[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Lucidious]

When I first read about affliction using drain life as a filler I was excited and thought about opening my account back up. Then I read about UA costing a shard and was like "nope". I really hope they don't let that go live cause that would just be tedious and take the fun out of the spec for me.

[Count Zero]

Since a slightly reworked shadowburn is a talent for Destruction, perhaps we will have that option.
Because it isn't listed on the preview, it only means it isn't core.

Yep, I'd actually be slightly surprised if Drain Soul doesn't return as a talent

[Xandrigity]

Moaarrrrrr dots! I love it as it should always have been.

[Cosytoast]

One thing i won't miss is begging for a bullsh!t 20 second pull timer.

[Maleific]

I hope this UA packs a punch in the 8 seconds it is up, and I hope it hurts like a bitch when dispelled in pvp. I'm fine with DL filler, and I know we haven't seen all the talents yet. But so far we have no ways of dealing direct damage, I hope this is addressed.

[wholol]

I hope this UA packs a punch in the 8 seconds it is up, and I hope it hurts like a bitch when dispelled in pvp. I'm fine with DL filler, and I know we haven't seen all the talents yet. But so far we have no ways of dealing direct damage, I hope this is addressed.

It says strong damage when dispelled not massive, just reading their description of it, so don't get your hopes up ^^

If anything it's actually better for them if they dispel the UA since it destroys our opening dots, remember having 1 shard only to start with so only 1 UA to dish out ( although they did mention you could re-UA after your first UA so no idea how talents are going to improve the gameplay).

[Deleted]

I hope this UA packs a punch in the 8 seconds it is up, and I hope it hurts like a bitch when dispelled in pvp. I'm fine with DL filler, and I know we haven't seen all the talents yet. But so far we have no ways of dealing direct damage, I hope this is addressed.

Why should we do direct dmg as Affli?
It's all about the DoTs, ok Shadowbolt back to all 3 specs would be nice.^^

[Deleted]

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

Sad panda.

What a load of absolute bloody tripe.

Surely this "niche" can afford to be spread over more than one or two specs, right?
Surely this has been a trademark of affliction for ever when we had, inarguably, the most thematically appropriate execute when we drain a weakened targets soul, and the strongest mechanically when our rotation changes to a slow and hard ticking channel that refunds soulshards. I'm sorry warriors, but while I love execute it's something the warlock class had always done better, even after the mess of a revamp that was MOP.

I really honestly DO appreciate letting specs thrive in their niches like affliction actually being encouraged to multidot as opposed to trying to throttle it like they did ever since MG was added, but it is a horrible execution (no pun intended) if that results in stripping it from every class bar 1 when others both had it as a tradition as longstanding as warriors, and performed it significantly better than the marginal change in gameplay warriors have frequently had from it.

Why should we do direct dmg as Affli?
It's all about the DoTs, ok Shadowbolt back to all 3 specs would be nice.^^

Because totems and some raid mechanics / mobs over the years have been impossible to kill via dots and channels - I don't think this is a "niche" ANYONE needs to have, the inability to kill something.

Again, being a master of something doesn't mean you can't have other things. Do people want BM hunters to never shoot their bow or Demonology warlocks to never use anything bar demons, destruction warlocks to lose ANY shadow spell etc? Afflictions niche is debuffs, dots and shadow spells. Shadowbolt is one of these things and in it's best incarnation, two of them.

It's as thematically appropriate as anything. Likewise Haunt was pretty nice when it was DD filler as a rotational ability with the health restore mechanic that offered some minor gameplay impact.

Yep, I'd actually be slightly surprised if Drain Soul doesn't return as a talent

I would, and even if it does, it's going to be going up against drain life filler which puts it in the same shithole as it was in MOP, the lack of tangible change during exeute makes it considerably less interesting. Now shadowbolt as a filler, that's something I could get behind, though expect even less.


I am kinda hopeful for Siphon Life being a talent, they've said many times that they're going to have you put your spec back together from talents. Not something I like, since to get what years of play has taught us should be baseline (shadowburn etc) will come via talents, making you either not get what you feel you should have, or be pigeonholed into talents (and god forbid when the others are optimal), but with them having so few buttons and then claiming you'll pick some up from talents, Siphon Life seems like a logic bone to throw for people who want more buttons and an injection of nostalgia.

[evertonbelmontt]

I have been playing this game for too long to understand that Affliction will never go live with drain life as a filler. Either they get rid of it's restoring life effect and keep it's name or change it entirely or the spec will be forever guted in some enviroment (like frost used to be bad for PVE).

I need to see the talents and actually play the spec. I like the preview, seems more engaging than live, but I want to be sure it's playable in high end PVE as well as PVP, since it's my favorite spec (because of the theme).

I'll definetelly be trading souls and sacrificing lots of murlocks in order to get my beta key /weee.

[Jetjaguar]

What is this bullshit about Drain Soul? Thematically it has always just been a generator for soul shards and that's it. In fact, in the beginning Drain Soul did absolutely pathetic damage. No execute in the history of the game has ever done it better than Execute itself. Drain Soul wasn't even an execute until wrath of the lich king. Execute is actually 4 years older than that. If anything, Shadowburn has way more claim than Drain Soul

[Deleted]

What is this bullshit about Drain Soul? Thematically it has always just been a generator for soul shards and that's it. In fact, in the beginning Drain Soul did absolutely pathetic damage. No execute in the history of the game has ever done it better than Execute itself. Drain Soul wasn't even an execute until wrath of the lich king. Execute is actually 4 years older than that. If anything, Shadowburn has way more claim than Drain Soul

Yeah and in TBC Shadowburn was only the Drain Soul for the Destro spec, crappy Dmg and a shard when the target was killed.

[Deleted]

One thing i won't miss is begging for a bullsh!t 20 second pull timer.

The 20 sec pull timer will be more important than ever, since Aff will by default have 1/5 shards out of combat and our main very short (8s) dot costs a shard.

No 20s timer = no opener at all.

[Deleted]

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

I believe it when I see it! :P

[Deleted]

Moaarrrrrr dots! I love it as it should always have been.

It will never be though.

If you put most of the damage into the DOTs it just means affliction locks become insanely overpowered in any fight where they can multi-dot long lived targets. But if you want to stop that, it means you have to nerf the DOTs, the result being that affliction locks become insanely underpowered on single-target fights

It's a dilemma that Blizzard have never managed to resolve and we've been though the process before. Their usual solution has been to moderate the DOT damage and then have multiplier spells like Haunt and Drain Soul which mean the DOTs become strong again, but only when backed up by Haunt/DS, which are either rvery hard and/or impossible to keep up on multiple targets

Strong DOTs also pose the additional problems of leaving not much to do when you've stacked them up (again, hence Haunt and Drain Soul, or previously, Shadowbolt fillers) plus the issue of PVP (and Blizz have always tried to keep away from any situation where any class can just DOT people up and watch them die)

Now of course, we are finally moving towards the separation of PVP and PVP which is good and does help

But the old DOT dilemma remains

If they make those DOTs really strong, on their own, then any multi-target fight will turn afflocks into gods. It was bad enough in Ulduar on the final boss when Spriests and Afflocks (which was, at that point the lock spec of choice)....and boy did everyone else bitch about it.

[Jessicka]

It will never be though.

If you put most of the damage into the DOTs it just means affliction locks become insanely overpowered in any fight where they can multi-dot long lived targets. But if you want to stop that, it means you have to nerf the DOTs, the result being that affliction locks become insanely underpowered on single-target fights

It's a dilemma that Blizzard have never managed to resolve and we've been though the process before. Their usual solution has been to moderate the DOT damage and then have multiplier spells like Haunt and Drain Soul which mean the DOTs become strong again, but only when backed up by Haunt/DS, which are either rvery hard and/or impossible to keep up on multiple targets

Strong DOTs also pose the additional problems of leaving not much to do when you've stacked them up (again, hence Haunt and Drain Soul, or previously, Shadowbolt fillers) plus the issue of PVP (and Blizz have always tried to keep away from any situation where any class can just DOT people up and watch them die)

Now of course, we are finally moving towards the separation of PVP and PVP which is good and does help

But the old DOT dilemma remains

If they make those DOTs really strong, on their own, then any multi-target fight will turn afflocks into gods. It was bad enough in Ulduar on the final boss when Spriests and Afflocks (which was, at that point the lock spec of choice)....and boy did everyone else bitch about it.

There is the 'Unleash the Harvest' spell on the Artifact, which is another DoT; 43s duration and 45s cooldown. That cooldown effectively makes it a single target spell; that is the tuning knob for multidotting.

[Deleted]

The 20 sec pull timer will be more important than ever, since Aff will by default have 1/5 shards out of combat and our main very short (8s) dot costs a shard.

No 20s timer = no opener at all.

This, it potentially means that Afflocks have even worse rampup times than we do now, although they do mention there will be other out of combat ways to create shards, presumably via talents

There are hints that they are looking at ways to fix Affy's godawful AOE (hey, how about reverting those idiotic changes to Seed of Corruption as a start, like only exploding with damage from the caster?)

But not much about Affy's othewr weaknes,s which is zero burst, so it sucks on any fight with things you need to kill fast. Which is most of them.

Two of the key ways fights aren't Patchwerks are add-waves and high priority kill adds. And aff is awful at either.

[grizzlysaurusrex]

This, it potentially means that Afflocks have even worse rampup times than we do now, although they do mention there will be other out of combat ways to create shards, presumably via talents

There are hints that they are looking at ways to fix Affy's godawful AOE (hey, how about reverting those idiotic changes to Seed of Corruption as a start, like only exploding with damage from the caster?)

But not much about Affy's othewr weaknes,s which is zero burst, so it sucks on any fight with things you need to kill fast. Which is most of them.

Two of the key ways fights aren't Patchwerks are add-waves and high priority kill adds. And aff is awful at either.

I think now with Drain Life being aff's filler that it would be a perfect time to give them Harvest Life as an actual AoE spell.

[Jessicka]

I think now with Drain Life being aff's filler that it would be a perfect time to give them Harvest Life as an actual AoE spell.

And that they improve the green beam animation.

[wholol]

what they should really be doing is adding demon bolt as a 2.5 cast time moderate / low damage for demo that generates shards( with a chance to summon an imp or increase pet damage on target by like 1% or whatever crap ), and give shadow bolt to affliction ( and ofc the true nightfall talent back , corruption having a low chance to make our shadowbolt instant again ) :3

[Count Zero]

Hopefully we can talent into Harvest Life for aoe ? I really miss that animation.

(especially with the old KJC ... soloing old content as Aff was amaze for that bit)