Affliction Nerfed - Demo Buffed

[Sixnalia]

Yep, Assasination got raped both ability damage-wise and legendary-wise, Shadow got raped hard (a minimum of 11% overall damage). Havoc and Ret are the true OP specs and it could be said that they got the slap on the wrists.
Shadow, a spec that needs to play like a mofo and die in the end to be able to perform, will do much less damage than Fire mages and many more. I think some of the nerfs are underdone and some of the nerfs are overdone in this following balance fix.

Pretty sure Assassin's nerf was a knee-jerk reaction too.

If you check any of the top parsers with the legendary boots, they were using a bug that gave them near 100% uptime on their cooldown Vendetta, which is a 30% damage buff and applies an additional DoT.

Hopefully the bug is fixed and proper adjustments can be made.

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OT:
Glad for the Demo buffs, as that is what I primarily play on my alt.

While I'm sad to see MG nerfed, it felt incredibly strong. I was able to Double UA with my legendary belt often, then MG with all the DoTs rolling. Felt pretty insane. 10% doesn't seem too massive in the big picture though, as others have said it is about 4.5% nerf.

[Deleted]

What is even wrong with SE? Other than some minor QoL changes, like having it follow you or show up as a boss frame for easier management. It's another target to DoT, which hey guess what Aff is all about?

Aside from the fact that it massively adds to ramp, is a pain in the ass to use which virtually mandates using focus and macros which they said they wanted to move away from, that it's fixed in one place and can therefore go out of range, that on a boss like Renferal you have to recast it which wipes out your dots including one that is designed to be maintained at 10/20 stacks, makes affliction even worse for target switching to priority adds because Effigy is locked to one target only, and that despite all of that the other 100 talents are poor in comparison so Effigy feels mor eorless mandatory....

The argument about "it's just dotting which affliction is rite" got soundly knocked on the head long ago.The dotting aspect is not why people dislike Effigy. Its a fine concept, it's just that the implementation is horrible and as a mechanic it's very hard to make it good in a game that is much more oriented towards burst damage that it was ten years ago.

[Reaper11b]

Aside from the fact that it massively adds to ramp, is a pain in the ass to use which virtually mandates using focus and macros which they said they wanted to move away from, that it's fixed in one place and can therefore go out of range, that on a boss like Renferal you have to recast it which wipes out your dots including one that is designed to be maintained at 10/20 stacks, makes affliction even worse for target switching to priority adds because Effigy is locked to one target only, and that despite all of that the other 100 talents are poor in comparison so Effigy feels mor eorless mandatory....

The argument about "it's just dotting which affliction is rite" got soundly knocked on the head long ago.The dotting aspect is not why people dislike Effigy. Its a fine concept, it's just that the implementation is horrible and as a mechanic it's very hard to make it good in a game that is much more oriented towards burst damage that it was ten years ago.

Oh no, having to use a macro poor Warlocks. Can't say I'm surprised to see you complaining since that's all you ever do. But contagion says hello for the burst issue and you can still use SC instead of SC for a 2-3% ST loss and since we know you do not play this game at anywhere a high level, that seems like a fair trade off for a small DPS loss.

[Deleted]

You shouldn;tneed to have amacro as par tof a standard rotation. Blizz have been trying hard for years to get away from that.

Contagion is not a burst talent. If you want burst you use Haunt.

With the changes to Soul Effigy and Malefic Grasp the gap is somewhat larger than 3%.It'snot a huge gap but for minmaxxers the hotfix makes Soul Effigy a virtually guaranteed choice, certainly for single target.

The issues player shave with Effigy and why it is so liked are well documented and have been repeated many times, and have nothing to do with multi-dotting. I like Soul Effigy as aconcept, but the implementation is poor. No player should ever be required to use macros such as focus macros simply to make their standard rotation workable. Soul Effigy gets virtually no help at all from the standard UI.

[HeyGuysHello]

You shouldn;tneed to have amacro as par tof a standard rotation.

We don't "have" to, SC is barely behind at all if you want to keep rolling that. I doubt you're in Method or Serenity, so there's no reason you're forced into one particular thing, unless you let a video game gnaw at the back of your head for some silly reason. With that said: We have a Macros button that sees less and less use with each patch. I'm happy to use mine just a little bit more, honestly.

[Deleted]

I could say, this update for warlock make it more balanced. Affliction w/ MG was pretty op. On cleave and ST also, I simple beat by overall damage other destro locks what have much better ilvl and stat than me (10+ ilvl diff, 20% stat diff).
The -5.5% MG nerf and demo buff sound good, maybe demo will be more viable in ST/AoE for raids and instances.

[HeyGuysHello]

Affliction w/ MG was pretty op.

Boo your misinfo. Boo.

[Lucrece]

High maintenance? You'll basically take AC and it's not worth keeping SL up on it most of the time so you maintain agony on it. That's high maintenance?

The high maintenance part is recasting it when the boss moves away or you have to go out of range like with Helya.

[Deleted]

The high maintenance part is recasting it when the boss moves away or you have to go out of range like with Helya.

I'm literally ALWAYS on range on effigy on Helya, how do you manage to go away? The only boss I remember ever having to recast it is Renferal.

[Lucrece]

I'm literally ALWAYS on range on effigy on Helya, how do you manage to go away? The only boss I remember ever having to recast it is Renferal.

Cast soul effigy in the center, good luck reaching it when you go up one set of stairs.

[Terryn]

Cast soul effigy in the center, good luck reaching it when you go up one set of stairs.

Its an issue that comes up in a blue moon. You will at MOST run up the stairs and have issues reaching it 3 times. Twice in p2 and once in p3. Its literally a non issue on that fight. If you want to talk about positioning on effigy being fucking dumb talk about Ursoc where you're having to do positioning completely wrong and kill someone in your raid, or be out of range for about 1/4 of the fight.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwhdPCUIS_8

There are a whole two instances where i'm out of range, and its for a whole 10 seconds tops, and this is completely mitigated by just casting before hand.

[klogaroth]

How concerned are we about effigy damage with the new build anyway?

I thought it was more there for the shard regen now, so recasting it shouldn't be too much of a hassle surely. Not like we gotta wait for a 20 stack agony to ramp up any more.

[Deleted]

it is a very very minor buff to demo if it is an actual buff, im inclined to see it as a nerf due to the bonus dmg reduction.

[Lucrece]

it is a very very minor buff to demo if it is an actual buff, im inclined to see it as a nerf due to the bonus dmg reduction.

Assuming you had 8-10 imps out and 2 dreadstalkers the majority of the time, it's a buff.

It's only a nerf at 12+ demons, which you most certainly didn't have out for the majority of the time outside pushing a Thal'kiel.

[Terryn]

How concerned are we about effigy damage with the new build anyway?

I thought it was more there for the shard regen now, so recasting it shouldn't be too much of a hassle surely. Not like we gotta wait for a 20 stack agony to ramp up any more.

You cast agony and AC-ed Corruption only, so you're literally only maintaining 1 dot on it. If you have a smart weak aura and proper focus target macros its like you're casting 1 extra dot and thats it. Damage wise its down because you're not using writhe and you're not using SL on it because its a waste of GCD.

[Reaper11b]

You shouldn;tneed to have amacro as par tof a standard rotation. Blizz have been trying hard for years to get away from that.

Contagion is not a burst talent. If you want burst you use Haunt.

With the changes to Soul Effigy and Malefic Grasp the gap is somewhat larger than 3%.It'snot a huge gap but for minmaxxers the hotfix makes Soul Effigy a virtually guaranteed choice, certainly for single target.

The issues player shave with Effigy and why it is so liked are well documented and have been repeated many times, and have nothing to do with multi-dotting. I like Soul Effigy as aconcept, but the implementation is poor. No player should ever be required to use macros such as focus macros simply to make their standard rotation workable. Soul Effigy gets virtually no help at all from the standard UI.

The gap isn't larger by 3%, the affliction theorycrafters (gahhdo and terryn) have SE 2.5-3% ahead of SC. Also you don't have to take haunt for burst, with contagion you can just UA into a priority add and DS. For SE well, you keep whining about it so can't help you there.

[Terryn]

Also you don't have to take haunt for burst, with contagion you can just UA into a priority add and DS. For SE well, you keep whining about it so can't help you there.

Theres literally 0 reason to take haunt right now. Looking at the situation where haunt MIGHT be good: 30% damage bonus after trying to get 4+ dots lined up (counting UA) + cast time / travel time on Haunt can't come CLOSE to what you get by simply hitting UA twice and draining.


You guys need to not think about SE like this. At this point, when running MG its simply "One extra dot that you maintain", and thats it. You set up a Weak Aura to track your shit on effigy, and then you just maintain agony. Thats it. There is none of this trying to maintain 6 dots and rolling contagion on your kill target any more, that play style is dead and neutered with the MG drain cycles.

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The issues player shave with Effigy and why it is so liked are well documented and have been repeated many times, and have nothing to do with multi-dotting. I like Soul Effigy as aconcept, but the implementation is poor.

At this point, yes I will agree with this statement. Effigy can VERY easily be replaced by giving us a dot that is applyable to only one target, gives us bonus shard gen, and deals damage. A thought I have had is:

Insert Name here
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Duration: 12 seconds.
Deals ramping up damage every second over 12 seconds. After the duration has expired, gives the user 1 shards.

This dot does almost everything that agony on effigy does, provides more depth into our gameplay, is primarily useable only on single target, and all that stuff that effigy does now, but isn't a giant UI turd to set up. The ramp-up effect allows for us to pay attention to when its applied, allowing for better players to make sure things like contagion and MG are rolling during the end of the ramp-up.

[klogaroth]

One place I can see haunt being useful is aoe situations where targets don't live long enough for writhe to be worth it. In those scenarios you're probably not going to be draining all that much, so you can just throw out haunt to detonate your first SoC, and it provides a bit of a bonus to damage on one of the targets. Basically heroic and low level M+ trash killing specs.

Other than that - boosting soul flame damage on a boss that loads of adds die on top of if there are enough adds and aoeing of said adds that it outweighs writhe and MG as well. Not a likely scenario in raids, but a possible one I suppose. What's more likely is doing that in a dungeon, like the first boss of Maw for example.

[BannedForViews]

One place I can see haunt being useful is aoe situations where targets don't live long enough for writhe to be worth it. In those scenarios you're probably not going to be draining all that much, so you can just throw out haunt to detonate your first SoC, and it provides a bit of a bonus to damage on one of the targets. Basically heroic and low level M+ trash killing specs.

Other than that - boosting soul flame damage on a boss that loads of adds die on top of if there are enough adds and aoeing of said adds that it outweighs writhe and MG as well. Not a likely scenario in raids, but a possible one I suppose. What's more likely is doing that in a dungeon, like the first boss of Maw for example.

Haunt can provide more immediate burst for pvp. That's probably about it right now. unless there is a fight with mobs living roughly 15-20 seconds and some way for us to be pretty fully stacked on shards the entire time, it makes no sense in pve.

[klogaroth]

Haunt can provide more immediate burst for pvp. That's probably about it right now. unless there is a fight with mobs living roughly 15-20 seconds and some way for us to be pretty fully stacked on shards the entire time, it makes no sense in pve.

Not for 99.9% of raid content, but raid content is not all PvE content. It's not all that bad for open world and easier dungeons, something that lots of people do. It might even be better than MG for AP grind boost runs.