affliction didnt need nerfs. We lost soul swap, 30% dot damage buffed on rapture hits, haunt buffing dots, and a strong drain life proc. Thats basically everything affliction warlocks did. I dont understand the plan. It just feels so bare
edit: oh soul rot got nerfed too. they basically just stripped affliction
I was going to play Affliction now its junk, 300k behind demo and 400 destro…GG Blizzard you again found a way to F-UP Affliction
In this expansion, we will change warlocks by removing every single one of their powerful abilities!
this is a crazy take. there is so much tuning that’s going to happen. the only thing that people should be talking about right now is how a spec feels to play. saying how far it is behind other specs means absolutely nothing until mythic raid week.
That is true if you have no history to make those assumptions on… a couple expansions in a row where aff has been the red-headed step child.
Personally I don’t like the playstyle of affliction at the moment, but admittedly perhaps I just don’t understand it quite well enough yet and still need some practice wrapping my head around the combos and keybinds to implement it better. 
Ok, let’s talk about the total lack of creative or significant difference in Aff play.
It’s additions are graphically and audibly boring and childish and the core mechanics of Aff remain the same: boring, simplistic and and uninspired.
It’s not fun to play. The nerfs to drain life gut the core fantasy of the spec (that would low mobility but excellent self sustain).
Let’s not get started on Destro, I’d be here all night and it’s already well documented in their feedback thread.
At least in legion we had: good damage (if questionable spender loop), along with amazing sustain and a cool harvesting ability ( that sadly was discarded for an rng search for tasty souls in soul harvester now).
But i feel that ever since the transition to BFA affliction’s been at a loss for identity… one that is now being at a constant attempt to cram every mechanic of the spec into Malefic Rapture at an annoying rate. (It’s like the spell is someone’s golden child and they don’t want to let it go)
afflic feels great to play its just very under tuned atm
Don’t worry, it’s only alpha/beta/prepatch/11/11.1/11.2/11.3/alpha/beta/prepatch/12/12.1/12.3/12.3/ - still plenty of time for tuning!
Didn’t say it wasn’t feeling better. I call for a vote of no confidence. Blizzard- year after year after year after year ALWAYS found a way to make Affliction Dogchit in M+
Bliz can make dots work in M+ they reworked SP 29 times to make sure they are viable. HahA
it does feel weird for soul rot to encourage aoe drain life, but the spell is pretty useless to cast now. since it seems unlikely for drain life to be a worthwhile spell in TWW, maybe they could change soul rot to apply to shadowbolt/drain soul instead.
I just want drain life back.
It doesn’t break the spec for Aff to have self heal.
It takes Aff longer to kill things, because it’s a DOT class. Having a sustain makes sense, and thus we’ve always had it.
It’s iconic to the spec.
It doesn’t have to be stoopid powerful like it used to be. But to make it virtually worthless is so painful.
I mean in general, life drain isn’t even worth a spell slot in the warlock class spell list it doesn’t do anything anymore they reduced to the point its heals doest register as a save. That spell over the years has been nerfed to the point of uselessness for who knows what reason but me think is due to the pvp player base. Yet plenty of hybrids now have off heals that heal about 10 to 15% in one go.
Is it now better to just dps in hopes you kill your target before they finish you.
Oh of course, you are right.
But they could change it’s functionality in pvp settings.
That’s why it feels so lazy/bad that they are destroying the ability.
I have no doubt they won’t give us back a decent iteration of it, but I’m not gonna stop complaining about it 
And this bozo will be here 1st week of mythic plus when affy is still behind and will say, “this is pointless guys, its only been a month.”
Seems it will once again be demo destro play again.
They just can’t seem to get affliction to work to be king again or competitive.
I don’t think you ever can make a slow ramp up spec work in a fast pace style like M+ work. It’s fine for raids but even in raid demo and destro have always pulled ahead.
Idk if its a scaling issue or what. Was excited to play aff again by now it’s looking like I’ll be falling back on the other two specs if I don’t outright just main my evoker.
Honestly, i’m fine with a slowburn/DOT Affliction warlock being not very good at PVE, but at least make it decent in PVP.
The only real complain in PVE, i think, is the ramp up before doing actual damage. That doesn’t sound to hard to fix ?
I feel that we have an introvert mid-talented dev working on the warlock, while some classes such as Paladin or Mage have charismatic Devs (or loud mouth) that are able to sell their ideas to the Team Lead.
But Warriors are just as bad lol. Ofc they’re like 10x better than Aff but Blizz hates Warriors just as much as Aff. Mages are clearly their golden child, every xpac a mage spec gets another rework and gets insanely strong/fun.
Basically this resumes all. Aff was super powerful and fun in Legion (it was overtuned yes, but mechanically it was good) and then in BfA they literally died. Introduction of Rapture and Deathbolt literally broke the whole spec, it was stupidly bursty until they nerfed it and then it literally vanished from the map ever since. Why would they even make a dot class BURSTY to begin with? There are million ways of making Aff better in PvE and in M+ but some devs apparently NEED to prove that MR is a great spell for the spec, like anyone even really cares about it.
The best thing they can do is kill rapture and the Darkglare and rework Soulburn to work with majority of spells, like Aff used to in Draenor and before, or an actual dot mechanic like Wither.