Affliction Warlocks have some of the most ridiculous button bloat in the entire game.
Siphon Life being a separate gcd spell instead of being baked into corruption like it used to be is just redundant and backwards. Making siphon life a passive buff to corruption can ease button bloat and give it more play.
Im fearing that this siphon life button bloat is some weird gimmick to make MR do more damage by adding another separate dot.
no need to fear because this is exactly what it is.
Blizzard doesnt like DoT specs doing DoT damage
Siphon Life came back in Legion, so it’s been around and pretty much unchanged since then.
Yeah dots being like 70% of our damage on the beta is definitely indicative of this.
Agreed.
I love the concept of Siphon Life, but does it feel worth the extra DoT? Nope.
7 DoTs to make up 70% of your damage profile is pretty dumb. They don’t need to have so many DoTs, a few DoTs doing way more damage fits the profile better, feels better with button bloat/clunkiness, gets better results with tuning, and is easier for newer players to learn/play and gives them more reason to stick to the spec over just playing something easier/more simple.
Also having to tune so many DoTs themselves is just bleh. Why tune 7 different DoTs when you could just make the spec 3 DoTs plus a Drain Soul filler, being 4 DoTs total, and tune their individual damage better, make each of them feel more impactful over just clumping 7 DoTs together into “DoTs as a whole” over “DoTs individually.” Makes no sense.
You’re right, though, it has been around since Legion.
The bulk of the damage is UA, Agony, and Drain Soul. Most of the rest comes from needing to have something to do beyond pushing 3 buttons. Our burst windows are much lower than in SL.
Not that I’ve seen much love for Siphon Life anywhere when it comes to DF feedback. It’s a busywork button, but it’s been that way since Legion. But, the devs seem reluctant to touch anything that came from Legion, probably because people always gush over how great it was.
They’ve touched on a lot from Legion. They brought things back, though, because people loved Legion playstyle.
Granted, not everything from Legion returned and we lost quite a bit, too, but what made Legion awesome was actually the feeling the spec gave players who played it.
Single Target with Malefic Grasp you felt like you were melting the enemy’s face off. I don’t mean damage, but you had your DoTs up, draining and your drains were making your DoTs more powerful, which played a feedback loop into making it feel more powerful and better. Like your DoTs really mattered.
Drain Soul didn’t do as much damage since it was mainly a buffer for your DoTs, though it did heal for like 500% of the damage it dealt so that was a cool feeling, too, just knowing that unless it was a 1 shot mechanic you were fine to stand in the stupid.
I’m both happy and sad they got rid of that, though, as it was dumb to have that high amount of survivability, but in PvP it felt magnificent since you could literally stand around draintanking in PvP over having to kite for days like it is now.
I don’t agree that the rest comes needing to have something to do beyond pushing 3 buttons as your DoTs all had a CD. I think they just keep trying to push burst onto DoT specs because they want the feeling of the highs and lows for every spec to have. The high being when your CDs are popped, the lows being when they’re not.
I think that’s fine for some specs, burst oriented specs like Destro or Demo, but I think DoT specs should not be oriented or designed this way, for reasons I stated above, regardless of tuning, regardless of the content or what the gameplay is; the reality is mythic+ is not suited for DoT specs or the design of DoTs. Raids are, as most during progression are 5+ minute fights or even 10 minute fights.
This design is more shifted and suited for DoT specs, but because mythic+ and dungeons are a thing, can’t have a DoT spec not having some kinda burst thing.
That’s also why Rapid Contagion fit more perfectly than MR, but also it’s why I think burst for DoT specs should just more faster ticking DoTs. I think it shouldn’t be there at all, but because it has to be there just having faster ticking DoTs solves the issue.
Did you guys look at the Shadow Priest talent tree? They got 2 talents I think Affliction should actually have, too. The Mind Flay extending duration of the DoTs on the channeled target but even more the one about the Mind Flay/ Mind Seer talents making your DoTs tick faster. I think that’s the better design direction for Affliction.
Granted, Shadow has its own problems and this is the Warlock part, but Shadow Priest and Affliction Warlock have always been intertwined ever since Vanilla I think, or at least since Wrath. There’ve been a few differences here and there but more or less these 2 specs have operated in identical ways and then in Legion they tried to seperate them quite a bit. Shadow, on the beta, actually feels pretty good to play for the most part. I don’t mean capstone talents or anything, I just means like…taking their DoTs, and then using Mind Flay to make their ticks speed up. That’s a pretty good feeling, feels awesome watching them tick 80% faster during Mind Flay.
Affliction doesn’t have an AoE channel like Mind Seer for Shadow Priest, which is fine as I think Affliction should just have 3 DoTs, plus Drain Soul. Multi target is: Use SoC to spread Corruption on 3 targets, throw Agony on each, throw Unstable Affliction on each and then Drain Soul into 1 target until it’s time to refresh DoTs. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that rotation, either. Press Rapid Contagion, channel Malefic Grasp into 1 target and then watch DoTs tick faster.
That’s my ideal version of Affliction, that or just manually apply all DoTs to each and then Rapid Contagion into Drain Soul and then by the time done a full channel of Drain Soul it’s time to refresh DoTs again. I think that’s a pretty good gameplay loop, it’s simple and pretty easy to do. It’s nice, and under MG your DoTs actually feel more impactful and because there’s much fewer DoTs, only 3, it’s 3 GCDs per target or 4.5 seconds of GCDs, it makes each DoT itself feel better since they could do similar and higher damage individually which gives a better feeling to “it’s a DoT spec” and with MG you get the rotting damage feeling that was there in Legion.
I also wanted to touch more on this because I think it’s quite the opposite. After Legion, in BFA, we literally seen a full on rework of the entire spec. It was scrapped for the atrocity that was Affliction in BFA. It was not a rot style, nor a real DoT spec. Death Bolt was the main character of the show, much like how Malefic Rapture is for Shadowlands and is again for DragonFlight.
You had an 8 second burst window that happened every 3 minutes because the bulk of your actual damage came from Death Bolt under Darkglare extension with UA stacking up so much.
People hated playing the spec, then, just like a lot of us hate using MR now. In DF it’s just as annoying because as much as it’s nice with the DoT damage buffer, you have to press MR even more than in SL due to it being a 6 second duration, so every 2nd-3rd GCD has to be MR, and that’s after you press it 3-4 times to get the buff up anyways.
If it was something like: Press MR twice, then once every 15 or 20 seconds, then a lot of people are much happier with that because they don’t have to press it as often, then. 6 seconds is a very short window and a very annoying one at that. How many people complained with Malefic Wrath buff when you had to do it every 8 seconds or whatever it was at first before it got buffed slightly to a longer duration? It’s the same crap there, just more DoT damage which is great, but it’s just as annoying having to continuously press that button every 2nd to 3rd GCD instead of every 10th to 15th GCD.
Siphon Life, as a DoT, just adds to button bloating. The spec, half of the time, is already GCD starved so when they add more things to the rotation for even more GCD starving, it doesn’t feel good. If they made the DoTs last like 20 seconds baseline, people probably wouldn’t care as much, then, but them being 12, 14, 18 seconds every GCD adds up. Add in mechanics, add in like actual buff maintenance, and make them all short durations and it becomes a mess. That’s why simpler is better; less is more because less is more impactful, it’s more freeing, and feels better to play since fights do have mechanics that need to be done.
Dread Touch also comes after taking Malefic Affliction, which nets you what is essentially a permanent 30% buff to UA damage. I think people are assuming Touch is closer to Haunt and not Grasp and that full uptime is the goal.
Even then, with just Nightfall and Crescendo, you can get a decent uptime on DT. It gives a similar feeling of channeling for a dot buff that Legion had, but you can time your proc uses to keep the dot extended, even while you do other things.
Maybe with the assumption, no clue. I just hate being forced into pressing MR as if it’s a burst window, and then having to continuously press it yet again because it’s my DoT buff mechanic as well.
It doesn’t feel good. If they lowered it down to 2 presses, and then a press every 15-20 seconds to keep the buff up, that’s fine. It’s just quite annoying having to press it and keeps making me feel like I’m doing burst windows with pressing it 3-4 times to get the buff, and then just as annoying with maintenance being so short.
You can, and I was thankful for this on the beta during playing it with a target dummy.
So yes and no. The feeling Malefic Grasp gives is there is no forced requirement buff for it. Like, it made your DoTs tick faster, tick harder, or tick again. Your duration for it was your DoT duration, and then you just channeled when you had free time, whereas with this you have to channel every 6 seconds or you lose the buff. Losing the buff costs you 4 shards to get back, maybe 5 even, but it’s not a good feeling at all, not even remotely close.
The feeling Malefic Grasp gave was a sustained damage feeling, because there was no time limit realistically speaking. You just dotted and drained. That’s not at all the case for DT, so again while you have freedom with not being required to stand still and channel, you don’t have the truest freedom of just “whenever you want” like you did under Malefic Grasp.
That is the feeling I’m speaking of, and that’s the feeling a lot of people loved when playing it. DoT into drain into refresh DoTs into more drains. Every drain made your DoTs feel more impactful. It wasn’t a burst cycle, though looking at how I described it I could see how one would think it was. If you were someone not doing mechanics, in like a pug, and just channeling into the target you’d have 99.9% uptime on it, then.
Yeah, when you had Crescendo and it procced that feeling felt pretty good.
It’s just not the same though. The gameplay loop is a bit similar but not really, and the more sustained loop of Malefic Grasp, ultimately, just felt so much better.
Not to mention during Legion from 7.1+ you had execute DoTs, which further played into the gameplay loop and made it feel that much better. Execute really felt so nice and impactful.
I’m hoping they don’t continuously make affixes that punish, sanguine is awful while talented in to VT. I don’t hate the button bloat, but also baking it in to Corruption wouldn’t be terrible, they could just adjust the damage it gives to MR windows.
I’ve ran a few higher keys as Aff and it just isn’t an enjoyable time. Damage wise is fine, get rid of DG as a cd.
Yeah, Siphon Life sucks to play with. I also find it hilarious that Harvester of Souls is just SL’s effect on a low chance lol. Why isn’t Siphon Life from wotlk in this game? Make AC compete against something else.
Playing a ton of WotLK aff right now, and can confirm, Siphon Life as a passive rather than it’s own DoT feels 1,000,000% better than being it’s own DoT(particularly in it’s relatively weak current form)
You just enjoy the lack of button bloat. And i dont blame you at all. Aff has to many buttons.
Siphon life has been in wow since vanilla
Because retail siphon life is a 14 second dot. Classic vanilla is a 30 second dot. SM/DS was my fav spec for my warlock because siphon life and demonic sacrifice provided alot of self healing. You never needed to eat or drink. Best farm spec. Better than a mage.
The wotlk version not only merged the spell with corruption it also nerfed the healing. Wotlk also make immolate and UA mutually exclusive. No more fire magic for affliction. Bad bad bad.
Wotlk lowered siphon life healing that is news to me it healed for 40% of corruption damage Or 50% glyph but even at 40% because of ho much damage corruption did in WotLK it actually healed for more than at any time in wow history a a portion of your health especially when you had the Corruption affected by haste glyph.
I forgot about that ,thanks. How much does corruption tick in wrath?
siphon life procs sacrifice, and augments rapture. It has it’s uses in low level content when you’re running around with burning rush dotting mobs with siphon life to replenish hp to full.
The main reason why you don’t have 3 heavy hitting DoTs is because the easier it is to apply all your dots to a target, the easier it is to apply all your dots to multiple targets in an aoe situation effectively multiplying your single target damage profile. They’d have to hamstring you with a cooldown on your DoTs or a target limit or something and no one wants that.
It is possible to balance a true rot dot class, it has been done before, but Blizzard is far too scared to try in case they break Aff again. And for good reason, Blizz has no idea how to properly balance classes anymore…
coughUA/PS/SRcough
Seriously though, you’re right. CD’s in particular suck imo.