[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Woz]

Since Beta is officially upon us this thread will be changed slightly from the "pre-Beta" iteration to a full blown Beta thread. I'll include a few shortcut links to things relevant to Beta:

General Talent Calculator

PvP Talent Calculator

Artifact Talent Tree

Item Sets
Legacy of Azj'Aqir
Vestments of the Black Harvest

Legendaries (ooo shiny):
Pillars of the Dark Portal
Sin'dorei Spite
Sephuz's Secret
Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus

Hood of Eternal Disdain
Power Cord of Lethtendris
Streten's Sleepless Shackles
Sacrolash's Dark Strike

Legendaries NOT available yet:
Fatebender
Timeshifters
Norgannon's Foresight




Once the datamining is over and/or beta actually comes out with all the current abilities and spells I'll update the OP. Currently there is a lot of information out there for all the specs, but sort of in jumbled order which can be found here: http://www.wowhead.com/news=250045/l...hanges#warlock

Zelk also made a compiled list of Affliction changes which can be found here on Page 6.

Affliction

Affliction warlocks are masters of shadow-touched powers, but unlike shadow priests—deadliest when pushed to the brink of insanity—these warlocks delight in using fel forces to cause intense pain and suffering in others. They revel in corrupting minds and agonizing souls, leaving enemies in a state of torment that would see them undone in due time. Even the most battle-hardened warriors can be deceived, landing blow after blow against the warlock, only to succumb to their suffering as their very vitality is siphoned away by the dark spellcaster.

"These warlocks delight in using fel forces to cause intense pain and suffering in others"

Gameplay
Affliction Warlocks’ gameplay has always aligned well with their character, but in terms of abilities, we want to avoid the feeling that DoTs are amplifiers for your channeled single-target damage. Applying spells that do damage over time is very core to Affliction, so we want to reinforce these spells as the primary source of damage, with other “filler” spells feeling more secondary. We’re adjusting the Affliction rotation so that DoTs are stronger, and your focus is more on figuring out how best to juggle those DoTs to maximize damage output.

Mechanically, we’re altering how Soul Shards are generated and spent, in part to better deliver on the more DoT-driven damage. Soul Shards are now generated by each Agony you have up on your targets, instead of only by your most recent Corruption cast, to favor placing DoTs on several targets rapidly (multi-dotting). You’ll then spend Soul Shards on an extremely strong DoT in Unstable Affliction, reinforcing the focus on DoTs.

Finally, in keeping with the Affliction theme, Drain Life serves as the main filler spell, instead of Malefic Grasp or Drain Soul. This better matches the Affliction identity because its damage stays secondary to the DoTs, which should be the primary focus of damage, instead of dwarfing them. It also adds significant self-healing, further playing to the Affliction motif.

To give you an idea of the Affliction Warlock in action, here’s a basic look at their core combat abilities:

• Corruption
  
  • 3% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant
  • Corrupts the target, causing moderate Shadow damage over 14 sec.
• Agony
  
  • 3% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant
  • Inflicts increasing agony on the target, causing up to a huge amount of Shadow damage over 18 sec. Damage starts low and increases over the duration. Refreshing Agony maintains its current damage level.
  • When Agony deals damage, you have a chance to regain a Soul Shard.
• Unstable Affliction
  
  • 1 Soul Shard, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast
  • An especially insidious affliction that deals strong Shadow damage over 8 sec.
  • If the target dies, the Soul Shard will be refunded.
  • If Unstable Affliction is dispelled, the dispeller suffers strong Shadow damage and is silenced for 4 sec.
• Drain Life
  
  • 3% Mana, plus 4,800 per sec, 40 yd range, Channeled
  • Drains life from the target, causing moderate shadow damage and restoring 18% of the caster’s health over 6 sec.
  • Drain Life’s damage is increased by 50% for each of your Corruption, Agony, and Unstable Affliction effects on the target.
• Mastery: Potent Afflictions
  
  • Increases the damage of Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction by 62.5% (with Mastery from typical gear).

Additionally, to provide a glimpse at how some talents may build upon this, here’s one example of an Affliction-specific talent:

• Contagion
  
  • Passive
  • After you cast Unstable Affliction, you can cast a second one for free, within 3 seconds.

Affliction Tweets

Is Affliction's Haunt ability gone? Also I'd like to hear more about Affli/Destro AoE.
Haunt is returning as a talent, with a slightly different design. Stay tuned for details. (WarcraftDevs)

Warlocks look great. Concerns for spec loyalty being a goal tho. It will take some AOE talents for AFF to not get overshadowed.
There's a particularly interesting talent that makes Seed of Corruption apply as an AoE, but cost a soul shard. Pop pop pop! (WarcraftDevs)

stuns they already had... So how effective is Drain Life really going to be,too much of a PvP liability
We're very conscious of this concern. The good thing is that we can add customization and tuning via Legion PvP systems. (WarcraftDevs)

is anything being done to address affliction warlocks aoe dps issues?
Yes. Multidotting will be strong again, and Seed will be strong, especially with a talent that allows AoE application of Seed.(WarcraftDevs)

How will Soul Swap work in Legion, it's really bad in WoD. Perhaps no cost with a CD ??
Soul Swap will not be returning. However, there's a new talent, Soul Effigy, that may interest you...(WarcraftDevs)

So will aff/destro locks have any form of burst cooldowns other than summon Doomguard/Infernal since dark soul is gone?
There are a few talents that improve burst, and the Doomguard/Infernal are being buffed to deal significantly more damage. (WarcraftDevs)

General

How many soul shards do each of the Warlock specs have and are there ways to regen them out of combat?
Maximum of 5 for all specs. 1 regens out of combat. There are other sources, including out of combat, in talents. (WarcraftDevs)

I would really like some clarification of this phrase: "and causing some demons to be favored based on the Warlock’s spec."
When all pets' damage was equal, everyone used an Imp. In Legion, each spec will slightly favor one demon for raw DPS.
Affliction slightly favors Felhunters. Demonology favors Felguards, and Destruction favors Imps. Others offer strong utility. (WarcraftDevs)

I like everything I see. Will we still keep our green fire?
Green Fire is staying. Don't worry. (WarcraftDevs)

How do Warlocks regen Mana in Legion? Life Tap? Stuff like the initial Affliction Artifact Talent? Both?
Yes, all Warlocks will use Life Tap in Legion. (WarcraftDevs)

I'm curious why some times class consistency is good (soul shards) and other times its not (holy power)?
Great question! It's important that the resource itself has strong fantasy, and that it also brings strong gameplay. (WarcraftDevs)

Does Dark Soul still exist for Warlocks in Legion?
No. Instead, Doomguards and Infernals will be on much shorter cooldowns, and possibly stronger, to fulfill the same role. (WarcraftDevs)

I keep hearing a lot about executes being mostly removed outside of Warriors. Will Doomguard's Doom Bolt still have execute?
Still evaluating. We're most sensitive to abilities which are only usable at low target health. Doom Bolt is different. (WarcraftDevs)

Artifact Weapon

Ulthalesh, The Deadwind Harvester

The first necrolyte to walk the world of Azeroth, Satiel, was given this scythe by the titan Sargeras himself. It grows in power as it draws souls from its victims. The Harvester earned its name as Satiel methodically drained all life from the hapless inhabitants of Deadwind Pass, creating a potent magical nexus there in the process. Hunting down Satiel, the Guardian of Tirisfal turned the scythe on her, sending her soul to join those of her victims. Eventually the Dark Riders recovered the weapon and secreted it beneath the tower of Karazhan.

Artifact Skins



Artifact Traits

• Each artifact trait tree starts at a specific position, the thick gold border trait.
• After selecting that trait, you can select any of the ones directly connected to it.
• For most classes, there are 3 Major Traits that are 4-5 deep in the trait tree. These are capped at Rank 1.
• The Minor Traits in the rest of the tree are capped to 3 by default.
• The cap on traits can be increase by up to 2 using relics.
• The current trait calculator doesn't restrict what traits you can select or support relics. This is coming in a future update.

• Initial Trait
  
  • Souls of the Damned (Rank 1) - Killing enemies empowers the Deadwind Harvester, increasing your shadow damage by 0% and doubling the power of all passive effects of the Harvester.
    Tormented Souls periodically attempt to escape the Harvester - killing them refunds 10% mana.
• Major Traits
  
  • Soul Flame (Rank 1) - When you kill a target, its soul bursts into flames, dealing Shadowflame damage to everything around it.
    
  • Wrath of Consumption (Rank 1) - Killing an enemy causes your damage over time effects to deal 0% more damage. This ability stacks up to 5 times.
    
  • Harvester of Souls (Rank 1) - Your Drain spells have a chance to trigger on all targets afflicted by your Corruption for 3 sec.
    
  • Reap Soul (Rank 1) - Deals 0 Shadow damage every 5 sec for 42 sec. Each time Reap Soul deals damage, it increases in damage frequency by 6.66%.
• Minor Traits
  
  • Inimitable Agony (Rank 3) - Increases the damage of your Agony by 10%.
    
  • Hideous Corruption (Rank 3) - Increases the damage of your Corruption by 10%.
    
  • Drained to a Husk (Rank 3) - Increases the damage of your Drains by 10%.
    
  • Inherently Unstable (Rank 3) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Unstable Affliction by 10%.
    
  • Seeds of Doom (Rank 3) - Increases the detonation damage of your Seed of Corruption by 20%.
    
  • Perdition (Rank 3) - Increases the critical damage of your Agony, Corruption, Drain, and Unstable Affliction by 13%.
    
  • Shadowy Incantations (Rank 3) - Increases your Shadow damage dealt by 10%.
    
  • Mere Flesh (Rank 3) - Reduces damage you take by 10%.
    
  • Long Dark Night of the Soul (Rank 3) - Increases the healing of your Drain spells by 40%.
    
  • Sweet Souls (Rank 1) - Your Healthstone fully heals you. Any party member using a Healthstone also heals you for the amount they were healed.
    
  • Fatal Echoes (Rank 1) - When your Unstable Affliction expires, it has a 25% chance to reapply itself.
    
  • Compound Interest (Rank 1) - Each Agony and Corruption you cast increases the damage of your next Unstable Affliction by 10%.

Artifact Trait Tree

^CLICKY

Talent Tree


^CLICKY

[Schirmy]

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...71422105796608

Add that to the OP.

[uhhwateva]

So Haunt + Corruption + Agony + Unstable Affliction + Unleash The Harvest... #PowerToTheDots

[Woz]

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...71422105796608

Add that to the OP.

It's in the OP already! On that note - if you see something Twitter, Reddit, etc that isn't in the post (still adding images from Blizzcon Panels) please post it and it'll get added.

[Schirmy]

I get the feeling talents will matter more than ever. We could see huge amounts of customization purely on talent choices.

[Cathbadh]

I could take or leave these changes. They're fine I suppose. Like Drain Life being a filler. I do want to know about Soul Swap in Legion though.

[Kirroth]

Overall I really like the changes. This is the first time I've been tempted to go Afflic since it was my main spec back in Wrath. No too much juggling finicky buffs/debuffs like in Cata, no more overemphasis on channeling with weak ass DoTs and a glacial ramp time like the last couple expansions. This is getting back to what made me love Afflic, where I pile a stack of deadly DoTs and then Drain Life to withstand their punishment till they fall over dead.

Well, it's suggesting it might be getting back to that. All judgments reserved till the Beta when we get the full list of what the talents and artifact add to the picture, since it seems to be rather a lot.

[Kalmakk]

I like the direction Affliction seems to be headed. It's hard to get a full grasp on the gameplay when Artifact traits and talents arent all available yet, so I kinda feel like discussion on rotations isn't going to be productive until beta. Having said that, the themes they've outlined in the changes to being more dot heavy and with fewer modifier fillers, and less ramp up time, seems great. Most likely going to maintain Affliction and Demo as my main specs. I don't see any right minded player looking at the Destro RNG and thinking that sounds fun.

[Schirmy]

I like the direction Affliction seems to be headed. It's hard to get a full grasp on the gameplay when Artifact traits and talents arent all available yet, so I kinda feel like discussion on rotations isn't going to be productive until beta. Having said that, the themes they've outlined in the changes to being more dot heavy and with fewer modifier fillers, and less ramp up time, seems great. Most likely going to maintain Affliction and Demo as my main specs. I don't see any right minded player looking at the Destro RNG and thinking that sounds fun.

Surely the mastery will be changed. Apparently, according to Twitter, your spells are going to be fast casts again like wrath so the mastery procs often. Still shitty though.

[Kalmakk]

Surely the mastery will be changed. Apparently, according to Twitter, your spells are going to be fast casts again like wrath so the mastery procs often. Still shitty though.

It's not so much the mastery RNG that concerns me, but the Immolate Soul Shard generation method. But it's a digression, I'll leave it for the destro thread.

I'm hopeful that my pet theory about Souls of the Damned holds water in practice. I like the idea of using the escaping souls as resource batteries by putting agony on them all to feed Soul Shards into your single target rotation. I expect in multi target fights they'll largely go untouched.

[Deleted]

I was cautiously optimistic for the first time since MOP when reading some of the things devs had been saying (like them liking lifetaps interactions, wanting to axe MG).

Not sure I like the end result.
Drain Soul was the one drain that should never be cut, they seemed aware of this enough to make it our core filler over MG (albeit only in name), sad to see it look like it's dead now. Drain life coming back as filler isn't terrible, but I was hoping for Shadowbolt finally coming home, the transition from hardcast to hard ticking DS execute was great - looks like they've finally killed off our execute, which at least for me, was part of this Core Class Fantasy buzzword they keep throwing around.

Thematically I think they have their head in the right place, the health drains are back, dots are strong and they seem to have finally stopped trying to limit afflictions multidotting and now encourage it. That's great, let classes flourish in their niche.
Unfortunately I'm not a fan of their mechanical approach to the class design - they seem to be making the specs atrociously simple across the board, then you have to "opt in" to having more than a sad few buttons on your bars.

It sounds like it could be nice on paper, but will it? How often will choices be hard to make because something that a player has liked for years has been cut from the base and made into a talent like Haunt? That'll rapidly reduce the amount of talents that are legitimate choices if that one was core to what a player felt was affliction. If Syphon Life for example comes back as a talent, can I really, with all my nostalgia baggage over things like 5-dot naxx resist that?

Also sceptical about them even being able to make the actives legitimate choices. When put in a situation where you have to choose active vs passive, passives often end up winning out since they don't require any input - I worry we'll end up in situations where passives are just the way to go regardless of what you want because they're optimal when you step toes into the dance dance revolution encounters.

[Maleific]

-snip-

From Warcraftdevs: "Warriors are intended to be the kings of the Execute mechanic, and others had crept too far into that territory."

Sad panda.

[Bullarkie]

Well I think most of us know why dot damage is tied to UA and drain soul. I don't see them getting rid of this mechanic due to us doing insane damage on cleave fights again. I think we might see strong single target dots with low ramp up AND good cleave via talents.

I'm looking forward to playing beta.

[infernity]

Aff sounds great imo. I like the idea of strong dots again. Just gonna sit here and hope the aoe isn't too wank

[Akakishin]

+
Drain life being filler. powerful selfheal + the fact that our dots power isn't tied to our filler is a great step
Strong dots, yes finally.
Encouraging ppl to multidot is awesome. Some free UAs is a good decision.
Mastery, I guess!?

-
maybe not a negative point but Im really concerned about our execution spell.
Shards are still tied to our dps ability which I don't like. they should be utility resource. No1 is going to spend shards for anything else rather than dps abilities.
---
P.s:
" Haunt is returning as a talent, with a slightly different design. Stay tuned for details. (WarcraftDevs)"
So, basically when they said hundreds of new talents, they meant "already basic abilities" shifted to talents?

[Elise the Seeker]

Looks like the spec that caused me to main warlock is back in action!
Miranda might be retiring, and elise may be coming back.

[Kirroth]

maybe not a negative point but Im really concerned about our execution spell.

Most likely there isn't one. There's was a Dev Tweet today: "Warriors are intended to be the kings of the Execute mechanic, and others had crept too far into that territory." This was in response to Ret Paladins asking about their own execute spell being removed. If you look at other specs and classes it's the case pretty much across the board that execute mechanics are gone.

[Akakishin]

Most likely there isn't one. There's was a Dev Tweet today: "Warriors are intended to be the kings of the Execute mechanic, and others had crept too far into that territory." This was in response to Ret Paladins asking about their own execute spell being removed. If you look at other specs and classes it's the case pretty much across the board that execute mechanics are gone.

If thats the case, it means shadowburn's talent version won't have execute mechanic as well or a weird mechanic that activates in execute phase but is not spamable with shards continuously.
---
On a side note I'd really like to see shadowbite as the way it was in wrath. Increased damage per dots you have.

[BadTastingPudding]

Do you guys think we are expected to have 100% uptime on UA in a single target enounter/would current nightfall % on agony be enough to support that? I mean taking into account that we'll also probably have some other form of shard spender to weave in.




"We're experimenting with ways to show some debuffs (such as DoTs) on nameplates. Beta feedback will be invaluable!" - @WarcraftDevs

I hope they do this, plate addons always seem to break on me.

[Deleted]

If thats the case, it means shadowburn's talent version won't have execute mechanic as well or a weird mechanic that activates in execute phase but is not spamable with shards continuously.
---
On a side note I'd really like to see shadowbite as the way it was in wrath. Increased damage per dots you have.

Maybe SB will be like BC, you can cast it from 100% to 0% on the mob but only for the KB you'll receive some shard ore something else.