Next week's balance changes

[Jondar]

You claim to be top dps in your group, so your group is underperforming, that is a numerical fact.

I don't claim to be top DPS in my group. And my group's logs are not private.

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Yeah but that makes affliction a one-trick pony. Sure, you can do good AOE, but at the expense of gutting your already rubbish single target. The latest buffs do nothing about that, in fact they make affliction aoe even stronger.

It would have been better to have across the board buffs because aff needs them to be sure, but to concentrate bigger ones in single target, that's where affliction needs help. It's fine for trash, so long as you talent, because for one thing the Gold artifact traits are actually useful

It's in a figh tlike Ursoc where affliction is so awful. Soul Flame, Wrath of Consumption do nothing whatever, and the lack of adds mean you don;t accumulate souls significantly to power up Ulthalesh either. A single target boss like that or Nythendra are a "perfect storm" (of shit) for affliction

Most dps classe shave fights where they are weake ror stronger, but warlocks seem to be particularly stuffed by their binary talent choices where being good at one thing automatically equaly bad at most everything else.

Yet fir emages, mm hunters, etc, they do not have that. For one thing, their artifacts rebalance talents. A fir emage, for example, can minmax talents and still have stuff like Phoenix Flames

Warlock talents do not feel like flexible choices, they feel like punishments that lock us into niche roles

I'd much rather see the dots take a smaller buff which much bigger ones on things liek Drain Soul, you could buff that by 50% without introducing real disruptions, particularly as PVP has modifiers of it;s own

Stronger Drain Soul would address affliction's horrible single target and lack of burst problems, without introducing the usual dilemma of "OP in multidot"

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not here to defend the state of Affliction. I'm just saying that they're pretty solid for Mythic+ because most groups prioritize trash over boss numbers.

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You keep picking on the Xavius log like an anti-vaxxer, or conspiracy theorist ignoring the consistency of under performance across the board; with the exception of Dragons.

Someone's feeling a little dramatic this morning. I haven't just focused on Xavius logs, and I certainly haven't just focused on your posting of it.

[Deleted]

Is it just me or do the new sims (with the balance changed included) look a bit .. underwhelming?

Is it possible that Blizzard "thought" that an 11% buff to chaos bolt, immolate, conflag and incinerate would result in an 11% overall buff? The reality is probably less than that with having damage sources like Dimensional Rift, Pet Damage and cooldowns that haven't been buffed.

After doing some maths I'd say that the buff is more like an 7-8% overall damage increase for destruction. This would mean that our position doesn't change that much compared to how it is now, considering many other classes get buffed too. DPS is always something that you have to look at in relation to other.
(This applies to more classes than just Destro and Affliction, but we are on the warlock forums though)

On the updated sims both Destro and Affliction are still in the bottom third of dps.

Blizzard said they are still looking at numbers. What I think they should do :

- Don't buff Demo that much for ST. They have different problems than pure ST damage
- Destro and Affliction need an additional 8-10% damage buff alongside other speccs

Increasing immolate tick chance to generate a soul shard would help a great deal or make one of the damage increasing talents baseline. For example Mana Tap baseline would be really fun since it also increases the amount of spells we have and encourages us to manage better.

[clevin]

A lot of people take being rejected from a group as a personal insult but the truth is that a lot of DPS will get declined, whether it's a Fire Mage or an Affliction Lock. I'm not saying that there isn't some people denying Warlocks some spot but claiming they are the majority is not true whatsoever and if you keep on being declined, maybe the problem isn't with the class.

Sigh... people, I'm not even running Mythic+ atm and when I do it will be with friends/guild.

I didn't say locks were any kind of majority, and the asshole whining about shitposting above the quoted post just needs to take his meds. What I'm saying is that even aside from posts, sims showed locks significantly below other DPS. THAT is what gets taken as gospel among a lot of the community - "they're bottom rung DPS... why take a lock when you can take a... " That stuff gets out, people tend to form opinions and they're progressively harder and harder to change. It was apparent early on that locks needed a boost and that they'd utterly fucked up balance when dps was spread over such a wide range.

[Jessicka]

Sims have been a poor indicator of raid performance for a very long time; I wouldn't read anything in to them.

[clevin]

Is it just me or do the new sims (with the balance changed included) look a bit .. underwhelming?

Is it possible that Blizzard "thought" that an 11% buff to chaos bolt, immolate, conflag and incinerate would result in an 11% overall buff?

Again, we need shard changes. Making CB a bit stronger does nothing for me if it costs 2 shards and, when Conflag is on CD, I'm stuck at 0 or 1 for 20 seconds because Immolate refuses to give me a damn shard. Same for things like RoF.... it takes 60% of my resource. The problem, of course, is that shard generation varied with crit so if they buff it for people with fairly low crit it could become OP at a certain level.

The other way to do shards would be to have them generate over time but at that point they're like Focus or Energy. Or they could give us other ways to generate shards, say by making Incinerate have a chance to give me a shard. Right now, if I'm not at 2 shards and Conflag is on CD I feel stuck, which is annoying.

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Sims have been a poor indicator of raid performance for a very long time; I wouldn't read anything in to them.

except they seem to line up with what people were saying this time. But by all means, ignore what you don't like.

[Deleted]

Again, we need shard changes. Making CB a bit stronger does nothing for me if it costs 2 shards and, when Conflag is on CD, I'm stuck at 0 or 1 for 20 seconds because Immolate refuses to give me a damn shard. Same for things like RoF.... it takes 60% of my resource. The problem, of course, is that shard generation varied with crit so if they buff it for people with fairly low crit it could become OP at a certain level.

The other way to do shards would be to have them generate over time but at that point they're like Focus or Energy. Or they could give us other ways to generate shards, say by making Incinerate have a chance to give me a shard. Right now, if I'm not at 2 shards and Conflag is on CD I feel stuck, which is annoying.

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except they seem to line up with what people were saying this time. But by all means, ignore what you don't like.

I agree. Incinerate feels way too boring as a filler spell that does absolutely nothing.

What would your suggestion be to solve the Soul Shard Resource problem?

[Kirroth]

P.S. Another thing, plenty of people including me actually really like Soul Flame, simply, because it is something awesome in the otherwise pretty boring affliction. It is a big help in a lot of cases, so I am not even sure why you even designate it is an issue, cases where it is good to awesome far outweight those where it is so-so or even useless.

Soul Flame is awesome. I still switch back to Afflic for Withered Army Training, and Soul Flame is half the reason. Setting off those chain reactions is immensely fun and satisfying. If the Devs could fix Afflic's ramp and ST, maybe make the talents more interlocking and less demanding that you constantly swap, I'd go back to the spec in a heartbeat.

[clevin]

I agree. Incinerate feels way too boring as a filler spell that does absolutely nothing.

What would your suggestion be to solve the Soul Shard Resource problem?

Either buff Immolate's chance to return a shard on non-crit ticks (which gets around the scaling issue of people getting a ton of crit and then having infinite shards) and/or have incinerate generate a shard (or have a chance to do that depending on math) and/or give me more charges of Conflag/shorten its CD a bit.

The problem I have with the shard mechanics is that my ability to cast spells is governed by RNG a bit too much. I get that letting us cast infinite CB would be a problem... but that's one of the issues in giving a spec one big nuke. Some of that is fine, but if I can't cast CB and Immolate is up and doesn't need refreshing and Conflag is on CD, I get to cast incinerate. /yawn....

PS: The other thing I'd consider doing is reducing the CD on Cataclysm and the shard cost of Rain of Fire. In many ways I think Destro will be OK ST as we gear up, but the AOE is still rather weak and given then Mythic+ is a valid endgame option and trash is important there...

[Deleted]

Either buff Immolate's chance to return a shard on non-crit ticks (which gets around the scaling issue of people getting a ton of crit and then having infinite shards) and/or have incinerate generate a shard (or have a chance to do that depending on math) and/or give me more charges of Conflag/shorten its CD a bit.

The problem I have with the shard mechanics is that my ability to cast spells is governed by RNG a bit too much. Some of that is fine, but if I can't cast CB and Immolate is up and doesn't need refreshing and Conflag is on CD, I get to cast incinerate. /yawn....

How about successful incinerate casts reduce the remaining cooldown of Conflag by 1 second?

[Deleted]

These so called buffs are like a wet bandaid. 2 of 3 speccs need to be redesigned.

I don't mind the unforgiving specc of demo but the mechanics and ramp up time for demo is just way to uneventfull in my eyes, it feels like you don't do sqwat whilst empowering demons.. hopefully in a near future and not after 3 raid tiers things will happend.. Am i the only one considering rerolling?

[Requimortem]

These so called buffs are like a wet bandaid. 2 of 3 speccs need to be redesigned.

I don't mind the unforgiving specc of demo but the mechanics and ramp up time for demo is just way to uneventfull in my eyes, it feels like you don't do sqwat whilst empowering demons.. hopefully in a near future and not after 3 raid tiers things will happend.. Am i the only one considering rerolling?

I'm sure one of the tools like Baconeggcheese, Jondar or Gaidax will come along and tell you why you're wrong and why everyone but them seems to have an issue with how the class is.

Infracted - Woz is an idiot.

[Gaidax]

I'm sure one of the tools like Baconeggcheese, Jondar or Gaidax will come along and tell you why you're wrong and why everyone but them seems to have an issue with how the class is.

Why should I even bother? For many here even 50% buff won't be of a help. Issue between the monitor and the chair.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jondar]

I'm sure one of the tools like Baconeggcheese, Jondar or Gaidax will come along and tell you why you're wrong and why everyone but them seems to have an issue with how the class is.

You're confused. We all acknowledge the class needs work. What we don't acknowledge is that the class's current state will prevent anyone from progressing through any of the available content, as well as being competitive with most of the classes (inc people barrage of people telling me BUT FIRE MAGES DEMON HUNTERS AND HUNTERS?!?!?! as if they're the only specs in the game.) The only thing stopping people are L2P issues.

[Requimortem]

Why should I even bother? For many here even 50% buff won't be of a help. Issue between the monitor and the chair.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Wow. All I have to do is mention your name and you come running. That's actually impressive. You're right. The issue is you and the handful of people like you. You're nothing special, you're not topping the meters or carrying your group. What you and the others ARE doing, however, is talking out of your ass.

[Deleted]

I'd rather they removed life tap, that should also result in a damage buff.

[Requimortem]

I'd rather they remove life tap, that should also result in a damage buff.

They won't. That cancerous tumor of an ability has been with us for too long so now people see it as "iconic" even though all it does is hold us back and hinder the flow of our specializations.

[Gaidax]

Wow. All I have to do is mention your name and you come running. That's actually impressive. You're right. The issue is you and the handful of people like you. You're nothing special, you're not topping the meters or carrying your group. What you and the others ARE doing, however, is talking out of your ass.

I follow this thread out of curiosity and here comes some random troll out of nowhere and throws insults at my address... you expect me to not reply, "tool"?

[Zzyzz]

I'm sure one of the tools like Baconeggcheese, Jondar or Gaidax will come along and tell you why you're wrong and why everyone but them seems to have an issue with how the class is.

Trolls troll. That's what they do.

[ThePhantombox]

Wow. All I have to do is mention your name and you come running. That's actually impressive. You're right. The issue is you and the handful of people like you. You're nothing special, you're not topping the meters or carrying your group. What you and the others ARE doing, however, is talking out of your ass.

Yeah, shut up @Gaidax, he's right and you're wrong because he said so.

[Requimortem]

Trolls troll. That's what they do.

I don't really care to call them "trolls". As you can tell by Gaidax's response, it's a label that lost all meaning when people started throwing it around to describe every person they don't like, agree with, etc.