Affliction - why so high on meters?

[noaim]

Elemental casts LB slower if they glyph it for movement (which is more or less mandatory except on a fight where most of it is standstill - for instance on Will you probably wouldn't glyph it, or even elegon). But aside from that, their only cast is Lava Burst, which is mostly infrequent and its procs (lava surge) are now instant with MOP. And during ascendance, they can SWG. So movement isn't that bad.

Yes, they cast slower with the glyph. But warlocks have to give up a 90 talent and suffer a movement penalty when moving while casting.

Fire is the only clear-cut DPS loss with scorch, but it's not a large DPS loss if used well. Hunters now move while casting with absolutely zero (0) penalty.

Yeah but as I said, noone has argued against the fact that elemental dps is too low, at least not that I have seen, so it would be stupid to say "aff does more than elemental, thus aff is overpowered". Fire doesnt lose alot of dps with scorching no, but from what I have seen most mages seem to go with rune of power as a lvl 90 talents and not standing in that should be quite a dps loss, yet they arent that far behind either, same goes for hunters and with the scheduled Sac-nerf, that gap gets even smaller.

[nightfalls]

You're right, most people aren't. I was responding to Voidspark however, who was. The logic behind comparing classes in 'real life' raid situations (i.e. Raidbots/WoL, as anything else is awfully anecdotal) is not at all something I disagree on, and I can't see where you should have picked that up - quite the opposite is true, actually.

Good job singling people out (again).

Using the sims helps your case, because in general, they make your hybrid DPS look much worse than the raidbots do.

And using heroic raidbots (beyond MSV), as GC has even said and I even said (but that flew past many of the "nerf camp's" heads), leads to a pretty big sampling bias when you're looking at few guilds getting public logs of HOF kills, and the fact that many are class/player-skill stacked.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Feng_the_...14/60/default/
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Feng_the_...14/60/default/

Relatively encounter-neutral (minus aoe padding) fight. You see the spread is 15% at most between best and worse specs. The "main pack" seems to be around 111k for 10H, and 128k for 25H. Affliction is only slightly ahead of this "pack" which you so want it wedged to the bottom of. That 3-5% nerf actually closes that gap quite a bit while leaving room for other fights.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. I'm too lazy to really look at details, but have you considered that beyond movement and range (so you can hit him in the air) and DoTs (so he's DPS'ed while traveling), that the echoes are another reason why affliction does so well on Heroic Zor'lok? In Phase 1 you can have DoTs rolling on the one you're not DPS'ing until they fall.

In Phase 2 if you kill the echo, you can double-dot the echo and the boss. If you don't kill the echo, for padding purposes you can still toss some DoTs on him after he spawns.

Finally any BoPs for attenuations would be given only to casters (of course), and warlocks who are already somewhat good at the fight would probably be first in line (along with mages), so any DPS difference, however puny, would be greatly exaggerated by this.

Point being, he's not really encounter-neutral at all, and definitely would be more friendly to warlocks.

[xskarma]

"One and only favourite spec" or whatever I wrote was obviously meant sarcasticly,

Sarcasm doesn't translate well across the internet, so it's much wiser not to resort to it when trying to have a discussion.

Also I clearly stated that I wanted no more personal attacks and discussion about WHO is making the argument, this is your and everyone else's last warning, to stay on the topic of IF affliction is OP and how that might be fixed.

[Deleted]

Nice pandering and good job singling people out (again).

Using the sims helps your case, because in general, they make your hybrid DPS look much worse than the raidbots do.

And using heroic raidbots (beyond MSV), as GC has even said and I even said (but that flew past many of the "nerf camp's" heads), leads to a pretty big sampling bias when you're looking at few guilds getting public logs of HOF kills, and the fact that many are class/player-skill stacked.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Feng_the_...14/60/default/
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Feng_the_...14/60/default/

Relatively encounter-neutral (minus aoe padding) fight. You see the spread is 15% at most between best and worse specs. The "main pack" seems to be around 111k for 10H, and 128k for 25H. Affliction is only slightly ahead of this "pack" which you so want it wedged to the bottom of. That 3-5% nerf actually closes that gap quite a bit while leaving room for other fights.

There are plenty of HoF kills to form a decent pool of samples; one good enough for cross-class comparison. Also, looking at one fight in particular (in this case, Feng) would be pretty inaccurate - it's one fight out of 16, and it's bound to make some specs look good, and others bad. Different fights favor different specs. If you want a (somewhat) accurate view of the state of a specific spec, it would be better to look at each fight individually (up until Shek'zeer/ToeS, that is, as the sampling then starts to get skewed).
My point is, Warlocks are (more than) strong on every single fight, except for Garalon. No other class has that luxury, and that's why I think Affliction should be tuned down (more than the 2.5%-3.5% from the GoSac nerf, if even just a little).

I also have a hard time seeing how the GoSac nerf would result in a 5% DPS decrease (I know, it's too early to say that for sure - but even if it *would* turn out to be a 4-5% DPS-decrease, it wouldn't be as rough on any fight with multidotting/extended periods of AoE. And both in T14 and (seemingly, judging from the early datamined Dungeon Journal notes) T15, those kinds of fights are a majority.)

[Bonkura]

As good as KJC is, it has no impact on the relative strength between the three Grimoires which is the issue. Affliction isn't even massively ahead to actually warrant nerfing; it's just easier to hammer that nail down that pull the others up.

Kil'jaeden's Cunning was garbage pre-change, so no, reverting it is pretty unnecessary.

If affliction is too good with movement, then that's something else that needs to be looked at, maybe just giving Kil'jaden's Cunning the spiritwalker's grace treatment, with a better activated version and no passive.[COLOR="red"]

I don't think you understand how it lets us circumvent mechanics completely (Zor'lok and Sha HC P1 says hello) and make the gap to other classes ridiculous.

Not related to this topic, but the goal for Blizzard seems to be to balance all talents so they all will be useful. Today we use KJC during progress for all fights with the only exception MAYBE being Tsulong, Ambershaper and of course Elegon (which should be considered old content by now).

The main issue I have with it now isn't only how it makes the spec imbalanced but also so much easier to play compared to other classes. Ranged classes already have a much easier time handling movement in a raid than melee by not having to constantly avoid standing in shit beind their target and also get more time reacting to any incoming movement. Everything that lets you move and not lose any DPS for a longer period of time without any real punishment should just be removed from the game IMHO.

If you think the old KJC was bad then feel free to suggest how it should work. I know if they changed it back I would be using AV, MF and KJC equally spread among all fights this tier.

[noaim]

Read the context. There's a difference between class-comparison through sims (which isn't at all accurate) and talent/spec-comparison (which is somewhat accurate). Classes have different strength and weaknesses, and a single-target standstill fight doesn't factor in any of them (making sims inaccurate when it comes to performance in actual raids). Talent/spec-comparison is largely usable as they aren't subject to this to the same degree.

The point obviously was that to get the most out of sacrifice, you have to have a perfect rotation. To get the most out of an Observer, you have to press petattack, which means the difference is prolly smaller than what sim shows. However in other scenarios, pet might have to run alot and then the difference might be bigger. Thats what the talents should be like and hopefully will be with the sac nerf. A is better sometimes, B is better sometimes etc.

There are plenty of HoF kills to form a decent pool of samples; one good enough for cross-class comparison. Also, looking at one fight in particular (in this case, Feng) would be pretty inaccurate - it's one fight out of 16, and it's bound to make some specs look good, and others bad. Different fights favor different specs. If you want a (somewhat) accurate view of the state of a specific spec, it would be better to look at each fight individually (up until Shek'zeer/ToeS, that is, as the sampling then starts to get skewed).
My point is, Warlocks are good on every single fight, except for Garalon. No other class has that luxury, and that's why I think Affliction should be tuned down (more than the 2.5%-3.5% from the GoSac nerf, if even just a little).

I also have a hard time seeing how the GoSac nerf would result in a 5% DPS decrease (I know, it's too early to say that for sure - but even if it *would* turn out to be a 4-5% DPS-decrease, it wouldn't be as rough on any fight with multidotting/extended periods of AoE. And both in T14 and (seemingly, judging from the early datamined Dungeon Journal notes) T15, those kinds of fights are a majority.

And still you dont understand that KJC is the reason for all this, instead you want to decrease the damage output...sigh...

The reason Feng doesnt show aff locks ahead is that its fairly stationary, so there you can see how balanced the actual damage output is, and as you can see for yourself, its quite well balanced. However when basically all other classes start losing dps with movement, we dont and then we pull ahead. If you then start nerfing damage by up to 20% as I have read some suggest, what do you think would happen on fights with low movement?

[Dazzy]

Iconic in your mind, however you are in a minority mindset.

You must be new to wow in Cata, aff was the only pvp spec you could play before this season if you wanted to win even 1 match. That's iconic. It's not a mindset, it's a fact.

[Deleted]

The point obviously was that to get the most out of sacrifice, you have to have a perfect rotation. To get the most out of an Observer, you have to press petattack, which means the difference is prolly smaller than what sim shows. However in other scenarios, pet might have to run alot and then the difference might be bigger. Thats what the talents should be like and hopefully will be with the sac nerf. A is better sometimes, B is better sometimes etc.

Yes, and there's no doubt that the two other Grimoires will see more action come the GoSac nerf. Still, judging from the sims (too early, I know), it seems that GoSac would still be the go-to choice. I don't have a problem with this per se, but I'm just saying that in a perfect world, they would all three be even closer to eachother and see a directly comparable amount of action (lack of a better word) in a given warlock's spellbook.

[Jessicka]

I don't think you understand how it lets us circumvent mechanics completely (Zor'lok and Sha HC P1 says hello) and make the gap to other classes ridiculous.

That isn't down to KJC, otherwise Hunters, Demo and every single melee class would be much closer in parity.

[Bonkura]

That isn't down to KJC, otherwise Hunters, Demo and every single melee class would be much closer in parity.

Hunters shouldn't have gotten Aspect of the Fox to be baseline. It should've been removed completely. They get away with this only because their damage is so low in theory.
It's a DPS loss for Demo to switch into Meta if not timed with DS/procs.
Whenever meeles can't sit on a target it's a big DPS loss.

[whi]

Relatively encounter-neutral (minus aoe padding) fight. You see the spread is 15% at most between best and worse specs. The "main pack" seems to be around 111k for 10H, and 128k for 25H. Affliction is only slightly ahead of this "pack" which you so want it wedged to the bottom of. That 3-5% nerf actually closes that gap quite a bit while leaving room for other fights.

Not that i care that much about our position vs other classes, as imo both demo and destro are competetive in that regard(not so much vs affli single target), but aren't you kinda proving his point showing affli being on top of a fight which in "shield phase" exaggerates it's only weakness(ish) - burst aoe?

[Deleted]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. I'm too lazy to really look at details, but have you considered that beyond movement and range (so you can hit him in the air) and DoTs (so he's DPS'ed while traveling), that the echoes are another reason why affliction does so well on Heroic Zor'lok? In Phase 1 you can have DoTs rolling on the one you're not DPS'ing until they fall.

In Phase 2 if you kill the echo, you can double-dot the echo and the boss. If you don't kill the echo, for padding purposes you can still toss some DoTs on him after he spawns.

Finally any BoPs for attenuations would be given only to casters (of course), and warlocks who are already somewhat good at the fight would probably be first in line (along with mages), so any DPS difference, however puny, would be greatly exaggerated by this.

Point being, he's not really encounter-neutral at all, and definitely would be more friendly to warlocks.

I don't think these reasons are enough to warrant it being called a warlock-friendly fight (other than what it already is due to KJC of course); since we're looking at All Parses, the amount of Warlocks padding the meters DPSing the P2 echoes/recieving BoPs is miniscule.

But yes, of course - Warlock friendly fight regardless, but it's by far due to (I think) KJC's influence and not so much multi-dotting and other factors. Hunters (BM and, to a lesser degree, SV) are really strong on that fight as well, due to mobility.

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 02:18 PM ----------

Not that i care that much about our position vs other classes, as imo both demo and destro are competetive in that regard(not so much vs affli single target), but aren't you kinda proving his point showing affli being on top of a fight which in "shield phase" exaggerates it's only weakness(ish) - burst aoe?

Not so much that; looking at one boss only instead of comparing multiple is an overall bad way to measure DPS regardless.

[Medieve]

I'm honest enough to admit that Aff is high, but honestly, the incoming nerfs should bring most aff locks down enough. The only other nerf that could possibly be warranted is making DoT's roll hit on each tick again and removing the 1 to 2k or so in secondaries that only aff locks have at the expense of hit as a result.

Prior expansion ranking and power has no bearing on whether aff is too powerful now, nor should it. It doesn't matter if it was strong or weak in the past, only how it performs now. Being powerful historically isn't justification for nerfs in this tier, and being underpowered historically isn't justification for buffs. I'm not sure why this point is inevitably brought up in every "balance" thread.

K'JC is extremely powerful for aff, but it's not too powerful. It's hard to quantify additional chance of accidental death from the slow, so you won't see it reflected in sims. Good locks have always been able to plan their escape portals well to keep close to full uptime on bosses, so K'JC doesn't necessarily perform an ability that wasn't already present. It just makes it more constant when higher amounts of movement are required. Hard to quantify in a sim, and not easily reflected in raidbots. You could be having the #1 parse by a 10% margin and then get caught by the snare. It happens, even to the best players.

Aff isn't so far ahead that guilds are stacking aff locks for encounters though. Sure, at the highest levels certain guilds stack classes to power though encounters, but that isn't trickling down to most or even many raid groups. With the current planned nerfs, good aff locks will still shine when they can take full advantage of certain mechanics, but many specs will be able to fight equally for top spots overall. Certain fights will still favor certain specs, that will always be true, but overall the top will see more diversity, so the OP's goal will be met.

[Deleted]

I'm honest enough to admit that Aff is high, but honestly, the incoming nerfs should bring most aff locks down enough. The only other nerf that could possibly be warranted is making DoT's roll hit on each tick again and removing the 1 to 2k or so in secondaries that only aff locks have at the expense of hit as a result.

Prior expansion ranking and power has no bearing on whether aff is too powerful now, nor should it. It doesn't matter if it was strong or weak in the past, only how it performs now. Being powerful historically isn't justification for nerfs in this tier, and being underpowered historically isn't justification for buffs. I'm not sure why this point is inevitably brought up in every "balance" thread.

K'JC is extremely powerful for aff, but it's not too powerful. It's hard to quantify additional chance of accidental death from the slow, so you won't see it reflected in sims. Good locks have always been able to plan their escape portals well to keep close to full uptime on bosses, so K'JC doesn't necessarily perform an ability that wasn't already present. It just makes it more constant when higher amounts of movement are required. Hard to quantify in a sim, and not easily reflected in raidbots. You could be having the #1 parse by a 10% margin and then get caught by the snare. It happens, even to the best players.

Aff isn't so far ahead that guilds are stacking aff locks for encounters though. Sure, at the highest levels certain guilds stack classes to power though encounters, but that isn't trickling down to most or even many raid groups. With the current planned nerfs, good aff locks will still shine when they can take full advantage of certain mechanics, but many specs will be able to fight equally for top spots overall. Certain fights will still favor certain specs, that will always be true, but overall the top will see more diversity, so the OP's goal will be met.

I don't think forcing the hit cap on Affliction Warlocks would be a smooth (or smart) move; I don't think it would be well-recieved. Affliction has historically (correct me if I'm wrong) had hit as a low priority, sometimes/often below one or more secondary stats. It kind of adds to class-diversity, while giving the individual Warlock a choice; to cap hit, or not to cap hit. If Affliction has to be brought down more after the GoSac nerf (remains to be seen, but I personally think it will), I don't think said nerf should affect mechanics/talents etc.; simply nerfing spell-coefficients on dots a little (for example) would suffice.

[Tsuna]

I for one welcome our affliction warlock overlords... I can't help but feel discussions like this are secretly instigated by warlocks to lobby for their favorite spec to get buffed so they won't have to learn another play style. The way people scream "nerf this, buff that" honestly feels *sunglasses on* Destructive, towards good design conversations.

[Bonkura]

K'JC is extremely powerful for aff, but it's not too powerful. It's hard to quantify additional chance of accidental death from the slow, so you won't see it reflected in sims. Good locks have always been able to plan their escape portals well to keep close to full uptime on bosses, so K'JC doesn't necessarily perform an ability that wasn't already present. It just makes it more constant when higher amounts of movement are required. Hard to quantify in a sim, and not easily reflected in raidbots. You could be having the #1 parse by a 10% margin and then get caught by the snare. It happens, even to the best players.

I only ever die to the delay of the snare when I move. I don't know if it's input lag or server side but things like waterspout on Sha HC P2 hit me many times even if I'm far away from them (it's a 2 yard range with 2 sec to react, you shouldn't miss it).

Aff isn't so far ahead that guilds are stacking aff locks for encounters though.

I've asked my guild to get more locks since this tier started but they haven't listened to me.

[Medieve]

I don't think forcing the hit cap on Affliction Warlocks would be a smooth (or smart) move; I don't think it would be well-recieved. Affliction has historically (correct me if I'm wrong) had hit as a low priority, sometimes/often below one or more secondary stats. It kind of adds to class-diversity, while giving the individual Warlock a choice; to cap hit, or not to cap hit. If Affliction has to be brought down more after the GoSac nerf (remains to be seen, but I personally think it will), I don't think said nerf should affect mechanics/talents etc.; simply nerfing spell-coefficients on dots a little (for example) would suffice.

You've always wanted hit as affliction prior to this. This is a relatively new thing. Bringing up the value of hit for aff locks isn't necessarily rotation or game changing, as changing spell coefficients can be as gear progresses. It'll become less of an issue as hit becomes more common to excess anyway, so isn't a permanent solution. I don't see any evidence that anything regarding aff will need to be nerfed further than the ones currently planned, however.

I for one welcome our affliction warlock overlords... I can't help but feel discussions like this are secretly instigated by warlocks to lobby for their favorite spec to get buffed so they won't have to learn another play style. The way people scream "nerf this, buff that" honestly feels *sunglasses on* Destructive, towards good design conversations.

And that, my friends, is how you win at forums.

[Jayded1]

How come Blizzard hasn't fixed this yet? On almost every single fight, Raidbots reports that Affliction is significantly ahead. Majority of fights it's on the top, and by a fair margin. This holds true for across all difficulties and sample sets (top 100/all), pretty much.
Point is, there's not much doubt that Affliction is in a *too* good spot atm, compared to all other DPS (except for Arcane, maybe, but they're getting nerfed by a lot come 5.2).

Sure, they nerfed GoSac. Which will result in a, what, 2.5% damage decrease? That's not at all enough to bring it in line.

Anyways, to the point - 1) is Affliction really as good as I think it is or am I simply misinformed?
2) If yes, why hasn't it been nerfed yet?
3) Will it be nerfed in the near future (5.2 primarily) at all?

A certain class has to always be on top. If they nerfed Affliction then the #2 would be #1 and you would complain about that.

[Deleted]

You've always wanted hit as affliction prior to this. This is a relatively new thing. Bringing up the value of hit for aff locks isn't necessarily rotation or game changing, as changing spell coefficients can be as gear progresses. It'll become less of an issue as hit becomes more common to excess anyway, so isn't a permanent solution. I don't see any evidence that anything regarding aff will need to be nerfed further than the ones currently planned, however.

I see your point, but I can't see a small nerf to spell coefficients being "rotation or game changing", even as we lag towards the end of the expansion. Sure, if Blizzard were to nerf Affliction by 10% (which I would consider calling a knee-jerk type of nerf), it wouldn't have to happen through adjusting spell coefficients. Could handle 2-4% in the long run though, I would dare guess.

---------- Post added 2012-12-28 at 02:58 PM ----------

A certain class has to always be on top. If they nerfed Affliction then the #2 would be #1 and you would complain about that.

I'm not complaining about Affliction being on top per se (you're right, one spec has to be up there), but I'm arguing that the gap between top and bottom shouldn't be as large as it currently is (and that nerfing Affliction further, if even slightly, would help alleviate this).

I'm not exactly screaming for nerfs either, as some may think.

[Medieve]

I only ever die to the delay of the snare when I move. I don't know if it's input lag or server side but things like waterspout on Sha HC P2 hit me many times even if I'm far away from them (it's a 2 yard range with 2 sec to react, you shouldn't miss it).


I've asked my guild to get more locks since this tier started but they haven't listened to me.

Hell, at this point we're just trying to recruit aware players. LFR has so far polarized and diluted the recruit pool that it's becoming impossible to find decent candidates, unless you're directly poaching from lower guilds, a la BC. During Wrath, you at least had the 10/25 split where 10's would run on alts and with pugs that at bare minimum gave people a taste of real raids and how to react to mechanics, which was nice when trying to find one or two new raiders to shore up a couple weak spots. Now with everyone blasting through LFR on autoattack while standing in fire, it's becoming impossible to find people who don't stand in bad.

Bit off topic. Snare has killed me too, pretty sure it's from server lag. Occasionally it activates late and lasts too long. I only get one stack when summoning my minions though, which I suppose is nice. Makes the run back after a wipe ever so slightly less annoying.