Think I found a masochist that enjoys afflic as much as i do, despite it being a clunky, bloated mess. Lots of effort for being comfortably mid. Xelnath's iteration still remains the pinnacle. Ion and co. are clueless.
I personally don't like playing it but, it can definitely be okay if you are able to plant your feet long enough. I just don't like having another channel for little gain. But it can definitely be good, play it if you enjoy it.
Yeah the dot extension, getting dread touch online & the prio damage is the main reason I will do 2+ raptures with my soul rot buff. Like I mentioned in another comment if the pack is going to live long enough it's probably better to just send all three raptures with the buff for the dot extension & if its not just send the 3 seeds imo.
Question Arsyn, when is the best time to Malefic Rapture over Seed of Corruption?, this is probably the biggest struggle for me knowing when which ability is better then the other as both do AoE.
Yeah, since you're not running bloom, and haunt with this build do you just use seed to get corruption on said mobs? When do you priorities rapture over seed?
I talk a bit about this in my guide as well but essentially if the pack is going to live long enough I will spend atleast 2 raptures to extended everything and get dread touch running on my main target. Then if the pack is 4-5+ & grouped up for the seeds to hit, I will cast seed with my shards & weave in raptures with crescendos if possible to extended dread touch.
Hey, Jance here. After watching your streams, your videos have inspired me to play fire mage. With the dmg, and defensives that are better than most specs, blue class seems to be the way to go. Thank you.
Imo as a non-affliction lock (mostly cuz it's too convoluted for me), they should either buff DoT dmg and maybe buff Drain Soul while removing Malefic Rapture, or buff DoTs and Malefic and remove Drain Soul. Having to juggle so many damage dealing abilities on top of applying and refreshing dots is just too much.
so actually, here's a summary of different DoT class designs and how we can just quickly judge whatever they change for this spec to be good or not, and the last one being my opinion of the best one for whomever cares to read this wall of text: Damage based on number of dots (current design with rapture): Awful. Incentivizes you to increase # of dots instead of dot damage. That's why you are forced to play siphon life, whose only purpose is to buff rapture, and also crave for other sources of dots like vile taint and soul rot. Granted, if this is the design you'd insist on, it can be made better by having some "base" dot that does not need to be managed, and a handful of dots that last less than their cooldown (like taint/rot), and you have intrinsic mechanics that either increase their stacks or extend their duration (not just a major CD, but skill and resource-based mechanics). This makes dot management a bit more interesting than just hitting one of those 4 buttons again in the allowed time window. That is just so so old and booooring. Damage based on total remaining DoT damage (like deathbolt or w/e it was called): i could be wrong, but incentivizes weird gameplay, and also excludes tiger's fury style abilities from being possible for the spec, which would otherwise make it interesting (more on this later). First, yes, it makes for some glorious moments with PI and such where keep spamming your deathbolt-equivalent super fast. However, this will force you to refresh dots all the time. For a cooldown like deathbolt maybe it was fine (i didnt play much wow back then) to do it occasionally, but if that's your main resource-based big hit, it would be really annoying. You'd hoard resource, then refresh, and then spam. It's similar to rapture really.... make sure you have shards every 30 sec, and spam it with all the shitty little dots up while they last. And for the tiger's fury point, if you had a button like that which would allow to snapshot damage, this would make you ask "is the remaining buffed damage on these dots higher than full duration un-buffed dots"? That's something you should not have to worry about when playing. Snapshot-style damage amps (tiger's fury, bloodtalons): so feral did this a while back, before it was flooded with so much resources that your main damage became bite. It was a more interesting way of managing dots for sure, but the complain was still that it was boring and didn't have really satisfying moments of gameplay. It was more like "hah i know you can't see it, but i'm killing it right now, trust me. Other feral druids who see my logs, after convincing themselves that my superior DoT damage is not just from my stats, will realize how awesome I am". It also sucks for target switching. This design does not allow for deathbolt-like abilities, as mentioned before. They create a really stupid problem for you, when combined. Temporary non-snapshotting damage amps: These exist already, but in a very boring way. Haunt, the left capstone choice node that debuffs with 30% increased DoT damage from rupture, the debuff from drain soul, and the MoP-style malefic grasp that increased DoTs while you channel. They are boring because they are maintenance buffs and given that you maintain 4 dots on top of that, the spec is a chore. This can definitely be made more interesting by making these buffs shorter. Stats should not increase the buff duration, or else you'd have the same problem as aug evoker, where you aspire to reach full uptime and anything beyond that is pointless. Instead, you can scale their intensity, with some combination of % extra damage per tick during the window, and speed of ticks during the window. This allows for more interesting mechanics layered on top in talents: Resets on ability cooldowns, pulsing aoe damage per tick, large AOE DoT buffs, stacked cleave "aura-type" dot buffs, soul swap spreading dot buffs etc. And by now if you read this, you are probably thinking of the obvious... Short-duration dots on top of non-snapshotting damage amps: Give it a thought. The list a few lines above of "spreading dot buffs" is actually more fun if instead of buffs you can spread actual dots. Here's a more concrete design: * ONE easy to maintain, and easy to spread DoT, similar to immolate in a sense. It gives you a little bit of resource. Not a lot so that on massive pulls your spender frequency increases by maybe 3 times, and does not result in destro-style rain of fire spam, which makes smaller pulls feel crap cuz the damage has to be balanced around its almost max potential. * legion UA/devouring plague - a short duration stackable DoT that does high damage and costs resource * seed of corruption is a debuff with a CD that allows each DoT tick on its target to also cleave nearby. You can have 3 (must be a small number) targets seeded * ~45 sec CDdot that does high damage and buffs you with increases tick rate of other DoTs applied during it (snapshotted). * short CD ability like rapture with charges that causes each active dot on all enemies to hit for X seconds worth of ticks (NOT remaining time and NOT X dmg * number of dots) instantly and increases remaining duration of existing UAs by a little bit. The maintenance dot has a chance to refund a charge per tick (mind blast/lava burst). The 2nd effect is so that you are not discouraged from pressing this button during your UA spam and buff windows except for resource overflow or preparation to spread dots. * a channel that decreases the CD of the 45 sec CD ability with each tick and generates resource * an AOE alternative to UA that is also short duration and stackable, except less damage and an AOE application * soul swap that copies the dots on the current target and allows you to apply them a different target at full duration with snapshotted damage amps. Short CD (10-15 sec) and a couple charges. if cast on the same target, will seek out and apply to a target with seed of corruption on it * big CD that applies a strong DoT in an area, makes your new UAs last longer, increases the damage of rapture This accomplishes: * fun single target damage that does not feel like a strictly more boring version of the AOE rotation. You have a resource-based hitter, and a charge-based hitter that depends on the former. micro-decisions on when to rip the latter vs keep applying the former is already a layer of fun in itself * increased resource availability and short CD damage buttons which do scale with targets but should be tuned to be not as spammy as rain of fire * an option for smaller target AOE damage that increases exponentially to an extent and then linearly (the seed of corruption effect proposed here) * 2-3 target multi-dotting profile that does not rely on spinning more plates, but instead on creating scenarios where you have the highest amount of damage to be spread * allows for talents that power up different components of your base kit (more soul swap charges / cd reduction, more or less seed target cap, increased proc chance for base dot to give CD reset, nightfall-type procs that allow you to channel faster for more resource and CD reduction on your mini dps cd, ability to store nightfall procs, more 20-sec cds DoTs on single target that have hit hard and have some fun effects like WW monk's strike of the windlord etc) * a very situational decision-making in AOE that wants you to decide whether you spam AOE dot on a large number of targets and kill them evenly, or focus on ~3 targets which will die faster and allow burst cleave with seeds. In case of abundant resources, do AOE dot and then ALSO use seed mechanic with soul swaps when its off CD
Think I found a masochist that enjoys afflic as much as i do, despite it being a clunky, bloated mess. Lots of effort for being comfortably mid. Xelnath's iteration still remains the pinnacle. Ion and co. are clueless.
Hey. Y used seed for debuff,I think right?
yo bro what do u think about inevitable demise, is it worth taking in M+? it synergizes pretty well with soul rot+vile taint imo
I personally don't like playing it but, it can definitely be okay if you are able to plant your feet long enough. I just don't like having another channel for little gain. But it can definitely be good, play it if you enjoy it.
Are you clicking rapture in aoe when you think you have 4+ dots average per target, or just because it’s bolstering week?
I think it’s just for prio damage, kinda like how a spriest would work
Looks like he answered it in a lower comment, it’s partially for dot extension
Yeah the dot extension, getting dread touch online & the prio damage is the main reason I will do 2+ raptures with my soul rot buff. Like I mentioned in another comment if the pack is going to live long enough it's probably better to just send all three raptures with the buff for the dot extension & if its not just send the 3 seeds imo.
Question Arsyn, when is the best time to Malefic Rapture over Seed of Corruption?, this is probably the biggest struggle for me knowing when which ability is better then the other as both do AoE.
Yeah, since you're not running bloom, and haunt with this build do you just use seed to get corruption on said mobs? When do you priorities rapture over seed?
I talk a bit about this in my guide as well but essentially if the pack is going to live long enough I will spend atleast 2 raptures to extended everything and get dread touch running on my main target. Then if the pack is 4-5+ & grouped up for the seeds to hit, I will cast seed with my shards & weave in raptures with crescendos if possible to extended dread touch.
Hey, Jance here. After watching your streams, your videos have inspired me to play fire mage. With the dmg, and defensives that are better than most specs, blue class seems to be the way to go. Thank you.
Imo as a non-affliction lock (mostly cuz it's too convoluted for me), they should either buff DoT dmg and maybe buff Drain Soul while removing Malefic Rapture, or buff DoTs and Malefic and remove Drain Soul. Having to juggle so many damage dealing abilities on top of applying and refreshing dots is just too much.
Whoa, are my eyes playing tricks on me or is your Soul Rot purple? :O how?
I edited the spell icon! It's available in my discord if you want it!
R1 aff keys are the best keys! ❤
so actually, here's a summary of different DoT class designs and how we can just quickly judge whatever they change for this spec to be good or not, and the last one being my opinion of the best one for whomever cares to read this wall of text:
Damage based on number of dots (current design with rapture): Awful. Incentivizes you to increase # of dots instead of dot damage. That's why you are forced to play siphon life, whose only purpose is to buff rapture, and also crave for other sources of dots like vile taint and soul rot.
Granted, if this is the design you'd insist on, it can be made better by having some "base" dot that does not need to be managed, and a handful of dots that last less than their cooldown (like taint/rot), and you have intrinsic mechanics that either increase their stacks or extend their duration (not just a major CD, but skill and resource-based mechanics).
This makes dot management a bit more interesting than just hitting one of those 4 buttons again in the allowed time window. That is just so so old and booooring.
Damage based on total remaining DoT damage (like deathbolt or w/e it was called): i could be wrong, but incentivizes weird gameplay, and also excludes tiger's fury style abilities from being possible for the spec, which would otherwise make it interesting (more on this later).
First, yes, it makes for some glorious moments with PI and such where keep spamming your deathbolt-equivalent super fast. However, this will force you to refresh dots all the time. For a cooldown like deathbolt maybe it was fine (i didnt play much wow back then) to do it occasionally, but if that's your main resource-based big hit, it would be really annoying. You'd hoard resource, then refresh, and then spam. It's similar to rapture really.... make sure you have shards every 30 sec, and spam it with all the shitty little dots up while they last.
And for the tiger's fury point, if you had a button like that which would allow to snapshot damage, this would make you ask "is the remaining buffed damage on these dots higher than full duration un-buffed dots"? That's something you should not have to worry about when playing.
Snapshot-style damage amps (tiger's fury, bloodtalons): so feral did this a while back, before it was flooded with so much resources that your main damage became bite. It was a more interesting way of managing dots for sure, but the complain was still that it was boring and didn't have really satisfying moments of gameplay. It was more like "hah i know you can't see it, but i'm killing it right now, trust me. Other feral druids who see my logs, after convincing themselves that my superior DoT damage is not just from my stats, will realize how awesome I am". It also sucks for target switching.
This design does not allow for deathbolt-like abilities, as mentioned before. They create a really stupid problem for you, when combined.
Temporary non-snapshotting damage amps: These exist already, but in a very boring way. Haunt, the left capstone choice node that debuffs with 30% increased DoT damage from rupture, the debuff from drain soul, and the MoP-style malefic grasp that increased DoTs while you channel. They are boring because they are maintenance buffs and given that you maintain 4 dots on top of that, the spec is a chore.
This can definitely be made more interesting by making these buffs shorter. Stats should not increase the buff duration, or else you'd have the same problem as aug evoker, where you aspire to reach full uptime and anything beyond that is pointless. Instead, you can scale their intensity, with some combination of % extra damage per tick during the window, and speed of ticks during the window.
This allows for more interesting mechanics layered on top in talents: Resets on ability cooldowns, pulsing aoe damage per tick, large AOE DoT buffs, stacked cleave "aura-type" dot buffs, soul swap spreading dot buffs etc.
And by now if you read this, you are probably thinking of the obvious...
Short-duration dots on top of non-snapshotting damage amps: Give it a thought. The list a few lines above of "spreading dot buffs" is actually more fun if instead of buffs you can spread actual dots. Here's a more concrete design:
* ONE easy to maintain, and easy to spread DoT, similar to immolate in a sense. It gives you a little bit of resource. Not a lot so that on massive pulls your spender frequency increases by maybe 3 times, and does not result in destro-style rain of fire spam, which makes smaller pulls feel crap cuz the damage has to be balanced around its almost max potential.
* legion UA/devouring plague - a short duration stackable DoT that does high damage and costs resource
* seed of corruption is a debuff with a CD that allows each DoT tick on its target to also cleave nearby. You can have 3 (must be a small number) targets seeded
* ~45 sec CDdot that does high damage and buffs you with increases tick rate of other DoTs applied during it (snapshotted).
* short CD ability like rapture with charges that causes each active dot on all enemies to hit for X seconds worth of ticks (NOT remaining time and NOT X dmg * number of dots) instantly and increases remaining duration of existing UAs by a little bit. The maintenance dot has a chance to refund a charge per tick (mind blast/lava burst). The 2nd effect is so that you are not discouraged from pressing this button during your UA spam and buff windows except for resource overflow or preparation to spread dots.
* a channel that decreases the CD of the 45 sec CD ability with each tick and generates resource
* an AOE alternative to UA that is also short duration and stackable, except less damage and an AOE application
* soul swap that copies the dots on the current target and allows you to apply them a different target at full duration with snapshotted damage amps. Short CD (10-15 sec) and a couple charges.
if cast on the same target, will seek out and apply to a target with seed of corruption on it
* big CD that applies a strong DoT in an area, makes your new UAs last longer, increases the damage of rapture
This accomplishes:
* fun single target damage that does not feel like a strictly more boring version of the AOE rotation. You have a resource-based hitter, and a charge-based hitter that depends on the former.
micro-decisions on when to rip the latter vs keep applying the former is already a layer of fun in itself
* increased resource availability and short CD damage buttons which do scale with targets but should be tuned to be not as spammy as rain of fire
* an option for smaller target AOE damage that increases exponentially to an extent and then linearly (the seed of corruption effect proposed here)
* 2-3 target multi-dotting profile that does not rely on spinning more plates, but instead on creating scenarios where you have the highest amount of damage to be spread
* allows for talents that power up different components of your base kit (more soul swap charges / cd reduction, more or less seed target cap, increased proc chance for base dot to give CD reset, nightfall-type procs that allow you to channel faster for more resource and CD reduction on your mini dps cd, ability to store nightfall procs, more 20-sec cds DoTs on single target that have hit hard and have some fun effects like WW monk's strike of the windlord etc)
* a very situational decision-making in AOE that wants you to decide whether you spam AOE dot on a large number of targets and kill them evenly, or focus on ~3 targets which will die faster and allow burst cleave with seeds. In case of abundant resources, do AOE dot and then ALSO use seed mechanic with soul swaps when its off CD
I dont understand how u do so much ST dmg