Obviously the only explanation for buffing the off meta talents in such a way that means you need to change the playstyle and reliability on the performing talents means who ever did these changes doesnt know the class, rotations or even the game tbh…
This and the M+ poll thats gone out… Is it bring you kids to work week at Blizzard? What the hell are they thinking with these random changes/suggestions?
Can we actually get a Blizzard Class Dev that has a discussion with the Class Discords on what works/doesnt work with our classes and takes on feedback on how to change them instead of having a 9 year old look at data and go, 1.3% of players use this talent, lets buff it and break the tree.
Darling, love the flair in your writing. And bless, you’re absolutely correct. But come now, we can get the vibe across without being disparaging.
The way I see it is the effort of balancing Affliction (or other certain less-played specialisations) is simply too demanding given the time constraints on the game. I think the making odd changes such as these gives slight progress forward, while not impacting anything within the current meta of the game which causes any disfunction with the most attended to classes.
I’ve not seen anyone in the class/spec community crying out for these changes to Perpetual Unstability, Oblivion, or otherwise. I get the appropriate reworks to the class would likely need much development time which just can’t be dedicated at the moment. I do hope Affliction’s time comes again, but unfortunately I feel the team assigns development attention to the most played classes/specs… Which ends up being a catch 22 because it just means less and less people play the ones underperforming, meaning we receive less and less attention.
In its current state I’ve had fun with Affliction’s playstyle. I’ve come to enjoy Malefic Rapture, which I’d never thought I’d say. But with almost half our talents being ‘x deals y% more damage’ or ‘cast time of X reduced by Y%’, the spec feels woefully unimaginative.
I think there’s some great potential to the imagination in some of the current talents if they were taken further. Instead of Volatile Agony, make it Volatile Afflictions - every time a new periodic effect is applied, or one is refreshed, the explosion triggers. Would add some much needed front loading into our kit, while remaining easily tuneable.
But anyways my friend, love your point on ensuring buffs don’t wildly alter play tech over halfway through the season. Especially when we don’t know what next season’s class tier is going to focus on.
Let us all continue our affliction addiction support group together <3 #AfflictionsAnonymous#AffAnon
Trust me, you dont want them to go to the discords, they are full of the 1% and will axe anything they think is “unnecessary,” for the spec from their perspective. So something might be amazing for the 99% of us but bad for the 1%, everyone on the discord will just axe it.
The same is for all the class guide writers, the community council (are they even around anymore?), and anyone who has any influence.
Sorry bud, but the game wasnt made for you and i, just for those select few.
Wrong.
I literally have first hand experience of a conversation on the discord between the 1%, class guide writers, and a normal person where they clearly stated multiple times that they would axe any changes they deemed “unnecessary,” even if the changes were positive. This was to include changes for better dot application, fewer multi-taxed spells, and better mobility. The reasoning was that “we are perfectly fine in our level of play so you have to adjust for your level of play.” This translates to ‘the class is built for us, not you, so shut up.’
So, if you think you have an ally there as a normal player, lmfaooooo, your sorely mistakened.
i scrolled the entirety of that discord for a agony aoe convo, i found said convo and i saw nothing remotely close to what your saying. theres some goobers here and there sure but i also say said goobers get memed on as well. it sounds like your either lying for clout to push a agenda, or took something the wrong way and offended for no real reason.
Wrong.
I literally have first hand experience of a conversation on the discord between the 1% class guide writers, and a normal person where they clearly stated multiple times that they would want to change the spec because affliction is so bad, even if it’s “unnecessary”, and the changes were positive.
Wrong.
Nice twist of words, but still incorrect. They do not want to change the spec, despite grumblings. Primary example is vile taint, especially used as a means of spreading agony. Countless people across multiple platforms have agreed its bad, and that they would rather see soc spread agony along with corruption. This was brought up by previously mentioned individual and even clarified that if done so vile taint could be buffed to stand alone or be baked in elsewhere. Also, having to ground target is clunky af and annoying.
This idea was meant with strict harshness by all parties bc as they put it “we dont have problems with vile taints cd at our level so its not a problem.” Also mentioned was why make dot application easier when its not a problem now? When the individual responded with “at different levels, vile taints cd is not up for every pull like it is for yours, therefore, it is a major issue.” In response, it was “well you have the agony button” “so you expect warlocks to spam agony 10 times bc vt is on cd?” “Yep, thats the definition of a dot spec, is it not?” “How is that healthy for a spec when you have aff having to spam agony ten times for shards when shamans and rets are popping cds every pull?” silence
Yea, pretty sure the conversation was not positive towards any change.
If you ask on the discord you’ll be told to maintain agony on 5 targets outside of VT, so I’m not sure where this conversation is coming from.
The issue I see here is that people both want Aff to be a dot spec, yet simultaneously expect to be able to keep up every dot at all times, on an infinite number of targets, with absolutely no effort.
I even agree that Aff could use some work in making it faster to get dots out across multiple targets, but this idea that SoC should just be able to keep dots up forever with such minimal skill expression or thought is taking away what is enjoyable about being a dot spec in the first place.
This is the same argument I’ve seen time and again on the Discord. You can’t expect dots to be kept up for free, forever, yet still contribute meaningful damage on their own. Aff’s thing is that it has to invest some time and thought into dot upkeep. Everyone on the Discord will definitely agree that Aff’s current output is not high enough for the trouble it goes through, but that’s just as much a tuning issue than a design one.
The idea that there’s some spooky, scary 1%er warlocks who secretly control class design is very funny, though.
i honestly dont believe you, the conversation ive read was nothing like youve described. idk what you have to gain to discredit a place where people go to get help, but its clear your just pushing some sort of misinfo campaign due to some strange personal vendetta. alot of people who dont like classcords is often because theyve been yeeted for being overly aggressive, arguementative, and/or said slurs. you clearly seem like the type of person to have been yeeted and now playing as the victim on multiple threads on multiple specs
These people are not the 1% and are dumb and bad straight up. I’ve never heard this argument in my life as somebody that is also part of the 1%, and it literally makes no sense. This either has context missing or you’re clipping out of context motoko (who runs the discord) who is also notoriously on the side of explaining things as they are instead of how he’d rather they be (he’s also not part of the 1%). If you take it as face value, then yes, they are right vile taint is not an issue for our m+ damage profile. It does, however, feel like trash to play. And before you comment about shard generation, I’ll refer you back to my previous post on how shards are generated as affliction, and that this is actually not a major issue for our damage profile or our ability to do damage.
This is just a straight fact – dot application literally has nothing mechanically wrong with it now, the issue is with the playerbase not wanting it to be the mechanic that affliction is known for. Btw the poster high-up is correct, during beta we determined that agony is only worth keeping up 5 targets outside of taint cd or else you’ll lose value on other globals, particularly because cull the weak is so monumentally strong for our kit atm. If you did talk to guide writers (I doubt that you did because I literally also help with sims/guides) only 1 of them is actually in the “1%” btw (loozy).
Tuning issues
The issue, and this is something I was EXTREMELY VOCAL ABOUT IN BETA, affliction only has one use case that makes it “feel good” to play and that is with absolute corruption and malefic rapture spread cleave. The problem is that m+ literally never has this niche, and raid maybe has 1 or 2 fights per tier with this situation, which is why affliction falls extremely flat if it isn’t tuned exceptionally high. They cannot make us good at this with slightly exponentially scaling in aoe, but then expect us to have high single target damage; the only way to make this is if they put cull the weak as a capstone talent that is weaker versus something like oblivion on the other side of the tree. They would need to take our spread cleave ability away if we want to play single target. This is something they completely flubbed this tier for sure.
There is nothing about dot maintenance that makes this situation worse or better. If you’re talking about m+, the problem is that all of our dots combined (outside of hellcaller) are equivalent to rapture. I would also argue that wither being such a large portion of our damage and having literally not interaction aside from a single application also feels bad, but that’s another long post I could make.
I can almost guaruntee you that there are people that argue for dots having friction as a part of affliction, but I can also guaruntee you that you cannot blanket statement this fact, especially when I’m also one of the biggest pushers for affliction to change and a loud voice for the 1%.
Blizzard has made it clear that their design goal is to make dots and their application the most important part of affliction. VERY OBVIOUSLY this has largely failed as an experiment since shadowlands through both theme and tuning metrics. Affliction has had exceedingly low playrates since 9.1 and is now more of a niche/situational spec than one that is more useful in all scenarios, especially as balance becomes more of a hot topic in the community.
I wish, seriously. In the past taking advice from people that live and breathe the spec has actually been largely a success in the development of the class (mists of pandaria). The problem is that the execution and the passion needs to come from a combat designer that REALLY wants to actually nail design elements of our specs which are already fantastic from a theme point of view, instead of somebody who is not part of the development team.
At minimum there should be some form of feedback thread during each major patch cycle for each class so that there can be a repository of information that people can look back and point to if something flops. I still have screenshots of my beta posts because I knew they’d be deleted, and that I knew warlock design would continue to run into in the future.
I would 100% take any chance to give direct feedback again on class design or patch changes, it was actually useful.
I never see them as “scary,” rather as arbitors who determine change. It is clear that those who get into alpha (doesnt necessarily equate to change but a higher chance to be listened to) are usually class guide writers, 1%, etc… and when they have the platform such as wowhead, icyveins etc to express views on a spec, those get read by blizz. Our stuff does not.
It is completely obvious that the design philosophy of aff is dead and garbage. Popularity has bottomed out. Dmg is scrapping the bottom. Blizz doesnt want to deal with it but just throws out 3% buffs just to keep it playable. So, really, should we at any level, be listening to those who promote it? Obviously the spec isn’t desired. No one wants to tab target when you can hop onto a ret and blow stuff up. No one wants to stack dots over multiple gcds while shamans come in and kill stuff b4 u rly get going.
There needs to be a realization that change needs to happen with aff, and modernization needs pushed. That dot application is no longer a vital part of aff identity, but rather how dots are used to dmg the target. Ramp time has been an issue for a long time. Shadow priests are already past this, crash not only applies both, but also has a choice node to use crash on a ground target or a target target. In fact, their primary dmg dealer is a dot… imagine that.
The entire point of all this is to get dots going faster so we can get dmg going faster. Soc applying agony not only helps with this but also streamlines things, removes clunky ground targeted spells, allows for vt to become a stand alone talent or w/e, and it moves aff towards a more modernized version. If one cannot see this bc “its not the problem right now” then they are the problem keeping aff from being modernized atm.
ya, no one would be willing to believe you since every post you made is just straight misinfo and you got caught in the act
multiple guide writers such as bolas, whispyr wordup and shad didnt get alpha. most of the changes made to every spec was majority from the feedback forums here. im sorry your ideas were just not up to snuff when blizzard makes changes to specs
this is subjective as stated before.
you’ll be surprised how many spec issues disappear for people when theyre giga buffed.
play ret then, idk about you but im actively trying to reintroduce a skill ceiling to the spec instead of radiant garbage rng deciding whether or not i do good damage or not.
overtuned spec doing 30% more damage than the next spec overtuned??? im shocked. you know as soon shammy is tuned like a normal spec people who praised its “consistent damage profile” will start calling it a issue.
shadow priest still has this friction and crash has its own major issues your ignoring to push a agenda
it sounds like you want every spec to be brain dead like ret for some reason.