[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Sarkol]

Oh, i didn't realise the Effigy was open to aoe damage/Cleave to be honest. I guess i assumed it was just a single target thing.

[Darkheart]

Oh, i didn't realise the Effigy was open to aoe damage/Cleave to be honest. I guess i assumed it was just a single target thing.

Also if you are specced GoSaC, cleave damage will hit effigy and boss. GoSaC is not to be underestimated for cleave damage, whether you use effigy or not.

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So its look like soul flame should be the first pick on the tree?

I have been wondering about that myself too.

It is either

1) Reap Soul > Compounding Horror > Soul Flame > Wrath of Consumption (16 points)

or

2) Reap Soul > Compounding Horror > Wrath of Consumption > Soul Flame (20 points)

Bear in mind that the first 13 points of the artifact are the quickest to get - you have them by the time you get to level 110. If you go the second path, you will have Wrath of Consumption at 13 points exactly. If you go first path, you will only get Soul Flame, and then it will be a while before you get WoC.

So I am not sure which path is the best to go. Soul Flame is good but it's also situational. Wrath of Consumption is useful in a lot of more scenarios than Soul Flame.

Edit :: Also with first path you're kind of wasting points on "Long Dark Night of the Soul" trait. Second path you're automatically taking the crit traits, which should not be underestimated even though we stack haste/mastery.

[wholol]

You're lucky if you only pve, since I also plan on pvping I have to take some weird path to pick up key pvp talents too , things such as sweet souls , shadows of the flesh are on two opposite paths and since I have to rush compounding horror first its looking like an awkward incomplete lvl 110 build for me.

[Fenzha]

From a blue post.

Greetings. Over the last day or two, we've applied a multitude of changes for tuning prior to 7.0.3 launch. Usually during betas, the community largely determines changes through datamining and comparing what changed between builds. But with hotfixes, that's much harder. Once we launch, we'll follow our normal procedures of posting hotfix notes, but for this last round of tuning before launch, I've listed what changed below.

Grimore of Sacrifice damage reduced by 33% for Affliction.
Mana Tap cost reduced by 17%.

[Kirroth]

As someone who wasn't thrilled at being pushed into using GoSac again, I must admit to being pleased.

[dholland662]

Does Soul Effigy die? Finalboss.tv said it does

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"He's gonna beat me, that talent is OP!"

Proceeds to top the meters with passive cleave. What a toolbox. It's disheartening seeing that happen in mythic dungeons.

And people wonder why I dislike mages.

Not winning? Must be an OP talent/spell

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As someone who wasn't thrilled at being pushed into using GoSac again, I must admit to being pleased.

I didnt really want to deal with the pet personally

[Kirroth]

I didnt really want to deal with the pet personally

Right, and I'm fine with GoSac existing as an option for other people. But the balance problem it's always had is that "not having to deal with the pet" is a DPS gain all by itself. When you don't have a pet you don't have to worry about a decent chunk of your DPS dying, or having pathing issues, or taking extra travel time, or needing additional micro management, or not scaling with all your stats. That's why Sac has to be a Patchwerk sim DPS loss, otherwise it always ends up being a significant actual play DPS gain. And Sac should never be the most optimal choice in every situation for what's so iconically a pet class.

[Lucrece]

TBH I'm more bothered with their insistence on tying certain pets to certain specs.

[Deleted]

I'm still not taking Mana Tap. Just... no. Clunky crap, let it sit at lowest usability so they see it and throw it out at next balancing (so... 8.0 Corgi Apocalypse probably).

[Rogalicus]

Is Harverster of Souls a no-go trait for the first raid? Currenty it looks more versatile than other two and pretty cool with +20%SP to each Corruption tick and passive healing, so I planned to go CH -> HoS -> SF -> WoC.

[Zerach8]

I'm still not taking Mana Tap. Just... no. Clunky crap, let it sit at lowest usability so they see it and throw it out at next balancing (so... 8.0 Corgi Apocalypse probably).

Absolute corruption is better anyway, 25% damage on corruption and u gain extra globals vs mana tap which is a global in itself and u need to refresh corruption and u need to tap more often...

[Baconeggcheese]

TBH I'm more bothered with their insistence on tying certain pets to certain specs.

Yeah that honestly doesn't feel good specifically because of the utility associated with the pets. As well as gosac having the utility removed. Just feels bad all around.

Poor succubus is never gonna see the light of day.

[Deleted]

TBH I'm more bothered with their insistence on tying certain pets to certain specs.

Yeah, pets were one of the things I liked the modern take of, or did until they started gutting the imps dispel into a buggy mess.

Interupt melee v dispel ranged was a moderately compelling choice.
I really wish they'd let voidewalkers tank again and make the succubus stand a chance, alas, seems they're going in the opposite direction.

The only pet I was fine with completely dominating was the Felguard for demonology since it was spec specific / iconic. I miss the old uber buff Felguard from TBC - you used to be able to use it as a form of CC that would just off-tank a mob and half kill it while you dealt with the rest of the pack. It was great.

I'm still not taking Mana Tap. Just... no. Clunky crap, let it sit at lowest usability so they see it and throw it out at next balancing (so... 8.0 Corgi Apocalypse probably).

Naive, Mannoroth's Fury and to a lesser extend KJC have been sat there rotting for how many years?

[Gaidax]

Nobody in their right mind should be taking that shit, not only it's a maintenance buff which already is shit really, but it also makes you cast life tap more which is another piece of shit relic from the past.

I hope they will make sure to never make that cancer talent mandatory.

[JV Chequer]

Right now it's worth taking "Fatal Echoes" instead of going right before "Harverst of Souls" to SoulFlame ? I'm kinda confused with right choices to Affliction artifact. It's not so simple as Destro one :P

[Kirroth]

Right now it's worth taking "Fatal Echoes" instead of going right before "Harverst of Souls" to SoulFlame ? I'm kinda confused with right choices to Affliction artifact. It's not so simple as Destro one :P

I'm not sure what information you're going by, but make sure it isn't outdated. A recent balance patch doubled the strength of Harvester procs. Someone was reporting it was doing about 1.5% of their DPS so it'd be more like 3% now. Which still probably makes it the weakest of the three golden dragons, but stronger than Fatal Echos. OTOH the other two golden dragons are mostly useless if there's nothing to kill, so if say Arena is your top priority then you'd actually want Harvester first.

[Molag]

So with haste making UA a shorter dot what does that do to the dispel protection for pvp? Say you have enough haste to make it tick for 4 seconds instead of the default 8, you will have to refresh more than normal to protect your other dots. Or am I wrong?

[Kirroth]

So with haste making UA a shorter dot what does that do to the dispel protection for pvp? Say you have enough haste to make it tick for 4 seconds instead of the default 8, you will have to refresh more than normal to protect your other dots. Or am I wrong?

Don't overlook the PvP talents. If you want dispel protection, take Endless Affliction (+4s UA duration) with Rot and Decay (Drain Life refreshes DoT duration) and you should be able to easily maintain UA presence on multiple targets.

Of course, that might be outdated tactics. Protecting your basic DoTs isn't as much a priority now that you're not focused on lining them up with a cooldown burst window. Sure, it's not great having your Agony stacks reset by a dispel, but the pace of PvP combat is so much slower now that two or three GCD to recast your DoTs isn't nearly as big a deal. In PTR PvP combat I found myself pooling SS and then chain casting four or five together. That results in a huge UA that's either going to do serious damage to the target or massive damage to anyone foolish enough to dispel it. Of course, PTR PvP is a lot less serious and organized than rated PvP is going to be. People care even less about objectives and just want to jump into fights to test out their new skills.

Also, remember that aside from open world PvP, you don't get to pick your stats. Everyone's using their fixed stat template that only very slowly improves with gear. You can't choose to stack Haste, you won't be getting exponentially more Haste with advanced gear, so you'll never ever have enough Haste to make UA last only 4 seconds.

[Baconeggcheese]

Naive, Mannoroth's Fury and to a lesser extend KJC have been sat there rotting for how many years?

Well both of them were used heavily for quite a while until they nerfed them into the ground, and by the same token archies didn't get touched until ra-den and then they completely changed it to something that would very clearly just dominate the row.

They've made heavy changes to the lvl 30 rows though, and addressed a lot of the concerns from the alpha feedback. So I'm somewhat optimistic for now.

[wholol]

So with haste making UA a shorter dot what does that do to the dispel protection for pvp? Say you have enough haste to make it tick for 4 seconds instead of the default 8, you will have to refresh more than normal to protect your other dots. Or am I wrong?

Or you could simply say to hell with dispel protection, pick everlasting affliction and spam 5+ UAs into something, that is the best dispel protection you will ever have period.

Just watch as healers learn the hard way that when they see a lock chain cast UA into a target dispelling it is the last thing they will ever press, heck today some poor unsuspecting victim/healer decided it was a good idea to dispel my 6 stacked UA in 3s on beta ( 6 stacks with soul conduit proc ), it literally one shot him for 1.9 Mil damage, he will never dispel a UA again in his life.