This spell should not have a 1 target limit. Blizz please figure it out, this is completely contradictory to what affliction should be, not to mention that it isn’t that powerful of a spell to begin with to have such a limitation on it. The June 10th Build was right on the money. Sacrificing the 10% damage for multi spreading was a very good solution. Bringing back the limit 1, and now only increasing the damage of malefic rapture is terrible. Please revert to the June 10th build and move forward.
10 Likes
Also please just make drain the filler. Shadowbolt feels so clunky when you don’t talent out of it.
8 Likes
Shadow bolt as the filler is what killed aff for me. I’ve always been a drain soul / malific grasp drain fan boy. Aff was felt amazing to me when you toss a ton of dots up and then drain.
Atleast the option for the most part to drain is still there with drain life and drain soul talents in the first row of our talents in SL.
I also feel they reverted the change to UA because I think a lot of aff would be focusing on just mass dotting everything and not using malefic rupture which seems to be the thing the devs are super happy with.
5 Likes
I agree completely with Shadowbolt filler killing Aff. I went from Legion Aff main all through Nighthold and into Mythic raiding for the following tiers to dropping it immediately in BFA.
UA needs to go back to multi target at this point for me. I won’t play the spec how it is right now with UA. I posted this in the mass feedback thread but I don’t want my class to feel good in pvp being able to spread my DoTs then awful in PvE because of how it SHOULD be. From the way I have been seeing dungeons playing out and the playstyle with Malefic Rupture (MR) you would be playing wrong to only be casting UA. With MR you really never want to cap shards and kind of spend them ASAP. Especially since drain soul and UA are going to gen you shards. If anything UA being on multi target made more sense to me so Soul Drain didn’t feel manditory to keep up with Soul Shard spending.
With the previous build you could spread your DoTs then MR one target with UA dies, you MR again, and repeat. It looked really fun and interactive to skillfully generate extra shards and not feel like you are just rotating 1 DoT, that doesn’t do significant damage, around. UA’s damage would need like a 100% or more buff to warrant limiting it to only 1 target. When I place it on a target I want to notice it. I don’t want to see it 6th on my damage meter bellow MR, Agony, Corruption, Covenant Ability, Drain Life/ Drain soul (depending on talent), Vile Taint, THEN UA. That just feels wrong for such a unnecessary limitation of 1 target.
3 Likes
I’m okay with UA having a 1 target limit if the damage is high enough. Lowering AoE/cleave without hurting single target is fine as long as they can get the numbers right.
Absolutely agree on Shadowbolt though. Drain Soul really needs to be the default filler. It’s just so much better.
3 Likes
The 1 Limit UA sucks, and should be reverted. “We want the class to feel like what it should be a dotter.” “Oh wait…Keeping up multiple dots is hard so let’s not do that.”
8 Likes
I was watching kalamazi vid with the june 10 build and it looked so fun, and fluid. he would move from pull to pull with shards up and be able to go right in and dps and it helped alleviate the build up portion of affliction. The spec looked whole. not it seems kind of lacking in my minds eye. the Devs really need to reconsider the limit 1. and i dont mind shadow bolt being in game, but Drain soul should be base line. it feels wrong as a talent. But i feel same about howl of terror as well… Also the idea of having UA avaialble only for pvp will make the build feel ridiculous when your in a pve setting. Its a big problem. but i digress.
8 Likes
Exactly this:
“I was watching kalamazi vid with the june 10 build and it looked so fun, and fluid. he would move from pull to pull with shards up and be able to go right in and dps and it helped alleviate the build up portion of affliction. The spec looked whole.”
I was honestly looking forward to having to “Snipe shards” with UA and have to juggle casting Drain Soul and UA on various targets. Now it is “Cast UA on main target, cast dots on all targets, sit back adn snipe with drain soul” just sounds so boring and stupid. Honestly makes me kinda wanna refund my money for SL if this is how blizz is going to do it.
6 Likes
Anyone on Alpha who knows if blizz has any intention on modifying UA to remove the limit 1 again? I’ve been looking at all sources of “Blue Tracker” holding out hope that they notice the community outrage over this and they revert it back at least to the June 11 build.
Nothing I’ve seen, but I hope they don’t just take the outrage at face value on this one. They’ll need to make other changes to curtail ramp up time if they want to add multi-target UA back in.
1 Like
Ramp up time with multi UA is already lower than Live ramp and is aoe by Default of how Malefic Rapture works. UA will still be a priority target only spell if you can cast it on multiple targets. With multi UA, you pre cast seed, cast Agony on seed target, 1 global, then UA the target for a 1.5 second cast time pre haste. Spread Agony and then Malefic Rapture to not over cap on shards then cast UA on remaining targets as permitted. So to get started you only have a ramp time of a total of 4.5 seconds including Malefic Rapture’s cast. I don’t see how being ABLE to cast UA on more than 1 target changes this.
Additionally I personally like have some Ramp/RoT as Affliction because it means I don’t need to wait at all for Tank to get aggro because by the time they have aggro my spells are starting to hit hard. Unlike a Destro Warlock where you can’t just cast Chaos bolt off the rip because you might just take aggro immediately (not to mention how inefficient it is).
Single target ramp up is faster because you don’t have to UA stack into a darkglare, but against multiple targets it is not faster at all. If rapture damage is balanced around keeping all dots up on targets you want to kill, then the more dots you have to cast means you’re taking more time to set up proper rapture damage. If you CAN cast UA on all targets, then you HAVE TO cast UA on all targets or your raptures are gimped.
Some ramp up time is to be expected. Adding more won’t be doing any favors for Aff M+ viability. I’d rather not have the spec be dead for M+ for an entire expansion again.
You don’t need to wait at all for aggro, ever. The only time aggro has been a problem are random TD procs right on a pull which won’t be a thing in Shadowlands.
To be honest they can’t do this. They’d have to balance around the assumption everyone is taking Vile Taint AND Siphon Life talents. I think they can and should only balance around having Agony, Corruption, and UA on each target, given keeping more than 3 dots on multiple targets up requires a higher skill ceiling.
So the “balance” is centered on “three dots on all targets”, which is easier if you do Seed + Vile Taint and multitarget Agony, and throw some UAs out, primarily for Shard gen when some are about to die.
In my opinion at least.
1 Like
Just because they shouldn’t design it like that doesn’t mean that they won’t. They’re going to need to do something to cap how many dots can effect rapture or we’ll get into a situation where we have so many things to set up that we’ll never have time to actually cast full damage raptures.
Spreadable UA, without other changes to make dot application and upkeep less time consuming, is only going to make things worse.
I don’t see any evidence to support this assumption. If dot classes are a problem so fundamentally as you claim then the correct solution is just to not have dots at all. If you assume agony is going to be cast 4+ times in any situation gcds alone will make it non-viable, forget any UA or other spells. There’s no way to make that work, period, so most of us that disagree assume that vile taint/seed and sparing use of other dots for sniping/shard purposes and fill will be assumed in a multi-target short duration fight. There is no way UA makes things worse and I don’t see how you think that.
I do keys as affliction on live and casting Agony on each mob is exactly what you do. That’s no assumption, that’s how things work. Maybe Aff needs a 1 second baseline GCD if they’re going to keep it working that way.
Just adding rapture to the mix would make current aff pretty good for keys, but adding in more dots that you need to spread around would present the exact problem you just brought up. Where you have no time for other spells that aren’t your dots.
You can’t just not use your dots, except on AoE packs that are going to explode anyways. Your dots are your damage. If the solution is for Aff to just not do damage, then enjoy another expansion of not being viable for M+.
They aren’t. You have moonkins with twin moons and sunfire hitting multiple targets at a time, shadow priests with misery to halve how many gcds they’re using and void bolt to keep them going, fire mages who get to spread all their damage passively.
Then you have affliction still in the stone age having to dot targets one at a time, and people are asking for MORE single target dots to put out one at a time. Yes, everyone loves UA and wants to be able to spread it all around, but at some point people have to realize that so many dots are a burden if there’s not a more efficient way to get them out.
And if you can’t actually conceive of something other than spriest/moonkin perhaps that would be a better fit for you? As for the gcd application issue, they’re not doing so hot in m+ either when compared with the rest of the ranged field, at present. People want to spread UA to shard snipe. Go charge the windmill again if you’d like but UA has essentially nothing to do with your issue and the people that liked the previous build of it didn’t like it for the reason you’ve listed.
A better fit for me? I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I do fine even with Affliction’s shortcomings. I would just rather see the spec move into a positive direction instead of one that makes its weaknesses even worse. Classes with better dot application aren’t doing great, so Affliction should get even worse dot application?
Having a single UA is what allows shard sniping. Spreadable UA is just shard blanketing. I mean, I’d love it if I just got dozens upon dozens of shards for doing what I’m supposed to do, but it really takes a lot of thought out of the spec.
If spread UA comes back, I wouldn’t count on the shard refund staying as part of it.
This is the biggest issue. On 1-2 targets casting a lot of DoTs is fine, but once you start getting to 3+ targets you start running out of time when you spend several GCDs on each target. 5 mob trash pack, even with Seed you still spend 12ish GCDs just getting Agony, Corruption, and UA up on all targets (add in SL and it’s even more), leaving you with just a few seconds leeway before they start falling off again. There’s just no time for casting anything else.
“Multidotting is too hard”
Litteraly have Multidotted as Aff Main since the first day of this game… Its not hard and that guy needs to be fired.
Multidotting is what separates a good lock from a bad one, and thats okay.