Update 02/2022 | Affliction Warlock M+ performance feedback
Changes marked with underline .
Wanted to share my feedback on Affliction in M+. After 6 years and 3 expansions there is no more hope to make it enjoyable and competitive… after done a lot of keys on live I will try to provide my feedback as always before.
On the beginning I would like to counter the Blizzard statement that the point of the WoW playing is to kill a boss or time a key as a group of people. From a player perspective it is only half true. Modification this statement would be “the point of the WoW playing is to kill a boss or time a key as a group of people, while having a feeling of bringing a value to the group”. With doing 1/4 overall damage less you feel like handbrake for a whole group. It’s even worse if you miss completing challenge by just a little and feeling guilty as you didn’t want to play better performing class/specialization.
In overall I’m disappointed by developers’ team, that during Dragonflight testing period Affliction received not enough of focus compared to other DoT combat style specializations, like Shadow or Feral as example.
Affliction is a mix of many good ideas which in the end not working in one cup. It would be appreciated from community point to see more detailed description how Affliction should work in developer’s mindset for PvE both single and multi-target scenarios. Typically, when we look at Balance or Shadow design, we feel like we their test grounds and, in the end, all good ideas are going to them. In general, the playstyle of Affliction feels still very clunky in M+ scenarios. So far in PvP situations Affliction looks working, luckily for PvP some over or under performing spells can be always % modified separate from PvE.
Personally, in my opinion the Affliction strengths should be:
- mobile soul master who bases mostly on instant spells, including those on which he is spending his soul shards,
- calmful strategist of the battlefield, who spend most of the time of looking out of opportunities to deal most damage to its enemies with his powerful spells,
- spending period between casting deadly spells during combat to refresh his damage over time effects and gather soul shard to prepare to another harmful combo upon enemies,
- most dangerous when enemy is weakening and close to death, using it as opportunity to deal finishing damage.
Existing and new problems in the nutshell:
- Soul Shards spending – in multi target situations our main shard spender is Seed of Corruption, in single target it is Malefic Rapture. Comparing to the Shadow Priest for both Mind Sear and Devouring Plague spells it takes 3 seconds to dry out Insanity. Affliction on another hand needs 5x2.5=12.5 seconds for Seed of Corruption and 5x1.5=7.5 seconds for Malefic Rapture to spend all his soul shards. Due to this it’s very hard (impossible) to find time to refresh Agony on multiply target. In case of single target with all damage over time spells juggling it makes rotation very trafficked.
- Agony refreshing – in multi target situations due to the Vile Taint applying Agony in worst case scenario there are 8 Agony to refresh on same timer. To been able to do that you need 8x1.5=12 seconds to refresh all of them (+ human mistake factor), with Agony lasting 18 seconds it means 2/3 of the time you spend to refreshing Agony and Drakglare is not always available to extend its duration. By doing that you are not spending Shards and sit far behind other damage dealers.
- DoTs timer not extending while spending Soul Shards – one reason of it is losing Deliberate Malice, in comparison Shadow have a talent which extends his DoTs duration when he spends his Insanity for AoE or cast filler spell. Additionally, the damage-over-time extending effect should work with all shard spending and hard-cast abilities like Malefic Rapture and Seed of Corruption. This effect did very well for Affliction when it came during Shadowlands season 3. I understand that in the past, the two seconds extension could move away Affliction little too much from necessity of refreshing dots. A key result that would be welcome would be the possibility to spend shards without worrying about DoTs expiring in the process, but also not keeping Affliction away from needing to refresh its DoT.
- Shard lacking to open the combat – in case of low hp enemies combat it is very often happening that you cannot prepare shards for next pack as everything’s dying in microseconds. In the current toolkit as the Affliction we don’t have any spell which would allow emergency backup of shards up to 3 when out of combat. This is most harmful when there is no single shard to cast Vile Taint. As example, Shadow got their Shadow Crash which generates 15 Insanity, when we use similar logic for Affliction then the Vile Taint would generate 1 Soul Shard instead of consuming it.
Existing and new problems in the details:
Malefic Rapture
Due to the number of available DoTs between single target and multi target the Malefic Rapture is hard to tune correctly. In most drastic scenario between single target and multi target we would consider:
Single Target
- Constant: (1) Agony, (2) Corruption, (3) Unstable Affliction, (4) Siphon Life,
- On-Cooldown: (5) Phantom Singularity, (6) Soul Rot (if talented)
Multi Target
- Constant: (1) Agony, (2) Corruption,
- On-Cooldown: (3) Vile Taint, (4) Soul Rot (if talented)
- Unstable Affliction does not count as Multi Target.
this cause almost 50% different in sustain situation, which should be strength of Affliction according to Alpha blue post about Affliction. In this case it would be best to reduce number of available DoTs or cap Malefic Rapture like Withering Bolt talent.
Would not also mind seeing changing Malefic Rapture into Rapid Contagion but with some remarks:
- 1 Soul Shard, instant, effect can stack up, but duration of each stack is not refreshed,
- For the next 20 sec, all your damage over time effects occurs 10% more often per stack.
It would unify PvE and PvP Soul Shard spenders, Rapid Contagion was good and quick fix in Shadowlands expansion but when we coming into Dragonflight it’s weird that Affliction warlock have to use two different spenders in PvE and PvP, from fresh player perspective it can be confusing. From advancer player perspective it can be found as laziness in design.
Unstable Affliction
At the current state an Unstable Affliction is doing barely same damage as Agony with Writhe in Agony, which is weird as the Unstable Affliction is limited to one target and should be one of our best performing single target damage ability. Later in the tree it can be buffed it with Malefic Affliction, which is nice, but require casting Malefic Rapture which provides additional ramping time for the specialization and does not work with Seed of Corruption.
Possible solution: Unstable Affliction could be our additional Soul Shard spender which is focused on single target damage:
- 1 Soul Shard cost,
- limit up to three targets how it’s already working in PvP,
- limit up to one Unstable Affliction can be placed on the target.
Additionally, with adding Soul Shard cost it would justify tuning up damage of the spell. Possibility of affecting up to 3 targets would help Affliction in case of sustain 2-3 target fights where Affliction is already one of the weakest in PvE.
Seed of Corruption
Design of this spell is outdated after 20 years, this should be our strong (and visually enjoyable) spell but with current version I got feeling like I’m still in Wrath of the Lich King. Cast time of 2.5 second is a too long as explained before, it should allow us to spend Soul Shards fast, so we have time to refresh Agony on multiply targets. To be clear, Affliction need a spell which works like Seed of Corruption, during the combat with low HP adds there is no time to spread DoTs in standard way. With Seed of Corruption, you can deal good multi target damage for a relatively short window of time, like in case of Tree boss in Academy or first boss in Ruby Life Pools.
Possible solution: Seed of Corruption should be our Soul Shard spender which is focused on stacked multi target damage:
- 10-12yd area AoE channeled spell (like Rain of Fire but channeled),
- 1 Soul Shard per second cost, channeled,
- with cool souls surrounding area themed animation,
- dealing x shadow damage and applying Corruption to the targets which are affected from its damage.
Xavian Teachings
Corruption must be instant baseline for Affliction. It would be good spot for Drain Soul as both Single Target and AoE build might need easy access to it.
Shadow Embrace
With currently Affliction ramp-up time this talent gives even more delay to it. Great to see another Unstable Affliction talent like Contagion .
Harvest of Souls
Nice talent, on paper. In the end low damage and low healing. With current tuning not worth of 2 points.
Agonizing Corruption
Two-point investment feel little too much in the current form, as it brings no value after Agony reach 18 stacks.
Possible solution: In addition to basic functionality, when Seed of Corruption explode on target with maximum Agony stacks it extends its duration by x/y seconds.
Drain Soul
As there are Shadowbolt and Drain Soul lovers it’s logical solution to keep a filler as a choice for Affliction.
Comparing in the current form it’s too high in the talent tree, it would be good to move it into a third row and make Corruption instant as baseline. In addition, as this is our filler spell it would have more sense if it would generate Soul Shard during draining (like almost all Shadow spells build Insanity).
Siphon Life
Personally, I’m not a fan of Siphon Life since it came back. I don’t agree that a complexity of the Affliction and its rotation should be locked behind increasing number or damage-over-time effects and things to maintain. Malefic Affliction and Dread Touch provides already more interesting playstyle.
Additionally, instead of keeping Siphon Life still in the game it would rather prefer to rip it out and change Absolute Corruption target to extend Corruption duration instead making it infinite duration.
Phantom Singularity / Vile Taint
As long as both single target and multi target build want to have access to one of those talents, it should be good to move it more into middle.
For Vile Taint being count by Malefic Rapture, I don’t like cooldown extension up to 30 second without compensate to damage or its duration. By addition, you would like to cast it in M+ at 30% of pack HP to deal more damage by Malefic Rapture as Seed of Corruption is too long cast, but you know the cooldown will not refresh uniting next pack. Adding an Agony and curse spreading into this spell was good step but need to keep it mind this it’s still one of our main damage abilities with the current stage of Malefic Rapture.
Possible solution: If Affliction is going to be more sustain damage dealer with would be good to remove applying additional damage over time effect (Vile Taint dot) and replace it with Corruption, also keep Agony and Curse as it is. Then it would be possible to tune Malefic Rapture damage around a smaller number of available damage over time effects.
Soul Swap
Current problem with this spell is that you will lose Malefic Affliction stacks if new target dies before next Soul Swap is ready. In case of M+ this is huge disadvantage.
Possible solution: What would make it work in PvE and solve losing Malefic Affliction stacks is to make it apply also 35-40 second debuff, if targets die during this time the Unstable Affliction is coming back to previous target.
Pandemic Invocation
Basic UI does not show DoT timers. In current form this talent does not make any sense as it requires additions addons or Weakauras.
Sacrolash’s Dark Strike
Death talent after nerfs. If the problem is PvP then it should be reduced just there.
Tormented Crescendo
As o damage over time manager, I think you would like to be more predictable of your rotation and go away from random procs which forcing you a spell to press. In addition, it would be much better if it would just generate a shard instead of making Malefic Rapture free cost cause then you can use it for Seed of Corruption also.
Wrath of Consumption
Completely death in Single Target. I understand that this is in AoE talents area but making last tier talent which totally 0% value in any scenario is not ok. Could be reworked into old Affliction talent cause as the playstyle is ramping up damage over time and starts slowly, it would be good to compensate it with health going lower.
Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Drain Soul deal up to 50% increased damage on targets below 35% health. Higher damage increase against lower health targets.
Malefic Affliction / Doom Blossom / Dread Touch
Huge disappointing it does not work with Seed of Corruption, this would open possibility of new multi target builds combined with priority damage Single Target.
In addition to Malefic Affliction bug which was fixed on end of January I’m going to miss it from M+ perspective. More I was thinking about it, more I had feeling that it was not breaking the game. The key aspect of ability was still to not let Unstable Affliction drop.
Additional problems which were solved with this bug:
- Priority target swapping - with Malefic Affliction does not drop, you feel more freedom about changing priority target during the combat (let’s be honest, Soul Swap in the current form solves nothing, 1 shard cost and 30 seconds is too restrictive).
- No interaction with Seed of Corruption - at the current form Malefic Affliction does not gain stacks when casting Seed of Corruption, this is little shame as it is also our shard spender. With bug it’s no longer a problem as you are carrying stacks from pack to pack.
Summon Darkglare / Antoran Plating / Wilfred / Grim Reach
General remarks across all warlock specializations pets: Big pets should have as baseline a minor version of talents like Reign or Tyranny or Grim Reach, other way choosing mentioned talents making too big step forward into a damage gain and makes picking cooldown reduction talent no point.
Same as in Affliction tree, the problem is that Darkglare without AoE talent will do 2% damage, so there is no point into reducing its Cooldown.
Soul Rot / Soul-Eater’s Gluttony / Decaying Soul Satchel
Well, not fan of it. It’s only there to increase amount of damage over time effect for Malefic Rapture and Darkglare. It’s misunderstanding from Shadowlands in mine opinion, the covenant ability was not good, it was just best from the worst.
I understand it’s performing outstanding in PvP scenarios and can be one of PvP talents.
