If the balancing problem with MR is it scales off the dots on the target, limiting it to one dot means it can be balanced easier. This would also open up being able to buff ua/agony and some of our talented dots to do actual dot damage, and not just as buffers to MR windows, without making the spec go nutty. Also, cuts down our aoe ramp significantly, being able to seed -> pop -> rapture, agonies for shard gen.
I think it would make us better feel like a dot spec, while still giving us an active ability that does rot damage and not reliant on specific burst windows, something many afflocks feel is counter to the theme of afflock.
Thoughts?
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The whole concept of MR is just bad imo.
It is just like demo’s Demonic Consumption. You feel obligated to follow a single build to increase the power of a single spell. If you don’t use that meta build then your dps drops significantly.
This also creates really small window for using cds/dump shards and requires a way too high skill cap for the regular rotation as we’re not all mythic raiders. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have to practice here. What I’m saying is even when doing pretty good, you won’t be as competitive as easier classes who do similar damage with no effort.
Having a hard class to play is alright, but it’s not alright when that’s the only viable option imo.
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It is hard to argue around MR because some people (like you) hate it from the ground up and others (like me) love it. This is the first time i’ve enjoyed the affliction playstyle in some time. I like planning for burst windows, and even though I get really annoyed at my bad parse because I can’t line up CDs and mechanics well, I like the potential of the concept.
The problem is that it is too cumbersome (too many ST dots) - the spec is completely manageable in ST if you have absolute corruption because then you are really only maintaining uptime on haunt + CoA; heck, SE basically never falls off either. You refresh dots when SR off CD then throw SR -> Phantom -> 5 raptures, then back to basic maintenance.
The fixes for MR are simple and numerous:
- Could get rid of SL and make AC baseline, or put an alternate talent on the row.
- Could make SL + Corruption have double the duration, for less maintenance so there is less pressure to spam during burst windows - preferably increase PS and SR duration as well.
- Could make MR scale off of the damage of your DoTs instead of the number; so for instance, it does more damage if CoA at 10 stacks or if you have WiA, and does more damage if you’re specced AC with sacrolash legendary and just have corruption up)
- Could create a non-linear scaling for MR and DoT number (i.e. rather than MR doing x% more damge per DoT, it does 0.4x% for 1 dot, 0.6x% for 2 dot, 0.9x% for 3, 1.0x% for 4, and 1.1x% for 5). When you have one DoT up you’d see double the damage (IE SoC -> MR spam), when you have 3 DoTs up (IE ST outside windows) you’d see same damage as we have, and when you have 5 DoTs up (IE ST burst window) you’d see less damage.
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I don’t hate malefic rapture, in fact I like it. But it’s obvious the issues it’s going to have on balancing and scaling is something blizzard is worried about, too. Big difference in its strength with stacking dots through talents, covenant and not doing so.
I also see a lot of people complaining that dot damage itself is low, and the aoe pulls is too slow to ramp in trash pulls in order to get the payoff of MR.
I think this solves all those issues, and still lets you do MR windows while being able to buff our other dots without having to gut malefic rapture.
I see your point for sure, but I think it feels like a pointless spell if it only scales off one DoT. It would be like if Kidney shot or Eviscerate did the same damage regardless of how many combo points were on the target. The whole point of the spell is it’s supposed to be a payoff for having the target more DoT’d up - a payoff that is proportionate to our ramp. You have to chose to MR early with few DoTs and no ramp (SoC -> UA -> MR spam) for low hp packs vs. MR late with a lot of DoTs and max ramp, lined up with natural modifiers that make boss weaker.
If they were going to make changes I’d use the ones above; alternatively they could get rid of it altogether and replace it with the PvP talent rapid contagion and up DoT damage, but that would make PvP balance very hard - it’s very unfair and unfun to be dotted up by a warlock at 30 yards who then teleports away and you die without ever catching up. It’s also not fun to get 2 shot in arena, but apparently blizzard is okay with that. Also 5x DoTs and constant drain soul is not my idea of compelling play, and makes the class braindead - just refresh dots at 50% duration or when moving and cast drain soul instead of sleeping for max parse.
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I would just like to see SL go away. It’s the only viable talent in that row just because it buffs MR.
at this point they have baked the lion share of our damage into MR any change has a drastic effect on our damage so they are kinda stuck. unless they do a major rework to the overall damage profile
If MR scaled off DoT DAMAGE, then I bet WiA would be more comparable to SL, and even AC may make the cut given +15% damage to corr. All three talents would be comparable if tuned right.
when in the history of the current talent system have they ever managed to balance any one row to a comparable state?
uhhhhh hmmm…
i wanna say the legion 30 row was decent?