How to safe Affliction Warlock

[Meddlmancer-blackmoore]

Since i don’t have beta access, I can’t write on the official Warlock Beta Forum. So here I am, sharing my thoughts with you in this post. I want to write about Affliction Warlock exclusively.

There are some obvious flaws in this spec on beta right now, that most people who mained this spec for a while will recognize immediatly. Some don’t like the full focus on Malefic Rapture and would rather see it gone than double downed on. I think it can work, but not how this Talent Tree currently functions. Although the spec doesn’t evolve around Malefic Rapture but our Dot’s, there are not less than 5 Talents that increase Malefic Rapture damage (Focused Malignancy,Kindled Malice,Cull of the Weak, Improved Malefic Rapture, Malefic Touch). For a spell that needs to do both, single target and aoe damage, this is not functional. One can find an argument for letting Focused Malignancy and Cull the Weak stay. Kindled Malice should be a good choice between single target (Dark Virtousity), single and aeo dmg (Siphon Life), and aoe damage (Kindled Malice). Unfortunately Kindled Malice is too good in single target and aoe right now. The best option is to replace Kindled Malice with Cull of the Weak. With the same argument we also let go of Improved Malefic Rapture and Malefic Touch. They are always the right answer and no choice. We gonna replace the last 2 later.

For now we gonna fix the whole problem of Affliction’s aoe damage. By making Seed of Corruption baseline, we can bring Volatile Agony in its place. We get a good choice for our second row between 2 Agony talents. We also bring the Vile Taint/Phantom Singularity node on Volatile Agony’s old place. And in the now empty Vile Taint place we create a new talent, that lets Corruption reduce the Cooldown of Vile Taint and Phantom Singularity, such that we can Vile Taint with full Volatile Agony value. Volatile Agony therefor needs to decrease its damage on multiple targets, lets say 3-4+ targets. So lets say we have 7+ Corruoptions running, then we should be able to refresh Agony with Vile Taint. On under 7 targets we need to manualy refresh it. I think it should bring a good playstyle. If we are running Phantom Singularity, it should line up with our 30 second window by just running 1 Corruption.

Because you have Vile Taint in the 4th row now, you can switch up Nightfall and Drain Soul aswell. Cunning Cruelty can take the place of Cull the Weak, and I would like to suggest to change Sacolash’s Dark Strike on the right side of Darkglare and bring back Soul Swap on the left side of Darkglare. Then Contagion and Malediction need to both be 1 Pointers. Also a connection between Shadow Embrace and Creeping Death would be welcome.

The bottom Part of the Tree has become a lot better but there is still some mess. First lets talk about the 2 talents on the right side, that we have left empty. We lost both, Seed spam and Soul Flame. But Warlock aoe should involve some kind of bombing. For Improved Malefic Rapture we take Dark Harvest. Since Dark Harvest is only shining in 3+ target scenarios, it should not be in front of our key talent (Malign Omen) but rather in the right side of the Tree. Then we create a new Talent for Malefic Touch…Black Mass: Dot’s create a Bomb on every Target that fills up with damage by the dots itself and also Malefic Rapture. And since the developers want to make crit Affliciton a thing, this could make a good interaction with crits, since it fills up the bombs more and faster.

The second bad thing in the bottom part is Oblivion. We just got away from Syphon Life every 20 seconds and now im back at casting Oblivion every 45 seconds. This should go back to pvp Talents to make room for an improved nightfall proc with cool new visuals for an even bigger Drain Soul or Shadowbolt. Also Death’s Embrace and Focused Malignancy seem kinda weak.

What do you guys think about this. What is your unfulfilled Affliction fantasy ? Let me know.

[Xanatas-nemesis (Xanatas)]

I also don’t have access to that section of the forum, which is a shame since I’m still testing (even paying, I might add) and leaving feedback on issue reporter.
Unlike destruction and demonology, which had a major rework that was decidedly improving in my opinion (especially destruction), I am particularly disappointed by affliction because although a substantial rework was requested and envisaged, in the end, currently, it is just an "enhance "of the old iterations.

I don’t understand, for example, how despite the vast majority of the Affliction warlock player base having expressed their dissatisfaction with Malefic Rapture for years (most of them asking for its cancellation) this spell has now become even more decisive and practically the entire spec (especially with Soulharvester) is practically oppressive.

All you do is spam this ability, instant or no instant, but you practically burn the bound key. This choice is even more incomprehensible because until a few weeks ago they actually wrote a blue post where they specified that the Malefic Rapture would NOT be so central.

I would add that ALSO the set bonus emphasizes Malefic Rapture even more…

I would also add that from a PvP perspective it is absolutely absurd that all the talents to enhance drain life have been removed, such as the old capstone of 30% speed and above all inevitable demise. Drain life doesn’t care about anything, on demonology and destruction it’s a spell that you can avoid putting in the bar which even with soulburn is totally ridiculous