[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[gruxxar]

I was playing with the target dummies:

How are you preventing your felhunter from trying to walk over to your Soul Effigy whenever you renew Agony on it?

Do I have to create a macro for agony to command the pet to stay on my main target so it doesn't try to ping pong between my soul effigy and my actual target?

put it on passive and tell it to attack the real target manually

[Lucrece]

put it on passive and tell it to attack the real target manually

Thanks! <3

[wholol]

Anyone else shares the thought that they should just put a cap on how many UA's we can stack and simply increase all our dot damage ?

[Fearsom1992]

I agree, when I did use a pet my macro was
/cast petattack
/cast soul effgy
This macro makes it so he attacks your target first as you cast the effgy

[bio347]

Anyone else shares the thought that they should just put a cap on how many UA's we can stack and simply increase all our dot damage ?

There effectively IS a cap on UA though, because it has a cast time. And the whole point of the stacking is to make it so that you never waste a shard, so capping it below that maximum would hinder that.

[wholol]

There effectively IS a cap on UA though, because it has a cast time. And the whole point of the stacking is to make it so that you never waste a shard, so capping it below that maximum would hinder that.

Yeah but I meant something like max 2-3 stacks or so.

To get a clearer idea of what I'm picturing here's an example:

All affliction dots deal 100% more damage BUT your dots deal 20% less for every extra enemy that the warlock has dotted beyond the primary target.

Furthermore, UA duration has been increased to 15 secs and can only be stacked up to 3 times.

This strengthens the strong dots model while keeping the balance between single and multi targetting in check without having to add weird single target spells.

[Lucrece]

To me affliction plays like a shadow priest without the burst or easy dot renewal (unless you take Absolute Corruption).

[Zerach8]

to me, absolute corruption seems strongest in the row for anything other than pure single target boss fight...reduces the ammount of globals u need to use, stays up even after u die and increases aoe burst due to 25% more dmg on corruption. Mana tap if use the legendary that makes life tap usable during other spells, contagion purely for ST...contaigon might pull ahead later in the expansion on council fights if we ever start swimming in shards and can keep up UA on 2 or more targets all the time

[striderZA]

to me, absolute corruption seems strongest in the row for anything other than pure single target boss fight...reduces the ammount of globals u need to use, stays up even after u die and increases aoe burst due to 25% more dmg on corruption

Since you'll probably be using Soul Effigy on single target, Absolute Corruption would be better there as well.

[Gnarilex]

To me affliction plays like a shadow priest without the burst or easy dot renewal (unless you take Absolute Corruption).

As a shadow priest I'm not sure what "burst" you're referring to. Voidform? Can't be. That's the mechanic we're balanced around and spend most of our time in. It's also a consistent +20% damage boost, so it's more sustained than burst. Easy DoT renewal? Sure, on three targets max in a strict no-room-for-error-rotation with Void Bolt but you'll probably have to reapply them on at least one target because they fell off while you were casting void eruption. You could sit there and reapply all of them at max insanity before hitting void eruption, but then you're wasting time and insanity generation that could be spent gathering haste in VF to do more damage. I guess the grass always looks greener on the other side.

[Deleted]

To me affliction plays like a shadow priest without the burst or easy dot renewal (unless you take Absolute Corruption).

But with insane tankiness, nonetheless. And a pet. Almost feels like it's a different class, even. :P

[Lucrece]

But with insane tankiness, nonetheless. And a pet. Almost feels like it's a different class, even. :P

Insane tankiness because you don't get a 90% damage reduction cd that also heals you for 40% of your health, no shadowmend with masochism or much of the way of low cd defenive cd's.

Pet is actually a detriment to me in most games . AI will always be crappy compared to all your power deriving from your PC.

I know most don't like to think of Mindblast and Void Torrent as burst, but it is. UA is not remotely as frontloaded damage.

[Taeron]

Insane tankiness because you don't get a 90% damage reduction cd that also heals you for 40% of your health, no shadowmend with masochism or much of the way of low cd defenive cd's.

Pet is actually a detriment to me in most games . AI will always be crappy compared to all your power deriving from your PC.

I know most don't like to think of Mindblast and Void Torrent as burst, but it is. UA is not remotely as frontloaded damage.

Are you really implying spriests are tankier than locks? I'd advise against starting arguments you will not win

Haunt could be seen as a form of burst. Can also use it to quickly trigger seed.
Burst damage isn't what affliction is about though.

I'm really loving the performance of affliction in dungeons though. I didn't expect it to be good with the amount of ramp-up time, but use GoSac combined with Siphon life and dot everything. Awesome AE if the mobs live long enough - which they will on progression line Mythic+

[Kirroth]

Insane tankiness because you don't get a 90% damage reduction cd that also heals you for 40% of your health, no shadowmend with masochism or much of the way of low cd defenive cd's.

You're behind the times. Dispersion is a 50% heal but only 60% DR. It's also a self-pacify, which really hurts the new Shadow that's a lot more dependent on casting spells for their Insanity cycles. And yes, there's an Honor talent to raise it to 95% DR, but if you count that then you have to start counting Afflic Honor talents like Essence Drain.

So what does Afflic have? Eternal Resolve is 40% DR on twice the cooldown of Dispersion, but it lasts longer and instead of being a self-pacify it makes you immune to silences and interrupts. With the artifact trait Healtstones heal for 50% of your max health on top of the normal amount. You're Soul Leeching 13% of all your single target damage as shields. You've potentially got heals from Siphon Life DoTs and Harvester of Souls procs and Drain Life channels (with another artifact trait boosting Drain Life heals by 30% over baseline) all stacking. Oh, and should I mention Essence Drain again?

I don't think Afflic has to kite to win PvP encounters. If anything, my PTR testing in the last day had me missing the snare more because other people were running away from me. Which is a very welcome change from the last couple expacs.

[Gnarilex]

You're behind the times. Dispersion is a 50% heal but only 60% DR. It's also a self-pacify, which really hurts the new Shadow that's a lot more dependent on casting spells for their Insanity cycles. And yes, there's an Honor talent to raise it to 95% DR, but if you count that then you have to start counting Afflic Honor talents like Essence Drain.

So what does Afflic have? Eternal Resolve is 40% DR on twice the cooldown of Dispersion, but it lasts longer and instead of being a self-pacify it makes you immune to silences and interrupts. With the artifact trait Healtstones heal for 50% of your max health on top of the normal amount. You're Soul Leeching 13% of all your single target damage as shields. You've potentially got heals from Siphon Life DoTs and Harvester of Souls procs and Drain Life channels (with another artifact trait boosting Drain Life heals by 30% over baseline) all stacking. Oh, and should I mention Essence Drain again?

I don't think Afflic has to kite to win PvP encounters. If anything, my PTR testing in the last day had me missing the snare more because other people were running away from me. Which is a very welcome change from the last couple expacs.

Not to mention all damage reduction was stripped from shadowform. No more psychic horror, can barely stay alive with 1 or 2 targets by spamming PW:S and shadowmend (masochism really isn't that great), vampiric embrace's heal no longer applying to the spriest, leap of faith/lifegrip removed, lack of any real AoE, a trash 100 talent tier that only leaves their special snowflake talent as the viable option, spectral guise removed, feathers for escaping removed, dominant mind talent gutted, I could go on. But hey, we can shackle undead and according to Celestalon that and having shadowmend is more defensive abilities than we deserve, and thinks we need even more pruning.

Again, grass always looks greener on the other side. Guess that's why I'm here considering switching my warlock to my main.

[Turaska]

Have to admit, I tried Legions take on affliction a few days ago having not touched my warlock for years. It actually FEELS like a dot class again. /clap Blizzard

[Kirroth]

Again, grass always looks greener on the other side. Guess that's why I'm here considering switching my warlock to my main.

I know what you mean. There were some dark days in late Mists and early Warlords when I was looking covetously at the Shadow kit. I even used the lvl90 boost on a brand new Priest alt so I could try it out. In the end I settled into using Demo in Draenor, even though it was never a perfect fit, because a main is a hard thing to abandon.

I can't tell you how happy I am that I can go back to Afflic and step into a battleground and not want to uninstall the game.

[Lucrece]

You're behind the times. Dispersion is a 50% heal but only 60% DR. It's also a self-pacify, which really hurts the new Shadow that's a lot more dependent on casting spells for their Insanity cycles. And yes, there's an Honor talent to raise it to 95% DR, but if you count that then you have to start counting Afflic Honor talents like Essence Drain.

So what does Afflic have? Eternal Resolve is 40% DR on twice the cooldown of Dispersion, but it lasts longer and instead of being a self-pacify it makes you immune to silences and interrupts. With the artifact trait Healtstones heal for 50% of your max health on top of the normal amount. You're Soul Leeching 13% of all your single target damage as shields. You've potentially got heals from Siphon Life DoTs and Harvester of Souls procs and Drain Life channels (with another artifact trait boosting Drain Life heals by 30% over baseline) all stacking. Oh, and should I mention Essence Drain again?

I don't think Afflic has to kite to win PvP encounters. If anything, my PTR testing in the last day had me missing the snare more because other people were running away from me. Which is a very welcome change from the last couple expacs.

Honor talents are a given in pvp, no ridiculous reason to discount them. A 90% DR on half a cooldown on top of their strong self healing with masochism and an instant aoe fear is far better against burst.

All of your proposed defenses only shine against sustained damage, which is not what you're worrying about in PvP.

I'll take a 90% DR cd any day when I'm getting tunneled by warriors and DH's and DK's all day.

Again, grass always looks greener on the other side. Guess that's why I'm here considering switching my warlock to my main.

Grass is greener implies I don't have or play a spriest. Which is stupidly false.

There is no question shadow priests have better burst than affliction, because affliction warlocks simply have no burst. No, UA stacking doesn't count. If your nuke takes more than 3 seconds to deliver its damage, it's not burst.

As an afflock, you dot multiple people and hope the actually threatening classes like mage/rogue/warrior/DK/DH finish off a target with burst.

[Deleted]

problem for affliction is that its braindead spec, where you sit on shards/artifact ability untill you get procs or you get moment in encounter where you need to burst - otherwise its just mindless keep dots rolling with 0 tought going into it

[Kirroth]

Honor talents are a given in pvp, no ridiculous reason to discount them. A 90% DR on half a cooldown on top of their strong self healing with masochism and an instant aoe fear is far better against burst.

All of your proposed defenses only shine against sustained damage, which is not what you're worrying about in PvP.

Yes, for the last few expacs burst has been king and sustained damage was worthless. It's been an absolute disaster. That's why the Devs are going to extreme lengths to change the PvP landscape so that no one has those massive two or three GCD burst windows available to them and sustained damage matters again. This isn't reading tea leaves, this is their openly stated goal.

Assuming they succeed, and the last couple days of PTR PvP testing I've done gives me hope that they are, then the value metrics you're using will be obsolete and incorrect.