Affliction Buffs in 7.1

[Baconeggcheese]

There are plenty of ways of improving affliction's single target without changing the "established order"

Oh its super easy to just bring up aff's ST, but that alone wouldn't really help aff be competitive. You'd see threads like this filled with the next complaint.

[Deleted]

It would certainly make affliction feel a lot less awful in Emerald Nightmare

Sure, affliction still has weaknesses like target switching, but there is really no reason at all why is has to be so awful at single target

Particularly in Mythic +, you just feel like a third wheel in between trash packs, you just feel embarassed to be there

I just feellike saying "sorry" all the time

It's just bad to have affliction absolutely dead last with such huge gaps in anything where you can't multidot, particularly as affliction has a tool to deal with it (horrible though it is)

I honestly can think of no other reason than affliction is exactly where they want it to be, which is basically a niche spec - like demonology. Which is fine, if they are thinking that it makes raid comp building more interestin gor whatnot, but as things stand most raids just think "fuck it, just take the mage, we'd rather have a bit less aoe in exchange for a lot more damage, and useful damage, on everything else"

Or maybe they just hope that the whole class will just die off so they don;t have to bother with it

[Dwill]

It continued to exist all through wod, completely free of snapshots, and caused the exact same issues. It was actually a massive problem for balancing the spec and something people constantly complained about. You're honestly the first person I've come across who thought it was a positive thing. People rallied for 2 xpacs to have it removed because of the issues it caused and how increasingly limited it made the spec since you couldn't even channel on a priority target to get some damage in without having dots on it.

I'm not saying it was the best solution then but for right now, it would help tremendously and could be balanced around the fact that Unstable is a shard spender and that Siphon Life is a possible talent. One thing that didn't help with MG in WoD is the absolutely stupid idea that Soul Swap needed a Soul Shard cost which made Affliction pretty terrible at dealing with priority adds.

Demo's niche is sustained ST, its already significantly stronger ST than destro and it doesn't really have a compelling reason to play it much outside of those pure ST fights. If they want all 3 specs on equal footing, they need to homogenize and move aff and demo away from being dot specs into something more in-between. That isn't realistically going to happen, so we're stuck with the situation where if the dot spec isn't over tuned there won't be a reason to play it.

There are ways to make affliction competitive without making it overpowered nor making it Fire Mage/Shadow Priest 2.0.

And if they over tune them and change the spec hierarchy, they'll piss off a fuckton of people. And if Aff for instance ends up the strongest spec, you're going to have the lock community at large under performing because they won't be able to play aff very well, and it's going to cause even more drama. It's pretty much a lose lose for blizzard if they move away from the way things are now very much.

While Affliction requires some actual thought process to perform well with, it's by no mean WotLK's feral so I don't buy into the idea that people will be pissed because they won't performed well nor that they won't adapt after a week or two of raiding and with AK getting even high every couple of days, it won't take long to get their artifact up to par.

[Ocedic]

A non-warlock player here:

I am amazed what Aff Locks are putting up with. Aff Locks have been completely shafted, getting nerfs in PvP over and over with nominal small buffs in damage that don't solve core issues. How did the artifact talents go live? How was that acceptable?

I hope Blizzard does some real changes for Affliction locks to smooth things out. Single target needs a lot of boost, and the golden artifact traits need to be retooled to not be On-Kill.

[Spunt]

7.1 is just bringing nerfs to CH and UA while slightly buffing dots.

Well, guess we're waiting on 7.2 now to see if they plan on making some positive changes.

[Deleted]

so is the CH nerf really that big ? They increased all the dots dmg also UA dmg 5%, also they made all ua's seperate so they can benefit from fatal echoes more.
It seems like its a overall buff to affliction, not a nerf?

[Dwill]

Patch Notes are out: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/20335228

I don't see anything about the Contagion change in there so maybe it either got reverted or they forego to mention it in the patch notes.

[Sunlighthell]

Some of the changes in blue post are wrong (200% CB for example) check it on site, there're correct values.
Also according to site cremation pvp talent is now 4% damage to health (nerfed even more from ptr 8%>5%>4%) while in blue post they state that it's 8% damage to health. They can't even make proper patch notes and you expect them to fix broken beyond repair affliction.

[Gangresnake]

Had my hopes up
Guess I was wrong

[Deleted]

I'll just leave it here. Read carefully.

the img is down

[Deleted]

Well see u @ tues/wed. I still think CH change is a quite big buff as it should benefit from mastery. At least thats what is written.

[Sunlighthell]

the img is down

Created separate thread.

[sd2400533]

I am really curious about where Blizzard get their data from. Where did they get the idea that compounding horror needs to be redesign??? And devour magic was gone for like 3 years now, no one ask for it back. UA was also doing ok, why they had to change it?? A simple flat 5% buff should been enough, why go through all the trouble making changes that player doesn't even want?
You make a change that will affact thousands of people, you better have a good reason right? So whats the reason behind the 7.1 changes?
I don't know how a game company works, but i would assume there are people who work for Blizzard that play the game, do testings and gather feedback from live game and forums right?
Are they blind or they are playing a completely different game??

At this point I am seriously thinking the game designer at Blizzard just some random incompetent dude who doesn't play the game, doing things whatever they want.

[Sulblaka]

I don't see anything about the Contagion change in there so maybe it either got reverted or they forego to mention it in the patch notes.

Just logged on the ptr and tooltip still says 12%

[Dwill]

Just logged on the ptr and tooltip still says 12%

Hadn't my hopes up to begin with but thanks for confirming.

[sd2400533]

Just logged on the ptr and tooltip still says 12%

Isn't 7.1 already live right now? Why log on to ptr?

[Baconeggcheese]

7.1 is just bringing nerfs to CH and UA while slightly buffing dots.

I'm confused, how are they being nerfed?

CH is being changed to 32% spelldmg per stack, as opposed to it currently being 5% UA dmg per stack which would be like 18% spelldmg so that seems like a pretty decent buff. And then UA got buffed by 5% which is a buff, and UA applying separate stacks means it can refund shards per cast of UA which is again a buff.

How exactly were they nerfed?

[erinthea]

I'm confused, how are they being nerfed?

CH is being changed to 32% spelldmg per stack, as opposed to it currently being 5% UA dmg per stack which would be like 18% spelldmg so that seems like a pretty decent buff. And then UA got buffed by 5% which is a buff, and UA applying separate stacks means it can refund shards per cast of UA which is again a buff.

How exactly were they nerfed?

Because CH does not benefit from mastery which any geared warlock has well over 100% meaning its a nerf and also perdition does not affect it now which is also a nerf and it will not benefit from upcoming tier set bonus which means in future becomes even larger nerf than it currently is.

Math is your friend

[Lucrece]

Math is your friend

Math is mean, definitely not my friend! Maybe frenemy.

[Coffeexbean]

So how viable will affliction be after these buffs?