[5.4] question Affliction

[Deleted]

Hai fellow Locks,

simple question; and I hope simple answer.
Is affliction getting buffed or nerfed in 5.4? I assuemed buffed however.. took some time reading the patchnotes last night and I saw an aweful lot "xx% less" damage followed by "not energising shards" etc.

Or is it, as always, to soon to tell?

I hope ppl who did some theorycrafting (or tried the PTR more extensively) can provide me with an answer,

thx
cheers
Eminus

[Numidia]

The shards nerf with ds only affects when you kill player pets or guardians. Multi dotting will be buffed because dots were, and we'll be less dependent on using mg/ds, which allows us to take talents other than kjc. The number pass to balance the specs has yet to happen, so it could go either way.

[Deleted]

If we are talking purely changes to the affliction spec, buffed. The extra damage on dots + haunt plus the increased nightfall outweighs the nerf to our channels slightly. Beside that, the changes to our level 90 talents, combined with the buff to fel flame, are a noticable buff.

However, RPPM changes nerf us like they nerf every spec in the game. They might hit us extra hard though, because snapshotting procs on our dots is an integral part of our spec, more so than others. We also suffer from the removal of trinkets scaling with haste, though mastery is looking very strong with the shift in damage plus the amp trinket.

Overall, definitely buffed so far. The final balance is not close to complete though, so everything can change.