Affliction Warlock Changes In Midnight
Affliction Warlock received a large overhaul heading into Midnight. Gone are the days of Malefic Rapture, with Unstable Affliction and Sow the Seeds making their triumphant return. While the spec itself feels quite smooth, fun and engaging to play, there are a few issues that Affliction has going into the Launch of Season 1 that are worth highlighting. The issue that I want to speak about today is the current tuning of Unstable Affliction.
Unstable Affliction Needs Help
One of Afflictions biggest issues is its lack of Single Target damage, more so when playing your designated Mythic + build. The return of Unstable Affliction has brought with it many new talents such as Malefic Grasp, Fatal Echoes, Cascading Calamity, Xavius’ Gambit and Dark Harvest. While Dark Harvest is essentially a different ability for Soul Harvester compared to Hellcaller, all of the mentioned abilities bring with them some form of amplification to Unstable Affliction. Sadly, most of our Single Target talents are positioned on the left side of our talent tree, while nearly all of our AOE elements are on the right side. While this is the case for a large number of specs, it is quite difficult for Affliction to invest points in both evenly when building a Mythic + build, and when I say quite difficult, I mean nearly impossible without severely hindering either your AOE or Single Target output.
Affliction faced a similar issue in Dragonflight, with talents like Doom Blossom requiring a heavy talent point commitment, leaving us lacking in the Single Target department. Fortunately, the issue was addressed by tuning Malefic Rapture in Single Target, which is something I feel needs to happen again in Midnight, but to baseline Unstable Affliction. While it does feel that Malefic Grasp, Fatal Echoes, Cascading Calamity, Xavius’ Gambit are lacking in the raw power department, buffing them does not address the issue we have in Mythic + with our lack of Priority damage. Unstable Affliction is our Single Target spender, but when I apply 4-5 stacks to a open world mob, you barely notice a difference in the rate its health depletes. Below is Afflictions current damage breakdown from a Single Target simulation, note that Unstable Affliction is even lower in a Mythic + talent build.
Potential Solutions
It does feel like a 20-25% buff to Unstable Affliction is not too much to ask for in the upcoming Heroic week tuning pass. While it is our main source of damage (as it should be), it’s not far ahead of other abilities such as Drain Soul and Wicked Reaping, which is our filler spell and a Hero Talent passive ability. The state of Agony and Corruption is also something that could easily be looked at for additional tuning, making up a whopping 6.2%/3.6% respectively.
Recent bug fixes to Patient Zero and Sow the Seeds in conjunction with a new bug, causing Seed of Corruption to begin calculating square root damage at 2+ targets (should be 8+ targets) has also hindered Affliction’s AOE as of late, so our fingers are crossed for that bug to be fixed and potentially a buff to Seed of Corruption, to offset the nerfs bugfixes brought with them.
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