Destro vs. Affliction in 7.2.5/ToS

[Liarparadox]

How often would you expect to see a legendary if you did this each week?

Daily emissary
hand in one broken shore chest a day for 100 tokens
normal NH
heroic NH
a few mythic +0 dungeons
a keystone dungeon for weekly chest

seems ages between legendaries ... doesn't help I can't pick a main and bounce between characters!

That's decently close to what I do. I'd say I get one every 4-6 weeks depending on luck.

- - - Updated - - -

Just now after posting this I got another legendary (trinket: yay for mythic+?). Yeah I'd say on that schedule referenced above it's about every 3-4 weeks, not 4-6.

[Deleted]

Well Haunt and Wrath of Consumption just got whacked by the nerhammer.

[burek]

it looks more like an overall buff than a nerf, considering you get 5% more baseline or something

[Deleted]

Possibly. My concern with their stacking more and more into the dots is that unless they're going to let affliction be an absolute monster on multi-dot fights, they'll balanc eit around those and let single target damage be garbage. By lowering Haunt's upfront they have removed a singificant amount of Affliction's priority burst, which was already pretty pathetic to start with. And in Sargeras there aren;t many council fights but a lot of single-target-priority-add and cleave fights. Dont want to go back to EN where affliction was competetive on Dragons but shit on something like Nythendra. That was a problem Malefic Grasp was brough in to fix, and Grasp was made so strong because our dots were so weak, precisely to stop them being monsters when you could spread them.

The WOC doesn;t matter much in Sargeras because most of the fights there dont; have tons of little adds so it will do fuck all most of the time anyway.

The nerf to Haunt's multiplier effect is either to balance it with Writhe and Grasp or it's simply a penalty to pay for Haunt being much more mobile than Grasp; of course Writhe is mobile but has it;s own penalty witht he loss if you let Agony drop.

I get what they're doing, but it flies in the face of past acknowledgements that affliction had a real problem in a game where upfront burst has a higher value than anything else.

I'm guessing they want the pure single target talent to be Grasp, the multi-target one to be Writhe, with Haunt a sort of jack-of-all-trades.

But that Haunt nerf is pretty big. They've reduced the damage multiplier and the uptime, but not the cooldown. And the upfront damage. .

I doubt if anyone is going to take it, might as well use Writhe or Malefic Grasp, neithe rof which require separate management.

Of course we know what they will do. Nerf those as well. It's a shame but it looks like Haunt will not be something to take.

[Deleted]

I think unless tuning is garbage, this is going to be a Destro raid.

[Deleted]

They always are for progress. Destruction's burst advantage always outweighs any lack in overall dps. Whatever affliction's dps potential is, it is still awful at some mechanics. The changes incoming make it even worse. Priority adds, for example, we won;t even have the UA+Reap+MG we've got now, and the nerfed Haunt is pathetic - the upfront damage at least on my toon is only 350k lol

I honestly don;t get it, they acknowledged already that ramp specs are really suffering in a game where burst is king...

Either that or they are really pushing people to swapspecs. No surprise, more spec played = more grinding for AP/Gear/legendaries/relic = more hours played..in the same content.

The datamining is incidentally not correct. The 25% buff aura does include Unstable Affliction.

Sadly they have changed it so it no longer affects pet damage.

[smokeytombs]

snip...

Sadly they have changed it so it no longer affects pet damage.

I'm pretty sure the pet is affected by the 25%. As aff on live my doomguard was hitting for 131702 and on ptr he hits for 164626 which is 25%.

[Gaidax]

Affliction will be just fine, it's just getting a bit rebalanced to not shit on Demo and Destruction too much.

Destruction will still be that spec that won't parse amazingly, but will be useful for prio adds and cleave. The buffs it got amount to like ~10% DPS increase overall, considering its current standing it's nothing to write home about, especially compared to mongoloid damage Affliction puts out.

Aff gets a bit toned down, but it will still be strong, especially with Death's Embrace which can prove very powerful, considering shit tends to hit the fan as boss HP closes to 0.

[Shandalar]

ToS is mainly a single target raid. Demon will be really strong.

[Liarparadox]

Sims show significant change in Netherlord ring ranking after a ptr build, who didn't see that coming?

[Apero]

Sims show significant change in Netherlord ring ranking after a ptr build, who didn't see that coming?

I just got more stats, of course it would climb? Its no rocket science.

[Liarparadox]

I just got more stats, of course it would climb? Its no rocket science.

You'd be surprised...

[Amonthar]

How often would you expect to see a legendary if you did this each week?

Daily emissary
hand in one broken shore chest a day for 100 tokens
normal NH
heroic NH
a few mythic +0 dungeons
a keystone dungeon for weekly chest

seems ages between legendaries ... doesn't help I can't pick a main and bounce between characters!

I only run LFR for enchanting patterns in EN.
I run Heroic or Normal NH, just one usually.
I do the daily emissary cache.
Maybe a turn in on The Broken Shore.
I do not run Heroic dungeons.
I barely run Mythic+ dungeons.

I have 10 legendaries on my Warlock. I went through a lull before 7.2 of over a month. Since 7.2, I have gotten six:

Destro Shoulders
Destro Belt
Prydaz (switched to Demo loot spec)
Demo Belt
Demo Helm
Norgannon's Foresight

I got the boots last night. I have spent close to 150k+ nethershards gambling bracers in Demo and the boots dropped.

Also, I have been lucky.

[Deleted]

Affliction will be just fine, it's just getting a bit rebalanced to not shit on Demo and Destruction too much.

Destruction will still be that spec that won't parse amazingly, but will be useful for prio adds and cleave. The buffs it got amount to like ~10% DPS increase overall, considering its current standing it's nothing to write home about, especially compared to mongoloid damage Affliction puts out.

Aff gets a bit toned down, but it will still be strong, especially with Death's Embrace which can prove very powerful, considering shit tends to hit the fan as boss HP closes to 0.

Depends what you mean by fine, it will be really shit at certain mechanics now they killed the Haunt spec. A fight with priority adds will make Affliction feel like a third wheel.

I also have this horrible feeling they're going to balance aff around multidotting, and given the choice between having affliction competetive on single target but an absolute monster on multidotting, or competetive on multidotting but crap on single target...well, we all know which one of those they will implement, because they've done it repeatedly in the past. Anytime aff has turned into a mutlidot monster - like it did in Ulduar for a while - the nerfs don;t take long to follow.

It's ironic because the only reason they introduced Malefic Grasp and made it so powerful was to address affliction's dismal single target performance, which was dismal because it was mostly dot-based, and dots were kept weak to stop them being LOL on say Dragons.

I get that they are aiming at "affliction should be about multidotting again" and also their past statements about "it's OK for some classes to feel aslightly disadvantaged sometimes"

But they have also acknowledged that classes that rely on spreading dots and which have tons of ramp don;t feel good in a game that heavily favours on-demand burst.

At the moment every patch seems to bring more nerfs to affliction's priority-single-target damage and pile more an dmore into it's dots and the inevtiable endpoint of that is either affliction becomes a monster on every council fight....or it doesn't, at the cost of being lousy when it can't dot up more than one thing.

The only reason that affliction put sout "mongoloid damage" is Wrath of Consumption/Reap/shards. There was a MASSIVE damage increase between 7.1.5 and 7.2 and the only reason for it was the change so that every add procced souls and shards. If you take a look at the logs affliction was not really dominating anything until that change. After it, affliction had excessive uptimes of WOC and Reap and was drowning in shards, WOC+Reap togther ad dup to almost a 50% damage increase and in many fights (particularly for WOC) it went from hardly up at all to being up a lot.

If they'd bitten the bullet then and done the nerf they've just done to WOC that would have dealt with a lot of that problem. Ironically again, the WOC change doesn;t really matter for Sargeras because it wasn;t going to do much if anything in that raid anyway. I'd like to think they're finally going to balance affliction around not having it;s on-death buffs up but we shall see. On death stuff sounds cool and fits with the spec, but they're an albatross around the neck, because they vary from being really powerful when you've got adds to proc them to being utterly useless when their aren't. A gold trait feels poor when you have boss fights where it does nothing at all.

Instead what they are doing is nerfing affliction when the change in raids would in itself have been a "nerf", because the Sargeras raids just aren;t full of loads of little adds you can cheese for a 50% damage buff that's up for much of the time.

Death's Embrace is OK, but affliction needed another ramping mechanism like a hole in the head. It's also going to be a pain in PUGs that wipe early, because affliction doesn;t have a really strong opener, so after the wipe guess which ones they will start to kick for "low dps"

I like affliction being about dots - I don't like everything being centred on Malefic Grasp which renders every other talent pointless, even on multidot fights where it outshines Writhe when it shouldn't. But I also know how problematic centering a spec around dots that you can spread can be. We've been there before and the devs have never truly managed to hit the sweet spot.

[Gaidax]

Affliction ST is fine and it is not going anywhere in ToS, the pat on a wrist with Wrath of Consumption won't matter, especially because of added another 5% damage. Especially on ST, obviously where it simply got flat out buff.

Affliction ramp is shorter than Demonology and its AoE and cleave are better as well, with added benefit of Death's Embrace which will give Affliction unique strength at the last phases of the encounters, which usually happen to be most intense. I don't see how it will possibly end up bad or useless.

Weaknesses you mention are there to ensure shit show we have now where Aff out-STs Demo and outbursts Destruction won't be a reality at least during progress.

[Deleted]

Affliction ST is fine and it is not going anywhere in ToS, the pat on a wrist with Wrath of Consumption won't matter, especially because of added another 5% damage. Especially on ST, obviously where it simply got flat out buff.

I understand that, which is why I said they should have bitten that bullet at the same time as implementing the change where every add procs wrath/shards/souls. It is really this that has lead to affliction putting out inflated numbers. I can only guess that they felt it wasn't worth introducing changes like that when 7.2.5 was on it's way anyway.

I don;t object at all to affliction being more balanced and reducing the importance of on-death procs/buffs, as I said, they're a pain because they can swing between being overpowered and useless from one minute to the next. Let's hope they do a good job because nerfing Wrath by 50% will really hurt in M+ - not so much is Sargeras because the fights there just aren't full of little adds to cheese buffs off like Nighthold is.

Affliction ramp is shorter than Demonology and its AoE and cleave are better as well, with added benefit of Death's Embrace which will give Affliction unique strength at the last phases of the encounters, which usually happen to be most intense. I don't see how it will possibly end up bad or useless.

Weaknesses you mention are there to ensure shit show we have now where Aff out-STs Demo and outbursts Destruction won't be a reality at least during progress.

Well sure, demo's ramp is worse, but that just makes it more bad than affliction, and again, affliction really is only "OP" because of the change where adds ALL proc buffs which can add up to a 50% damage increase

I didn;t say Death's Embrace was bad or useless. Just that it has downsides; I don;t like that it has a ramping effect, which affliction already has too many of, but also, you probably will avoid it in PUGs, because when PUG groups wipe their first reflex is to throw out "low DPS", which a DE using afflock will be as so much of their damage will be bound up in the sub-35% phase.

The change that really caught me out was Haunt. That's been a dead talent for so long, they made it pretty good in the PTR, now they've killed it again. It loses out to MG and WIA. If you can stand still then MG beats it, if you have a high movement fight, WIA tops it. Even in a pure single target fight Writhe is a better choice. Haunt's upfront damage now hits like a soggy noodle, so it;s lost the attraction it had as a "priority add" talent, before you could quickly switch, throw a Haunt which hit relatively hard (in affliction terms) in it own right and dump a bunch of UA's.

The new Haunt hits like a soggy noodle, and the 10 second duration is not even long enough to dumpa full UA load. You also now have to have something die in less than ten seconds to reset the cooldown. I guess the only real use for it will be dungeon trash.

I have no idea why they felt the need to hit it so hard. Maybe it was ending up as a default talent, or they want people to have to take Malefic Grasp and pay movement penalties.

The reworked Haunt just feels bad. Particularly in the light of previous statements where the devs have said "yeah, we know how bad a ramp class feels in a burst oriented game"

I guess the question is, sure, you must have affliction less burst capable than destruction, but how bad do you want affliction to be at burst without it starting to feel irrelevent?

There can be little doubt that in Wow, burst is king. If affliction doesn't have a big enough sustained advantage to counteract it;s lackof burst, there's no reason to play it.

As affliction, I'd better do x% more sustained damage on the boss if I'm almost useless at priority adds. At least compared to the plethora of burst classes who can dump 3m+ dps in short windows. And that's without Sargeras gear.

[Gaidax]

The new Haunt is absolutely fine, the changes are in simcraft already and it is competitive that row in its new shape with MG being a bit better on ST with obvious downsides it carries.

Haunt was merely put back in line, don't make it sound as if sky is falling, simcraft disagrees.

As a whole I don't see how Affliction will not be fine, for all the nerfs it got it also got flat out buffs to compensate. My only concern is that it may again end up being head and shoulders above other specs and I am glad at least some cautious balancing is done to tone down the retarded snowballing it had.

On your part I am sure you can appreciate it being made a bit less reliant on adds.

[Deleted]

I'll repeat, the only reason affliction's performance snowballed was that adds started proccing the on-death mechanics, and it so happens that the Nighthold is bung full of fights where there are loads oflittle adds. It just wasn't happening before that change, although affliction scaled extremely well with gear (as ever). Sure, I'm happy if they can put the damage into affliction's base and mov eus away from the on-death procs, because again to repeat, they have swung between overpowered and doing sod all in different fights. It's like telling a warrior, of you execute works the whole time in this fight, but it doesn;t work at all in that one. On a boss like Nythendra Wrath of Consumption did literally nothing whatever, which feels pretyt bad for a gold trait.

Thing is with the new Haunt, there's no real reason to use it. Malefic Grasp when you don;t have to move and Writhe in Agony for just about anything else are just better.

The current affliction talent rows demonstrate the devs do get things wrong. Haunt live is a dead talent which no one uses, and Malefic Grasp is so powerful that it outclasses everything else.

[Baconeggcheese]

Anytime aff has turned into a mutlidot monster - like it did in Ulduar for a while - the nerfs don;t take long to follow.

Except that time it went an entire xpac of getting increasingly more shenanigans.

Mop was an interesting time.

[Deleted]

Can't comment on MOP as I did not play it, but I think I'm correct in saying there was a trinket that contributed a lot to affliction's strength there?