BFA Affliction

[lummiuster]

Uninterruptible> rogue blinds you or vanishes away until it wears off> reopens, you dead.

Yeah I said good rogues are the only once that can cause us trouble. Experience will help you alot.
VS rogues, when he open on you, if he poped cooldowns you gotta use unending resolve. If he blinds you, when he re-opens on you, you use casting circle and start casting. (you always have death coil + fear combo to get 3UAs on him). He should have used cloak to vanish.
If he casts cloak while fighting you, start summoning your Succubus, then 1 sec before the end of his cloak, start casting fear.

[Lucrece]

Yeah I said good rogues are the only once that can cause us trouble. Experience will help you alot.
VS rogues, when he open on you, if he poped cooldowns you gotta use unending resolve. If he blinds you, when he re-opens on you, you use casting circle and start casting. (you always have death coil + fear combo to get 3UAs on him). He should have used cloak to vanish.
If he casts cloak while fighting you, start summoning your Succubus, then 1 sec before the end of his cloak, start casting fear.

He will not let you cast a succubus outside unending resolve, and he'll use stuns, gouge, and blind to ruin your unending resolve so you can't cast anything within it. Then it's kicks.

Same principle applies to windwalker monk and their leg sweep, incapactitate, and fists of fury also stunning. They'll just rotate stuns/incapacitates through your unending resolve to minimize the amount of casts you can get off, then pop their cooldowns when it wears off.

Melee have way too many tools to make it impossible for anyone but a mage to cast at all.

Of course if you meet the average idiot melee who thinks he can just pop cd's and spam damage through your drain soul and 3 UA's without bothering to disrupt, they'll eat dirt. But that goes for any idiot in general.

Melee need serious nerfing, or immobile classes like warlock/shadowpriest/shaman/balance druid (who lost their blink in bfa lol) need disarms.

[lummiuster]

He will not let you cast a succubus outside unending resolve, and he'll use stuns, gouge, and blind to ruin your unending resolve so you can't cast anything within it. Then it's kicks.

Same principle applies to windwalker monk and their leg sweep, incapactitate, and fists of fury also stunning. They'll just rotate stuns/incapacitates through your unending resolve to minimize the amount of casts you can get off, then pop their cooldowns when it wears off.

Melee have way too many tools to make it impossible for anyone but a mage to cast at all.

Of course if you meet the average idiot melee who thinks he can just pop cd's and spam damage through your drain soul and 3 UA's without bothering to disrupt, they'll eat dirt. But that goes for any idiot in general.

Melee need serious nerfing, or immobile classes like warlock/shadowpriest/shaman/balance druid (who lost their blink in bfa lol) need disarms.

It truly depends on your experience and the order for which you use Unending resolve, Casting Circle, Death Coil, Health stone, Fear, trinket. I have no issue with them, I'm most of the time at 100% health when I kill them.

[Deleted]

Its to situational. You can have pets tank way beyond their initial limit for all 3 specs

[Werst]

Come BFA...melee are going to go right back to tunneling purple dots first on any BG or situation because we will be pretty unable to fight back with one in our face nor able to escape. Equal skill/gear its going to be no comparison on live so take out the self heals, channeled vs shadowbolt filler, and at least half our haste for casting speed due to end tier ilvl stat inflation. Still sound like fun to pvp vs a melee yet? Especially with affliction having 100% of its damage and CC in shadow school so any kick = silence.

Haven't checked but do kicks/interrupts still not DR on BFA? Fear/stun/silence all do but not the lockouts. Perhaps they should DR with any other CC? As much uptime as melee get on warlocks they basically run a pve rotation. Locks either need to take significantly less damage while on lockout or any hard CC (30%+) or get the tools to fight back with a melee in our face. Making drain life immune to interrupts would be a start. If you channel it baits a bigger more significant CC...especially for mongo melee. So at least smart locks could try to rotate cooldowns to get some spells off versus just being a punching bag for melee while we watch CC timers and die. Melee still get to play at the 1100mmr level to beat a 1800mmr lock...lets not upset the apple cart too much, but at least there is a chance.

[Deleted]

Chill out. We still need to see pvp talents.

[Valkaneer]

It's looking rather grim overall. The iconic drain cycle is dead with the removal of drain soul. We're basically shadow priests without void form at this point in the alpha.

You got that backward, Spreist is basically Affliction locks as we've been doing this ever since release. People just angry that they're going back to being a multi-target spec instead of ST beast.

[Danvash]

Affliction can beat any melee 1v1 in wpvp apart from a rogue with the shoulders. If you're standing still and eating their burst, you're doing it wrong.

[sugarfree]

Only PVE warlocks are rejoicing with shadowbolt being back. And if you do PVP at the same time, grats you played yourself.

Good luck trying to churn out a below mediocre hitting spell for 2.5 sec vs. Drain Life that could wreck someone under the same time because of talents. LMAO, warlocks really do contribute to making our specs worse and worse every expansion.

[nodq]

Affy is already our squishiest spec in terms of the damage it can take.

We have lost Drain Soul (unless it appears as a talent in the future) and multiple traits that give healing so it's unlikely we will currently survive as well. Of course a lot of things may change yet.

Affli is as tanky as in Legion, because drain life is still there and heals about the same I would say as DS in Legion. maybe a little less. So why do you think it is the squishiest specc? YOu just can not do damage while you heal yourself to full. And that is how it should be and always was like, before Legion. That simple.

[Aggrophobic]

Affli is as tanky as in Legion, because drain life is still there and heals about the same I would say as DS in Legion. maybe a little less. So why do you think it is the squishiest specc? YOu just can not do damage while you heal yourself to full. And that is how it should be and always was like, before Legion. That simple.

You can't waste 5-10 seconds healing yourself up while doing no damage. There is just just no situation where that is going to be viable.

- - - Updated - - -

Only PVE warlocks are rejoicing with shadowbolt being back. And if you do PVP at the same time, grats you played yourself.

Good luck trying to churn out a below mediocre hitting spell for 2.5 sec vs. Drain Life that could wreck someone under the same time because of talents. LMAO, warlocks really do contribute to making our specs worse and worse every expansion.

No, it's just as horrible for PvE.

[nodq]

You can't waste 5-10 seconds healing yourself up while doing no damage. There is just just no situation where that is going to be viable.

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And that is how it should be, like it was in every expansion just not in Legion. If you really want or have to heal, use DL, if your healers in raid are capable of healing, then they will heal you and you can keep doing dmg. Simple.

[Aggrophobic]

And that is how it should be, like it was in every expansion just not in Legion. If you really want or have to heal, use DL, if your healers in raid are capable of healing, then they will heal you and you can keep doing dmg. Simple.

Indeed but it also make the spec rather worthless ar surviving anything and it's also crap at doing damage so, you know. Pointless.

[garonne]

You can't waste 5-10 seconds healing yourself up while doing no damage. There is just just no situation where that is going to be viable.

.

ive seen you say this before, but im curious how much of afflictions damage are you attributing to drain soul and/or the future shadowbolt? the only damage youre losing to heal is drain soul (SB for Bfa). your corruption would still be on the target, your agony would still be on the target and you cant cast UA and DS so if you were gonna cast UA, you still can and drain life after. So again i ask, how much damage are you attributing to DS (SB for bfa)?

[Aggrophobic]

ive seen you say this before, but im curious how much of afflictions damage are you attributing to drain soul and/or the future shadowbolt? the only damage youre losing to heal is drain soul (SB for Bfa). your corruption would still be on the target, your agony would still be on the target and you cant cast UA and DS so if you were gonna cast UA, you still can and drain life after. So again i ask, how much damage are you attributing to DS (SB for bfa)?

You'll get about 3 SB out in the same time it takes you to get about 30% of your health back and thats if you get no NF procs. It's a pretty large amount of damage if you have to do that a few times every fight. If you're running with SE you might even drop stacks if you have to waste GCDs on healing yourself and with more than one target it's just not possible at all.

It's just not a viable option.

[garonne]

You'll get about 3 SB out in the same time it takes you to get about 30% of your health back and thats if you get no NF procs. It's a pretty large amount of damage if you have to do that a few times every fight. If you're running with SE you might even drop stacks if you have to waste GCDs on healing yourself and with more than one target it's just not possible at all.

It's just not a viable option.

you still haven't answered how much. an arbitrary amount of "large" doesn't mean much when i dont know what large means to you.

currently, if you're healing you'll already have corruption and agony on the target. If you were gonna use UA before you still can in this situation, nightfall doesnt matter bc you can just use it right after you're done Drain life or use it if it procs if you're worried it'll proc again before you're done. so the only thing changing is whether you cast SB or DL. so lets look at how much potential damage you'll be losing along with the health gains.

on alpha, a fresh 110 shadow bolt from affliction is 861 shadow damage with a 1.66 sec cast. Drain life does 1038 shadow damage over 5 secs and heals for 600% of the damage. The health of a fresh 110 affliction is 16,035 health.

you'll get 3 cast of shadow bolt which is 2583 damage over 4.98 secs. a difference of 1545 damage in exchange for 6,228 health (38.9% of your health)

if you took shadow embrace you can lose damage if it falls off, no arguments there. Deaths Embrace also works against drain life, but if you need to heal yourself often, you have 10 secs to reapply Sb. if you need to heal yourself for almost 80% of your health over 10 secs then i wouldn't be complaining about the damage lost cause you were prob gonna die. SE would be a pain if it fell off but its not a big deal as you still have time to reapply it, or you can use another talent. Saying that, your biggest problem is DE, it doesnt buff DL.


as a dps spec. what other class has the option to heal themselves this easily while still doing damage (corr, agony and ~1/3 of SB)? Now, look at those classes (DK, ret, shaman... to name a few) and compare the size of the heal and how easy is it to get that heal off.
How is this not viable?

[Deleted]

How is this not viable?

It's extremely viable.... in every kind of content there is, wheter it's mythic-raiding or mythic+.
There are more than enough encounters where raid damage will be constant and not bursty. Enough encounters and situation where your healer(s) needs to focus on something else or can't catch up. Not dying because you were able to counter that basically on your own is extremely helpful, much more so than leaving everything to the healer while saying "well, my job is to deal damage" - it's just idiotic.

I'm a hunter player myself (as in: I play my hunter more often than my lock) and I'm always and will always be jealous of a warlocks healing capabilities. Turtle is great - I can cheat a mechanic once, Exhilaration is meh at best and it's cooldown is a joke if you compare it to other survival CDs... actually both Turtle and Exhilaration CDs are awfully long

It's sad that people don't know what they have and even make up shit just so they can deny it.
How on earth are you not dealing damage if you use drain life instead of shadowbolt, you are trading a filler for a weaker filler - yet it's only a filler. How much could you possibly lose? Certainly not "a large amount of damage".... what does a hunter do when he can't get out of his turtle stance because the healer didn't catch up yet?

Oh yeah, he does *nothing*, yet it's the right thing to do because otherwise you'd be dead.

[Aggrophobic]

you still haven't answered how much. an arbitrary amount of "large" doesn't mean much when i dont know what large means to you.

currently, if you're healing you'll already have corruption and agony on the target. If you were gonna use UA before you still can in this situation, nightfall doesnt matter bc you can just use it right after you're done Drain life or use it if it procs if you're worried it'll proc again before you're done. so the only thing changing is whether you cast SB or DL. so lets look at how much potential damage you'll be losing along with the health gains.

on alpha, a fresh 110 shadow bolt from affliction is 861 shadow damage with a 1.66 sec cast. Drain life does 1038 shadow damage over 5 secs and heals for 600% of the damage. The health of a fresh 110 affliction is 16,035 health.

you'll get 3 cast of shadow bolt which is 2583 damage over 4.98 secs. a difference of 1545 damage in exchange for 6,228 health (38.9% of your health)

if you took shadow embrace you can lose damage if it falls off, no arguments there. Deaths Embrace also works against drain life, but if you need to heal yourself often, you have 10 secs to reapply Sb. if you need to heal yourself for almost 80% of your health over 10 secs then i wouldn't be complaining about the damage lost cause you were prob gonna die. SE would be a pain if it fell off but its not a big deal as you still have time to reapply it, or you can use another talent. Saying that, your biggest problem is DE, it doesnt buff DL.


as a dps spec. what other class has the option to heal themselves this easily while still doing damage (corr, agony and ~1/3 of SB)? Now, look at those classes (DK, ret, shaman... to name a few) and compare the size of the heal and how easy is it to get that heal off.
How is this not viable?

Well, with a bit of scaling (SB does more than 4 times that at max level with just questing gear), that extra damage from thoes 3 bolts will make the damage loss quite significant especially if you're doing it multiple times in a fight.

You can just switch to demo and you'll heal yourself by just doing your normal damage rotation. That one was easy. Even better, you also take less damage while playing it or destro. Same goes for quite a few other classes. It was great haveing a heal as affli with drain in Legion but it's just not going to be used when you can bring something else that can do the same job but better.

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It's extremely viable.... in every kind of content there is, wheter it's mythic-raiding or mythic+.
There are more than enough encounters where raid damage will be constant and not bursty. Enough encounters and situation where your healer(s) needs to focus on something else or can't catch up. Not dying because you were able to counter that basically on your own is extremely helpful, much more so than leaving everything to the healer while saying "well, my job is to deal damage" - it's just idiotic.

I'm a hunter player myself (as in: I play my hunter more often than my lock) and I'm always and will always be jealous of a warlocks healing capabilities. Turtle is great - I can cheat a mechanic once, Exhilaration is meh at best and it's cooldown is a joke if you compare it to other survival CDs... actually both Turtle and Exhilaration CDs are awfully long

It's sad that people don't know what they have and even make up shit just so they can deny it.
How on earth are you not dealing damage if you use drain life instead of shadowbolt, you are trading a filler for a weaker filler - yet it's only a filler. How much could you possibly lose? Certainly not "a large amount of damage".... what does a hunter do when he can't get out of his turtle stance because the healer didn't catch up yet?

Oh yeah, he does *nothing*, yet it's the right thing to do because otherwise you'd be dead.

Of course, a hunter.

[Deleted]

Of course, a hunter.

People have more than 1 class @ max level nowadays.

But I guess if that's all you have to say....

Well, with a bit of scaling (SB does more than 4 times that at max level with just questing gear), that extra damage from thoes 3 bolts will make the damage loss quite significant especially if you're doing it multiple times in a fight.
You can just switch to demo and you'll heal yourself by just doing your normal damage rotation. That one was easy. Even better, you also take less damage while playing it or destro. Same goes for quite a few other classes. It was great haveing a heal as affli with drain in Legion but it's just not going to be used when you can bring something else that can do the same job but better.

"significant"? no... it's still better than what other classes can do. It's not even "significant" at all.
It's quite obvious that you have no idea how to use that heal and when you should use it and why it's superior to what other classes have in that regard.

And I have no idea why you think downplaying that by comparing it to the other 2 warlock specs which do also have over-the-top self sustain makes affli's life regen look less good. (not that it's true anyway)

[garonne]

Well, with a bit of scaling (SB does more than 4 times that at max level with just questing gear), that extra damage from thoes 3 bolts will make the damage loss quite significant especially if you're doing it multiple times in a fight.

You can just switch to demo and you'll heal yourself by just doing your normal damage rotation. That one was easy. Even better, you also take less damage while playing it or destro. Same goes for quite a few other classes. It was great haveing a heal as affli with drain in Legion but it's just not going to be used when you can bring something else that can do the same job but better.

This is the second question you haven't answered. yes destro and demo is better, but it doesnt answer if affliction is viable, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Also what does scaling have to do with anything? they both scale the same. the damage will ALWAYS be proportional. whether the damage is 890 or 8900, it will scale proportional to DL. youll be losing damage worth 2 SB. 2 SB for 38% of your health is a large sum of health. over a 5 min fight. lets say you use it once every minute (something most likely to not happen). even then it wouldnt drop your dps by much. stop spouting nonsense about things being nonviable. Drain life is very viable, the spec is just utterly boring.