Affliction Warlock Feedback/Wishlist

[Rotscythe-kazzak]

Hello,
Affliction player here for a very long time, here are the things I would like to see changed to the spec as a whole in order to target the weaknesses and problems it currently has:

• Volatile Agony(Talent): Refreshing Agony with 10 or less seconds remaining deals (% of Spell power) Shadow damage to its target and enemies within 10 yards. Deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets. Duration of Agony is increased by 5 seconds
  The current state of the talent is very underwhelming and it doesn’t do much outside of the last 10s of Agony, making it last longer will allow for higher uptime via Vile Taint removing the need to spend a lot of global cooldowns to maintain it on 8 targets
• Writhe in Agony(Talent):Agony’s damage starts at 4 stacks and may now ramp up to 18 stacks. Agony damage is increased by 20%
  The ramp up time of Agony is an old mechanic and a bit underwhelming, making it just be a flat damage increase to Agony will be much better
• Seed of Corruption(Talent): Embeds a demon seed in the enemy target that will explode after 12 sec, dealing (% of Spell power) Shadow damage to all enemies within 20 10 yards and applying Corruption to them. The seed will detonate early if the target is hit by other detonations, or takes (Spell power * 50 / 100) damage from your spells. Shard cost removed
  Seed of Corruption shouldn’t cost from resources. It used to be your major AoE spender but not anymore. It will open up the possibility of other talents being picked like Siphon Life. Also increasing the range of the explosion which applies Corruption will allow for better dot management
• Vile Taint(Talent): Unleashes a vile explosion at the target location, dealing (% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 10 sec to 8 enemies within 10 yds and applies Agony and Curse of Exhaustion to them. Shard cost removed and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds
  Vile Taint costing a shard again doesn’t feel right when you can spend a shard on Malefic Rapture or Soulburn for extra utility. Damage overtime effects shouldn’t be costing resources for them to be spread to more targets. Also lowering the cooldown of Vile Taint will make maintaining Agony easier and will flow much better with the rest of the spec. Removing the ability for Vile Taint to apply Curse of Exhaustion will be a nice quality of life improvement so it doesn’t interfere with your other curses
• Phantom Singularity(Talent): Removed
  I think this talent doesn’t work out with the rest of the spec, maybe it should be redesigned into something else but to me Vile Taint will be more desired if its made right
• Infirmity(Talent): Removed
• Shadow Embrace(Talent): Haunt(Drain Soul / Shadow Bolt) applies Shadow Embrace, increasing your damage dealt to the target by 4% (Drain Soul: 2% / 4%) for 18 16 sec. Stacks up to [Drain Soul: 4 / 2] times. (Swapped places with Improved Haunt(Talent))
  Having only Haunt to apply Shadow Embrace will be much better without the need to stack it up
• Improved Haunt(Talent): Increases the damage of Haunt by 35% and reduces its cast time by 25%. Haunt now applies Shadow Embrace. Now baseline.
  Having faster Haunt cast time as baseline will be nice addition to the spell
• Improved Shadow Bolt(Talent)/Drain Soul(Talent): Separated, no longer a choice node
• Improved Shadow Bolt(Talent): Reduces the cast time of Shadow Bolt by 15% and increases its damage by 40%.
  Spending the Nightfall procs on Shadow Bolt during movement will allow for a better mobility of the spec
• Oblivion(Talent): Removed
  I haven’t seen any use of Oblivion in PvE, maybe in PvP can also be made back as a PvP talent as it used to be
• Drain Soul(Talent): Placed on the talent node of Oblivion
  Making Drain Soul be used along side Shadow Bolt will give back that execute feel of Affliction whenever a target is at or below 20% and Shadow Bolt outside of it and also make the Nightfall procs be used for mobility
• Perpetual Unstability(Talent): The cast time of Unstable Affliction is reduced by 20%. Refreshing Unstable Affliction with 8 or less seconds remaining deals (% of Spell power) Shadow damage to its target. Haunt refreshes the duration of Unstable Affliction
  The damage part of this talent is not that great and it doesn’t bring anything useful other than the faster cast time. Haunt refreshing the duration of Unstable Affliction will be a nice quality of life improvement

There are a lot of other things I would like to see improved but generally these are the things that I think are the most needed right now. I’m not perfect so some things might be wrong but at least I hope some things can act as a guiding points for improving Affliction.

[Loi-garrosh]

I have just two wished for affliction.

1. Take away rapture. I want the majority of my DMG to come from my dots.
2. Make affliction the super mobile spec.
   Let us do almost anything on the go

[Mera-twisting-nether (Mera)]

I’m happy with affliction, and I’ve been playing the spec since WotLK. Rapture is fine, those who hate it just need to get over it.

If there was ONE THING they could fix, is making it so that Agony and Vile Taint CD lined up so that Agony wouldn’t need to be manually refreshed, but that’s about it.

Also, I do still miss my doomguard buddy.

Those are the only changes I’d like to see. I have nothing else to complain about.

[Jsnschntzlr-twisting-nether]

Only thing I would like to see for affliction currently is some QOL in m+, maybe 10sec reduced CD on vile taint and/or 2 stacks… or why not just buff rapture and make agony just 1 target only, remove vile taint and just keep phantom singularity. its pretty annoying to manually reapply rupture in aoe.