[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Darkheart]

Your recency bias is showing.

Not sure how I'm biased. My favorite spec is affliction. I love the play style. But I could hardly play it for progression in WoD. So I become quite concerned when people question why affliction needs some sort of burst.

I agree with the premise, which is why its good that aff isn't pigeon holed in legion the same way it was in wod.

I really hope so. If I can play Affliction for mythic progression in at least half of boss encounters, then I will be satisfied.

[Deleted]

See that's the thing, blizzard very intentionally does not balance them in that way. They have stated many times they want different specs to be stronger / weaker in different situations and have their niches.

I know, but most of the time for affliction, weaker means useless on allot of fights compared to destro. The same when I switched my mage from fire to frost, I gained like 40% on her @ low gear.

[Slashkill]

While it sounded cool, it turned out to be really shitty in practice. Glad it's been changed.

I could see why it'd be shitty in practice, but spec really feels dull as it is right now. It might be "good old" aff, but I for one would really be happy to see some changes to our shard-dumping abilities/artifact weapon.

[croghan]

I looked artifact weapon affliction warlock and two of the three golden dragons take effect after killing a target.
This means that arena, these two skills will be useless! They amputate us two major powers while the other classes have the available!

What do you think dear friends warlock?

[Orwell7]

It means that you can go and own in Arenas with a half-powered artifact

[Slashkill]

I looked artifact weapon affliction warlock and two of the three golden dragons take effect after killing a target.
This means that arena, these two skills will be useless! They amputate us two major powers while the other classes have the available!

What do you think dear friends warlock?

I think that aff artifact weapon, apart from looking kickass, is utter garbage.

[dholland662]

Isnt there a developer Q&A about pvp coming up? ASK THEM during that. Caps for emphasis

I bet they'll deactivate the artifacts outside of their core ability in arena or something

[Slashkill]

Isnt there a developer Q&A about pvp coming up? ASK THEM during that. Caps for emphasis

I bet they'll deactivate the artifacts outside of their core ability in arena or something

Then a shitload of talents artifact has will make little to no sense.

[wholol]

Isnt there a developer Q&A about pvp coming up? ASK THEM during that. Caps for emphasis

I bet they'll deactivate the artifacts outside of their core ability in arena or something

Wait what ? they already tweeted artifacts are fully usable in arenas a couple months ago, only relics ( the upgrades for artifact talents ) won't apply to rated pvp content.

If you want to ask them something, might as well start by asking why our dots hit like wet noodles.

[lostdoormat]

I looked artifact weapon affliction warlock and two of the three golden dragons take effect after killing a target.
This means that arena, these two skills will be useless! They amputate us two major powers while the other classes have the available!

What do you think dear friends warlock?

I was under the impression that's the point of the ghosts that your artifact spawns. Something to trigger on kill effects.

[wholol]

I was under the impression that's the point of the ghosts that your artifact spawns. Something to trigger on kill effects.

That design was shafted several builds ago, you now auto spawn "collected souls" , you no longer target and kill anything.

So yeah 2 of our golden rings might not be usable on raid bosses with no adds to kill ( if any ) and not usable at all in arena unless we can count killing pets or totems ( which i'll have to test), either way that's a design flaw in a way, when both endgames have limitations on 2 of our artifact rings, that's kinda sad.

[lostdoormat]

That design was shafted several builds ago, you now auto spawn "collected souls" , you no longer target and kill anything.

So yeah 2 of our golden rings might not be usable on raid bosses with no adds to kill ( if any ) and not usable at all in arena unless we can count killing pets or totems ( which i'll have to test), either way that's a design flaw in a way, when both endgames have limitations on 2 of our artifact rings, that's kinda sad.

Ah crap I hadn't realised that. As clunky as the old system was, it was at least unique.

[Baconeggcheese]

It just means the spec is tuned around not having those 2 proc outside of add situations which is typically where affliction is weak in the first place making those traits crutch afflictions damage a bit in the event that there's adds that die quickly.

Really not a problem, though quite boring in arenas.

[Deleted]

That can't be true.

Blizzard is always about the "we want people to feel a difference when they upgrade X and Y"-philosophy. Gold traits are something where the player expects a "big(ger)" upgrade.
When you can't make use of it 66% of the time, it'll feel extremely underwhelming.

They need to adress that imho. Soulflame sounds somewhat absurd.
I'd have expected something like agony crits dealing 50% spellpower AoE damage or something like that.

[bio347]

It's not like Affliction is the only class whose artifact has a gold trait that isn't 100% applicable. There are a fair number of other artifacts that have a gold trait that boosts an AoE skill, which is also obviously useless on a single-target boss and basically useless in an arena setting.

What matters is the balance, and that's literally the entire point of the PvP stat profiles thing.

[nerdzrool]

That can't be true.

Blizzard is always about the "we want people to feel a difference when they upgrade X and Y"-philosophy. Gold traits are something where the player expects a "big(ger)" upgrade.
When you can't make use of it 66% of the time, it'll feel extremely underwhelming.

They need to adress that imho. Soulflame sounds somewhat absurd.
I'd have expected something like agony crits dealing 50% spellpower AoE damage or something like that.

Haven't looked at all the bosses, but I can assure you that more than 66% of the bosses will have add spawns that proc those passives.

[Baconeggcheese]

They need to adress that imho.

I honestly have 0 expectation for them to change it at this point. They were fully aware of this being this way and even mentioned changing them after the reap soul change and then didn't. They're past the point where they're making many mechanical changes and are just tweaking around tuning. I wouldn't hold my breath on them completely overhauling 2 major traits.

And again, you can balance around this perfectly fine. There's no reason not to have it this way, it's not what I'd call preferable but its completely doable.

[Kirroth]

And again, you can balance around this perfectly fine. There's no reason not to have it this way, it's not what I'd call preferable but its completely doable.

Right, that's the point of artifacts being baseline. It's not like a trinket or a set bonus where the Devs have to balance things for both people who have it and people who don't. Everyone has their artifact, and everyone is getting a custom package of PvP stats, so the people with gold dragons that are more useful in PvP get less generous stat packages than specs like Afflic that don't.

Well, in theory. If the PvP Devs do their job right. Which I'm really hoping they do, because I'd love to come back to PvP.

[dholland662]

Then a shitload of talents artifact has will make little to no sense.

You should still use the opportunity

[Deleted]

Haven't looked at all the bosses, but I can assure you that more than 66% of the bosses will have add spawns that proc those passives.

Just because adds spawn doesn't mean you can make use out of Soulflame.