WoD Beta Affliction Discussion

[Baconeggcheese]

I personally don't care either way.

I can understand the playstyle preference in that it feels different... but for instance in preaches video he's basically just going on about how its "boring" to spam a channeled spell as opposed to spamming a hard cast. Both of which would be the same mindlessly jamming one button.

hence "The shadowbolt procs of the past though, totally different thing and something like that would be welcome."

[Werst]

Haunt procs make much more sense for present day. Still say SB:SS back to 1 shard, SS on a charge timer like HoG/Conflag. Spriests are actually turning more into what afflocks used to be. With all the appearance changing toys in the game visual is pretty far down my list.

[xskarma]

Meh. I'm one of the ones that welcomed MG with open arms. A channel filler like Drain Soul always felt "right" to me.

Confusing game play feel with gameplay technicalities like a Shadow bolt instant cast proc is useless though. Game play wise the channel filler never became what we hoped because they tacked on the fact that it now boosted your dots. No one asked for that or wanted that. It was just a Multidot nerf they brought in to keep Affliction in check. What people want with Shadowbolt back is usually the fact that we had stronger dots then, and not so much SB. Tbh, if nerfing our dots was a design goal (and it was), then they would have done exactly the same (and KEEP it the same right now in WoD) as when they would have kept Shadowbolt.

Getting back Shadowbolt would not accomplish what most people want.

[blackblade]

from a gameplay perspective, shadowbolt never made sense for a spec that revolves around DoTs atleast not to me.

Old Shadowbolt (Circa: TBC) for affliction (from a gameplay perspective) was more about the maitenence buff and filler dps than having a direct damage nuke (Improved shadowbolt talent added a debuff which increased shadow damage taken from all sources by 10%), so the concept was sb->dot-dot-dot-sb->repeat, getting the dots on while keeping imp. sb on the target.

Haunt kind of fills that role today, in terms of a maitenence buff, the draw being is that it's def not a 100% uptime thing like imp sb was.

IMO, Shadowbolt is probably not the right fix. Having a CD to recover shards or a higher shard generation will likely vastly improve affliction's "feel", though that might come with a nerf to Haunt.


I think, looking at the bigger picture, numbers are close to where the devs want them, but there's a lot of room to make things more fluid post-button-squish -- the problem is that none of the devs are really looking at "this feels like ass" style feedback at all, so we're likely going to go through a patch of "clunky rotations" before they clue in that there's some QoL and button-fluidity issues that need to be looked at.

[Baconeggcheese]

@skarma: If they really wanted to do that though they could have simply reduced the % from MG / DS to match what shadowbolt accounted for.

Which they did a little in 5.4, and then undid in the beta bringing DS back up to 40%.

Could very easily just bring DS down to say... 20 or 15% or some such number and bake that damage back into the dots.

I have to assume its intentional that they don't want affs dots being strong.

[evertonbelmontt]

I miss Haunt healing myself. It was like feeding on a soul.
SB:H should give us that too :P

[Deleted]

Meh. I'm one of the ones that welcomed MG with open arms. A channel filler like Drain Soul always felt "right" to me.

What people want with Shadowbolt back is usually the fact that we had stronger dots then, and not so much SB..

this.
Stronger, e.g decent dots.
For pvp & pve.

I don't see how retard SBSS can ever be balanced - and it never was - , except perhaps. if the add count is more or less always the same. It cost us decent dot dmg.

[Santoisms]

Haunt procs make much more sense for present day. Still say SB:SS back to 1 shard, SS on a charge timer like HoG/Conflag. Spriests are actually turning more into what afflocks used to be. With all the appearance changing toys in the game visual is pretty far down my list.

Affliction needs something like this in terms of gameplay, playing the spec on beta is mind-numbing due to ONE filler and dots. Keep SB:Haunt up and it also relies heavily on RNG from Shards. They also need to give us either 1 or 2 more shards or increase Nightfall, the spec is broken on cleave... and not in a good way.

[Werst]

A free/no shard cost (instant please) haunt proc would be nice supplement to shard regen. I always liked aff better with a channeled filler. Shadow embrace is just a throttle of a bygone era that would just cause mechanical ramp up problems for us today. I think the shard generation from corruption ticks should have a diminishing return system. IE the second corruption applied has half the chance of the most recently applied with the third corruption having 1/4 the chance. That would help a bit without going over the top. I'd move about 10-20% more damage into the dots themselves, especially if we are to be less mobile. For pvp sake we need to have pressure and still have a chance at killing someone ourselves who isn't afk.

[Cempa]

Shadowbolt has always been on of the -if not the- most fun ability to cast as a Warlock. The sound, look and feel are just amazing and I used it as Affliction as a filler which was awesome! Nightfall procs making the next SB instant was crazy fun! TBH I hate the shard system we have in place today, it sucks so bad -by that I mean it reduces fun for me. Did I like the old manual shard collecting mechanic, well I did not mind it....

I hate when 'technical' design supersedes 'fun' design...

In any case the drain feel was removed from Affliction a long time ago...no one uses Drain Life any more and Drain Mana was axed a while ago..

I got news for you Blizzard, just because you call it 'Drain' Soul does NOT mean players 'feel' and 'immerse' into it as a drain...Drain to players in Life+Mana!

Honestly, bring back Siphon Life and buff Life Drain and Nightfall-->SB....

But I guess moving towards homogeneous classes is what they want...

[Werst]

From a min/max standpoint you want a channeled filler > casted spell when mobility is tightened down. You at least get partial ticks versus losing the whole time spent casting a longer cast time nuke. (who hasn't had poo flung at them when BBoY is peaking...) What I feel DL needs is a way to be more reliable so it can be balanced better pve and pvp. Treating it like hunter steady/cobra shot (mobile casting and uninterruptable) for something that has low damage (I'd trade dmg for healing). That or at least give us casting protection on it or put it in another spell school. I think a instant random shardless haunt proc would be "fun" and add some spice to the aff rotation. The funny thing is the curses description....ooops no longer in the game. Our one remaining drain is teetering on the edge of useless. Safe to say we are either off the original vision for the class significantly or they need to update their class descriptions.

[Baconeggcheese]

I hate when 'technical' design supersedes 'fun' design...

Fun is subjective... you change it from what it is currently and someone else will come into the forum saying how much fun they thought it was and how they should change it back and how they hate how blizzard supersedes fun for reasons...

[xskarma]

The ever awesome Cabana wrote a 6.0 guide for Affliction, feel free to check it out and get the discussion about stats, talents, gear and priorities underway there.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Warlock-Guide

[Baconeggcheese]

Opened the link and immediately liked where he was going with that.

[Santoisms]

Opened the link and immediately liked where he was going with that.

LOL. Me being a huge wrestling fan I love the WWE/WWF references on the guide.

[Deleted]

Meh. I'm one of the ones that welcomed MG with open arms. A channel filler like Drain Soul always felt "right" to me.

One of my main gripes is that giving us channeled filler encroached far too much on Drain Soul's ground, which has culminated in it effectively being cut, along with our execute phase.

There used to be a tangible difference between your filler and execute, you "GOT" to use Drain Soul in the execute phase and it felt different to your SB spamming. The difference between pressing mortal strike and execute or explosive shot and kill shot isn't any different than hammering a keybind, but I'd be surprised if people didn't consider it something "fun" about the specs that have them.

That was part of affliction that I absolutely adored, the long fights where you'd start off slow and creep up the meters and finish it off hitting like a truck, and after the SS system revamp, generating soulshards out the wazoo.

With MG and DS not being different enough to remain seperate, we've now got a BS execute phase that is essentially nothing more but arbitrarily rolling part of our net damage into the last 20% of the fight with absolutely zero reason behind it other than to presumably appease warlocks that might complain if the execute phase was removed, despite that already being the case mechanically.

While I can respect people wanting channeled filler, chalking it up to "most people just wanted strong dots" seems to ignore some pretty decent gameplay flavor, if not complexity, that SB brought, and that's without mentioning the debuff maintenance or the tactile differences in the rhythmic cast of a SB that MG has just never gave me with it's constant beam and subtle ticks.

I was eagerly awaiting WOD's launch signalling them moving affliction back towards what it was in Cata and WOTLK, depressing to see the complete opposite. I think MOP has been the first time that affliction hasn't been my go-to spec, hell, it's not even my dual spec anymore and WOD is even further from what I like.

[Werst]

When aff had 2x channeled fillers in MoP the need for drain soul vs shadowbolt kind of went away for me personally. You were still channeling just a different color so I can understand combining them. Losing fel flame (or any non shadow school spell) is rough on affliction, especially in pvp, especially since you can't channel or dot a totem and forcing wands on the populace seems...odd to say the least.

The problem with "fun" skillfap things like shadow embrace stacks is either we get obscene ramp up which is a function problem min/max in today's fights or we are tuned around not having it then are OP when we do which promptly gets everything nerfed. That is why I don't like it. Haunt already does that to some extent but with more function mechanics.

As for the stronger dots debate...I think we need them in pvp or have them tick harder vs player targets which is just the inverse of how chaosbolt works on live. Dots alone are still too easily healed through and with aff mobility and single spell school you just aren't going to get to hardcast much. If you can't really fight back with melee in your face (trust me they will be there en masse) and you only have dots on target for damage while the melee chunks your HP...you need something better but with the caveat it can't muck with pve too hard. Putting DL in a non shadow school would be a minimum, making it mobile baseline with KJC talented is another, or making it uninterruptable but stationary would also work so you could finally balance its numbers. It would allow for tactical play (baiting interrupts so you can cast shadow spells) or locks to help their healers in early mana starved encounters.

[Santoisms]

Affliction suffers from having a Level 100 talent which is a Shard spender, when we still only have 4 shards. Give us the WW treatment and give us 1 or 2 max shards.

[Deleted]

When aff had 2x channeled fillers in MoP the need for drain soul vs shadowbolt kind of went away for me personally. You were still channeling just a different color so I can understand combining them.

I agree 100%, having both IS pointless - what I don't agree with is the path blizzard took to get us into this situation and the solution they're going with.

My problem is blizzard made this "problem" of having two essentially identical spells that they're "fixing" in WOD by combining them by replacing SB with MG in the first place. There was nothing wrong with Shadowbolt, it was a great, iconic spell that had been a staple for ages. What reason was there for removing it, spec identity? The only other spec that uses it is Demonology now and even then it's only a portion of it's rotation inbetween soulfires and meta - I don't think for a second that Shadowbolt was detrimental to afflictions spec identity, if anything, giving us MG hurt afflictions spec identity by making it closer resemble a shadowpriest, the only other dot class had channeled filler.

It's a problem that had no reason to exist, and is being fixed by chopping something (resulting in a pretty bland filler from 100>0%) rather than reverting to the older system.

[Deleted]

Does anyone know if the drain soul corruption ticks can proc nightfall ?