Going back to the roots of Affliction warlock

[Zmaniac17]

Affliction is awful at dungeons right now compared to lets say demonology with implosion.

Too much ramp up for such little damage, Tried playing it over and over with high mastery, sim'd up and doesn't come close to competing with demo.

Both weapons have the 5% upgrade trait and both spec ilvls are 882.

What this new UA has done is made shards even more difficult to manage and add layers upon layers of uneeded casting.

UA stacking is just another form of ramp up if you think about it.

Alright so I figured it was better to show than tell. Here's some good good afflocks that I follow. The first video is a kara clear it shows how amazing affliction aoe is. The second is a guide for maw. And the third is a +16 Nelths. You may be using the incorrect spec or rotation if you're suffering from ramp up. If everything is dying fast you should be using sow the seeds. For higher level stuff it won't die fast so you won't have that problem. That's not to say that there is no issues with ramp time. But they can be worked around. In my experience demo is better single target but doesn't keep up with multi target or aoe.

Geletyven - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThZyau2CBA

Yipz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzs4fCeYAq8

Terryn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxaLGdXxWI8

[Lucrece]

Alright so I figured it was better to show than tell. Here's some good good afflocks that I follow. The first video is a kara clear it shows how amazing affliction aoe is. The second is a guide for maw. And the third is a +16 Nelths. You may be using the incorrect spec or rotation if you're suffering from ramp up. If everything is dying fast you should be using sow the seeds. For higher level stuff it won't die fast so you won't have that problem. That's not to say that there is no issues with ramp time. But they can be worked around. In my experience demo is better single target but doesn't keep up with multi target or aoe.

Geletyven - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThZyau2CBA

Yipz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzs4fCeYAq8

Terryn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxaLGdXxWI8

Affliction has ramp up. Look at Terryn's video, he couldn't compete in trash packs and only came first in the last boss where it forced the melee of the boss for magma wave.

The spec's ramp us very long but it's still miles ahead of demo in trash pack performance and very close in single target anyways because of the amount of mobility 5 mans require which wrecks demo.

Gelet shows that the spec truly shines in raids where the encounters are long enough to suit affliction's strengths.

To be honest, all warlock spells have terrible ramp up which is what holds them back in dungeons simply because most other speca can fit 2 cooldowns worth of burst along their pots in relatively short 3-4 minute fights.

The doomguard as a cooldown is fucking atrocious, and because grimoire of supremacy exists it is an even weaker cd since it's balanced around someone having the doomguard up all the time.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Zmaniac17 You look at the first two videos and you wonder what everyone else was doing as their numbers were very low, which allows aff to get its dmg out. Like that whole first section of kara leading into the first boss is mage heaven with the heavy movement and mass aoe, and the mage didn't do any dmg. You look at the hunter on the first aoe pack on maw and you're wondering what he's doing, since again his numbers are low and hunters burst crazy high there. And then terryn's video looks about exactly what you should expect.

Aff's got good aoe on live right now if it can get it out, that's about it tho.

[ComputerNerd]

I agree with the sentiment, but not so much the reasoning. For me it isn't enjoyable to cast because it feels very flat as a spender. For our other specs the spenders are very visceral. Chaosbolt has a very aesthetically pleasing animation and chunks things when it lands, for demo you spend shards on what are effectively dots but you get these physical manifestations that are relentlessly attacking the target.

With UA you apply a debuff, the targets health doesn't get chunked and there's no visual. I see that being more the issue in it not being satisfying than anything else.

I think the UA dislike is what I agree with the most.
It is simply rather boring as a spender.
All very well keeping the DoT theme, but by blizzard's own admission the burst playstyle is leaving it behind.
So I think the spender at least on single-target ought to be burst.
I like the idea of something like Malefic Grasp as an empowerer and single-target burst.

[Zmaniac17]

@Zmaniac17 You look at the first two videos and you wonder what everyone else was doing as their numbers were very low, which allows aff to get its dmg out. Like that whole first section of kara leading into the first boss is mage heaven with the heavy movement and mass aoe, and the mage didn't do any dmg. You look at the hunter on the first aoe pack on maw and you're wondering what he's doing, since again his numbers are low and hunters burst crazy high there. And then terryn's video looks about exactly what you should expect.

Aff's got good aoe on live right now if it can get it out, that's about it tho.

If you look at the post I'm responding to you'll notice that I am not claiming locks are the "best" class for dungeons. I'm just saying that they are very good and using these videos as proof. They are exponentially better in dungeons than they were in previous expansions.

In the kara video they were moving through very fast which is why the mage and priest didn't do a lot. Mages need everything to stop and stack up to do that much damage if it spreads out they don't do as much. With affliction you can just hit everything even if its spread out or miles behind you. You're still doing damage. Also locks do a lot of damage when mobs die. In the maw video the lock was there to carry the other guys. They were under geared.

[Baconeggcheese]

If you look at the post I'm responding to you'll notice that I am not claiming locks are the "best" class for dungeons. I'm just saying that they are very good and using these videos as proof. They are exponentially better in dungeons than they were in previous expansions.

In the kara video they were moving through very fast which is why the mage and priest didn't do a lot. Mages need everything to stop and stack up to do that much damage if it spreads out they don't do as much. With affliction you can just hit everything even if its spread out or miles behind you. You're still doing damage. Also locks do a lot of damage when mobs die. In the maw video the lock was there to carry the other guys. They were under geared.

The post you're responding to is saying that aff lags behind due to ramp, you then link 2 videos where people are doing low dps thus giving the aff time to ramp, and 1 video where people are doing proper dps and the aff is lagging behind due to ramp. You proved his point.

The spec has aoe now, so its definitely better than wod at least for dungeons. It NEEDS things to live long to do dmg though, frankly all our specs do it's just that aff suffers a bit more from it.

Also ignite spreads, they don't need to be stacked. I've done that pull so many times with mages in my guild and they dwarf what the mage was pulling in that video.

[Zmaniac17]

The post you're responding to is saying that aff lags behind due to ramp, you then link 2 videos where people are doing low dps thus giving the aff time to ramp, and 1 video where people are doing proper dps and the aff is lagging behind due to ramp. You proved his point.

The spec has aoe now, so its definitely better than wod at least for dungeons. It NEEDS things to live long to do dmg though, frankly all our specs do it's just that aff suffers a bit more from it.

Also ignite spreads, they don't need to be stacked. I've done that pull so many times with mages in my guild and they dwarf what the mage was pulling in that video.

Please read the whole series of posts before saying I'm nuts . And this is what I was responding to mostly "Affliction is awful at dungeons right now compared to lets say demonology with implosion." I also agreed with him that ramp is an issue. Are you just looking for an argument?

[Baconeggcheese]

Please read the whole series of posts before saying I'm nuts . And this is what I was responding to mostly "Affliction is awful at dungeons right now compared to lets say demonology with implosion." I also agreed with him that ramp is an issue. Are you just looking for an argument?

So you say for me to read the whole post (which I did, and responded to), then you cherry pick a part of a post that you're claiming you were responding to instead of his whole post... and then you try to attack me instead of what I responded to your post...

Well played.

[Zmaniac17]

So you say for me to read the whole post (which I did, and responded to), then you cherry pick a part of a post that you're claiming you were responding to instead of his whole post... and then you try to attack me instead of what I responded to your post...

Well played.

Ugh, I didn't respond to your post because I don't disagree with it. You just misunderstand what I'm saying. I think affliction locks are good in dungeons. That is about as simple as I can put it, but it certainly lacks some explanation if I say it that way.

[Lucrece]

To be fair though all you need for affliction in kara is sow the seeds, phantom singularity, and drain soul to pop seeds quick. Put agony to fish for shards while the tank is pulling the entire hall and pop souls+phantom singularity and a seed cast, you'll get ridiculous damage in. Kara nightbane run was MADE for affliction.

Kara also lets you use your engineer belt+burning rush to keep up with the tank so it's not too bad, and unlike mythics you don't restrict use of nitro boost because it's not really necessary to use pots in kara pulls at all.

Then simply switch to destro/demo while opera RP happens and switch back to affliction for trash.

If only mythics+ allowed spec/talent swaps....warlock would be so much better off. Could use destro for smaller trash packs, affliction for larger or longer lived 4+ packs, demo/affliction for bosses depending on the amount of movement.

[Baconeggcheese]

If only mythics+ allowed spec/talent swaps....warlock would be so much better off.

I'm pretty glad they don't, would be freaking awful if min-maxing became swapping specs and talents constantly in between pulls.

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Ugh, I didn't respond to your post because I don't disagree with it. You just misunderstand what I'm saying. I think affliction locks are good in dungeons. That is about as simple as I can put it, but it certainly lacks some explanation if I say it that way.

They're *ok* is the point, and only assuming they have enough time to get their dmg out. Which is the point the first dude was making, albeit with some exaggeration.

[Lucrece]

;(

I would settle for them actually giving better baseline capabilities to each spec and just talent swaps with good spread of options instead of spec swap.

But I don't expect that to be the case in the near future.

I guess wanting spec swap is just a symptom of how specialized the warlock specs are at the moment.

[Zmaniac17]

I'm pretty glad they don't, would be freaking awful if min-maxing became swapping specs and talents constantly in between pulls.

- - - Updated - - -



They're *ok* is the point, and only assuming they have enough time to get their dmg out. Which is the point the first dude was making, albeit with some exaggeration.

Spec swapping would suck. I wouldn't mind talent swapping though. Some classes have a leg up because they have a talent build that's good for everything. That would even the playing field. Of course the cost of tomes would definitely suck.

Well, I think they're better than OK. We can agree to disagree I guess.

[cristos]

Would much prefer MoP or WoD aff lock back, We may have been under performing in dungeons but the spec mechanically felt much better to play.

Back in the last raid tier of WoD affliction was the highest single target damage and our spread pressure was fantastic. Not only was it much more enjoyable to play but shard management felt like a core part of the spec where as now it doesn't seem so orientated around shard management and maintaining them.

Now it's wait for reap/procs/lust and dump all your shards unless playing with contagion.

The new aff lock feels like a half arsed lazy design.

[Baconeggcheese]

@cristos shard management absolutely wasn't a part of the wod design due to soulburn haunt. Man that was such an awful talent.

There's barely a difference from the wod design to now tbh, the entire wod kit is still there. Mop was an entirely different story because shard management was actually a thing between haunt and abusing the shit out of soulswap.

[Lucrece]

Cata afflock was by far my favorite. Cata demo will also hold a dear place in my heart. Never was a destro guy, but mop destro with number nerfs would have been fine mechanically. I think the current destro is not too bad barring the pruning of fire and brimstone and cataclysm -- baselining those two would quickly fix much of destro's problems.

I really dislike wreak havoc, it's too dominant a talent for my taste in the instances where it's usable, which in turn makes it so they balance it to be the supreme cleave talent that's totally useless in other circumstances, where they prop up CDF instead as the alternative (or soul conduit for pvp).

[Deleted]

@Zmaniac17 You look at the first two videos and you wonder what everyone else was doing as their numbers were very low, which allows aff to get its dmg out. Like that whole first section of kara leading into the first boss is mage heaven with the heavy movement and mass aoe, and the mage didn't do any dmg. You look at the hunter on the first aoe pack on maw and you're wondering what he's doing, since again his numbers are low and hunters burst crazy high there. And then terryn's video looks about exactly what you should expect.

Aff's got good aoe on live right now if it can get it out, that's about it tho.

This is exactlywhy I simply don;t understand why Seed of Corruption has a stupidly long cast time, particularly when you consider it's got that ridiculous requirement of making it explode with your own damage on top.

Unfortunately I suspect the devs still have it in their heads that affliction has good aoe due to corruption spreads, but exactly as was predicted at the start, as soon as the burst aoe classes gear up everything dies before you've done anything.

As you point out in the first two vids the burst aoe damage dealers are slacking and in his video Terryn can't keep up, just look at the damage differentials in most of the dungeon. It doesn;t help that affliction as it is now has to gimp it's AOE to do halfway decent single target damage so Terryn has taken Siphon Life and Soul Effigy, which means no Sow the Seeds and no Phantom Singularity

But even those has ridiculously long rampups. In fact, probably affliction's strongest aoe is Soul Flame. It's quite noticable how you get sudden spikes out of that after being well behind before that goes off.

[Deleted]

Good luck playing Demo on myt+ with volcanic tho
Or destro for that reason, unless you go Cataclysm+Conduit+RoF build which relies heavy on RNG shard.
Affli may not be "ultradps" like retard Living Bomb, but it is comfortable to play. Plus in movement heavy fights it's way better than demo, destro or meles that have to be appart from the boss too many time. Each spec has its niches, that's why you gotta keep the 3 of em on par. Many dislike that, but that's just because
a) noone other class have to do this to stay competitive - which is a fault on the other classes for having a cookie cutter spec that can do everything
b) the AP grind to have them all maximized (altho you don't need em maximized) is unsufferable unless you spend a lot of time on the computer, which a majority of people can't.

[cristos]

Good luck playing Demo on myt+ with volcanic tho
Or destro for that reason, unless you go Cataclysm+Conduit+RoF build which relies heavy on RNG shard.
Affli may not be "ultradps" like retard Living Bomb, but it is comfortable to play. Plus in movement heavy fights it's way better than demo, destro or meles that have to be appart from the boss too many time. Each spec has its niches, that's why you gotta keep the 3 of em on par. Many dislike that, but that's just because
a) noone other class have to do this to stay competitive - which is a fault on the other classes for having a cookie cutter spec that can do everything
b) the AP grind to have them all maximized (altho you don't need em maximized) is unsufferable unless you spend a lot of time on the computer, which a majority of people can't.

Actually demo is fine in volcanic. Just stack up on melee...

[Deleted]

Actually demo is fine in volcanic. Just stack up on melee...

Last I heard they fixed that - if you do that, volcanic starts showing up in melee either way