7.1.5 Ptr Changes

[Duckz0rs]

When you're being hit in the face with a baseball all the time when others get free candy, do you just smile and say "It's gonna be ok, let's stay positive" or you voice your concern for some changes? If you are silent, nothings gonna change. Nobody gains anything just from being passive. Gaidax is a very good player that can squish every last drop of awesomeness from the warlock class and still be mediocore, but not everyone is as good as previously mentioned players. Everyone is talented in different things. I think the class should be adjusted to everyone and not just individuals. Even an idiot can play hunter and do good damage, why it shouldn't be SIMILAR with let's say: warlock? Voicing out your concerns is healthy.

If the top players do just medium, then what does it say about a class?

Using your metaphor: if everyone around you gets candy and you get repeatedly get hit in the face with a bat do you proceed to sit in a corner and shout "THIS ISN'T FAIR!" or do you try to find a way to improve your situation? And let's be honest, shouting "YOU SUCK!" at the guy who's hitting you with a bat is only going to make him hit you harder next time. I'm not asking people to remain silent; I'm asking everyone to remain civil and constructive.

I'm not sure why you brought skill level into play, that is way beyond my point. I pointed said players out for their great attitude, not their higher skill level, even if they are connected. I try (and from time to time fail miserably) to remain constructive in general. Since I'm mediocre at best that usually just comes down to following the discussions between those players, who are miles ahead of me, asking questions about what I don't understand and listing things I don't particularly like.

I understand the frustration that we're middle of the pack. I haven't argued against it. In no way am I trying to convince people to deny that we're not in the greatest place, but just repeating that we aren't has clearly gotten us nowhere in the past few months. Let's find a way to work with what we have, and find a way to convey what we find wrong in a way that might actually get us an answer.

EDIT: All that said, since my last post discussion has actually gone on in proper, so I guess my entire post is made moot in the time it took me to write it. Glad to see the change of approach and sorry for the Wall of Rant!

[Soluna]

I actually think that Gaidax isn't that wrong here guys. Sure, we got some bad things as warlocks but well, I want to answer the following:

1) 'We aren't good on Guarm Mythic!!11!!1'.
Answer: That's one out of the 10 released raid fights. On Helya mythic we are surely competitive given the cleave we can do. Maybe we aren't dealing 2 million dps on Helya, but I saw some warlock on world first Mythic Helya kill. If they can do it at the bleeding edge of progress, then so can you with better gear at some point.

2) 'We need to specc specifically for specific fights and can only aoe or ST'. Honestly, I change 1-2 talents for raiding. Dungeon build is a completely different one with FNB, Demonic power and Wreak havoc at all times BUT it's actually fun to have an alternate build and playstyle specifically catered to dungeons.

3) 'Our CR is a 3 sec cast timer!!!'. It's almost never an issue to use it, but especially in raids, you have druids and DKs ready to rezz instantly anyway, so you shouldn't cry about it.

4) 'Our utility is shit'. Demonic portal is fucking awesome. I can think of many moments that its useful and makes fights like renferal trivial as fuck for the whole group. Yes it might not be time warp material, but not all can have the best shit ever, yeah? Also healthstones are quite useful for lots of guilds who cba to spend tons of gold on health potions. More utility is coming in 7.2 also, so it will be ever better.

5) 'Our ST is low'. This is a legitimate concern, but there are way too few pure ST fights. There should be a buff to ST, but a nerf to wreak havoc.That's literally the only way of keeping good cleave and getting strong ST. Or of course, play Demo only and stack on haste gear to be competitive with other dpsers on ST.

6) 'Destro Mastery is shit'. Yep it is. Personally I would like it if our mastery was instead a flat % chance for any of our spells to trigger an instant, free chaos bolt with 100% increased damage. Sounds crazy, but when you remove the flat % dps increase you get from the current mastery, it should be the same, or slightly better. Considering that it's also a chance to procc. Also, the visual of this chaos bolt would be much bigger, since it's supposed to be really powerful with that 100% increased power. 'But its too OP for cleave!'. Yep, you are right, that's why if you try to make it benefit from havoc, it just instead splits into two regular chaos bolts with normalised damage. So its like casting a normal chaos bolt, just without the cast time. Strong, but not broken strong.

7) 'Affli talent choices suck'. Legitimate concern. I don't play affliction but I hope you will all get more respect and not be forced to be one trick ponies.

8) 'We aren't viable in M+!!!1!!!' That's bullshit. I feel viable as fuck.

9) 'We have no baseline interrupt!' Yes, that sucks big time. I hope they will let us have one. Maybe in the form of a felhunter interrupt summon, similar to the demo pvp talent.

My overall wishes would be to get a single target dps increase,either in the form of a similar mastery to the one I mentioned, since it would fix our mobility and well, instant chaos bolts sounds FUN, or by buffing our spells overall and making wreak havoc weaker (Or havoc effects overall e.g., only 50% of the dmg is duplicated on havoc'ed target). A baseline interrupt would be lovely too. A bit better legendaries for destro would be nice too. Or if you could get the demo bracers while on destro specc. It is sad how I play only destro but I have to pick demo loot specc for a chance out of EIGHT to get the legendary I want... while most of the other choices would either force me to start playing demo or just keep the legendaries rotting in my bag... Easily addressed also by targetted legendary farm!

[Maculo]

What I would like to see more than just buffs for warlocks, is a more convenient way to focus on the right stats/gear. Specifically, I would love if reforging returned in some form or if there was some way to reroll the stats.

If I had one criticism of Warlock, it is that the class*seems* (my perception obviously) more gear dependent than other classes. For example, I would not want to play Demo without at least 20% haste or Affliction without a certain amount of mastery. For a casual player finding the right gear can be a pain in the rear, especially if you have limited time to play.

[Soulzar]

Thal'kiel's Discord (Rank 1) Shadowbolt Shadowbolt and Demonwrath sometimes enrages Thal'kiel, causing him to teleport to an enemy and scream for 0 Shadow damage to all nearby enemies over 0.

Beats getting a nerf. Helps a bit in AOE situations/mythic+ dungeons.

Great to see this finally made it in, was suggested during Beta feedback. Curious how the targeting will work, if you don't have a target for example.

[Zandalariprelate]

Still nothing.

This is a joke.



"Everyone who disagree with me is bad."

lol nice shield.

Well what do you expect to someone like him to comment(Gaidax)? I really doubt this guy even play at 85% percentile and his slogan is: Everyone is bad except me

[Eleriol]

See, that's where I disagree. Over the course of last 3 months we seen our baseline shard count rise to 3, destruction getting 12% buff to many abilities, mana tap eliminated and replaced by more reasonable (albeit as it looks like now, mandatory, choice), AoE/ST mixed rows sorted out and improvements to our less used talents such as Supremacy (Doomguard buff), Soul Harvest and CDF.

It is a lot of changes over a short period of time based on feedback. How is that none of the concerns and constructive feedback addressed, when we had so many improvements already?

Realistically, what is the huge issue about Destruction now? The only weak thing I can think of now is ST not being stellar, that's about it, really?

For example if one would ask me what I desire to see improved in Destruction, it would be a pretty short list:

It would be nice to:

• Change GoSac to be a real alternative to playing with a pet.
• Have a small improvement to baseline mobility
• Small increase to single target - best way would be rolling in the RE 0.5 cast time reduction to CB baseline, really.
• NEW - make lvl 30 row more competitive, as currently it seems to be positioned to be eaten by ELT.

And well, that's it really? Sky falling?

Both the 3 shard and dmg buffs for all 3 speccs where enough to push us from being completely unviable to being fine depending on the encounter but there are still many issues that needs to be adressed and many of us hoped that we would get those changes during this PTR and hey we might just get them since there is time.

I agree that its good that cata, FnB and SH now are in the same row its how it should have been from the very start BUT it came at the cost of destro single target DPS which we all know is very poor at the moment. Destro seems to be suffering greatly because of Wreak havoc since it seems devs dont know how to give us good Single target that wont scale out of proportion with Havoc.
Channel Demonfire could be the solution if they gave it a proper buff to its single target component. Heck they could even make it castable while running giving us a slight mobility buff with it aswell. Reverse Entropy will never be baseline since that will conflict with Empowered life tap and given how stubborn the devs are they wont drop ELP.

The PTR isnt over but the track record for this expansion hasnt been great since right now they have done the bare minimum to keep the class viable. And this is only destro they still need to buff affliction single target and both demo and affliction needs shorter ramp up times.

There are many issues and most of them havent been adressed even after being ackonwledge by Blizzard themselvs to be legitimate issues with the class. Sure hyperbole isnt helpfull but try to be more empathetic to the panic people feel when yet another large path cycle goes through with no changes to the core issues Warlocks are experiencing right now.

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I actually think that Gaidax isn't that wrong here guys. Sure, we got some bad things as warlocks but well, I want to answer the following:

1) 'We aren't good on Guarm Mythic!!11!!1'.
Answer: That's one out of the 10 released raid fights. On Helya mythic we are surely competitive given the cleave we can do. Maybe we aren't dealing 2 million dps on Helya, but I saw some warlock on world first Mythic Helya kill. If they can do it at the bleeding edge of progress, then so can you with better gear at some point.

2) 'We need to specc specifically for specific fights and can only aoe or ST'. Honestly, I change 1-2 talents for raiding. Dungeon build is a completely different one with FNB, Demonic power and Wreak havoc at all times BUT it's actually fun to have an alternate build and playstyle specifically catered to dungeons.

3) 'Our CR is a 3 sec cast timer!!!'. It's almost never an issue to use it, but especially in raids, you have druids and DKs ready to rezz instantly anyway, so you shouldn't cry about it.

4) 'Our utility is shit'. Demonic portal is fucking awesome. I can think of many moments that its useful and makes fights like renferal trivial as fuck for the whole group. Yes it might not be time warp material, but not all can have the best shit ever, yeah? Also healthstones are quite useful for lots of guilds who cba to spend tons of gold on health potions. More utility is coming in 7.2 also, so it will be ever better.

5) 'Our ST is low'. This is a legitimate concern, but there are way too few pure ST fights. There should be a buff to ST, but a nerf to wreak havoc.That's literally the only way of keeping good cleave and getting strong ST. Or of course, play Demo only and stack on haste gear to be competitive with other dpsers on ST.

6) 'Destro Mastery is shit'. Yep it is. Personally I would like it if our mastery was instead a flat % chance for any of our spells to trigger an instant, free chaos bolt with 100% increased damage. Sounds crazy, but when you remove the flat % dps increase you get from the current mastery, it should be the same, or slightly better. Considering that it's also a chance to procc. Also, the visual of this chaos bolt would be much bigger, since it's supposed to be really powerful with that 100% increased power. 'But its too OP for cleave!'. Yep, you are right, that's why if you try to make it benefit from havoc, it just instead splits into two regular chaos bolts with normalised damage. So its like casting a normal chaos bolt, just without the cast time. Strong, but not broken strong.

7) 'Affli talent choices suck'. Legitimate concern. I don't play affliction but I hope you will all get more respect and not be forced to be one trick ponies.

8) 'We aren't viable in M+!!!1!!!' That's bullshit. I feel viable as fuck.

9) 'We have no baseline interrupt!' Yes, that sucks big time. I hope they will let us have one. Maybe in the form of a felhunter interrupt summon, similar to the demo pvp talent.

My overall wishes would be to get a single target dps increase,either in the form of a similar mastery to the one I mentioned, since it would fix our mobility and well, instant chaos bolts sounds FUN, or by buffing our spells overall and making wreak havoc weaker (Or havoc effects overall e.g., only 50% of the dmg is duplicated on havoc'ed target). A baseline interrupt would be lovely too. A bit better legendaries for destro would be nice too. Or if you could get the demo bracers while on destro specc. It is sad how I play only destro but I have to pick demo loot specc for a chance out of EIGHT to get the legendary I want... while most of the other choices would either force me to start playing demo or just keep the legendaries rotting in my bag... Easily addressed also by targetted legendary farm!

Combat ress having a 3 second base cast time when ressing is horrible and what happens when your other combat ressers are dead or you didnt bring that many/any DKs and Druids? SS needs to be instant when ressing its not a unreasonable request.

And your wrong about single target. Lets take Helya as an example a very good one at that, even if youre sitting on the same dps cleaving on all the small skeletons around with FnB/havoc etc how do think things turns out when you have priority adds to kill such as the Lantern add? Even if your on the same DPS your actual damage done to priority targets will suffer greatly.

Its called padding and its not exactly helpfull in most fights.

[Deleted]

I'm really concerned by the number of people crying for a ST buff by advocating a nerf to Havoc... Be careful what you wish for. Most fights (in both raids and m+) are cleaves, and especially on higher difficulties (mythic / 10+), this is where the lock is currently borderline OP (especially with the bracer leggy). If you take that away, what will happen is that you are middle-of-the-road for both trash and ST/Cleave fights.

In this situation, to be brutally honest, I'd rather take a mage, owl, hunter, or frankly even an elemental shaman because they have their strengths.

Just because you want to be best in everything, you are actually risking a nerf to our only strength as destruction lock... Look at the fight that seems to have been specifically designed for us: Odyn. There is absolutely no other class/spec that can put out our damage during phase 1 & 2. Also, we don't have to worry about "doing more damage to one or the other add" because - by definition - we do exactly the same amount to both. That would change dramatically with a nerf to the havoc'ed part of our damage.

Realistically, they will never ever increase our ST more than 10%, maybe 20%. And that would put us not even into the top 10 in the sims on pure ST fights (admittedly, I don't believe in Sims at all, because I have a rather different picture of dps distribution in my raid). And for that you want to give up the fights were we actually are on #1 in the meters?

Very short-sighted and sad picture of the "I-want-it-all" generation.

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snip

And your wrong about single target. Lets take Helya as an example a very good one at that, even if youre sitting on the same dps cleaving on all the small skeletons around with FnB/havoc etc how do think things turns out when you have priority adds to kill such as the Lantern add? Even if your on the same DPS your actual damage done to priority targets will suffer greatly.

Its called padding and its not exactly helpfull in most fights.

Well, there is padding and there is effective cleave. Lantern add needs to die, but we can do OK damage to it while at the same time doing the same damage to Helya herself. No other class can do that as well as a destruction lock.

Even more pronounced (as mentioned earlier) in the Odyn fight: We are one of the very very few classes/specs that can do SUSTAINED! damage to Odyn in Phase 2.

I don't even go into bosses with shard health pool (dragons) as this is just ridiculous.

There is an obvious advantage to our cleave, and that is something that makes us special. Special is always good. Please don't mess with a running system. I'm ok with people bitching and moaning they want to be the MOP gods of dps where everyone looked up to them and worshipped them (exaggeration for effect) but don't mess with our strengths in the process or you will soon see what "non-viable" actually looks like.

[Baconeggcheese]

Blizzard will not do any mechanical changes mid expansion. Warlocks will be shit for this whole expansion, that's what blizzard intended since alpha.

You realize they've already done mechanical changes multiple times right? Like even in the patch that's on the ptr there's mechanical changes.

Blizzard could split on your face and u will be grateful.

I mean... someone doing a split on your face is usually a positive thing ifyouknowwhatimean.jpg

Gotta be honest I am surprised to see a prot pala doing 360K+ dps on a single target fight when Destruction warlocks with BiS legendary roughly get the same. Keep in mind tanks were heavily nerfed a while ago ^^. That is pretty impressive

Dunno what you're talking about... on nyth for instance the top prot pally did 343k, the top prot warrior is 385k which is pretty crazy for a tank... But then you look at lock parses and the top aff is 500k, the top destro is 512k and the top demo is 604k. Not exactly "roughly the same".

Tanks cap out around mid 300k, where we cap out around 500k+, this narrative that locks do tank ST dps is full of shit. If you're competing with tanks its not the class that's the issue.

[Pokeypenguin]

Its not that hard to buff our single target around havoc, they literally could just buff imp firebolt by 50% and call it a day, I have no idea why they think its good for our single target to be such shit. Unless they think we should be switching to demo, which normally would be fine except they built this entire expansion around making switch specs as aids as possible.

[Deleted]

snip

I mean... someone doing a split on your face is usually a positive thing ifyouknowwhatimean.jpg

snip

That seriously depends on the someone, if you know what I mean

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Its not that hard to buff our single target around havoc, they literally could just buff imp firebolt by 50% and call it a day, I have no idea why they think its good for our single target to be such shit. Unless they think we should be switching to demo, which normally would be fine except they built this entire expansion around making switch specs as aids as possible.

Not really sure that a 50% buff to our imp would solve that ST issue

[Baconeggcheese]

@Gaidax I'm actually just kind of confused with where they're going right now, a lot of these changes *should* manifest as small nerfs here and there I believe. Which I was fine with figuring they'd compensate somewhere else. But it doesn't look like they're going to at this rate, and we're absolutely not in a position to be nerfed even the tiniest amount.

I don't think any of this will put us in a bad place, it's just odd.

[Deleted]

@Gaidax I'm actually just kind of confused with where they're going right now, a lot of these changes *should* manifest as small nerfs here and there I believe. Which I was fine with figuring they'd compensate somewhere else. But it doesn't look like they're going to at this rate, and we're absolutely not in a position to be nerfed even the tiniest amount.

I don't think any of this will put us in a bad place, it's just odd.

Well, I'm definitely looking forward to their design philosophy blog on warlocks. To me it just doesn't seem fair that if you want to do competitive ST you have to keep demonology gear and artifact ready, when most other classes have single specs that manage all fights decently well.

And I would really like an explanation on "lack" of baseline interrupt and CR having 3 sec cast time, I feel those two are just unwarranted handicaps to play with.

[Pokeypenguin]

Not really sure that a 50% buff to our imp would solve that ST issue

It could, I mean on a pure single target fight imps do about 20% of our damage, so a 50% buff would increase our damage about 10% on single target fights and about 5-6% the very few cleave fights we don't take sacrifice. Its a simple band aid that would take us from unviable to mediocre

[Gaidax]

@Gaidax I'm actually just kind of confused with where they're going right now, a lot of these changes *should* manifest as small nerfs here and there I believe. Which I was fine with figuring they'd compensate somewhere else. But it doesn't look like they're going to at this rate, and we're absolutely not in a position to be nerfed even the tiniest amount.

I don't think any of this will put us in a bad place, it's just odd.

Well, I think we had conversation about it when it came out. I see it as improvement for the future. As of now I am pretty confident it will be no change in throughput overall, but at the same time several important long term changes happened for Destruction, namely ST/AoE mixed rows are in better shape, Mana Tap gone and replaced with far less annoying mechanic and CDF buffed which adds new options for us. Even Shadowburn change is a strategic value in PvE because by removing it from CB competition it can be more easily balanced to compete with alternatives in that row.

All of that is positive improvements long term and if by some reason numbers won't add up, they are just numbers that can be bumped anytime.

The only real negative change for me is GoSac, simply because I yearn for petless destruction and this is a move in the opposite direction.

[Bullettime]

I'm just disappointed that they've seemingly dropped the ball on providing even some easier usability fixes in regards to Affliction.

Why did Drain Soul get nerfed to under live Drain Life?
Why is Malefic Grasp the way it is when it's useless with Effigy? We spend way too much time maintaining dots and nowhere near enough time draining for it to work.
Why didn't they at least try to make Soul Effigy less obnoxious and even just allow something like double duration dots on it?

I wasn't getting my hopes up for large scale work. I was just hoping for changes like the above which are even less than what they've done for many other specs and classes, like Mages and Hunters.

[Jessicka]

Well, I'm definitely looking forward to their design philosophy blog on warlocks. To me it just doesn't seem fair that if you want to do competitive ST you have to keep demonology gear and artifact ready, when most other classes have single specs that manage all fights decently well.

And I would really like an explanation on "lack" of baseline interrupt and CR having 3 sec cast time, I feel those two are just unwarranted handicaps to play with.

Why would you expect there to be a blog on it? This isn't a thing they've ever really shared in any real detail on a class by class level.

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I'm just disappointed that they've seemingly dropped the ball on providing even some easier usability fixes in regards to Affliction.

Why did Drain Soul get nerfed to under live Drain Life?
Why is Malefic Grasp the way it is when it's useless with Effigy? We spend way too much time maintaining dots and nowhere near enough time draining for it to work.
Why didn't they at least try to make Soul Effigy less obnoxious and even just allow something like double duration dots on it?

I wasn't getting my hopes up for large scale work. I was just hoping for changes like the above which are even less than what they've done for many other specs and classes, like Mages and Hunters.

They said they never felt they made major changes to Warlocks outside of Demonology, it's very likely they still don't.

[Deleted]

Well i don't think there will be another round of changes incoming before the patch goes live as it is aimed to go live before christmas.

So what we have now is what we get with 7.1.5. We should begin to get used it.

[Deleted]

Why would you expect there to be a blog on it? This isn't a thing they've ever really shared in any real detail on a class by class level.

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They said they never felt they made major changes to Warlocks outside of Demonology, it's very likely they still don't.

I'm expecting a short writeup on their vision for warlocks, similar to the ones released recently. Just to see what they want, because it doesn't seem to be the same thing every week.

[Violetti]

I'm expecting a short writeup on their vision for warlocks, similar to the ones released recently. Just to see what they want, because it doesn't seem to be the same thing every week.

We forgot about warlock until an intern reminded us just as we were updating the servers. He said one of the things wls were not happy with is ELT, so we added 2% more damage to it.

you happy?

[kavousanos]

Using your metaphor: if everyone around you gets candy and you get repeatedly get hit in the face with a bat do you proceed to sit in a corner and shout "THIS ISN'T FAIR!" or do you try to find a way to improve your situation? And let's be honest, shouting "YOU SUCK!" at the guy who's hitting you with a bat is only going to make him hit you harder next time. I'm not asking people to remain silent; I'm asking everyone to remain civil and constructive.

I'm not sure why you brought skill level into play, that is way beyond my point. I pointed said players out for their great attitude, not their higher skill level, even if they are connected. I try (and from time to time fail miserably) to remain constructive in general. Since I'm mediocre at best that usually just comes down to following the discussions between those players, who are miles ahead of me, asking questions about what I don't understand and listing things I don't particularly like.

I understand the frustration that we're middle of the pack. I haven't argued against it. In no way am I trying to convince people to deny that we're not in the greatest place, but just repeating that we aren't has clearly gotten us nowhere in the past few months. Let's find a way to work with what we have, and find a way to convey what we find wrong in a way that might actually get us an answer.

EDIT: All that said, since my last post discussion has actually gone on in proper, so I guess my entire post is made moot in the time it took me to write it. Glad to see the change of approach and sorry for the Wall of Rant!

Playing into the metaphor as well, the kid next to you (name's mage) got a swing with the bat in the face, made a post starting with "YOU FUCKING IDIOTS", verbally attacking the bat holder in every way possible, provided NO FEEDBACK whatsoever and got him to partially or in some cases completely reverse and apologize for that bat hit to the face.
In contrast, two weeks of civilized warlock feedback brought a change of.. 2% on a despised upkeep talent. That we now HAVE to take.

Nope. Constructive feedback gets you nowhere. At least vent your anger before having enough. Then quit.