7.1.5 Ptr Changes

[Sulblaka]

Well, this confirms that they're pretty much done with mechanical changes for this patch, at least for us, that is.

All we can hope for now are destruction buffs to compensate for the talent switch.

[Dastey]

If they could just give us some temporary changes then that would be great.
Reverse entropy baseline and for all I care add a talent to that row that increases damage done by 1%. Yes it won't be taken due to Eradication being better, but it means they won't have to design something new until 7.2 and it will leave most destruction players satisfied as we will essentially have gotten a buff by still having RE, Eradication and now an option for an AoE talent or DPS CD

[kavousanos]

Not even tomorrow.

12/01/2016 12:12 AMPosted by Clarlem
Feedback: you're leaving the warlock community out in the cold. Please communicate with us. We are extremely desperate.

We agree with a number of the core concerns raised, but don't have immediate solutions (or those solutions will take more time to design, implement, and test than the 7.1.5 PTR cycle affords). A couple of examples off the top of my head:
Steady/predictable Ember generation suited the Destruction rotation well, and something important was lost in the course of unifying the class to use a single shared resource, but fixing that at this point isn't just as simple as rolling everything back to Embers.
Mechanics like Demonic Empowerment and Soul Effigy are cumbersome to manage and while they have strong spec-specific theming, the actual gameplay of using them drags down their respective specs.

We're probably too reluctant to acknowledge problems for which we don't yet have a solution to present. But the fact that we haven't yet changed something doesn't mean that we think it's perfect as-is.

At least they're acknowledging something, but no solutions, no changes. Nothing for 7.1.5.

Changing Effigy/DE cannot fit in the scope of 7.1.5, but completely redesigning a perfectly mediocre and generally accepted talent, Shadowburn, for which the only feedback that existed was for it to be made baseline clearly does.
Redesigning from scratch two pvp abilities and the damn upkeep buff clearly does as well.
Someone please post this in the us battlenet. What the man is saying is ridiculous.

[Jessicka]

Changing Effigy/DE cannot fit in the scope of 7.1.5, but completely redesigning a perfectly mediocre and generally accepted talent, Shadowburn, for which the only feedback that existed was for it to be made baseline clearly does.
Redesigning from scratch two pvp abilities and the damn upkeep buff clearly does as well.
Someone please post this in the us battlenet. What the man is saying is ridiculous.

EU accounts can post to PTR forums. Either that or it's just my expired US one... in which case make a free US one.

[Mehrunes]

They "acknowledged" things as early as the big hotfix few weeks after release. They haven't acted much on their "acknowledgments" much so far, especially for Demo and Aff. And in some situations they acted in the opposite ways, like "doubling down on strengths" and "we overpruned and are going to address it for talents everyone takes" which for Warlocks translates to "we're going to make ST and AoE talents mutually exclusive with each other so Warlocks are even more mediocre (at best) at both". So yay, Blizz is paying lip service again, so excited /s

Officially reached "7.2 will fix it" on the downright spiral of delusion, I guess.

[noaim]

Not even tomorrow.

12/01/2016 12:12 AMPosted by Clarlem
Feedback: you're leaving the warlock community out in the cold. Please communicate with us. We are extremely desperate.

We agree with a number of the core concerns raised, but don't have immediate solutions (or those solutions will take more time to design, implement, and test than the 7.1.5 PTR cycle affords). A couple of examples off the top of my head:
Steady/predictable Ember generation suited the Destruction rotation well, and something important was lost in the course of unifying the class to use a single shared resource, but fixing that at this point isn't just as simple as rolling everything back to Embers.
Mechanics like Demonic Empowerment and Soul Effigy are cumbersome to manage and while they have strong spec-specific theming, the actual gameplay of using them drags down their respective specs.

We're probably too reluctant to acknowledge problems for which we don't yet have a solution to present. But the fact that we haven't yet changed something doesn't mean that we think it's perfect as-is.

At least they're acknowledging something, but no solutions, no changes. Nothing for 7.1.5.

That is a valid excuse he has. If the feedback was given now for the first time that is. But afaik people have said "Soul Effigy sucks" since alpha, and beta, and even since Mages had their version of it in WoD. So yeah, that is what one would call pure bullshit!

And as I said in an earlier post, I do understand that destro is hard to fix without removing wreak havoc, or at least crippling it, and I havent played demo so I cant comment alot on that, but affliction is SO easy to fix (as in making better without making big changes).

Basically, the more we dot, the less we channel. Buff Drain Soul! If we multidot alot, we channel less, so it does not affect us alot in multidot scenarios, where we dont need the help, but it does affect us in singletarget, where we need the extra damage. As a little extra bonus, it would also devalue Soul Effigy, maybe not making it mandatory for single target, but still an option for those that prefer it.

It is really really frustrating that they can not grasp this. I still hope the tooltip in the new talent calculator is correct on Drain Soul, and the ingame damage is wrong, because then we may not be fixed, but in much better shape. Oh, and again, let Writhe double the damage, not the stacks!!

Not perfect, but at least putting us in a much better spot.

[Soluna]

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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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.

Specc for Imp GoServ, keep some chaos bolts shards ready, and 1-2 portals, you will do decent burst on lattern add then. Who talked about FNB on Helya mythic? Learn to use rain of fire for aoe.

[Shandalar]

Thats a confirmation of dead class until next expansion.

Time to reroll.

[BannedForViews]

Thats a confirmation of dead class until next expansion.

Time to reroll.

They have no incentive to fix the class if we keep playing the game as a different one.

[Sunlighthell]

They have no incentive to fix the class if we keep playing the game as a different one.

They will not fix it if we continue to suffer and give them constructive feedback either.

[Eleriol]

GoSac is to go to choice for any cleave encounter and helya is one of the few times FnB is worth using simply because it offers a far better burst aoe then RoF. You might think but hey that screws up four ST dosent it? Yes, yes it does and that is one of the issues with the current talent tree right now.

[Scathbais]

So phase 1 of fixing the secondary stat problem is to nerf the stat rating. I assume this is phase 1 as the next logical step (as Bacon pointed out to me a while back) is to increase the scaling of secondary stats with ilevel. At first blush that 850 haste ring you've been wearing just got a lot weaker, so if they increase scaling on higher level gear, it will be a benefit to wear that 880 piece wasting away in your bags.

Note this is really problematic for Demo and Fire Mages as they haven't yet laid out how they will fix those specs to work well with lower levels of haste and crit.

Versatility got the biggest nerf, followed by Haste, with Crit and Mastery getting slightly smaller nerfs than haste:

Patch 7.1.5 PTR - Secondary Stat Changes
In the latest PTR build, the amount of rating you need per 1% of Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, and Versatility was changed.

Critical Strike - Now requires 400 rating per 1% Critical Strike, up from 350.
Haste - Now requires 375 rating per 1% Haste, up from 325.
Mastery - Now requires 400 rating per 1% Mastery, up from 350.
Versatility - Now requires 475 rating per 1% damage and healing increase, up from 400. Now requires 950 rating per 1% damage taken reduction, up from 800.


EDIT: mmo-c updated with Phase 2 buffs to secondary stats. Here is the link so you can check on ptr changes to your gear: http://ptr.wowdb.com/items/armor?filter-ilvl-min=800

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Sephuz's Secret:

Live: 1642 crit (4.69%), haste 657 (2.02%)
PTR: 2121 crit (5.30%), haste 848 (2.26%)

[Deleted]

I wasn't expecting them to revert back to the Ember resource system during the expansion either way, but nice to see that even they agree that the current Soul Shard system for Destruction Warlocks is just not good enough. I understand they wanted to make Soul Shard a resource system across the class, but it feels very tacked on for Destruction in particular.

I was a lot more hopeful for some redesign for both Effigy and Demonic Empowerment. Both of which has gotten more than enough feedback since Alpha & Beta. I don't see the biggest difficulty with redesigning Effigy as opposed to Demonic Empowerment. Effigy is essentially an additional talent which just further improves single target DPS. It's not integral to our rotation or anything, so there isn't all that many considerations to make as opposed to DE. DE is super integral to the spec and has a few talents tied to the spell. There are a lot more things to consider when redesigning said spell and keep the spec balanced.

I do believe that there is a possibility of them redesigning them, but as they said they just don't have a solution as of yet. That is all I can really hope for at this point, and before someone replies to me with their useless talk about how lazy Blizz is etc, I don't care. Latter sentiment is mostly aimed towards a few certain users. I'm just saying, they didn't say it won't be fixed until next expansion.

[Lucrece]

The changes to jewelry scaling don't compensate for the secondary stat loss.

Demonology locks will be nerfed if they don't do something about ability scaling.

What I gathered from that blue post is that the changes warlocks got for 7.1.5, which are pretty much nerfs, are most of what we'll see go live in 7.1.5

[Baconeggcheese]

Who talked about FNB on Helya mythic? Learn to use rain of fire for aoe.

Yeah I actually just completely ignore the skeletons and cleave into priority adds the entire time. You let the burst aoe classes handle the burst aoe and you use the heavy 2 target cleave class to 2 target cleave.

Thats a confirmation of dead class until next expansion.

Time to reroll.

Or until the next major patch. They've made an unprecedented amount of changes thus far in smaller patches, there's no reason to believe they wouldn't make much larger ones in a coming patch that's gonna last longer than what 7.1.5 is since we always knew it'd be fairly short.

The changes to jewelry scaling don't compensate for the secondary stat loss.

Demonology locks will be nerfed if they don't do something about ability scaling.

What I gathered from that blue post is that the changes warlocks got for 7.1.5, which are pretty much nerfs, are most of what we'll see go live in 7.1.5

They're nerfs without tuning, something he specifically stated hasn't happened yet. Which is what I was hoping, but was starting to get skeptical of. I'm glad he confirmed that they're still in "qualitative design change" mode. Our changes are potentially very good ones, as long as they're tuned to not be nerfs.

[Deleted]

Malefic Grasp will have to get one hell of a tuning to make it even worth considering taking given that you have to lose Writhe and that MG works really badly with Soul Effigy, because they fight each other for time spent either refreshing dots or channeling drain.

Also they're going to have to retune to compensate for the stat changes pdq because right now everyone is logging in to the ptr and seeing hefty nerfs. My freshly copies afflock went from 125% mastery to 118%. With commensurate losses to the dots

[Deleted]

Nicely said see you in 8.0

[kavousanos]

No, that is not a nerf being reverted, the spec is actually worse off now then it was during the first PTR build. It doesn't matter that pyroblast got a 9% buff (not 42%) as well as several other abilities when the spec lost a further 5% crit and one the best golden traits got nerfed from 25% to 10%. Currently on the PTR, Fire does less single target then affliction by a rather large amount and falls even behind on cleave.

Neither was "Warlock legendary pants are great for structured PvE" the only thing said about Warlocks since Legion release, silly statements like that is not going to get you taking seriously.

How can I have a conversation with someone that says whatever pops to mind without reading my post?
Let me break it down for you. MAGES get ATTENTION and are being ACTIVELY worked on. MAGES had MORE BLUE POSTS in the span of A DAY than warlocks had since legion BETA.
If you plan to respond to me comment on the above. Stop replying to ghost questions.
Here, the pyro buff. Want me to explain that too?

Pyroblast Hurls an immense fiery boulder that causes [ 1 + 376% 420% of Spell Power ] Fire damage. Mage - Fire Spec. 2.5% of Base Mana. 40 yd range. 4.5 sec cast.

[Lucrece]

Mages are hardly in a position to cry. But since that crying gets them reliably to Number 1 every expansion alongside rogues, it's no wonder they continue to do so.

[Bullettime]

Mages are hardly in a position to cry. But since that crying gets them reliably to Number 1 every expansion alongside rogues, it's no wonder they continue to do so.

To be fair, this isn't a fault of Mage players. They did absolutely have some gripes such as Frost being clunky, Arcane being gimmicky, and Fire getting decimate by the nerf bat.

The issue is more Blizzard doesn't seem like they have a clue what direction to take classes in and is throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, then blaming us or feigning ignorance.