Originally Posted by
Vynny
I think that there are 2 main things that are inflating aff's numbers right now
1. the number of add fights in NH; Skorp, Chronomatic Anomaly, Tichondrius, Star Augur, Krosus, High Botanist, Gul'dan. All fights where Aff in topping the parses and all fights where adds supply a decent amount of wrath of consumption stacks, and they now supply more reap soul uptime. Will these conditions which are favorable to aff continue in ToS? I dunno because I haven't looked at the fights much, but nerfing aff because the current tier is really good for aff and inflating it's numbers would be stupid imo because without these conditions (on Trilliax or Elisande for example) aff drops down to bottom of the top tier or top of the middle tier, so nerfing aff would leave them in the lower middle to bottom tier of dps without these add fights to inflate their numbers.
2. many of the bosses have temporary damage windows that aff is very well poised to take advantage of now. Very few classes have the kind of small burst windows that can be held back like aff does. Mages can't hold onto their burst phases too long because they're cd based, so they have to ensure a certain number of uses per fight, the same goes for warriors, pallies, etc. Aff can hold 4 to 5 soul shards, save reap stacks, and coordinate when to let loose based not only on when they have wrath of consumption stacks, but when Chronomatic Anomaly has his 30% increased damage taken debuff or for Essence of Night on Tichondrius. Now this is going to be powerful with Concordance in the near future, but unless boss fights have these high damage phases in ToS then it's something that Aff can indulge in for this tier, but will no longer have to inflate their numbers in the next tier.
The point is that I hope the devs themselves realize how they designed this spec and at least wait until the initial balancing patch of ToS to see how aff interacts with concordance and these new fights before nerfing it so as to avoid taking what is in reality a spec that is top tier, but not top overall and making it into a middle or even bottom tier spec when the fights are what's making aff op, not the spec itself.