Last PTR build, warlock tier sets all received slight changes to either implementation or scaling. There were buffs pretty much across the board, mainly focused on bringing up the strength of the set bonuses. Affliction in particular made out with some pretty nice changes to both quality of life, and also proc rate as seen above.
As a reminder, the 2 piece,
Deliberate Malice, extends your main three DoTs uptimes by 2 seconds on each target they're active every time you hit
Malefic Rapture. Before, this was a little weird for permanent multidotting scenarios because ideally you'd be taking
Absolute Corruption in those situations, and thus missing out on 1/3rd of the set bonus benefit. Now instead, you're awarded one free tick of
Corruption damage, which is a nice tradeoff.
In addition to this, the procrate of the 4set on
Drain Soul was buffed by... 150%. If you did any playtesting with this set bonus on the PTR at all, you know that you could easily go a minute of channeling
Drain Soul without having this set bonus proc at all, so this is very nice. The synergy I mentioned in the
original article is building up even more. More
Malefic Rapture casts, more DoT uptime, more time casting
Drain Soul rather than refreshing DoTs - it all feeds into itself. Should be very fun to play with.
I'm still not sure that these changes will bring affliction to a point where it's a top tier spec - none of the warlock specs really look to be in that boat right now going into next tier unfortunately. That being said, it should still be one of the best consistent AoE specs in the game through the strength of
Sow the Seeds, and will definitely be a formidable multitarget spec with this set bonus.