I just want to play affliction 
it’s my favorite spec maybe of all classes but my god it’s in such a terrible place right now I am forced to play destroy/demo
You guys have seen the patch notes do you think in the next patch it will be viable in all PvE areas?
(I don’t pvp so idk )
I don’t pvp, but as far as PVE goes, my warlock main kicks butt either in dungeons or out in the world questing. Never have a problem on affliction.
I especially love “set it and forget it corruption” - I dot up everything in dungeons via Seed of Corruption and my corruption dots just keep on ticking , absolutely love it (I love destro & demo too)
Was there a particular part/aspect of affliction that you struggle with or don’t like?
Blizz has history in being terrible at DoT specs.
I’ve been burned too many times…Affy is bad and will stay bad.
I’ve got 3 Affliction locks since the game began. I love the way it plays. I can care less how much damage it does. But I also dont raid or do much past heroics since I drive Semi truck and cant make specific game schedules.
blizard is incompetent to balance dot class spec, specially affliction, or they made it broken or like usual they give up and make the spec garbage so nobody pick it. That is warlock story with blizzzard devs.
affliction is fine and will only get better
than play it?
Real fans of Affliction don’t care if it’s doing trash and make it work or go mad trying.
Before I swapped to maining Healer mained Affliction Warlock didn’t care how bad it was I would stick to it 
What a boomer sentiment, hope it’s sarcasm
Wanting your favourite spec to be viable and up-to-standards with the modern requirements of wow content doesn’t mean that one isn’t “a true fan”
Nope very serious and nah I’m in my early 20s and just don’t care about meta whatever and play what I enjoy.
You can do that and play Affliction at the same time just need friends who aren’t obsessed with meta flavour of the month nonsense.
I play and enjoy affliction, and I care about it being a trash spec in m+ currently. Gameplay can always be improved, and I believe it’s important to always strive for ways to make things better
its not really doing trash though, its perceived to be trash due to low sample size and the other specs being better.
This reminds me when aff was at the bottom in raids due to ppl not playing and me saying “watch them give them a 3% placebo buff(that was like a 1k dps buff) and they sky rocket because people actually try the spec” and guess what happened.
Should probably not have used the word ‘trash’, what I meant is more-so in the playstyle of it: the spec takes to long to do meaningful damage, and is overly punished for movement with (until 10.1.5) way to long cast time on SoD
It’s current iteration just doesn’t function very well in modern m+, where dps that have quicker access to burst, and better movement will fare much better. Unfortunately Blizzard seems keen to make Warlocks even more turrety, as seen with Demo changes for next patch.
Afflictions problems doesn’t really translate into raid to be fair, it’s m+ where it’s problematic
Thats fair, it just kinda sucks that we have to wait till July 11th for something that should of been addressed a long time ago.
I think there are two solutions for Affliction either make it more mobile like hunter and keep the more manual DoT application and management style or turn it into a stationary turret with more passive application and management.
Like I’m personally not to bothered by the current playstyle but well I played Affliction for years so 
Suspect the like more complicated playstyle that can be extremely punishing if you mess up pushes people away from the spec.
It’s not just that movement feels extremely punishing with long SoD cast timer, it’s probably more-so the need for an extremely long ramp up time for aoe, which feels extremely annoying even in +20 tyrannical weeks on trash.
Just to compare between my ret paladin and lock:
paladin opener (trash packs):
judgement → blade of justice (cast while running towards mobs) → wings&final reckoning& trinket (all macroed, one global used only) ->divine storm (spender) → wake of ashes > divine storm → divine toll → divine storm ->etc…
with paladin, i can be fully ready to blast before mobs are even totally lined up
Now affli lock:
SoD>VT>haunt>UA>3 stacks of drain soul>soul rot>dark glare&trinket → seed spam
In many keys, especially the lower ones, most mobs will be close-to or already dead at this point, especially if you have to add 2-3 globals due movement.
in comparison, that’s 9 globals to even begin damage, compared to paladins 2. Also as with how m+ continues to evolve, we get more and more turret-punishing mechanics, E.G. the astronomical amount of swirlies this season.
Don’t get me wrong, personally i find affliction much more fun than paladin, IN THEORY the reality (for me) is that it’s become stuck with an ability set that doesn’t allign with the demands of modern wow-gameplay.
I get the fantasy of being a turret, i really do, but i just don’t see the reason why Blizzard chooses to double down on it, when they make the game more and more movement demanding (see 10.1.5 changes to demo - taking some of their mobility)
There’s also another rotational problem along the long ramp-up, which is dealing with agony refresh during long-living pulls - shadowpriest can permanently keep dots up via shadowcrash, we have to manually refresh, which can feel like a chore.
I’m not a game designer by any means, so I won’t pretend that I can fix these (personal) issues with the spec, but i’d definitely like to move the game into a direction where more casters get some additional free-casting, like evokers got. Maybe give casters like affliction the ability to move while casting drain soul? or SoD? with a 50% movement speed penalty or whatever.
tl;dr i’d love to see a change to cut a few globals of the ramp up, while also gaining some more movement freedom
10.1.5 fixes what you describing. Aff already is a good spec for movement.
Lower SoD cast time definitely counts for something with movement, but how is the ramp-up time addressed? Not sure if i’ve followed all the change notes
With malefic gone the ramp up time for dread is 1 cast so our 1-2 and 3 target ramp is reduced by about 4 shards and 2 casts. For aoe I feel like that ramp is something a lot of casters have to go through and our damage isnt too bad from like 11s up.