Nightfae and Venthyr played the same yeah, I agree, much the same with Destro big casts and then donezo.
One could argue Soul Shards are combo points, as you just build them up and spend them much the same as combo points. It just takes more spenders to fully spend Soul Shards compared to Combo Points.
Either way, I’m ready for a rework back towards Legion Affliction itself, without the UA spender we had. They can have us choose between Rapid Contagion and Malefic Rapture. If you choose MR you lose 50% or so DoT damage and just have MR similar to 9.0 with MR being a big nuke attached to DoTs. RC for the DoT lovers.
Then as another node have us choose between execute DoTs and Death Bolt or something, for those who, again, want to have DoTs do the damage or like with DB’s case you just use the DoTs themselves as a booster to do more damage.
A choice with fillers between Shadowbolt and Drain Soul. A choice between SoC and maybe Soul Swap, but SSwap reworked into: “Sacrifice 3 shards to place all DoTs on all targets within 15 yards of the target” on a CD. Something like that would be fine.
Lock got great tier sets. Not great specs. Both destruction and demonology are pretty bad and insufferable at the beginning of an expansion. Atm destruction rely on the 4 pieces tier set bonus. Without it it’s a mediocre spec doing average dps at best. While demonology does great damage without the tier set bonus it’s arguably a lot more fun to play and also easier to play with it. I personally can’t stand demo without the tier set. If blizzard doesn’t fix Affliction before next expansion then locks will be stuck playing demonology with low haste again and with a far less forgivable rotation. The problems of the class are hidden by the borrowed power. The base lock specs are pretty badly designed imho.
I’ll echo this sentiment. Affliction has oodles of great class fantasy. Gul’dan was even depicted as an affliction warlock in the movie draining souls and life and cursing the f* out of Durotan until he was nothing but a shriveled rotten shell.
Affliction is easily the most stand-out spec for warlocks as it is totally different from the other two, which rely on regular window intervals of burst damage. There is an art and a generally rewarding experience to maintaining dots on not only single target, but AOE situations.
As class fantasy goes, I don’t want to feel like a burst mage, and I don’t want to rely on demons to do damage. I want to be the one doing the inflicting and I’ve been primarily affliction since WoTLK when siphon life was a talent that caused your corruption DoT to also heal you, and increase damage by 5%.
I’ve been essentially all-in with affliction for a long time and to be literally removed from raids and mythic + before even starting SOLEY because I’m affliction not only does not feel good, but destroys the gaming experience for me. Yes, people are kicking affliction warlocks out of their groups. Yes. That’s how bad this spec has been impacted by various nerf decisions and playstyle decisions (darkglare, rapture).
Sorry to hear that, though with raid are you doing mythic? Because heroic it doesn’t even matter. For mythic I could understand even though it doesn’t matter there, at this point in time, either, with how many times the raid got nerfed.
With mythic+, I still do a decent amount of damage as Affliction, but my version isn’t the StS. I just play DoTs and around them based on whether it’s Fort or Tyr week. For Tyr, I let the others do the AoE and I become ST based, with Necrolord and I’ll still play AC, but other than that I just go full ST build plus AC. With Fort this week I was testing out Nightfae with DS/AC/VT/Haunt/Creeping. On +14-15 keys, I still average around 10-13k overall, which for pugs it isn’t bad.
When they pull big groups like 3-5 groups and I pop Darkglare and VT and can get everything up and going I will hit 28k-35k burst. Again, not so bad though still nowhere near Destro, but my only thing is I’m just there in keys to complete the key for the 1-2 weekly boxes and then I’m done.
For raids I do Heroic difficulty at most because the game just isn’t that fun. When the specs I love feel very fun to play, like in Legion with Affliction, I raid mythic and do high keys n even try harder with PvP and whatnot, but if it’s not a fun version of the spec, I just can’t be bothered to go that far. Tried to play Shadow Priest but it just isn’t my Affliction Warlock. Tried to play other classes and specs, too, and again they’re just not the Affliction Warlock so I feel ya there.
Im with you, i feel like the problem of our spec is the legendary tier set bonuses, the 4pc is shadowbolt which is a playstyle that is kinda dead on Aff-locks
Personally i think you are both right and wrong here, but where you are wrong it really isnt the players’ fault.
Blizzard enabled this specialization loyalty as far back as Cataclysm. Before that, in the Classic Trilogy days, you would play a Warlock, and your specializations were there to help accent your strengths, not completely define your character. It’s sad that the complete separation of specializations will continue with the new talent trees in Dragonflight, but here we are.
I mean, you still play a Warlock, it’s just that there’s no need to Fear mobs or anything or do general Warlock things, right? Like, Andy is probably the only fight in this expansion, where, I think you opted into casting Fear if you didn’t have a Priest for Shackle or a Hunter for the trap or anything. Fear worked just as good so you could do that, instead.
General class abilities exist for Druids, things like casting Regrowth or Roots to help the group out. Cyclone can even be used, like again on Andy, but what really all is there to general classes at this point?
I think back in the classic days, all Warlock specs had Corruption? They still do have it, it’s just something that Aff gets to be instant and the other 2 specs have a 2 second cast time. The damage of it is moot to the point you never want to waste time casting it. I don’t think there’s actually anything from the Demo or Destro spec that’s in Affliction. I do remember before being able to cast Immolate as a level I think it was 20 or so Affliction Warlock back in BC. Just running around casting Immolate due to cast time->Corruption->Agony on mobs. It was neat to have something from Destro in Aff. But yeah outside of that I don’t see how they could realistically incorporate other things from each spec into the other 2.
Affliction gave Demo and Destro Corruption. I guess Destro could go back to giving Aff and Demo Immolate, but what would Demo give the other 2?