How "fun" is affli warlock to play?

[Coffeexbean]

its as fun as being a dark wizard that puts curses on people and drains their soul. If that sounds fun then youll enjoy it, if not then you wont. if you have to ask you probably wont lol. I think i heard somewhere that warlocks are one of the least played classes. Do you have what it takes to be this edgy

[Xeranath]

Are you a fly? If you are, then chances are you're gonna like shit like most of them do.



Most other specs/classes are much more fun. The numbers are decent but we lack "moments" of awesomeness.
As a DH you become a mini-boss every so often, doing bursts of millions of dps.
As an ele shammie you get that lava burst proc streak that feels like a force of nature. A lava machine-gun.
Boomies have their Full Moon, a HUGE number you see every so often. Their AoE also feels amazing once they unleash it.
Same with fire mages and their instant Pyroblast procs and double Flamestrikes.
MM hunters hitting a shot right on the end of Patient Sniper.

Both Affli and Destro lack these things. You go over your rotation and check a dps meter afterwards.
Your legendaries will be lackluster. Your utility will be summoning people. Your mobility will be.. heh.. Won't be.
That is the Legion Warlock.

I understand why people like procs but for me, the consistency of Aff is what I enjoy. I know that if I execute well the whole fight, I will perform well, rather than hoping the dice roll well. Though you could argue that the presence of adds through a fight acts a process, in that you can take advantage of them to gain shards and wrath stacks. But if you like big booms, then yeah, Aff s not for you.

I did prefer it before 7.1.5 though. MG gave us great ST abilities but came at the cost of making us quite turrety. Not fond of that playstyle.

[Cheze]

it's not exactly rocket science, but what ranged spec is? The challenge isn't in doing the rotation, it's in doing the rotation as well as possible while dealing with mechanics

[Baconeggcheese]

About as fun as you personally find dot specs would be the correct answer.

[Aragnil]

The most boring pile of garbage I've ever attempted to play. Damage is fine though.

To be honest, I cannot bring myself to play either demo or aff this xpack. They just aren't my thing. Demo seems cool enough, but once you move, it feels like shit. That being said, I'll stick with Destro and its semi-cancerous rotation as I find it to be the most fun of the 3 specs as well as the most forgiving. The RNG is a bitch, however.

[Kirroth]

Let's try and parse what "fun" means. Yes, seriously.

One type of fun is Moments Of Awesome. Those moments where you get to do something cool and feel like a badass, usually because you used a big cooldown or your procs lined up or you're doing the thing you're the best at. In general all the Warlock specs are a bit short on MoA right now, but I actually think Afflic has the best of them with Shadow Flame chain reactions. It's super satisfying to see a mass pull all explode at once and see your DPS shoot into the stratosphere. But the situations where you see mass pulls for the really impressive chain reactions are limited.

Another type of fun is a stimulating ability rotation, which is a very subjective assessment. Again, all the Warlock specs are a bit lacking in interesting procs or rotational short cooldowns. You're basically alternating between "wait for Soul Shards to trickle in" and "spend Soul Shards" modes. That said, Afflic has some play variability with talent choices, especially if you're willing to venture outside the couple of sim approved "optimal" specs. At one end you've got All The DoTs with three DoTs to maintain and a fourth you're trying to get high uptime on, where DoT juggling is the majority of your rotation. I'm playing at the other end, where I've only got one DoT to refresh and I spend most of my time channeling to maximize my UA/MG burn windows. If you actually enjoy either of those is up to you to determine.

So, is Afflic fun? Eh, could be better, but I'm enjoying it more than Destro. Destro is, for me, just painfully boring right now.

[Usernameforforums]

Fun is subjective and varies from person to person. Personally i find aff fun to play but i do main demonology.

[Scroff]

Fun?

But on a more serious note, I love aff when things are hectic and adds are popping up and exploding. But on single target it, errr, gives you plenty of time to think about mechanics

[Deleted]

Not sure where the locks have no mobility meme comes from.. with burning rush, teleport and gateway we are one of the most mobile classes in the game.

[Teebu]

I mean its all subjective to what you find fun. Responses like the one I quoted is why its fairly pointless to ask such an opinion on a forum like this. I would suggest you take advantage of Class trials and give them a test run. I personally love affliction right now and have no draw to destruction. The next person may hate how UA works and love Chaos bolts.

It's not pointless, though. He asks for specifics like if it's tedious or rewarding. If he just said "is this class the funnerest" then yeah, that'd be pointless.

Personally I like the dot aspect, my lock is one of my favorite alts for that reason. It just feels good to apply some dots and drain some souls to me.

Adding another mob to a fight increases your spell usage and target switching, which can be annoying if you're not a fan of throwing up dots after dots after dots.

[Natylyaz]

A bit too many dots in my opinion, it would be fine it they were in addition to something else, but Shadow Bolt is gone.
How I miss instant-cast Shadow Bolt on trigger, and hard-casting shadow bolt as a filler feels much better than spamming Unstable Affliction+Malefic Grasp.
Entirely subjective though! This is still the spec I play chiefly (if demo was less all over the place, I'd probably have stuck with it).

[ComputerNerd]

I hate Malefic Grasp. I think it ruined the game play in a lot of ways. that said, it may be "easy" but there is still a skill cap to it, and some people do enjoy the play style. At least it's fun in M+ on any weak that isn't volcanic.

I would argue that Malefic grasp brings something that affliction mechanically needs, burstier single-target.
Simply adding in stronger dots affects multi-target.
Is it the best approach ?
Maybe not, perhaps there isn't one which is best.
But I think it is serving a role in trying to solve a problem.

There is no objective answer on whether a given spec is "fun".
Difficulty is perhaps a bit easier to rate relatively, one being more so than another in a given scenario.

[Mcgvr]

I think affliction is the most fun - but it also has some downsides:

U need good gear to not do absolute crap dps
Hard to burst down adds
Long ramp up time before u start to do good dmg
U need resorces like souls
Alot of different talent options wich make u swich several times in a raid (maby some for the other specs dont know)

Regardless its the spec i think is most fun

[Uzkin]

Not sure where the locks have no mobility meme comes from.. with burning rush, teleport and gateway we are one of the most mobile classes in the game.

Talent, talent, raid utility (=everyone in the raid benefits).

[Deleted]

Talent, talent, raid utility (=everyone in the raid benefits).

What does it matter if its a talent? not all fights require any mobility to speak of.

edit

In raids demonic circle has no rival anyway and in l75 tier you get to choose to be the tankiest dps class in the game or among the most mobile. Warlocks are increadibly versatile.

[Sot4]

Let's try and parse what "fun" means. Yes, seriously.

One type of fun is Moments Of Awesome. Those moments where you get to do something cool and feel like a badass, usually because you used a big cooldown or your procs lined up or you're doing the thing you're the best at. In general all the Warlock specs are a bit short on MoA right now, but I actually think Afflic has the best of them with Shadow Flame chain reactions. It's super satisfying to see a mass pull all explode at once and see your DPS shoot into the stratosphere. But the situations where you see mass pulls for the really impressive chain reactions are limited.

Another type of fun is a stimulating ability rotation, which is a very subjective assessment. Again, all the Warlock specs are a bit lacking in interesting procs or rotational short cooldowns. You're basically alternating between "wait for Soul Shards to trickle in" and "spend Soul Shards" modes. That said, Afflic has some play variability with talent choices, especially if you're willing to venture outside the couple of sim approved "optimal" specs. At one end you've got All The DoTs with three DoTs to maintain and a fourth you're trying to get high uptime on, where DoT juggling is the majority of your rotation. I'm playing at the other end, where I've only got one DoT to refresh and I spend most of my time channeling to maximize my UA/MG burn windows. If you actually enjoy either of those is up to you to determine.

So, is Afflic fun? Eh, could be better, but I'm enjoying it more than Destro. Destro is, for me, just painfully boring right now.

Fatal Echoes...?

Regaring the post, I think you will enjoy affliction if you like dot classes, it has unrivaled self healing, choice of either having a movement speed increase off cd or being so tanky that u can even "soak" mechanics you are not supposed to(cuz u know - moving is hard, need more dps)
It has great AoE, and good single target damage, best spec for doing world quests - run and dot stuff up.
Bad sides that I could think off would be afflictions ramp up and how massively can RNG influence your dps, if you are a competetive player you will find this annoying but also very fun when rng does strike u good (u will see what I mean if you ever decide to play affli).
The artifact usage of affliction is totally different from all other classes/specs in game atm and I like how unique it is but its downside is that on single target fight you can wait whole bloodlust to end until you start getting any usage of it, that is the part where you will hate the spec, but then again this is an rng spec.
All in all, if you like dotting, versatile, high self healing caster, with "a bit of rng" involved I would say this is a spec for you.
EDIT: Affliction has the least visuals of their spells from all 3 warlock specs, keep that in mind in case u actually want to see what happens after u press 123

[Schmilblick]

A little boring but still funnier than Retribution Paladin.

[Kenjer]

Not sure where the locks have no mobility meme comes from.. with burning rush, teleport and gateway we are one of the most mobile classes in the game.

lmao, warlocks are slow as shit. On top of the boring rotation thats what really makes me remember why i never play mine.

Classes more mobile than warlock:

DK - Barely, but yep
DH - YES
Druid - Hell, yes
Hunter - Definitely
Mage - For sure
Monk - Oh god yes
Paladin - Yes
Priest - Not sure on this one, honestly.
Rogue - Uh huh
Shaman - Yup
Warrior - Every day

- - - Updated - - -

All of that being said, warlock was the quickest leveling experience i've ever had. With the right talent setup you can just 3-dot everything in sight and literally can't die to anything but an elite. Stuff just continually melts around you. It wasn't fair.

[Deleted]

You put three dots on something, you cast a fourth twice, you drain and go afk for 5 seconds. And you repeat.
The first three dots will do ~100k dmg per tick. The fourth ~350-800k. Those numbers are from 900+ilevel.
So scale them down at your leisure.
That's it.
All of it.

Pretty much this. If you like soak evey shit in dungeons or raids just pick affliction because it is imposible to die

[kavousanos]

I understand why people like procs but for me, the consistency of Aff is what I enjoy. I know that if I execute well the whole fight, I will perform well, rather than hoping the dice roll well. Though you could argue that the presence of adds through a fight acts a process, in that you can take advantage of them to gain shards and wrath stacks. But if you like big booms, then yeah, Aff s not for you.

I did prefer it before 7.1.5 though. MG gave us great ST abilities but came at the cost of making us quite turrety. Not fond of that playstyle.

Do you find Aff consistent?!
Our main shard consumer hits for ~350k and crits for ~900k at 905.
Artifact soul generation is random. Sometimes you have souls at Bloodlust, sometimes not.
Fatal Echoes is responsible, on its own, for 100k fluctuations in dps if the procs are used skillfully and happen during trinket/bl procs.
Aff is THE inconsistent warlock spec right now. Even Destro got incredibly smoother with 4p.