This is more so related to demonology warlock rather than affliction, but shadowbolt feels terrible to use. In dragonflight, demonology felt amazing. It was fast and fun and it MOVED, the main issue perhaps being nether portal was widely disliked. But using cores for demon bolt and then using hand of guldan, while rarely ever using shadowbolt felt like a good rotation.
I know that the philosophy of Shadowbolt moving into the war within was to make it feel like a good button press and not like a waste of time. But forcing demonology to use shadowbolt 4x as much by reducing cores, feels even worse. Somehow demonology went from a semi- mobile spec to maybe the 2nd least mobile spec in the game.
This lack of mobility doesn’t feel like an impactful moment either, most of the time, the moments you aren’t moving are when you’re casting shadowbolt as dogs become instant and cores are instant cast. Hand of Guldan is a cast but it feels good and it feels impactful. Everytime I have to stand still and cast shadowbolt, it feels bad.
Diabolist, new tyrant, and new capstones feel amazing for demonology; however the curse of shadowbolt brings down the fun level of the spec drastically. I believe most of the outcry and problems with demonology/warlock as a whole can be fixed with a relook at shadowbolt as an ability or a relook at core economy.
I’m not a class or game designer so I can’t tell you what would be better but I know shadowbolt feels TERRIBLE to press, somehow even more now than it did in dragonflight. There has to be something better than what we have currently.
