Soul effigy - good or bad talent? (gameplay wise)

[Deleted]

Soul Efigy is just a DOT multiplier like Haunt and Drain Soul were, it's the usual attempt to square the circle of decent damage from DOTs alone means overpowered damage on multidot fights.

So they hobble DOTs for that, and beef them up with a multiplier you can only have on one target

Soul Effigy is actually a bigge rpain in the arse - it turns every fight into one where you have two sets of DOTs to watch at all times and it makes us even less useful for adds because the Effigy is locked to one target, whereas Haunt and Drain Soul came with the rotation if you swtiched target, whereas Effigy can't.

And it pushes out rampup times up even higher.

I guess th eonly bonus to Effigy is that it allows you to keep hitting a boss that is very inaccessible, since afaik it has no range limitation.

It will likely be the go-to, though, since the othet two talents are weak by comparison.

[Exijin]

Yea I was wondering how that worked out at 110 since I don't have access to the BETA, so can you dot up a target, SE, then soul swap to the SE? Or would it be just as advantageous to take Rot and Decay, dot up both and then drain the SE to refresh both sets of DOTs? I have no idea if this is how the gameplay is so any information is appreciated. Thanks!

Last I heard RnD was resetting UA damage to 1 stack worth of damage, which would make it much more of a gimmick. I will try it out properly tomorrow and post in the aff PvP thread though. You obviously shouldn't be able to stack it indefinately higher and higher, but hopefully you don't lose the damage you do stack.

[Grinthe]

I'd like soul effigy a lot more if it was placed at the targets location when it was cast, not at mine. As people have said, running into melee to get the most out of the talent is awkward and not fun. Otherwise I am perfectly okay with having to multi dot at all times, even on single target.

[Deleted]

Yes, it should be placable. I suspect they aren;t allowing this to stop it benefitting from AOE damage, if they allowed this then afflocks would work Seed of Corruption into their standard rotation, and Blizzard really hate that sort of stuff.

It was the base reason for the massive nerf to Rain of Fire, it's damage and ember generation meant you could and would work it into a single target rotation.

So in typical sledgehammer to crack a small nut technique, they nerfed it into oblivion, making Rain of Fire literally worthless, a waste of mana and GCD.

[Spunt]

Yes, it should be placable. I suspect they aren;t allowing this to stop it benefitting from AOE damage, if they allowed this then afflocks would work Seed of Corruption into their standard rotation, and Blizzard really hate that sort of stuff.

It was the base reason for the massive nerf to Rain of Fire, it's damage and ember generation meant you could and would work it into a single target rotation.

So in typical sledgehammer to crack a small nut technique, they nerfed it into oblivion, making Rain of Fire literally worthless, a waste of mana and GCD.

It already benefits from splash AOE. It's a DPS increase to drop in the middle of mobs and proceed to AOE. Making it drop at the mob's feet would make more sense, since warlocks are a ranged class anyways. Or they should disabled it from getting AOE and buff it to compensate. Warlocks shouldn't be required to go into melee range for a DPS increase, especially since warlocks mobility was all but destroyed in legion.

[Kirroth]

It already benefits from splash AOE. It's a DPS increase to drop in the middle of mobs and proceed to AOE. Making it drop at the mob's feet would make more sense, since warlocks are a ranged class anyways. Or they should disabled it from getting AOE and buff it to compensate. Warlocks shouldn't be required to go into melee range for a DPS increase, especially since warlocks mobility was all but destroyed in legion.

Right, but I'm pretty sure that gaming the Effigy's efficiency with AoE splash damage isn't the intended use case or balance point for the talent. So I expect the Devs want to discourage using it in that way, not make it easier. In fact, if they can figure out a way to remove it entirely and make the Effigy only damaged by your DoTs, I rather expect they will.

[Spunt]

Right, but I'm pretty sure that gaming the Effigy's efficiency with AoE splash damage isn't the intended use case or balance point for the talent. So I expect the Devs want to discourage using it in that way, not make it easier. In fact, if they can figure out a way to remove it entirely and make the Effigy only damaged by your DoTs, I rather expect they will.

Hopefully they buff it's damage to compensate, otherwise that's just a flat nerf to a rather underwhelming 100 talent.

[Kirroth]

Hopefully they buff it's damage to compensate, otherwise that's just a flat nerf to a rather underwhelming 100 talent.

Why should they? From the little testing I did, on a pure single target fight it's like an extra 10% DPS over Soul Conduit. Now sure, not as superior in other situations, but IMO it's as niche a talent as Sow the Seeds. You only want to pick it in the right situation.

Instead of buffing Effigy to compensate, I'd rather they rework Phantom Singularity so that it has actual use cases to cover the times when neither Effigy or Conduit is favorable.

[JoshuaNLG]

It's a pretty easy talent to utilize if you just throw in some focus macros.

Set it as your focus target, set some seperate binds specifically macro'd to target your focus, "Focus 1: Corruption" "Focus 2: Agony", stick them on some stupid bind like Mouse wheel up and Mouse wheel down or MB4 MB5, done. Heck, if you take permanent corruption it's even easier.

[Zerach8]

Make it placeable and i have no complaints

[Noxate]

The concept and gameplay I like but the ui implementation is pretty meh.

[Deleted]

If only the effigy wasn't a totem but actually something attached to me or the target, that'd be cool.

RP wise it would be cool if we held the target soul in our hands while we Dot it to deal damage to our enemy.

[Jessicka]

Right, but I'm pretty sure that gaming the Effigy's efficiency with AoE splash damage isn't the intended use case or balance point for the talent. So I expect the Devs want to discourage using it in that way, not make it easier. In fact, if they can figure out a way to remove it entirely and make the Effigy only damaged by your DoTs, I rather expect they will.

It may not be something they want to encourage but they will still balance around the assumption you do it. I don't think it would be hard to make it immune to AoE if they had issues with us doing that.

[Deleted]

It may not be something they want to encourage but they will still balance around the assumption you do it. I don't think it would be hard to make it immune to AoE if they had issues with us doing that.

Maybe, but in that case the entire spell is completely ass-backwards from a usability standpoint. If you're supposed to put it at the boss, why does it plop down under your feet? Why no targeting reticule? Pat-pat-pattering to every boss on every pull at bullshit baseline speed (because we have no Rush/often no Circle), plopping the Effigy down, then pat-pat-pattering back to our respective position from which we'll actually be doing the boss... is this supposed to be our opener? This is cancer, I'd rather do a couple % less dps than deal with that shit on every pull for the next fuck knows how many months.

[Jessicka]

Maybe, but in that case the entire spell is completely ass-backwards from a usability standpoint. If you're supposed to put it at the boss, why does it plop down under your feet? Why no targeting reticule? Pat-pat-pattering to every boss on every pull at bullshit baseline speed (because we have no Rush/often no Circle), plopping the Effigy down, then pat-pat-pattering back to our respective position from which we'll actually be doing the boss... is this supposed to be our opener? This is cancer, I'd rather do a couple % less dps than deal with that shit on every pull for the next fuck knows how many months.

I dunno, none of this is new discussion. It's been criticised for these exact issues since even very early Alpha, but back then you just got shut down by the usual apologists saying 'if you don't like dots don't play Aff', or focusing on comparisons with Prismatic Crystal and stifling the discussion - pretty much why I stopped posting much of anything here. There are clearly some few players who either like it, or don't care enough to consider the consequences of it, or just want to defend it for the sake of defending it. It's only now more people are seeing the reality of it that it's getting airtime again. Hopefully that will change it.

Past experience with similarly unpopular talents (ISF, Prismatic Crystal, Invocation, Clarity of Power), have seen bad mechanics defended by people defending strong numbers, and consequently slow change so I won't be holding my breath.

[Deleted]

I dunno, none of this is new discussion. It's been criticised for these exact issues since even very early Alpha, but back then you just got shut down by the usual apologists saying 'if you don't like dots don't play Aff', or focusing on comparisons with Prismatic Crystal and stifling the discussion - pretty much why I stopped posting much of anything here. There are clearly some few players who either like it, or don't care enough to consider the consequences of it, or just want to defend it for the sake of defending it. It's only now more people are seeing the reality of it that it's getting airtime again. Hopefully that will change it.

Past experience with similarly unpopular talents (ISF, Prismatic Crystal, Invocation, Clarity of Power), have seen bad mechanics defended by people defending strong numbers, and consequently slow change so I won't be holding my breath.

All true, except in the case of Effigy I don't really expect strong numbers. It props us single target a bit, but that's it. It's not like Aff is OP thanks to it.

[Dorrin]

Soul Effigy is making me want to play literally any other class. Complete shitheap of an idea and the execution of it is even worse.

Totally agree, more so because of your location and Nobby pic

Seriously though, its awful. Afflic is my fave spec and Im trying to love it again. There are plenty things I like about it but this and the way Agony is working are really turning me off it.

[CuchuCachu]

I wont say it is good but if it solves the dilemma it exists to solve (balance multidotting and single target) then that's good enough for me

[Prada]

I would have preferred if Soul Effigy worked like this:
- You cast the Soul Effigy spell while targeting the enemy and the effigy is bound to the target, 1 target only.
- All dot spells you cast on the effigy also automatically appears onto the target it is bound to.
- Unstable Affliction will cost two shards if available in order to apply to both the effigy and the target.
- Damage done to the effigy and the target itself is reduced to 50% each when an effigy is present.
- Damage done to one of the targets is then increased 50% when a drain spell is cast.
- Overall this will equate to a 25% damage increase while channeling a drain spell (before dmg increases via talents and artifact bonuses).

This way it would make things interesting for us as a ranged dps class. We can cast the effigy at a location with premeditated strategy and do our dps vicariously.
I don't see it being too OP in PVP since with movement we can end up going out of LOS while also preventing us from loosing LOS on our enemy when we need to execute.
Or to be more fair it can be given a limited duration and cooldown just for PVP.

[Xogo]

I always prefer Aff over other specs, but I too am hating the SE talent. My plan is to go Aff but with Soul Conduit on all fights and hope I can it work. Has anyone compared the dps from Aff w SC to the top Demo spec?