WoD Beta Affliction Discussion

[Deleted]

SB:Haunt is a trap talent tbh

It's not trap if it's mandatory. The other 2 are so shit for aff I can't see anyone picking them ever.

[Santoisms]

It's not trap if it's mandatory. The other 2 are so shit for aff I can't see anyone picking them ever.

The point I'm making, Level 100 talents shouldn't be traps or talents that rely on RNG to be used effectively.

[Jessicka]

The point I'm making, Level 100 talents shouldn't be traps or talents that rely on RNG to be used effectively.

That's the nature of the spec, it's what you sign up to; same as a Fire Mage signs up to the RNG of Crits. Giving you room to fill one or two more Shards would make absolutely no difference, other than starting with the additional resources. Improving RNG from Single Target? Not sure how that'd really play out - Drain Soul functions in a way that *guarantees* you extra DoT ticks for ST; additional RNG on RNG wouldn't improve things, because ultimately where you'd pay is from those ticks.

[Deleted]

SB:Haunt is a trap talent tbh, giving us 4 shards baseline (5 in opener) you'd have to sit at 2 shards constantly, or get lucky with Nightfall / DS an add to keep Haunting Spirits up 100%, just seems so annoying on beta when you have no control over the Soul Shards, I still think we should have a perk for another Soul Shard or two or give us a higher Nightfall proc single target, or even Nightfall AoE again. SB:Haunt is more annoying then helpful imo.

Not so sure about it being a trap, I think a 20% dmg boost to all dots for 30s is worth 1 shard.

[Santoisms]

Giving you room to fill one or two more Shards would make absolutely no difference, other than starting with the additional resources

How would more Shards not make a difference? More Haunts in between Haunting Spirits.

Not so sure about it being a trap, I think a 20% dmg boost to all dots for 30s is worth 1 shard.

Yeah the 2 shard is what I'm referring to, that and Soul Swap but we all know how that turned out.

[Jessicka]

How would more Shards not make a difference? More Haunts in between Haunting Spirits.

That would only happen if you boost the proc chance. Starting with more or being able to pool more would give you negligible additional up-time.

[Santoisms]

That would only happen if you boost the proc chance. Starting with more or being able to pool more would give you negligible additional up-time.

Again, how would MORE of a resource used not make a difference? More Soul Shards = 100% uptime on SB:Haunt with minimal Haunts in between if you are getting the same Nightfall proc chances in both situations.

[skitzin]

I think the point Jessicka is trying to get at is the rate shards are gained.

For example if the rate is 1 shard per 10 mins, then it doesn't matter if you have a reserve of say 6 shards, you're still only getting 1 shard per 10 mins.

In this case I think we'd need a higher rate of shard generation rather then the increase of how many I can hold. Particularly as a fight goes on longer.

[Deleted]

How would more Shards not make a difference? More Haunts in between Haunting Spirits.



Yeah the 2 shard is what I'm referring to, that and Soul Swap but we all know how that turned out.

True soulswap is garbage now, but the 2 shards for SB: Haunt is worth it and sadly mandatory, because the 15% dmg to ALL dots on ALL enemies is a big bonus vs 2 regular haunts.

Sad this is all you do is drain soul + cast dots and SB:Haunt 1/30s.

[DesireKT]

Having 1 extra shard effectively does nothing. The only way to generate a significant amount of shards to make an impact on the course of a 7-10 minute fight would be to proc more in combat. It's not like it's Chi or Combo points that you build spend store save etc for certain times or to constantly be using over and over. All these other classes got overflow or additional spots for resources to make it QoL change for when they were unable to control the resources that put them above cap. It had nothing to do with rotations or being able to get more attacks in or increase buff uptimes etc.

1 starting shard over 7 minutes isn't that big of a deal. You still sit around 2-3 shards to make sure you have enough to SB:Haunt on CD. And all you gain is that 1 extra shard in the opener which most people do already by precasting SB. If you are complaining about significant downtime on Haunt, I don't see how you can't understand that having an additional 10second of Haunt uptime (1 extra shard) really isn't that much time out of 7 minutes.

I kind of think an Astral Communion (or whatever the boomkin things called) type spell would be what most people are looking for outside of just an increased proc chance. Not always useful but for when you get screwed and go long period without procs or phase changes/RP where you can't get shards back because you can't DPS.

Wandering Souls
3 minute cooldown
4 second channel
You gather energy from nearby wandering souls regenerating 1 Soul Shard every second for 4 seconds.

[Santoisms]

Wandering Souls
3 minute cooldown
4 second channel
You gather energy from nearby wandering souls regenerating 1 Soul Shard every second for 4 seconds.

We would never get this type of spell.

[DesireKT]

Never claimed that but it's what most people probably want if we aren't going to get an increase in shard generation. Especially because increasing the shard cap to 5 is worthless. Now if they didn't remove return all shards on kill from Drain Soul then sure it would be great, but then again we wouldn't have this problem if they left that.

[Deleted]

Never claimed that but it's what most people probably want if we aren't going to get an increase in shard generation. Especially because increasing the shard cap to 5 is worthless. Now if they didn't remove return all shards on kill from Drain Soul then sure it would be great, but then again we wouldn't have this problem if they left that.

Would like more shard supply regardless though as we now kinda have 2 charges of SB: Haunt.

[Santoisms]

Never claimed that but it's what most people probably want if we aren't going to get an increase in shard generation. Especially because increasing the shard cap to 5 is worthless. Now if they didn't remove return all shards on kill from Drain Soul then sure it would be great, but then again we wouldn't have this problem if they left that.

I'm just stating my opinion is all, never stated you said we should get it. We do need a Shard regeneration of some kind and I definitely love the feedback on it because it is a major problem. I think that increasing the Shard cap isn't worthless though. They should increase DS kills to 2 shards instead of 1 as well and have 5-6 Shards baseline and I'd be content with that.

Would like more shard supply regardless though as we now kinda have 2 charges of SB: Haunt.

Interesting way to think about SB:Haunt, never thought of it like that.

[Deleted]

imo afflic atm is a dead spec, in order for it to work in any way decent they have to greatly increase the shard generation with the way the spec looks, also as some of the ppl here, the idea of our lvl 100 talent for afflic being comletely relying on RNG is bad design, atleast the fire mages reduce their reliance on RNG as they get better gear, not to mention the base crit they get, atleast more than for lock, ofc they could go another way and put soulswap on 3ish charges and SB:haunt a 45-60 sec cd instead that would solve some of the issues atleast.

[Jessicka]

imo afflic atm is a dead spec, in order for it to work in any way decent they have to greatly increase the shard generation with the way the spec looks, also as some of the ppl here, the idea of our lvl 100 talent for afflic being comletely relying on RNG is bad design, atleast the fire mages reduce their reliance on RNG as they get better gear, not to mention the base crit they get, atleast more than for lock, ofc they could go another way and put soulswap on 3ish charges and SB:haunt a 45-60 sec cd instead that would solve some of the issues atleast.

Affliction RNG is effectively reduced by Haste.

I totally agree we need some on-demand generation; it was an absolute mistake to merge Drain Soul and Malefic Grasp for this reason, and I've been saying as much the entire Beta. I also think the Shard used to cast Haunt should be refunded if the target dies while the debuff is still active, in addition to the one generated by Drain Soul.

Having said that, I actually think Shard generation is okay as is; it's supposed to leave you wanting more and it makes their correct use have a bigger impact than simply having more procs, more shards, more uptime and overall flatter damage where Shards themselves mean very little. As gear improves, up time will increase and actually devalue the debuff slightly, and that is kinda sad that the design does leave a physical cap on the effectiveness of the resource itself, and gear ultimately overcomes bad play for the spec as a whole.

My only concern is the loss of protection Drain Soul offered for dry spells that may occur when leading to an important burn phase.

[Werst]

They could tweak SB:Haunt to have returning haunts have a 100% chance to grant a shard while the SB:Haunt buff is active. You couldn't spam haunt but at least you could keep haunt up more consistently. If you did somehow have a spare shard there is plenty to do with it not even counting things like adds, asap target swaps, etc. That and maybe tighten up bad luck streak protection on corruption. As far as it being a "fun" spec for daily's and questing DS will need to refund at least 2 if not 3x shards or other specs are just going to be more efficient. Aff already has the long wind up with soulswap only saving us a GCD but its one we can use with a melee up our butt. Soulswap on a charge system like HoG/Conflag would give some options in pvp where the spec is severely lacking and nice QoL for daily's/non raid play while preventing the spam of MoP.

How is that in any way an unreasonable middle ground? Especially compared to what other specs can do multi dotting (boomy, spriest, unholy, etc). Our dots when unsupported by haunt and DS are so weak nearly any other class can multi dot as well. A single warrior bleed outpaces our 3x dots when not channeling/haunted to say nothing of feral bleeds. Affliction needs a better toolkit to be a spec that is competitive and some tweaks to make it actually something someone *wants* to play. Right now the spec is failing in both regards which is a design issue.

[Zulantu]

That would only happen if you boost the proc chance. Starting with more or being able to pool more would give you negligible additional up-time.

Assuming that you always bank two shards to insure as close to 100% uptime on SB:Haunt as possible, Affl(with SB:Haunt) just doesn't feel right with a four shard cap to me at least. I'm not sure if I'm the only one that feels this way. There have been times on the single-target dummies in Shatt that nightfall RNG has been so bad that I actually haven't generated two shards in 30 seconds. How I see it is, the ratio between the shard cap and shard cost doesn't accurately reflect the difference between good and bad nightfall RNG. (Based off personal experience)

(MaxShardCount/ShardConsumption)<(MaxRegenRate - MinRegenRate)
or (As the MaxShardCount goes up, we're more easily able to use good RNG and minimize the loss from bad RNG)
As Jessica has stated, it wouldn't increase overall duration of Haunt by a significant amount, but it gives more room for meaningful preparation.

As I said before that's entirely based off personal experience, and I don't want to spread misinformation. An actual mathematical representation would be awesome, but I figured it was worth at least noting my own experience and how affliction felt, because I think that's what the discussion is aimed at more than buff/nerf.

[Deleted]

More shards would be a QOL thing, like paladins and their holy power, but it's not going to fix any underlying issues.

It will feel a tad better under niche circumstances, but it will NOT fix the issues affliction has, which there are plenty of.
I can understand people wanting more shards, but I can only say that it's better to focus feedback on other things, because it's hard enough getting Blizzard to go back on bad changes as is and the door is closing rapidly now beta is over. The last thing I want to see is another crappy handout from Blizzard like when Drain Soul was used as the name for that horrible filler instead of MG because people spent ages complaining about that instead of the fact that Drain Soul was cut in everything but name, and our on demand shard generation and execute phase died with it.

tldr; complain about things that matter, extra shards is nice but won't fix anything.

[Deleted]

more shards from removing the nightfall cap(recent corr casted) will certainly help smoothen out the spec and buff the amount of shards from drain soul on adds dying or replace the shard cost on soulswap with charges is needed too i think. once these thing has been done, all it really needs is a buff. afflic is certainly still far off from being a viable spec and tuning is needed.