to give insight about how the changes affected their spec.
Affliction Warlock
Recent BuffsWhen it comes to the three Warlocks specs, Affliction has been the spec that has seen the least play over the course of Season 1 in both Mythic + and raiding alike. While Affliction has a very strong AOE profile, you are left lacking in the single target department if you choose to play builds catered towards AOE. Demonology has also been the overall "best" single target option that Warlock has had access to. Last reset however, Blizzard pushed a handful of buffs to Affliction which were mainly focused around our single target damage, but we did also receive a small buff to our AOE.
Agonia,
Corruzione and
Seme della Corruzione all received a 5% damage increase, while
Risucchio d'Anima and
Aspirazione della Vita received a 10% increase to their damage. There was also a 20% buff to
Invocazione della Pandemia, which has received numerous buffs recently. While these numbers might seem small, it adds up to roughly a 3% increase to Affliction's single target damage.
Affliction in RaidingIn raiding, this translates to Affliction gaining a bit more ground on fights where it is seeing some play such as Sennarth and The Primal Council. Affliction has mostly become the de facto choice on Terros due to cooldown timings and the fights frequent movement, which means these buffs help further solidify it as the “optimal” choice. Encounters such as Dathea and Broodkeeper Diurna are the most interesting however, as Affliction was seeing niche play on said fights in a more “boss focused” role. While the buffs aren't going to catapult Affliction to being the best "overall" Warlock spec in Vault, they do help shore up some of its weaker areas.
Affliction in Mythic +In Mythic +, the changes sadly aren't as noticeable. While they do still provide a slight damage increase, Affliction's AOE was already strong before the 5%
Seme della Corruzione buff. The main issue is that even with the buffs to
Agonia,
Corruzione,
Risucchio d'Anima and
Aspirazione della Vita, Affliction's single target damage is still lacking in Mythic + due to selecting
Contaminazione Vile over
Singolarità Fantasma and often
Corruzione Totale over
Aspirazione della Vita. There are builds that opt to play more of a “hybrid” talent build in an effort to improve single target, but even with that being the case, Affliction still falls short when compared to Demonology or Destruction overall but it has lead to an increase in its representation.
Conclusion and Upcoming 10.0.5 BuffsOverall the buffs that Affliction received certainly are welcome and are a driving factor in the increase of play Affliction has seen this week, but the spec still needs more changes to be competitive in a high-end setting. Thankfully patch 10.0.5 is bringing back
Malignità Concentrata as a talent along with a few other changes which could very easily catapult Affliction to being a top performing spec once again.
Destruction Warlock
Recent BuffsDestruction has been in an odd state in the early weeks of Dragonflight. The spec has seen some play in a lot of different content, but not been super competitive with a lot of other specs, only in certain niche situations where our damage profile fit well. That has resulted in Destruction receiving damage tuning to some talents and abilities:
Some of these talents saw a lot of play like Devastation Evoker has undergone multiple rounds of tuning since the release of
Segrete delle Incarnazioni, ranging from single target buffs in the form of
Disintegrazione damage to Empower buffs that affect AoE and cleave as well. At some point we also received a fix to our
Luce della Creazione (from
Kharnalex, la Prima Luce) to properly scale with
Maestria: Ammazzagiganti. The result is that Evoker is at least 10% stronger than it was when
Segrete delle Incarnazioni opened. Raiding and Mythic+ Evokers are all enjoying this increase, but it is unlikely to change much for guilds planning for Mythic
Raszageth progression since Preservation is absolutely necessary for the fight. If you can manage to stay Devastation this tier, you will find that our damage in raid is fairly strong now.
The changes do not affect our talent choices or our preferred stats. We still don't play
Occhio dell'Infinito. Overall, not much has changed except we do more damage. In terms of the value Devastation brings to a raid setting, the strengths are the same as before: We provide
Salvataggio and
Spirale Temporale which are invaluable for Phase 1 of Mythic
Raszageth. We also have strong 2 target cleave and AoE for encounters like
Kurog Totem Truce and
Custode della Progenie Diurna.
When it comes to weaknesses, the survivability comes to mind immediately. Devastation Evoker has strong defensives like
Scaglie d'Ossidiana and
Fiammata Curativa but they all need to be used before the damage happens. Talents that provide self-healing like
Panacea and
Abbraccio Lussureggiante are very weak, ever since they were hit by the nerf to healers in beta. This means that experienced Evokers have passing durability, but fresh ones will struggle to stay alive more than most classes.
Devastation is also mired by bugs. Every class has bugs but for Devastation they are common enough to be a disruption on your playstyle.
Disintegrazione often refuses to cast even if you have the
Essenza.
Impeto dell'Eternità and
Soffio di Fuoco will fail to cast randomly, disrupting your ability to get
Rabbia del Drago extensions.
Alito del Drago will sometimes trigger an extremely long
Salvataggio/
Alito del Drago hybrid that forces you and a partner across the map and
lock the Evoker into being unable to act for up to 5 seconds. These are just a few examples of bugs that have been problem since beta. Are these bugs going to be fixed at some point?
In conclusion, Devastation Evoker has flaws but is generally good. It has been a bit overshadowed by Preservation so far this tier but is a strong pick and seemingly getting stronger each week. What the class needs more than anything else is bug fixes.
Tuning affected talents that benefit from Crit like
Occhio dell'Infinito and
Supremazia del Plasmamagia. The overall trend of Haste being stronger than Crit holds true. Using the t29 base profile, here is how different stat configurations simmed (All of them have 5k Mastery and BiS gear. Only change is how much Crit and Haste they have):
As shown here, Haste is generally better than Crit but the ideal stat setup is somewhere between. Stat weights fluctuate. It is always best to
sim your own character for "Top Gear" to determine which stats are best for you.
The most important factor in Shadow's improved performance in Vault of the Incarnates this has been the January 10th Hotfix tuning, providing a 15% damage buff to a large number of the spec's main damaging spells. Prior to this tuning, Shadow's performance in both Heroic and Mythic had been some of the worst across all specs in Dragonflight, only being able to hold its own in sustained cleave encounters like The Primal Council. This raid also contains an incredible amount of movement with encounters like
Sennarth,
Dathea l'Ascesa, and
Raszageth making it very difficult for Shadow Priests to find ample opportunity to stand still and channel
Flagello Mentale: Pazzia. Despite this, a jump of 12 places following tuning hopefully indicates the spec is beginning to come into its own.
Looking at heroic log data in more detail we can see that Shadow is a solid upper middle performer on every boss in the raid besides
Raszageth and
Custode della Progenie Diurna for overall damage, with its best fight continuing to be
Primal Council. The January 10th damage buffs did not directly impact AoE damage spells, however, they did buff
Aculeo Mentale to a point where it has become a prominent tool in AoE thanks to its interaction with
Legame Psichico so some improvement there was expected. Looking at boss damage only, we can also see that Shadow isn't necessarily losing or gaining places on the majority of encounters, indicating the spec has not fallen foul to its Shadowlands niche of Single Target specialist. Shadow's toolkit seems much more capable this expansion of dealing with different damage patterns and encounter types.
Besides just the damage tuning, there are other factors which have likely played a small part in Shadow's rise in logs. Encounter's becoming shorter on average, as well as cleaner in execution benefits casters and ranged dps more so than melee, especially those that spend a lot of their rotation having to stand still and cast. Shadow is at its most stationary for quite some time this tier, meaning it stood to gain a lot from needing to do less mechanics. Comfort and familiarity is another thing worth mentioning, Shadow is effectively a brand new spec this tier with a lot of new ways to play and potential talent choices to try out. One major surprise has been the competitiveness of
Forma del Vuoto, even on fights that do not regularly have additional targets to cleave, purely because of the additional GCDs of movement it provides due to access to
Dardo del Vuoto. As players get more comfortable with the ins and outs of Shadow in Vault of the Incarnates, expect to see a steady rise in relative performance.
Infusione di Potere puts Shadow in a unique position when it comes to analysing DPS log data for two main reasons. The first, as it was during Sepulcher and Sanctum in Shadowlands, is that Shadow Priests cannot be the recipients of Power Infusion for the purposes of overall rankings. Many dps specs routinely see some number of Power Infusions per encounter and their performance will be weighted slightly because of that. The second is the question of if the damage Power Infusion provides should be a consideration when tuning and analysing the spec. Taking into account Power Infusion puts Shadow firmly in the top 5 for specs in Vault of the Incarnates for raw damage. There is precedent for this however with the likes of Enhancement Shaman's
Totem della Furia del Vento, which the spec holds strong despite, and the fact that not everyone will have access to optimal PI targets playing optimally to extract maximum value. Power Infusion remains somewhat contentious, now it doesn't seem to be deliberately holding the spec back.
Looking briefly at Mythic, the changes have had diminished impact on Shadow's performance relative to Heroic. The reason for this is likely because of, again, the enormous amount of movement there is in this raid. Later bosses still lack enough data to draw reasonable conclusions (Zero Shadow Priests have defeated Raszageth Mythic at the time of writing due to its inability to handle certain mechanics) but it's very likely we'll see the same pattern. Shadow's damage is pretty good now, when it gets the chance to stand still...
