Soul Effigy Solution?

[Drunkenhusker]

I'm assuming that this has already been suggested, as it seems like to easy of a fix to the problems that people bring up regarding soul effigy. Can they just make soul effigy a debuff on a mob, that lasts 10 min, that creates replica's of our dots that do 35% of the damage of the original? This clears up our focus target problem, makes the talent much less cumbersome, and streamlines the entire spec.

This seems like an easy fix to a problem, but I may be missing something. Thoughts?

[Mythra]

The biggest problem with soul effigy is the amount of gcd lost so the easiest and best solution is to make it soul effigy a havoc-like spell to refresh our dots on the soul effigy when cast on the original target, that way we don't lose GCDs and agony can generate soul shards

[cristos]

Here's an idea,

Remove it for haunting spirits. Common sense would suggest that it's the most likely to return if we ask for it in 7.1.5

It was a well thought out version of soul effigy. We could remain mobile with it, It was a player aura not inanimate object that is a leash, Gave us 20% extra damage as opposed to 35% of maximum damage.

[pahbi]

Why not just make the felhunter pet our soul effigy?

We cast dots on the felhunter, which diseases and corrupts the pet to increase the felhunter's damage for the duration of the dot(s). The damage would be equivalent to using a soul effigy.

Look at all the pluses:

* Fits the theme of affliction to disease our dog for extra damage
* Accomplishes the goal of maintaining dots on a second target to increase single target dps
* Is easy to target your specific pet
* Pet follows you around, and pet can be ordered to attack other targets
* Don't have to constantly resummon the felhunter like you do with soul effigy.

I mean seriously, its win win win all around.

- P

[Moreus]

Instead of using the fel hound. Why not put a buff on a raid member, to act as our soul effigy. I really hate paladins.


In all seriousness. The more i play with soul effigy ( only in raids of course) the more i like it. It shouldnt be stationary but should follow the target. That would be my only complaint

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[FelPlague]

Make it like havoc any dot you apply to it, will also be applied to the target (plus how it currently works), and make it a pet(guardian since we cant have "2 pets") that doesent attack, it follows you, and doesent care about line of sight (it wont do damage well out of sight line, but better then having it disapear)

[muto]

Make it so you generate more Souls for Deadwind while channeling your Drain Spell.

[Esinar]

Don't wanna sound pessimistic, but after the 7.1.5 targeting changes that are coming, I really don't think Blizzard are going to change it/remove it until at least the new expansion... just my opinion.

If they are going to be stubborn though, they could at least make another talent on that row competitive with Soul Effigy for raiding so those of us who dislike it don't have to play with it. IMO a few talent shuffles could fix a lot of issues such as:
Siphon Life -> baseline spell
Phantom Singularity -> in place of siphon life
Haunt -> in place of phantom singularity
New talent for tier 1

Obviously would need number tuning but I dunno, I could see this helping mechanically.

[Haruk]

Don't wanna sound pessimistic, but after the 7.1.5 targeting changes that are coming, I really don't think Blizzard are going to change it/remove it until at least the new expansion... just my opinion.

If they are going to be stubborn though, they could at least make another talent on that row competitive with Soul Effigy for raiding so those of us who dislike it don't have to play with it...

I did see in one of the developer discussions related to warlocks/soul effigy, that they are looking at the issues with it and also mentioned they will look at improving the other talents on the row for those who don't like the soul effigy mechanic/game play. So I think you are right, it is not going away, but there is reason for optimism. As long as there is a viable alternative, I'm fine with SE being one of those talents I can just ignore.

Of course, we need to see if they deliver.

[Advo]

Honestly instead of soul effigy they just need a talent that provides a bonus for having all DoTs on a target, if they want something to give us a ST boost.

Idea: For every second you maintain Agony, Corruption and UA on a target, you deal 1% increased damage to that target, stacking up to 50 times. Target debuff lasts for 3 seconds and is refreshed on a new stack.

[Bullettime]

Make it like havoc any dot you apply to it, will also be applied to the target (plus how it currently works), and make it a pet(guardian since we cant have "2 pets") that doesent attack, it follows you, and doesent care about line of sight (it wont do damage well out of sight line, but better then having it disapear)

This would arguably be the best solution. Makes it less frustrating while still keeping the core concept of the spell intact.

- - - Updated - - -

I did see in one of the developer discussions related to warlocks/soul effigy, that they are looking at the issues with it and also mentioned they will look at improving the other talents on the row for those who don't like the soul effigy mechanic/game play. So I think you are right, it is not going away, but there is reason for optimism. As long as there is a viable alternative, I'm fine with SE being one of those talents I can just ignore.

Of course, we need to see if they deliver.

At least their solution for 7.1.5 is to make Soul Conduit more useful with Malefic Grasp and Contagion, and even the buff to Haunt. Effigy is still useful for certain encounter types, such as high mobility encounters or two target cleaving (due to Writhe increasing its value) but we won't feel locked into it this tier until a better solution can be found.

[Cheze]

it seems like they will largely tune it out of existence in 7.1.5, which honestly is good enough for me. If malefic grasp beats it on pure ST and soul conduit and either contagion or aboslute corruption is relatively competitive on steady 2+ target cleave, I'll be happy.

[Bullettime]

it seems like they will largely tune it out of existence in 7.1.5, which honestly is good enough for me. If malefic grasp beats it on pure ST and soul conduit and either contagion or aboslute corruption is relatively competitive on steady 2+ target cleave, I'll be happy.

The big thing is that there's a ton of options. You can realistically run most combinations and be fine with each different combination having a specific niche strength. The only thing you arguably won't want to do is pair Effigy with Malefic Grasp. All of the other combinations are pretty much fair game based on what you need to prioritize for that encounter, which is really nice to see.

Ton of movement? Effigy can still be useful there, as well as the cleaving encounter.
Single target focus? Pull out the MG-Con-SC and melt them.
Rapid add focus? Pull out Haunt with largely your choice of T2 and T6 talents based on other encounter needs.

[Deleted]

Actually peopel testing on the PTR still find that Soul Effigy is ther strongest pure single target, even if you take Malefic Grasp. It's counter-intuitive but apparently that's the case.

But apaprently a Soul Conduit build is relatively close so you can take it unless you're cutting edge squeezing out every last bit of damage.

Some of those numbers are based on sims, so using MG/Effigy/Contagion is pretty tough to maximise and screwed by movements. Thing is 7.1.5 affliction has a LOT of viable options and so much depends on the encounter.

[Mythra]

oh shiet I just got an amazing idea.

Why don't we get Shadow Bolt back and make Soul Effigy a buff that absorbs 35% of our damage dealt to a target and we can use it to Empower Shadow Bolt? although it doesn't fit the so called "fantasy" behind affliction (bullshit, that's how Affliction worked back in WOTLK with Haunt+Nightfall procs) I think it's a fun design plus it solves our ramp up problems when switching to high priority targets in pve

[Gaidax]

If they would want to make it a debuff they would already do it 500 times over, it's not some revolutionary idea here.

It's clear they want it to be a little more original than just another buff/debuff, it's just the implementation is poor at the moment. Whether it as a whole is a bad idea or not, probably it is, but it's clear they wanted something little more special there.

[Deleted]

The intent was obvious, to have a dot spec rely mostly on it;s dots.

Soul Effigy isn;t a bad idea, which was to bring up single target by turning everything into at least a two target fight, so we can always multidot.

It's just the implementation which is horrible. I'm fine with the SoulEffigy concept, it's just horrible to use. It's just a good idea done very badly, and maybe there are limitation in the game engine that mean it can never be done well. I'd be quite happy using it if it either had an unlimited hitbox or was in some way tethered to me, and if the ramp issue could be resolved. The first is probably possible, the second is harder: ramp is inherent in affliction, and if you are going to have affliction be a mostly dot user with a Soul Efigy style fix to the single target problem...I can't see there's any real way to get around the issue that it essentially doubles your ramp.

Personally I think affiction should have an execute phase to compensate for the ramp.

Ramp could also be ameliorated by changing Writhe to simply have higher damage but not the longer time to get there.

It's a tough problem and with the new Haunt and Malefic Grasp - essentially resurrected old fixes to the single target/multidot dilemma -, basically it means there either (a) not solution to the "use just dots" dilemma or (b) there is but it requires an expansion level redesign. The third more rmeot epossibility is that a fix is possible within a small patch....but they don't want to give up the Soul Effigy concept.

According to sims, Soul Effigy is still the top single target talent from it's tier, with Malefic Grasp, even though the two conflict. However, you can certainly abandon it in favour of Soul Conduit and the loss is nowhere near what it would be on live.

But then as the devs have already stated, the whole idea of a dot class is becoming obsolescent as it is harder and harder to make them work in a faster paced game that favours burst damage. In the expac after Legion, affliction will either be gone or radically reworked. The trouble with ramp that it and demo have will only get worse.

Shadow Priests are a dot class...but they do well now basically through brute force. Also their dots do not have a mechanic like Agony. That really needs to go, it is an albatross around affliction's neck.

Replace it with a new Agony, that does an upfront chung of damage and then imemdiately dot ticks at full power. I;d argue that this is what Agony actually sounds liek it shoudl always have been. You basically slash someone's soul, which hurts them immediately and then it "bleeds" over time.

[cristos]

Once again, Haunting spirits is the easiest and most enjoyable replacement for effigy, It rewarded multidotting and single target.

They messed up affliction when they removed soulburning, the old drain soul, non stackable UA and decided haunt would be suitable as a talent.

[Deleted]

The problem is that affliction is already perfectly fine at multidotting. You can't have anything that buffs single target that also sideways-buffs multidotting. The whole idea was to bake most of afflictions' damage into dots: you can see the thinking. Affliction is a dot spec, so shoudl do it's damage via dots.

With that premise, it's really hard to deal with the dilemma of single target vs multi-target damage:make single target good, and multi-target goes wild. And vice versa. We've always had that problem. But this time we got constrained by the "dot premise". It's hard to see many other solutions that don;t involve a mechanic like Soul Effigy.

In fact we haven't now. Malefic Grasp and Haunt are just resurrected old solutions to the single target problem. They has mor eor less abandoned affliction's dot-purity. It is going to be dot+drain or dot+semi-nuke.

You can't bring back soulburn now: affliction already has maintenance buffs a-plenty.

Would you really want to maintain all those dots + haunting spirits + contagion + reap?

[dakalro]

Instead of using the fel hound. Why not put a buff on a raid member, to act as our soul effigy. I really hate paladins.


In all seriousness. The more i play with soul effigy ( only in raids of course) the more i like it. It shouldnt be stationary but should follow the target. That would be my only complaint

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I find the same being true. Soul Effigy was added because of a lot of whine due to MG/Haunt play-style. And it works great allowing you to just multi-DoT and maintain good single-target. The problems with it are related more to positioning. Not like on a multi-target fight you wouldn't have to do the same thing and swap targets and keep dots up.