Affliction’s current issues and hopes for the future

Classes Warlock
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As a die hard affliction player I have been using affliction in both m+/raid. First off I think that the hero talents have been a big success, they both feel good and improve the gameplay in different ways. Affliction feels better to play in more content than in the past. But unfortunately right now affliction is undertuned (especially in ST) - short term I would target Unstable Affliction for a very large buff. Right now it does less than agony, and it’s supposed to be our big single target only dot - it just feels off in its power level. Long term I think affliction has challenges in several key areas that I outline here, and I provide some ideas for fixes more as a guide to directions I think would make the spec more fun and useful.

Movement

Historically affliction has been the most mobile warlock spec with its instant cast dots, that for me this is part of affliction’s identity. Now affliction is the least mobile warlock spec, with only one instant cast dot to refresh. Additionally warlocks’s fantasy has always been a more tanky but less mobile caster - which worked in the past, but with current mechanics unless you can face tank a mechanic you have to be able to move well (spoiler: you can’t) - and with many classes gaining new defensive power, warlocks is not even especially tanky. Now I’m not asking for more dots to refresh but some more movement options that are not rng would be great. Some ideas:

  • Add some kind of move while channelling to Nightfall drains or to Oblivion

  • Add an instant cast spell that can be cast while moving, but is a dps loss when you can actually cast

  • Reduce the gateway cooldown for the warlock themselves. I have been loving soul burning a gateway to move, it feels great every time, but I would love to be able to do it more often.

  • Additions/changes to the class tree to improve movement

Utility

I have seen some interviews where Blizzard has mentioned warlock’s amazing utility - and this is true, in raid only (and even then a lot of it is more nice to have rather than need to have). In M+ it’s a different story, with warlocks having significantly less useful utility than most other DPS. Would love to see some improvements to warlock’s utility toolkit. One area of utility, curses, is even worse for affliction. The other specs can curse while mobs are being rounded up, but affliction can’t, since VT overwrites curses with curse of exhaustion. This is a huge QOL improvement I notice when I switch specs. Some ideas:

  • Make the slow on VT not a curse but just a slow, so that it doesn’t overwrite other curses.

  • Instead of a slow have VT apply smart tongues/weakness (this would be awesome).

  • Add IC (venthyr warlock power) back to the class tree. This much requested addition would look so sick updated to be a giant green/purple meatball. Would really help warlocks in the utility department. Or otherwise put AOE curses into the class tree.

  • Add other creative utility to the warlock kit, like put the PVP talent that teleports mobs to your port location in the class tree.

Class Tree

Not limited to affliction necessarily, I think the changes to the class tree were a big improvement, but the current class tree is still very restrictive, so many of the talents are essentially locked in that you have no room for expression/preference. Would love to get the quick soul stone but can’t, would love amp curse but can’t, etc. My hoped for changes:

  • Reduce talent points numbers / required dps talents in the class tree, and free up pathing.

  • Put in more exciting capstones (see above) - though don’t touch my demonic hearthstone (love that addition).

Agony Refreshes

While I wouldn’t mind not having to ever refresh agony in AOE again, I admit that is likely part of the design for affliction. I think the new volatile agony spell goes a long way to making this feel better - but it does have enough effect to really make hiting an agony refresh feel great.

  • Add gameplay/talents that allows you with proper rotation to extend and be able to refresh agony with VT - possibly by reworking infirmity for VT

  • Make hitting those Agony referees feel even better. More dmg, maybe some type of cascading effect where the explosion refreshes other agonies or something?

  • Make manually refreshing easier - like what was initially in the hero talents and taken out.

Underwhelming Talents

The affliction tree, especially in the final section, has many talents that are just completely underwhelming. In many cases AOE talents that have some single target benefit outclass ST talents in ST (don’t get me wrong, this is great design and very important that AOE talents have ST power, but the other ST talents should be at least slightly better in ST!) For example, Dark Harvest’s 4% haste and crit for 8 seconds every minute in ST is better than almost all the other capstones on that row. (BTW this doesn’t mean touch this sequence, SR to Malign Omen to Dark harvest is a perfect progression).

  • Dark Virtuosity is not as good as Volatile agony in ST even for Soul Harvester - somehow??

  • Middle section of the tree is just overstuffed, improved haunt just feels bad and should be baked into haunt.

  • Phantom Singularity’s duration being reduced by haste is completely anti-synergistic with the rest of afflictions kit which wants dots to be up longer, needs to be changed to work like other dots. I could also see changing its cooldown to a minute and buffing its power, since it is always held and many other classes have had their cooldowns aligned.

  • Xavius’s Gambit is just absurdly underpowered (maybe better if a huge buff to UA comes in) but probably needs to be 30% here.

  • Oblivion is not taken (partly because gated by Xavius’) would love to see it have secondary effects that make it a more exciting spell eg. Can cast while moving, makes dots tick faster while channeling, etc.

  • Death’s embrace still very weak execute - would love to see it ramp

  • Ravenous Afflicitons is okay for SH, but still just because it’s not quite as weak as the other talents.

  • Perpetual Unstability is a PVP talent and that’s fine you can’t take everything and its good to have talents with niches.

  • Relinquished just overnerfed due to Hellcaller’s shard gen talents that got removed and now not used by hellcaller which should be the use case.

4 Likes
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Need acknowledgement we exist as a class first

4 Likes
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I would love to see our Shadowflame Blackened Soul be affected by Shadowflame crit %, its the lowest crit ability. Blackened Soul thematically is great, but feels like an invisible power with no noticeable impact when its up or not. With it having an execute mechanic based off Seeds Of Their Demise (@20%), I would like to see Death’s Embrace have an interaction with it. Or Creeping Death. Or even borrowing part of the Idol Of Nzoth mechanic and remove shards being its stacking mechanic.

My overall hope is just that affliction’s tree has more DoT centric interplay and capstones, Such as Unholy’s Dot ramping and fire mages ignite spreading. Just fun ways to interact with your DoT’s and feel less like a rapture turret in certain windows. Current state of affliction is definitely a great improvement over the last few years. Id love some creative thematic expansion both with abilities and visually on what this class specialization can be. Like haunt’s jumping target to target, harvesting souls like inverse apparitions for damage and power gains, A unique ST DoT that feels like a real power window not tied into a rapture modifier. So many fun routes to explore with warlock!

1 Like
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They did just buff warlocks a few weeks ago, and seem to have hit with demo and destro, while underbuffing aff, my hope is they recognize they undershot the mark and correct, while bigger changes come in .1

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Actually, the buffs were fleetinf at best.

  1. The buffs were only given AFTER THE FACT. Everyone else got buffs on the 20th anniversary, we did not. A week later we did after a huge lock uprising.
  2. The the buffs are already falling off. See, all 3 lock specs were garbo dumpster bottom when they gave us those buffs. Those buffs buffed destro to barely top 10, demo barely top 50%, and aff didn’t move. Since then, the buffs were unstable and recent logs show destro dropping over 6 positions and demo dropping 8, while aff… well, you rly cant drop lower.
  3. Now that another tuning pass has come and gone, locks will further drop bc there was no work to sustain their numbers. Blizz will buff the bottom hero trees like they always do to make it seem like a big buff but in reality its just a catch up buff.

Locks dont dont have a dev, blizz has a well documented bias against locks, and the last two tuning passes just support this assumption.

1 Like
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I’m having so much fun on my classic fresh lock that I think oh man I have to dust off my 70 retail lock and level it up, then I read these well-written posts and think nah, I’ll just stay on classic.

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Yea. Dont come to retail. Its a very bad situation

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I honestly think the gameplay on lock with hero talents is top tier. Aff plays the best it has in the last several expansions. I wouldn’t take tuning as a reason not to play - that is easily fixed and swings from patch to patch. This is mostly a wishlist for what I’d like see to improve the spec. Give it a try I’d recommend.

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I’d like to see an ability with a long cast time that refreshes all active agonies. Not worth it in single target, risky due to cast (5 sec?) But awesome in aoe when u cast

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Not worth it in aoe either. The problem with locks are their immobility. This would just multiple the issue. Plus this is just mercurial to everything we are trying to accomplish, which is fewer, shorter, and less taxing spells.
Having seed of corruption apply agony plus corruption in its current state is plenty. Actually, tbh, a bit overpriced since its a double taxed spell (cast time plus shard cost).

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At this point, they should make [Seed of Corruption] not costing a shard, because its a hardcast, and introduce [Soul Burn: Seed of Corruption] costing a shard and make it instant.

3 Likes
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I don’t have any of these problems with my affliction that I have made 2 of and played since xpac launch. You just need to time your casts right and watch your cds/dots