[Legion] Terryn's guide to Affliction Warlock

[Spunt]

OK SORRY FOR SUCKING RECENTLY. Had a bunch of IRL things that finally calmed down this week.

Updated most of the guide for 7.1 Grabbing stuff for FAQ involving the new silly mechanics for 7.1.

If you're still reading Terryn, I would like to ask you how to deal with the rare occurrence of having another affliction lock in a raid with Soul Effigy. The few times I've done a raid (mostly pugs) that had another affliction warlock, we were both targeting each other's effigy when using a macro, particularly one that does"

/target Soul Effigy
/cast (spell)
/targetlasttarget.

[Deleted]

If you're still reading Terryn, I would like to ask you how to deal with the rare occurrence of having another affliction lock in a raid with Soul Effigy. The few times I've done a raid (mostly pugs) that had another affliction warlock, we were both targeting each other's effigy when using a macro, particularly one that does"

/target Soul Effigy
/cast (spell)
/targetlasttarget.

I haven't encounted a 2nd affliction lock yet, but my effigy is always on focus so you could just target your focus maybe?

[Deleted]

Yeah it's really stupid they designed effigy so that it is not uniquely targettable, and that the UI gives you no help at all with it

On the other hand, maybe they knew right from the start that you wouldn't be seeing affliction warlocks around -shrug-

Meanwhile, some questions:

I presume I'm correct in that each individual UA does not buff Shadow Bite? That it only does so once? Now of course, this would be help towards our woeful single target damage and is naturally inherently not spreadable so I am guessing that against all sense and reason they have not done it?

Also, am I correct in saying that the Shadow Bite buff doesn;t compound? That each dot actually adds 50% to Shadow Bite's base damage, not that it buffs it by 50% and then 50% of that and so on?

In the past such buffs have tended to not compound, but merely be additive.

[Deleted]

If you're still reading Terryn, I would like to ask you how to deal with the rare occurrence of having another affliction lock in a raid with Soul Effigy. The few times I've done a raid (mostly pugs) that had another affliction warlock, we were both targeting each other's effigy when using a macro, particularly one that does"

/target Soul Effigy
/cast (spell)
/targetlasttarget.

You can use just /focus macro after dropping effigy, and then @Focus macroes like below

/cast @Focus] agony


Also you may want to change your signature if you are playing in 7.0

[GameFX]

I really don't understand why they can possibly nerf Compounding Horror? For that matter anything in regards to Affliction. If anything the change they just made to UA would make us a bit better if Compounding Horror was kept the same.

[Deleted]

Because they are obviously happy where we are and these "buffs" are in fact simply compensation for nerfs elsewhere and the end result is little change at all

I think they simply see our role as aoe'ing trash and that's it, if you're affliction you just have to be carried though boss fights

"Strengths and weaknesses" (as in mages and hunters get all the strengths and we get all the weaknesses)

But hey. Healthstones. And portals.

[Terryn]

I really don't understand why they can possibly nerf Compounding Horror? For that matter anything in regards to Affliction. If anything the change they just made to UA would make us a bit better if Compounding Horror was kept the same.

Raw single target damage wise it's really a minor nurf, and with adds it's actually a buff because now you get some extra direct damage applied to the UA cast. Got to look at the toolkit as a whole with this situations (much like with the talent swap "nurf" to our survivability) yes it's a nurf but it's not even close to as severe as it's been made out to be.


In unrelated notes, collecting a few things to be added. Adding a few things to the FAQ: 7.1 UA and shadow bite interaction has been noted. Also I will be adding the effigy macro and cast on effigy macro set to the macro guides. On mobile so it's a royal pain to do that right now

[Raxle]

Here's the macro I use for focusing/casting on my Soul Effigy. I don't think it will solve the issue with multiple affliction locks but I have no experience with that scenario.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt,target=focus][] Agony
/stopmacro [target=focus,exists]
/cleartarget
/targetexact Soul Effigy
/focus [exists]
/targetlasttarget [noexists]

Basically if you don't have your Effigy focused, this will target it, focus it, and cast Agony. I tied it to my Agony so that I don't have to hit a separate button to focus it and casting Agony is the first thing I do after casting Soul Effigy anyway. The other parts in the macro are there so that using Agony in any scenario that doesn't include a Soul Effigy works as usual, as well as not overwriting your focus target in case you are focusing something other than your Effigy.

Then I just make macros for all my other dots that follow the first 2 lines in my Agony macro so whenever I use the alt modifier, I cast on my focus. Works great.

[Deleted]

Raw single target damage wise it's really a minor nurf, and with adds it's actually a buff because now you get some extra direct damage applied to the UA cast. Got to look at the toolkit as a whole with this situations (much like with the talent swap "nurf" to our survivability) yes it's a nurf but it's not even close to as severe as it's been made out to be.


In unrelated notes, collecting a few things to be added. Adding a few things to the FAQ: 7.1 UA and shadow bite interaction has been noted. Also I will be adding the effigy macro and cast on effigy macro set to the macro guides. On mobile so it's a royal pain to do that right now

I think the sourc eof the complaints is that given the state of affliction's single target damage right now, a nerf of any sort is simply absurd, and given the state of other artifact traits why on earth are they pissing about with compounding horror at all?

I can;t see anything in the updated notes about Shadow Bite and the new Unstable Affliction mechanics, though?

Does it get extra buffs from the individual UAs? That would meak the Felhunter the default pet for single target wouldn't it?

Sadly I can;t see them actually allowing that

[Deleted]

Raw single target damage wise it's really a minor nurf, and with adds it's actually a buff because now you get some extra direct damage applied to the UA cast. Got to look at the toolkit as a whole with this situations (much like with the talent swap "nurf" to our survivability) yes it's a nurf but it's not even close to as severe as it's been made out to be.


In unrelated notes, collecting a few things to be added. Adding a few things to the FAQ: 7.1 UA and shadow bite interaction has been noted. Also I will be adding the effigy macro and cast on effigy macro set to the macro guides. On mobile so it's a royal pain to do that right now

I'm not really sure you can call it a minor nerf, at my gear level on ptr its about 35% less damage from compounding horror which will only get higher as mastery increases. That's also not factoring in that the new version wont work with Wrath of Consumption, Perdition,Inherently unstable or up coming 2 set bonus.

[Terryn]

I'm not really sure you can call it a minor nerf, at my gear level on ptr its about 35% less damage from compounding horror which will only get higher as mastery increases. That's also not factoring in that the new version wont work with Wrath of Consumption, Perdition,Inherently unstable or up coming 2 set bonus.

It should be working with wrath. If it isn't that's definitely a bug (Wrath is a flat damage increase on everything)

You are definitely right though, it is a nurf over all, I am just pointing out the change DOES have some positive side. Maybe a "small increase here but a nurf over all" would be the better terms.

The logic behind the change is that CH was by far the strongest 1 point trait non gold trait on any artifact. The change kind of puts it in line with others.

[Deleted]

Says it all about their vision for affliction, doesn't it?

They look at the state of affliction and decide "yeah, that needs a nerf, compounding horror is too strong"

I think it just says "we'd rather you didn't play affliction at all"

So basically it looks like the overall result is at best neutral, but probably a loss, and the logiical conclusion is that affliction is exactly where the devs want it to be. Good on aoe trash (in Mythic +, of course, forget it in normal dungeons) - and pretty much rubbish at everything else. A one trick pony. It's not even thar good in Mythic + six and over because then it becomes more a matter of control and targetted dps. Then we don;t even have shadowfury, we can;t turns dots off, we can;t stop soul flame and we have no burst so destruction takes over again

At this point the overwhelmign impression I get is that Blizzard are thinking "hardly anyone is stupid enpugh to play it so who gives a shit about affliction"

Clearly they do not see it worthwhile investing the time and resource in what is essentially a dead spec.

I don;t expect any worthwhile changes from now on.

What a joke, the only change they apply to affliction is to reduce the strength of our best trait to put it in line with the others, in other words a level playing field of mediocrity

[Terryn]

Says it all about their vision for affliction, doesn't it?

They look at the state of affliction and decide "yeah, that needs a nerf, compounding horror is too strong"

I think it just says "we'd rather you didn't play affliction at all"

So basically it looks like the overall result is at best neutral, but probably a loss, and the logiical conclusion is that affliction is exactly where the devs want it to be. Good on aoe trash (in Mythic +, of course, forget it in normal dungeons) - and pretty much rubbish at everything else. A one trick pony. It's not even thar good in Mythic + six and over because then it becomes more a matter of control and targetted dps. Then we don;t even have shadowfury, we can;t turns dots off, we can;t stop soul flame and we have no burst so destruction takes over again

At this point the overwhelmign impression I get is that Blizzard are thinking "hardly anyone is stupid enpugh to play it so who gives a shit about affliction"

Clearly they do not see it worthwhile investing the time and resource in what is essentially a dead spec.

I don;t expect any worthwhile changes from now on.

What a joke, the only change they apply to affliction is to reduce the strength of our best trait to put it in line with the others, in other words a level playing field of mediocrity

They buff all spells other than CH by ~20% over the past 4 weeks, and nurf CH, and that translates to "we want to burry aff to the ground?" Ok.


In other parts of the world: Doomguard just got a stealth 12% buff on ptr. Memes.

[Dwill]

The logic behind the change is that CH was by far the strongest 1 point trait non gold trait on any artifact. The change kind of puts it in line with others.

I have a difficulty believing that line of thought because nearly every spec have a single non gold trait that makes them very powerful , e.g Impish Incineration for Destro and Infernal Furnace for Demo and I highly doubt we'll see a nerf for those. Not that they need one of course but neither did Compounding Horror.

It should be working with wrath. If it isn't that's definitely a bug (Wrath is a flat damage increase on everything)

Wrath is for DoT unless I miss a change and the tooltip wasn't updated.

[Deleted]

The first round of buffs were Corruption 10%, Agony 5%, Drain Soul/Life 10%, Seed of Corruption 15%, Unstable Affliction 15%, Haunt 15%, Phantom Singularity 15%, Siphon Life 10%

The latest buffs are 5% on Drain Life/Soul, Siphon Life, Agony, Unstable Affliction, Phantom Singularity and 10% on Corruption

So the only spells to have received 20% buffs are Corrupttion, UA and Phantom Singularity

Moreover, given the nerfs to Contagion (which is down by 20%) and to Compounding Horror, the second round of buffs are almost entirely negated by nerfs, the overall result in practically no change, in fact, particularly in single target talent builds

So I don;t know where the "20%" is coming from

On top of that we must consider that the effect of these changes is to buff affliction where it is already strong (sustained aoe) and make it even weaker where it is already terrible (single target) - and most of the EN fights do not play to these strengths but instead highlight the weakness

Considering the state of affliction, buffing Phantom Singularity and nerfing Contagion is simply bizarre if one is actually wanted affliction to be a balanced and competetive spec, and we may only conclude from this that the actual intention is to restrict affliction to a rather niche role where it is extremely good, if not outright OP, at one thing - and poor to very poor at most things not in that niche.

I suspect they have painted themselves into a corner with the whole "damage must come from DOTS" thing and they are scared of affliction getting OP at multi-dotting (even fearing a skilled afflock would be able to spread Contagion powered UA buffs to more than one target), have no idea how to make us competetive on single target or how to ameliorate the effects of ramp, zero burst etc and so just keep on making affliction stronger at aoe in the hope that getting big numbers on trash or meter cheesing will act as compensation

Given that warlock is now the least played in game, and that most of them are playing destruction followed by demonology, I think it;s reasonable to say that affliction is pretty much dead and buried as far as raiding is concerned.

If you look at the US forums you will see that even some of the die-hard afflocks have been told by their guilds they are benched following the releas eof the 7.1 changes.


Looking at wow progress, the top ten guilds - there is only one that has more than one warlock in their raids, and there is not one affliction warlock - virtually al of them are destruction.

And a number of those raids have no warlocks at all.

- - - Updated - - -

I have a difficulty believing that line of thought because nearly every spec have a single non gold trait that makes them very powerful , e.g Impish Incineration for Destro and Infernal Furnace for Demo and I highly doubt we'll see a nerf for those. Not that they need one of course but neither did Compounding Horror.



Wrath is for DoT unless I miss a change and the tooltip wasn't updated.

I think the logic being intimated is that Compounding Horror is actually better than the Gold traits - lets; face it, that's not hard given the affliction Golds.

Therefore, they have decided to go for a race to the bottom and just decided to make Compounding Horror less attractive to make the Golds look better.

They've fone this many times with talents, get a good one alongside two shitty ones, and guarantee they will level theplaying field downwards, not upwards

[Deleted]

Just a thought on compounding horror, could be way off here. But maybe they didn't like how much it constrained your unstable affliction usage, as in the difference between someone managing their compounding horror stacks effectively and someone who doesn't being too large.

I can see how the devs could have been thinking "this will be a nice buff to unstable affliction you will passively get if you haven't cast it in a while", whereas in reality we are all off making our compounding horror tracking weak auras so we can constantly monitor it. Obviously that's something people will still do, but the relative gain by doing it is smaller.

Putting myself into super optimistic mode, it's potentially a problem if a spec has too much variance between people that play it well and people that don't, you don't want to have to balance around people playing incredibly well then have the majority of the player base getting awful results, or equally if most players get decent results, then the top players destroying with it. Clearly there should be things you can do that can set you apart, but affliction is already one of the more nuanced specs in the game. I'm hoping they are wanting to reign a couple of things in before slapping more buffs on top, it's definitely a spec that could explode in power if Blizzard aren't careful, so maybe it's a good thing they are being cautious.

- - - Updated - - -

Considering the state of affliction, buffing Phantom Singularity and nerfing Contagion is simply bizarre if one is actually wanted affliction to be a balanced and competetive spec, and we may only conclude from this that the actual intention is to restrict affliction to a rather niche role where it is extremely good, if not outright OP, at one thing - and poor to very poor at most things not in that niche.

I don't disagree with a lot of your points. The position affliction is in sucks. But I believe the reason for those particular changes is because they ideally want to make all the options on the talent tree row relatively equal overall, so they reined in contagion and buffed phantom singularity to move towards a less "cookie cutter" spec build. They have stated their intentions for this with multiple classes, although they are hardly delivering on it, they have been making small changes to multiple specs with this in mind.

[Skaiz]

@Terryn I hope you keep the work up my man. You are the Internets last source of Affliction information on the internet. Side question here, how can I find my own gear lists? I've never really tinkered with simcraft and would like to see if certain trinkets are alright.

Also, is Bough of corruption any good of a trinket for affliction? Just got a 880 version but im weary of giving up other trinkets that have int and a mastery proc

[Deleted]

@Terryn I hope you keep the work up my man. You are the Internets last source of Affliction information on the internet. Side question here, how can I find my own gear lists? I've never really tinkered with simcraft and would like to see if certain trinkets are alright.

Also, is Bough of corruption any good of a trinket for affliction? Just got a 880 version but im weary of giving up other trinkets that have int and a mastery proc

dont use that trinket . dont trust icy-veins either.

in short : this trinket is only up there because of the mastery and how well we scale with it . the proc is horrible for affy .

someone had the same question some pages ago.

also, i was forced to sim my own stuff, Terryn was kinda busy / abanoned this guide for weeks without any sims. i would not count on getting the latest Info/results in this guide :P

[Dwill]

Also, is Bough of corruption any good of a trinket for affliction? Just got a 880 version but im weary of giving up other trinkets that have int and a mastery proc

http://downloads.simulationcraft.org..._trinkets.html

[JoyeuxNoel]

Just a stupid question, how to cast seed of corruption? Do you want to cast it to different targets or just cast it on one same target constantly, when doing aoe?