Legion Affliction Question

[Sabever]

This is a question for anyone playing legion beta as affliction and doing pvp?

Does the spec feel tanky? I have seen the developers claim this is supposed to be a tanky dps class. But based on the talents and pvp talents I really don't see this.

They have a shield which can be 20% of health if you spec into it. Seems easy to break. They get a 10% bonus to health. Other than that I don't see anything. It would appear that other cloth classes are equally as tanky if not better just because they can totally avoid damage. Thoughts?

[Deleted]

Well you'll have lots of dots spread in pvp and all of them will be adding to your shield generation via Soul Leech, healing via spells/talents aswell. Same goes for Demo all pets adding to shield etc. Warlocks get more innate interrupt reduction aswell

[Deleted]

...and our filler is drain life. ( jesus christ )

At first affliction looked tempting to me but the more I looked up videos and checked out our talents I realized.... Agony, corruption, UA.. and drain life. :whoco:

[Dubhglas]

A shield for 20% max health that recharges based on all single target damage done, not just drain soul like WoD, and passively if you take the talent, is hardly what I'd call "easy to break." Add onto that drain life constantly healing us as our new filler spell, siphon life adding to this if you take it, dark pact granting a shield well worth the health loss to you or your pet, and the final talent being either a) the effigy which will help build up soul leech shield or b) an aoe that also heals you for a portion of the total damage done along with baseline damage reduction cooldowns like Unending Resolve, glyphed healthstones giving a massive HoT, and I see significant shielding and self healing.

The Artifact weapon itself has a healthstone that fully heals you, and whenever somebody in your party or raid uses one it also heals you, a 15% corruption proc that heals you for approximately 65% of your spell damage, up to 3% extra soul leech shield,

As for PvP talents, you have the revamped Curses, two of which either reduce the target's physical damage, or reduce targets casting time, thus reducing magic damage. The next talent tier has either Essence Drain, which which causes each tick of drain life to reduce target damage to you by 10%, up to 50% for 6 seconds, or Nether Ward, which reflects all spells for 5 seconds. Basically we get to reap the benefits of big self healing and shielding without having to stop attacking.

Compare that to, say, a frost mage; their artifact offers one talent that double ice barrier reduction at max rank. For defensives in PvP talents, they get a 2.5 second spell immunity upon blinking. The next tier has a shitty version of Dark Bargain where they take all damage after 4 seconds, without a manageable DoT, or increased Ice Barrier that only affects physical attacks. For baseline talents they get Cauterize, which is nigh useless without heals, or two charges of Ice Block. Basically, their only defensives will immediately kill them after they wear off, or they have to stop everything and Ice Block to wait out the opponents procs.

So yeah, I would say Affliction locks are pretty damn tanky.

[Gohzerlock]

Soul leech seems to have a lot of ramp up time... drain life is pretty easily interrupted and if you get locked as an afflock you can't really do anything. The full heal with healthstone is gonna be great, but I don't think these things combined make us as tanky as one might think. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Maybe us being this tanky is the logic for poor decisions like our port and sac shield being on the same tier?