AoE Affliction

[Havikz]

I'll throw some ideas:
-Make Sow the Seeds baseline adding one more target (Legion Iteration)
-Remove Vile Taint
-Make Sow the Seeds spread your Agony, Corruption and Siphon Life. You'll have to set up your DoTs in a single target, throw seed, let it explode and spread them dots.
-Remove Vile Taint and Haunt
-Make your Summon Dark Glare to do splash damage.
-Remove Vile Taint, Haunt and Deathbolt.



Didn't you get the memo? They don't want us to switch between specs.

The StS change you came up with is really silly... The problem has nothing to do with spreading dots. You can spread dots incredibly easily, I can easily keep agony and corruption up on 10+ targets. The problem is our base dots do next to no damage, and require too long to ramp up.
Our damage breakdown is typically
25% Base dots
25% Unstable Affliction
10% Pet
10% Shadowbolt
8% Darkglare
5% Deathbolt
Then the rest is composite from random azerite/trinket crap, 60% of our overall damage is raw single target and only 25% of it is "AoE"

These changes that you've listed are so laughably bad that it's very obvious to me that you don't raid above heroic or clear above +5 dungeons

Remove haunt? Why? Lmao? Why would you remove deathbolt? Haunt and deathbolt are the only talents that make the spec feel half fun to play on single target because you have something to manage and think about.
Honestly just don't make any more suggestions for Affliction in the off chance that Blizzard actually listens to you

[Orwell7]

Remove haunt? Why? Lmao? Why would you remove deathbolt? Haunt and deathbolt are the only talents that make the spec feel half fun to play on single target because you have something to manage and think about.

While I mostly agree with you, and yes it "spices up" our rotation, but do you know what is the "hidden" or how to say.. fundamentals of this Deathbolt thing?
It's simply WAITING to not use your resources as they come up.

That's it. It actually punishes players who are "all in" types. It's OK to have this type of "challenges", but Deathbolt interaction can be the same as:
-mage, where you need to accumulate, and not use, your next 5xHot Streaks before using a big hitter
-hunter, where you need to not use your Kill Command 5 times in a row before using a big hitter
-rogue, where you don't Eviscerate 5 times.. stack combo points to 25 before using the big hitter

Except the Mage cannot "store" those Hot Streaks. If we have a proc called UA, it will be the same.
Imagine how overjoyed those specs would be with these changes.

[xblubbx]

- Haunt needs a viable aoe alternative in the row. Having to use haunt in aoe fights / in m+ feels complete bullshit.
- Drain Soul needs to be made strong enough to be a viable alternative to deathbolt

I loved Legion aff (despite the few flaws that were there), raided mythic and high m+, but intended to quit in bfa anyway.. and the current aff state made it really, really easy to do just that.

[Nangz]

This is probably one of the worst class design ideas I have ever seen.

You should apply for a dev position at Blizzard.

Care to elaborate?

[Kazuchika]

Care to elaborate?

Sure.

What's the point of making it a 1 min CD when all it does is put up a different dot? As it stands now in most practical applications Seed is nothing more than a GCD saver when you have 3+ targets you need to dot. Making it spread agony let alone putting it on a hard CD instead of having a shard cost makes utterly no sense. If you have the same amount of targets you spend the exact same amount of GCDs whether it's spreading Agony or Corruption

Cool we end up with a spell that spreads dots that last 4 seconds longer but in the end it doesn't matter because we're gonna spend the other half a minute waiting for it to come off CD and re-dotting everything anyway or it'd just lead to more degenerate shit with AC which everyone just loves.

[Deleted]

We need an instant AoE damage spell or else they have to make our dots overpowered and that is something the playerbase hated us for last expansion. Last expansion Sow the seeds and baseline corruption made us have great AoE, not because it was instant, but it did borderline overpowered damage. So much in fact that 1 single round of corruption ticks did equal damage to divine storm/whirlwind etc on an equally geared toon. That means when we needed 2-3 agonies to setup agony for shards, 2 second Seed cast, in those 5-6 seconds, warriors and paladins would have their AoE`s in allready and top the meters but once we unleashed our stuff we would quickly overtake them.

This is no longer the case, we still have the same ramp up time, however our round of corruption ticks on an AoE pack deals maybe 1/10th of the damage now compared to aforementioned abilities other classes have.

So its either giving us insta AoE damage so we can get along on today's meta of bladestorm, fan of knives, divine storm and frozen orb shenanigans where you push 1 button and see 150k dps on skada (INSTANTLY, no cast times, no setups beyond 2-3 globals) OR make us have overpowered damage that will certainly wreck ST balance since we`r already decent in that department.

It must be done. It must get a buff. This niche stuff that warlocks don`t deserve AoE damage is ridiculous. If by this logic class balance would have been achieved, frost mages, demon hunters would have no single target damage at all, but they do.

Why accept niche that our AoE sucks when we can roll demon hunter and have both good ST and AoE? Even if looking past DPS meters, wouldn't you feel more valuable to your raid if they weren't carrying you on AoE encounters?

[kail]

I'd be fine if Seed of Corruption hits decently. It would be worth the spam at least, but as it stands it's simply a corruption application. It takes too many targets for Seed damage to outweigh a single UA cast.

[Nangz]

Sure.

What's the point of making it a 1 min CD when all it does is put up a different dot? As it stands now in most practical applications Seed is nothing more than a GCD saver when you have 3+ targets you need to dot. Making it spread agony let alone putting it on a hard CD instead of having a shard cost makes utterly no sense. If you have the same amount of targets you spend the exact same amount of GCDs whether it's spreading Agony or Corruption

Cool we end up with a spell that spreads dots that last 4 seconds longer but in the end it doesn't matter because we're gonna spend the other half a minute waiting for it to come off CD and re-dotting everything anyway or it'd just lead to more degenerate shit with AC which everyone just loves.

The problem is that this is an AOE row. Multiple classes have this issue actually. An AOE tier like this needs to have its options either mathematically equal or be better in different situations. With current Sow the Seeds there is no way to make it mathematically equal so I feel having talents designed to be the best in certain scenarios should be the goal.

Sow the Seeds is currently designed for large aoe. Its buffing our "aoe" spell by almost 100% (the corruption application isn't doubled). The problem is that you don't use SoC for damage until you are at very high targets and even then it actually performs worse than Vile Taint. (I simmed this with my gear on 10 target boss, its probably not a perfect sim but the difference was over 10%), Vile Taint is our sustained aoe option.

Where does that leave the other talents? Phantom Singularity is for infrequent cleave ans single target. Thats pretty obvious. It has phenomenal damage per cast time on a cooldown that feels designed for cleave.

Sow the Seeds needs to fill a void. I feel that void is a mythic-plus-trash type void. I'll admit 1 min cd may be excessive, the goal is that you can use it for every other pack. The goal is to not simply create "Cataclysm for Affliction" with a short enough cooldown to maintain your dots..

[Deleted]

We need an instant AoE damage spell or else they have to make our dots overpowered and that is something the playerbase hated us for last expansion. Last expansion Sow the seeds and baseline corruption made us have great AoE, not because it was instant, but it did borderline overpowered damage. So much in fact that 1 single round of corruption ticks did equal damage to divine storm/whirlwind etc on an equally geared toon. That means when we needed 2-3 agonies to setup agony for shards, 2 second Seed cast, in those 5-6 seconds, warriors and paladins would have their AoE`s in allready and top the meters but once we unleashed our stuff we would quickly overtake them.

This is no longer the case, we still have the same ramp up time, however our round of corruption ticks on an AoE pack deals maybe 1/10th of the damage now compared to aforementioned abilities other classes have.

So its either giving us insta AoE damage so we can get along on today's meta of bladestorm, fan of knives, divine storm and frozen orb shenanigans where you push 1 button and see 150k dps on skada (INSTANTLY, no cast times, no setups beyond 2-3 globals) OR make us have overpowered damage that will certainly wreck ST balance since we`r already decent in that department.

It must be done. It must get a buff. This niche stuff that warlocks don`t deserve AoE damage is ridiculous. If by this logic class balance would have been achieved, frost mages, demon hunters would have no single target damage at all, but they do.

Why accept niche that our AoE sucks when we can roll demon hunter and have both good ST and AoE? Even if looking past DPS meters, wouldn't you feel more valuable to your raid if they weren't carrying you on AoE encounters?

Actually even in Legion affliction's base AOE wasn;t that great: what made it strong was Soul Flame. If you watch the videos of people doing M+ runs it's quite noticable that afflocks are often substantially behind other classes on trashpacks until you get that big Soul Flame cascade at the end. In fact simly the fact that we specifically got a separate AOE ability as an artifact trait shows that aff's baseline AOE wasn't that great. Plus, of course, you culd align the stars even more in a god group by having Reap and the other self-buffs up almost constantly. And finally, there were a few outliers where affliction did insane amounts of damage, notably, the blobs at the start of Arcway and the dungeon I forget the name of which had endless swarms of low-health bats.

I have no idea why they have nerfed Seed of Corruption over and over - it was never the problem.

The thing is, that a spell with a cast time that long - given that it not only has a long cast time, but also that ridiculous requirement to make it actually explode from the caster's own damage -you'd expect Seed to be really strong when it finally goes off. Only it's not. It's shit. It's the sort of damage you'd expect from an instant-cast spammable ability.

Either Seed shuld do a lot more damage to justify how long it takes to set it off, or it should stay where it is but be instant cast.

I'm sure the dev thinking is that the Corruption spread balances things out. Something like

Use Seed, explode it, spread Corruption, then tab-cast Seeds and have them go off in a big chain.

The reality is, watch the cast crawl across the screen, watch it sail majestically across the room, tap your foot waiting for it to go off, only to find that by then everything in nine-tenths dead and you're lucky to get one Corruption tick and you're not going to get any mre seeds out, you just hear "I need to target something!"

I'm usre it's all part of the "classes huld be good at some stuff, not so good at other stuff". Which is OK, except there are plenty of all-star classes that simply don;t have to compromise. Moreover, AOE (aside from, let's all admit, the sheer fun of watching those numbers pop all over your screen) has taken on a hugely increased importance thanks to M+.

Afflictin can feel like a third wheel on trash and yet clearing trash is oen of the most imprtant aspects of a timed dungeon. It's not so bad if you're in a group of freinds who know how things are and know that aff does good boss damage.

But it's totally toxic for the casual playerbase who rely on pugs. Most pug groups only look at over all damage and aff just looks plain bad as it sits alongside the tank as the trash dies like crushed bugs from the fan of knives/frost orb/bladestorm bullshit. Why would you want to take a class liek that when you've got a dozen people playing all-star classes in the queue?

As pointed out, the sort of AOE some can do should mean they sit below the tank on single target bosses: but of course, they don't.

Aff only really come sinto it's own when you are doing high keys or fortified, because then the trash healthis high enough that corruption has time to actually do damage.

[xblubbx]

doing M+ runs it's quite noticable that afflocks are often substantially behind other classes on trashpacks until you get that big Soul Flame

Affliction's awesome sustained aoe came from sts+sephuz.....

[Bakis]

I wish they brought back the way old 0,5GCD reduction on casting dots.

[Arkura]

Bring back MoP Soul Swap!

those were the days!

[Craaazyyy]

good buff to AOE would be removing ramp time from agony.. it never made sense

[Deleted]

It's a penalty for allowing it to drop in order to add a "skill" requirement to dot refreshment. Nothing more.

[Deleted]

Just play Demo for aoe in m+.

Showing u an example of the power of demolocks in m+. These details are from a +10 underrot this week (explosive,bolsering,tyrannical, infested)
Check this out:

[Deleted]

Just play Demo for aoe in m+.

Showing u an example of the power of demolocks in m+. These details are from a +10 underrot this week (explosive,bolsering,tyrannical, infested)
Check this out:

This tells us nothing really. You could be in there with 380 ilvl vs DH and rogue with 355. I pull consistently 20k+ on anything multi target on my 366 demon hunter, a good pull (2-3 packs) results on 30-40k on skada whereas a 380 demo warlock could be the best player in the world and #1 on warcraftlogs and still not get anywhere near 25k on comparable pulls.

Affliction is even worse. I main 376 affliction and can`t even get half the dps on AoE packs that i pull off with my DH alt. And to make it worse, on my demon hunter i literally use 3 buttons to pull it off vs on my warlock i have to micromanage a trillion dots. 1 Agony falls off and 20k dps turns into 18k dps. Another one falls off, 16k dps, use seed too late because you are shardstarved (e.g. 2-3 seconds without a new round of corruption rolling) 16k turns into 10k. Great. We have to deal with micromanaging dots on EVERY target, shard generation RNG, ID stacks if we use it, our weird as hell glare cooldown, fight mechanics. We might as well study fucking rocket science.

No, on my demon hunter i hit immolation aura, eye beam and annihilation. Voila, a trillion dps.

Yes if equally geared and paid attention too, affliction warlock will pull 22k dps on bossfight if everything goes right and stars align and DH will pull 20k. Wow, 2k dps gained. Next trash pack 20k dps lost. Great.

If this is not ridiculous in anyone`s eyes, they`d need to find a doctor.

[nToxik]

This tells us nothing really. You could be in there with 380 ilvl vs DH and rogue with 355. I pull consistently 20k+ on anything multi target on my 366 demon hunter, a good pull (2-3 packs) results on 30-40k on skada whereas a 380 demo warlock could be the best player in the world and #1 on warcraftlogs and still not get anywhere near 25k on comparable pulls.

Affliction is even worse. I main 376 affliction and can`t even get half the dps on AoE packs that i pull off with my DH alt. And to make it worse, on my demon hunter i literally use 3 buttons to pull it off vs on my warlock i have to micromanage a trillion dots. 1 Agony falls off and 20k dps turns into 18k dps. Another one falls off, 16k dps, use seed too late because you are shardstarved (e.g. 2-3 seconds without a new round of corruption rolling) 16k turns into 10k. Great. We have to deal with micromanaging dots on EVERY target, shard generation RNG, ID stacks if we use it, our weird as hell glare cooldown, fight mechanics. We might as well study fucking rocket science.

No, on my demon hunter i hit immolation aura, eye beam and annihilation. Voila, a trillion dps.

Yes if equally geared and paid attention too, affliction warlock will pull 22k dps on bossfight if everything goes right and stars align and DH will pull 20k. Wow, 2k dps gained. Next trash pack 20k dps lost. Great.

If this is not ridiculous in anyone`s eyes, they`d need to find a doctor.

This is the best post ever.

[Kazuchika]

Just play Demo for aoe in m+.

Showing u an example of the power of demolocks in m+. These details are from a +10 underrot this week (explosive,bolsering,tyrannical, infested)
Check this out:
hurr damage meter

How about some actual logs instead of pointless screenshots of your damage meters?

[Phraek]

- Haunt needs a viable aoe alternative in the row. Having to use haunt in aoe fights / in m+ feels complete bullshit.
- Drain Soul needs to be made strong enough to be a viable alternative to deathbolt

I loved Legion aff (despite the few flaws that were there), raided mythic and high m+, but intended to quit in bfa anyway.. and the current aff state made it really, really easy to do just that.

I was thinking maybe an Azerite power (or straight change to) Drain Soul to make it AOE. That way you trade a little single target damage by not taking Deathbolt and gain a little by AOE by taking Drain Soul?

[Kaver]

Affliction shouldn't be god tier on every aspect.