Burning Crusade How viable is Afflie in raids?

[minisjofiskE]

Hey, I have about 1.1k shadow spell dmg and 2.7k gs on my lock and have thought about giving afflie a go after just spamming shadow bolts though t4.
How viable is afflie? Since I can nail 1k dps and 1.1ish when I get eye, spellstrike and t2 set bonus proc on the raiding dummy unbuffed it should be ok right?

Since I would get about 80-90 more spell dmg from just the spell hit gems i need for shadowbolt spec it woudl increase even more.

[poepinjehoofd]

Affliction has lower personal DPS than other Warlock specs but have very nice utility. The Malediction talent gives your CoE an additional 3% damage, this offsets a large part of the personal DPS you lose in raid DPS gained. There's also the unique debuff Shadow Embrace which reduces the physical damage by 5%, no other class can provide this and it really helps. Warlocks also have the best instant cast ranged snare in Curse of Exhaustion, which is really useful on fights like Vashj. On top of that as Affliction you will usually be running around with your Imp out and 3/3 in Improved Imp, so you will usually be placed in the tank group to provide the tank with Blood Pact.

Playing Affliction isn't about your personal DPS, if you want that you should roll Demonology (or if you can't control your dots/pet Destruction). Affliction is about:
+3% better CoE
-5% physical damage
+Blood Pact for the tanks
+Spammable instant 36 yard range snare
IMO these bonuses are definitely worth sacrificing some personal DPS. It's much more fun to have lots of DoTs to keep track of as well instead of basically just being an Immolate/Shadowbolt turret.

[Selaya]

theres two kinds of affliction, UA affliction which specs into the 41pt talent of it, and ruin affliction which only goes 38 for 3/3 maledict and then 21 into destruction for ruin, and both specs will spam shadowbolts for a fair amount, you won't get around of that im afraid

realistically maledict/ruin is the only viable affliction spec unless you're like in green questing gear (ruin is just far more value than UA, dps wise) tho

also, if you're on maledict/ruin you won't be able to spec past 2/3 impr imp; you will still get put into the tank group tho

[taralej]

DoTs can't crit on TBC. Does that answer your question on Affli's viability?

As Selaya said, even if you spec Affli, you will be almost the same as Shadowbolt but with lower DPS and picked in raids for the utility. Something like playing Retri pally on Alliance.

[poepinjehoofd]

realistically maledict/ruin is the only viable affliction spec unless you're like in green questing gear (ruin is just far more value than UA, dps wise) tho

That's actually not true. With (just an example for T4 geared locks) 21% crit, 1k shadow 900 fire damage, spell hit cap, crit meta and 0% haste (you're not getting Bloodlust in the tank group, shammy will get switched out for the casters and switched back) 41/3/17 is about 60 dps ahead of 38/2/21 (tested with Leulier spreadsheet). Ruin doesn't have that much value for Affliction because it's at most (Ruin spec) 60% of your damage dealt and at least (UA spec) 48% of your damage dealt. It gains a lot of value when you have a lot more crit but as Affliction you shouldn't be gearing for crit at all since DoTs don't crit, it's only in higher tiers of gear where there's a lot more crit that Ruin will be better than UA.

[Selaya]

hmm, interesting
all the guides i've read recommended against UA specs with any realistic sets of gears. i guess thats because you rarely got full tick UAs on retail, which doesnt happen here from what ive seen (rip debuff slots)