I see so many post of why people do not like Affliction warlocks but I’d like to hear from die hard fans of Affliction. What makes you stay on your Affliction lock no matter what? And is it still your main today?
I like it.
From a raiding perspective I think that it’s got quite a fun set of mechanics. Outside of MoP, Aff is pretty much as fun in raids as it’s ever been. Dot juggling is fun, and our Azerite traits do a fantastic job at making the spec feel different based on how many targets there are. Consider how it feels to play Aff on Grong vs Mekka, for example. I love that.
If it were up to me I’d remove Darkglare completely and just shift that power into dots, but otherwise I think that in raids Aff is a great spec to play.
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Affliction has gone through a rather weird phase.
To be honest, I feel that affliction and demonology are specs that weren’t fully understood.
The primary reason? The devs didn’t know how to handle the split post SM/Ruin of vanilla, when cross spec was a thing.
The core essence of warlock specs, before the removal of cross specs and classification of “spec centric” gameplay was such:
All warlocks had demons
All warlocks had dots
All warlocks had burst
This “base” allowed a player to manipulate talents to either increase the damage done by their dots, burst damage spells and/or achieve synergies with their demons.
With spec centric gameplay, this was thrown out of the window and therein lies the issue. In an effort to increase dot damage, they ramped up the base dots damage, nerfed it back down, tried modifier spells (like haunt) and talents (shadow embrace) and ultimately made demons redundant by making introducing and making GoS mandatory, if Max dot damage is to be achieved in a multi target scenario situation.
Still, I like the current affliction cause it forces creativity. With limited cc options (esp if GoSac is taken), timing your cool down a with racial and trinkets along with enchants (masterful navigation) and traits is essential.
Another thing to note is the conistent damage contribution to the passive shield warlocks get when damage is done. More dots spread equated to a higher shield absorb rate. And affliction is still the only spec to carry a life draining effect via dot, siphon life… Counts for something I suppose.
Wish they brought soul link back to the spec though.
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Sitting here trying to think of what I like about affliction… the only thing that comes to mind is Phantom Singularity. AoE, high dps, instant cast undispellable DoT.
Do I like it more than demonology and destruction? Yes, I prefer the DoT playstyle
Do I prefer the current version of affliction versus nearly any other past version? Nope
We don’t I like?
0 baseline instant cc (bring back howl)
Too many talents that aren’t competitive/viable
UA stacking
Too dependent on darkglare
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are you referring to a different expansion when you talk about GoSac? its a completely dead talent right now, as is shadows embrace.
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Yes, I loved the triple ID and SO setup, feels so satisfying to drain the life from your enemies and actually heal and do damage with it. I don’t main it but I swap constantly through all specs since I love all the fantasies
Probably the iteration before 8.1.5
Still GoSac has it’s uses in PVP.
Running haunt might be great for single target type scenarios but mostly in random bg’s and arena, GoSac helps with dot damage increase and helps the haunt dispel problem.
It has a new use too.
Sacrifice a Succubus, and have a first hand experience on how Seduction actually works. Try convince oneself that the channeling requirement is ‘fun’ and ‘unique’. While i’m not sure ‘standing still for 30 secs and doing nothing’ is fun, but ‘unique’? I guess uniquely impaired counts.
And no, changing the ability from Seduction to Whiplash is not solving the issue. That’s like changing the steering wheel when the brakes aren’t working.
Stop pretending the brakes are working fine. If it doesn’t work well on us, it doesn’t work well on pets as well. Period.
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Mate, completely agreed on the sacrificing a succy part. Also, never said that it was working fine… In terms of mass dot pressure damage, it is what it is, if you take GoSac.
Also, why sac a succy? Might as well sac a VW and get the extra health boost to combine it with demon sac, to take on the many burst windows that occur in a BG or arena opening scenario.
If you have an iota of what it meant to run a machine gun imp build of vanilla for PVP, you’d know what I’m talking about in my earlier post on how warlocks were and what they’ve come to be, esp on PVP.
affliciton lock is dependant on azerite gear to be viable, tripple id and tripple wb is the only real options. you can get by with double of both but to be of any use u need all 3
if you do not have optimal azerite gear then switch to destro and pick w/e u want really destro benifits but is not hurt like aff is without optimal traits.
i love affliction lock love love love it, just doesn’t have options and is very linear for how it can be affective and must be played in that order. the only option you really have is the choice of absolute corruption or siphon life and even then its not much of a choice cuz the only fights you will want to use aff in will be single target fights and you will want siphon life. affliciton’s damage is just really low in every environment where you are progressing. if you are being carried and don’t care about being within reasonable range of other players then play affliction. it is the absolute worse spec in the game for mythic dungeons. literally the absolute worst spec according to logs and experience. by the time you cast ur seed and pop it the mob will already be killed by the demon hunter or rogue that you are 90% guaranteed to have.
For practical uses, sac a VW for the health boost is the best use under most circumstances. I honestly still miss VW being able to disarm opponents.
I’m just pointing out that currently, it is a rare opportunity to show and tell, first hand, how badly dated Seduction is. It already has not one, but multiple preventive measures to prevent abuse:
1, It shares DR with Fear, so you can’t chain Fear-Seduce-Fear for super-long CC time. This was done a long time ago.
2, It has a cast time, which can be interrupted.
That channeling requirement to ‘maintain’ CC is way overkill at this point. It needs to go, and asap.
Well, it’s been a long time since vanilla, so i can’t remember everything. But there are times where we have some fun, interesting, or even downright crazy/OP builds in PvP.
The most recent would be in Legion where Rot and Decay would allow Drain Life/Drain Soul to refresh our DoT’s duration on target.
Having a full set of DoTs and 5 UA endlessly ticking on the target is, in lack of a better word, insanely fun.
I love affliction warlock but blizzard decide to gut the spec so bad that make it unplayable for M+ and pvp, you get forced to play demo or destro for that content other than raids. Forcing players into something is not something that works fine blizzard!!! give us the real affliction warlock back, no excuses for not given us at least some AoE.
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I still like certain things about Affliction, but I just get this empty feeling when I play my Warlock in BfA. I hate being a downer but that’s just how it has felt.
I know a lot of people had issues with Affliction being a good spec for awhile but they really sucked a lot of fun out of it.
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BFA affliction warlocks is no more than a shadow of what a true affliction warlock was.
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I love it because I top the meters in the current raid rolling my face on the keyboard…
Aff is dumb. It’s supposed to be a sustained rot spec but it’s a 3 minute CD hero with a gigantic nuke with heavy setup on a long cd.
The design is awful. It’s MOBA design. The problem is that it’s still effective which is even worse because there is no impetus to make it a sustained spec again.
They would have been better off just keeping drain soul as filler and the legion talent trees and just making drain life a separate utility spell. They literally have turned affliction into a vanilla 3 minute mage.
I like Affliction still for raids. I mean, it does decent numbers and isn’t as horribly punished by movement.
I don’t like Darkglare/Deathbolt as much though… ESPECIALLY since Darkglare doesn’t always target your main target and sometimes doesn’t even extend your DoTs like it’s supposed to.
I like Affliction, its very hard to kill a properly played Affliction Warlock, however that being said, Affliction is without question a supporting role in PvP.
I remember when macros were the most useful thing in the game, now, not so much, all but instant cast DoT’s were essentially rendered useless when Blizzard in it’s infinite wisdom added cooldown times, removed Haunt, lifetap, and the list goes on and on and on.
All of these things. They are just throwing new abilities at us via talents to solve problems with the inherent damage of our regular spells.