Here i am again to bring you another thread of how plain bad this class is performing in PvP (esp. regarding affliction).
Laughably low damage output, clunky gameplay, squishiest class in the game.
Not to mention we get laughed at by shadow priests. What happened to ‘hybrid tax’?
Rerolling, or probably quitting altogether soon. I know that’s dramatic but I don’t have the time or desire to restart from 0 even if we are at the beginning of the xpack. This class is just too bad though.
hybrid tax mentality was abandoned… like a decade ago?
Fine, maybe it was.
I would focus on the rest of the post though, that’s what is important.
Ok. Clunky is a vague term. What do you mean exactly?
I agree it is a vague term. Have you tried playing lock in any PvP settings at 60 yet? If not…when you do, you’ll see exactly what i mean
It just doesn’t feel good. Other classes either control us with ease or burst us down faster than we can hope to put out damage. Or, in cases of druids, pallies, DKs, monks too even…our chances of being able to put out enough damage is absolutely 0. They will win the long game every time or beat us sooner than that, even.
Our ‘rotation’ is a nightmare. It feels like garbage and performs like garbage. I’ve already made the decision to move on, this character will be shelved until big changes come. It’s just not fun gameplay, and it’s objectively garbage performance.
I was wondering how afflic was doing in PvP. Might reroll as I’m not too sure about this lock.
All warlock specs should get Demon Armor as a passive, Demonology should be able to have two perma demons at the same time and have Doom deal 900% increased damage and be baseline (legit 18 seconds before it does something and it does less damage than a chaos bolt, 18 seconds for 5% of someones hp).
Affliction should have it so all dots act like Agony and will gradually ramp up to deal insane amounts of damage
Destrucion should get Focused Chaos reverted to 65% damage increase and more Soul Shard Generation in general.
Not to dogpile but:
Locks weren’t fixed in 8.3. They just dumped a haste cap borrowed power scenario on locks to make it so lock deficiencies became unimportant. As I said way back in 2018 the class design is bad. It’s bad for PvP and PvE. Mobility is king.
That’s not dog pile. That’s what I wanted. Most of his complaints were meaningless and vague. Now people are bringing out precise mechanical problems. People are thinking and not feeling.
You know as well as I do that people who don’t understand classes love to swarm part whiny noise at the beginning of expansions. But that’s worse than useless it it’s all feelycraft and full of thinks like ’ it’s clunky" " rotation is bad" “stiff” these are all objective bs.
Drain Life dealing a small percentage of health for a long channel is precise and useful. I mean sorta useful. Not like the devs come in here anymore Andrea read things.
I think they do on the general forum. Not this forum. No way given the last 4 years.
Warlock feels unplayable in a battleground scenario. Cast times too long, setup too long, defensives non existent. Affliction feels better than Destruction considering how absurd melee damage and mobility is. Fury warriors literally have auto charge this xpac. Wartlocks have deathcoil on a 45 sec cd, or howl on 40, a 1.5 cast time fear, portal which means you have to have picked your place of combat. No slows, no roots, one terrible defensive ability. Maybe it gets better with versatility.
Edit: I’m reversing my stance on this post completely. I spent most of yesterday grinding BGs, playing with some different specs, and working on my versatility. It’s a bit of a learning curve, and the current top pvp spec (sub rogue) is a natural counter, but by focusing on my positioning I am starting to see the real power of affliction in BGs. Considering making a separate effort post to offera counterpoint to this thread.
While I agree that’s it’s hard to get damage out sometimes we’re not exactly crap in pvp right now. Getting our utility curses back along with amplify curse was pretty big. Amp’d Curse of Weakness in particular can really shut down people’s burst whether they do melee or spell damage.
I’ve been slapping people’s &$@! in pvp since I hit about 170ilvl; that took like a day or two of running dungeons until we had enough people to do mythics. The only classes that give me a ton of trouble right now are Unholy (which can stomp me 7/10 times) and Shadow Priests because of their monster self healing during burst if they twist 3 DP onto me with VE up. MM hunter loses a lot of its shock and awe if it can’t crit me and I have defensive for their cooldowns. Same for Sub rogues but you have to prewall that infinistun bs and get an amp’d curse on them to force a cloak so you can port and stall for time.
Try running a battle masters and deathcoil if you aren’t. I hit like 38k HP with a battle masters up; that’s a pretty fat deathcoil/Healthstone heal on percentages alone not accounting for really big drain life if you can get enough CoA stacks and the baseline heal for Drain Life being buffed. I outheal some healers in battlegrounds right now spamming drains.
Tl;dr gotta use all your utility and we have a lot of it between baseline portal, deathcoil, healthstones, applying correct curses and kiting.
CoEx is really strong. Portal removes snares and roots on cast. Don’t be afraid to use feldom to snap a succubus or something if you need one. Soul shape is mvp for for blinking LoS or just forcing movement abilities to bait a safe portal on your part. Always shoot to just stay alive and let the dots work. Aim to unload your Raptures with Resolve up they hit like a truck.
It sounds like you’ve definitely played more PVP than I have. I’ll take all this into consideration, but what I want to know is what are you PVP talents. Specifically, what are you giving up to take amp’d curses? I can’t even imagine aff in a pvp situation without rampant/rapid, and that leaves one for a defensive, imo either demon armor or spell reflect.
You’re trying to play too aggressively this early into the patch. Affliction is about grinding them down not YouTube montage burst damage 100% of the time even though it’s capable of some retarded burst. It’s 100% about baiting them into making a mistake then punishing it with health regen and our Godzilla sized control kit.
I’m running Amp Curse, Demon Armor and Reflect for BGs. Yes the ability that gives you faster dots is very very strong. Yes more UAs are really good for cleanse protection. They are also much better in arenas or RBGs. That being said you can’t do damage if you get erased in the first 15 seconds of the fight before your F-tier ramp time outruns the globals you need to start playing.
As far as rated pvp goes you will almost never need demon armor and reflect simultaneously. This is a soloBG pick that’s suboptimal overall but will keep you alive. Always spam drain every chance you get. Unloading 5 Raptures is tempting but you can’t dps dead. Take a lead out of BCs book and drain drain drain drain while debuffing and keeping your dots up.
Also I forgot to mention but get in the habit of dropping your portal everywhere. All the time. No matter where you are. On cooldown. Having it in range no matter where you are is the most important part.
Just smash that &$@! Down everywhere. Dismount got fight? Portal. Jumped by a rogue? Portal down the second you’re out of stuns. Random world quest you’re doing? Portal down; ran out of range of it and it’s off CD? New Portal. It’s very important. Very very important.
Yeah this is god tier advice right here.
Welcome to the club of being bursted down, DH has less ways to survive than lock. Pretty much the only thing we are better at is getting away.
have you tried getting some gear? you can have a full 171 set in a few days but your complaining while being in the 150s in the first week of the expansion, we are gonna be fine, not going to be ridiculous like BFA but we will definitely have a place in the meta.
bruh curse of exhaustion is one of the best slows in the game
it does get better with vers btw
I think the issue is not that curse of exhaustion is bad, its that it get’s overshadowed by the multitude of enemy engages, immunities, slows, roots, and stuns. Who cares if they are slowed if you can’t create distance between them long enough to cast anything?