Ret vs Affliction, which is more fun?

PVP Battlegrounds
1

Looking for a new class to play when 9.1 rolls in and just wondering which would be more enjoyable to play, Ret or Affliction

2

Rot classes seem to be comming back in 9.1.

Its up to you.

Do you like to slowly rot peoples life away?

Or

Do you like to be a giga-chad with golden wings and 9 lives

3

I absolutely love rotting people away

Honestly, and I know this is pretty stupid, but I am lvling my lock (lvl55) and I’ve played a few BGs and I don’t feel strong…like at all. Its probably my lvl but I am not applying any pressure and I am dying so fast (especially to Rogues and BM Hunters)

How well can Locks survive in BGs??

edit: I don’t know about Affliction in BGs. With a healer sure but the setup to escape, and with all the gap closers and Drain Life being on the same spell school as all my other abilities I don’t think Locks will survive in BGs

But I’m still learning

4

so i hear you like pet classes

5

Affliction is going down in popularity for 9.1. Ret, to the best of my knowledge, will still be pumpers. Which is more fun I imagine is entirely based on your personal preference.

6

Not a fan of mobility, eh? May as well throw DK in the running.

2 Likes
7

The one that is more fun is the one you’re not currently doing. At least, that is how it will sit in your mind.

But seriously…burst is king right now. There are a lot of specs out there(such as afflic) with a really cool toolkit. But if you can’t keep a burst spec off you, then you will just get deleted.

9

I haven’t got around to it but DK gets a legendary that gives you all 3 dots, UH gets a conduit that makes plague last longer.

Looks fun in epic bgs, especially ashran where you get the melee frontline buff but play as a ranged class.

10

I’ve got a 197ilvl warlock, 20% vers, 32k HP, all the right enchants, even the right legendary (Sacrolash’s Dark Strike). Outside of my slow I feel useless. DoT’s are hitting for basic white damage. And by the time I worked up to a good MR spam I was usually already targeted and stunned or silenced. What’s worse is my OP slow usually made me a target by default. The moment I popped off a corruption I immediately was targeted. I could have my DoTs on every enemy in the game and would still fall lower on the damage done chart.

Switched to Destro, and I feel like a glass cannon. By the time the enemy figures out where I am they’re almost dead.

So go Ret lol. PvP is all about those big numbers.

2 Likes
11

I was afraid of that because thats been my experience in the 60-69 bracket

12

I feel like Afflic and Demonology got the shaft this expansion in PvP. I get corruption and a curse off on a target and it will tick 2-3 times before some big boomie, fire mage, ret, sub rogue will do 20K damage in the same time that I get off 2k.

1 Like
13
  1. It’s not stupid. I’ve loved Affliction since 2005. If Warlocks had a healing spec I’d be a one-toon Charlie.
  2. Surviving in BGs, (not RBGs, I don’t have that experience) is pretty easy.
  3. I play Affliction, frequently, as a utility spec. Curse of Tongues, Curse of Weakness, soon we’ll need Exhaustion if Sacrolash is getting nerfed. But between fears, slows, and your pet keeping people off of the flag, it’s a pretty great class.
14

How you get into that bracket?

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15

Asking which is more fun is like asking the forums “what is my favorite ice cream flavor?”. Fun is an inherently subjective metric, no one else can answer that for you.

Do you like bursty specs? Do you like sustained damage specs? Do you like ranged? Or do you prefer melee? Do you enjoy having strong offheals? Etc… These are all personal questions that will have different answers for different people.

For me personally I find aff much more fun. But that is because I tend to prefer ranged specs over melee, especially immobile melee. But that doesn’t mean you’ll find Aff more fun than Ret, it all depends on what you value in a spec.

1 Like
16

This is the perfect answer. I find affliction less fun because of the long ramp up time to real damage, and I like my PvP to be a lot more fast paced.

17

I’m gonna rephrase my original post above.

I play both and enjoy both for different reasons. Aff lock is really fun in a sort of piling up background pressure on many targets way and then culminating in a huge resource dump that results in even more pressure. But depending on how geared your team is vs the other team, this can be either not noticeable at all, or you will rot the entire enemy team to death right there. So prepare to be at a mercy of quality of your team. If you really embrace the humility that you can’t carry the team and just chill, it’s a very relaxing gameplay I find.

Ret on the other hand is more self reliant, and can destroy single targets on the spot. You can also support allies more, and can sort of carry the team, by doing objectives yourself. But at the same time it’s more stressful, because you need to be more active. You have power to carry objectives on your own, or do important supports, that can really turn the game upside down. So I find it more stressful personally, but also extremely strong and active.

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