I’m pleased that Affliction Warlock is moving back to a DoT heavy spec in Shadowlands, but something about the Malefic Rapture button leaves me wanting. The way I imagine Affliction Warlocks is a malicious spellcaster, who really revels in the torment of their victims. I feel like their Soul Shard spender should reflect that.
My idea for Malefic Rapture is that it’s a channel, that lasts 1 second per Soul Shard you have, consuming them as the channel goes. During this time, all your DoT effects tick 100% faster and heal you for 100% of the damage they deal. Your victims are slowed by 50% while you channel this effect and you can channel this spell while moving, although you move at 50% speed. There would be a subtle spell effect as you draw shadowy energy from everyone affected by your DoTs.
The upshot of this is the spec revolves around maintaining your DoTs, filling with Shadow Bolts, and then this moment where you massively intensify your victims pain for a short period. I would also perhaps move Soul Shard generation to a 50% chance on Shadow Bolt cast, and have Affliction start with 0 shards to emphasise this slow ascent to this big finisher.
The numbers are obviously rough placeholders and would need looking at. I’m interested to see whether people share my vision for Affliction Warlock and whether you think this a fitting way to cap off the new Affliction spec.
100% heal for the dmg u deal would be too strong in arena in my opinion. Or at least that’s what I am thinking about… I think the affli changes are fine and better than the changes before bfa but we don’t wanna talk about the non existant changes for the other two specs for SL
First of all, let’s analyze the goods and bads of Malefic Rapture.
Pros:
It’ll, together with the seed buff, solve Affliction’s AoE problems in M+.
2 or 3 target cleave will improve. Destruction used to kill on this case but now Affliction can do decent too. If numbers are high, I am assuming it will do as good as Destruction.
Cons:
It’s gonna make the single target rotation alittle gimmicky. Will Shadow Bolt spam or Drain Soul be better than Malefic Rapture on single target? If so that’s gonna be alittle bit weird. Not using a spell at all. If better; we are gonna have to cast 2 spells constantly. Malefic when we have shards; SB or DS while building shards. That’s alot of casting for a DoT class.
Arena. Dispelling Warlocks’ dots is very easy in arena. There is no punishment for it and the Agony itself alone does no damage to put pressure on opponent. Which means, its gonna be very hard to have multiple dots on multiple targets in arena to spam cast Malefic Rupture. On rare occasions we do; we are gonna get interrupted or stuned. So It’s completely useless.
What would improve if the spell were changed in a way you described (other than playstyle).
It would make the AoE or cleave part WAY better. I don’t know if thats needed. But, i definitely think it would improve the arena part ALOT and make the single target rotation alittle bit more smooth.
In arena you could dot others, fear / coil or teleport behind a pillar and channel the spell.
In raids or m+ you could channel this when stuation requires you to move. Normally Affliction reapplies its dots during movement, this would give us something else to do.
I like the idea alot. But it may require some tonning down. 100% fast ticks, healing, slow. All of it is abit too much.
Edit: If dots are going to tickle in arena like its doing atm… Yeah. You know…
Affliction would be better without much casting at all, pref. only drain soul. Maybe Malefic Rapture could work better like the affliction artifact spell worked, consumes shards to increase dmg/dot dmg for X% per shard. Then dots would hit hard and would require less casting to make it more about the dots. Could also increase the dispel backlash from UA to make it more scary and not just dispelled.
I don’t know I feel more like it’s just because it’s a garbage idea from Blizzard honestly. I mean literaly it will literaly be a spamming button, not fun either, I mean I get if people don’t see it now but I am pretty sure this is going to be the case, it’s just unfun as it was designed.
Honestly yeah channel would be good, I am not sure we need to keep “Malefic Rapture” around as concept though since it doesn’t seem in my opinion to carry any merit on its own but your idea is interesting, my only problem is that spending shards on channel will efel bit clunky and spamming short channels one after another does not feel right, but would definetly be better for sure.
I think it’s an interesting idea and I think that no matter how much many eople hate it, channels are good supplement for DoT specs, that’s just my opinion but well.