Hi!
I’m known as Jro by my friends in the community, and I’m a proud Affliction player. As some background, I’ve been playing affliction as my primary specialization since Sanctum of Domination, and casually for much longer than that. In logs, I’ve been ranked near the top of Affliction Warlocks in raid for the past several seasons. I do not PvP so my feedback will be entirely PvE focused.
I also do not have Alpha access, but I have watched creators that do and have already spent many hours theorycrafting on the calculators available. I would be happy to test more thoroughly with access and revise my feedback.
The Good
Removal of Sow the Seeds & (active) Siphon Life:
Sow the Seeds has, to me, always felt like a strange inclusion in Affliction. We already have a spender that is capable of doing AoE damage, and doing it quite well. However, with Siphon Life as a spell that essentially existed only to buff Malefic Rapture damage, it made our potential Malefic Rapture AoE greatly diminished AND extremely slow, even in low target counts.
Sow the Seeds is also, in my opinion, not in line with the class fantasy. All it accomplished is doing big numbers in mass AoE. It has nothing to do with DoTs, whereas Rapture does. The fact that Seed of Corruption happens to apply Corruption is largely an afterthought in the mindless shard spam of Sow the Seeds in big AoE pulls.
By allowing Rapture to be the singular spender in both single target and AoE, the class fantasy improves, the accessibility and learning curve improves, and interesting design and tuning decisions can be implemented.
Removal of (some) maintenance buffs
While Dread Touch did provide an interesting gameplay loop, it also provided another maintenace spell in a spec that already has a lot to manage. I envision it’s also hard to balance Haunted Soul versus Dread Touch, as Haunted Soul does a similar DoT amp effect but is much easier to maintain.
Shadow Embrace is not a spell that is liked by the community, and I would agree with that. However, I understand it’s usefulness as both a tuning tool and a rotational one. In a world without Shadow Embrace, and without Siphon Life, and without Dread Touch, the spec may verge on being too simplistic and unrewarding. I can understand keeping Shadow Embrace of these three and would agree that is the best option.
Increased Shard Generation
With the removal of maintenance buffs as noted above, one way to keep the gameplay loop more interesting is increasing the rate at which shards are gained and spent. Nodes such as Relinquished and Empowered Unstable Affliction accomplish exactly that, and I believe the much more reactive gameplay will be loved by the community at large. Also, nothing is worse that going through long loops of not generating a shard on retail!
Volatile Agony
As I’m sure you know, the Affliction community has been clamoring for a way to refresh Agony without individually having to re-apply the DoT, with most people hoping for some way to extend Agony to the point where Vile Taint can catch the refresh, or reduce the cooldown of Vile Taint to accomplish this. I was questionable on either of these as options, as AoE would be extraordarily simple, and would have very little engaging gameplay decisions.
Volatile Agony is an incredible way to both differentiate Affliction from Shadow Priest, maintain complexity in AoE, but allow that complexity to be rewarding. I can’t wait to play with this talent.
What can be Improved/Concerns:
Absolute Corruption / (new) Siphon Life choice node
I fear that it will be very hard to balance a permanent DoT versus a slightly more damaging DoT with a heal effect. Corruption/Wither damage would have to be very high for this nodes 5% increased damaged to be enough to warrant the extra globals on re-casting Corruption or Wither – or the shards expended on Seed of Corruption.
I’m not sure of the interaction between Absolute Corruption and the Hatefury Rituals talent, but I imagine this isn’t in line with the intended design of Hatefury Rituals.
Possible solutions:
I would personally lean towards trying to move Writhe in Agony to the Absolute Corrption choice node, so you’re choosing between the new Siphon Life and Writhe in Agony. This tuning might be too hard with Hellcaller significantly moving lots of your damage to Wither, but the idea here would be a choice between what should be slightly more damage at max stacks in Writhe in Agony, versus the easier to maintain and always working Siphon Life. This would also open up a node early in the tree, which could perhaps be used to smooth out potential negative friction points in the tree.
Cull the Weak
This appears to be a “tuning knob” for the spec when it comes to AOE pulls. My fear with the high % increase is that too much damage will be shifted baseline away from Malefic Rapture to the point where it will be unimpactful to hit in single/low target scenarios.
Possible solutions:
I would probably prefer a baseline Malefic Rapture damage increase and a lower % on this talent, and increasing Agony damage as the AoE tuning knob instead, but Blizzard has been fantastic with tuning for a while and I trust the direction they decide. Shifting damage from Rapture to Demonic Soul in the Soul Harvester tree also does help ease my concerns with this talent. Still, this talent and it’s impact on the balance of the spec between single target and mass AoE must be watched.
Phantom Singularity / Vile Taint Choice Node
The only synergy that exists for PS over VT, from what I can tell, is the fact that Oblivion is also a 45 second cooldown – but Oblivion only being affected by maximum three dots makes this a moot point.
While Phantom Singularity doesn’t cost a shard and is a longer DoT on the target, it is hard to make up for the free Agony and ideal 30s cooldown provided from Vile Taint. With Darkglare being more accessible and likely more valuable than it has been for much of Dragonflight, combined with 1 min. Soul Rot with additional talents to buff it’s effectiveness, it will prove very hard to find scenarios in which Phantom Singularity is the right choice to be played over Vile Taint.
Possible Solutions:
I believe the simplest change would be to reduce the cooldown of Phantom Singularity to match Vile Taint. However, either ramping the power to be (on it’s own) a much more powerful cooldown than Vile Taint, or adding another interesting clause similar to when you added the application of Agony to Vile Taint could make this a more interesting choice node. One idea I had for the latter option would be to add a clause that the caster’s Agony’s are refreshed whenever Phantom Singularity ticks – which would lead to a bit more difficulty on pull, but more sustain through AOE pulls and more globals gained in Single Target. I’m sure many more interesting things could be considered, but I do believe something needs to change with PS to make it more attractive, especially in a world where Soul Shards are at less of a premium.
Oblivion
Frankly, I just don’t find Oblivion to be a compelling or interesting button. This is essentially just an empowered Drain Soul with Withering Bolt baked in and with a shard cost. Only being affected by 3 dots means this is a simple press whenever it’s up button as long as you already have your basic DoTs on the target. This node should have more gameplay implications and ideally should have something to do with the prior capstone-tier talent prerequisites, which it doesn’t.
Possible Solution:
Replace with Death’s Embrace, remove the clause in Death’s Embrace for increased healing, add a significant buff to Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul when the target is in execute range. This thematically fits the capstone row better and the lower placement of Death’s Embrace allows it to be a bit more powerful than it is on the current iteration.
Death’s Embrace, Soul Rot Row
With Soul Rot’s inclusion in the Soul Harvester hero talent tree, having this spell locked near the bottom of the tree will make the tree feel more rigid and less creative than if it was placed higher. Death’s Embrace also doesn’t really fit thematically as mentioned in the previous paragraph, beside the Drain Life healing increase.
Possible Solution:
Shift Soul Rot up one row, move Inevitable Demise down to where Soul Rot is currently (and make it one talent at the same value as 2 currently). In the current spot of Inevitable Demise, I’m sure a good solution can be found – even something as simple as moving Cunning Cruelty to this spot, making it a two point talent (and tuned to be worthy of such), and replacing Cunning Cruelty’s spot with Soul Swap could be interesting.
If you made it this far, thank you very much for considering my feedback. I very much look forward to playing Affliction in The War Within, and despite my several points of “negative” feedback above, I think these changes and the Hero Talents are an incredible step forward for the spec.