Does Blizzard actually hear us?

Classes Warlock
1

Affliction is crippled in all content except scripted raid fights.

It’s can’t dps fast enough for mythics

It can’t setup it’s damage fast enough for PvP

Has almost no survivability

Sucks at Target swapping

Has no aoe

Spends all it’s time refreshing dots in a futile attempt to mimic aoe that other specs can do passively

Single target damage is trash except for darkglare window

Entire burst setup can be countered by a single dispel (that won’t even harm the dispeller enough to discourage the dispel)

The ONLY thing affliction can do is raid dps. The spec is awful. Why did you guys think a dot spec would be enjoyable as a burst spec? If we wanted burst we’d play destro.

Do any of you developers even play a warlock? Do you know how terrible the spec feels in actual play?

Try it in a mythic, I bet you’ll hate it. Hate the feeling of frantically trying to get dots up, and when you finally tab to the last target left to dot, they’re all dead because every other spec can aoe.

Or when a boss fight calls for a target swap, but you know it’s just a waste of your time because the add will die before you can do any meaningful damage. So you don’t swap, but get pointed out for “ignoring mechanics”. So the next time, you do swap, and do a measly 5k dps to the add because it died too fast. You also lost dps on the boss because you were busy dotting a different target

Seriously, one of you devs just play the spec. You’ll understand what I mean. It feels terrible. The damage is there, but the way the damage is achieved sucks.

Just because our damage is good (in raids), does not mean the spec is good.

39 Likes
2

ya affliction scores in top 5 worst designed specs in bfa.

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3

They rushed BFA (thanks Activision), if they didn’t rush it Affliction would be in a far better state.

If I where to say what the problem is, its the lack of effective ramp along with over-reliance on Bursting with UA. What Affliction needs is a way to increase its overall damage either quickly with a lower upper limit or slowly for a higher upper limit.

I’d suggest turning Unstable Affliction into a normal dot instead of a burst dot and make some other method of burst damage; One possibility would to make Haunt or some other skill speed up tick speed. In either case I think UA should be recombined back into 1 dot, and have the dispel damage capped for clarity’s sake.

Also I think the mastery needs a rework, never mind its more valuable than your primary stat according to sims. It shouldn’t be a %-damage increase mastery, it should add kit interactions.

A new Mastery idea:
Entropy Seeds- Whenever Corruption deals damage there is a x% (increased by mastery) chance to spawn a seed of entropy within 12 yards of the afflicted target. These seeds apply extra effects depending on how they are harvested.

Using Seed of Corruption causes all Seeds of Entropy within 12 yards to detonate dealing shadow damage to all targets with 12 yards.

Using Unstable Affiction will absorb all nearby seeds increasing damage dealt by 10% and extending Unstable Affliction’s duration by 3 seconds for each seed absorbed.

Looking at Affliction’s talents at starting at level 90:
-Haunt Changed to increase tick speed of all dots for a short time upon being cast, resets on kills. This would make it useful for short term burst with some potent reset power for things like mythics.

-Shadowy Embrace reworked to increase all periodic damage dealt by 1% for 30 seconds, stacking up to 30 times, from shadow bolt casts . This would add long term ramp power, but not be ideal in shorter fights.

-Grimore of Sacrifice damage buffed by your mastery. This way its an all around pick when you have a little of both.

Looking at level 15 talents:
-I’d argue making Deathbolt baseline, its such a strong talent that crowds out other options. Then having another talent that modifies deathbolt to maybe have a cooldown reduction from casting shadowbolt.

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4

It’s the worst in my opinion. I sit and think “What spec has a worse design than affliction?” And I literally can’t think of one.

What spec has so many drawbacks, and only 1 strength?

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5

Blizzard cannot hear you because Activision bought them out

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6

Activision being brought up is quickly becoming the Godwin’s Law of the wow forums.

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7

I don’t even play afflic but I think Seed of Corruption should be insta-cast. This would help tremendously with AoE, considering Corruption has no purpose anymore and Seed of Corruption costs a soul shard. It takes a day and a half to cast.

14 Likes
8

Umm arcane mages say hi.

And I hate to be the one to bring this to your attention, but affliction does not “suck.” It’s pretty much been in the top 5 dps since Nighthold. The reason why many warlocks think it’s bad now is because you were utterly spoiled by Legion affliction where it was a “do anything” spec; oh and my primary alt is a warlock who plays both demo and affliction in BFA so I’m not just talking out my rear here. Affliction was God-mode for st, cleave, aoe and in pvp in Legion. Now you’re not and suddenly the spec is terrible even though it’s remained in the top 5 on almost every boss for like what, 2.5 years? Oh and as for “no survivability,” really? Life drain is still way stronger than any heals I have as a mage, at will summoning of health stones, a 40% reduced damage cd, gate, teleport, a tanking pet… Again you’re coming at this from the Legion version where affliction was brokenly op.

I understand the frustration of being pretty bad in dungeons and pvp. But when you say the spec as a whole sucks and every single dps log/ranking shows them around the top 5, it’s hard to feel sympathy. Yes you need some fixes for dungeons and pvp, but there are plenty of classes in worse shape at the moment.

1 Like
9

It is garbage bottom tier in everything except raid content, where it is surprisingly top tier. The spec is total garbage in everything else due to the severe lack of AoE and the incredibly high ramp up time along with terrible survivability in pvp.

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10

So what is it you locks would like? Mediocre at everything? Great at pvp but crap in raids? THE spec for mythic+ but meh at everything else?

I’m legitimately asking here, not trolling; just please don’t say “we want Legion affliction back.”

1 Like
11

I feel like 3 spec DPS classes should always have a high tier option for all content. I’m not asking to be FOTM in everything like we were back in late Legion, I just want Blizzard to fix m+ balancing and make Warlocks in general a better choice for that content.

3 Likes
12

Agree with you 100%. Unfortunately as a mage, who has pretty much 3 meh to yikes specs in BFDA, it’s hard to sympathize when all 3 specs of lock were top 10, demo took a hit but aff and destro are still rolling. I do agree whole-heartedly that affliction does need to be better at things like questing and dungeons.

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Yeah, I’d like all the pure dps classes to be near the spot where Rogues are in currently, maybe a little weaker on the m+ end. Just doesn’t feel right having 2 of our specs be completely unviable for m+ and only 1 bottom of mid tier spec. Though there are some people that overestimate the state of Warlock on these forums, they aren’t used to not being top tier in one piece of content.

14

Well the issue with rogues right now isn’t even dps, it’s dps combined with insanely good utility. Rogues are all but mandatory for high keys and it’s rare to find even a 10 or 11 that’s not asking for a rogue.

The core issue with dps though is something they failed to learn in Legion: namely that you shouldn’t be “balancing” specs based on weather or not they have a specific piece of gear or the absolute perfect combination of traits. We went from Legiondaries to the NL crucible to azerite gear and now we’re getting neck traits which will probably be rng lottery 4.0. Traits and unique gear should let you do something different to spice up the rotation, not make or break your dps.

2 Likes
15

Blizzard usually balances specs around information from higher-end players who have all their BiS pieces and know how to play the class to its near highest potential, which I find to actually be a good thing. If they balance around more casual players, which first off would be a harder thing to gather information for, they would have a completely messed up class balance for higher level play.

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who are you and what have you done with tiggles

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You obviously didn’t read what I posted. I’m not talking about afflictions numbers. You seem to be in the same mindset as the devs. You think that high numbers = good spec.

I’m talking about the way the spec FEELS

It’s clunky, doesn’t flow, has no tools to compete unless the fight is 1 target, and has no survivability for PvP.

Again, not talking about it’s dps. I’m talking about the way it functions to achieve that dps

You clearly don’t pvp either…

Life drain is only worth while healing if you run ID, and good luck surviving in PvP long enough to get 50 stacks.

Resolve is a 3 min CD, much longer than any burst CD, meaning next go, you’re dead.

Healthstones can only be used once per combat. Meaning they won’t start their CD until you leave combat. So about 1 use per boss fight, and maybe 2 uses in arena, but no good team will let you leave combat.

You as a mage don’t have heals because you have 3 blinks, nova, and a spammable slow… Different classes use different tactics to survive. Affliction isn’t tanky like destro, not mobile like a mage, and has low to slightly average self healing. Any hybrid has better self heals (even mages if you consider temp shield)

Port is good I’ll admit, but we have to spec into mobility. We get 0 baseline

No I’m not. I’m looking at it as a spec in BFA. It lacks the tools to function in any scenario that isn’t a raid. If it’s not a scripted, single target fight, affliction will fail and barely be viable when compared to other specs

Again only in raids. Did you look at top mythics? How about PvP ladders? RBGs? Even random BGs affliction is rare because it doesn’t work. It does not have the tools to function outside of a raid

18

  1. My honor level is 258 so I think that qualifies as having some pvp done.

  2. Affliction “has no tools to compete unless the fight is 1 target?” Are you serious? Aff is the KING of multi-target sustained, even spriests cry at that.

  3. I wasn’t referring to surviving in pvp and you definitely could use help there, but you need to qualify what and where in your posts. Saying you have no survivability at all as a blanket statement isn’t accurate.

  4. Again with the “scripted single target fight” fallacy. Do you even play the spec in raids? Aff is amazing on multi-target fights, especially in BFDA.

I’m not saying there aren’t issues with the spec. But you making factually incorrect claims and blanket statements that don’t apply in every scenario doesn’t help make your case. I play affliction, I get the issues. But given how bad balance is in pve and pvp and Blizzard’s reluctance to do much of anything approaching fixing it, I’d be ok with being top 5 in raids for over 2 years running and just keep my fingers crossed it gets changed. It could be worse.

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I apologize, I should’ve worded it better. I was referring to boss fights specifically, and how they’re 90% single target, or 3 targets at most. Affliction is only good if the target count is low, and they live a long time

When you get into aoe with 6+ targets, affliction starts to fail. I think part of it is too many things to manage, which is fun in boss fights, but a nightmare in dungeons.

I agree the spec is on top in damage, but overall I don’t think it’s well designed. It’s clunky outside of it’s one niche, and doesn’t function well at all.

I’d trade top dps in a heart beat if it meant being fun and viable in all aspects of the game

2 Likes
20

the spec is good, you’re not.

EDIT: SOULSTONE UR GOT DAM SELF IN PVP FUH DE LOV OF JESUS

2 Likes