Affliction AOE = Low dps

[Biruta]

Playing a lv 120 affliction warlock (120 IL) and I can output more damage against 4 mobs if I just dps one of them as single target.
Seed of Corruption is a crap spell to use atm (only worths to spread corruption) and both Phantom Singularity and Vile Taint can't compete against other classes AOE skills (Blizzard, Fel Barrage, etc).

Has anyone here read anything about a possible improvement in our aoe?

[Lucrece]

All warlock aoe sucks, it’s not affliction specific.

[Biruta]

All warlock aoe sucks, it’s not affliction specific.

Yes I know, but someone read anything in blue posts about a buff to our aoe skills?

[SpikeySquad]

Or just focus on Affy's strengths and leave the AoE to the specs more suited.

[acer1234]

Affliction AoE is probably the worst in the game atm. Tanks doing their basic aggro hold rotations but out more dps. Now that's a problem.

Another problem is when affliction has dead spots when it comes to aoe dps. All shards down plus phantom on cooldown? Well your doing 0 aoe dps. And your stuck tab targeting agony for shards. Just terrible design. Fucking terrible design where you can have a 10-15 seconds of dead air. Then you have to wind up a 2second seed that still does no damage. Gg blizzard

[exarkunofpr]

Or just focus on Affy's strengths and leave the AoE to the specs more suited.

Yah pretty much this. Just multi dot/seed spam on trash and let the other classes do the bulk. When its boss time you get to shine.

[Deleted]

Playing a lv 120 affliction warlock (120 IL) and I can output more damage against 4 mobs if I just dps one of them as single target.
Seed of Corruption is a crap spell to use atm (only worths to spread corruption) and both Phantom Singularity and Vile Taint can't compete against other classes AOE skills (Blizzard, Fel Barrage, etc).

Has anyone here read anything about a possible improvement in our aoe?

Both Demo and Destro has very decent AoE, Affliction does great single target and barely okay AoE.

Unless they remove the soul cost of seed and buff it's damage it's not going to compete :P

[IAmJakub]

So far I have had best result with Absolute Corruption and only use SoS to do the initial spread, and keeping up Agony on everything (4 or so targets) and then if shards permit UA on everything or at least kill target. Azerite trait which applies 4stack Agony off the bat works really good with this. But I cant say I'm exactly topping with this strategy. Its really micro management heavy but I actually enjoy it.

[Deleted]

It gets better once you get better gear. The problem right now is other classes do too much burst aoe, affliction only really does sustain AoE. Not really much to be done when you your Seed just manages to explode as a frost mage, survival hunters or Arms warrior et.c. has solo'd a pack with 30k dps.

Once you get into groups with undergeared people or with classes that don't burst that hard you'll do decent damage.
My tips now for the HC and mythic0 dungeons is:
- Get vile taint, tbh this talent is extremely underrated. It's far better on trash than PS. The short cooldown allows you to use it on every pack rather than saving it for high value like you have to with PS. You'll often be able to cast it 2-3 times on some packs aswell. The 30% slow is pretty decent as well, should be higher though imo. You lose out on single target though.
- Get the agony Trait. I can't stress how important this trait is to do meaningful damage. Agony starting at 4 stacks is insanely important to deal meaningful damage since it lowers the ramp considerbly.

How you play is pretty basic. Precast seed during a pull -> cast viletaint to instantly pop the seed and dot everything up -> Apply agony's everywhere. From here on, sustain the agony and recast viletaint on CD pretty much.
Once agony is everywhere, Haunt + UA + Deathbolt a priority mob and after that just shadow bolt spam. Cast UA on targets at 15-20% to regain your soulshards so it's not wasted.
Don't seed, you don't have the shards for it and it does too little damage unless it's like +10 targets. If you got 5 shards, cast some UA's.
Always make sure to never drop below 2-3 soulshards. Majority of your shards will only be spent for Vile Taint, spreading corruption and UAing really low targets. Our shard regen is really crappy right now since we don't have Drain Soul or any haste.

Additional tip is to get the Drain Life trait, it's extremely strong. I'm looking to obtain 2 Drain Life pieces and one Agony one.
Before a boss pull, make sure to hoard 5 Soul Shards and 100 stacks of corruption if possible, this will net you some extremely nutty dps.
Corruption -> Agony -> Haunt - > Vile Taint -> UA Spam(Usually you get another shard during the UA spam so you get 5 UA's) -> Dark Glare -> Death Bolt -> Drain Life

But as said, there's no saving from playing with competent Arms/Frost mages et.c. their damage's just too frontloaded.

[muto]

Destro seems to be the only spec that can do somewhat competitive AoE and that is only with Cataclysm + CDF

[Deleted]

How you play is pretty basic. Precast seed during a pull -> cast viletaint to instantly pop the seed and dot everything up -> Apply agony's everywhere. From here on, sustain the agony and recast viletaint on CD pretty much.
Once agony is everywhere, Haunt + UA + Deathbolt a priority mob and after that just shadow bolt spam. Cast UA on targets at 15-20% to regain your soulshards so it's not wasted.
Don't seed, you don't have the shards for it and it does too little damage unless it's like +10 targets. If you got 5 shards, cast some UA's.
Always make sure to never drop below 2-3 soulshards. Majority of your shards will only be spent for Vile Taint, spreading corruption and UAing really low targets. Our shard regen is really crappy right now since we don't have Drain Soul or any haste.

Do all this and you are hemorrhaging your ST dps, the part where we are actually viable now. Right now its a trade off between doing barely okay AoE dps + crap ST or absolutely crap aoe (below tank) and superior ST dps.

Other specs are pulling 1-2k dps less on single target than us but bursting 30k on trash atm. We really need a 10% ST nerf combined with a 50% aoe buff or something. This cant go on like it is right now.

It gets better once you get better gear.

You don't understand, when we get better gear, the other dps will get better gear as well meaning 50k burst on trash instead and we improve from 10k trash dps to 12k or 13k. This is how scaling works when something is broken.

[Lucrece]

Do all this and you are hemorrhaging your ST dps, the part where we are actually viable now. Right now its a trade off between doing barely okay AoE dps + crap ST or absolutely crap aoe (below tank) and superior ST dps.

Other specs are pulling 1-2k dps less on single target than us but bursting 30k on trash atm. We really need a 10% ST nerf combined with a 50% aoe buff or something. This cant go on like it is right now.



You don't understand, when we get better gear, the other dps will get better gear as well meaning 50k burst on trash instead and we improve from 10k trash dps to 12k or 13k. This is how scaling works when something is broken.

Oh, it can, and it will, or you don't know how Blizzard operate.

Remember they kept promising a demo revamp as early as the release of Legion and they just let it rot till BfA alpha to do anything about it.

Demonhunters were promised a revamp by 7.2 and that revamp has yet to arrive.

[Bakis]

Yah pretty much this. Just multi dot/seed spam on trash and let the other classes do the bulk. When its boss time you get to shine.

So no spot on tyrannical M+ weeks then. Great..

[agittunc]

Destruction is better in dungoens by a mile. so m+ pushing is gonna have them in it. their AOE is quite good with opening : cataclysm > rain of fire > CDF.

Affliction is rather annoying to me and only works when it's sustain and not burst.

Demo i have honestly no idea how to properly do it.

affliction ST is kinda OP. raids!!!!

[Lucrece]

So no spot on tyrannical M+ weeks then. Great..

You mean fortified. Tyrannical is the boss affix.

[Bakis]

You mean fortified. Tyrannical is the boss affix.

Yea hehe a slight typo. So unless any fix is made we are forced to swap spec's not just talents.

[Deleted]

Do all this and you are hemorrhaging your ST dps, the part where we are actually viable now. Right now its a trade off between doing barely okay AoE dps + crap ST or absolutely crap aoe (below tank) and superior ST dps.

Other specs are pulling 1-2k dps less on single target than us but bursting 30k on trash atm. We really need a 10% ST nerf combined with a 50% aoe buff or something. This cant go on like it is right now.



You don't understand, when we get better gear, the other dps will get better gear as well meaning 50k burst on trash instead and we improve from 10k trash dps to 12k or 13k. This is how scaling works when something is broken.

Sacrificing PS isn't gimping your single target dps. If you prepare before bosses you're still able to pull 15k single target when a boss dies with BL since the bosses die so fast.
I'm rarely below 10k on trash unless it's 1-2 target or I'm hoarding for a bossfight. If you pop cooldowns for big packs you can easily manage 20k dps throughout the pack. The problem as mentioned earlier is other specific classes oneshotting packs before you get to do anything. The damage potential is there, the specc just isn't fast enough. Warlocks are just about consistent AoE damage, burst is just nonexistent right now.
If you're playing with a fast group those broken burst classes won't have their abilities ready for every pack either and when they don't have it their damage is nonexistent.

Afflictions biggest problem is lack of soulshards and seed doing pityful damage. I agree that the AoE sucks, I was just saying what to do to do respectable damage in AoE. It'll get better once Mythic + arrives because packs will start to live through peoples burst so your dots can shine.

[xuros]

Playing a lv 120 affliction warlock (120 IL) and I can output more damage against 4 mobs if I just dps one of them as single target.
Seed of Corruption is a crap spell to use atm (only worths to spread corruption) and both Phantom Singularity and Vile Taint can't compete against other classes AOE skills (Blizzard, Fel Barrage, etc).

Has anyone here read anything about a possible improvement in our aoe?

Did a heroic with a demo lock that was about 10 ilvls higher than my Aff lock. He/She blew me out of the water on trash but on the bosses I wrecked the demo spec (and most others) by around 3-4k per boss fight. This will probably only hurt in M+ for faster trash killing but on bosses with a few adds its not going to be that bad. It should be easy enough to maintain dots on 2-4 mobs that stay alive long enough to make the spent time worth it. On raids i mean, what locks actually are at the keyboard while trash is being pulled these days lol.

[Jahrastafari]

It gets better once you get better gear.

344 here. When does it get better, because tanks AoE threat generation can out-dps me. As we get gear, so do they, and their AoE scales miles better than ours. It literally gets WORSE with gear.

[Valagrym]

Yeah I don't know. It's hard to even shine on ST at this point. We do pretty good damage on ST but geared melee(rogues specifically) can do just as much single target and they also get to roflstomp AoE. I just don't understand resolving yourself to "it's okay my aoe dps is shit tier, i can do competitive dps on the boss!". If other classes couldn't do both equally well I'd tend to agree but there are bunch of other classes right now that don't have to compromise on either.