I am very happy to see the changes to Wrath of Consumption

[Beazzles]

While there were few things that felt better than lining up a fully boosted drain cycle with full stacks of WoC active, I am honestly happy to see this change.

Wrath of Consumption (Rank 1) After you kill a target, your damage over time effects deal 2% 1% increased damage for the next 20 sec, stacking up to 5 times.

I feel like this trait along with Soulflame are what has presented a real challenge to create some balance for our specs this entire time.

On fights where there are things dying along the way, we gap the whole raid in DPS by a noticeable amount. If there are no small adds dying, the play feel really really bad.



This is based off of my own 7.2 and earlier experience. I am not currently on the PTR. Is anyone actively participating able to provide some more feedback and insight to these changes yet?

[Havikz]

Disagree. Affliction became "OP" (Affliction in its current state would still blow ass on progression because lol no target swap damage at all) when they gave us souls and consumption from every single enemy in Nighthold. All they needed to do was revert the Reap Souls change and nerf consumption from 20% -> 10%. Our damage was middle pack in 7.1.5 but climbed to top on an ideal fight like Augur, this is GOOD game design that rewards a class for filling their role.

But to slap ALL of these nerfs and THEN nerf the ONLY thing keeping Warlock afloat would just doom it to the position of Shadow Priest where it does bottom single target and middle of the pack dps on multi-target unless it's a council. You should never make a class where it requires best case scenario to become competitive.

To further nail in the point, look at the rankings on Trilliax. Affliction is dead smack in the middle, the fact is our damage is balanced without reap and consumption. They're designed to be a power multiplier and to reward the class for ideal fights.

There's going to be literally no reason to play Affliction on any fight other than 3 target council cleaves. It will do bottom single target, poor 2 target (compared to destro), and it will only ever become middle of the pack if there are frequent add spawns similar to Augur. It still can't do any add dps what-so-ever, so they've effectively removed EVERY strength the spec has while keeping the weaknesses there.


You should honestly take a look at all of the changes on the PTR before forming an opinion. Stack up all the changes and you'll realize how bad this is, it's not just that patch that's being applied to the live server. MG will be 25%, agony will be 15 stacks, haunt will be what you see in those notes, effigy will be gone, 4 set will be nerfed (and replaced).

[IAmJakub]

Disagree. Affliction became "OP" (Affliction in its current state would still blow ass on progression because lol no target swap damage at all) when they gave us souls and consumption from every single enemy in Nighthold. All they needed to do was revert the Reap Souls change and nerf consumption from 20% -> 10%. Our damage was middle pack in 7.1.5 but climbed to top on an ideal fight like Augur, this is GOOD game design that rewards a class for filling their role.

But to slap ALL of these nerfs and THEN nerf the ONLY thing keeping Warlock afloat would just doom it to the position of Shadow Priest where it does bottom single target and middle of the pack dps on multi-target unless it's a council. You should never make a class where it requires best case scenario to become competitive.

To further nail in the point, look at the rankings on Trilliax. Affliction is dead smack in the middle, the fact is our damage is balanced without reap and consumption. They're designed to be a power multiplier and to reward the class for ideal fights.

There's going to be literally no reason to play Affliction on any fight other than 3 target council cleaves. It will do bottom single target, poor 2 target (compared to destro), and it will only ever become middle of the pack if there are frequent add spawns similar to Augur. It still can't do any add dps what-so-ever, so they've effectively removed EVERY strength the spec has while keeping the weaknesses there.


You should honestly take a look at all of the changes on the PTR before forming an opinion. Stack up all the changes and you'll realize how bad this is, it's not just that patch that's being applied to the live server. MG will be 25%, agony will be 15 stacks, haunt will be what you see in those notes, effigy will be gone, 4 set will be nerfed (and replaced).

Wrong on all counts. You are doing a good job of focusing all the nerfs while completely ignoring that Affliction will get 25% buff across the board. We will be better off on a council fight than we are now by the sheer fact that all of our damage will be doing 25% per. Our damage will be across the board higher and the nerf of concordance will mean that fights that involve small adds we won't shoot up shoulders above everyone else.

[Liarparadox]

The change is good, mostly because WOC is horrible to balance around as is on live. They had to do this. It felt great to have a 5 stack going; but the dps swings are way too much. And WOC on live just invites dumbs padding. Glad it's getting nerfed.

[Deleted]

if u make hc raids/mythic instances the affli with 2 legendary can preform 550-750k single target dps depend on boss and with tah ur in the top4. to say :"There's going to be literally no reason to play Affliction on any fight other than 3 target council cleaves." just stupid.

[Feuerbart]

The trait was bad from the start. Surely you can abuse it when possible. It´s the same with soulflame. Just look at Skoryron.
Having 2 gold traits that do zilch on a pure single target fight feels just terribad. Consolation prize is our other 3/4 traits are really good.

As has already been said multiple times. Current Affli is very strong when you abuse our kit to do good boss damage aka farm. For progression that crumbles to middle of the pack. In that regard this change is good because our base kit can just be stronger without such big boosts.

[Deleted]

The trait was bad from the start. Surely you can abuse it when possible. It´s the same with soulflame. Just look at Skoryron.
Having 2 gold traits that do zilch on a pure single target fight feels just terribad. Consolation prize is our other 3/4 traits are really good.

As has already been said multiple times. Current Affli is very strong when you abuse our kit to do good boss damage aka farm. For progression that crumbles to middle of the pack. In that regard this change is good because our base kit can just be stronger without such big boosts.

While WoC might have needed nerfing, as above post shows it set apart bad affliction locks from good ones so its going to be missed. Especially since they fixed it in 7.1.5 to actually double under reap managing it has been one of crucial parts of affliction on most fights.

[JabJack]

WoC could be exploited if you paid attention, but separating the experienced from the inexperienced has little relevance to this most recent change when it comes to the greater scheme of end game play.

[pappaslop]

Affliction has historically performed far better on farm than progress... I don't see how this still seems like a surprise to some people...

Overall, the changes for affliction look to be good and obviously there will be a tuning pass. I'd rather MG be weaker with less of an emphasis in comparison to the direction we appear to be going - we will just have to see

[Gohzerlock]

WoC could be exploited if you paid attention, but separating the experienced from the inexperienced has little relevance to this most recent change when it comes to the greater scheme of end game play.

Exploited? Or intelligently used? I mean, monitoring how many stacks you have and getting more by dotting a dying add / neutral mob isn't really exploiting. Maybe you're talking about using a toy that spawns stuff I dunno.

[Deleted]

i really like the changes.
-ST is comparable to live, maybe slightly lower
-DPS on the move is much better
-Off dotting is actually worth it now, not only for extra shards and woc stacks
-You have to keep up your dots now even stop draining uas for it

[Deleted]

Terrible golden trait, that is ultimately either totally broken or worthless. I'm glad to see it nerfed and our dmg compensated elsewhere.

[Deleted]

Im doing more damage on PTR then on live. Dropped 4 ilvls for 4 set of the new set with legendary chest + belt. Malefic Grasp and Soul Conduit as talents of choice.
Can consistently hold 1.1-1.2 million dps on dummies without BL or consumeables.

[Beazzles]

I am glad overall you guys are feeling a similar opinion to mine. The other Affliction lock in my guild was bummed because of the change. Being that we are a 10/10M guild, we do tend to use any small min/max benefit we can, so I sort of understand. In all honesty, he(other aff lock) is better at managing WoC stacks and is able to pull more out of it, so I am not surprised.

I do agree that managing WoC was definitely one of the main mechanics that was able to distinguish a great warlock from just a good warlock.

I am trying to stay off of the PTR in an effort to keep the 7.3 content fresh for me when it drops, but man its hard to avoid after hearing all this feedback.

[Demonidze]

iam glad they nerfing it. its in our best interest to be balanced around ST then with adds in mind, not all bosses have small adds and NH was really an anomaly raid in that sense.

[Deleted]

Wrong on all counts. You are doing a good job of focusing all the nerfs while completely ignoring that Affliction will get 25% buff across the board. We will be better off on a council fight than we are now by the sheer fact that all of our damage will be doing 25% per. Our damage will be across the board higher and the nerf of concordance will mean that fights that involve small adds we won't shoot up shoulders above everyone else.

He is correct. The only thing that inflated affliction's damage was being able to cheese little adds that gave up excessively long times for Reap and Wrath - these together add up to a 50% damage buff.

It is as though the devs allowed Paladins to have their wings up for half the encounter, or longer.

This only happened after 7.2 hit. Before that, not ever add procced souls or shards or wrath, and - excluding Skorpyron - affliction was a solid, middle of th epack performer. It wasn;t dominating anything - dmeon hunters, warriors, rogues etc beat us on single target and shadow priests dominated what should have been "our" fight, which was Botanist, because SP dots are not only stronger, they are much easier to maintain (basically, you can cast two for th epric eof one with a talent, and then endlessly extend them with one spell, on every target they are running on). iirc Ellisande was just bad for affliction, and Gul'dan wasn't that good either until we were able to cheese buffs off the low-health eyes.

Sargeras is an indirect nerf, because the boss fight sin there simply don;t feature lot sof little trash adds. They've nerfed Wrath by 50% but it doesn;t matter because in Sargeras it was going to do fuck-all most of the time anyway, as it did in Emerald Nightmare.

We will be bette roff in a council fight, hmm, how many of those are there?

The on-death mechanics sounded cool and class fantasy, the reality is they're albatross around our necks. This is because they can swings from being overpowered to doing fuck all from one minute to the next, what other classes have a gold artifact trait that literally does nothing whatever for an entire boss fight? Those mechnaics make us totally dependent on a stream of little adds to maintain self-buffs

It must make balancing horrendously difficult, if you make affliction competetive where it;s self-buffs are hardly up at all (eg somethin glike Ursoc), then it wildly overperforms when there are adds. That's probably why each boss encounter had to is essence be individually tuned for afflocks, so that some adds didn;t proc souls/shards/wrath at all. I;d guess they gave up on that and just enabled the procs on everything with a plan to adjust the spec later. A decision that has lead to a wide perception of affliction being "OP"

And it's all because Wrath and the rest were designed to work hand in hand with the little killable adds the artifact was usposed to spawn, fixing the issue of "add starvation" when some fights didn;t have them. But that in itself was a horrible mechanic to play, and would have lead to soul-flame cheesing . So they pulle dit, promising to adjust the other traits accordingly. Then they let it go live without doing that.

Which was a big contributor to affliction just sucking at launch.

- - - Updated - - -

if u make hc raids/mythic instances the affli with 2 legendary can preform 550-750k single target dps depend on boss and with tah ur in the top4. to say :"There's going to be literally no reason to play Affliction on any fight other than 3 target council cleaves." just stupid.

The issue won;t be raids. It will be dungeons. Anything other than a high keystone M+ affliction will feel like garbage, because you'll be playing alongside "pump and dump" classes who can even without Sargeras gear dump out 3m+ dps very easily. WHich means that by the time you've stacked up all your dots almost everything will just be dead before they've done a couple of ticks.

The devs themselves acknowledged that in wow burst is king and that spread-dot-ramp classes are becoming very hard to keep relevant and competetive.

That's why they gave us Malefic Grasp and mad eit so powerful.

Now the pendulum is swinging back to multidotting with virtually no burst capacity at all. They clearly want affliction to be about sustained damage over a longe rperiod, nerfing Haunt indicates this.

[Dnusha]

WoC nerf solves quite a few problems(from blizz point): Affli reliance on adds to deal crazy damage, players that can't into buffs/WA no longer feel weak, spec is easier to balance.

While i agree it's more balanced that way i really loved old WoC. Guess it could be better as a talent or legendary in future or something like that.

[Reith]

what other classes have a gold artifact trait that literally does nothing whatever for an entire boss fight?

That would be Judge Unworthy for Retribution Paladins, which only spreads the judgment debuff beyond 2 targets. Does literally nothing for Trilliax, Krosus, Botanist, Star Augur. There's probably a couple other examples from other classes/specs (I think fire/arcane mages both have one), but that's the one I know about.