Affliction Warlock Class Changes in Patch 9.1 PTR Build 38511 - Guide Writer Analysis and Feedback

PTR Posted 2021/05/03 at 2:28 AM by Xyronic

9.1 PTR build 38511Seed of CorruptionCorruptionWithering BoltSummon DarkglareShadow Embrace

Our Guide Writers have given their thoughts on the Patch 9.1 PTR Class Changes and new Legendaries for Build 38511. Check out all of our released opinion articles for the build below.

Class Tuning Opinions Build 38511

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Affliction Warlock

Specialization (1)

Seed of Corruption Embeds a demon seed in the enemy target that will explode after 12 sec, dealing (40%50% of Spell power) Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yards and applying Corruption to them.
The seed will detonate early if the target is hit by other detonations, or takes (Spell power * 50 / 100) damage from your spells.

Talents (1)

Summon Darkglare Reduces Summon Darkglare's cooldown by 60 seconds.
Category changed from Talents to Specialization

Soulbind Conduits (1)

Withering Bolt (Potency Conduit) The effectiveness of Shadow Embrace is increased by 33%.Drain Soul
Drain Soul deals 20%
Shadow Bolt deals 40% increased damage per damage over time effect you have active on the target.
Name changed from Cold Embrace to Withering Bolt
Rank changes:
33% 36% 39% 42% 45% 48% 51% 54% 57% 60% 63% 66% 69% 72% 75%
20% 22% 24% 26% 28% 30% 32% 34% 36% 38% 40% 42% 44% 46% 48%

Spells (2)

Corruption
Affliction:
Corrupts the target, causing (12% of Spell power) Shadow damage and an additional (78.75%91% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 14 sec.
Demonology, Destruction, Initial:
Corrupts the target, causing (78.75%91% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 14 sec.
Shadow Bolt
Affliction:
Sends a shadowy bolt at the enemy, causing (39% of Spell power) Shadow damage.
Applies Shadow Embrace, increasing your damage dealt to the target by 3% for 16 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

Talents (1)

Dark Pact Sacrifices 20% of your current health to shield you for 250% of the sacrificed health plus an additional (Spell power * 3.85) for 20 sec. Usable while suffering from control impairing effects.

Affliction Warlock Guide Writer PerspectiveXyronicLiquidtwitch@LimitXyronicWatch live video from Xyronic on www.twitch.tvOn the latest PTR build, Affliction Warlocks were hit with a large number of quality of life changes, some spell tuning, and a few changes to talents and conduits.

First and foremost, the spell changes. Seed of Corruption's damage was increased by 25% - pretty massive for AoE. In addition to this, Corruption damage was increased by 15%. Going back to the recent PTR build about a month ago where they increased Agony damage, both of these buffs fall in line with the idea that the developers' idea for Affliction is that it should be more heavily focused into doing damage with DoTs, rather than having power baked into spells that deal damage based off of DoTs like Malefic Rapture. The Seed of Corruption change especially compounds this - if an Affliction Warlock wants to spec into heavy AoE damage, you can take the Sow the Seeds talent and just spam away in Mythic+, instead of having to go through the current headache of spamming out DoTs, and then spamming out damage with Malefic Rapture.

Second, the quality of life change that every Affliction Warlock in the world has been asking for; Shadow Embrace and Summon Darkglare have swapped places entirely for Affliction Warlocks. Now, Summon Darkglare is a baseline ability every warlock learns at level 58, whereas Shadow Embrace is now a talent in the same row as Haunt. Not only does this change remove the unintuitive playstyle that Shadow Embrace brought to Affliction, it removes the forced Drain Soul talent option in the first row. Also, Summon Darkglare being baseline makes your Summon Darkglare line up perfectly with Dark Soul: Misery every single time, which has always been a weird interaction as an Affliction Warlock. While this is a very nice quality of life change, it does in general mean that as a baseline, Affliction will be doing a bit less damage before any tuning happens, as the 9% or so damage that Shadow Embrace added was more valuable than the damage increase that Summon Darkglare provided.

The final change was a result of the swap between Shadow Embrace and Summon Darkglare - the conduit Withering Bolt was removed since Shadow Embrace is no longer baseline, and replaced with an entirely new conduit - Withering Bolt. This new conduit increases the damage of your filler spell - Drain Soul or Shadow Bolt - by a certain amount per damage over time effect on the target. This will definitely be subject to tuning - initial PTR tuning has a 226 conduit at 64% increased damage to Shadow Bolt, or 32% damage for Drain Soul.

In addition to this already ridiculous tuning, there's some definitely unforeseen consequences of this new conduit just now being found out by Affliction Warlocks testing on the PTR. With the increase to filler damage, Malefic Wrath has seen some play on the PTR. Since the way Malefic Wrath works is by increased the base damage of your filler, the multiplier provided by the new conduit then multiplies on top of that, resulting in exponential scaling. On top of this, Necrolord's Decimating Bolt is yet another multiplier on top of that. This results in your baseline filler spell, which would normally hit for 700 or so with 1400 crits, hitting for upwards of 80k crits when the stars align. It's definitely not an intended design. Because of the conduit changes and tuning not yet being implemented from the looks of initial testing, its hard to gauge where this lands in terms of strength in numbers - what it does entail is a very involved playstyle. If Malefic Wrath does end up being the play for Affliction, it will result in a high involvement playstyle where you'll not only have to manage your same DoTs and debuffs from before, you'll also have to maintain uptime on a 10 second buff that more than doubles your filler damage, and is highly subject to soul shard generation RNG. I'm very interested to see where the tuning will fall with this conduit. One extra side note - in a hilarious turn of events, based on the strength of filler spells, Shadow Embrace could actually end up being better than Haunt on pure single target - missing out on 4 filler casts to cast Haunt would result in a much larger damage loss than the 1% lower damage increase.

The final change, albeit a minor one, was a slight spellpower coefficient buff to Dark Pact. While not super significant, it will result in an extra few thousand absorb, which is always great for heavy burst damage on sub one minute cooldown nukes in encounters.

Comment by HimeaPlacing bets on how fast that conduit gets nerfed. I give it three days.Comment by KunchuPlease do the same effort for Survival spec that you do for Affliction locks. Not just increasing the % damage. Put some efffor for that spec Blizz.Comment by LinaoriNot sure where to report this, there are some issues with the post. First the Xyronic link isn't working, second the twitch embed is not working for some reason:

Firefox Can’t Open This Page

To protect your security, player.twitch.tv will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. To see this page, you need to open it in a new window.https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/xframe-neterror-page?as=u&utm_source=inproductComment by KibagamiThey need to buff Grimoire of Sacrifice too, it's way too far behind compare to Haunt!
It's about 9-10% behind Haunt and in some case it's a dps lose to even use it since it barely compensate for your pet damage lost!Comment by DegnoGrimoire of sacrifice being bad for pve is intended, they want us to play with a pet, and if we really don't want to have to play with one, there's a tax to pay, this talent (which is good in pvp btw but it's weird that it's a pve talent)Comment by Perilax On top of this, Necrolord's Decimating Bolt is yet another multiplier on top of that. Comment by Direbanana2knext ptr build it will be nerfedComment by ChungtaoMake Haunt baseline, allow seeds to spread Agony at 10% chance and give Darkglare some cleave, thanks.Comment by CetlysmOne warlock spec gets more attention than entire classes, or an entire spec for 2 expansions in a row like survival.
Great favoritism blizzard!Comment by OgoroThis is what I thought about Affliction since the beta - dots were hitting way too low and felt like placeholders for the actual malefic rapture damage making the spec burst-oriented rather than multi-dot master. I am happy they are balancing it now but it was obvious already in beta and lots of frontline warlocks were commenting on it so I think we could have it earlier. The malefic rapture doing so much damage in comparision to dots doing no damage felt really weird the whole patch and made the dots kind of loose it's identity (it doesn't matter which dots you applied these were still placeholders for the actual malefic rapture damage).Comment by KaverPlease do the same effort for Survival spec that you do for Affliction locks. Not just increasing the % damage. Put some efffor for that spec Blizz.Comment by VolkLoganIf they would only do half the effort for arms (or other specs that are bottom of the barrel) i would be a happy little warrior. Talent row / talent / qol changes mid expansion ... impossible they always said.

Well guess not if you are Warlock.

It is disheartening.Comment by CetlysmPlease do the same effort for Survival spec that you do for Affliction locks. Not just increasing the % damage. Put some efffor for that spec Blizz.Comment by TrumpcatPlease do the same effort for Survival spec that you do for Affliction locks. Not just increasing the % damage. Put some efffor for that spec Blizz.Comment by TehbobbstahDude, seeing the actual thought put into a lot of these meta specs compared to other under performing specs is actually making me sad. At what point do you find a different class advisor or something? Some specs are out here just getting flat % increases and aura buffs when there's real thought and care going into Affliction.Comment by BigtazdingoI don't understand why they are doing so much tuning for a spec that is considered top end in raiding while ignoring specs that are bad both in m+ and raiding atm, destruction could use same treatment with Summon Infernal cooldown reduced to 2 min to align with Dark Soul yet they only care about affliction.Comment by stymThanks for your hard work, Xyronic!
Would you mind adding your thoughts about the rework of the Sacrolash Dark Strike legendary? It says in 9.1 instead of slowing enemies it seems to extend the current dots. The way it is spelled out you'd think it could extend them indefinitely but that sounds a bit ludicrous (I don't know if it has been made available yet on the PTR).Comment by SaevenarI'm hoping these changes will bring affliction into somewhat of a useful place in M+ dungeons. Meta can be hard to break, so we'll see. Love me some shadowbolt, though!Comment by AcelPlease do the same effort for Survival spec that you do for Affliction locks. Not just increasing the % damage. Put some efffor for that spec Blizz.Comment by McSquishOne extra side note - in a hilarious turn of events, based on the strength of filler spells, Shadow Embrace could actually end up being better than Haunt on pure single target - missing out on 4 filler casts to cast Haunt would result in a much larger damage loss than the 1% lower damage increase.