Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Leave Affliction Be

In case you haven't been following the forums lately there is a big push by many, many players to make Affliction more...well...easy. Ghostcrawler has even expressed thoughts of maybe making the spec easier by making more of the DoTs have the same duration, IE watering it down. If you haven't guessed by now I'm 100% against this and the following is my response...


I've tiptoed in several other threads regarding this but I figured it deserves it's own. That being said I'll get right to it.

There are plenty of other, easier options for you to respec/reroll to if the difficulty of Affliction is such an issue. I understand that those of us that like Affliction how it is, or would even like to see it become more involved, are by far in the minority. Most players like to keep things simple, pewpew the boss, get loot, have a cheer, good day! There's nothing wrong with that per se, but in your attempts at convincing Blizzard to make Affliction more manageable by dumbing it down for the average joe you're completely ruining the game for a very dedicated minority who revel in the complexity of the spec. What's left for those of us who like ultra involved gameplay? Nothing.

Boss encounters? The glorified synchronized herding of cats. I'm big into raiding due to the challenge of maximizing DPS. Optimal DPS rotations, especially on multiple targets is an incredibly fun game within itself. But most of demands of the encounters themselves are either RNG in nature, or simply waiting for one of the 3 morons in your raid (Seems like there's always 3...) to not screw up this time.

Arena? If the match isn't decided the moment the doors opens due to class imbalances or countercomps then it's decided, again by RNG factors. Even if it were more skill based one can only stomach so much "you cannot do that while stunned/silenced/assist trained" before getting fed up with it and logging out.

The only real issue at hand is simply that of the game lacking a proper base UI to support multiple DoTs with varying durations. It's quite enjoyable if you have DoTimer, and if you still don't enjoy it or can't handle it then maybe Affliction isn't for you? Affliction is a bastion of sorts for ultra attentive/involved players. There's really nowhere else to go for us but to another game, and even those that claim to cater to "hardcore" gamers cater only to hardcore in the "if you have no life..." meaning: camping world boss spawns, massive level grinds, etc. Not the hardcore in the skill intensive "you have to actually be good" meaning. There's really not a whole lot left outside of Affliction as most other specs in the game are nearly every bit as mindless as 0/21/40 was, are only moderately more engaging than such, or are only challenging in a solo environment. Affliction is all that's left. Please, please don't push this. Don't ruin it because you can't handle it. I'm sorry to say that, it is somewhat rude, but it's the truth. There's other specs, other classes where you can have your fill of easy rotations. Every class should truly have such a complex and attention demanding spec where good players can thrive and have a good time doing it.

Please, leave Affliction be.

3 comments:

Hagu said...

Alas, it would be easier if Bliz had left Desto alone. I feel almost all bloggers and millions of people like very complicated rotations/specs. But a lot of us do not. I really miss my 0/21/40 desto for PvE. I do not want to play a FPS and dislike all the changes to more intricate movements and rotations. Surely with this many classes and builds, we can have a few that are fun while others are real-time stress-tests. Having all builds being sort of complicated will not please anyone.

Anonymous said...
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M said...

I completely agree with you here. I don't want to see Affliction lose its identity. I also think a big part of the QQ is just having to get used to a new rotation. That means a lot of thought and macro changes and such. Some people (me) really enjoy this, others not so much.

With that being said, I don't really like Immolate as an Affliction lock. I'd like to focus on Shadow, so tweaking that to be benficial for our destro brethern but not all the great for us would be acceptable, and would cut down most rotations by one DOT. The remaining 5 aren't that hard to manage... Of course, I almost always choose to leave out Immolate anyways, so maybe I just want to look smarter than I really am.