This playstyle has been shoved down our throats for the sake of m+ and everything has been designed around it.
The worst part is the class has pivoted to full turret gameplay on every spec.
If MR isn’t going away at the very least make it so we have a st spender , keep mr for aoe instead of having it be the defacto spender for everything.
Even if they did that it wouldn’t change anything.
Mr is good for the specs health and keeping it viable in todays game.
Disagreed. It only exists to homogenize all classes into the aoe centric role which m+ is about.
Like the class kit was bent to fit it. Warlock’s class fantasy is great, however the combat design is not only severely lacking, it’s borderline bad.
Nope. It’s there to give Aff burst which is needed in high end content.
Throwing up dots and spamming a filler isn’t viable in today’s game. That play style isn’t likely going to come back.
I don’t necessarily dislike MR, I think reducing the # of dots that scale MR and shifting it to an AoE function would be fun and a perfect fit. Maybe a way to also fan and spread dots with it. And it really could use a visual reimagining to it.
Feels like the # of dots portion are what make it underwhelming and too hooked on soul rot and ps/vt windows, it’s either not doing alot and spammed, or it’s doing the most and spammed.
Thematically affliction just seems to be lacking a proper lethal drain. Since that’s the summary of affliction, master of drains and shadow damage over time.
And please for the love of god can we remove VT, spending resources to spread our shard generation that has a long ramp should not exist, it should be like dark transformation and easily spreadable. Since unlike other specs, dots are the thematic core of the specialization fantasy.
Not saying the previous playstyle should return, just that there probably are better ways to give direct damage without relying on a 1min cd and spamming MR.
Besides u r probably one of the few who seem to enjoy it, most of the locks i know dislike the whole soulrot/MR cycle.
To briefly explain my point further. Disable all damage numbers on ur screen and details. Make it so u cannot see numbers at all then do a full rotation. It’s clunky af but players are so addicted to numbers they will put up with literal crap to get their doze. Bunch of junkies tbh.
It’s not going too because Aff needs burst units profile at high end.
I do enjoy it. I preferred SLs iteration actually. I enjoyed managing siphon life too.
The only numbers I show is on details and the only numbers that matter is the boss health getting to zero.
The rotation isn’t clunky at all to me personally. Even with it being simplified as it is currently.
I see both sides to the argument. But yeah I don’t know many locks that are happy about the gameplay loop being so married to soul rot. Or enjoy the rapture gameplay, efficiency aside.
Look, my point being, there’s too much friction with the way it plays. It’s clunky !
Ramp up time, cds, everything is centered around plant and dump. Mobility’s horrible in any actual high endgame tier where u need to move or die.
The class as a whole has cement shoes on and a lot of the utility comes at a cost. Be it self harm or preplanned, it’s exhaustingly complicated rather than challenging.
Edit: why do 7 things for the same result as classes that do 1 thing? Being hard and being tedious isn’t the same thing. Like if u could work 1 hour a day to get paid the same as someone doing 20h then i’m sure everyone would revolt.
I think you’re losing a lot of nuance in this type of discussion by simply stating “burst” as a metric of instant damage from an ability; for example, if rapture were to increase all your dot tick rates by 400% for X seconds per shard, that would similarly do extreme burst since rapture is essentially a stand-in for X% of dot damage instantly.
I think the argument is that people would rather them see the “drain” and “dot” aspect of the spec as the focal point for the fantasy rather than rapture as a separate damage source. Burst damage doesn’t have to be snap instant damage, but can also be extreme rot damage (see dragonflight “burst” damage in pvp).
You are in the minority for sure in this case – I’m curious though, why did you enjoy siphon life and 4 dot management. A similar question would be: did you use this in mythic+ and what made you think it was successful design?
I would agree that the rotation isn’t “clunky” but I think it’s nearly impossible to argue that it does not have poor quality of life. Once you get up and going I think affliction is ok in it’s combat cadence, albeit very boring with poor fantasy, but the problem is the start to your rotation, whether it is in pvp or in pve atm.
Second reply here (sorry!)
I think this is an oversimplification or a lack of faith in blizzard having a decent group of combat designers that could design a version of affliction that isn’t just spender/builder, or filler/dot gameplay.
There’s a serious lack of classes in the game that can pool resources for a significant length of time (think of old demonology resource of demonic fury), and affliction is a pretty good candidate for having a large resource bar that can be dumped to increase our dots at specific times.
Throw in a couple of procs, and aff would be more than just filler/dots imo.
I know my friend, tbh i gave up on blizzard a while back.
We don’t even have a warlock dev and no one seems to actually read any feedback so i generally stopped posting.
Edit: a thousand and one solutions were literally gifted to them by all the lockbrains on a platter discussing every aspect of warlock design but nothing changes.
Yeah the current fantasy direction for me is a disappointment. Just not very creative or expansive on the core theme, spell effects are tame… possibly bland (core spells not hero).
That’s your opinion. I disagree.
Ramp up is how dot classes work.
But it’s doing the same thing in just a different way to appease people not liking dot damage. Be a waste of devoting time to change it though.
Even if your suggestion were implemented they would still dislike it and complain anyways. And as controversial as this opinion is I tend to not stress about how people doing heroic and below tend to feel about how specs are because at that level it doesn’t really matter.
I know I’m in the minority. It felt smoother. Even now I still keep hitting my SL bind out of habit sometimes.
I have a video where for heroic bear master in CN I was managing full dots and debuffs on both the boss and the bear.
Same for managing dots/debuffs on remonia and sire.
I don’t do mplus more than for max level vault for raiding and tended to play DEmo or Destro as I enjoy all three specs of warlock.
You could argue that is due to being a ramp up class. I think current Aff is easier than DF Aff but I enjoyed DF Aff more.
Nothing to be sorry about. I’m here for credible discussion 
I’m sorry for the late reply was at an emergency call that legit turned into a nightmare.
I do have very low faith in Blizzard.
Look, as somebody that’s been lambasted for being part of the 0.01% in this game, I think this way of thinking is a little too harsh considering how the vast majority of the feedback about the spec lacking fantasy is coming from that crowd in particular.
On the other hand, I literally play anything that has a .1% advantage because I have to, but it doesn’t mean I can’t hate the spec. As somebody that has dug this spec out of it’s grave multiple tiers in a row by being the first person to use it on mythic fights (partly because I have disagreements with the guide writers and TC’s sometimes), it’s something of a personal slight that I hate what they’ve done to the spec.
I think it’s a bit unfair to judge the spec from a M+ perpsective as to it’s playability if you haven’t necessarily played a lot of it, especially during the days of siphon life. Considering mythic+ is so much more popular than raid as well, and has extreme meta problems, it 100% has extreme issues in its ramp ability and lack of strong niche in dungeons. Not to mention the poor quality of life.
I don’t think honing in on better fantasy for the spec is appeasing people, and a waste of development time. Look at what they did to survival hunter this expansion and went all in on a specific bomb theme and it has significantly increased the playability, readability, and theme of the spec. This is also confirmed through its vastly improved play metrics (it’s almost triple the population as usual for the spec)
Survival hunter this expansion should be the benchmark moving forward for sure.
How is it harsh? People playing at that level don’t need to worry about damage profiles or burst because at that level it doesn’t matter. At CE and above those things do matter. There’s also way too many people with different opinions to make everyone happy.
I can see where you’re coming from as far as trying to min max. I do as well to a degree. Hating the spec is subjective though. I never said people can’t dislike the spec. I even said I prefer an older version but I still like the spec. I wanted to play Aff on Fyrak but demo was just too good
I didn’t judge it from a mplus perspective. There are just some specs that will likely never be meta for mplus and aff is one of them.
A ramp up dot spec is counter to the things that make classes strong in mplus. Changing MR from instant damage to increased dot ticks doesn’t help that.
It’s triple the population because it’s strong. The same way it was in fated for season three and four of SL.
A lot of people hate msv
I think it’s harsh because the primary focus of the critique of affliction is both directed at it’s poor quality of life in lower level m+ dungeons (12 and under) and its theme – both of which top end players do not care about.
At lower levels, damage profiles and the conversation on which class has an easier barrier to entry is always top of mind, especially considering the meta has shifted heavily toward burst oriented specs in lower dungeon levels. Saying that their opinion doesn’t matter, or is weighted less, since whatever damage they do they’ll likely time the key for instance (this is stretching what you are saying, I understand), is leaving their personal feelings of why the class feels bad to play in the lurch.
Destruction has been exceptionally strong and highly represented in many MDI tournies, but it’s never filtered down to be meta in lower level keys, yet people still complain about inferno vs cataclysm (because of lower level keys).
Their gripes are arguably more important than what us top level players think. I’ll always be riding the meta wave regardless, wheras most players of this game will not be.
By saying “high end content” (in your previous posts) you’re leaving it vague and up to interpretation to what you actually mean. In this case, I’m mentioning mythic+ since raid is always about niche situations and where meta representation is arguably less important since most people play in coordinated groups. On the other hand, “high end content” could also be extrapolated to mean mythic+ where it is both weak in high and and low end content.
On the other hand, It’s also grim to hand-wave tuning and poor playability for many specs by saying that they will “likely never be meta”. That’s a straight up failure of game design if certain specs have either poor tuning or extreme niche use cases that it never has the opportunity to shine in a major pillar of game content (let alone 2 considering it hasn’t been good in raids in nearly 4 years).
A ramp up dot spec is not counter to what makes classes strong in m+. It’s actually the opposite in most higher-end keys. Destruction has been the meta spec of choice for warlock players seeking the m+ title since it’s inception because of its ramping aoe damage, not it’s snap burst. The problem, is that playing destruction is miles easier and relies less on niche situations than affliction – the burst issue is entirely a low key-oriented meta which is why it’s so prevelant in forum posts.
Both can be true. While neither of us can say why it is truly up in its play metrics, the underlying factor is that the talent tree has significantly upgraded from its dragonflight counterpart and has increased its ability to be played outside of niche scenarios. Having more tuning knobs outside of niche talents like in previous expansions, has opened up more doors for the spec.
I’m not sure MR is the culprit as much as Vile taint is when it comes mythic+. Shouldn’t have such a long cooldown or the shard cost idk. But when it comes to raiding I feel the problem is the Phantom Singularity+soul rot burst windows. And then the rest of the time feeling like our damage isn’t there.
Remove phantom singularity and buff our dots to compensate idk
I don’t understand why Vile Taint or Seed of Corruption even cost a Soul Shard at this point, considering one you CAN’T spam and the other you SHOULDN’T spam. It’s not fun that we have to give up 2 MRs to just get our DoTs rolling on a pack.
I don’t think MR by itself is a problem really, I think the problem is that they made it the spender for everything to solve two Dragonflight issues:
So since you use the same spell to do damage in AoE and damage in ST, it makes design frustrating because you need talents and your other spells to help filter / support the type of damage you are doing, but looking at our talents they didn’t do a good job of that and almost a third of our talent tree just became ways to increase MR damage directly.
There are (2) talents that help support a specific damage profile for MR, Focused Malignancy and Cull the Weak. All other MR talents are designed to support the “Not making the AoE / ST choice anymore” by generally just increasing MR damage or reducing the cast time. There aren’t enough talents in the tree to make MR interesting so it just becomes burst damage. In fact there are no talents that make MR do anything other than just burst damage. Cull the Weak is the most interesting MR damage increase talent because it feels like it actually makes MR do more damage in a somewhat novel way.
Blizzard needs to address our talents and give us some better options or functionality for MR and tune things accordingly because it always feels like Blizzard is designing Affliction so delicately and they are afraid to do anything and we are still paying for Legion / BfA “crimes”.