BFA Affliction

[Verazh]

Issues compared to whom? Mages have an immunity, but no defensives outside of it.

Bullshit or ignorance. Ice block, barrier, frost nova, BLINK. Mages are loads.

[Deleted]

It's pretty useless to argue with morons who think class survivability is balanced around open world questing anyways.

It also has to be balanced around m+ and raids.

Play other specs. Pretty much all dmg dps take is magical damage. And if a warlock is unable to make it nearly noone can survive it.

And dont mention rogues. They are on their own level, but their utility outside of that is pretty low. Group stealth and st stun and tricks.

And if you really wanna focus on demo: i would remove or nerf drain life for demo. Demo really doesnt need DL. I think giving affli overpowered self healing and demo soul link is a fine distinction. It might even happen.

[Deleted]

@Klatar

The basic problem with affliction is that it is designed from the ground up to be a "has to stand and take it but can survive doing so" spec but in BFA all it has left is the "stand" bit.

Affliction was designed with this idea in mind: you can't escape or immune damage but that's OK because you can survive through it via massive self-healing. So it;s Ok that affliction has no escape, no immunity, that it's only shield is worth 40% on a three minute cooldown and so on.

Only they took the self-healing away but gave no compensation for doing that. What you have left is a spec that can neither escape punishment nor survive through it. It is bad enough in PVE but in PVP it's catastrophic.

In Legion PVP, if a melee decides to sit on you, there is virtually nothing you can do. You can draw the fight out for longer if they are supremely dumb and let you stand and channel Drain Soul.

You can't do an immunity. A 40% reduction for five seconds on a 3-minute cooldown doesn't mean shit in the face of the massive burst every class has at the press of a few globals. You have no escape ability. All your spells are in one school, so one spell-lock and you can do literally nothing. You can't do anything whilst you're stunned. Your dots would take ten times as long to kill them as their "three globals and you're dead" damage does to kill you. Your stuns and interrupts are tied to pets with all the disadvantages that implies. You have no way to peel them off you, they can endlessly spell and stunlock you but you can't disarm them. Your only hope is to selfheal through this and hope someone else comes to your rescue. One stun or shadowlock that prevent Drain Souling and you've had it.

It is ten times worse in BFA. You have hardly any self-healing left. Healthstones have been nerfed heavily and have a long-cooldown that only works out of combat. Drain Life heals for much less, does no damage to speak of, and it's channeled. Basically you're dead meat the moment a melee decides to sit on you, and they all do because they know you're virtually helpless. You can't escape, you can't immune, your stun as a cast time and a cooldown (lol), your interrupt is tied to just one pet, you have one - just one - CC, and that breaks if they get brushed by a butterfly.

If by some miracle you actualy hurt a melee, they just bubble/vanish/doublejump, go back to full health and often with all your dots wiped off, and sit right back on you. Then you're in the same boat only you have no cooldowns left either.

As to PVE, it's not as bad, but basically, afflocks will have to be just as adept at avoiding damage as all other cloth casters but again have far fewer tools to do so. They are by far the squishiest class in BFA because they have zero immunes or escapes, even the speed boost is a talent and it sucks up your health almost as fast as the damage you are trying to avoid. Your only significant healing is from Drain Life. Which means you have to stand still and channel something that does virtually no damage.

Drain Life might give a first impression of a class that can ignore damage by healing through it...the reality is that it is such an undesirable way to play that you will not do it so it might as well not be there except for LFR where you just stand in the fire and heal cos dps is totally irrelevent in LFR anyway.

[Lucrece]

It also has to be balanced around m+ and raids.

Play other specs. Pretty much all dmg dps take is magical damage. And if a warlock is unable to make it nearly noone can survive it.

And dont mention rogues. They are on their own level, but their utility outside of that is pretty low. Group stealth and st stun and tricks.

And if you really wanna focus on demo: i would remove or nerf drain life for demo. Demo really doesnt need DL. I think giving affli overpowered self healing and demo soul link is a fine distinction. It might even happen.

In m+ the best classes are also those who can soak large hits on tyrannical. Which is why mages and hunters get taken instead of warlock and why resto druids and holy paladins dominate the healer rep.

Warlock self healing is a myth a bunch of heroic/LFR retards float about being able to ignore mechanics. Any lethal mechanic that's supposed to be avoided, you can't heal through. The only times where affliction healing was ever useful was in low keystone volcanic and to survive fortified Neltharion's trash. That's it.

Everywhere else, it's mage and hunter alongside a melee because not only do they burst way better than warlock, but the mechanics that count can be made so much easier by those two.

There is virtually no mythic or m+ progression/cutting edge race where a mage or hunter wished he was a warlock, because the encounters are not balanced around constant moderate damage intake but rather infrequent bursts of it in which these two classes thrive.

And now that affliction aoe has been made utter trash and their only "plus" of selfhealing removed, there is very little reason to even bring aff to m+ unless it's massively overtuned in numbers.

The fact that affliction even has some ramping garbage like Agony makes sure it will generally underperform in m+ because Agony is a garbage mechanic for a format in which trash mobs compose the vast majority of the dungeon times and strategy.

[lonely zergling]

In m+ the best classes are also those who can soak large hits on tyrannical. Which is why mages and hunters get taken instead of warlock and why resto druids and holy paladins dominate the healer rep.

Warlock self healing is a myth a bunch of heroic/LFR retards float about being able to ignore mechanics. Any lethal mechanic that's supposed to be avoided, you can't heal through. The only times where affliction healing was ever useful was in low keystone volcanic and to survive fortified Neltharion's trash. That's it.

Everywhere else, it's mage and hunter alongside a melee because not only do they burst way better than warlock, but the mechanics that count can be made so much easier by those two.

There is virtually no mythic or m+ progression/cutting edge race where a mage or hunter wished he was a warlock, because the encounters are not balanced around constant moderate damage intake but rather infrequent bursts of it in which these two classes thrive.

And now that affliction aoe has been made utter trash and their only "plus" of selfhealing removed, there is very little reason to even bring aff to m+ unless it's massively overtuned in numbers.

The fact that affliction even has some ramping garbage like Agony makes sure it will generally underperform in m+ because Agony is a garbage mechanic for a format in which trash mobs compose the vast majority of the dungeon times and strategy.

https://raider.io/mythic-plus/season...rboards-strict
Yeah no one ever would wish to play warlock for m+ right now

Affli lock has strong defensives which allow you to be safe for atleast 3 big hit mechanics on most bosses. Only moonkin & rogue offer better defensives against frequent big hits. Mage immunity and hunter turtle are usefull but have too long cd to actually matter for such mechanics but are nice for soaking at mana wyrm. The selfheal of affli is actually usefull for the healer even after the nerfs in legion, your healthstone alone is a big o shit button other classes dont have (and the tank can use it for you too).

Dmg wise they are great and they offer good utility to the grp. Affli and boomkin have their place as sustained dmg kings with affli offering slows and sick boss dps on many boss fights with adds in legion.

[Deleted]

THIS. Most stuff in M= is designed to be "move out of it or it will kill you". Self healing and damage reduction won;t let you survive it; but a damage immunity that reduces it to zero instead will. Think of it this way: a boss ability that hits you for like 50 million will kill you whether you pop a 40% damage reduction and spam Drain Soul and Healthstones or not. But it won't if you use Iceblock. The only option is to move. And guess what? Warlocks are stuck with standard run speed unless they takle burning rush, which quite literally slowly kills you anyway.

And I agree, affliction's AOE is absolute dogshit - it was dogshit in Legion too, only we had Soul Flame cascades which a few outliers liek the Arcway made aff seem much stronger than it actually was. Now we won;t have Soul Flame, they nerfed Sow the Seeds, they nerfed Phantom Singularity (useless for dungeons anyway with that cooldown), and in thelast iteration they nerfed Vile Taint as well. Taking 3-4 seconds to get our pathetic AOE even up and running is absurd beyond words

Wy would you want an afflock in M+ - a dot based spec where the strongest dot takes either 10 or 15 ticks to reach full effect.

[Lucrece]

https://raider.io/mythic-plus/season...rboards-strict
Yeah no one ever would wish to play warlock for m+ right now

Affli lock has strong defensives which allow you to be safe for atleast 3 big hit mechanics on most bosses. Only moonkin & rogue offer better defensives against frequent big hits. Mage immunity and hunter turtle are usefull but have too long cd to actually matter for such mechanics but are nice for soaking at mana wyrm. The selfheal of affli is actually usefull for the healer even after the nerfs in legion, your healthstone alone is a big o shit button other classes dont have (and the tank can use it for you too).

Dmg wise they are great and they offer good utility to the grp. Affli and boomkin have their place as sustained dmg kings with affli offering slows and sick boss dps on many boss fights with adds in legion.

You gave me a link where rogues and hunters and mages all have greater rep than warlock alongside druids, where the top rankings all involve a rogue or hunter as well as the warlock.

Guess which class is losing the artifact boosted healthstone and the self healing. Guess which was the most artifact dependent and will suffer the most from their removal.

Hint: It ain't the green or yellow class colors.

[lonely zergling]

You gave me a link where rogues and hunters and mages all have greater rep than warlock alongside druids, where the top rankings all involve a rogue or hunter as well as the warlock.

Guess which class is losing the artifact boosted healthstone and the self healing. Guess which was the most artifact dependent and will suffer the most from their removal.

Hint: It ain't the green or yellow class colors.

Obviously the top groups have mixed groups. Atm the meta is ww monk (best class for dmg hands down), affliction warlock and boomkin with some groups using mm hunter and very rarely a rogue / mage, taking mm hunter is risky though because they are squishy af and need the healer to carry their defensives. Warlock is in a good spot right now not sure what you are talking about. Try this link, forgot to put the filters in last link . https://raider.io/mythic-plus/season...MythicLevel=99

Guess which classes lose their defensives? Moonkin gets their op bearform nerfed to the ground, hunter is losing the disengage dmg reduce trait which leaves their only def cd turtle, mage is losing the blink chest legendary which they had to use on some higher key level bosses. Affli still has the passive shield, unending resolve and dark pact (you just have to make sure you are at max health now before you use it to counter a big hit) -

Dmg tuning will happen and blizz wont leave a spec unplayable for too long, affliction has potential to do good dmg on higher keys when stuff lives longer and also has a good defensive toolkit on top of that. If not you can always play destro / demo and be fine till they fix affli. Warlocks are ultra safe next expasion.

[Deleted]

THIS. Most stuff in M= is designed to be "move out of it or it will kill you". Self healing and damage reduction won;t let you survive it; but a damage immunity that reduces it to zero instead will. Think of it this way: a boss ability that hits you for like 50 million will kill you whether you pop a 40% damage reduction and spam Drain Soul and Healthstones or not. But it won't if you use Iceblock. The only option is to move. And guess what? Warlocks are stuck with standard run speed unless they takle burning rush, which quite literally slowly kills you anyway.

And I agree, affliction's AOE is absolute dogshit - it was dogshit in Legion too, only we had Soul Flame cascades which a few outliers liek the Arcway made aff seem much stronger than it actually was. Now we won;t have Soul Flame, they nerfed Sow the Seeds, they nerfed Phantom Singularity (useless for dungeons anyway with that cooldown), and in thelast iteration they nerfed Vile Taint as well. Taking 3-4 seconds to get our pathetic AOE even up and running is absurd beyond words

Wy would you want an afflock in M+ - a dot based spec where the strongest dot takes either 10 or 15 ticks to reach full effect.

I strongly suspect you didnt play high m+ keys.

With BR mobility is really strong. You also can use gateways (one is baseline and the whole group can use it) or talent into one. So you can instantly teleport to a safe spot.

It even has some great potential. In HOV the 4th boss charges mostly oneshot us at high keylevels. A WL can avoid every charge with teleport. The same at Aran where we can avoid 2 inferno casts completely via teleport.

And Burning Rush is a great mobility talent. 50% movement speed and you can even cast while it is active. Elementals can switch to gw for only 30% mobility and they cant do anything in gw form, not even cast instants.

There is a reason why affliction is the strongest m+ spec. And as long as burning rush and teleports exist warlock can be one of the most mobile ranged dps if needed.

[SpikeySquad]

And I agree, affliction's AOE is absolute dogshit - it was dogshit in Legion too, only we had Soul Flame cascades which a few outliers liek the Arcway made aff seem much stronger than it actually was.

Affy's (live) sustained AoE (so the pulls where Soulflame is inconsequential) bad? You really didn't play a lot of keys.

[Deleted]

Obviously the top groups have mixed groups. Atm the meta is ww monk (best class for dmg hands down), affliction warlock and boomkin with some groups using mm hunter and very rarely a rogue / mage, taking mm hunter is risky though because they are squishy af and need the healer to carry their defensives. Warlock is in a good spot right now not sure what you are talking about. Try this link, forgot to put the filters in last link . https://raider.io/mythic-plus/season...MythicLevel=99

Guess which classes lose their defensives? Moonkin gets their op bearform nerfed to the ground, hunter is losing the disengage dmg reduce trait which leaves their only def cd turtle, mage is losing the blink chest legendary which they had to use on some higher key level bosses. Affli still has the passive shield, unending resolve and dark pact (you just have to make sure you are at max health now before you use it to counter a big hit) -

Dmg tuning will happen and blizz wont leave a spec unplayable for too long, affliction has potential to do good dmg on higher keys when stuff lives longer and also has a good defensive toolkit on top of that. If not you can always play destro / demo and be fine till they fix affli. Warlocks are ultra safe next expasion.

Affliction is strong in beta. I did one seed on 3 targets for 6k damage. One shadowbolt averages 1k. Additionally we have dots ticking and we can save 5 shards for burst aoe.

I didnt play it in dungeons so far but having dots + seed absolutely seems to be strong in aoe situations. As long as mobs live at least 10 sec.

It is too early to say where the balancing will end up. But so far it looks pretty good. Just like drain life looks good and powerful.

When there is some raod testing i will log some fights to show it.

[MrHappy]

For leveling you're never picking sac

Sac is perfectly fine for leveling I don't know why you have an issue with.

If you dont use voidwalker you die to 3+ mobs on beta and at 120 if you don't have an interrupt I wonder what content you're doing.

We've almost always used void to tank while leveling....this isn't new. If you need to interrupt an mob while questing when you have Shadowflame baseline and you can take Coil and you also have fear. In group content where an interrupt is a must then you don't need to worry about having a void to tank for you so again non issue

Dark pact means no demon skin ( demon skin is mandatory in pvp and even then it's lackluster)

Demonskin is only good if you are not the target. a preemptive dark pact is better than passive shields unless you can re-direct hits

Unending resolve is a 3 mins cd, other classes have similar defensives on a much shorter cd.

Right except it's also the only caster cooldown that makes you immune to silences and interrupts but hey who pays attention to such things.

Drain life? are we really going to bring this up ?

Yea i am....use it learn it love it. Take Essence Drain and use it often . 25% damage reduction and a 20% of your hp heal is no joke.

Have you played beta or are you just commenting after casually reading some posts here and there?

Hit Max level on alpha before character wipe but thanks for asking.

most of our legion sustain is gone, healthstones are nerfed quite substantially too, not that draining was a viable source of sustain outside pve content but in beta you wouldn't cast drain life in any content outside open world.

If you are not casting drain life in open world and complaining about sustain then you are doing it wrong.

even when i pulled trash mobs while trying to kill a rare elite and having my pet die i myself didn't between stun, fear, drain, HS, portal, gateway and re-summon pet I was able to not even go below 50%. I guess it's a matter of skill

[Lucrece]

Obviously the top groups have mixed groups. Atm the meta is ww monk (best class for dmg hands down), affliction warlock and boomkin with some groups using mm hunter and very rarely a rogue / mage, taking mm hunter is risky though because they are squishy af and need the healer to carry their defensives. Warlock is in a good spot right now not sure what you are talking about. Try this link, forgot to put the filters in last link . https://raider.io/mythic-plus/season...MythicLevel=99

Guess which classes lose their defensives? Moonkin gets their op bearform nerfed to the ground, hunter is losing the disengage dmg reduce trait which leaves their only def cd turtle, mage is losing the blink chest legendary which they had to use on some higher key level bosses. Affli still has the passive shield, unending resolve and dark pact (you just have to make sure you are at max health now before you use it to counter a big hit) -

Dmg tuning will happen and blizz wont leave a spec unplayable for too long, affliction has potential to do good dmg on higher keys when stuff lives longer and also has a good defensive toolkit on top of that. If not you can always play destro / demo and be fine till they fix affli. Warlocks are ultra safe next expasion.

To even bring in legendaries is so dumb, as if Prydaz wasn't a thing classes are also losing.

If you think Hunter missing disengage dmg reduction and mage losing a blink shield compares to affliction losing soulflame, massive damage amp on mob death, secrets of the necrolyte drain soul healing+healthstone amp, and a gutted sow the seeds is comparable to what the other classes are losing, you haven't the slightest clue of just how much more dependent affliction was on performance next to the other specs who have had far less pruned from their core kit and defensives.

[Deleted]

@Klatar

The basic problem with affliction is that it is designed from the ground up to be a "has to stand and take it but can survive doing so" spec but in BFA all it has left is the "stand" bit.

Affliction was designed with this idea in mind: you can't escape or immune damage but that's OK because you can survive through it via massive self-healing. So it;s Ok that affliction has no escape, no immunity, that it's only shield is worth 40% on a three minute cooldown and so on.

Only they took the self-healing away but gave no compensation for doing that. What you have left is a spec that can neither escape punishment nor survive through it. It is bad enough in PVE but in PVP it's catastrophic.

In Legion PVP, if a melee decides to sit on you, there is virtually nothing you can do. You can draw the fight out for longer if they are supremely dumb and let you stand and channel Drain Soul.

You can't do an immunity. A 40% reduction for five seconds on a 3-minute cooldown doesn't mean shit in the face of the massive burst every class has at the press of a few globals. You have no escape ability. All your spells are in one school, so one spell-lock and you can do literally nothing. You can't do anything whilst you're stunned. Your dots would take ten times as long to kill them as their "three globals and you're dead" damage does to kill you. Your stuns and interrupts are tied to pets with all the disadvantages that implies. You have no way to peel them off you, they can endlessly spell and stunlock you but you can't disarm them. Your only hope is to selfheal through this and hope someone else comes to your rescue. One stun or shadowlock that prevent Drain Souling and you've had it.

It is ten times worse in BFA. You have hardly any self-healing left. Healthstones have been nerfed heavily and have a long-cooldown that only works out of combat. Drain Life heals for much less, does no damage to speak of, and it's channeled. Basically you're dead meat the moment a melee decides to sit on you, and they all do because they know you're virtually helpless. You can't escape, you can't immune, your stun as a cast time and a cooldown (lol), your interrupt is tied to just one pet, you have one - just one - CC, and that breaks if they get brushed by a butterfly.

If by some miracle you actualy hurt a melee, they just bubble/vanish/doublejump, go back to full health and often with all your dots wiped off, and sit right back on you. Then you're in the same boat only you have no cooldowns left either.

As to PVE, it's not as bad, but basically, afflocks will have to be just as adept at avoiding damage as all other cloth casters but again have far fewer tools to do so. They are by far the squishiest class in BFA because they have zero immunes or escapes, even the speed boost is a talent and it sucks up your health almost as fast as the damage you are trying to avoid. Your only significant healing is from Drain Life. Which means you have to stand still and channel something that does virtually no damage.

Drain Life might give a first impression of a class that can ignore damage by healing through it...the reality is that it is such an undesirable way to play that you will not do it so it might as well not be there except for LFR where you just stand in the fire and heal cos dps is totally irrelevent in LFR anyway.

This is why affliction is terrible, they overdid the tankyness in the PvE aspect in legion so now they're punishing warlocks for it, yet nothing gets added to the "hurrdurr tanky caster"-facade. The argument that all melee classes have had their cooldowns upped or somehow nerfed is also pretty redundant since even if the rogue now has a 2 minute CD on his cloak, he will still kick your ass through it if the insane damage capabilities of melees from legion gets carried over. Basically; affliction might be playable in 3s if you have 2 people hard-peeling for you but outside of this it will be extremly painful and frustrating to play against every melee in the game. They COULD solve alot of these problems by reverting demonic circle to baseline and maybe replacing the talent with something like a 1min CD that resets the cooldown of your circle but after the entire warlock community has basically been begging for something along those lines for the entirety of legion and it still hasn't happened it's highly unlikely. :/

[wholol]

@MrHappy

You seem under the impression that we're discussing leveling and normal dungeons only, such content barely needs any defensive cds or sustain.

I feel like you are skipping pages and only answering things vaguely with whatever limited knowledge you have while avoiding the myriad of counter posts right above your own countering the very things you just stated.

Given what i've seen on your profile, you barely pvp and you raid casually with a few m+ here and there, I doubt you were ever in a state where your survival was ever an issue as most of the things you have experienced in game do not need much cd management on your part to survive ( basically healers keeping u alive as long as you avoid mechanics that 1 shot you).

I will tell you this since im talking from a pov that you haven't experienced, in pvp affliction warlocks are very squishy, 1v1 encounters where you are allowed to drain life freely aren't a good example of your ability to survive.

We are also discussing the state in which warlock specs fluctuates on extremes, how can demo be the tankiest caster and affliction be the squishiest ( or 2nd squishiest ) spec ? if you have no idea what im talking about read the last couple of pages again.

Let me put things into perspective so that you better understand my point, everything affliction has other warlock specs have and more, why is affliction excluded from the tankiness fantasy ? why does demo /destro not need to use drain life to function as a form of survival ?

Do you honestly believe that sacrificing your dps to heal in pve or pvp is a viable alternative in ANY scenario? if affliction is fine why does demo/destro possess MORE survivability than it does?

Does it mean that the other 2 specs are broken because they are above tankiness standards or is affliction under said standards? which is the most logical conclusion here?

Next thing you know you'll be mentioning how affliction survives great in pet battles, that's the level of replies you're giving atm.

[Deleted]

Aff needs Soul Link back baseline , or as a pvp talent if Blizzard wants to play hardball. If that doesn't happen Affliction will again be a worthless punching bag all expansion long in any serious pvp setting. In Legion, in pvp, Affliction is like a frost mage without all the slows and mobility and Ice Blocks. Healers struggle just to keep you alive from basic, constant damage. Your (twice nerfed) shields are pathetic, so is your self healing and the damage you take is impossible to deal with. We're just a way worse SP/Boomkin, we fail to do what we're supposed to do, because we die as soon as people lay their hands on us. There's also the fact that our damage is stopped way too easily. Ramping mechanic of Agony combined with constant dispells, without real penalty, and of course all of our spells being shadow. But you know that's not what's stopping the spec from being viable, it's the disgraceful lack of any tankiness in a spec/class that is supposed to be tanky and tough to kill. But just isn't.

Damage is just a question of tuning, but without proper tankiness it's a dead spec, just like in Legion.

[thrill]

It would be nice if they brought back searing pain as an aff spell (a fire spell that fits with the spec fantasy BS), so we at least have SOMETHING to do outside of shadow school.

[Deleted]

I strongly suspect you didnt play high m+ keys.

Then you are wrong.

With BR mobility is really strong. You also can use gateways (one is baseline and the whole group can use it) or talent into one. So you can instantly teleport to a safe spot.

Yes, the 50% speed is quite good. However, it comes at the cost of 4% of your health every second. There's a reason most players don;t take it, except for easy dungeons where you take it to not be Mr Slowpoke who slows the entire group down by not having a movement ability.

Gateways and teleports have to be precast and are obviously a fixed position.

There is a reason why affliction is the strongest m+ spec. And as long as burning rush and teleports exist warlock can be one of the most mobile ranged dps if needed.

Yes, because it is virtually self-sustaining as regards health - it is literally a group of four as far as the healers are concerned - and because affliction does extremely high damage, particularly on long-lived targets.

But of course, we are talking about BFA, not Legion, where neithe rof those things will apply. Most of aff's excessive damage comes from the artifact which was tuned more towards not being shit when there are no adds giving you buffs and shards rather than not being OP when there are (aff was quite mediocre until they made the change that every add procced Wrath of Consumption, which is why there was such a step change from EN to NH) and aff's already strong healing was buffed to a huge degree by the artifact abilities, particulary with Reap active

Now look at BFA - no artifact, and the baseline healing has been nerfed into the ground on top.

- - - Updated - - -

Affy's (live) sustained AoE (so the pulls where Soulflame is inconsequential) bad? You really didn't play a lot of keys.

No, I was talkign about affliction's base AOE where it takes between 3-4 seconds to actually get it out and running, thanks to Seed of Corruption's excessively long cast-time and the ridiculous damage-to-detonate requirement

They are both hangovers from Burning Crusade when warlock was by far the top AOE spec because SOC was very strong, and it exploded almost instantly because all damage counted, not just the caster's own. I remember the boss in Karazhan where it was pretty much "only a warlock will do" and you got assigned a pocket healer because you were spamming SOC and lifetap. Or in Hyjal with those addwaves where the warlocks would be so far ahead of everyone else it was unreal.

Correct, sustained AOE is good, but that will only count if the adds live long enough for those corruptions to add up. Most players do not do high keys or raids beyond LFR and thus burst AOE is more valuable.

WoW is becomign ever faster paced and it is inevitable that burst damage is preferenced. The devs themselves noted several times that dot-and-rap classes were becoming ever more obsolete and problematic to make relevant in a game that increasingly favours burst, where the fights tend to be shorter but with more going on, rather than grindfests that have to be outlasted.

And yet despite this, we have the same archaic Agony ramping mechanic, we are still lumbered with Writhe, and we still have a weak AOE ability that still for some bizarre reason has a 2-s base cast time, with another delay on top. And heaven alone knows why they felt that sow the seeds had to be nerfed yet again. Sow the Seeds was brought in specifically to address the complaint that afflocks were shit at AOE because it takes so long to get it up and running compared to the damage it does when you finally do. I could unserstand it is SOC was really strong and did a lot of upfront damage, but it simpyl doesn't.

Many classes had way better AOE in Legion, and that is when aff had Soul Flame as a crutch. You can see many AOE situations where aff sits well below other dps until that big soul flame at the end. But we won;t have soul flame in bfa and they nerfed our aoe on top as well. Sow the Seeds is just crap, PS got nerfed and it's cooldown is far too long. Vile Taint is thus made a mandatory talent and that probably explains why they nerfed it, to make the other talents in the row look better.

It is a classic dev "talent levelling" exercise and they always opt to level good talents down rather than buff the crappy ones up. We had some talents that were shite for whole expansions, Haunt and Enhanced Lifetap say hi.

- - - Updated - - -

Affliction is strong in beta. I did one seed on 3 targets for 6k damage. One shadowbolt averages 1k. Additionally we have dots ticking and we can save 5 shards for burst aoe.

I didnt play it in dungeons so far but having dots + seed absolutely seems to be strong in aoe situations. As long as mobs live at least 10 sec.

lol. Exactly the point, my friend, exactly the point. In dungeons you will be in a group with other dps who have stronger, instant spammable AOE and nothing will live for those ten seconds. And this effect will only get worse as people gear up.

In world content you can send your VW tank in, and you have time to get all those dots up and running and actually do some damage.

In dungeons you will hit that See dof Corruption button and hear "I need to target something!"

Just like drain life looks good and powerful.

Drain Life is terrible, you will only use it as a last resort which is precisely how it is intended to be. It's a spell that requires you to stand and channel and does virtually no damage. It will be relegated to the same place Drain Life was for destruction/demo in Legion. Something you do when there's no other healing available.

And needless to say, it is even worse in PVP. It is literally a big green "kill me I'm on low health" arrow pointing you out in battlegrounds, no competent melee will ever let you use it to any significant degree when they sit on you, and unlike Malefic Grasp it doesn;t even hurt them.

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Sac is perfectly fine for leveling I don't know why you have an issue with.

It's fa rmore efficient to use a voidwalker tank, which lets you pull a load of mobs, avoids you being pummeled and (mostly) CC'd with crap like stuns, and the VW does just as much damage as any other pet.

[Orwell7]

You can see many AOE situations where aff sits well below other dps until that big soul flame at the end.

Don't forget that most of Soul Flame's damage is ACTUAL padding and has no real value when it "one shots" mobs at 2% hp.

[Deleted]

Quite. And on top of that, it was uncontrollable burst aoe and could be absolutely lethal with the Bursting affix active. In fact a wipe was virtually guaranteed in the Arcway at the start.

Man yother classes got a completely cockeyed view of how strong affliction's AOE actually is because of a handful of outliers - notably the Arcway blobs, BRH with the bats on the stairs and a large trashpack in Nighthold. These could produce enormous explosions, since Soul Flame becomes exponentially more powerful the more mobs there are (since there are not only more to explode, there are more to hit on top), but aff's AOE on smaller trash was quite mediocre when you consider how much time it takes to get it out and running.