[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Deleted]

Aren't the stones equivalent to pots though, in Legion?

[Spunt]

if nothing else, u get 50% of your max hp as healing from your HS so at least u get some benefit from the trait...its preety much a full heal on demand

too bad it only works half the time. There are several occasions on the beta where a HS only heals for the base amount even with that trait. Broken artifact for the win.

[Baconeggcheese]

Hmm, not sure how easy hp potions are to get in legion, but in WoD it's a joke since everyone can make them with lvl 1 first aid. My guild told us to not use HS for that reason.

My guild just used health stones (and we're ranked 7th in the US, so the kinds of people who supposedly would never do that). There was that little stint where some of us cared enough to get tonics or even those absorb shield pots, but that quickly went into not giving a shit because it honestly doesn't matter 99.9% of the time.

[Deleted]

Aren't the stones equivalent to pots though, in Legion?

I don't think so, they seem to be arbitrarily worse for some reason. Annoying, since you can't even glyph into the HOT vs burst heal or anything anymore.

Really frustrating seeing one of the few utility-ish spells we have left not only being useless to the raid but pretty useless to us (bar being cheapskates).

[Deleted]

currently playing a bit destro.

How much better is affliction in PvP?

As Detro I find melees a bit annoying and it seems like my Chaos Bolt is not really hitting as hard as it should. Is Affliction much better?
Probably gonna test it out tomorrow, but wanted to hear what you guys think first

[cristos]

So regarding the nerfs to affliction once again, I think it's about time us warlocks start speaking up as a community rather than letting things slide.

Blizzard needs to know what the playstyle of warlocks needs to be and how we should be balanced correctly.

The nerfs to UA dispells and overall intellect weren't called for.

Who here is down to speak up together as a community so we can request for some fair changes to us.

We can either sit here and complain about the class or actually do something about it for once. If we just sit here and complain I can guarantee you nothing will change.

I'm not going to stand around and let blizzard shit all over my favorite spec and class in the game.

I was playing affliction well before the attention it attracted recently and I strongly believe affliction needs some love this expansion for once.

Seems like locks are always the class that's swept to the corner and forgotten about.

[Spunt]

So regarding the nerfs to affliction once again, I think it's about time us warlocks start speaking up as a community rather than letting things slide.

Blizzard needs to know what the playstyle of warlocks needs to be and how we should be balanced correctly.

The nerfs to UA dispells and overall intellect weren't called for.

Who here is down to speak up together as a community so we can request for some fair changes to us.

We can either sit here and complain about the class or actually do something about it for once. If we just sit here and complain I can guarantee you nothing will change.

I'm not going to stand around and let blizzard shit all over my favorite spec and class in the game.

I was playing affliction well before the attention it attracted recently and I strongly believe affliction needs some love this expansion for once.

Seems like locks are always the class that's swept to the corner and forgotten about.

UA was directly nerfed because people intentionally let a lock stack UA and then dispelled it. Wonderful way to go about nerfing things.

[cristos]

So lets get a good part of the community from here so we can speak up on the battle.net forums or even send them a comprehensive email regarding the nerfs and a request for them to actually start balancing our class correctly and giving it the love it needs.

After doing a little more research I've found a thread on the forums stating that our versatility was reduced by 75%.

I can literally picture the balancing team at blizzard drinking themselves stupid together, Messing around with warlock balancing then having a good laugh about it afterwards. That's exactly how it feels at the moment..

Funny thing is I'm still relatively new to world of warcraft and I can see things like this already. My rogue and mage feel like they're both in extremely good places at the moment.

It's just a shame my warlock doesn't feel the same.

[Deleted]

So lets get a good part of the community from here so we can speak up on the battle.net forums or even send them a comprehensive email regarding the nerfs and a request for them to actually start balancing our class correctly and giving it the love it needs.

Feedback has felt like it's been ignored for the past three expansions now, I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of people had stopped giving it - especially considering some of the retarded and / or snarky responses Celestalon has given. I don't see why things would change now when we're so close to launch.

Wait for the inevitable number tweaks we'll get during the expansion to start performing well again.
Hope that the expansion after Legion we'll get a class that's designed well and feels pleasant to play, though I wouldn't hold your breath.

I can literally picture the balancing team at blizzard drinking themselves stupid together, Messing around with warlock balancing then having a good laugh about it afterwards. That's exactly how it feels at the moment..

And get rid of that. It's blatantly incompetence, inability or unwillingness to remember previous iterations of design and a different idea of what's fun / enjoyable to play, not malice.

[PeopleReady]

Can anyone at 110 in beta weigh in on warlock's ability to solo difficult world content? I'm ideally looking for a class with "good enough" performance in raids/Mythic+, but can also solo most of the more difficult (although not all) world quest stuff. I'm not even sure such a class exists, but I figured if it did it might be affliction lock or beast mastery Hunter.

[Fallensaint]

Can anyone at 110 in beta weigh in on warlock's ability to solo difficult world content? I'm ideally looking for a class with "good enough" performance in raids/Mythic+, but can also solo most of the more difficult (although not all) world quest stuff. I'm not even sure such a class exists, but I figured if it did it might be affliction lock or beast mastery Hunter.

Warlocks in general are very solid for soloing world content. Our Voidwalker and Infernal are tanky enough that we don't have to worry about stuff pounding us in the face, and when stuff does pound us in the face we've got enough defensive abilities to survive. With Health Funnel and Drain Life, we can survive indefinitely against anything that doesn't stun or one-shot. Affliction in particular is good because Drain Life is it's filler and does decent damage, and your DoTs will continue to work while maintaining your pet with Health Funnel.

At around 830+ ilvl, the only problems I've had while soloing are some of the elite WANTED world quest rares (which are balanced for groups with a tank and/or healer) and pulling too many mobs in the few elite-only areas (specifically the Wardens island and eastern Suramar City).

[PeopleReady]

Warlocks in general are very solid for soloing world content. Our Voidwalker and Infernal are tanky enough that we don't have to worry about stuff pounding us in the face, and when stuff does pound us in the face we've got enough defensive abilities to survive. With Health Funnel and Drain Life, we can survive indefinitely against anything that doesn't stun or one-shot. Affliction in particular is good because Drain Life is it's filler and does decent damage, and your DoTs will continue to work while maintaining your pet with Health Funnel.

At around 830+ ilvl, the only problems I've had while soloing are some of the elite WANTED world quest rares (which are balanced for groups with a tank and/or healer) and pulling too many mobs in the few elite-only areas (specifically the Wardens island and eastern Suramar City).

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. Could I ask the the follow up - were you ultimately able to solo the WANTED quests despite the difficulty, or did it end up as needing a tank/healer in the end?

[Deleted]

At around 830+ ilvl, the only problems I've had while soloing are some of the elite WANTED world quest rares (which are balanced for groups with a tank and/or healer) and pulling too many mobs in the few elite-only areas (specifically the Wardens island and eastern Suramar City).

I assume Supremacy is the way to go for solo grind? Or does Mr Blue still have some sort of advantage over the Infernal (how's their survivability)?

[Fallensaint]

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. Could I ask the the follow up - were you ultimately able to solo the WANTED quests despite the difficulty, or did it end up as needing a tank/healer in the end?

It ultimately depends on what sort of abilities the elite has. Several were soloable, but the ones with heavy unavoidable damage, or long stuns, or required a dispel, I wasn't able to solo. Luckily, since these are world quest targets, it wasn't hard to find a group or mooch off of someone else's group if I couldn't solo.

I assume Supremacy is the way to go for solo grind? Or does Mr Blue still have some sort of advantage over the Infernal (how's their survivability)?

In my opinion, the Voidwalker is a bit better defensively but the Infernal has much better damage and is better able to hold aggro on multiple targets.

[Deleted]

It's a shame that affliction is so damn boring visually. The Agony is the ancient skull effect that disappears, UA is a glow, Drain Soul is okay, does Corruption actually do anything? Demonic Sacrifice procs are another pulsing glow

Couldn't Agony at least be updated to a series of red slashing effects or something?

What a pity we never got that AOE Drain Soul that was spoken of some time ago. Now that would be way more fun than Phantom Singularity.

[Deleted]

It's a shame that affliction is so damn boring visually. The Agony is the ancient skull effect that disappears, UA is a glow, Drain Soul is okay, does Corruption actually do anything? Demonic Sacrifice procs are another pulsing glow

Couldn't Agony at least be updated to a series of red slashing effects or something?

What a pity we never got that AOE Drain Soul that was spoken of some time ago. Now that would be way more fun than Phantom Singularity.

Eh, I know my opinion is probably not very popular, but I disagree.

First, I kinda like Affliction as the spec that deals with insidious corruption and disease, eating out enemies from within. This doesn't thematically lend itself well to flashy spell effects and I think it'd be pretty forced.

Second, we already have enough visual clutter in raids. People doing this and that, 8 different spell effects on the ground that you need to ignore to see the void zone etc. It's enough that Destro has huge-ass Chaos Bolts flying, we don't need it.

Third, I think it's also good in pvp that Affliction doesn't have super-obvious telegraphs Take Shadow, or the new kid on the block DH: they press their big dick dps button and shift form, basically making a huge loud announcement "HEY GUYS I JUST POPPED MY MAJOR DAMAGE CD, PLEASE FEAR/STUN/KITE ME". Whereas as locks, we can unload a whole train of UAs into a player sometimes and often enough when they notice it's too late. I'm talking about casual pvp for fun, not glads fighting other glads, ofc.

[EliteNightKnight]

Warlocks in general are very solid for soloing world content. Our Voidwalker and Infernal are tanky enough that we don't have to worry about stuff pounding us in the face, and when stuff does pound us in the face we've got enough defensive abilities to survive. With Health Funnel and Drain Life, we can survive indefinitely against anything that doesn't stun or one-shot. Affliction in particular is good because Drain Life is it's filler and does decent damage, and your DoTs will continue to work while maintaining your pet with Health Funnel.

At around 830+ ilvl, the only problems I've had while soloing are some of the elite WANTED world quest rares (which are balanced for groups with a tank and/or healer) and pulling too many mobs in the few elite-only areas (specifically the Wardens island and eastern Suramar City).

Thanks a lot for the answer!
But what about affliction warlocks in mythic+ ?

[Deleted]

Eh, I know my opinion is probably not very popular, but I disagree.

First, I kinda like Affliction as the spec that deals with insidious corruption and disease, eating out enemies from within. This doesn't thematically lend itself well to flashy spell effects and I think it'd be pretty forced.

Second, we already have enough visual clutter in raids. People doing this and that, 8 different spell effects on the ground that you need to ignore to see the void zone etc. It's enough that Destro has huge-ass Chaos Bolts flying, we don't need it.

Third, I think it's also good in pvp that Affliction doesn't have super-obvious telegraphs Take Shadow, or the new kid on the block DH: they press their big dick dps button and shift form, basically making a huge loud announcement "HEY GUYS I JUST POPPED MY MAJOR DAMAGE CD, PLEASE FEAR/STUN/KITE ME". Whereas as locks, we can unload a whole train of UAs into a player sometimes and often enough when they notice it's too late. I'm talking about casual pvp for fun, not glads fighting other glads, ofc.

Well, we don;t have a real major damage cooldown, that's the doomguard, which is kind of obvious. Then there's the bright green and bright violet "I'M RIGHT HERE GUYS" arrows called drain life/drain soul!

A spell effect doesn;t need to be flashy.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks a lot for the answer!
But what about affliction warlocks in mythic+ ?

They're strong on trash because affliction has good sustained AOE via Sow the Seeds, Corruption ticking forever on everything and the buffed Phantom Singularity.

The only downside is that you surrended a LOT of single target damage to do that, and some classes don;t have to make such a compromise.

Ironically, affliction's AOE will get steadily weaker because everyone will gear up and AOE burst down trash packs, but I guess in Mythic the mobs have bigger health pools, and the difficulty rises so essentially you don;t simply outgear stuff to the point where it becomes trivial

[Gaaz]

Thanks a lot for the answer!
But what about affliction warlocks in mythic+ ?

Besides certain tank specs, locks are the best solo class at the moment. By a long margin. BM hunters are not even close, since all they have is a 30% heal on a 2min timer and severely nerfed pet survivability compared to Draenor. That said however, locks can be quite fiddly during AoE or cleave senarios. Some classes do it much better in terms of both - numbers and mechanics. For Mythic+ warlocks are average at best. BM/MM hunters and mages are probably going to rofl stomp anything a warlock can show due to their superior AoE, cleave mechanics and better burst abilities.

[cristos]

Feedback has felt like it's been ignored for the past three expansions now, I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of people had stopped giving it - especially considering some of the retarded and / or snarky responses Celestalon has given. I don't see why things would change now when we're so close to launch.

Wait for the inevitable number tweaks we'll get during the expansion to start performing well again.
Hope that the expansion after Legion we'll get a class that's designed well and feels pleasant to play, though I wouldn't hold your breath.



And get rid of that. It's blatantly incompetence, inability or unwillingness to remember previous iterations of design and a different idea of what's fun / enjoyable to play, not malice.

I can completely understand where you're coming from,

I see it time and time again other classes bringing their balancing issues to the forums and never warlocks. Even if they don't listen we should still go there and try.

Why let things slide?

All we can do is stick together as a community and at least give it a shot.

Anyone here who isn't happy with the latest warlock balancing lets put together a good part of the community here and bring this to blizzards attention. Intellect nerf, UA dispell nerf and 75% versatility nerf seems a little overboard to me.

Not sure about you guys but it seems like every other spec and class is in a better place than affliction currently and I want to start a movement so we can change things. The last few expansions haven't been good for affliction and I'd like to see something different.