I want to make it clear form the beginning, I’m not a fan of abandoning Malefic Rapture. I think it was a more solid and “modern” foundation to build a dot spec around, and managed to preserve the plate spinning gameplay that multidotting commonly entails, while avoiding putting too much power directly in the dots themselves.
Though, MR is gone, the spec rotationally plays very similarly. There’s less set up, but there’s also less of a reason to actually multidot. More on that later, but it’s especially galling that multidotting with our main spender is now a straight up dps loss. I’ve been playing warlock since late Cataclysm and I don’t think that’s ever been the case.
Regardless, I’m as committed to making this version of aff work as anyone. Now, onto Midnight Affliction and whether or not the spec is meeting the design goals stated in Alpha 1’s patch notes.
Overall, we want less conditionals to affect Affliction’s throughput to reduce setup time, increase consistency, and add clarity to when a spell should be cast.
You got it on this point. Removing Shadow’s Embrace went a long way on its own, but removing Vile Taint/Phantom Singularity, making Haunt hit really hard, and removing Darkglare’s snapshot extensions have brought the set-up time down to a satisfying level.
…we (want) the answer to the question of Soul Shard spending to be “now” most of the time, outside of pooling for Darkglare.
Another W. Soul shard economy has been fairly healthy for some time now, and only improved with the introduction of Soul Harvester and talents like Tormented Crescendo (now split into Shard Instability and Nocturnal Yield). Our elevated shard economy persists into Midnight. The raw amount of shards along with the rotational incentive to use them for Dark Harvest cooldown reduction actually feels strong and fluid. I honestly believe the DH cdr feedback loop is the best designed and most inspired part of the kit right now.
On Darkglare and Pooling and Malefic Grasp
While the answer of when to spend shards is “now” and that is a goal reached, the Darkglare portion of our rotation has been hollowed out a bit with last week’s changes. I like the 20% dot amp while DGL is active, and I like that it’s a dynamic effect. However, losing extensions on both DGL and DH makes it so there’s no time to leverage our resources and cast our new big button (Malefic Grasp) and keep our dots rolling. The DGL window is way too busy now.
To zero in on MG for a moment, as many already said, the mobility tax is unworkable with MG tied to DGL. Expecting players to turret for upwards of 30s is a death sentence in virtually every facet of combat in the game. Delves, raid, plus, pvp, whatever. This is a non-starter to be honest.
Mobility aside, again, MG tied to DGL creates a frustrating window of conflicting priorities when it should be a period of peak power. I want to spend my shards and procs to keep UA rolling, but I also want to maximize MG casts to amp the damage of those UAs. At the same time, I’ve got dots to refresh and DH to cast from all the spenders I’m using. MG is the problem, and it’s generally a problem tied to our 2min cd. I’d like to see it return to a proc and/or gain it’s own button.
While many specializations have tools to solve DoT application, DoTs do not define their moment-to-moment gameplay and shouldn’t as that is the realm of Affliction.
This sounds great. Sounds like a throwback to the good-old-days when dots were our main damage. However, what’s happened on the testing realms at this point is you end up spending your moment-to-moment gameplay simply applying dots or casting filler. In the past, your moment-to-moment was defined by amplifying the dots (or in the case of MR, capitalizing off prior application).
We currently have no means of active dot amplification outside of MG which is tied to a 2 min cd. We have little in the way of passive dot amplification either, outside of DGL and its new 20% amp…on a 2min cd.
I think this contributes to a more flat, less rewarding damage profile and a more static and passive rotation. But more than that, it’s just frankly disappointing. It doesn’t make sense to me that THE dot spec has the hardest time maintaining and spreading dots (with our aoe being a nuke btw). I hope this element of the kit is addressed and iterated on further.
…we are reducing the throughput of Unstable Affliction and removing Soul Miser and Cloying Power to highlight Seed of Corruption as Affliction’s multi-target spender. (Source)
With all due respect, this is a big mistake. A potentially ruinous mistake.
This effectively deletes aff’s multidot, council cleave potential - a hallmark of the spec in much the same way that people perceive dots. The fact that this is a deliberate change…
Seed is fine for mass aoe. I’d say you could even do more with it than what we have currently, but that’s burst stacked aoe. Do you intend for us to seed on a boss like OAB or the DH fight in MFO?
I understand and appreciate that UA could become difficult to tune in multitarget scenarios, but walling off dot cleave builds to the point that UA on other mobs is a DPS loss is excruciating. It begs the question, why bother with this spender format when Rapture already solved for this quite well?
Anyway, thanks for reading. We don’t have a ton of time left before launch, so I’m not sure how realistic it is to expect changes at this point. But I’m heartened by the fact that the devs seem incredibly responsive to feedback this testing cycle, so here’s hoping.
