Build 15689

[Inactivity]

Seems like Demonology is getting gutted. Hopefully rotation changes will help, because right now we're left with an underperforming (damage-wise) spec with a rotation that those who want "complicated," and those who want "easy" seem to mutually agree sucks.

On the positive side,

- Dark Intent now is less mana, which actually is a really good thing considering we would also have to re-buff if others are resurrected.
- Drain Soul is actually buffed now that it ticks faster, perhaps affliction will gain a lot of power?
- Imp Swarm's spell haste change I'm guessing is designed to make it useful when we have more haste (otherwise, the passive ability would proc more often). But it can also screw with timing. With 30% haste it is looking to be around a 45 second cooldown which somewhat lines up with the 100 sec Dark Soul.
- Decimation and Molten Core staying around longer helps with multiple targets, albeit not by very much.

I don't get what they are doing with Dark Apotheosis, it honestly was not reducing damage (although that may be bugged, as Ysen pointed out) before they nerfed it. I honestly don't see it being useful for any scenario at all with the state it will be in - Meta will be superior for bursting down mobs while soloing, and DA serves only as a (very mediocre) tool for maintaining demonic fury. I don't think it is bad necessarily since it can be used for questing, but honestly what use is a form just for questing? If it should be useful for anything (soloing, small group content) it needs a level of damage reduction built in to make it superior to simply using DPS cooldowns.

The amazing thing about soloing in Live is that Meta serves as both a burst, and a massive damage reduction. Since we are losing the two (as well as Soul Link), to keep up our soloing ability we need to simply have better straight damage reduction, which is something we seem to sorely lack at this moment.


Thoughts at the way things are going?

[Bridius]

I'm very happy with the way things are going.

[Deleted]

Maybe they changed DA's scaling when they removed that 10% base reduction. If not, I think I would be at 8 or 9% damage reduction with 400ilvl at 85, and that would be nearly useless. But anyway, it's still better than the 0% reduction we had until then
I like Imp Swarm haste scaling. Still with DA in mind, haste was nearly useless, only affecting Soul Fire and Drain Life, so it's a good thing they start to add cd reduction through haste. Want the same for Hand of Gul'dan and Fury Ward!
And just to disagree, I think the MoP's version of Soul Link is great. Especially because you get a new original way to heal yourself by summoning a new pet.

[Deleted]

Maybe they changed DA's scaling when they removed that 10% base reduction.

that was also my thought, but i guess then it would have been datamined too

I also don´t get it why they are nerfing the damage of demonic flash. it was already quite close to shadowbolt dpet and maybe now its even weaker

[Nivrax]

I also don´t get it why they are nerfing the damage of demonic flash. it was already quite close to shadowbolt dpet and maybe now its even weaker

I will laugh when they 'fix' it that using Meta will be dps loss.

[Hellfury]

- Drain Soul is actually buffed now that it ticks faster, perhaps affliction will gain a lot of power?

its the exact same damage overall but just more predictable.

Also for some reason mana consuption in afliction is out of wack, out of mana in 30sec literally just by doing normal rotation.

[Deleted]

Dark Apotheosis is still freezing the game, but at least they are aware of this.
Its mastery scaling is the same, around 2.1% mastery for 1% damage reduction. At lvl89 I have 13.85% Mastery (3119 rating), which is 6.48% damage reduction. Using Dark Soul, I have 46.87% Mastery (20718) which is 18.98% damage reduction.
Can't test if the damage reduction is actually working though.

[Gohzerlock]

3% damage reduction now for demon hunting... :/ sounds like they couldn't balance it around pvp. They should honestly just take it out of the game at this point.

[deviantcultist]

3% damage reduction now... :/ sounds like they couldn't balance it around pvp. They should honestly just take it out of the game at this point.

Maybe...some of us want to have it even as it is?

[Deleted]

Maybe...some of us want to have it even as it is?

+1
The damage reduction may be very low, but it's still great for soloing, just for the perma armor bonus it gives you and your pet.
And don't forget Fury Ward. At lvl85 it's like 40k dmg absorbed every 10s.

[Gratlim]

3% damage reduction now for demon hunting... :/ sounds like they couldn't balance it around pvp. They should honestly just take it out of the game at this point.

It's clearly the Direction they take. I will blame all locks and demo haters who did lobby against lock off-tanking (not as MT or queing as a tank) at the start of beta. If we are here today with this broken glyph, it's thanks to you guys. Grats

ps: he was fun to win against those frost mages spamming my instants, oh well. I guess next patchnote it will be bye bye Demon Hunting

ps2: I trully believe this glyph was the savior of warlock pvp

Regards, ex-glad SL/SL

[zdude]

I'm surprised demo has been hit so hard, when the sims at EJ had it sitting middle of the pack of the three specs. I don't see the nerf to DA as a bad thing, it was probably a bit op in PVP, but in it's current form it still has it's advantages when soloing and a "Stay alive" button in raids to help out the healers. I am a bit of a purist and wasn't in to the whole "We are a tank spec now" argument, so I'm glad to see it's finally dead.

[Zinnin]

I believe the sims that are on EJ right now are AFTER the nerfs. Before they did these nerfs demo was simming pretty far ahead of the other two specs, now its even with destro and behind affliction. That said I am sure that the demo prio list could be adjusted to preform a little better.

In this latest build you can melee attack during soul fire casts in meta. I think we should also be going into meta to refresh corruption, instead of doing it manually. In my tests I was able to go into meta for every corruption refresh, spend all my soul fires (30s duration now really helps) in meta and still build up a good amount of fury to use with Dark Soul every 2m.

[Count Zero]

They said they want us doing about the same when the changes go live as we're doing currently on live. Currently all 3 specs are well ahead of that target. Either they're fine with coming out a bit over 10% more than we're doing on live (assuming they nerf afflic down to where Demo and Destro are at), of we're going to see more nerfs for all 3 for level 85 damage. But, yeah, number balancing is probably meaningless right now, at least for Demo, until a better idea of the rotation gets decided on by the devs ...

[Gobuchul]

its the exact same damage overall but just more predictable.

Not true. DS ticking twice as often without any other changes would mean DS doing twice as much damage. It so happens they reduced the spell power coefficient from 2 to 1.5 as well this patch (they just forgot to update the tooltip), so they haven't made DS twice as good as it used to be, but it was definitely buffed.

[Gorehowl]

is the change to drain soul a flat 2 sec per tick or does it still scale with haste?

[Gobuchul]

It still scales with haste.

[ComputerNerd]

It's clearly the Direction they take. I will blame all locks and demo haters who did lobby against lock off-tanking (not as MT or queing as a tank) at the start of beta. If we are here today with this broken glyph, it's thanks to you guys. Grats

ps: he was fun to win against those frost mages spamming my instants, oh well. I guess next patchnote it will be bye bye Demon Hunting

ps2: I trully believe this glyph was the savior of warlock pvp

Regards, ex-glad SL/SL

We found genuine faults with the system, and are accused of being haters simply because we wanted a fixed spec, and not a horribly broken one.
Point again proven that the cool factor of it was placed above it actually being right.
If people get their heads out their backsides they will realise that the glyph and the mechanics which went with it were horribly broken in more ways than one then there is the possibility of it being viable in the future.
But the criticism of the community when completely oblivious to the real problem is not achieving anything.

[Drakile]

I made the mistake of trying to go into DA last night and now I cant even log back on my warlock, the damn client freezes up just before it loads everytime did they bug it on accident when they changed whatever they changed?

[ComputerNerd]

I made the mistake of trying to go into DA last night and now I cant even log back on my warlock, the damn client freezes up just before it loads everytime did they bug it on accident when they changed whatever they changed?

There would be no reason to do that intentionally.
Just an unfortunate consequence of repeated changes to a spell they are so desperate to make fit, if only to please a vocal portion of the community.
A vocal portion who were simply not present before the glyph was there.

3% damage reduction now for demon hunting... :/ sounds like they couldn't balance it around pvp. They should honestly just take it out of the game at this point.

For the sake of balance it is going to be a mere shadow of what it was, still only there because they don't want to throw away a cool prospect.
Adding eye-candy and toys should never be at the expense of the class, yet that is exactly what DA has done.