Has anybody else found Affliction no longer Fun?

[Cwimge]

For the longest time I've stood torn between Affliction and Destruction as my primary spec, until I was taught (read forced) to learn how to Affy I got by in the ICC period by spamming my fire like any other destro player- and until I tried Affy it was good. But once I -did- try playing as Affy I quickly forgot the limited-in-spell simplicity of Destro and sunk into my shadow-damage wonder from mid ICC all the way up until pandaland hit.

Now, at first, when the patch had only just hit I thought Affliction was the shit, a shiney new spell that filled the role of shadow bolt -and- drain life as dps and filler both? it seemed insane. But as time went on and I had a chance to feel out the spec a bit more I came to realize something. Four soul shards you need drain soul or a lucky proc to restore? Haunt requiring said shards to cast? and an appalling lack of automatic refreshes on corruption and the lucky UA? my beloved, flowing Affy had become sluggish and slow, chunky and infinity less fun to play while Destruction had been given a work-over and whole new mechanic with a resource that felt fun to use and made for some rapid-fire gameplay? Destruction was not only more fun to play- but now all of a sudden it had the numbers to back up a position as a viable spec. Nothing ever felt quite so fun as laying down a rain of fire, blowing all my embers on some FoB aoe before backing up to spam harvest life between refreshing my rain and AoE immolate. Whereas Affliction was stuck with a slow moving seed, yes the damage did seem higher, back to where it had once been- but with that came a sense of slowness, seeds no longer popped as briskly as before and while Malifc grasp is very much an awesome spell..it had started to feel like the reason my dots had copped some bland changes.

So my question is this...has anybody else found Affliction no longer as fun..or at least dependable to play in the wake of the changes to it and Destruction? I understand Affy still seems to hit harder, but this has less to do with numbers and more with my spec now feeling similar to how Demo once did. Highly dependent on procs and luck while still seeming clunky and somehow unwieldy

[Findus]

I'm actually very disappointed with all the specs. In every single patch since I started playing in TBC, there has always been at least one warlock spec that I've loved, and that's the reason why I've stuck with my warlock so long. I've been a big fan of Destro for very largy portions of the WotlK and Cata eras, and I think Affliction has consistently been the most fun spec in the game throughout the years. Then MoP hit, and pretty much ruined any interest I had in the class. While I think some additions are really good, and I like that they have separated the specs more, It just isn't fun anymore.
The only spec I feel that's been improved is Demo, and even that feels extremely clunky with all the switching in and out of Meta.

[Cwimge]

Interesting, if I may put forward a counter-point? if you have never at all enjoyed demo? (I never found it particularly thrilling myself) then perhaps, like me you've simply found the overabundance of changes made to it overshadow your own chosen spec? I could count on one hand all the non-demo warlocks I've seen, and of the Demo locks virtually none of them have taken something other the the demon hunting glyph

As far as gameplay goes..demo admittedly works once you grasp it but I have still leaned towards the others and hence my predicament

[jaymzkerten]

I myself have always been quite the opposite of you. In BC I had to switch to destro because afflic didn't scale as well with the gear back then, and I remained destro all the way through ToC. The spec felt very boring because your entire rotation was immo > incin > conflag > CB > incin til immo needed refreshed. When ICC hit and afflic became viable again it took me a moment to get the hang of it again but I loved it. I quickly started to outperform our other locks in the guild. I have been afflic ever since then and I love it more and more as time goes on. Yea sure SoC is pretty crap in comparison to almost any other aoe right now, but right now there are very few fights where aoe is a pivotal part of the encounter. I *like* that haunt is tied to a resource and not just another spell you cast when it comes off CD to maintain 100% uptime. I love finding ways to increase my shard regen, whether it be fights like WotE where you can throw all your dots on other adds and drain them to get all your shards back, or fights where you just use a SB:SoC to put corruption on other lesser adds (ambershaper). I also love how much more viable it is for soloing old stuff these days with SB:HF.

I will say I find destro to be more enjoyable than it was back then, and definitely more enjoyable than it was in cata (wtf dots on a DD spec), but blizz is going to have to seriously botch afflic as it is right now for me to stray away from it.

[actiwe]

Played warlock since pre-tbc and i find affliction to be the most fun right now. As haunt now cost soulshard is really good, the skill-cap for affliction is higher now i would say. You just dont spam haunt everytime you have a shard for instance. I agree with you that SoC still is boring, but it have been like that since we got it.
Also we are not the only class depending on "procs"

[Deleted]

I will always love affliction as it is the spec that feels the most "warlocky" to me.
I have grown tired of the state of warlock in MoP already because compared to fmages and spriests for example
there is too much work involved for the same amount of reward.

Looking at the 5.2 PTR changes it will only become worse and altho its only PTR we all know from
history that the "live will fix it", "next patch will fix it" and other similar excuses all poors out in the sand.

Warlocks will always be my favorite but im having much more fun with the better classes atm.

[Scorp969]

some time it is fun and some time not depends on shard regen during fight only thing that will make it better is to let shard regen during combat that passive 1shard/40sec
and a boost to aoe

[Deleted]

I quit MoP after 2 weeks as I found the new affliction to be boring and shit in PvP.

Played lock from vanilla.

[Cwimge]

Well if it works for you then more power. Very little has really changed when we boil the issue down, no longer picking shadow bolt, drain life or both as filler and having some paltry degree of resource management now. But can you tell me, is Haunt still intended for 100% uptime? is it ideal to find those more creative or stop-gap ways to get a quick shard back to keep it up or is this simply a case of the players working around Blizz's intent?

---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 02:54 AM ----------

Man alive did this take off while I wasn't looking: Jay my last post was directed towards you
Scorp: I agree, some kind of in-combat regen. Slow so as to give them back "eventually" if you cant pause to rebuild them
Salty: We've always been on the short-list im afraid..but on the upside Spriest has never been more fun to play!
Acti: Well I might just have gone into it with the wrong mindset regarding haunt- all my Affy play has just been me fighting to hold onto that 100% uptime

[Woz]

Never bored with Aff. Best spec in game. Thx

[xskarma]

I've always been Affliction main, with brief spells as Destro and Demo because the damage was too good to pass up. Always kept an Affli spec ready though, and usually switched to it for questing and dailies and such. I love the new Affli, it's kept the basic dot refreshing and added the Haunt/MG mechanic to it. I enjoy that, but I can understand not everyone does.

Thing is we have 3 distinct specs now, much better then the mostly the same rotations we had in Cata, so if you don't like Affli I can highly recommend trying the other specs for a while. I've been Affli for Mists, and have raided and done dungeons as such, but since November I've been giving serious time to first Demo and now Destro to really put them through their paces and get to know them. I've enjoyed every minute of it, and have learned much about both specs without even learning how to raid as them.

The day I stopped clinging to just Affli and embraced being a Warlock is when a completely new and deeper enjoyment of the Warlock class began.

[Cwimge]

Well from the sound of it I really have been in the minority here, perhaps its time to consult google and see just how Haunt is intended to be used now instead of just winging it. Being a moonguard native rp'er I've always tried to maintain a respectable level of dps. Affy still hits harder and if I can work this out...well it does fit better with the character as well

[xskarma]

Well from the sound of it I really have been in the minority here, perhaps its time to consult google and see just how Haunt is intended to be used now instead of just winging it. Being a moonguard native rp'er I've always tried to maintain a respectable level of dps. Affy still hits harder and if I can work this out...well it does fit better with the character as well

The Affli sticky at the top of the board has excellent information and discussion to give you any info you would need.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...pecific-Guides

[Cwimge]

Many thanks: I intend to come back into wow more informed then when circumstance forced me to leave- something broke somewhere rather severly

[Kink]

I played my warlock very little in cata (something like a week before the pre-mop patch) and all three specs seemed very weird and unbalanced, how you were literally forced into a different spec for every fight in Dragon soul(Or had to gather a mastery set to pull demo's full potential DPS -_-), where as I think there's more room to play whatever spec you want this tier with there being very minor differences, depending on the players skill. I've found affliction to be extremely fun for single target/cleave fights but for Wind Lord, even if you can still pull good numbers as affliction, it just doesn't tickle my fancy so it's an automatic switch to Demo on that fight for me, and that's just a personal preference since regardless of which theoretically performs better on that fight, I know I'll do more as demo since I enjoy myself more. That's just my view of the class at the moment, I'm really having fun.

[Thelxi]

Affliction was at its best for me in cata, so smooth and rewarding (post ISS). Now it feels average again, kinda like a spriest.

[Deleted]

Ever since the SS change to apply all dots, I've found affliction so strong including burst, it's what the spec missed and now can produce some of the biggest burst in game ( over time) Easy to open up peaking over 250k dps, it makes progression so much stronger for warlocks, and currently loving it. I like how viable affliction has become.

[jaymzkerten]

Well if it works for you then more power. Very little has really changed when we boil the issue down, no longer picking shadow bolt, drain life or both as filler and having some paltry degree of resource management now. But can you tell me, is Haunt still intended for 100% uptime? is it ideal to find those more creative or stop-gap ways to get a quick shard back to keep it up or is this simply a case of the players working around Blizz's intent?

---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 02:54 AM ----------

Man alive did this take off while I wasn't looking: Jay my last post was directed towards you
Scorp: I agree, some kind of in-combat regen. Slow so as to give them back "eventually" if you cant pause to rebuild them
Salty: We've always been on the short-list im afraid..but on the upside Spriest has never been more fun to play!
Acti: Well I might just have gone into it with the wrong mindset regarding haunt- all my Affy play has just been me fighting to hold onto that 100% uptime

Haunt is not meant to be 100% uptime. It is more of a minor DPS cooldown now.

[Rakaji]

I'm more of a Destro-lover than an Afflictionado, but I definitely like what they've done with the spec in MoP. It feels a lot more fluid and more of its own monster rather than "the spec that still uses Shadow Bolt, but has to watch more DoTs" like it had been.

That being said, I really wish Affliction wasn't "that" far ahead of Destruction in single-target situations. In cleave fights and AoE-heavy encounters, Destro has an advantage if played well, but still. I'd rather be able to enjoy my green fire in 5.2 more often

[Seezer]

For the longest time I've stood torn between Affliction and Destruction as my primary spec, until I was taught (read forced) to learn how to Affy I got by in the ICC period by spamming my fire like any other destro player- and until I tried Affy it was good. But once I -did- try playing as Affy I quickly forgot the limited-in-spell simplicity of Destro and sunk into my shadow-damage wonder from mid ICC all the way up until pandaland hit.

Now, at first, when the patch had only just hit I thought Affliction was the shit, a shiney new spell that filled the role of shadow bolt -and- drain life as dps and filler both? it seemed insane. But as time went on and I had a chance to feel out the spec a bit more I came to realize something. Four soul shards you need drain soul or a lucky proc to restore? Haunt requiring said shards to cast? and an appalling lack of automatic refreshes on corruption and the lucky UA? my beloved, flowing Affy had become sluggish and slow, chunky and infinity less fun to play while Destruction had been given a work-over and whole new mechanic with a resource that felt fun to use and made for some rapid-fire gameplay? Destruction was not only more fun to play- but now all of a sudden it had the numbers to back up a position as a viable spec. Nothing ever felt quite so fun as laying down a rain of fire, blowing all my embers on some FoB aoe before backing up to spam harvest life between refreshing my rain and AoE immolate. Whereas Affliction was stuck with a slow moving seed, yes the damage did seem higher, back to where it had once been- but with that came a sense of slowness, seeds no longer popped as briskly as before and while Malifc grasp is very much an awesome spell..it had started to feel like the reason my dots had copped some bland changes.

So my question is this...has anybody else found Affliction no longer as fun..or at least dependable to play in the wake of the changes to it and Destruction? I understand Affy still seems to hit harder, but this has less to do with numbers and more with my spec now feeling similar to how Demo once did. Highly dependent on procs and luck while still seeming clunky and somehow unwieldy

Nightfall procs enough. Using haunts wisely adds life to the spec instead of "Ok, time to refresh haunt.". And same thing with corruption. It was pretty much fire and forget for so long that it's refreshing that it's another thing we have to do manually. For a spec that has the potential that affliction has, there should be a higher skill cap. And that's how you can easily tell a good affliction lock from an average affliction lock. How wisely they use their haunts. It's more interactive, and much more fun imo. Add MG into the mix, and this is by far the most fun I've had with affliction. People use "clunky" for everything that doesn't suit them. And affliction is far from clunky.

---------- Post added 2012-12-27 at 12:32 AM ----------

Well from the sound of it I really have been in the minority here, perhaps its time to consult google and see just how Haunt is intended to be used now instead of just winging it. Being a moonguard native rp'er I've always tried to maintain a respectable level of dps. Affy still hits harder and if I can work this out...well it does fit better with the character as well

Track your intellect procs. Use haunt for your initial burst, when you are full on shards, and when you have intellect procs from jade spirit, trinkets, lightweave, etc. Trying to maintain 100% uptime is not the way it's supposed to be used. You're going to lose dps that way. Treat it as a cd. Not as part of your rotation.