Purpose: Make Aff more fun to play and lean into the “life-draining caster” fantasy.
Big-picture issues
- Affliction gameplay is clunky and inconsistent in multi target fights.
- The spec’s talent tree includes several nodes that perform poorly or not as expected.
- The damage profile is misaligned with the class identity of draining vitality. Damage is typically front-loaded and spiky via Malefic Rapture + cooldowns
Big-picture solutions
- Reduce barriers to entry in AoE and target-swapping scenarios. Eliminate the dead zone where Agony has to be manually refreshed
- Rebuild the talent tree so that capstones are impactful and choice nodes reflect meaningful build decisions.
- Replace Malefic Rapture as a Soul Shard spender with a new spell more aligned with a DoT-forward damage profile.
note: if you like Malefic Rapture, ignore section three and the rest of it should still hold up.
/1. Reducing barriers to entry in AoE
Affliction is not very fun to play in Mythic plus or on council-style fights. This is because Agony uptime is tedious to maintain in large groups as Vile Taint does not come off cooldown before we need to refresh Agony. In multi-target scenarios, this feels like casting “homework” spells and so that you have any sort of Shard income for the real damage.
- Reduce the cooldown of Vile Taint to 15s at baseline. This allows us to maintain 100% uptime of Agony while the targets are close to each other and we have at least 1 Soul Shard in reserve.
- Rework some talents to provide AoE friendly options. Particularly those that allow Affliction to store power and carry it to the next pull.
- Reintroduce Soul Swap to the spec tree. Substantially reduces the time spent re-applying DoTs on a new priority target.
/2. Rework the talent tree for impact and fun
There are several talents that either don’t work as expected, cost too much, or have low impact. Not to mention our choice nodes are not actually choices in PvE, aside from VT/PS. A few examples:
- Phantom Singularity gets shorter with haste, thus punishing you for the gall to have stats/Time Warp.
- Malediction, Contagion, and Cull the Weak all being two point nodes in the same row makes navigation terrible because they’re so hard to get around. You don’t see this in many class trees.
- Summoner’s Embrace / Grimoire of Sacrifice is not a choice in PvE. GoS is never worth taking for output or utility. GoS could be a baseline spell for flavor/PvP.
Based on these criteria, here are some talents we could remove (x) and update (circle). Of course, we’ll add new nodes to make better use of those points!
https://i.postimg.cc/nctg57cZ/Old-Aff-Talents.png
And here’s the reworked tree. Note: Damage and amplification values below are roughly estimated for illustration. Adopting this change would require additional spell balance adjustments.
https://i.postimg.cc/L8xWnbk6/Proposed-Aff-Talents.png
Row 1 - unchanged
Row 2 - unchanged
Row 3
- Moved up Drain Soul / Improved Shadow Bolt choice node so players get to play around with them sooner. Also allows better pathing into filler-modifying nodes.
- [new] Feast of Souls: When any of your damage over time effects deal damage, gain 1 stack of Feast of Souls (lasts 10s). Every 50 stacks, convert 50 Feast of Souls into 1 stack of Soulpowered (lasts 30s).
- Soulpowered: Deal 3% additional damage over time per stack. Stacks up to 3 times
- Replaces Absolute Corruption / Siphon Life
- Kindred Malice - Slight change. Now increases both Corruption and Agony damage by 10%.
Row 4
- Moved up Nightfall as a natural flow from the filler choice node.
- Moved down Dark Virtuoso as a filler-modifier.
- [new] Inevitable Demise: Drain Life consumes all stacks of Soulpowered, dealing 100% additional damage and 100% increased healing per stack consumed. Nightfall affects Drain Life.
- Oblivion consumes all stacks of Soulpowered, dealing 20% additional damage per stack consumed.
- [new] Sow the Seeds: Casting Seed of Corruption expends all stacks of Soulpowered. For each stack consumed, reduce casting time by 20% and cast an additional seed at a nearby enemy.
- [new] Despoil: When Corruption deals damage to a target affected by Agony, there is a chance Agony will cause damage immediately and gain a stack.
Row 5
- [new] Lingering Shadow: Shadow Bolt deals 50% of its damage over 4s. Damage over time effects occur 10% faster while casting Drain Soul on the target.
- Cunning Cruelty - Reworked. Shadow Bolt can trigger Shadow Bolt Volley (x5) while Drain Soul can trigger Mass Drain Soul (x3). Chance to proc is substantially increased when consuming Nightfall.
- Note: projectiles created by this talent can be modified by talents that affect Shadow Bolt and Drain Soul (LS, ISB, and WB).
- [new] Soul Swap: Copies all damage over time effects on a target and holds their duration. Recast within 10 seconds to apply them to another target. Unstable Affliction is not applied if it is on another target.
- 30 second cooldown
- Instant
- Replaces PE/GoS. GoS is now a baseline Affliction spell.
- Vile Taint / Phantom Singularity - Same as current functionality but PS duration is no longer affected by Haste.
Row 6
- Moved up Malediction so that pathing to row 8 isn’t so painful. To compensate, Haunt, SDS, and Cunning Cruelty have gone to other rows.
Row 7
- Deleted Improved Haunt and rolled it into baseline Haunt, which is now in this row.
- Decreased cost of Contagion to 1 point.
- Sacrolash’s Dark Strike / [new] Alythess’ Pact: Damage caused by your pet has a chance to generate additional stacks of Feast of Souls.
- SDS is unchanged.
Row 8
- Moved up Ravenous Afflictions as it’s a bit too weak to be a capstone.
- Moved up Relinquished to reflect its relatively low value.
Row 9
- Focused Malignancy - Increases the effect of Bane/Malefic Rapture by 25% if Unstable Affliction is on the target.
- Decreased cost of Cull the Weak to 1 point.
Row 10
- Perpetual Unstability / [new] Unstable Pathogen: UA may be applied to a second target. Refreshing UA with 8 seconds or fewer remaining will apply it to a second target if one is in range.
- PU is unchanged
- [new] Radiant Agony: At 12 stacks or higher, Agony has a chance to mutate and gain a stack. If it does so, two nearby targets also gain a stack of Agony. Agony’s maximum stacks increase to 20.
- [new] Torch the Soul: Casting Bane on a target afflicted by Corruption triggers Bane on all targets affected by Corruption within 100 yards.
- Note: if you are a Malefic Rapture enjoyer, just pretend this is Tormented Crescendo.
/3. A spender that feels like Affliction
This section isn’t required for the talent rework above to be successful. If you’re in love with MR, simply replace the proposed Torch the Soul talent with Tormented Crescendo and it will work. But if you like the idea of amping DoTs, read on.
Bane
1 Soul Shard
Instant
The Warlock’s damage over time spells are 50% more effective on the target for 4 seconds. Reapplying Bane extends it to a maximum of 6 seconds.
Instead of using DoTs to fuel Malefic Rapture, Bane fuels damage over time effects. 4 seconds isn’t a lot of time, however, and players will not be able to keep up constantly in single target fights. During a burn phase, players will have a distinctly different pattern weaving in spells while maintaining maximum Bane uptime, rather than today’s pattern which is more about dumping shards as fast as possible then praying for TC procs.
This design also provides marginally better synergy with both Hellcaller and Soul Harvester hero classes.
- Hellcaller - provides further % increase to Agony and Wither, which are now core damage sources
- Soul Harvester - Provides an extra DoT effect for Bane to buff
How does Affliction play with these changes?
The play pattern changes a little depending which choice nodes you took and whether you focused on the left (single-targeted focus) or right side (AoE focus) of the tree. Committing to the right side while taking some points to modify Shadow Bolt will give you plenty of shards for Bane uptime but you’ll want to pay attention to both Nightfall procs and Soulpowered stacks. The former can trigger a Shadow Bolt Volley that in turn applies Shadow Embrace to several targets, while the latter provides a large burst of damage via Sow the Seeds and maintains Corruption. You might also choose to save those Soulpowered stacks for the next pack to get Corruption rolling at no Soul Shard cost. Regardless, you’ll have Vile Taint for every pull.
By contrast, committing to the left side of the tree is about preparing for huge Oblivion windows that melt bosses at a 45 second cadence. While pooling resources for Oblivion, you’ll get to spice things up with Soul Rot / Darkglare so there’s always something to look forward to. Your choice of Perpetual Unstability vs Unstable Pathogen will be based on how often a second target appears for you to duplicate your DoTs. And constraints on movement or target proximity may influence your choice of Vile Taint or Phantom Singularity.
Regardless, it’s no longer a spec about dumping shards for bursty damage. Skill expression starts in talent choices and extends through managing the uptime of both DoTs and Bane. As a DoT class, its damage curve is still a gradual slope but the punch of Sow the Seeds and the flexibility of Soul Swap should make it much more capable at dealing with trash and changing targets.