Almost there with Aff! My affliction fixes

Classes Warlock
1

I have been an affliciton main since 2004. That being said, Affliction feels MUCH better than in Shadowlands, my least favorite of all time Aff iteration. This spec should not be a burst spec . Affliction is the premiere “poison” or “rot” spec in the game. It has no need for burst. That being said, here at my fixes to improve the feel of the spec and address some issues.

Fix Malefic Affliction bugs!: Seriously, not being able to apply this stack through shields is a huge, glaring flaw. The penultimate fight right now, Raszageth, REQUIRES high damage on shields. This makes that impossible for affliction.

Remove Malefic rapture: This ability is, frankly, not fun. It’s just there. It hits like a wet noodle and seems to exist simply to have a soulshard spender. We don’t need one. As a steady DoT class, this “burst” spell requires 5-7 GCD’s to do damage. 5-7 GCDs is not burst. 1-2 is. Replace this entirely with another shard spender (preferably in the form of a long lasting DoT) or remove this.

Make dread touch apply on the first Malefic rapture: If we insist on Malefic rapture, at least remove some of the ramp time. I get the idea that we are supposed to have ramp time due to the DoT nature of the spec, but this is excessive. DoTs inherently give us ramp. We don’t need 4 more GCDs to start doing any meaningful damage with them.

Make malefic rapture instant: The appeal of affliction for many is its instant casts. Since malefic rapture hits like hotdog water now, it being instant wouldn’t be unheard of. It feels good to press when Tormented Crescendo goes off, but that is the only time Malefic Rapture feels good. Lower it’s damage if you have to, but maybe this would help alleviate the feel of this spec.

Make Siphon Life Baseline: This should be a core ability. The spec revolves around applying and maintaining DoTs, and this is another one. Thankfully it hits harder now, but talenting out of this for infinite corruption feels bad. Siphon Life is an iconic affliction staple and should not be a talent.

Accept the Maintenance playstyle: This spec is about maintenance. Some people love it, some people hate it. Simply accept the fact that applying and maintaining powerful DoT abilities is the heart and soul of the spec and stop trying to make it burst damage. It does not work.

Make drain soul (or shadowbolt, ew) deal more damage on targets without DoTs: This is for the very low HP mobs that need to die ASAP, and affliction is horrible at this. A DoTless drainsoul buff would help alleviate this issue. Obviously, make drain soul do more when DoTs are applied, but also passable add-killing burst when you simply need 1-3 GCDs to kill something. Or add a new spell (Like shadow priest mind spike) for this purpose.

Make Seed of Corruption Baseline: This spec lakes any aoe abilties whatsoever unless talented into. This is one of the only specs like this. There is no reason that this should be the case.

Make Soulflame baseline: Again, affliction lacks any AoE without major talent investment. Other specs in the game simply have AoE and ST with a single build. Make this talent weaker if you need to, base AoE is needed. Multi-dotting is not AoE, it is cleave. Mob counters are higher than ever and true AoE is needed.

Lower the cast time of Seed of Corruption: Why does this have a 2 second cast time to spread one DoT? DKs can spread their (much more powerful individually) dots with one instant key press. Why does SoC need to have this ludicrous cast time?

Pandemic Invocation needs to go: This talent, for lack of better words, simply feels terrible. Applying dots on the move is how affliction deals with any mobility checks (which there are an insane amount of) and this talent actively punishes refreshing DoTs proactively. This talent is hotdog water.

Xavian teachings: Make it baseline for affliction. I mean, seriously.

Harvester of souls: Amazing concept, weak execution. I would love to grab this talent, but frankly it is quite weak. Self heals are a slippery slope, but this isn’t even worth the points.

Soul Swap: Decide what to do with it. Either make it like it was in Pandaria with mass spreading all our DoTs (Maybe make them weaker when applied this way if you have to) or get rid of it. Right now, it simply sucks.

Darkglare: This…feels like a Demo spell. Why do we have a demon summon cooldown as a rot class? Once again, it is just there. I would much rather have a badass shadow spell that I cast personally than a set and forget floating eyeball.

Agonizing Corruption: This talent is weak at best and useless at worst for two points. TWO POINTS. That’s a major investment for a talent that quick frankly sucks.

Soul Rot: Change the graphic to a shadowy, fel-laced death nuke rather than a recycled fairy princess sparkle bomb. It’s okay otherwise.

I’m sure i could think of more, but that’s my fixes for now.

11 Likes
2

Not sure how affliction went from a class with a lot of instas to one that needs to cast three damage spells to get the most damage output. But if the casting of all those spells is to remain, the devs could at least move malefic and drain soul into the frost/shadow school of magic.

4 Likes
3

The only thing I absolutely despise about affliction is how you’re forced to be 1 dimensional with the talent system.

You can have workable single target with ZERO AoE damage, or you can have workable AoE with garbage single target.

It’s so much easier to pick up a handful of talents in Destro/Demo and end up with a well rounded damage profile. Doing acceptable ST/AoE in Affliction requires so many talent points that having a build that can do both is impossible.

2 Likes
4

UA lock has to cast MUCH more often than Destruction in PvP to accomplish kills. It’s all so backwards.

2 Likes
5

we should all advocate for MoP lock specs to come back, make demo horrible again lmao

1 Like
6

aff its good feels good plays good the desing its good problems were 1 bugs 2 dmgs , they fixed the first one now we have 2 expansion wating for dmgs buff

7

They should have the unholy DK dev take a look at Affliction. Feels like a much better dot class. Outbreak, Unholy Blight, Superstrain, those are good instant cast dot spreaders.

2 Likes
8

Honestly, I couldn’t agree more. Unholy feels pretty solid.

9

Ironically they have this cosmetic gory spell that blows up the dead bodies of NPCs!
Not sure if it was ever a real spell but it is familiar to Soul Flame…
They also at one point had a type of Life Drain outside its Blood spec
I think DK Unholy is the melee equivalent of Affliction + Demonology match together.

Now that I think about it, it is actually more easier to spread Dots with Unholy DKs than a Affliction Warlocks! :exploding_head:

2 Likes
10

If that happens, I’ll absolutely give Aff a try in Raids. This spell is like the main reason why I hate this spec rn… I’m ok with Pandemic, but Malefic Rapture is just too much of a hassle.

As a main Mage, I use to believe that Rune of Power was the stupidest thing ever but God damn, Malefic Rapture is even more disgusting :rofl:.

4 Likes
11

MoP affliction without snapshotting would be worse than what we have now.

You aren’t getting snapshotting back. Blizzard does not want that in the game which was why all of it was removed (except feral druid) in WoD.

12

Ok i might be a minority here but i liked malefic grasp - added to the rot playstyle, im fine w/o snapshotting i was never a huge fan of it… Haunt being a soulshard spender/having more rot abilities is more of what I was thinking.

13

Im also a big PvPer so I may have differing opinions from people who main PvE - the old soul swap was way better back then for getting spread pressure out - UA not being hard locked to 3 targets etc. Dark soul

1 Like
14

Fair. I rarely pvp these days and back then I only did PvP on destro because Chaos Bolt actually dealt damage.

15

Oh do not even get me started on Destro. I did so many disgusting things on my warlock back then in open world and BGs, even some 2s carries occasionally. Yea its hard to get back into destruction with the current iteration of Chaos Bolt since it just feels like a wet noodle and my incinerates hit harder, even though Destruction isn’t in a horrible spot right now, it will just never be the same after burning ember changes, glyph changes, grimoire of sacrifice changes, the list just goes on.

16

Maybe it was a little overtuned, but I do remember there being a couple niche builds with Destruction where I was just unkillable against scrubs, I remember a lot of people complaining about it haha. Maybe 5v1ing in BGs shouldnt be a thing, even though the build was pretty niche and you had to have very certain glyphs/talents

17

Overtuned or not MoP was peak Warlock design. I will fight people over this lol

18

Never paid attention much to classic releases… will they eventually do a MOP re-release? Does it then retain the same class mechanics as back then? I never played MOP but it sounds like I would enjoy it with the warlock.

19

I mean…

Problem with MoP classic is we would have to endure Cata Classic first lmao.

20

Wut, it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t play good, either. The only way a DoT spec feels good to these people, is when they’re trying to get away from the rot style that you literally sign up for/as as a DoT spec.

Maybe as a whole, like class wise I guess. Legion was peak for Affliction, specifically, to me, in most cases. I actually want a hybrid of MoP, WoD and Legion to come back.

I want Legion’s simplistic design of Drain+DoTs, there still had room for improving. I want WoD’s style of UA where UA is just a regular casted DoT that lasted a long time but did major damage. I want MoP’s Soul Swap thing back.

From Legion I also want the execute DoT mechanic back, too, and then from SL if I had to have an actual shard spender mechanic I want Rapid Contagion, itself, to be this. That, or MR to be reworked into just making all DoTs out to tick 3 times per cast, that’s it. I want Affliction to have less DoTs, but a lot more DoT damage. I want the Mastery for Affliction to cover all DoTs, including Drain Soul. Shadow Bolt to be removed entirely so no need to worry bout that.

I don’t want UA shard spender nonsense, as much as that fit the thematics and whatnot, I just find that to be more annoying of a playstyle.

You see this blizzard? This is how you design a DoT spec; 3 or 4 DoTs total including filler, faster ticking speeds, more sustained damage profiles, less maintenance nonsense with things like Shadow’s Embrace/DT, just make it a basic n simple spec. I don’t understand why people want more things to do on a DoT spec, that’s just simply annoying. Demo n Destro are that way.