Patch 7.1.5 PTR - Build 23178

[chaud]

See the front page for the latest notes.

[AoBman05]

Sigh, Boulderfist still has the 7.5sec CD... Why blizz?

[Splenda]

Good on the seed of corruption change. Affliction changes in general, actually.

[Coffeexbean]

omg yes on those warlock buffs! ;D

[leviathonlx]

None of that music is actually new besides the Brawlers Guild stuff.

[Soulfròst]

Am I reading this right? BM & Marksmanship Hunters losing Disengage? If that's true... ohhhhh boy will there be some tears on the forums tomorrow.

[Kuhnta]

Am I reading this right? BM & Marksmanship Hunters losing Disengage? If that's true... ohhhhh boy will there be some tears on the forums tomorrow.

No, they are clearly keeping it. Survival is just getting it as a talent.

[Sabrius]

The aff changes are a significant step in the right direction. I'm absolutely loving the changes to make baseline seeds stronger and reducing our reliance on StS, however it appears baseline seeds now has a shard cost, which I hope is an error. If it's not, I hope they add agony onto seeds as well or something different.

The increase to MG allows for a boatload of gaming that I'm excited to try out.

You're not out of the woods as far as I'm concerned blizzard with how you've forsaken affliction warlock players for so long, but this instills massive amounts of hope and it's a grand step into greener pastures.

Well done.

Please remove the shard cost from seeds.

Edit: Also, Empower Lifetap is getting much better, best iteration yet, i don't see us capping mana much if at all now.

Lastly, I'll be thrilled to see what the 80% Malefic grasp does to our mastery scaling.

[JIMM-]

so they just buffed the best legendaries even more and make them even more mandatory than ever ? K

blizz balancing team SeemsGood /sarcasm.

ps. delete all the rubbish legendaries already and just keep the good ones in the loot table.

[Kaedis]

The aff changes are a significant step in the right direction. I'm absolutely loving the changes to make baseline seeds stronger and reducing our reliance on StS, however it appears baseline seeds now has a shard cost, which I hope is an error. If it's not, I hope they add agony onto seeds as well or something different.

I think I actually prefer it that way. Playing around with it on the PTR (where it does, indeed, have a shard cost, though StS no longer does), it actually feels more fluid with the shard cost. AoE rotation becomes keep up Agony on 3+ targets -> spam Seed while you have shards (your DoT ticks will burst it almost instantly) -> drain when you have no shards (which doesn't last long at all). I was maintaining ~625k AoE DPS over a 6 minute combat session on 4 targets with StS + 880 ilevel and an 880 weapon with 23 traits purchased (the entire upper crescent from the right gold to the top left to the bottom left, and no others). Damage breakdown: http://puu.sh/sFMBD/80f40ec3ea.png

By comparison, on live in roughly the same gear, I was able to maintain only about 410k against 4 targets with StS and 360k without (by largely foregoing SoC and using spread UAs instead). So not only does this improve the AoE rotation in terms of intuitive flow, it also represents a significant increase to AoE DPS.

By tooltip on the PTR, UA does 240,644 damage (combat log confirmed, 4 ticks of 60,161), and Seed does 89,411 per target (on average, it has a damage range like most direct damage effects). This means that Seed is better than UA as a shard consumer at 3+ targets baseline. Artifact traits and talents can obviously affect this. Contagion increases the threshold to 4+ targets. Sow the Seeds makes Seed better at 2+ (even with Contagion), with Seed dealing around triple the damage per shard as UA against 3 targets.

All in all, though, the change makes sense. Demo has a filler replacement during AoE, and Destro has a consumer replacement during AoE. Seed currently doesn't really fit either of those definitions, since you still need to keep Agony up to generate the shards. Making it a consumer thus pushes it to the Destro style, where AoE becomes "keep up resource-generating DoTs -> spend shards on AoE ability". On a side note, it also drastically decreases the frequency with which you need to Life Tap during sustained AoE, since you spend a LOT of time casting Seed, and it lost its mana cost when it gained the shard cast.

EDIT: just tested it on PTR, and there's been another change to SoC that didn't make the tooltip: if you cast SoC on a target already afflicted by SoC, the SoC will instead apply to a random target without SoC that's within the explosion radius from your first target, if any exist without SoC. If all targets have SoC, it'll just recast (and overwrite) on your current target, but you can spam SoC on an AoE group before you have your DoTs up and every cast will hit a different target, so the initial explosion is substantially more significant, and you don't have to manually tab target to avoid overwriting.

EDIT 2: tested against live, and this behavior is present there as well, so it's not new to 7.1.5. I feel like it wasn't present in 7.0, however, so maybe it was stealth added in 7.1?

[Traxwow]

So you make emerald dreamcatcher mandatory for boomkins to compete, and instead of fixing their ST, you nerf the legendary allowing them to compete with other classes? I'm trying to believe that you know how to properly balance, and that this isn't final, but what was even the point of this? It's like having a bar that only certain classes can reach, making boomkins spin a wheel and hope it lands on a pair of stilts, and then cutting those stilts in half so that the bar is now impossible to reach. It doesn't make the other boomkin legendaries look better. It only makes dreamcatcher look worse.

[Sierra85]

why nerf Emerald Dreamcatcher? wtf

[Drulvert]

Survival Instincts Reduces all damage you take by 50% for 6 sec. Max 2 charges. Druid - Feral & Guardian Spec. Instant. 6 sec cooldown.

The 6 sec cooldown must be an error, otherwise guardian just got the most overpowered damage reduction cooldown ever.

[JIMM-]

Why are they continuing to buff Fire bracers?

pyro bracer is 300% on live , it got nerfed and with all the changes in 7.1.5 fire got gutted really,really hard

still, these changes makes no sense, buffing warrior execute ring that is already beyond broken bis , nerfing balance druid helm ???what

[Deleted]

Why are they continuing to buff Fire bracers?

As far as I understood, if they don't it will be a DPS loss to hardcast a pyro when the bracer procs.

[Deleted]

I think I actually prefer it that way. Playing around with it on the PTR (where it does, indeed, have a shard cost, though StS no longer does), it actually feels more fluid with the shard cost. AoE rotation becomes keep up Agony on 3+ targets -> spam Seed while you have shards (your DoT ticks will burst it almost instantly) -> drain when you have no shards (which doesn't last long at all). I was maintaining ~625k AoE DPS over a 6 minute combat session on 4 targets with StS + 880 ilevel and an 880 weapon with 23 traits purchased (the entire upper crescent from the right gold to the top left to the bottom left, and no others). Damage breakdown: http://puu.sh/sFMBD/80f40ec3ea.png

By comparison, on live in roughly the same gear, I was able to maintain only about 410k against 4 targets with StS and 360k without (by largely foregoing SoC and using spread UAs instead). So not only does this improve the AoE rotation in terms of intuitive flow, it also represents a significant increase to AoE DPS.

By tooltip on the PTR, UA does 240,644 damage (combat log confirmed, 4 ticks of 60,161), and Seed does 89,411 per target (on average, it has a damage range like most direct damage effects). This means that Seed is better than UA as a shard consumer at 3+ targets baseline. Artifact traits and talents can obviously affect this. Contagion increases the threshold to 4+ targets. Sow the Seeds makes Seed better at 2+ (even with Contagion), with Seed dealing around triple the damage per shard as UA against 3 targets.

All in all, though, the change makes sense. Demo has a filler replacement during AoE, and Destro has a consumer replacement during AoE. Seed currently doesn't really fit either of those definitions, since you still need to keep Agony up to generate the shards. Making it a consumer thus pushes it to the Destro style, where AoE becomes "keep up resource-generating DoTs -> spend shards on AoE ability". On a side note, it also drastically decreases the frequency with which you need to Life Tap during sustained AoE, since you spend a LOT of time casting Seed, and it lost its mana cost when it gained the shard cast.

Your comparisons are a bit weird. Yes, Seed does more damage, that's obvious from the change. So even if everything else is equal it should be doing about 30% more dps.
The shard change I don't like much. Even on live you should be keeping several Agonies going for shards for StS. The difference the shard cost makes is that you can't spam Seeds while waiting for shard procs but need to wait to start casting till you get a proc. Right now on live I can chain multiple seeds and hope that in the 2 sec cast of Seed a proc will happen. On PTR you will have moments during AE where you need to shoot single target fillers instead of actually AEing.
On fights with AE waves this means you will have to keep a shard in reserve and not burn them all on UA's.

Why are they continuing to buff Fire bracers?

It's 300% on Live. It used to be 200% on beta but was deemed too low. Right now on PTR they seem to test different values to find the balance between useful and OP.

[gutnbrg]

So hand of the protector got nerfd?

[Deleted]

No changes to Holy priest huh, seems like the first build for us was the final one. Oh well.

[deathhero]

What happened to the changes to the other shared legendary items? Specifically the shitty neck and ring. You know, the worthless ones Blizzard hands out to the players that RNGesus hates.

[Deleted]

Those Charge changes... I'm laughing so hard it hurts.