Blood Pact: Questioning Drain Life's position in the affliction spec
by Tyler Caraway 
Mar 14th 2011 at 2:00PM
I know that I had originally promised to continue on with the next edition of the Art of Staying Alive this week; however, I just really couldn't put it off any longer. You see, I have a confession that I must make: I'm ... an afflock. It's true, and I'm not ashamed to say it either. Destruction and demonology are fun past times that I've "experimented" with, but I'm 100% affliction. I've tried forcing myself to change. I've told myself it's just not normal to be affliction. But I can't help it. I can't change who I am.
Really though, I do have a deep love for affliction, and the changes that have been made to it on the PTR so far are fairly interesting, and I think that they are worth talking about. For the dark types who wish they were more like mages, well, I'm sorry, this week isn't going to focus on you. Maybe another time.
PTR changes
Oddly enough, there aren't all too many changes up on this PTR yet for warlocks (or really any class), which isn't all too surprising, considering that it has been said by Blizzard has said that this patch won't hold as many class rebalancing tweaks as the last one did. So far, the major aspects of this patch have been a focus to reduce burst from various specs and to equalize AoE DPS a little bit more. Here's everything for warlocks so far:
- Rain of Fire damage has been increased by 25%.
- Seed of Corruption damage has been increased by 20%.
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Talent Specializations
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Affliction
- Haunt damage has been increased by 30%.
- Shadow Mastery (passive) has been increased to 30%, up from 25%.
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Demonology
- Mana Feed now restores more mana (four times as much) when the warlock is using a Felguard or Felhunter.
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Affliction
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Pets
- Doomguard's damage has been increased by 50%. The Doomguard is intended to be the best guardian for single-target damage, and the Infernal the best when there are multiple targets.
- Lash of Pain (Succubus) damage now scales with level, reducing the damage done at lower levels such that it will deal 50% damage at level 20, and 100% damage at level 80 and above.
- Shadow Bite (Felhunter) damage and effect has doubled.
Neat stuff, right? The Rain of Fire and Seed of Corruption changes are obviously there to help out affliction and destruction's AoE, while there are a few changes to Haunt and Shadow Mastery to boost up affliction's raw DPS. The biggest change, however, is the increase to Shadow Bite, which allows for the Felhunter to deal equal to more damage than the Succubus for affliction warlocks. All in all, none of these changes are that surprising. The most interesting change, in my opinion at least, is the one to Mana Feed for the Felhunter.
The affliction spec
Why changing Mana Feed seems odd is because affliction usually doesn't have the points in order to pick that talent up. Afflocks run some form of a 31/3/6+1 spec that is forced to pick up the Shadow Bolt talents over in destruction. With that investment into destruction that we have to take, there's no way for us to pick up Mana Feed -- so then why would Blizzard buff the talent to allow for it to provide a ridiculous level of mana back when using the Felhunter?
Truth be told, there is an affliction spec that does pick up Mana Feed. The fabled affdrain spec, which uses Drain Life as a filler over Shadow Bolt, doesn't have the same point investment into destruction that the standard affliction spec does. Instead, it runs a 31/7/3 spec that focuses more on demonology. Glyph-wise, both specs actually use the same ones, which can seem a little bit odd considering that affdrain doesn't use as many Shadow Bolts as the standard affliction spec, but the mana reduction glyph is still rather noticeable even without Shadow Bolt being the filler.
The viability of affdrain
Very few affliction warlocks actually run the affdrain spec; I know that I personally don't and favor the standard affliction set up instead. For a long while in beta, affdrain was the standard spec for all affliction warlocks simply because Drain Life did so much more damage than Shadow Bolt did; however, Blizzard made it very clear over multiple posts that this was not what it intended. The designers did not intend for affliction to use Drain Life as their filler. The reasoning behind this was that it made warlocks far too similar to shadow priests -- both used multiple DoTs, both had a channeled filler spell, and both focused on shadow damage.
Blizzard has said time and time again that it does not want for affliction to be using a Drain Life-focused spec, and to a degree, players haven't been. For the longest time, affdrain has actually been higher DPS than the standard affliction spec in simulations. The issue, however, is that affdrain is excessively difficult to play.
I know what people are thinking -- WoW, difficult? It's true, though. Using Drain Life as a filler requires very precise timing in order to actually parse out as being higher DPS than using Shadow Bolt out in the real world. The simulated data may support using Drain Life, but in practice, the timing requires to prevent clipping are rather brutal, making it fairly ineffective.
Why it is interesting, then, is that Blizzard would alter a talent to support a playstyle that it had previously condemned. Again, Blizzard doesn't want for affliction to use Drain Life as their filler, so why would they adjust Mana Feed to support the Felhunter when only affdrain can get the talent?
The ramifications of Mana Feed
One theory could be that it is more geared toward a PvP change. In PvP, affliction would use Drain Life as a filler when they got the opportunity due to the health return portion of the spell. Further, picking up Mana Feed for PvP is slightly more beneficial than going full into destruction because you don't always have the option of using Life Tap for mana -- then again, how often is your Felhunter really going to be critting players in PvP either?
Changing Mana Feed for the Felguard makes more sense. Even demonology would use the Succubus for single-target DPS because the damage was on par or higher than that of the Felguard, but with Mana Feed, the Succubus just provided a far higher return than the Felguard did. With this change, that's no longer an issue, so it should make the Felguard more desirable even for single-target encounters -- slightly, though.
This same logic doesn't work for the Felhunter. When using Shadow Bolt as a filler, it's just impossible to get Mana Feed, so even if the Succubus was still better with this talent than the Felhunter, it wouldn't have any real impact on affliction -- so why make sure that it was equalized for both pets?
Drain Life returning?
Given that affdrain parses higher than standard affliction, I'm curious whether or not Drain Life will take back over as the preferred filler for affliction warlocks. At this point in time, I really don't think that this will be the case. As I had mentioned, using Drain Life over Shadow Bolt requires a lot more precise timing in your spell queuing to avoid clipping issues that can result in lower DPS than you would see merely using Shadow Bolt. With the simulated difference between the two only being 500 DPS in favor of Drain Life, it is unlikely that a majority of players would actually be able to play at the level that would support using the affdrain spec.
I know that may seem like a harsh thing to say -- that players just aren't good enough to do it -- but it's the honest truth, and I am certainly in the faction of players who can't make it work. This is not to disparage players; it's merely the truth. I know that I've repeated it a few times now, but that's only because it is very important to understand that using Drain Life is only a simulated increase in DPS and isn't always observed in game.
That being said, the Drain Life spec actually scales better than the Shadow Bolt spec. In fact, it scales better not only from mastery, which was the key factor that had made Drain Life better than Shadow Bolt previously, but the rotation also scales ever so slightly better from haste and crit as well. Given the superior scaling values of using affdrain, it is entirely possible that we'll see it completely dominate standard affliction within the next tier.
Once we reach a point where the simulated difference between the two specs is 1,000 or 2,000 DPS, it will be much harder to ignore switching over even with the timing issues. Latency factors only put so much of an artificial limitation on performance. The biggest issue is what will Blizzard do about it?
Given that Blizzard doesn't support using Drain Life as a filler for affliction, will it take measures to try and nerf this playstyle once again? Or perhaps Blizzard will finally just give in, as has happened before, and let the style live. There have been times where Blizzard will make certain balancing adjustments to break a playstyle only to fail and be left in a situation in which the only feasible way to get the results they want is to break the spec entirely.
For affdrain, I doubt that will end up being the case. If Blizzard really wants to prevent players from using Drain Life as a filler, all it has to do is attack the Soul Siphon talent -- which brings up the point, why hasn't this been done yet? Perhaps it is PvP balance; perhaps Blizzard isn't as against Drain Life as they initially seemed. No one can say for sure, but one thing is certain. For an amazing player, using Drain Life now can be a DPS increase; in the future, it will be a DPS increase for everyone. It's only a matter of time and scaling.
Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DoTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, advise you on tip-top trinkets and steer you through encounters such as Blackwing Descent and The Bastion of Twilight.Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
mazca13 Mar 14th 2011 2:10PM
I definitely agree with your comments about how difficult it is to actually extract superior DPS from using Drain Life as a filler. Hitting your Shadow Trance procs while not clipping your drain lifes, while simultaneously keeping your DoTs up and dealing with all the void zones and fight mechanics, is not easy. Once you take into account my latency and inherent incompetence, I definitely get a bit more DPS out of shadow bolt spam - "Keep your DoTs up, cast Haunt on cooldown, and otherwise spam Shadow Bolt" is quite a lot easier for my poor brain to handle in a fight that's difficult in other ways.
Tyler Caraway Mar 14th 2011 10:30PM
I am right there with you. I tried to make it work for the longest time because I can pig-headed like that, but I just couldn't perform well enough with it to see any results. :(
mark Mar 19th 2011 7:01PM
sure - cause your dps is all that matters (bloody warlocks)
how about a minor dps loss making things a hell of a lot easier for healers - does that sone good?
no? does not getting splattered cause all the healers know your a self centred idiot sound good? hmmmm?
evocation on any big hit ftw - cauterize and IB ftw - frost shields ftw
its a "group" game
mark Mar 19th 2011 7:03PM
sure - cause your dps is all that matters (bloody warlocks)
how about a minor dps loss making things a hell of a lot easier for healers - does that sone good?
no? does not getting splattered cause all the healers know your a self centred idiot sound good? hmmmm?
evocation on any big hit ftw - cauterize and IB ftw - frost shields ftw
its a "group" game
Revynn Mar 14th 2011 2:29PM
I miss Affliction, so I'll probably off-spec it once 4.1 rolls around and see how it performs. Giving up Bane of Havoc and Shadowfury will be a hard pill to swallow, but not managing ISF anymore will likely make up for it.
The biggest problem with Affliction right now is that fight mechanics just don't favor it. Too much movement, too much target-switching and Destro has the faster ramp-up time and such awesome mobility.
Affdrain is fairly interesting though.
Nikalia Mar 14th 2011 3:15PM
I am baffled that people think fight mechanics don't favor affliction. In fact, I've been under the impression that due to all the movement and so forth, fight mechanics lately are catering to affliction! Being able to run and gun so to speak--- or rather run and dot - has helped me reign superior as affliction over many other specced locks. (I'm affliction main, demo off for PVE). I understand destro has the burst to start going hard on that new target you swapped to, but that's exactly what soul swap is for! Granted trash fights typically suck as affliction due to everything dying much faster, but when it comes down to boss fights I really think you haven't fully tried affliction then if you're going to say it is unfavorable. In heroic blues plus a small quantity of epics (only about 4) my afflic (sb filler) lock pulls 16k+ on any boss in blackwing descent. I think you must be missing how to play it well.... perhaps you aren't manually replacing your corruption when you get that sexy int proc from trinkets and/or pots....and then keeping it up. Little tricks like that.
Revynn Mar 14th 2011 4:07PM
The "run and gun" ability of affliction is often overrated, IMO. Conflag is one of our biggest abilites as Destro and we can keep it on CD regardless of whether or not we're moving. Chaos Bolt, with 2PT11 and Backdraft have me down to a flat second cast time and incinerate is much easier to keep rolling by stutter-stepping than SB is, simply because of the shorter cast.
I'm not saying that Affliction is gimped or anything, it's not like Arcane or Subtlety, but logs from real raid environments, StateofDPS.com and Raidbots.com, all put it at about a 1K loss compared to Destro. Now that Destro can provide the 5% crit debuff, losing 1K DPS while giving up my AoE stun, replen and Bane of Havoc just isn't worthwhile to me. What else does Affliction privde? Jinx? I run with an Unholy DK on a regular basis, so that doesnt help me at all.
Soul Swap is nice, but even on fights like Omnotron where it should shine and Bane of Havoc is a big no-no, Destro still has the edge.
Tyler Caraway Mar 14th 2011 10:41PM
To a degree current encounter mechanics do favor affliction, but it is far more difficult to do than destruction is.
Affliction does have somewhat better dual target damage than destruction, which is highly important on a large number of encounters, however it requires juggling Haunt and Shadow's Embrace on two targets at the same time while still keeping up DoTs and Shadow Bolting whereas destruction can just BoH the off-target, Immolate them, and be done with it. (Technically, they can also Corruption and Bane of Agony them when Backdraft is down as well, but, it's not a -huge- gain.)
Affliction just has the pain of a long ramp up with Shadow's Embrace and Haunt that they just don't perform quite as well in the current raiding tier as destruction. A very well played affliction warlock will usually out DPS a destruction warlock, but the skill cap is nearly as bad as pre-nerf affliction at the start of WotLK. For the average player, and even for the good players, they just won't get as much out of aff.
On one hand, that's what I love so much about affliction. It's always had a more complex rotation than most other caster specs which has always been what's drawn me to it. I flat out refused to play my warlock in TBC because I couldn't stand the Shadow Bolt spam rotation. I would've stopped playing my balance druid at the time too since their rotation was just as simple -- roll Moonfire, spam Starfire -- it was only the fact that I was able to be "viable" as a "broken" spec that kept me going.
Darasen Mar 14th 2011 2:38PM
Does speccing into Demonic Aegis become more viable with the drain set up?
Matt Mar 14th 2011 9:51PM
No. With affdrain you can reach Mana Feed, but you will also want to drop points in Shadow and Flame anyway so that your Shadow Trance SB's are putting up that crit debuff. Especially if you are in 5man's or 10man's. But if someone else can provide that crit debuff and you are having issues with staying alive then it is plausable Demonic Aegis might help. But it's not that big a buff to your self healing. Saving a shard for Soulburn: Healthstone would be more effective.
Artificial Mar 14th 2011 2:39PM
Huh. I leveled up my warlock as affliction, doing the "drain tanking" schtick. I don't claim to be capable of getting maximal DPS out of the spec, but using Shadow Bolt as filler has always felt wrong to me; Drain Life seems more in keeping with how I perceive warlocks. I had no idea the devs felt otherwise. I really hope Blizz intends to keep it a viable spec.
ian Mar 14th 2011 2:46PM
I'm still bummed over the removal of Drain Mana. If they ended up nerfing my Drain Life I think I'll explode.
net_surfer22 Mar 18th 2011 3:05PM
Yeah without drain mana, it's is very difficult for us afflocks to kill healers :( . I especially had a hard time bringing a 3800 resilience resto druid down 40% of his life pool.
Pyrha Mar 14th 2011 3:04PM
Your concerns about channeled clipping should have been addressed when blizzard made changes to the shadow priest mind flay channel. They've been worrying about this mechanic since classic, and Cataclysm prevents you from clipping your spell for the first .5s at least, perhaps the first second full second.
I don't understand why this game play style would be all that hard to deal with, unless you're including pet management into the equation. You have 3 dots to cycle, nightfall procs for SB, and then need to apply the crit debuff every 30s. In between, you're filling with drain life.
Except for the pet, this sounds like a shadow priest... (which we have on a 4m cd).
Tyler Caraway Mar 14th 2011 11:17PM
Blizzard has made many tech upgrades to help players deal with channel clipping, but there's so much potential for it using Drain Life as a filler. It's a mixture of standard movement, chain-casting, refreshing DoTs, and Shadow Trance procs that contribute to the loss in DPS.
Overall, the rotation actually becomes slightly more chaotic and complex using Drain Life as a filler than using Shadow Bolt. With Shadow Bolt, if a DoT falls off during a cast, you just complete the cast and then reapply the DoT. Simple, clean, easy. With Drain Life, you rather need to interrupt the channel in the middle of the cast to reapply DoTs in order to gain the maximum benefit. This is what contributes to the issue. Getting the timing down to prevent clipping in all the possible situations for it is far harder than just casting Shadow Bolt is -- and Drain Life is only higher DPS if you can play it perfectly.
Ilmyrn Mar 14th 2011 3:13PM
Wait, I'm NOT supposed to be using Drain Life as my filler? Granted, I've only recently started leveling a warlock from scratch after not playing one since Vanilla (due in large part to reading Blood Pact and Arcane Brilliance; felt the need to play a dress wearing class and the guild was short on 'locks), but reading the Affliction talents, I assumed I was supposed to be using Drain Life. Either way, it still feels more warlockey, or at least Afflictioney to be using DL over shadow bolt, and since I doubt my little 'lock will ever see any serious raiding, I may just stick to draining.
Revynn Mar 14th 2011 3:33PM
Filling with SB gains a lot of validity whe you can start sub-speccing into Destro.
I wouldnt worry about it too much while leveling. DL helps your downtime, which is the most important part, IMO.
mazca13 Mar 14th 2011 4:31PM
Agreed, when levelling Drain Life is often a much better choice anyway. Reduced chance of death, and increased life available to tap into mana - in general saving you a lot more time in reduced downtime than you lose in slightly reduced DPS.
Tyler Caraway Mar 14th 2011 11:27PM
Until you can get Bane from destruction, Drain Life is actually higher DPS than Shadow Bolt. In fact, I don't think that Shadow Bolt is better than Drain Life until you get both Bane and Shadow and Flame; but that one I'm not quite as sure about.
While leveling affliction, you'll be using Drain Life as your filler for a good portion of the time. Once you get Shadow's Embrace, you'll want to use Shadow Bolt at the start of boss encounters to quickly stack it up, but then rely on Haunt to keep it stacked. Once you get Bane, then you can use Shadow Bolt as your filler on boss encounters. For most other situations, you'll still want to use Drain Life.
While soloing, you'll want to health return from Drain Life to keep you topped off at all times and avoid having any downtime at all. Against normal dungeon trash, they'll most likely die before you can get more than a single Shadow Bolt off, if even that once you're done spreading DoTs around. Using Drain Life instead will at least give you some additional damage from getting a tick or two off before the mob dies.
Honestly, I found leveling as destruction far better than leveling as affliction. Affliction's damage just isn't there until you get Shadow's Embrace and Haunt; and destruction can get Bane and Shadow and Flame very early on which is a huge DPS increase. Not to mention that low level Conflag is ridiculous. Until Outland, most mobs will die to a single Immolate/Conflag combo, and if not, a single Shadow Bolt finishes them off and the cast is stupid fast in comparison to affliction with Bane and Backdraft.
Billlop Mar 14th 2011 3:39PM
Im kinda sick of seeing every warlock post be about Affliction. The other 2 specs are equal (if not BETTER) in DPS and fun.