Affliction Warlock

It ain’t great. And most of this has to do with its new design in Midnight.

One problem Affliction has always had to deal with is the fact that basically all of its damage is dispellable. However, back in TWW you would cast one UA, then apply your DoTs with a single button (something like Curse of Exhaustion/Tongues/Weakness applies Agony and Corruption for the cost of a Soul Shard via the PvP talent “Jinx”), and then cast Haunt. So 2 casts and 1 instant spell.

If that got dispelled, it sucked but you could be cookin’ again in a just a couple seconds.

But now in Midnight with this redesign, UA costs a shard and you need to cast it multiple times to apply multiple stacks in order to do any real damage. That means now your “setup” is like 5 UA casts (or at least 3, and they all cost a shard), plus applying your curse for Jinx to apply Agony and Corruption (also costs a shard), then casting Haunt.

So in Midnight its now taking 8 or 9 seconds to apply your damage (way longer than in TWW and long enough for dispel to be off CD again), and its costing WAY more shards. So if that gets dispelled you’re much further behind than you were after a dispel in TWW. Plus, after the dispel you may not have any shards, or only one or two, and so often you actually CANT reapply all of your damage like you usually could in TWW.

That is way too impactful for an 8 second cooldown every healer has. The only reason it was “okay” for all of Affliction’s damage to be dispellable was because it was relatively quick and low cost to reapply it all. But that is no longer the case in Midnight.

Of course people will say its fine because curses AoE to go on multiple targets because of the Foul Mouth talent. But that really doesnt help as much as everyone thinks. Say you’re facing RMP for example. And the mage and rogue are within 10 yards of each other. If you put Curse of Tongues (reduced casting speed) on the mage, the rogue also gets it. But each target can only have one curse on them at a time and you want Curse of Weakness (reduced attack speed) or Curse of Exhaustion (reduced movement speed) on the rogue, not Curse of Tongues.

This whole Midnight redesign of affliction just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know how it is in PvE, but I’d be surprised if its being well received there either. I do know its a complete mess in PvP and needs to be revisited for another redesign ASAP.

1 Like

Idk I like the direction they are taking it, and I think it’s close to something.

The only real changes I’d advocate for would be UA or Drain soul on different spell school, Jinx to apply dots even if the target is immune to the curse (IE if you cast curse of exhaustion on a freedom’d target, it does not apply dots atm just says immune).

It does great into spell cleaves but suffers against retwar/turbo/etc because everything is hard cast/same spell school. So it feels like a very inconsistent spec.

Fix rapture bugs/fix shared agony bugs/fix seed of corruption instant cast re-writing and being useless bug. etc etc etc.

The spec design as always is a pve thing.

This is what the 3rd time? We have gone to UA stacking now?

True, but I actually REALLY enjoy aff atm in pve.

I think warlock in general lacks relative kill pressure in pvp atm.

1 Like

Honestly id just buff dot damage again and call it a day.

Idk if the patch bugged something but my agony and corruption hit way less harder now.

Its super noticeable with corruption

Honestly seems more likely that it did than it didn’t at this point XD

Basically this. Dots in general just feel like they no longer rot hard at all. This goes for spriest as well

Maybe because assassination isn’t running around with them atm keeping wounds and bleeds up on everything but yea, you just walk away from aff atm the second any pressure comes out

1 Like

Like something happened to the pvp modifiers istg.

My corruption does noticeably less damage overall.

But then again its hard to tell because our blizzard quality assured dps meter IS ABSOLUTELY AWFUL LOL

I’m strongly considering just downloading WCL and using it for everything now because the meter is so unbelievably useless.

1 Like

Its been so long since in actual L$D/splay/scleave, rot comp was good.

We really need them back to keep all the energy leather/mage/X comps in check again.

1 Like