[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Deleted]

Affliction Warlock is underrated by many people. Comparing all three specs by looking at sim-dps it seems to be pretty weak. But you have to be aware of several aspects. The damage of the spec increases with every add spawning during the bossfight. The buff uptime of "Deadwind Harvester" easily goes from 40 to 70% or even more. So does Wrath of Consumption which could be another 10% damage buff. Except Nythendra and Ursoc there will be adds in the bossfights we can make use of. Just keep in mind you have to hit them at least once to get these assist-related buffs.

Some tips:
Try to place your Soul Effigy clever. Seed of Corruption, Demonic Power and Soul Flame will be a huge ST damage increase if adds are standing/dying next to it. Know where adds will be tanked or ask your raid for fixed tanking positions.
Place Soul Effigy into the boss if you have GoSac.
Cast Seed of Corruption on your Soul Effigy to make it explode faster (stacked Agony) or cast UA before you start spamming with "Sow the Seeds".
Spread your Agony for more shards (even low-damage ticks should generate them).
If Bloodlust is used on pull, delay Doomguard/Trinkets for ~15sec so Agony has more stacks (worth it?).


Relying on several simulations, Harvester of Souls does about 1,6% of our total damage (single target). Because you have to "waste" 4 traits to get there, this may should be the last trait to go for. Three points in Shadowy Incantations increases our damage by 3(6)% (> Harvester of Souls).

My way would be: Seeds of Doom + Inimitable Agony -> Soul Flame -> Wrath of Consumption


Soul Flame:
This trait gives you a lot of AoE damage, especially in dungeons.
Try to kill adds next to your Soul Effigy to increase your ST damage.
It does double damage with "Deadwind Harvester".

[Deleted]

On the topic of UA strategy: if you're not going to spam a bunch of shards at once, be very careful to not clip it. The reapplying trait needs ~.2s to do its magic, so even with Contagion you should definitely wait for that.

[Zerach8]

the only thing i wish they did now is make effigy castable to a position instead of next to u and i wouldnt think twice about going affl, i hate the fact that i will have to move in to melee range and cast effigy just to get some extra cleave in with sac and the artifact trait

[Deleted]

UA-Usage

Comparing Contagion (C), Absolute Corruption(AC), Mana Tap(MT):

I did some Sims swapping between these 3 talents (using ~835-ilvl-stats + horn of valor + full artifact).
C: 179k dps
AC: 172k dps
MT: 175k dps

As expected Contagion will be the best choice for ST fights, with ~68% debuff-uptime. Spawning adds during bossfights -> more shards -> more Contagion uptime -> more ST damage. BUT you will lose some burst potential (adds, burn phases, strong trinket procs).
Therefore Mana Tap might be the better choice. The only problem you will get is to maintain your dots on every target, same with Contagion. Having 3 or more targets (including Soul Effigy) and using Siphon Life gets stressful to play, tunnel vision. Just go ahead and test it yourself! Having Sow of Seeds or Soul Harvest this talent gets more doable and greatly increases you AoE damage.
Absolute Corruption is the quality of life talent but it still does good damage. Don't be ashamed of using it. It makes you rotation more relaxed and you can focus on boss fights and it's abilities. So, if you have problems with the other talents or (new) boss fight mechanics feel free to pick this one and swap back later on for min/max'ing.

[Deleted]

UA-Usage

Comparing Contagion (C), Absolute Corruption(AC), Mana Tap(MT):

I did some Sims swapping between these 3 talents (using ~835-ilvl-stats + horn of valor + full artifact).
C: 179k dps
AC: 172k dps
MT: 175k dps

As expected Contagion will be the best choice for ST fights, with ~68% debuff-uptime. Spawning adds during bossfights -> more shards -> more Contagion uptime -> more ST damage. BUT you will lose some burst potential (adds, burn phases, strong trinket procs).
Therefore Mana Tap might be the better choice. The only problem you will get is to maintain your dots on every target, same with Contagion. Having 3 or more targets (including Soul Effigy) and using Siphon Life gets stressful to play, tunnel vision. Just go ahead and test it yourself! Having Sow of Seeds or Soul Harvest this talent gets more doable and greatly increases you AoE damage.
Absolute Corruption is the quality of life talent but it still does good damage. Don't be ashamed of using it. It makes you rotation more relaxed and you can focus on boss fights and it's abilities. So, if you have problems with the other talents or (new) boss fight mechanics feel free to pick this one and swap back later on for min/max'ing.

Absolute Corruption is extremely good for AoE. Corruption is a bigger part of our AoE than Seed, so Absolute Corruption just makes it that much better. Not sure at what point I'd just go to that talent, but Nightmare Dragons Mythic(4 targets + maybe Soul Effigy) is definitely a clear Absolute Corruption fight. The GCDs saved with that talent are insane, at 3 targets without it you already have almost no time to Drain Life.

[Roidzilla]

Afflic artifact is still not fixed, it doesn't double traits. Once this is fixed Aff will does top 3dmg single target and be on top for multiple target fights while still falling behind in quick aoe situations.

[Slashkill]

Which talent builds do you guys run for raids / mythics 3+? My biggest concern is lvl 90 tier

[dooms]

is dots still the same as wod ? or its back to snapshooting? cos when i apply UA then activates the artifact reap soul ability that inc dmg by 10%.. the UA dmg doesnt seems to go up

[Kirroth]

is dots still the same as wod ? or its back to snapshooting? cos when i apply UA then activates the artifact reap soul ability that inc dmg by 10%.. the UA dmg doesnt seems to go up

UA doesn't follow usual DoT rules because it isn't meant to be a 100% uptime debuff. Treat it more as a resource spending nuke with the damage spread over several seconds. So yes, UA and only UA intentionally snapshots.

[dooms]

UA doesn't follow usual DoT rules because it isn't meant to be a 100% uptime debuff. Treat it more as a resource spending nuke with the damage spread over several seconds. So yes, UA and only UA intentionally snapshots.

it means that Agony, corrupt, siphon life still use the same dot mechanic from WoD ?
this forum really need the thanks button.. got so many lesson from here...

how bout the secondary stats for afflic? is it still haste ? do haste still inc dot ticks ? i cant find the skill that makes afflic gain more haste from gear like on WoD. and my stats atm on beta is crit 15% haste 17% mastery 89%.. come from copying my toon which is on haste heavy gear.

[Kirroth]

how bout the secondary stats for afflic? is it still haste ? do haste still inc dot ticks ? i cant find the skill that makes afflic gain more haste from gear like on WoD.

With no reforging and fewer secondary stats, they're taking out favored stat passives like Afflic's Haste multiplier. Doing so also means that some specs can have their best stat change depending on talent choice without mechanical penalty.

Afflic's best stat is going to be either Haste or Mastery, since there's nothing that procs off Crits. Which one will be a question for the theory crafters and sim parsers to answer. Only any answer they compute right now would be meaningless by tonight when a new build has come through and changed the numbers. So we won't know until launch, or possibly a few weeks after launch, when the numbers tuning is complete.

[Deleted]

Afflic's best stat is going to be either Haste or Mastery, since there's nothing that procs off Crits. Which one will be a question for the theory crafters and sim parsers to answer. Only any answer they compute right now would be meaningless by tonight when a new build has come through and changed the numbers. So we won't know until launch, or possibly a few weeks after launch, when the numbers tuning is complete.

They are trying to raise Crit's value a bit with the Crit damage traits on the artifact, but it is most likely not gonna overtake the other two stats even with 6/3 trait.

[Deleted]

Am I seeing an AoE... buff? I.e. Sow the Seeds uncapped? Or is it just a tooltip fix or sth?

[Zerach8]

if u have corruption on a target, the seed will burst before u get to cast it again most likely so its not really a buff, but i guess in case u dont have anything in the target and u want to burst multiple at once than it is.

[jackofwind]

Am I seeing an AoE... buff? I.e. Sow the Seeds uncapped? Or is it just a tooltip fix or sth?

Appears to be a SoC buff with the cap removed indeed.

[Baconeggcheese]

On the beta the tooltip hasn't changed for sow the seeds when I checked right after the patch. Didn't actually test it on mobs though cause I'm lazy.

[Necropotence]

Not sure if this is the right thread to ask...but question from a player returning from a one year hiatus who is interested in picking up affliction in legion.

Is it a large concern that two of the major artifact weapon traits rely on mobs dying to activate? From a raid setting I can of course see this being helpful on any boss that spawns adds, but what about single target fights, council fights, or fights where just only one or two powerful adds spawn? I can't image more than 40% (being generous) of the fights having waves of mob spawns, but it seems like a lot of the class power is tied up with on-death effects. It doesn't even seem that helpful in sustained AoE situations, as you want the damage to burst down the pack, not get more powerful once they are all almost dead and the first one drops.

Just looking for some wisdom from aff locks who have been playing the spec on beta...is there a way to make these traits useful in ST or council type situations?

[Kirroth]

Just looking for some wisdom from aff locks who have been playing the spec on beta...is there a way to make these traits useful in ST or council type situations?

No, there isn't. They're left over from the initial design of the artifact where it spawned ghosts for you to kill, giving you a steady supply of mob deaths even on single target fights. That design had massive issues, so they changed it to the current Reap Soul mechanic, but they didn't overhaul the entire artifact.

Hopefully the spec will still perform acceptably on ST fights without those traits, while being strong enough on other fights to make it still worth using as your main spec. Council fights will be less of an issue because a DoT spec like Afflic is naturally strong on them, even without a couple artifact traits.

[Baconeggcheese]

No, there isn't. They're left over from the initial design of the artifact where it spawned ghosts for you to kill, giving you a steady supply of mob deaths even on single target fights.

I wouldn't call that accurate, the souls that spawned the original way were fairly negligible in terms of proccing those two specific traits. IIRC it was once every 30 seconds, with the 2% trait having a 10s duration at the time and soul flame not being much dmg at all for patchwerk.

There's no way they intended those traits to be carried by those ghosts, it had to have always been additional add deaths that were supposed to make up the bulk of their usefulness.

[Kirroth]

There's no way they intended those traits to be carried by those ghosts, it had to have always been additional add deaths that were supposed to make up the bulk of their usefulness.

I stand corrected. Then in that case, it's just the intended design for the spec. Afflic is good at council fights and add fights but weaker at pure single target fights. The Devs have been muttering about wanting classes to be strong at some things and weaker at others, with the artifact investment encouraging people not to swap specs constantly. I suppose this is the manifestation of that for Afflic.

It'll be interesting to see how artifact investment and spec swapping plays out for the high level raiders. Let's say that with equal artifacts, Demo beats Afflic on a ST fight by 10%. That's enough that, previously, everyone would say you're crazy not to swap. Now though, that's a comparison with equally leveled artifacts. Do raiders try to split their artifact power 50/50 for flexibility, enough though it's cutting several percent off their damage in every fight? If you split it 80/20 you're not sacrificing as much off all the fights when you're using your main spec, but then that 20% progressed off-spec artifact isn't nearly as much of a gain on the fights the spec is better suited for. Combine that with the fact that you're playing a spec you're less geared and practiced with, and maybe it isn't a gain at all anymore. Is there a magic sweet spot where a pure DPS can level an off-spec artifact for the spec that covers the fights their main spec is weak at, where they're not sacrificing too much of their main spec's damage while not leaving their off-spec artifact too far behind the be an actual gain? Or has Blizzard finally hit on a way to get people to commit to a spec in a significant enough way that spec swapping on a per boss basis becomes unattractive outside of the most extreme edge cases?

Of course, for people like me who take their sweet time progressing through Normal before repeating the process just as slowly for Heroic, spec swapping won't be a thing because it's never really been a thing. But as a spectator I'll find it interesting.