Hard to tell what’s going to happen with revised talent system coming up, especially where active ability options will sit.
If they carry this current design forward, they should add back a Soul Rot clone (warlock themed, not fae) in that case, not pruning anything. Drain Life interaction for thematic/niche purposes and all, since with MR design it makes the spec feel complete.
Right now there’s more to bind for warlocks with proper pet control, but in terms of just rotationals alone, if you can’t handle affliction’s then there aren’t very many other specs in the game that you’ll enjoy either…
Well for some reason rather than baking some of the artifact passives into the main kit, they brought back shadow bolt and added death bolt and death glare. I mean when bfa came out, I wanted to die.
It was ok for a hot minute because single target damage was still good, but it felt horrible to play and I just ditched it and ran away.
I’m back to warlock now because demo and destro are really fun to play, so let’s hope that affliction becomes fun again too.
Sustained damage always has a place in high end raiding. I understand you guys don’t trust blizzard to balance this, I get that, and I do not mind your fears and worries as this worries me, too. It, does, however, have a big place in it actually.
It never will not have a place, as again the only times where a full on sustained damage type would not have a place would be on teams where there is nothing but sustained damage, aka on a team of 15 dps, all 15 are the same spec or the same sustained damage types, which is nearly an impossibility across the board as there will always be people playing other specs.
Agreed, they’re viable, and again if every spec is tuned in the same way that is exactly why the specs get “boring” because they ARE tuned the same way. You might as well play a Destro, play Demo, play something else with higher burst.
Warlock, itself, has 3 spec designs and 1 of them is designed around sustained damage, as it deals with DoTs. Currently, this version of Aff, a lot of people will def agree it feels off. It’s because of the half assed measures, sure, but even in 9.0 A LOT of people complained about it.
There’s too many buttons for too little reward, much like Feral Druid had for the longest time, it was too complex for too little reward. Aff isn’t too complex, it’s just too many globals and it doesn’t feel good ever since BFA. DoT specs never feel that good being designed around burst when a lot of people understand that the nature of the design, itself, is over time not under quick succession.
That’s because you just focus the boss as Aff, you can slow the adds, and also people need to understand this as this is what I did during Legion when Aff still wasn’t that viable burst against 6 second target requirements like Antorus had: As a sustained damage type, you focus the boss. As a DoT spec, you focus the boss. If you can’t make it in 6 seconds, you focus the boss. That’s why different specs were designed differently. Does it feel bad to some people cause they wanna do stuff to help out? Yes, but that’s the tradeoff for playing a spec like this. You don’t do much, but you do a lot of boss damage.
It is a GCD nightmare, even if you’re good. Other specs, that are burst designed and actually fits, do their same burst damage in way less buttons than Affliction does for it’s burst damage.
If you think not, go look at literally all other specs, from Ret, MM, BM, Warrior specs, they’re literally WAY less buttons. Go look at Demo’s profile, still less buttons than Affliction and more damage.
Look at your StS profile in mythic+, too, for example. Way less buttons and still a lot more damage. Look at Shadow Priests, look at quite literally almost every other spec in this game and you will see they have less buttons.
Also, again the fact that it might need binds, for any spec, would be bad design for newer players anyways. No new players get introduced to Keybinds, that’s an advanced tactic they might learn from guildies, Youtube or something else. You want all specs to be new player friendly, not to be some advanced spec. Simplicity is key for new players and if you think a lot of them understand things like that right off the bat without having played MMORPGs, no, most of them do not.
I don’t use them, myself, but I understand them and tell new players about them when they ask me things and again just like how the design of MR is: I keep getting “that’s dumb, why design something like that.” – this is the biggest thing I get most commonly. “Cause they want it to be like that” is what I tell them and then they just go play a different class instead.
It is not newer player friendly. It’s fine for returning players, but for completely new to the game players it’s not. All specs should be newer player friendly.
Yet all the sustained specs are doing poorly and have been doing poorly
It currently doesn’t have a real place because of the pure fact that burst classes are the best right now.
No offense but you’re only 4 bosses into heroic and you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
No there isn’t. That’s a you issue not a spec issue.
That may work in the normal and little bit of heroic raiding you do. However in mythic it’s a big difference and it matters.
I played Aff in CN. It only has bad burst because players cried about MR and Dora not doing damage. They then gutted the spec.
Affliction damage isn’t bad because of the buttons. It’s because the spec was destroyed in 9.1.
That’s what happens when you want a dot based damage spec in a time trial. You seriously can’t comprehend that dot damage takes time which is why Aff is doing so poorly.
The game should never ever cater to new players.
So you don’t use keybinds and think your opinion is valid on too many buttons? Lol.
Again I don’t care about newer players. They aren’t trying to maximize dps.
There are no sustained damage specs anymore. They’ve all been converted into burst, and half of them are poorly designed, at that.
They aren’t the best, they’re boring, at best. You’re powerful for a few seconds, then done for minutes. That’s nowhere near any fun, that’s just bleh game design. That’s why Legion and MoP had better designs than BFA and than SLands. It’s also why a lot of people keep asking for Legion Affliction or something close to it back.
I will give them that some of them are actually just wanting Aff to be overpowered, but a lot want it to be a simple DoT spec that isn’t difficult, nor has many GCDs to use, and want it to be a sustained damage rot style spec.
That’s precisely why it’s missed. It felt good to play and it was very, very easy to understand.
If a spec has more than 5 GCDs to do it’s damage in quick content, it’s a design issue. Again, a lot of players don’t want 7+ GCDs, that’s 10-15 seconds before you can do your damage.
No, it doesn’t. It matters to you because the mentality you have is “I have to help or I’m literally useless” and people like you can’t actually accept that not all things are created equal. Also, by the time a ton of guilds get into mythic raiding it’s already been nerfed a few times. The first few mythic raid bosses aren’t anywhere near as difficult as the last few heroic bosses, so they’re very easy to kill to a lot of guilds. This has always been the case and always will be the case, now and in the future, in the past.
It was like that in WoD, in Legion, in BFA, in Slands. It’s not going anywhere, nor will it.
They gutted the spec because they realized a lot of people want a DOT spec to do more DoT damage. They got it wrong because they needed an actual overhaul, or rework to the spec, which they did in Legion, too, with some specs.
If they reworked it into Rapid Contagion, it would literally fit 100% better and would have been so accepted a lot easier and better by a lot more players. If you need a burst CD that’s the design you should go for. Again, DoT specs are for DoT damage, not MR damage. I give them credit for trying out something new, but they failed. They made it even worse by half assing it with the 9.1 changes, rather than just doing a full 180 and going entirely in the opposite direction including a full rework.
Also, the legendaries for Affliction could have solved it, too, if they didn’t actually want to rework it. They could have redid a few legendaries for more DoTs, like Wrath of Consumption actually making every time Agony/Corruption do damage, it increases your DoT damage rather than relying on you to get the kill.
You’re correct, but the buttons don’t help but rather deter a lot of people because, again, when other specs can do the same or more damage with less buttons compared to the amount of work Aff has to do, then yes they are deterred.
No, I comprehend it and I accept it fully. You seriously can’t accept a spec being designed around DoTs and think that mythic raiding should be what specs are designed for. It shouldn’t be. Mythic raiding should be designed around specs.
They can actually do things like rather than an add having to be killed in 6 seconds, having to be killed in 12 or 15 is just as fine and still requires a good bit and quick target swapping. That, too, would work for DoT specs since that’s basically a full Corruption duration.
The game should 100% cater to newer players or you have them leaving. If they leave, your game is a failure. If it cannot attract new blood or keep them interested, your game will surely fail at some point because we aren’t all gonna fully stay playing the game forever.
So you think your opinion is better than mine when I fully understand things better than you do?
Again, I don’t care about mythic raiders. If you think mythic raiders should be what this game is designed for, you’re absurdly mistaking. There’s so many more Heroic raiders, so many more Normal raiders than Heroic and Mythic, so many more casuals than hardcore players.
If every casual player left, this game would either die or need to go and increase subscription costs by 300% to make up for it. If all the hardcore players died, the game would just get easier/ more casual friendly and still be plenty fine. Why? Because they outnumber hardcore players by a LOT more.
DoT specs should be based on sustained damage, not burst. Sustained damage is not a bad thing, especially in raids. Raid leaders need to understand there are strengths and weaknesses to every spec, every design. That’s why rosters used to change depending on the boss encounter design, and why, for the most part, they still do in a lot of guilds too. You pick what’s best for the boss you’re doing, if you have that option and require doing so for the content you are doing. I used to mythic raid in Legion all the time, when it was fun. I mythic raid when the specs I play are actually worth mythic raiding on. If they’re not, like what Affliction has been for SLands and for BFA, then no, that idea goes out the window. Mythic raiding is tough, but I, myself, will not grind it out if I’m not having fun. I will when I am, though, and that was fun in Legion.
I do know what I’m talking about, and if you think just because I’m only raid logging with my guild and that experience doesn’t pertain to the past, nor does it go towards the future, you’re dead wrong and very naive.
If your spec’s strength is that you can tunnel a boss really hard while ignoring other things that need to die, then your spec is going to sit on the bench on anything that isn’t already on farm.
Speaking of confusing new players, Rapid Contagion would be so much harder to understand than Rapture. You press a button and it would barely have any visible feedback or numbers popping up to tell this new player that they were even doing anything. Even though they are essentially two buttons that do the same thing, one does it in a much more obvious, new-player friendly way.
Who decided this? Affliction is a spec that uses dots. Rapture is an ability that relies on dots. Rapture also has the potential to do more, such as the current 2-set bonus that definitely needs to return as a talent.
While currently lacking numerically, Affliction plays extremely intuitively. It’s a dot spec with a good playstyle, but since Details doesn’t say (dot) next to a bulk of its damage, it’s somehow attacking the purity of the spec.
BM/Assassination/Frost Mage are just three off of the top of my head that are sustained damage specs and they are performing lower because fights have downtime no matter what.
Says the guy wanting Aff to only do dot damage instead of getting any satisfaction from burst windows.
Nope you’re just not very good.
Has zero to do with what my point was.
It did do dot damage. MR literally did more damage based on the dots.
The buttons were fine. The button bloat was already reduced in 9.1 which is why I find it hilarious you want even more buttons removed. Also the more buttons are the trade off for the majority of your damage being based on instant casts.
You don’t comprehend anything that’s in reality. You’re completely delusional.
You really are out of touch with reality.
No it shouldn’t. Should it do things to help newer players? Sure. However newer players are an extreme minority.
Actually yes. I play more harder content and have a better understanding of multiple classes including Your own class and spec. My logs in CN are better than yours.
You don’t understand anything.
Source please?
False. You do realize mythic raiders are more likely to buy tokens than casual players right?
Also casual players can raid mythic as well. Casual doesn’t have any basis on skill.
You have four bosses killed on heroic. You don’t know anything about current tier. If you actually knew what you were talking about you wouldn’t be having to say it over and over again.
What do you mean? It says it makes your DoTs tick faster. How is that even confusing? It also makes so much more sense for the spec design.
No, every spec has a strength and weakness, and again if your spec’s strengths align with the fight, congrats, you get to be in the fight. If they do not, then yeah.
The people when a lot of us said we want more DoT damage and blizzard when they decided to listen, albeit they implemented that feedback in a bad way, but, they opted into listening more towards dot style not MR.
It’s not a good playstyle.
No, if you have to add up most of your DoTs to get more DoT damage for a DoT spec, your designs are wrong. Even professionals tell you, it’s not a DoT spec.
You mean MR that isn’t a DoT doing the bulk of the damage you deal? Yeah, it’s only like that because it’s a shard spender, too.
They’re still burst specs.
Beast Mastery: Bestial Wrath, Aspect of the Wild. Wild Spirits. Again burst, all 3 of these. Yes, Bestial Wrath gets reduced drastically, that’s not the point. It is still burst. It’s burs that’s up faster, sure, since the ability does get reduced by a lot per Kill Command, which helps orient it towards sustained moreso than a Ret Paladin, however, take these CDs away and what happens to the spec?
Sustained damage is damage oriented towards not having CDs up or being all powerful during CDs, thus why there are “no more sustained damage” specs. It’s burst is in a window that’s up much more frequently than almost every other spec, so don’t try to play the sustained damage game. It’s not.
Frost Mages are a proc based burst spec. Again, everything towards procs here, which is burst on a more RNG based window. Much like how Enhancement has a talent that let’s their Stormstrike have a 25% chance to proc more Stormstrikes. This is how Frost Mage has always played for as far back as I can remember. It’s a fun playstyle to those who enjoy it and lackluster to those who do not. Frost Mage also has: Icy Veins and Rune of Power, as per suggested by guide writers. Guess what these are. You’re correct, cooldowns!
Assassination Rogue: You got me here with this, as apparently it is a sustained damage spec, still with cooldowns, though, such as Vendetta.
You mean the guy who agrees with blizzard in this way: every spec of all 36 specs shouldn’t be designed around the same exact venue of burst? Yes, I totally agree. That does, indeed, make for boring design and boring game play. Some specs are 100% fine to have sustained damage, while others be great at bursting. Before BFA, that’s how things were in Legion. It’s also why, when you ask a lot of people, they found the expansions with the best spec designs to be: Legion, MoP, or Wrath. Legion focused on spec identity, MoP and Wrath just had better class and spec designs than BFA or Shadow Lands, even WoD really.
I never said I was good, why do you assume this?
The point was you thought I had 0 experience in mythic raiding and thus my point is invalid. This is a very closed ended point of feedback, as newer player feedback is alwaus just as welcomed as older player feedback, too.
If you don’t listen to all types of players, your game is going to fail at one point or another. That’s why game designers ask for feedback from everyone, so they can understand what’s missing and hopefully make it better.
Doing Dot damage is not the same as doing damage with a nuke based on the number of your DoTs. That’s like saying looking left is the same as taking a knee. They’re the same in the sense of they both have something to do with directions, otherwise they’re nowhere near the same.
The button bloat wasn’t fine for newer players. “Why is there so many buttons to press and these DoTs aren’t even doing much damage?” “Why do I have to keep these up to do damage with Malefic Rapture instead of just doing damage with Malefic Rapture” – these are some of the questions I was asked. If you go with MR, then the button bloat of having to set up 3-7 buttons ahead of MR is annoying to newer players. That’s a lot of setup compared to BM, to Assassination, to Frost Mage who all have way less buttons to press for their rotations. Even look at Demo Locks, it’s still less buttons if you include MR being pressed 5-7 times pending soul shard generation during pressing MR.
0 Keybinds on neither Demo nor Aff, Aff has more buttons on it to press than my Demo spec does.
I comprehend reality just fine, as I always tell people do content you enjoy, don’t do content you don’t enjoy.
Not anymore than you are, actually. I deal with newer players more than you do, I get asked questions often which is fine. I just don’t always have the answer and when I don’t I send them to the Warlock Discord for information where, most of the time, they get spat on for asking the questions to begin with. “You go look at a guide” which is fine. I tell them ignore it and move on, it’s people being angry at being asked the same questions either answered in guides already or that have literally been asked that probably hundreds of times a day by people newer to the class/spec. I also tell them they can look at Youtube, instead, and find things there, too.
Let me clarify this point I was trying to make: I meant specs should be designed more simply and less annoyingly. Affliction’s ST abilities: Agony, UA, Corr, SL, PS, Haunt, SR, MR, DS. That’s 9 abilities, alone, and then add in the 2 CDs of DS:M and DG so 11 abilities to press, including your 1 filler ability. They are DoTs so you don’t press the others for a while, but, that’s 11 GCDs you’re going through which is anywhere between 11 and 20 seconds worth of GCDs/buttons you’re pressing. It gets easier with StS build in things like mythic+, and faster setup damage going out, but things like what the Shadow Priest has with their double DoT 1 GCD talent would actually help out a good bit in reducing bloat.
Looking at Demo right now and my bar, taking off everything not damage related or rotation related, my bar for default is literally half filled compared to my Affliction spec bar. It has: DB,SB, HoG, Dreads, then you look at the 2 CDs you have and that’s 6 buttons total.
We can even look at the previous best build, which would add 3 more buttons in for 9 total buttons, still less than 11 buttons, too, btw. Still bloated at 9, 6 it’s alright.
You mean like mythic raiders are?
Cool, do you want a cookie? There’s a reason good designers ask for feedback from everyone, not just from better players but literally everyone. If any designer doesn’t then they’re bad. Why? Because you want your spec and class designs to be as good as they can for everyone and if newer players struggle with things, you want to fix it for them.
I apparently was wrong bout Normal, however, wowprogress front page scrolling through how many guilds have cleared at least 1/11 bosses on normal or higher.
18012 guilds cleared 1/11 normal or higher.
11503 guilds have cleared 1/11 heroic or higher.
3610 guilds have cleared 1/11 mythic or higher.
Thus, there’s a LOT more heroic than mythic raiders in this game. I actually thought there were more Normal raiders than Heroic, but I seem to have been wrong about that case, actually.
So, if we take away 3610 from 18012 we get 14402 guilds that do not touch mythic raiding. If we take this a step further, we can divide 14402 by 18012 and find out that that comes to 0.79957 and more numbers. Rounding that off we get 79.9 or 80% basically of the raiding guilds that have completed at least 1 boss on normal or higher do not touch mythic raiding. This leaves the mythic raiding playerbase at around 20%, which makes sense because, again, mythic is for the top of the top that want the challenge and a lot of casuals do not care for that. Heroic is the casual version of mythic and this game has a lot more casuals than hardcore players in it.
I agree 100% with you, but more often than not when I talk to those who raid mythic vs those who do not raid mythic you can tell by their attitudes whether they do or don’t and by their mindsets. Mythic raiders think completely different, usually it’s also a lot more “cocky” as you said before with the “I have more experience than you do, thus your opinion doesn’t matter” kinda thing, it shows. I can very easily tell, most of the time, who it is that raids mythic content vs who does not.
Not all mythic raiders think like that, but a lot more than you’d think do think like that.
I say it because you keep trying to assume it has any validation or not. Much like how someone who doesn’t have a degree in meteorology can tell you it’s not going to rain any time soon, too. Or do you question everyone without a degree in meteorology about what the weather’s going to be like?
Except design like that can make for some unintuitive playstyle. Would a new player assume that dots already present are buffed, or only dots you apply while the buff is up? Would they assume snapshotting is a thing because of how the spell is worded?
It’s just rapture with extra steps and it’s ripe to be misinterpreted. Considering it would play exactly the same way, it would be no better for spec design. It would just make for worse damage in cases where something dies while dots are still ticking.
Single target damage is hardly a strength. It’s basically a requirement for viability outside of fights with absurd cleave or aoe requirements.
What if we turned rapture into a 6 second dot?
Dots are required to do the damage. They are the main focus of the spec. Your shard spender not being a dot, but still relying on dots, makes it a dot spec.
These sorts of complaints already tanked Aff after 9.0. I will continue hoping Blizzard has the good sense to not listen since I’d rather have a viable spec in 10.0. Can’t wait to see those talent trees.
Lmao no they aren’t. They are sustained classes that have cds. Every class has a dos cd they use even affliction. By that ignorant logic Aff is a burst spec because of dark soul.
Please just stop talking.
Which is what the three specs I listed are based on. The difference between a burst spec like fire mage is all of their damage is done in their cd windows compared to specs like frost that have increased damage with CDs but their damage doesn’t burst as high during CDs or dip as low outside of CDs.
Wrong again. Fire and arcane are burst specs. Frost is not.
Just because blizzard says one thing doesn’t make them right. 9.0 Aff was perfectly fine.
Claiming to know what you’re talking about is claiming to be good. Considering you don’t know what you’re talking about nor do you perform well my statement is accurate.
You have zero mythic raiding experience this expansion as evident by your lack of knowledge on multiple specs and fights.
You’re heroic raiding is extremely limited.
People that can’t figure out basic rotations or keybinding shouldn’t be listened too. The game should be balanced around bad players because it makes a good game bad as evidence by WoD.
Opinion. Using dots to empower your main cast is well along the lines of affliction lore as you use those dots draining to empower yourself.
7 buttons is the trade off for having instant casts. I already explained this.
Zero relevance. If you keybinded instead of clicked it wouldn’t be an issue.
That’s fine. Do what you enjoy. Just don’t pretend to have a clue on content you don’t do like you are currently doing.
Again relevance? You should honestly stop giving new players advice because you aren’t helping them.
No.
I don’t need you to list afflictions single target rotation. I played it in 9.0.
There is no bloat. You’re just bad at your rotation because you click.
Mythic raiders are the biggest majority after casual players.
WoD already proved games shouldn’t be balanced around bad players.
You have been wrong about everything not just normal.
You go by individual achievements not guilds.
I say someone with zero mythic kills and only 4 heroic kills giving an opinion on mythic raiding about as equal as a janitor at a hospital giving their opinion on someone’s upcoming surgery. They don’t have a clue what they are talking about.