[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Jessicka]

A couple important changes didn’t make it in in time for today’s Alpha build, but we wanted to share now, to help guide feedback. Grimoire of Supremacy’s effect is being replaced with the Demonic Servitude effect (permanent Doomguard/Infernal), and Demonic Servitude is being replaced with a new passive talent, Soul Conduit, which causes each Soul Shard you spend to have a chance to be immediately refunded (chance rolled individually per Soul Shard).

Additionally, there’s another change coming, specific to Affliction’s artifact. Souls for the artifact will no longer be targetable units; they will instead be just a soul that appears when you kill an enemy, plus occasionally escaping from the artifact. The artifact’s active button will consume all of the nearby souls, and grant you the buff for 5sec per soul consumed. No more targeting/killing souls required.

Thanks for all the constructive feedback, and keep it coming!

I must say I'm impressed. They took our Tormented Souls/Reap Soul feedback and implemented it. Also impressed with the Demonic Servitude location change. /Hat tip to blizz

So they're turning it into a maintenance buff? How do we track how many souls are up? I don't feel like this is much of an improvement.

[Baconeggcheese]

So they're turning it into a maintenance buff? How do we track how many souls are up? I don't feel like this is much of an improvement.

Sounds like it works pretty much exactly the same, except its everything we were asking for it to be.

We wouldn't necessarily have 100% up time on it, its basically a mini-cd button. If its 5 seconds and the souls still come out of us at the same rate without targets dying its not much of a maintenance buff so much as a 5 second active CD.

This is wonderful news, really raised the spirits. Its awesome that they not only changed something we were complaining about but basically verbatim put in what people were consistently recommending.

[bio347]

Or if the souls don't dissipate, or don't dissipate quickly, you could save some up and blast a number at once for a longer buff.

[Jessicka]

Or if the souls don't dissipate, or don't dissipate quickly, you could save some up and blast a number at once for a longer buff.

Yeah, this is why it *looks* a lot like Slice n dice but with a much less reliable resource. Once you start multidotting, and you get adds in a fight that start dying, you might not be struggling to get that up time - and this of course increases ramp up and hurts ST throughput.

Obviously I can't test it to see how true that is, but the alternative is maybe that it's another layer of 'Haunt', on top of the current UA and very steep peaks and troughs in throughput, creating the same sorts of issues as we had in MoP.

[Capsupplier]

One less thing to target and damage on progression raiding is nice. It removed the mana generation from killing them. Easily tuned with simple adjustments to mana costs I suppose.

At this point instead of killing the soul and gaining a 10% damage increase for 10 seconds, when we pop Reap Soul on a target we gain 10% increased damage for X*5 for however many souls popped out between Reap Soul cooldowns. This could lead to holding Reap Soul for a big bad guy, and then unleashing all hell on it for a decent window. If anything, the old build was more of a maintenance buff, and this is more like... Dark Soul? Flat damage increase instead of haste, and you're not doing anything extra for it other than using Reap Soul.

As for tracking them.... its something that should be added by Blizzard, if they actually want to own up to their statement of not having required addons. My idea is fairly basic. Simply put a Tormented Soul counter near the soul shards counter. It would work for Demonology as well, seeing as they could probably make use of an Imp counter. Maybe the community can come up with a better idea. It seems they're listening.

Hope you guys with alpha access can bring them some good ideas. I would if I could. Take mine if you like.

[Fearsom1992]

One less thing to target and damage on progression raiding is nice. It removed the mana generation from killing them. Easily tuned with simple adjustments to mana costs I suppose.

At this point instead of killing the soul and gaining a 10% damage increase for 10 seconds, when we pop Reap Soul on a target we gain 10% increased damage for X*5 for however many souls popped out between Reap Soul cooldowns. This could lead to holding Reap Soul for a big bad guy, and then unleashing all hell on it for a decent window. If anything, the old build was more of a maintenance buff, and this is more like... Dark Soul? Flat damage increase instead of haste, and you're not doing anything extra for it other than using Reap Soul.

As for tracking them.... its something that should be added by Blizzard, if they actually want to own up to their statement of not having required addons. My idea is fairly basic. Simply put a Tormented Soul counter near the soul shards counter. It would work for Demonology as well, seeing as they could probably make use of an Imp counter. Maybe the community can come up with a better idea. It seems they're listening.

Hope you guys with alpha access can bring them some good ideas. I would if I could. Take mine if you like.

mind if I post your stuff on the alpha forums? I agree they should but a way to track them like idk "gray out reap soul and have it gain x amount of numbers every time a soul appears? or have soulburn haunt graphic around you?"

[Capsupplier]

Please do Fearsom. I hope it brings some fruitful discussions towards improving warlocks.

[dholland662]

Good changes. They also make affliction viable on adds fights, at least after the first kill.

[Ciremyk]

Reap soul still vanish when corruption fade or is refreshed....

Been like 7 builds now ?

[Kirroth]

Right, because like the blue post said, there's going to be an entirely new Reap Soul next build that harvests loose souls instead of being an additional DoT. Mostly likely that change has been in the works for a while, which meant that fixing the bugged old version would have been a waste of time and resources.

[Dnusha]

Additionally, there’s another change coming, specific to Affliction’s artifact. Souls for the artifact will no longer be targetable units; they will instead be just a soul that appears when you kill an enemy, plus occasionally escaping from the artifact. The artifact’s active button will consume all of the nearby souls, and grant you the buff for 5sec per soul consumed. No more targeting/killing souls required.

Well thats actually a really good change.

[Coffeh]

So they're turning it into a maintenance buff? How do we track how many souls are up? I don't feel like this is much of an improvement.

In some regards it's a bit of a nerf. Can't throw an agony on a soul now to possibly proc a soul shard.

[Duckz0rs]

In some regards it's a bit of a nerf. Can't throw an agony on a soul now to possibly proc a soul shard.

If the button to absorb all the souls is off the GCD it's a large buff given how many GCD's it saves you over the course of a fight. Even if it isn't it still saves a bunch of GCDs over the span of a fight. Shard generation shouldn't be a particularly big issue anyway with talents like Soul Effigy and Soul Conduit.

[Esinar]

So they're turning it into a maintenance buff? How do we track how many souls are up? I don't feel like this is much of an improvement.

They say the number of Souls active will show up on the Reap Soul button (like charges I guess). It may be a little boring but tbh I'd much prefer this than having to specifically target a shitty ghost in the middle of all the action to get the buffs from it, potentially switching from a priority target in the process. That being said the buff may have some aspect to it to make sure timing it correctly will produce better results. We'll have to see how the new Reap Soul will work to get a bigger picture but I think it's the first step in the right direction.

[Jessicka]

They say the number of Souls active will show up on the Reap Soul button (like charges I guess). It may be a little boring but tbh I'd much prefer this than having to specifically target a shitty ghost in the middle of all the action to get the buffs from it, potentially switching from a priority target in the process. That being said the buff may have some aspect to it to make sure timing it correctly will produce better results. We'll have to see how the new Reap Soul will work to get a bigger picture but I think it's the first step in the right direction.

It's better than it was, I won't argue with that; but turning it into a maintenance buff - which they've chased out the game as baseline things elsewhere - doesn't strike me as the right improvement.

[Fearsom1992]

It's better than it was, I won't argue with that; but turning it into a maintenance buff - which they've chased out the game as baseline things elsewhere - doesn't strike me as the right improvement.

I don't know how its a "maintenance buff" I don't think its one and I will take this one over the old reap soul any day of the week lol

[PickleballAce]

It's sort of like a Savage Roar kinda thing where you're "passively" building up "combo points" that you'll press a button to consume to gain a damage buff. The optics are a bit different and there's probably still a lot of iteration left, but I can see where someone would feel like it's a bit maintenance-y.

[grizzlysaurusrex]

It's better than it was, I won't argue with that; but turning it into a maintenance buff - which they've chased out the game as baseline things elsewhere - doesn't strike me as the right improvement.

It just seems like a first iteration of a new try. Maybe it will suck them into the target to cause the soul explosion effect?

[Soulzar]

It just seems like a first iteration of a new try. Maybe it will suck them into the target to cause the soul explosion effect?

Soulplosion. Make it so. lol

[Jessicka]

It just seems like a first iteration of a new try. Maybe it will suck them into the target to cause the soul explosion effect?

Yes. Soul Fire fueled by actual Souls. Make it happen.