Affliction talent questionsFollow

Malediction, Dark Pact & Grim Reach to be specific.

I have been looking at a lot of affliction specs trying to find the one that will provide the best DPS for me. I have only recently started raiding with my Lock so I'm still a little ignorant when it comes to some of the talents.

First: Malediction.

How important is this? When used in longer fights will the debuff allow more DPS than CoA would do on its own? I see most build with at least 1 point in it. Since it helps out the raid's DPS I assume that it would out-weigh my own.


Second: Dark Pact

I see almost no Affliction build with this. It was very useful while soloing being able to steal mana from my imp (less downtime for me). Wouldn't this carry over to raiding as well? Or should I be using Life Tap more during raids?


Last: Grim Reach

Again I don't see many builds with this. Once again it was great for soloing. Why would this be looked over? Wouldn't being at further range be beneficial? I can see where it would be less useful in raid encounters since you are typically closer to the bosses, I guess I'm looking for reasoning to drop it. Obviously dropping this would free up 2 points to put on Malediction.


My current tree. I know a few pieces of gear are in desperate need up updates, not too worried about that just yet. I've been progressing pretty steadily over the last few weeks.

Thanks for any input.

malediction is a 3% damage increase to yourself. and IF you don't have an unholy DK or moonkin in your group, you can then provide improved CoE for the 13% bonus to raid damage. so malediction is pretty much a requirement for afliction dps

darkpact. nice idea but it gives less mana than lifetap and the dps pet for afliction is your imp (not the felhound like most locks presume) in which case the imp uses more mana and so needs that mana for itself

grim reach. pvp talent. not needed.


check my signature, click taoquitok and look at my armory. you'll want a spec along the lines of what i have (mine is designed so i can solo onyxia, so it's not the 'optimum afliction dps spec' in the optimum one, remove the 3/3 fel concentration and darkpact for 2/2 imp.lifetap and 2/2 demonic power for the best afliction dps spec. for this spec you want 289 hit rating presuming you have either a Spriest or moonkin in your raid to provide the 3% hit debuff.

IF you have the 14% hit cap (368 hit), and presuming you have the 3% hit debuff on the target, then the 'optimum dps spec' is this variation

Not sure why, but for some reason this thread made me decide to give Affliction another shot. We'll see how it goes tonight.

Yeah, I was thinking of switching anyway, just for a change, and didn't want to go Destro until the patch. So I'll give this a go for a while, then try that. The patch after that I beleive they are planning on buffing Demo some more, so I'll probably go back to that. I like to mix things up and be a different spec every couple of weeks. I haven't been lately, but it keeps the game more interesting IMO.

chaosbolt base damage getting roughly a 20% increase
backdraft affecting global CD too
glyph of conflagorate changed so that conflag will NOT consume your immolate or shadowflame effect.

yep, means you're conflaging every 10 seconds, doing chaosbolt whenever up and renewing your dots whenever needed too. i done a bit of mental maths for it and it looks like roughly 50% of your destruction spells cast will have a 30% haste bonus and in theory, they should all be incinerate or chaosbolt, so you can pretty much count that as a passive 15% haste (or 15% increase in damage) without ever loosing any immolate damage. also every other conflagorate will benefit from the 25% bonus to crit, so you can count that as a 12.5% bonus to conflag crit (or 12.5% bonus to its damage)

it all adds up and hopefully will make full destro competitive again :)