Warlock Runes Fails. (mostly Affliction)

Here i will state some important things about Warlock Runes in general, but mostly about Affliction.

Problems with new runes:

Edit: (got resolved with hotfix) Unstable Affliction too weak base Damage and does not even profit from the +20% Haunt Damage.

Invocation Rune does not affect Unstable Affliction.

Edit: (got resolved with hotfix) Shadow and Flame buff does not trigger with pandemic crits (dot crits).

Edit: (got resolved with hotfix) Dance of the wicked does not trigger with pandemic crits (dot crits).

Drain Life Dot does not profit from Pandemic.

Felguard Pet DPS is too weak.

Old Runes Problems:

Demonic Pact - Triggers with Pet Crits which is frustrating with a ~5% crit chance. with bad luck it triggers first time after 30 sec+. It should be just like Hunters Heart of the Lion a straight Passive Aura.

Demonic Pact - Like Heart of the Lion Aura there should be a double effect for one self. Like +20% of spellpower for the Warlock, and +10% spellpower for party members.

Grimoire of Synergy - too high RNG Factor, better would be a doubled trigger chance from 5% to 10%, as overall compensation reduce the Effect from +25% to +12.5%.

Edit: (got fixed !) Haunt - provides no +20% for Unstable Affliction.

Soul Siphon - totally useless, too weak by far.

Reminder:

Heart of the Lion: Raid active, double Effect for the provider, permanently active.
Demonic Pact: Party active, no bonus effect for the provider, only active for 45 sec after a pet critical strike (which happen rarely)

I see no fairness here.

Affliction WL was one of the worst specs so far, and i will stand up now and hope for Hotfixes and improvements!

8 Likes

One more: pandemic crits do not trigger dance of the wicked rune. Affli is super mana intensive so it actually working would have been nice.

But like you said tons of synergies wasted. On top of the low damage / high mana cost.

Better level a SP if you like dots (or even pets now).

This should be changed because otherwise the rune is lying in my eyes. You can’t state that my shadow spells that crit cause bonus damage and then when a shadow spell does crit it doesn’t proc it because “oh, no not that spell”.
YOU, Blizz, did NOT specify NOT that spell. YOU said that my shadow spells that crit proc the bonus damage.

Fix it.

Speaking as a Tank Lock, I do not think that Drain Life should be able to benefit from Pandemic. It’s plenty powerful enough as it is and does not need additional benefits.

Absolutely, not only that though but its ability set is boring.

I just think Grimoire Of Synergy should be a 10% chance for either the demon or the Warlock to make the other gain 5% max mana and health back. A debuff happens when this proc happens that disallows it from happening again for 3 seconds.

We have enough “oh here’s a bit of damage” runes as it is.

What it should do is make all drain spells link to two additional targets (like a chain lightning) and drain from them as well, however the drain is now lowered to 75% (225% damage caused if 3 targets are being drained).
As it currently stands it might as well be removed from the game. It’s complete trash.

1 Like

i really dont understand why it is so hard to fix bugs and main issues for them especially when thousand people repeat the same things everyday in all wow community places

1 Like

One thing it’s good for is the Soul Link build for PvP, it’s damage sucks but it’s decently chunky and the charge is good utility, especially to close the gap between casters that have more range than you.

Really? It seems to have an almost 100% uptime for me, but the extra spell damage on it is kind of pathetic.

Well, yeah and no.
On you? Absolutely.
But I mean… If you are in a party of 5 casters then that is 125 spell power (for me it is currently 25) spread out over 5 players.

That is pretty chunky when you think about.
This druids starsurge got 25 more spell power to it.
This mages fireball got 25 more spell power to it.
This other mages arcane blast got 25 more spell power to it.
This shadow priests Mind Blast got 25 more spell power to it.
And on and on with everyone’s rotations for a minimum of a whooping 45 seconds.

It is a pretty great buffbot ability actually because all of those little things will add up quite a lot towards the overall DPS.

The questions is… Do you want to take the hit? Do you want to have a less interesting playstyle because you want to just be a walking spell power totem?

2 Likes

It’s definitely the best rune to take on legs for affliction still if you wanna be useful to the raid, every caster wants to be in the lock party for it, and it’s a nice buff for how much uptime it has, but compared to the 80 sp I get from demonic knowledge + STV trinket + imp, and the fact that you lose out the 30% spell crit for 6 sec every 20 sec to make pandemic actually useful, it would feel a lot better to use if it was a bit stronger.

2 Likes

Yes and with my idea to make the bonus 20% for myself and 10% for others this would be a good solution. Like Lion Aura from hunters. why do they get this feature and warlocks do not?

  • Felguard will now cast Cleave even when there is only 1 target.
  • Demonic Sacrifice buffs now fall off when the Summon Felguard rune is removed.

Latest Warlock hotfixes … not even close to what is really needed.

If you understand and support my complaints then drop a /push here please!

Aggrend probably just hates warlocks :smile:

Everything is clunky about locks and unfortunately not getting fixed.

Tanks are basically forced dps with hard casting. Horde is prone to interuption while alliance just roll.

Tank tier set bonus sucks to use in single target. Should be swapped to searing pain instead.

Dance of the wicked gets refreshed by weaker buff.

Backdraft duration is too low making rotation bad. You cast too many immolates. Also you have to life tap a lot.

Affliction dps is dead. Only good in pvp.

Unstable affliction dmg is too low.

Felguard is a joke. Damage is too low and stats low not making it good for either dps or master demonology buff.

Everlasting affliction doesn’t seem to have a use. Maybe in phase 4 if affliction gets good we can snapshot good corruptions but then we get into a different territory.

Lake of fire is unusable. I would make it cast instant rain instead and let it do aoe dmg for the duration.

Soul siphon is a dps loss. Totally useless. I would make it buff drain life instead as a a damage filler spell for affliction and buff drain soul for execute phase.

Invocation is useless. I would instead make it that it increases dot damage for every effect that is up.

Shadow and flame and synergy are almost identical. Synergy is also too rng. You basically choose the highest dps one.

Demonic pact shares slot with other important runes that unless you make a demo spec with felguard viable it won’t let find real use.

Overall there is very few things about last locks right now I would change. Better start fixing things quickly instead of adding new stuff or people will get sick and quit.

unfortunatelly i think they won’t do anything and finally we’ll get response like: 'it’s an experimental and seasonal fun, don’t take it so seriously, we have no time to fix it and don’t really care, just try to imagine that warlock has 1 destro tree or create alt"

I hoped for more love for affi. Started well but seems there was no enough time,resources , attention for things you guys talk about. Maybe indeed not enough willingness. I guess a break from a game cant be bad.

I see the next weeks it will be like when joining a raid…

A: LFM sunken temple.
B: warlock here.
A: tank or dps?
B: supporter.

Maybe (and hopefully) they will put more focus on class and spec balancing when phase 4 is out (or maybe they will try to make it even before releasing it? lol)

This is not affliction specific, nor runes. But atm in order ot achieve most dps as confla lock, you should NOT upgrade imps’ firebolt…

Continue the fight work fellow warlocks. Fight for our rights ! Make affi great again

1 Like

As i already mentioned in 2 or 3 other threads…

We got a hotfix for one of the many affli Problems.
Shadow and Flame got changed and it now triggers from pandemic crits!

Let’s keep this thread active if you are interested in a better future for affli wl and wls in general then
Please drop comments every few hours to /PUSH
Thanks

Dance of the wicked still dont proc from pandemic…
are they kidding ?

Sorry for the incoming wall of text but I have lot of experience with game design and balancing so I want to get this out of my chest.

Pandemic - Shadowflame should be able to crit too.

Lake of Fire - should be either straight up buff to Rain of Fire and Hellfire, or should come in multiple stacks each applying with tick of damage, once max stacks is achieved one tick of damage should be enough to refresh the duration, that way there is still the initial cost but it becomes much more viable in longer fight.

Master Channeler - should apply to health funnel too, this ability is just clunky, very slow to heal the pet, you need to channel it and in the SOD quest for the rune we actually had to use health funnel not drain life.

Soul Siphon - as mentioned before by others it is just very weak and absolutely pathetic in comparison to master channeler which is in the same slot! Execute mechanic (or anti execute, lower your health higher the heal) of some sort could work or general buff to the damage/heal + ability to crit (+20% damage per stack, stacks up to 100% - this would put it close to other fillers) that could turn drain life into affli filler.

Demonic Tactic - this is just not strong enough and it gets relatively less effective more crit you have from gear and buffs, in general it might result in +3-9% total damage buff depending on talents and other runes, compare that to master channeler that can be 15-20% of your DPS in 1v1 situation and can proc Synergy rune and Nightfall talent. It should be either combined with Demonic Pact, or buffed to +15-20% crit or + 10%crit +10% haste or +100% scaling of the pet with Warlocks crit chance.

Invocation - should trigger the effect every time the dot is refreshed not just when it is finishing - it would result in comparable damage to the searing pain from Meta, this would give lock viable alternative to Meta, because lets face it SOD is clearly about instant spells, movement and burst, there is not much time for hard cast gameplay, especially in PVP, game is just too bursty.

Everlasting Affliction - on top of its current effect it should cause Shadow Bolt, Shadow Cleave and Shadow Bolt Volley (and maybe Haunt) to apply corruption on the target. It would of course synergy with invocation and as a result could lead to some interesting builds (experimentation in SoD) for Affli and Demo.

Demonic Grace - remove the GCD please, maybe make it usable in Meta even without pet, possibly some scaling with some of the Demo talent(s) - for example each point in improved succubus would increase duration by 1 second, or something.

Demonic Pact - needs a buff of some sort, perhaps increase to spell damage done for the lock like in WOTLK on top of the current effect, maybe percentage of your spell power (30-100%) applied as AP to your pet when it procs, or again scaling with some of the Demo talent(s) - passive increase in effect when you unlock demonic sacrifice or master demonologist, etc.

Demonic Knowledge - is fine, maybe could scale with some late demo talent.

Dance of the Wicked - the mana regen needs buff or scaling with talents, maybe weaker version of the buff should not overwrite stronger buff unless its like 3 seconds till the end of the buff.

Shadowflame - is pretty good at the moment, however it could benefit from pandemic talent and maybe backdraft could be triggerable by this spell too not just by Conflagrate (so you could go for weaker version of the buff with 10 sec duration and 15 sec cooldown if you dont go full destro).

Unstable Affliction - DOT damage should be buffed and / or it should be at least instant or put a twist on it make the silence and nuke damage proc when the DOT runs out if it does not get dispelled in the mean time.

Felguard - it should deal more base damage than Succubus at least but if devs want to avoid it becoming default pet for all specs it could just scale much better with Demo talents, for example Unholy Power could have double effect on it, Improved Subjugate Demon could apply attack speed on it, putting point into Demonic Sacrifice and / or Soul Link could unlock new Felguard abilities such Demonic Frenzy (+5% AP with every attack, up to 50% - TBC / WOTLK ability) or Felstorm (Felguards Bladestorm). Improved Fire Stone could give Felguard ability to proc FireStone effect, etc.

Immolation Aura - is fine, does what it is supposed to do, maybe could have some buff / bonus effect from Demo talent(s) or Demo runes - like temporary buff to damage / tick speed / visuals every time you cast Demonic Grace, Vengeance or when Dance procs - something cool that works well with its purpose / lore.

Shadow Bolt Volley - when only one target is hit, should deal full damage or maybe even bonus damage (something like +10%), could even cause some cool effect like shooting three separate smaller shadow bolts vs single target, maybe even doing triple damage ticks (3 x 35-40% of normal damage vs single target).

Metamorphosis - should be treated as core demonology rune and talents that apply to demon pets should apply to it in some way and as such should scale with Demo Talents heavily.

Hypothetical examples:
Fel Stamina - increase total health in Demon Form by 3-15%.

Fel Intellect - give warlock +20-100% dodge scaling from his intellect (just like other classes scale from agility) while Meta is active.

Improved Imp - give searing pain little splash damage while in Meta (like demon form in WC3).

Improved Voidwalker - buff to shadow ward, WOTLK style sacrifice that would take 80/60/40 % of pets max HP instead of killing him.

Improved Succubus - aforementioned buff to demonic grace, +50/100/150% damage bonus to shadow cleave (at +150% it should be slightly better than searing pain but it still would have 6 sec CD, Nightfall would also be much more viable in this situation in Meta).

Improved Health Stone - +10/20 max (or missing) HP restored on use or scaling with spell power while in Meta.

Improved Health Funnel - heal your pet for % of your damage while Meta is active, or maybe share some of your heals / self heals, or make it like master channeler while in Meta.

Fel Domination - recharges 3 times faster while in Meta.

Master Summoner - reduces mana cost of Meta by 25/50%.

Unholy Power - gain AP equal to 20-100% of your SP, add your auto attack to your Shadow Cleave damage, or increase threat or damage or make charge usable in combat and increase the stun duration while in Meta.

Demonic Sacrifice - maybe alternative effect while Meta is active, instead of killing the pet warlock is gonna take big chunk of its health in order to get some effect - heal, physical bubble, magic bubble, general damage bubble, spell reflect on next incoming spell - something tanking related, perhaps each pet should give different effect.

Improve Subjugate Demon - reduce duration of general crowd control effects while in demon form by +5/10/15/20/25% and demon specific CC by additional +10/20/30/40/50%.

Improved Firestone - make the proc scale with SP something like 5/10% or 10/20% and make the proc happen with spell damage as well.

Master Demonologist - remove the reduction to threat from Felguard while Meta is active, maybe replace it with increased threat instead? Reduce the cooldown of Vengeance or increase its duration and or HP buff for example.

Improved Spellstone - change it to consumable with multiple charges and 60-30 sec CD, or alternatively make it not disappear when you use it. Give it some love.

Soul Link - When Meta is active your Vengeance gains bonus affect something along the lines of WOTLK Meta, increased damage, huge temporary buff to power of immolation aura, turn charge into intercept, instant Howl of Terror, healing from Death Coil tripled, increase to healing received or self healing. Something cool that work well for Tanking and PVP bruiser.

2 Likes

Some of your ideas are pretty awsome and all of them make some kind of sense… but you are clearly expecting too much from blizzard.
To really achieve some balancing we should focus on the much simpler and more obvious problems.
Tuning of already existing spells and features can be done im a few minutes of “programming work” i guess.
But completely changing and creating new spells and talent features would take days of work

If they even consider working 20% on it i would be glad.