(2) Set Bonus: When Agony grants you a Soul Shard, you have a chance to gain Cruel Inspiration, increasing your haste by 12% for 6 seconds.
(4) Set Bonus: Cruel Inspiration also grants 2 charges of Cruel Epiphany, up to 5 charges. Each charge of Cruel Epiphany increases the damage of your next Malefic Rapture or Seed of Corruption by 40%.
Boring 2 set for sure -with RNG Chance on top of RNG chance -where others just got flat buffs to specific spells - at least we need the Haste.
But aligns with what they stated in the blue post so fine
4 set = Just when I thought they were not gonna buff MR damage this go around after removing the previous 9.2 tier set 2 piece with the flat 25% rapture buff and making a mild attempt at making dots be more important damage wise.
and then… this…
At least this go around they included seed of corruption to the set (something they 1000% left out of the 9.2 set.
but why rapture/seed damage -when so many have been asking for dot buffs.
Also the 4 set accumulating charges up to 5 depending on how long the damage buff lasts could result in a even more forced burst window playstyle with rapture spam.
Something there has been allot of feedback on and at this point the tree seemed to try and step away from and now could be forced back into it heavily.
the post says specifically that they don’t want the tier sets to alter playstyle this round but looks like the aff designer didn’t get the memo or snuck it past.
maybe I’m just reading this all wrong but knowing the warlock community if I did i’m sure the comments will be fun.
More than anything it just reminds me how much I dislike our random shard generation mechanic in general. If all 3 specs have to share soul shards as a resource(because…it looks better? Even though they work completely differently anyway?), why does affliction have to be based on random procs rather than having control like demo/destro?
The set is a dumb design. Shard generation by agony has a wide gap between multi target and single target. So they will either have to make the proc chance low when milti targeting so that you dont just have massive rapture spams which results in bonus that is terrible in single target. Or they make the proc rate high enough so single target actually gets use out of it and it becomes crazy OP in M+. The only way it works is if they have a backend design where in single targets the proc rate is significantly higher and goes down as you apply more agonys to other targets.
Yeah I’m with you, they are boring, and really badly designed imo.
If they did something like:
2 set: Starting at 100% enemy hp, your DoTs increase by 1% damage per missing 2% enemy hp.
4 set: Corruption damage has a chance to proc X, allowing you to cast Drain Soul/Shadow Bolt while moving for 10 seconds.
Alternative set bonuses:
Seed of Corruption cast time reduced by 50%. Dread Touch now lasts an additional 6 seconds.
When Cresendo procs, your next MR increases the duration of all your Affliction Damage over Time spells out currently by 2 seconds.
Nightfall procs 50% more often. When Nightfall procs, you may cast while moving for 8 seconds.
Unstable Affliction can now be thrown on 2 additional targets (in concerns to PvP, this means you can give up the 3 target UA PvP talent and would be able to pick a different talent, then.)
Drain Soul ticks / Shadow Bolts make your Affliction Damage over Time effects 50% more frequently for 4 seconds.
Your Affliction Damage over Time effects tick 25% more frequently at all times.
Your Affliction Damage over Time effects gain double the effect of your Haste (or Mastery).
Drain Soul/ Shadow Bolt increase the duration of all your Affliction Damage over Time effects by 2 seconds.
If you haven’t learned it, you now learn Demonic Gateway. Your Demonic Gateway is now instant cast, can be thrown an additional 20 yards, and all party/raid members may now use it twice before incurring a CD. In addition, the debuff to use it for your entire party/raid is reduced by 50%. (as in it goes to a 1 minute thing from 2 minute)
Corruption damage now applies X, increasing the damage of all of your Affliction Damage over Time abilities by 5%, stacking 4 times.
Your Summon Darkglare summons an additional 3 more Darkglares. Summon Darkglare also lasts an additional 5 seconds.
Soul Swap no longer costs a Soul Shard, has its cooldown reduced by 15 seconds, and now copies over all Affliction Damage over Time effects, including all stacks of Agony.
These are just what I thought of off the top of my head, but I think any of these are better tier set bonuses than our current Affliction bonuses.
I don’t think you’ve actually thought it through.
The issue with MR is that you end up casting MR 5x+ times in a row as a burst mechanic.
Casting a one-off empowered MR is fine. And it may actually sync up really nicely with Dread Touch.
As for the 2 piece, Haste is at least a fun stat to be surged with. If it was Mastery or Crit, yeah, then it would be super boring. But I think Haste could be enjoyable and noticeable.
This is precisely what they don’t want. They outlined this in their blog.
They don’t want the tier sets to alter your play style, being able to cast on the move tier 1 of DS and then losing it for the rest of the expansion would be terrible.
The focus is on the class trees. Tier sets are minor boosts this go around.
The cool thing they do is; usually they do not mind talent node redesigns during X.1/X.2/X.3 patches, as they’ve announced that every other expansion. Cool thing is; they could use things like that to test out how people will react to things like being able to cast while moving, and then make a talent for it or edit a talent for it when the tier set goes away in the X.1/.2/.3 patch, thus it not actually going away then and just being incorporated into the spec.