Thread: 7.2 affliction

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  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baconeggcheese View Post
    We are not concerned with multi-dot for purely the council fight situation, as opposed to the entire game. Also historically agony has never been as significant a portion of our overall multi-dot as what you're suggesting. It's always high / at the top but not almost the entirety of it. And you have never been punished to the extent that we would be under what you're suggesting.
    I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to make us like Moonkins or Shadows when it comes to multidotting in such scenarios, because compared to the past our aoe is significantly stronger. The only thing I'm expecting (if that) is for them to make us shine at council fights again.

    Even so, if they changed Writhe to ramp up faster and deal more dmg it'd help us with relatively short lived adds too. But I'm betting the only thing they'll do is make Writhe deal more dmg. And I'd be ok with that, actually. Good ST, good sustained multidotting, okish aoe. Can't have it all, can we now?
    Last edited by sheggaro; 2017-03-17 at 03:30 PM.

  2. #22
    I think the fact that Blizzard thought it was a good idea to include set bonuses that were specific to a ST build just shows the direction they believe Aff Locks should go in. I hate to be negative but if that's what they came up with then their minds are clearly pointed toward making Aff locks spec into MG builds that DoT a target and then drain soul.

    I don't expect them to just simply "flip a switch" and suddenly remove that and make us multi-dot specialists. They'd have to do so much at this point to accomplish that I just don't think it would happen. Or if if they do do that then we will end up with a patch that gets us half-way to being a multi-dot specialist and we will just end up sucking in ST and add fights until they realize they didn't do enough and then in another x.5 patch we'll get the other half to finally become true multi-dot specialists.

    So yeah, if they switch us from ST turrets to anything else expect that transition to occur over two patches because Blizzard will never get a switch like that right the first time based on history.

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by sheggaro View Post
    I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to make us like Moonkins or Shadows when it comes to multidotting in such scenarios, because compared to the past our aoe is significantly stronger. The only thing I'm expecting (if that) is for them to make us shine at council fights again.
    This is an oxy moron.

    Even so, if they changed Writhe to ramp up faster and deal more dmg it'd help us with relatively short lived adds too. But I'm betting the only thing they'll do is make Writhe deal more dmg. And I'd be ok with that, actually. Good ST, good sustained multidotting, okish aoe. Can't have it all, can we now?
    Now you're saying they should make mechanical changes, which defeats the purpose. A talent that's entire purpose is high ramp up would never be designed to be good for short lived adds.

    The spec wouldn't be good under priority targets with even what I'm suggesting, since its a dot spec. The spec is also fairly terrible at burst aoe, all it can really do is cheese soul flame when it comes to aoe which is a fairly poor way to deal aoe dmg.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Thalem View Post
    I think the fact that Blizzard thought it was a good idea to include set bonuses that were specific to a ST build just shows the direction they believe Aff Locks should go in. I hate to be negative but if that's what they came up with then their minds are clearly pointed toward making Aff locks spec into MG builds that DoT a target and then drain soul.

    I don't expect them to just simply "flip a switch" and suddenly remove that and make us multi-dot specialists. They'd have to do so much at this point to accomplish that I just don't think it would happen. Or if if they do do that then we will end up with a patch that gets us half-way to being a multi-dot specialist and we will just end up sucking in ST and add fights until they realize they didn't do enough and then in another x.5 patch we'll get the other half to finally become true multi-dot specialists.

    So yeah, if they switch us from ST turrets to anything else expect that transition to occur over two patches because Blizzard will never get a switch like that right the first time based on history.
    Sigma's post on the matter suggests otherwise, but I'm not holding my breath.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  4. #24
    Deleted
    Sigma's post actually neatly evaded almost allthe points the original pposter raised, notably that it makes an spec already dragged down by ramp even more rampy and when you have an issue like having souls for somepulls and not others makes some feel good and some bad, the solution is not to make them all feelequally bad.

    Affliction's ramp issue is really rearing it's ugly head again, as summed up neatly " Heroism on pull -> Oh, you spent half of heroism just ramping up to deal as much damage as everyone else? Nice, there goes your opportunity to contribute to the greatest overall "free" uptime of damage in most fights."

    That can be really bad in a PUg group that wipes a couple of times. They just look at the first thirty seconds dps, and you can see demon hunter sor god help you trinket-warriors pulling multiple millions and there's mr afflock, right at the bottom. And no one is interested in hearing "I catch up towards the end of the fight honest"

    It's the inevtiable consequence of how the artifact works. Because Reap gives us a 10% damage buff and doubles allof the artifact traits as well, we are inevitably grossly underpowered without Reap to avoid being overpowered with it.

    Affliction desperately needs either a cooldown for an opener, or to start every fight with a couple of tormented souls. Or at least an execute to comensate for the intiia ramp.

    I don;t get the logic, they gave us three starting shards because of this issue...

    I get why they feel having banked shards for some and not other fights is bad, but they have chosen the wrong way to "fix" it.

    Other classes starting with zero resource is fine, because they innate ability to generate resources quickly, reliably on demand. Everything in affliction is way too RNG dependent. Even the new artifact talent is RNG piled on RNG

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Baconeggcheese View Post
    The easiest solution without mechanical changes is to just shift numbers around. UA currently has the lions share of our dmg at 50+%, the crudest way to do it is to shift 20-30% of that damage out of UA, split it between agony / corruption, and then buff up all dots and nerf dot modifiers like MG / SE.
    Another option might be an increase to Agony,Corruption and SL duration. Sure, damage numbers need to be adjusted, but if our dots lastz longer, we have more time to drain another target instead of starting a refresh cycle after every one and a half drain in a council fight....

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Cainium View Post
    Another option might be an increase to Agony,Corruption and SL duration. Sure, damage numbers need to be adjusted, but if our dots lastz longer, we have more time to drain another target instead of starting a refresh cycle after every one and a half drain in a council fight....
    We'd still be ST turrets in that case, it'd just be easier to drain. The goal is to turn the spec back into a multi-dot spec.

    I would like longer duration dots though, I don't enjoy short ones. The class trinket felt awful for instance, though the spec would be really slow paced if you didn't have to frantically refresh dots as there's already barely anything going on.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  7. #27
    Multi-dotting could be easily done if they bring back Soul Burn: Soul Swap, or something similar to it, as affly dont have a effective way to spread Dots on targets (other then Corruption with SoC) without wasting a lots of GCD and ramp time.

    Or maybe just changing Soul Flame to do the thing... Something like "when a target affeted by Drain Soul die, the dots on the target are spread to the adyacend enemy on 8-12yards, with the remaining time when the orginal target die". This way it not become broken on PvP as you can only use DS on one target at time...

    Dunno, the devs have the cards for the solution, but they doesnt seems to know what to play...

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarkan View Post
    Multi-dotting could be easily done if they bring back Soul Burn: Soul Swap, or something similar to it, as affly dont have a effective way to spread Dots on targets (other then Corruption with SoC) without wasting a lots of GCD and ramp time.
    The spec had soulswap last xpac and it was still really mediocre at multi-dot to the point where you only used it in council to multi-dot and literally the only other time you touched it was to turret single target. The issue is the dots are weak, and need massive modifiers to do dmg, and even then only 1 of our dots does by and large the majority of the damage and that one is tied to a spender and can be stacked on a target so its not meant to be multi-dotted as designed.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Baconeggcheese View Post
    The spec had soulswap last xpac and it was still really mediocre at multi-dot to the point where you only used it in council to multi-dot and literally the only other time you touched it was to turret single target. The issue is the dots are weak, and need massive modifiers to do dmg, and even then only 1 of our dots does by and large the majority of the damage and that one is tied to a spender and can be stacked on a target so its not meant to be multi-dotted as designed.
    Yea, i know that, i also play Spriest and i stated here that Vampiric Touch do twice much damage over a 20 stack Agony, and even more on Voidform... We have 4 dots, if talented to it, and they do too few damage... But buffing the modifiers would make Affli way to powerful on multidots, this is the problem, and we all knows it.

    Having a way to spread 3 of 4 dots (im on the idea UA cannot be allow it to spread as it do quite of damage) without waste to much GCD is the only way to keep the numers on check, as you know better then me that touching the modifers would start a festival of roller coast every patch with the hotfixes. If you ask me, the Misery talent on Spriest it should be for Affli, as we have twice the numbers of dots to put on, and they do half of the damage...

    Another solution could be make SL as it was on WotLK, just a % of damage of Corruption turn it on heal, and for the damage value, buff the dot for a right amount of Spell Power... Sure, we have AC, so i would say buff Agony in place of Corruption. This save us GCD and also cut out ramp up time, but i guess we would fall on the problem of the multidot scenario anyway...
    Last edited by Bjarkan; 2017-03-18 at 06:12 PM.

  10. #30
    The problem is they're totally inconsistent. Their response to warlocks wanting to do damage with dots is " if you want to do damage, you can't eb mobile; we are going to make you hardcast if you want your dots to do significant damage".

    They want to make affliction a dot spec, but don't want it to thrive with what makes dots good despite being a spec totally lacking in burst and target switching. Really strong, mobile sustained damage is exactly a strength the spec should have given the other limitations barring the needed overhaul the spec needs to cover other encounter gaps.

    So if they're going to keep affliction as this shittier version of demo, I'll just roll demo and do better ST AND cleave/aoe. Both specs will suck with movement just like destro because they seem intent in making warlocks total garbage at dealing with mechanics (by also nerfing the combination of dark pact with demonskin), but might as well get the results while I'm turreting.

    Affliction at the moment shines at NOTHING compared to the other specs. Demo has ST, 3+ target cleave, and Destro got the priority add+2 target cleave. Affliction is inferior at every niche the warlock specs can cover, and just like destro is a stinking ball of RNG.
    Last edited by Lucrece; 2017-03-18 at 06:51 PM.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Lucrece View Post
    The problem is they're totally inconsistent. Their response to warlocks wanting to do damage with dots is " if you want to do damage, you can't eb mobile; we are going to make you hardcast if you want your dots to do significant damage".

    They want to make affliction a dot spec, but don't want it to thrive with what makes dots good despite being a spec totally lacking in burst and target switching. Really strong, mobile sustained damage is exactly a strength the spec should have given the other limitations barring the needed overhaul the spec needs to cover other encounter gaps.

    So if they're going to keep affliction as this shittier version of demo, I'll just roll demo and do better ST AND cleave/aoe. Both specs will suck with movement just like destro because they seem intent in making warlocks total garbage at dealing with mechanics (by also nerfing the combination of dark pact with demonskin), but might as well get the results while I'm turreting.

    Affliction at the moment shines at NOTHING compared to the other specs. Demo has ST, 3+ target cleave, and Destro got the priority add+2 target cleave. Affliction is inferior at every niche the warlock specs can cover, and just like destro is a stinking ball of RNG.
    That's what they call "challenging".

    Cuz like, adding an aspect that is counter-intuitive to how the spec plays makes it super skilled guys!

  12. #32
    Soul swap was awesome. It's really sad to see affliction move into a completely different directions.

  13. #33
    Deleted
    How would I make affliction's multidotting awesome?

    Turn us into Shadow Priests

    They have two dots that are stronger than our four, one of which hits as hard as Unstable Affliction without having to be buffed up by Reap+Malefic Grasp and neither of which have the sort of ridiculous ramping mechanism of Agony, SP dots hit very hard from the first tick instead of hitting like noodles until ten (or even) twenty seconds have crawled by

    In a council fight they can drop two dots on three targets and refresh them all by casting Void Bolt.

    It's "hilarious" playing affliction on Botanist. Sweat your nuts off manually refreshing dots and trying to neve rlet agony lose it;s stacks. Then watch Shadow Priests absolutely destroy the meters by dropping Shadow Word:Pain and Vampiric Touch on the three bosses and not have to worry about them again just cast Void Bolt and they're golden.

    Affliction does wellon Star Augur becaus eof all the movement and the cheesing opportunity at the end with the voidlings. In T20 arour it wouldn't because they are dead-set on making affliction an immobile turret like every other ranged caster by tying us hard to doing uninterrupted 6 second channels.
    Last edited by mmoc7a6bdbfc72; 2017-03-19 at 10:23 AM.

  14. #34
    @Nebiroth99 Spriests get 2% dot dmg per void form stack, they're dependent on pushing voidform up to buff their dot dmg, and thus have lots of ramp on their dots. Not even sure I'd call it ramp, so much as their dots just do varying amounts of damage depending on where they are in their voidform ups and downs and whether or not they have cooldowns.

    Their dot damage is just allocated better, hence what I talked about in post #16.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  15. #35
    Deleted
    Come 7.2.5, I just wonder why they think tying the setbonus to Drain Soul is a good idea? This is pretty detrimental for WiA multitarget builds, and even specced into MG means standing still for 5 seconds, which will suck on encounters that involve movement (nearly all encounters) AND goes against the way DS is used atm (re-channeling after a few ticks).
    Why don't they tie it into UA casts, which all Affli speccs use?
    For example, give us a stacking buff per UA cast, that after X casts increases haste by Y amount and then resets to zero. This would not only alleviate the turreting, but also give us something to play around, with the possibility of optimization and a higher skill ceiling, while at the same time being useful for all builds.

  16. #36
    Deleted
    Ranged casters are there to deal with mechanics like soaking up bombs on Elisande.

    It's the melee's job to do dps . That's why they are so good at it. Rogues, rets, demon hunters, warriors with their lol-trinket.

    Joking aside, I really do not understand why they are centering affliction around Drain Soul. It's a weak ability at best and doesn;t getbuffed by talents.

    Mygues sis they don;t like affliction's mobility, they want us to be more like demo locks.

    As you say, the tier bonuses actively discourages multidotting, turns us into an immobile turret spamming full Drain cycles without interruption, like that happens, and effectively makes anything other than Malefic Grasp irrelevent.

    and we allknow what they willdo. Nerf Malefic Grasp. It's always the same, if there's a standout talent they crap over it to bring it inline with the bad ones. Already been hinted it IIRC.

    Kind of ironic- we entered Legion and it was allabout dots.Only we got the old dilemma that dots strong enough for single target are wildly overpowered when you can spread them. So affliction was awful on single target.

    They fixed that with Malefic Grasp, only now that means that if you buff dots dor multitarget they are wildly overpowered when you can boost them with Grasp. So we are back at single target tunnelers again, not least because affliction is inherently rubbish at switch-and-kill fights.

    And now they are reniforcing that even more with the T20 bonuses and talents. Which also takes away affliction's big mobility card.

    We seem to be stuckon this stupid rollercoaster. And we are still stuck with horrendous ramp in a game that favours burst. Logically, they help by dumping the stupid Agony mechanic, giving us two tormented souls to enable Reap to always be there on pull (because spending half of hero ramping up to full damage whilst everyone else goes crazy with cooldowns sucks, particularly in PUG groups) and giving us an execute to compensate for ramp. We are actually getting noneof that, just stuff thatmakes affliction worse.

    It's in a decent place, but what's coming are not improvements at all. In fact they make it worse to play.

    Destruction's on-demand burst and reliable resource generation will inevitable keep it as the progress spec. Destro and dmeo get very powerful T20 bonuses. Afflictin's are awful particularly the 4-set

    I'd happily see Malefic Grasp nerfed down a bit but dots buffed sothat single target was about the same, but multitarget is better (it is ridiculius that Shadow Priests are so much better atmultidotting than whatis supposed to be the supreme dot spec).

    As Soul Effigy is not going away, make it viable. I actuallylike the basic idea, the problem with Effigy is that it's implementation is awful. The worst aspect is it;s fixed position. If it followed the caster the biggest problem with it would be solved.
    Last edited by mmoc7a6bdbfc72; 2017-03-20 at 10:34 AM.

  17. #37
    what affli needs is soul swap back. it was a perfect solution to our add burst problem. (the way it worked in cata).
    BETA CLUB

  18. #38
    What I wish they would've done to affliction instead of this boring crap playstyle it's been turned into.

    UA should go back to being a no cd no shard cost longer duration dot, while soul shards should've been used on a soul burn like ability that empowers our dots per shard consumed, aka reap shoulda been what our soul shards are for instead of a freakin artifact, although our % damage increase on dots would increase depending on the amount of shards consumed.

    Another thing i'd hope to see is drain soul as an execute with another filler for pre execute phases, something like a no cd haunt that somewhat reminds us of shadowbolt, and an rng proc off of corruption that has a % to make it instant cast ala good old nightfall.

  19. #39
    @Elindre You should voice that on the official forums in one of the threads going, since that's where they're looking.

    sigma already posted acknowledging the t20 bonus and the specs reliance on mg, dunno if we'll see change in the not so distant future but he's acknowledged it. They said in the recent Q&A that these things are subject to change until ToS releases and that there will be a 7.2.5 patch before or with ToS that is similar to 7.1.5 so we should expect to see some amount of balance passes n stuff.
    ..and so he left, with terrible power in shaking hands.

  20. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by JJShadoe View Post
    Yeah, in early MoP, it was amazing. Trying to remember the name, but it was Drain Life, not Drain Soul.
    No. Youre thinking of the carry over that would have been a new Soul Harvester from Cata that would have dealt dmg as an aoe.
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