[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Zerach8]

Yeah, I've played with most of them. Obviously Horn of valor is amazing (for all classes really), though that's like the one trinket I haven't gotten to try.

This one is also pretty decent, though a little harder to play with due to the Area of Effect requirement to benefit from the on use: http://beta.wowdb.com/items/137433-obelisk-of-the-void

It's also a little harder to get since you can't choose which bosses in Violet Hold pop up.

that looks juicy, mythic+ versions of it look amazing tbh, but i dont think correct values are applied to rating -> % conversion on wowhead

[Darkheart]

@Darkheart Highmaul started with all 3 seeing fairly equal representation until they over buffed demo at which point it became fairly dominant. BRF was completely dominated by demo, and HFC saw demo on 2 fights, one of them being the 2nd most important of the tier... while the rest of the instance saw a split between destro and aff. So he's only right if he meant that you'd need to play destro at some point at all, but if he meant predominately destro he'd be wrong.

I'm not sure where I fall on your scale for top to bottom, but I've been a core member of my guild for almost 4 years now and that guild is currently ranked 7th in the us 34th in the world. I've been fairly competitive during raid testing usually landing somewhere within the top 5 dps of my raid, which are a bunch of people from a US top 10 guild. I'm also not using any cheese during the testing, no set bonuses, legion rings / neck, legion trinkets so that I get a more accurate assessment of where my char will be. I am not at all worried about the state of locks going into legion, as I've been through this same song and dance at the beginning of every xpac.. and every time its been nonsense.

Oh and btw tuning absolutely already started, quite a while ago.

Destro is better than the other two specs in that its versatile and its niche is direct damage which tends to be more useful for general cutting edge progress and the fights that typically make or break progression. The other two specs are still fine though, they're just better at different things. They tweak the numbers the tiniest bit and it makes them raid viable just because of how strong they are in their niches.

Highmaul was just too short so I didn't bother bringing it up, but you're right.

WoD Demo had an amazing toolkit, but got taken away. Like you said, it's just very niche now, exactly like Aff.

I agree with most of your post, and I don't have as much experience as you do. But in my humble opinion, I don't think destruction has any glaring weaknesses. If you learn how to destro, you can play any progression and perform decently at the very least.

In Legion, let's say I decide to invest all my time in Aff and Demo because they are my fav specs, I'll probably do much worse on progression than someone who will just invest time to learn Destro. I think this is bad class design.

Of course, they could nerf the hell out of Destro and buff the hell out of Aff or Demo, then they will become viable. But that's bad design too again. They should give Aff and Demo better toolkit in my opinion.

[Baconeggcheese]

In Legion, let's say I decide to invest all my time in Aff and Demo because they are my fav specs, I'll probably do much worse on progression than someone who will just invest time to learn Destro. I think this is bad class design.

That'd really depend on the kind of damage you need and your raid. Destro is shaping up to be t17 demo though, just because its kit hasn't changed much. Though its aoe is very clearly not what it was, but its cleave is on point and its burst potential is flattened out a bit but still very much there.

Though with saying that, the other two look like they have their typical niches just like destro has its niche. It just so happens that destro's niche is generally more useful for most of progression for bleeding edge guilds. Honestly if not for the artifacts the conversation would be fairly moot, as its looking like it always has for playing different specs on different fights, the only reason this conversation exists is because you have to invest so heavily into a single spec with the artifacts (and potentially legendaries) that it doesn't allow for flexibility.

Which is a huge problem where they were trying to get away from homogenization.

[CuchuCachu]

I understand where people's lock frustration comes from.

For me it mostly revolves around Mages (and to a lesser extent DKs) never really being noncompetitive except for times when clearly broken mechanics were playing in another class' favor (like shadowbolt spam in TBC).

And a lot of that revolves around a loss of kit forcing warlocks to make choices and sacrifices it seems like Mages never have to make. Granted my raiding experience is tainted by late Wrath and Cataclysm Fire Mage dominance. Which was mostly down to them being able to handle almost any encounter.

I think it's more of a convergence of circumstances rather than anything deliberate or careless on the part of Blizzard. Things like the way Warlocks were in Classic and TBC where they really lacked a sense of purpose (though for different reasons. In Classic the specific niche of the warlock was unclear whereas in TBC it was dominated by shadowbolt spam).

Add onto this the fact that Affliction in particular has been pretty much always the pvp spec so it was always good at something in game which made it not prioritized for big changes. Then add in the thematic similarities with Unholy DKs and Shadow Priests so a lot of cool ideas can go to them instead. This also meant that buffing Affliction's pve abilities would be a nightmare in pvp (remember when glyphed soul swap had a ten second cooldown?).

I am less familiar with Demo and Destro's evolution so I wont comment

[bio347]

For me it mostly revolves around Mages (and to a lesser extent DKs) never really being noncompetitive except for times when clearly broken mechanics were playing in another class' favor (like shadowbolt spam in TBC).

The thing is, warlocks have also never been non-competitive. And you may say "well, but warlocks only have one competitive spec at a time!" or something like that, which (aside from the questionable definition of "competitive") is hilarious because frost mages exist and would probably very much like to be considered competitive at any point at all, thankyouvermuch.

[Spunt]

Affliction's only weakness is burst from what I've experienced on the beta. If something lives long enough for agony to reach 20 stacks and stays that way for at least a minute or 2, affliction's damage starts getting pretty high.

Plus, you can kind of cheese SE. If the target disappears, and SE is out, you can just switch to hitting the effigy until boss respawns. Not sure if that's intended or not or if it's actually working.

[Kirroth]

Affliction's only weakness is burst from what I've experienced on the beta. If something lives long enough for agony to reach 20 stacks and stays that way for at least a minute or 2, affliction's damage starts getting pretty high.

Between hitting LFR for Weapon Illusions and doing a Heroic Archie kill for returning guild mates, I've gotten some actual play use with Afflic in a raid situation the last few days. Once again, I'm struck by the similarities to how Wrath Afflic felt to play. While it's never optimal play to let a DoT fall off, if you're running WiA then keeping that 20-stack Agony from resetting is your absolute number one priority. Everything else but that has some forgiveness, but if your Agony falls off it's a long slow climb back up. Which feels very much like babysitting a mega-buffed Corruption with Haunt renews from back in Wrath. Only this time it's an explicit mechanic with clear UI displays, which is much better.

[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.

I don't think Blizzard should be TRYING to hamstring affliction in it's niche. Like you said, there has NEVER been a point in the game where affliction was a competetive ST dps AND not strong on councils. I think that's perfectly fine, because there has definitely been some stellar periods of affliction spec design.
If we're talking about class fantasy, how about letting multidotters be good at multidotting instead of trying to impliment convoluted throttling that has never worked and just resulted in frustrating gameplay for the playerbase and / or bad performance elsewhere. Council fights aren't what the game should be balanced around in any world.

That was one of the few things I had hope for coming into Legion, they seemed to be in their beloved CLASS FANTASY phase and it looked like they might be fine letting classes excel in their niches. I didn't realise they'd be coming at this by balancing affliction around two targets and them talenting ST fights into a multi target fight.

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.

It failed because it didn't result in throttling our damage nearly enough, we were still bonkers on council fights.
Shockingly the world continued to turn despite us being strong on such pivotal bosses as Fallen Protectors.

[CuchuCachu]

The thing is, warlocks have also never been non-competitive. And you may say "well, but warlocks only have one competitive spec at a time!" or something like that, which (aside from the questionable definition of "competitive") is hilarious because frost mages exist and would probably very much like to be considered competitive at any point at all, thankyouvermuch.

There have been times when warlocks werent wanted for progression.

[bio347]

There have been times when warlocks werent wanted for progression.

Oh sure. The list is like... what, first tier of Cataclysm and Classic Naxx? Warlocks have been fine or better for the vast majority of the game's history, and have been top dogs in a good amount of tiers.

And besides, warlocks QQing about mages (and vice versa) is literally as old as this game is. It's tired and boring and I don't think anyone really cares anymore.

[Turturin the Warlock]

Oh sure. The list is like... what, first tier of Cataclysm and Classic Naxx? Warlocks have been fine or better for the vast majority of the game's history, and have been top dogs in a good amount of tiers.

And besides, warlocks QQing about mages (and vice versa) is literally as old as this game is. It's tired and boring and I don't think anyone really cares anymore.

First tier of cataclysm? Both affliction (quite easily) and destro (for those with exceptional ISF uptime) topped charts in a lot of fights....

[bio347]

First tier of cataclysm? Both affliction (quite easily) and destro (for those with exceptional ISF uptime) topped charts in a lot of fights....

I'll be honest, I had totally blocked ISF from my memory. But really then, Classic Naxx is about the only time I can think of where warlocks were truly not wanted. Since expansions started happening, we've always had at least one spec that was good enough and were often near the top for one reason or another.

[ThePhantombox]

So everyone's going on about how affliction's aoe/target swapping is shit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of the scythe not to make affliction better at killing shitty trash add's, but to make the act of the those shitty trash adds dying improve your single target/priority target damage?

[CuchuCachu]

So everyone's going on about how affliction's aoe/target swapping is shit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of the scythe not to make affliction better at killing shitty trash add's, but to make the act of the those shitty trash adds dying improve your single target/priority target damage?

Yes. Which is a smart mechanic for Blizzard to add imo

[TummyBoy]

So I assume that with Uthalesh, as long as you "tag" a small mob, you'll get a buff when it dies? You don't actually have to get the killing blow?

[Deleted]

is it just me or does the affliction artifact weapon skill tree look extremely weak?

like super weak compared to other classes.

Especially the "after you kill ... then you get" kinda talents. They really scare me away from affliction, because they are pretty bad in a raiding environment

[Spunt]

is it just me or does the affliction artifact weapon skill tree look extremely weak?

like super weak compared to other classes.

Especially the "after you kill ... then you get" kinda talents. They really scare me away from affliction, because they are pretty bad in a raiding environment

There aren't many pure single target fights where no adds or anything spawn so this isn't as bad as people make it sound. As long as an add has one dot on it, you'll get both soul flame and consumption procs. If the adds don't live that long, don't bother dotting, just throw a seed out on the man target and keep trucking.

[solshine2510]

Does pandemia point apply to Siphon Life? Just askinc because SP timers show it for all 3 DoTs but this one.

[Kirroth]

Especially the "after you kill ... then you get" kinda talents. They really scare me away from affliction, because they are pretty bad in a raiding environment

You've got it backwards. Those "on death" artifact traits don't require killing blows, they trigger off the death of any mob you've tagged with damage. So their intent is to make Afflic better in a raid environment by giving the spec a boost with the add heavy fights it usually suffers on.

Your DoTs don't contribute as much to taking down constant adds on a boss like Xul'horac or Mannoroth? That's okay, they're feeding you Wrath of Consumption and Reap Souls uptime so your boss damage goes up to compensate. Not as good at contributing to large add packs like Kormrok's hands or Socrethat's ghosts? Well thanks to Soul Flame you're now a lot better, as each death chains explosions into the others.

Now sure, the spec is still a bit weak at the "burst down this single priority add ASAP" thing. But everyone's got to have weaknesses, and those artifact traits go a long way towards making Afflic a more well rounded spec.

[Deleted]

You've got it backwards. Those "on death" artifact traits don't require killing blows, they trigger off the death of any mob you've tagged with damage. So their intent is to make Afflic better in a raid environment by giving the spec a boost with the add heavy fights it usually suffers on.

Your DoTs don't contribute as much to taking down constant adds on a boss like Xul'horac or Mannoroth? That's okay, they're feeding you Wrath of Consumption and Reap Souls uptime so your boss damage goes up to compensate. Not as good at contributing to large add packs like Kormrok's hands or Socrethat's ghosts? Well thanks to Soul Flame you're now a lot better, as each death chains explosions into the others.

Now sure, the spec is still a bit weak at the "burst down this single priority add ASAP" thing. But everyone's got to have weaknesses, and those artifact traits go a long way towards making Afflic a more well rounded spec.

oh yeah but for example a patchwork fight ... those talents would be absolutely useless

I don't like that

- - - Updated - - -

There aren't many pure single target fights where no adds or anything spawn so this isn't as bad as people make it sound. As long as an add has one dot on it, you'll get both soul flame and consumption procs. If the adds don't live that long, don't bother dotting, just throw a seed out on the man target and keep trucking.

ok good to know. I know nothing about LEGION raiding.

but if fast add burst is important ... are afflictions locks the right choice then to begin with?