I was baffled to see that haste isn’t a priority stats for affliction after so many years prioritizing the gears that has haste… now on icy vein and wowhead, crits is now the way to go then mastery then haste? TF am I being trolled? O_O
Not… quite.
It’s Mastery/Haste for M+. Haste/Mastery for raiding (at a Mythic raiding gear level, otherwise it’s also Mastery/Haste).
Crit is not a priority stat for Affliction. I’m not sure where you’re getting this information.
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This is completely false.
With the way that warlock as a whole scales with crit (we get a 10% stat bonus to crit + affliction gains 30% extra crit damage on dots) crit in general is always in the top 2 stats for every spec. I could post the stat scaling chart for you from both dragonflight + TWW if you are curious (it has changed significantly since the alpha changes on stats).
EDIT: Another factor is that affliction is much less global starved than it’s ever been due to the elimination of siphon life + the increased importance of absolute corruption, so there is less reliance on haste to maintain dots in both single target and aoe.
It was specifically this expansion when they added Demonic tactics to our class tree which increased the value of crit significantly. The added bonus for aff is the critical strike scaling of wither through mark of pero’tharn + contagion which makes crit the best scaling stat for affliction, and it’s not close.
Mastery has always been the second best stat in general otoh, since vers has scaled incredibly poorly for aff.
In general, if you’re looking to play all specs you can treat gear as crit>haste=mastery>>vers
The haste breakpoint on demo is also not as relevant as the guides make it seem.
EDIT 2: The one condition where haste is more relevant is if you choose to play siphon life in keys, which makes haste have slightly more value than mastery, and higher than crit – this is also very niche as there are very very few people running siphon in m+
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Weird. That wasn’t what I’ve read but you’d definitely know more. I stand corrected.
Edit: also would love suggestions on where to look for warlock guides. I play Demo (because pets) and it seems like a LOT of guides are massively out of date/wrong. Always trying to improve becomes hitting walls due to misinformation that I clearly am subject to.
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Kalamazi’s guides are nice. He gives you the quick rundown without all the fluff
It’s not the most in depth but it’s always pretty accurate
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Thank you!
His guides are also subject to time constraints on TC work as well as sim work both of which I actively forward on to him + other warlock guide writers (although mostly him).
Some of his guides for this patch are out of date (which he knows about iirc), but if anything you could look at his website for slightly more up-to-date information.
I’m not sure what guides you’re looking at but both icyveins + wowhead (the two biggest guides) are up to date with accurate information.
I did talk to motoko pre-tier to try and fix the demo guide by having talents be separated by the amount of current or old tier you have (as the new talents are purely based on undermine 4pc). However, he ran out of time.
EDIT: The one lacking thing in the wowhead article is the summation of accurate tyrant ramps for PVE content – the underlying assumption dates back to shadowlands when I was critical of the sims at first (although it turned out to be marginal) of getting at minimum 11 imps into your tyrant. Before somebody claims “haste”, imps scale completely linearly with haste, so you cannot get more imps out regardless of your haste levels. This means that at 0% haste you should be able to get at max 11 imps into every tyrant ramp.
The haste breakpoint is entirely dependant on reaching an extra cast for your tyrant.
Edit 2:
For the affliction enjoyers, kalamazi’s guide is also slightly out of date as of when he recorded it (as well as written guides) which enforce the need for you to refresh your agonies on up to 5 targets in aoe: this information is wrong now.
In m+ it is a marginal dps increase to refresh more than 2 agonies (main target + another important enemy) outside of your vile taint cooldown. This significantly reduces the importance of spending globals on agony refreshing in m+. There are some other conditions, but that’s the gist of it.
Yeah I meant the website. That’s the most up to date of I recall
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