With TWW coming up I thought I’d use the opportunity to give some feedback about Affliction Warlocks in general. I feel like affliction has kind of lost its charm as time went on. With the recent addition of Malefic Rupture in Shadowlands the design direction of Affliction seems misguided, as the class should not be focusing on direct damage spells or big bursty numbers at all. I explain this further in the Philosophy section below.
After writing this all down I now realized it got a lot longer than I anticipated.
TLDR: Affliction should be about making Time work for you, not against you. Direct damage is not in tune with the fantasy of the spec and was a bandaid fix for the lackluster M+ performance of non-bursty specs.
History of Affliction
For context, I mained Affliction as my first DPS Class in WotLK and reached max level around the time Ulduar released. Back then we had snapshotting of Dots, which was kind of unique, Ferals had it too, and maybe Warriors?
This snapshotting resulted in gameplay that focused on never dropping your Corruption from the target. Additionally there was Dot Clipping, which meant you had to refresh your dots as close as possible after a damage tick occured. Meanwhile your Shadowbolt did decent damage which made it important to cast it as much as possible and Drain Soul did insane execute damage. I am not sure, but I think Agony was still being reapplied everytime in WotLK, meaning that the ramp up damage reset with every application. Which made it important to refresh AFTER the last tick (not 100% sure).
These four things combined resulted in the following gameplay:
Buff your crit/spellpower on pull
Apply Corruption empowered
refresh Corruption as late as possible before expiry to maximizize time spent casting Shadowbolt/Drain Soul, while keeping track of Boss mechanics that made you/the boss move out of range for reapplication of Dots.
Refresh Dots; Agony ASAP after the last Tick, Cor ASAP after a Tick, if possible the second to last tick.
Maintain Haunt
Simple but effective.
Cleave fights were fun, because you spend more time with your dots, which gave you free time to move around as they are instant, your SB/DS was highdamage, so multi dotting was not double the damage as you lose some casts of SB/DS on the main target, but still multi dotting was very good.
In Cata we got Soul Swap, which was changed and removed multiple times. Now we still have it, instead of sucking the dots off it no duplicates them, which is far more convenient for cleave. Even more importantly Dot Clipping was removed, which meant that you got a lot of leeway for applying your dots, anything within the pandemic window was fine. AoE was still Seed of Corruption, with Soul Burn as an extra button that burned a soul shard to make the Seed apply Corruption to all targets hit in addition to its direct damage. On top of all this we also got Fel Flame which made refreshing UA easier and Affliction more mobile, which was not really necessary in Cata since we got Pandemic+no Clipping already, making us pretty mobile already.
In MoP we got the first itteration of Malefic Rupture, called Malefic Grasp at the time. This was a spell that did some damage on its own (quite low if I remember correctly) but made your other dots tick extra times for 30% of their damage. A cool addition I think, which still focuses on dots and most importantly is single target. AoE was still Seed of Corruption as in Cata. Fel Flame still available, and the addition of Demonic Gateway made Warlock one of the must bring classes in every raid, we now provided buffs for Spellpower/Spellcrit, Healthstones, Gateways, excellent damage, high survivability and a good amount of damage on movement heavy encounters and patchwerk.
WoD removed Fel Flame, as the philosophy of the addon removed a lot of on-the-fly damage for all classes. Pandemic stayed, Dot Clipping never came back and we got the changed Kil’jaeden’s Cunning as compensation, which allowed us to cast while moving (like Shamans and Evokers still can for example). Haunt could now benefit from Soul Burn to increase dot damage even more, which was kinda clunky in my opinion. Malefic Grasp was removed and merged into DS, meaning every tick of DS made your dots tick an extra time for reduced damage. The class felt really weird here already in my opinion, you had Dots that did okay damage, but really you needed to be channeling all the time, because Malefic Grasp was moved into a channeled spell instead of being a dot. You could still apply your dots with Soulburn + Soul Swap which was kind of fun but also killed the dot style a little bit, as you did not really spend time applying your dots. This in combination with the dots not dealing damage on their own was already foreshadowing what was to come.
Legion probably the best addon there ever was overall, after the changes to acquiring legendarys and the Artifact Weapons. Most importantly we got Reap Souls and Soul Effigy which will be mentioned again later and play a huge part in my inspiration for how to Make Affliction Great Again. Additionally we got fun little gimmicks like Soul Flame, Wrath of Consumption and Compounding Horror. Especially Soul Flame had a cool visual and would decimate AoE pulls. Lucky we still have that, one of the coolest abilities every and in tune with the fantasy of withering away your enemies. Unfortunately Malific Grasp was on the same talent row as Haunt, which made it awkward. Also MG was still tied into channeling DS, so still Affliction was a very immobile spec compared to our former glory. Which is fine to be honest, as we are supposed to be tankier versions of spell casters that can take a hit maybe at the cost of being able to traverse quickly. Which is not really true since we still have Demonic Gateways and Portals and Burning Rush.
Speaking of Burning Rush, its a cool looking effect and ties into the underlying philosophy of Affliction even more than it does into Destro/Demo in my opinion. You get a speedboost, which is worse for short distances than Blink/Leaps or other gap closers, but on long distances it overtakes those abilities. Exactly what Affliction is supposed to do. Non-bursty but continuous systems to win.
Shadowlands, lets not talk about it. I barely played here, damage was good and very good burst windows. But the class did not really feel like affliction is supposed to feel. Sludgefist was satisfying because the numbers were good, but again the feeling was not that of an affliction warlock but more like a fire mage with a shadowy aesthetic. Mostly because of Malefic Rupture
Afflictions Philosophy
In Classic the strength of Affliction was maintaining a load of dots on multiple targets, at a high cost of mana. In turn you could use Life Tap to reduce your health and convert it into mana. To heal back up you would need to deal damage with your dots, mainly Siphon Life and your channeled spell Drain Life. This was fun while leveling, especially if you started fear juggling, where you dot something up, let it run to you and dot something else in the meantime. When the first target almost reached you, you fear it and drain on the second target or start dotting a third, fearing the second and so on…
This was the epitomy of Affliction. Very little time spent on damaging spells, a lot of time spent on controlling the battle field. We had curses to reduce armor, reduce melee damage, increase enemy spell cast time. We could stun, we could fear, we could enhance damage taken by enemies while providing emergency Health Stones to our friends. The classical roll of the Warlock is not necessarily damage, but also controlling the battle field. But of course the numbers must be right always.
What Affliction is about is different systems running in parallel that - if managed correctly - give you an advantage when time goes on. The damage profile of Affliction is not bursty, which can be a drawback in M+ for example, and we can come up with ways to combat that. But giving us a direct damage, hardcasted spell, that deals damage based on dots on the target is not the way to go. Right now Affliction feels like time works against you, not for you. We have to cram everything onto the target, wait for cooldowns, cram even more on top, line up and then have a bunch of direct damage spell casts. Until we stand there, empty handed after a couple of Seeds or a hand full of Malefic Ruptures. Our dots expire, our Haste dwindles, and our non impactful dots tick for nothing while taunting us with the fantasy of what could have been.
Instead we should feel like we did in Classic while leveling or WotLK raiding. Start out at the bottom of the DPS meter, and when the time has come our High-Crit Corruption has weakened our enemies and made them ready for execution with Drain Soul. After they are defeated their tortured souls explode into nothingness, the only thing they knew in the last minutes of their sorry lifes was Agony, Corruption and feeling their life being withered away. In the end they dont even get to go to the Shadowlands, they explode and turn to nothing. Its mean, but look at the Warlock in the WoW Classic Trailer, that is a mean one.
r/wow - A nice guy finishing you off
A nice guy finishing you off
If you want roses, play a druid. And if you want burst, play a Mage or Destro Warlock.
The Solution - Time & Pressure
Agony ramps up - good, and it should hurt if it does.
Corruption could snapshot, even though I know that Blizzard does not like hidden mechanics like that, but its part of the philosophy - take it as inspiration at least. Affliction should be about spinning multiple plates/systems.
Drain Soul could be a beam-shaped AoE if it kills a target, just like Soul Flame.
(Enhanced) Soul Flame is a good ability, keep it, maybe even buff it and give us more agency over it (read below).
Seed of Corruption as a AoE Spender is good, just give us more soul shards in M+.
Withered Soul as a substitute to Malefic Rupture (read below) as our single target spender for soul shards.
In short: Make use of Mana again, let us manage multiple ressources: Health, Mana, Soul Shards. Other classes manage buffs, we should manage debuffs and ressources. Curses should help us control our engagements, stuns to prevent damage, even transfering health from our enemies onto friendlies could work. Or shield people with fallen Souls.
Inspiration for Spells/Mechanics
I dont have practical experience with game design, but as you probably can tell, I am very passionate about Affliction. So take these examples as inspiration, all of them combined would maybe be OP, but then again Fire Mage as it is on the WWI Beta is praised as the best class there ever was.
Withered Soul (Unique on one Target like UA was) could become a new kind of dot and the core fantasy of the spec like Wither on the Beta right now. It executes the target if the remaining dot damage is greater than the remaining HP of the target. This makes us work from both sides, the bottom up, and dwindling enemy HP down (Think Touch of Karma). At each tick (or every X ticks) they explode into an (Enhanced) Soul Flame, that applies a portion of the threshhold to all enemies. Focus target ticks for 100k, all targets hit get execute-threshold to 10k. Next tick again 100k only on the main target, all targets get executed at 20k, stacking. You dot everything like you do now, but then you can focus on one target and make it explode for indirect damage. The fight ends when all targets get executed at ~1mil hp, while you dealed ~10mil to the main target in 100k chunks. Your damage becomes back-loaded while also assisting against enrage mechanics (Berserk at 20% for example).
The main target could also get a bigger chunk of the direct 100k tick damage into its execute-threshold. Meaning that surrounding targets get 10k/tick execute, main target gets 50k/tick execute. That would make balancing for single target/multi target easier (Balancing-knob) . When certain values are reached the target could just take direct damage and reset the threshold.
Soul Effigy (Talent) teaches you Soul Effigy could be used to draw Withered Soul off the Boss, to save your burst for a later moment. The Soul Effigy would have an infinite duration, but limited HP pool (Balancing-knob). Your Withered Soul does not explode on the Soul Effigy, unless you relocate the Soul. When you relocate the transfered amount of execute-threshold could be smaller/greater than on default ticks (Balancing-knob) You work to keep the Soul alive with Drain Life and your other self healing with the help of:
To make it even more interesting, the Soul Effigy could even absorb some of the surrounding execute-damage when targets die. This way the Soul Effigy could be placed again on the next pack of mobs, and help with the ramp up time of Affliction, while still giving us a plate to spin. For this to work the Soul Effigy heal range has either i) to be huge and work through LoS, so we can heal it with our own HP inbetween packs, or ii) desummon the Soul Effigy and carry the damage on ourselfes, so the Warlock would tick down inbetween packs and try to stay alive, so he can shorten his ramp up on the next pack.
The whole Soul Effigy mechanic is just an example we already know, for illustration. The same concept could be achieved with just buffs/debuffs on the target/warlock und ground-targeted spells to apply the explosion instead of moving the Soul Effigy.
Sustained Malediction (Talent) teachecs you Effing Linked: create a link between Soul Effigy and the caster. While this link persists 40% of your self-healing is taken by the Soul Effigy and amplified (Balancing-knob).
When executed correctly, your Soul Effigy stacks a huge amount of execute threshhold, and when adds spawn you move the Soul Effigy and make it explode to apply a % of the execute threshold onto all the new targets. Then start dotting them for direct damage. This makes us not really bursty, but work in tandem with our friends. Our damage is not front-loaded but back-loaded (As all good things should be).
Teachings of the Torture Master (Talent) teaches you Pain Ward takes a even smaller percentage of Withered Soul, or could stack its own pool for shielding from damage prevented (Balancing-knob) due to Curse of Weakness/Tongues (if tongues reduced Magic damage)/Exhaustion (Pool increases with meters walked). This could then be applied to tanks in M+ to shield them from X amount of the respective prevented damage or vice versa. Prevented magic damage → Phys damage shield/magic damage shield. 1 min cooldown takes damage prevented in the last 20 seconds.
Forbidden Teachings (Talent) teaches you Free Soul: Use X amount of your Pain Ward-Pool to prevent the next Interruption, Silence, Pushback or Disarm effect suffered by your target. This buff lasts 4 seconds. (Give Unending Resolve to your friends) 1 min cooldown