So how does Demo/Aff actually feel to play in BFA so far?

[Deleted]

Aff is shaping up to be back to the bad old days of Draenor - a single target specialist.

ShadowBolt is a massive retrograde step, it does not fit with the concept of affliction at all. It is very obviously a nuke, but the problem he is compounded by the fact that it's a weak nuke with a long cast time.

Now look at where aff should be strong: multi-target fights. I have no doubt at all that Blizz have taken far too much notice of the whines about how well aff does on council fights so they've put Writhe and Absolute on the same line, to make them mutually exclusive. The irony is totally lost on them that a pure dps class which lore indicates is the "king of dots" just will not be: that will go to hybrids, i.e. ShadowPriests and Balance Druids.

The AOE is absolute shit. Everyone and their mom has hard-hitting, instant casts. What have we got? Yeah, Seed of Corruption. Which still has a 2.5s base cast time and is still crippled by that ludicrous dependence on damage to explode it: and not just all damage, but the caster's own. Seed of Corruption is just weak, why does it need to have more shackles around it's ankles? They've nerfed Sow the Seeds yet again, oh wow, one extra seed! Seed's weakness mean it should be at least instant cast, as propel gear up it will become more and more worthless and you will hear more and more of that annoying "hey the thing you targetted died whilst you watched the cast bar crawl across the screen", and you'll be lucky to see one tick off those Corruptions. Plus, of course, Absolute and Embrace are also now mutually exclusive.

It applies Corruption? Who cares? It's not like anything is going to live that long to matter. Aff's AOE was strong because of Soul Flame, which was strong and got stronger the more targets there were.

What are you suposed to do going into a dungeon where you can't change talents? Who wants an afflock when you can take much more versatile dps classes who can do strong single target and strong aoe and have better interrupts/CC?

"Hey guys, I'm good at single target. honest! Well so long as I don;t have to move and so long as I survive cos I have no escapes or immunities and no speed boost without killing my health in the process!"

One of aff's biggest assets for high M+ keys was it's self-healing. Which has also been taken away.

So what you will have is a single target niche spec, mediocre to bad at everything else, locked in by it's talent choices. I'm willing to bet that even the single target won;t be that much higher than anyone else either, despite the fact that they aren't saddled with the ridiculous ramp times.

Agony's ramp mechanism should have been ditched long ago. It's an archaic hangover from the days when Wow was a much slower game. Everything these days is geared towards a faster paced gameplay, which invariably favours classes with fast, upfront damage and increasingly inhibits any class with ramp. At the very least you should have something like "On targets hit by ShadowBolt, Agony now reaches maximum damage twice as fast"

That would really help with stuff liek target switching.

I fully expect a heavy nerf to Creeping Death too. And Deathbolt, that's never gonna make it unchanged to PVP.

[Werst]

Death's Embrace is one of those things that I feel should be baseline for affliction as its such a ramp up spec. Contagion, such long/linear ramp up agony, shadow embrace, etc...it should have a execute built in the way hunters crit/burst the balls off stuff off the top. I disagree with shadowbolt as a spell, especially shared with demo, especially as I am pretty sure it has the shittiest DPET in the game for a nuke. Agony can have ramp for "lore's sake" but it needs to start at about 75% peak damage and tick up from there not be 10%/20%/etc. Its not that strong of a dot, other dot specs don't suffer it, and FFS its not 2004 anymore. SoC is another lingering dildo of design. 2.5 cast, self damage, watered down damage for corruption's ticks, and all for the nostalgic "awww" moment devs loved from oh IDK some BC era thing when a cascade of seeds would lay low a trash pack. Hint: doesn't happen anymore...the DH's eye beams level the trash pack before your cast is halfway off and you are in your haste set...

Demo feels far better but aoe single target builder into aoe feels wrong. More targets should build aoe faster. You also can't aoe on the move at all without big CDs which of course then demo feels great. Implosion and possibly its shadowbolt interaction still needs some polish/work...but loving the spec in many other ways so far.

[Deleted]

Seed of Corruption was justifiable in it's co-existing alongside Soul Flame. Witohut that it will be by far the worst AOE in the game. It is weak anyway, and the damage it does in no way whatever creates a requirement to hobble it with that long cast time and self-damage detonation. It shouldn;t have eithe rof those, let alone both.

Might as well just have a spell that announces "I need to targhet something!" cos that's all you're going to hear. It will be particularly awful for non-progression players, because the only place SOC will be even slightly useful is high keys and progression raiding. Anywhere else and everything will just die instantly to eye-beams and chain lightning.

Aff's rampups have no place in a game of 2018; Agony should have been redesigned years ago. I don;t see any other class dots having that, and many of them are better and stronger (if Agony needs to be reined back why doesn't SW:P and VT?)

Aff needs either a way to get rid of it;s ramp (e.g. "Agony on targets hit by Shadowbolt reaches full damage immediately"), a buff to it's sustained damage to compensate, or a baseline execute. Before anyone says but hey Deathbolt and Embrace
take a look at how they are talents and what they are mutually exclusive with.

And I am willing to bet we will get none of them. Anyone who claims that Blizz don;t deliberately put high-performing specs into the shitter for the following expansion fails to read their history.

Moreover, they do of course want to push people into the shiny new demo, largely a dead spec because it was strong in Draenor and therefore shit-canned for Legion, not least because of the needs of demon hunters to have cool stuff.

And yes ShadowBolt will be almost the shittiest dps spell in the game. A 2s cast for something that does 55% SP. lol. I suppose the upside is if you have to move and hence can;t cast, you're not losing much!

The first prize goes to seed of corruption though. It's garbage. Ironic that they introduced Sow the Seeds in recognition of how utterly useless afflocks were in Draenor at AOE and how much that sucked. But hey, let's do it again!

I've always played aff but won;t be in bfa. It's horrible.

[Deleted]

Do demo pets still work like totems in the ui? where you cannot track them without that weakaura or do you actually get an easy way to track them now?

[Deleted]

I kinda want Doom to be more than just a 30 second ToD. Make it baseline and put a talent in its place that do something interesting. Like I dunno, maybe when it procs it resets the CD of your Dreadstalkers (or gives you a second charge if it's off CD). Something other than just a boring DoT

[Gaidax]

I kinda want Doom to be more than just a 30 second ToD. Make it baseline and put a talent in its place that do something interesting. Like I dunno, maybe when it procs it resets the CD of your Dreadstalkers (or gives you a second charge if it's off CD). Something other than just a boring DoT

Can people stop with this "baseline" crap?

No - Doom does not need to be "baseline". Demo in Alpha is very nice and clean baseline and I'd rather have them keep it this way, instead of making same fatal mistake 3rd time and overloading it with unrelated shit.

Talents in part exist so that those who want "moar battanz cuz skiel" can plop those there and have their Dooms and what other nonsense to juggle around.

- - - Updated - - -

As for the second point - I do, in fact, agree that Doom could have additional function. 30 seconds thing is a very strict condition for it effectively being just damage, albeit high damage. I also don't really see how it fits with Demonology idea, it's just some delayed nuke, what does it have to do with demonology?

[Snorkles]

I'm enjoying Demo very much, the removal of the buff mechanic and the change to the talent tree seem really nice to me. At face value seems like lots of choice (I'm sure when damage meters/sims come out that'll turn out to be false though).

Certain talent builds and you can end up with 7+ different demons flailing around.

EDIT: I'm assuming I'm not the only one firing blocks instead of shadow bolts on Alpha?

[Deleted]

Can people stop with this "baseline" crap?

No - Doom does not need to be "baseline". Demo in Alpha is very nice and clean baseline and I'd rather have them keep it this way, instead of making same fatal mistake 3rd time and overloading it with unrelated shit.

Talents in part exist so that those who want "moar battanz cuz skiel" can plop those there and have their Dooms and what other nonsense to juggle around.

- - - Updated - - -

As for the second point - I do, in fact, agree that Doom could have additional function. 30 seconds thing is a very strict condition for it effectively being just damage, albeit high damage. I also don't really see how it fits with Demonology idea, it's just some delayed nuke, what does it have to do with demonology?

Doom would suit Affliction more tbh. It's a really boring talent. It needs something.

[Gaidax]

Apparently Grimoire of Service is also affected by Summon Demonic Tyrant +15 seconds duration to current demons. Pretty powerful.

[Lucrece]

Doom would suit Affliction more tbh. It's a really boring talent. It needs something.

Doom is a horrendous dot that should not exist in the state it's in. At the very least if the target dies before it does damage it should grant the warlock a soul shard.

[Deleted]

I suspect Doom exists as a way to give demo some council-fight damage. It's hard to do that via pets if the targets are widely spaced, but you can maninatin Doom on multiple targets easily. The downsid eis that it's useless for anythin gother than bosses. Maybe have a talen that lowers the time and the damage or something. I never saw the point of Hand of Doom, which feels like it should be a PVP talent.

As to the "crap", I don;t think it;s "crap" to suggest that affliction should have a baseline execute to compensate for it's ramp.

[Gaidax]

As to the "crap", I don;t think it;s "crap" to suggest that affliction should have a baseline execute to compensate for it's ramp.

Of course it's crap. Spec has issue with ramp... let's introduce mother of all ramps - execute as fix? Wut?

Baseline spells should be something that spec can't function without and it's certainly not execute for affliction.

[Baconeggcheese]

Yeah doom feels completely out of place on demo right now, definitely not something I think should be made baseline in demo's kit.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Yeah doom feels completely out of place on demo right now, definitely not something I think should be made baseline in demo's kit.

Doom in its current incarnation is just bizarre. It has no interaction with any other abilities, and has no contribution to summoning demons. Like either give it shard gen or imp summoning, please.
Or maybe make it summon a doomguard when it expires? It seems like the doomguard is gone, this would be a fun way to bring it back.
Maybe make it only castable on targets sub 20% health, 1 minute duration, maybe an "impending doom" buff reducing duration by the expired time on the dot. More ways to game it than just a straight execute, and slightly more interesting.
Or maybe that idea's awful because it's had no real thought put into it, but it's more interesting than just some damage every 30 seconds.

[Baconeggcheese]

Doom in its current incarnation is just bizarre. It has no interaction with any other abilities, and has no contribution to summoning demons. Like either give it shard gen or imp summoning, please.
Or maybe make it summon a doomguard when it expires? It seems like the doomguard is gone, this would be a fun way to bring it back.
Maybe make it only castable on targets sub 20% health, 1 minute duration, maybe an "impending doom" buff reducing duration by the expired time on the dot. More ways to game it than just a straight execute, and slightly more interesting.
Or maybe that idea's awful because it's had no real thought put into it, but it's more interesting than just some damage every 30 seconds.

I was brainstorming something like the DG but waiting 30 seconds to spawn a guardian that's gonna take another X seconds to do its damage would be horrendous.

[Lucrece]

I was brainstorming something like the DG but waiting 30 seconds to spawn a guardian that's gonna take another X seconds to do its damage would be horrendous.

It's an impossible dot to balance because the answer would be that the doomguard do one big nuke and not just autoattacks but making a nuke worth 30 secs of ramp up would make this dot broken in pvp but even harder to balance since it can be dispelled so a consideration has to be made for risk vs. reward.

Just scrap the idiotic 30 sec dot concept.

[rhorle]

The current doom baseline with a talent to buff the existing talent to reduce the time to tick based on demon attacks. Each unique demon attack a doomed target could modify the spell. Given our swarm nature I would imagine it would have to be unique casts of demon spells rather then each individual demon. Pretty much the Wilfred Sigil of summoning but with doom.

It certainly does need something because a 30 second dot is lack luster for a talent given no other class/spec interactions.

[Deleted]

The current doom baseline with a talent to buff the existing talent to reduce the time to tick based on demon attacks. Each unique demon attack a doomed target could modify the spell. Given our swarm nature I would imagine it would have to be unique casts of demon spells rather then each individual demon. Pretty much the Wilfred Sigil of summoning but with doom.

It certainly does need something because a 30 second dot is lack luster for a talent given no other class/spec interactions.

How about every major demon hit on the target while Doom is active reduces the dot by 1 second? With a 2 sec CD for the reduction per demon? Major demons being both felguards (Service + standard), Vilefiend, Tyrant + any demon summoned through Inner Demons/Nether Portal. Literally any demon that isn't the imps or dreadstalkers.

[vian]

Considering a channeled main filler was the one and only thing I wanted since vanilla. Suppose I'll never touch the spec again.

[Gen4Glock21]

Demo is awesome IMO, constant demons, and a variety of demons also, and it seems to have great synergy with most of the talents. AFF sucks! not much else to say, it needs a lot of work. Destro on the other hand didn't seem bad.