I play as affliction and I want to stick with it. I am having a lot of trouble with aoe/cleave situations. I am following Kalamazi and BamesJond rotations and builds. I am only simming at 3500 dps (raidbots light movement) and I am at 207 ilvl. What am I doing wrong here?
Probably not enough haste
Simming isn’t to find out the exact dps you should be doing on a certain boss, it’s to find the difference between gear/talent/etc setups.
FWIW, I just simmed you (only changed AC to SL) and you’re at 4.9k: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/6PaQuTiYzoKZb5rNzYkKbd
Same options and I’m at 5300: https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/5wHvfRLB1zY8smxzTLTDBx
So you’re not simming unreasonably low on normal settings. I don’t know much about the light movement setting, but unless someone has given a really compelling reason to use it over patchwerk I’d be wary of it.
Stat priority is really, really overblown. Unless it’s a ring or neck piece, it’s really not an issue.
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Good summary. I’ll chime in about the Light Movement over Patchwerk for sims simply because pure Patchwerk sims are great in a nutshell but those environments basically don’t exist in the game. If people want an idea of how much damage they can reasonably do, I’d tell them to use LM over Patchwerk. Each scenario has its own place though, for sure.
I agree that secondary stats aren’t as important as your primary stat and taking a higher ilvl gear piece that isn’t a ring or necklace will win out just because of the higher Int on it. I think there is a point where Haste helps a lot though, I know at around 18% it makes gcd seem much smoother.
I agree with stat priority not being THAT important (and for me / most, most stats are within 15% of each other compared to more than 100% away from int).
But I think in M+ scenarios haste is overlooked when it should be much more highly coveted. Despite what my sim says (haste is worse than mastery) I push for as much haste as I can muster on higher keys - the biggest reason being more agony ticks = more shards, and our limiting factor on AoE is shard starvation. And haste reduces GCD I believe so it lets you get your DoTs up faster, and also lets you cast your first SoC faster to really get pumping on MR.
Mastery way better for ST in most cases (noting all stats scale based on how much you stack of one) but I think in M+ haste trumps all since it buffs our weakest area (burst aoe) and only slightly hampers our specialty (ST).
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It’s things like Shard generation that simming doesn’t account for. That’s primarily why I started trying to focus on Haste myself, especially with the Perpetual Agony of Azj’Aqir. Since MR is where most of our damage comes from, then casting more of them is good in both AoE settings as well as ST. Haste will keep those shards coming.
Sims do take this into account
They do, but I think sims are primarily useful for patchwerk-style encounters. M+ is difficult, and unless people have some reliable comparisons to say that the ‘dungeon slice’ or ‘hectic add cleave’ function are good comparisons for M+, I’d say it’s not as reliable.
I do, however, use WCL parses to help decide, and most of the warlocks who have been able to complete 15+ keys are running demonic synergy, which is what I use. Once I get enough ash to push my az’aqir to R4 i’ll recheck the WCL and see, since many may have been using Synergy as it was best for raids and they pumped it first.
I probably should have specified that I meant for Mythic keys. When you have multiple Agony’s up in a Mythic key, it’s hard to sim accurate damage because a lot of fights require you to move, especially with affixes like Quaking. It’s an accurate assumption that more Haste leads to more Shards, that’s really what I was getting at. Sims for patchwork fights are a lot more accurate despite it assuming that you stand still and don’t move at all. Demonic Synergy definitely seems like the best all around legendary, I just prefer Perpetual Agony of Azj’Aqir.
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I agree with your statement on legendaries. I think the main problem with Az’Aqir is that the 20% generation is hard to notice on an RNG mechanic so it doesn’t FEEL like you’re getting the shards, and you don’t necessarily get them when you need it (i.e. the big AoE packs), and the loss of high-uptime 10% damage hurts. I’ve been leaning into synergy more and more because I’m guessing the 10% damage of all our DoTs when it’s up + MR damage likely makes up for having 1-2 less shards for MR during the fight. And synergy has insane uptime, it procs early in almost every pull.
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Yeah, that’s why nobody liked the Hood of Eternal Disdain in Legion, at first. it caused Agony to tick 10% faster which means it was basically 10% more shards. Didn’t sound too exciting but it scaled really well with Haste and turned out to be one of our best legendaries. Az’Aqir doesn’t make Agony tick faster but it’s still basically 20% more shards. I’m just anticipating that as we get higher ilvl gear and higher secondary stats, that it’ll scale better. Speaking of Legion, I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point we start wearing more than one legendary. lol