Hello, wanted to give a good chunk of honest feedback about specific interaction between the affliction specialisation and the tier set that would most likely be overlooked if left as is. For context, I am a warlock main of many years started in BC playing on and off until shadowlands where I started really grinding the game. I’ve reached top 10 warlock world in mythic+ Io in Season 4 Dragonflight and has been a high rated warlock since Dragonflight Seasom 2. I’ve also got every cutting edge since Dragonflight season 1 progressing as a warlock every time.
The current tier set has a lot of issues that don’t stem from a tunning standpoint on the current PTR. The community of affliction warlocks is, at the moment, feeling completely powerless relatively to the state of the specialisation. Even after the rework of the specialisation tree going from dragonflight to the war within, some of these issues have never been adressed & will only get worse as we arrive into undermined with this new gimmicks.
- The new Unstable affliction provided by the new class set fundamentally doesn’t synergize with almost any of our current talents. Oblivion, Withering bolt, PU, Death Embrace & more. None of these affect it despite them even labelling the spell in question. The same goes for tormendo crescendo, one if not the core spell to the specialisation. Matter of fact, even demonic soul from our Soul Harvester Hero talent seem to completely ignore this new unstable affliction.
- This new unstable affliction tier set limits our choice greatly: It currently is only activated by getting a buff called “Jackpot!” which is only obtained doing direct damage to your target. Dot ticks do nothing to help you towards that goal. It is directly anty-synergistic to one of our main spell & probably one of the most iconic affliction spell drain soul as ticks of it do not count as direct damage basically locking us into using shadow bolt for the remainder of the upcoming tier. For a specialisation that rely on damage overtime for the majority of ifs damage, shadowbolt and malefic rapture being the only ways of activation feels awkward.
- Affliction is currently one of the spec with a tier set that doesn’t have a 2 piece combo that is thematic to the spec. The current jackpot proc is a simple 12% haste buff compared to the other specialisations on the same class getting new spells or effects like greather dreadstalkers or demonfire infusion.
- Again, this above results in anti-synergies in our current tree: The spell Phantom singularity is a prime example. The tier set currently scales with the secondary stat haste for it’s proc rate and effect. The higher your haste, the more chances you have to be lucky and get a “jackpot!”. Phantom singularity duration as a dot reduces with more haste so stacking haste is not an option if you want to raid since we use the combination of this spell + infirmity which is a 10% flat damage increase for the duration of phantom singularity. We now have a set that promotes the use of haste and even gives some to us vs a spell that fundamentally hate haste which in return makes it a worse version than currently without any tunning.
- There is no visual difference between this new Unstable affliction & the one i am directly casting. Like mentioned, despite being a new unstable dot with a different duration, the spell doesn’t work with a lot of talent and thus isn’t as valuable as the one I am casting myself but there is no visual indicator or virtually any visual difference between the 2. It makes the gameplay that much more convoluted when the specialisation is one that needs the most external assistance currently in the game (weakauras, addons) to properly function. You then need even more external assistance from addons to make the difference yourself between your own dot and the applied dot. It makes tracking your dots harder since you need to know which target has the “right” dot so you can prioritize that target with your filler spells.
I only touched the tip of the iceberg that is affliction as there is simply a lot more to cover that isn’t specifically tied to the tier set but makes the specialisation simply worse to pick & play compared to the 2 other spec the class has access to.
Also not mentioning the potential degenerate gameplay this tier set promotes at the start of encounters (proc, holding cooldowns for procs, behaviour on single target figjts etc).
A lot of us in the community wish to have fun with the spec but it is really afflicted by a lot of issues affecting directly its gameplay and making the wow experience not so enjoyable & I hope this can be the start of our conversation into making it better for everyone.