[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Baconeggcheese]

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.

We'll need to see how it plays out once tuning happens.

I don't see a large reason to go aff in general though with its current kit vs the other specs.

[Deleted]

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.

there is literally no reason to make any assumptions about how a spec will turn out dpswise at this point in time since there has been no tuning pass yet and im fairly sure that afflic will be perfectly fine for anything by the time legion launches, unless ofc they give locks the same treatment at launch as they did at wod's launch, with locks being good at everything but nowhere near great at anything(which the devs have agreed on).

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I don't see a large reason to go aff in general though with its current kit vs the other specs.

idd, i particularly dont like the idea of afflic aoe being reliant on a RNG based resource.

[Lucrece]

We'll need to see how it plays out once tuning happens.

I don't see a large reason to go aff in general though with its current kit vs the other specs.

Yeah, it's why I don't buy the arguments on tuning.

From looking at a kit alone, we don't excel at multidotting over shadow, we don't have their burst kit because we don't have a baseline nuke like mindblast or the mindspike+mindblast mechanism let alone voidbolt spam with t Void Torrent that also hits like a truck in a form that gives them metric tons of haste.

If seed of corruption is tweaked to not suck, we MIGHT be better at large target aoe than shadow, but that's about it.

And then there's all the utility shadow brings on top of having a far better mechanics avoidance cooldown in the form of dispersion, not to mention their artifact gold traits don't suck.

And that's from a performance perspective. From an aesthetic perspective, Affliction warlocks got left in the dust. We have no improved visuals whatsoever; agony, corruption, and UA have no real cast time animations or visible effects besides a small smoke cloud on the target, and Drain Life is a visual downgrade from Malefic Grasp or Drain Soul.

We could have something going on with the souls from the artifact but those don't even spawn now so we lost that persistent visual, and the only other two neat visuals we got for spells are phantom singularity and Effigy.

[Baconeggcheese]

idd, i particularly dont like the idea of afflic aoe being reliant on a RNG based resource.

I have a bigger issue that said RNG resource comes from us having to maintain a dot that doesn't aoe in order to properly aoe. But yeah these things are far from its only problems.

From looking at a kit alone, we don't excel at multidotting over shadow,

That's not kit, its tuning.

we don't have their burst kit because we don't have a baseline nuke like mindblast or the mindspike+mindblast mechanism let alone voidbolt spam with t Void Torrent that also hits like a truck in a form that gives them metric tons of haste.

Yeah the specs got its usual problem of having too much ramp, which gives it obvious issues. They could solve them with specific talents being changed decently but that likely won't happen.

not to mention their artifact gold traits don't suck.

I'm hoping our gold traits change, but if they don't it means the spec will be tuned around them sucking which is the same difference at the end of the day. Just doesn't feel great.

Though compound interest is stupidly strong and I'm not sure why it isn't a gold trait.

From an aesthetic perspective,

Yeah I wish we got anywhere near the aesthetic love of spriests or fire mages. Our class kinda got dicked there as of right now, ahwel.

[Duckz0rs]

Yeah I wish we got anywhere near the aesthetic love of spriests or fire mages. Our class kinda got dicked there as of right now, ahwel.

Funny how we went from visually most impressive spellcaster (bar affliction) to least impressive in alpha. Then again, I get the feeling they're not quite done yet; they really seem to want to overhaul -ALL- the player vfx.

PvP question: If you take Soul Swap in the PvP talents, does it also copy the stacks of UA or only a single stack? Will be shenanigans for spread pressure in 3s if it copies the full UA stacks.

[Sabever]

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.

Well I care about PVP and you are not tanky at all. In fact, if you want to get self heals you have to spec into drain life. Soul leach is not a self heal.

soul leech + artifact to increase amount absorbed

Sould leech needs to build from damage, and is not a self heal.

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

Demon skin has been removed (go check for yourself) and is no longer a pvp talent. Mortal Coil is a 45 sec cooldown and works just like it does now which is a small heal.

there's phantom singularity which also heals 30% of damage done on a 1 min cd

30% of damage done, which is a small aoe damage. This likely will not result in a good pvp heal.

your health stone FULLY heals you plus w/e it heals your party for (one time use)

I didn't realize it heals you fully but that is a really long cd

reap soul which increases damage which increases all healing bonus as well as increasing soul leech quicker

so far on the ptr this has been very very small

[Duckz0rs]

Well I care about PVP and you are not tanky at all. In fact, if you want to get self heals you have to spec into drain life. Soul leach is not a self heal.

What do you mean by "spec into Drain Life"? It's Affli's baseline filler. There's no "speccing into", you'll have it and need it either way. The only option there is taking Drain Soul which does more damage but -less- self-healing.

Demon skin is removed, and replaced with the far, far superior Drain Essence and Casting Circle. Drain Essence gives a damage debuff to the targeted enemy stacking up to 50%. Casting Circle makes you immune to interrupts and silences for 20sec on a 15 sec CD. On top of that we also have a baseline reduction on the duration of interrupts and silences cast on us. (forgot by how much)

Soul Leech will restore itself based on ALL damage done, so every single DoT you have ticking causes our baseline shield to recover. Doesn't sound like much, but Shadows of the Flesh increases the absorption (not value) further.

But the big thing really is Casting Circle in my opinion. It allows us to Drain Tank and, barring Death Grip and knockback, enemies literally have NO way to stop us from channeling drain life within it. Siphon Life and Drain Life didn't heal for a particular lot in Vanilla either, but drain tanking still made us near immortal if done right.

With all the other extra survivability options, such as Mortal Coil for snap CC, Dark Pact shield, Unending Resolve, our own and allies' healthstones healing us and whatever else I forgot we can probably give most tanks a run for their money survivability-wise in PvP.

[Sabever]

What do you mean by "spec into Drain Life"? It's Affli's baseline filler. There's no "speccing into", you'll have it and need it either way. The only option there is taking Drain Soul which does more damage but -less- self-healing.

Demon skin is removed, and replaced with the far, far superior Drain Essence and Casting Circle. Drain Essence gives a damage debuff to the targeted enemy stacking up to 50%. Casting Circle makes you immune to interrupts and silences for 20sec on a 15 sec CD. On top of that we also have a baseline reduction on the duration of interrupts and silences cast on us. (forgot by how much)

Soul Leech will restore itself based on ALL damage done, so every single DoT you have ticking causes our baseline shield to recover. Doesn't sound like much, but Shadows of the Flesh increases the absorption (not value) further.

But the big thing really is Casting Circle in my opinion. It allows us to Drain Tank and, barring Death Grip and knockback, enemies literally have NO way to stop us from channeling drain life within it. Siphon Life and Drain Life didn't heal for a particular lot in Vanilla either, but drain tanking still made us near immortal if done right.

With all the other extra survivability options, such as Mortal Coil for snap CC, Dark Pact shield, Unending Resolve, our own and allies' healthstones healing us and whatever else I forgot we can probably give most tanks a run for their money survivability-wise in PvP.

The original response was to a person stating on Live, not on Beta. So a current speccing discussion was required.

Sould Leach in Beta is not a heal. Additionally, in pvp affliction requires time to build the shield. The lock is the primary target in pvp meaning there will be no shield.

As for your last statement, I just assume you don't pvp.

[Duckz0rs]

The original response was to a person stating on Live, not on Beta. So a current speccing discussion was required.

Sould Leach in Beta is not a heal. Additionally, in pvp affliction requires time to build the shield. The lock is the primary target in pvp meaning there will be no shield.

As for your last statement, I just assume you don't pvp.

My bad on Drain Life, lost track of the conversation, sorry.

I didn't say Soul Leech is a heal. I said it's a shield that (re)generates through attacks.

Regarding your last statement, you ignored the main points of my post, replied with an "insult" (not that I'm insulted) and seem to only reply to the words Soul Leech. So you have spoken and are not open to discussion?

[Baconeggcheese]

Why is anyone trying to make an in depth post about live in the alpha thread?

One would have to be completely ignorant of alpha to think aff doesn't look tanky for pvp.

Soul leech is all damage
Demon skin / mortal coil
Soul siphon
Harvester of souls
Sweet souls
Drain life is our filler (and long dark knight of the soul)
Essence drain / casting circle / nether ward
Curse of tongues / weakness

I don't know what such a kit will be besides tanky.

[garonne]

Well I care about PVP and you are not tanky at all. In fact, if you want to get self heals you have to spec into drain life. Soul leach is not a self heal.



Sould leech needs to build from damage, and is not a self heal.

Demon skin has been removed (go check for yourself) and is no longer a pvp talent. Mortal Coil is a 45 sec cooldown and works just like it does now which is a small heal.

30% of damage done, which is a small aoe damage. This likely will not result in a good pvp heal.

I didn't realize it heals you fully but that is a really long cd

so far on the ptr this has been very very small

you ask what makes us tanky yes? does building a shield from damage not help with being tanky? dont answer yet

demon skin is still there http://legion.wowhead.com/spell=219272/demon-skin (go check for yourself, lvl 45 talent) and mortal coil does work like it does on live but its still 11% health on a 45 sec CD. does that not make you tanky? dont answer yet

30% damage done amounts to 172.8 SP heal on a 1 min cd, its about 3-5% health per target hit, yes its minor but does it not help with being tanky? still, dont answer just yet

a full heal from lock candy, A FULL HEAL, you're at 5% and pop it thats a 95% heal, yes its one time use only but its basically a Lay on Hands for self only. again, does this not help with being tanky? dont answer yet

i notice you said NOTHING about dark pact which is a 40% absorption on a 1 min cd, does this not help with being tanky? you guessed it, dont answer yet

there's also siphon life, call it minor if you want but thats a constant heal no? does constant heals not help with being tanky? just a minute, dont answer yet

and guess what, i haven't touched the pvp talents yet

we have curses, my my, those look tanky to me, i make my target do less damage to me so i can survive longer? what would you call that?

and here goes another tanky row, essense drain allows me to make my opponent deal up to 50% less damage, or i can pick casting circle where im immune to silence and interrupt or incase i dont want that, have a shield that reflects all spell damage done to me on a 5 sec duration, 45 sec CD

oh man, look at that, i almost forgot a rotational spell that we use, drain life.

now, here goes the big kahuna, the climax if you will, can you guess it? can you guess? c'moooooooon, guess it? give up? well,

you get to have ALL of this at the same time, isn't that good? isn't that making you tanky? oh yea, you can answer now.

[Deleted]

I have a bigger issue that said RNG resource comes from us having to maintain a dot that doesn't aoe in order to properly aoe. But yeah these things are far from its only problems.

yeah, it would be a HUGE QoL thing if they added a mechanic in our artifact or talent that would spread agony, like each tick it would spread to a mob within 20 yards, it would help with a lot of the issues i think, ofc not the clunky ones but atleast the most glaring ones.

[Cyberthug32]

Lets all accept that if they were going to change the kit of our talents at all, they would have already. That has nothing to do with tuning, one of the reasons Destro took so long was being they changed the artifact completely.

If you are hoping when its officially Beta, and the talents change you have another thing coming. Blizzard doesn't remove or revamp too much once its in that stage.

I can see damage increasing and improving some abilities but the kit we have is what i for see us keeping come Live. ;-(

[Fearsom1992]

I like how this forum is more active than the affliction beta forums because everyone got tired of saying the same shit every build xD, but its hard to tell how our aoe is because to a surprise soul flame doesn't work and its only good on xavius and scorpion boss -.- harvester of souls could be better if it did more dmg if you take absolute corruption, and wrath consumption is broken but in theory sounds pretty useless.By the way all 3 dots are equal in dmg everyone is just playing affi wrong for example all 3 dots snapshot which is pretty annoying when don't have a lot of tormented souls to multi dot a ton of adds before the buff fades.

[Xorn]

So, I don't really pay affliction much mind so I'm just now noticing this, but is anyone else concerned that 2/3 of the major artifact talents are only activated on a mob death? They offer 0 single target value now that the escaping soul is not actually a target

[Fearsom1992]

So, I don't really pay affliction much mind so I'm just now noticing this, but is anyone else concerned that 2/3 of the major artifact talents are only activated on a mob death? They offer 0 single target value now that the escaping soul is not actually a target

we have been posting about that for months on the alpha forums but no go still -.-

[garonne]

Lets all accept that if they were going to change the kit of our talents at all, they would have already. That has nothing to do with tuning, one of the reasons Destro took so long was being they changed the artifact completely.

If you are hoping when its officially Beta, and the talents change you have another thing coming. Blizzard doesn't remove or revamp too much once its in that stage.

I can see damage increasing and improving some abilities but the kit we have is what i for see us keeping come Live. ;-(

blood and frost recently had a talent revamp 2 weeks ago and the class as a whole had a talent revamp in january/february, its really not too late if its not working out.

[wholol]

I've been pondering about this recently, but is there no cap to how many UA's we can stack on a single target?

I mean logically speaking there should be, otherwise it would be insanely broken on single target fights, I mean just imagine what the dps would be if you can infinitely stack UAs, I mean it's not even about dpsing anymore because nothing would come near that level of dps after the very first minute and the longer the fight goes the dps just keeps going on growing exponentially.

If you think about it, lets say we pick soul conduit and soul harvest, start the fight with full shards and just focus on making sure that UA never runs out, we can manage generating 1 shard every 6.4-7 secs ( factoring the minimum cast time and delay up to the maximum 1 sec, aka gcd cap) while banking on several from soul harvest in case RNG doesnt happen within those 6.5~ sec, aka soul conduit refund or agony multidotting.

So theoretically let's say on a single target fight that lasts around 5+mins ( let's just go with 5 mins):
(5*60)/6.5 = 46.15 , let's just round it up to 46 ish UA stacks,I mean what would a 46th stacked UA be ticking for anyways ? we're probably talking 1% of the bosses HP per second here or more but something around those figures

Anyways my point is this would potentially break dps meters and afflock stacking would be a thing and then the nerf bat.

Unless I've missed something critical in my so called logic of course, please enlighten me with your opinions on this matter.

Can someone test this on a dummy in alpha and see if it works ?I understand there might be holes in time where shards might be an issue but I'm hoping proper usage of soul conduit and soul harvest can fill in those dead times of bad RNG.

[Kirroth]

Unless I've missed something critical in my so called logic of course, please enlighten me with your opinions on this matter.

What you've missed is that UA is using Ignite mechanics and not straight stack mechanics. If you have UA up and cast UA again, the new DoT doesn't have UAx2 potential damage. It has the full potential damage of the new UA cast plus the remaining damage of the first UA cast. So you're not rolling stacks with escalating damage. You only ever get 266% Spellpower (plus Mastery) damage out of a single UA cast. It's just you don't lose damage from casting UA again before the first DoT runs out.

[Baconeggcheese]

The "cap" assuming gcd capped would be something like tick damage x8 rolling at a time with infinite shards. If I'm imagining right.