Instances . . .Follow

. . . I'm horrible at them.

My affliction 'lock just hit 76 the other night. I've leveled almost entirely solo. The only instances I've ever done were either a) being run through by an 80 or two so that I just had to keep up with looting and not die or b) running lowbies through stuff like WC, RFC. I did manage to solo Sunken Temple when I was in the 60's somewhere because there was a 'lock quest on my log driving me nuts.

But a regular, 5-people-at-level instance run . . . horrible.

I keep recount going for my own info and usually just solo-questing around I've been hovering right around 600-615 dps.

I got whispered the other night by a guildy wanting to know if I could dps Gundurak. Had no idea what or where that was. He said he'd summon and that he just ran it and it'd be pretty quick. I said sure, why not.

I felt like I was scrambling to keep up the entire time. Had no idea what was going on. There were just so many bodies in there between the 5 players and all the mobs. I had no idea how to target anything.

click - oh that's a player
click - no that's a pet
click - Aha! a mob
cast haunt 3 . .2 . .oh it's dead
click - mob
cast haunt 3. .2. .1 woohoo! it hit! Coa, Corruption, UA 3. .2. . .oh it's dead
and now that pack is cleared
looting . . .whoa, they have another pack!?

So yeah. Is there some sort of an instancing for dummies article around somewhere?

The thing I find, especially with my affliction 'lock, is that it does really decent damage but it takes time to set up and most of the damage is done in the latter part of the rotation after I have 4 DoTs on and the mob is low on life. A regular 74 mob with ~9000 hp will take 7-8 secs ((while I apply DoTs) to get down to 4000 but then those 4000 will tick off in about 2 secs. Questing around solo this works just fine because mobs are spread enough that I petattack one, apply DoTs, select another mob, petattck > apply DoTs, just rinse and repeat until I have 4-5 corpes to loot.

But in the instance, I can't even seem to locate a mob to start targeting. Or by the time I do it's either half-dead and gone before I get all my DoTs applied, the same mob I already managed to get DoTs on, a player, a pet, etc. There are just so many bodies, everything moves so fast, and everything is clustered together so tightly.

At theend, recount showed the 2 DKs at aorund 1000-1100 dps, warrior (guildy) at 800-something, me at 660, and the shaman at like 4 who was obviously healing/buffing.

I had some 5-6 buffs on me in addition tome regular food/armor/stone buffs and barely did more than my usual questing damage. And I really didn't feel like I was doing much or contributing a whole lot. We did clear through it fine. The warrior and I did die once when we both somehow pulled aggro but that was the only hiccup.

So what am I doing wrong? And how can I do better in these situations?

Since you mention Haunt and UA, I assume you're Affliction? Affliction rocks on boss fights, the longer the better, but trash just doesn't last long enough to let us shine.


QFT. For trash, just spam Shadowbolt and Seed of Corruption/Rain of Fire (your choice; for Aff, SoC's generally better). What I do sometimes is tab-target one, cast Corruption, tab to next & Corruption, tab to next... you get the picture. Allows lots of chances for Nightfall procs and gives you incoming health via Siphon Life to let you Life Tap whenever you feel like it.

Don't worry about your DPS on trash, just as long as they're being cleared in a reasonable time period. On boss fights, open with Shadowbolt and Haunt to put Shadow Embrace at max, cast your DoTs, then cast Shadowbolt between refreshing DoTs (with the exception of Corruption, which should be refreshed via Haunt, thanks to Everlasting Affliction). Life Tap to keep mana up, of course. When the boss gets low enough, don't forget that Drain Soul does x4 damage to victims below 25% health.

Thanks for the feedback.

It looks like I've got a lot to learn. Or re-learn rather.

@WhiskeyDuck: I don't think I've used Rain of Fire since . . .I got it? I know I tried it a few times but it seemed massively mana-intensive and there seems to be no way to stop it once it's started so it seemed a lot of wasted pew-pew after all the mobs were dead. Plus, being affliction, nothing I have specced, talented, or glyphed does anything to help it. But I'll find it and give it a shot and see what happens I guess. If AoE is what's needed though I don't see as I have much other choice.

@Rykhorne: I never really use shadowbolt either unless nightfall procs so this will be new too. It always seems to take so long to cast that by the time I *could* cast it my mob is dead. So that is generally the last thing I think of when I need damage done.

I'm not sure what Shadow embrace is (I'll look it up) but I don't think I have it/do it/use it.

I've played around with SoC a bit questing and it seemed . . .subpar to other options. I don't know how to find out exactly how much damage certain things do but it didn't seem to do a whole lot for the casting time + lack of having Corruption up. But again, this is something that I will definitely try out my next run.

By halfway through the run I had gotten the idea that I wasn't doing so well and resorted to Drain Souling whatever I could get my hands on that looked heavily damaged. It seemed to work ok I guess. But the shards! Oh my gods the shards! This is why I very rarely use it in solo play. My bags filled within about 3 packs of mobs of drainsouling. But if it's really that effective, I can get into the habit of clearing my bags after every pull or something.

@xorq:
1. I'll try the V thing and see what that does.

2. I only pulled aggro the once and the warrior did too either right before or right after me - I think the tank just completely lost aggro there for a few secs for whatever reason. But I will ask around and see what I can learn about keeping it down. One of the problems I'm having is that I seem to be about the only 'lock in the guild. Except one incomprehensibly drunk guy who insists his imp can tank (and I think recently /gquit for the 3rd time this month) and a newer guy who keeps asking *me* questions.

3.Again, don't use shadowbolt so wouldn't see this as standard. Apparently it is.

My usual rotation is Haunt, CoA, Corr, UA. I can swap the CoA & Corr if it matters though.

4. I was counting Haunt as a DoT although I suppose technically it's more of a DoT Buff than an actual DoT. Delayed burst I guess would be more accurate.

5. Pet on Passive? Really? What's the point of having it out then?

Affliction spec has almost always sucked on trash. Your playing a spec were all your powerful spells take time to do the damage. While this is good for bosses and such, trash has always been more of a burst damage type affair. For the most part, if a mob is going to die before the dot can run it's course then you don't put the dot up(for dungeons, not solo play). There are exceptions, corruption can be used for the instant shadowbolt for example, but the general rule is if the trash is going to die in 10 seconds there is no point putting up a 24 second CoA as it will only tick a few times.

This becomes hard for affliction as there really isn't any burst damage there, you have haunt and shadow-bolt, compared to destruction where you can burst the living crap out of something real quick. Once you get over the dis-oriented affect of being around so many mobs and learn what needs to die first and how long the trash stays alive with your purticular group you go from there. Sometimes you'll be in a low dps group where UA can be thrown on trash with full affect, sometimes you'll be in a group where by the time your done casting UA the mob will be close to dead. You kinda gotta follow your gut.

Of course many groups aoe trash down (not a big fan, I loved the pulls in shadow labs and shattered halls, crowd control ftw). If your group is like that the only way to stay competitive is to aoe them as well. As affliction spec your seed of corruption is buffed and should be enough to keep up with others, baring gear differences, but it can be slow, meaning by the time you cast it, it travels to the target and pops most of the mobs are close to dead so you only get 1 seed to full effect. If that's the case switch to rain of fire to get a steady stream of damage. Once again, it figuring out your group and what spell would be best for the situation, it won't always be one or the other.

On most bosses though affliction should shine and this is the dps your should be looking at anyway. People can get big numbers on aoe trash from hitting whirlwind, volley, or rain of fire, it's not that hard nor is most trash. The challenging part is the bosses. Learning and perfecting your rotation for long fights and fighting for top damage on them with-out ripping aggro or standing in fire, that's the goal.

Threat: It's not about keeping it down, it's about doing as much as you can do with the threat buffer that the tank gives you.

The rotations I mentioned are the boss opener rotations. At bosses you don't rest, you use every bit of casting time for something, when all your dots are up and haunt is on cooldown you cast sb. For trash mobs you're going to be doing:

1. AoE fest. Easy. Spread seeds, chain RoF, or both.
2. dot spreading. Not usual. Just V and DoT all the nameplates that are at like 90% hp.
3. focus fire. short duration focus fire is not easy for affliction.

I still can't really figure short duration focus fire rots. Wild guess is to start with Corr-Haunt and then push with either SB or life drain while manually commanding your succ/imp to attack.

Pet on passive. Every lock has his own style. My way:

Void: Void sac and taunting stuff off of the healer. Void sac absorbs hellfire damage.
Felhunter: Dispel, Counterspel, on ocassions I make it offtank a caster. If there's no casters I might still use it for the buff.
Imp: For added DPS where I prefer fireballs over whip. Or for the stamina buff.
Succ: For added DPS where I prefer whip over fireballs.



Edited, Jun 17th 2009 4:35pm by xorq

Ok, thanks again everybody. I really appreciate all the advice.

"V" didn't seem to do anything after several attempts with differnt mobs. "shift+V" did bring up what I assume you're referring to over my pet. I'll check again later and see if the hotkey got changed somehow or something.

I think I had Shadow Embrace at one point a lot of levels ago but since I wasn't using shadowbolt and didn't have haunt yet I specced out of it for something. Probably ought to go relook at my talents I suppose, eh?

And, let's see, what else? Looks like I'll be trying to make friends with SoC & shadowbolt.

Moving cancels channeled spells . . ./facepalm. I really should have figured that one out.

Pets on passive - had never even considered this but will do. I think I remember where it is =p

Oh, and I'll check out Necrosis. The shard thing drives me nuts really. I'd use Drain Soul all the time but I hate clearing out my bags. I looked before at curse but all the addons that handled this seemed to either have a lot of complaints about them or have 5000 other things attached to them that I didn't really feel like messing with.

Precisely for optimization reasons it is. SB is the lowest DPCT an affliction warlock has. The 5% DoT damage is equal to zero when your DoTs are not there yet, and it's less DPCT than any of your DoTs even if all DoTs are up.

So I put dot-dot-dot first and then add the 5%. Additional bonus is that you may get a Nightfall proc and add SE on instant cast.

And the reason for starting with Haunt instead of dot-dot-dot isn't the 25% dot damage (also gives less DPCT than any of your dots), it's because if I start with haunt I make more use of the haunt c/d and later in the rot cast 1 more haunt and 1 less shadowbolt.

And in encounters with effects like immunities and effects that remove debuffs every second of delay in the application of DoTs is a loss of DPCT.



Ctrl+1.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 2:08pm by xorq

One thing I find helps is to make a simple macro with the tanks name in it:

/assist tanksname

Put this on your Actionbar, or keybind it. A quick click will have you targeting the same mob your tank is targeting. No fumbling to mouse over the mob.

I edit the tank's name in the macro when I run an instance with a different tank.

If you want, you could even do

/assist tanksname
/castsequence reset=/target Spell1, Spell2, Spell3

Just be aware that a spell with a long cooldown will have to become ready again for a castsequence to use it. A castsequence will stop at any spell on cooldown. It will continue when the spell becomes ready, or a castsequence reset causes a different spell that is ready to be used.

If you want to experiment with castsequence, try it while questing by removing the assist command.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 5:59pm by dadanox

DPCT-Damage Per Cast Time ,dots and curses have this higher then cast time damage spells,less time to cast compared to damage they do.

/assist tank name ,so if you're grouping and your tank name is George,you edit your macro and put /assist George and when you press it it will target your tanks target,saves time.

Edited, Jun 19th 2009 5:41am by shoarmakip

For petattack, you can also make a macro "/petattack" and bind it to any key.

Rykhorne...

Just a note, and I am not sure for Warlock's, but in the case of a Shadow Priest, the bonus from shadow weaving only effects spells when they are cast. So, if I have a 4% increase to damage from 4 casts from SW'ing, then when I cast my dot it only obtains a 4% damage increase. To receive the 5% damage increase at a max stack, the dot has to be re-cast or reapplied.

I mention this because if it is the same, then in theory, based on speed of the kill, it is probably not worth casting on trash mobs at all. Secondly, for bosses, it would be a huge dps loss if that is the case.

So, if the class mechanics are different, then I just wasted your time, and I apologize. I am more curious for my own sake as I decided a bit ago to reroll a Warlock after being bored playing a healer or melee dps. (So, that means I cannot test this myself on my level 36 Destro lock...)

BUFFS that increase damage will only increase the damage of the spells casted while you have the buffs up. This is the case for example with the lifetap glyph and the trinkets.

Haunt and Shadow Embrace are debuffs. You can put all your dots and then put up the debuffs that boost your dots and it will work.

Drain Soul 4x when the target is at 25% is a conditional. If you start doing it at 26% and keep channeling for 15 sec it will not do 4x damage but normal damage. And for it to do proper damage you need to have all your debuffs up so you have to interrupt it to put up your debuffs when they expire.

Edited, Jun 19th 2009 8:19pm by xorq

Grow somw gonads.ace the mob, Tab, Tab.dot dot dot.....unless your crowd control, thats your game.