Rework affliction warlock

Classes Warlock
1

We really need to rework affliction warlock, it feels awkward to play after shadowlands
Dots fade too fast, aoe damage is lower than destro, boomie, feral, and its similar to shadowpriest damage aoe damage just dont have burst like shadowpriests.

Funny part that destruction and demo have access to whole affliction tools like amplify curse.

Also destruction immolate ticks are equal to affliction unstable affliction, agony and corruption damage all together, while also inquisitors gaze damage proc rate higher like 5 times than affliction. There literally issues within affliction.

And malefic rapture with all the dots on target tickles compare to starsurge, shadowburn, conflag, which are instant, while affliction have to cast it, unless they get proc

It became hardcore caster which is countered in pvp, curse dispels, magic dispels, revivals and other stuff.

Fix that class, u cant leave it unviable for whole expansion

20 Likes
2

They can. They do it

3

I dont know why delete void disarm. Problem warlock - All melee classes have silence. But why casters not have disarm. Please back Void and give new life.

2 Likes
4

Im saying this on every warlock post if it comes to changes/rework. “Where is affli rework?”
Same playstyle since BfA, Malefic Rapture is the worst thing could happen to the spec. I mained Aff in Legion pretty much all the time, now I cant even log on my lock. I have to play devoker/spriest because they are usable.
Also aff needs dot extensions. Boomi and spriest has to apply 2 dots and they extended (and watch this, spriest even applies these dots with 1 button!!) meanwhile with aff if there are 2 targets by the time you apply dots on both of them the dots are falling on the first target. What a joke.
Find someone who can balance dots, fire the current aff dev, and rework it fast. Demo/destro is the only choice for warlocks for years now.
They have to change aff weekly, still noone plays it. Maaaaybe, just maybe
 its a sign that the spec is dog and thats why noone touches it :slight_smile:

3 Likes
5

Aff has been insufferable since losing the Deliberate Malice set bonus from SL. The spec is so GCD starved as it is just in dot maintenance. Blizz identified this issue in S1 and attempted to address it by adding a GCD to Soul Swap :joy:

Looking at the most recent PTR changes; They seem to be re-introducing the effect into Rot and Decay pvp talent (extending dots via Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul in addition to Drain Life). Awesome
 not like we are hard locked into mandatory PVP talents to begin with
 and this makes it even less desirable to cast MRs.

Demo & Destro getting all the attention on the PTR while Aff sits there with Doom Blossom/Dread Touch change and a 25% buff to UA with a 25% nerf to Rampant Afflictions :sweat_smile:

As much as we want a rework
 it ain’t looking good.

2 Likes
6

25% buff and 25% nerf of the same thing Holinkas last mockery

1 Like
7
  • Developers’ notes: We are increasing the damage of Unstable Affliction’s backlash effect to lessen the value of dispelling Affliction’s damage over time effects. It’s been lower than we’d like, in addition to healers gaining extra health this season. Additionally, we’re increasing Shadow Bolt damage as the reward for casting it is lower than we’d like.

    • Unstable Affliction backlash damage increased by 50%.

    • Shadow Bolt damage increased by 30% in PvP combat.

The goos thing they have increased backlash damage.

But shadowbolt? What are they even thinking, shadowbolt is least considered spell that affliction will pick. Casting? There is no time to cast that haha, dots are fading faster than you can think off, i would like to see any of blizzard try casting shadowbolts in arena as affliction :smiley: it hits like 10k dmg :smiley: you need like 300% damage increase to make it viable

1 Like
8

Yeah affliction gutted, i dunno what they are trying to do with this class, but seems they dont know what they are doing.
Malefic casts, shadowbolt/drain soul, drain life, UA cast, soul rot cast. Soul swap gcd. It’s way too many spells to cast. Compare to other classes.

  • 3 to 4 gcd on all dots when applying

And dark glare becoming most useless cd in the game, doing 0 damage, like 1.5% total damage :smiley:

In addition like 60% of other classes either can remove agony + curses or whole stacks of dots,
Or like dk with anti magic shield immune to dot applying. Feels very interesting design

3 Likes
9

Although things have been much worse in the past 10 years for affliction lock, and blizzard has improved in many aspects
 we are still a bit far from the ideal case. Right now affliction has obvious issues

here is just a few :

  • Unstable affliction is limited to one target. Even with the pvp talents it feels bad : you are basically playing with 2 pvp talents, other players use 3. That is wrong.

  • up to 30-35% of the damage breakdown is still done by things that are not dots and main abilities :smiley:
    → Doom Blossom
    → Grimoire of Sacrifice
    → Dark Glare
    → Inquisitor’s Gaze
    That is plain wrong, we want the damage back in the main spells ! It feels like we are not playing our character, and we are playing 60% of an affliction warlock at the same time.

  • Malefic rapture 
 lol
    why is it our primary node in the talent tree ? Please can we change that and make an AoE side of the tree with Malefic rapture and seed of corruption. And the multi dot talents and spells would be on the other side of the tree with the good things.

  • Overall Affliction uses dots as enablers for the actual harmful and damaging spells that come much later after
 so you basically have a first layer of dots, then a second layer of actually good spells/debuffs and then maybe a third layer with big damage amplifiers and
 ho no it’s gone ! :frowning: somebody dispelled everything.
    the gameplay has never been this back loaded

Long story short :
Affliction should be much more dot centric
Dots shouldn’t be mere enablers with intensive maintenance
We rely too much on things that are hidden borrowed power stat sticks, this is wrong and unfun.
If it wasn’t for precognition, affliction would be unplayable : it needs to be more dynamic and interactive in the different pvp formats

4 Likes
10

I can’t stand Affliction in this state.
I like the fantasy behind the spec, as it is a shadow caster compared to Fel users.

But at the moment it’s a pain to play it.
DoTs run out way too fast! It is not fun being unable to do anything other than just refreshing the dots and then panicking if you have to switch target/or do actual mechanics while your dots run off and you lose a big chunk of DPS.

I’m maining an Evoker now and it flows like a breeze. Affliction Warlock is in a sad, terrible state.
It should be a petless spec, have the dots last longer, get rid of malefic rupture OR make it instant. Seed should also have a much shorter cast time than now.

The way I see Affliction is like Dark Wizards from Harry Potter. Make them fun, make them feared!

1 Like
11

The only fun have those dogs sitting at Excel

12

As much as I like the spec thematically, it feels like poop to play.

Affliction’s biggest issues are Malefic Rapture and the DoTs doing baby damage.

IMO Drain Soul should be the first node in the talent tree, and it should make your DoTs tick faster without affecting their duration, rather than applying a damage increase (Shadow Embrace).

They could also make an AoE variant of this same mechanic but a bit less powerful to compensate.

About the builder/spender gameplay
 I don’t dislike it, but I’d rather have a spender like the old Unstable Affliction which costed 1 shard instead of this annoying spell called Malefic Rapture.

Spending shards on big DoTs feels better (and allows you to cleave better) than just a small burst of damage that depends on how many DoTs you have on enemies, and makes more sense lore wise.

3 Likes
13

It sure easy to main something that has like 5 buttons in whole rotation that pretty much comes down to maintaining corruption and agony, spamming UA when you have shards and spamming soulsteal when you don’t have shards.
And oh yeah you also used ulthalesh ability when it icon showed big number.
DF destro is harder than legion affliction

1 Like
14

Yea i like deliberate malice a lot.

And it would solve many of the issues with affliction.

Darkglare should have a soul shard generation component.

Siphon life is just unfun and should be removed, 3 dots are enough.

Soulflame also needs to go, and instead they should just increase the damage of seed of curruption.

Haunt functionality should be integrated into unstable affliction. Haunt is bloat.

Doom blossom and dread touch are too polarized. One is pure st, the other is pure aoe.

15

I can write about affliction warlock issues in PVP:

Too many classes have dot/curse dispels which are way out of control
Example below which are them way too superior:

*Shaman - Elemental/enhance - curse dispel, Restoration whole dots dispel + curse dispel
Druid - same as shaman
Hunter - feign death fully remove all dots without any penalty
Mage - any spec (curse dispel)
Dh - Reverse magic ( full removal of dots Aoe removal)
Priest - any spec (mass dispel + dispel ,full removal of dots)
Monk - windwalker Diffuse magic (full dots removal) + mistweaver ( revival full aoe dot removal without punishment + normal dispel full dots removal)

so this is just most annoying thing what affliction is encountering.

So lets say we face mistweaver, demon hunter + Balance druid
what happens is that this team have atleast 3 full dispels + curse dispel
this means that affliction warlock is barely able to keep dots on targets.
Lets not forget 4 stuns, 2 incaps, 1 fear, + spammed cyclone.

Additional things to mention:
Deathknight - anti magic shield (not dottable when he uses that)
So this means he have massive advantage against affliction warlock, as u can’t drain,dot, or do anything while he got that shield on

Slows:
99% of classes can remove slows by their own, dps,healers or any other
so slows are barely helping affliction (compare to shadowlands, there was lower amount of classes who had access to remove slows)

Starvation of globals:
Affliction warlock to setup a darklare for 2 enemies (not 3) have to atleast use 7 globals to pop darklare
along soulswap with additional 3 malefic rapture globals to get advantage of malefic affliction so in total 10, by that time either dots are fading.

Casts:
too many casted spells which are fillers,
Drain soul (shadowbolt not viable, cause it does 0 damage at full gear 4 set it hits 50k with shadowbolt proc )
drain life
malefic rapture
Unstable affliction

and i see u have added new talent (which is channeled as well)

  • [Oblivion (New) - Unleash wicked magic upon your target’s soul, dealing [ 570% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage over 3 sec. Deals 10% increased damage, up to 30%, per damage over time effect you have active on the target. PvP Talent. PvP Talent. 3 Soul Shard. 40 yd range. 3 sec cast (Channeled). 45 sec cooldown. Requires Warlock. Requires level 10.
    This talent have no spot in last window of pvp talent picks, as it is starving in globals to even consider channel for 3 sec :slight_smile:

Pvp talents:
Rampant afflictions - mandatory
rapid contagion - mandatory
Other talents - situational
by that it means that affliction warlock cannot replace other 2 pvp talents to play like other warlock specs.
Shadowrift - not playable as affliction
Essence drain - not playable as affliction (you dont drain life until u got 50 stacks of inevitable demise)
Rot & decay - not playable as affliction (you dont drain life until u got 50 stacks of inevitable demise)
Deathbolt - not playable as affliction (does low damage, easily countered by any dispel class)
Bond of fel - not playable as affliction
Impish instincts - very good talent (playable)
Soul rip - very good talent (playable)
Call observer - very good talent (playable)
Demonic gateway - very good talent (but not playable, as there are better talents to pick)

magic schools :
Main shadow
extra - nature for soulrot

Our class also lacks additional magic school, as unending resolve/fear/dark pact are all on same shadow school, it means if affliction got kicked it cant access to damage, crowd control or defensives spells.

What affliction needs:

Agony - have to be redesigned from curse to magic or have different solution or reduce amount of classes which are able to remove that curse, as it currently one of most vital spells for affliction which can be removed with short cooldowns by 7 DPS specs + 3 healers specs (remove curse) which allows to stack drain life heals.

Malefic rapture: have to be instant, and not castable, as we barely use this spell in pvp cause we starve on GCDS

Soulswap - previous soulswap was better than this one cause it was easier to apply dots,
new soulswap added 1 additional global. In addition if it wasn’t limited to 1 charge, lets say it had 2 charges, this would be fixed, as affliction require to dot 3 targets in 3v3 scenario

Left warlock talent tree:
it’s flooded with important affliction talents (along with added most important amplify curse +teaching of satyrs, which was affliction skill in shadowlands, now every warlock spec are able to pick)
Grim feast one of the most required talent for affliction is added to bottom of talent tree, which require warlock to go trough middle section, making most of other important talents not reachable

Shadowbolt - This spell is not usable in arenas as it doesn’t hit enough to consider this spell usable, Drain soul way superior Shadowbolt it require to buff for atleast 100% to make use of it

Demon armor - Bring back this talent for affliction, since removal of demon armor, affliction is very weak against melees
Windwalker/warrrior/ferals/hunters etc.

Agony, corruption duration: Affliction dots are fading way too fast and durations are too short, in previous expansion (shadowlands) agony duration could be extended with additional covenant talents which made it way better up to 26/28 sec
currently it’s only 18 sec.
Or Would suggest to make a talent similar to shadowpriest when casting Unstable affliction corruption/agony applies automatically (making 2 global less heavy on affliction)

Dispels - Because of large amount of dispels in the game makes affliction lower viability. Suggestion would be to add pvp talent which makes our dots (certain) either undispellable or increase punishment for that dispel ( current 250k dispel against 700k hp classes are barely effective)
Or consider looking at classes which have way too many dispels, with any of these classes grouped in 3v3 situation, affliction become useless and easy to counter
Shamans - Curses dispel + magic dispel
Druids - Curse dispel + magic dispel
Mage - curse dispel
Monks - absolutely removing all dots without punishment (revival, Diffuse magic)
hunters - feign death - receives 0 backslash damage, short cooldown

Darksouls misery : in dragonflight with removal of dark souls misery, affliction lost a talent which gave burst damage and control of the game, currently it have nothing.
Summon darkglare sadly does 0 damage :slight_smile:
compare to other dot classes they still have big cooldown cd
shadow priest - void form, power infusion
balance druid - incarnation

Pvp talents:
Rampant afflictions are not suppose to be in mandatory talents,
make Unstable affliction applyable to 3 targets without talent, you wont find any affliction warlock who can play without rampant afflictions.

new talent Oblivion - this talent cannot be released as there will be 0 people playing this talent, especially when its channeled for 3 sec, if it was instant, i would say thats good

Amplify curse - bring that spell only for affliction as it was before

Magic tree - Introduce additional magic tree to affliction, so it doesn’t get locked to single tree. With current gameplay, micro cc/stuns, multiple kicks, it became very hard to cast something, if there was no precognition affliction would be dead end.

Anti magic shield, totems - make it dottable or atleast drain soul /drain life pass these spells (same as it works on cocoon)

Globals - huge starvation on globals, make lower amount of casted/applied spells required, especially dots, which are most important part for affliction to do damage, without dots malefic rapture or anything else does nothing

6 Likes
16

Switched to Destro just to compare DPS and see how enjoyable it is.
All right so:

Destro burst: 120k, AoE 125k. Sustained DPS 75k-85k. GLORIOUS

Affli: No burst. 55k-65k sustained, AoE surpasses Destro AoE though and is more enjoyable in AoE situations due to Rain of Fire having placement issues and costing 3 shards.

I want to main Affli, but I have a hard time playing it and managing MR. It gives me anxiety ngl.
I love fantasy behind affli lock, but the current design is really making it hard to enjoy playing it.
Destro is amazing damage-wise, but I hate being a static turret and I am not fond of felfire and destruction as my character is solely based on
well, being a stylish caster kinda.

Has anyone tried Affli on PTR?

17

This game is made for melee with 1 button. Thats all.

4 Likes
18

I just wanted to add my 2 cents here also, and yes the DoTs tick for such minor damage its only when you have them all rolling on mobs they do any kind of decent damage and yet SP gets Shadow Crash to apply SW:Pain to ALL mobs in the AOE then the cream on the top for SP Devrouing Plague
 Dont even get me started on that


Soulswap was awesome back in Cata when you could soulswap continously between mobs as it allowed you to continuously soulswap from one mob to the next whilst refreshing the DoT’s on the previous target. This is how soulswap SHOULD work now also not with the 1 charge as you spend 4-5 GCD,s to apply DoT’s and you would still spend a GCD to Soulswap to another target anyway, Or even allow us to refresh all DoT’s on the target to max durations by soulswapping to the same target.

We need to return to a pure DoT based class and have very little channeled effects and not many spells which are dependant on each other to do any actual damage. (Malefic Rapture for example, What use is a spell which does as much damage as a chaos bolt but costs 7 GCD,s to achieve in the same as 1 GCD for Destro) it either needs to do twice the damage for the time cost invested into it or change it completely so that it does CB damage AND refresh DoT’s

I understand that this might feel a bit OP / boring having one spell to manage when your DoT’s are all rolling but this would make the spec a bit easier to manage.

This guy has it spot on + the soulswap idea. :wink:

I have switched to Demo but would love to return to Affliction but it.s just not viable anymore.

4 Likes
19

Totally agree with this. Some really good ideas there.
Affli needs to be a pure DoT spec and we defo need to work on the ‘bloat’ as the person mentioned.

MR needs to go though, it’s what makes the spec so bad.

2 Likes
20

This response is very comprehensive, covers so many aspects.

One thing that I would add though, is that Unstable Affliction dispell protection has lost some of its lustre over the years. And it’s not about the damage, it is about the message
 Several other classes have been granted a dispell protection of their own : Shamans, Moonkins and so on


The message this sends is clear : these classes are supposed tu function in the pvp scene knowing that they shouldn’t rely on another spec like affliction to do the dispell protection. And in several other aspects, they have better tools than warlocks. Just as an example, Cyclone is vastly stronger than warlock fear, by several orders of magnitude.
Thus it renders affliction warlock much less desirable in comparison. The relative strength issue is so glaringly obvious.

1 Like