If you want aoe dmg as warlock simply do not play affliction until about like +12 or so in M+ or maybe +10 fortified. Good traits like sudden onset will help but destro/demo will simply have you doing more aoe dps on mobs until way high keys. Unstable Affliction to dump Soul Shards. Shadow Bolt or Drain Soul to consume Nightfall procs (if selected). Haunt on cooldown (if selected). Deathbolt on cooldown (if selected). Try to use right after refreshing your DoTs. Shadow Bolt or Drain Soul as a filler spell. Your default demon choice for Affliction DPS is Summon Felhunter.
Unstable Affliction until you have reached five or run out of Soul Shards
Mastery and int on-use trinkets
Normal Priority
Multi Target Priority:
Maintain Agony on up to 8 targets
Maintain Corruption on all targets. Use Seed of Corruption if there is more than 3 stacked targets.
Maintain Siphon Life on up to 4 targets. You should probably be playing Absolute Corruption or Writhe in Agony in most cases if there are so many targets to dot up.
Cooldown Management:
Cooldown Management is heavily dependent on the fight length. For optimal DPS it is recommend having a Weak Aura telling you how long the fight approximately is going to last. You want to use Summon Darkglare as often as possible with Dark Soul: Misery without losing an use. Here are two examples:
Scenario A - 5 minute fight:
Pull:Dark Soul: Misery, Berserking and Summon Darkglare
2 minutes:Dark Soul: Misery
4 minutes:Dark Soul: Misery, Berserking and Summon Darkglare
Here you see that I waited with the second Summon Darkglare for an entire minute to line it up with Dark Soul: Misery. It doesn’t matter waiting because I don’t lose any uses.
Scenario B - 7 minute fight:
Pull: Dark Soul: Misery, Berserking and Summon Darkglare
2 minutes:Dark Soul: Misery
3 minutes:Berserking and Summon Darkglare
4 minutes:Dark Soul: Misery
6 minutes:Dark Soul: Misery, Berserking and Summon Darkglare
In this fight I had to use my second Berserking and Summon Darkglare by itself but it will line up perfectly at 6 minutes with my Dark Soul: Misery.
Unstable Affliction Usage:
You should aim for a 100% uptime on Unstable Affliction throughout the entire fight. However before Summon Darkglare you want to start saving your Soul Shards that you have five of them ready for it. Make sure to dump all of your Unstable Afflictions before the fight ends.
You should always dot up targets that are about to die with Unstable Affliction. You get your Soul Shard refunded if a target dies that is affected by Unstable Affliction.
Seed of Corruption vs. Unstable Affliction:
Usually it’s worth to dot all targets instead of spamming Seed of Corruption. You only use it to apply Corruption on every target. You need around 7-8 targets that Seed of Corruption becomes better. However if the targets don’t live long enough for your dots, it is worth to use Seed of Corruption. If you play Sow the Seeds you can already use Seed of Corruption on 3-4 targets.
Pandemic:
How Does Affliction Does Aoe Dmg Take
Pandemic is a mechanic that allows you to refresh your dots when they have less than 30% of their duration remaining and adds the new dots duration onto the old one.
Agony: 18 seconds base, <5.4 seconds Pandemic, 23 seconds max
Corruption: 14 seconds base, <4.2 seconds Pandemic, 18 seconds max
Felhunter: Perfect choice for Mythic+ for the interrupt and offensive dispel
Voidwalker: Does AoE damage which makes it really strong in dungeons if there is no interrupt required
Succubus: Basically pointless in PvE
Movement:
Affliction has really good movement. If you are required to move you can always re-apply Agony, Corruption or Siphon Life. Deathbolt is also an instant cast.
A lot of movement can also be already planned ahead with a clever use of your Demonic Circle or Demonic Gateway.
Survivability:
For big hits you should always activate Unending Resolve or Dark Pact (if talented). Healthstones and Coastal Healing Potions are really useful as well. If you see you have neither of these tools ready it is worth asking a healer for an external. A great way to see which externals are ready is the Add-On “Exorsus Raid Tools”.
Please review and [https://wow.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Damage_over_Time&action=edit update] as needed.'>
'Dot' redirects here. For minimap tracking dots, see blip. For the alpaca, see Dot (alpaca).
Damage over Time, generally abbreviated as DoT or simply dot, refers to inflicting some damage on one's foe which will be applied at a regular interval for a limited duration. Abilities and debuffs that inflict damage over time are referred to as DoTs. Some AoE effects also deal damage over time.
Typically in World of Warcraft, the damage from DoTs is applied every X seconds, in ticks. Every X seconds the DoT will 'tick', dealing damage. Ticks usually deal a regular amount of damage, but in some cases (such as [Agony]) this amount increases, with later ticks dealing more. Each DoT has a base number of ticks, and a base tick frequency (often once every 3 seconds), which multiply to equal the total duration of the effect. Haste can increase the speed of ticks, causing damage to be dealt more quickly, and if sufficient, will result in extra ticks being added to the effect, roughly maintaining the overall duration of the DoT but greatly increasing both its total damage (and therefore cost efficiency) and the speed at which it deals damage.
DoTs may be applied using a variety of methods — from a spell, a trap, a weapon, a poison, or some other form. Most DoTs are target specific, but some are also used as Area of Effect (AoE) attacks.
While all damage dealing classes have some form of DoT, the Affliction Warlock and Shadow Priest are the most reliant on DoTs as the backbone of their DPS rotation.
See also: Direct damage, Area of Effect, Buff, Debuff, Healing, HoT, Utility.
Discussion
How Does Affliction Does Aoe Dmg Stand
Damage over Time effects are most effective when they are allowed to run their full course. Also, DPS based on multiple DoTs has a significant ramp-up time as it takes several Global Cooldowns to apply them all to a target. As such, DoTs provide sustained DPS, without the 'burst damage' of an equivalent Direct Damage attack.
DoTs in PvE are most effective in extended fights against one or more long-lived targets, and least effective in short trash pulls where the targets are downed quickly, or fights that require frequent switching to new targets. Specs relying on DoTs often lack burst capabilities, or may have to use an alternate rotation (often not involving DoTs) when burst damage is required. DoT-reliant specs must decide early on whether DoTs will be required for dealing with any given target; applying them to a target that is quickly downed is a waste of mana and potential damage output, while failing to apply them to a target that takes a more significant time to defeat will usually result in similar waste of mana and damage output, due to the substitution of less desirable damage-dealing abilities. DoT-reliant Warlocks and Priests can find it hard to maintain competitive DPS against trash without high-end gear, and will often fall back solely on Area of Effect spells in those situations.
One significant advantage of most DoTs is the ability to apply them to an unlimited number of targets. This allows these specs to deal huge amounts of damage on multiple targets, albeit relatively slowly and in a manner that is often easy for healers to respond to with multiple-target heals. In PvE, on so-called 'council fights', where two or more boss targets share a health pool, this effect can significantly amplify DoT class DPS. This technique is referred to as 'multidotting'.
In PvP, DoTs are vulnerable to being dispelled, but have the advantage of continuing to cause damage if the caster is silenced, out of range or even dead. This leads to tactics such as the warlock's infamous 'dot, dot, dot, fear'. The target has no chance to dispel the DoTs until they have broken the fear, while the caster is free to heal, run away or cast further offensive spells while their opponent takes damage from the DoTs. To compensate for their vulnerability to being removed before they have fully affected a target, some DoTs will also cause additional damage or other effects if dispelled. For example, the Affliction warlock DoT [Unstable Affliction] will damage and silence the dispeller for 4 seconds.
One limitation of DoTs is their ability to break crowd control effects, such as [Polymorph]. Some crowd control spells can be modified - such as with [Glyph of Polymorph] - to remove all DoTs from the target, preventing this conflict.
As of patch 4.0.1, all DoTs can crit, and all spell DoTs and some physical DoTs innately scale with haste. Unlike prior implementations of DoT haste scaling, DoTs do not lose duration when affected by haste. This functionality was further updated in patch 6.0.1. Between patches 4.0.1 and 6.0.1, the DoT's duration would be the sum of the number of DoT ticks that leaves the final duration closest to the original duration as possible, meaning the duration would fluctuate around the original duration by up to half the tick interval as haste values changed. In 6.0.1, all DoTs retain their normal duration regardless of haste levels. The game engine will fit in as many full ticks as possible within that duration, and then finish the dot with a partial tick representing the portion of a normal tick proportional to ratio of the remainder time to the normal tick interval. For example, a 15 second DoT that normally ticks every 3 seconds ticks 5 times. With 25% haste, it will have a tick interval of 2.4 seconds. It will thus tick 6 times during the 15 seconds, over 14.4 seconds. At the end of the 15 second duration, a 7th partial tick will occur for (0.6 / 2.4) = 25% of a normal tick, resulting in an effective damage equal to 6.25 tick (5 * 1.25), representing the 25% damage increase per time interval from haste. As a result of this change, DoTs no longer have any haste breakpoints and now have a continuous increase in both their damage per second and damage per cast.
Also as of patch 4.0.1, DoTs no longer can be 'clipped'. Previously, if a DoT was refreshed before it had expired, the tick timer was reset, causing a delay of up to double the normal time between ticks between the last tick that occurred and the first tick of the refreshed DoT. Now, the tick timer is constant. If a DoT is refreshed before it expires, the duration of the DoT will be extended by up to the full normal duration of the DoT, and ticks will continue to occur at the prior interval. Between patches 4.0.1 and 6.0.1, this functionality only allowed DoTs to be 'clipped' by a single tick before duration was wasted, requiring DoTs to be refreshed between the second-to-last and the last tick to maintain uninterrupted DoT ticks while optimizing duration gain. Patch 6.0.1 extended this period to 30% of the DoT's normal duration. For example, a 15 second DoT can be extended when it has less than 4.5 seconds remaining at no duration loss (the full normal duration is added to the remaining duration). This also applies to many short-duration buffs like [Slice and Dice].
Examples
Death Knights with [Icy Touch], [Plague Strike], and [Unholy Blight].
Druids with [Moonfire] (in generic caster or Moonkin form), [Rip], [Rake] and [Pounce] (in [Cat Form]), and [Lacerate] (in [Bear Form]).
Hunters with [Serpent Sting], [Explosive Shot], and [Explosive Trap] as Area of Effect DoT.
Mages with [Living Bomb], and [Fireball], [Frostfire Bolt], or [Pyroblast] (although these are primarily DD spells, they also add a small DoT even when offspec), If specced, fire spells criticals will put on the enemy a dot through Ignite talent which deals 8-40% of the damage done for 4 seconds.
Paladins using [Seal of Truth] and [Consecration] in a way. If specced, Divine Storm and Judgement spells criticals will put on the enemy a dot through Righteous Vengeance talent which deals 40% of the damage done for 8 seconds.
Priests with [Shadow Word: Pain], [Vampiric Touch], and [Devouring Plague].
Rogues with [Deadly Poison], [Garrote], or [Rupture].
Shamans with [Flame Shock] (a DD spell with DoT). Magma, and Searing Totems may also be considered DoT (or AoE).
Warlocks with [Immolate], [Corruption], [Agony], [Doom], [Seed of Corruption], or [Unstable Affliction].
Warriors with [Rend], also if specced, their melee criticals will apply a Deep Wound that deals 60% of weapon damage.
Limitations
Most spell-based or poison-based DoTs can be cured by potions or dispelled.
Most methods of Crowd Control are broken by damage dealt by DoTs.
Tips
Rogues and Cat Form Druids who stealth while a DoT is still on them will come out of stealth when the next tick of damage is inflicted. [Vanish] will briefly prevent DoTs from pulling a rogue out of stealth.
First Aid and Fishing will be interrupted by a DoT.
Notes
This term is often referred to as periodic damage by Blizzard.
Prior to patch 3.3, classes that relied heavily on Damage over Time (and Heal over Time) effects complained of scaling issues, as their effectiveness did not increase with gear upgrades at the same rate as direct damage classes. This was remedied in the 3.3.0 patch by the introduction of glyphs for Warlocks and Restoration Druids, and a change to [Shadowform] for priests, all of which allowed the caster's Haste to affect their core periodic spells. This was further remedied in patch 4.0.1 when all spell DoTs gained innate haste scaling and the ability to crit.
Retrieved from 'https://wow.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Damage_over_Time&oldid=5062597'