How would you change Affliction?

[Deleted]

What with affliction being garbage at the moment and, in my opinion, one of the most boring specs in the game (excessive channeling with occasional dot refresh), what are peoples ideas concerning a play-style change for affliction? I wont speak for everyone but I feel that personally it needs more than just a numbers change to be considered even remotely fun.
How could the already existing abilities interact?
Would you add new abilities, if so what would they do?
Would you make any changes to talents?

[Locki]

Obviously, change two gold traits on the artifact. I like the effects themselves, but considering how important artifacts are in this expansion, I would say that getting a broken artifact from the get-go is a big bummer. Here's a tiny list!

- On-use of artifact: Apply dot that deals dmg based on how many souls you've collected
- Souls will be aquired through tormenting your target(s), rather than mainly being an on-death thing. Would effectively be more dots for more targets.
- Return of WOD Drain Soul for improved ST-dmg and the return of an execute that we currently don't have.
- Same as above, mini-tick from DS would result in quicker ramp-up on agony.

General point: Make our talents feel meaningful. I've played warlock a couple of years now, only affliction, and it's sad to see spells and passives that used to be part of our main toolbox being put into the talent tree instead.

[Requiem94]

@Locki I like your ideas but I just want Reap Souls to be like a 1min CD dot that we throw on the target. I feel like this dot should interact with the rest of our kit in some way. Perhaps something like for every additional dot on the target the existing dots trigger something...first thought is something like "Damnation" where part of the foe's soul is ripped out(with a kickass animation to boot) and sucked in by the scythe. This effect deals some number of damage and reduces the cooldown of the new Reap Soul dot.

As for the rest of our kit...anything this is a talent now that was a baseline ability in WoD should be given back to us and new, original talents should take their place. It's very uncreative to take things that have existed for 2+ xpacks and suddenly make them talents. It's braindead and shameful.

[Inshabel]

Bring back haunt in it's old incarnation to raise our ST damage without making multidotting OP also make the rotation a little more engaging, maybe even haunting spirits (what the hell Blizzard was thinking when they scrapped that animation I will never know)

Re-evaluate the entire artifact to make it more usefull for single target situations.

[Nutri]

Just some out loud idea's
- the on-kill traits in the weapon need to be changed to make it more boss/single target friendly
- if overpowered multidotting is an issue maybe limit dot-spread to corruption only - agony/SL/UA limited to 1 or 2 targets at once or give ag/sl a cast time
- if like above then buff agony/SL/UA to boost single target dmg
- redesign the on-use effect of the artifact weapon, there are problems with it's regen once you've used it during a long bossfight. Put a timer on it?

It feels like affliction relies way too much on getting a buff after you kill a target. Yay on trash, but crippling on single target dps.

Note: I don't want a casttime on spells myself since it's pretty much the identity of Affliction to have instant casts, but apparently Blizzard has a few issues in making ST dmg on par with the other specs due to the AoE/spread damage it can do. Hence the suggestion of making ag/sl/ua limited to X targets.

[Kuhnta]

keep agony damage the same but lower the stacks. let 5 stack be the same damage as 10 stack is now and same with its talent.
increase damage of unstable affliction by a decent amount but only can be on one target (this could be a talent)
i personally like the shadow flame damage after death golden dragon, but the stacking damage amp per kill is a little lack luster.

[Snes]

-Bring back Drain Soul as baseline with Haunt so they can balance single target without making multi-dotting absurdly OP.
-Change the Wrath of Consumption artifact trait to make Seed of Corruption also apply Agony to all affected targets.
-Remove Soul Effigy talent and replace with a single target nuke that consumes all available Soul Shards.
-Remove life tap from the game

[Moggie]

Gonna sound bad but, Are there not hundreds of posts about this already? Everybody has their own ideas and pipe dreams but does a lick of good when Blizz doesn't acknowledge anything.

[Tommy T]

Make Drain Soul baseline
Drain Soul speeds up Agony ramp up time.
Improved shard procs.

That's literally it.

[Agares]

- Make the Artifact so that u don't need to kill anything for it to be active
- Bring back Drain Soul
- Bring back Haunt

[Halwyn]

Something among the lines @Kuhnta suggested.
The biggest issue is not overpowering multidotting while buffing ST damage, I'd say a huge buff to UA damage to make Affliction's ST strong, which will diminish for each additional target except Soul Effigy affected by Agony.
Maybe baseline Sow the Seeds.

[muto]

Improve Shard and Compounding Horror procs. There fixed.

[Deleted]

copy-paste cataclysm affli.

[Deleted]

The first tier talent is outrageous, it should be baseline, that's all.
Give us back our abilities, our execute phase, old haunt, soulswapping, soulshatter, make healthstones heal as much as potions, make the demonic circle talent gives us 2 buttons.
Make our gold traits if you don't change them a chance to activate during fights where there are no adds to kill, make the generations of soul shard generate tormented souls and maybe why not vice versa.
Stop with the ramp-up, just make agony does its max damages immediatly, or make our filler able to speed the stacking
Stop with UA being a "nuke" that isn't one except in pvp, remove the damn soulshard cost
Make siphon life baseline
Sow the Seed should be baseline with the same concept of the talent, you can use a shard to spread 5 seeds
Get rid of soul effigy
Make soul shard fun to use, make it a real ressource instead of something holding us back, something to empower one ability when you use it with a shard as we used to have with soulburn : better healthstone, speed boost with demonic circle, mega healing for drain life, instant pet, maybe a new CD based on the use of a soulshard allowing us to "consume" all our dots on a target very quickly to allow decent quick switch and burst ?
Our glyphs, give us back the verdant spheres, the floatting soulshards, the dreadsteel walking on water, the alternative skins for Inferno and Doomguard
Etc. etc. etc. etc.


I would also gladly ask that we get our maledictions back even if you're not doing pvp, especially the one slowing ennemies to get some utilities back AND OUR SPEC FANTASY BACK, but I'm really really pessimist on that account, even more so than for the rest.


Cataclysm affliction was awesome, even WOTLK, and MoP.

- - - Updated - - -

And we need a huuuuuuge increase in our dps numbers, just in case stating the obvious is necessary.

[Deleted]

Make Drain Soul baseline
Drain Soul speeds up Agony ramp up time.
Improved shard procs.

That's literally it.

/Thread. Really, this would improve ST while only improving MT a bit.

[zvvl]

go back in time 4 months

[Thelxi]

I wouldn't change much, but I'd get rid of the artifact and everything related to it.

[Cainium]

Traits:
1. Change trait "Harvester of Souls". Don't need two Siphon Life things. Change it so that Reap Soul deals direct damage to the target based on the amount of souls consumed and heals us foir x% percent of damage dealt this way

Talents:
1. Native UI support for Soul Effigy. An extra frame and the ability to directly target your own SE using macros if there is more than one aff lock in the group
2. Soul harvest returned to the old Dark Soul CD

In addition I would change some of the talents. IMO Phantom Singularity should be baseline, and get replace with Soul Swap (from PvP Tree). Mana Tap should be removed, and replaced with something different. Maybe a maintenance buff coupled with Life Tap. But doing that LT, MT rotation feels clunky.

Haunt and Soul Swap should change positions. So now Haunt is level 100 and SS is level 15, with an empty spot on the PvP tree. The level 100 PvP row needs a complete rework so or so, 'cause Rot and Decay outshines the other two options.

"Haunt" changed to the effect of "Rot and Decay", resetting the DoTs duration to maximum (with pandemic), effecting Siphon life as well. So there is a gameplay and rotational benefit from using Haunt, over Effigy or Soul conduit. Increase CD to 25 sec, so you can "refresh" your DoTs once for their lifecycle.

Increase the damage of Drain Soul to increase single target damage. It should be stronger than Writhe in Agony on 1 target, and lower on 2-3 target, and Soul Swap should be strong on fights with priority target switching, so you can prepare and copy over a 5 stack UA, exceptional good synergy with the new Haunt, for fast switches without ramp up.

That's it for the first part. A second part would including moving other things from the PvP tree and Legendaries around, to give us some utility options.