up? If yes, is Corr up? If yes, is Immo up? If yes, is Siphon up? If all those are up, Sbolt. Try to time Pact/Tap during movement if you can so you have less wasted time, but don't wait overly long either.

I'd go ahead and get your Spellstrike pants, at least, before getting consumables, and possibly the helm. After that, however, I'd get full consumables - wizard oil, flasks, and food. I only used them Curator and beyond, since we had the first bosses on farm within a couple weeks of starting, and I didn't think it was worth blowing two flasks in one night. Farming Blackened Basilisk between arena queues I've found is the best way to use that downtime.

Soul Fire is pretty much a waste.

Be sure you're resetting the damage meter for bosses, or even better, get Recount so you can look at Overall, or any of the last five fights individually :D

It's only a waste on short-lived trash. Siphon's damage/cast time is significantly above that of shadow bolt, so use it.


Armory caught you with your fishing pole on, but it seems that your gear has no enchants on it. Get the sha'tar revered head enchant, scryer's exalted shoulder enchant, 15 damage to bracers, 15 hit to gloves, epic spellthread on those pants and +40 to weapon if you don't already have it. That and consumables will bring your mileage considerably up.

Edited, Mar 5th 2008 8:19am by Banatu

That's wrong. Siphon life is wasted dps. Maybe with his low crit/hit rating using Siphon life might be helpfull but it does low damage with the GCD of 1.5 seconds while a shadowbolt will do very close to it normally (Damage per second) plus the added bonus of crits and the imp shadowbolt buff.

Edit: Here's a little math:

With 800+ shadow, siphon life gets 100% from the spell damage doing 863 damage with as an instant cast but basically counting as 1.5 because of the GCD.

Shadowbolt with 800+ shadow gets 85.71% of the spell damage and will normally hit between 1226-1288 averaging to 1257 with a 2.5 cast (Bane of course)

Now 1.5 is .6% of 2.5 so the shadowbolt down rated to 1.5 along its damage only does 754. However, every 9-10 shots he will get a crit doing around 1885 (1131 if it were 1.5. Now 1131 is 263 damage higher but in the 10 bolts that would be counted the siphon life would have done between 981-1090, but the imp shadowbolt debuff will add in 20% which is 251 for 4 shadowbolts equaling 1005 damage. This is 1268 damage for shadowbolt and 1090 for siphon life. Even if we take into account his hit rating shadowbolt will either come out above or even with siphon life.

In the end, with his gear, shadowbolt is still better than siphon life. If he gets a little more crit and/or +hit, it will easily top siphon life.



Edited, Mar 6th 2008 12:10am by Tugnus

Forgive a warrior trolling the lock forums, but why would you want that extra healing threat on top of the damage threat? Then again, I suppose the OP is not threat-capped yet?

yeh comming 1st on damage and 5th or 6th on healing in a 25 man raid is cool.
the only other class i can think that would be able to do that would be an SP

Gems, enchants, flask, food, and oil. Everything that is not on farm should be getting a flask, food, and oil.

Even if your being tight with money to get the spellstrike hood put something in your gem slots. You can get the green gems for 1g-4g (on my server anyway). I know 8 spell damage or spell hit doesn't seem like much, but it adds up quickly.

Lvl your enchanting. Go solo some lvl 60 dungeons for stuff to DE to get you to 300 then it becomes a cake walk until 350 or so. Just use quest rewards to make random enchants. Even if it's a crappy one it's better than having none at all.

Once you get your enchanting to 325 or something you can make your own oil. If I remember correctly it's 3 arcane dust and an herb. 3 arcane is easy to come by and if you buy a stack of the herb it should last you a good month. Each time you make an oil it has 5 charges, each charge lasts 1 hour and sticks with you through death. So 1 stack of herbs will last you 100 hours of raid time.

The armory is having a problem so I don't know if you have cooking. If not I highly suggest getting it as it's quick and easy to lvl and gets you another daily quest to make the money back and then some. Plus it only takes 1 piece of meat to make most of the food you'd want. No spices or anything. Running low on food before a kara run, just stop by the dead mire in Zangermarsh and kill basillisks for 5 min, it'll get you through the entire run and then some.

Flasks are the most expensive raid buff. If you are working on new bosses or bosses you might still have problems with use a flask, as it will last through death. Pure Death is the best with supreme power not far behind it. If you are working on stuff that you have on farm use potions, or at least a battle elixir. I've always been partial to Adept's Elixir. However elixirs only last 30 min and if you die it's gone, hence the reason to use flasks when there might be problems.

Once something is on farm you can stop using potions etc, but due to your problem I would still suggest using them until you can understand and fix your dps.