Anyone else feel like Affliction is getting way overhated right now?
Since the buffs, the raw damage honestly doesn’t feel bad at all. During lust windows last night I was peaking around 280k ST and was genuinely surprised by how hard it was pumping.
Now the talent tree design? Different story entirely lol. I still think darkglare needs to be replaced with something more thematic. Malefic grasp needs to be integrated into a different way, and lastly, the whole 50/50 split on AoE and ST talents is awful
But from a pure numbers standpoint, I really don’t think the spec is as dead as people are acting like it is. Curious what other Aff players are experiencing right now? What you think could be better?
The biggest 2 issues now (and it still needs some raw number buffs, though the recent buff helped) are:
- Abomination of a talent tree means you can only do ST or AOE, not both.
- MG is unplayable.
But really, the talent tree more than anything else needs to be fixed. If it was, the other issues are less pressing.
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tbh for me to enjoy aff right now would to be for unstable affilction to be instant cast, i mean might aswell considering every other dot is and it helps with the set up and it would be cool if they made a talent where unstable cost another soul shard but buffs it to where it does more dmg like idk maybe like 20% or something
What are your guys thoughts on them adding something like soul swap back to the game for PVE? Or even Dark soul instead of Darkglare as our cooldown?
Dark Soul : (Infuses your soul with the misery of fallen foes, increasing spell haste by 30% for 20 sec)
And lastly what about something even more thematic like bringing back some of the legendary powers from shadowlands as capstone talents instead of the ones we have now? Like malefic Wrath (: Malefic Rapture increases the damage of your [Drain Soul / Shadow Bolt] by 35% for 10 sec, stacking up to 3 times. ( Swap With unstable afflcition ofc) )
Or even Wilfred’s Sigil of Superior Summoning: (Summon Darkglare reduced by 2 seconds per shard you spend ) Could help both aoe and ST. Thats if they keep the poo poo darkglare
Hell, or even just bring back one of the covenant abilities?
I actually really like my Affliction Warlock at the moment. 
Talents honestly feels fine to me tbh.
Darkglare sort of retains the ‘Warlock’ vibe with the summoning demons or dangerous beings from other realms to amplify power, so yeah I’m relatively fine with that too 
Numbers standpoint, eh ~ I feel like if they buffed seed of corruption’s explosion and upped corruption’s base tick damage, the spec would possibly be rivaling Demonology in M+ lol
Soul swap would not help any of afflictions pressing issues.
Talents are objectively terrible though. To you, what feel fine about having to talent into EITHER single target damage with no AOE, or AOE damage with pitiful ST?
My brother in christ… Do u mean like the talents themselves or the talent tree? There is no way someone who plays this game look at this talent tree and think its fine
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The overall numbers are fine, and the rotation is okay, but the damage profile is horrible. Way too much of our damage is just random procs. Way too much damage comes from the little Soul Harvester Ghost, and because that ghost has to be so strong, the actual buttons that we press do very little. I barely notice a difference between a 5 stack of UA and 0 UA unless I had Succulent Souls. Then we also have our Apex which is just more random damage.
As for the ST/AoE split, yes they obviously need to rework the entire tree, but an easy bandaid would be taking damage out of seed and putting it back into harvest and corruption. We use harvest in single target anyway, make it actually do decent damage in ST instead of just refilling shards.
Also, as you said, Darkglare is lame. It is totally non-thematic, doesn’t feel good to press, and it has just about the ugliest model in the game to boot. If we take the upgraded version we can’t even use the slightly better Observer model. I’d just like Darkglare replaced altogether.
We also effectively only have one hero tree available since they seem completely unwilling to make Hellcaller viable. Wither does no damage and our apex talent synergizes way better with Harvester.
I’m still enjoying aff, but it could and should be way better.
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Why play aff who can either do great ST or great AoE, when I can play demo who can do great ST and great AoE at the same time?
That’s why its looked down upon. It’s all the talents fault too.
Make the talents let us have both with tweaks to lean a “little” into one or the other but not be terrible at either while doing so.
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Completely agree with what u said. I hate the fact that everything is so random for Aff: from generating shards to damage itself. It’s such an easy fix too, there are billions of ways to make these feel less frustating. I like when I high roll 3 nathrezins at once or when you get 2 of that OP ghost from Soul Harvester but most of the time I really dont care lmao. Simply cause theres nothing I can do abt it, just keep playin and I guess sometimes it happens. They could keep the RNG but make ways of at leas guarantee it happening. Like Dark Harvest always spawn a ghost and when Haunt gets off CD (get into the pandemic window) the Nathrezin is guaranteed to spawn or smth similar idk
Actually I have seen this new Hellcaller build and Im having lots of success (and fun) with it. HC AoE is better than Soul Harvester but the ST is MUUUCH worse, by dropping some Wither increase damage talents and that one that reduces Dark Harves Cd then getting Malefic Grasp and Shard Instability you basically deals more damage AoE in dungeons but just slightly less ST, but still very good damage overall. Def reccomend tryin it out, unfortunately Soul Harvester is still ahead cause ST damage is muuch more necessary in high keys.
Talent Code for anyone interested (Got this build from Arsyn’s stream idk who to credit):
CkQAMrNP5kak+EBqLfUa3dMm+yMjZGNLmxmZGzyAAAmZmlZzMzyYAgZZbZMMmFz0YmZYLzGDLDAAAzAAAzMzMjZMzsNGzYGzMGDzMzMAgZgB
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So tried hellcaller in a few 17s as well as an 18 (Bricked) last night and i gotta say, the AoE damage is freaking insane. Not only that its a lot more fun and ties into affliction with the theme and gameplay style SOOOO Much more than soul harvester.
Its actually about building up your dots, wither and agony do really solid damage, and there isn’t a spec out there i can genuinely see beating me in overall dmg in a dungeon. Was beating everyone else by a mile.
WITH That being said, yeah no, the ST damage is just so much lower compared to soul harvester it isnt even close.. I tried grasp and some other talents instead and the margin was just too large. When you’re fighting bosses at 17s and up, they take forever to kill and deal just so much dmg, that you NEED to kill them as fast as possible. Its just not really viable unless you have either an aug in your group, or a boss melter type comp.
I think soul harvester should be about spamming dots, and hell caller should be about sitting on dots.
To accomplish this, they would need to do something like making UA last twice as long and do twice as much damage but cost 2 shards or something like that in addition to wither being a mega dot for hell caller. For soul harvester they spam as many dots as possible and then allow drain soul to nuke hard, so you are rewarded for harvesting correctly to get like 9 UA stacks but its the mega drain soul that does the single target damage.
Less globals while retaining the quadruple downing on a big nasty dot.
2 completely different dot play styles for fans of old and new game play. But either way, seed spam should be available early in the trees and talents should support some quality of life with it, like if you hit 3 or more targets, agony is auto applied as well as corruption/wither. If haunt goes out before a target dies, it is reset. Things like that.
Can we just PLEASE For the love of god rework soul harvester to be more about dots, and rework malefic grasp? Your lucky if you get 4 channels of it in a m+ encounter simply because other spells have greater prio and maintenance. UA, Agony, haunt, dark harvest, you never get to cast it….
And idk about you guys, a love grasp as a concept for affliciton, and the animation is peak also.
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