Snapshotting or dynamic DoTs in WoD?

[Koloss]

It was said, that in WoD they will make DoTs scaling dynamically with your current stats. It's truly an issue, because it's hard to balance Damage dealer classes like Affliction Warlocks, and this is why Demo locks and Moonkin Droods (before they made the moonkin-trinket-nerf) performed too good in ToT.

I think it never was an issue before only in MoP. Why? They've just added too much procs/cd-s. Let's collect them (let's say you're caster), if you're a Tailor and/or Engineer you can have back/gloves proc, Meta gem: 30% haste, Jade Spirit 1650 Intellect, Potion: 4000 Intellect, Trinkets: 10k of a primary or secondary stat (UVLS 100% crit) and of course you can stack it with your 20-30% dmg CD and maybe 30% haste bloodlust.

This got a bit out of control in MoP i think, if DoTs can do 3 times the damage as normal in certain conditions it's no surprise DoT classes can become overpowered in some situations. I understand they added procs because "procs are cool", yes they're. But it becomes much less cooler if it will just sometimes effect will your mind blast hits 1k or 1.1k?, than effecting actual gameplay.

Personally i love it, when i can use some theory instead of just spamming my rotation/priority (It's mainly an Afllic lock thing, it's the only hardness in their game). And if i could choose between this with less procs, or when i just spam rotation i would choose the first. Players not deeply into DPS theories could still be able to do decent damage.

In my opinion 2 trinket procs/CDs plus a potion would do the trick, you can still stack it with personal CDs and Bloodlust, and your screen won't be full of WeakAuras proc progress bars (if you're a player like me) and DoTs will never be too overpowered. Enchants and legendary things should always be static, or a proc like legendary-back-kind-of-proc, which would be awesome for some trinkets too in the expansion.

Maybe not many people find this important, but if you do so, what do you guys think? Which system is the better?

[Blueobelisk]

I hate RNG. That's my answer. I prefer dynamic.

[Nobleshield]

Anything that severely limits "proc watching" is a plus in my book. I tried a Warlock and found it quite obnoxious to play due to needing to watch procs or rely on AffDots to tell you when to refresh something optimally.

[weedsurge]

tracking procs takes a little awareness and skill to use properly, dynamically updating dots takes zero effort, awareness, or skill. so naturally they choose the easy one, just another example of catering to the bad players. only upside i can see is that this should make it easier to balance numbers, right now aff locks are a bit out of control with this.

[Aboubacar]

Lot of things to consider in this post. First I'd just like to point out that UVLS was never good for moonkins, compared to breath and cha-ye, it just became trash after the proc rate nerf (heroic proc 2-3 times in 5min encounters).

Anyway a lot of the problem is too strong of trinkets this xpac and not snapshotting itself. However, I do think that they way they seem to be approching dynamic dots (gaining a quarter of a tick or something with more haste) is good. I think it's good because it eliminates breakpoints and plateaus, where your class feels like shit without a magic unattainable haste number, then really good with it. Maybe classes will feel less crappy at low gear levels at the start of expansions as well.

And on the flip side I'm going to be bored always be bored with no decisions regarding clipping/refreshing. Will always clip at <1 sec w/ dynamic. Some classes are not as simple as just refreshing dots when a trinket procs atm either. I didn't quite understand what they meant by addons telling us how to clip dots? I use an addon to track trinket procs b/c it can be hard to see in the default buff frame with all that's going on, but no addon says "refresh now!".. ..

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tracking procs takes a little awareness and skill to use properly, dynamically updating dots takes zero effort, awareness, or skill. so naturally they choose the easy one, just another example of catering to the bad players. only upside i can see is that this should make it easier to balance numbers, right now aff locks are a bit out of control with this.

Yea aff is out of control because snapshotting, but so is destro even tho snapshotting plays less of a role and Blizzard claims snapshotting is an expansion-worthy change and the only reason locks are overpowered as hell atm... Give me a break, they need to destroy their resource regen into the ground right now, obviously they don't give a crap about class balance.

[Juvencus]

Class abilities and passives like Eclipse will still snapshot in a way. Also I'm guessing also Haste procs, unless they have a way to dynamically add and remove the new "half" ticks.

[Deleted]

Anything that severely limits "proc watching" is a plus in my book. I tried a Warlock and found it quite obnoxious to play due to needing to watch procs or rely on AffDots to tell you when to refresh something optimally.

Good thing there are 10 other classes for you to play then.. I don't have a Warlock myself so I don't care if they're the "proc watching" class. I will never raid on one so it doesn't concern me.

I don't get why they're removing the snapshotting. People playing Warlocks in high-end guilds seem to enjoy it for the most part. The rest of the Warlocks who aren't at a high level shouldn't/don't care anyway because they can get by fine without worrying about it. All removing it does is remove a way to display your skill as a Warlock.

[Deleted]

As a shadow priest I'm not sure how I feel about dynamic yet. Will have to see what other changes they make first and how dynamic changes the flow of shadow. Part of me feels like it's going to remove all the dynamic play in dot classes and oversimplify things. The other part of me thinks "well tbh MoP is massively simplified in a lot of areas compared to BC, Wrath and even Cata to some extent and people still do awful dps with decent gear so who cares"

[Ryuda]

Anything that severely limits "proc watching" is a plus in my book. I tried a Warlock and found it quite obnoxious to play due to needing to watch procs or rely on AffDots to tell you when to refresh something optimally.

Yeah, this is basically it, definitely prefer Dynamic overall, I've been was Boomkin main from BC - MoP, when I switched to a MW monk, but I still play my Boomy a lot, and I have to say, it's become quite the headache to try and keep track of my CDs, 2 trinket procs, leg. meta proc, and Jade Spirit procs. I admit, bursting close to 600k with a 545 ilvl at the beginning of a fight is fun, but in the long haul, I think it'll be a breath of fresh air not having to watch 7-8 different aura bars.

I mean, they could, as you suggest, limit the stack potential, but I think Dynamic scaling is the better play here:

problems I see with basic reduction: Some will be going away already, we're losing metas, so that won't be an issue. (not really a problem, just an observation)
- Not all classes have CDs that they can stack with DoTs, which means that removing/adding some would likely sway the balance of power between specs by a large margin (i.e. do you give spriests some kind of damage increase, or take away say, Incarnation from Boomies, which would affect their burst by a lot, even without snapshotting) this would make a long process of re balancing the caster role.
- Chances are, the things that would likely be hit would be trinket procs, they'd probably be set in a way that makes it "less punishing" to miss a proc, i.e. making them less interesting.

whereas with Dynamic scaling, they could probably get away with even increasing the strength of trinket procs (at least in PvE, but PvP is another ball game completely) without worrying about casters having insanely strong DoTs, it also makes for an easy sweep "nerf", as it affects most DoT using casters virtually the same, with a few minor tweaks to damage in other areas.

The only thing I hope, is I'd still like to see some reward for watching for procs, but time will tell what/if anything Blizz has in store.

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Good thing there are 10 other classes for you to play then.. I don't have a Warlock myself so I don't care if they're the "proc watching" class. I will never raid on one so it doesn't concern me.

I don't get why they're removing the snapshotting. People playing Warlocks in high-end guilds seem to enjoy it for the most part. The rest of the Warlocks who aren't at a high level shouldn't/don't care anyway because they can get by fine without worrying about it. All removing it does is remove a way to display your skill as a Warlock.

I'll edit this on, as it raises a good point...I don't think I'd mind snapshotting if it kind of went back to being an "affliction-only" thing, I think my gripe with it is the fact that's it has spilled over into just about every other caster DPS. That said, I guess it might make for some weird balancing issues to have only 1 spec based around snapshotting, but who knows, it's always a possibility.

[Darmalus]

The only thing I hope, is I'd still like to see some reward for watching for procs, but time will tell what/if anything Blizz has in store.

Maybe more boss vulnerability windows to burn your burst CDs on?

[Zannis]

Having an addon tell you when to refresh your dots for maximum damage isn't skillful gameplay.

I'm personally glad snapshotting is going away.

[Seezer]

Anything that severely limits "proc watching" is a plus in my book. I tried a Warlock and found it quite obnoxious to play due to needing to watch procs or rely on AffDots to tell you when to refresh something optimally.

Affdots wasn't around in cata...And you aren't going to watch procs any less. "Oh hey, look! my cloak, weapon proc, trinket just procced! I know this because I was watching my procs! Now I will fire off a few cb's!"

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Having an addon tell you when to refresh your dots for maximum damage isn't skillful gameplay.

I'm personally glad snapshotting is going away.

You don't need the addon. Warlocks did this in cata without affdots. All you need to see is your procs. And it's alot more skillful than "Okay, my Corruption is getting ready to fall off, let me refresh it.". And if all it required was "just getting an addon" then every lock would be doing killer dps. And that sure as hell isn't happening.

[Steve the Sloth]

I'm mostly for it but it's gonna be much harder to try and stay awake while I look at my screen zoned out spamming frost bolts...

[Deleted]

Snapshotting is fun to me. Making them dynamic will kill the fun of mutli dotting as an aff lock or shadow priest.

DoT classes will be extremely dumbed down and boring in WoD it seems.

[Normie]

The game would be better off without things that are difficult or impossible to play well using the default UI.

[eschatological]

Snapshotting was a sign of good play. It was like stutter stepping with hunters (my main) when auto shot required standing still. Honestly, this xpac, where I literally had to pay no mind to anything since nothing snapshotted for hunters except Lynx Rush which was nerfed into oblivion shortly after launch, and I could move while casting anything, I found the rotation to be fairly stale, and fairly difficult to weed out good hunters from great hunters.

That being said, I found the encounters more interesting, and I took on more responsibility in them because I could mindlessly do my rotation at 99% efficiency. That's kind of Blizzard's design philosophy, put the difficulty in the encounter (and the difficulty level you're doing) and make the skill ceiling low for classes so they can ask a bit more of players per encounter. That could be a solid design, because, let's be honest, refreshing gameplay doesn't come from watching procs and hitting your big CDs when they proc. I mean, I like big numbers as much as any DPS, but it's kind of silly to consider that a sign of an awesome player. You know where I felt most useful this tier? On the conveyer belt in Blackfuse. No where near the top of the meters (hunters aren't on any fight, anyways, except Thok), the priority kind of went out the window as you were saving things to burst down weapons, but my utility and mastery of my class contributed to the fight being smooth as butter (for how difficult it was, at least).

[Ilfayt]

I am excited for Dynamic. One of the things about snapshotting is it makes particular classes RIDICULOUSLY gear dependent. If you're lucky with drops or are in a high end guild, sure, it's fine, but I'm sick of sitting here with only one decent proc outside of my trinket.

RNG+, well, RNG(which is what most procs work off of in the long run) makes for very chaotic gameplay, and not in a good way. This really shows through when you're doing something other than 'sustained burn' on a boss, like burning down an add that needs to die because of a mechanic. You're ability to deal with a situation like that becomes more heavily dependent on the 'RNG gods' and aligning everything. I do NOT find 'hoping for the right procs' fun.

I do agree that it's nice to be able to take advantage of procs, but I'd rather have they shifted into your channel style spells and using a class CD, things you can control and yet still require a small amount of setup, than on the DoTs themselves. Maybe make Malefic Grasp or Wrath benefit more from procs in someway.

[zombiesnakes]

tracking procs takes a little awareness and skill to use properly, dynamically updating dots takes zero effort, awareness, or skill. so naturally they choose the easy one, just another example of catering to the bad players. only upside i can see is that this should make it easier to balance numbers, right now aff locks are a bit out of control with this.

There is 0 skill in watching procs. Let me show you the process.

1. Install addon that tells you when to refresh your dots.

2. Stare at addon.

There is no skill involved at all.

[Servasus]

tracking procs takes a little awareness and skill to use properly, dynamically updating dots takes zero effort, awareness, or skill. so naturally they choose the easy one, just another example of catering to the bad players. only upside i can see is that this should make it easier to balance numbers, right now aff locks are a bit out of control with this.

You act like babysitting your procs is intuitive, fun and skillful. It's just plain nonsensical. If my intellect equates to spellpower, and my spellpower increases, so should the current damage and healing I am doing. As a Mistweaver, for example, it's impossible to get fully maximized Renewing Mists on maximum targets within a 20 second time frame. It takes 24 seconds AT THE VERY LEAST to achieve that, which currently is impossible.

No reason to have them be anything but Dynamic.