The shadowlands version of affliction was pure perfection. I can’t tell you how much I miss deathbolt… oblivion is just such a horrible replacement. The healing from drain life that you got from each tick of agony on a target, capping at 50 stacks for a crazy heal if you managed to channel it. Perfect. Nowadays affli doesn’t have any soul to it, its super watered down compared to what it used to be.
I can’t remember the name of the cooldown that made your dots pop off, but I remember it costing 3 soul shards. The combo being, use that CD with agony corruption UA, then press phantom singularity, soul rot, summon darkglare, DEATHBOLT 50 STACK DRAIN LIFE. and it was just euphoric every single time. It was pretty much death for any class that didn’t have immunity like bubble/ice block/cloak of shadows. It might have been a little OP, but nowadays everything is OP… I mean look at feral, SP ect.
I know deathbolt had some weird world pvp mechanic where you could make it hit stupid numbers but… is that any different from touch of the magi on arcane mage? I can go out into the world and hit a 50 million with touch of the magi. Note this post is not about nerfing touch of the magi. The meat and potatoes is give affli deathbolt back and big drain life stacks from agony again… and that cooldown I cant remember the name of lol. thanks!
honestly id take bfa, shadowlands or dragonflight fire mage over the current one…
or DF Arcane
TWW arcane is basically DF arcane, just a little worse in everything
it would be enough for blizzard to read the description written by themselves of the Affliction spec, “a master of shadow damage specialized in damage-over-time and drains”.
Currently the dots do little damage, drain soul is almost not used and above all drain life can easily be removed from the game bars. Not bad for a “draintank” spec.
The bulk of the damage is produced by chain-spamming the spell most hated by the vast majority of warlocks, malefic rapture. Spell that they themselves during the TWW alpha with a blue post announced that it would become less central in the Affliction game economy. I believe there are currently at least 10 talents to enhance it, and not only that, the two bonus sets further emphasize it.
Best affliction’s iteraction is MOP for me (and also destro and demo…).
I dont know guys but im REALLY enjoying affliction right now. It feels solid with damage on demand. Haunt into sb feels good to press. Personal opinion ofcourse.
i remember Affli lock in Shadowlands, that he was permanent dying, can die in every maim stun into Jungle, i think how the games against Rmp went, is self explained
then the Warri ret Abomination, idk how anyone can Think of “that shadowlands affli was good”
I guess we all have opinions of what expac was the best version. I started playing affliction in shadowlands and before they did the talent revamp for dragonflight I couldn’t see one thing about affli that I would change. Getting rid of deathbolt, rapid contagion, and BIG drain lifes killed the spec for me. Tried it in DF, felt bad, tried it in TWW, felt bad. So in my opinion one of the best, funnest specs in the game in shadowlands has been made worse and worse ever since, hence the reason for this post. and i agree spamming maelific rupture is lame
current version of mage feels bad in all sense
frost was better in SL/DF, it was not just icelance spam at least
Fire was better it just felt better, both pyro and flamestrike dmg were better, and u didn’t have to rely on hyperthermia to do well, or sunfury to force its proc, and u could play aoe/ST w/e u wanted Living bomb agency asw, they changed it litfuse, which i was fine with, until they 163%nerfed it, and now its half our talent tree that nobody touches with a 10meter poll
Arcane is literally THE SAME, but it has lost 50% of its survaiability, icenova, supernova, and it has gained 50% dmg, which, still feels weak af because it was basically 0 to begin with
and they keep buffing irrilevant stuff, like, tomorrow they buff, splinter dmg, splinterstorm w/e why can’t i do dmg with my ARCANE BLAST, why these damn passives going off that just feel awful, thats the same as buffing, icicle dmg, or frostbite, those are not fun abilities neither to face nor to use for me
i want to cast and do dmg, why they making the whole game a big proc/passive gameplay…
casting feels awful and unrewarding, u get all the risks of actually being interrupted, and 0 benefits, and worse, u do more dmg with your instant casts very often, how can icelance do more dmg than frostbolt… next splinter will do more dmg than arcane blast? idk
yes mage is in a bit of a strange place. Fire mage hasn’t felt good since shadowlands, they gutted it in DF and now. Frost in shadowlands was fun too, pop skele mode and fire big frostbolts. I have videos of when solo shuffle first came out for testing at the end of SL, I would use the ‘immune to 2 cc’ trinket pop arcane power rune of power on use trinket charge a full arcanosphere and literally 1 shot someone… cheesy but fun.
Remember the cool trinkets from SL like the grenade/bomb, the shackle, the immune to 2 cc, what happened to those? Honest opinion shadowlands was 10x funner in PVP than DF and TWW
u can stack like 10 buffs on top of a full 5 seconds cast of arcanosphere, and u will do less damage than ONE ICELANCE
fire was good in df, they butchered it with lvl 80 tww, even prepatch tww felt good, they made litfuse and flamestrike useless, after reworking the entire class to make u cast those 2 things…
insane 40k corruption and 60k agony ticks meanwhile VT ticks for 100k and swp ticks for 30k
OR if you go hellcaller your dots ACTUALLY DO DAMAGE like 80k agony 100k corruption(big dam) but shadowbolts are 300-350k at best
afaik i am the only aff hellcaller enjoyer on eu past 2.2 shuffle(also being r1 aff hellcaller world with 2317 so its definitely not a favorite spec for the majority of people) so there is that - most people do banger 100k / 1.5s with their dots
only rapid contagion was pretty « fun »