IMO Asking Blizzard to Make Affliction "Good at Multidotting" is the Wrong Approach

[CuchuCachu]

Hopefully I can explain myself clearly and persuasively. And suggest some alternatives to asking for multidotting.

But first I need to be clear about something: this is not at all an attack or rebuke of how any of you imagine this would be implemented. The issue is how I think Blizzard would interpret this suggestion based on what they've done in the past.

Blizzard implements feedback based on how they perceive the feedback, they kind of take the path of least resistance, and in the case of Warlocks the changes tend to translate to somewhat clunky and sluggish gameplay. So we could end up with an Affliction which has awful single target and is really only good at multiple target scenarios (and we did end up with this at launch as you may recall)

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It is worth keeping in mind that Affliction right now is fine at multidotting and will remain fine. Moreover it doesnt look like many Tomb fights would even highly reward multidotting. So this is really not a pressing issue, that alone suggests pursuing an alternative

First my misgivings with multidotting as thought of by Blizzard

1) They tried that with Legion already. And had a lot more development time to get it right. Affliction was garbage until they basically reneged on that design.

2) it would mean Effigy would probably never go away as it's the way Blizzard tried to balance multitarget and single target. So they'd just hold onto the ability rather than rethink it. They only would rethink Effigy if it stops being used. The fact it was widely used at launch is how they justified not changing it as I recall.

3) Destro, with Havoc, is already pretty powerful at multitarget scenarios, as is Affliction, so the Warlock class as a whole would not gain that much from this change.

4) the kind of fights with prolonged periods of targeting multiple enemies that Affliction would shine on simply arent common enough and Blizzard would certainly gimp ST damage to accommodate this change

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As it stands there is no reason to expect anything different from Blizzard than what we've already gotten when they had more time, and I think two better alternatives exist.

The first is simply reducing RNG reliance for shard/soul generation. Blizzard likes consistency so they could easily be persuaded by this. And it would be a nice quality of life change.

But if you still want to be better at multidotting I suggest you ask for Affliction to be better at handling adds

Why? Well because I think tackling this problem would incentivize better design by Blizzard and would be good for all of the warlock specs as I will explain at the end. Moreover I also think it's closer to what a lot of you have in mind when you ask for multidotting.

1) Being better at Adds would carry over to multidotting because council fights are just long lived Adds.

2) Single target would not have to be gimped as badly (again, think of Affliction at launch)

3) adds are in almost every fight so this would be generally more used as an upgrade

and lastly

4) The reason Blizzard does not buff Destruction's single target damage is because Destro is already extremely versatile so if it did not have lower ST damage it would edge out Aff and Demo too often. But if Aff and Demo were to become more well rounded, this pressure would not exist.

The most obvious manner in which to assist Affliction with this would be changing the DoTs to be quicker in their damage or having them trigger effects on the Warlock which would assist him in other ways so he'd benefit from throwing them out (think like Wrath of Consumption and Reap Soul do this). The latter would not improve damage to Adds but it would still make Adds something Affliction could handle and be in keeping with the current design philosophy/class fantasy. Or maybe just make UA do some upfront damage like Shadow Priest DoTs, and Compounding Horror adds to that damage (would actually make it compounding too)

I hope this is clear. Thank you for reading. Consider it.

[Alexeht]

IMO they need to change this terrible spec asap, it is so clunky they should call it different ... And 'mulitidotting' was affliction thing for many, many years - IDGAF about ST of affliction ...

[CuchuCachu]

IMO they need to change this terrible spec asap, it is so clunky they should call it different ... And 'mulitidotting' was affliction thing for many, many years - IDGAF about ST of affliction ...

Frankly, the fights where improved multidotting would really pay off aren't that common

As we saw at launch, many other specs could do well at them too while being generally well rounded. Affliction simply was not good enough to justify itself relative to these specs (and remember, that was Blizzard's plan A with a lot more development time)

Affliction right now is perfectly adequate at multidotting

Affliction in history also had decent ST and decent multidotting by virtue of being a good DoT spec. Not because Blizzard actually tried designing it around multidotting like they tried and failed at launch in Legion.
Moreover back then other specs were not as good at multidotting or multiple target fights like they are now, so Affi stood out more for that reason

And lastly, people clearly do care about Affliction ST as 7.1.5 showed

I repeat again, Blizzard tried and failed ti balance Affliction purely around multidotting. It sucked and frankly wasnt that great at it versus a Shadow Priest who was also more well rounded

[Alexeht]

Not because Blizzard actually tried designing it around multidotting like they tried and failed at launch in Legion.

wait what? They absolutely destroyed fully working affliction from WoD! If they wouldn't touch it beyond artifact ability then it would be fine!

[Gnomognomo]

I agree with the OP. Specially becasue of ST dmg is always needed while multidoting dmg is more situacional. What's more, on those figths that are mainly about multidoting (council bosses like botanist in normal/heroic) affly is doing fine, the only class that rolls over every other class is the so since they have that void bolt mechanic.

The only thing i would ask for affly, would be a change on the tier bonus in order to not make affly that turret-like spec, insted of finishing a DS imo would be much better if DS ticks gives a buff stack and once you get to X stacks you get the haste.

[Alexeht]

Well, I hated affliction in WoD. You won't do great DPS if you don't drain soul enough and you can't drain soul enough if you have to move and encounter is multi-target, so affliction was single-target spec.

I was doing fine in HFC on Hellfire High Council, so I have no clue how you could say that affli in wod was ST lol. Removal of "Soul Swap" from PvE was also really bad idea ...

[slickwilly]

IMO they need to change this terrible spec asap, it is so clunky they should call it different ... And 'mulitidotting' was affliction thing for many, many years - IDGAF about ST of affliction ...

I'm happy you want to be good at fights that rarely exist in raids. Maybe get 1 good council fight per tier. Oh boy you can rock 1 fight.

[Cheze]

I don't really understand the mania over multi-dotting tbh; like, why would you want the same issues destruction has (excellent at 2-target cleave/council, mediocre everywhere else)?

[Deleted]

Soul Effigy is fine as a concept.

It's the implementation that is terrible. If they tethered the thing to the caster, lowered the cast time and raised the reward a bit it would be quite acceptable. If you like multidotting it's actually quite a clever concept.

The problem is that they have made Malefic Grasp so powerful that anything else is more or less pointless - probably in response to complaints abot affliction;s dire single target damage and lots and lots of hate for Effigy; Grasp is clearly designed to make Effigy redundant, as Grasp syngerises poorly with Effigy but well with Conduit.

That is reinforced by the new Rend artifact trait and the awful T20 bonuses, both of which are centred on Drain Soul.

It is irnoic that the devs post that they would like affliction to be comfortable at multi-dotting, and then they pidgeonhole it at every possible step into being a Drain Soul spamming turret that has no other function than tunneling the boss because affliction is awful at, well, almost anything else. No burst, mediocre cleave at best and our potentially powerful aoe is hostage to bloody seed of corruption.

The potents suggest that affliction and probably demo are in for some more tweaks.

Affliction is OK but it really should be good at council fights.

It absolutely sucks to sweat your nuts off juggling three dots (or four without eternal corruption) on Botanist and paying a huge penalty if you let Agony drop at all, only to watch Mr Shadow Priest absolutely destroy the meters by dumping Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch (which can be done with one cast) on each and then maintain them forever with Void Bolt which extends the dots on all three bosses automatically. Not only that, SWP and VT hit considerably harder than our dots, except Unstable Affliction when it;s buffed by Grasp+Contagion+Reap.

Personally I think affliction's biggest issue is that it is held hostage to the on-death mechanics.Fine if a fight has plenty of adds that actually proc souls/shards/wrath but it sucks if there aren't any; being resource starved is no fun, and affliction is of necessity weak without those buffs/resources because otherwis eit would be wildly OP with them. You can see that in dungeons where runs are fast enough that afflocks can keep up wrath/reap almost all the time. I guess Rend is intended to address this.

It makes affliction a bitch to balance. You get wild pendulum swings because afflictions's resource is, at its most basic, adds in a fight. And you can eithe rget lots of them or hardly any. Which leads to big variances in Reap uptime and thus big variances in performance.

[Deleted]

IMO they need to change this terrible spec asap, it is so clunky they should call it different ... And 'mulitidotting' was affliction thing for many, many years - IDGAF about ST of affliction ...

run writhe in agony with effigy and affli is still very strong in council fights aswell..
What they could do is make haunt a bit more viable so you could run haunt in fights where there are priority adds to burst down.

[PowerOfTwo]

run writhe in agony with effigy and affli is still very strong in council fights aswell..
What they could do is make haunt a bit more viable so you could run haunt in fights where there are priority adds to burst down.

Haunt IS powerfull btw, it has what.. 8-900 SP Coef and increases all dmg the target takes AND resets on death...and is and prolly will be for the entirety of this xpac considered trash tier. Why? because it shares a tier with 2 talents that make Aff a dps class to begin with, WiA makes the _DOT_ classe's dots actualy... do damage and MG is a bigger boost in all other scenarios where there arn't 4+ targets up 80% of the fight.

[Deleted]

I think affliction is doing just fine

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...unt&dataset=90

[FelPlague]

yeah i think affliction is fine/needs a nerf...

demo is THE single target, turret spec of the class... yet it is being beaten by affliction... wut?

when affliction does demos job, and more, whats the point of playing demo...

[Deleted]

I don't like the design philosophy of "this spec is good at a, but worse at b and this spec is good at b, but worse at a". I think all specs should be somewhat equal, especially considering the absurd amount of work you'd have to put in to get all 3 specs to a usable level. "Class Fantasy" should be about play style, visuals and "feel" and not about numbers and niches.
At the moment Affliction looks a bit too strong, masking problems with numbers. I'm fully expecting nerfs, which, knowing blizzard, will stomp the spec to the ground. I think they have designed themselves into a corner with the artifact weapon.

[Sunlighthell]

I think affliction is doing just fine

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...unt&dataset=90

If you click different bosses you will know that afflcition only insanely good on ST fights and scorpyron where we can cheese soulflame. And on bosses like krosus we're good now only because they finally fixed our artifact to give souls, without that aspect affliction were insanely good only on 3 bosses in NH(one of them being scorpyron lol) while for example destro with bad st was op on 2 bosses and they still are (and those 2 bosses are 2 last bosses, not useless scorpyron) This is the reason we didn't receive a nerf this week I guess.

Also this is how it works right?
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=90&bracket=25
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=90&bracket=16
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=90&bracket=21

[Requimortem]

It doesn't matter what we tell Blizzard, they'll continue to do as they please and we have to accept the ramifications of that. Anyone with half a brain could tell that Soul Effigy was a terrible idea but since Blizzard had to butcher us to make way for Demon Hunters and couldn't be bothered to come up with anything new and interesting, we got the leftover garbage that they actually tried with other classes (e.g. Soul Effigy = Prismatic Crystal).

[Joryy]

Multidotting and adds are sort of the same step, and bliz is already aware of the problem. That is why they made WoC (and Twist of Fate).

Dots (especially agony) are basically irreverent on targets that live for less than 10 seconds -- but short lived adds give us WoC and resources that we pump into the boss. Unless the <10 second add is a massively tight tuning, we still interact in a positive way with the mechanic.

That being said, I think there is probably room for a talent that makes us better at things like Empowered Eye of Gul'dan, Fel Ember, and empowered icy fragment. I envision a longish cd (at least 30 seconds) instant cast nuke that applies the dots. Haunt is supposed to be this tool, but it doesn't do enough to solve the ramp up problem. Make it cost a couple shards, but also apply the dots and do more damage (and maybe move it off of the core throughput row).

[Deleted]

If you click different bosses you will know that afflcition only insanely good on ST fights and scorpyron where we can cheese soulflame. And on bosses like krosus we're good now only because they finally fixed our artifact to give souls, without that aspect affliction were insanely good only on 3 bosses in NH(one of them being scorpyron lol) while for example destro with bad st was op on 2 bosses and they still are (and those 2 bosses are 2 last bosses, not useless scorpyron) This is the reason we didn't receive a nerf this week I guess.

Also this is how it works right?
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=90&bracket=25
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=90&bracket=16
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=90&bracket=21

your 90th percentile shows this:
Scorpy: 1# affliction 22# destruction 23# demo
chrom: 1# demo 2# affliction 17# destruction
Trilliax: 7# affliction 12# destruction 13# demo
Spellblade: 7# affliction 13# demo 20# destruction
Tichondrius: 1# demo #5 affliction 14# destruction
Augur: 1# affliction #2 demo #17 destruction
Krosus: 1# affliction #3 demo #22 destruction
Botanist: 1# affliction #2 demo #15 destruction
Elisande: 1# destruction #15 affliction
Guldan: #4 affliction #12 destruction

So in summary: (23 possible positions)
Affliction 1, 2, 7, 7, 5, 1, 1, 1, 15, 4
Destruction 22, 17, 12, 20, 14, 17, 22, 15, 1, 12

Affliction is number 1/23 in 4 out of 10 fights, withing top 7/23 in 9 out of 10 fights and I don't see the 2 bosses where destro is OP.

[Deleted]

the thing with affli is that it is really fucking good on farm, while just good on progress, thats why higher end guilds really don't want more than 1 affliction warlock in their progress raids, but are fine with having 2 destro locks for example...in order for affli to be balanced in farm runs it will be bad in progress and when it's good for progress its op for farm runs.

[Epicon]

In my opinion asking Blizzard to make Warlocks great at anything has not worked since MoP. It is pointless and of course their logic is flawed. The whole, "enjoy being above average at one thing but shit at everything else." is of course flawed. But try telling that to a group of ego driven developer nerds who think they know better than their amazing community who plays the class non stop.

I really believe there is something to the idea that Blizzard does their best work now days on the classes they themselves play - such as mages.