I haven’t been avidly taking a stance on this until the time I made the thread. I’ve had snipits of moments to try and grab Blizzard’s attention long before but with no such luck or traction. As I’m only one voice and not a content creator, I can only do so much.
The IdleReadyCast stance is clearly shown at the class selection screen for every class available. Of those classes, Mages and Warlocks display different styles. One is up right in a calm manner and the other shows to be more dangerous and menacing in their spellwork.
Jump into the live game and the difference of how it’s shown between class select and in-game is night and day. Warlocks use the Idle stance of Mages. If we can’t get the proper animation shown that a lot of people really want, why even have it displayed in the class selection in the first place?
At this point, it’s not even about how many of X people want it in. It’s more on principle. WHY was the animation used for a daily quest? WHY did the Warlocks at Dalaran’s crash site have this animation but Warlock players do not? WHY was the animation thrown in a forgotten corner of Undermine in the sewers? WHY was the animation used during a Xal’atath promotion and not reflected in-game?
This is why my assessment has become that there is some person, a Dev, maybe their S.O. or someone else internally who rates, plays a cutesy Warlock and simply does not want their character to be ‘evil looking’ or sinister. It’s really not much of a reason, and while there’s no evidence behind it; after 5 Betas one finds it harder and harder to write it off as a simple coding error they simply forgot about, or didn’t know existed. There comes a time when the silence becomes deafening as it were.
Especially when every Warlock NPC has it.
Yet players do not?
In my experience there is no such thing as luck. Ergo, it’s very likely it’s been ignored or stonewalled for a reason.
That’s also why at this point if it’ll get this matter ‘finally’ resolved.. I say, give players a toggle or something. That way whoever is holding this up can keep pretending to be a Mage , while the rest of us can finally catch up to what every other caster class got back in 2017.
I love the return of Malefic grasp! It needs to be more synergistic with Necrolyte Teachings in the Soul Stealer hero talents. I am disappointed with the Shadow of Nathreza apex talent. Summoning a Dreadlord seems like a Demonology talent not Affliction. It should be more focused around ghosts since the spell it focuses on is haunt.
I respectfully disagree with you regarding the Shadow of Nathreza Apex talents. Dreadlords are demonic masters of deceit, shadow, and plague (they were instrumental in the creation of the Plague of Undeath that ravaged Lordaeron, for example, and consistently cast Carrion Swarm), so their nature ideally suits Affliction’s spec fantasy. One can argue that perhaps the Apex talents should be tied to an ability other than Haunt (though I see no issue with this myself and personally like it), but I think the dreadlord theme belongs properly to Affliction.
I’m going to have to disagree with you. Summoning demons is a Demonology theme. Curses, drains, and shadow magic are part of the Affliction Warlock theme. I also think the Blight spell needs to be changed. I don’t like choosing between Blight of Weakness and Blight of Tongues. The Plague of Undeath was created by the Lich King and spread by Kel’Thuzad in Warcraft 3. It was not created by the Dreadlords. The Lich King created it under the command of Kil’jaeden.
True, they did not create the plague themselves - I didn’t say they did (hence my qualifying phrasing “instrumental in…”). Rather, according to Shadowlands lore that partially changed the original narrative by giving the dreadlords a much greater role in general, they indirectly assisted the Lich King in its creation through complicated reasoning I won’t get into. The dreadlords also facilitated the plague’s spread. In any event, I do not think summoning demons is strictly a Demonology theme. If this were true, then Affliction should not be able to summon a Darkglare. While Demonology’s niche lies in summoning an army of demons, summoning itself is not exclusive to the latter spec. Thus, I do not see an issue with tying Dreadlords, who expertly wield shadow magic (among others), to Affliction.
Can we please have an option for the UA duration being displayed on the stack be the one closest to expiring. I’m not a fan of the most recently applied UA being the countdown for the entire stack. I’m sure there are some that prefer it the current way but I’d much rather be given the option to choose.
Please make it so I can track the actual buff for my Diabolist Ritual, not just the countdown. Having to look up at my buff bar to confirm which demon is coming next is very counter intuitive.
Also, please let me re-size the soul shards for the personal resource display. They are too small.
I would also like the Dreadstalkers icon to track the duration of my dogs instead of having to rely on a separate bar to track how long is left on them.
A higher APM doesn’t make sense for Affliction. Spamming a single button (Unstable Affliction) just to watch a number tick upwards on a target debuff feels lazy and makes no sense for Affliction. Much like mashing Malefic Rapture felt totally out of place or spamming shadow bolt.
Affliction Warlocks are all about letting their afflictions they cast on targets do all the work and managing/spreading those afflictions. That is core class fantasy.
Instead of a stack count of UA, UA should be a press-and-hold empowered ability. As the bar climbs, the potency grows and grows. This should be visually represented on the target, AND for each tier that is reached, a soul shard is spent and cannot grow beyond the number of available soul shards. Each tier of the empowered bar should be relative to the actual cast time of UA.
Speaking of spells being visually represented…
Affliction needs your help, devs. Little puffs and swirls around the target for agony, corruption/wither, and UA need major improvement. It doesn’t feel impactful at all. When a warlock casts agony, a twisted demonic hand or something visual should wrap around the target and squeeze before turning into the puffs and swirls. I want to feel like my mouse clicks are physically connected to my spells.
Right now, it feels like I click a button, and nothing happens, but if I look close enough at my target, I can see something swirly happening. Give affliction SOMETHING to look at when we’re casting and managing all of our dots. I think this is why an empowered UA would work so well, because it would physically feel like I am doing the casting through my character, instead of clicking buttons and looking at stack counts.
Bad - Horrify still doesn’t work with Howl of Terror. Howl continues to be unusable for PvE players because no one wants to fear a mob in a dungeon.
Bad - Shadowfury still has a cast time, making it pretty bad at stopping casts in progress. All other AOE stops, including ranged stops like SuperNova, are instant AND on shorter cds.
Bad - Blight duration is only 12 seconds. A PvE pull probably lasts 45 seconds. Considering this already cant be recast because it’s on a long cooldown, can we make this last longer in PvE? Totally understand that it might need to be shorter in PvP.
Bad - Pathing. Dark Pact is a mandatory defensive talent. In order to take it you have to path through Banish or Exhaustion, either of which are very rarely useful. If Banish was location swapped with Fortified Soul or Empowered Healthstone this would avoid forcing a player to take a situational talent just to access a mandatory one.
Demonology
Good - Grimoire of Felhound and Imp Lord solve major problems for Demonology lacking the utility of the other warlock specs in M+. Arguably this gives Demo a little “extra” in terms of double kicks but the other specs have access to AOE Curse of Satyr and Demo does not, so it should be a good balance.
Good - Demonic Calling + Vile Fiend changes free up a button and add a smidge of predictable mobility, and get rid of the bad feeling of not having a dog proc.
Bad - There is no difference at all between AOE and ST rotations any more. While most of Demo AOE has been sort of passive (dog bite procs, felstorm), it used to be actively different by using implosion above a certain target count. Now that implosion is capped at 6 imps and has a 30 second CD it’s hard to imagine even taking the talent, let alone a once-every-30-second small implosion being a noticeable rotational adjustment.
I can understand that we don’t want to expect people to track imps in single target for perfect implosions on bosses - can’t you accomplish that goal by making the damage based on remaining imp energy instead of total number of imps? If implosion damage is “(remaining energy * .75) to all targets in x yards” then it is easy to understand - it would always be a damage loss in single target unless the target was about to die, and it would always be a damage gain at 2 or more targets, and it would not matter how many imps you had when you pressed it in aoe other than very minor long term globals saved by doing more imps per implosion.
Affliction
Good - Vile Taint not having charges and being mismatched from Agony uptime was a primary reason Aff felt unplayable in M+. Shared Agony is a good solution to this.
Bad - Shared Agony only being 2 targets. This is still very inadequate for large pulls. If the thought process was “its good enough for moonkin” please remember that moonkin generate energy via their spammable nuke but aff locks cannot generate shards via our filler. Our only play is to manually tab-Agony our way to sustainable random procs.
Bad - Shared Agony is not smart casting, it continuously refreshes on targets with longer remaining durations when it should prefer empty targets or targets with shorter remaining durations.
Bad - Cloying power confuses play in AOE in a bad way. Am I supposed to use shards spreading UA or am I supposed to use them planting Seeds? If the answer is ever “manually hard cast UA on as many different targets as possible” that’s going to feel awful. It also directly conflicts in play behavior with the capstone talent it is gating (cascading calamity).
Maybe Bad - Sudden Onset is desirable in AOE for reducing Agony Ramp (and possibly mandatory for season 1 tier set synergy), but its behind xavius gambit which appears intended to be a ST alternative to Seeds of Destruction’s AOE option. This would feel way less bad if Xavius and Seeds were 1 point nodes.
Destruction has never been about laser beams. Destruction Warlocks weild fire, and fel. They call down flames to scorch and demolish anything unlucky enough to stand in their way. I am happy they removed the laser beams. I thought the lasers looked silly.
It literally shared an animation with an ability used during the Kil’Jaeden fight in Legion. If Kil’jaeden, one of the Legions most powerful warlocks, utilizes the spell… how is it not something Destro would be about?
I’m with a few others on the Demonology spec and the Apex Talents. Its underwhelming and doesn’t feel right. I could see every 2 casts working out but it doesn’t really feel right with the rotation you have a lot of build up and work just to hit Tyrant at the right moment and then you can get a few extra demons out. I was under the impression the new philosophy was to get away from weakauras being the end all be all for great game play feels like this leans back into that kinda game play, not that you need it.
Preposterous. In the fight he clearly cast the dreadflames himself. They’re not literally spaceship laser beams despite being what people have taken to calling them.
If they’re unwilling to budge on the number of cast needed, I thought a nice inbetween would be to have the initial cast of Tyrant summon one of the Argus demons alongside the Tyrant. Would feel immediately more powerful and allow us to reach 3 demons more consistently with the possibility of 4 in perfect conditions.
It literally shared an animation with an ability used during the Kil’Jaeden fight in Legion. If Kil’jaeden, one of the Legions most powerful warlocks, utilizes the spell… how is it not something Destro would be about?