Drain Life/Drain Soul beta change

[Stefanus]

Drain Life Drains life from the target, causing [ 6 + 25.05% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage, and restoring 18% of your health over 6 sec over 6 sec, and healing you for 600% of the damage done. 0% of Base Mana, plus 3% per sec. 40 yd range. 6 sec cast (Channeled).
Drain Soul Drains the target's soul, causing [ 6 + 750% 300% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage, and restoring 6% of the caster's health over 6 sec over 6 sec, and healing you for 300% of the damage done. Generates 1 Soul Shard if the target dies during this effect. Affliction Warlock - Level 15 Talent. 0% of Base Mana, plus 3% per sec. 40 yd range. 6 sec cast (Channeled).

To all you beta warlock testers out there, what do you think of this change, I for one am completely against it because it is a nerf of course. Is drain soul now really healing you more than drain life does, nonsense? I don't really know what the intention behind this change was...

[Jessicka]

Drain Life Drains life from the target, causing [ 6 + 25.05% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage, and restoring 18% of your health over 6 sec over 6 sec, and healing you for 600% of the damage done. 0% of Base Mana, plus 3% per sec. 40 yd range. 6 sec cast (Channeled).
Drain Soul Drains the target's soul, causing [ 6 + 750% 300% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage, and restoring 6% of the caster's health over 6 sec over 6 sec, and healing you for 300% of the damage done. Generates 1 Soul Shard if the target dies during this effect. Affliction Warlock - Level 15 Talent. 0% of Base Mana, plus 3% per sec. 40 yd range. 6 sec cast (Channeled).

To all you beta warlock testers out there, what do you think of this change, I for one am completely against it because it is a nerf of course. Is drain soul now really healing you more than drain life does, nonsense? I don't really know what the intention behind this change was...

It's probably to compensate for the fact that Drain Soul lacks synergy with Soul Effigy, Mana Tap and Siphon Life Talents that cost globals reducing the amount of time spent channelling.

[Stefanus]

It's probably to compensate for the fact that Drain Soul lacks synergy with Soul Effigy, Mana Tap and Siphon Life Talents that cost globals reducing the amount of time spent channelling.

I don't understand this. Who in the right mind balances class/specs around synergy/or lack of it with one single talent (which is btw optional)...

[Jessicka]

I don't understand this. Who in the right mind balances class/specs around synergy/or lack of it with one single talent (which is btw optional)...

Because the alternative is that you put a combination of talents together that happen to have really good synergy, and picking anything else becomes useless. The way to make them optional, is to have other combinations compete by way of buffing them.

[Baconeggcheese]

I don't understand this. Who in the right mind balances class/specs around synergy/or lack of it with one single talent (which is btw optional)...

I'm kind of just generally confused by it, the wording is clearly just thrown on there and not final. As it currently is it looks like drain soul does the same damage as drain life but half the healing and instead generates a shard.

It was already pretty useless as it was, this would make it completely unusable. Though I'm not sure how they plan to make us use it without just over buffing the crap out of it.

[Faytel]

The change was due to drain tanking in PvP (and I'd assume in other environments). It was nearly impossible for anyone to 1v1 you. While I hate this change, I kinda understand it. If you paired the dmg from DL/DS w/ a PvP talent called Essence Drain (stacking incoming dmg debuff -50% total incoming dmg from the target) then that paladin's equality (which was 1 shotting people) tickled you especially if you had your soul leech built up which was easy to do since you could drain tank your way from 10% to 100% pretty easily. If you had 2 people on you and specced into CoW you could actually become a pretty huge dps sink. Drain Tank 1 to get -50% incoming dmg from them (obviously choose the stronger option) and CoW the other gg all day.

I logged in today saw the change didn't pay that much mind to it until I tested it out... After testing, it's beyond idiotic, you have a class that relies on cutting them self for mana, you take away a baseline mobility spell, you buff melee's dmg and even their ranged abilities, and now you nerf one of the core features in the fantasy of a warlock, the ability to heal the harm you have to cause yourself. It doesn't work well at all.

But rejoice in the fact that people are talking about it in the beta forums and this is a beta so things will change that for sure can be certain. It's just disappointing to see them testing these waters vs. other options.

Faytel

[toolsv]

I would have thought this is a perfect opportunity to put their new pvp-specific scaling business to work. This is exactly the sort of thing that it was designed to sort out. That said from what I'd heard it was pretty ridiculous and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there was some totally degenerate thing that it let you do.

[Faytel]

I won't lie it was great and a bit OP but the nerf hit HARD!!!!!

[Stefanus]

The change was due to drain tanking in PvP (and I'd assume in other environments). It was nearly impossible for anyone to 1v1 you. While I hate this change, I kinda understand it. If you paired the dmg from DL/DS w/ a PvP talent called Essence Drain (stacking incoming dmg debuff -50% total incoming dmg from the target) then that paladin's equality (which was 1 shotting people) tickled you especially if you had your soul leech built up which was easy to do since you could drain tank your way from 10% to 100% pretty easily. If you had 2 people on you and specced into CoW you could actually become a pretty huge dps sink. Drain Tank 1 to get -50% incoming dmg from them (obviously choose the stronger option) and CoW the other gg all day.

I logged in today saw the change didn't pay that much mind to it until I tested it out... After testing, it's beyond idiotic, you have a class that relies on cutting them self for mana, you take away a baseline mobility spell, you buff melee's dmg and even their ranged abilities, and now you nerf one of the core features in the fantasy of a warlock, the ability to heal the harm you have to cause yourself. It doesn't work well at all.

But rejoice in the fact that people are talking about it in the beta forums and this is a beta so things will change that for sure can be certain. It's just disappointing to see them testing these waters vs. other options.

Faytel

The answer to that is really simple, the problem wasn't drain life, because the spell itself is highly liable to interrupts/stuns/etc. The problem is Essence Drain spell, I suggest that it should be either removed or redesigned for exactly the reasons you wrote above and return the drain life/drain soul to how they previously were...

[Deleted]

As i understand this change, Drain Soul now deals like 12 x more dmg than DL and also does (i'm not that good at math) twice as much healing as DL?
DL: 6+25% of spelll power, DS: 6+300% of SP. This is a huuuge difference dmg part. Also 300% to DS healing > than 600% of DL's healing.

[wholol]

The tanky warlock dilema is what caused the shift in playstyle from mitigation to evasion ( teleport) when wotlk came out, essentially blizzard cannot balance the tanky version of affliction as proven in previous eras ,they'll either end up too tanky and semi immortal as in tbc or wet noodle paper there's no in between sadly.

[gruxxar]

logged in y'day on beta and:

Drain soul deals twice the damage of Drain life but heals for 1/2 of Drain life's healign %.

translate: Drain soul deals twice the dmg of drain life, heals same & generate shards on kill now.

[Stefanus]

Want to add a little update after I've compared the numbers from beta to see the actual healing nerf of Drain Life.
In comparison to 18% heal over 6secs, now it is roughly 13.4% over 6secs...
Now, to put my conclusion on this one. If the nerf is instigated by drain life's synergy with Essence Drain PvP talent, I would say that it is far better to revert the nerf to how it previously was and remove/change Essence Drain talent...

[Deleted]

The answer to that is really simple, the problem wasn't drain life, because the spell itself is highly liable to interrupts/stuns/etc. The problem is Essence Drain spell, I suggest that it should be either removed or redesigned for exactly the reasons you wrote above and return the drain life/drain soul to how they previously were...

nonsense, you couldve made a stopcasting macro with dl as you just need 5 initial ticks to have 50% dmg mitigation.
It was quite retarded as you could draintank people through their offensive cds, between CoW up for 50% of the time and 5 stacks Essence Drain a melee would do 80% less damage to you, then you factor in SL and DL healing and you were retardedly OP to s6 DK levels

[Deleted]

nonsense, you couldve made a stopcasting macro with dl as you just need 5 initial ticks to have 50% dmg mitigation.
It was quite retarded as you could draintank people through their offensive cds, between CoW up for 50% of the time and 5 stacks Essence Drain a melee would do 80% less damage to you, then you factor in SL and DL healing and you were retardedly OP to s6 DK levels

Which is why he said Essence Drain is the issue, and not the life generated from DL / DS.

[zvvl]

Well, Drain Soul requires a talent point so it makes sense that it's better. It is currently very nice for leveling as Affliction.

You could argue from a lore perspective that a soul is more "valuable" than a life or something I'm sure. I don't really know how anything works in the Warcraft universe though, I just DPS things.

[Stefanus]

Well, Drain Soul requires a talent point so it makes sense that it's better. It is currently very nice for leveling as Affliction.

You could argue from a lore perspective that a soul is more "valuable" than a life or something I'm sure. I don't really know how anything works in the Warcraft universe though, I just DPS things.

I'm okay with its dmg being better, but not with its healing being better as it defeats the purpose of Drain Life...

[zvvl]

I'm okay with its dmg being better, but not with its healing being better as it defeats the purpose of Drain Life...

Well, yes, that's the point. It's an improved version of Drain Life. The trade off is you aren't taking Writhe of Agony.

[Spunt]

I'm okay with its dmg being better, but not with its healing being better as it defeats the purpose of Drain Life...

Drain Soul replaces Drain Life though. You can't get both in Legion.

[Deleted]

I like the change :x It opens up more options, and the healing nerf wasn't THAT bad, roughly from 18% to 14% max hp per channel. Still way more than what other classes have, spammable.