[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Slashkill]

Dunno. Imo this should be like "Whenever [insert dot name here, cos we have NO DOTS which are actually called "Soul-something"] deals damage, target's soul may burst in flames, dealing wtfbbq damage". Then again, warlock artifact traits feel really weak to me.

[nerdzrool]

Just because adds spawn doesn't mean you can make use out of Soulflame.

Fair point, soulflame is definitely the most problematic of the 3 on-death passives. I'll argue that I'd rather have a pretty strong passive that is only useful in certain scenarios over a passive that always works but is fairly weak in comparison. Soulflame does a pretty high amount of damage in stacked AoE during reap, other classes have golds that are like a 1% damage gain in most scenarios.

I definitely dislike that WoC or soulflame will basically never work in arenas (except maybe against demo locks...), but I also have played less than 10 arena matches over my entire wow career.

[Fearsom1992]

all you have to do is tell your raid to have the boss 8 or 10yards from the add so soulflame hits it isn't hard explain to them its fire nova... soulflame x15 adds on first boss of nighthold is a ton of dmg its worth speaking up about.

[Deleted]

Regarding our passives, I don't know if it has been already said or not, but Grimoire of Sacrifice procs the passives from the artifact.

Summon pet prepull -> Wait for 1 shard -> Prepot -> Sacrifice -> Doomguard -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life -> Soul Effigy -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life.

That is my opener and...tons of damage.

I was going for a mastery-haste build, and at item level 898 I had 95% mastery with 55% haste and 15% crit chance.

Every 30s you can resummon a pet and re-sacrifice it to obtain the 20s with additional dot damage.

This may seem not optimal for a lot of people, but on yesterday's raid testing, I was using 2-2-1-1-3-1 as talents, and every 30s I was resummoning and sacrificing the pet, and man...top 3 damage on all of the tries, in some of them top dps.

[gruxxar]

Regarding our passives, I don't know if it has been already said or not, but Grimoire of Sacrifice procs the passives from the artifact.

Summon pet prepull -> Wait for 1 shard -> Prepot -> Sacrifice -> Doomguard -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life -> Soul Effigy -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life.

That is my opener and...tons of damage.

I was going for a mastery-haste build, and at item level 898 I had 95% mastery with 55% haste and 15% crit chance.

Every 30s you can resummon a pet and re-sacrifice it to obtain the 20s with additional dot damage.

This may seem not optimal for a lot of people, but on yesterday's raid testing, I was using 2-2-1-1-3-1 as talents, and every 30s I was resummoning and sacrificing the pet, and man...top 3 damage on all of the tries, in some of them top dps.

Even though that seems like a nice find, i doubt this is intended. Blizz will probably fix this. Altough it'd be a nice thing to have for bursty moments!

[Fearsom1992]

That is probably something you shouldn't share just saying lol

[wholol]

Although soul flame damage procs where the target ( the pet in this case) dies , wouldn't it be wasted if the pet isn't in boss range ?

Btw wrath of consumption seems almost negligible at just 1 stack but 2% more dot damage is better than nothing I guess.

[Deleted]

Is wrath of consumption a "rolling" buff (don't know how to describe it,basically each stack will appear/disappear seperately) or could you extend 5 stacks by another 20 seconds that way?

[PickleballAce]

That is probably something you shouldn't share just saying lol

I'm sure you're being facetious, but that sounds like the kind of gameplay we'd want quashed ASAP.

[Hexxidecimal]

I'm sure you're being facetious, but that sounds like the kind of gameplay we'd want quashed ASAP.

But it's so damn cool! I love the flavor of that!

[striderZA]

But it's so damn cool! I love the flavor of that!

Obvious sarcasm but no thanks, pet twisting sucks.

[Hexxidecimal]

Obvious sarcasm but no thanks, pet twisting sucks.

To each their own I suppose. But I get that. Though at this point I am glad to have something.

[Spunt]

If there is a method that provides aff locks semblance of on demand burst, I would expect a change from blizzard that makes this no longer work. Burst DMg isnt thematic to aff locks class fantasy.

It's not like burst is still king or anything...

[dholland662]

Regarding our passives, I don't know if it has been already said or not, but Grimoire of Sacrifice procs the passives from the artifact.

Summon pet prepull -> Wait for 1 shard -> Prepot -> Sacrifice -> Doomguard -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life -> Soul Effigy -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life.

That is my opener and...tons of damage.

I was going for a mastery-haste build, and at item level 898 I had 95% mastery with 55% haste and 15% crit chance.

Every 30s you can resummon a pet and re-sacrifice it to obtain the 20s with additional dot damage.

This may seem not optimal for a lot of people, but on yesterday's raid testing, I was using 2-2-1-1-3-1 as talents, and every 30s I was resummoning and sacrificing the pet, and man...top 3 damage on all of the tries, in some of them top dps.

What would adding Soul Harvest and/or Mana Tap do?

[Taeron]

This may seem not optimal for a lot of people, but on yesterday's raid testing, I was using 2-2-1-1-3-1 as talents, and every 30s I was resummoning and sacrificing the pet, and man...top 3 damage on all of the tries, in some of them top dps.

But isn't Skada still counting damage done to the Effigy? (in addition to the damage effigy does to the boss)
Seems misleading to count effigy damage on meters when it doesn't actually help anyone.

[Jessicka]

To each their own I suppose. But I get that. Though at this point I am glad to have something.

You'll love the flavour about the first 4 times you do it, then it becomes tedious and especially annoying if someone ninja pulls or some other shit happens the interrupt your flow for the first 10 seconds and tanks your damage for the entire fight. We've been there, done that, got a major redesign.

[Deleted]

But isn't Skada still counting damage done to the Effigy? (in addition to the damage effigy does to the boss)
Seems misleading to count effigy damage on meters when it doesn't actually help anyone.

That's a good one, didn't check tbh, sorry! I'll try to do some dungs and I'll check later the logs to see if it's duplicated.

What would adding Soul Harvest and/or Mana Tap do?

I don't know, I can try it this weekend, but in the end it's just a 2% more dot damage, it's not like we have an "on-demand burst", for me, it felt more like something that you could use rotationally or, in my case, I just used it depending on the situation.

I'll give an example. Testing Chronomatic Anomaly, there is a moment where two adds spawn and the raid divides in two groups. Once you finish the add, two little adds spawn. This 1->4 adds, must be killed asap. Of course I used the sacrifice on pull, but when I had it available again, I saved it because I knew that in the next 10-15 seconds I would have to kill the adds and that additional 2% damage would be more helpful then.

As I said in my original post, I'm sure that not everyone will like this, but I find it an interesting way to give us, in someway, a bit of control regarding our artifact.

And someone asked that for the AoE damage we would require to have the pet at melee, sure, but that's not a problem, on all the tries I did, I just summoned the dog when the add died and 4 mini adds spawned, then I used Grimoire, the AoE made effect and I had the 20s buff for a 2% additional dot damage.

As I said, I don't know if it's expected behaviour or not, I think it is, since in the end it's just a 2% dot damage with an uptime below 66% even doing it on cooldown.

[Hexxidecimal]

You'll love the flavour about the first 4 times you do it, then it becomes tedious and especially annoying if someone ninja pulls or some other shit happens the interrupt your flow for the first 10 seconds and tanks your damage for the entire fight. We've been there, done that, got a major redesign.

You make a good point. In that case I suggest something similar but intended to be used in combat.

[Deleted]

Regarding our passives, I don't know if it has been already said or not, but Grimoire of Sacrifice procs the passives from the artifact.

Summon pet prepull -> Wait for 1 shard -> Prepot -> Sacrifice -> Doomguard -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life -> Soul Effigy -> Corruption -> Agony -> Siphon Life.

That is my opener and...tons of damage.

I was going for a mastery-haste build, and at item level 898 I had 95% mastery with 55% haste and 15% crit chance.

Every 30s you can resummon a pet and re-sacrifice it to obtain the 20s with additional dot damage.

This may seem not optimal for a lot of people, but on yesterday's raid testing, I was using 2-2-1-1-3-1 as talents, and every 30s I was resummoning and sacrificing the pet, and man...top 3 damage on all of the tries, in some of them top dps.

I highly doubt that a 2% damage buff to our dots will be an increase over having an actual pet do damage. Yes I know Demonic Power does damage as well but on single target it will not be all that much. Especially as affli, without any destro passive increasing it's damage by 50%. Especially on pull, on beta our damage on pull is barely existent since agony needs to stack before it does some damage.

Would be nice if you could link your logs as well. Maybe I am wrong and this will be the way to go.

[Mehrunes]

ETA: I'm wondering if Reap Souls isn't the big sleeper trait on the artifact. Yeah, +10% damage, nothing huge there. But it also doubles all the passive traits you've unlocked. Let's count what a fully unlocked Harvester will offer with that.

+5% shadow damage
+10% crit damage
+12% Agony and Corruption damage
+6% Drain Life damage
+6% UA crit chance
+15% Seed explosion damage
+30% Drain Life healing
+3% Soul Leech leeching

We can't figure what sort of effective damage buff that all equates to until the tuning pass is done, but it's a good deal more than 10%. And it gets 5s of uptime for every add that dies. That's going to make Afflic really strong on any boss with a lot of adds.

Yeah, but even after Reap Souls our traits are only slightly ahead of the rest specs (hell, with baseline bonus for Drain Life being just 6% we get lower bonus to our filler than most specs even post Reap Souls). The only bonus that is comparable right off the bat is the Seed one and maybe the Shadow damage one. So we have minimally stronger traits that require adds to not fall back behind, tied to primary trait, where other specs have primarily strong nukes, and pitiful gold traits. I don't see how that's a good deal for Affliction.

If you want to ask them something, might as well start by asking why our dots hit like wet noodles.

Because Aff is back to being all about the DoTs, obviously.

It just means the spec is tuned around not having those 2 proc outside of add situations which is typically where affliction is weak in the first place making those traits crutch afflictions damage a bit in the event that there's adds that die quickly.

Really not a problem, though quite boring in arenas.

Which is precisely why our other Artifact Traits are underpowered compared to alternatives of other specs and require Reap Souls with good uptime to close the gap and Reap Souls in turn needs adds or something else (than the ghosts) to kill for good uptime. Balance all around.