[Affliction Dragonflight] Possible spells return/rework feedback

[Gowu-burning-legion]

[Affliction Dragonflight] Possible spells return/rework feedback

Hello, I play Affliction since 2007 (TBC) and would like to share my feedback for talents and abilities which could return or be reworked in Dragonflight for this specialization. I was trying to address most of weakness points of Affliction, which I currently see, and put a little more complexity and control into Affliction rotation. To make things little clearer to read I had listed Active abilities in above, and passives into second tab as in below example: Active ability Description Curr…

[Graypox-stormreaver]

I read through your suggestions, while I like the logic behind all of them, the solutions are sometimes a bit off. I will mostly just comment in terms of playability.

1.) Death’s embrace isn’t very flashy & makes execute sniping even more important in M+, affliction is already not very pleasant spec to play in M+. Would be good for raid progression though. Slightly against Death’s embrace but not strongly.

2.) On Soul Swap I agree in principle, target swapping is indeed terrible, but I don’t think the solution is to introduce Soul Swap.

I take a hot take on this and say my suggestion would be to REMOVE Agony and make corruption to be the king DOT (and shard generator). Corruption works beautifully in AoE situations thanks to Seed of Corruption. However Agony even in stacked multitarget is like this: Agony - Tab - Agony - Tab - Agony and so on.

If the only ramp up Affliction warlock had was Corruption & UA, it wouldn’t have even close to the same target switch & GCD starvation problems.

3.) Fully agree on Shard generation to go from random full shards to fragments.

4.) Dark Glare indeed feels underwhelming. Having not played affliction before SL, it feels like Misery is THE dps CD, when it in fact is Dark Glare. Agree with combining.

[Naze-aegwynn (Naze)]

@Graypox-stormreaver

1.) Death’s embrace isn’t very flashy & makes execute sniping even more important in M+, affliction is already not very pleasant spec to play in M+. Would be good for raid progression though. Slightly against Death’s embrace but not strongly.

I would rather sea a decimating Bolt passive effect for dots. But only up to 100%.

@Graypox-stormreaver

2.) On Soul Swap I agree in principle, target swapping is indeed terrible, but I don’t think the solution is to introduce Soul Swap.

I think an ability that let us apply all dots for a Shard would be better.

@Graypox-stormreaver

4.) Dark Glare indeed feels underwhelming. Having not played affliction before SL, it feels like Misery is THE dps CD, when it in fact is Dark Glare. Agree with combining.

This would be the solution for the last tier row, but in DF they completely change the Talent Tree system. I really hope they bring back malefi grasp and decimating bolt for a good snipe burst.

[Gowu-burning-legion]

@Graypox-stormreaver

2.) On Soul Swap I agree in principle, target swapping is indeed terrible, but I don’t think the solution is to introduce Soul Swap.

When Unstable Affliction is limit to one target, having a possibility to copy it, could benefit a player is some situations.

@Graypox-stormreaver

If the only ramp up Affliction warlock had was Corruption & UA, it wouldn’t have even close to the same target switch & GCD starvation problems.

Had some ideas before Shadowlands release:

Affliction Shadowlands – No Agony?

[Edited 07.09.2020 / Listed only changes] Affliction Shadowlands – No Agony? Introduction Hello all! Gowu here. I would like to share with you guys a fresh point of looking at the Affliction Warlock in Shadowlands. I’m playing Affliction since early TBC, my total days played at Destruction and Demonology you can count with your finger of the one hand. I believe current state of this specification does not cover all of the developed systems in the game. Affliction as we know it today been d…

I always remember a Woltk Affliction with warm heart… the most different was how Unstable Affliction was working.

In end we have like three options of Affliction:

• Woltk, Corruption (strong damage) and Unstable Affliction (strong damage) class.
• Legion, Agony (shard generation), Corruption (low damage) and Unstable Affliction/Seed of Corruption (Shard spend) spread damage class.
• Shadowlands, Agony (shard generation), Corruption (low damage), Unstable Affliction (medium damage, just single target) Malefic Wrath/Seed of Corruption (Shard spend).

In general, Affliction Warlock had always unique playstyle with focus on possibility to keep DoTs on many target and benefit from it.
In this case, in my opinin we should go deeper in this direction, but the strong damage from DoTs must be there.

At this moment Seed or Rapture is >40% of the damage which makes DoTs not line baseline spell, more like support spell. This should be little more opposite. DoT as main damage, Shards spender as the support damage like: with spending shard you can choose if you wanna deal Single Target damage, or AoE damage in support.

The most popular argument why Affliction can not have strong DoT damage, is example of council type of combats, where more that one targets is present in the combat for a long time of time, and DoT class which do X times more damage than any other.
But:

1. This is very strange that class design is done according to the boss encounter, not opposite. The encounters should be design with class in mind. Some type of encounters are not the must in the game, and can be replaced with more propert solution.
   2) There are typically very few council fights in any tier, and even then I’m pretty sure there is a way for designers to find elegant solution to DoT class not outstand with their damage.

In end, Affliction is like past Shadow… need a strong rework with incoming DF expansion, but I’m worry that the main focus will be putted into design new class.

[Graypox-stormreaver]

The main dots (Corruption, agony, UA & Siphon life) currenty do approx. 30-35% of the damage on single target, which is still quite a lot if you take into account that your pets do roughly 8% of total damage (Including Dark Glare). However upkeeping 3-4 dots is very GCD intensive and eats a lot of the joy, especially on multitarget.

I believe the Shadowlands style of affliction is a good concept with rapture as it gives on demand burst, which is needed in today’s wow. But with one less DOT to manage it would smoothen the spec so much.

And I do believe Blizzard will change the spec as long as the change(s) is elegant & simple and doesn’t require an overhaul. Thumbs up for suggesting removal of Agony already before

[Gowu-burning-legion]

In this case I think the Soul Shard spells should be feel more like bonus damage, not core of the output. Then the feeling of loosing time during Dotting-up could be feel a little less as waste

According below MIST run (with WoC Legendary, 75% up-time) could be not bad to aim Rapture as 20-25% of overall max, and move damage little more to DoTs.

Mist of the Tirna Scithe
Level 22 (34:07)

[Malefic Rapture ] 38.29%

[Agony] 17.18%
[Corruption ] 10.33%

[Vile Taint ] 9.86%
[Unstable Affliction ] 6.96%
[Soul Rot] 6.79%

[Nheedom ] 3.44%
[Darkglare]) 3.00%
[Drain Soul] 2.52%
[Seed of Corruption ] 1.18%

[Dæmonicus-twisting-nether]

Corruption and Siphon Life can be merged again like old times. Maybe they need to add some talent for GCD or add this to our mastery x points of mastery give us x sec for our GCD.GoSaC need to be reworked to and Haunt need to be baseline, DS to…And Soul Swap + Soulburn need to make a big return…

[Gowu-burning-legion]

@Dæmonicus-twisting-nether

Corruption and Siphon Life can be merged again like old times. Maybe they need to add some talent for GCD or add this to our mastery x points of mastery give us x sec for our GCD.GoSaC need to be reworked to and Haunt need to be baseline, DS to…And Soul Swap

This you can find under the link

With Haunt I proposed a solution to combine it with Unstable Affliction which embrace a DoT spreading and funnel damage.

@Gowu-burning-legion

Contagion [Battle for Azeroth baseline ability]
You deal 10% increased damage to targets affected by your Unstable Affliction.
Problem: Lack of priority damage coming from spreading a DoTs, witch anyway are not a impactful part of the damage at the moment.
Solution: Adding 10% to Unstable Affliction, remove Haunt because it is just another timer to maintain. The additional 1% damage effect will reward player for correcting playstyle of Affliction as damage over time spreader. As example:
“You deal 10% increased damage to targets affected by your Unstable Affliction and additional 1% for each Agony and Corruption at any target.”