[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[JJShadoe]

I'm not in the alpha so I can't comment firsthand, but does it seem like the Affliction "identity" is being tied in to being the tankiest of the Warlock specs?

I know they're trying to make Warlocks in general the hardiest of the cloth casters like they used to be, but it seems like the talents and artifact traits for Affliction lean that way much more so than Demo/Destro. That definitely ties into the way Affliction was (or was able to be) back in Vanilla and BC. Apologies if this is a totally redundant point that's already been discussed.

[Baconeggcheese]

but does it seem like the Affliction "identity" is being tied in to being the tankiest of the Warlock specs?

They're all different, what ends up being the tankiest will be situational etc.

Aff looks like it has the most healing, demo is in-between, and destro has more flat damage reduction (mastery, eternal struggle).

[garonne]

could someone clarify something for me. when reap soul says it doubling the effect of all other traits, does it mean just the gold ones? or every single other trait?

so the trait "Inimitable Agony" that increases our agony damage by 12% would be 24% under the reap soul correct?

if so, the 10% damage buff is probably meant to offset the nerffed damage to some artifact traits.

[Fearsom1992]

All I know is when I play demo and destro I have fun and affi just makes me so sad on ST xD

[ThePhantombox]

could someone clarify something for me. when reap soul says it doubling the effect of all other traits, does it mean just the gold ones? or every single other trait?

so the trait "Inimitable Agony" that increases our agony damage by 12% would be 24% under the reap soul correct?

if so, the 10% damage buff is probably meant to offset the nerffed damage to some artifact traits.

Yes, it means every trait. Though, quick question for anyone on the alpha who may be reading this. I don't see too many videos of affliction after the artifact change, so how is the uptime of the reap souls ability looking? Is it going to behave more like a maintenance buff or a dps cooldown?

[Kirroth]

Yes, it means every trait. Though, quick question for anyone on the alpha who may be reading this. I don't see too many videos of affliction after the artifact change, so how is the uptime of the reap souls ability looking? Is it going to behave more like a maintenance buff or a dps cooldown?

I think the answer depends on the circumstances. On a raid boss where you're just consuming the souls it generates on its own, it's a DPS cooldown. If you're solo questing and grinding through a lot of mobs quickly, those killing blows will generate enough extra souls that your buff uptime will climb towards 100%.

[Baconeggcheese]

Yes, it means every trait. Though, quick question for anyone on the alpha who may be reading this. I don't see too many videos of affliction after the artifact change, so how is the uptime of the reap souls ability looking? Is it going to behave more like a maintenance buff or a dps cooldown?

They appear to keep tweaking the spawn rate, initially you couldn't consume them fast enough but there's down time in this last build. So its looking more like a dps cd with every pass (assuming no additional adds)

[ThePhantombox]

They appear to keep tweaking the spawn rate, initially you couldn't consume them fast enough but there's down time in this last build. So its looking more like a dps cd with every pass (assuming no additional adds)

Well, that's good to hear, it was looking like it could really go either way.

[Lucrece]

Is nobody else bothered by the lack of neat animations or animation updates for our spells?

We feel like a shitty shadow priest with no good spell animations. All we see is drain life because the rest are basically a tiny dark smoke around the target and that's it.

[Kirroth]

Well, that's good to hear, it was looking like it could really go either way.

If there's a mechanic where you get increased uptime from killing blows, then you can be assured that the base uptime will be well short of 100%.

[wholol]

They're all different, what ends up being the tankiest will be situational etc.

Aff looks like it has the most healing, demo is in-between, and destro has more flat damage reduction (mastery, eternal struggle).

Wouldn't demo ,being the only spec that still has soul link , be the tankiest of the bunch? I mean how high a mastery for destro do u even need to reach 20% flat dr?

Setting eternal struggle aside since you can also consider demo's fel skin as a DR talent,also the fact that eternal struggle only lasts 6 sec and having to cast it specifically for the damage reduction will cost us 10% max hp is somewhat of a debatable risk.

[Baconeggcheese]

Wouldn't demo ,being the only spec that still has soul link , be the tankiest of the bunch? I mean how high a mastery for destro do u even need to reach 20% flat dr?

Setting eternal struggle aside since you can also consider demo's fel skin as a DR talent,also the fact that eternal struggle only lasts 6 sec and having to cast it specifically for the damage reduction will cost us 10% max hp is somewhat of a debatable risk.

Depends on final numbers and situation. Again, they all do it differently.

[Lucrece]

Well, demo should be the tankiest if we are to take their recovery options to be weaker than affliction/destro.

More importantly, demo doesn't have the burst design of destro nor the spread pressure or mobility of affliction. Those should account into a spec's durability.

[Sabever]

I'm not in the alpha so I can't comment firsthand, but does it seem like the Affliction "identity" is being tied in to being the tankiest of the Warlock specs?

I know they're trying to make Warlocks in general the hardiest of the cloth casters like they used to be, but it seems like the talents and artifact traits for Affliction lean that way much more so than Demo/Destro. That definitely ties into the way Affliction was (or was able to be) back in Vanilla and BC. Apologies if this is a totally redundant point that's already been discussed.

I pointed this out, or asked this in a similar thread. So what makes Warlocks, or affliction warlocks tanky? I honestly do not see it at all. They say that they are taking away our mobility in favor of being tanky. How? We get 10% more health. Ten percent is nothing especially since we have almost no abilities to mitigate damage. We get a shield that can be 15% or 20% if you spec into it. That is decent but still is easily able to be burst through. You no longer have a damage mitigation. They took away demon skin in the last patch. You have one emergency CC in Mortal Coil but you lose teleport if you take mortal coil. You can summon an shield that allows you to free cast but you still take damage in it, and can be knocked or gripped out of it.

Hontestly I have no idea why they keep saying tanky. I see nothing tanky about Warlocks in the current Legion build. In pvp we are going to be an easy kill target, the weakest and easiest to dispatch of all clothies, by far.

[Deleted]

also remember that destro, as part of their mastery, takes a random amount of less dmg, at 0 mastery they take up to 5ish% less dmg but afflic's selfhealing is HUGE, we're talking about selfhealing equivalent to a blood dk's selfhealing, i would estimate it to be around 20-30k hps on live which means you can heal your whole health pool in around 20-25 secs, personally i would take the selfhealing coz it eases up the pressure of the healers and they can focus on other ppl. demo has static dmg reduction, destro has random dmg reduction and afflic has HUGE selfhealing, all these things are just another way to say that locks are still tanky as hell, possibly even more than on live.

[Sabever]

also remember that destro, as part of their mastery, takes a random amount of less dmg, at 0 mastery they take up to 5ish% less dmg but afflic's selfhealing is HUGE, we're talking about selfhealing equivalent to a blood dk's selfhealing, i would estimate it to be around 20-30k hps on live which means you can heal your whole health pool in around 20-25 secs, personally i would take the selfhealing coz it eases up the pressure of the healers and they can focus on other ppl. demo has static dmg reduction, destro has random dmg reduction and afflic has HUGE selfhealing, all these things are just another way to say that locks are still tanky as hell, possibly even more than on live.

I do not have access to the PTR for Legion but I can say that from the videos I have seen this is not true. In fact, it is not even close. They get siphon life, they can get an artifact talent that lets Corruption randomly tick for possible health, then the life drain, which is only a filler, and is not that high to begin with. I am unsure where this other healing is coming from. So assuming that the 25k-30k is coming mainly from siphon life, (which it isn't), then you would be doing this on a 3 target pvp match about 5% of the time. Meaning you are dead.

[Deleted]

I do not have access to the PTR for Legion but I can say that from the videos I have seen this is not true. In fact, it is not even close. They get siphon life, they can get an artifact talent that lets Corruption randomly tick for possible health, then the life drain, which is only a filler, and is not that high to begin with. I am unsure where this other healing is coming from. So assuming that the 25k-30k is coming mainly from siphon life, (which it isn't), then you would be doing this on a 3 target pvp match about 5% of the time. Meaning you are dead.

i wasnt talking about legion in my post, i was talking about live, on legion it is easily doubled and then add soul leech. also who cares about pvp. in pve you're tanky as fuck.

[garonne]

I do not have access to the PTR for Legion but I can say that from the videos I have seen this is not true. In fact, it is not even close. They get siphon life, they can get an artifact talent that lets Corruption randomly tick for possible health, then the life drain, which is only a filler, and is not that high to begin with. I am unsure where this other healing is coming from. So assuming that the 25k-30k is coming mainly from siphon life, (which it isn't), then you would be doing this on a 3 target pvp match about 5% of the time. Meaning you are dead.

since this is the affliction forum:

soul leech + artifact to increase amount absorbed
there's demon skin/mortal coil for a constant building shield (20% + a constant 1% per sec and a health from damage dealt) or heal of 11% and fear on 45 sec cd
siphon life
there's dark pact which is 40% of our health every 1 min
there's phantom singularity which also heals 30% of damage done on a 1 min cd
your health stone FULLY heals you plus w/e it heals your party for (one time use)
random health from corruption (very low but its a bonus)
reap soul which increases damage which increases all healing bonus as well as increasing soul leech quicker
then there are the curses: increase cast time, reduce physical damage your target does or reduce target health (latter doesn't help tanky)
essence drain/nether ward/casting circle: take less damage stacking to 50%, reflect all harmful spells or cannot be interrupted or silenced
and last but not least drain life.

[Fearsom1992]

what i found out in raid testing tonight
A: All 3 of affi's dots snap shot with procs and reap soul
B: 2/3 of affi's gold perks are completely useless(HOS only good one at 6% of the dmg)
c: seed has wayy too long of a detonate time and cast
D: Soul Harvest feels wayy too important
E: the mana cost of all the spells is very brutal.

[Lucrece]

I see no reason whatsoever to bring an affliction warlock over a shadow priest. An aff lock is now a shadowpriest without the burst, and is far more RNG reliant.