Upcoming Affliction Simplification - Page 5

Nnayr · 01/25/09, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Darkstarrz

I really just think they should make dots last longer to leave us with more shadowbolt uptime. The rotations are fine, but I do agree there is alot to manage, and I would not be able to do it without a dot timer, I'm not gonna lie. I think making dots longer durations or even having haunt renew another dot could definately simplify the affliction rotation. Having to rely on an addon though is somewhat of an annoyance, and I think blizzard will hopefully make a good decision on this topic.

That would lead to insanely high dps and scaling. Warlocks don't need to do any more PvE damage. I agree the rotation can be a little annoying on the bosses where you are constantly moving or don't have time to get many DoTs on them like Gothik. But it is fine for now.

Leil · 01/25/09, 4:25 PM

I'm going to depart from the philosophy espoused here with the simplification theory.

I do believe the Affliction Spec does need simplification, but also offer different sets of rotations based on what the player would like to do. I do think people corner themselves into thinking that the Warlock is simply a DPS class, but it is also a debuff class as well. I do realize Blizzard's paradigm for the class is to do damage, but debuffing the boss should also be considered. Homogenization of the class roles has lead to people noticing each class does not bring anything unique to the raid. I don't buy this though, as I do see Elements being really good, and other debuffs in our spell lineup that we get as baseline abilities, and others get as talents only.

What I would like to see in Affliction are two things...
1) A strong DPS rotation that involves four or five spells, that's it.
2) A strong debuffing rotation that provides a variety of debuffs that yes can be brought by other classes. This rotation should also be about four or five spells, and do solid but not greater dps than the first rotation.

What I notice in my raiding experience in hardcore raiding guilds, and in semi-casual raiding guilds is that while every buff and the perfect raid can be engineered it is more often than not amongst the population of WoW players that people make due with what they have. This has been Blizzard's goal in this expansion - you play with your friends and you do not suffer as a result and do not have to deal with bringing someone you dislike because of their buff or debuff. Such is said "Bring the player not the class."

Now that the preface has been gotten out of the way, I'd like to review the Curse System. I believe it is quite easy to make a talent that adds damage to a curse and/or refreshes dots - but only certain dots. Combining Curses up and joining them together is definitely going to help this, and reduce the amount of GCD's a warlock has to use. I believe devs can make some talents that make plain old DoTs do a lot more than just DoT the target - I'll leave that to them. That's an easy thing to do.

Below are some of the newly minted ideas I've seen for curses, but lets attach some talents for them to make them sexy. I've done so on each example.

Combining CoA and CoE together to make one new curse called Curse of Wrath is a great idea, but don't stop there. Add a talent that has increases Curse of Wrath's effectiveness, but also has a percentage chance that casting Curse of Wrath will refresh Siphon Life. Make it from 20%-100% and make it three talent points.

Ok, lets keep going, I saw Curse of Frailty. Great idea, combining Curse of Weakness and Curse of Recklessness. But now lets add another three point talent that gives people option of having this curse deal damage and be refreshable by Haunt. Devs decide what kind of damage is appropriate. The damage would go up with each talent point invested. It might be considered to adding an additional effect to the curse too. It should deal less damage though than Curse of Wrath.

Now, lets take control of Haunt here. This nuke is great, but needs something more. We have Shadowbolt in our normal rotation, and I don't believe there's any reason for us to not have this nuke refresh Haunt. Now we can balance this very appropriately. First, make a talent that refreshes Haunt on successful Shadow Bolt landing - but you don't get to see your Haunt return life to you. You do two things here: 1) reward the player for taking a talent that reduces the spells in a rotation he is casting, and 2) balance out losing a GCD/do more dps by not healing them. For the REAL kicker though offer an Improved Version of this talent that for one more talent point allows the heal to go through. I think two to three talent points (percentage heal 50-100%) here would suffice grand total on both talents.

Finally, UA, is fine by itself, and does not really need adjusting.

So the Ideal damage rotation would look like this:
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Immmolate
Corruption
Curse of Wrath
Siphon Life
Shadow Bolt
UPON RENEWAL
Shadow Bolt (continued from spam)
Unstable Affliction
Immolate
Curse of Wrath
(Continue Shadow Bolt)

So to start this damage rotation you start out with a complex spell weaving that you simply must maintain with a very simple four spell rotation.

This brings me to the next situation what would the debuff rotation look like?
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Immolate
Corruption
Curse of Frailty
Siphon Life
Shadow Bolt
UPON RENEWAL
Shadow Bolt (continued from Spam)
Unstable Affliction
Immolate
Siphon Life
(Continue Shadow Bolt)

Again, you start with a complex spell weaving and then whittle it down to four spells to maintain it.

This system works out great as it keeps a degree of complexity to the system, but at the same time when you have it properly maintained you're not reaching for ten thousand buttons to keep it going. I hear people state that a Flash minigame is needed to watch your DoTs called DoTimer and I do agree. With this system setup you can get rid of the addon as long as you have 1 spell's effect still ticking on the mob.

Example you're using rotation A and you get thrown across the room, you check back with the boss and check his debuffs and see Haunt is still up - GREAT - recast a Shadow Bolt and and then throw UA/Immo/Wrath and you're good to go. If Haunt was down, then restart from scratch your rotation. The same goes for the second rotation as well. You should be able to look at your 1 debuff on the boss and know off the bat "ok I need to cast X to keep the damage rolling" etc.

Again, complex start, easy maintenance is what I think Affliction should be. I think we should also have again, a DPS rotation, and a debuff-like rotation in PVE.

PSGarak · 01/26/09, 8:44 PM

A lot of the talk in this thread is, simply, too powerful. Affliction warlock damage is at a good place, and we're looking for redesigns that make the spec a little easier to use without actually buffing it. We're not even necessarily looking at simplifying it, the core problem is not the complexity of the rotations but that it doesn't fit well with the default interface. Going overboard with the refresh mechanic is a bad way to do this, it removes the design and feel of the spec. Speaking for myself, I have no interest in playing a TBC destrolock that has DoT damage in the background for free.

The most obvious solution is to leave everything exactly as it is and put a DoT timer in the default interface.

I'm going to make the bold claim that the only problem with affliction's rotation at the moment, is the DoTs with cast time, UA and immolate. The issue at hand, from blizz's perspective, is that a player needs mods to be competetive, and the things we need mods for most are the DoTs where you press the refresh button for it as close as possible to, but not exceeding, 1.5 seconds before they expire. They also help account for lag; I consider that a far secondary concern.

So, we need to address DoTs with cast times. I woould say the second-simplest answer (behind the UI) is making everlasting affliction refresh UA instead of corruption. This basically keeps PvE affliction playing the same except that it's easier to tell when you need to refresh DoTs. It increases our mobile DPS and it changes PvP a little bit, although I don't think much since the things that would refresh UA also have a cast time.

A more drastic adendum would to have a deep-affliction talent proc instant immolates. This seems both unthematic and have more impact, since it's a DD as well. Perhaps a glyph that adds a cooldown, who knows.

zergman · 01/26/09, 9:20 PM

I like the idea of a one spec being more difficult than another and having the more difficult spec provide more dps. Thats how it should be, otherwise how is one person supposed to reach greater heights of skill than another? With that said the two suggestions I've read in this post that I like is extending COA to 30 seconds with the glyph so you can "join" immolate and UA and join COA and SL. The other idea I like is taking away the time for Haunt to arrive at the target. I usually cast haunt the second its cooldown is up because if I wait I run into the problem of thinking my Haunt is going to get there in time, but depending on how far from the boss I am this may or may not be the case.

Sumbish · 01/26/09, 9:56 PM

All the ppl saying aff rotation is just fine - keep in mind you are raiding puggable raids ie. raiding in Naxx is total cakewalk. Sarth3D is the hardest thing in the game yet you can expect to master it in a week. Remember pre-nerf SWP and then tell me you have time to watch dotimer in a serious raid. I raided SWP mostly as aff, and when you go to Ulduar you will need a bit more leeway on your rotation than now. So, all I am saying it be careful what you are basing your aff experience on.

I vote yes to CoA with glyph = 30s and that haunt is an instant cast. I reckon I could do that without timers and do maybe 90% of optimal DPS.

Originally Posted by Atomos

/castsequence reset=4 Haunt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt

Don't do it! Castsequence does not allow you to queue your next cast thus forcing you to eat your lag every cast!

Glyphed CoA is 28s and so does not equal SL!

Can EJ please not become wow forums with blatant factual errors and misinformation?

Originally Posted by PSGarak

I'm going to make the bold claim that the only problem with affliction's rotation...

A bold claim indeed from a lock who has not raided in WOLK, and is still 70.

Nachtschaduw · 01/27/09, 12:40 AM

Originally Posted by Vid

I agree; one of these two changes should be implemented. It's nigh impossible to keep both stacks of SE up sub 25% without losing major dps, unless you get a nightfall proc as you're refreshing dots. Either one of these two ideas would work well to address that problem, though implementing both would be redundant.

As for the talk of combining or eliminating dots: How would we feel about SL having its functionality and damage merged into UA? For starters, it seems a little ridiculous that our weakest dot eats up a glyph slot. This change, by substantially increasing UA ticks, would also help afflocks make more use of crit, through harder hitting Pandemic procs.
I don't pvp, but it seems like this might also help with some of the issues (ie: total brokenness) that locks are dealing with in pvp. By combining both dots with pvp functionality into one, whether an instant or 1.5sec cast, it would free up some casting/movement time. The risk, I suppose, would be that deep affliction (especially with an instant haunt) might become the only viable pvp spec. Still an improvment over no viable pvp specs.

Well, I was thinking siphon life effect on corruption, but corruption right now is like the complete linchpin to so many effects, procs etc. However, I love Siphon Life during farming, so making SL on UA would require to stand still and cast instead of dot and run farming I can do now. Also having siphon life heal for a percentage of damage done doesn't seem viable and it's already being done (blood presence).

Siphon Life should be buffed up a bit to justify it's presence and overtake immolate. I would rather not see what I suspect is going to happen see immolate being dropped AND siphon life a passive buff.

What I would like is all curses give the "malediction" debuff like earth and moon is working.

Having a block Haunt/UA with same cast time and duration with a single stack of shadow embrace (cause using a filler just to get a better debuff to get your rotation going while you admit that the rotation itself is already too complicated?!, come on devs) would be perfect imo.

Haunt (15sec)
UA (15 sec)
corr (infinite)
CoA (30 sec)
SL (30 sec)

That would be a proper rotation and at least a lot more manageable when movement is required.

And like I've said before, let all procs affect the current DoTs like haunt already does and make them crit baseline. You could even make the coeffecients slightly lower to adjust for the added crit.

Sorry if this post is a bit incoherent, it's late/early and I can't sleep. -_-

Krathis · 01/27/09, 2:03 AM

The pre-wrath affliction rotation was pretty manageable. To get the most out of it you still wanted to run a dot timer to maximize UA and Immolate uptime but you weren't juggling those two dots into haunt casts. This meant you'd glance at your dot timer when UA and Immolate were close to a refresh point but you didn't need to keep 90% of your focus on it like you do now.

Haunt appears to be the biggest issue and the simplest fix is to extend the duration to 15 seconds and remove the travel time. Expanding on that idea this brings corruption into question since three seconds isn't a lot of leeway in renewing through EA when you factor in lag. Increasing the duration of corruption to 30 seconds without changing the damage per tic wouldn't be game breaking. It'd also bring up Destruction and Demo dps (something that isn't a bad idea).

If we want to make things much easier to manage add another tic onto Curse of Agony as has been suggested several times, putting all affliction refreshes at 15 and 30 seconds (assuming CoA is glyphed).

This would move us away from a priority system and into a proper rotation which is much simpler and much easier to manage with or without mods.

A typical rotation would be corruption, coa, siphon, haunt, ua, immolate, filler, haunt, ua, immolate, filler, repeat.

As far as Shadow Embrace goes it would need to be refreshed by drain soul or have it's stack duration increased substantially in order for this idea to work properly because of the longer gap between haunts.

TangoDigital · 01/27/09, 6:52 AM

Originally Posted by Krathis

This would move us away from a priority system and into a proper rotation which is much simpler and much easier to manage with or without mods.

A typical rotation would be corruption, coa, siphon, haunt, ua, immolate, filler, haunt, ua, immolate, filler, repeat.

The question is: Do we want easy rotations? I personally don't. I'm quite happy with the way affliction plays actually. Running the top dps should require attention. Lots of it. It shouldn't be something you just do casually.

Kana · 01/27/09, 9:22 AM

Originally Posted by TangoDigital

The question is: Do we want easy rotations?

The relevant question is, do the people who make the game want easier rotations? I think it's a fair statement to say that affliction works harder than any other pure class for it's dps. Certainly harder than other ranged dps. That seems to be what the devs feel is a problem. I also don't think they like the extent to which aff warlocks have to watch timers, compared to other classes.

My sense is that where affliction runs into trouble is that point every third cycle or so when UA, immolate and siphon life are all falling off at the same time. It's possible to run smoothly through that, but it takes more forethought that people seem to muster on the average boss fight (at least without a lot of practice.) After a while you learn that you need to refresh haunt early and it's a lot less of an issue. Still, if you can come up with a way to get rid of that circumstance, I think a lot of the perceived difficulty of aff's rotation would go away.

Extending haunt's duration might work, but that winds up being an effective pve buff and a pvp nerf for a class that doesn't need either. Making it refresh more timers removes some of the novelty of the class. Removing the travel time I think is a fix that should happen, but it doesn't really solve the problem of making the rotation easier (and it removes a neat animation that I'm sure they're proud of.)

I think the most likely fix is some sort of rebalancing that removes immolate from affliction's rotation. Solves the problem in sort of an elegant way without a ton of retuning or revamping of talent trees that work pretty well, and removes a spell that feels sort of out of place in an aff rotation anyway.

Edit: just had another thought. What if they shortened Haunt's cooldown (to three or five seconds or something), made it's damage equivalent to shadow bolt, and adjusted the healing component such that the overall HPS remained about the same? Then you're probably casting it on cooldown, which eliminates a lot of the problem with timers lining up.

Necros · 01/27/09, 9:25 AM

I personally do not feel that there is any problem per se with the current warlock "rotation" but more with the current design philosophy of the trees and general warlock changes as they pertain to the changing game as a whole. Ive played a warlock since well before BC came out and overall the warlock trees have changed very little and still have the original design philosophy behind them. Most of the warlock trees need a rethinking and reordering in order to keep them competitive. Note: Much of this has direct impact on how affliction and even other rotations function.

Some design philosophy's that should be changed:

Each DPS spec must either be destruction or dip into it for DPS
Affliction and Demonology must dip into destruction to shore up the DPS on their main nuke, where as destruction can dip where it wishes to help its DPS. Affliction should get the tools to buff its nuke (SB) or gain one of its own. Drain Soul ticking every second and just ramping up DPS below 25% as would giving deep affliction SB cast time reducers, that would not stack with bane obviously. Demo should also either get its own nuke or the tools to boost its nuke through deep Demo talents that double dip.

Range/Aggro Talents are split deep into two trees
Extra range isn't just helpful, it can mean the difference between getting that haunt off during 3D Sarth while the tank is moving during a flame wave and losing the debuff and trashing your DPS. Only having enough talent points to increase range on half of your casts is useless, hence why nearly all raiding warlocks skip grim reach, and no one reaches deep enough for Destructive Reach. This reaches into the tree specific nuke problem again, if affliction had its own nuke it could forgo a lot of points into other trees freeing up points for talents such as these. Aggro talents aren't NECESSARY, but are extremely helpful, especially in AoEing spawning add situations, or aggro dumps by bosses. I should not have to beg for Vigilance and pay off a ret pally to hand of salv me just so i can do as much threat as the mage.

Second Class Debuffs/Buffs
Most buffs have been made equal in the game. Might a match for Shout, 5% crits match, replenishment, the list goes on. Yet the buffs/debuffs warlocks bring either hurt our DPS or are just plain inferior. Fel Intelligence, even if you bother with 2/2 Imp Fel Hunter doesnt come close to AB or Prayer of Spirit. Our imps give half the health of Commanding shout. Our CoE takes away from our dps and only stacks up to other debuffs when talented, even though the other magic debuffs are side effects from that classes normal dps rotation. CoW talented is the best AP reducing debuff in the game, a game that no longer really cares about physical incoming damage, all the huge spikes are magical to account for the already high avoidance/mitigation of tanks. CoR increases the AP of the target, while for the same effect a druid can Faerie Fire and the target is unable to stealth/invis (not really a problem in raids). CoT is the only "useful" debuff because it can be applied at range (vs. Mind Numbing) and isn't a deep talent (Slow). Yet even then CoT has only been useful in one fight in BC (Council) and none yet in Wrath. Even our Soulstones are inferior to Battle Rez in the longer cooldown and the restriction of having to select a predetermined target. Healthstones are the only unique "buff" brought to a raid that isn't overpowered by another classes ability that does the same thing, only better.

Suggestions/Ideas for Warlocks going forward
Most of these suggestions are not made to be added together, there just trains of thought and the starts of paths to a better design of the warlock class overall.

Make drain soul tick per second and let it crit with deep affliction talents, turning it into Mind Flay. Not an elegant solution but preserves class balance and precludes affliction from having to talent into destro. Longer immolate cast times may drop its effectiveness, meaning it will drop from the rotation, meaning range talents will be meaningful again.

Make Corruption "morph" into Unstable Affliction, much like the DK's deep unholy talent. Putting these together removes the need for tracking another dot, especially if its refreshed with haunt. With any change that makes it so that immolate is dropped from the rotation this means you have your short cooldown (haunt) and your long cooldowns, CoA and SL.

Redo the curse system, easiest way is taking the redo of pally judgements (another old jack of all trades system) and morphing it into a two stage system. Either buffing ourselves with something that will debuff a target the way we want (Essence of Elements buffed on ourselves gives your "Insert spell here" the chance to apply the CoE debuff) This means that theres less "ramp" up time on your debuffing yet its still customizable, also include damage on Essence so that each curse is effectively an Agony.

Health Funnel needs to be changed to bring it in line with Mend Pet. Make it a HoT on your pet, but a DoT on you. Talented it should also work like imp mend pet and remove debuffs. This will help with pet survivability a ton, even if your not deep demo and have Fel Synergy.

Summary/Conclusion
I may have gotten sidetracked with the core theme in the thread, but i think the true core issue with the current rotation is not that its too complicated, its that much of the design of the class is outdated and should be brought current.

faidwen · 01/27/09, 9:32 AM

I would say that the rotation as it is now is relatively simple.

I just switched from years of being either partially demonology spec'd or totally destruction, and dreaded the "hard" rotation as espoused by so many who had tried affliction. Although I had tried afflic. in the past, I had quickly switched back to an easier rotation, and suffered the DPS loss as a result.

I am now afflic. and after a week I find that the rotation is easy to play at a mediocre level. By mediocre I mean, it still tops the charts in the groups I am running (on bosses and raids), but I am not seeing the "uber" numbers that most long time afflic. players are posting.

The basis, in my honest opinion of the difference in "uber" numbers versus mediocre is simply DOT clipping, and not knowing the tick times of everything that is being placed on the mob. Once you learn the timings to properly clip a tick (if needed), I think the numbers will slowly start to climb. Practice, and continued usage will be what is required.

Addons that show you the ticks are obviously beneficial in the beginning, but I also found it extremely difficult to watch the timers and move about the environment when required. Sound queues can be a great boon.

Suffice to say, don't give up on the rotation if you find it difficult at first, practice on test dummies, practice, practice and stick with it. Eventually it will become second nature. At which point Blizzard will modify the entire sequence and we can all start again.

exog · 01/27/09, 9:33 AM

They could also allow partial queuing of dots so if you recast CoA while it is still active, it will start ticking once the first CoA is finished. This would simplify affliction when two dots run out at the same time. It would also improve uptime. It would not reduce the number of casted dots tho. DoTimer dependency would decrease as one would only have to monitor which dots were in stacks of 2, and which were single.

They might want to disable dot stacking unless a dot has less than 50% duration left.

Auze · 01/27/09, 10:26 AM

Originally Posted by Nnayr

That would lead to insanely high dps and scaling. Warlocks don't need to do any more PvE damage. I agree the rotation can be a little annoying on the bosses where you are constantly moving or don't have time to get many DoTs on them like Gothik. But it is fine for now.

The real issue here is effort vs reward. Other classes do little effort compared to this and do the same DPS or more. I think this is what is prompting these changes. If they did simplify the rotation by making dots last longer, which would allow us to cast more shadow bolts, they would more than likely tone down the damage of shadow bolts to make up for the increase in DPS.

There really aren't too many choices if they want to do away with the need for timers.

. Make dots last long enough that you don't need to be on meth to keep up.

. Remove the amount of dots from the rotation. Ie. Merge them.

. Have dots auto repeat somehow. Either via a new curse, or alter Haunt to effect multiple dots, etc.

That's about all they can do to remove the need for dot timers.

Bosmonster · 01/27/09, 10:45 AM

I think the following Haunt changes would help a lot:

- Make Haunt last 15 seconds and only increase 20% damage on shadow DoT's. This would probably eliminate the need for immolate or at least make it an option to leave it out. If this isnt enough, Haunt could possibly even reduce firedamage to the target by 20% for example.
- Make Haunt refresh both Corruption and Unstable Affliction, to compensate the loss of Immolate

CoA/SL are already fairly equal in length with the glyph, so you could re-apply those together every 30 seconds.

Pro: This would make the Affliction rotation a lot easier, without buffing DPS alot. It would also bring back the shadow focus a bit to Affliction, which I personally think is important.
Con: It would make Affliction more about spamming SB then actually applying/rotation DoT's

Troffel · 01/27/09, 11:21 AM

Some other changes are also possible:

1. Talent Siphon Life: "Transfer x% of shadow damage done as life from the target to the warlock."
2. Talent Dark Pact: "Whenever the warlock has not enough mana to cast the spell, the mana cost are taken instead from life."

I really like the idea that dots (not warlocks alone) get the possible of two stacks: Only the first stacks does actually damage and the second is consumed and prolongs the first, if the (first stack) dot runs out.