Once again it's all about Discipline Priest and not Holy Priest. Still no love love for the Holy priests .
Afflis are only really strong in raids with their single target damage while they are mediocre in m+ and arenas. With shadows embrace, haunt and the conduit there are 3 tuning knobs to address their ST strength without ruining the spec in m+ and arenas. Nerfing malefic rapture is just the worst possible choice...
Affliction beats most specs by over 5% on most bosses in Nathria. It has been the sleeper OP spec while people are focused on unholy and balance because they are flashier and had higher base damage and lower scaling. Affliction is in need of a nerf, and a roughly 5% overall damage nerf that also curtails their extremely high burst cleave (particularly in pvp like rbgs) is appropriate.
What is your point with this comment? Affliction has many more sources of damage than balance, marksman, or arms. Of course those multiple sources of damage will need to do less damage per instance to keep overall damage per second in check. It's elementary math to see that malefic rapture needs to do less damage than aimed shot for marksman and affliction to be relatively competitive with each other.
WOW Balance team feels like a goo goo ga ga kindergarden $hitshow.All ( literally ALL ) the buffs / nerfs we've seen recently, apart from the pala mana nerf, are legit proof they have no clue how to balance things. Class have big dmg ? break it. Class doing bad ST ? 3% all around buff. Spell big dmg baseline ? nerf conduit. I need some of that crack, men ..
People are parroting that "it's just a justified 5% nerf to affliction" and having an opinion on something they do not understand. It's not a 5% blanket nerf, which would be fine, but an 18% nerf to the only form of burst the spec has. It is a change that will make the spec average in raids, specialized in spread cleave. But in m+ where dots might as well not exist and burst is king that same change is closer to 9%. Who would ever invite an affliction warlock after 9.0.5 hits? I hesitate to invite them even now over fotm and utility classes, and you know you do too.And most of all: fmages, boomies and mm hunters are suffocating everything else out of the meta right now. All meta, pve and PvP. And blizzard carefully tunes them, buffing their less used playstyles, while in that same patch they wreck affliction with its one niche. If they tuned most overperformers accordingly this would be a very different conversation we would be having, I'd support the change. But as things stand, this change smells foul to me.
i dont know if ppl work on blizzard are #$%^&*ed or what? they only listen opinions and QQ from Methods team and others, NO DRUID NERF DAMAGE, NO PALADIN NERF DAMAGE, NO ONE SHOT ROGUE KILL NERF DAMAGE, NO 2 MAGE COMBUSTION NERF MAGE DAMAGE, BUT YES AFFLICTION WARLOCKS? is the same $%^& than BFA? ONLY WORK DESTRO WARLOCK? IDK if they are #$%^&*ed or just trolling us, that is the reason too many ppl quit of wow