October 14th-11:00 a.m. Your class needs you!

[Dwill]

No, you're talking Burst/Mass AE. I can't see any legitimate reason why you'd sacrifice so much ST and multidot potential for that in the wider context of what you're doing (Raid boss, everything else in the dungeon); those situations are super niche. In most cases multidotting is where it's at for the spec, and for that you use SL, Contagion, Conduit and Service; which is a build that'll get you through 90% of the content. The major changers are actually the 15 row, which are dependent on how long stuff is going to live.

With having already substandard single target while having the optimal build for it, Affliction's niche relies on having very strong AoE and multi dot'ing in Mythic +. I will give to you though that in the higher level one, I'd rather get Siphon Life with GoSac for the additional proc chance.

[Soloose]

That is what I already do, but simulationcraft for demo represent and unrealistic view on demo damage.
Demo is good on ST, but not nearly as good as simcraft makes it look

I agree with you. That's the difference in WoL numbers and realistic numbers. You toss in a wee bit of movement and demo's dps drops off quickly. Our guild is actually using 2 locks in a 15 man, simply because we've both been playing locks for many years and refused to re-roll. He loves Demo, I love Affliction. That being said... I feel like affliction isn't in as horrible a place as it appears to be tool kit wise. I feel squishy and un-involved a lot of times in pvp which is a toolkit problem, but in pve it is a struggle yes. However I feel there are some simple changes Blizzard could make to solve the play style concerns. For example. Siphon life should be baseline and should do significantly more damage than it currently does, they could replace this in the tree with a QoL talent for all I care, I'd probably just keep sow the seeds for the utility of add killing even as a *just in case* scenario.

Soul Effigy seemed like a cool concept back when I first read it, in Beta. Now it's just a pain in the bum. I'd be happy with siphon life baseline, UA partial damage on initial application (Which I believe they're already doing) and rework Soul Effigy... IDK to something like: Soul Effigy - Passive - After two seconds, infuses your drain life with weaker souls you have reaped, increasing the haste rating of your damage over time abilities on that target by 35%.

I'm not sure on the numbers or how that would add up, but it feels more synergistic. It gives you a perk to stand and cast and penalizes you some for moving. I just want to spend less time making sure I'm in range of my al;ksdnfoaidnfaopidsnfapodsnfas soul effigy.

[Deleted]

I agree with you. That's the difference in WoL numbers and realistic numbers. You toss in a wee bit of movement and demo's dps drops off quickly. Our guild is actually using 2 locks in a 15 man, simply because we've both been playing locks for many years and refused to re-roll. He loves Demo, I love Affliction. That being said... I feel like affliction isn't in as horrible a place as it appears to be tool kit wise. I feel squishy and un-involved a lot of times in pvp which is a toolkit problem, but in pve it is a struggle yes. However I feel there are some simple changes Blizzard could make to solve the play style concerns. For example. Siphon life should be baseline and should do significantly more damage than it currently does, they could replace this in the tree with a QoL talent for all I care, I'd probably just keep sow the seeds for the utility of add killing even as a *just in case* scenario.

Soul Effigy seemed like a cool concept back when I first read it, in Beta. Now it's just a pain in the bum. I'd be happy with siphon life baseline, UA partial damage on initial application (Which I believe they're already doing) and rework Soul Effigy... IDK to something like: Soul Effigy - Passive - After two seconds, infuses your drain life with weaker souls you have reaped, increasing the haste rating of your damage over time abilities on that target by 35%.

I'm not sure on the numbers or how that would add up, but it feels more synergistic. It gives you a perk to stand and cast and penalizes you some for moving. I just want to spend less time making sure I'm in range of my al;ksdnfoaidnfaopidsnfapodsnfas soul effigy.

yeah. One thing I fear is blizzard drowning in so many classes having issues. It's more than just warlocks. Others class forums are filled with issues and complains too (not all of them but most).

I agree that affliction needs some love. To put it in simple words :

- Affliction needs higher damage and a slight redesign of 1-2 spells
- Destro needs more single target damage and something to do for movement. Cleave could be nerfed
- Demo needs more cleave/aoe damage and something to do while moving.

I am talking rather small changes. I am not saying Destro needs a 50% damage buff. I rather mean something like quality of life changes, making the rotation a big more interesting and enganing.
Then there is also Feretory of Souls and T19 2 set piece bonus. Which makes everything very complicated, because I believe with Feretory + 2 piece T19 Destro is pretty strong. (though that is my guess, I have no evidence to back that up ^^).

[Deleted]

So many things to say about affliction

The ST dps really really low, bring back our execute phase, put back haunt, increase our numbers, anything really. I'd prefer the execute back as we used to have, it felt great gameplay-wise, in BC, WOTLK, Cata, the drain soul in the end refreshing a dot and doing massive damages was so amazing, from a RP point of view, mechanicaly, it gave some variety with the switch from shadowbolt, and "physically" on the keyboard you would feel also the difference, you were spamming dots and SB and then, came the 25% hp of the target, the moment where you were harvesting the results of the hard work of the whole fight, you just had to start draining and destroy your ennemy. You were (so) happy to "afk-draining" for once.

The artifact weapon, mostly works with dying things, useless for so many fights, tooltips still bugging, traits that are not doubled despite the activation of the weapon.
Stop with this ramp up, just give us agony point blank and make it do its max damages immediatly, or make our filler accelerate the stacking progress, anything, or make the ramp-up rewarding.

The soul effigy is terrible, we have 7 dots to watch out for in ST (and 10-13 on "council fights"), a gameplay which in terms of complexity is so high compared to most classes (I like complexity, when it's rewarding, it's not here)

Make us want to spend our shards, really UA doesn't feel great, nor a nuke (maybe with the compouding horror that will change a bit), bring back utility with consuming our shards, and BRING BACK SOUL SWAP IN PVE

ETC. ETC.

[Bjarkan]

Soul Effigy is the old mechanic of Drain Soul. I mean, Drain Soul's ticks make your dots ticks. Or a least it seems that was the idea, a way too improve ST damage, but the result...

What i trully see as a problem with Affly damage is the ram up time... Yeah sure, is a dot spec it should have ram up time, but it takes too long for starting to make decent damage (and the traits on kills dont really help), maybe making UA doing a portion of damage on hit, affected but the numbers of stacks too, could make for it until our dots rams up... In short fights could be useful, and had a good synergy with Haunt, as both spells "refund" itself after a kill.

[Deleted]

No, you're talking Burst/Mass AE. I can't see any legitimate reason why you'd sacrifice so much ST and multidot potential for that in the wider context of what you're doing (Raid boss, everything else in the dungeon); those situations are super niche. In most cases multidotting is where it's at for the spec, and for that you use SL, Contagion, Conduit and Service; which is a build that'll get you through 90% of the content. The major changers are actually the 15 row, which are dependent on how long stuff is going to live.

Two words.

Mythic Plus.

Affliction has no purpose in Mythic Plus except trash. It's single target is so low even when fully talented, it is actually better to maximise the one thing affliction is really good at, and effectively get carried through the boss encounters, not least because you can have for example a rogue go maximum single target and let the afflock deal with the trash

Or of course you could just take a mage, who will just excel at everything.

Sadly it tends to fall down in the higher levels when you get things like Bolstering, because spamming aoe can be Very Bad.

- - - Updated - - -

Soul Effigy is the old mechanic of Drain Soul. I mean, Drain Soul's ticks make your dots ticks. Or a least it seems that was the idea, a way too improve ST damage, but the result...

What i trully see as a problem with Affly damage is the ram up time... Yeah sure, is a dot spec it should have ram up time, but it takes too long for starting to make decent damage (and the traits on kills dont really help), maybe making UA doing a portion of damage on hit, affected but the numbers of stacks too, could make for it until our dots rams up... In short fights could be useful, and had a good synergy with Haunt, as both spells "refund" itself after a kill.

Soul Effigy is a dot-multiplier, an attempt to address the dilemma that if you make dots strong enough to compete on single target they become more and more overpowered the more things you can dot up.

We have had numerous mechanisms, almost all of them in the form of an ability that causes dots to do increased damage which is difficult or impossible to use on more than one target

It's just that Soul Effigy is a spectacularly shit one. You can only have one active, against one target, ina fixed position, so it can go out of range, and it means managing two sets of dots (or three, or more, it quickly becomes a horrid plate-spinning exercise with zero fun attached)

Drain Soul and Haunt had their issues, but Soul Efficy is atrocious. It is useless if you have to target switch, you have to recast it on long fights on if you go out of range (as you will, constantly,on say Ursoc), it doubles your dot management

And it is not even very rewarding.

I tend to ignore it and just use soul Conduit lol

[Jessicka]

With having already substandard single target while having the optimal build for it, Affliction's niche relies on having very strong AoE and multi dot'ing in Mythic +. I will give to you though that in the higher level one, I'd rather get Siphon Life with GoSac for the additional proc chance.

You're overstating just how strong StS actually is past the initial burst or on anything less than 5+ targets. Those situations just don't come up enough and aren't really important enough to lose your ST and 2-4 target damage where the build I described really excels - and where the spec itself excels. It's very niche, and in that respect not a problem in terms of "having to swap out all the time". Again, its the 15 row that "swapping out all the time" is more of a thing, because they are about target lifespan which is very variable.

The spec isn't used enough right now to really rely on WL parses as gospel as to where it's really sat. I think ST certainly could use a buff, but more from streamlining the procs and stacking mechanics on the Artifact which is what bog it down; they stack reasonably fast in multitarget situations, but very slowly in those ST situations and exacerbate the multi target/ST delta.

The 100 talents, well they just need a total rework. Singularity is super-niche because of its size, Effigy is just badly implemented and designed for the effort/reward; which leaves Conduit which is okay, but I don't really like it as it's not actually that easy to track/spot when it's procced which can be annoying.

[Bjarkan]

Effigy range could be fixed in a easy way tho... Making it a Orb like debuff that spin over the target, that way would be always over the mark. Having 2 charges max maybe? For Cleave fight... Dunno about this last thing.

Singularity, to tell the truth, i see it good enough. Is just plain and simple, like Cataclyms for Destro, maybe if with 45s of CD could be better, but i really dont have complains about it.

Soul Conducit... Always dislike it, for all the specs, dunno, its a reactive talent, and for Affly and Demo you can use it right on proc, as their expender use 1 SS... But, i dont like it.

[xpose]

You need to have a PHD in math to understand how to play affliction and even then you will be at the bottom of the dps charts. The spec relies way to much on snapshotting during buffs and soul effigy is clunky and needs to be reworked. The whole spec is a train wreck.

[Sunlighthell]

With guy who said "we rather you don't play demonoly" taking game director chair warlocks future is dark.

[Dwill]

You're overstating just how strong StS actually is past the initial burst or on anything less than 5+ targets. Those situations just don't come up enough and aren't really important enough to lose your ST and 2-4 target damage where the build I described really excels - and where the spec itself excels. It's very niche, and in that respect not a problem in terms of "having to swap out all the time". Again, its the 15 row that "swapping out all the time" is more of a thing, because they are about target lifespan which is very variable.

Except that in Mythic +, you don't get to decide (outside certain bosses) whether you have to 2 or 5 targets. When you're in Mythic +, you optimize for clear time which in multiple case involves taking Sow the Seeds over Siphon Life.

The spec isn't used enough right now to really rely on WL parses as gospel as to where it's really sat. I think ST certainly could use a buff, but more from streamlining the procs and stacking mechanics on the Artifact which is what bog it down; they stack reasonably fast in multitarget situations, but very slowly in those ST situations and exacerbate the multi target/ST delta.

The 100 talents, well they just need a total rework. Singularity is super-niche because of its size, Effigy is just badly implemented and designed for the effort/reward; which leaves Conduit which is okay, but I don't really like it as it's not actually that easy to track/spot when it's procced which can be annoying.

Singularity fills its niche (which isn't that rare) quite well but I will agree with you that soul Effigy needs to scraped or entirely revamped. It has way too many cons vs pros but it's way too much of a single target damage loss to not take it. There's a reason Prismatic Crystal was scraped and why we got an even worse version of it is beyond me.

[Jessicka]

Except that in Mythic +, you don't get to decide (outside certain bosses) whether you have to 2 or 5 targets. When you're in Mythic +, you optimize for clear time which in multiple case involves taking Sow the Seeds over Siphon Life.

In Mythic+ you're not 'swapping out all the time' either; you know the dungeon and you go with what's going to work for clear time with your group. People are talking like you'll switch every other pull; that isn't how it plays out at all. And again, for the vast majority of players who aren't pushing for times and aren't chain pulling; they're not going to get those 5+ packs very often anyway.

Singularity fills its niche (which isn't that rare) quite well but I will agree with you that soul Effigy needs to scraped or entirely revamped. It has way too many cons vs pros but it's way too much of a single target damage loss to not take it. There's a reason Prismatic Crystal was scraped and why we got an even worse version of it is beyond me.

I find when I was speccing Singularity that I just wasn't getting nearly enough use out of it for the risk of ass pulling. It's okay in a raid boss where that's not necessarily a problem (until you're tanking a stray add!), but rest of the world and in dungeons, then less so.