Is affliction the new best Mythic raiding spec?

[Pokeypenguin]

So, I was looking at logs for 7.1 and affliction looks like its beating out Destro and Demo by a good ammount, and not just on aoe and trash. Even when you filter for boss damage and look boss by boss its outperforming the other two more often than not.

I am not a fan of affliction, I have nothing invested into it, no gear for it and was hoping they would never buff it to relevance, but maybe it's time to give it a real hard look.

Maybe the fact it has no good legeis or tier will help me have an excuse to keep ignoring it?

[Halwyn]

And then you see boss-by-boss and it's significantly higher only on the Heart and Dragons... yay, padding.

[Arachnofiend]

Uh.... I'm definitely not seeing what you're seeing. Affliction only beats the other two specs on Dragons and Elerethe, two bosses where having dots tick on an otherwise untargetable enemy is a pretty common occurrence.

[Pokeypenguin]

And then you see boss-by-boss and it's higher only on the Heart and Elerethe... yay, padding.

Boss damage only rank vs other 2 specs

neth #2
heart #2
ele #1
ursoc#2
Dragon #1
Cenarius #2
Xavius #3

That's not bad....to me that's a strong versatile spec that excels at aoe and is decent on almost every boss, basicly what destro was earlier.

Destro for reference..
neth #3
heart #3
ele #3
ursoc#3
Dragon #2
Cenarius #3
Xavius #2

[Turturin the Warlock]

boss damage is important, but so is certain add damage in many fights

- ursoc images
- ilganoth everything except bloods
- dragons - pretty much everything
- cenarius - pretty much everything
- xavius - everything except tentacles.

The question is not only which spec is best on those, but which does the best during progress. farm parses (which is most of what you're seeing when you look at the 90th percentile in mythic over a range of 1 day) just don't mean that much.

[Pokeypenguin]

boss damage is important, but so is certain add damage in many fights

- ursoc images
- ilganoth everything except bloods
- dragons - pretty much everything
- cenarius - pretty much everything
- xavius - everything except tentacles.

The question is not only which spec is best on those, but which does the best during progress. farm parses (which is most of what you're seeing when you look at the 90th percentile in mythic over a range of 1 day) just don't mean that much.

Yes, but that's my point, we already knew afflic did good add damage, now it seems it's better boss damage then destro as well.

[starji]

In EN, it's always been better than any forums wanted to admit. Still: check the rankings for Heroic difficulty and you'll see a very different picture.

warcraftlogs has a few issues with their rankings with less-played specs. For example, they include deaths in the completed parses (so if someone with a spec gets one-shot by the boss on the pull, they're recorded as doing zero dps). This evens out over time when there are many runs, but if you only have a few, it's going to inflate or deflate the class's performance.

My guess is that on Mythic, the adds live a lot longer, and therefore dots have a chance to tick longer and agony can ramp up. On heroic and normal, you'll see adds dying faster so Aff doesn't do as much.

[ambident]

There are too few parses to draw any conclusions.

[Deleted]

It's good, definitive better than demonology, the ramp up time is much more rewarding and not as chaotic, you can move without losing 40 seconds of imp build up. But is it better than destruction? It "probably" is, atleast for EN and Karazhan.

[Werst]

The single most important thing aff has going for it is mobility. Mostly instants with a short cast spender. Unfortunately it has tremendous problems and is IMO still under tuned. Ignoring the issues the artifact has there are some basics the spec needs to bring it to modern.

*Agony ramp up could go away, talent just increases its damage by a flat %.
*Siphon life has its damage baked into corruption, is a healing only modification to corruption when talented.
*Effigy is a one target only debuff that causes dots to tick 50% harder and is undispellable. Also bound to a target not a stationary point.
*Seed cast time reduced by .5 seconds and it detonates on impact now.
*UA dispel should refund shards per UA dispelled, same with mobs that die with UA on them...but now one per UA.
*Haunt cooldown cut to 10 seconds, reduced by haste.

That would be far more fun to play and might even be close to a peer of shadow priests minus the STM nuttiness. With what other classes are permitted this would make the spec fun again. Now fixing that artifact is another problem but since that is a real undertaking it makes more sense to fix the core spec and let the artifact be less significant... EVERY other dot spec dots better than affliction. As a pure class dot spec it should be better at it than it is....why shouldn't it have parity? People say "aff scaling" but remember as content gets older/easier aff is naturally weaker. It it isn't going to do well now it never will the more everything dies from burst/front loaded damage classes/abilities (eg DH, barrage, etc)

[HeyGuysHello]

Turn it to 95th percentile and look at how many parses there are.

[Soulzar]

The single most important thing aff has going for it is mobility. Mostly instants with a short cast spender. Unfortunately it has tremendous problems and is IMO still under tuned. Ignoring the issues the artifact has there are some basics the spec needs to bring it to modern.

*Agony ramp up could go away, talent just increases its damage by a flat %.
*Siphon life has its damage baked into corruption, is a healing only modification to corruption when talented.
*Effigy is a one target only debuff that causes dots to tick 50% harder and is undispellable. Also bound to a target not a stationary point.
*Seed cast time reduced by .5 seconds and it detonates on impact now.
*UA dispel should refund shards per UA dispelled, same with mobs that die with UA on them...but now one per UA.
*Haunt cooldown cut to 10 seconds, reduced by haste.

If these changes were to happen i'd probably main spec aff. I really enjoy it, with exception to Effigy which is a massive exception given the talents is pretty much used for everything. I like the change to compound horror giving UA upfront dmg.. and ua having such a short duration makes it good quick "burst" dmg.. and the separate stacks now with shard refunds makes stacking a few on a "needs to die quick" mob work really nicely. Agony ramp really does need to go or get reduced. Should bandaid it now and have DL/DS ticks stack it faster again.

[Deleted]

So true. Affliction will become less relevant as people gear up and everything dies faster. Same thing that quickly rendered it irrelevent in normal and heroic dungeons, begingging to kick in in Mythic now as well.

[Soulzar]

Turn it to 95th percentile and look at how many parses there are.

Which Percentile do we need to set it too to make Aff look the worst?

[Deleted]

Yes, but that's my point, we already knew afflic did good add damage, now it seems it's better boss damage then destro as well.

Good add dmg? at what fight does affli kill off / doing more dmg to prio targets then destro?

[xuros]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/10#class=Warlock clearly the best...oh wait.

[Cainium]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/10#class=Warlock clearly the best...oh wait.

At this stage of the expansion I won't give much about log class statistics anymore.

The problem with them is the problem why the TE opened this topic. Even "if" affliction would be the best, you won't see it 'cause everyone went demo or destro during affs "down time", and the investment to switch the spec is higher than in WoD/MoP. So why should anyone who is demo/destro should do that just to "test" if aff is competetive now instead of sticking with their preferred spec and doing well?

Maybe in a few month, as soon as the investment gets a lot less, we'll see more aff parses, and so where the spec "really" is.

[Treesus]

The single most important thing aff has going for it is mobility. Mostly instants with a short cast spender. Unfortunately it has tremendous problems and is IMO still under tuned. Ignoring the issues the artifact has there are some basics the spec needs to bring it to modern.

*Agony ramp up could go away, talent just increases its damage by a flat %.
*Siphon life has its damage baked into corruption, is a healing only modification to corruption when talented.
*Effigy is a one target only debuff that causes dots to tick 50% harder and is undispellable. Also bound to a target not a stationary point.
*Seed cast time reduced by .5 seconds and it detonates on impact now.
*UA dispel should refund shards per UA dispelled, same with mobs that die with UA on them...but now one per UA.
*Haunt cooldown cut to 10 seconds, reduced by haste.

That would be far more fun to play and might even be close to a peer of shadow priests minus the STM nuttiness. With what other classes are permitted this would make the spec fun again. Now fixing that artifact is another problem but since that is a real undertaking it makes more sense to fix the core spec and let the artifact be less significant... EVERY other dot spec dots better than affliction. As a pure class dot spec it should be better at it than it is....why shouldn't it have parity? People say "aff scaling" but remember as content gets older/easier aff is naturally weaker. It it isn't going to do well now it never will the more everything dies from burst/front loaded damage classes/abilities (eg DH, barrage, etc)

This needs to happen

[Soulzar]

At this stage of the expansion I won't give much about log class statistics anymore.

The problem with them is the problem why the TE opened this topic. Even "if" affliction would be the best, you won't see it 'cause everyone went demo or destro during affs "down time", and the investment to switch the spec is higher than in WoD/MoP. So why should anyone who is demo/destro should do that just to "test" if aff is competetive now instead of sticking with their preferred spec and doing well?

Maybe in a few month, as soon as the investment gets a lot less, we'll see more aff parses, and so where the spec "really" is.

Yep. You can look through rankings and clearly see the same few people who have gone all in on Aff, with the legendaries to back it, starting to have a presence amongst the sea of Destro parses. To me, the very fact that the same geared and skilled players can consistently beat out thousands of destro parses is telling of what the spec can do, regardless of how many total parses there are for aff.. or how many days of logs we are looking at...

[Pokeypenguin]

At this stage of the expansion I won't give much about log class statistics anymore.

The problem with them is the problem why the TE opened this topic. Even "if" affliction would be the best, you won't see it 'cause everyone went demo or destro during affs "down time", and the investment to switch the spec is higher than in WoD/MoP. So why should anyone who is demo/destro should do that just to "test" if aff is competetive now instead of sticking with their preferred spec and doing well?

Maybe in a few month, as soon as the investment gets a lot less, we'll see more aff parses, and so where the spec "really" is.

Yes, that is the issue, it will be a lot of work to switch over, but I will do it if it makes sense. I am already behind because I started as DH but switched at friends request, so being more behind is not a huge deal, just means more farm/grind...sigh.