Any chance that we can see Affliction rise from THE BOTTOM OF THE BARRAEL IN M+ to a form that is playable and worth playing? Affliction is the real Warlock spec. I would love to play it because it is so much fun!
They buffed vile 40%… bagahahhahahahah…bahahahahahahha… bahahahahahahahajahahaha
No one plays aoe aff at blizz
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Well hey, good news for you!
As an objective fact, Aff isn’t bottom of the barrel DPS! Only one of their specs comes close, but not there. The bottom of the barrel belongs exclusively and solely to BOTH specs of Augmentation Evoker, followed by Slayer Arms warriors and Rider of the Apocalypse UH DK. The worst performing aff spec (Soul Harvester) is still 9 from the bottom. It’s not good, but it’s far from the worst. Beyond that, just play Hellcaller for Aff, they’re actually DIRECTLY MIDDLE of the pack, which is an arguably good place to be.
I mean, the worst performing aff spec still outDPSes the worst shadow priest spec, and aff’s best smokes shadow priest’s best. Their DPS is factually not terrible.
Oh and big edit for big note: The above is regarding M+ DPS performance. Not utility, not raiding. Their utility remains both great and unique, as it’s still a warlock! Raiding, the numbers are a hair different.
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I agree—Affliction could use some tweaks to be more viable across all Mythic+ key levels, but I wouldn’t call it rock bottom.
It needs more consistent damage on every pull, rather than alternating strong and weak pulls while struggling with soul shard generation.
There are some solid suggestions for changes on the forums—hopefully, a developer takes notice and considers implementing them. One can hope 
Vile didn’t need a damage buff it needed a cooldown reduction. Singularity needed a damage buff and to be fully haste enabled. it has to be the lowest damage cooldown in the game and because of how it works with haste makes it horrible as it lowers the 10% buff uptime the higher your haste.
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Blizz: Best I can do is a buff to hearthstone
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I’d be happy if they just baselined the spirit walkers grace remix trinket ability to locks so we can move while casting drains UA and such.
Locks had that at one point, in Pandaria I wanna say. It was called Kil’jaeden’s Cunning, and it’d gone through a few iterations (to finally get removed in Legion). Short and sweet is it was a passive that snared you for using it, then it was just a passive with no snare, until it was a 1 minute CD lasting 8 seconds (then got further buffed to a 35 sec CD later on in WoD).
Short of it is it got removed because “mobile caster” isn’t a Warlock’s niche. No real further need to expand upon that. Since it was removed, warlocks have received a bevvy of instant spells to assist with their arguably bad damage on the move.
Basically, not to be that guy, but you’re probably never going to get that ability (or anything like it) added back to the class, and even if you did… think of the monkey’s paw curling, dude. How much survivability would you have to give up for that?
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Exactly.
Vile Taint’s issue was never damage as no one cared about it. No one even tracks it. It was merely another dot for MR. Its primary use is mass agony dot app for m+. Its absolutely horrible clunkiness is its cd which needs reduced by at least 50%, or change mass agony app in its entirety. However, the 1% refuses to push positive changes if it doesnt effect them.
Sing is just clunky af in the rotation and timing. No matter how you work it, your holding the thing for at least 10 seconds. Just bad design.
Or, and hear me out, they baseline agony to spread to nearby hostile attacking enemies so you can just cast it on one enemy and it spreads to the whole pack. Like DK plagues. No need to have Cast times and Cooldowns when there are plenty of other things in the rotation that already fill the holes (Like mobility keeping up with everyone speed running chain pulls to the boss)
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That is a very interesting idea, and one that you would think blizz would be willing to entertain. However, i do see issues.
- Shard generation. Since the powers at be have decided to funnel all of our shard gen into one spell (terrible design, we all agree), we would be left somewhat shard starved in aoe and cleave situations as it was spreading.
- MR and ramp: unfortunately we would be at the mercy of waiting for agony to spread before we could go full out on burst, leaving us in the same ramp situation as now.
- Knowing blizz, they would add some sort of probability component to the spread (since god forbid we cant just have simple spreading mechanism), and therefore rng would probably be a big factor.
- It may lead to aff being funneled into being like demo where its good at stacked cleave and thats it.
- However, i do think you are onto something. Locks have this terrible thing of being 2x/3x taxed for every spell, or its hindered by manual dotting on one end or putting up with the terribad ground targetted, clunky vile taint on the other. I dont think this needs to be the case for everything, instead there are certainly some qol and modernization as well as the push for better moblization that should not cost anything.
But tell that to the 1%.
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1: The talent “Relinquished” would work for agony spread to generate shards.
2: agony spread could just auto spread instantly to all surrounding aggroed mobs maybe even spread it’s stack and timer too, not to mention the “Volatile Agony” talent which would help provide aoe when reapplying
3+4: is just speculation, as is the whole idea really so anything is possible
I think if I have to chain case my Seed of Corruption on something I should be able to just cast 1 agony on the same target after to help detonate and spread both AOE. It’s not like I have destro with 2 different tergeting options for Rain of Fire AOE which is instant cast as long as you have shards.
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Devs: we hear you loud and clear. Drain life damage buffed by 0.1%. 
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- I mean, its an interesting point. Having seed act like dk’s “Blood Boil,” so you apply Agony on one target then hit seed and when it explodes it spreads agony to all the other targets. The issue i have with that is 1. Still having to manually dot in aoe situations is very counter-productive. 2. SoC. Blizz has destroyed it. Its cast time is too long. It costs a shard. Its explosion area is too small. It does basically no dmg. To make such a thing work they would have to remove the shard cost and decrease the cast time to 1 sec, and increase its explosive radius to that of vile taint. Although, they should do it anyways because 2x/3x taxed spells is one of warlocks biggest issues.
- There was something that came across my brain the other day… why dont they just lower the cd of Vile Taint to 10 seconds and give it a choice node like rof and let it be cast on the target instead of forcing players to use the ground target thing. It would act just like a ranged blood boil, it would substantially help ramp, paired with a fixed SoC it would really help with getting dots out, and it would be wayyyy less clunky. Make it insta or 1 sec cast, no shard cost.
At this point, might as well just delete taint and make soc the dot spreader. Feels bad we have several aoe dot spreader each for a single dot, i mean how bad is the design behind this idea, it makes no sense.
Also, UA should have no target caps and should be spread with seed too. The dot itself is comparable to sp’s VT and it’s functionality with rapture isn’t great for ST.
In fact, i don’t think rapture should be our best st spender. Why is oblivion even there anyway? It’s like they didn’t have enough time to finish lock so they kept a placeholder and never looked back.
Imo haunt should have no cd , be instant and cost 1 shard. It’s the closest and best ST only spell we have. It buffs damage on the primary target and can be tuned around it being better than rapture when it’s sub 2 targets. Adding it to our mastery would also go a long way.
Sorry you will get no modernizations. You will spread every dot 1 by 1 and like it /s.
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I am totally on board with what you are saying about soc, ive been on the “fix” soc train for awhile. Unfortunately, the 1% hates it because they think it “dumbs down” the spec too much. Do remind yourself they are just as antiquated as the specs they play.
I fear, and knowing blizz it is legit, if they add agony to soc they would bring the hammer and make it a 2.5 second cast, 3 shards, 30 sec cd, bc god forbid warlocks become modernized and keep up with every pull. This is why if you keep it seperate it doesnt justify blizz overtaxing spells.
UA should be spreadable i think, but in a cleaveable situation (up to 3 targets). However with its cast time it would be very difficult to take full advantage of its use. You might only get 1 or 2 MR b4 having to renew dots after getting everything out, and thats a major problem with the spec atm in general outside of eye cds.
I do think we should have 1 spender for st and 1 for aoe. They could rework oblivion to make it to a spender st. Haunt could be one as well. MR could be aoe one. The difference between the two is that MR would increase the duration of dots on targets by .5 secs up to 30 secs. That would greatly help with having to renew dots all the time in aoe situations. St spenders wouldnt do that.
I mean, these are just small fixes. Blizz just n33ds to quit spending money and time on making raid environments and tier sets for warlocks making them look better than they rly are and use the resources to just break apart each spec and class tree down piece by piece and modernize the entire thing. It rly shojldnt even look like the same class when they ar we done with it bc of how antiquated things are atm.
But they wont.
It just makes no sense that the class is so heavily taxed on things that simple straight forward or ease of use is considered “too much” or blasphemous.
Imo a lot of warlock mains secretly want to suffer just to justify their choice of being on a “hard class” so to speak.
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Well, ya. They dervive their self worth from playing the “hard” class, when in reality, they are just making their own lives harder. Others in wow dont care or wont recognize that “status” and just wont invite to m+ or raid pugs. They feel exclusive but in reality it just builds walls around the possibilities to having fun and not needing to make excuses for their classes.
Its like the wow version of victimhood.