Hello, some feedback from testing on the PTR concerning Warlocks.
TIER SET BONUSES
Affliction
Everything I say concerns Soul Harvester Affliction.
I’ve tested with Hellcaller as well, but Hellcaller is still in a terrible state. It deals no damage, is very slow and boring, has atrocious utility/defensive talents (hello Zevrim’s Resilience, Illhoof’s Design and Aura of Enfeeblement). The tier set doesn’t change that, Soul Harvester is by far the best spec, mechanically and numerically speaking.
The changes to Blackened Soul make it worse. Hellcaller needs massive tuning or a rework.
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Tier Set Bonuses
I think Affliction tier set bonus is the best of the 3. It’s probably the most powerful of the 3 specs, the most impactful, and the most noticeable. Although it’s bugged and might create a gameplay problem.
- THE BUGS
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Affliction 2pc tier set bonus simply doesn’t work. You have no refund of shards when spending any soul shards.
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Affliction 4pc tier set bonus has an unintended interaction with Soul Harvester and Succulent Souls stacks: When casting Seed of Corruption, it also applies an Unstable Affliction.
If you have 2 stacks of Succulent Souls when casting Seed, both stacks are consumed, because both a seed AND a UA are cast.
Both stacks of Succulent Souls actually are consumed for real and deal damage and trigger the various effects etc., BUT the Succulent Soul damage from the UA cast deals only 50% of its normal damage.
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Also due to this double cast of Seed and UA, casting Seed reduces the cooldown of Dark Harvest by 3s per cast instead of 1.5s (via the Cull the Weak talent). So you get much more Dark Harvest cast and associated benefits. It could be intentional, but I don’t think so.
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Maybe not a bug. Seeds of Corruption with Sow the seed only applies Unstable Affliction to your main target, not the other 2 targets hit by the extra seed. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not.
- THE “GOOD”
- The 2 pc tier set bonus is extremely powerful for Single Target encounters, because we’ll have just a lot more shards, and you will notice having a lot more shards when previously we were a bit starved in those scenarios. It’ll make the rotation more fluid.
. - The 4 pc tier set bonus is immensely powerful in AOE**. Every seed of corruption you cast (but NOT the extra seeds from sow the seeds) applies Unstable Affliction (at 50% power) on your main target.
. - This adds A TON of priority damage in AOE, which is one of Affliction’s weakness. You can easily get to 6/7/8 stacks of Unstable Afflictions on your target, so it deals substantial damage, even in 5/6/7/8 target scenarios.
- THE “BAD”
- The 2 pc tier set bonus is useless in AOE. Soul Harvester Affliction already has more shards than it can spend, so a 20% refund changes nothing. This isn’t fundamentally a problem, the 2pc bonus is more ST oriented, the 4PC more AOE oriented.
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- The 4 pc tier set bonus is very weak for single target, since we don’t cast Seed of Corruption in single target scenarios, right? Or do we now?
. - The tier set bonus is guiding us towards casting Seed of Corruption in Single target scenarios INSTEAD of Unstable Affliction.
On PTR, you currently deal similar damage in ST by casting Seed of Corruption to apply UA at 50% power and spending your Nightfall procs on instant Seed of Corruption, than by casting UAs manually and consuming Nightfall with Drain Soul/Shadow Bolt.
. - It feels weird to play that, but it just works. It makes the spec more mobile, MUCH MORE versatile when it comes to dealing with scenarios with AOE AND ST moments.
I don’t know if that’s the intention of the devs though. If you want us to keep using Unstable Affliction in ST rather than Seed, we will need a good reason to do so.
Affliction warlocks would simply remove UA from their action bars, you would never have to cast it manually.