VT just needs to apply agony/corruption/SL just like SC does.
SL needs to remain because aff would be mind numbingly boring if it didnt.
They need to cook⌠they need to cook hard.
Anyway, hero tree is not bad.
What we talking about is spec itself, cook hard⌠Drain, Dots and fun.
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So you would prune Corruption and Seed of corruption entirely, make agony stronger, but take away our ability to maintain stacks on agony in aoe situations, which is already a pain point for Affliction, with having to individually tab target to refresh while waiting for vile taint to come off cd, and you want even that to not extend, thus losing stacks.
Then we have the issue of how wither would turn agony into wither which has its own stacking mechanic and offshoot features.
I am really not seeing how this iteration of affliction would be enjoyable or have a damage profile fitting with the current design of the game. It would take time to get damage up in, say an aoe situation in keys, but then just be gone, which would feel very unrewarding. Not to mention the additional tuning that weâd need for rapture value losing corruption as a dot. And if weâre looking to cut a dot, Siphon Life seems like a much better fit for the chopping block.
To your point, yes corruption is kind of pointless aside from rapture scaling, however thatâs kind of exactly what this hero tree does for Affliction, it turns corruption into something with some value.
Thats what happens when people dont hit level 70 and do content where it matters
Honestly some of Hellcaller seems like it would at least make Aff better in faster-dying content, even if itâs still not as good as other options.
Hatefury ritual seems cumbersome in longer fights, but in lower keys where things die fast anyway, it can go a long way. Combine that with malevolence forcing blackened souls means you can get damage out a lot faster than you can right now.
Hellcaller overall seems to have a big focus on sustained damage beyond that, so it should even stay relevant as you get into higher content too.
Overall seems like a good tree to me. Mark of Xavius could stand to be simplified.
âBetterâ
Dot classes still do ticking damage so while it may be better I dont see it being good just because of the fact the adds will die too fast.
I think it will make affliction good. Its all based on tuning in the long run
Are the people doing the content where it matters in the replies with us? Not in my quote, apparently.
Does no good for your points to be outright dismissive like that.
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Youâre not wrong but at the same time I guess I just donât care about being bad at keys youâre going to +3 anyway.
If these talents can make Aff better at fights with frequent adds, thatâll be something else. This tree seems to do little against short-lived mobs, but gets better as enemy lifespan increases.
It might just stay that Aff stays a bad pick for those scenarios, or soul harvester brings something new to the table.
Yes⌠go big⌠go outside box⌠break all the walls⌠as since very long no one takes Affliction seriously. Affliction is unplayable in M+ since BFA⌠I would let all go if it would help.
Agony is not pain point of Affliction. Pain point is only that you need to maintain it by hand and itâs doing meh result in compression to effort you put. If maintaining it by hand would BLAST, your pants would be brown by excitement 
You will never see Vile Taint cd so low to refresh all Agonies at ones, why?
It was already it beta and they moved anyway from it⌠why?
It would be too much⌠VT, UA, Seed x6, VT, UA, Seed x6, VT, UA, Seed x6, VT, UA, Seed x6.
No⌠just give use Wither instead of Agony and Corruption. Tune it. Simple.
They wanna have by-hand-maintainable dot? Make it strong, make it worth effort you put in.
To be honest dot maintenance of Agony, UA, Corruption, Siphon Life playstyle is nothing new and was already in TBC. No rocket science there.
Simple math⌠Malefic Rapture and Darkglare should be anyway capped at fix amount of dots. And not doing it since Shadowlands still keeps Afflicion so unbalance M+ vs Raid.
Think big steps, Affliction problems are too big for taking small steps⌠there is nothing special in Affliction design right now which could not be ripped out. Best part of it is that in current talent tree design we can have UA / MR / Seed enjoys happy as everyone can have their own version of Affliction Warlock.
Neither do I. I am just commenting about the ones that do.
The issue I worry about if Aff is too good at council type fights and its ST gets nerfed
Wanted to share an interesting thoughts I had about âCull the Weakâ specifically, and how it carries some potential implications for Afflictionâs AOE rotation.
Cull the Weak wants us to re-apply wither in the pandemic window to get 3 free stacks, but Afflictionâs current AOE approach (seed spam) would prevent this, as it would constantly re-apply Wither. From this, I see two possible outcomes:
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We take âHatefury Ritualsâ in AOE, reducing Witherâs duration from 18s to 9s, allowing us to still take advantage of âCull the Weakâ if we somehow wait 9s in between seeds. This makes me think that they could be trying to push us towards using Rapture a bit more in AOE, since Malevolence also only buffs Rapture and not Seed. This new approach of using Rapture more in AOE and just using seed to re-apply Wither would require huge changes to our current skill tree too, if thatâs really the direction things are going.
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âCull the Weakâ is simply a dead perk on Affliction in AOE, as whatever value it adds wonât be worth interrupting the seed spam. This would be disappointing given that we have to take it, and would make Hellcaller 1 node weaker than every other Hero Tree in AOE settings. This is the more likely outcome, and hopefully means something will be changed to make it support Affliction if seed spam is still our AOE rotation in 11.0.
Anyways, Iâm probably over-analyzing this, but wanted to share it with everyone.
This all just feels extremely dated. Again, the damage profile this would bring with no upfront damage, and a stacking dot that you have no way to aoe refresh sounds miserable.
I do not know if there is something that is getting mixed up in communication here, but I donât see this playing well, or being received well by anyone but you. And I assume if you got it youâd be over the moon until you played it.
I will agree affliction needs a rework, but I am framing a lot of my assumptions/preferences within this thread on the basis that it is not receiving one, or at least not a major one, as we have no evidence to support that. There will be changes as there always are, but they could opt to just tune and shuffle some talents around. Even if there was a major rework, I do not think what you are laying out is the path to follow.
It is also confusing that youâre talking about getting rid of/rolling dots into one, then in the same breath tell me that maintaining multiple dots has been around since tbc and seem to advocate for it. These statements are contradictory.
Additionally the playstyle you seem to promote is tab target dot application (Either one that does several things or applying multiple with no easy way to spread the same dot to several and maintain them) makes the main crux of the spec dot management. Which would lead to a pretty awful damage profile for the way the game is currently designed (Unless your proposed god dot is wildly overtuned). Additionally this is not the way I think most would want to play the spec, a simplified method of setting up and maintaining dots so you have more time spent doing something with them while they are active instead of tab target reapplying constantly would probably be much more enjoyable.
Iâm sorry, but this needs to be redesigned and re-conceptualized. Each hero talent tree bridges two specs but one seems to have the dominant fantasy. Diabolist merges destro and demo with the latter having the dominant fantasy. By logic, we then assume Soul Harvester will be the dominant aff fantasy leaving Hellcaller to be the dominant Destro fantasy. For Hellcaller, DoT management and buffing immolate is simply not the core fantasy for Destro, the glass cannon spec. Please, please change this completely.
As a side note, I really donât understand the Nelf adjacent fantasy being forced here with the Satyrs. Who here is aware of the renowned âwarlocksâ Xavius (the Nightmare Lord?), Perothâarn and Xalan? I donât mind that we are acknowledging Satyrs again but when we saw them in the Legion expansion they were serving the Nightmare and not the Legion directly. It doesnât really feel like core warlock fantasy - names like Sargeras, Guldan, Archimonde, Kiljaeden, Jaraxxus, Helânurath (Xoroth) etc. should be mentioned far more.
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Defensives from the lens of a PVP warlock:
Can we please come up with something other than a 10% shield when using a HS or 30% heal after using unending resolve.
These are really good early game but lose value rapidly as dampening ramps up.
Note: Iâm sure PVE warlocks arenât super thrilled about these either, they would prefer something they can use proactively.
- Perhaps changes to Burning Rush, so it is an option in PVP. e.g. can cast on the move when burning rush is active. Burning rush off GCD.
- Activated Nether Protection in some form that helps a lock against melee train
- Instant Shadow Fury, Uncapped Howl of Terror.
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There are other solutions to this. MR just needs to be replaced with a single target spender, so we have a clear distinction between single target and aoe spenders. Literally what shadowpriests have now is just a more modern version of half of the solution we had before, which is having a specific dot be a spender and let it stack some amount.
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None that are any good.
The issue for aoe is needing a shadowcrash clone that applies our dots.
MR is their tuning nob with FM to adjust the difference between council and st
Shadow has a single spender to handle both single target and aoe, and it works pretty well for them. Removing rapture would just make things like blackened soul from Hellcaller worse for Aff. Why do you want that?
I suspect Cull the Weak is mostly a bonus for spamming Wither while moving - something that both Aff and Destro donât have a great answer to at the moment.
I would be surprised if blackened soul is strong enough that youâd ever take these aoe implications as something to even worry about.
I think people are too focused on Wither being a dot and not on Blackened Soul being a means of buffing direct damage spells. Wither slowly decaying a target fits Aff, and for Destro, youâre pumping a target so full of corruptive shadowflame that it burns them from the inside out.
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Yep, itâs mixed up in communication here.
In the end there are many solutions to solve any problem which are hard to put in here on the âpaperâ. I think I putted my main points in the summary of first post.
By sad it does not all matter, as we are not designers here and every people have own version of Affliction. The master piece would be to cook them all in one pod (talent tree).
As and outro (and this is mine opinion and I donât care how to bake it into game) is that Affliction is the Soulmaster, managing the powerful dot or dots⌠and drains⌠as talent description says. Do I ask about tab targeting? Maybe, as one of possible playstyles. Not every class need to play equal and not need be. We will not see Shadow playstyle in themes of Balance and Affliction also, what would be point to have separate class then.
All I care is not to be forced to play Seed spam and have good second option to play with.
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We have Seed of Corruption and Vile Taint, these things can be tuned better, but we have it.
It literally doesnât thought? Sure, if it was removed and not replaced with anything it would be an issue for a tree I think should be fully reworked anyways, but presumably rather than deleting rapture theyâd replace it with a different sort of spenderâŚ
Point out where I said the person canât give feedback, all I originally did was point out that I found it odd to pick a pure dps spec and then not use the other two specs when theyâre clearly better. You came in like a frothing lemming to try and tell me why my opinion was wrong. Iâll let you try and figure out why thatâs stupid.
Or better, quit creating straw mans you can argue against. Itâs childish.