So once I saw blizzard patch notes for 9.1 and nerfs affliction received, I want to state issues and notes from Affliction playstyle. All this is since I play in high rated Arenas.
I’ve seen many people was not happy with sacrolash slow, and how it’s annoying to play against.
What advantages Sacrolash gave to warlock pvp gameplay:
- Save globals to apply Curse of Exhaustion slow.
- Have additional dispel protection ( Players who want to dispel Corruption to remove slow will have to dispel UA in which case they will have silence effect.
- Movement control, higher ability to kite and move to a safer positioning when only defensive spell “Unending resolve” and Portal is on cooldown.
Counter classes which don’t get affected by Sacrolash or can remove slow effect when it needed:
- Druid any specs ( can shapeshift and remove sacrolash slow)
- Hunter’s ( feign death legendary allow them to remove dot’s without any damage taken every 15 sec)
- Monks any class ( healing spheres, sprints, reverse, etc. can remove sacrolash slow effect)
- Rogues (Sprint, Cloak of shadows)
- Demon hunters (reverse magic)
- Paladin (freedom)
- Death knight (wraith walk)
- Warrior ( avatar)
- Priest ( Shadow and holy mass dispel with fade)
Melee uptime on a warlock with Sacrolash legendary equiped:
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Warrior around 85% Venthyr condemn charge (doesnt have cooldown can be used almost everytime ) charge, leap ( with leap legendary 100% uptime).
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DH 90% uptime ( no need to mention what spells he have)
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WW Monk 95% uptime
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Rogue 85-90 % uptime
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Retribution paladin 50%-70% uptime
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Death Knight 80-90% uptime.
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Casters uptime can vary. Warlock can still play the game facing caster teams.
Affliction warlock burst cooldown usage ( Dark Souls, Darkglare) and counter plays by other classes:
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Shaman - Grounding totem, Purge, Shear, Lasso, pet stun, incap totem. ( Purge has no cooldown, instantly removes dark souls from warlock)
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Priest - Dispel magic, Fade + mass dispel ( Dispel magic has no cooldown Allowing instantly remove darksouls)
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Mage - Kleptomania, Spell steal ( we know that mage will only use any of these abilities when facing warlock to steal hes darksouls, Yay free Haste buff for mage)
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Death knight - Anti magic shell, anti magic zone
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Demon hunter - Reverse magic
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Monk - healing spheres, Karma , Diffuse magic
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Warriors - Spell reflect, mass spell reflect, Over watch
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Hunters - Feign death
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Rogues - Cloak of shadows, Feint
*All these listed classes spells which counters Affliction warlock burst damage are not major defensive abilities, most of them are either minor or it has low cooldown.
Warlock surivability gameplay:
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Rogues -
Unending resolve can be forced in opener placing major defensive ability on 3 min cooldown. Warlock can be killed on next Rogue damage rotation. -
Demon Hunters - With reverse Magic and hunt ability Demon hunters can force warlock major defensives very fast, creating a space for a kill while unending resolve is not available, As Major damage cooldowns are faster than Unending resolve.
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Warriors - With new covenant abilites such as Condemn and leap legendaries combined with spell reflects and intervenes, warrior can really punish warlock without even receiving fatal damage.
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Windwalker monks - Have same amount or even more mobility than warlock, Warlock have absolutely 0 chance to avoid windwalker damage, With new legendaries, and covenant abilities Windwalker monks can kill warlock within 2 minutes or less.
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Hunter - With new meta on Beast master combined with Feign death legendary, He can ignore warlock until he use He uses PVE rotation and kill warlock, Beast master immunity to fear effects and removal dots with feign death legendary makes warlock absolutely useless against that class.
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Death knight - with current meta on death knight, Warlock have 50-50 % win rate against death knight, As in current meta DK cannot do high amount of damage or self healing to pressure enough alone. What to mention that death knight anti magic shell does not allow warlock to use dots/drains on DK while magic shell is active, which means for full duration you can just afk.
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Mage - Class which receives biggest bonus when facing warlocks, can spell steal haste buff making warlock useless, have ability to restore combustion faster than any of warlock cooldowns.
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Shaman - Class which loves to face warlock as he can purge and delete warlock within 1 min of storm keeper cooldown, making warlock unplayable against that class.
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Shadowpriest - The only class which still can fight long enough against warlock to either loose or win.
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Feral, boomkin - can kill warlock in any situation with a new abilites, combined with
unavoidable silences and stun potential. Can still play against these classes and pray that they will use any of their spell unwisely.
**To sum up: **
Affliction warlock does not have enough defensive abilites or offensive abilites to punish enemy class.
Few of them:
Affliction warlock dot damage is lower than dk instant spread damage - Corruption and agony barely does 200-300 damage per tick.
Unstable affliction damage does 500 damage per tick
Talent choice is purely designed.
Nightfall - does not give any benefit from shadowbolts as they hit around 800- 1k
Drain life - is the only viable option during pvp combat combined with Night fae covenant ability.
Drain soul - useless low damage spell which can be interrupted.
Writhe of agony - another useless talent , cause of many classes have decurse ability.
Absolute Corruption - it’s only viable option to pick as it gives more time for your globals.
Demon skin - is only viable spell for that row, it heals atleast something.
Phantom singularity - is only viable option for that row, as it gives instant spell, Unfortunately it does 200 damage per tick and heals for 20 health per tick, isn’t that funny?
Howl of terror - best of choice for affliction warlock to play
Sacrifice - is the best option to pick from a list of talent tree.
Dark soul - Best choice to pick as it gives highest boost to ur damage ( unfortunately It was made to be dispelled by other classes, so 7 of 10 classes can remove or steal ur MAJOR damage booster)
PVP talents:
Only few to choose and cannot be replaced like Rampant afflictions, in pvp situation u have to use it perma and cannot replace it.
and few other options demon armor, nether ward, demonic gateway, rapid contagion
that’s the only pvp talents which can be used during pvp combat, other listed are not viable in any pvp content.
Defensives:
Unending resolve - Cooldown 3 minutes, 90% of the classes have their offensive cooldowns on 2 minutes or either less, making major warlock cooldown to 3 minutes makes it vulnerable to most aspects of pvp combat.
Demonic gateway - another long cooldown defensive ability, supportive ability which helps in really minor situations.
Portal - good defensive ability with very high counter play. As we know almost every class has really high mobility to chase down on that portal and finish up warlock.
Other than that there are no active defensive abilites.
Nether ward - can be spell stolen, dispelled, Situational against caster teams.
Demon armor- does not save you from dying To codemn ( shadow damage) warrior, combustion, or retribution paladin ( MAGIC DAMAGE).
Drain life - Heals absolutely nothing.
Also to mention Only viable comp to play is Shadowplay - all because of Mindgames.
Other than that are either not viable with affliction or has low viable option.
Thanks for you patience to read that, hopefully you guys had a great time with affliction or not, see you in next major patch, Reroll destro for another 4-5 seasons until new patch comes in. I promise you Destro will be very good, With all these haste increase and changes to destruction sounds promising 
R.I.P Affliction, you will be back in Burning crusade classic enjoy! 
Have a great one, atleast