Absolutely, the current Shadow Bolt is by far the worst new animation. It’s ludicrously bad. It desperately needs to be changed.
2 Likes
Was it changed today?
Edit: …I don’t see anything different on the PTR, and the Shadow Bolt looks like it has since it’s last update, which I personally like. So I guess we’ll have to chalk this up to a matter of taste Theo.
Wither is 50-70% of your damage in aoe and ticks when malevolenced for more then buffed mortal strikes do. It is your top damage single target by A LOT and scales the same each target, you 100% want to be seeding to apply wither to your targets.
2 Likes
I know that probably devs won’t read this. but.
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We need a refresh on warlock CC kit, it works really well on PVP, but in m+ is terrible having to cast Shadowfury to AoE Stop, and and having to Choose between Mortal Coil/HoT is a no brainer.
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Healthstone with current tuning is not even good enough as Druid/SP offheals for a party (Maybe Healthstones should add a shield or a HoT after use?).
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Demonology is also too punished for being forced to stay with only one pet, so it’s impossible to bring other utilities like purge, or Interrupts that dont stun the target.
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Affliction still have problems when applying curses when playing with Vile Taint.
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Affliction Dot Refresh/Timings still a major concern
Thanks you! 
7 Likes
The new deathcoil animation shoul’ve been given to shadowbolt tbh.
To those that haven’t seen it yet, it’s basically an updated version of what old shadowbolt looked like, with the big skull projectile. Though it has a swirly and green effect which is rather nice tbh.
3 Likes
That’s a good point: anything would be better than the animation we have right now, frankly.
Hellcaller Destro AoE feels bad. You’re forced to take cataclysm, which puts your main AoE and essentially your hero identity on a 30 second CD, and it makes rain of fire both weaker and more expensive. Meanwhile Aff can spread wither with SoCo any time they want. Can Rain of Fire somehow factor into wither spreading so demo can take Inferno (or bake inferno into RoF)?
Aff feels good with exception of taint cd … soul rot cd should also be lowered.
Drain life needs a buff after the removal of ID.
Shard generation needs to be looked at it seems a bit low overall.
Sorry, meant destruction
I’ve tested affl in last m+ testing, still need to testing in the second test for m+.
I’ve been playing affl for the last two seasons in DF, I’d like to share some points on the warlock talent tree rework and hero talents.
Warlock:
- The rework on capstone talents made them really interesting in both trees affliction and warlock, Pact of Gluttony give us an awesome survivability resource. Soul conduit fells like it need some buffs just 5% fell a little weak for a capstone. I still think that Soulburn could instant cast Soulstone it would bring a lot of quality of life for warlocks in m+ environment.
- Soul link increasing to 2 points giving the same values the actual one is kinda tough, there are some 1 points in upper rows that could be interesting to have in your kit.
- Swift Artifice made our bress way better than the bres in DF.
- Demonic Tactis was a good addition for affliction Specially with Maleditiction and Contagion, it really gave our DoTs a good damage, it fells like bring our identity back with some adjustments. It fells really good having our dots keeping our dps specially while we need to avoid mechanics.
- Fiedish Stride moving for 1 point is really good for our mobility, thank you for that.
Affliction
- The reduction points cost for the utility of seed of corruption is a pretty incredible addiction.
- The redesign for Kindled Malice giving our corruption more damage helped a lot bring the identity of the spec doing DoTs damage, thank you for this.
- The rework for Siphon Life give us a good quality of life, specially cuz actually there is no way to keep it in aoe situations applying 1 by 1.
- Volatily agony gave us a good damage boost for renewing our dots before they expire.
- The possibility to play as an affliction with shadow bolt as the filler spell is incredible specially with nightfall procs, Ravenous Afflictions and Cunning Cruelty.
- Relinquished is a good addiction for affliction, but in some single target encounters I’ve seen myself running out of souls shards. Maybe a review in agony proc change could improve this for the spec.
- Redesign in Malevolent Visionary really improved how using dark glare a heavy CD fells.
- Unstable affliction felt a bit weaker, maybe with the old version of Perpetual Unstability could give us the soul shard generation for single target encounters.
- All the talents in the 9th row really looks interesting, nice job.
Soul Harvester:
- The colors used in the whole concept of this hero talents is pretty cool looking.
- Demonic Soul has an amazing animation, something that is missing for affliction thank you.
- Soul of anathema damage for affliction felt a little weak specially for a hero talent, note that I’ve played after the 50% damage reduction.
- I really think Succulent Soul should have a better visual feedback in our screen like mages or priests has.
- I’ve missed some curse talent for soul harvester like hellcaller has it would add a lot of utility for soul harvester kit.
Hell Caller:
- Wither is an awesome addition for our damage and bring an interest mechanic with it. Also the colors used for icon is really good the same goes for Malevolence.
- Blackened Soul helps a lot wither in damage profile helping bring DoT spec identity back.
- Curse of the Sathyr is an incredible utility for our kit.
- Malevolence gave us a good offensive CD.
Aditional notes
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I think vile taint could change to 20s cd it would bring a lot of quality of life for affliction warlock in general. Shadow crash for priests applies two of their principal dots with one cast while warlocks needs to expend resources in 2 casts for the same goal. Maybe a redesign in Vile taint applying corruption and curse of agony and his CD changed to 20s could bring huge quality of life for affliction specially in the number of casts we need to do our setup before expending resources.
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The resource generation in single target encounters sometimes fell weird adjustment would be appreciated.
1 Like
Yeah, fair point.
Our AOE spender is Malefic Rapture. Pre-requisite are DoTs.
They could justify 30 secs vile taint in a world where Sow of the Seeds existed.
But now, having dots up is key to AoEing, very similar to Spriests.
Just like Shadow Crash, we need Vile Taint to keep them agonies up
With the new direction of Malefic Rapture being the AOE spender, blues please reconsider Vile Taint Cooldown.
7 Likes
The Demo talents Foul Mouth (the damage portion), Shadowtouched, and The Houndmaster’s Gambit are all completely nonfunctional. They do not modify damage at all. It has been another patch so I am reporting this again, so that when TWW launches and they still have not fixed this no one can say it was not reported. I have submitted bug reports in game each patch it is not fixed as well.
Anyone else worried about how short wither gets without absolute corruption?
Having to constantly refresh a 14 sec dot on single target is such a pain.
At this point it’s almost mandatory going absolute for both aoe and st.
1 Like
Soul Harvester Changes Feedback.
1 - A Cap of 4 Succulent Souls sounds a bit arbitrary when Soul Shards themselves go to 5.
2 - On Hand of Guldan, Succulent Souls never offer the full value (+1% wild imp and shard discount) it only offers 1 or the other.
3 Shard HOG + Succulent: 1 shard discount, deals damage of a 3-shard hog, costs 2 shards. (so you have shard discount)
2 Shard HOG + Succulent, deals damage of a 2-shard HOG, costs 2 shards, summon 3 imps. (so it summon extra imp but no discount)
1 Shard HOG + Succulent, deal damage of 1-shard hog, costs 1 shard, summon 2 imps. (summons extra imp but no discount)
Only the 0 shard+succulent hog offers both, allowing a 0-shard hog, who summons 1 imp and deals damage of a 1-shard hog.
3 - The Passive effect for Shadow of Death is nice, but the inner mechanics and how the “clock” for the 30s wors is a bit odd given it does not care about staying 30s in combat like the tooltip says, but being in combat when it “ticks”
2 Likes
I just want to know why they are so unwilling to give us Cataclysm that isn’t on a choice node, especially with how Hellcaller is all about Immolate/Wither
3 Likes
Soul Harvester Feedback
I just wanted to also add, that as affliction, it feels pretty bad to have a succulent soul proc overlap with a tormented crescendo (free rapture) at the moment. I know that damage is increased for rapture, and has the additional bonuses with the demonic soul, but the rotational change by making rapture free just feels bad when I munch a crescendo proc.
Maybe having some form of protection for succulent soul if the player has a stack of crescendo would be helpful.
On the other hand, it feels particularly strange to cap soul shards after using soul rot. I’m assuming this will even out once we figure out when it’s optimal to dump shards, but it just feels like something is missing, and I’m not sure what.
EDIT:
oh! I also forgot something –
Howl of terror being target-capped is the most ludicrously bad feeling talent I’ve played with in combination with the new affix in mythic + on beta at the moment. Why is this even a thing, does it need to be capped for some strange reason?
7 Likes
Good catch bro!
No, shouldn’t be capped in PVP either. I have a feeling pvp is shifting from arenas to bgs in tww. And this outdated cap needs to be gone.
5 Likes
After messing with all the new stuff, i have a few feedback points for each spec going into TWW
Affliction - Aff feels really good play style wise besides one factor. Vile Taint coming off cool down 5 seconds before my agonies drop feels really bad and i think infirmity is a great spot to fix this issue. Instead of the stack application i think it should increase its duration of agony when applied by Vile Taint. In addition to that, the middle area of affs tree feels very constricted on choice. I would love to see the 2 point nodes go away just like demo and destro, if you dont like the infirmity idea maybe add a talent for agony duration increase as well.
Destro - I love the way destro feels rn with all the abilities we can use now. However, i still think cataclysm and inferno need to be seperated. I am not a fan of the Improved Chaos Bolt talent being in that part of the tree. Dimensional Ripper should go back to being with immolate/wither instead of incinerate. Making previous dev notes about rifts adding movement but making the refunds applied to a stationary ability doesnt make sense. I would love to see Diabolic Embers become baseline as it just feels like it should be apart of destros kit in retail.
Demo - The first thing that should change about demo needs to be the demonic core changes made to dogs. I understand you want to tone down our core economy but RNG feels awful when it comes to basic rotation, especially when its not good RNG. Good RNG right now just makes demo feel fluent and regular when bad makes demo become shadowbolt spam and clunky. I personally am not a fan of tab targeting dooms around and i really dont like the chance to spawn a doomguard. I think tyrant should grant 5 soul shards as it feel pretty bad to use tyrant then go into shadowbolting.
Class Tree - The 2 point nodes in our class tree need to go. You added some cool stuff to our class tree but we cant take those talents cause we have no extras to use. We have to take all the defensive/offensive nodes and that leaves use with no points for talents like darkfury, banish, and swift artifice. Also soul conduit being 5% is not good especially for a capstone, i believe in shadowlands it was a 15% chance and i would love to see that come back.
11 Likes
also add flamerift to destro, either to rifts baseline or ripper, the animation for flamerift is too cool not be in the game
7 Likes
Affliction Warlock Feedback
- Affliction ST Soul Shard generation needs a slight increase, only slightly.
- Darkglare please just remove it.
- Vile Taint should be brought down to 20 sec. (This is huge QoL)
- Drain Soul is in a rough spot since you made Deaths Embrace favour Shadow Bolt stacking it twice as fast especially with Nightfall procs making it instant and modifiers. Drain Soul needs more to compete.
- Grimoire of Sacrifice I cannot see ever be picked vs Summoner’s Embrace if left as is. It’s just a loss picking GoSac.
Fix this and Affliction is going to be great. 
1 Like