Page 1 of 2
1
2
LastLast
  1. #1

    Affliction - Personal Gameplay Experience

    Hello friends,

    Before i start, i would like to note that i have low to none experience with this class in the past. I never played it, and even though i was alwasy intrigued by Warlocks - i never played them at max level in any expansion. Untill now.
    Ive created a Lv.100 few ago on the PTR, and god i completely fell in love with the current Affliction.
    It's fun, it's strong and it's just fun as hell in PvP.
    With that notion, ive created a Lv.1 Warlock in LIVE after pre-patch hit and started leveling.

    Now, i understand it takes about 20 seconds to ramp up our damage, but my god - my dungeons experience during the lvling phase was atrocious.
    We have a bad to none AoE what so ever, in dungeons where bosses get rekt in 10 seconds i lag behind a healer in damage.
    And i just feel completely useless in terms of contributing any damage to the party.
    Of course not everything is bad.
    PvP is still a great fun, and i excel in it even in the lvling phase.
    And there are rare occasions where i get to be second top on dmg in dungeons, but i think its only because people in my group are really bad - because i cant imagine how you can lag behind an affliction warlock as a fire mage nowadays (dungeons that is).

    I'd love to have an insight from more experienced players and their opinions about Affliction in dungeons (even at level 100), and how do you see yourselves perform in Legion.
    I imagine this spec is more useful in raids, where boss fights are over 10 seconds long

  2. #2
    Stood in the Fire
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Sweden
    Posts
    461
    Generally, if you outgear a dungeon (which, to be honest, is done without gear at lower levels) affliction is close to useless. Everything dies to fast for it to be of any real use. The upside of this is that, well, everything is dying fast even without your help, so it doesn't matter that much.. Other than the fact that you'll feel useless..

    In legion, This will most likely still be the case for dungeons up until mythic+, where I sincerely hope that we'll be able to perform as affliction. It does depend slighly on the dungeons and so on as well.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by SirreASDF View Post
    Generally, if you outgear a dungeon (which, to be honest, is done without gear at lower levels) affliction is close to useless. Everything dies to fast for it to be of any real use. The upside of this is that, well, everything is dying fast even without your help, so it doesn't matter that much.. Other than the fact that you'll feel useless..

    In legion, This will most likely still be the case for dungeons up until mythic+, where I sincerely hope that we'll be able to perform as affliction. It does depend slighly on the dungeons and so on as well.
    This is my biggest fear. I love dungeons, and i hate to feel useless.
    15-100 was just running around and see everything dies around me. Thats not a way to play the game
    And im afraid Legion wont be any different.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Kjarl Grimblood View Post
    This is my biggest fear. I love dungeons, and i hate to feel useless.
    15-100 was just running around and see everything dies around me. Thats not a way to play the game
    And im afraid Legion wont be any different.
    Unless they have some changes planned before Legion goes live, don't expect to be invited to Mythic dungeons. Affliction's toolkit is not compatible with Mythic dungeons. Affliction has no burst, has terrible AOE and when everyone else has insane burst, nothing lives long enough for your damage to build up. Affliction is a great solo spec, but when it comes to group play, affliction falls flat on its face.
    Sylvanas Windrunner For Warchief 2016!!
    #NoFlyNoSub, #NoFlyNoLegion, #NoFlyNoBuy, #BringBackFlight

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Spunt View Post
    Unless they have some changes planned before Legion goes live, don't expect to be invited to Mythic dungeons. Affliction's toolkit is not compatible with Mythic dungeons. Affliction has no burst, has terrible AOE and when everyone else has insane burst, nothing lives long enough for your damage to build up. Affliction is a great solo spec, but when it comes to group play, affliction falls flat on its face.
    A premature and pessimistic view that assumes Mythic+ Dungeon tactics will be the same as Challenge Mode tactics were. I'm wouldn't be nearly so quick to write the spec off, and unless you're running Mythic Raid level Mythic+ Dungeons I doubt anyone is going to get blacklisted.

  6. #6
    Im finding that pre-artifact, it's all timing. You can get a good SoC off and do well on the meters, or you can flail around miserably. Knowing the pulls and when you spam UA or SoC is a huge help. Im right at 700 ilvl and my dps is comparable to most classes in most scenarios. Im sure the artifact will help with ramp-up a bit and balance will be a bit better, but there will always be a class that does better in certain situations. Thats how its always been and how it should be. I dont think we'll be sat in M+ due to any spec design. Things will be living longer and we will be substantially more beneficial.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Untill people start outgearing things again, then you'll be next to huntards spamming Barrage and Fire mages so as affliction you'll be feeling useless again

    Heck, as affliction I got kicked a few times on Archimonde PUGs because the groups would wipe in the first 30 seconds or so and I got whispered "you dps is too low" - any clas sor spec with a high burst potential and low rampup times will beat affliction at almost everything, even in raids when players have high gear levels.

    Affliction is a spec that competes well at the start and then progressively falls behind.

    The stupid thing is many of affliction's issues could be fixed by just reverting that idiotic change to Seed of Corruption, so that it exploded from all damage, not just the caster's.

    Until that changes, affliction's aoe is junk, you're stuck with a long cast time and then having to wait forever for the bloody seeds to explode, whereas everyone else has crazy burst aoe. Sow the Seeds is a bandaid fix, if Seed worked as it did in BC we'd be fine.

    I don;t buy this "no spec is good at everything" because hunters and mages are.
    Last edited by mmoc7a6bdbfc72; 2016-07-30 at 04:23 PM.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    In my opinion, pretty much all 3 warlock speccs are affected by that.

    Destro burst (for targets really die in ~5-10 seconds) isn't that good either, especially on the AoE part. I guess Havoc/Shadowburn can somehow make it better... but I'd never call that damage output good.
    Demo has implosion, but it's probably too hard (it takes too long) to build up enough shards most of the time.

    GoSac has too many downsides, it doesn't feel worth it most of the time since you can't spec out of it (for a boss encounter) anymore.
    If it would proc more often depending on how many targets you hit, it would be better, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

    The stupid thing is many of affliction's issues could be fixed by just reverting that idiotic change to Seed of Corruption, so that it exploded from all damage, not just the caster's.

    Until that changes, affliction's aoe is junk, you're stuck with a long cast time and then having to wait forever for the bloody seeds to explode, whereas everyone else has crazy burst aoe. Sow the Seeds is a bandaid fix, if Seed worked as it did in BC we'd be fine.
    that's what I thought too, Seeds are really garbage AoE for bursty situations.
    Last edited by mmoc96d9238e4b; 2016-07-31 at 08:51 AM.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Seeds explode immediately if u cast ua on that target

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Nebiroth99 View Post
    Heck, as affliction I got kicked a few times on Archimonde PUGs because the groups would wipe in the first 30 seconds or so and I got whispered "you dps is too low" - any clas sor spec with a high burst potential and low rampup times will beat affliction at almost everything, even in raids when players have high gear levels.
    Archi pugs are cancer, I once got my warrior friend to ninja pull the boss during trash twice in a row so the leader immediately kicked all the hunters so we could invite our other friends into the group.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nebiroth99 View Post
    I don;t buy this "no spec is good at everything" because hunters and mages are.
    Except they're not. Talk to any mage ever and they'll always tell you about how specs have their niches on some types of damage and perform poorly on others. For example in HFC arcane and frost were pure single target with shit aoe/cleave while fire was the opposite. You see mages doing well at everything because they're playing different specs. Gee doesn't that sound familiar? Oh yeah, it does, because it's the exact same thing we did in HFC as well. The difference being we could just stack mastery for all our specs while the stat priority for mages varied drastically by spec. So it was actually MORE of a pain in the ass for them.

    And hunters always lose in damage compared to a skilled lock or unskilled mage.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZee View Post
    In my opinion, pretty much all 3 warlock speccs are affected by that.

    Destro burst (for targets really die in ~5-10 seconds) isn't that good either, especially on the AoE part. I guess Havoc/Shadowburn can somehow make it better... but I'd never call that damage output good.
    Demo has implosion, but it's probably too hard (it takes too long) to build up enough shards most of the time.

    GoSac has too many downsides, it doesn't feel worth it most of the time since you can't spec out of it (for a boss encounter) anymore.
    If it would proc more often depending on how many targets you hit, it would be better, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
    Seeds blow up pretty fast if you talent either haunt or drain soul and not much slower if you drain life right away after the seed lands.

    Destro burst is amazing with cataclysm, pretty good with havoc/shadowburn and decent with havoc/chaos bolt.

    You can carry the imps for implosion over from previous pulls and even if you don't, one hand worth of imps is still pretty good damage.

    Honestly the burst aoe for all three specs takes about the same amount of time to set up as the whole aoe chaos bolt rotation we had in WoD.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Niyyu View Post
    Seeds explode immediately if u cast ua on that target
    If you have really high gear levels and get a lucky crit on the first tick. Or you can stack UA's. But of course, you still have long cast times on UA, and even longer ones on Seed. To really work you should use Sow the Seeds, which requires a shard. Which you won;t have, becaus eon first pull you will have one, which leaves you none for UA>

    Face it, reality is, affliction's AOE is pretty garbage, particuarly if you are in an instanc enext to fire mages, barrage spamming hunters etc.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Nebiroth99 View Post
    If you have really high gear levels and get a lucky crit on the first tick. Or you can stack UA's. But of course, you still have long cast times on UA, and even longer ones on Seed. To really work you should use Sow the Seeds, which requires a shard. Which you won;t have, becaus eon first pull you will have one, which leaves you none for UA>

    Face it, reality is, affliction's AOE is pretty garbage, particuarly if you are in an instanc enext to fire mages, barrage spamming hunters etc.
    If u call afflictions AOE garbage what do u say to destros? Non existent?

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Niyyu View Post
    If u call afflictions AOE garbage what do u say to destros? Non existent?
    I don't know about current content, but I'm usually top DPS as destro in timewalking. The problem is that you need to kill your ST dps for it and I don't really like switching half of the talents so often.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Seriously, who gives a fuck about the current content. Discussions about the current state of the specs are useless , u should face the situation at 110

  15. #15
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by ThePhantombox View Post
    Seeds blow up pretty fast if you talent either haunt or drain soul and not much slower if you drain life right away after the seed lands.
    Destro burst is amazing with cataclysm, pretty good with havoc/shadowburn and decent with havoc/chaos bolt.
    You can carry the imps for implosion over from previous pulls and even if you don't, one hand worth of imps is still pretty good damage.
    Honestly the burst aoe for all three specs takes about the same amount of time to set up as the whole aoe chaos bolt rotation we had in WoD.

    I think everything you mentioned pretty much pales compared to what other classes have to offer.
    We are talking about 5-10s encounters, not 30s+ that you'll encounter early on in Legion.
    Warlock AoE has a pretty huge setup compared to Hunters or Melees.

    On top of that, it requires you to specifically spec into it, which is bad due to Legion's "amazing" talent and talent-switch design.

    It's just frustrating, I mean, it's obviously not a huge deal, because if targets die so fast, it doesn't matter right? Yet, you feel like trash and can only think of how much of a pain you must be for the other players.
    Last edited by mmoc96d9238e4b; 2016-07-31 at 11:03 AM.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Yeah, basically, it's I'll just cast this Seed of Corruption, then cast some DOTs or my slow numke to set it off, oh wait, everything died whilst I was waiting for the Seed of Corruption cast bar to crawl it;s way across the screen.

    It'll be OK to start in Legion, but we'll be righ tback again when people gear up and kill everything with their instant cast spammable AOE again

    People say "oh it's trash so it doesn;t matter" but it does, because you spend half your time feeling useless and yo uknow the peopleyou're with are think "ah jeez an affliction warlock, ugh"

  17. #17
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Nebiroth99 View Post
    Yeah, basically, it's I'll just cast this Seed of Corruption, then cast some DOTs or my slow numke to set it off, oh wait, everything died whilst I was waiting for the Seed of Corruption cast bar to crawl it;s way across the screen.

    It'll be OK to start in Legion, but we'll be righ tback again when people gear up and kill everything with their instant cast spammable AOE again

    People say "oh it's trash so it doesn;t matter" but it does, because you spend half your time feeling useless and yo uknow the peopleyou're with are think "ah jeez an affliction warlock, ugh"
    mythic+ , problem solved

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZee View Post
    I think everything you mentioned pretty much pales compared to what other classes have to offer.
    We are talking about 5-10s encounters, not 30s+ that you'll encounter early on in Legion.
    Warlock AoE has a pretty huge setup compared to Hunters or Melees.

    On top of that, it requires you to specifically spec into it, which is bad due to Legion's "amazing" talent and talent-switch design.

    It's just frustrating, I mean, it's obviously not a huge deal, because if targets die so fast, it doesn't matter right? Yet, you feel like trash and can only think of how much of a pain you must be for the other players.
    Keep in mind I'm not in beta, I'm speaking from experience from the ptr and pre patch.

    For the record, I'm no hardcore raider, I'm pretty much the definition of casual, it's just that I like to be big fish in a little pond, so doing things like pulling big numbers on meters is fun for me so I look for ways to do it. I did a ton of 5-mans when the ptr came out as all three specs and I was either pretty competitive with every group I was in (affliction) or I just outright smashed through everything (destruction). I've also done a few pugs lately as demo, and with beholder and hand of doom alone I could pretty consistently top meters on trash. I'm in my third guild since the start of WoD and I've consistently been one of the strongest dps there in almost any situation. In nearly all of my pug raids I did for extra loot I was either top or near the top in damage.

    My point isn't to flex my e-peen here, but it's to say that with how many people with similar gear levels to me I've been able to out perform, that could really only leads me to believe that warlocks were always competitive and still are, as long as you know what you're doing, and I'd like to think I know what I'm doing.

    And if that's not the case with you and you're in some bleeding-edge progression guild, then I don't know why you're getting hung up on this in the first place.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    I'm just being considerate towards my party members and friends.

    I played 95% of my time as a Hunter so far and it doesn't take long to realize that burst AoE is what is currently pretty much non existent in all the Warlock specs.. at least compared to what I could and still can do with my hunter in that regard (it's even better in Legion).

    On top of that, just read what OP said.. that's the problem basically, it's not about being OP or about being to weak in general, it's about feeling/being useless.. it's the worst kind of feeling ever. It's like making a new character in D3 that is being carried in T10 with 0 +movementspeed and no equipment... you lag behind, you don't see any numbers, it's boring af and you know you aren't doing anything, even if they don't mind, you aren't doing anything, ugh.
    And then you get to the point where you can actually do t10 on your own, but you lack mobility skills like a wand of woo/in-geom wizard or raekor barb and you can only use your movementspeed ability every ~10 seconds or so (dunno, Crusader probably). They kill everything, you manage to squeeze one or two spells in there to kill some leftovers, you pick up loot and when you are done pickung up loot, you already read that they engaged 2 new elite packs further up, which you won't reach in time either because you lack mobility etc. etc. and then the Rift Guardian appears, the only target that lives long enough for you to do your shit and you finally see that you are doing great damage and you can actually do something.

    That's how it feels to play Warlock in OPs scenario and any scenario that is similar to that (and even mythic+ will be like that most likely)
    Last edited by mmoc96d9238e4b; 2016-07-31 at 08:25 PM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZee View Post
    I'm just being considerate towards my party members and friends.

    I played 95% of my time as a Hunter so far and it doesn't take long to realize that burst AoE is what is currently pretty much non existent in all the Warlock specs.. at least compared to what I could and still can do with my hunter in that regard (it's even better in Legion).

    On top of that, just read what OP said.. that's the problem basically, it's not about being OP or about being to weak in general, it's about feeling/being useless.. it's the worst kind of feeling ever. It's like making a new character in D3 that is being carried in T10 with 0 +movementspeed and no equipment... you lag behind, you don't see any numbers, it's boring af and you know you aren't doing anything, even if they don't mind, you aren't doing anything, ugh.
    And then you get to the point where you can actually do t10 on your own, but you lack mobility skills like a wand of woo/in-geom wizard or raekor barb and you can only use your movementspeed ability every ~10 seconds or so (dunno, Crusader probably). They kill everything, you manage to squeeze one or two spells in there to kill some leftovers, you pick up loot and when you are done pickung up loot, you already read that they engaged 2 new elite packs further up, which you won't reach in time either because you lack mobility etc. etc. and then the Rift Guardian appears, the only target that lives long enough for you to do your shit and you finally see that you are doing great damage and you can actually do something.

    That's how it feels to play Warlock in OPs scenario and any scenario that is similar to that (and even mythic+ will be like that most likely)
    I'm saying that's exactly what DOESN'T happen if you know what you're doing unless your party members massively out gear/skill you. Granted the OP was talking about leveling, which is totally borked and not at all representative of ANY 5 man content currently. You however don't seem to talking about leveling to which I say, read my other post again.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •