The revamped return of Malefic Rupture is generally agreed to be good, especially its dependence on number of DoTs rather than interacting with ticks. In fact some are wondering if there’s a way to integrate some aspect of this with Deathbolt, since as it stands Deathbolt is difficult to line up.
At the same time, with the recent Deathbolt nerf, and the changes to the spec in Shadowlands clearly moving Affliction away from “burst”, maybe Deathbolt should be removed, especially given it’s power now is drastically reduced with the removal of UA stacking + Darkglare extension combination. The loss of UA stacking also makes the Darkglare significantly weaker as well.
There is a disconnect between Malefic Rupture’s awesomeness and it’s graphics/visuals. Can this be changed at all? Make it look as powerful as it feels? Maybe shadowy-blood explosions? Anything really?
Malefic Rupture is unaffected by mastery, to mastery’s “weight” will go down.
There is currently debate among warlocks as to whether Shadow Bolt filler is better or Drain Soul filler, but many are leaning towards desiring a return of Drain Soul being the filler given the “return” of Malefic Rupture, so as to have a clear spell during encounters for execute phase while maintaining Corruption (instant), Agony (instant), Doom (instant), Unstable Affliction (has cast time), and Malefic Grasp (has cast time). A filler with a cast time while we have two of our primary spells (Unstable Affliction and Malefic Rapture) have a cast time, and three if we spec into Haunt, four if we spec into Vile Taint or Phantom Singularity, and if we spec into Siphon Life (all of which is probable given Malefic Rupture interaction with number of DoTs) spring us to a total of eight spells of which three have a cast time, is not good. That’s a lot of GCDs in addition to the cast times of Unstable Affliction, Vile Taint (which is now superior in many instances against Phantom Singularity), and the Malefic Rupture spender.
Alternatively others prefer Shadow Bolt due to the nature of interrupts/silences in a PVP setting; this could be remedied however by baking into Nightfall changing the filler from Drain Soul to Shadowbolt. Doing so would open up a Talent slot which could easily be an Azerite Trait that affects our rotation, such as Inevitable Demise making Drain Life a part of our rotation, but perhaps in a less strong way. Maybe Malefic Grasp visual could return to differentiate Normal Drain Life from Inevitable Demise Talent Malefic Grasp.
Affliction build up appears to be extremely long and maintenance unreasonable to allow for a castable filler baseline. Return Soul Swap in some capacity, rebuilding dots on a target is tedious and a big time sink especially if we’re also getting Doom back; alternatively return Soul Burn:Soul Swap from ye olden days in some capacity (we doubt both would be returned). Replace Shadowbolt filler with a Drain Soul filler, maybe if Soul Swap is returned make the talent spot be a “Empowered Soul Swap” and make it a CD that puts all our primary dots on the target.
As it stands with Writhe In Agony, Agony takes 30 seconds to stack.
Affliction AOE remains problematic. While the changes are a step forward, increase the numbers of Seeds to three and increase damage, given the resource cost and the lack of a direct way to gain that resource outside of RNG DoT ticks. There are also qualms about Seed of Corruption casting time remaining too long as well. Also there’s a concern that the new Sow the Seeds is bad because it makes the baseline ability worse.
Having a majority of damage centered on burst via Darkglare for Affliction does not make sense. In addition considering that for maximum burst damage one is obligated to choose the Deathbolt Talent, the majority of Affliction’s damage should be on our DoTs and proper sustainment of them. In general Darkglare is not popular, both from a fantasy perspective (Affliction was historically never centered on demons per se, and fit somewhere inbetween the Void-centric fantasy of Shadow Priests and the Shadow/Death-centric fantasy of Unholy Death Knights once they came out) and from a gameplay perspective for this reasons. A suggestion is to remove Darkglare all together, and perhaps make Dark Soul baseline once more. Alternatively, not having a baseline DPS cooldown (or at least not such an extreme one) and returning power to the sustainment of our DoTs. Similarly the loss of UA stacking also makes Death Bolt significantly weaker.
Affliction used to be centered on sustained damage, Destruction on burst damage, and Demonology as a sort of inbetween with now the added flavor of “master summoner”. At the moment Affliction’s damage is centered too much on burst, and too centered on the obligation of taking certain talents due their being DoTs on CDs.
Limiting Unstable Affliction to being only castable on one target when the stacking aspect has been removed feels too limiting. Is the intent here to remove the cleave aspect to Affliction, as it used to be where Aff was more single target, Demo more AOE, and Destro cleave-centric?
Additionally the healing provided by Drain Life and Siphon Life simply does not feel significant. Can this be buffed?
Regarding Haunt, while Malefic Rupture is welcome and many are excited, there doesn’t seem to be a big differentiation between Haunt and Unstable Affliction. It has been proposed to increase the damage % increase and the CD on Haunt and simply make it a DoT to make it more meaningful and different from UA, or alternatively remove the damage % increase on UA and buff the damage, to balance against Malefic Rapture as both are spenders and orient MR to AOE and UA to ST.
There is zero interaction with Shadowbolt and the rest of the rotation. Some are under the impression we are the only class whose filler has no interaction.
Any chance of Malefic Grasp, even as a visual, returning?