With the recent affliction changes for TWW there’s been tons of people talking about how malefic rapture needs to be deleted and aff needs to go back to having unstable affliction as a spender. Everyone that says this simply isn’t living in reality. I might get crucified for this post, but people need to stop wishing for the glory days of MoP and Legion aff (from almost a decade ago) and think about the spec in the context of the modern game.
Just think about it for a minute - the other dot classes in the game already occupy the design space for having a dot-based spender. Balance has starfall which operates essentially as an AOE dot, and Shadow priest has a single target dot as their main spender. If you want your spender to be a dot, go play those classes instead.
For aff, rapture allows the spec to have more burst damage while still rewarding you for applying and maintaining your dots. You still have the spread cleave profile that dot classes all have without being too broken. I get that people want their main spender to be a dot, but if everything is a dot then your ramp time is so long that in everything except raid and high m+ everything is going to die before you can do any damage. Ask any balance druid how that feels.
What it needs is an updated visual. I think the biggest problem with aff right now is that there’s no visual feedback when you cast MR in instances because the little puff of purple on the enemies gets drowned out by other visual clutter. If it had a more clear visual, like souls slowly floating from the enemies to you, it would feel way better to press. It’s super simple but I honestly think if MR had a cooler visual effect then people would hate it way less.
As someone who has been wanting to play aff for 3 years, it really sucks to see it have the least players out of any spec in the game. If you truly want the spec to be good in the modern game, just accept that its not going to go anywhere. Whining to Blizzard about the same thing over and over does nothing but drown out actual constructive feedback that will make the spec better.
I argue that affliction shouldn’t have a builder spender rotation at all. It should be about adding and maintaining dots with a filler. RNG resource generation has been trash for affliction since legion.
What Affliction was described as over a decade ago, what the “feel” and vibes of a dot orientated, “slow death” spec" was, and what it has become today has GREATLY changed.
I hear so much talk about damage profiles and being viable, and i get what they are talking about in comparison of class to class and spec to spec - that they want everyone or at least affliction warlocks to be on the same playing field as every other spec and to be included.
Were arguing that: just as opponents state that they can make MR balanced and viable to be brought for all content — WE are arguing that we can still have UA or some other DOT spender there other than MR and still be viable, and that all it requires is the same balance and tweaking of numbers that has already been done for MR.
If they took the damage that MR does with every dot and buff/debuff up (since it’s damage is based on all those things) and rolled it into a soulshard spendor that was a dot of anywhere between 4-8 sec (without the need of the setup/ranp up) it would resolve this debate once and for all.
We would get our DOT as a spender WITHOUT the massive setup/ramp up that it requires and those who want the big bad MR they they are talking about for burst could still have it under a short 4 sec window.
They get their burst and damage profile,
We get our DOT and fits the ENTIRE theme of affliction dot and sloe death.
I see this take but I just can’t understand this, even from a gameplay perspective. I don’t see how just clicking on nameplates and spamming dots could be an engaging gameplay loop at all. On top of that, it wouldn’t be viable at all like Snozex said.
Totally agree with you. A full dot style for aff doesn’t work when there’s adds that need to die in >10 seconds - see the last boss in Brackenhide this season. If you had a dot spender then you just can’t bring aff for that dungeon.
I can’t blame them so much though because if you don’t do the content then you don’t know the differences.
If you never did xymoc on mythic in SoTFO you would never know there’s three platforms on the left side you have to take a gate too to kill adds because it’s just not a part of the fight on heroic.
Or mythic nyume with the third add
Your example of brackenhide is spot on as well. If they aren’t doing keys that are high enough where that totem can kill them they just don’t know.
While I understand why MR exists, I don’t believe the notion that a dot spender is completely unviable. Shadow is a dot spender and has been doing FAR better than affliction for this entire expansion.
Part of the issue I see with affliction is it has too many spender points in its soul shards.
What I mean by that is while all the warlock specs have 5 shards, affliction is the only one that actually has to cast 5 times to spend them. Demo can cast 2 times at 5 shards before needing to build again. Destro is the same. Affliction though needs 5 casts to deplete its resources and get full value.
This necessitates affliction needing a super fast spammy spender to be able to spend all its resources quickly. In addition to needing something that deal quick damage rather than a long dot like UA.
If Blizzard wanted to make the spec a dot spender, it would need to be a short duration dot, and they would probably need to increase its resource cost to 2 shards minimum. That way you’re not trying to juggle dots and find a way to cast 5 dots (and wait their full duration for damage) in order to dps.
Basically it would have to adopt the shadow priest model. A super strong short duration dot.
I doubt Blizzard would ever do that though. It would likely drift too close to shadow priest, although it wouldn’t have the passive cleave of psychic link and would likely focus more on managing dots instead
Personally, I don’t like MR, but I do understand why it exists. Rot specs can’t compete in M+ without being severely overtuned, and Blizzard probably doesn’t want shadow and affliction being the same, so we get MR… even though it’s about as thrilling as watching paint dry
I hate this do dialogue I hear parroted in the forums about how legion/mop affliction is no longer viable in modern wow. It’s just stupid. Both specs had solid AOE burst and sustained ST for M+ and priority targets with Soul swap and grasp/UA. Make seeds our aoe burst akin to to rain of fire and implosion, make UA our spender again which we can drop on priority ads, bring in malefic grasp to give us a gameplay loop for ST. All the best tools are there but devs want to make the laziest class desgins possible and turn Affliction into maintenance destruction.
Because it’s not. Legion had solid aoe burst because it was brokenly overtuned.
You may not like it but there are multiple examples of where it’s not viable at higher end content.
Last boss in brackenhide when he sets the totem
Second boss in uldaman with the totem
Mythic nyume with the third add
Mythic xymoc in SoTFO with the add platforms
These are all situations where Aff wouldn’t be viable with a legion design.
soul swap into UA dump or simply dumping 5 UA’s would drop the totems and ads just have to think about your dots and when to refresh and cast SS before ads show up. Not hard really core affliction gameplay right there. Also, seeds being over tuned is brain dead lol we’ve spent like 4 years tuning maleific rapture I think they can balance seeds by just capping enemies or scaling damage to rain of fire levels. MR has had 4 years of maintanence and still sucks. stop trying to make this terrible spender work so hard and fix the rest of afflictions kit is all we are saying. Drain soul feels horrible, dots feel horrible - that is why we want legion/MOP back.
Even if we don’t get Legion/MOP affliction back, MR has got to go - not be made an even more crucial gameplay mechanic.
The notion that a builder spender rotation is required for modern play is ridiculous, its simply a sign of lack of imagination. In the instance of a pack of mobs that need to die you pop a cd like darksoul and spam seed, if its a single big mob that needs to die you apply dots with haunt (which should be significantly buffed to fill the purpose of singletarget nuke buff). Affliction was better before Legion added the builder spender rotation, and thats a fact. It just felt better to play. The biggest problem is the RNG shard generation. I wish shadowbolt gave us shards like it does for demo and because we cast it less we still get shards from Agony. Having control over both sides of building and spending of the resources would be huge for making the spec feel better.
And people wonder why the game feels so bad to play. Its been a ratrace for ages and the fun was sacrificed along the way. I remember in mop and wod the rotations were so fun you’d kill random mobs in the world while getting from A to B just to press buttons. Even spending time on a target dummy was fun juat to go through the rotation. That hasn’t been a thing in wow for a long time.
BIG Agree on the point about needing a visual/audio re-work. It’s so bland it it doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with DoTs, even though it absolutely does. I truly believe that if the visual was more intense people would be more accepting of it. I even imagine the reverse of haunt – sucking the soul out of all the enemies affected.
