Affliction DF tree feedback

[Lolth-twisting-nether]

My most important suggestion is bring 9.0 aff with no SE and 2min Darkglare.

Atm in the tree there are way too many. Having a 15 button rotation not counting all the utility ones is insane.

The buff your filler playstyle is bad, and Malefic wrath especially is way too much as a maintenance buff that requires you to cast another spell to get its dmg out, its only st. Even it was buffed so it rewarded you for playing pure st, I wouldn’t like it. You get shoehorned into st way too much and calamitous crescento is just a band aid in 2-3 target situations imo.

Out of the buff your filler talents, I would remove Dec bolt(maybe make synergy a capstone), Withering bolt and ofc MW, but maybe keep Calamitous crescendo so you are rewarded for casting your filler.

Shadow’s Embrace is way too annoying as seen in 9.0, bake a % buff to UA so there’s a tuning knob for st and bring focused malignancy as a talent for more of the same.

Darkglare is a lackluster cd that is even way down is the tree. Wilfreds was never in its history good for aff. I would say baking DS misery into DG, even with less potency, it would be much more preferable. Also maybe give its beam some cleave, so it does smth in aoe.

Soul swap has no place in a spec that has MR, even if you make like the old soul swap that copied all dots, it will compete for your shards with MR in low target count situations.

Siphon life it another dot just for the sake of having another dot, I wouldn’t mind replacing it with something else. Maybe even a talent that makes your UA count for 2 dots for MR, but that’s just a suggestion.

Pandemic invocation is a bad talent when you have things like calamitous crescento. Its super unsynergistic, just remove it.

Creeping death is a talent that conflicts with MR, you want your dots to last long enough for you to spend your shards.

Summon Jailer is another buffon with no synergy, just remove it, we have plenty of buttons to press and instead of trying to remove ramp up, give us options to reduce ramp up vs more dps options. To be honest the general class tree shouldn’t have capstones that give you more buttons into your rotation. I kind dislike soulburn being another button plus it also takes dps for utility and would prefer making some of its options as selectable talents, but I don’t feel as strongly about it as the rest.

Grimoire of sacrifice has such a central location while being the most anti-synergistic and never worth picking talent in recent years.

Accrued Vitality also needs to be moved.

[Naze-aegwynn (Naze)]

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Grimoire of sacrifice has such a central location while being the most anti-synergistic and never worth picking talent in recent years.

They should replace it with rapid contagion.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Summon Jailer is another buffon with no synergy, just remove it

I guess it is a flavour spell for demo. So you can feel like a real summoner, same goes for the Pit Lord. But the Pit Lord is also that Nether Portal is getting some playtime.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Creeping death is a talent that conflicts with MR, you want your dots to last long enough for you to spend your shards.

Should be replaced with Death’s Embrace.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Pandemic invocation is a bad talent when you have things like calamitous crescento. Its super unsynergistic, just remove it.

Can be removed and in its place Rampant Affliction.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Siphon life it another dot just for the sake of having another dot, I wouldn’t mind replacing it with something else. Maybe even a talent that makes your UA count for 2 dots for MR, but that’s just a suggestion.

This is a dead talent line Creeping Death. Should be replaced by Soul Effigy.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Soul swap has no place in a spec that has MR

For pvp purpose it is good. We can charge this to a pvp Talent and reintroduce Fel Flame in its place.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Darkglare is a lackluster cd that is even way down is the tree. Wilfreds was never in its history good for aff. I would say baking DS misery into DG, even with less potency, it would be much more preferable. Also maybe give its beam some cleave, so it does smth in aoe.

Was always not a good burst option, it is good that it is optional now.

@Lolth-twisting-nether

Shadow’s Embrace is way too annoying as seen in 9.0, bake a % buff to UA so there’s a tuning knob for st and bring focused malignancy as a talent for more of the same.

I would rather have that removed and dmg increased by 5%. Give us a gcd reduce on instant cats.

[Spauk-auchindoun]

Whilst Darkglare might be lacking, with the removal of Dark Soul: Misery, it will seemingly be our only cooldown.

I agree that Siphon Life is just a waste of time.

It seems in general DF is looking to inflate our button counts with little to no payoff. Its the same issue I have with the current builder/spender systems for most specs. You never really feel the payoff for spending. Its just another button. Atleast Chaos Bolt is pretty cool.

I wish Aff got some love with shard spending. Like make Haunt spend 3 shards but increase all dot damage on the target by 500% or what ever. Just make something exciting happen! Isnt the purpose of builder/spender to have a kind of rising action with a climax at the end? Right know MR is really anti-climatic lol

[Lolth-twisting-nether]

Firstly I really like that the class tree has minimal throughput talents, pure dps classes have specs that play so different that it would be incredibly hard to give them smth that all want. The alternative of putting smth in the class tree that only a few of the specs would ever choose and its throughput would make a part of the tree dead for the other spec/specs. Maybe the capstones can be a bit better, but I don’t even mind them being completely optional. Soulburn costing a shard is a lot different between the specs, with aff being able to benefit the least, since shards are much more difficult to gain than the other 2 specs.

Summon soulkeeper feels like another button you would push for dmg, which has no synergy with any of the specs. There is not point to it, and its use will depend on pure tuning.

Make soul swap put 3 stacks of Malefic affliction on the target, then its smth to use on pull and when target swapping, plus its shard cost will be worth it now.

To continue with the remove button bloat mindset, remove siphon life and give us another st tuning knob like the FM conduit or maybe even make UA count as 2 dots for MR, or even make the agony on the UA target to tick faster, which means more st dps and st shards.

Darkglare aoe is nice, but in st it seems incredibly lackluster, and by going away from MR dmg to dot dmg that’s an ever bigger issue, due to dmg profile being only sustain dps. So maybe instead of wilfreds give us a DS:misery-like effect, as in while DG is up you have X% haste.

Pandemic Invocation is just bad. A good replacement would be dot execute. That would make our dmg profile a bit better, since atm it seems like aff is pure sustain dps. That might make a DS:misery effect maybe redundant. But we need at least one of the two.

I still feel that Shadows Embrace is annoying and you could bake a 10% buff into UA to compensate. It was bad in 9.0 and I think it will still be bad this time around.

Not too sure about Calamitous crescento in the tree. At low haste, we might be missing shards to really keep Dread Touch up and also have some for PS/soul rot, so it will be useful, but it still is just a meh talent, except in pure st. since we have no dot extension by the 2piece of its set. And we are already gcd starved when trying to dot in multiple target scenarios. My idea would be to make so instead of giving you a proc of free MR, it automatically casts MR, maybe with some downside, like reduced dmg.

Speaking about being gcd starved a dot gcd reduction talent would be very welcome.

Xavian teachings should be baseline for aff, replace it with a gcd talent.

Pandemic Invocation is just bad. A good replacement would be dot execute. That would make our dmg profile a bit better, since atm its pure sustain dps.

I would move ID to where gosac is atm, so it’s closer to soul rot. Maybe make gosac into a pvp talent, or move it in a corner so it doesn’t affect your talent tree selection in pve.

Idk where you are going with soul tap. But if it’s going to be a cd that you press every x amount of seconds, it should just be removed, we have plenty of button bloat atm. Either give a small shard generation talent for agony if its shard generation that’s needed or just remove it all together.

Remove the shard cost of vile taint or if that’s too good, at least either remove the cast time or buff its dmg significantly. A smart cursing mechanic, would also be another decent alternative.

A general thing about the aff tree, a bit of power is need in the mid-section. Most of the power in at the last section, which is fine, but the mid-section feels only smth you pick to get you at the end. As I said the dot execute in place of Pandemic Invocation would go a long way, maybe then even move it in the Withering Bolt spot so it’s more central. Also it feels like you have to make a choice between having aoe or st, maybe that will be tuning dependent, but having your main st mechanic(Malefic Afflictions) directly competing with aoe talents, might break the viability of the spec. Maybe the baseline kit will be enough for complementing the st build in aoe, but that’s how it feels. One thing I can think of to amend it is a buff your MR talent like the current 2piece but with no dot extension, since that makes dot managing a joke and imo that should be a core skill needed for aff.