As a veteran i want to make a very generalized over-arching point:
In the distant past, most classes didnt have AOE and damage was “balanced” around ST.
Warlocks had the quite unique advantage to spread their damage and bump it insanely high due to multi-targeting if they worked very hard to pull it off as it required crazy amount of clicks compared to the others.
But hardship-reward was the dynamic definitely.
The game has gotten very very far away from that, which is fine.
Now everyone has AOE and can do cleave. Sure, that’s great.
The issue is everyone received 1-3 button AOE dumpers, while warlock still has to tripple the APM of other classes not to mention eye strain cuz u gotta be clicking Tab and looking at where and what dot is dropping off.
And the most insane part is for all this hardship there is no reward - it’s punished as even at 110% efficiency you are subpar to people doing rotations that require 30% of the concentration and clicks.
It eventually evolved into that but affi was always about dots. Also Iam talking for example about boomkin (?). Hell even warriors get better dot spread tha affi.
Ha, I think it’s hilarious, because I made a similar observation a few years ago.
Without repeating myself too much, it feels as if playing affliction require more mental presence and and physical strain than most other specs, for very little reward. That doesn’t mean that Affliction is overly complex, nor that it’s difficult to play, just that there’s… a lot. A lot of things to do, a lot of things to keep track off, and with very little actual payoff for the time invested.
I haven’t finished Dragonflight. I reached Valdrakken and will finished it in a year or so, once I return and there’s haste everywhere. I’m spending what remains of my sub to level up alts in older zones, and there are certainly other classes and specs with similar issues. Retribution Paladin is my latest project - and it’s absolutely ridiculous how many things there are to keep track of. The difference being that pressing all the various buttons as Retribution has instant pay-off. Big numbers on the screen, flashy animations, excellent sound effects, and the dopamine just flows.
I have always enjoyed how Affliction is very subtle. No flashy animations, no loud sounds aside from Seed of Corruption. Death by a thousand cuts. Apply dots, drain, rinse and repeat. You had to care about Shadow Weaving and Ruin and curse of Shadows/Elements at some point, but generally speaking, it was all about the dots.
I think AoE in particular would feel better if Seed of Corruption was made instant-cast and given a short cooldown - or exploded instantly - or had it’s shard cost removed. Having a cast time, shard cost and then having to wait for detonation is incredibly archaic. I’d prefer the first option, as you could mouseovermacro it.
But ideally, the perfect AoE for Affliction would be Vile Taint or Seed of Corruption applying Agony, Corruption and Siphon Life to all affected targets, and re-designing Malefic Grasp to be an AoE spender which boosts dot damage to ridiculous amounts, having it scale with the total amount of active dots to make it unattractive as a single target spender, and attractive as an AoE spender.
That way, we could return to a dot dot drain playstyle for single target, a multi-dot playstyle for cleaves and have a comfortable, modern AoE playstyle in line with other DPS specs.
No, you are just under geared or not that great if you are under the tank.
I just checked your Primal Council log from 13 Jan and you were playing a rubbish build to deal with it. That problem lies with you, not the spec. I couldn’t be arsed to look at anything else, I’d seen what I needed to see.
It’s a good spec. The only problem with it is having to spec into either ST or AOE fully. There are some hybrid builds that are seeing some play, though. After the patch, hopefully this will smooth it out,
Both MR and SoC should be instant cast with a 2 second cooldown (maybe 1.5 CD for MR). This will enable us to still be useful whilst dodging the damn hundreds of swirlies that are in the majority of encounters, but will have the same throughput as they do now.
Vile Taint should revert to a 20 second cooldown.
Dread Touch should last 10 seconds.
Bring back the tier bonus which extended dots, the QoL difference is insane.
What i dont understand is that SP can use damnation to apply dots which is instant, shadow crush which is aoe and instant, and they have another talent that when u apply vamp touch u can use it again instant and do instant damage also…While when they cast vamp touch they put swp also…
And then you have afliction who has more dots to apply has use globals and fake cast for ages to apply his dots…
Come on blizz help the lock specs its 2023 atleast demo and affl make them faster pace.
Less casting will be good realy…
