Make haunt and ua instant cast. Make seed 1 second cast. Make seed apply haunt to original target
That doesnât really fix anything. The problem with Haunt and UA isnt that they have cast times. The problem with seed has less to do with cast time and more to to with radius of effect and being functionally useless once corruption is applied.
Jumping back in to rehone in on some feedback:
- Affliction doesnât feel like itâs hitting its targeted thematic of the drain and dot spec. We lost a major component of âdrainâ with inevitable demise being cut this expansion, and our dots outside of wither feel less impactful (especially unstable affliction). The split between shadow bolt and drain soul also weakens this impact since you can choose to play a âdrainâ spec without a single drain.
- Affliction is becoming too homogenized with the other two specs by leaning too heavily into burst damage through soul rot windows â thereâs no cool distinction between the specs if they all have 1 - 2m burst profiles. Warlocks are lacking a solid high throughput, low variance spec at the moment, and it might be cool to lean more into removing our 1m burst cycle (or at least having the ability to choose).
- Quality of life for mythic+ is lower compared to the other two warlock specs. Volatile agony doesnât feel like the best solution to forcing us to refresh agony manually. On the other hand, Vile taint does feel good to press, and feels overly punishing by having a longer cooldown than the refresh window.
- Rapture doesnât feel like itâs hitting its thematic of reinforcing dot gameplay. Many times I have to hit rapture without all my dots up because I donât have enough time to correctly setup (usually outside of soul rot windows). In single target it feels better, but still feels like it falls flat as a key component of our toolkit â it feels like our dots serve a purpose instead of being the purpose.
9 Likes
I suspect we are past making any fundamental changes this cycle.
But I want to take a moment to talk about oblivion. Magni spoke in great detail about the dot situation.
Oblivion is supposed to be affs solution for burst or snap damage, to put it frankly it just is not. This button does not feel good to press. Thereâs an enormous opportunity cost in it being a channel, with a 45 second cd, as well as a whopping 2 shard cost.
This ability also does not interact with our mastery. When it introduced I envisioned a rapture drain soul hybrid. What we got is an unfortunately weak to press shard eater. Not only can you not move while you cast it, it doesnât actually âburstâ all that hard considering the shard cost.
First and foremost this capstone should not be locked behind another poorly tuned talent in XG, it could get a connection from FM and may actually find some niche uses if we get some value from this ability from our mastery.
Better ways for this ability to become a reasonable option in various builds in my opinion would be to both add and keep the connection from FM. But perhaps adding subsequent clauses or interactions if itâs possible.
If there are no dots on the new target, add a dot not in place every second or have second. (Agony, corruption/Wither/UA) While doing the damage of the spell tied in with mastery.
If dots are in place, let it consume them on the target or a portion of them to funnel in more damage (Internal combustion esque like destruction). This would compliment the loss of soul swap, while also adding value to the whopping two shard cost and 45 second cd.
Other great suggestions and discussion has already been started, thank you for reading!
3 Likes
I like where u r going with oblivion. With the new tier set we now know that blizzard is not adverse to spreading UA on multiple target.
Why not make a simple change to Oblivion. It applies UA, Agony and Corruption and then does channel dmg as usual (without removing original ua). Then it would serve itâs true purpose as on-demand target swap and burst.
I get the fantasy behind draining, but just worried, it will make us suck even more when movement is heavy.
2 Likes
ideas for Volatile Agony:
- Spread agony into other targets (giving priority on mobs that doesnât have agony)
- Reduces the CD of vile taint/has a chance to reset the CD (dangerous because it may compromise Soul Rot + Taint combos)
I also believe that affliction needs an improvement on single target damage, or give them a neat utility. For example: while Darkglare is active, targets that have DOTs takes extra % damage from every player. This is a creative change that makes the spec attractive since they are vastly outclassed by both demonology and destruction.
It isnât just Oblivion. Pretty much all of our spec capstones are forgettable trash. All the meat of the spec is located between the middle and just above the capstones, and you can really only take it one of two ways - boosting rapture or boosting dots.
You are absolutely correct. I just wanted to focus on this really cool, hype filled cap stone that just flopped.
âŚ
no changes this week, very fun indeed.
Affliction is currently simming 50% behind fury warriors (top spec) and 25-30% behind the median in single target, really fun!
6 Likes
This was likely the last pre-live tuning pass, the last major one at least.
Get ready for a week three 10% aura buff when the spec is 30% behind.
Hopefully every warlock likes destruction because its likely to be the only viable spec in pve barring some demonology jank someone discovers.
2 Likes
I would like to see a PVP talent that causes Soulburn to increase the range of your spells by 10 yrds for a duration. It feels terrible being the slow kid that has to waddle into range of the opposition just so you can start ramping up with pitiful DoTs.
AND fury got several buffs.
Veteran warlock player for 12 years and WoW player for 14 years. I want to explain what path we should take to revive the class fantasy of the warlock spec known as Affliction. I have no idea whatâs going on a Blizzard HQs but I wish your team would let us players be the think tank for the direction of classes and its specs and you be the master of the numbers.
I primarily want to state what I believe could be the best path going forward. I know we have stated our concerns and reiterated the issues of the spec countless times on the forums which is why I want to give you solutions and not more complaining.
That being saidâŚ
- There is a massive disconnect between the class fantasy/design of affliction with todayâs WoW content. I want to emphasize change to the talent tree first and foremost.
A great way to tackle this problem is by having 3 distinct branches of the affliction tree, in essence, the left side more AoE oriented, the middle, a tiny bit of both AoE and single target, and the right side being more focused on single target only. There are so many different paths and spells we can take but I want to focus on the AoE portion of this because in my opinion, that is the hardest problem to tackle with this spec.
- Left side of the talent tree (AoE focused)
- That side of the tree could focus on buffing the DoTs in a variety of different ways and having spells that spend shards/resources that complement that idea. This could mean several things NOT just buffing the damage of the DoTs. Some fun ideas like DoTs radiating damage to nearby enemies, DoTs that get increased uptime with spells and spells that straight up sound like a fun idea. With a tree like this there will be the need for some changes like possibly MR needing to be a talent on the tree (down to the right) so that you cannot take it if you go down the left side because having MR with these talents would be massively OP.
Examples:
Talent 1- shard regeneration increased by X%
Talent 2- spend 1 shard to increase damage of Agony/Corruption by X%.
Talent 3- spend 1 shard to increase the duration of all dots by 3 seconds.
Talent 4- Crits now give you 0.X% increase DoT damage for the next 3 seconds.
Talent 5- (Gain X talent: takes one shard to use), this talent now makes your dots radiate damage to nearby enemies for X% of spell power for X time.
Talent 6- Agony/corruption now does X% more damage but its duration is shorted to 10 seconds.
Talent 7- All dots now pulse with X damage but the duration of all DoTs is decreased by half.
Talent 8- (Gain UA X talent: cooldown is 20 seconds and takes 3 shards). This talent casts 4 Unstable Afflictions to nearby targets for 8 seconds.
Talent 9- Darkglare now becomes a void God and does X damage for every DoT active Or pulsates the ground for X damage and X seconds recharging soul shards X% faster.
Talent 10- (Gain X talent). You can now cast Agony and Corruption together (in one global).
Talent 11- Soul Rot now becomes a ground aoe for 10 seconds doing X damage(like vile taint) and extends DoTs by 5 seconds while mobs are in the effect.
Talent 12- Gain stacks of Xspell, at 100 stacks your next haunt explodes in a 10 yard radius doing X damage.
Talent 13- Malefic Rupture now turns into Malefic burst (1 minute cooldown and takes 5 shards). All your Dots now explode for X damage and are consumed.
I could go on and on but these are just a few fun ideas for the left side talent tree that focuses on AoE with a DoT emphasis being, Buff DoTs by spending soul shards/resource and things of that nature.
I will leave it at that because this is a huge overhaul for the spec (and will likely never happen) and if I went into anymore detail with how this could be accomplished, I would end up writing 5 more pages and It most likely wonât matter anyway because no Dev will ever see this.
I want to end with this statement with this idea aimed specifically at the Devs. Making a class that is fun and rewarding should be your top priority. Buffing or nerfing damage can always be accomplished later. BringâŚBackâŚWarlockâŚAfflictionâŚFantasy.
Sparky
3 Likes
AoE would be so fun and flashy if we could nightfall Drain soul 4-5 targets at once
2 Likes
Make nightfall drains castable on the move. Burning rush off the GCD and usable when draining.
Edit: And Oblivion
1 Like