[BETA] Affliction Warlock Discussion

[Deleted]

i get what you're saying now and i do agree that depending on how much damage is coming from shards the talent SC can valued higher. when it comes down to it tho, SC for affliction isn't balanced on how well it does for demo or destro but the other two talents in that row (soul effigy and phantom)

which is sad bcoz it makes it incredibly weak for afflic which is prolly the spec that needs the refunds the most.

[wooters]

you dont get what it is im saying tho, im debating the value of soul conduit for specs like destro/afflic vs demo not the value of the shards themselves and using your example as a reference destro would get 5 shards from SC where as demo would get 20 shards that means soul conduit would be worth 10% overall dmg for destro but a total of 14% for demo, outpacing destro by a whopping 40%(in this example its actually closer to 50%), clearly showing that shard consumption matters just as much as shard value, if not more.

If destro consistently have multiple targets to havoc, say a couple of instances a minute or more, I atleast.. doubt conduit is better for the other two. and after all..these types of fights are when locks most often will use that spec

[Deleted]

If destro consistently have multiple targets to havoc, say a couple of instances a minute or more, I atleast.. doubt conduit is better for the other two. and after all..these types of fights are when locks most often will use that spec

while i do agree, the moment you then start to aoe, demo would get significantly more out of SC, in heavy cleave fights SC is more value for destro for sure.

[Deleted]

All that aside, I think that Soul Conduit is a terribly boring talent, particularly for a lvl 100 one. It's an RNG passive. I'd much rather see some sort of active ability - affliction could really do with a "pop your cooldowns" type one of some sort.

[garonne]

All that aside, I think that Soul Conduit is a terribly boring talent, particularly for a lvl 100 one. It's an RNG passive. I'd much rather see some sort of active ability - affliction could really do with a "pop your cooldowns" type one of some sort.

yea its passive, but its a reactionary passive, something you as the individual have to respond to depending on the situation unlike Grimoire of sacrifice for example.

[Canitank]

All that aside, I think that Soul Conduit is a terribly boring talent, particularly for a lvl 100 one. It's an RNG passive. I'd much rather see some sort of active ability - affliction could really do with a "pop your cooldowns" type one of some sort.

Still haven't hit 110 yet, but I have been playing around with all the different talents and various combinations while leveling on alpha and it is not only a boring talent, but it feels bad. At least so far in my experience it doesn't feel like I generate enough shards on ST for Soul Conduit to actually matter and when I get multiple targets to put Agony on I feel like I'm swimming in shards and don't need a random 20% chance to refund one when using one.

What is A LOT of fun though is GoSup and Sow the Seeds and pulling everything you can and watching everything blow up or GoSac + Sow the Seeds + Phantom Singularity on trash packs in places like Violet Hold. Just wanted to post something positive for a change and let you all know that despite how some things may look about how the spec is headed that I have managed to find some fun things in there too.

[Deleted]

Don't worry, I'm sure they will fix affliction back to being shit on AOE before things go live

Seriously though, you're right; Conduit is obviously destined to be a single target talent, at least for affliction, because if you can multi-Agony you'll be drowning in shards, and affliction doesn;t really burn through them crazy fast unlike demo anyway.

But for that purpose, soul conduit really should be buffed for affliction. It it boring as hell and very underwhelming. It's also a very easy way to buff affliction if necessary because you can stack UA more if you get more shards.

[Baconeggcheese]

Don't worry, I'm sure they will fix affliction back to being shit on AOE before things go live

Seriously though, you're right; Conduit is obviously destined to be a single target talent, at least for affliction, because if you can multi-Agony you'll be drowning in shards, and affliction doesn;t really burn through them crazy fast unlike demo anyway.

But for that purpose, soul conduit really should be buffed for affliction. It it boring as hell and very underwhelming. It's also a very easy way to buff affliction if necessary because you can stack UA more if you get more shards.

Soul conduit looks like a multi-target / aoe talent more than anything. Especially multi-dot since phantom singularity could potentially fill the aoe niche.

UA is only second to agony damage wise, so if you end up in a situation where you can do nothing but maintain agony and spam ua you'd be all about it. Its highly unlikely we'll get there on just shard gen alone in say... council or what have you so soul conduits definitely looking like the council talent.

It all comes down to numbers, but mechanically I assume blizzard is going for:

soul effigy: ST
Phantom singularity: aoe
Soul conduit: council

[Canitank]

UA is only second to agony damage wise, so if you end up in a situation where you can do nothing but maintain agony and spam ua you'd be all about it. Its highly unlikely we'll get there on just shard gen alone in say... council or what have you so soul conduits definitely looking like the council talent.

Just for fun I tested this on the PvP realm at 110 with 4 target dummies at shrine and found this to pretty much be the case. Maintain Agony on all 4 while dumping UA in 'priority' target dummy rinse and repeat and I didn't really find myself with much opportunity to cast much else and Soul Conduit was feeling much better than it did on ST when having more shards to spend.

Though as far as Phantom Singularity goes for AoE the CD feels a little long at 60sec as though it isn't up when I want it.

[wholol]

Soul conduit will be the go to pvp talent for affli, since UA dumping is sorta going to be a thing I'm guessing, so the more rng shards u get while dumping the better the outcome.

What I'm really wondering though is why is demon skin in the CC row, is the logic behind it " give up cc for better survivability"? or do they somehow estimate that the CC options are meant to peel for urself so you reduce damage indirectly, although in organized pvp CC is never randomly used and most likely will be set with certain playstyle patterns like cc chaining or off target CCing during burst windows or to force cds, in which case this sets us with the very crude choice of be squishier for the sake of being able to CC, which is a dilemma no other class has to go through.

[Baconeggcheese]

Difficult choices probably.

For pve its a pretty no brainer you either need cc or you don't. For pvp you'd have choose between straight up 1% max health a second (and potentially 5% more total on the bubble in the unlikely event you aren't getting ridden) and a cc. That passive gens nothing to sneeze at and if blizzard doesn't fuck up for a 3rd time then we wont NEED the cc for these burst windows in order for anyone to die like the last 2 xpacs.

I could see phantom singularity making its way into pvp if the heal ends up being decent. Thing has a 25 yard range which is fairly massive, you'll pretty much guaranteed be hitting multiple people. In arenas I just don't see anyone allowing someone to just UA spam, us being locks and locks forever being ridden in pvp.

[wooters]

while i do agree, the moment you then start to aoe, demo would get significantly more out of SC, in heavy cleave fights SC is more value for destro for sure.

depends on rain of fire really.. is it currently stackable in legion? if it is..its dynamite in aoe, preferably in combination with cataclysm ofc. knowing blizz it probably isn`t

[wholol]

Difficult choices probably.

For pve its a pretty no brainer you either need cc or you don't. For pvp you'd have choose between straight up 1% max health a second (and potentially 5% more total on the bubble in the unlikely event you aren't getting ridden) and a cc. That passive gens nothing to sneeze at and if blizzard doesn't fuck up for a 3rd time then we wont NEED the cc for these burst windows in order for anyone to die like the last 2 xpacs.

I could see phantom singularity making its way into pvp if the heal ends up being decent. Thing has a 25 yard range which is fairly massive, you'll pretty much guaranteed be hitting multiple people. In arenas I just don't see anyone allowing someone to just UA spam, us being locks and locks forever being ridden in pvp.

Actually phantom singularity was at the top of the priority list for pvp before they introduced soul conduit,and since legion affliction pvp is mostly going to be UA stacking on a single target soul conduit brings so much more burst ,although phantom singularity would be much better for the purpose of multi dotting pressure ( which is what affliction has always been about, sadly that's changing).

Also the pvp talent tree has some very interesting new additions that are quite honestly, absolutely broken op. I mean check out the pvp talents section's 4th row, especially casting circle, that talent should never exist period.

[Duckz0rs]

Actually phantom singularity was at the top of the priority list for pvp before they introduced soul conduit,and since legion affliction pvp is mostly going to be UA stacking on a single target soul conduit brings so much more burst ,although phantom singularity would be much better for the purpose of multi dotting pressure ( which is what affliction has always been about, sadly that's changing).

Why would that be changing? With the loss of current Drain Soul/Haunt mechanics and a refocus on multi-dotting I guessed Affliction would only get better at spread pressure in pvp, not worse.

Question (think I asked it before, but not sure if someone answered): Does the Soul Swap pvp talent transfer all stacks of UA or just one? That would be some insane spread pressure.

[wholol]

Why would that be changing? With the loss of current Drain Soul/Haunt mechanics and a refocus on multi-dotting I guessed Affliction would only get better at spread pressure in pvp, not worse.

Question (think I asked it before, but not sure if someone answered): Does the Soul Swap pvp talent transfer all stacks of UA or just one? That would be some insane spread pressure.

You will still be spreading your instant dots, but you won't be spreading UAs ( at least for now in it's current iteration ) mainly because the stacked value of several shards worth of UA on a single target is significantly more dangerous than spreading those shards around currently, basically we're sort of playing the live version of a shadow priest, spread low prio dots for procs n such while devouring plague main target for burst.

Also soul swap transfers all stacks but does not copy paste, it deletes and pastes, you cant spread those juicy stacked UAs , blizzard took away that dream : <

[Duckz0rs]

Ah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The spread pressure theorycrafting I was doing was largely based on Soul Swap copy pasting, so I can throw that out the window . Sort of disappointed but largely understandable, it'd be too strong if it copy pasted your stacks and too weak if it only took one of them.

Would like to hear more about Affli for pvp on alpha, if there's anything interesting in particular? Did you try (assuming 3s for this one) doing halfsies on UA stacks? Half of the stacks in a row on the main target, the remaining ones (+ soul conduit procs?) on the healer? I don't exactly know why I feel this'd be effective, but you never know.

[Skroe]

Man... I'm extremely concerned about Affliction at the moment. I think I'm fundamentally not understanding something.

I've done almost all the raid testing, and while I admit upfront my attention is more on working out strats for the fights, I feel on almost any given fight so far that I'm being incredibly uncompetitive, or demonology performs vastly better when I go that.

I feel very shard starved, and I admit upfront, this could easily be because of a misunderstanding of basic functionality.

I've typically been running these talents.
http://www.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#G/ll

The encounters on Tuesday I think were indicative of the disparity... and it could simply be my approach is dead wrong.

The SECOND encounter, Elisande, you regularly had the boss + two 35 million HP adds alive, so rolling three agony's lead to pretty good shard return. In combination with the fight's haste / dot tick buff (it's a mechanic if you haven't done it), I felt better about Affliction (though still not great). I at least felt like I was generating shards and able to cast UA.

This contrasts with the first encounter. Chronomatic Anomaly. This fight has one big boss, that you dot up. It periodically has one moderate health add, that you want to nuke down as fast as possible. There are a few small adds that die by DemonHunter hands. Chronomatic Anomoly had essentially no built-in shard generator besides Agony on the boss, so there were periods where I had no UA up, or just put one UA "stack" on the boss because that's all I had. It seemed ridiculous. I felt totally ineffective.

I've tried playing with Haunt and Absolute Corruption on these and different pulls to negligible effects.

So am I just completely missing something or am terribly out of date about throwing UA's up? Elisande makes sense to be Aff on. The shard return is there (for the most part). But Chronomatic Anomaly... frankly I was just getting pissed off by not being able to put UA up. I guess I just don't get shard generation (or my approach to damage) on that "model" of fight that doesn't have built in a long-duration shard generation.

Thanks!

[Deleted]

Well we haven't had damage tuning yet, but yeah,. affliction feels very mediocre right now. And whilst they've finally given it aoe, it's not great on "nuke it down quick" type situations.

But then no class/spec should be great at everything. Obviously huntards and mages are exceptions to this.

What's a tad worrying is that the artefact stuff means you invest a lot more in a spec than now, and switching for different fights means levelling both up. What, Blizzard increasing the grind requirements, surely not...

[Baconeggcheese]

One thing to keep in mind with UA is that its strength comes from compound interest. Compound interest can cause a single ua to do up to 75% more damage currently, and they can very easily tune around that to cause player behavior if it doesn't already.

It's actually really confusing to me as is when I see people mentioning in pve that the gameplay is to just spam ua in all situations when you'd very clearly want to use your UA's based on compound interest procs and you don't just have infinite stacks of it. The only way I'd see us wanting to spam UA is if there's just a shenanigans trinket unlike anything we've seen or if we're in a situation where we're generating excess shards and need to spend them.

UA is already fairly weak as a spender without compound interest stacks. For pvp hey could easily tune agony + corruption to be stronger, (agony already is) and then make it so you want to spread UA's for dispel protection / buffing agony + corruption with contagion. And then UA's own damage will be getting buffed by compound interest, which you're going to want to bias shard use around since its such a massive buff as opposed to just spamming weak non-buffed ua's into a target. You'd also doubly want the dispel protection because agony takes forever to stack now and with writhe in agony stacks up to 20, and I imagine we'll want the kind of pressure of 20 stack agony's out.

The mechanics have been there for getting people to play how they want, they just need to tune to cause said behavior. And frankly the current tuning might already be there or close to it and people just haven't theory crafted it out, which if that's the case would be why blizzard hasn't responded to said feedback.

[Halwyn]

Obviously huntards and mages are exceptions to this.

Isnt it one of the reasons Demonology was nerfed in 6.2?