Affliction Warlock GuideMidnight Overview
Affliction Warlock Changes in Midnight
Affliction Warlock is changing in Midnight! Long gone are the days of casting Malefic Rapture as your spender in Single Target and AOE. If you are familiar with the Legion playstyle of Affliction, based around Unstable Affliction and Seed of Corruption as your spenders, it's back in 12.0! Many players have been asking for a return to this playstyle ever since Affliction shifted towards Malefic Rapture in Shadowlands, but balancing pure DOT-based specialization has always been a tricky task. They often tend to excel in Council/Cleave based settings, but have to also not be tuned in a manner where they are poor in Single Target settings, which has proven difficult in the past. Nevertheless, Unstable Affliction spender is back in Midnight!
With every large overhaul however, there are usually a few "pain points", or areas of concern that are worth looking at in the early stages. With that being said, today I want to discuss a few of those areas, while giving my overall thoughts on the specs first iteration. Spoilers, it's pretty fun!
Out With The Old, In With The Older
The days of Malefic Rapture are behind us, or will be soon with Midnights launch. With that, Afflictions damage profile is shifting back to one of DOTs, which brings with it many changes and different interactions. Unstable Affliction is back as your new Single Target spender and Seed of Corruption/Sow the Seeds is back for AOE. In addition to that, Vile Taint has been removed and in its place, Shared Agony will be used for players to spread and refresh their Agony effects. This is essentially Twin Moons for your Agony effects and solves the Vile Taint issue that has plagued Affliction for years in AOE. The return of Sow the Seeds also essentially solves the issue with Seed of Corruption having a very small radius to apply Corruption/Wither effects, as you now launch 3 Seeds whenever cast. It is also your main damage spender in AOE and feels quite good to spam. Who doesn't love massive AOE numbers?
With all good however, there is some bad, or in Afflictions case, some concerns. Currently, Shared Agony is not "smart". It essentially has no logic built in where it will prioritize refreshing lower duration Agonys on mobs surrounding your main target when Agony is cast. This is also the case for Roaring Blaze and Destruction, so I assume that logic is simply not yet implemented, but feel its certainly worth mentioning for both specs as that is a bit frustrating to play with.
Our Apex Talent Summons Dreadlords!
Oh, did I mention that Affliction Warlocks new Apex Talent Shadow of Nathreza summons literal DREADLORDS?! Yeah, we do and its pretty sick. The talent is essentially passive, activated through us casting and maintaining our Haunt effect on a target. Thematically, its quite an exciting Apex Talent and yes, you can indeed have more than one active at once.
The Dreadlords themselves cast a Carrion Swarm ability that does Shadow Damage in a green cloud effect, while also having a Fel Claw attack, which does Priority damage. The other two Apex Talents for Affliction are Shadow of Nathreza and Shadow of Nathreza, which further amplify our Haunt Damage as well as cause our Haunt to summon a Demonic Soul that "Haunts" our target, dealing Shadow Damage to it and surrounding enemies.
The Return of Unstable Affliction
I have to admit, I've really been enjoying playing with Unstable Affliction again. Legion/BFA Affliction was probably my favorite time playing the game and it feels both a bit nostalgic and exciting. With that being said, Unstable Affliction DID have its own set of issues back then, which Malefic Rapture helped solve, but Rapture also brought along its own issues.
Unstable Affliction's Limitations
Unstable Affliction is limited to 5 copies being active on a target at a time. There were times in Legion where this was an issue on Single Target encounters or places where you received a high-roll on resource generation, you had to sit on multiple Soul Shards or at times, 5 Soul Shards until copies of Unstable Affliction began to fall. The Midnight version of Affliction has even MORE ways to general resources/refunds or ways for Unstable Affliction to re-apply itself passively. Talents such as Fatal Echoes, Shard Instability and Soul Miser all give ways for Affliction to generate additional resources while in a damage window, where multiple Unstable Affliction effects are already being cast. That coupled with Summon Darkglare and Dark Harvest extending your active DOTs by an additional 10-12 seconds, you are looking at roughly 16-20 second Unstable Affliction effects during major Cooldowns. This means you are running a pretty high risk of overcapping on Soul Shards, as you simply cannot cast a 6th Unstable Affliction. Doing so will override a previous effect, losing its extension and damage.
A solution to this likely needs to be found as certain Hero Talents for Soul Harvester and Hellcaller build upon resource generation even further. The first solution would be to add some kind of Devouring Plague effect to Unstable Affliction, essentially "adding" the damage from a 6th cast to the 5 currently active Unstable Afflictions. This would allow Affliction to continue spending resources and leverage talent procs during said damage windows, or streaks of high RNG. Another potential solution that has been mentioned is to increase the hard cap of 5 Unstable Affliction effects to a higher amount, which is similar to what is suggested above, but also a bit different. The Devouring Plague method is likely the better, more elegant solution to this issue. There is also a world where the refund/RNG based talents could be changed to instead increase the damage of active DOTs or Unstable Afflictions, breaking the refund/RNG playstyle. Potentially altering the talents to something like Rapid Contagion without the Shard cost attached to it.
The other current issue with Unstable Affliction is that each individual DOT application to a target is being shown as 1 DOT in Alpha, not separating the effects. When I go to apply a 2nd or 3rd Unstable Affliction effect, it shows a small stack counter on the effect, but also refreshes the visual duration, leaving the player no way to tell what the remaining duration of earlier cast Unstable Affliction effects are. This makes micro-managing procs of Shard Instability more difficult and the general Cascading Calamity playstyle a bit awkward. I feel giving players the option to display Unstable Affliction as one DOT with a stack counter OR allowing us to see individual Unstable Affliction effects we've cast is something that needs to be done. It makes the new effects built around Unstable Affliction much easier to manage, without having to play a guessing game.
As of 10/18, Unstable Affliction has had its 5 stack limit removed, but is currently bugged. We aren't sure if it will stack past 5 applications, or have 1 Unstable Affliction effect active, while adding damage and duration to the effect.
DOT Tracking In Midnight
It's no secret that Warcraft as we know it will be much different come Midnight. Many combat based addons are being "broken" in a sense, where they will no longer be usable. Blizzard is providing alternate options via their own in-game Boss Abiltiy Tracker, Nameplates and Cooldown Tracker, but they are still in their early stages. Affliction (and other DOT based classes in general) have often used third-party addons or Weak Auras to track DOT effects on multiple targets. Nameplates have often been customized for DOT effects to show "Pandemic" glow effects and Boss Frames have also followed suit, allowing the player to track multiple DOT effects in Council/Cleave based settings. While similar functionality has been mentioned by Blizzard as "Coming Soon" to Alpha for testing via the Cooldown Manager and Nameplates, the overall customization of said effects is going to have a VERY large impact on DOT based Casters and their overall quality of life in Midnight.
One of my largest concerns for Affliction heading into Midnight is that this level of functionality will no longer exist. It has been mentioned that a Pandemic type effect will be added to the cooldown tracker, but we aren't sure if that will entail a glow type effect. Boss frames in their current form don't allow for much (really any) DOT type tracking of the sort, which has often caused players to use external addons such as SUF (shown above) to track them in an organized manner. When spinning multiple "plates" is the main design of your specialization, having ways to effectively track said effects in a clear and easy manner isn't just nice, it's required.
Is Affliction Worth Playing In Midnight?
Its quite early in Midnight Alpha, but for a spec that received a large overhaul, Affliction is in quite a fun state. The initial talent tree has a lot of exciting talents that build upon Unstable Affliction and Seed of Corruption, promoting a fast and efficient playstyle. It does have its own share of issues (as mentioned above), but with it being so early in Alpha and this version of Affliction being so close to many hearts, my fingers are crossed that they are resolved. Blizzard has done a great job as designing a spec that's fun, engaging and it really does feel like DOTs do damage again! It has been a long time since I was able to play Affliction in a progression setting, whether it be Raid or Mythic +, but I am REALLY hoping that changes in Midnight!
