[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Faenskap]

The other side of the story is that afflocks have no burst, they have to be able to survive long enough to actually kill someone. If you're up against a burst class then without that survivability an afflock would lose 100% of the time because they would always die first.

And afflocks have like all DOT classes always done massive amounts of spread damage.

If people are getting killed to afflocks without stuns, lockouts and interrupts being used then they are deservedly losing.

And the last thing you'd do is use a succubus because eof Agony's ludicrously long rampup times. Maybe in a large battleground where you can Seduce someone and have them died to a team-mate. I doubt you'd use it outside of that.

The felguard is unique to demonology of course.

DOT classes have always been strong in battlegrounds particularly, they often do most damage - but with relatively low actual killing blows.

Oh yes I feel tanky against most classes (rogues are tough though), but I'm finding it hard to make sure they actually die. And if they run away at 10 or 15 % HP, well, not much I can do. Damage wise, overall damage is by no means bad but I feel we ain't got nothing on moonkins

Still, I'm having lots of fun with my new love-spec affliction!

[heinz0r]

Well instead of attacking the Class that has exceptional self sustain, attack something else lol. Or better yet attack the Affli Lock with more than one person.
Locks have always been known for the massive spread pressure they can do, and with Blizz basically removing ALL mobility spells from Locks in general they need to be compensated somehow, and being tank-like is what they've got.

From what i've seen on beta and the pre-patch Affli is in a good place right now (damage is a little low but that's easy fixed) PVP wise i'm confident Legion will be for all purposes MUCH better for Warlocks than WOD has been.

And your mention of the Felguard when speaking about Affli shows you've came on not really understanding the mechanics of the Warlock and just have clearly been stomped by a few lol.

What you're really trying to say is you can't beat a Warlock 1v1 so you want them nerfed, right?

Amazing how toxic those forums sometimes are. What part of me explaining that felguard was a name mixup due to playing on a non english client do you not understand? It should have been rather clear to which stun I was referring to, because I even stated that it is the 3 minute cooldown 2s stun, so everyone wondering what pet I meant could have come to that conclusion by themselves already. But yeah, it is easier to overlook this and straight up nitpick and go with personal attacks.

And no, I am playing wl myself but I do understand that specifically affliction is overtuned right now and does not require too much effort ontop of it. Warlocks deal spread damage thus they end up doing more damage than classes who are tunneling on one target at a time. But the amount of damage that warlocks would deal before the prepatch was usually around 1.5 or 2 times more than that of a "normal" class with basic singletarget or cleave damage. Right now we are often in spheres of wl dealing 3 times more damage, sometimes even more. On beta it is not much different either. I am shocked to see that you think damage is a bit low, you are kidding right?

I get it, I am on the warlock forums and I am saying that the spec is a bit too strong currently, people get defensive about it, just try to stay away from personal insults, its just silly.

[wholol]

Amazing how toxic those forums sometimes are. What part of me explaining that felguard was a name mixup due to playing on a non english client do you not understand? It should have been rather clear to which stun I was referring to, because I even stated that it is the 3 minute cooldown 2s stun, so everyone wondering what pet I meant could have come to that conclusion by themselves already. But yeah, it is easier to overlook this and straight up nitpick and go with personal attacks.

And no, I am playing wl myself but I do understand that specifically affliction is overtuned right now and does not require too much effort ontop of it. Warlocks deal spread damage thus they end up doing more damage than classes who are tunneling on one target at a time. But the amount of damage that warlocks would deal before the prepatch was usually around 1.5 or 2 times more than that of a "normal" class with basic singletarget or cleave damage. Right now we are often in spheres of wl dealing 3 times more damage, sometimes even more. On beta it is not much different either. I am shocked to see that you think damage is a bit low, you are kidding right?

I get it, I am on the warlock forums and I am saying that the spec is a bit too strong currently, people get defensive about it, just try to stay away from personal insults, its just silly.

It isn't about calling locks strong, it's mostly your thoughts on some things that just screams inexperienced, now I might be seen like the bad guy here since I came off rather rude before and I do not want to tell you how you should be playing the class, you can enjoy it anyway you want, sadly the only thing I do have a problem with is the fact that you are adamant regarding that playstyle and somehow want to prove your point is correct when this has been worked and done so many years ago by many locks to the point of exhaustion.

You never use succubus as affliction, removing your dots is just bad for you, the more targets you have ur dots up on the more sustain you gain via siphon life, the more shards u get via agony and the more overall pressure you have up, that is the point of the spec, pressure.

Seduce shares DR with fear, instead of being lazy and taking the easy way out with seduce which also impacts you negatively , you can fear for CC and keep the interrupt for even more control.

You can use circle if you wish, but as an old school pvper I am telling you that you don't really need it to do what needs to be done, that is all.

[heinz0r]

It isn't about calling locks strong, it's mostly your thoughts on some things that just screams inexperienced, now I might be seen like the bad guy here since I came off rather rude before and I do not want to tell you how you should be playing the class, you can enjoy it anyway you want, sadly the only thing I do have a problem with is the fact that you are adamant regarding that playstyle and somehow want to prove your point is correct when this has been worked and done so many years ago by many locks to the point of exhaustion.

You never use succubus as affliction, removing your dots is just bad for you, the more targets you have ur dots up on the more sustain you gain via siphon life, the more shards u get via agony and the more overall pressure you have up, that is the point of the spec, pressure.

Seduce shares DR with fear, instead of being lazy and taking the easy way out with seduce which also impacts you negatively , you can fear for CC and keep the interrupt for even more control.

You can use circle if you wish, but as an old school pvper I am telling you that you don't really need it to do what needs to be done, that is all.

Keep going with it, you dont want to come off as rude yet you keep calling me inexperienced when you know nothing about me other than me giving some examples of things that _could_ be viable options for future gameplay. This is a discussion forum, so I give you my view and explain why I came to that view. The replies so far ranged from "lol blah" to "this is the only way, I know best" and only a couple even made an effort to list why you think I am completely off track. And from those replies I get the impression that the persons making those posts _exclusively_ looked at it from an arena perspective. And the best of it, a name mixup was the thing most ppl jumped on, because you WANTED to jump on it. How can you not notice that I simply used the wrong pet name when I mentioned the 3 minute cooldown, or does the felguard have a 3 minute stun cd now instead of 30s? But calling me stupid is really easier than realizing that you deliberately act dumb yourself by not figuring that out that it was a name mixup.

No idea why you think I am adamant about what I wrote. I gave you some explanations as to why a succubus could now be a perfectly valid option and I never claimed that it will be the perfect or only solution to all of afflictions problems. The one claiming that there is only one, maybe two options is not me I am absolutely fine in accepting that both the doomguard and felhunter are still very good and against healers in 90% of the cases the better options, especially in arena gameplay, because they are tried and tested and you can still use the same tactics you used before the 7.0 patch. But that is arena only, good luck beating a duo of melee in open world pvp or bgs with a felhunter as your pet and without the interrupt protection when you have no support available.

I totally agree with you guys that the downside of using a seduce on a target with your dots up is loosing dot pressure and having to restack agony, but so would sheeping that target or blinding it, just for example. But then again, it does not take ages to get back to a 20 stack agony and while agony damage makes up for a big portion of damage between the three instants (20 stack agony deals roughly the damage of siphon life and corruption combined), it will not decide wether you kill a target or not. I hope we can agree that you need the UA stacking and teammate damage in order to kill someone in arena. That is how stuff dies, not because your sustain dots are running which gets outhealed by quick heals and shields. 20 Stack Agony deals around 30% of the damage that stacked UA does.

But yeah, I think its all just black and white and there is no grey in between.

About circle... seriously, I am tired of saying anything more about it. I made my points, you chose to ignore it and keep claiming that its not needed at all, and just keep telling me I have no clue, without any point being made as to why it is not a strong option. The first reactions to the circle talent on beta was a big fat "you cant be serious blizz" from pretty much anyone around.

Take that how you want to understand it, but at least I tried to have a discussion, and the only reason I kept replying and explaining my point of view was to show that you might be a bit narrowminded and fixated on just one aspect of the game and not really looking at the big picture. If that is being adamant, so be it. I could also start lashing out and calling ppl inexperienced, lazy and whatever, but how does that help?

[wholol]

Keep going with it, you dont want to come off as rude yet you keep calling me inexperienced when you know nothing about me other than me giving some examples of things that _could_ be viable options for future gameplay. This is a discussion forum, so I give you my view and explain why I came to that view. The replies so far ranged from "lol blah" to "this is the only way, I know best" and only a couple even made an effort to list why you think I am completely off track. And from those replies I get the impression that the persons making those posts _exclusively_ looked at it from an arena perspective. And the best of it, a name mixup was the thing most ppl jumped on, because you WANTED to jump on it. How can you not notice that I simply used the wrong pet name when I mentioned the 3 minute cooldown, or does the felguard have a 3 minute stun cd now instead of 30s? But calling me stupid is really easier than realizing that you deliberately act dumb yourself by not figuring that out that it was a name mixup.

No idea why you think I am adamant about what I wrote. I gave you some explanations as to why a succubus could now be a perfectly valid option and I never claimed that it will be the perfect or only solution to all of afflictions problems. The one claiming that there is only one, maybe two options is not me I am absolutely fine in accepting that both the doomguard and felhunter are still very good and against healers in 90% of the cases the better options, especially in arena gameplay, because they are tried and tested and you can still use the same tactics you used before the 7.0 patch. But that is arena only, good luck beating a duo of melee in open world pvp or bgs with a felhunter as your pet and without the interrupt protection when you have no support available.

I totally agree with you guys that the downside of using a seduce on a target with your dots up is loosing dot pressure and having to restack agony, but so would sheeping that target or blinding it, just for example. But then again, it does not take ages to get back to a 20 stack agony and while agony damage makes up for a big portion of damage between the three instants (20 stack agony deals roughly the damage of siphon life and corruption combined), it will not decide wether you kill a target or not. I hope we can agree that you need the UA stacking and teammate damage in order to kill someone in arena. That is how stuff dies, not because your sustain dots are running which gets outhealed by quick heals and shields. 20 Stack Agony deals around 30% of the damage that stacked UA does.

But yeah, I think its all just black and white and there is no grey in between.

About circle... seriously, I am tired of saying anything more about it. I made my points, you chose to ignore it and keep claiming that its not needed at all, and just keep telling me I have no clue, without any point being made as to why it is not a strong option. The first reactions to the circle talent on beta was a big fat "you cant be serious blizz" from pretty much anyone around.

Take that how you want to understand it, but at least I tried to have a discussion, and the only reason I kept replying and explaining my point of view was to show that you might be a bit narrowminded and fixated on just one aspect of the game and not really looking at the big picture. If that is being adamant, so be it. I could also start lashing out and calling ppl inexperienced, lazy and whatever, but how does that help?

To explain the reason why I seem "narrowminded" I will give you an example you might understand better, it's like looking at a conversation between a mythic raider and a casual pver who only does heroic dungeons where the casual says he is picking said talents which are obvious dps losses in the eyes of the mythic raider , yet everytime the mythic raider is trying to tell this to the casual the casual accuses the mythic raider of being condescending, well maybe the mythic raider has a point, or maybe the mythic raider is too used to mythic raiding that he has forgotten you can pick pretty much whatever you want in casual 5 mans because who cares about dps there.

Anyways this is about as close to an explanation I can give you, you can play whatever you enjoy tbh, I don't really wish to continue further on this topic with you and somehow turn this into an argument.

Best of luck to you sir.

[heinz0r]

Way to go, yet another example of you being actually condescending by using an example that does not even compare to what we argued about It would have applied if I was being stubborn and saying that the succubus is the only way, when it clearly is not, but you seem to not realize that I even agree with you that the felhunter is most likely still the best option here when it comes to arena and disabling healers.

But yeah, have fun and lets keep it at that.

[Gnarilex]

So have people gathered experiences so far with Affliction in 7.0 raiding? How is it going for you guys. Is affliction able to compete with mages/hunters/rogues etc. ?

Raiding going on during the pre patch should be taken with a grain of salt as the specs are balanced for 110 with an artifact. Someone who has raided in the beta might be able to answer that question.

[CuchuCachu]

So I did some testing on the target dummies.

Specifically without timers or macros to sort of test myself on how well I could handle "difficult" tasks.

I was surprised at how powerful soul effigy was.

Normally I would do about 35k+ on the dummies without using cooldowns.

This added a good 12k. Again, without much to make it easy like mousover or target macros

Also without a synergistic talent setup. Had Haunt (which I forgot to use) and contagion

I was wondering what good synergies people have found. I have a few:

Haunt + Contagion.

Absolute Corruption + Writhe + Soul Effigy being obvious

Also Grimoire of Sac for Cleave

Edit: I just remembered the whole damage meter bug with effigy. However I thought that only affected Skada (used recount)?

Because 12k sounds like a large increase. But I feel like it should have been more than 12k if I was multi-dotting at full strength. Will test again in the morning.

[Deleted]

An unrelated question - have they said why the Effigy can't be placed with a targeting reticule, rather than plopped down under our feet? I'm sure everyone's been asking for that, so is there some reason?

[Deleted]

Oh yes I feel tanky against most classes (rogues are tough though), but I'm finding it hard to make sure they actually die. And if they run away at 10 or 15 % HP, well, not much I can do. Damage wise, overall damage is by no means bad but I feel we ain't got nothing on moonkins

Still, I'm having lots of fun with my new love-spec affliction!

It's highly satisfying to dot something, then watch them die to those dots while you're fighting another target. Dot damage has become a real threat now. Very fun - Though I agree with it being an issue with making them actually die in a short space of time. I guess Haunt is the only option for that?

- - - Updated - - -

Amazing how toxic those forums sometimes are. What part of me explaining that felguard was a name mixup due to playing on a non english client do you not understand? It should have been rather clear to which stun I was referring to, because I even stated that it is the 3 minute cooldown 2s stun, so everyone wondering what pet I meant could have come to that conclusion by themselves already. But yeah, it is easier to overlook this and straight up nitpick and go with personal attacks.

And no, I am playing wl myself but I do understand that specifically affliction is overtuned right now and does not require too much effort ontop of it. Warlocks deal spread damage thus they end up doing more damage than classes who are tunneling on one target at a time. But the amount of damage that warlocks would deal before the prepatch was usually around 1.5 or 2 times more than that of a "normal" class with basic singletarget or cleave damage. Right now we are often in spheres of wl dealing 3 times more damage, sometimes even more. On beta it is not much different either. I am shocked to see that you think damage is a bit low, you are kidding right?

I get it, I am on the warlock forums and I am saying that the spec is a bit too strong currently, people get defensive about it, just try to stay away from personal insults, its just silly.

What? Warlocks have a history of being over-nerfed, slightly buffed then nerfed again due to the opinions of those that are in-experienced flooding the forums. It ruins it for those that have remained dedicated to them.

Survivability is strong, mobility is not, we do not have any form on direct burst outside of talented Haunt to kill something either, it's all dots and drains which is how an Affli should be, it's massive team pressure rather than getting kills. You will not be able to beat one easily 1v1 due to the pure healing/control they have. That's just class mechanics.

And with regards to the damage they put out. Yeah it LOOKS insane, looks are deceiving, that's dots ticking away that can easily be healed. While you're running to attack a target, a Warlock is already dealing damage via instant dots, that's why the damage ramps up on the meters, it doesn't mean those dots are actually getting kills.

[Deleted]

Afflocks have always been about spread damage. In a BG you aren;t doing it right unless you're standing back and tab-DOTing everything in sight. We have so little in the way of escape and break mechanics now since they stuffed them in mutually exclusive talents instead of baseline, we need survivability. And that we have. I have no doubt that once burst classes gear up they will be on top of it again.

Soul Effigy is just a sneaky DOT-multiplier. It's a way of making DOTs work on "single target" without having them being overly-strong on multi-target fights. It's really just a variant on Haunt and Drain Soul, it brings up your "single target" damage because if your DOTs were strong enough then they would be overpowered in something glike a council fight.

It's just that Soul Effigy is a fancier pain in the arse to manage.

[Jessicka]

Soul Effigy is just a sneaky DOT-multiplier. It's a way of making DOTs work on "single target" without having them being overly-strong on multi-target fights. It's really just a variant on Haunt and Drain Soul, it brings up your "single target" damage because if your DOTs were strong enough then they would be overpowered in something glike a council fight.

It's just that Soul Effigy is a fancier pain in the arse to manage.

This is exactly what it is.

[Deleted]

In effect it turns every fight into a min-council one. Joy. Easiest way is to take everlasting corruption, and just focus the Soul Efficy so you can shift-cast Agon onto it. You wouldn;t waste UA's unless for some reason the boss was inaccessible (presuming the Effigy continues to hit the boss in a "flight phase" or whatever, does it have a range?)

Personally I'd talent to minimise the number of DOTs to maintain and maximise the damage of them, unless you have a passive-damage fight and want to use siphon life

[Deleted]

Afflocks have always been about spread damage. In a BG you aren;t doing it right unless you're standing back and tab-DOTing everything in sight. We have so little in the way of escape and break mechanics now since they stuffed them in mutually exclusive talents instead of baseline, we need survivability. And that we have. I have no doubt that once burst classes gear up they will be on top of it again.

Soul Effigy is just a sneaky DOT-multiplier. It's a way of making DOTs work on "single target" without having them being overly-strong on multi-target fights. It's really just a variant on Haunt and Drain Soul, it brings up your "single target" damage because if your DOTs were strong enough then they would be overpowered in something glike a council fight.

It's just that Soul Effigy is a fancier pain in the arse to manage.

That's one of the reasons I dislike it so much, it's essentially a talent to turn each fight into a minimum of two targets and avoid having to bother with balancing affliction's ST output.

[Spunt]

I've noticed at least on bosses that disappear (Like Cordana Felsong or the Dreadlord boss in Black Rook Hold), I just switch to hitting my effigy when they leave. Keep the dots up and drain life and it seems to keep dealing dmg to the boss. Once Agony gets to 20 stacks, it stacks hitting ridiculously hard.

[Kirroth]

That's one of the reasons I dislike it so much, it's essentially a talent to turn each fight into a minimum of two targets and avoid having to bother with balancing affliction's ST output.

You say "avoid having to bother" as if it's something easily accomplished. Has there ever been a point in the game when Afflic was relatively balanced in both ST and Council situations at the same time? If the ST damage is good the Council damage is way too good, if the Council damage is only a bit above average the ST damage is terrible. The whole Malefic Grasp experiment was an attempt to throttle Council damage without impacting ST too much. It failed, but that's because MG was a completely unfun gameplay mechanic, not because the underlying dilemma went away.

So now we have Afflic in Legion, where they're trying to give the spec its class DoT playstyle with multiple little hooks to balance things. The SS cost on UA throttles damage escalation in Council situations. The on-death traits on the artifact boost output on add heavy fights where DoTs are weak. And Soul Effigy is there to for pure Patchwerk ST fights.

If that was the whole picture, I'd say it was fine. There aren't many pure ST fights anymore. Ursoc in Emerald Nightmare and Krosus in Nighthold, and I'm not sure there are any others in what was tested. Having Soul Effigy as a niche talent for those fights isn't a bad thing. It's only when people try to game Effigy with AoE damage on add fights that things get crazy.

[Deleted]

You say "avoid having to bother" as if it's something easily accomplished. Has there ever been a point in the game when Afflic was relatively balanced in both ST and Council situations at the same time? If the ST damage is good the Council damage is way too good, if the Council damage is only a bit above average the ST damage is terrible. The whole Malefic Grasp experiment was an attempt to throttle Council damage without impacting ST too much. It failed, but that's because MG was a completely unfun gameplay mechanic, not because the underlying dilemma went away.

So now we have Afflic in Legion, where they're trying to give the spec its class DoT playstyle with multiple little hooks to balance things. The SS cost on UA throttles damage escalation in Council situations. The on-death traits on the artifact boost output on add heavy fights where DoTs are weak. And Soul Effigy is there to for pure Patchwerk ST fights.

If that was the whole picture, I'd say it was fine. There aren't many pure ST fights anymore. Ursoc in Emerald Nightmare and Krosus in Nighthold, and I'm not sure there are any others in what was tested. Having Soul Effigy as a niche talent for those fights isn't a bad thing. It's only when people try to game Effigy with AoE damage on add fights that things get crazy.

Blizzard have been trying to square this circle forever. There's no real way to make DOTs on their own strong enough for single target without tmaking them massively powerful for multitarget fights, and conversely no way to make them balanced for multitarget fights without making affliction weak on single target

We've had the pendulum swing backwards and forwards for as long as I can remember - th elast time DOTs were strong was the start of Wrath raising, and there were nerfs almost right away

We've just had variants of single-target DOT multipliers, like Haunt, Drain Soul, Malefic Grasp, and buffing the pet's damage per DOT (which we have again, pideonholing affliction into using a slow-moving melee pet, ugh).

Soul Effigy is jusy a variant of, and it even worse. It'slocked to one target, making affliction's damage on priority adds even worse because there is no multiplier (can't see you'd bother with Effigy swapping at all) and it's a bore to manage, essentially turning every fight into a two target one.

[Zerach8]

You say "avoid having to bother" as if it's something easily accomplished. Has there ever been a point in the game when Afflic was relatively balanced in both ST and Council situations at the same time? If the ST damage is good the Council damage is way too good, if the Council damage is only a bit above average the ST damage is terrible. The whole Malefic Grasp experiment was an attempt to throttle Council damage without impacting ST too much. It failed, but that's because MG was a completely unfun gameplay mechanic, not because the underlying dilemma went away.

So now we have Afflic in Legion, where they're trying to give the spec its class DoT playstyle with multiple little hooks to balance things. The SS cost on UA throttles damage escalation in Council situations. The on-death traits on the artifact boost output on add heavy fights where DoTs are weak. And Soul Effigy is there to for pure Patchwerk ST fights.

If that was the whole picture, I'd say it was fine. There aren't many pure ST fights anymore. Ursoc in Emerald Nightmare and Krosus in Nighthold, and I'm not sure there are any others in what was tested. Having Soul Effigy as a niche talent for those fights isn't a bad thing. It's only when people try to game Effigy with AoE damage on add fights that things get crazy.

id say Effigy is mendatory even on fights with adds because u can cleave on to effigy with soul flame and thats a big extra on to the boss...skorpyron comes to mind

[CuchuCachu]

Hopefully the bugs get fixed with recount.

As for the debate how how well Afflic is balanced... How are Shadow Priests and Unholy DKs doing? They're who we should compare ourselves to

Maybe Fire but I dont know if it is really a dot spec any longer

[TummyBoy]

I'm really new to Warlock so take everything I say with grain of salt here.

I think Soul Effigy was a really big missed opportunity. It really just resembles Prismatic Crystal, to the point where it's almost as if they just recycled the concept and threw it at Warlocks because they had no other ideas. It's like, "Mages have had to deal with this crap for a full expansion. Your turn!" I'm going to be playing with it in Legion, primarily because it's going to be the best skill, but it just seems way too uninspired at the moment. It doesn't help that it's automatically planted at your feet, rather than being placeable anywhere.

A cooler type of Soul Effigy would be one on a cooldown--say, a 1 minute CD--where it copies all of the effects currently on the target onto itself, and then radiates a certain percentage of that damage to 4-5 nearby targets for the remaining duration of your DoTs for up to 15 seconds. Warlocks would plan in advance where they could stack up Unstable Affliction on the target for large AoE burst phases before an add cleave phase comes. It would reward good play and punish bad play, and would still play into the theme of the class.

...Throw us a few bones with something like instant Shadowbolt casts or something and I think the spec will be a lot more interactive and fun.