Warlock visuals gone in Legion?

[Kirroth]

There's no moment for Affliction where I think to myself, "Aww yeah... I'm about to cast THAT spell and it's gonna look so cool!"

The thing is, I'm totally okay with that. The class fantasy for Afflic, at least back when I enjoyed playing it, is a steady inescapable demise. I felt like I was trapping my foes under a heavy millstone that was going to grind them down no matter what. In PvP, the question wasn't if my DoTs would kill them, it's would they be able to take me with them or would my Drain Life delay my death long enough for them to die first.

Those are powerful fantasies that they don't lend themselves to big flashy graphics because there's no big flashy spell that a major part of your damage depends on. I've played those specs the last couple expacs, throwing Chaos Bolts and Demonbolts. Now I'm ready to go back to Afflic because Afflic is ready to offer me that grindstone playstyle again. No more of this nonsense where you're supposed to combine Haunt and Malefic Grasp to get a DoT pseudo-nuke that's inferior to a real nuke in every way.

[Varteras]

The thing is, I'm totally okay with that. The class fantasy for Afflic, at least back when I enjoyed playing it, is a steady inescapable demise. I felt like I was trapping my foes under a heavy millstone that was going to grind them down no matter what. In PvP, the question wasn't if my DoTs would kill them, it's would they be able to take me with them or would my Drain Life delay my death long enough for them to die first.

Those are powerful fantasies that they don't lend themselves to big flashy graphics because there's no big flashy spell that a major part of your damage depends on. I've played those specs the last couple expacs, throwing Chaos Bolts and Demonbolts. Now I'm ready to go back to Afflic because Afflic is ready to offer me that grindstone playstyle again. No more of this nonsense where you're supposed to combine Haunt and Malefic Grasp to get a DoT pseudo-nuke that's inferior to a real nuke in every way.

I think you can make even a steady, inescapable demise look cooler than paint drying. I don't require huge flash but seeing my work come out as really nothing more than numbers and a single beam... boring. Like I said, take a page from Shadow Priests and go from there.

[Kirroth]

Like I said, take a page from Shadow Priests and go from there.

Er, wasn't Shadow in the exact same boat of a bunch of invisible DoTs and a channel? A channel with an inferior visual to Drain Soul, I might add. I'm pretty sure I saw them kvetching about it when I was reading up for my Priest alt.

I mean, Legion Shadow is different, but Legion Shadow is Neo Warlords Demo and has more direct spell attacks and transformations and such.

[Lou Sanders]

It's beta, you can still send feedback about this you know.

Things regarding warlock aesthetics have been posted on the Legion Beta forums before:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745045224

Sadly, it seems to have been completely ignored.

[Kirroth]

Sadly, it seems to have been completely ignored.

Bet you a dollar it's not "ignored" but "filed away for future reference". There was a Dev comment in one of the recent interviews that they want to do a major overhaul of the spell animations the way they added a ton of new and improved melee animations. They just don't have the time to do so for Legion launch and it'll have to wait for a future patch, or maybe even next expansion, because animations are what take the longest to add to the game.

So new spell animations are coming. Someday. If we're patient and give them time, odds are even good that they'll do a biggest revision and finally make caster weapons part of the casting animations instead of sitting sheathed uselessly the whole time. There's already one or two for artifact abilities that snuck in as early samples of what they must be trying to design.

[Varteras]

Er, wasn't Shadow in the exact same boat of a bunch of invisible DoTs and a channel? A channel with an inferior visual to Drain Soul, I might add. I'm pretty sure I saw them kvetching about it when I was reading up for my Priest alt.

I mean, Legion Shadow is different, but Legion Shadow is Neo Warlords Demo and has more direct spell attacks and transformations and such.

Start with the idea behind Shadowy Apparitions flying from you to your target when one of their DoTs does damage. Obviously it shouldn't look the same but you get the idea. You could make it a mass of corruption that moves slowly towards the target. Next, look at the idea of animations occurring around your character under certain conditions, like with Voidform. They had that with Soulburn: Haunt, even though I hated the idea of that talent. Something that causes a spell effect to occur around your character would be nice. It doesn't necessarily have to be something on command, though. Shadow's artifact weapon gives them a trait where Mind Flay causes tentacles to pop out of the ground and also cast Mind Flay. Something where Affliction performing its Drain filler causes an additional effect with its own noticeable visual would be nice as well. Perhaps dark bolts of twisted souls that fly out of you and strike your target multiple times similar to how the fel bolts from the Felmouth Frenzy food works.

Another thing is that Shadow's AoE spells are quite noticeable whereas Affliction's aren't so much. You can hardly see when Seed of Corruption detonates and, right now on PTR, Phantom Singularity is just a purple ball that floats above the head of your primary target while mysteriously causing damage to everything within 25 yards. I don't know if that's an animation glitch and it's supposed to have those tendrils that reach out to the targets like it did in beta, but right now there's nothing to it on PTR. Mind Sear and Shadow Crash are far more visually appealing.

With just a little bit of inspiration and creativity, there is no reason why Affliction can't have a more appealing look to what it does.

[volrat]

I was pointing these problems from the very beginning, but was shunned by some ppl with thousands of post who seem to live in this and other forum only to say that all devs are doing is good, well done and it is a great addition to the warlock class...now that truth is under the eyes of all, the emptiness and mercenary nature of theyr claimings is uncovered, but still, i am sure nothing will change... the expansion wich hold the greatest potential for the developing of the warlock class is turning in its burial stone.

Really, the lore, appeal and flavour of the class have been butchered, with the complicity of a great number of community opinion setters, hope they enjoy whatever gain this behaviour granted them.

[Drakile]

Sadly all our demonic pizzazz and steam so to say, was stolen by Demon Hunters coming on the scene. Also after playing warlock for several years, I can't help but feel like there is someone on the Dev team that just hates our class, I know it sounds childish and like a wild accusation but, as far as I can remember we always get shown a bunch of awesome stuff we could have on beta or alpha(let's call it 100% awesome) just to have blizzard drain all the awesomeness away, either handing our cool mechanics to other classes, or just changing for no revealed reason (inquisitor to beholder-look-alike) Then by the time we hit live we may have like 5% of the awesomeness that was first seen in beta. Generally followed by blanket nerfs and continuous trimming of cool stuff once we hit live.

[dholland662]

Yep, they also removed the floating baseline purple shard above us because we always start with 1 shard and displaying 1 shard above your head doesn't look as cool as having a full shard deck floating, I still don't know why they didn't keep the start at full shards model instead of this weird starvation playstyle.

Or have us default to 2 or 3 when out of combat

- - - Updated - - -

Warlocks are still paying for MoP, maybe the expansion after Legion the hate of the the Dev team will stop........maybe.

I'm still certain someone with the power to guide development was beaten to a pulp consistently by warlocks during MoP, cause seriously the removal of so damn much of the warlock kit, the reducing to very narrowly defined roles (you can AE or you can cleave\single target or you can do them all with a massive ramp time acceptably not fantastically but you are utterly immobile) and the removal of the good-great visuals we have enjoyed for years (not "oh we fell behind" outright removal of pre-existing visuals)?

Yeah warlocks are being targeted by someone.

Only bothers me if Mages get to keep their bs.

Although I wish I played during MOP if Warlocks were so dominant