Has anybody else found Affliction no longer Fun?

[rap87]

Had been a warlock for about 3 or 4 raiding tiers in row, I loved it. My fav spec was Affliction in Cata with Bane of Doom or Agony for dual targets and Haunt on CD, later in Cata I went Demo and liked them both equally...Mastery Snapshotting was fun as hell though.

I love the new Demo...but it isn't on par with Affliction and Affliction is meh more spammy and not as smooth as it used to be imo, good time go back to my DK, loving DW Frost and Blood Dk as OS.

[Iry]

The lack of viable refreshes makes Affliction rather irritating to play, and I cannot find any really valid reason for Corruption and Unstable Affliction to be two separate spells. Agony has a different mechanic so it has a reason to be separate, but Corruption and Unstable Affliction could be merged into one spell just to cut down on irrelevant GCDs.

[Sabsy]

yep same here

out of all the specs, surprisingly i find destro the most fun... i thought it would be the other way around >.>

demo is fun but having a pet again after playing petless for a while is... well... not as much fun lol

tho i will admit demo is MUCH better than it was in cata

[Gurushock]

I always played affliction... Played it from classic up tell about 2 weeks ago. I now play Destro/Demo(atm destro main)

Not sure why, but yeah it kinda just hit me that I wasn't having as much fun with the spec. I'm sure I'll play it again at some point tho

[Zoldor]

Have to admit, played lock since late vanilla, and I love Affliction the most. Like other said I feel it to be the most warlockish and the best in vision for the spec. Demo has had some high points and same with destro, but I've always felt affliction to be the one for me. Even now I like it, I'm interested to see the 5.2 soul leech change go into effect. To me affliction has been the same since wrath or well since the end of SB spam and basically the spam specs of BC.

May just be burned out on it. Mix it up and come back to it.

[-aiko-]

I find it fun to play, perhaps the most fun of all the specs, but my favorite spec is Destruction. Visually I find it a lot more...epic, and I really like big numbers. It's cool to see all the numbers flying as Affliction but 500k Chaos Bolts just make me feel all giddy.

[Last Starfighter]

The lack of viable refreshes makes Affliction rather irritating to play, and I cannot find any really valid reason for Corruption and Unstable Affliction to be two separate spells. Agony has a different mechanic so it has a reason to be separate, but Corruption and Unstable Affliction could be merged into one spell just to cut down on irrelevant GCDs.

You can't find a viable reason for Corruption and UA to be two separate spells? Maybe because they are two separate spells. Having mind numbing refreshers and 2 dots to worry about is going in the absolute wrong direction. First off, it's smooth. If you find it irritating to track 3 dots, then a dot spec probably isn't what you want to be playing. And GCD's aren't "irrelevant". They're there for a reason. If you want mind numbing, play destro. Affliction is ez mode enough as it is. We have an 3 dots (which can be applied instantly when needed) and a cd with a filler. The toughest part of the spec is knowing the best time to use your haunts. And that isn't tough either.

[kail]

I missed when Afflic used to manage 5 dots, oh the fun

Not sure why they canned SiLi, the whole idea of the spell was very warlocky.

[Deleted]

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.

Indeed i completely agree with this. Since i've been playing my warlock since vanilla this is the first time i can interchange between specs with:

1. a good variation of enjoyement between all 3 specs
2. change my spec depending on what boss im fighting to get better dps/utilty

Although im not really playing destro much atm, I have rarely played demo in the past and i love the spec now. It's dynamic and fun with demo stance. Having a real blast in raiding with my lock atm.

I do however agree with the soul shard mechanics/ dot refreshments. I don't mind haunt using soul shards, but as it's so important to have haunt up time as much as you possibly can to maintain high dps, i feel the soul shard mechanic is too random really. But players only feel that way because when they don't have the shards they can see there dps slip away, even with good shard management some fights are just a pain to get 100% up time without using DS. Watching your dps fall because of turn based RNG, is not fun lol.....

[Cwimge]

So what I've taken from this and people's experiences is that Affliction has undergone some small tweaks. Changes other then the ones I immediately picked up on- I'm going to need something to help keep track of the procs that will let me make the most out of Haunt..but one small, final question: int proc based haunt, how many possible procs are needed to make it viable?

Also..what seems to be the average gear level? all of my experiences where gained while still out in the world doing heroics in preparation for LFR. Was this just a case of Destro preforming "better" at lower levels of gear or was my failing to understand the Affy changes hamstringing my enjoyment/dps that much?

[Strafer]

Been Affliction since TBC. Love it. Demo as second spec.