I think most people can remember the “we’d prefer you not play demonology” fiasco a while ago, do you think the same thing is happening with Affliction right now? Seems like some pretty significant nerfs incoming in 9.1 that seem a little unwarranted, and given how hard it would be to just balance things with a spec as involved as Affliction it might be easier to just get people to not play it than address some of the issues with it.
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Short answer is no.
They are attempting to nerf st but not aoe while giving themselves more knobs to turn on the spec later since the only meaningful knob at present is MR.
They are also trying to solve like 3-4 problems at once which is… An idea.
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Holds up tiny umbrealla
THE SKY IS FALLING LOSTLEGION!
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God damnit again?! We just had the new sky put in!
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Trying to solve 3-4 problems at once is usually a bad idea. I still believe the best course of action was to nerf the conduit only which effectively would have nerfed ST only and pvp. Maybe the buff to agony will help enough in mythic+ dunno i guess we will see but it wont make the spec less cumbersome to play or less problematic in lower keys.
Sky v1.0.1 release notes:
- Stability improvements to Sky™ platform.
- Anima sky box wormhole buffed.
- Sky box color tones updated to sync with user seasonal depression.
- Further visual clarity for ‘Falling’ events during interim PTR build patch notes.
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You lack of faith in the Stylish Black Parasol is disturbing.
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Aff can go back to the dumpster… where it belongs.
Thank goodness only had to deal with that annoying mess for a season.
Blizzard finally making the changes that need to be made.
No, you are not being Demonology’d. You are being Venthyr’d.
Demonology got nuked to holy hell because (despite whatever blizz said about people feeling forced to play it) Legion was in the works with Demon Hunter, which had Meta, “forcing” a Demo rework on Blizzard, so they nuked the spec beforehand so there’d be fewer people affected.
Impending Catastrophe got nerfed hard because it was a solid single target DPS gain which was also an AoE, meaning its AoE DPS was absurdedly strong, on top of the Curse utility it brought. So Blizzard nerfed it so it would be solid but not too strong in AoE pulls, but unfortunately weak in single target.
Now, which of the two sounds more like what Blizz is doing to Aff?
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Oh yeah. I honestly believe this is going to backfire before ptr is over lol.
But their moves are rather telegraphed, addressing things warlocks asked for or obviously need work… and the SE thing. Dunno what the SE change is about…last ditch effort to save the mechanic I guess?
Kala did a video on it.
They are basically trying to make demo be the ST spec. Destro the two target cleave and affliction the council spec.
I’m still pretty sure the changes are an overall PvP buff, in arena at least. Most of your time is spent running away from people, and with WiA, Agony is ticking even harder than UA now, and the Sacrolash change still lets you perpetually slow the other team, but you’re doing more passive damage while kiting now.
Shadow Rift, assuming we have the slot to use it, is another kiting tool on a class that’s already slippery.
In RBGs it will be harder to just blanket the enemy team with a slow, but that was pretty toxic gameplay anyway, but you’ll still be able to pull off something like perma-tongues on enemy healers while still having pretty strong 3 target cleave during team fights.
In raids, my guess is it will be fine. There’s always a lot of speculation and doom and gloom, but you never know what’s really going to be top tier until the raid’s out there and people have the fights figured out.
For M+, it might be worth looking into switching up some talents or conduits to adapt, but again, it’ll take some testing to really figure out.
The spec won’t be dead, but people who’d rather play Demo or Destro shouldn’t feel incentivized to stick to Aff just because of numbers.
There’s literally no reason to play aff in arena now. Destro is that much better.
As far as mythic plus goes I think Destro/demo will be better just due to aoe cleave potential.
Well we THINK that’s what they are doing. And I agree with Kala. That’s probably the goal, but they are making so many changes to Aff at the moment I’m not buying chips on anything. Still early still changing the changes.
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Well yeah that’s also true considering we’re still on the first ptr build.
I just hope that affliction stays ST viable. I would rather play aff or Destro over demo.
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Destro and Demo are probably already better than Aff in arena. Getting a free, passive, and significant damage reduction just for being yourself in a huge burst meta is a pretty big deal. Doesn’t change the fact that the changes are buffs to Aff.
But the doom and gloom is always present. It’s a PTR tradition.
I’m not mad about the changes tbh. Let’s be honest here for a sec MR is too strong in ST. It is what it is. With how well the spec scale with gear this would have been broken later in the xpac. I do mythic+ with my full single target spec and when our priest PI me we destroy the bosses and they become almost trivial in 15-16. My overall dps sucks because i suck at multi-dotting but that’s on me i guess. I actually welcome the SE change.
My main problem with this is we got nothing to compensate for the nerf outside of we’d rather you play destruction. Aff is good right now because of Sacrolash and MR. Everything else about the spec sucks. I welcome a buff to agony in pve and corruption via Sacrolash but man i doubt a mere 20% to something that was previously almost meaningless will be enough.
We had a niche. Broken single target dps (specially with PI). We risk losing that niche and i honestly doubt that dots buff will be enough to create a new one. I mean a ret paladin can just spam divine storm and laugh in our face with no remorse. MM hunter just have to replace Arcane shot by multishot and voilà. I wish they would have really tried to adress aoe and multi-dotting. Remove the shard cost on VT plz. Change WiA so that SoC spread agony too making the shard cost and casting time worthwhile. SoC might very well be the most stupid spell in the game. Cost a shard. Long to cast. Spread a dots doing next to no damage. That’s laughable. Anyway i guess we will see but i agree this could backfire and pretty much kill the spec specially with the destruction buff.
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Well, demo is a good spec, so I dunno…maybe? Is that bad tho?
At the end of the day affliction was too strong and there’s 2 other specs which are also good.
Imo, keep the MR nerf, make sow seeds baseline, and replace the talent with “reap what you sow” reducing its cast time to 1.9-2 sec (before haste).
True tried but that’s part of the problem. Aff is tied too strongly to MR atm. Nerf MR and you need st and aoe. Aff needs a st nerf without much ado in aoe. Blizzard is attempting to set the scene in which this adjustment can be made simultaneously to making the change.
It’s a good idea in theory but moving so quickly that a mishap is almost guaranteed.
It’s just as if not more likely that the balls drop midair and Aff is left sobbing in the dirt until 10.0 in this scenario so. Hope that blizzard is careful at this balancing or that people like destro and demo.
I’m not a fan of Aff currently but I’m less of a fan of scramble mode adjustmentd.