Hello,
After spending 2 days trying to find decent groups to up my rio score (in vain), I’ve decided to try to address some issues here.
1st off, dungeons themselves and m+.
I love m+. It’s challenging, bfa dungeons have been designed with keys in mind, more trash mechanics have been implemented (as opposed to Legion where you could blast/cheese most of it) and that is great. Started playing in WotLK and back then (in Cata as well), if people didn’t execute stuff properly, they’ll just die. That’s something I missed in Legion and I love to see that back now.
Something I liked in Legion tho, was the ability to switch from an aoe gearset to a more single-target oriented one, in order to compensate for the talents setup. That ability is sadly gone and instead, we got… ehm… nothing ? Yeah, just gfy nothing, plain and simple.
2nd, affliction warlock in m+.
Blizzard seemed to have rolled back to a type of class design where some specs where super good at something but a bit lacklustre otherwise. The concept itself is fine, I mean all specs just can’t (and shouldn’t !) be good at everything. I’ll talk about what I know best, which is the affliction warlock.
The aff lock was way too overpowered back in Legion, that’s for sure. Sacrolash was… well, don’t even have the words… On top of that infinite slow ability, we had insane aoe dmg (retarded gameplay-wise though) and great single-target dmg. Oh and yes, we were almost nearly immortal as well, thanks to the ridiculous self-heal. It felt good, even god-like. No warlock ever complained I guess, but those were indeed issues, and I’m glad Blizzard intended to do something about it. That being said, if you wanted to top meters in every situation as an aff lock, you had to switch gear in order to maximize your output and that involves some thought, preparation and encounter knowledge. As I said earlier, that’s gone and we just have to suck it up. Fine.
But where do aff locks stand right now ?
Healing : we still have insane self-healing (and dmg!) ability using the Inevitable Demise azerite trait. Nerf incoming, makes sense, so that’s fine.
Single target and priority dmg : that’s ofc where we shine now… maybe too much indeed. ~10% overall nerf on UA dmg (+ ID nerf) incoming, makes sense, so that’s fine too.
Aoe dmg : no big numbers in sustained aoe anymore (for destro/aff, demo is doing fine), no back to back burst aoe dmg except when using our 2/3min CDs (and if mobs have a decent healthpool in order for agony to ramp up)
Problem is : in BfA dungeons, it’s more about trash mobs rather than bosses. Some specs/classes (dh/rogues mainly) are wayyyyy too much overpowered while others are almost enterily not worth playing or useless, cluncky or squishy (war prot, feral, guardian druid, WW monk).
We all know the situation right now where you have blood dk/dh/rogue comps above everything else, and one ranged slot remaining for mages, boomkins and hunters, mostly. Aff locks are being picked more on tyrannical weeks, but otherwise it’s… meh. And now that we have those single-target nerfs incoming, what would it be ? Warlocks already stand in a niche right now and Blizzard’s answer is to narrow it down even more ? When a nerf is deserved, that’s fine. But what are you thinking here ? Of course, we could all reroll to fotm classes and play in Blizzard’s hand$$$. But I pay for this game and I want to play what I like to, but that could become impossible soon : as I’m already having a hard time getting picked up in m+10’s (yeah, freaking 10s), I have a really bad feeling about 8.1.