Affliction lock feedback and some general ones

Classes Warlock
1

Since my rage post was actually removed as if we are in kinder-garden and we cannot say s*** or f** let’s make a decent one with some actual suggestions that will get ignored like the whole community is the past 5 or more years :

  1. Drain Soul : Please remove it or replace it with Malefic Grasp or what that spell was doing. Currently it is a DAMAGE LOSS … i mean how can you manage that seriously! This will increase ST dps.

  2. Nightfall : Increase the actual proc rate of this talent to bring it on some level with deathbolt so some people might actually use it. If people want shadow bolt specs have 2 choices this way multi target - single target … if you want drains you go with drain soul (improved one not the current s***)

  3. Seed of Corrpution : Decrease the actual cast time from the abysmal 2.2 secs to either instant with shard cost or to a 1s maybe with no shard cost this time … this might actually increase AoE dps and make affli a little more useful in m+ and raid aoe if needed and when.

  4. Sow the seeds : Just increase the number to 3 targets … its not like its going to do rogue, dk, boom, elemental dps anyway !!! but will make it competitive with the above change as well.

  5. Grimoire of Sacrifice : To even be competitive atm it needs and increase in dmg or ideally the splash dmg that was available at some point. this will add to aoe as well and be a viable choice. As it is now … its useless.

  6. Creeping Death : Should be way more powerful for a tier 7 talent … it cannot compete by any means to the misery talent and no matter how you play it atm it is bad. Should give a bit more strength to our dots on top of the current like 10% so it actually starts to seem on par. I like it personally alot but no way to make a use of it as it is …

  7. Burning Rush : make it a passive talent please … its our only speed increase and comes at a cost anyway so ye

  8. Darkfury : should be an instant cast since its on a 1min cd … yes its aoe stun and its powerful but the cast makes it somewhat badish

  9. Vile Taint : Was actually pretty happy to see it as a talent before expantion … until it actually came out to be worthless. Not compared in any way to PS mainly cause of the shard cost!! Remove the cost and maybe it will actually be of use in situations!!!

  10. Inevitable Demise : Gutting the azerite traits by 50% without even bothering to check the effect … was the only thing making affli viable in any pvp environment especially arenas and you wrecked it. Either restore this back to original and based on CORRUPTION not agony for pve as well or increase dot dmg to compensate since even dps classes outheal the dot dmg as it is .,…

  11. Demon armor : Was a good introduction after a long patch of being a punch bag … and was nerfed right the moment all melee got buffed … so back to punch bags almost … i mean why ? rly what is on your mind ?

  12. Please feel free to add any additional comments, ideas or feedback so we can all get ignored, but sucks to see top guild having 9 affli locks for a kill and all of them being 7-10k behind a SP in dps … this as side complain for a class that was actually the original dot dmg caster and pure dps class!

Thanks for your time and hope you like some of the above proposals.

5 Likes
2

Go away from Shadow bolt and give us drain back.

10 Likes
3

Just increase its damage to shadowbolt level (plus extra during execute phase) and make it give shards.

Either increase the proc rate or the damage done by the instant SB.

A 1,5 cast would be enough.

Agree.

Grim of sac needs to have the number of procs per minute unlimited.

Creeping death should be “extra 15% haste for dots” instead of “your dots deal damage 15% faster”. Dots lasts to little already, no need to make them shorter.

Burning rush stopped making sense when warlocks stopped having realiable self healing options. As it is it makes little to no sense.

If it was made baseline, we would still need something to take its place.

Agree. Warlocks have 0 baseline instant defensive abilities. They need one.

Vile taint also needs to be instant cast in order for it to be usable in pvp.

You can’t base anything on corruption due to the “permanent” corruption talent.

Demon armor was rightly nerfed. A pvp talent should not be mandatory. Problem was not giving afflilocks anything to compensate for the nerf. They needed something extra (personally, I would say self-healing).

  • Dot duration, because right now is absurd how with a Syphon Life build you can dot at max 3 targets.
  • Haunt is weak and unfun. A 10% damage increase of our dots and negligible extra damage in comparison to a shadow bolt… give its healing back to make it worth it in pvp.
  • Remove shadow embrace and put something interesting there.
  • Remove soul conduit and add something interesting there.
1 Like
4

In my opinion it is mandatory against melee since we are too squishy. No means of actual escape or space creation other than a portal that all classes can cover easily. Since almost all melee got some buffs since it was implemented it makes no sense to nerf it now …

It is not permanent in pvp and for pve should give some boost in certain fights

Yes something along this could be better indeed. i like the “bursty” idea behind the faster thing but should have some actual dmg on dots to make sense … if not your proposal seems more reasonable.

Indeed forgot those two completely since they are under a pile of dust from not using them … Something along the line of maybe CoS old style or passive haste like in pvp legion talent would make more sense.

All in all i think there are minor tweaks that don’t require so much work to implement that could bring more joy and quality of life in affli. Right now it’s … i dunno … very very bad in m+, bad to very bad in competitive pvp, and ok to good in some fights in raiding.

5

Warlock’s in general, not only affliction need changes in their toolkit.
Self-heals, CC(fears, stuns, slows) need some improvement, mobility should be buffed by reducing CD of Demonic gateways and Circle - we have a therriorital mobility, not freeroam mobility.
Warlocks in general in dire need of well thought work, that will not have such bizarre burst rotation and idiotic spell design.

6

Affliction needs effigy back.

7

Nop, that thing did not play well with movement- at some point it was just a cast macro sequence.

8

But except it did, even krosus you didn’t need to recast it if placed correctly.
Every rotation is a cast macro sequence

9

Affli need an actual gameplay design…

3 Likes
10

I would add (not necessarily affliction issues):

  • Succubus needs seduction to be made a fire and forget spell instead of a channeling, current design stopped making sense once the 30 second cooldown was added. And probably needs something else added, such as no longer sharing DRs with fear or being made instant.

  • Voidwalker and Imp need something added to them in order to be viable options in pvp.

  • Affliction needs takiness or self healing or both.

  • Soul strike should not be limited to felguard: for gods sake, it is not even a pet ability (it triggers the warlocks cdr)

  • Grimoire: felguard should be changed back to grimoire of service.

  • Dreadstalkers, summon vilefiend, and, in general, any other cooldown-limited resource spenders should be instant cast. Having to hard cast to generate resources and hard cast again to summon the demon makes these abilities useless in pvp.

1 Like
11

Change succubus incapacitating effect to a mind control.

12

What makes Nightfall and Sacrifice, and other similar things, so horrible is this hidden mechanic which tries to make them “balanced”.
Because these talents compete with other single target talents their proc chance is manipulated behind the scenes in such a way that regardless of how many corruptions you have active Nightfall has the same proc rate.
There are no words to describe how much i hate this type of garbage and i’m aware this was done with the purpose of limiting the potential of these talents.

I don’t care if they shuffle these talents around to preserve this “all single target on the same row” phylosophy but these talents need a FIXED proc chance.

Furthermore, beside buffing Nightfall a bit, i’d like to see some crit synergy with it, maybe giving it double proc chance when corruption crits.
This could be further improved by making a useless talent like “Shadow Embrace” increase crit damage, this way differing itself from Haunt.

Regarding Seed of Corruption i think the cast time is kinda irrelevant here, i don’t understand why it’s so high. Right now it doesn’t matter how fast you cast them, they could even be instant, because you’re still limited by shards and to a degree the detonation time.
As for the “Sow the seeds” talent i never liked this cleave idea, this talent right now could simply work as “Seed of corruption detonates twice” (and deals X% increased damage, if needed for balance purposes).

Lastly Creeping death is a curious talent and i don’t think the devs thought this through. Right now EXCLUDING unstable affliction from this talent would actually improve it.
There is no reason for unstable affliction to be there, after the merge with Contagion UA also acts as a debuff and creeping death REDUCES the duration of that debuff. Secondly Creeping death is designed to allow your regular dots to be cast more often, therefore do more damage, but UA can be stacked up to 5 times, it doesn’t have the same limitation as regular dots and and you can cast it as often as you want so it doesn’t benefit from creeping death at all.

13

I use drain soul because it feels more affliction like than just flogging SB’s at my enemy like some casual demon.

The point was to nerf warlock AOE, but they didn’t count that removing the corruption bomb nerfed AOE enough and now it’s just no-existent outside of PS.

Unending resolve

14

8 seconds uptime with 3 min CD…i feel so defensive, and unstoppable

15

It’s still a baseline instant defensive.

Unending Resolve - 8 seconds, interrupt/silence immunity, 40% reduct (3min CD)

Icebound Fort - 8 seconds, stun immunity, 30% dmg reduct (3 min CD)

Aspect of Turtle - 8 seconds, reflect attacks, cannot attack (3 min CD)

Karma - 10 seconds, damage reflect (1.5 min CD)

Dispersion - 6 seconds, 75% dmg reduct (2 min CD)

Astral Shift - 8 seconds , 40% dmg reduct (1.5 min CD)

Classes who have 1 defensive CD often have them with other gimmicks. Not all are created equal.
Having interrupt immunity and still being able to cast is strong, especially in comparison to things such as turtle or dispersion.

16

And now look at all those classes, they all don’t need to be absolutely stable to cast their attacks, they all have mobility, they all can actively evade damage.
Icebound Fort - is not the only defence spell in DK spellbook, they aslo has antimagic shell for example, and variety of talents in order to defende themselfs.
hunters can fake death to evade damage, Aspect of Turtle is not their only defence spell.
Monks with carma with their mobility can evade all sorts of damage with ease.
Priests have shields on top of their shields and dispersion.
Astral shift is amazing spell that works great with other shaman self defence spells like their knockback and self-heals.

And what warlocks have base line? Unedning resolve, soulleech that requires you to deal damage in order to have shields, but with interupt vulnerability, low mobility and cast nature off all spells, you can’t normaly gain those shields without demon skin talent.

17

What about remove retatded UA stacks as it was before changes in early Legion. Spam UA and shadow Bolt its not about affliction spec. If you want hard cast you always can go to destru spec.
Sorry If my English bad. Peace.

1 Like
18

I actually meant a CC. Right now afflilocks have to choose between 0 mobility (demonic gateway excluded) and 0 instant CC.

I would add to the list: in order for affli to be viable, it needs for fear to last more than 2 seconds. I just tested in the freaking mugambala dummies and with 3 dots it broke in the first tick of the dots 90% of the time. And that was without even ramping CoA.

19

First of all I’d like to clarify I am not aff player, was Demo before legion and in Legion only briefly played Aff in Legion after implosion became obsolete, so I have general idea but I am not expert by any means and I will also speak from PoV of PvPer so I might not adress many issues PvEers have so sorry for that.

I think Drain soul worked well as nuking ability and had very strong implications that drain life is more than just random ability for Affliction since the spec gave it new purpose, I think the spell suits nuking target with DOTs pretty well, so I think it should again be baseline and include effects of MG

Ngl, Nightfall is absolutely garbage talent, shadowbolt is not any huge DPS ability nor does it generate anything, so whats the point of getting insta cast ability to poke the enemy a little bit. Yes it should apply to Deathbolt too, or Deathbolt only and for that to work Deathbolt should be baseline, but honestly to me deathbolt feels like baseline spell to begin with so I think that needs happen too.

Can’t say much about Seed of Corruption or sow the seeds, during my brief time as affy I did not really get to use them in PvP myself.

I don’t really like this talent but yeah the DPS should be increased if this is supposed to be a viable choice.

Me too personally. I love this ability and I’d like it to be buffed, however they should do it in moderation and I am not sure if I am willing to trust Blizzard with that.

As for me as PvPer burning rush is garbage and not usefull to me at all, I understand why you might need it in PvE but in that area I dont have too much to say as I am not experienced in Raid enviroments. As for making it passive talent, I feel like I’d much rather have Demonic Circle baseline, which was supposed to always be baseline anyway.

Darkfury is garbage talent. No it should not anything. The talent feels to be made arbitrarily. It feels to me like they made Shadowfury have long cooldown only to put this talent in. No, Shadowfury should have shorter cooldown baseline instead of ridiculous talent that isn’t even best in the tier. And yes it should be insta cast too, but we don’t need a talent for that, Shadowfury casting time makes no sense to begin with and removing the cast time would save lifes.

Can’t say much about Vile taint

Demon armor is really strong talent. So while I am not happy with the nerf I don’t feel to sad about it either. What I have to say though is this talent feels very mandatory and I’d like Blizz to adress that (Though I suspect their way of adressing things is removing it, so please don’t do that and think it over properly)

let me then provide my own input on talents, since I think there is some input I can give

Tier 1-
Already adressed this, the first one should not exist and is useless or has to be reworked. The other two are baseline.
What I would put here is one ability in some way buffing drain soul and another buffing deathbolt adding some interesting effect to these abilites. And then maybe something related to DOTs and soul leech, no idea for the last one.

Tier 2
Honestly persoanlly I’d love to have both Absolute corruption and writhe in Agony at once but I understand why they did this, and understand why this choice is important so I’d keep them like that but one thing I think should be brought back is 20 stacks of Agony again instead of 15.
Soul siphon seems like pretty good DOT but I dont think it has place on this tier since you are loosing lot of passive damage if you pick it, honestly I’d make it baseline for affy
Tier 3
As I always say Demon skin feels like mandatory ability should be baked into soul leech. Instead put Dark regen back there and make people choose between shield to soak in burst and healing cooldown.

Tier 4
Keep it the same. Maybe just buff some abilities a bit?

Tier 5
Again Darkfury is garbage. Cooldown of shadowfury was made so long for this ability to work rather than the other way around and should be down from the start. Just please remove this talent and put something usefull in here, maybe Howl of terror or something.

Mortal coil-Very good talent, doing good job, keep it as it is.

DC-make this baseline. Instead add talent that makes Demonic gateway insta cast and increase your movement speed after using it.

Tier 6
Shadow embrace-Yeah just make this use drain soul as source instead and its fine.

Haunt-its good burst ability. Whether it belongs on this row, thats a question I can’t answer but I like the spell regardless.

Grimoire-Yeah I dont like this ability, it seems pretty pointless to be, but I wouldn’t mind if it stayed here.

Final tier

Soul conduit- Shards were not a problem and this talent was nerfed anyway, just feels like leftover from Legion that is going to be leaving us very soon. If you want to generate soulshards, at least add talent that gives some of your other dots change to also generate them.

Creeping death-Love this. Maybe slightly buff it, but otherwise it makes sense on this tier.

DS: Misery
Yeah this is good, keep it there.

Hope I gave at least some valuable insight into this, sorry if I did not.

20

I’m surprised I don’t hear this complaint more often, it’s exactly the reason why I stopped playing Lock, UA turret is just a boring and terrible design.