Affliction Warlock Talents

Classes Warlock
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-Greetings Champions of Azeroth, I am the Warlock Tiffinii, Affliction Specialist from Moon Guard!

I would enjoy talking to you today about Warlock talents, specifically, Affliction playstyles and talent options. For Players participating in, PvP mainly…

Firstly, I would like to say, I am rather pleased with the options to make Unstable Affliction and Haunt so easy to cast. This change is really wonderful and it makes it feel like I can actually cast spells.

I am rather confused as to why Improved Haunt, does not make Shadow Embrace stack to 4 times, such as The actual Shadow Embrace talent does, making it seem odd to make the talent choice give Shadow Embrace, but still making it seem as though a talent point into Shadow Embrace is necessary.

I also must say, the Shadowbolt Volley is a cool talent choice.

I do not understand how we went from having the Pandemic Invocation talent pick when refreshing all dots below a certain time inflicting damage, to now every dot has a different talent pick for the refresh damage.

The removal of Soul Swap, seems utterly confusing as well.

Forcing a pick into Seed of Corruption, which is really only for AoE, just to increase the damage of Corruption and Malefic Rapture, seems very odd. Seed of Corruption is really only used for PvE, even in RBGs, it won’t have much benefit, as u still have to apply curses to targets, so if you are running Jinx for example, You have already cursed and corrupted your targets, it seems like a complete waste of a soul shard, which has become increasingly more difficult to gather, along with the cast time. It would be much quicker, and easier, to tab target corruption spam as I will not risk being spell locked.

Which leads me to other topics, Soul Shards…
Soul Conduit, has only a 5% chance to refund shards, and this is a last talent tree pick from the base Warlock side, a 5% chance would mean, 1 out of every 20 soul shards I spend, is the chance to receive one back. For a last talent pick, when compared to other classes, this seems rather anticlimactic.

Along with, Pact of Gluttony. This is arguably something, that should have already been introduced into the game, baseline on health stones. The night elf Racial, shadowmeld, or a hunter’s feign death/camo, or a rogues vanish, does this exact thing to regular health stones. So if there are work arounds to this last talent choice already, how is this suppose to feel like Warlocks are gaining something? It doesn’t even increase the health granted…

These changes, especially to soul swap, have made Affliction feel, limited, where it was once a spec about spreading Damaging over time abilities, it seems as though it is about focusing one target, and slightly having a DoT on another target, Soul Rot is only able to be applied if people are grouped now, Haunt cannot be transferred, and UA is only a single target ability as well, unless you talent into the PvP choice.

I am sure Drain Life was changed for the better, but it also feels entirely weak, even with the talent options into it, soulburn drain life, now is lucky to give you a shield for 5% of your HP, which also, if a stun or interrupt cancels the drain, you don’t get a shield, making it a waste of a soul shard, as I have also explained, getting soul shards has already become harder. The Relinquished talent choice is nice, but it is so far down in the tree, how is it a true choice, it would be better fit up top.

Also, such talent options like, Swift Artifice, or Life Blood, seem placed randomly and filler talent tree picks.

The moral of this rant is basically,
How are you going to make soul shards a 5% chance refund, and make healthstones do something they should have already done, 2 of the 3 end talent tree choices for Warlock?

Why is Soul Swap removed, but seed of corruption is a forced ability to gain access into other parts of the talent tree?

These changes seem like such an odd choice for the class’s design. Pandemic Invocation at least gave a 6.66% chance to give a soul shard. That is nearly equal to both Soul Conduit and Relinquished talent picks, combined.

If Soul Shards are only going to be obtained from Agony damage, then I would think it would be more difficult to dispel agony, as Mages can also dispel agony with dispel curse. I’m unsure if this is due to a bug as its not actually considered a curse anymore? but it is a thing.

Another issue is the mana problem… Balance druids do not need mana for their rotation, Shadow priests do not need mana for their rotation, Warlocks and Mages are the last spell casters to require mana, and Warlocks require soul shards to actually use abilities as well. As a mage, I can spell steal things and lose my entire mana bar, and it won’t matter, but as a warlock, the mana eventually runs out, from simply doing a dps rotation and keeping curses and applied, and then the sacrifice of mana for mobility for Demonic Gate also comes into play and much quicker than any caster I have played in modern WoW.

I hope to whom ever reads this, I hope you see a bit of the frustration and confusion, that I as a simple Affliction Warlock has encountered in the travels of Azeroth.

P.S. I actually only play WoW for the Pet Battles.

-Shaza-kiel Xaxas Nar’valas Denalore, Katra zil shukil dalektharu il dask daku!

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Drain life really needs to be looked at its either bugged or horribly under-tuned.

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I know this post is 10days old, but it really needs the attention… Especially this the changing of Soul Swap to a PvP talent:

Forcing a pick into Seed of Corruption, which is really only for AoE, just to increase the damage of Corruption and Malefic Rapture, seems very odd. Seed of Corruption is really only used for PvE, even in RBGs, it won’t have much benefit, as u still have to apply curses to targets, so if you are running Jinx for example, You have already cursed and corrupted your targets, it seems like a complete waste of a soul shard, which has become increasingly more difficult to gather, along with the cast time. It would be much quicker, and easier, to tab target corruption spam as I will not risk being spell locked.

Forcing warlocks who will NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER cast Seed, and even locks who will SOMETIMES, BUT NOT ALWAYS cast Seed, to take this talent in order to progress the tree is legit “bad dev” decision imo. The main reason why I would rate it THAT harshly is because our spec progression is completely blocked and unusable if we do not pick this talent.

1/1 - Unstable Affliction
1/1 - Writhe in Agony
2/2 - Dark Virtuosity
1/1 - Nightfall
1/1 - Volatile Agony
1/1 - “Absolute Corruption/Siphon Life” choice node

This is the furthest you can progress in the Affliction tree if you do NOT put a point into SoC, 7 points. 1pt shy of opening next row. Being hard forced into a spell that is as useless as it is , and having ZERO alternative, is an example of actual bad design. This doesn’t mean that Soul Swap is the only think you can put in there as a choice… However, with things being what they are, and content being what it is, Soul Swap does seem the obvious choice.

I know some people would be ok with something else as well, like making Volatile Agony a 2pt node (which would allow tree progression) but I don’t think this ADDS GOOD to the game, it just band-aids a bad.

So yeah, please put Soul Swap as a choice node with Seed of Corruption. I can promise you that this would probably go down as the best change to Aff Locks since legion artifact introduction.

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There’s nothing wrong with forcing us to pick up Seed.
It’s essentially a baseline talent. Seed was baseline from MoP → SL and it was fine. I don’t really see the big deal.

It would be a bigger deal if you didn’t mathematically have to take it, but in order to pick up critical talents you logistically did. The word “forced” is doing so much heavy lifting.

It would be no different than if they removed Seed entirely from the talent tree and just gave it to us at like level 15.

Soul Swap being removed from PVE is a different situation. Blizzard doesn’t want it in PVE for whatever reason, but that isn’t because Seed is now mandatory. If your true argument is give us Soul Swap back, going at it from the SoC angle is a bad idea.

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I literally listed how it is mathematically impossible to NOT take it.

If you do not select the Seed of Corruption talent, your character is UNABLE TO UNLOCK the 2 tier of talents (you must spend 8 points in your spec talent tree to unlock tier 2), only SEVEN points are available if you do not specifically select Seed of Corruption. So yes, it 100% is forced, and no it is not “doing heavy lifting”.

It would be fundamentally different, since they would need to put a talent in its place… Which would provide some form of other benefit which would very likely be more useful than SoC.

I am not saying that they removed Soul Swap in order to make SoC mandatory, the 2 aren’t connected like that and I NEVER made that insinuation. What I am saying is that forcing us to invest a talent point (which are a finite and rather precious currency that is exchanged directly for player power) into a specific and non-primary spell, and locking us out of our tree if that superfluous spell is not taken… Is bad design.

I am not asking them to get rid of the talent, I am asking them to at least provide a choice in that node if we are going to have ZERO CHOICE ABOUT WHETHER A POINT HAS TO BE SPENT THERE.

And if they REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY don’t want Soul Swap in the spec tree (for reasons they have not yet even elaborated on… They could move Vile Taint/Phantom Singularity to it’s spot and put SoC where VT/PS used to be. There… Problem solved, and they can still (kind of) still screw over aff locks. Literal have their cake and eat it to.

And to answer the question that might pop up: What do you mean screw over aff lock?

Well, by having only 3 pvp talent slots and all ready having 2 of them basically spoken for, this means that aff locks are now basically going to lose choice for the 3rd… Since no aff lock would be foolish enough to intentionally NOT take SS. It was practically mandatory BEFORE it went to the PvP tree.

I hope this clarifies things even more, as I was pretty sure my original post was clear and concise enough… But apparently it wasn’t.

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I just miss the imminent demise talent. The one that allows agony to make drain life do damage.

That talent was so much fun to use with soul rot, but now with that removed soul rot doesn’t feel satisfying to press for me

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Doesnt make it right and Siphon life used to be too. Simply too much bloat

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Its an RPG not a MOBA, please stop complaining about “bloat”, this is why devs overly simplify everything and the game becomes boring to play.

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Posts like these deserve alot more attention. This spec is never going to be viable especially when no one actually speaks up or supports people who do. Its sad this spec was fun once or twice in 20 years

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