[6.1] Affliction Warlock Guide

[Woz]

I really enjoy the hardcasting DOT class play style, reminds me of locking of old.
Ha I must be weird.

I too really enjoyed it. It just added a little something else to the spec that wasn't just one button snooze fest.

[Noxate]

I too really enjoyed it. It just added a little something else to the spec that wasn't just one button snooze fest.

I prefer it too. I think my only real issue with Aff right now is that SS and SB:SS seem like dead abilities and the single target rotation puts me to sleep. I liked this hard casting dot style when we had more dots.

[Santoisms]

I prefer it too. I think my only real issue with Aff right now is that SS and SB:SS seem like dead abilities and the single target rotation puts me to sleep. I liked this hard casting dot style when we had more dots.

This. I feel the rotation has abilities that are unusable.

[WarlockJack]

I prefer it too. I think my only real issue with Aff right now is that SS and SB:SS seem like dead abilities and the single target rotation puts me to sleep. I liked this hard casting dot style when we had more dots.

Yeah, I feel like they fixed things, but in doing so didn't really finish everything up. I think at least adding another dot or ability is a must. I've gone from IMO a rather complex dance of reapplying dots while watching Affdots to make sure my dots were always as powerful as they could be to doing pretty much nothing. I mean... keeping 3 dots up and applying haunt... That's a bit basic. And its not like keeping 4 dots up and applying haunt would be much better either. /shrug

[Noxate]

I think I'd almost like a 4th dot that throttles off of Drain Soul and remove the throttling on all our other dots. So Drain soul would only affect this 4th dot and not our others, maybe making it more of a single target application only. Idk just throwing stuff out there.

[Dragosh]

No ghost ticks at all would be better I think, they just have to bake the damages of these ticks into a 4th heavy hitting dot that can only be applied on one target... (yeah, Curse of Doom anyone?)

This way, we can still do damages if we can't channel (pvp) while not being op in multi target situations

[slickwilly]

Yeah, I feel like they fixed things, but in doing so didn't really finish everything up. I think at least adding another dot or ability is a must. I've gone from IMO a rather complex dance of reapplying dots while watching Affdots to make sure my dots were always as powerful as they could be to doing pretty much nothing. I mean... keeping 3 dots up and applying haunt... That's a bit basic. And its not like keeping 4 dots up and applying haunt would be much better either. /shrug

MoP affliction- cast dots with strong procs.
WoD afflcition- cast haunt with strong procs.

They both seem the same really ...

[Deleted]

MoP affliction- cast dots with strong procs.
WoD afflcition- cast haunt with strong procs.

They both seem the same really ...

Gaming dot snapshotting gave it some differentiation.
As is, using haunt during procs feels awfully like using chaos bolt during procs, and afflictions contracted destructions ailment of feeling like it's an ability or two short of a rotation.

I'd have been much happier if, instead of having soulburn: haunt as a lvl 100 talent, they gave us the old WOTLK / Cata style haunt back as baseline - no shard cost, cooldown based direct damage spell with a small heal afterwards, something else to cast that filled how empty the rotation feels / gave us a hardcast to deal with totems and the like and had a small heal to offset lifetaps. Miniscule depth, but lining up a lifeftap to coincide with a haunt heal used to feel nice.

Then have the current haunt as the soulburn variety, off the CD and consuming a shard to give the dot amplification variant of haunt that MOP brought.

The state of affliction depresses me to no end. WOTLK and Cata felt like they nailed it, baffles me where the drive to "fix" it came from considering blueposts suggested blizzard were happy with it themselves.

[Poeiras]

Werst, i agree with you. For a low rating PVP player like me, spreading pressure with SE was really good, but on a higher level was not that good indeed. I think that locks could kill when they had DS for execute skill, and not only on CC's windows.

[Werst]

Honestly the way the devs seem to feel about aff in pve in terms of its multi target the only good solution is to make dots tick 25% (maybe more) harder on player targets. I mean if chaosbolt hit too hard but you couldn't nerf it for pve reasons why not buff dots vs players as they are too weak by themselves needing both haunt and channeled DS to do any damage to even a single target.

Aff needs something to cast that isn't shadow. Give drain life a 3 sec ICD that does a small up front damage (hai totem killer) and make the channel interrupt immune. (not like there aren't still a plethora of melee stuns, disorients, etc) I mean if steady shot, cobra shot, etc all get casting immunity why not drain life? The cost alone when lifetapped back cuts it to nearly nil net healing, especially with anything with mortal strike on it. Otherwise there will never be a way to balance DL in pvp and its not like using DL in pve is any kind of gain. I'd take 15%-20% off drain soul's bonus and bake it into baseline dots, especially if we are forced to hardcast them now. Locks need some mobility in pvp OR able to go toe to toe with a melee not be constantly in shut down while they run a pve rotation on us. Its simple...if you can run like a frost mage and open cc/damage chances that's great. Locks don't even have a slow we don't have to glyph for and aff has no slow period. Since all melee has their gap closers and most have passive snares locks don't stand a chance. Buff DL to include the glyph or bake the glyph into the harvest life option. Make it uninterruptable and let the glyph grant mobile casting. That would give aff a low damage but quasi survival tool to use on movement fights and a way to fight back when we are inevitably wearing melee as a buttplug. Again if the pve healing is too much make it heal more when used vs player targets. PVE is balanced around the assumption of mostly freecasting drain soul when pvp that is the extreme minority of the time while everyone enjoys full uptime on us. Being an afflock shouldn't be an auto loss vs any team with melee (which will be most of them). Its too easy to faceroll an afflock as any melee with even the most skilled play gaining us nothing. You literally need 2'ish partners to constantly peel you. Not to mention its nigh impossible to keep a pet alive and they are entirely too much of our toolkit to be made of tissue paper and glass.

PVE aff is kind of boring. The way they have soulswap and SB:SS and no shard refill when killing a mob with DS its killed the fun. A 2x charge system for basic soulswap needs to happen with SB:SS costing a shard (not two). Our level 100 skill should buff nightfall chance while active so we have a steady supply of shards during the use. My testing I felt shard starved barely able to keep up the effect and even shard starving in a normal rotation. Sorry aff isn't tuned highly enough that haunt = chaosbolt and even so at 90 I generate embers faster than I generate shards. That and/or aff needs a random proc like old nightfall but it launches a shardless haunt instead.

A pure damage dealer wanting a spec that functions in pvp well enough to kill someone on their own when you outplay them shouldn't be out of line as a concept. Especially now lock CC is so heavily nerfed. Look at rogues....full CC toolkit, crazy mobile, crazy burst. Look at any other range toolkit in terms of snares, roots, non fear CC to get casting and thus CC/kill opportunities. If I am hardcasting dots with a single spell school around a plethora of stuns/CC and 2x interrupts that never DR they need to hurt more since the melee hits chunk my hp rather rapidly.

[Santoisms]

Definitely going to have to get used to multidotting the old fashion way, was practicing it on Protectors a few times this week.

[pvw1075]

Definitely going to have to get used to multidotting the old fashion way, was practicing it on Protectors a few times this week.

Doing that fight last week all I did was dot the entire time, don't think I used DS once.

- - - Updated - - -

So i just jumped on AMR for the first time in a bit and whoa. It wants me to go haste everything, this guide says mastery.
Mastery makes sense to me.

Also I just got the mythic warstaff (i have the normal mode one as well.)
But I see my nazgrim sword/warforged juggs (both mythic) Simming higher.

Now I are confused. Alas. lol

pps- WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CLOAK ENCHANT

[Deleted]

I'd have been much happier if, instead of having soulburn: haunt as a lvl 100 talent, they gave us the old WOTLK / Cata style haunt back as baseline - no shard cost, cooldown based direct damage spell with a small heal afterwards, something else to cast that filled how empty the rotation feels / gave us a hardcast to deal with totems and the like and had a small heal to offset lifetaps. Miniscule depth, but lining up a lifeftap to coincide with a haunt heal used to feel nice.

well soulburn:haunt is essentially just a more expensive and higher powered version of improved soul fire, so you do basically have wotlk/cata version of afflic to an extent, personally i hated wotlk/cata afflic with imp sf which is why i loathe the idea of SB:haunt.

[Turturin the Warlock]

MoP affliction- cast dots with strong procs.
WoD afflcition- cast haunt with strong procs.

They both seem the same really ...

Well, to be fair it's slightly more complex than that. not only do you want to be casting haunt, during the strong procs, but you also want to channel drain soul as much as possible. You want to avoid recasting dots during the proc while still not having dots fall off. My guess is (all other things roughly equal) affliction will prefer ICD or On-use trinkets as a result, since resource pooling and planning for max length dots and max channeling time is more doable with this type of trinket/proc.

[Deleted]

dont forget that you'd want to keep up SB:haunt as much as RNG-ly possible too.

[Deleted]

well soulburn:haunt is essentially just a more expensive and higher powered version of improved soul fire, so you do basically have wotlk/cata version of afflic to an extent, personally i hated wotlk/cata afflic with imp sf which is why i loathe the idea of SB:haunt.

Improved SF is the last thing I want back, I just want the core rotational ability of haunt, or someething. Affliction feels barren as all hell, something needs adding to the rotation, and it may as well cover the direct damage void that's left after FF's removal.

[xskarma]

I don't actually mind SB:H as much as I did Improved Soulfire, cause with SB:H you actually apply a Haunt which gives some direct game play, whereas Improved Soulfire was just a single cast that didn't do anything or change anything apart from the buff. It may be minor but it makes me not hate keeping the buff up.

[Werst]

I'm with xskarma re SB:H > ISF. In addition to the cast being far shorter and thus more functional. I just feel shard starved with aff live and really starved using SB:H at 100 even if I take SB:SS and SS off my bars lol. Maybe put a 100% chance for a single shard return when SB:H expires? I am not so worried about early trinkets as the pvp trinkets being int with int on proc/use can be quite effective ilvl for ilvl. Especially for people like me who spent all of dragon soul without even seeing a cunning of the cruel (did hspine with a DMC:volcano card) still its a comfort. ICD tracker on the proc pvp trinket, on use trinket when you really have everything up and are able to channel, everyone who does some 2's can get them.

Hint: the ones for honor at 550ilvl now are great for alts...

Aff is perhaps the most iconic warlock spec and it feels rather boring and less "warlocky" than ever. Read the class description about drains, curses, etc and it could be said affliction has strayed from its iconic feel pretty significantly. I've played my lock more hours without SS/SB:SS than with it so going back to hardcasting dots isn't that strange to me. Tidyplates and weak auras pretty much handle what I need to know. Not sure if I want to enable the tick noise each time DS ticks or not yet.

SB:H does need something if the spec itself isn't going to get a shard generation buff. Right now they feel rare as embers but are clearly nowhere near as powerful nor quick to generate. Maybe SB:H renews all dots to max duration with subsequent haunts during the buff also extending by 3'ish seconds or something? With snapshotting gone the dynamic update mechanic would work fine with that model and it would let you channel more when you need to.

Oh and for the love of sargeras shaved butthole why are we back to a high detonation threshold on SoC (lock dmg only)?!? Either make it detonate on impact or let us detonate on demand (minor glyph?) like mushrooms. Still a fan of random shardless haunt procs on a rppm with bad luck streak protection.

[Deleted]

I just feel shard starved with aff live and really starved using SB:H at 100 even if I take SB:SS and SS off my bars lol.

That's one of my biggest gripes with SB:Haunt, affliction already sometimes feels RNG enough with shard gain, let alone having SB:Haunt eating up even more.
Shards feel less common than embers and are certainly less reliable, yet you seem to be eating through them at an alarming rate, and when shardless the rotation is horribly bland.

I can't help but feel it desperately needs something added to the baseline casts, and the old haunt is the first thing that comes to mind, just a direct damage spell with a small heal tagged on the end for flavor, it gives us more to press than drain soul and fills the DD hole Fel Flame's removal has left.

Aff is perhaps the most iconic warlock spec and it feels rather boring and less "warlocky" than ever. Read the class description about drains, curses, etc and it could be said affliction has strayed from its iconic feel pretty significantly

"was".
Affliction lost it's place as iconic in my eyes the second they revamped what certainly WAS the most iconic spec, the one that didn't struggle for an identity like destruction and demonology often did in the past, and moved it closer to the only spec with any similarities, shadow.

Hell, we don't even HAVE a curse these days. Just let that sink in for a second.

[Werst]

I agree Nagassh on the "was" part for sure. The 0 curses thing (unless you count mages/decursers being able to yank down agony) I was using my badly geared priest alt (hey alchemist alts need love too!) to farm malygos for the 2nd mount and some other misc stuff and I was shocked how much shadow (even geared/setup for 5.4 disc) felt like what I liked about "old" affliction.

1. Dots hurt on their own without a dance of haunt, SB:Haunt (100), and constant DS channeling.
2. Plenty of procs to react to that all synergize well with other abilities
3. Nuke capability with MSpike/Mblast
4. Not having to lifetap myself to death just to friggen play
5. Gosac for affliction which is to say no derpy pet that is glass fragile and tied into nearly every aspect of my toon's toolkit.
6. Better functional mobility.

I'm not saying reroll or anything. I'm saying blizz knows how to do a dot class with a smidge of versatility. They could and should have done better with affliction. If I had to put a bucket list for affliction:

1. Either buff dots baseline and make shards/haunt feel really powerful vs just a minor buff we need to keep up to stay competitive or buff shard generation.
2. Affliction needs a proc to react to. A shardless perhaps instant haunt would do that nicely.
3. Drainlife on a separate spell school from shadow minimum, interrupt immune probably, glyph allows mobile use but no resource generation (demo mostly hurt by that), give it a small up front damage component on a 3 sec ICD (reduced by haste), castable when shadow is locked.
4. Dots tick 50% harder vs player targets so we can kill the afk and healerless
5. SB:Haunt resets dots to full duration on your most recently haunted target, subsequent regular haunts during the SB:H buff add 3 sec to dot durations.
6. Plain soulswap on a 2x charge system similar to HoG/CW and conflag.
7. SB:SS costs 1 shard
8. Killing something with drain soul ticking on it refunds all shards (why did this go away? at least for regular non raid mobs...)
9. UA slows targets 50% when glyph'd in addition to its existing effect. (aff needs SOME type of slow c'mon)
10. SoC detonates on impact, ditto with SB:SoC
*All: burning rush also prevents you from being snared below 70% as a passive.
*Glyph of 10% passive damage redux just baseline. Let us choose between different on use options for our unending resolve. Passive: each time you are shadow locked, stunned, struck, or CC'd the cooldown of UR is reduced by 1 second. With button bloat gone we could use some decision making buttons to press.

That would make the spec more fun, more functional, and shouldn't do to much to overall numbers. Its nothing that nearly every other class doesn't already have a better version of if not a vastly superior counter.