Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[NeverStop]

So void zones won't give you bonus spellpower but what about intentionally staying near things like Thunderstruck or Poison Bomb to take extra damage?

[sugarfree]

Av is potentially OP in PvE and yet still useless in PvP. Ugh, how about making this talent interesting for PvP, Blizz???? WHY NOT?!?!?!

And will this force locks to stand in fire more??? I get unavoidable damage, but damn at standing in fire. It's like the new pro thing to do.

[pokeadott]

Still don't see a good way to make AV work in raids as a dmg taken to dmg done modifier. Either it's too small to matter or it's big enough to become mandatory and/or OP. Balancing AV against MF in AE situations or against KC in single target situations seems like an impossible task. At this point, I'd really just prefer to see AV turned into a strictly pvp or utility talent even if it doesn't fit with the other two until they can rework the tier.

[Seezer]

AV change is dumb. Get rid of the "Hey! You want some killer deepz?! Stand in this!". They should change it to this...

"Archimonde's Vengeance has been redesigned. You draw A dalaran in the sand and crush it. Increasing your spellpower by 10% for 8 seconds."

[Marximos]

Why does AV have to revolve around damage taken.. why not something "Different"!

• MF is all about AoE.
• KJC is DPS on the move.

What if AV is to fill the missing aspect.. DPSing while standing still.

How about something like:

"Archimonde's Vengeance: Increases your spell power by X% for every X seconds standing still, and degrades by X% for every X yards moved" Passive.
"Archimonde's Vengeance: Allows the caster to maintain the level of spell power gained for X seconds while moving, but the passive effect is deactivated while on cooldown" Active.

[icecoldsir]

"Archimonde's Vengeance has been redesigned. You draw A dalaran in the sand and crush it. Increasing your spellpower by 10% for 8 seconds."

No, just no.

[miasmah]

what does all these latest changes on MG and Draind Soul numbers mean? how will the playstyle of aff change?

also reg nightfall proc rate, it sounds quite confusing. Does it mean that all active corruptions have a 5% chance and your latest corruption has a 7% chance to proc nightfall?

[kendro1200]

AV change is dumb. Get rid of the "Hey! You want some killer deepz?! Stand in this!". They should change it to this...

"Archimonde's Vengeance has been redesigned. You draw A dalaran in the sand and crush it. Increasing your spellpower by 10% for 8 seconds."

The flavor text made me lol hard. Technically though, he didn't destroy Dalaran until he gave his sand variation a hug. So it should say, "You draw a replica of Dalaran out of sand and then hug it, increasing your spellpower by 10% for 8 seconds."

[Rayaleith]

I find these changes interesting. A strong AV means nice 90 tier talents overall. They will definitely do something with void zone type of damage since they will do that for tanks and they already have data and experience on vengeance mechanics. I like it. And maybe... I say... maybe it is a rehearsal for our tanking spec in next x-pac

[Deleted]

How about something like:

"Archimonde's Vengeance: Increases your spell power by X% for every X seconds standing still, and degrades by X% for every X yards moved" Passive.

Because that won't encourage standing in bad shit either..

[Deleted]

Does this mean you can't use Soul Leech with AV ?

[MasterHamster]

I'd love some sims on those Aff changes

[Marximos]

Does this mean you can't use Soul Leech with AV ?

That was the 1st thought I had after reading the change... its odd to say the least, a talent killing the use of 2 others (Soul Leech/Sac Pact).

[bumr]

I may be wrong - but if i understand new AV change , it only works with damage you really take (not from absorbed damage). So using dark bargain to survive instakill hits dont help you , only following damage from bargain dot .
If my calculations are correct and this change was already in game - by my logs it will result in avg 500SP gain during whole fight (sure,without taking unnecessary damage).
I dont find it very op , but as i say i may be wrong

[Rayaleith]

They destroyed soul leech anyway. And this is weird. Noone complained for the tremendous nerf. 15%... And if blizzard does not see reactions they do not bother reviewing it again. The same with portals. 60 seconds makes it almost useless but they leave it that way.

[Count Zero]

Well, the wording sure is awkward as hell. It could either mean:

Your spellpower bonus is calculated based on the incoming damage before it is mitigated

or

Your spellpower bonus is calculated based on the incoming damage after it is mitigated

I'm leaning more toward them meaning the latter but it seriously is very awkwardly written. if they mean the latter of those two, it should just say something like "from actual damage sustained". If the former, then something like "incoming damage before mitigated or absorbed".

In any event, they've said that Vengeance won't be gained from standing in fire in 5.4, so I doubt this will be, either. And likely will have a cap, again like actual Vengeance.

Really it looks like they're trying to effectively nerf KJC by making the other options hard to pass up. On paper, AV will always be better since you can't really simulate how much movement you're going to need to do. You can guesstimate, base predictions on past experience ...

I think for your "average" player, AV is going to be somewhat of a trap talent. The best Warlocks will take it because they will be able to keep their movement to a minimum, and most others will follow along when guides and Simcraft show it as the highest dps option. But most folks will honestly probably be better off with KJC (talking of course about fights where MF isn't the obvious choice) in real situations -- since only a small fraction of the raiding population have the experience where eking out every last drop of dps/hps is more crucial to success than mastering mechanics.

I dunno, tho -- still real early in the process. And with the buffed FF, who knows ... I guess first and foremost we'll have to see what exactly AV procs from, and what, if they actually implement it, the active portion of it is ... since the updated patch notes only mention a passive effect, in a way that implies there will be an active effect -- or did no one else get that impression ? Either way, yeah, what it procs from and a better idea of more of the encounters.

Interesting stuff so far.

[Deleted]

Currently loving the affly changes. Since now less emphasis is on mg, might even us AV more for pvp.

[Resentful]

Currently loving the affly changes. Since now less emphasis is on mg, might even us AV more for pvp.

I kinda felt it's super god dam nerf am I looking at things wrong here? In terms of AV in pvE that's quite dumb personally I'm sure they will redesign it.

[Shauni]

Our hardcasted Dots are buffed.
Corruption is untouched, my guess : not to boost affli AOE over the roof.
Nightfall is boosted on mono, eavily nerfed on multi and slightly nerfed on cleave
MG is nerfed, haunt is boosted so we are not penalized from low MG-uptime

So, manually refreshing our DOT is the new way to go, unless we can chain drain soul, sb:ss on multi is not viable, so SoC-damage is buffed. I am having an hard time to figure if this is a nerf or not.

[Apero]

The nerf to mf and ds is a nerf to sac too.

But overall, with the haunt change, i feel like its not a nerf atleast. With the new 4pc t16 , you haunt uptime is extremly high.