Discussion about some talents becoming BASELINE. [Affliction]

[hubbort]

I was exploring through some threads recently and some people wished that some talents would become baseline
and some others to be so. I have my desires but lets face it. With correct reasoning, it might seem feasible.
Without them, we don't know what blizzard will do as they tend to leave the wrong ones alone and mess up the correct ones.

I will also address the changes that I think blizzard should make
PROVIDED that they correctly balance change the other 23 DPS Specs as well.

I will not cover all of them. Only the ones that became an issue

So I would like summarise em and start some constructive criticism so that we could at least appeal to blizzard (if they read) with useful details.
("Not" I have a right to my opinion and my opinion is that you have no right to your opinion)


Haunt - To me, forcing us to remove this from the rotation made us awkward. In WoD, it acted as a nuke and a damage amplifier
with the Rot n Decay talent. I think this is the main reason why Affliction's ST dmg is low right now.
Class fantasy-wise, it appears more painful if all 3 dots are applied to a target which has a ghost stuck up my butthole than without one.
So balance-wise, and Class-fantasy-wise, I think that Haunt should be in the baseline.

Writhe In Agony - PvE players are all forced to choose this which is not what blizzard promised us with a statement
"we want players to choose a variety of talents for variety of playstyles."
If players don't choose this talent, the single target damage would drop.
Affliction is forced to increase mastery and haste. On my character, I have ilvl 875, 7.38% crit, 21.44% haste and 139% mastery.
Even with this stat + reap activated, 20stack agony will deal a crit damage around 253,000.
(3+1 points in inimitable agony, 3 points in shadowy incantations, 3 points in peredition)
Class fantasy isn't an issue here but balance is an issue.
To be competitive with other dps specs, i think agony dmg should be buffed or they can limit the number of agony targets.
(Above 7 main priority targets, it's difficult to even consider casting UA but you're shards will cap out though)

Drain soul(or malefic grasp) - consider yourself in a mythic+12 or above dungeon (arcway for example).
For the sake of observing your one of the few moments that affliction could only implement (i mean slime soulfireworks)
you took sow the seeds instead of siphon life.
this means you have more time to cast and channel drain life. this is the case when you take "Writhe in Agony"
However, If you take Drain soul, what will happen to your ST damage?
The 3 artifact trait only increases its damage by 6% only. and with the damage numbers that i represented above,
DMG of 10stack agony + 20% + dmg buff from changing from drain life to drain soul is nowhere near
DMG of 20stack agony + drain life.
When I first saw this talent, i felt I am a component of a PLC program with lots of INTERLOCKS with nowhere to go.
If i choose this, the other will fail. If i choose that, then this will fail.
Therefore I think I think this needs a complete new rework.
Either they buff the damage that drain soul gives (or the dmg bonus of malefic grasp) or replace it with something different

Siphon Life & Sow the Seeds - Our main issue. In my opinion, having these 2 in the same line is just a total mistake.
Blizzard has just made more issues themselves. If these 2 were in different lines, Affliction warlocks will be happy
And they were be able to reduce one rant that most affliction warlocks will fire at them.
I didn't even want all 2, or either one of them becoming a baseline. At least wanted them as talents on separate lines.
Already the ST dmg of affliction warlocks were proven weak but blizzard's obligation against affliction warlocks said
"If you want more AoE dmg, then sacrifice your ST"
I do however admit that AoE of affliction warlock is amazing (Im talking about 5+trash stacked) if SoS is talented.
Problem is that AoE almost seems negligible without SoS.
Again, Affliction warlocks are stuck in a dillemma.
May be it's only me that before I go into a mythic+ dungeon, I count the number of mobs on each section of each area
and conduct an analysis and bring a result of which of SL or SoS would be ideal for what specific dungeon
when other classes could by the meantime, do more world quests for the AP grind.
Well, at least I tried my best to contribute the most for my party.

Soul Harvest - Well, blizzard and other specs could say We have Grimoire Sacrifice as cooldown ability.
But if we go to mythic+ and for the sake of contribution, If i take Supremacy for stunning and interrupts,
Then technically speaking, we are left with no DPS cooldowns at all.
This is an awkward one though. Because for ST this is tempting but for multi-cleave. I don't think it is that necessary.
But again.. in Dungeon content, for boss fights, if this is taken, ST deteriorates (Siphon Life gone)
If Soul Harvest is selected for the sake of burst, (prioritized target), the mob is dead by 2 other DPSers
before you even could ramp up your agony.
Is this talent really viable? I have sometimes questioned its existence in the first place.


Soul Effigy - Some people like it, Some people think its ok, Some people love it.
I am on the side LOVE. However I understand the issue people address about it though.
Here are some examples of some situations:
1.
"Halls of Valor, Fenryr. For the 2nd phase after Fenryr went to lick is wound, every other class is on their mount but the
poor affliction warlock has to remove pet, remove focus, and spam the mount button hoping he will get there in time.
(faster than warlock anyhow, and please, dont even say cast Demonic Gateway before fighting the boss. We're in a hurry to dmg to the
boss here)
2.
"Halls of Valor, After defeating Hymdall, We take the 3mobs upstairs towards the mid-level of the stairs and kill em there.
To Ride quickly you removed your pet and killed the 3 mobs. You are out of shards but your tank already pulled the big trash pack
right in front of the hall. You are hoping the first tick of agony gives you a shard for summoning your doomguard or infernal but
that really never happens. Lacking of communication and interrupt wipes the party. What a nice experience to start your mythic+.


But sometimes I thank this talent which improved my skills. It made me download the addon "Hard Yards" and I make no mistakes
on where to put the effigy on the first and 2nd podium of Elerethe Renferal as well as Ursoc.
However, forcing us to choose this talent for ST is a mistake from blizzard.
Because I am no rocket scientist but I do know from my guts that More soul shard generation equals more damage.
Again suppressing our creativity.
Soul Shard Generation % is exceptionally difficult to express in numbers (in my opinion)
and that's why I think blizzard never mentions about it though. We've never seen Soul Shard Generation Rate alteration fixes regarding
PvE content yet.
I don't think this should be a baseline though. It can act as a nice shenanigan which fills its role as a talent.

Finally, For the most important thing of all,
It is just me that I believe that Ulthalesh Stack generates at an equal rate between
Agony+Corruption on ST and Agony+Corruption on ST+Effigy?
I personally think RNG on Ulthalesh Reap stack must definetely be fixed.

Thanks for reading guys.

[Darsithis]

This got stuck in the spam filter and I have restored it.

[Faenskap]

Biggest issue I've had so far in PvP with affli, is that corruption ticks will put me in combat right after ressing. Really an issue in RBGs,unable to mount for 6 seconds.

I haven't done that much PvE as affliction, just one heroic and WQs, but I refuse to use Soul Effigy.

[starji]

I wouldn't expect too much from blizzard as far as turning talent choices baseline. The issue with that is they have to replace the vacated talent with something, and that takes plenty of effort, so they're only going to move the worst offending talents.

Writhe would be a good target. I think almost everyone doing non-trivial PvE takes it. I would like them to do it for Demonic Circle, and then let Aff take Shadowfury as an option on that tier. I also agree that having Siphon Life and Sow the Seeds on the same tier is a frustrating decision that means we just don't take sow the seeds most of the time. Making Siphon Life baseline would be cool, but they'd have to make something to replace it.

[Haruk]

Soul Effigy - Some people like it, Some people think its ok, Some people love it.

Is that a typo? I would say - most people hate it, some people think it is OK, a few people love it.

In any event, that is why there are supposed to be three "alternatives" on the talent line that will have more or less similar utility (be it damage, defense, or what have you). I hate soul effigy and don't ever want to have to spec into it. And I should not have to. There should be other alternatives on that talent line that are just as appealing. That way folks like you who love soul effigy can carry on, folks like me who hate it will have viable alternatives.

Aside> I still think the "bounce your spells off a target dummy for partial additional damage" is the worst talent concept ever conceived, so I would like to see soul effigy follow prismatic shard into the trash can of failed concepts and removed from the game. But I realize this is personal bias on my part.

[Werst]

If you bumped conduit to 35%-30%, halved the radius and cool down of PS, removed agony ramp up stacking, and changed effigy to be a single target debuff on the boss for 35% more dot damage and 30% greater agony chance to proc a shard on that target affliction would be 90% fixed. You could tidy up the rest by going StS baseline with agony application being the talent option. Haunt could go baseline and apply full dots on a 30 sec CD, talent to be instant and 15 sec cd.

None of those besides maybe effigy is anything but simple coding or interger fixes. Not to mention super easy to adjust single target. Aff needs fixes like this to play a dot spec in a 2017 macro memo world.

[Jessicka]

You could swap Writhe and Effigy's places in the tree, and suddenly with Writhe competing with Conduit or Singularity, it can actually be a compelling choice, typically based on how long stuff will live for and how much of it there is. Similarly, Effigy can then be taken as a ST option, again how long stuff lives for or mobility as deciders.

I'd like to see Siphon Life and Sow the Seeds baseline, with replacement talents to basically just buff them. Baseline StS could be like 2 extra seeds, talented gives the full 5 for example.

[Roujeaux]

What if Agony did full damage all the time but had a ramping crit chance instead, with Writhe increasing that ramping crit chance?

And also why can't Soul Swap replace Soul Effigy in the PvE talent tree, multidot concerns?

[Sartre]

If you bumped conduit to 35%-30%, halved the radius and cool down of PS, removed agony ramp up stacking, and changed effigy to be a single target debuff on the boss for 35% more dot damage and 30% greater agony chance to proc a shard on that target affliction would be 90% fixed. You could tidy up the rest by going StS baseline with agony application being the talent option. Haunt could go baseline and apply full dots on a 30 sec CD, talent to be instant and 15 sec cd.

None of those besides maybe effigy is anything but simple coding or interger fixes. Not to mention super easy to adjust single target. Aff needs fixes like this to play a dot spec in a 2017 macro memo world.

I liked your ideas, and you also count in the coding/QA efforts to implement those, when most people just go fantasy-mode. I'd also like to see Soul Conduit to scale with gear though. I know, it scales indirectly (you cast more spells, more checks for conduit 20%, and so on), but having a flat increase as you gear up would also be nice. Like [20% + (1/10000 of spellpower or 1/1000 of mastery)%] -or just remove the base % and make the whole amount scale.

[Jessicka]

What if Agony did full damage all the time but had a ramping crit chance instead, with Writhe increasing that ramping crit chance?

And also why can't Soul Swap replace Soul Effigy in the PvE talent tree, multidot concerns?

Because without Siphon Life it's kinda redundant as it won't save you any globals.

[Roujeaux]

Because without Siphon Life it's kinda redundant as it won't save you any globals.

Siphon Life needs to be baseline for Affliction anyway, as you pointed out above.

I think all of the "98% taken" warlock talents could be made baseline and easily replaced with either a talent that modifies them or one of the many pruned talents and abilities we've lost over the years. I went back and took a look at the warlock talent trees over the years and marveled at some of the many things removed from the class that could have definitely made a refined comeback for Legion.

[Werst]

I would be fine baking the damage and healing of siphon life into corruption. Is it's gcd really necessary? Talent the healing component perhaps vs StS so the single vs AoE isn't so harsh? Especially if the idea of a StS that spreads agony is too much for devs lol. Coding wise having siphon life applied by corruption would be the easy way to code it.

I ask about halving cooldown and radius of phantom singularity because it has almost twice the range of any other AoE and can be a liability in mythics. Just an odd duck hard to balance. Halving radius and cd makes it a more rounded talent that still gives an AoE or mini burst ability. It's hardly that powerful, being roughly a cataclysm over time...

Conduit is just really hard to balance...harder to code but maybe have it buff resource generation as well on one target and work as it does on additional targets. So conduit would increase shard chance 20%-25% on the first target PLUS its present live effect. That would keep it from overscaling but help us now, especially where the spec is too weak.

Getting a shard on channel spell death should be baseline whatever version we end up using. Haunt has a place in aff for direct damage and for fast dot spreading on a short cooldown. It doesn't need to be tied to shards. A talent to improve it makes more sense.

I also like the idea of putting writhe and effigy on different talent places but you'd have to make effigy different which is more effort which devs have stated we don't get. If they did the above with conduit + MG could be tuned to a potent single target option that wasn't reliant on effigy.

Every single ability in the weapon that is on death could be "on shard generation" as well and at least not be useless without wildly changing coding. Why hasn't that been done? That could have been baseline at launch when they switched from spawning souls we had to kill.

Changing agony to tick at max damage from get go should be easy coding wise unless there is some oddball issue behind the scenes. This is a very 2006 vs 2016 change! That could easily be q/a tested on ptr and if it's a coding pain try something else. Even a rewrite of the ramp up value per stack would do it. I.E. does 90% at first stack, 91% to 100% then to 110% with writhe making it less of a thing while adjusting base agony damage accordingly.

Still feels like seed needs to detonate on impact OR be instant to plant and detonate on damage....compromise on a 1.5 cast that detonated on impact? Seems some qol here especially as gear inflation favors AoE burst.

Affliction has always been the hallmark spec of the class to me (though the dark lord Z gave me a eternal love of demo)...
Right now aff doesn't feel like itself and extremely out of step with the macroscopic world of other classes. The lore has choked it from a MMO spec to a fantasy RPG toon. I appreciate the notion of lore but it has people who have been decade loyal not wanting to play. SOMETHING is wrong and it's worthy of attention before some nebulous date in the future!

[Moggie]

Pfft. I want Curse of Shadows/Elements baked into DS/SB/Incinerate much like the old Imp. SB talent. Let that replace Soul Effigy while Effigy gets tossed into the trash bin and deleted from existence.

But, on topic, they won't make anything baseline. Hey, maybe look towards 7.2...lol

[Deleted]

Even the so-called baseline Drain Soul is just Drain Life with a purple beam with less damage and much less healing. The only thing you get out of it is a shard proc, yay yet another on death mechanic that will do absolutely nothing whatever in single target fights where affliction sucks cos we only got two of those already so lets make a party of them!

And that's quite deliberate, and it has nothing to do with "it's hard to make dot classes strong on single target without them being OP on multi-target" because it is not even slightly difficult. At all.

[Jessicka]

Siphon Life needs to be baseline for Affliction anyway, as you pointed out above.

It does, but it doesn't seem to be happening so the point still stands.

I think all of the "98% taken" warlock talents could be made baseline and easily replaced with either a talent that modifies them or one of the many pruned talents and abilities we've lost over the years. I went back and took a look at the warlock talent trees over the years and marveled at some of the many things removed from the class that could have definitely made a refined comeback for Legion.

Yeah, it would be probably the easiest path to take, to make a thing baseline and have a talent improve it, to close some of the atrocious deltas in, for example AoE Vs ST builds. We're clearly not in a time for major overhauls, but minor things like this would go a very long way in terms of practical bandaids.

[noaim]

Another reason why Writhe in Agony is bad is that if you have Hood of Eternal Disdain, it is even more mandatory. I dont think that a legendary should force you in to a talent. But maybe that is the case for many classes?

[Jessicka]

Another reason why Writhe in Agony is bad is that if you have Hood of Eternal Disdain, it is even more mandatory. I dont think that a legendary should force you in to a talent. But maybe that is the case for many classes?

Yeah, the Legendary gloves I have on my Mage enforce Thermal Void.

[dakalro]

Move Sow to lvl 100, move Effigy to lvl 15, make haunt or MG baseline, or remove Writhe completely. Though haunt based play if it would stay a talent will be boring with 30s CD. Tune damage from there.

[Sheevah24]

If you bumped conduit to 35%-30%, halved the radius and cool down of PS, removed agony ramp up stacking, and changed effigy to be a single target debuff on the boss for 35% more dot damage and 30% greater agony chance to proc a shard on that target affliction would be 90% fixed. You could tidy up the rest by going StS baseline with agony application being the talent option. Haunt could go baseline and apply full dots on a 30 sec CD, talent to be instant and 15 sec cd.

None of those besides maybe effigy is anything but simple coding or interger fixes. Not to mention super easy to adjust single target. Aff needs fixes like this to play a dot spec in a 2017 macro memo world.

So you are just asking to be totally and ridiculously Overpowered in almost all aspects of the game without sacrificing anything?

What saddens me the most is that some people actually agree with you. Affliction is FAR from the trash spec many people make it look like it is. Sure, it was really bad at the start of the expansion. And yes, it does have a terrible ramp up and a talent that 95% of Affliction warlocks hate ( soul effigy of course) for varied reasons. And mediocre ST damage (cant have it all).
But Affliction is competitive in General, that's just the truth. What worries me is that due to all this "uprising", blizzard will provide some of the changes asked for (malefic grasp etc.) with the risk of making it worse. So far it seems they are giving the crowd the skill they asked for but keeping the numbers intact. Which is what they should do.