Pretty much.
They gutted Affliction's aoe in Battle for Azeroth, nerfing Seed of Corruption severely and they also removed the on death buffs from the Artifact aswell as Soul Flame.
As for pvp, Affliction does not deal enough spread damage to be relevant and lacks any kind of on demand damage. It also is a punching bag with one spell school in this game of melee mongoloids with their braindead instant cc and kicks of which they can miss 90% and still cc you forever.
Look at this farce they call class design:
https://www.wowhead.com/battle-for-a...ges#affliction
From 172% SP to 20%. Aoe nuked from orbit with precision.Seed of Corruption Embeds a demon seed in the enemy target that will explode after 18 sec, dealing (172%12 sec, dealing (20% of Spell power) Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yards and applying Corruption to them.
The seed will detonate early if the target is hit by other detonations, or takes (Spell power * 300 50 / 100) damage from your spells.
And as if that wasn't bad enough?
To the ground baby!Sow the Seeds Seed of Corruption will now embednow embeds a demon seed in 2 additional nearby enemies.into 1 additional nearby enemy.
If they weren't too incompetent to come up with something new to make up for the loss of an ability in this game of ever declining amount of spells and abilities they would have simply removed the ability instead of gutting the talent by 50% and the spellpower scaling by 152%.
Last edited by enigma77; 2019-05-31 at 04:24 PM.
Affliction honestly needs quite a lot of work. I'll focus on the main issues:
1. DoTs are not scary. UA stacking to 5 is not working out well. DoTs in general feel extremely crappy and weak but UA is probably the worst offender. UA does somewhere around 13-18k over its duration. DoTs should be extremely high damage per execute time, otherwise they're not worth pressing. Right now a casted UA does less damage than all of the following instant spells: Comet Storm,
2. Only casting DoTs isn't that fun. The feeling of power in a DoT class comes when you can apply them and then let them do their thing for a bit. DoTs are cool when you can snapshot them, or when you can amp them massively like you could in MoP with Soulburn: Haunt+darksoul or in legion with the artifact ability. Darkglare is amped by DoTs but that doesn't tie into our rot fantasy. Affliction's baseline cooldown should amp DoTs, not use them as a resource.
3. Shadowbolt feels like crap. Reintroducing Nightfall, which felt awesome in the past, is only cool if Shadowbolt is actually a big deal. Shadowbolts graphic as well as its damage is pathetic and out of place, looking like some kind of confetti and doing confetti levels of damage.
4. PVP wise, affliction utility is sorely lacking. It has a single school which is easily locked out due to having to cast UA's constantly. It brings fears but fear now conflicts with the rot playstyle because it breaks instantly. It brings shadowfury but again that's a cast which can be safely locked out because it'll stop every single other thing affliction can bring.
Solutions:
1. Drop UA stacking, have it cost 2 shards and have it do about triple the damage that it does now over 15 seconds. Increase other DoTs damage as well.
2. Shadowbolt needs a better graphic (seriously the confetti is whack) and much more damage (~300%).
3. Affliction should get a passive which causes DoT damage you deal to not break fear as easily (DoTs should be able to do roughly 10% of your health before breaking a fear).
4. Affliction should get a version of Howl of Terror that doesn't immediately break on DoT damage.
5. Affliction should get Curse of Exhaustion and/or Shadowflame (slowing cone) baseline again.
6. Remove Darkglare and give Affliction a new CD that amps DoTs.
I wish people would stop saying this stupid shit. Soul flame has nothing to do with it. Soul flame wasn't even that relevant.
It's the fact seed of corruption got gutted and aff has no real aoe and things die too fast for aff to ramp, without Seed/Sow the seeds aff is just trash in 5 mans.
At some point they are going to have to admit they fucked up and buff seed. Because that is literally the only thing that will fix aff without impacting raid.
This isn't even getting into the hilariously dumb idea of "bring shadow bolt back" that was heavily endorsed by a bunch of players on this very forum that didn't actually play at a high level.
Seriously, some guy on this forum told me shadowbolt was the "pinnacle of game design." Everyone that actually played the spec at a competitive level knew shadowbolt was awful and would make aff worse overall.
Last edited by asil; 2019-05-31 at 08:11 PM.
See what happens to the meta with the new season affix. It is supposedly more single-target focused, so this may swing things back to affliction being more viable. Current season, no. Be thankful that Affliction is, and has been for years, god-tier raid spec
I think you guys are right. A big buff to seed of corruption, or at least a talent to buff it heavily, is probably the only way affliction will ever be good in m+ this expansion.
I think we have different definitions of what "fine" is in arena. Afflicion is absolutely horrible right now in my view.
What is competetvie m+? Lvl 23+? Or just doing them in time?
I'm only doing 15-17s at the moment but I really don't care that much which class comes. I'd take a good player over a bad one any day, no matter if they play a "bad" spec.
Also, how bad is bad? Would an affli lock increase the time a dungeon takes by 1 min? 10 min? Could you play around the spec? I only know I tank stuff and the dps does their thing and we win, most of the time :P
Also, reroll, weakus!
You're lying. Here's actual data:
https://www.arenamate.net/?region=&r...class_filter=9
Aff is one of the worst pvp specs in the game, to the point it's nearly non-viable. There is a single aff warlock over 2400 rating. Nobody plays aff because it is just a trash arena spec and has been for 2 xpacs now.
Furthermore, warlock is one of the least represented classes in arena as a whole:
https://www.arenamate.net/?region=&r...r=3v3&faction=
It's also one of if not the worst m+ spec.
Last edited by asil; 2019-06-03 at 12:40 PM.
using arenamate as an argument? lol while filtering out all of the classes and attempting to claim that there's only 1 warlock over 2400 that's aff, got some bad news for you buddy, but people change specs between arena and other content, just because they didn't log out as aff(which is how arenamate uses the API to track participation) that doesn't mean they aren't playing it.
I mean personal experience, but whatever buddy continue to think that you know so well lol.
Using Arenamate as an argument is hardly me being "blown the fuck out", especially since arenamate is known for their garbage over the last few years with promoting boosting. The fact is: Arenamate uses the armory API and it shows what the player logged out in, that's hardly proof that people aren't playing Affliction in arena.
So in closing:
A) You have no proof to support what you claimed.
B) The available data says you are wrong.
just an FYI friend, I have multiple rank 1 titles and have played a warlock at over 3000 rating. I quit pvp because aff is fucking awful. Nobody I know (which includes a bunch of those warlocks in the top 20, btw) thinks aff is good. It's a trash tier spec.
I get you probably thought nobody here would have the knowledge to put you down, but you were wrong. Take a seat. I won't waste any more of my time, because I feel like I've soundly put you down and everyone can see it.
There is no "available data". There is no accurate way to track what people are playing without actually being there and playing it. So you have zero proof, I have zero proof. The actual difference is I'm a multi-Glad using personal experience and you're someone using a website that uses an armory API with false statistics and trying to use it as "proof".
I also highly doubt you know any of the top 20 warlocks, but that's an entirely different argument that I'm really not interested in having lol.