Necro Build Feedback - Affliction

PTR Feedback
1

Affliction was a quirky little build that involved rapid-fire cursing to mow down mobs. In live, it can clear pit 80 with mythics and ideal gear, and is in the 60’s in mid-tier ancestrals. Each affliction proc would hit for 100m+ and with some attack speed, can really pour on the casts.

It has the fun capability to be able to go down 2 difficulty levels and be a 0 button build for overworld content, meaning its initial proc when used with cursed aura deals enough damage to kill most normal enemies and many elites. But that’s when you’re substantially overgeared for the content you’re playing.

It’s really been the little engine that could, an underdog build that is fun to play. It somehow is my favorite build (though Sanguivor’s soul train makes me giddy).

Well good news:

  • In Tier 2, it still can be 0 button. Mobs in T2 really don’t have much health
  • Bone Storm makes this build sooooooo tanky. It’s impossible to kill when using bone storm and bone storm’s three aspects and lidless wall for the hell of it.

On to the bad news:

  • As expected, the really bizarre decision to put a cap on the damage absolutely destroys this build’s potential. I really don’t understand the cap as, while the passive gets used fairly often, it’s only for that x15% afflicted damage bonus. Only a few of us nuts were using it for direct damage.
  • It took me 10 minutes to run a T40. I honestly didn’t want to spend the 15 minutes it would take to find out if it would run a T45.
  • Gearing for this is remarkably similar to ideal gearing for Sanguivor, so swapping over was just a matter of swapping out aspects and weapons. We could push it a bit further, as I’ve managed to get crit capped, I can move crit chance to attack speed. Can move Lucky hit to attack speed too. But we’re not making up for the fact that our main damage just isn’t scaling. 2-3 pit levels at best. Seeing if we can get enough CDR to keep bone storm up without Osseus Gale and Lidless Wall could give us another 2-3 levels? Still leaves us short of T4 content.
  • Bone Storm takes up 4 slots, 2 offensive, 1 defensive, and the shield. Giving it corrupting damage with Ultimate Shadow lets it trigger affliction procs, but that’s 4 aspects that I don’t get to boost the meager affliction damage. Ultimately, this turns the build into a weak bone storm build rather than an afflicition build.

Suggestions:

  • I’d like to see something made of Affliction, but you’ll have to remove the damage cap or at least set it to something very high like 10000%. Better would be to put it on a logarithmic curve so you get diminishing returns for investing in only one damage type.
  • If we’re reworking aspects, combine a few bone storm aspects, or give them to lidless wall. No real reason for Osseus Gale to be an offensive aspect, it could easily just be a property of bone storm or combined with Lidless Wall/Shielding Storm. Lidless wall becoming a uniquely overpowered item would influence folks to play it as right now it sits unused.
  • If you’re really against having affliction be uncapped, perhaps an aspect for it now that we’ve gotten rid of Osseus Gale? Could uncap damage or make the different damage types now stack with their own lofty max values (2k each? 1k?) and change the damage type to corrupting so it is benefitted by wither?

Wishlist:

While we’re here, this is how I would like to see affliction transformed.

  • Cursed Aura size should be affected by the curse size temper
  • Cursed Aura changes the two curses - they are no longer targetable and cause the aura to pulse, applying affliction. The curses may now be cast while moving.
  • Vampiric curse should proc affliction any time its cooldown is reset. And yes, I’d like to see a minion + sanguivor + blood moon affliction build be possible.
  • I appreciate Iron Maiden getting a lucky hit chance… Can it be ~ 20% rather than 5%? It’s low enough that I’d still favor casting decrepify for its self-proc on non-bosses.

This build is never running away with anything, it’s too niche and its single target damage is far too low. But it would be nice for it to exist.

2 Likes
2

Personally, I just think they didn’t put any thought at all into capping this skill and just set it to the same as the others even though it doesn’t function as a general multiplier (aside from the fixed 15%).

3 Likes
3

I agree with you. They saw a lot of people using it, said, “oh, this is uncapped” but didn’t really understand how it was used and that you had to build into it specifically to make it work.

For me, it should be the necro speedfarm build. Having it pulse on cursed aura while moving would let you never stop running through pits/UC/etc.

But the long and short is that it needs to be uncapped in some way, and, frankly, it needs to be buffed when you’ve built into it to match the other builds. If the devs change their mind on the cap, I might play the build in s9 (having played it in S6 & 7). If instead they throw me a bone and buff the build, I’ll definitely play it in S9 (unless they also adjust Sanguivor upwards, in which case I’ll have a hard decision to make).

Some other things that I would love to see happen:

  • I forgot to include this before: Blood Moon Breeches should switch to lucky hit to apply curse rather than a flat % chance. This is key since summons can lucky hit now, and would help the builds that use Blood Moon on the whole.
  • Boost the inherent block chance on shields. Quarterstaff on SB gets 40% block chance. Why is a shield only getting 20%? Should be 50%+ or 40% with spiked armor ranks giving 5-10% block chance per rank. It should be possible for Necros to cap at 100% block chance, and would bring shields and aspect of redirected force into the meta.
  • Find a way to juice Affliction damage vs Boss. This is an AOE build, boss battles are really, really slow. Some twist to make this build better at clearing the boss would be welcome. Say IM’s lucky hit chance is substantially higher when it only hits one target combined with curse on lucky hit from blood moon giving you a close to 2 or 3x damage boost on bosses.
4

This is definitely needed. Not sure why we are this far along and it’s still a fixed size. It needs to be able to be upgraded to be the size of Soulrift.

2 Likes
5

Man, I just saddened myself. Built a theoretical affliction necro based on a reversal of the 400% cap and a buff to block chance on shields, especially lidless wall, and man… That got me super excited to play a spec that doesn’t exist in the current game state.

6

I don’t even know why it was put into the game, frankly. Key passives should be at least somewhat general in nature and other than the speed build this thing is only taken when there is literally nothing else to take. The ability to make curses a damage ability should be a skill tree node or an aspect or something, not a key passive.

In terms of it being uncapped, it also has to be noted that since curses are not inherently damage abilities they lacked tags. Not a Basic or Core skill, not even a Macabre skill (which has seen more seasonal support recently). Not a blood, bone or summon skill. Other than that one scaling multiplier, and general multipliers that effect anything, there wasn’t much that scaled this damage.

7

Then there is room for improvement already. Aren’t they already trying to buff “basic” skills this season? Add Basic to their tag with afliction key passive.

Now, it’s unfortunately capped, but you can modify it’s damage upwards with aspects aimed for them. Or even add that basic skills can proc curses.

Now it’s a “basic” build type they want and the build has upward scalability.