To my understanding Aff is gunna be the main dps spec for pve, but its soooooooo boring and unimaginative, both visually and interactively its a complete snooze. And aoe? pfff
They should take a page out of shadowpriests book, another dot class but it has some oomf to it and feel good to it.
I like Lock, the look and lore, what they bring to a raid is awesome in terms of both dps and utility. But aff spec literally… drains the fun out of it…
I actually like where it’s at. I was getting so bored of just spamming UA and then repeating, or applying UA, draining and then repeating. I like the addition of MR but absolutely agree that it needs a visual update to make it feel impactful and flavourful.
I like the idea of adding dots and then using shards on something to deal immediate damage, adds a new pace to the spec.
I like the fact that I can pretty much burst a lot of dmg asap with dark soul on and rapture spamming, unlike demo where I had to do a perfect 30 second rotation without interrupts to dish some meaningful damage.
Tried out destro a bit and my god what a boring spec.
Keeping up the dots is pretty interactive compared to most speccs, and whatchu mean “aoe? Pfff” aff is probably one of the best aoe classes right now because we aint got no target cap yo.
It’s goofy that you have to apply several agonies one by one, seed of corruption, vile taint and 1 UA to start spamming MR like hell, meanwhile BM hunters…
Hey, I chose lock this tier to main, this week I’ve leveled and geared a priest and ive been saying to the guild all week ‘shadows dots feel like dots ,unlike aff’ . It’s in this wierd place where you set up and burst and then watch your dots do nothing,where shadows dots are pretty weighty. I’m considdering changing ,just dont like the utility loss
For the first time in 10 years, I think I’m going to move on from my warlock. I was praying that the changes to Affli would tempt me back on, but it just doesn’t feel like it once was. Think BFA really put me off my main and I’m really struggling to enjoy it again.
As far as my personal taste goes, I think affliction has become way funnier in this prepatch iteration than it was in bfa. I did not like to spam unstable affliction and the AoE felt clunky, now at least we are able to spread our dots and make them erupt to make the effort count.
I agree that at the moment the dots might feel strange to apply in large pulls, but we will receive an extension on agony duration and an improvement on the MR damage on targets afflicted with UA, plus SoC and VT do not have a target cap and they’re fairly easy to apply.
So, bottom line, I’m liking what they’re doing with affliction and I will wait a couple of months in shadowlands to fully judge how the spec really feels. In comparison I think destro needs more work in therms of rotation and general feeling: outside of infernal window it seems like you’re playing another class.
Note: I don’t pvp, so I really don’t have an opinion on that.
In my honest opinion I think this is largely down to the fact they didn’t want both speccs doing pure DoT based damage. So one got rapture and the other got high damage DoTs.
However it would not suprise me if shadow does get nerfed just before SL goes live. The speccs over performing in PvP situations…
Apprantly this is actually a prepatch thing… or atleast it should be, ion stated in the interview to preach that they intend to balance in a favour of the talents that yield the hardest difficulty of the 3 should always perform best.
So I imagine most will end up having the manually dot everything again soon
I imagine we will be nerfed (or should be nerfed).
Shadow priest and hunter is op atm. They push less and do more damage than any class in the game. Why? Because no one in the office seems to play other classes. Affliction lacks damage wise based on the buttons you press. You literally tear yourself apart to do some decent damage. And spells do feel cheap. Watchout guys, you might lose your eyesight due to keeping track of the dots. Just saying.
affliction has too many dots and it feels horrible to apply them all since they don’t actually do anything but are just a buffer.
i’d love this spec so much more if siphon life/vile taint/ps weren’t a thing or the duration of all dots was increased by a lot or they lowered the gcd on dot spells.
in sl with low haste and how many dots you have to juggle + covenant/shadow’s embrace, all you’re doing is reapplying dots.
Aff unironically might be the most complex spec in the game (PvE wise) right now. For that fact alone it can very well be considered the most fun one as well.
Your optimal build includes actively managing 6 dots. Dots by default are considered way harder to manage than any other damage source, due to the fact that things such as snap shotting and pandemic timers existing, and multi dotting being really gcd heavy in AOE and how much management it demands even in 2 target situations.
On top of that you have a builder spender resource bar which you have to manage for optimal damage (you cant simply insta dump it like pretty much every other builder spender class in this game). On top of that your big cooldown is not something you just press and forget, but it demands from you a big setup.
The real issue with aff is not that it is boring, but that it is balantly underpowered for the amount of effort you have to put into to compared to every other spec in the game (including feral) to do well. Their current kit also does not work at all that well in PvP on top of being the squishiest class in the game.
When you think about it we don’t have much going on except for the 40% dmg reduction 3 minute cd, demon skin and health stone as far as defensive goes which is way less than every other dps class. On top of that our movement demands setup so it can be very unfeasable in some bgs.
Wouldnt ccall any CClass complex. however would say AFF is defintly one to compete as the “most complex” of the classes
Its DoT management is harder then any other DoT Casters. Its One of the least mobile and it has More factors / Additional Responsibility ccompared to other choices.
Like if we really looked at in a PvE Enviroment. which cclass ur going to Ultimately start getting ccompetitive with. I’d Say a Shadow priest would be far Easier compared to Affliction
