Is Aff BfA Warlock that bad?

[HotJoint]

Hello. I recently level up my first warlock ever. I really enjoy it and i was affly all the way from 0 to 110. I really, really enjoyed it.

As soon as i hit 110 i went directly to random BGs and oh boy, i liked it! I officialy made it my main for BfA a month ago and came here and read that aff warlock is getting destroyed in BfA broke my soul.

Is really that bad? Demo and Destro are that much better? Is any hope affly can be any good? Jesus i cant beleive this!

PS: Sorry for my english.

[Gaidax]

Basically, you have couple of shit posters here such as Nebiroth who barely manages blue parses in heroic raids and Shandalar who are literally crying for years about Affliction and Warlocks as a whole being bad, gutted, hated by devs and what not.

Basically - it's bullshit. Just ignore these and carry on. Affliction will be more than fine in BfA.



Infracted for flaming.

[HotJoint]

Basically, you have couple of shit posters here such as Nebiroth who barely manages blue parses in heroic raids and Shandalar who are literally crying for years about Affliction and Warlocks as a whole being bad, gutted, hated by devs and what not.

Basically - it's bullshit. Just ignore these and carry on. Affliction will be more than fine in BfA.

Thank you for the response. I mostly play random pvp. Is aff any good ?

[Wolfman31]

Does it still involve waiting around for RNG shards from Agony just to have some semblance of a rotation?

[Baconeggcheese]

Does it still involve waiting around for RNG shards from Agony just to have some semblance of a rotation?

More so, since you no longer have drain soul unless talented.

They said the goal is for you to maximize UA up time though, basically making it a maintenance buff. So I can't imagine they'll leave people too shard starved.
@HotJoint No one is going to be able to tell you, its whether or not you like it mechanically at this point. Its not terrible different than live, the biggest difference is probably shadowbolt as your filler instead of drain soul.

Besides that it'll come down to tuning, and that's always subject to change so it makes no sense to go off of current numbers.

[Deleted]

Anyways. Numbers are strong for Affliction in beta. Destruction is probably the strongest dps spec in beta and affliction seems to be veeeery strong numbers wise.

Of course we have no final numbers. But they recently nerfed nearly all good dps and buffed affliction and demo. Both buffs were a surprise to me because both specs currdntly perform really well in the heroics and m+0 i did.

For pvp i wont argue. But i did one bg on the new pvp realm. The 3 warlocks including me were p2/3/4 in kills/overall damage, i died only once. I picked defensive talents and got into several duels with elementals/mages/warriors and they couldnt kill me evem once. Some of them could escspe before i could kill them.

[Deleted]

Basically, you have couple of shit posters here such as Nebiroth who barely manages blue parses in heroic raids and Shandalar who are literally crying for years about Affliction and Warlocks as a whole being bad, gutted, hated by devs and what not.

Basically - it's bullshit. Just ignore these and carry on. Affliction will be more than fine in BfA.

..and on the other hand you get arrogant posts from Gaidaix who thinks he is god's gift to the world because he's good at playing a game, rejects criticism of Wow generally, and pronounces stuff about a spec he has publicly stated he hates and never plays.

Basically, when Gaidax does a post, it's

"Listen up, fives, a ten is speaking to you" - and his favourite word is "bullshit"

This was happening when even top raiders were making the same sort of critcisms.

I can remember a time when people were saying that the old design of Havoc was a bit off - Gaidax made vehement statements about it being a brilliant piece of design and that people were talking "bullshit" and it shouldn't be touched

Then the devs made exactly the changes people were suggesting - and cue Gaidax to say it was a brilliant move by the devs



Being able to use your brain to intuit weaknesses in a design is an entirely different matter to having what are basically reflexes to get 99% parses in a game

It's like saying no one can criticise a gun's design unless they are an expert marksman. A gun can be badly designed and you will still get some people who can hit a bullseye consistently with it.

[Duckz0rs]

Does it still involve waiting around for RNG shards from Agony just to have some semblance of a rotation?

Yes, shards still come from rng agony. As @Baconeggcheese said drain soul for extra shards is gone baseline, but is still available as a talent. That said the procrate for shards from Agony seems to have at least doubled from the (admittedly little) testing I've done. Don't remember getting shard starved for more than a few seconds on beta.

[Xanatas]

Thank you for the response. I mostly play random pvp. Is aff any good ?

affliction in Legion have great self healing, health "lay on hands" stone, high damage, high tankiness

affliction in BFA lose self healing, healthstone "normal", tankiness is low.

In legion an affli lock make high damage AND great self healing.

In BFA an affli lock make damage OR self healing.

[Gaidax]

*usual bullshit*

Heey what's up man? Did you fix your 60% Aff parses in heroic? I mean it's your main spec, shame having worse parses than the guy who does not play spec all there. You. Aff pro you...

:lul:

[Lulbalance]

Heey what's up man? Did you fix your 60% Aff parses in heroic? I mean it's your main spec, shame having worse parses than the guy who does not play spec all there. You. Aff pro you...

:lul:

What is this post? rofl.

I have 2700 3v3 / 2400 2v2 achiv and you don't have the 1500 in any bracket..does that automatically DQ you from discussing locks in pvp or wpvp? Ofc not.. silly angle. If he's wrong just point out where.

Maybe you have before and this is a run on thing, admittedly I don't follow threads here close enough to know - bragging about parses and making it personal after logging like 8 hours a day and treating wow like a job just seems like a flake move dude.

[Bakis]

Basically - it's bullshit. Just ignore these and carry on. Affliction will be more than fine in BfA.

In PvE perhaps, not in Pvp.

[Orwell7]

I think Gaidax lost his reputation a looong time ago.

And yes, I still remember when he defended all 3 warlock specs in the first tier of legion, and how is it "normal" for me to have 99% parses while doing less damage than most specs who did 65-70% parses.

And then, a massive buff wave came to make us competitive.

If the likes of Gaidax won't confuse developers by spreading false information about this game, then those buffs would have come a lot sooner. But naaah, he needs to be THE special chosen one who CAN play warlock "just fine" and all concerns are just crying.
---------------------------


On topic, Aff doesn't seem bad.
It's all numbers.

However it is worth mentioning that the removal of artifact traits can't just fixed by tuning numbers. Everyone lost a shitton of things, so it's not an easy comparison. We'll have to wait and see!

BfA launch will be the craziest of all I can assure you.

[Gaidax]

My reputation is just fine, thank you. I, as opposed to 80% of derps here who can’t play warlock to save their lives, do pretty well and do so for 13 years and counting as Warlock in WoW.

I played every expansion there is for many years and every damn time you have these same derps coming in and spreading bullshit, scaring people away.

Reality is - warlocks as a whole are very solid pick and when I compare this class to others, we certainly are ahead of the curve power-wise, chances of warlocks being good are quite higher than to be bad, because we inherently have many core advantages that keep going with us because it’s warlock thing - whether that is great PvE perks both solo and in group content or specs in PvP that can drive people mad.

In general warlocks are doing good for years now, Legion, for example - was a very good expansion for Warlocks aside from the very brief time at the beginning of expansion. Affliction basically was stomping everyone multiple raids now and Destruction now is up there too. Same with PvP - you can always find your niche there, even if things are not as simple there.

That’s why if person is coming in asking whether Aff in BfA will be bad - the answer is no, because unless Blizzard completely fucks up tuning and gameplay AND does not fix it like they did in Legion - you can bet it will be just fine, because it is just fine historically.

And it certainly does not help that random derps come here and spread their bullshit sky is falling nonsense not backed by anything conclusive and a bunch of other bads are only too happy to parrot that meme around like all cool kids do.

[Terryn]

Aff is currently the bottom of the 3 specs right now mechanically, mostly because of DS not being baseline makes your shard gen really obnoxious when you need it in multi target. Right now playing without DS in m+ feels really really bad.

The silver lining is that its the bottom compared 2 to specs that are doing really great mechanically, so the spec itself is still fine.

[Lulbalance]

My reputation is just fine, thank you. I, as opposed to 80% of derps here who can’t play warlock to save their lives, do pretty well and do so for 13 years and counting as Warlock in WoW.

I played every expansion there is for many years and every damn time you have these same derps coming in and spreading bullshit, scaring people away.

Reality is - warlocks as a whole are very solid pick and when I compare this class to others, we certainly are ahead of the curve power-wise, chances of warlocks being good are quite higher than to be bad, because we inherently have many core advantages that keep going with us because it’s warlock thing - whether that is great PvE perks both solo and in group content or specs in PvP that can drive people mad.

In general warlocks are doing good for years now, Legion, for example - was a very good expansion for Warlocks aside from the very brief time at the beginning of expansion. Affliction basically was stomping everyone multiple raids now and Destruction now is up there too. Same with PvP - you can always find your niche there, even if things are not as simple there.

That’s why if person is coming in asking whether Aff in BfA will be bad - the answer is no, because unless Blizzard completely fucks up tuning and gameplay AND does not fix it like they did in Legion - you can bet it will be just fine, because it is just fine historically.

And it certainly does not help that random derps come here and spread their bullshit sky is falling nonsense not backed by anything conclusive and a bunch of other bads are only too happy to parrot that meme around like all cool kids do.

Don't get me wrong; I agree with your point of view, I'm just not sure it's worth getting fired up about. Whether people think it's good or bad.. without actual substance the arguments are just noise.

Anyways OT, assuming we get some alignment in our numbers - I'm quite looking forward to BFA lock. Looks like we'll have some flexible spec options.

[MrHappy]

honestly all specs are fine.
Play what you enjoy and your numbers will be determined by traits you want and the gear you'll have.
All specs perform well and all have a niche for type of dps (cleave, ST, AoE) that is better than other specs.
If you really want to min/max for specific role wait for lockonestopshop to do the Sims and go from there

[Baconeggcheese]

honestly all specs are fine.
Play what you enjoy and your numbers will be determined by traits you want and the gear you'll have.

A real Mr happy over here pretending everything's all happy go lucky.

[Terryn]

A real Mr happy over here pretending everything's all happy go lucky.

poor bastard.

[sam86]

affliction in Legion have great self healing, health "lay on hands" stone, high damage, high tankiness

affliction in BFA lose self healing, healthstone "normal", tankiness is low.

In legion an affli lock make high damage AND great self healing.

In BFA an affli lock make damage OR self healing.

probably only answer that seems to be related to topic...