Hop on over to the Undermine(d) PTR channel and look for the 11.1 Affliction Warlock feedback post I wrote up. You can also click my profile and find it via my posts. Went into detail about Affliction in it and copy/pasting would be trolling this thread because it was so long
I donāt really think thatās the case.
Affliction is uniquely propped up by a hero talent that works exceptionally well for them.
This is not a bad thing obviously, soul harvester is very fun and thatās a good thing.
But the spec tree is not good.
You can count on your fingers the amount of cool abilities and passives that affliction actually has, the rest is clutter.
Have not tested lock on PTR yet but I have grouped with several. Observationally, Destruction looks very solid in dungeons. Affliction is lacking in both damage and survivability (the amount of mobility required next season is nuts and will hopefully get tuned down). At this stage, unless Aff gets a bunch of instant casts, itās going to struggle to get the rotation off.
If mobility is a hurdle in 11.1, I would think affliction might be a desirable choice. It handles movement the best of the 3.
Hopefully with tuning and some small changes aff can have itās place.
Edit Iāve been educated on the mobility. I was mistaken about affliction I suppose.
I find it funny at the start aff was looking so promising. Then takes a nose dive with rockets off a cliff. Dropped lock. Sad times.
LOL.
Nice one.
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destruction>demo>affliction for movement in raids atm (mostly mythic)
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The very worst part of this fact, is that even if you are a master of your spec and know the ins and outs of pvp/M+/raids, you will always be overlooked in most activities that require groups for progression. Blizzard literally makes us so undesirable that most groups wont take us for ANYTHING as most melee are a better option.
PvP M+ raids etcā¦
It sucks being so behind simply because i sit in LFG for hours and eventually have to log off without accomplishing anything.
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Ah. I suppose Iām mistaken then.
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What is it about warlock that groups find so undesirable in your mind?
Affliction used to be the most mobile spec, but Blizzard pretty systematically ruined that. Itās been relegated now to the most undesirable warlock spec, performing the worst with no real strengths.
Thereās potential, but they refuse to do anything about it.
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Itās funny because in PvP thatās reversed.
destro<demo<affli
It has a single strength: multi-target split cleave where the targets live long and cannot be stacked. The issue is that this nearly never happens, and with destruction having a stronger dps profile with hellcaller than affliction (sad), as well as the 11.1 buffs to 2-target cleave, it leaves affliction in an even more niche spot.
Iām not saying affliction needs to have burst cleave damage, but I think it should be tuned so that if you are able to have dots on multiple targets for their full duration (before pandemic refresh) it should be the best spec in the game. Right now, the way itās designed this isnāt possible since rapture is used within specific ādumpā patterns every minute and outside of that minute youāre completely worthless.
Right now, I think affliction is hamstrung by three main issues:
- Dark harvest and cull the weak being some of the highest-value talents in the entire game if you can abuse them properly (which is extremely rare), which makes tuning harder.
- Soul rot being a permanent pick talent and forcing us into a 1m rotation with rapture
- There are no talent selections that allow us to move away from 1m burst and spec into consistent damage, or high consistent spread cleave with bigger burst every 2 minutes.
In the past affliction had a super high consistent damage profile that both increased during execute and during high-value cooldowns like dark soul or soul harvest. The swap to a dot-based spec having low consistent damage and high burst damage is not only counter to the theme of the spec but also puts it in direct competition with the other two specs. I think if affliction had a higher cadence of soul shards that allowed us to use raptures once we had dots up consistently, it would feel better than having to hold on to the raptures for our burst cycles, and being tuned around that soul rot window.
Iām not a rapture hater, Iām just not a fan of affliction moving away from high consistent damage to become burst oriented. Itās double taxed in a sense since you have to add dots to then start your burst, which is backwards from most other specs in the game that do their burst and end up putting dots afterwards. IMO, if I succeed as an affliction player in putting up all my dots properly and then hitting rapture, I should be doing more damage than somebody that hit their burst sooner but tapered off later ā this isnāt the case now.
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This is an interesting take that I also agree with, particularly everyone clamoring for āreworksā. However, I think āreworkā has also been used to just mean āwe suck, buff usā, or even more recently, āour talents suck, change themā.
Obviously I think it would be better if people just outright said these things instead of blanket using the word rework which should mean fundementally changing how a spec functions at its base level.
On the other hand, I disagree about affliction not requiring a rework; Usually, there are two metrics, at least in my opinion, that are telling when it comes to if a spec should be reworked:
- Play rate for a spec (to a much much lesser degree, tuning as well)
- Whether a spec is correctly hitting itās thematic target
In my opinion, affliction is failing on both fronts
The play rate for affliction has been on the extreme low-end in pve for a little over 4 years now in both m+ and raid where it was the least played spec for 3/4 years in both benchmarks. This has a lot of nuance to it, but in general it comes down to the spec competing with two other specs that had extremely high peaks, but also because affliction has a significantly higher skill ceiling. Similarly, the rise of m+ has caused burst damage to be over-represented in the vast majority of key levels causing perception issues around specs that have weak fast burst potential such as affliction. On the higher end of keys, the problem is actually the opposite in which sustained aoe is the ideal, but also having equally as high sustained single target ā something which very few specs are able to spec into simultaneously.
Second, afflictionās theme is centered around ādrains and damage over time effectsā which has been flipped since the 9.0 rework to focus more on ādamage over time effects and burst damageā. Iām indifferent whether rapture remains or stays, but I would prefer having a holistic view to our theme rather than tacking on spells or talents that shove us toward the average baseline of where damage should happen (burst being important in general now), than trying to find an iterative solution on our original theme of damage over time and drains (āchipā damage).
My personal preference would be that rapture would affect our dots rather than our dots affect rapture which would line-up with our theme of our dots being the star of the show rather than facilitators. For example, hitting rapture should enhance our dots in some respect instead of doing upfront damage (whether it be dot tick rate or dot damage). This coming patch (11.1) is a good example of this failure, in which even with our tier affecting unstable affliction damage, it is still a worse performing dot than agony if you play hellcaller, which is a joke.
An even more unique way to think about this would be to have rapture be a single cast that used all of our shards to then multiply its output instead of having to sit there and cast multiple spenders at once, reducing the burden of movement. Iām curious whether hitting a single rapture that consumed 5 shards but then increased dot tick rate by something like 40% per shard would feel incredible.
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I would like to see a shadow priest style of applying corruption applied agony. Or, having a penance style hitting another spell spreads dots. (But as much as i love aff lock) its not one of my top played classes. But do want it to get some love
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I think Affliction is very close to being a good spec. The problem is reapplication of Agony in aoe situations, it is something I loathe. So if I were king for a day hereās what Iād do:
- Vile Taint no longer has a cooldown.
- Vile Taint renamed to Vile Agony
- It functions similarly to seed but for the Agony application to aoe groups.
- Both Seed & VT are instant cast with global cooldown.
This would make things so much better on mythic plus pulls. Damage might need to be raised a tick or so but I donāt mind giving up burst for an ability that means I donāt have to fish through enemy plates to refresh Agony.