So I raided on a Warlock in Vanilla, TBC, and WoTLK. Tooled around a tiny bit in WoD and Cata, but mostly focused on my druid and dipped out pretty quickly. Resubbed to try things out with the free XPac 70 super boost to start M+ content.
What…what happened? I’ve tried Destro and Demo, and they both feel insanely clunky.
Destro of all things somehow struggles with fun AoE(???), as a big component appears to be Havoc cleave and single-target spells. And it’s just not fun trying to pick out the optimal name plate and maintain havoc in a pack. The single target feels a bit better, but I don’t understand how a subclass that is so straightforward and punchy isn’t satisfying. Maybe due to how weak incinerate feels compared to when I last used it, or how bland the nukes are without the conflagrate speedup?
Demo just feels overly busy. You have a shard spender that summons demons and another nuke that spends demon souls while giving shards, with a bazjillion cooldowns that don’t really line up. It’s definitely a cool idea, but compared to something like Wrath demo it’s just not elegant and very spammy.
Affliction just…looks too janky to even use with content. Which is a shame, because it (with the exception of wrath Demo) was always my favorite spec. But it feels like each expansion pack must have added a new mechanic to justify itself and they don’t play well together or feel good. Now apparently you have to spam a cast time shard spender to get super-DoT ticks, maintain 5 DoTs, and spam a ton of limp cooldowns. What happened to the elegance of DoT ramping?
I’m just shocked that there are so many weak cooldowns to juggle and buttons to spam, when the class previously felt like you had fewer strong tools to deploy to satisfying effect. Apparently mana management is no longer a thing, so the complexity of other elements was needlessly increased?
It’s incredibly jarring and not at all satisfying, like devs are rewarded for complexity and not smoothness. I might give up and embrace my inner boomkin if that spec feels good at all.
Warlock are supposed to be tanky and cast a lot. Clunky is not a thing that warlocks are, that’s for sure. It flows much better than in the past. I’d say in DF all classes are fun and not clunky, it’s when you got for that maximum output possible that things get weird.
Speaking of Affliction, one thing I’d change is Doom Blossom. I don’t get it why it’s attached to Seed of Corruption. Becomes absolutely useless for ST instead of simply being less efficient. Devs should change it trigger from Malefic’s Grasp and Soul Rot, on top of SoC. This might make MG spam more fun with those bursts of extra damage popping up everytime you use one.
Mana management was hardly “a complexity”. It was a nuisance and a flaw within the class. All you had to do is burn your own health for mana, that’s it.
Mafelic Rapture you mean? In that case hard to not agree… pumping more effects into SoC is blind direction… SoC is ok for boring, low level of entry spell to cast
‘Rapture’, yes, my bad. It’s been years and I’m still getting it wrong.
I guess there’s too many 2-point talents in Afflic, too. Makes it difficult to be interested in talents for SoC.
Not to mention talents such as Soul Flame and Wrath of Comsumption. Killing blow effects are nice but… spending points on them where there’s other stuff? Nah.
Affliction is GCD starved in mythic+ it’s really not designed in a way that allows it to excel in that content, on top of the spec just feeling bad to play, having too much ramp up time, and having a bad spender spell.
Destro I think feels bad because the spec is slow. Slow shard generation and slow casts. It also doesn’t look very flashy since incinerate got redesigned into a sparkler we roll across the floor toward our enemy.
Demo feels bad with low haste levels. Once you get up around 30% is feels pretty good, although it does suffer from ramp up time in order to deal good damage.
