[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Duckz0rs]

The goal post have been there from the outset i'm afraid mate, how you originally interpreted my comment is where the confusion lies here. When i read the blue posts their wording opened up an avenue for future change that could result in the buff becoming more maintenancy, if you choose to see a different meaning behind my words, even though i'm telling you the opposite then that's your issue, not mine.

You seem to think a maintenance buff needs to be up 100% of the time for it to qualify as one, which is totally wrong. A maintenance buff is any buff a class should look to keep up for as long as possible because they are balanced around the damage increase it produces. Now with the changes each soul produces 5s of buff uptime so you can stack them for increased duration, currently unless there is a consistent flow of mobs to kill this buff duration is not going to exceed 10s due to the spawn/despawn rate of souls "occasionally escaping" the artifact. If that rate is increased we will creep towards wanting to stack as many souls as possible to maximize the buff uptime. Which is the whole concern behind my OP, if we are balanced around this damage buff it is just going to feel like mana tap as we want it up all the time.

The whole reason it is good atm is because it is so short, therefore gaming around trinket procs/other buff windows will produce more damage. If the possible uptime far extends those type of damage windows, then not having it up will water down the power of those procs over the duration of the fight because of the RNG i.e if you can have 20s of buff uptime but you are waiting on that trinket to proc and it doesn't until 21s later, clearly to wait would probably be the wrong decision. All it would take to create a situation like this is 2 more souls than we currently have possible on ST.

The confusion stems from you reading into things that weren't actually said and then basing your speculation on it. Wishful thinking in the negative form. There might be a possibility of your scenario coming true in fights such as Kilrogg in HFC for example. That's been acknowledged several times. But if culling maintenance buffs is your goal, wouldn't it be be better to focus on getting rid of Mana Tap? That at least is a clear and cut maintenance buff for the time being.

[Deleted]

The confusion stems from you reading into things that weren't actually said and then basing your speculation on it. Wishful thinking in the negative form. There might be a possibility of your scenario coming true in fights such as Kilrogg in HFC for example. That's been acknowledged several times. But if culling maintenance buffs is your goal, wouldn't it be be better to focus on getting rid of Mana Tap? That at least is a clear and cut maintenance buff for the time being.

You don't have to take mana tap so it only exists for people that want that playstyle, which is fine and dandy as long as the other talents are not totally garbage in comparison, sure one will probably still be optimal over the others but if that difference is 1-2% then it matters not unless you are a OCD min/maxer/progression worlds first mythic raider.

I realise i am speculating on things that hopefully never come into fruition, but to say they won't happen is just as equally wrong, this is alpha we are talking about remember

[Jessicka]

The confusion stems from you reading into things that weren't actually said and then basing your speculation on it. Wishful thinking in the negative form. There might be a possibility of your scenario coming true in fights such as Kilrogg in HFC for example. That's been acknowledged several times. But if culling maintenance buffs is your goal, wouldn't it be be better to focus on getting rid of Mana Tap? That at least is a clear and cut maintenance buff for the time being.

If it's not mana tap 2.0 then it's Unstable Affliction 2.0 on a tertiary RNG resource. It sounds at best superfluous to have two spells doing pretty much the same thing, because you're just going to stack them always for X to make Y work. It's like Demonic Empowerment extending the cast time of your summons.

[Deleted]

If it's not mana tap 2.0 then it's Unstable Affliction 2.0 on a tertiary RNG resource. It sounds at best superfluous to have two spells doing pretty much the same thing, because you're just going to stack them always for X to make Y work. It's like Demonic Empowerment extending the cast time of your summons.

At least someone gets it

[Duckz0rs]

If it's not mana tap 2.0 then it's Unstable Affliction 2.0 on a tertiary RNG resource. It sounds at best superfluous to have two spells doing pretty much the same thing, because you're just going to stack them always for X to make Y work. It's like Demonic Empowerment extending the cast time of your summons.

Fair point, and yes I'm aware they're doing roughly the same thing. But if one has to go and one has to stay, you can find me with a baseball bat beating down on Mana Tap. I'm not advocating that the souls thing is a great idea, but I don't see as much issue in such a superfluous design. I guess I should add that I personally imagine Harvest Souls to be off the GCD counter, but there's no proof to that whatsoever at the moment.

If this goes live as-is Osanger, with the competing talents being Absolute Corruption and Contagion, it's going to be as "optional" as Improved Soulfire was. Fully mandatory even if you're not a min/maxer, because the alternatives are just absurdly weak by comparison in core concept, not tuning.

[Deleted]

Not in alpha but is aff still relying purely on seed of corruption for aoe? They really need to make that instant cast, the new talent sounds decent but cast time + travel time + detonation damaged needing to be incurred is ridiculous.

No. Seed is still pretty slow, but it's improved quite a lot - if you have a shard, it will automatically work like Soulburn:Seed does now (applies Corruption to everything)

But you can take Sow the Seeds talent (which means when when the first seed blows, it will not only put Corruption, but also seed what it hits too)
Then you can take the level 100 Phantom Singularity (although that's got a 1 min cooldown)
Plus you can take permanent doomguards/infernals because Supremacy talent in being replaced with Servitude)

Don't know if an infernal's AOE counts as "your" damage

I think that's the only thing that needs changing, it's dumb that Seed detonations are triggered only by the caster's damage, should be everyone's.

Affy's AOE is much better, but it's still going to suffer as people gear up and trash starts to die in two seconds. It will be fine at the start though.

But then affy is not an AOE spec.

[Deleted]

But then affy is not an AOE spec.

Yea but that depends in my view on how available other artifacts are. Slightly at ease with that with them saying the second one will be available shortly after the first. But depends on how far behind it is from your first.

Talents and the like for a bit looked like they would balance it out between the specs and that's still a thing as you pointed out. Just would be nice if aff had something 'snapish' with its aoe. It doesn't have the be among the top tier but just being able to contribute something if its needed would be nice, instant cast seed would help that I think.

[Deleted]

If this goes live as-is Osanger, with the competing talents being Absolute Corruption and Contagion, it's going to be as "optional" as Improved Soulfire was. Fully mandatory even if you're not a min/maxer, because the alternatives are just absurdly weak by comparison in core concept, not tuning.

That's not necessarily a bad position to be in, its clear that mana tap is not going anywhere from the recent hissy fit celestalon posts, so then its a tuning issue with the talents which is fixable with adjusting numbers. We have more chance of them balancing the talents than scrapping one completely, whether that's a nerf to mana tap or buff to the other two(dunno how they would buff AC tho, perhaps a damage increase as well) is for them to decide.

[Deleted]

No. Seed is still pretty slow, but it's improved quite a lot - if you have a shard, it will automatically work like Soulburn:Seed does now (applies Corruption to everything)

But you can take Sow the Seeds talent (which means when when the first seed blows, it will not only put Corruption, but also seed what it hits too)
Then you can take the level 100 Phantom Singularity (although that's got a 1 min cooldown)
Plus you can take permanent doomguards/infernals because Supremacy talent in being replaced with Servitude)

Don't know if an infernal's AOE counts as "your" damage

I think that's the only thing that needs changing, it's dumb that Seed detonations are triggered only by the caster's damage, should be everyone's.

Affy's AOE is much better, but it's still going to suffer as people gear up and trash starts to die in two seconds. It will be fine at the start though.

But then affy is not an AOE spec.

Mostly depends on the fight design itself but id take http://www.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#GhYl in a xhul progress fight
Haunt+Sow the Seed looks a nobrainer and probably the only situation when you wanna take absolute corruption is to free some GCD off the corruption tabbing in order to increase the numbers of UA/CoA on adds that live for at least like idk 20ish seconds?

Once you unlock Wreath of consumption and soul flame i see aff being more than decent in aoe fights

[Fearsom1992]

Aoe rotation for affliction is sooo fun so is multi target but ST is snore feast... like i said on the alpha forums... affliction lacks "the flow" that demo has I don't feel in sync with the spec like I do when I paly demo so something is definitely up .

[Kadria]

Really dig the changes and can see myself changing talents readily on the fly due to specific raid encounters. Shall be fun figuring it all out.

[Deleted]

I've been away for a very long time, but with Legion coming and all, I thought I might give WoW another shot.

So I was looking at the Warlock class, my main during SoO mythic and I noticed a talent that I don't quite understand: Soul Effigy.

Isn't this a stupid gimmick to force us to multi-dot in every situation? (granted that it actually works as described) Wouldn't it make more sense to halve the dot's damage on both targets if it's actually applied on both targets? That would make it useless on single target fights where the main target is accessible and very valuable on fights where the main target stops being accessible.

Example:
UA on effigy only = 100% damage
UA on effigy and main target = 50% damage on effigy & 50% damage on main target

If it ads a blanket 50% damage, without nerfing the active dots, it will probably start as being over powered and then it will be nerfed to the point that it'll become compulsory in single target fights to reach your potential.

[nerdzrool]

I've been away for a very long time, but with Legion coming and all, I thought I might give WoW another shot.

So I was looking at the Warlock class, my main during SoO mythic and I noticed a talent that I don't quite understand: Soul Effigy.

Isn't this a stupid gimmick to force us to multi-dot in every situation? (granted that it actually works as described) Wouldn't it make more sense to halve the dot's damage on both targets if it's actually applied on both targets? That would make it useless on single target fights where the main target is accessible and very valuable on fights where the main target stops being accessible.

Example:
UA on effigy only = 100% damage
UA on effigy and main target = 50% damage on effigy & 50% damage on main target

If it ads a blanket 50% damage, without nerfing the active dots, it will probably start as being over powered and then it will be nerfed to the point that it'll become compulsory in single target fights to reach your potential.

Yes it makes you multi-dot in every fight, but there's no point to casting UA on it since UA can stack on the main target, and without Absolute Corruption it's barely worth casting corruption on it anyways. It mainly serves as an extra target for agony to generate extra shards although currently it does have favorable interaction with GoSac and SoC as well, making it very clunky since you have to run into melee to use it effectively.

[Deleted]

Yes it makes you multi-dot in every fight, but there's no point to casting UA on it since UA can stack on the main target, and without Absolute Corruption it's barely worth casting corruption on it anyways. It mainly serves as an extra target for agony to generate extra shards although currently it does have favorable interaction with GoSac and SoC as well, making it very clunky since you have to run into melee to use it effectively.

Ugh, that sounds horrible. So basically you cast 5 UA's on the main target, soulburn and cast 5 more, then only apply Agony and Corr on your effigy (assuming the fix the SoC synergy).

What about your silhouettes? You kill them for mana, but life tap is more rewarding considering the gcd's it takes. Will casting Agony on them be enough to kill them whilst increasing the chance to generate a shard?

[grizzlysaurusrex]

Ugh, that sounds horrible. So basically you cast 5 UA's on the main target, soulburn and cast 5 more, then only apply Agony and Corr on your effigy (assuming the fix the SoC synergy).

What about your silhouettes? You kill them for mana, but life tap is more rewarding considering the gcd's it takes. Will casting Agony on them be enough to kill them whilst increasing the chance to generate a shard?

That mechanic was scrapped and we'll see a new version in the next build where the souls aren't attackable and instead pressing Reap Soul harvests all active souls and gives you a damage buff for 5 sec/reaped soul.

[Jessicka]

That mechanic was scrapped and we'll see a new version in the next build where the souls aren't attackable and instead pressing Reap Soul harvests all active souls and gives you a damage buff for 5 sec/reaped soul.

Sounds pretty much same, stack up Shards and Spirits (both RNG resources), then spam everything when you're shard capped. I thought they wanted to move away from this 'buff stacking' gameplay because it created too much of a throughput delta, and burst issues in PvP.

[grizzlysaurusrex]

Sounds pretty much same, stack up Shards and Spirits (both RNG resources), then spam everything when you're shard capped. I thought they wanted to move away from this 'buff stacking' gameplay because it created too much of a throughput delta, and burst issues in PvP.

Killing souls and targets already applied the buff though I think in the current version. This is just changing how the buff is applied. If it's something that's easier to keep up more consistently it should be easier to balance. I think they said souls spawn when you kill targets as well, but we'll see. Hopefully there will be a new build today and we won't have to guess anymore.

[nerdzrool]

Ugh, that sounds horrible. So basically you cast 5 UA's on the main target, soulburn and cast 5 more, then only apply Agony and Corr on your effigy (assuming the fix the SoC synergy).

What about your silhouettes? You kill them for mana, but life tap is more rewarding considering the gcd's it takes. Will casting Agony on them be enough to kill them whilst increasing the chance to generate a shard?

Yeah unless we get some drastic change you're gonna be seeing a lot of UA spam. There might be some play around keeping a single UA rolling as much as possible assuming the mana tap tier gets some tuning adjustments but ultimately most of our damage is coming from UA and it's our only shard spender atm.

[Deleted]

That mechanic was scrapped and we'll see a new version in the next build where the souls aren't attackable and instead pressing Reap Soul harvests all active souls and gives you a damage buff for 5 sec/reaped soul.

That sounds more interesting. I wonder how long you can wait with reaping, until the soals disappear though.

[Kirroth]

Isn't this a stupid gimmick to force us to multi-dot in every situation?

You say forced, other people who enjoy multi-dotting say enabled. But that difference of opinion is why it's an optional talent, after all.