[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[dholland662]

Honestly it occurred to me that soul shards could be made into some great gameplay. Too late now naturally.

Either multiple ways to spend them, or have them provide a stacking buff which can be burned off for some spell which provides a quick source of damage rather than a long lasting and consistent one.

Too late now obviously.

Should one expect addons designed purely to manage Soul Effigy painlessly?

I think SE would be much better if we had snazzier tools with which to multidot, since that's clearly what they want to encourage.

Because I do like the Voodoo Doll idea for Affliction. And it could be used for other things down the line.

[Lucrece]

Anyone got a video of the new drain life animation? Nephilim on beta forums says it's changed.

[Spunt]

For the people with beta access, could you briefly describe what a typical fight would be for an affliction lock now?

I was watching a videos on legion affliction locks earlier that would have into much more detail but strangely the author of those videos had his account banned on youtube before I could watch 5 minutes of it. And most other affliction specific youtube videos didn't really shed much light on how the spec functions when trying to do an optimal (if it even exists at this point) rotation.

Is there much ramp up time outside of just getting your dots up this and using procs effectively or do we have to maintain constant casting other spells that do weak dmg on their own but only serve to buff dot dmg? I'd rather have an affliction locks who dots hit like truck on their own and weren't reliant other spells constantly being maintained (other then we something procs) so the dots don't hit like poop.

I really love what I've seen and read about the artifact story for locks and their class hall is just heads and shoulders above everyone else's in terms of cool factor and how well it fits the overall theme of Legion in general. It's totally made me want to ditch my DK and warrior to go to fel side. Always prefer affliction to demo or destro not actually haven't play it, I was hoping a kind beta tester could share some experience.

However, if this has already been detailed in another post within this thread, I would gladly like a link to it!

[Deleted]

For the people with beta access, could you briefly describe what a typical fight would be for an affliction lock now?

a "typical" fight is rather hard to describe cause the whole priority list is depending on your talents.
-and i believe there arent any "best" talents right now, so anything can be valid-
if somebody wants to, its possible to play "somewhat like" on live server.(t1 haunt, t2 contagion, t6 sacrifice, t7 soul conduit)
be aware that there is no longer soul swap, so you need to manually refresh all dots wich results in slightly less time for filler / drain life.

if u use t1 drain soul, t2 absolute corruption, t4 soul harvest, t7 soul effigy then the whole fight looks like:
1time corruption on boss & effigy; keep Agony up on both, use shards for UA (on both, but u cant maintain 100%) and filler the hell

[Spunt]

a "typical" fight is rather hard to describe cause the whole priority list is depending on your talents.
-and i believe there arent any "best" talents right now, so anything can be valid-
if somebody wants to, its possible to play "somewhat like" on live server.(t1 haunt, t2 contagion, t6 sacrifice, t7 soul conduit)
be aware that there is no longer soul swap, so you need to manually refresh all dots wich results in slightly less time for filler / drain life.

I honestly prefer out dots didn't require a lot of setup to make them effective. Just get them on the target, and use other spells that aren't directly tied buffing dot dmg (Malefic Grasp was terrible in my opinon) or maintain debuffs to increase dot dmg until its time to refresh something.

Affliction should be about dealing a lot dot damage without having to jump through insane hoops to get them ticking for good damage. If it's like the day of shadow embrace where you had stack dots and maintain a lot debuffs that didnt last very long otherwise your dots did shit damage, then boo on blizzard. Really rather not go back to that style.

[dholland662]

I honestly prefer out dots didn't require a lot of setup to make them effective. Just get them on the target, and use other spells that aren't directly tied buffing dot dmg (Malefic Grasp was terrible in my opinon) or maintain debuffs to increase dot dmg until its time to refresh something.

Affliction should be about dealing a lot dot damage without having to jump through insane hoops to get them ticking for good damage. If it's like the day of shadow embrace where you had stack dots and maintain a lot debuffs that didnt last very long otherwise your dots did shit damage, then boo on blizzard. Really rather not go back to that style.

Isnt this what we have in Legion? In WoD we dont do very good damage with DoTs alone, because of Drain Soul's interaction

[Spunt]

Isnt this what we have in Legion? In WoD we dont do very good damage with DoTs alone, because of Drain Soul's interaction

I don't honestly know, that's what I'm attempting to glean from what other's have posted. Seems to be the way it works, and if that's the case, then sign me up.

[Deleted]

drain life or haunt dealing almost equal damage than Corruption or Siphon life or Agony over a long single target fight. So i think dots are to weak right now

[dholland662]

drain life or haunt dealing almost equal damage than Corruption or Siphon life or Agony over a long single target fight. So i think dots are to weak right now

Honestly, that sounds better than now. I cant see the breakdowns of course but there are a few things in mind.

Drain Soul not only does damage each tick but makes your dots immediately deal some percentage of their damage. This is counted as its own damage source but for the purposes of comparison may as well be rolled into Drain Soul Damage.

And in Legion we will be using Haunt on CD and it's a pretty hard hitting spell on live so it makes sense that it would be a big deal.

[Spunt]

Honestly, that sounds better than now. I cant see the breakdowns of course but there are a few things in mind.

Drain Soul not only does damage each tick but makes your dots immediately deal some percentage of their damage. This is counted as its own damage source but for the purposes of comparison may as well be rolled into Drain Soul Damage.

And in Legion we will be using Haunt on CD and it's a pretty hard hitting spell on live so it makes sense that it would be a big deal.

I don't think Drain Soul interacts with dots anymore. Nothing is mentioned in the latest tooltip on wowhead at least. It replaces drain life, does more damage, does half the healing of drain life, but also has the benefit of generating a shard if the target dies while it's being channeled. No dot benefits anymore though

[Thantor]

Drain soul functions as a separate channeled dot basically , its not weak like a kitten tho, it does good dmg, it ends up healing just the same as lifedrain but alot more dmg.

Atm, its hard to speak to the "this is doing terribly, we will be forced to take that talent" ect, because Blizz has alot of tuning ahead, aff isent in a super good position right now, alot of effort and juggeling for lackluster results, BUT!, with like 3months+ of tuning, that will solve it self hopefully

And afflictions seed seems terribly strong , the downside is ofc, that if theres something that needs to die insanly fast, your screwd, because seed is so awfully slow ><, tbh i wish they just nerf the seeds dmg to what they think is rigth and make it instant, or barring that cut the cast time to 0.5s, and leave it there as a token cast time

[Molag]

I think affliction could benefit from some things from jade harvester witch doctors in diablo 3 specifically an ability to finish and deal the remaining damage on dots on a target. Might be hard to balance but it could have a 2+ second cast and cost 2+ shards but imo it would add more fun to the spec.

Also maybe a spell like destructions FnB where when it's turned on when you cast dots it applies to all nearby enemies at the cost of a soul shard. Just some thoughts.

[Deleted]

I think affliction could benefit from some things from jade harvester witch doctors in diablo 3 specifically an ability to finish and deal the remaining damage on dots on a target. Might be hard to balance but it could have a 2+ second cast and cost 2+ shards but imo it would add more fun to the spec.

Also maybe a spell like destructions FnB where when it's turned on when you cast dots it applies to all nearby enemies at the cost of a soul shard. Just some thoughts.

they do through a legendary.

[Duckz0rs]

they do through a legendary.

Did they add new legendaries? Don't remember one with any such effect.

[dholland662]

I don't think Drain Soul interacts with dots anymore. Nothing is mentioned in the latest tooltip on wowhead at least. It replaces drain life, does more damage, does half the healing of drain life, but also has the benefit of generating a shard if the target dies while it's being channeled. No dot benefits anymore though

I was comparing WoD's mechanics to Legion's

[Terryn]

A lot of posts are pretty wrong here in terms of what you are doing for affliction

Affliction damage revolves around the fact that:
1) UA snapshots still
2) UA has an ignite effect, allowing you to never worry about wasting your UA unless the target is about to die
3) Compound Interest allows you to get huge mileage out of your shards

Typical Aff gameplay for single target is
1) maintain dots on main target and effigy
2) snipe drain soul on anything about to die
3) use UA at optimal times. That's a 4-5 stack of UA (60-75% damage increase), trinkets etc
4) Consume souls at optimal times. The buff gives you a 10% damage bonus plus amplified every passive that your artifact gives you. %shadow damage, UA damage, %crit damage, etc.

Affliction is not a static spec like it is being made out to be. You need to almost think of it like 6.1 demo. You want to pool shards, only using UA when CI is about to cap, and trying to consume souls to get the most out of UA. Unbuffed UA is close to 90% the effectiveness of CB on beta in terms of damage per shard, but with things like CI and artifact being amplified you can get pretty effective if you play smart.

[Baconeggcheese]

Did they add new legendaries? Don't remember one with any such effect.

There was a neck but I'm pretty sure it was removed because it would have been broken.

[effs]

Anyone got a video of the new drain life animation? Nephilim on beta forums says it's changed.

I made a video on Destro spell visuals a few days ago. Drain Life is at 2:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ree3BHu2q0

[Sabrius]

I really wish the design team would consider a Genesis like ability for warlocks. In the current iteration of warlocks on beta, this would solve an immense amount of our current "issues".

Example:

Soul Crush:
Costs 2 shards, 1.5 minute cool down.
Compresses all damage over time effects to 1/6 of their current duration.

Essentially giving us 600% haste on our current dots up.. Or maybe even make it single target.

This would finally finally give Aff something productive to do during adds that need to be focused down.
It would (if kept for all targets) help us a ton on trash fights to deal with fast dying targets.

It would give us a very fun artifical way to potentially generate a large quantity of shards. Theoretically leading to a nice simicontrollable pickup ability or burst as an aftereffect since warlocks have virtually no cool downs now, poor ramp up, and little to no way of picking damage back up on a returning target.

Branching off of the above benefit. On Iskar - adds are about to die, hit "Soul Crush" extinguishing your dots on adds helping them get finished off quicker, then, in effect, giving you a handful of shards (rng) to be used on Iskar when he comes back, which alleviates a little bit of the poor ramp up Aff is notorious of also

The list goes on. This could be such an amazing ability, with such a vast amount of cool uses for skilled/casual players alike, and at the end of the day, imho, being an incredibly fun ability, before, during, and after its use. Plan, execute, react.

[Darkheart]

Has anyone tested if Wrath Of Consumption and Soul Flame only trigger upon killing blow in raids?

If they only trigger via killing blow, then they are useless in 99% of raids. And if they trigger without having to do the killing blow, then they are still useless in any fight without adds, which could be something like 50% of raids, but potentially good to OP in the other 50% of raids?

Any thoughts?