Feedback and a few thoughts about Affliction:
*
*
*
- Hellcaller
Hellcaller has terrible utility/defensive talent options (it’s true for Destruction as well).
Illhoof’s Design is simply a 10% health nerf to the warlock. Since we can’t replenish our Soul Leech shield and it’s the first absorb to break, it doesn’t matter that we can get a bigger max shield. This talent is a trap, and it’s been like this since TWW beta. It needs a big Soul Leech generation buff (maybe a % of non overheals received contribute to Soul Leech), or it needs to be replaced.
Zevrim’s Resilience is a pretty bad talent. It’s better than the alternative because at least it’s not a nerf. The healing should last 20s no matter if the shield breaks or not. If your Dark Pact holds 20s and you get value from this talent, then you should not have cast Dark Pact in the first place.
Aura of Enfeeblement still exists. In TWW beta it was AOE curses but it got changed just before TWW release into its current form. It’s very bad, very weak and noone should pick this. Noone would ever cast Unending Resolve to trigger this, and applying curses would have no impact whether or not you survive.
This talent is made entirely useless with Foul Mouth in the class tree.
Curse of the Satyr is becoming a bit better, since it saves you a talent point in the class tree.
Also, Unstable Afflictions don’t build stacks of Blackened Soul.
*
*
*
- Soul Harvester
Soul Harvester simply doesn’t work at the moment with the changes to Affliction
Demonic Souls don’t work with either Unstable Affliction or Seeds of Corruption. Casting either does consume the stack but triggers no effect. The 5% damage buff to UA is meaningless. Seeds of Corruption needs a corresponding buff.
Necrolyte Teachings doesn’t work with Malefic Grasp, it’s a big loss for Soul Harvester.
We need to be able to track our Manifested Avarice spawn via the Cooldown Manager.
Wicked Reaping is broken and doesn’t work.
Shadow of Death is in a bad spot with Cull the Weak in the spec tree:
- In AOE you can cast Dark Harvest every 30s or so with poor gear and so generate 3 extra shards. We can’t spend those shards, we don’t have the time.
- And in Single Target you don’t really want to play Dark Harvest at all, since it doesn’t scale with mastery and doesn’t do that much damage in ST. And even if you were to play it then it’s way weaker than in AOE with a fixed 1min CD
- Shadow of Death needs a rework, probably a new trigger, and I think it should always summon the Demonic Soul from Manifested Avarice to make it punchier.
*
*
*
- Apex Talents
Nathrezims are really cool (although Shadowlands has hurt their brand in my opinion), but I just don’t understand what it’s doing as a theme for Affliction.
I do not understand why Haunt would summon the ghost of a Dead Nathrezim that would then launch a fragment of its destroyed planet onto our enemies but actually Nathrezim were made in the Shadowlands so did they ever have a planet?
It is so random, so out of place. Tt has absolutely no synergy with the rest of the Apex talents and even less with the spec.
First, Shadow of Nathreza Dot should scale with the spec’s mastery.
The capstone for me just doesn’t work and doesn’t make sense. The Nathrezim is massive and takes up a lof of space. It deals 0 damage in single target, doesn’t proc for a minute at a time, it’s just not reliable. Also it targets a random enemy with the meteor, not your actual target.
The capstone should be something that expands upon the other Apex talents, so why not just make Haunt deal AOE damage on hit (even to the main target for some ST tuning)? And/Or make Shadow of Nathreza DoT hit 2/3 additional targets? And/or make Shadow of Nathreza DoT scale with the spec’s mastery?
*
*
*
- Affliction spec tree
Overall I think it’s a pretty good tree, Affliction becomes a lot less complicated, I think the spec works well overall in its current state in beta.
Shared Agony is great at applying Agony to targets without it, but it’s very bad at refreshing agonies. It needs to be made smarter for refreshes, check the remaining duration on nearby targets, prioritize those. Right now on a pack of 6 mobs you have to recast Agony 5 times to refresh all of them instead of what you would expect to be just 3 times.
Improved Haunt is essentially a QoL talent and now it competes with the Improved Shadow Bolt (SB)/Drain Soul (DS) node on one side and the Absolute Corruption/Siphon Life node on the others. We must pick these 2 other nodes to get down the tree. I can’t see us being able to pick improved Haunt as it stands.
Withering Bolt and Cunning Cruelty, those 2 talents compete with each other but essentially do the same thing, it’s more damage with our filler spell, except one cost 2 points and the other 1. Withering Bolt has to be twice as powerful than Cunning Cruelty AND be better than talents further down in the tree to be worth picking. We have every reason to always pick Cunning Cruelty.
Summon Darkglare on its own is very underwhelming, especially in AOE scenarios. We have to spend 3 points into it (Eye Contract, Malefic Grasp, Malevolent Visionnary) to make it do something, and those 3 points have a few problems.
Eye Contract on its own is just extremely weak, Darkglare’s damage is meaningless, 5s more just doesn’t do anything. This being an independant node is poor design.
Malefic Grasp (MG) has A LOT of issues:
- It DOESN’T benefit consistently from talents benefitting SB and DS despite replacing them. It doesn’t get damage buff from Withering Bolt, Nightfall, Death’s Embrace, Necrolyte Teachings (Soul Harvester). Big problem for Soul Harvester especially.
- But it DOES benefit from the faster channel time from Nightfall? The one you get for Drain Soul? Even if you’re talented into improved Shadow Bolt? But the damage isn’t buffed?
- The fact that it doesn’t benefit from all the damage buffs to Drain Soul and Shadow Bolt doesn’t make it that good in terms of number, Drain Soul in execute with Death’s Embrace is better.
- Also we don’t have that much time to channel MG during Darkglare. We have to keep spamming Unstable Afflictions (UA), refresh Haunt, Agony. You’re constantly interrupting your MG channels, wondering if it’s better to reapply a UA or not.
- We need clarity about what affects Malefic Grasp or not, it needs to be in tooltips.
- Malefic Grasp doesn’t seem to be castable currently while talented into DS.
Malevolent Visionnary makes or breaks Darkglare. This talent turns Darkglare into something that actually deals damage, without it it’s a wet noodle, especially in AOE.
Dark Harvest/Cull the Weak. I wish we’d kept the Agony extension on Dark Harvest, it’s hard to spend your shards when you have to maintain Agony on 5/6 targets (or more). Also Dark Harvest should benefit from the spec’s mastery.
Fatal Echoes is just too weak, 4% chance at a refresh doesn’t do anything. The proc chance needs to be buffed. Also I think it would be better if instead of a chance at a refresh that’s VERY HARD to track (if not impossible), it was a chance to apply 2 UAs in a single cast. It would be a lot better, punchier and you could actually notice when it procced.
Death’s Embrace needs to work for Malefic Grasp. And maybe for Dark Harvest.
