After experiencing wither on destro, i wish immolate was instant baseline.
It feels so nice having your trivial dot be instant, why does this relic still have a cast time?
6 Likes
This might be off topic a bit but what do you guys think about the spell lock change that was made at the start of DF?
Initially in the DF beta spell lock was in the general tree, opening up the option to run any pet and retain your interrupt.
Though some voiced their concerns about not having it tied to your pet and something about skill expression.
Now that DF is nearing it’s end, do you guys think that was the right call or should we have gotten our interrupt baseline or in the general tree like every other class?
1 Like
There are cases for both but in general i much prefer the pet interrupt as opposed to it being from the warlock themself. Being able to disrupt without breaking cast is great. I’d be ok with an option, but I’d be opposed to it being taken off the pet entirely.
For me, the ideal solution would be to give every pet spell lock and the other utility option would carry more weight based on the situation. For instance, the Felguard Axe Toss would just become a single target stun and the felguard would gain spell lock too. For non-demo specs, you could then choose between purge, singe, and charm based on the pet, without losing your kick.
One can dream.
5 Likes
This is a small thing regarding the tier set, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen those hands visually display. Both with the PVP and PVE variety.
Affliction Warlock Feedback
Hellcaller
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Shard Starved in M+ - Vile Taint & Seed Corruption costing a shard feels really bad going into a pack with 3 shards let alone if you start with less. If you don’t use UA’s refund aspect properly you can sometimes start a pack with 1 or less shards. This feels extremely clunky. The best way to fix this is to combine Seed of Corruption and Vile Taint into one spell with 15-20 Second Cooldown that costs 1 Shard. This helps solve our button bloat, Setup Time, & parts of shard issues. The other option is to remove Shard cost of both buttons…a more lame way of doing but still helps the major issue.
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Drain Soul/Shadowbolt - Now that drain soul is a dead talent this hurts our shard gen from pack to pack immensely…I personally would like to see drain soul come back as its a staple of Affliction warlocks.
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Vile Taint CD 30s - The way the current cooldown works feels clunky. I would lower the cooldown as it would help the gameplay smooth out.
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Setup Time - The time it takes to start casting Malefic Rapture after being fully dotted up is somewhere along the lines of 10 seconds or more and gets even worse if stacking Shadows Embrace. This is going to be extremely detrimental on the low health mobs or lower M+ in general. On top of that we have zero ability to target swap to a mob that needs to die fast. This is going to limit affliction horrendously in some raids & M+ fights.
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Darkglare - Please make this cooldown good. In its current form I expect many builds to path around this… and that doesn’t feel good at all.
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Aff Tree - Improved Haunt should be baseline in the Haunt node, Row 7 feels very bad and removes a lot of choice out of the capstone talents due to the 2 point nodes. Perpetual Unstability, and Relinquished are very under tuned and quite frankly boring as well. Oblivion feels bad to play with how shard starved we are currently.
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Soul Swap - We need a way to target swap faster… I personally never liked Soul Swap but it at least filled the void aff has. If you cannot design something new & engaging please just bring back Soul Swap.
6 Likes
Disagree here, DS is not dead. This is exactly its use case, to snipe low health mobs to get back shards and be ready for the next pull as well as having execute damage.
That’s where Oblivion comes in imo, this is the ability for fast target swaps. If a dungeon needs fast target swapping, I’d spec Oblivion. It’s a much better tool for that than Soul Swap was.
1 Like
Drain Soul will never be taken in almost any scenario if the current Beta went live. Soul Harvester drain soul is kind of a joke lol. The playstyle is not fun at all. Hellcaller maybe has a place but I doubt it…
The problem with oblivion being used as the Target Swap talent.
Its a 45 second cooldown…While on CD we are just screwed to the max…but also the fact it costs 2 shards just feels bad to play with & the current shard gen being so bad it feels even worse. I agree Oblivion helps with target swapping every 45 seconds but even Soul Swap at 30 second cooldown wasn’t good enough in DF Dungeons
2 Likes
I’m not entirely sure I agree about affliction shard economy atm. I haven’t felt shard starved as either hero talents, and have found that I’m actually capped on shards as soul harvester much more often than I should be. At this point, I’m convinced that succulent souls should do something other than make the shard cost of rapture free and add a small amount of damage. As malakath noted as well, the implementation of the shard reduction is already counter-intuitive for demonology which further reinforces doing something other than giving us a free spender.
For hellcaller, malevolance windows give you infinite crescendo procs in dungeons and make you not use shards for 20s essentially (especially in >5 targets). Unstable affliction sniping is more than enough shard gen imo. I’m actually of the opposite opinion, in that they need to tune down shard gen through hero talent tuning.
Drain soul tuning comes down to movement and execute importance.
I hate to be beating a dead horse here again but putting a movement talent in place of soul conduit would fix 90% of any tuning discussion, while also cleaning up that last remaining major pain point for every warlock spec.
2 Likes
Enthusiastically agreed. Flame Rift is too visually stunning and interesting not to be in the game. Dimensional Rift is in need of further enhancement, as right now it is not very competitive at all. This is a shame, and re-adding Flame Rift would really help, together with making Immolate, rather than Incinerate, have a chance to reset a charge of Dimensional Rift.
Another issue discussed above that I’d like to double down on is Destruction’s comparative lack of burst AoE. We have Cataclysm, but it’s tied to Inferno, which is performing significantly better for non-Hellcaller warlocks. The latter group, though, have to wait 30 sec for Cataclysm to come off CD, and in between cumbersomely dot adds one-by-one. The solution, in my view, is to untie Cataclysm from Inferno and reduce the former’s CD from 30 to 20 (or even 15) sec. It’s just not fun gameplay to press Rain of Fire over and over again without a powerful burst AoE tool thrown in the mix at regular intervals. Fire and Brimstone and Channel Demonfire aren’t enough, either. With Dimensional Rift’s AoE damage (if the talent is selected) being lacklustre at the moment (a buff is needed), the need for Cataclysm to be accessible and more regularly available is even greater.
7 Likes
As much as I’m for having cataclysm as either baseline / in place of pyrogenics, I think there is nothing that discussing inferno or cataclysm contribute to any discussion about burst aoe. Not only would destruction’s “burst” aoe not gain anything by reducing cataclysm’s cooldown --aside from ensuring you can use cataclysm on every pack in lower M+ keys–reducing the cooldown would in turn actually force blizzard to reduce the overall damage contribution of cataclysm in aoe since you use it more often.
I’m not sure what the solution might be, but it might simply be that blizzard does not want destruction to have burst aoe on par with either demonology or affliction, as the player is able to play two other specs that can do more burst aoe if needed. I would assume this would also have something to do with having specific niches for each spec.
My biggest worry is that they won’t hit their target of being able to tune destruction’s sustained aoe (as stated as one of their goals in alpha) in relation to inferno’s new design. They’ll have to tune rain of fire much higher than dragonflight to counteract our inability to spam rain of fire in 4-5+ targets. From a class design standpoint this creates 2 problems:
- Havoc’s niche is slashed as rain of fire becomes the de-facto button to press on 2-3+ targets if you tune it high enough with inferno.
- If rain of fire isn’t tuned to where it is always the play on 2-3+ targets, newer players have to suffer through figuring out when it is more efficient to havoc chaos bolt vs hit rain of fire in these situations. This similarly continues to contribute to the problem of destruction being unintuitive in smaller target numbers, and completely dilutes havoc’s importance to destro’s 2-target niche.
Both of the problems I’ve mentioned above are also why destruction has been overshadowed by other 2-target niche specs like frost mage in later dragonflight tiers when it should be equally competing in these situations due to havoc.
I think if anything, blizzard will have to have a pretty in-depth discussion surrounding how exactly they want destruction aoe to be intuitive for players starting the class or spec for the first time, while tuning aoe expectations for existing players.
bonus
In the past, pretty much all of these issues were fixed with fire and brimstone as our main aoe spender, as it was both intuitive (you ran out of shards, or could tell you were running out of shards in aoe) and havoc remained the most important button to press in less than 3 targets. You also had burst aoe through charred remain chaos bolts (aoe chaos bolt).
4 Likes
This is a fair point, but I do not think it would be truly broken to allow Cataclysm (with its current dmg) to be cast more regularly. Certain other classes and specs have burst AoE that is clearly OP, but left untouched. To me, a spec titled “Destruction” really should have powerful AoE burst. Partially denying it that niche defies the theme of the spec.
You are absolutely right, though, about the old Fire and Brimstone. I profoundly wish they would bring it back on a choice node for those who may not want to play it. Its return would solve a lot of issues and make the spec so much more fun.
4 Likes
yeah, you’re right about cataclysm. Interestingly enough, in the past when it was a 60s cd, it actually hit really hard and felt like an impactful “burst” aoe CD, but we had other options to spread immolate to multiple targets quickly.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the theme of destruction – our animations outside of chaos bolt really lack the former oomph that it had during previous iterations of the spec. Incinerate is barely noticable, channel demonfire doesn’t look or feel like it does that damage that it actually does, and soulfire shoots so fast and is not a unique animation. Somebody higher up in the feedback thread has also mentioned how lame some of the portal animations are in relation to their impact, and that the newer fire portal animation was superior.
I also believe that most of the complaints about animations and thematics can be put on affliction as well, since that spec is probably the lamest and most subpar visual spec in the entire game (elemental shaman comes close). Rapture needs a new animation, idk maybe something cool and unique like a scythe animation instead of a little explosion. Drain soul also uses a very old animation, and shadowbolt looks incredibly lame for how important the designers want it to be to our kit.
7 Likes
Agreed, all very well said (though I honestly like the Dimensional Rift portal animations - the purple one could use more oomph, however). I miss the old Conflagrate animation so much. Now it just feels and looks like a weak fire cracker went off. The old Immolate was vastly superior as well. And Shadow Bolt…literally the worst animation change in the entire game.
1 Like
The issue is Drain Soul may see play at the beginning of an expansion when mobs have more uptime but further down when players gear and mobs, particularly priority mobs that need to be bursted super quick, it makes Drain Soul less and less useful.
More gear, Raids and keys are completed quicker and quicker, limiting the time of Drain Soul especially when trying to Shard Snipe.
Shadow Bolt stacks Deaths Embrace twice as fast, instant cast with Nightfall (mobility is always king regardless of content), and hits like a truck now too.
I’m not saying their may not be scenarios where some raid bosses have fewer mechanics to allow Drain Soul especially for its execute damage but we need to remember that’s only when the target is at 20%. Say the final 30 seconds of a boss. How many Drain Souls would we be casting realistically to make up the difference of essentially getting full effect and mobility/Instant cast of Shadow Bolt which was pumping from the beginning.
I personally think Drain Soul needs a major buff to compensate for its clear downsides.
Why Deaths Embrace stacks quicker on Shadow Bolt is beyond me 
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Yeah I agree that drain soul needs some tuning as well.
EDIT: atm, drain soul is roughly 1.6x a shadowbolt cast but nearly 3x the cast time. This is where the tuning isn’t equal in this regard. If the tuning was closer to 2.5x an improved shadowbolt it would be closer imo. Obviously blizzard has better numbers, and willingness to actually balance SP % coefficients.
Not to mention that shadowbolt volley is also taking shadowbolt damage increases as part of its calculation which further disincentivizes drain soul.
On another note, where did this information about drain soul stacking shadows embrace slower than shadowbolt come from? At this point it’s just straight up misinformation – with 24% haste on beta, shadowbolt has a 1.4s cast with improved shadowbolt. That’s 2.8s + travel time to stack max shadows embrace. Drain soul has a 4s channel and ticks 5 times with no travel time. (4 / 5) x 4 = 3.2s to stack 4 shadows embrace. With travel time taken into account it’s literally the same amount of time to stack, unless you’re standing in melee distance of the boss. This also equals out with nightfall as well, as it would take 1.6s for drain soul and 1.4s + gcd + travel time with shadowbolt.
EDIT: both are fairly equal on movement, as you can currently get 1 tick of drain soul in before you’d have to stop casting shadowbolt (0.8s) if have a habit of clipping casts with shadowbolt. It’s better to clip drain soul than bolt – nightfall clipping with drain soul is a relative issue, especially considering you can instant cast shadowbolt.
3 Likes
FEEDBACK TOWARDS AFFLICTION TALENTS
The Ugly
Too start, i want to say this is not a post begging for buffs, or a statement that affliction is a weak spec, in fact, i believe today test had affliction with good performance.
The Matter of affliction being weak or strong is something to be determined by future tunning and how well its kit synergizes with each encounter.
This feedback is more about concerns in how some talents at the bottom of the spec tree seem to be of very little to almost no impact in regards to overal damage increase while being at the “most expensive/valuable” zone of the talent tree.
- Improved Malefic Rapture: Increases Malefic Rapture damage by 5% and reduce its cast time by 10%.
BUG REPORT: The Cast Time reduction of Improved Malefic Rapture puts MR bellow the GCD, meaning 10% faster casts of MR do not increase the damage.
But beyond this, looking at some combat logs of the Silken Council tested today , Malefic Rapture casts value fluctuated around 20% of the overalll done by affliction warlock with the Hellcaller Hero Talent, and a 5% damage increase would be worth around 1% of the total damage the affliction warlock could do.
Now, at least, you have the argument that its the only path towards a more powerfull talent, as Malefic Touch is worth 3% of your overall damage in the same combat log.
- Relinquished : Agony has 1.1 times the normal chance to generate a soul shard.
Relinquished have a similar situation in that the 10% increase in Soul Shard Generation would end only represent some 5% increase in the number of Malefic Rapture casts, this happens because a great number of the Malefic Raptures happen due to the discount of Tormented Crescendos from the Talent and Seeds of Demise.
Now, just like the above talent, this only represents an 1% overall increase while being in the bottom of the tree, where you need to invest the most points to acess and have the least amount of avaliable points to spend.
- Xavius Gambit: Unstable Affliction deals 15% more damage.
Xavius Gambit, like its cousin in the other side of the talent is another talent who only purpose would be as pathstone towards the Capstone it blocks.
Looking at the same logs i used before, Unstable Affliction represents around 10% of your overall, meaning this talent is worth something around 1.5% overall.
Meaning, the only reason you would ever invest on it, is to acess Oblivion while also having risk of Oblivion not being good enough to make the investment in Xavius Gambit Worth it.
- Ravenous Affliction: 1.2 PPM to grant Nightfall.
This Talent is a capstone, and amazingly enough, it manages to be weaker than any of the paths that grant acess to it, including Relinquished and Improved Malefic Rapture.
Nightfall as a talent is positioned in the first part of the talent tree, and it grants you 3x as much Nightfall procs as Ravenous Affliction, while also scalling with number of targets in a similar way Agony generation does (with a Diminishin Return)
In the Silken Court, Warlocks without Ravenous Affliction had around 5 to 6 procs per minute of Nightfall at 2 targets, meaning Ravenous Affliction would only be a 20% to 25% upgrade on Nightfall.
Even worse, if we would consider the contribution of the max damage of shadowbolt in said fight, Ravenous Affliction would be around 0.6% of the overall damage in the fight.
- Other Talents who i suspect are bad.
Truth be told, i also have reservations in regards to Dark Harvest, Perpetual Unstability, Malefic Touch and Oblivion but those are harder to gauge in value due to a number of scenarios.
1 - Oblivion and Malefic Touch are technically worthwhile, but they do not scale with mastery, are locked behind extremely weak talents, and this can lead towards preference of investing at talents above who are better and going for a Haste/Mastery Build.
2 - Perpetual Unstability harder for me to judge as i have not much evidence on it, but just like it does not scale with mastery like Oblivion and Malefic Touch, It does not reduce the Unstable Affliction GCD meaning the faster cast time is uselesss, It don’t have the big amount of spellpower like Oblivion nor the frequency of Malefic Touch but i am very suspect this talent isn’t very worthwhile.
The Odd
On the other hand, affliction have very potent talents elsewhere in the talent tree.
The First Two Parts of the talent tree is where most of your power is concentrated, there are talents like Cunning of Cruel and Malediction who put to shame some of the capstones in affliction talent tree.
In Conclusion
Like i said at the start, this post of mine isn’t to argue for buffs for affliction, but it is to raise awareness that the distribution of power inside the talent affliction tree might be at odds with the idea of talent point investment/costs and the gate requirements of (20 point), with very little power in the position more associated with higher investments and less points who can be invested in here.
6 Likes
They should just make MR instant and be done with it, would solve so many issues with aff tbh.
2 Likes
My take is that havoc needs buffed. I’ve seen many times where other classes rocket past destro on a 2 or 3 man pack and it felt like using havoc was just meh even with rolling havoc running in comparison to what others were doing. Unless it’s paired with the infernal but you’re typically not using the infernal on such a small pull in keys. It’s always been said that destro is king of 2 target cleave but it really doesn’t feel that way. Havoc baseline should also just be a 15 second duration instead of being forced to spend an additional point for the last 3 seconds.
On a side note of that I do love using havoc with rolling havoc going into large pulls and you can feel the ramp building as rain of fire comes out faster and faster until you’re literally pouring hellfire down up on your enemies. But on small packs it struggles to gain shards to do this and can feel quite shard starved at times. But having fire and brimstone (love watching a mass wave of incinerates shoot across the field) combined with diabolic embers seems to help the lower pack issue alot. But I do feel that diabolic embers should just be baseline to what incinerate does. Demo has insta cast demonbolt and gains 2 full shards. Destro has nothing close to that and has to cast multiple times to gain a single full shard. So in small packs that really hurts whereas demo rotation doesn’t really change and we’re over here trying to regen shards because there’s not enough targets to immolate and build compared to how fast demo builds and spends their shards.
As far as rift play is concerned I would personally be happy if all rifts were just flame rifts. It was really the only exciting rift we had visually and from a DPS standpoint it left all the other rifts in the dust. Some more than others. Some rifts that were just an utter disappointment when they popped because of how weak they were. But at least in s3 the proc rate felt decent with immolate and with only needing 1 talent node. Rift was good in s3 with the tier set… outside of being forced out of chaos incarnate which was one of the worst things they did to us in that season. it felt terrible. So glad they separated rift from CI that was a smart decision.
My opinion on fixing rift is to make it a standalone 2 talent node. Having to spend 3 nodes on 1 ability on the bottom tree hurts and forces us out of other necessary talents and could still prevent it from being used because it takes too many points. First node is as it is in retail. 2nd node is what the s3 tier set bonus was. Remove or bolster the weakest rift. Dmg can of course be tuned as needed but if it’s a capstone ability it should be powerful.
I wish we had the option to increase our single target damage as a choice node with havoc, rather than having mayhem.
You do technically, with rolling havoc. But it’s not much considering it’s only 1% for each duplicated spell up to 5% that only lasts for 6 seconds. So it’s not much at all