[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Kirroth]

I wouldn't call it a pitfall but it plays differently with the artifact since it has a bunch of beneficial effects in it and using reap wrong can result in significant damage losses. Compound Interest (artifact trait, very top) is especially important as it will often be the deciding factor for when to use Reap and UA.

Right. I did glance at the artifact calculator and notice that Compound Interest is now on ticks rather than casts. The last time I was following Afflic developments people were annoyed that the "on cast" procs meant that Absolute Corruption was a bad talent pick, so that was good to see.

There does seem to be a tension between dumping SS on UA all at once during a trinket proc or cooldown versus spacing them out for greater uptime and room for CI procs. What's the word on how Fatal Echoes works? Do you have to let UA fall off entirely for it to proc?

[Fuqup]

pretty basic question: i'm not in the beta and can't test for myself, do the 2 golden artifact talents that trigger from kills work with HKs? or do they require the killing blow?

another question while i'm here: how does affliction seem to be performing at burst/sustained aoe? what is ramp-up like? does it still suffer in situations with hard target swaps/2 target cleave?

[Kirroth]

pretty basic question: i'm not in the beta and can't test for myself, do the 2 golden artifact talents that trigger from kills work with HKs? or do they require the killing blow?

The last I saw, Word of Dev is that they're not supposed to require killing blows to trigger, and if they're currently operating otherwise that'll get fixed before launch.

[nerdzrool]

pretty basic question: i'm not in the beta and can't test for myself, do the 2 golden artifact talents that trigger from kills work with HKs? or do they require the killing blow?

another question while i'm here: how does affliction seem to be performing at burst/sustained aoe? what is ramp-up like? does it still suffer in situations with hard target swaps/2 target cleave?

Currently they require killing blows but that's supposedly a bug that will eventually be fixed.

Pretty solid sustained aoe with the right setup (sts/sac), burst aoe isn't great due to cast/travel/trigger on seeds. Ramp up on pull is pretty bad in basically every situation due to starting with 1 shard / 0 souls and decaying quickly out of combat. Target swaps are a lot better than live since UA deals a lot of damage fairly quickly and refunds a shard if it expires early, but we still won't be great at very short adds since they won't live long enough for UA to tick out. We'll do fine on anything that lives 8s or more since we'll be able to cast a few UAs into them and have them tick out. 2 target cleave is fine, nothing special from what I can tell.

[Fearsom1992]

haste only gives UA burst ? we might need need double stat to gain a % of crit but the crit dmg perk is pretty cool when you hit reap soul but mastery is flat dmg increase so idk... I wish affi stats were as clear as destros :].

Off topic but Ion said soulflame, tormented souls , and wrath of consumption are supposed to proc off mob tag plus it dying then right now where its killing blow( its bugged)

[Hexxidecimal]

Right. I did glance at the artifact calculator and notice that Compound Interest is now on ticks rather than casts. The last time I was following Afflic developments people were annoyed that the "on cast" procs meant that Absolute Corruption was a bad talent pick, so that was good to see.

There does seem to be a tension between dumping SS on UA all at once during a trinket proc or cooldown versus spacing them out for greater uptime and room for CI procs. What's the word on how Fatal Echoes works? Do you have to let UA fall off entirely for it to proc?

In regards to UA maintenence opposed to SS dumping, with the amount of damage SS dumping with UA does, it seems like (though I have no hard numbers or even actual testing experience) damage procs (like CI, trinkets, etc) into UA spam will end up netting you more damage in the end. I am only basing this off of PTR numbers I see when dumping SS as opposed to the amount of damage maintaining my dots do. Add to that specific UA perks like CI and I can see why you look to dump SS in a window opposed to trying to maintain contagion. Plus it seems difficult maintain it, especially factoring in the amount of damage you loose trying this method during fights with a lot of movement.

I would like to know peoples opinions on Arena/BGs with affliction. I tried some dueling last night and it took me a couple of talent iterations till I found something I really liked. The surprise MVP of talents for my duels ended up being Siphon Life. The amount of healing this did was a life saver. A instant cast spammable (for multi target) dot that heals you when you can't sit and channel is pretty amazing. Does anyone else feel this is a worthy talent in normal PvP? Or even PvE content?

[Kirroth]

I would like to know peoples opinions on Arena/BGs with affliction. I tried some dueling last night and it took me a couple of talent iterations till I found something I really liked. The surprise MVP of talents for my duels ended up being Siphon Life. The amount of healing this did was a life saver. A instant cast spammable (for multi target) dot that heals you when you can't sit and channel is pretty amazing. Does anyone else feel this is a worthy talent in normal PvP? Or even PvE content?

I think it'll be pretty good for PvE. At least by PTR tooltip, it's ticking for about as much as an Absolute Corruption boosted Corruption, which is a decent amount. It should also be boosting your Felhunter's Shadow Bite attack by another 50% of base damage. And if you want to take Soul Effigy it's another DoT to maintain on it.

[Greel]

Agony is not PPM, it's a scaling percent chance just like Corruption is in WoD.

It no longer works like WoD's corruption.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...16?page=13#251

[Lizl]

After a good bit of playing around with affil on the PTR I have to be honest and say that all I wish was that Drain Soul/Drain Life was a 4s channel. I understand that the idea is that you're not stuck channeling all day, but I don't wanna be punished for using my filler spell.

Also, I feel most comfortable with Soul Conduit. The spec just seems so slow in general

[bio347]

The length of a channel doesn't really matter, though? You can break it at any time and the mana cost is per-tick.

[Kirroth]

The length of a channel doesn't really matter, though? You can break it at any time and the mana cost is per-tick.

Right. You'll probably want an addon that shows the tick marks on the channel bar so you can try to time when you break it, but there's really zero reason to be committed to a full channel.

[dholland662]

So is the Haste Reducing UA duration a thing? Or is still just something that's happening but not listed?

Are people reporting it?

I ask because the pvp talents like Endless Affliction wont make much sense with that effect. Increases UA duration by two seconds if anyone was wondering

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After a good bit of playing around with affil on the PTR I have to be honest and say that all I wish was that Drain Soul/Drain Life was a 4s channel. I understand that the idea is that you're not stuck channeling all day, but I don't wanna be punished for using my filler spell.

Also, I feel most comfortable with Soul Conduit. The spec just seems so slow in general

I think that's by design. They want to contain burst

[Terryn]

So is the Haste Reducing UA duration a thing? Or is still just something that's happening but not listed?

Are people reporting it?

I ask because the pvp talents like Endless Affliction wont make much sense with that effect. Increases UA duration by two seconds if anyone was wondering

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I think that's by design. They want to contain burst

Haste works exactly the same way as the class trinket does. UA is designed to only have 4 ticks period, so haste will drop the duration and reduce the tick period


Another thing to note is UA pandemics, which actually increases the tick count to 5.

[Hexxidecimal]

After a good bit of playing around with affil on the PTR I have to be honest and say that all I wish was that Drain Soul/Drain Life was a 4s channel. I understand that the idea is that you're not stuck channeling all day, but I don't wanna be punished for using my filler spell.

Also, I feel most comfortable with Soul Conduit. The spec just seems so slow in general

I have found that Soul Effigy works really well for SS generation and generally I generate Soul Shards far more often through out a fight than I currently do on live (Thanks to Baconeggandcheese). So basically, on the PTR it's keep up DoT maintenance until 4-5 soul shards (which can happen very fast with mutliple targets) then dump UA on the target you want to kill. Of course things will change with the artifact and other gear as you'll be waiting on procs and what not as well.

Once numbers are finalized it'll be some testing to figure out at what number of mobs seed of corruption becomes better than multi dotting.

[Vankhorne]

Damage numbers are completely broken on the PTR, makes me wonder if Blizzard do any sort of internal testing before launching content. Like, at all.

[Deleted]

Damage numbers are completely broken on the PTR, makes me wonder if Blizzard do any sort of internal testing before launching content. Like, at all.

Just like content comes out in pieces, so does class changes. They may be working on something that combined with recent changes makes sense, but of course, it is often hard to tell when we don't get any sort of information regarding changes. Would be nice if they had a guy dedicated to making short explanations of tweaks, so that we have a better chance of knowing if we are on the same page. Because buffing fire mages this patch, for example, definitely made me question their ability to properly tune numbers!

[apluscarp]

So are we supposed to hold SS and dump them all into one UA or use them as the proc to sustain a UA?

NVM answered by previous post.

[Kirroth]

So are we supposed to hold SS and dump them all into one UA or use them as the proc to sustain a UA?

After thinking it over and looking at the options, it might be that the correct answer can change with circumstances. And by "circumstances" I mean "which legendary drops you get first".

Power Cord of Lethtendris has a 25% chance to refund a SS if you cast UA on a target that doesn't already have UA on it. Streten's Sleepless Shackles increases your damage by 4% for each target with your UA on it. Now obviously, those both have the most effect with a multi-target situation where you're spreading UA around instead of piling them all into the same target. But in a single target situation they'd seem get the most impact from going for high uptime while deliberately renewing right after the previous UA falls off. So if those are your first legendary drops, maybe you'll want to spec Contagion and play that way.

There's similar talent considerations for the other Afflic legendary items. If I parse it right, Hood of Eternal Disdain is an Agony specific +20% Haste, which would reward taking Writhe in Agony. Sacrolash's Dark Strike makes Corruption a 60% snare, so Absolute Corruption would be amazing for any fight with kiting elements. It's interesting how they push you to pick complimentary talents. Maybe that means by the end of Legion when we have a full set and can equip them all at once we'll be pushed into a cookie cutter spec. Or maybe that'll never be an issue because you'll never have a full set, or cap will never be high enough to equip them all at once, or more legendary items will be introduced in patches so there's always more option than your equipped cap allows. We'll have to wait and see.

[Hexxidecimal]

Damage numbers are completely broken on the PTR, makes me wonder if Blizzard do any sort of internal testing before launching content. Like, at all.

Well something to keep in mind is that anything on the PTR or the beta servers is not content "launched". It's content to be tested. Internal testing will only take them so far number wise. By releasing stuff on the PTR they get a much larger pool of data. Also, numbers are easily tweaked. Right now I think they are more concerned with mechanics working properly and things not actually being broken. As in Y ability is supposed function in a particular way but doesn't because bugs.

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After thinking it over and looking at the options, it might be that the correct answer can change with circumstances. And by "circumstances" I mean "which legendary drops you get first".

Power Cord of Lethtendris has a 25% chance to refund a SS if you cast UA on a target that doesn't already have UA on it. Streten's Sleepless Shackles increases your damage by 4% for each target with your UA on it. Now obviously, those both have the most effect with a multi-target situation where you're spreading UA around instead of piling them all into the same target. But in a single target situation they'd seem get the most impact from going for high uptime while deliberately renewing right after the previous UA falls off. So if those are your first legendary drops, maybe you'll want to spec Contagion and play that way.

There's similar talent considerations for the other Afflic legendary items. If I parse it right, Hood of Eternal Disdain is an Agony specific +20% Haste, which would reward taking Writhe in Agony. Sacrolash's Dark Strike makes Corruption a 60% snare, so Absolute Corruption would be amazing for any fight with kiting elements. It's interesting how they push you to pick complimentary talents. Maybe that means by the end of Legion when we have a full set and can equip them all at once we'll be pushed into a cookie cutter spec. Or maybe that'll never be an issue because you'll never have a full set, or cap will never be high enough to equip them all at once, or more legendary items will be introduced in patches so there's always more option than your equipped cap allows. We'll have to wait and see.

My understanding is that Legendary items are 1 allowable equip no? Unless I am thinking something else. If that is the case then what you do in your rotation will depend heavily on what Legendary you decide to equip. I can see, for instance, having Power Cord of Lethandris being an item that pushes you to try and maintain UA in single target situation where normally it may be more difficult to do without the 25% chance of a refund. In cases where you don't have Power Cord you look to build up SS and/or proc CI and then dump. Though it's hard to tell at the moment. Streten's sleepless shackle seems weird to me though. Considering UA only gets 4 tics and simply falls off faster with haste you may be able to 3 or 4 up at one time perhaps empowering a few ticks from each DoT (albeit on multiple enemies) before simply running out of SS to keep the buff up.

PvP seems much more simple though, burst is king and just spam UA on proc in that setting.

[Kirroth]

My understanding is that Legendary items are 1 allowable equip no? Unless I am thinking something else.

PvP seems much more simple though, burst is king and just spam UA on proc in that setting.

A cap of one legendary item is the starting limit. There will be various milestones over the expansion that increase your cap. For example, we already know that the final Class Order Hall unlock will increase your maximum equipped legendary items by one.

Yes, PvP is an entirely different animal. Not just because of very different playstyle demands, but because things like legendary items and tier sets will be disabled. Bursting someone down or building a huge UA that's instantly lethal if dispelled is very much a desired thing.