List of really bad affliction warlock talents and borrowed power(angry)

Classes Warlock
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Hi, we had no class changes for over 5 months now
i’m gonna go over all the stupid stuff that this class sufferst from , at least what i know and have experienced
this list contains legendaries, talents, and abilities, that are either under tuned, feel miserable to play, or straight up anti synergistic with the spec.
originally i was going to make all 3 in one post but it’s too long and so i decided to cover one by one

  1. affliction and baseline abilities :

  • the entire soul shard system is cool for demo and destro but for affliction there’s no reason for it ? like the entire thing just happens automatically when your agony is on your target, and more often than not you spend all your shards at once , there’s no shard management like demo, i played wrath affliction and now it’s still does the same thing with extra steps really, at least in single target

  • the spell animations are beyond garbage, i can barely see what i’m doing , if there is

  • there should be a way to cast agony on multple targets without having to waste 7 global cooldowns , this is the main reason why affliction is slow in mythic plus

  • nightfall sees 0 play in literally any part of the game right now

  • inevitable demise is only played in pvp

  • drain soul is too strong even in m+ despite being a single target ability because of the soul shard that can be spent on the bandage fix of sow the seeds

  • absolute corruption is absolutely not being played at all

  • siphon life is mandatory for any bit of single target damage

  • in a world of soulshape being available to druids and rogues, the fastest classes ever, warlocks have to spend their health and a precious talent slot in order to have a degree of their mobility

  • dark pact is cool but why does it not stack with voidwalker’s shield ? it’s like things that aren’t even in the same class i don’t get it.

  • sow the seeds spam is garbage gameplay, keeps resetting corruptions and heavily reliant nightfae legendary to be relevant in m+, offers 0 single target value, makes malefic rapture irrelevant in aoe, and is boring to play

  • vile taint has seen some play in m+ and multitarget settings in 9.0 but it went back to sleep since the rapture nerfs, overshadowed by sow the seeds.

  • shadow embrace and haunt both do the exact same thing, yes there’s a small difference in damage depending on the situation but really they just make you do more damage to the target, boring gameplay, at least haunt resets on kill , we got rid of maintainable buffs in legion but we forgot all about maintanable debuffs in shadowlands , it is the same thing if not even worse to play, i’ll take empowered life tab over this crap every day in the week, at least it’s a better option in aoe so there is some kind of change you can make in this stupid row

  • grimoire of sacrifice : may fool you into thinking that this is the aoe option in this row,surpise : it doesn’t do additional damage to other targets, so we have 3 single target options , and this talent isn’t played at all in pve for any reason, people prefer haunt’s cast time even with how slow affliction is over grimoire of sacrifice, this also removes your second pet ability out of the game and barely does any damage to make up for it, even in single target, the only use of this is ironically so people won’t kill your pet in arena, and speaking of arena , why does the buff and the sacrificed pet go away sometimes when the arena starts for no reason, if i don’t notice that, i start unable to interrupt, got to cast 6 second pet summon and then wait for the cd that this talent has for some reason so i can actually play the game like normal people

  • soul conduit : conduits at their finest, i played the entirety of shadowlands and haven’t seen any affliction warlock use this talent for any reason whatsoever, it’s giga useless and overshadowed by dark soul misery in every single possible situation

  • Creeping death is probably the worst talent in the entire expansion, not only that it sucks, not only that it does no damage no matter how many targets, but it also makes your dots shorter, in what world do you give conduits that increase the duration of your dots but then there’s a talent that makes them shorter, what kind of garbage design is this ? don’t you want them to last longer for your rapture so you can stop refreshing dots all day every day like a hit the squirrel game and actually press a button that actually does something ?

  1. legendaries :
  • who the hell designed malefic wrath ? 10 seconds buff that costs 3 shards, but if you get a boss mechanic that’s RNG then you lose the entirety of your dps, like if you study one second of game design they tell you that losing due to rng that’s not in the player’s control is bad game design that should not exist. and the fact that this is the only pure single target legendary that affliction has pisses me off even more
  • claw of endereth and pillars of the dark portal : is this a joke ? these things are still in the game ? i posted about them before and yes, i still haven’t seen a single lock that even bothered crafting them at rank 1
  • Decaying soul sachel is not even a legendary, it’s just a stat boost with extra steps
  • Wilfred’s is giga useless for affliction due to darkglare doing no damage for some reason, and blizzard still refuses to buff it despite affliction having a 0 single target damage profile, i guess they don’t want us to play affliction
  1. covenant abilities : for some reason all of the and not only for aff, but for all specs , they’re useless and seem out of place, just something else you have to cast , another dot you have to go through , another obstacle that you need to deal with so you can actually pop your cooldowns , we have 2 cooldown dots blizzard, what is this , why ? isn’t phantom singularity enough ?
  • why isn’t decimating bolt a passive ? we already have an execute ability
    the only misery i inflict is on myself by playing this class
6 Likes
2

Some very good points but it is very hard to read can you break it up some and make spaces/paragraphs it really hurts the eyes.
Also would this not be better on lock forums ?

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sorry i missclicked and posted it before i’m done with it, yes i’ll place it in the lock forums

1 Like
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Putting anything on the lock forums is like putting it in the nether. Nobody ever visits or reads anything here.

4 Likes
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it’s actually sad, i sometimes hope that people one day stop playing this class so this company starts fixing it

1 Like
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It is you who do not understand how this talent works. Creeping Death is a DPS increase by dotting off the targets faster. Here’s an example:

Let’s say Corruption lasts 15 seconds and ticks 100 damage 10 times through the 15 seconds. That is 1000 damage from that spell in a 15 seconds duration.

Now, we take the Creeping Death talet, and it as example shortens the duration of the dots by 1/3. Then our Corruption will last 10 seconds, and tick the same 100 damage 10 times through the 10 seconds. That is 1000 damage from that spell in a 10 second duration, and you can cast Corruption again for additional damage.

Without Creeping Death, Corruption would be cast 4 times a minute and do 4000 damage in total. Now with Creeping Death Corruption can be cast 6 times a minute and do 6000 damage in total. That is 2000 DPS increase per target per minute!

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i’m aware of that , i know it makes dots do more damage but most of your damage isn’t coming from dots anyway , excluding drain soul and drain life
as affliction i would rather have my dots last long so i can actually have time to cast other things like shadowbolt and malefic rapture
we all know that refreshing dots is the annoying part of playing affliction and creeping death makes it worse, i can understand that talent being in something like bfa or legion affliction but not so much here, it feels like the entire spec has changed but they just forgot about that talent

1 Like
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For Affliction Decimating Bolt should go up to 300%! So the stain Soul build could be a thing.

If Decimating bolt would also increase drain life dmg, this could be a thing in 9.2.

I would change it to an execute effect, like as more hp is lost by the target as more dmg the dots will do.

Remove it or baseline pls blizzard. Give back Soul Swap.

SE just passive baseline and haunt needs to heal you when it returns. For the dmg haunt deadly and you did to the target.

Blizzard should just increase the survivability of all 3 specs with Demon Skin, Demon Armor and soul link baseline. Then this wouldn’t be needed.

Baseline again pls.

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1 please make decimating bolt increase 3 drainsouls like it was in beta .
This is the reason why its not viable for Aff … and a legendary for 1 drainsoul doesn’t feel great .

Its good that Aff cds line to 2 min ,but darkglare feels still useless cause it still works like in BFA with UA stacking , but u cant stack it anymore .

DSS lego feels decent in 4 + targets , but far away from good with uncapped aoe from most of the classes now. But the ability itself is missing synergy . Drainlife on 4 Targets doesnt mean a DPS increase at all . Shadowbolt / drainsoul would feel better .

Overall i played now all classes in pve and pvp this expansion and Warlock class design feels awful . Almost like if u had no time left and the synergy is almost nothing .

If they bring out double legendarys , warlocks will need a lot of tuning compared to other classes who are already playing with covenant lego …

10

as much as i want buffs for aff single target, this is probably the worst one
decimating bolt doesn’t care if you channel your entire drain soul or just 1/10 of it, it’s kind of the same thing as malefic wrath where you need to stay in one play or you lose all your damage, there are many other ways to adress single target, like :

  • buffing darkglare
  • buffing level 45 row
  • buffing shadowbolt
  • buffing siphon life
  • buffing UA
  • phantom

feelsbad, i’m commited to my lock for aesthetic reasons, but i’m close to rerolling in all honesty, or might play another game all together

2 Likes
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y i realy hoped in beta to be necro aff , it looked viable , but the change that it only enhances 1 drainsoul is so bad , its the only covenant that works with spells that we actualy use .

whole warlock needs a rework for pve and pvp meta , every class has so much synergy with all other abilities and as a warlock it makes me sad .

1 Like
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I think malefic rapture is a completely garbage spell and shouldn’t even exist.
Shards should go back to the legion level where you can spend them on UA that is able to stack on the same target.
Shadowbolt should hit waaaaay harder, right now it’s not a shadowbolt, its a shadow mosquito bite. Just compare it with how hard it hits in TBC classic.
That garbage drain life talent need to go and drain life buffed properly. It should heal decently and do damage decently. Affliction was always about draining while dealing damage to survive. Right now in PvP you are not allowed to drain because it would ruin all your stacks for a one time nuke, while it should have been the typical filler spell.
Grimoire is bad too, I would rather have a talent that makes your pet stronger rather than killing it for another passive random proc.
Covenants are complete joke because other covenants than night fae provide literally nothing.
Venthyr ability should apply Agony to all targets hit (immolate for destro and doom for demo), not some meme curses.
Kyrian ability should jump on the nearest target when the target dies and get refreshed. This way you can stack multiple of them on mobs that die quickly which could be a fun mechanic.
I don’t even know what to do with necro ability since it buffs the damage of an ability that deals 0 damage. Anything times zero equals zero.

It’s just a very bad design where blizz took everything away from affli that made it viable and now it feels like an unfinished spec.

1 Like
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after blizz nerfed Suxrotrash slow lego im switched to claw and i like it in 2s and feels good to use :smiley: but i think i am the only lock in the world who uses it on competitive plays

the rest of the thread is so true, affly lock talents/pvptalents is like an ancient relic from the legion expac, the spec is stuck in the past and only devolved most of the mechanics does not have any real synergy with the spec gameplay everything is random and out of its place.

Malefic Rupture could be a good spell if we get the pre alpha version of it. Channeling spell, 1 soulshard / 1sec can move while cast, you dots does their periodical damage 400% faster while channeling the spell.

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In general yes, AFF is bad designed class with many weaknesses.
Taking aside shadowlands borrowed powers… too simple, not fun talents, most of the talents are static (dmg x, y, z), no strong synergy between talents, lack of complex passives to build power up during the combat…

Duration of Agony and Corruption should be longer from M+ perspective as baseline +10 sec each, now we are good cause there is agony conduit.

Rapture is bad in PvP, makes the UA → Fear breaking faster. Could be removed.

Row 1
Nigthlfall stack 2 times, but reworked after Drain Soul baseline.
Drain Life idea is ok.
Drain Soul baseline and new pet sacrifice talent in this row.

Row 2
Agony not bad but ramp up time should be same = 20 sec not 28 sec with 0% of Haste.
Corruption is boring as a spell in general, low dmg and no interactions. Maybe 30% slow effect baseline? It match to the name. Corruption talent is boring, it could increase slow up to 50% and make something additional.
Siphon Life to removed, make UA talent. It’s DOT row and UA have no any talent.

Row 3
Burning Rush to be removed, make talent for our 2 min def cooldown.
Fix mobility, make Demonic Circle work like instant Doors of Shadow.

Row 4
Total mess row.
Seed not best but only working in strong aoe. Seed should detonate Seed.
Phantom to be removed. New talent needed. Maybe UA cap up to 3 targets.
Vile Taint maybe apply also Agony? Slow part not needed.

Row 5
Darkfury also instant.
Mortal Coil is ok.
Aoe fear only used in pvp. Baseline talents are pve. Replace with Fear talent, feared target will not be running around and not enter combat.

Row 6
All is trash.
This is almost final row, the feeling of power need to be in those talents. All to be reworked.

Row 7
Last row also to be reworked.
Soul Conduit - move to row 6,
Creeping Death - move to row 6,
Dark Soul - Integrating with Darkglare will make it strong cd.
New last row talents?
Corrupting Leer is not bad to be a last row talent in case of AoE, bursty talent.
Wrath of Corruption is not bad to be last talent also, maintaining buff style.
Last can be Malefic Wrath for ST but time should be xtended.

1 Like
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stackable ua was disgusting and so unfun to play.

bring back soul swap and just make haunt the main ST nuke/ss spender.

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