Affliction nerf transperancy

[gdr441]

15% Affliction buff?
Soul Effigy being removed?

Please, Blizzard, don't play with my emotions like this. I will gladly trade MG for this.

A-FKN-MEN! This is the best news ive heard for affliction since legion is out! <3

[jojoushi]

Did they change that back? Or what did I miss? I'm not saying it's a big deal necessarily, but the numbers going from 20 % to 12 % is still a nerf, is it not?

Datamining error, still at 20% on ptr for aff

[Moggie]

15% Affliction buff?
Soul Effigy being removed?

Please, Blizzard, don't play with my emotions like this. I will gladly trade MG for this.

Thank jeebus that pos mechanic is going bye bye.

[Uzkin]

Blue just confirmed that Soul Conduit will remain at 20% for affliction.

For the first time in this expansion, it feels like the devs are actually paying attention to lock feedback and putting some effort / thought into the class design. Better late than never, I guess. Just sucks that locks had to play what was essentially an alpha/beta-quality class for 2+ live tiers.

[wholol]

I really wish someone would bring up some of the following issues for affliction pvp on the US forums:

Since affliction's survivability was shifted from passive DR to sustained playstyle , most of the healing power was based in drain soul and to an extent, the big Healthstone heal.

Since drain soul channel is hard to maintain in competitive arena pvp due to obvious reasons, I was hoping the healing portion of drain be reduced and shifted elsewhere, towards our dots.

To be more precise, maybe give soul leech for affliction a small % heal based on shield generated through damage, this would give it a more viable sustained option for the multi dotting playstyle instead of the tunnel drain playstyle.

Another issue I wish would be addressed is the healthstone cd being unable to reset in arenas due to being in constant combat, this is a severe nerf to a healing cd ,especially for affliction since one of it's core fantasy defensives is baked into HS through the artifact trait.

Maybe making HS cd work regardless of combat inside instanced pvp zones, this would help the quality of life for affliction quite a bit.

[Shodan30]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

[Moggie]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

If it wasn't good enough for Mages to keep as Prismatic Crystal, then why should Warlocks be forced into using that crappy ability? The majority wanted the stupid mechanic gone since SE first arrived during Alpha/Beta. You could leave that spot blank and nobody would mind. And let's be honest, if they couldn't or didn't care to get it to work for Mages, they're certainly not going to bother with doing something to help it for locks and after all this time, not once made it a semi-interesting or enjoyable ability. You can dress up a pig in fancy clothes and smear makeup all over it but it's still a pig.

I'm sure they have other abilities they could throw into that spot. Will it be balanced or underwhelming? We'll have to see. I don't have that much faith in Blizz ability to do much right, but the removal of SE is a huge step in the right direction for a change.

[Tikishock]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

I'm not a Blizzard fanboy but a few things...

1. Do you specifically know that this removal to Soul Effigy was just thought up by Blizzard and it LITERALLY means they only have a few weeks to find a replacement talent? If you've worked for any sort of business in a leadership role you would probably know the standard practice is to have meeting after meeting discussing changes and the ramifications of the changes and THEN make an announcement once you feel it's time and has been work shopped enough. I'm sure Blizzard has been discussing taking Soul Effigy out for some time and it's not something they just thought up and agreed to this past Monday.

2. Soul Effigy for the most part sucked. It sucked for all the same reasons Prismatic Crystal sucked for Mages. Could they have made it work? Yes, probably. Would it have still be fun for players? For the majority, probably not.

3. The middle 100 tier talent is Phantom Singularity. It has some niche uses but you are correct in that talent could also be looked at and strengthened to make the tier more situational instead of "select it and forget it".

[Deleted]

I got to give them credit, when they want to promote Destruction, they force people to play Destruction by nerfing the other 2 specs to the ground.

[Count Zero]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

You really think Blizz wants to design something new rather than fix SE ? The talent was already tuned. Which means they now have to design, implement, test, and tune a new talent. Rather than "just" fix SE. I don't think fixing it would be as simple as you make it sound.

Don't get me wrong - your ideas seem simple, but I'm guessing that on a technical level they're actually really hard to do. I mean - no one complains about the idea of SE, they just complain about how it actually works. And in that sense I think we might see something very similar and possibly with the same name ... maybe like basically soul swap but it creates a soul effigy of the target and places the dots there automatically (as opposed to letting you choose where they go). 45 second cooldown, lasts 25 seconds - or something like that. So basically it's the same thing except to fix the issues the idea is that you're using it as a cd.

[Uzkin]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

SE is horrible, and the blue/dev correctly identified the reasons why it is horrible. He/she also correctly deduced that when the majority of players are AFRAID of SE becoming the strongest choice (because then they would feel obligated to use it) it is better to redesign the talent.

For the first time in Legion, I feel cautiously optimistic about the warlock design. Finally they seem to put (at least some) thought and effort into it.

[Cainium]

What did the designer and developers say?

Community Manager: Locks complain a lot about Soul Effigy
Designer: Can we make it work?
Developer: Yes, we can.
Designer: What about the implementation?
Developer: It's implemented as a totem-like unit, changing the UI just for effigy requirers lots of clunky things to do, but we could do it
Designer: How long would it take?
Developer: One year.
Designer: Ok, i think we can come up with a replacement in less time than that
Community Manager: What should I tell them?
Designer: Tell them that we are fine with it. And that major changes are not coming before 7.2.5., by that time we should have found a solution
... silence ...

Effigy was not as clunky as people made it sound. It worked well for EN and ToV, I don't know why people have problems recasting effigy once or at its worst twice per fight. Our numbers have been still good, and correct maintaining of the effigy placement and range was a little bit of micro management which added some depth into using it. The only clunky thing was tracking the dots, 'cause it consumed the focus frame. In NH i never had to recast it on any encounter it was good using it. NH had just two edge-cases, Tichondrius and Elisandre where it could have been good. For Tichondrius SC is better for AoE padding on adds anyway, leaving Elisandre as the only encounter where movement screwed it up completly.

The whole MG-Drain-Cycle-Playstyle made it look worse than it was, and SC was a viable alternative. Removing effigy was the wrong thing to do IMO.

If you wanna see clunky mechanics look at classic class design.

SC is crap and should be changed. PS is useless, even on heavy AoE fights like Scorpyron SC is better due to shard refunds on SoC.

What will we get now? What is good ST only and does not make SC obsolete on mixed-style encounters?

[dmon83]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

You're on the wrong side here, sorry you have bad taste.

[smokeytombs]

WiA was looking to be a strong single target option in 7.2.5 but needs effigy to work. Curious how that will get balanced without it.

[Violetti]

Lets hope they dont listen to the community and give us SB:H or Soulswap lol

[chrewm]

The new talent is going to have to be amazing to get me to not use the (not nerfed) SC. Especially if MG stays nerfed, and the newly buffed haunt (that costs a soul shard) becomes more popular.

[Moggie]

The new talent is going to have to be amazing to get me to not use the (not nerfed) SC. Especially if MG stays nerfed, and the newly buffed haunt (that costs a soul shard) becomes more popular.

Haunt won't become popular.

[Isadora]

Datamining error, still at 20% on ptr for aff

Alright, that sounds pretty neat

[Gonzo1399]

Greeaaaaattt... congrats guys, you got a talent that was somewhat argueably annoying to play removed from the game for something that will be thought up and thrown in within a few weeks development.

Besides tuning it to fix the problems there was NOTHING wrong with Soul Effigy. They could have had it follow the warlock. They could have adjusted the range or damage its passing. But no. Now its GONE. A Simple macro removed all the pain of targetting the effigy, and vastly improved my damage.

At the very least they could have kept it as an option and replaced the middle 100 talent that NOBODY IS USING. They don't even mention that. I cant even tell you what the name of the thing is its so pathetic.

TBH, I agree. It wasn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It's clunky at first but knowing to to play the game quickly alleviates that. People were just too lazy to figure out how to use it effectively. Sure, there's some fights you don't take it on because it gets cleared during boss transitions and it's obviously not going to be used in M+, but as a raid talent it was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be.

I really liked running SE/WiA builds on fights like H botanist, H guldan. It also had it's place in mythic. I run it on mythic auger, mythic trillax, etc.

[burzian]

Changes look great and they're explaining them thoroughly. I personally didn't like Soul Effigy but I know some locks did, so I can understand some annoyance there. Other than that though, I'm just going to laugh at all the people spitting venom two days ago about PTR notes saying Blizzard is committing domestic terrorism by nerfing Affliction or whatever.