Haunt being baseline

[UKHirst]

Just wondering what people's thoughts are, I for one wish it was baseline again to add to the dull rotation.

[Hisholyness]

I would say yes, its great for levelling. Contagion could be a passive that removes it as a spell but causes UA to automatically apply the damage debuff

[evertonbelmontt]

It would still be dull.

Haunt in Beta has become a maintenance buff instead of something you can capitalize in. It should have been for afflic what SB used to be for destro, you should use it to do heavy direct damage, increase dot damage and should have no cast time, maybe decrease duration to compensate for how easy it would be to use.

Thing that SHOULD be baseline is Nightfall, because the ONLY advantage I can see for having that shitty filler over a channeled filler is it, and it comes as a talent.

Siphon Life should also be baseline at this point, mostly because of the healing for PVP.

[xRATJARx]

I would say yes, its great for levelling. Contagion could be a passive that removes it as a spell but causes UA to automatically apply the damage debuff

Thats been a thing in BfA since early Alpha...

[Hisholyness]

Thats been a thing in BfA since early Alpha...

new talent increases it from 10 to 25%, circumventing the addition of haunt

[Baconeggcheese]

I'd prefer it over UA since UA is basically the same spell in function right now.

Spec does need something else to make it fun though.

[Sartre]

The stacking Azerite trait that makes Drain Life powerful is what should be baseline. It gives your rotation dynamic phases, or you can save the stacks, keep them rolling, for a burst window if you don't just use them at an optimal stack (where DL damage > SB damage).

It could add some fun and spice, this way it is a missed opportunity.

[Deleted]

It should be a baseline ability with 2 charges, so you can bank it for procs. This spec badly needs something remotely interesting.

Baseline Haunt with 2 or 3 charges, nightfall baseline, drain soul given back as a baseline spell for add sniping, contagion removed from UA to stop this idiotic gameplay where you want to spread out UAs like a robot

[sugarfree]

What should be baseline is Deathbolt and Siphon Life. I have seen some videos saying how fun it was playing Aff in BFA, but then it is mostly because they invested on speccing to DB and SL.

Now remove both in an equation, and you'll get what the spec has for fun...nothing. Once Deathbolt gets nerfed (which I think is always a possibility for warlocks), you're looking into 2 other options that are exceptionally DULL.

And I have seen one video where he tries to spec out of SL and the whole spec felt "lacking" for him. SL as part of your rotation is just integral, I think. But that's just me.

[Deleted]

I liked it as it was back in WOTLK / Cata, just broke up the SB spam a little bit and had a self-heal that you could occasionally line up with life taps (though I guess that's not a thing, still).

I'm more interested in getting drain soul back though. Not as filler, but as execute - I'd much rather have the execute being baseline and tangible rather than a talent that just makes your spells arbitrarily hit for more with zero gameplay connotations.

I was thrilled to see Shadowbolt come back, but it's frustrating when every time they add something back they take away something else that I considered important.

[asil]

I liked it as it was back in WOTLK / Cata, just broke up the SB spam a little bit and had a self-heal that you could occasionally line up with life taps (though I guess that's not a thing, still).

I'm more interested in getting drain soul back though. Not as filler, but as execute - I'd much rather have the execute being baseline and tangible rather than a talent that just makes your spells arbitrarily hit for more with zero gameplay connotations.

I was thrilled to see Shadowbolt come back, but it's frustrating when every time they add something back they take away something else that I considered important.

I'm really baffled as to how anyone can possibly prefer sbolt over drain soul as a filler. Why?

[Deleted]

I'm really baffled as to how anyone can possibly prefer sbolt over drain soul as a filler. Why?

I'm likewise baffled as to how anyone can prefer channeled filler over hardcast.

Channeled filler has little to no tangible feedback over the rhythmic pulse of hardcasts, stacking up haste to increase the speed you can spew out shadowbolts (and as a byproduct, stack up SE) felt like a tangible increase in power and made haste stacking in WOTLK feel pretty damn rewarding. Channeled filler increasing in haste tends to feel worse if you're just recasting it more because there's no feedback unless you're running a tick-tracker which is obsolete in modern design.
The times it DID feel rewarding and tangible were back in WOTLK / Cata where it was an execute spell that ticked like a truck and each tick was a large enough spike in damage that you would NEED to take notice of it because you had to time dot refreshes around it to avoid clipping ticks. When it's channeled filler it can't be tuned high enough to be noticable without being strong enough that your dots are neutered to compensate.
Dots depending on filler being channelable also feels a lot more restrictive than SB applying SE, where you have leeway in that the debuff remains even if movement delays SB casts.
Likewise the move to channeled filler first had MG + DS, but shocker, they're too similar - so they got merged. Then DS was axed until the community cried out in protest, at which point MG was axed and DS was kept, but in name only. It was MG in every other fashion and our execute was gone in all but numbers. Then the execute was removed before being returned as a talent, but it's still just a numerical thing with absolutely zero gameplay nuance. Garbage.

WOTLK / Cata affliction was chunked into maintaining up to 5 dots, stacking SE with SB and then using it as filler / getting nightfall procs, using haunt on CD, lifetapping, executing with DS when in range and also had the at times janky interactions of fel flame to think about.

Legion affliction is at times maintaining a grand total of ONE dot, dumping UAs as applicable based on talent choices and filling with drain from 100->0 and without MG it feels sadly flacid.

I'm not arguing about complexity here, but I prefered the breakup in spells - it actually felt like a tangible thing when you hit execute back in WOTLK / Cata, being both tactile, numerical and a visual shift.

On top of that channeled filler has been traditionally a shadowpriest thing, the only spec in the game that affliction has any cause to worry about spec identity with.


Lucky you if you enjoyed channeled filler, but it feels worse in every aspect to me and it seems like the obvious culprit for afflictions execute being killed amongst other things.

[Mkluvin]

Only if we can get a bit longer duration to our dots