Affliction has major issues in pvp

Classes Warlock
1

its constantly global starved in arena.

it falls over against melee cleaves, theres almost no variability in pvp talents: youre always taking rampant affliction, demon armor and netherward.

the only realistic choice you have for standard talants is between mortal coil and howl of terror, the rest is pretty much cookie cutter: ID, AC, DS, PS, mortal or howle, Sac, DS:M. even with the demon armor buff we are so squishy its laughable. youre never going to take siphon life with how underwhelming it is considering its heal is and that its another global you dont have to spare the ONLY class i can consitently kite is ret paladin and i dont know if thats more sad for the affloc or the ret paladins.

our pets are incredibly squishy, the cast time is huge, the cd on fel dom is huge and taking haunt is just another opportunity to get shadow locked and another wasted global when there already arent enough.

casting malefic rapture is a luxury you dont get against melee cleaves. shadow bolt is literally not worth putting on a keybind.

sure, affliction can top bg damage EASY if no one sees you and you can get free casts of for 20 seconds. but that doesn’t happen in arena, and it doesn’t happen if there is one competent rogue on the enemy team in bgs.

ive been playing affliction since tbc, skipped legion and bfa, and its never felt more fragile. what the hell happened?

I dont care if it tops pve meters, pve is lame as hell

changes that dont affect pve rankings:

make nether ward baseline
make demon armor baseline
buff pet health
increase the damage when dispelling UA( currently does not feel like enough when compared to how hard it is to get the casts off.)

5 Likes
2

Try a Shadow Priest. Locks have more flavor but seriously Blizz fixed Shadow Priest by making them better Affliction locks.

I’m not max level on mine yet but it’s amazing and sad how much more thought went into this class. Imagine having a full toolkit of spells, and talents that enhance them, instead of getting talents that just plug the holes in your spec.

Baseline Spriests get:

AoE Fear - locks have to spend a talent point.

Dispel Magic, Mass Dispel, Purify Disease, and Power Word: Shield, and a passive that gives them Insanity when they use these defensive spells.

Devouring Plague heals for 50% damage dealt baseline. Meanwhile, locks get Siphon Life which costs a Talent point.

Focused Will - passive that reduces damage taken by 15% when
melee hits you.

Power Infusion - 25% haste on a 2min cd, Which locks can spend a lvl 50 Talent point on for Dark Soul: Misery (plus 100 mana and a gcd)

Silence. They just get a silence.

Built in snare in their channeled dps spell.

I really like the Damnation talent Spriests have which put all their dots on a target with a 45sec cd. I would love that on my lock.

The talent options to get a ranged stun or give Dispersion a heal are also cool.

Their pet gives them resources when it does damage and the Pvp Talent Psyfiend gives their pet a ranged attack that snares and mortal strikes your target.

Don’t forget Power Word: Death, instant cast execute

Again I’m not max level yet but the class feels so much more fleshed out than Affliction Lock.

10 Likes
3

I think it will be like most expansion in that Haste will help disproportionately for all global starved classes.

Also their are 4 primary PvP talents: You forgot Rapid Contagion, which you would take in place of netherward against certain comps.

In 2s, I can see opting for Dark Pact rather than Demon Skin to survive initial melee burst if you aren’t running with a healer. Or if your are facing rogue/mage, rogue/MM, or MM/Mage.

With that said, I’d support your proposed changes.

1 Like
4

I loathe responses like this. Just a highlight reel.

Locks have a spammable Fear, AoE stun baseline.

Healthstone, Gateway, Curses.

If you think Devouring Plague’s passive healing is going to do ANYTHING while you’re getting trained, while dampened, you’re delusional. Siphon buffs MR damage, don’t toss it out like it provides nothing additional to bad healing.

10% more health. INSOURMOUNTABLY more mobility. Passive shielding + additional shielding (not affected by dampening), or low CD, usable while CC’d, MASSIVE shield (again, no dampening).

Apples and oranges. Access to given buffs/CD’s is not interchangeable based on class.

Part of their toolkit. Moonkins get one that lasts longer.

Far an away worse than exhaustion. (Or corruptions legendary which is bonkers). It’s a slow buckled into a channeled ability. Channeled spells get kicked more than little Timmy curling around his lunch money.

Pet can be CC’d or killed. Psyfiend dies faster than a staff wielding resto shaman during rogue mating season.

Death is insane. Counter CC tool and an execute. Part of their class, but yes it is amazing.

Locks (affliction) have something that no other class has. Not even remotely close to has. Dispel protection. Vampyric Touch’s “dispel protection” is about as threating as a Male Pandaren named Po on a RP server. Meanwhile UA silences, and does more damage than a single alcoholic father with 5 children and an eviction notice.

Affliction also has just insane AoE rot and burst. And I mean insane. We’re talking Gary Busey bobsledding down an interstate on ramp during rush hour insane here. Let me tell you about a spell. It’s a spelly spell. The type of spell that smells, spelly. It’s called Malefic Rapture. And here’s the thing. Malefic Rapture is special. Like a Christmas romance movie ending kind of special.

You see with Malefic Rapture, it ignores two things. Two things that plagues any ranged class. Range and LoS. So what do you do with all of this glorious cheating. Well, you throw out some Dots. And when you’re ready to burst, you can just pop your teleport (heh, warlocks have this too), and spam Rapture until the cows come home, become burdensome, and are eventually evicted due to a lack of respect for common living spaces.

Look, I get what you’re saying. But let’s please not compare an apple to an orange here. Priests have insane utility. Insane. Druid aside, probably the insaneist. (Insane-ist?) The most insane… But locks have things too. Things than no other things have. Just as a warrior does, or a sherman.

6 Likes
5

I dont feel like responding to your highlight reel with a highlight reel, but maurice had a lot of good points, more than your nitpicky highlight reel bad speech. i have to agree afflock is a worse version of shadowpriest in a lot of ways.

also rapture doesnt ignore los which youd know if you played a lock, which ruins your credibility to comment on this at all

6 Likes
6

It’s rapid contagion that ignores line of sight, not Maelific Grasp. It also has no range restriction.

(Jt is just a self buff)

7

You missed affliction god mode, especially in PvP.

1 Like
8

This whole post was just… A bunch of wrong info.

But this one is the one that hurts the most, probably because it’s the one I miss the most.

I was thinking to myself the other day, when was the last time I won an arena due to the other team rotting and not being able to recover.

I legit cannot remember. I think maybe mop? Might have happened once or twice in wod, even though by wod we were mostly having to focus on single target already.

It definitely hasnt happened once in the last expansion, and this is not an exaggeration either, I know it sounds hyperbolic, but it really isnt. I haven’t gotten a single rot kill in a whole expansion.

This revamp, at least in prepatch, dont really help in this regard at all. It’s all still casted and in the same school, dispelable with little punishment (better than no punishment I guess), and the damage is still grossly undertuned,

In what world is it ok for corruption to deal 1300 damage over its duration to people that have over 20k health? Like seriously.

If you wanna compare to how warlock damage once was, when it could actually rot people, just do one set of dots on a target in classic/bc/wrath and check the difference to how anemic our dots are now, even without factoring the insane self healing every class got these days.

If you’re feeling lazy I did it for ya: https://gfycat.com/yearlyacademicgangesdolphin , ps. notice this is an unenchanted warlock in half blues. Not in full end game gear.

7 Likes
9

sounds like a hardstuck sub 2k player complaining about a class that takes some skills and effort to play again

u have 3 curses with no cooldown + a legendary that gives you permanent 15% slow on every target you dot and you are complaining about kiting?

health stone, gate way, port, howl of terror/mortal coil

fear also doesn’t break on damage

covenant also gives you insane mobility if you go night fae

what are you on about lol?

only locks that struggle against melee cleaves are ones that don’t know how to play it properly and fake cast/utilize port

get better…

10

weak troll attempt zzz

1 Like
11

I like all your jokes.

12

Its 50% slow. I hope you weren’t thinking a 15% snare is godly.

13

typo but u just proved my point even further so? low iq?

14

Ya im sure you typed 15 instead of 50 on accident. Seems plausible.

15

again? u are just proving my point that ua isn’t trash? are u low iq?

16

He’s seriously not complaining about locks is he? :joy:

17

afflic needs soul swap in pvp.

18

Just wanted to bump this to say I told you so lul

19

I literally kill people from them dispelling ua

20

Is that on a different character or? You haven’t done any arena