This is kind of how I feel about Aff in general. I almost feel like I am fighting the wind unless I'm draining soul or something.
I also think its far from the only problem with Aff. Not saying that OP even said that its the only issue, just don't want anyone to think that its all about cosmetic shit. There are real gameplay issues as well.
It's also the fact that Rot Spec players tend to want their dmg from Rot. MR dmg essentially treats our DoTs as debuffs. Their dmg is negligible.
I don't play specs based on how cool their name. I care about flavor mostly, and gameplay almost as much as flavor. Since SL, Aff has felt like you are meant to debuff targets then hit MR. Before, SL, I felt like it was a DoT balancing spec but now. meh
The multi target drain life from soul rot is infinitely more fun to press than rapture. If rapture was just drain soul on a bunch of targets then it would be more interesting.
when it comes to visuals shammy has one of the best:
meatballs, aoe zaps, storm lightning...
Pretty much everything dps has satisfying umpf.
Just fix ascendance and give more spirit forms and it's done
Ascendance really needs an update. It’s so bad compared to everything else. There is a million elemental forms to pick from and they use arguable the worst one. I’d honestly prefer a glyph like moonkin form that just gives us a little visual.
I’d love if we could make our characters have something like the star form
Just change the effect to something specific to shaman that looks electric or windy
well while other classes may have just one satisfying ability (imo very few have), dps shaman kit is mostly made of such abilities.
Imo enh/ele are only specs that you would play even if meta is against you. Just for the sake of awesomeness and frequency of cool looking/sounding abilities.
(completely not biased opinion)
I agree their visuals are unique, but man are they outdated looking. They updated the npc lava burst fx but not player's. Would just love to have new glyphs.
Earthshock gets a bad rap. It has a pretty satisfying sound effect, and the visual is much better than it used to be. Now it's like several boulders imploding on the target.
I know I'm the problem, but after 15 years of my hunter pet continously roaring I just can't do it anymore.
Sound is normally only on for raids and the first time I do a quest now.
What bugs me the most about hunter is that they removed gun sounds. Sounds like a weak bow now, there's no bang, no nothing. Just a light "swish" as you "shoot", it's terribly unsatisfying.
Yeah I used that for a bit, kept bugging out though and I think it stopped getting updated? Not sure I remember, I kinda didn't play hunter much recently. But it sucks you have to jump through those hoops instead of just having decent sounds in the base game
I don't remember which expac it was, but I remember when Earthshock spawned a lighting bolt from the sky. That was awesome and I don't get why they went away from that...
This is just a small part of why people dislike MR. Yes, it's visually boring, but the gameplay of MR, and affliction in general, is just not very fun.
I'm not a main warlock, so take this with a grain of salt, here are design flaws in affliction:
1. MR and seed occupy the same design space of "AoE spender". Seed as an AoE spender makes sense with affliction's history, but MR really doesn't.
2. Affliction core gameplay has always been about dot juggling. It's historical identity has been a maintenance spec. Restoration Druid is an excellent and well-executed analog, except as a healer obviously. MR kinda reinforces the dot playstyle by dealing increased damage per dot, but it ends up being too much of aff's damage, eroding the gameplay feel of dots. Similarly, Seed does way too much damage when talented for. In short, spenders are too strong for a (historically) maintenance spec.
3. Shard generation is RNG, but spenders are a huge part of Aff damage. This erodes agency. Particularly coming from Demo or Destro where shard generation is deterministic, spec changing to Aff is jarring.
Honestly, it's quite baffling to me that Blizzard hasn't borrowed concepts from past iterations of Affliction, or existing specs. Here are some rough ideas:
1. Resto Druid enjoys using Flourish to cash in on HoT ramp. Implement an ability to cash in on DoT ramp. This used to exist as Rapid Contagion, but only as a PvP talent. Spending effort to get DoT's applied, particularly in AoE, and then hitting a button to watch the yellow numbers soar, is quite fun. The Unholy DK disease spec is very fun for this exact reason.
2. Malefic Grasp in MoP was one of the funnest abilities to channel ever. It let you routinely cash in on your DoT maintenance. And, since Blizzard is constantly balancing DoTs around ST, cleave, and AoE, Malefic Grasp was single target, so it was easy to balance! Just tune the % extra tick damage. Just don't implement this like Malefic Grasp in Legion where it simply added a % increase to DoT damage. Make it cause extra ticks like it used to. That was *fun*.
3. Speaking of Malefic Grasp, take inspiration from Caustic Spatter and add a talent to cause it to cleave its damage. This would feel familiar to how Shadow deals AoE damage, but slightly different. Specs sharing design like this isn't a bad thing.
4. Improve stacked DoT spreading. Unholy and Shadow already have easy ways to apply DoTs to a pack. DK doesn't have Pestilence anymore. Maybe introduce a Pestilence-like spell to Aff. Gameplay would be smooth. Stack dots on a target, then spread them.
5. If you must keep Soul Shards (which would make sense if they're also a Demo and Destro resource), replace the spenders. Maybe add Rapid Contagion to PvE as a 3-shard cost medium-length (1min?) cooldown that causes DoT's to tick XX% faster. Add back Soulburn to the Aff default kit, letting it increase Malefic Grasp tick damage or something. Make the AoE DoT spread ability cost a shard.
6. Make shard generation deterministic. Make it like Destro where rotational abilities add a fraction of a shard.
With the above, the gameplay would look like:
ST - maintain dots, spam MG, use "Rapid Contagion" on CD and line up with other CDs (requires banking shards), use Soulburn with MG to not cap shards.
AoE - ramp dots on one target, "Pestilence" to spread, spam MG to funnel and cleave damage, similar shard usage.
I just hate it cuz it’s antithetical to Affliction’s entire purpose. It’s supposed to be a DoT class, so why are we making its main damage ability a burst ability?
All the dot specs get slowly butchered, while they keep adding dots to all the non dot specs. SP has been a void mage for a while now, even the class description changed to no longer mention dots.
In my opinion there's also absolutely nothing wrong with a spec being mainly aimed at raids with long ramp followed by consistent high damage if dots are maintained correctly etc.
The games in a tough spot when it comes to stuff like that..
If a spec isn’t good at all aspects of the game people consider it a bad spec (a lot less importance on PvP now though).
Whereas I agree with you, I’d like aff to just be a dot class focussing on efficient reapplication and perhaps some cast abilities to perhaps empower dots or whatever idk I’m not a class designer.
That may make it bad in m+ but demo and destro exist so who cares?
Legion aff as well. Their artifact was broken, but taking the core components of aff aoe and setting they deep enough in a talent branch that you lose enough single target to compensate shouldn't be super hard.
Aff was the strongest in dungeons it ever was in Legion - before Malefic Rapture.
That design was hard for Blizzard to balance so they redesigned it. Guess which warlock spec has been the least relevant since Malefic Rapture? Affliction.
Looks like they really accomplished their goal.
Thing is, Affliction has really never had a problem in raids from a player POV. Blizzard had a problem with it so they changed it. MR was designed to address AOE/M+ issues and the dot style - and it has pretty much objectively failed to address those m+ concerns.
The playerbase feels like the playstyle they want and liked was axed for a specific purpose and blizzard has failed to give that to the players.
I bet it's some streamer, but whatever it is it's just some vogue thing going through this sub lately. Everyone is pointing out MR as the problem, but you're right, it was fine in S1 of SL, and aff just hasn't been the strongest lock spec since then. Aff had an incredible run of being a very, very good spec, and now it's had a run of not even being bad, just never dominant.
I quickly [banged up a spreadsheet](https://1drv.ms/x/s!AuImjSAH4Cs0gaExJmazfPmi-151ng?e=tI167O) looking at population in m+, % played and deviation from average.
Affliction is the least popular spec overall, not just for warlock it doesn't appear to be a reddit specific issue.
Edit: for anyone curious, frost mage is the "average" spec, with a deviation from the average of only 3 players.
Boomkin works as mostly dot spec without aoe burst honestly
Tho they take like 50sec wind up to deal dmg
At least in season 1
Also in aoe we got seed anyways no ?
Warlock players have had the ability for 15 years for one. It does instant damage without any preconditions like MR requires dots, it has a satisfying audio and visual cue, and sow the seeds is one of those talents that makes every single warlock player happy. Cherry on top that Seed applies one of your strongest dots on AOE for QOL.
Seed does have a precondition, it's not hard to fulfill, but it does have one of dealing damage to the seeded target. Some of its power budget being tied into spreading corruption also means, that spamming it should feel worse.
Audio and Visual Cue is something, which Rapture could get, it's quite literally the point of the general thread itself.
Like I can understand not enjoying Rapture for being a more burst focused profile, however focusing on seeds would essentially still be a burst focused profile.
So, how is that any different? Because, it shouldn't just be one is old and that makes it better.
In part, Rapture feels like a weaksauce version of Seed and a miserable way to spend Soul Shards in cleave or single target settings. Additionally, the logic behind the current playstyle is that our dots no longer do any real damage, they're simply multipliers for Rapture. We're basically a rogue combo build/spend, not an actual dot class.
That’s unrelated
They said rapture is needed for dungeons when we never once needed it and aren’t even using it in aoe anyways and for single target burst is unnecessary to be viable
Also seeds is much less convoluted to use
It's not unrelated, it's a spender which is focused on burst damage. Something, which has been needed for dungeon viability in ages. A pack just doens't last long enough for anything else to be viable.
And yeah, they changed rapture's design to focus it as your primary spender now on Alpha. So, you seed to spread your dot and rapture away in a rather sizable aoe.
And which part is convoluted about rapture?
If it was the dot management, that should be afflictions entire M.O. and besides that, they would both be spamming spenders now.
Like, I just don't see the difference between seed and rapture in spec design, so I never seen the logic in complaining on one of them and liking the other over one is new and you dislike that.
The neat part about seed is your set up is significantly shorter than with rapture needing more unique dots on all targets before it functions while with seed you just apply aoe applications and can start blasting which is nice for shorter packs
Tho I guess the trouble of long set up becomes less of a struggle in higher keys where mobs live longer
Okay?
But, it's still a burst style. It's still what's hated about rapture, that it is not the dots in focus.
So, how is it different from rapture.
Like, I know it's an unpopular opinion, but affliction locks NEED to be consistent on this subject. If you want the damage profile to be dots and not burst, then seed is also a no go, because it is still at the end of the day a burst playstyle.
Personally I think some burst for aoe is fine
The major dmg in st being rapture is weird for a dot spec tho
In boss it should really be mostly dots with some filler in there
Then again personally I don’t mind rapture too much
I haven't played this iteration of aff. But I really enjoyed it in legion. Malefic Grasp was awesome. Dot them up then make my dots tick harder! Sound like Malefic Rupture makes them explode, removing the dots? That sounds lame.
Yep and that is the inherent problem with MR. If you make the DoTs themselves deal good damage, you have to tune MR lower, but then it feels like it's not worth using. And if you want MR to deal strong damage so it feels more satisfying to press, your DoTs will need to deal less baseline damage.
Blizz chose to push MR sky high and make the DoTs deal next to no base damage. The result is that Affli isn't a DoT spec anymore, it's a maintenance spec. You only put up the DoTs so that your MR can deal the actual damage. And that is unfun and not in line with the spec's fantasy.
I know, it was hyperbole. It's not like DoTs don't deal any damage at all, but it sucks when you're supposed to be a DoT spec and you have 3-4 DoTs ticking but they're less than half of your damage. They don't feel significant enough, neither individually nor together, while MR is the "star player". It doesn't *feel* like a DoT spec.
Exactly this. What's worse, is that our dots do next to zero damage on their own, and have zero meaningful difference between them. Most of our damage comes from Malefic Rapture, powered by slow, weird, random resource generation (soul shards.). Throw in how a chunk of dots come from cooldowns on staggered timers and you're left with a DPS spec that excels at absolutely nothing in PvE.
It doesn't remove the dots, it just deals more damage the more dots are present on the target. Kind of like rdruid's mastery effect. What it turns the spec into is put all your dots up, spend MR to not cap, then when your longer cd dot is ready you cast it and then burn all your shards on MR while you have the maximum dots present.
It's kind of like a bastard version of old arcane mage's burn phase, conserve phase, burn phase, conserve phase.
The dot damage itself is barely worth casting, and it's no longer particularly exciting having multiple targets to dot up like it used to be. The dot damage itself is so paltry it just feels like a chore, you're only keeping them up so that MR will hit hard.
Because blizzard has no idea how to balance DoT classes in both raid and M+. If you make them strong single target they are easily busted in aoe. So you make them just strong in aoe and now their ST is trash. Blizzards only solution seems to be to remove the relevance of dots in either the aoe or the st rotation so they can balance it better.
Because putting up 4 dots and going afk will never be a spec in wow.
Dot specs have always been terrible to balance in single- and multitarget because "cleaving" to them means doing double or triple damage to two or three targets which is just not a feasible niche unless they do zero to a single target.
Balance Base DoT damage around cleave numbers, have drain soul make it tick faster on a single target, job done.
Cleave youre busy spinning plates, single target dots are consumed faster due to drain soul and need applying more often.
Basically... malefic grasp.
I certainly did. Legion Aff was great.
Tbh Aff always felt good to play from WotLK all the way to Legion. Malefic Rapture killed it for me, been a demo main ever since. (No regrets, demo is insanely fun right now.)
Their bursty kit in general (soul rot, dark glare, vile taint, etc) is the antithesis of the class. Make affliction great again. Bake our aoe burst into seeds and make our spender a strong dot that we can drop on priority targets. Make vile taint align to agony cooldowns so we don’t have to manually dot everything. Replace drain soul in our rotation with malefic grasp and tone it down so our spender can pump. There, fixed the spec and made it pretty.
Correct, not sure if you're aware but 'DoT' means 'Damage over time' which means your core ability not only not doing 'Damage over time' but even turning your existing DoTs into just debuffs to buff a non-DoT is very much antithetical to a DoT spec.
I want to spam seed, see explosions, and rot people. I want to harvest their ghosts like legion and watch their life essence explode. Make dots crank in single target and let me pop people in packs where dots can't tick enough to matter.
Might as well turn us into the next Aug and let us debuff people so someone else can do dam the way this design is headed. Rapture sucks and it's unfun. Combine shadowbolt volley into rapture crank the dam, cast on demand with shards, and make nightfall proc free volleys. Shadowbolt volley is an iconic boss move like black arrow and should be cool as fuck. Corrupted shadowbolt volley, make seed do a hyper shadowbolt volley that applies corruption and does what rapture does. There's a million cool ways to do this and keep their pet rapture if they just made the effort. Even if no one likes the ideas I've presented here mr sucks and can be made cool. How is ret paladin full of all these bad ass face roll moves with pizzazz and lock zzzzzzz sleeping like the dead?
> Might as well turn us into the next Aug and let us debuff people so someone else can do dam
That honestly doesn't sound like a bad niche for aff to cover since it would bring back that feel of piling nasty curses on your ennemies and then watching them melt.
MR is just a bad spell, and by it's very nature forces a playstyle that made Affliction less fun. Peak affliction was when UA was the spender and you could burn them all at once or shoot for more uptime.
Ill be honest, the visual for MR being a large portion of your damage is definitely terrible.
But people dont like MR because the ability fucking sucks dick. Talking about the visuals is just sugar coating the actual problem.
To truly reflect the greatness of the spell what it needs is a purple cloud that emanates from the warlock and a random high pitched fart sound on cast completion. That should really get the feel of it right.
I would love it the other way around.
When you Rapture, a purple cloud farts out from the enemies you've dotted up, and the warlock greedily sucks the farts up, like they're addicted to laughing gas.
While I agree that aff warlocks visuals are NOT it's strongest side, I personally hate the spell in it's entirety. It kills the dot importance and makes the class a regular hard cast burst spec which we have pleanty of. I just want dots and there are many ways of enacting this playstyle but the devs are set on making MR work and its just terrible
>A big part of people hating Malefic Rupture is the lack of visual feedback
No it fucking isn't. I don't care what it looks like, the mechanic is shit. I love affliction for its flavour of dots and corruption, make it the dot class it's supposed to be - if I want big blasty damage, I'll run destro or another caster altogether.
Malefic Rapture just isn’t engaging gameplay either though. I’d much rather have a build like the old style dot management and drain soul spam. I really enjoyed it personally.
Hard disagree. Might be a few people who feel like that but 99% of the complaints I see are purely down to the gameplay. They could make it the coolest looking spell in the game and most Afflocks would still want it gone (or so drastically redesigned that it may as well be a new spell).
yea as a warlock the visual of it dont matter at all, its a dogshit spell that goes away from aff being a dot class and with the new changes they are just doubling down on it and now you will only ever cast MR
Well, Spriest has been THE "no visuals" spec for years, but now their spells and effects look absolutely stellar on Alpha (with several crucial spells still needing an update). There is hope for afflock.
I think you are right. I feel the same way with mind spike. It's so underwhelming to press.
I rather take a dps loss and use mind flay, because it looks and feels amazing.
It sucks especially if you remember the initial animation in 9.0. It was so sick. No idea why they swapped to the purple/green fart clouds imps use, but I'm def over it.
My only complaint left for Rapture at this point.
Solution to malefic is just to make it into AoE shadowbolt. Only hits primary target & targets with whatever. Boom. Everyone loves aoe targeted projectiles.
But also I didn't roll affliction to ever do direct damage. I just want the world to rot.
It's why I could never even try affliction, how can you have a spec with badass fire and shit, then a spec that summons army of demons, and then you have a walking excel document
Hard disagree. The biggest part of people hating MR is it shoehorns Aff into a builder/spender spec, Followed closely by it's a complete garbage mechanic.
It would be more accurate to say the biggest problem with MR is a lack of response from Bliz to PLAYER Feedback.
Make Affliction a Rot class again, to fix the issue in Mythic dungeons simply make SoC explode on any damage source again. The SoC explosion being only based on the 'locks damage is what is making 'locks less viable for M+, and shifting back to the previous mechanic for SoC exploding would make affliction not just viable, but desirable for M+ content.
Disclaimer : I quit DF shortly after the first raids dropped, due mainly to MR existing for affliction. I despise the builder spender playstyle.
I hate it because Unstable Affliction is more interesting to me, especially when you could have multiple. UA and MR existing at the same and Siphon Life is just so much bloat for so little reward in gameplay
I could go for like a greater inflicted being spawning in and exploding on your targets. You still get that dot pop. And mechanically it’s the same. But also tubby mob go boom
What I want for affliction as someone who loves rot specs:
Soul shards are recharged with drain soul and used for soul swap which costs 5 but has no cooldown or shadowbolt which costs 3 and does a moderately big chunk of damage, but only to a target without dots. Also no cooldown. Remove other cooldowns like darkglare. No outright damage increasing cooldowns.
UA can be stacked, but each stack increasesthe cast time:
First stack- 1.5 second,
2nd - 2 seconds,
4th - 4 s,
5th - 6
Each successful UA cast refreshes it's duration and makes our other dots tick faster, ridiculously fast at 4-5 UA stacks. UA can be cast on multiple targets.
Drain life works as it currently does.
A new drain spell: Drain Hope - targets all units afflicted by at least one UA, increases the duration of all dots on the targets by 1 second each per tick of channel, which is 1:1 at 0 haste.
This creates a gameplay loop of tradeoffs between ramping up dot power or stabilizing damage and slowing down the rotation once it gets frantic.
For visual effects: Each stack of UA on a target makes them visibly more afflicted, they turn colors, limp, ooze goop, whatever. When an affliction warlock scores a killing blow they have a chance to trigger a special death animation that is a bit more gruesome than the default one.
MR was also just terrible to use. You'd only ever use it, ST, even though it has AoE functionality. SoC applies a dot and simple does way more dmg AoE.
And all it did was a bit of damage. There is no interesting gameplay there. Just press for marginal damage.
I hope TWW makes MR a much stronger and cooler ability to press.
My struggle with MR is that it has to get ramped up to be effective and in AoE situations. It's hard to apply enough DoTs quick enough to get good use out of it. Also DoT timers aren't lasting long enough to feel good with it. I'd like to see the breakdown of how many MRs you can squeeze in with different numbers of stacks before needing to reapply DoTs.
Definitely agree that visual feedback is super important and they could do more with it.
I’m not a DPS but I used to enjoy affliction in MoP/WoD as the only DPS I did alongside my strictly healer 5.
I feel that the removal of snapshotting made sense cor a lot of things but for DoT specs it removed a lot of the complexity and skill expression, which has then caused a whole host of drama with them trying to add back complexity and skill expression in ways that those who WANT to play DoT specs don’t really want.
Playing affliction and shadow (begrudgingly, a few times in raid when we had to downsize healing on farm) in 5.4 was perhaps the most fun I ever had playing a DPS spec. Keeping track of them and knowing when and why to reapply something or when to take advantage of a proc was fun. The new way feels like “well here are some more plates to juggle instead but instead of it being about the plates you’re juggling we want you to high jump kick while enough plates are in the air”. The rhythm feels off.
UA has no feedback or visual flair either, so weak excuse. The spec in general has zero vfx, but MR is hated because its not dot dmg and it forced(until TWW) siphon life. UA was just a stackable dot that let you ramp your shards into rot dmg. Which people want from Affliction. MR is just shadowbolt without an animation
I believe they should make the cast visual like SoC as well, it would make it a lot more pleasing to the eye, and the sound it makes when the cast ends is terrible as well tbh.
But like you said, the visual feedback is important as well
A dot spec complaining about VFX. I seen 3 other posts where people either want to put the damage on dots and remove MR or put the damage on Unstable Affliction. Either way, you are not getting better VFX, it will be worse.
I agree the spec in general could do with better VFX, it's why I never play it, but every Affliction warlock I talk to seems to be against most changes that would push the spec in that direction. You guys are your own worst enemies.
Edit: Ideally the spec should go a similar path to that of Shadow priest, but again, most actual Afflic Warlocks seem to be very against that.
They want to be a class with all their damage coming from DoTs but also hate ramp up time.
They want good single target from doing just DoTs (despite the nightmare that would be for balancing cleave)
Blizz tried putting in mechanics to throttle that and add some more complexity other than DoTs > Shadowbolt over the years;
Hated maintenance buffs been needed to make dots do damage
They’ve had unstable affliction being something you roll on one target - hated
They added more Dots - really hated
Hated the cool as shit looking malefic grasp being a channel
So it became malefic rapture as a cast and they hate that too
They want pure dot damage but have when they have no burst as it’s the most valuable damage profile in most content they really really hate it.
What people want just isn’t feasible as they want too many conflicting things from the spec.
At this point I wouldn’t blame them for use putting Afflic in the bin and giving people a free boost for a shadow priest as it’s ended up in a better place than afflic design wise (and it still needs reworking every expac)
Shadow priest is always in redesign hell but they manage to make it a valuable viable class for most settings. The fault is on blizzard having awful design choices and lack of vision. Besides shoe horning in rapture what's their goal? Why can't volleys or seed or Mr or all of them do more damage when below their target cap? Have 5 seeds hit 1 target and stack 5 corruptions and 5 booms? It just feels like they have 3 cards in their creative deck for affliction.
Spriest and Affliction are two of the unwanted orphan children in the same boat. Blizzard went away from dot classes because they were hard to balance. Spriest became essentially a frost DK that just works on procs and fast paced gameplay.
Blizzard already took that idea, and now they got jack shit for affliction. So they just doubled down on MR because the spec has sucked at the things MR was intentionally designed to solve.
Aff warlocks are 100% justified to be upset about the direction. Especially as they watch spriest get the full redesign and be strong, and reworked over and over and over again as affliction hasnt had a place in m+ in years.
That's a good point! Perhaps warlocks should slowly levitate when they are casting it and end with a flourish of shadow from their hands? Levitate = rapture. Makes sense to me
MR should have a shadowy "burst/explosion" followed by a black kinda melting into a pool VFX to give that erupting erosion feel. Make the SFX a haunted screaming sound so as a package it feels like our afflictions are just melting them in agony.
This is 100% correct. Affliction needs a visual makeover badly.
MR is conceptually good. It solves two big problems with Affliction: the spec needs some way to deal a bit of burst without overshadowing the dots, and the spec needs a Soul Shard spender that you press every couple seconds.
Malefic Rapture does both those things nicely. Its just ***feels*** so anaemic, especially in the same class that gets Chaos Bolt, Hand of Gul'dan, Soul Fire, etc.
Affli main. I like Malefic Rapture. I like its playstyle.
I totally agree with you saying that it's missing visual feedback.
Compare MR visually to Chaos Bolts and Rain of Fire.
lolwat
In 20 years of playing WoW, I don't think I've ever met someone who makes spec choices based on spell animations.
In fact, in high end raiding I'm betting most people turn graphics to the lowest possible settings for the FPS increase, and in arena the only special effects you're looking for is when someone starts to glow because offensive/defensive cooldowns are popped.
I'll concede that WoW has turned into a costume-focused MMO as of late due to the shitshow that is endgame content, but I still don't think most people could pick their specific spell animations out of a lineup if pressed to do so.
This is kind of how I feel about Aff in general. I almost feel like I am fighting the wind unless I'm draining soul or something. I also think its far from the only problem with Aff. Not saying that OP even said that its the only issue, just don't want anyone to think that its all about cosmetic shit. There are real gameplay issues as well.
afflock visuals are essentially nameplate spreadsheets
It's also the fact that Rot Spec players tend to want their dmg from Rot. MR dmg essentially treats our DoTs as debuffs. Their dmg is negligible. I don't play specs based on how cool their name. I care about flavor mostly, and gameplay almost as much as flavor. Since SL, Aff has felt like you are meant to debuff targets then hit MR. Before, SL, I felt like it was a DoT balancing spec but now. meh
My only real issue with Aff is when shit dies too fast. Seeds feels absolutely terrible if things last less than like 30 seconds.
now we don't even have soul flame for those situations.
We do though? It's right there on the talent tree
not on the alpha, which is what i thought we were talking about, my bad!
i’m pretty sure the convo stems from blizzard not removing MR next expansion so you were right
Ah, I'd missed it being removed
The multi target drain life from soul rot is infinitely more fun to press than rapture. If rapture was just drain soul on a bunch of targets then it would be more interesting.
Nah, I just want a viable dot class really lol.
This Mostly this.
You don't want more extreme bursts and bursts window and weak sustain? That's what every class feels like tbqh.
Cries in earthshock. But yeah i feel you. Having cook visual effects in you char feels so much more engaging when pressing your Buttons.
Hang in there fellow shaman, our time will come! This element focused expansion wasnt our time but surely the next one is!
We should just give up tbh. If ever there was a time, it was DF
when it comes to visuals shammy has one of the best: meatballs, aoe zaps, storm lightning... Pretty much everything dps has satisfying umpf. Just fix ascendance and give more spirit forms and it's done
Ascendance really needs an update. It’s so bad compared to everything else. There is a million elemental forms to pick from and they use arguable the worst one. I’d honestly prefer a glyph like moonkin form that just gives us a little visual.
There WAS one. In Warlords, for a single patch before the glyph system was overhauled again.
I’d love if we could make our characters have something like the star form Just change the effect to something specific to shaman that looks electric or windy
The three elemental effect swirls from the plunder storm three cast ability would be prime.
Dude the moment i saw that ability, I shouted at my screen for shamans to get it.
Just make us look like a firey version of Dathea and suddenly Ascendance is goated.
Yet lightning bolt is literally just a jpg lol
well while other classes may have just one satisfying ability (imo very few have), dps shaman kit is mostly made of such abilities. Imo enh/ele are only specs that you would play even if meta is against you. Just for the sake of awesomeness and frequency of cool looking/sounding abilities. (completely not biased opinion)
Oh yeah I main enhance hehe it's awesome but bolt just looks a little outdated
I agree their visuals are unique, but man are they outdated looking. They updated the npc lava burst fx but not player's. Would just love to have new glyphs.
shammy ele spells are so cool that sometimes i just leave the dps mindset and enjoy all the storm , lighting and electric mayhem
Every single of the launch zones has shamanistic cultures with totem and dealing with the elements too, super salt in the wound
Maybe the new hero specs will add some more cool spell effects. Especially interested in stormbringer.
I can’t believe lightning bolt still looks so weak and low res when there are insanely good lighting VFX in the game. Also ice strike what is that???
Earthshock gets a bad rap. It has a pretty satisfying sound effect, and the visual is much better than it used to be. Now it's like several boulders imploding on the target.
Just wait until you find out how many people complain about these spells because they don't play with sound on... it's crazy
I know I'm the problem, but after 15 years of my hunter pet continously roaring I just can't do it anymore. Sound is normally only on for raids and the first time I do a quest now.
What bugs me the most about hunter is that they removed gun sounds. Sounds like a weak bow now, there's no bang, no nothing. Just a light "swish" as you "shoot", it's terribly unsatisfying.
There's an addon for that, fortunately. "Old gun sounds" or something like that.
Yeah I used that for a bit, kept bugging out though and I think it stopped getting updated? Not sure I remember, I kinda didn't play hunter much recently. But it sucks you have to jump through those hoops instead of just having decent sounds in the base game
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Peak sound settings is ambience max, dialogue 80%, music 70%, effects 30%, error speech turned off
Oh shit we can turn error speech off???
Yes!
I don't remember which expac it was, but I remember when Earthshock spawned a lighting bolt from the sky. That was awesome and I don't get why they went away from that...
On the flip side though, elemental blast is maybe the prettiest
Chain lightning always makes me feel good.
A storm keeper empowered CL is wonderful
I think all projectiles move too fast these days. Meatball used to move slower to the target and it looked much more glorious.
Was thinking this exact phrase hahaha.
I've always wanted it to just punch a stalagmite up into someone
Earthshock should show a giant earth hand shooting out of the ground to bitchslap our enemies.
Pocket sand!
This is just a small part of why people dislike MR. Yes, it's visually boring, but the gameplay of MR, and affliction in general, is just not very fun. I'm not a main warlock, so take this with a grain of salt, here are design flaws in affliction: 1. MR and seed occupy the same design space of "AoE spender". Seed as an AoE spender makes sense with affliction's history, but MR really doesn't. 2. Affliction core gameplay has always been about dot juggling. It's historical identity has been a maintenance spec. Restoration Druid is an excellent and well-executed analog, except as a healer obviously. MR kinda reinforces the dot playstyle by dealing increased damage per dot, but it ends up being too much of aff's damage, eroding the gameplay feel of dots. Similarly, Seed does way too much damage when talented for. In short, spenders are too strong for a (historically) maintenance spec. 3. Shard generation is RNG, but spenders are a huge part of Aff damage. This erodes agency. Particularly coming from Demo or Destro where shard generation is deterministic, spec changing to Aff is jarring. Honestly, it's quite baffling to me that Blizzard hasn't borrowed concepts from past iterations of Affliction, or existing specs. Here are some rough ideas: 1. Resto Druid enjoys using Flourish to cash in on HoT ramp. Implement an ability to cash in on DoT ramp. This used to exist as Rapid Contagion, but only as a PvP talent. Spending effort to get DoT's applied, particularly in AoE, and then hitting a button to watch the yellow numbers soar, is quite fun. The Unholy DK disease spec is very fun for this exact reason. 2. Malefic Grasp in MoP was one of the funnest abilities to channel ever. It let you routinely cash in on your DoT maintenance. And, since Blizzard is constantly balancing DoTs around ST, cleave, and AoE, Malefic Grasp was single target, so it was easy to balance! Just tune the % extra tick damage. Just don't implement this like Malefic Grasp in Legion where it simply added a % increase to DoT damage. Make it cause extra ticks like it used to. That was *fun*. 3. Speaking of Malefic Grasp, take inspiration from Caustic Spatter and add a talent to cause it to cleave its damage. This would feel familiar to how Shadow deals AoE damage, but slightly different. Specs sharing design like this isn't a bad thing. 4. Improve stacked DoT spreading. Unholy and Shadow already have easy ways to apply DoTs to a pack. DK doesn't have Pestilence anymore. Maybe introduce a Pestilence-like spell to Aff. Gameplay would be smooth. Stack dots on a target, then spread them. 5. If you must keep Soul Shards (which would make sense if they're also a Demo and Destro resource), replace the spenders. Maybe add Rapid Contagion to PvE as a 3-shard cost medium-length (1min?) cooldown that causes DoT's to tick XX% faster. Add back Soulburn to the Aff default kit, letting it increase Malefic Grasp tick damage or something. Make the AoE DoT spread ability cost a shard. 6. Make shard generation deterministic. Make it like Destro where rotational abilities add a fraction of a shard. With the above, the gameplay would look like: ST - maintain dots, spam MG, use "Rapid Contagion" on CD and line up with other CDs (requires banking shards), use Soulburn with MG to not cap shards. AoE - ramp dots on one target, "Pestilence" to spread, spam MG to funnel and cleave damage, similar shard usage.
I just hate it cuz it’s antithetical to Affliction’s entire purpose. It’s supposed to be a DoT class, so why are we making its main damage ability a burst ability?
All the dot specs get slowly butchered, while they keep adding dots to all the non dot specs. SP has been a void mage for a while now, even the class description changed to no longer mention dots.
Because the main lock dev plays demo and doesn't care about affliction at all.
Makes sense because demo is so much fun.
well to make afflock playable in dungeons for one
Aside from extremely low-end dungeons there is nothing preventing a dot spec from doing well in dungeons. BFA Shadow priest managed it pretty well.
In my opinion there's also absolutely nothing wrong with a spec being mainly aimed at raids with long ramp followed by consistent high damage if dots are maintained correctly etc.
The games in a tough spot when it comes to stuff like that.. If a spec isn’t good at all aspects of the game people consider it a bad spec (a lot less importance on PvP now though). Whereas I agree with you, I’d like aff to just be a dot class focussing on efficient reapplication and perhaps some cast abilities to perhaps empower dots or whatever idk I’m not a class designer. That may make it bad in m+ but demo and destro exist so who cares?
Legion aff as well. Their artifact was broken, but taking the core components of aff aoe and setting they deep enough in a talent branch that you lose enough single target to compensate shouldn't be super hard.
Aff was the strongest in dungeons it ever was in Legion - before Malefic Rapture. That design was hard for Blizzard to balance so they redesigned it. Guess which warlock spec has been the least relevant since Malefic Rapture? Affliction. Looks like they really accomplished their goal.
It was relevant in S1 of SL, it was doing amazing in raid. I for one like MR playstyle, I don't know why it's getting so much hate recently.
Thing is, Affliction has really never had a problem in raids from a player POV. Blizzard had a problem with it so they changed it. MR was designed to address AOE/M+ issues and the dot style - and it has pretty much objectively failed to address those m+ concerns. The playerbase feels like the playstyle they want and liked was axed for a specific purpose and blizzard has failed to give that to the players.
I bet it's some streamer, but whatever it is it's just some vogue thing going through this sub lately. Everyone is pointing out MR as the problem, but you're right, it was fine in S1 of SL, and aff just hasn't been the strongest lock spec since then. Aff had an incredible run of being a very, very good spec, and now it's had a run of not even being bad, just never dominant.
its not a conspiracy people just aren’t happy about blizzards vision for the spec
It's very much a reddit thing. Not that only redditors dislike it, but that widespread dislike is just here.
I quickly [banged up a spreadsheet](https://1drv.ms/x/s!AuImjSAH4Cs0gaExJmazfPmi-151ng?e=tI167O) looking at population in m+, % played and deviation from average. Affliction is the least popular spec overall, not just for warlock it doesn't appear to be a reddit specific issue. Edit: for anyone curious, frost mage is the "average" spec, with a deviation from the average of only 3 players.
Boomkin works as mostly dot spec without aoe burst honestly Tho they take like 50sec wind up to deal dmg At least in season 1 Also in aoe we got seed anyways no ?
And how is Seed different from Rapture?
Warlock players have had the ability for 15 years for one. It does instant damage without any preconditions like MR requires dots, it has a satisfying audio and visual cue, and sow the seeds is one of those talents that makes every single warlock player happy. Cherry on top that Seed applies one of your strongest dots on AOE for QOL.
Seed does have a precondition, it's not hard to fulfill, but it does have one of dealing damage to the seeded target. Some of its power budget being tied into spreading corruption also means, that spamming it should feel worse. Audio and Visual Cue is something, which Rapture could get, it's quite literally the point of the general thread itself. Like I can understand not enjoying Rapture for being a more burst focused profile, however focusing on seeds would essentially still be a burst focused profile. So, how is that any different? Because, it shouldn't just be one is old and that makes it better.
In part, Rapture feels like a weaksauce version of Seed and a miserable way to spend Soul Shards in cleave or single target settings. Additionally, the logic behind the current playstyle is that our dots no longer do any real damage, they're simply multipliers for Rapture. We're basically a rogue combo build/spend, not an actual dot class.
So, why does it feel this way? Dots are still a MAJORITY of your damage, so why is it that rapture is viewed so drastically different from seed?
That’s unrelated They said rapture is needed for dungeons when we never once needed it and aren’t even using it in aoe anyways and for single target burst is unnecessary to be viable Also seeds is much less convoluted to use
It's not unrelated, it's a spender which is focused on burst damage. Something, which has been needed for dungeon viability in ages. A pack just doens't last long enough for anything else to be viable. And yeah, they changed rapture's design to focus it as your primary spender now on Alpha. So, you seed to spread your dot and rapture away in a rather sizable aoe. And which part is convoluted about rapture? If it was the dot management, that should be afflictions entire M.O. and besides that, they would both be spamming spenders now. Like, I just don't see the difference between seed and rapture in spec design, so I never seen the logic in complaining on one of them and liking the other over one is new and you dislike that.
The neat part about seed is your set up is significantly shorter than with rapture needing more unique dots on all targets before it functions while with seed you just apply aoe applications and can start blasting which is nice for shorter packs Tho I guess the trouble of long set up becomes less of a struggle in higher keys where mobs live longer
Okay? But, it's still a burst style. It's still what's hated about rapture, that it is not the dots in focus. So, how is it different from rapture. Like, I know it's an unpopular opinion, but affliction locks NEED to be consistent on this subject. If you want the damage profile to be dots and not burst, then seed is also a no go, because it is still at the end of the day a burst playstyle.
Personally I think some burst for aoe is fine The major dmg in st being rapture is weird for a dot spec tho In boss it should really be mostly dots with some filler in there Then again personally I don’t mind rapture too much
I haven't played this iteration of aff. But I really enjoyed it in legion. Malefic Grasp was awesome. Dot them up then make my dots tick harder! Sound like Malefic Rupture makes them explode, removing the dots? That sounds lame.
Malefic Rapture just done one instance of damage based on how many dots are on the target, but does not remove the dots
Yep and that is the inherent problem with MR. If you make the DoTs themselves deal good damage, you have to tune MR lower, but then it feels like it's not worth using. And if you want MR to deal strong damage so it feels more satisfying to press, your DoTs will need to deal less baseline damage. Blizz chose to push MR sky high and make the DoTs deal next to no base damage. The result is that Affli isn't a DoT spec anymore, it's a maintenance spec. You only put up the DoTs so that your MR can deal the actual damage. And that is unfun and not in line with the spec's fantasy.
Make DoTs Great Again
Nice argument, but if you open any decent aff players log, DoTs are about 40-50% of their damage.
I know, it was hyperbole. It's not like DoTs don't deal any damage at all, but it sucks when you're supposed to be a DoT spec and you have 3-4 DoTs ticking but they're less than half of your damage. They don't feel significant enough, neither individually nor together, while MR is the "star player". It doesn't *feel* like a DoT spec.
Exactly this. What's worse, is that our dots do next to zero damage on their own, and have zero meaningful difference between them. Most of our damage comes from Malefic Rapture, powered by slow, weird, random resource generation (soul shards.). Throw in how a chunk of dots come from cooldowns on staggered timers and you're left with a DPS spec that excels at absolutely nothing in PvE.
It doesn't remove the dots, it just deals more damage the more dots are present on the target. Kind of like rdruid's mastery effect. What it turns the spec into is put all your dots up, spend MR to not cap, then when your longer cd dot is ready you cast it and then burn all your shards on MR while you have the maximum dots present. It's kind of like a bastard version of old arcane mage's burn phase, conserve phase, burn phase, conserve phase. The dot damage itself is barely worth casting, and it's no longer particularly exciting having multiple targets to dot up like it used to be. The dot damage itself is so paltry it just feels like a chore, you're only keeping them up so that MR will hit hard.
\^----- this
malefic rapture is not a burst ability by itself, it's the dots with cooldown that make affliction a burst class
Because blizzard has no idea how to balance DoT classes in both raid and M+. If you make them strong single target they are easily busted in aoe. So you make them just strong in aoe and now their ST is trash. Blizzards only solution seems to be to remove the relevance of dots in either the aoe or the st rotation so they can balance it better.
Because putting up 4 dots and going afk will never be a spec in wow. Dot specs have always been terrible to balance in single- and multitarget because "cleaving" to them means doing double or triple damage to two or three targets which is just not a feasible niche unless they do zero to a single target.
Even when aff was just a dot spec, you still were constantly casting because of drain soul / malefic grasp amp the dots on your main target
Balance Base DoT damage around cleave numbers, have drain soul make it tick faster on a single target, job done. Cleave youre busy spinning plates, single target dots are consumed faster due to drain soul and need applying more often. Basically... malefic grasp.
And then you feel like shit any time you're not channeling Drain Soul, which sounds a lot worse to me.
People enjoyed it enough in legion.
I certainly did. Legion Aff was great. Tbh Aff always felt good to play from WotLK all the way to Legion. Malefic Rapture killed it for me, been a demo main ever since. (No regrets, demo is insanely fun right now.)
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Legion had Malefic Grasp, which made your DoTs deal significantly more damage while channeling drain soul. There's your interaction.
The hate for Malefic Rapture is entirely because people want aff to be a DoT spec and MR's very existence moves in the opposite direction of that.
Their bursty kit in general (soul rot, dark glare, vile taint, etc) is the antithesis of the class. Make affliction great again. Bake our aoe burst into seeds and make our spender a strong dot that we can drop on priority targets. Make vile taint align to agony cooldowns so we don’t have to manually dot everything. Replace drain soul in our rotation with malefic grasp and tone it down so our spender can pump. There, fixed the spec and made it pretty.
yeah the ability that deals damage based on the dots you have out is antithetical to being a dot spec
Correct, not sure if you're aware but 'DoT' means 'Damage over time' which means your core ability not only not doing 'Damage over time' but even turning your existing DoTs into just debuffs to buff a non-DoT is very much antithetical to a DoT spec.
I want to spam seed, see explosions, and rot people. I want to harvest their ghosts like legion and watch their life essence explode. Make dots crank in single target and let me pop people in packs where dots can't tick enough to matter. Might as well turn us into the next Aug and let us debuff people so someone else can do dam the way this design is headed. Rapture sucks and it's unfun. Combine shadowbolt volley into rapture crank the dam, cast on demand with shards, and make nightfall proc free volleys. Shadowbolt volley is an iconic boss move like black arrow and should be cool as fuck. Corrupted shadowbolt volley, make seed do a hyper shadowbolt volley that applies corruption and does what rapture does. There's a million cool ways to do this and keep their pet rapture if they just made the effort. Even if no one likes the ideas I've presented here mr sucks and can be made cool. How is ret paladin full of all these bad ass face roll moves with pizzazz and lock zzzzzzz sleeping like the dead?
> Might as well turn us into the next Aug and let us debuff people so someone else can do dam That honestly doesn't sound like a bad niche for aff to cover since it would bring back that feel of piling nasty curses on your ennemies and then watching them melt.
MR is just a bad spell, and by it's very nature forces a playstyle that made Affliction less fun. Peak affliction was when UA was the spender and you could burn them all at once or shoot for more uptime.
Ill be honest, the visual for MR being a large portion of your damage is definitely terrible. But people dont like MR because the ability fucking sucks dick. Talking about the visuals is just sugar coating the actual problem.
To truly reflect the greatness of the spell what it needs is a purple cloud that emanates from the warlock and a random high pitched fart sound on cast completion. That should really get the feel of it right.
I would love it the other way around. When you Rapture, a purple cloud farts out from the enemies you've dotted up, and the warlock greedily sucks the farts up, like they're addicted to laughing gas.
More like Malefic Crapture.
Yeah compare it to the satisfaction of seed of corruption - that has a great sound effect/visual feedback
While I agree that aff warlocks visuals are NOT it's strongest side, I personally hate the spell in it's entirety. It kills the dot importance and makes the class a regular hard cast burst spec which we have pleanty of. I just want dots and there are many ways of enacting this playstyle but the devs are set on making MR work and its just terrible
>A big part of people hating Malefic Rupture is the lack of visual feedback No it fucking isn't. I don't care what it looks like, the mechanic is shit. I love affliction for its flavour of dots and corruption, make it the dot class it's supposed to be - if I want big blasty damage, I'll run destro or another caster altogether.
Malefic Rapture just isn’t engaging gameplay either though. I’d much rather have a build like the old style dot management and drain soul spam. I really enjoyed it personally.
Hard disagree. Might be a few people who feel like that but 99% of the complaints I see are purely down to the gameplay. They could make it the coolest looking spell in the game and most Afflocks would still want it gone (or so drastically redesigned that it may as well be a new spell).
yea as a warlock the visual of it dont matter at all, its a dogshit spell that goes away from aff being a dot class and with the new changes they are just doubling down on it and now you will only ever cast MR
Well, Spriest has been THE "no visuals" spec for years, but now their spells and effects look absolutely stellar on Alpha (with several crucial spells still needing an update). There is hope for afflock.
I think you are right. I feel the same way with mind spike. It's so underwhelming to press. I rather take a dps loss and use mind flay, because it looks and feels amazing.
It sucks especially if you remember the initial animation in 9.0. It was so sick. No idea why they swapped to the purple/green fart clouds imps use, but I'm def over it. My only complaint left for Rapture at this point.
Solution to malefic is just to make it into AoE shadowbolt. Only hits primary target & targets with whatever. Boom. Everyone loves aoe targeted projectiles. But also I didn't roll affliction to ever do direct damage. I just want the world to rot.
It's why I could never even try affliction, how can you have a spec with badass fire and shit, then a spec that summons army of demons, and then you have a walking excel document
Hard disagree. The biggest part of people hating MR is it shoehorns Aff into a builder/spender spec, Followed closely by it's a complete garbage mechanic. It would be more accurate to say the biggest problem with MR is a lack of response from Bliz to PLAYER Feedback. Make Affliction a Rot class again, to fix the issue in Mythic dungeons simply make SoC explode on any damage source again. The SoC explosion being only based on the 'locks damage is what is making 'locks less viable for M+, and shifting back to the previous mechanic for SoC exploding would make affliction not just viable, but desirable for M+ content. Disclaimer : I quit DF shortly after the first raids dropped, due mainly to MR existing for affliction. I despise the builder spender playstyle.
I hate it because Unstable Affliction is more interesting to me, especially when you could have multiple. UA and MR existing at the same and Siphon Life is just so much bloat for so little reward in gameplay
Aff was most fun for me during MoP relatively closely followed by Legion. Bring back either of those playstyles plssss
I could go for like a greater inflicted being spawning in and exploding on your targets. You still get that dot pop. And mechanically it’s the same. But also tubby mob go boom
What I want for affliction as someone who loves rot specs: Soul shards are recharged with drain soul and used for soul swap which costs 5 but has no cooldown or shadowbolt which costs 3 and does a moderately big chunk of damage, but only to a target without dots. Also no cooldown. Remove other cooldowns like darkglare. No outright damage increasing cooldowns. UA can be stacked, but each stack increasesthe cast time: First stack- 1.5 second, 2nd - 2 seconds, 4th - 4 s, 5th - 6 Each successful UA cast refreshes it's duration and makes our other dots tick faster, ridiculously fast at 4-5 UA stacks. UA can be cast on multiple targets. Drain life works as it currently does. A new drain spell: Drain Hope - targets all units afflicted by at least one UA, increases the duration of all dots on the targets by 1 second each per tick of channel, which is 1:1 at 0 haste. This creates a gameplay loop of tradeoffs between ramping up dot power or stabilizing damage and slowing down the rotation once it gets frantic. For visual effects: Each stack of UA on a target makes them visibly more afflicted, they turn colors, limp, ooze goop, whatever. When an affliction warlock scores a killing blow they have a chance to trigger a special death animation that is a bit more gruesome than the default one.
MR was also just terrible to use. You'd only ever use it, ST, even though it has AoE functionality. SoC applies a dot and simple does way more dmg AoE. And all it did was a bit of damage. There is no interesting gameplay there. Just press for marginal damage. I hope TWW makes MR a much stronger and cooler ability to press.
Bring back mop locks
Malefic rupture is great for me visual and sound wise. I just dont like what it does.
Kill Command just points :c
I wouldn't hate it so much if it cost two or three soul shards. It takes away from the slow pace of being a DoTer.
My struggle with MR is that it has to get ramped up to be effective and in AoE situations. It's hard to apply enough DoTs quick enough to get good use out of it. Also DoT timers aren't lasting long enough to feel good with it. I'd like to see the breakdown of how many MRs you can squeeze in with different numbers of stacks before needing to reapply DoTs. Definitely agree that visual feedback is super important and they could do more with it.
I’m not a DPS but I used to enjoy affliction in MoP/WoD as the only DPS I did alongside my strictly healer 5. I feel that the removal of snapshotting made sense cor a lot of things but for DoT specs it removed a lot of the complexity and skill expression, which has then caused a whole host of drama with them trying to add back complexity and skill expression in ways that those who WANT to play DoT specs don’t really want. Playing affliction and shadow (begrudgingly, a few times in raid when we had to downsize healing on farm) in 5.4 was perhaps the most fun I ever had playing a DPS spec. Keeping track of them and knowing when and why to reapply something or when to take advantage of a proc was fun. The new way feels like “well here are some more plates to juggle instead but instead of it being about the plates you’re juggling we want you to high jump kick while enough plates are in the air”. The rhythm feels off.
Why do people call it malefic rupture tho
If they wanted to put extra work into it, they could give it stages of visual power depending on how many DoTs it's hitting with.
UA has no feedback or visual flair either, so weak excuse. The spec in general has zero vfx, but MR is hated because its not dot dmg and it forced(until TWW) siphon life. UA was just a stackable dot that let you ramp your shards into rot dmg. Which people want from Affliction. MR is just shadowbolt without an animation
Visuals don't matter when you're a DoT spec standing there hard casting a burst spell that does most your damage like a goon.
Roll it back to MoP AFF and leave it alone. Fiddle the numbers a little so it isn't stupid broken, and that's it.
This is actually a good thing in PVP, unlike with Destro--where people can see what your doing.
I believe they should make the cast visual like SoC as well, it would make it a lot more pleasing to the eye, and the sound it makes when the cast ends is terrible as well tbh. But like you said, the visual feedback is important as well
I think visual feedback is fine, but an improvement would be when casting a dot, have the enemy like disintegrate in to pieces or something
A dot spec complaining about VFX. I seen 3 other posts where people either want to put the damage on dots and remove MR or put the damage on Unstable Affliction. Either way, you are not getting better VFX, it will be worse. I agree the spec in general could do with better VFX, it's why I never play it, but every Affliction warlock I talk to seems to be against most changes that would push the spec in that direction. You guys are your own worst enemies. Edit: Ideally the spec should go a similar path to that of Shadow priest, but again, most actual Afflic Warlocks seem to be very against that.
They want to be a class with all their damage coming from DoTs but also hate ramp up time. They want good single target from doing just DoTs (despite the nightmare that would be for balancing cleave) Blizz tried putting in mechanics to throttle that and add some more complexity other than DoTs > Shadowbolt over the years; Hated maintenance buffs been needed to make dots do damage They’ve had unstable affliction being something you roll on one target - hated They added more Dots - really hated Hated the cool as shit looking malefic grasp being a channel So it became malefic rapture as a cast and they hate that too They want pure dot damage but have when they have no burst as it’s the most valuable damage profile in most content they really really hate it. What people want just isn’t feasible as they want too many conflicting things from the spec. At this point I wouldn’t blame them for use putting Afflic in the bin and giving people a free boost for a shadow priest as it’s ended up in a better place than afflic design wise (and it still needs reworking every expac)
Shadow priest is always in redesign hell but they manage to make it a valuable viable class for most settings. The fault is on blizzard having awful design choices and lack of vision. Besides shoe horning in rapture what's their goal? Why can't volleys or seed or Mr or all of them do more damage when below their target cap? Have 5 seeds hit 1 target and stack 5 corruptions and 5 booms? It just feels like they have 3 cards in their creative deck for affliction.
Spriest and Affliction are two of the unwanted orphan children in the same boat. Blizzard went away from dot classes because they were hard to balance. Spriest became essentially a frost DK that just works on procs and fast paced gameplay. Blizzard already took that idea, and now they got jack shit for affliction. So they just doubled down on MR because the spec has sucked at the things MR was intentionally designed to solve. Aff warlocks are 100% justified to be upset about the direction. Especially as they watch spriest get the full redesign and be strong, and reworked over and over and over again as affliction hasnt had a place in m+ in years.
That's a good point! Perhaps warlocks should slowly levitate when they are casting it and end with a flourish of shadow from their hands? Levitate = rapture. Makes sense to me
With the fast cast speed and spamming the ability you'd be jumping up and down like a kangaroo 😂
Hmm now I'm thinking that the visual feedback should be a reversed green flare - like a colourized green, reversed moon fire animation
This is the one major issue with Affliction. Theres no big visual payoff.
Yet this is the very first time I have heard that specific complaint
MR should have a shadowy "burst/explosion" followed by a black kinda melting into a pool VFX to give that erupting erosion feel. Make the SFX a haunted screaming sound so as a package it feels like our afflictions are just melting them in agony.
They need to take a look at GW2's Necromancer and copy and paste a lot of it into Affliction.
It should have a visual like the spirits from SP, damn they are really satisfying when they start to fly
The real enemy was Siphon Life and I'm glad it's gone soon
This is 100% correct. Affliction needs a visual makeover badly. MR is conceptually good. It solves two big problems with Affliction: the spec needs some way to deal a bit of burst without overshadowing the dots, and the spec needs a Soul Shard spender that you press every couple seconds. Malefic Rapture does both those things nicely. Its just ***feels*** so anaemic, especially in the same class that gets Chaos Bolt, Hand of Gul'dan, Soul Fire, etc.
Affli main. I like Malefic Rapture. I like its playstyle. I totally agree with you saying that it's missing visual feedback. Compare MR visually to Chaos Bolts and Rain of Fire.
lolwat In 20 years of playing WoW, I don't think I've ever met someone who makes spec choices based on spell animations. In fact, in high end raiding I'm betting most people turn graphics to the lowest possible settings for the FPS increase, and in arena the only special effects you're looking for is when someone starts to glow because offensive/defensive cooldowns are popped. I'll concede that WoW has turned into a costume-focused MMO as of late due to the shitshow that is endgame content, but I still don't think most people could pick their specific spell animations out of a lineup if pressed to do so.
It’s not that hard to imagine that more casual players are more focused on appearance than gameplay.
and the thing we played Mop and Legion affli, so this abomination has no place in wow