If you truly think the current design of Affliction is better for PvP you are either underexperienced or playing the wrong spec.
DoT’s only doing damage in soul rot/darksoul windows w/ Malefic Rapture spam is a horrible horrible design. Having to hard cast that many spells to do significant damage is a massive detriment to a spec with a single spell school. On top of that Malefic Wrath/Drain Soul are both better fillers from a PvP standpoint because they could(read; did) interact with other talents that helped in the execute phase.
One of the reasons Aff feels really really bad in PvP right now even doing the most insane damage ever and having a few other overtuned tools, is because we functionally have no way to help finish kills. This has always been an issue with the spec more or less and we can’t ask for everything, but Malefic Grasp and Drain Soul helped cover this weakness somewhat.
MR feels convoluted and doesn’t fit what Affliction should be. Why can we not go back to having Malefic grasp as the filler spell? Have something you can use the dots tick twice effect from it to build up inevitable demise faster for burst. Nightfall could affect MW as well for a faster channel?
MR just doesn’t feel right and it prevents me from wanting to play affliction at all anymore.
A lot of the people against MG or filler things like DS/MG and for MR like MR because it provides a skill window and it’s not “boring” – which is one of the points I’ve iterated on before: people play DoT specs for different reasons but one of the main reasons a lot of people end up getting interested in DoT specs is for their boringly simple playstyle; it’s complicated on multi target via timer juggling otherwise it’s a very “boring” playstyle.
As people get higher in skill, some of them end up not liking this playstyle and want more meaning into it. Personally, I am the opposite, I prefer boring, easy and simple over anything else which is why I loved when Aff was this way over any other style.
This is what I’ve noticed when talking to people, though, and one of the reasons why I kept harping on in some threads about high end content players vs non, as it’s a completely different world. Most of their interests usually lie in 1 of a few diff things:
“I don’t want to be bored. I don’t like it so I don’t want it and I want a spec that actually engages me.” This is what happens most often when I talk to people about specs and what they like/dislike about them. This goes more than just Warlocks, this is all classes/specs, usually the higher the skill of the person the less they want to be bored or having a spec be boring.
The next most often reason I see for things is: “I raid mythic and you have to be able to kill X in Y seconds” which is fine, like I said DoT specs should not be considered for this job or if so, throwing 1 UA up there should be your contribution and/or channeling DS/MG into it. If blizzard wanted to fix this they easily could fix this problem by just adjusting timers from “kill X in 6 seconds” go to something like “kill X in 15 seconds” and you have enough time for all DoTs to be up plus tick for a good 5 times or so each plus DS/MG ticks to help out with even more ticks.
The way Affliction is right now and the way the ST build is currently with blizzard’s design you have like 15 globals to go through before you do your full damage, which is absurd. Even for DoT specs there’s a limit to the number of DoTs that any more than that limit and you just get frustrated playing it.
Also one of the reasons I think we should just have 3-4 DoTs total and then those 3-4 could be really powerful and that would be fine. 4th would include Vile Taint and then a 5th being your filler, whether it’s Drain Soul/Malefic Grasp or Drain Life, as long as it’s not a hard casted ability like Shadow Bolt, it’s fine.
I disagree that the devs don’t know what they want with the ST spec. Looking at what they’ve changed/buffed and what’s in the single target section of the tree, it looks like they want to make a single target alternative to rapture and for players to throw out beefy shadow bolts.
That’s also why I said they don’t know how to design their spec, too. Shadow Bolts don’t belong in Affliction, not just not my version but when you break their description of Affliction down; it boils down to “Damage over Time and Drains specialist” shadow bolt is neither of these. This makes it literally not fit and the only “mold” it fits is the old caster mold from BC/vanilla where all your damage came from Shadow Bolt spam and DoTs.
I can somewhat understand Death Bolt with it being the bare minimum now for what constitutes a DoT, a 3 second long duration ability it reaches the bare minimum of being a DoT, so I can understand that moreso than Shadow Bolt itself being in the spec. I disagree with this spell, but I at least understand it and it fits, it just doesn’t feel good to press and has a clunky playstyle.
That’s also why I was saying before; they don’t know how to really design it to make it flow and feel better while retaining the “damage over time and drains specialist” aspect of it that it is.
It doesn’t help them, either, that we are split on what we all want from a DoT spec; some of us want rot style others want burst and some others want something else entirely so the community is actually split in multiple ways for this, too.
I do feel sorry for them, as no matter what design they go with there’s always going to be people that are not pleased.
Infinitely better than the way the tree is now but I still don’t think it fixes the core issues with affliction. However, at least this would be playable.
I’m not mad at all, you are entitled to your own opinion and you should play the way that suits you best and advocate for said playstyle if it means that much to you.
I just think Blizzard should take feedback from the more casual crowd with a grain of salt.
Multi dotting is what i love but malafic rapture juay doesnt feel right and is convoluted, makes rotation feel like crap and juat isnt fun. If i wanted to multi dot with a hard cast spell of play shadow. UA should be the shard spender again
See thats a poor way to design a game. Most of the community is Casual. Only a few are tryhard andies.
All feedback should be taken into account, not only the 1 percent.
If it was up to me, i would prefer to see much more in depth class reworks for everyone, because this is what teh game needs. Especially now that we have new devs with fresh ideas and ambitions.
I would much rather not bring too much of the past in. I understand we have things we hated or loved form back then. But i would much rather see what these devs can do. Seeing how envokers were design, i am pretty confident that they can bring a fresh spin to all classes.
Yeah, but there’s a difference between a spec or class centered around burst and one not. I don’t think DoT specs should be designed for or around burst, which leaves a completely different set of design ideas. Burst, while good for the game design currently I guess, it’s literally bad for DoT specs just going based off of how their natural state.
They could also come up with a few nice ideas while giving ours attention, too, and then we still have our ideas/designs while getting to see what they, themselves, can do.
But Affliction’s been a bad spec, thematically speaking, for 2 expansions at this point. BFA design sucked badly, it was hot ball of garbage, and Shadowlands, while better, was slightly better than BFA. Wrath, MoP, WoD and Legion all had better versions of Aff and better designs/goals for it, too.
I pretty much accepted that they won’t due major core class changes. Seems like their focus is getting at least the talents going well.
Which is fine, i understand. The devs took over what the old devs left off from since DF was being worked on even before shadowlands.
I think once they get a good talent tree going, maybe on the next expansion they’ll focus more on class design for each spec. But part of me hope they still tinker a bit regardless. I am happy to see that they are trying to unite the Class with each corresponding spec. I believe this is an important step before diving deep into the spec itself. Here’s to hoping Priest, specifically Shadow priest get something good going since its very disconnected from the class entirely these days.
Personally, idc what they do as long as it feels good and its fun to play in both PVE and PVP. As well as long as it fit the class & spec thematically. I Do hope aff stays rot though over all.
Have you even seen the updated tree they are trying to pass thru tomorrow? Unless there are significant pvp only nerfs it is goin to be the most extremely overpowered aoe rot version aff has ever been.
Creeping Death no longer decreases the duration of your damage over time effects. thats pretty good, more dot ticks without dropping duration.
This with rapid Contagion is going to be nasty…
waiting for tomorrow before fully concluding seeing as my build might have been changed a lot. So lets see. I am happy to see them tinker and mess around with stuff.