Affliction Warlock suggestions!

[Deleted]

That is actually how it was in vanilla, chance on shadow bolt to apply a debuff. SM / Ruin was so good, miss my 30/0/21

Thinking along these lines, having a dot which works like druids life bloom in the sense that you can only have it on one target would solve a lot of the issues with the balancing act of being good at single target without being too ridiculous at cleave/council fights.

[Deleted]

That is actually how it was in vanilla, chance on shadow bolt to apply a debuff. SM / Ruin was so good, miss my 30/0/21

That was a bad attempt at humor.

I want shadowbolt back and I have done ever since MOP. The pointless change to channeled filler resulted in the death of the most mechanically interesting execute phase in the game, Drain Soul and the quirks it enabled. SE was also probably a better multi target throttle than most (all?) the other solutions they've tried.

I was kinda hoping we'd get it back in WOD after MG was such a problem in MOP, but no cigar.
I was thrilled when I heard MG was being removed in Legion, unfortunately we still have drain life channeled filler - but hey, it's at least a step in a direction I like.

[Sartre]

1) Remove soul effigy as a ST buff ability. Make it a cleave talent for instance. Right now it is basically old Haunt v.2 which was removed for a reason.
2) Agony stacks are pointless, has no real use or mechanical background to it since pandemic. Remove it completely. Let agony do full ticks.
3) Bring shadow bolt fillers (or any kind of nuke-ish filler spamming), and drain soul execute phase back. It was one of the great characteristics of the spec.
3.2) Is "Ruin" still a base passive skill for Warlocks? If not, make "Ruin" (+crit damage) base. It will fix a lot of problems for all the 3 specs.
4) Make Haunt a base ability, a powerfull nuke with soulshard cost. It may return the shard if target dies in X seconds, like shadowburn. For those moments that we need burst.
5) Make phantom singularity a one target limited DoT, like the old Curse of Doom.

So we choose Soul Effigy when we need cleave, and Phantom Singularity when we need +ST dmg, and Soul Conduit when we need burst (many haunt/UA stacks usage) in a fight. And redesign level 15 talents with... I don't know I'm not getting paid by Blizz

[TheLimonTree]

I feel like I'm the only one who thinks soul effigy is fun with just some small issues like the nameplates not showing and it's spawn location :/

[Terryn]

1) Effigy is a terrible bandaid for shard generation and damage bonus for single target. Remove it, bring back Malefic Grasp and tie it to Drains. Drop damage for the ticks down to probably 10%, but have it effect all dots. Make ticks from these dots able to proc all possible procs, shards, CH, souls, etc.
2) Haunt should apply all dots minus UA, and the agony application should be a 10 stack. Helps with the idea of getting dots rolling as soon as possible and lets the aff lock focus fire adds a lot easier.
3) Make doomguard / infernal a bit more spec specific, making it an actual decent CD instead of the crap that it is now.

[BannedForViews]

I would rather see Haunt come back as it was in place of Soul Effigy, than ever use Soul Effigy. As it stands I dont care if it is a dps increase, it completely ruins the feel of the spec, and makes it much more likely that CoA will fall off other targets. It is a horrible design.

[TheLimonTree]

1) Effigy is a terrible bandaid for shard generation and damage bonus for single target. Remove it, bring back Malefic Grasp and tie it to Drains. Drop damage for the ticks down to probably 10%, but have it effect all dots. Make ticks from these dots able to proc all possible procs, shards, CH, souls, etc.

I guess I'm crazy for enjoying dot management over just sitting there draining

[Sheevah24]

First of all, DoT management IS what affliction is supposed to be about. BUT Soul Effigy fails to deliver the "reward" good DoT management should provide.
Affliction has (most of the time) and should always be a "high" skill cap spec with high rewards.
Soul Effigy being so "unfriendly" to keep track of,forcing us to spec for "absolute Corruption" because otherwise it's almost impossible to even cast a single UA without the high risk of an expiring DoT (on 3+ targets) and therefore leave us with only 1 DoT to manage . I don't even consider Siphon Life a viable talent (over Sow of Seeds) unless you're willing to spend those infernal tomes before and after almost all boss fights.
All in all,i believe most warlocks Feel Soul Effigy is a deal breaker when it comes down to Fun/Reward aspect of Affliction as a spec.

And also, even though some ideas are nice and could offer a lot to Affliction,we can't really hope for a total overhaul of the class so I think we should consider more viable options.
Agony starting at full stacks could be a dream come true but Adding shadow bolt in the spec? Don't think it's even possible to do such a thing at least (and that's a BIG at least) before 7.1

And last, I believe that "Drain Life" & "Drain Soul" perfectly fit the "Fantasy" of the spec,if I may say so. I could live without Shadow bolt as Affliction.

[Zuckuss]

Thinking along these lines, having a dot which works like druids life bloom in the sense that you can only have it on one target would solve a lot of the issues with the balancing act of being good at single target without being too ridiculous at cleave/council fights.

I think UA, in its current form, is meant to do just that — optimal when spammed on a single target.

Also, I am interested to see how higher haste ratings and legendaries affect affliction play on council fights. Hood of Eternal Desain, Power cord of Lethtendris, and Stretens Sleepless Shackles make me curious about contagion vs. absolute corruption. I feel like contagion could be similar to WoD haunt juggling, very rewarding but more intensive... I think affliction will be very fun on some raid bosses once they roll out.

[TheLimonTree]

First of all, DoT management IS what affliction is supposed to be about. BUT Soul Effigy fails to deliver the "reward" good DoT management should provide.
Affliction has (most of the time) and should always be a "high" skill cap spec with high rewards.
Soul Effigy being so "unfriendly" to keep track of,forcing us to spec for "absolute Corruption" because otherwise it's almost impossible to even cast a single UA without the high risk of an expiring DoT (on 3+ targets) and therefore leave us with only 1 DoT to manage

I agree that SE has some mechanical issues like being too hard to track, having it spawn next to you, and replacing it removing all dots.

If people are dead set on changing SE though, what if instead of being an attackable target, it would worked semi similar to the old Artifact ability. Instead of 1 continuous target to multi dot, you get occasional free adds to damage that transfers to the boss? This would mean more souls to reap in single target, and make our gold traits better too!

I don't even consider Siphon Life a viable talent (over Sow of Seeds) unless you're willing to spend those infernal tomes before and after almost all boss fights.

Over all I think the problem here is having the two compete against each other. Maybe it'd be better to have seeds compete with phantom singularity and SL with SE? Just a thought.

And last, I believe that "Drain Life" & "Drain Soul" perfectly fit the "Fantasy" of the spec,if I may say so. I could live without Shadow bolt as Affliction.

Amen to that. One of my favorite parts of afflic is that our filler is a channel and not a cast.

[Lucidious]

I personally love the new affliction. Way better than previous versions in my personal opinion. My wish list would be a longer duration on UA and starting with full shards. Other than that I'm really having fun playing affliction for the first time since TBC playing the SL/SL hybrid spec.

[RockJohnAxe]

Buffs and Artifact adjustments:
- Increase secrets of the Necroltye passive to 215% from 200% (+15% Drain Life damage)
- Curse of Agony ticks twice as fast (Would deal less per tick, but DPS would remain the same except faster ramp)
- Soul Shard generation will be normalized so you should gain a soul shard in about the same amount of time no matter how many targets you have agony on
- Ulthalesh Souls now slowly generate while dealing damage as well as from kills
- Wrath of Consumption artifact trait now lasts 30 seconds (up from 20) to give more time to keep the buff rolling


Seed of Corruption reworked:
- Seed of Corruption renamed to Spread Corruption (2 Sec Cast)
- Spread Corruption deals light damage to a target and spreads your corruption DOT to all targets within 8 yards. If targets are already inflicted with Corruption it will instantly trigger 1 Tick of Corruption that deals +50% damage


Talent Changes:
- Siphon Life has become a baseline spell (Damage reduced by 20%)
- New Talent - Deadly Siphoning: Causes your Siphon Life to deal +20% damage

- Remove Sow the Seeds
- New Talent - Creeping Agony: Your Spread Corruption Ability now also spreads Agony to nearby targets as well

- Remove Soul Effigy
- New Talent - Malefic Grasp: Your Drain Life/Drain Soul deal +5% damage for each 10% of life the enemy is missing.

[CactusDisco]

We need a new filler. Drain Life is just so boring. Our dots need more dmg, and abit longer duration. Also we should be able to give our pets a DOT or something. Would be much cooler. And what about an ability which gives you a 10 sec CD on Curse of Agony, but now it will be applied to all targets hit with Seed of Corruption? So then the targets would get Corrupion and Curse of Agony.

[Deleted]

- New Talent - Malefic Grasp: Your Drain Life/Drain Soul deal +5% damage for each 10% of life the enemy is missing.

Do we really need more arbitrary ramp that gives absolutely no QOL improvement, just shifts more and more and more of our damage further down the line?

We seem to have a problem with the execute phase. People keep wanting it back but they want it back on a purely numbers level. Blizzard did this in WOD - we just arbitrarily did more damage at the end of the mobs life with zero gameplay change, we were just doing less damage at the start and more at the end. The only reason for this is what "Well, affliction ALWAYS had an execute phase!", so they gave us one even after they essentially removed Drain Soul because it was too similar to the pointless new channeled filler they invented.

I don't know about other people, but I loved the affliction not because it relegated a bunch of our damage to the end of a mobs life, but because it was mechanically interesting and was just a nice tactile change. Warriors execute has generally been pretty boring despite being the namesake - execute usage has rarely been that interesting, afflictions was fantastic though.

We went from a hardcast filler to an incredibly slow and heavy ticking channeled one.
After the soulshard system was added, we also started pumping out soulshards at a ludicrous rate.
If things died, we generated soulshards.
And in a world where you can't go 5 seconds talking about class design before Blizzard brings up Class Fantasy, the affliction execute phase certainly delivered on that - your enemy was so weak you were able to start draining their soul, it wasn't something you could do willynilly, it was a direct representation that the opponent was dying and weak enough for you to start ripping the soul from their body. It's badass.

So yes, as much as I'd like to see an execute phase back, I really don't get why people just want an arbitrary balance shift. I was glad if anything that the execute phase was removed in Legion because it was a joke in WOD when you just started hitting for more with no mechanical change. It was one of the most sensible changes they made to the entire class. Give me a real execute phase that lives up to what we had, not just my abilities hitting for less at the start and more at the end, because.

[Werst]

*Soul effigy is nice in concept but horrid in implementation. Constructively I'd prefer a debuff you cast on a mob that gives 35% more shards and healing (same about as what you would get live playing it with macros and whatnot). It just amps all the effects but with only a 2 sec cast to move it to a new target. That would do the same thing but not be such a chore that any who try it are turned off from the spec. Adjust its dmg bonus to balance single target but if you have to go over 35% the baseline dots need to come up.

*Haunt needs a job and aff needs a way to spread dots. Thus a role for haunt would be to spread any dots on the impacted target to everything in an 8 yard radius. Keeps the cd, dmg, and shard less design. Also keeps out AoE cheese or locks feeling like they have to drop it in melee.

*Seeds baseline should be 2 sec cast and detonate on impact, still spreads/applies corruption.

*Phantom singularity can cut its swath in half along with its cool down so 8-10 yards and 30 sec cool down.

*Siphon life should be baseline and in its place a 25 second recharge soul swap choice. AoE vs cleave vs a CD.

*Agony starts at 80% and each tick adds 2% - talent just ups numbers of agony to 20 stack numbers but keeping same ramp up as described for regular agony.

This gives us a toolkit to compete with other dot classes mechanically and have a much better qol to tune numbers around.
**As a rule numbers should be based around the on death traits not to be involved. Those only exist to save the spec where its mechanically weak.

[Wot]

I have notice a few bugs that are annoying and should be a star to fix thingst:

- Seed of corruption does not always apply corruption to targets nearby. It could be you have to be on the threat table of all the mobs or they won't get hit or some other weird mechanic.
- DoTs drop off the target. This I can't reproduce and it doesn't happen often, but I have seen all my DoTs completely wiped off a target despite having plenty of duration left. Stacks of Agony are lost so it's not just a UI issue.
- Soul Effigy target-able by pets. Not sure if this counts as a bug but it's damn annoying that I have to force attack a pet on a target at the risk of losing an Agony stack. Also non-controllable pets such as those in quests will attack the effigy. If the effigy only transfers 30% damage then it's a DPS loss, not to mention the time the pet wastes running around.

Some problems I have with mechanics
- Reap stacks: I could start a fight with a full 12 stacks, we wipe, then I restart with 0. This is a huge inconsistency.
- Compounding Horror: It's very random and feels a waste not to use it even at 1 stack as it has a habit of dropping of if you wait for it. (If you watch it stacking does it know and drops just to mess with your head?)
- Soul Effigy: Lots have already been said - it's targeting frame, it's placement, the whole idea of it in general.
- Soul Flame: I feel like this gets too much credit around the place. It's only particularly useful if a bunch of adds are dying in a cascade, otherwise it's just a last second DPS cheese-o-meter on adds that were already dead. A lot of our bonuses are already tied to on death buffs. A better implementation would be either to use the Grimoire of Sacrifice mechanic and pulse while the adds are still up. This will also alleviate the reckoning bomb effect it sometimes has under some conditions.

[xpose]

Affliction needs a big game changer for it to even come close to competing with the other specs.

They need to dump Soul Effigy, feel like such a weak top talent.

Give haunt back as a base skill

Give us something like astral communion where we can instantly apply fully dotted Agony, Corruption and SL and that will help with out ST I think.


Rework our "On Kill" gold traits. They are beyond pointless for anything outside trash and soloing.

[discoslice]

**Casting Unstable Affliction as our only soul shard dump isn't fun. Give us something more interesting and fun to do.

**Casting Reap Souls (Artifact power) to get a largely invisible 10% damage boost for x seconds, and doubling traits is not satisfying, especially when compared to our more interesting (and visual) sister Artifact powers.

**Soul Effigy is just as much fun as Pirismatic Shard was for mages (hint, it's gone for them.)

**Our dots are pretty much invisible. Either make the enemy glow green (like being sick) or perhaps have an imp on their shoulder sucking their life out or something.

[Deleted]

Personally, I would like to see Blizzard change the artifact ability. I'd like to see something along the lines of the old drain soul/malefic grasp (making dots do miniticks), aoe for smaller ticks or singletarget for bigger ticks which would buff our ST damage nicely. Not sure we need another channeled spell, but then again I think I would enjoy something flashy in an otherwise pretty dull spec.

[Joryy]

My problem with affliction is that it doesn't have much of a high point in the rotation. Doomguard is much less fun of a cooldown than dark soul was, as it is a pure fire-and-forget button that I don't interact with at all. Reap into spam UA just isn't all that enjoyable.

In fact, the artifact ability isn't very fun to use. A buff that is sometimes up, active but gated by a largely uncontrollable soul mechanic? I'd like to see it feel more personally impactful, and more controllable.

What if instead it was a targetless channeled ability that amplified/genesis'd all of your active dots, with a sort of beckoning vortex of 'your soul is mine' visual. Evocation meets genesis, the anti-tranquility. It could have either a traditional cooldown, or a 1-second-per-soul (per shard?) change system with the current soul mechanic.