Soul Swap Review
Last night after the raid, I logged into the Beta realm and swapped to my Affliction build. I spent some time questing in Hyjal, so I could play with Soul Swap. This tier-4 affliction talent, requires 15 points in the affliction tree and 1 point in siphon life. Leveling, you could pick this up at level 39.
Grinding through closely packed mobs, currently appears to be the ideal situation for this spell. Since it does so little (if any) damage, this spells is a great closer (aka destro's shadowburn?) for mobs. This spell in some aspects takes the place of your Drain Soul, except that it does not damage over time.
Here's how I've been using it:
Now, in actuality, timing of this spell is complicated. You need to have closely spaced mobs, that are fairly similar. If you time it wrong, you can grab a dead mob's soul and pass that along, wasting the mana. If you do it too early, you've removed a lot of potential damage from your current mob and it could take too long to die (have two angry mobs). Maybe Hellfire?
The mana cost is defintely worth the effort over simply recasting the 3 dots (corruption, bane of agony and Unstable Affliction). Assuming you can flip and not recast those dots, going to require retraining muscle memory (rotation: 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6)..
), then /cast Exhale Soul [target=focus]. If I get a macro working, I will let you know.
You instantly deal ??? damage, and removing your damage-over-time effects from the target. For 20 sec afterword, the next target you cast Soul Swap on will be afflicted by the damage-over-time effects and suffer ??? damage.
You cannot Soul Swap to the same target.
6% of base mana, 30 yd range, Instant cast
Grinding through closely packed mobs, currently appears to be the ideal situation for this spell. Since it does so little (if any) damage, this spells is a great closer (aka destro's shadowburn?) for mobs. This spell in some aspects takes the place of your Drain Soul, except that it does not damage over time.
Here's how I've been using it:
- At ~10% health of one mob, grab dots and exhale them on next target (focus? mouseover?).
- Finish off first target as second starts running toward you.
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Now, in actuality, timing of this spell is complicated. You need to have closely spaced mobs, that are fairly similar. If you time it wrong, you can grab a dead mob's soul and pass that along, wasting the mana. If you do it too early, you've removed a lot of potential damage from your current mob and it could take too long to die (have two angry mobs). Maybe Hellfire?
The mana cost is defintely worth the effort over simply recasting the 3 dots (corruption, bane of agony and Unstable Affliction). Assuming you can flip and not recast those dots, going to require retraining muscle memory (rotation: 1,
- Soul Swap (6% base mana) + Exhale Soul (6%) = 12% base mana used
- Bane of Agony (10%) + Corrption (6%) + Unstable Affliction (15%) = 31% base mana used
), then /cast Exhale Soul [target=focus]. If I get a macro working, I will let you know.
I've never done a lot with Affliction but this is definitely an interesting idea for a spell. The mouseover macro would definitely make it easier, I think.
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