Your 100% right but it looked so cool. 
- T
This here.
And when the inevitable nerf comes to decimating bolt / drain soul combo, we wont even have that great single target.
I think that Venthyr might be a safer bet, at least you’ll have some sort of AOE for M+ that’ll hit before every other class globals the trash packs while you’re still waiting for SoC to finish casting.
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Can we start judging M+ performance on +15s and not +2s.
I would say 10s would be the right place to judge M+ performance. It is the spot between being casual and hardcore. I have only done a handful of 15+, but I have done more 10s than I can count.
At a 10, that is a challenge for a casual, easy enough to do for any heroic raider, but even for someone who does 15+ or mythic raids regularly could get killed in worst a case scenarios. Unlikely, but if all four others in the group were hard-carries it could still happen.
Also, the stats don’t lie, affliction is terrible in M+. Affliction is one of the lowest ranked specs in the game for M+. The specs below Affliction in M+ rankings aren’t just bad at M+ they are just all-around specs that are broken. That’s how bad affliction is with the current design and I presume will stay in SL, it is broken in M+.
Also, newbs got to go through 2s before they can get to 15s. Playing a broken spec and always being carried is no fun.
Yes, except that destro with grim sac seems to outrot affliction. just saying.
I picked 15 because that’s the minimum required to get the top loot. Whatever that number is, is where things should be judged.
I play Affliction in M+ and it’s nowhere near as unplayable as people make it out to be. Definitely not top tier, but it can pull its weight in the 15-20s just fine. Probably even higher than that. But community perception says otherwise and that’s always going to be enemy #1 of any spec that isn’t considered meta.
This myth that everything dies in 2 globals while warlocks pretend to help needs to die - it’s untrue in any relevant key. And in the cases where it is true, congratulations, you’re +3ing that key regardless of what you do.
That said, the changes in Shadowlands are making it look like a top tier spec for M+. Things live long enough for you to get set up once the key level gets high enough, and the mechanics of affliction are now much better suited to dungeon trash with shard sniping and malefic rapture. There’s a few changes I wouldn’t mind seeing, but right now it’s still leaps and bounds ahead of where it is in BfA.
But what about affliction with grim sac.
It probably changes at 60 and with covenants, but on PTR at level 50, destro grim sac out damages aff’s grim sac. equally geared duels my grim sac was doing about 35% more damage than aff’s.
you probably didnt play warlock before. lets discuss the viability of soulswap.
right now, people are complaining aff lock’s dots dmg being too weak. and malefic rapture is the majority of aff’s dmg overall.
to a lot of aff lock fans, this spec feels more of burst/cast range dps instead rot spec.
if you simply just buff dots dmg and nerf MR, then problem is the same. you will spend lots of GCD on doting, and everything is dead before your dots take any effect.
if you do what they are doing now, which dots are just being a “filler” dmg,then you are losing the class identity. people can just play boomkin if they prefer putting on some weak dots then spam their burst.
now. if we buff dots especially UA. then in AOE situation. you can apply agony+corruption+phantom(of course this soulswaped phantom will be a nerfed version), this can be a “burst” AOE for aff since phantom has 45 sec cooldown with good dmg.
siphon could be a viable talent too for some extra flavor.lets say in PVP . you can get extra healing back.
or when your phantom is on CD, you can just replace it with siphon and you still have that consistent spread dots dps.
lastly dont forget UA being your most powerful dot but can only apply to 1 target as well as haunt will def keep that balance between AOE/ single target. even though they buff all dots dmg and give warlock soulswap.
for sure,. feel free to go to retail or ptr and do a warlock class trial thing,. so you can read all their spells and talents,. and tell me what you think
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however, if you prefer BFA version of aff lock, then right now you are not disappointed at all .
they just replace your UA spamming into MR spamming. everything else stays the same.
well even though i dont like it. but i totally respect your personal preference
Shadow just feels like what affliction should be. Makes me not even want to play my warlock when my dots are hitting for less than an autoattack. This is not the affliction I signed up for a decade ago.
I hate MR spam, I hated UA spam, I hate so much of my damage being tied to CDs for demo/destro, I miss being an actual rot spec.
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this will not be our expansion again i guess.
Shadow’s dots don’t hit any harder outside of devouring plague. I’m not sure the resource spender doing damage over 6 seconds make them any more of a rot spec though.
Rapture makes the new apparitions look like a joke, too.
Tbh I’d still prefer having rapture be damage over just spamming UA
Can we just get soul burn/soul swap back. Please and thank you 
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not really. rapture spam has more nuance in its damage profile than UA spam, shenanigans with debolt on top of that makes aff look and feel significantly different from bfa to me and i love where its at right now
plus thank the almighty heavens above we can make darkglare line up with dark soul, god that was needed
Well it’s a good thing all aoe is being nerfed across the board. So now we can go on talking about single target damage
Except dot classes can still dot as many targets as they want in an AOE scenario (correct me if I’m wrong). The 5 target cap that most classes received the “nerf” for doesn’t apply to dot classes like lock or spriest. But again maybe they changed that recently and I didn’t see.
Unless your talking about number tuning, then maybe so I don’t know.
A problem is what you consider what is relevant. You seem to think that just because it is a lower level key than what you do it isn’t relevant. It could be entirely relevant to most of the population of gamers, but it doesn’t matter to you, because it is beneath you.
If you ask me, anything past a 10 isn’t relevant. A 10 is what you need to guarantee a character the top item level loot for the weekly chest. Honestly it is all I push for on my dps mains, then I spend the rest of the week on my tank alt helping out everybody else get in their weekly 10s. Anything more than a weekly 10 is unnecessary.
There is something to be said for challenging yourself, which is what you appear to like to do. Good for you, but don’t look down on others because they are just trying to be in a group and get their weekly done and want to feel like they are contributing meaningfully to the M+.
Anything that is relevant in my definition, things do die to quickly for Affliction to be helpful. No one likes to get carried.