Aff is bad in raid in single target fights.
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I’ve seen all sorts of solutions to this given. Make Malefic rapture only work on the main target. Make the dots scale with the number of mobs they are on. Buff the darkglare. Etc etc.
None of these sound impossible to implement, but maybe easier said than done, who knows.
And awful in PVP. Not even in BGs now.
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The easiest solution imo would be to revert part of the nerf to Whitering Bolt. In the 9.1 ptr affliction had good single target but then they nerfed Whitering bolt to the ground. It was too strong on the ptr but they nerfed it too much.
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I’ve been playing TBC affliction because dots actually do damage in that game.
Then I noticed, TBC dots do about the same damage as Shadowlands dots… what?? Each tick is under 1k in both expansions. Then I noticed shadowbolt does the same exact damage in both expansions!! What is this nonsense? I’m so disappointed in devs with how crappy affliction damage is and the warlock class in general is a big let down in Shadowlands.
Affliction is the mobility spec, you’re supposed to be constantly moving casting dots and only occasionally casting fear and unstable affliction. Throw out malefic rupture that spell is just draining the power from our dots.
If blizz can’t think of a better way to spend shards, buff up our shadowbolt; again, it really does the same amount of damage (about 1-2k unbuffed) as it did in TBC however in TBC health pools are 7k-20k max, while in Shadowlands health pools are 30k-100k max.
The damage is horrendous and mobility has gone down. Affliction locks suck.
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damned if you do and damned if you don’t
I agree. At the start of the expansion rapture seemed cool, but its obvious that its just taking all the power from the DoTs on the premise of spamming 5 raptures to make up for the tickle damage.
Personally, I’d like to see soul drain as the spender with it doing more damage the more shards that are spent, similar to old UA but less broken because a channeled ability has more counter-play than an uber dot that you are punished for dispelling (could work with life drain too, but then that makes balance issues around the healing). Soul drain has always been a centric part of warlocks, particularly affliction, and it seems weird its just a random talent now. The entire class functioned on a currency only soul drain provided…
Then I think it would be cool if rapture was reworked into an instant cast 3 charge ability with a 45sec-1min cooldown per charge, and give it the added effect of it extending your active DoTs on targets hit by 2-3 seconds. It would support mobility and the overall playstyle of affliction, and add a lot of quality of life for keeping DoTs rolling, and being able to spot-extend them when you need to refresh 2 dots but only have 1 GCD worth of time due to movement, los, CC, etc… It would also give affliction a fun and much-needed button of significance to press more than once every 2 minutes.
Just my thoughts anyways. Whatever the case they just need to put the power back in the actual dots. Affliction is supposed to be the DoT spec but right now its just feels like a tickle monster and 5 raptures.
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The problem with MR is this is an aoe shard spender that they tuned to make more damage on the primary target via a conduit (borrowed power that will disappear next xpac). Since the last patch our aoe shard spender is now SoC as it should be. This make both MR and SoC aoe shard spender which doesn’t make any sense design wise. IMO they should rework MR to be a single target shard spender doing more damage than it actually is in single target to help the spec in the raid. You would use SoC on 3+ targets and MR in single target. Then two targets cleave could be Destruction niche with another small buff to CB cause right now it still doesn’tt do enough damage in pve.
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I use to main Warlock for along time, for me, a lot of the changes in BFA were a huge turnoff and I left the class.
I thought it would be interesting to brush off my lock and see how it goes, but honestly all specs feel clunky. I was getting close to enjoying Demonology, but interactivity of certain spells drives me nuts. I also feel all the effort to try to pull off bigger dps takes massively more effort than my hunter or druid or monk .
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The main problem with demonology is all the bugs and also the lack of any instant cast spells and how punishing it can be to be hit my a mechanic right before you have to cast your tyrant. It makes the spec very frustrating to play at time. Nothing like having a perfect tyrant window just to be hit by a mechanic and having to move and then see 3 imps and your dogs disappear right before you can cast your tyrant. It would have been a cool spec to play back in WOTLK where there was less movement in fights and hard enrage timer to beat.
Lot of people counter this by saying you have to learn the fights and plan your tyrant but because of the legendary planning your tyrant is not always an option (the infamous l2p BS instead of asking the dev to address the issues). If you delay it 15 seconds then you lose a big part of the advantage the legendary gives. Also i’d argue some fights involve so much movement it’s almost impossible to find a reliable windows and you have to commit and hope for the best.
Making the dogs instant cast baseline would help the spec a lot. It would give the spec one more option as a pvp talent and would help having a fluid tyrant window and would not involve some sort of proc. Making the tyrant instant cast like the infernal and DG would help tremendously the spec. It’s one of the few CD in the game you actually have to cast. They pretty much all are instant cast. PI instant. Wings instant. BW instant. CA instant. Combustion instant. etc …
Finally all the bugs kill the spec for me. Specially the one where you click your tyrant keybind and a GCD seems to proc but the cast is not made for some reason. This is so frustrating and it happens to me 2-3 times every nights of raiding. This is probably the buggiest spec in the game by a fair margin. For me that leaves Aff and Destruction as viable and fun spec to play. Both of them shine in aoe and are lackluster in single target which really ****.
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100% this. Although they did say that they wanted to try to make this raid a bit more melee friendly so maybe next raid won’t be as movement intensive.
I am still on the ‘buff aff to be our best ST’ train as I like it the best.
for some reason I thought this bug only happens to me. Do you also scream into the void when this happens during raid nights? I do.
Nope it happens to everyone as far as i know. Kala referenced it in a video lately. And yeah it’s highly frustrating when it happens specially when you timed you tyrant perfectly.
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