7.1.5 Ptr Changes

[Sunlighthell]

So i bought sindorei spite on ptr aaaand it's not working for affliction here? Also tested trinket from Guldan, new legendary trinket, legendary hood and bracers for affliction and tier set.

Guldan trinked procced after 2 mins of dummy smashing and then it did it again 2 times in row. So i got debuff and buff at the same time lol, seems nice trinket for affliction.
Legendary trinket is good. Flat dps increase with use effect which crit for 1m+ under haunt. (800k without)
Legendary affliction hood and bracers are both very good. It seems that with MG bracers telegraphed to more dps.
Affliction tier set is 2p - 10% dmg to UA and 4p - 1.15 increased chance of shard on agony. You can pick 4 pieces with decent stats, but tbh stats reshuffle doesn't seems so horrid in reality just flat dps increase with 4 pieces. Dunno if this is set of I just got lucky but I started with 800k dps with set equipped maintained 600k for about 1.5 minutes and then averaged at 530k. IF they will not nerf MG affliction will be burstier than destro. Unstable affliction's damage contribution to overall damage is at 50% agony, corruption, doom guard is at 11% Comprounding horror still very bad.
Good news is - build with haunt is not very different dps wise from MG. Also it obviously better on fights with movement and can be used on multitarget fights like dragons.
They fixed agony tooltip and probably buffed drain soul.

[Lucrece]

Demo before the nerfs wasn't even top 3, and it lags considerably behind both sub/assassination and arms. Those 3 specs are mongoloid specs to begin with.

If anything, demo needed buffs to single target considering it sucks at everything else and even in ideal stand still turret fights like Nythendra it lags behind assassination/sub/arms, all of which don't suffer anywhere as much from mobility/mechanics.

All demo has is basically long ramp up single target assuming very little movement. It should be if no the best very close to that given the constraints the spec has. It has no aoe, it has no good cleave, it sucks at target switching.

If destro/affliction ever gets bumped to do competitive damage with demo, there's very little reason to play demo at all. In terms of toolkit it's got the least flexible one.

[xuros]

But hey, how about them Shadow Priest buffs! At least we got out Demonic circle buffed lol.

[Toastiekins]

So i bought sindorei spite on ptr aaaand it's not working for affliction here? Also tested trinket from Guldan, new legendary trinket, legendary hood and bracers for affliction and tier set.

Guldan trinked procced after 2 mins of dummy smashing and then it did it again 2 times in row. So i got debuff and buff at the same time lol, seems nice trinket for affliction.
Legendary trinket is good. Flat dps increase with use effect which crit for 1m+ under haunt. (800k without)
Legendary affliction hood and bracers are both very good. It seems that with MG bracers telegraphed to more dps.
Affliction tier set is 2p - 10% dmg to UA and 4p - 1.15 increased chance of shard on agony. You can pick 4 pieces with decent stats, but tbh stats reshuffle doesn't seems so horrid in reality just flat dps increase with 4 pieces. Dunno if this is set of I just got lucky but I started with 800k dps with set equipped maintained 600k for about 1.5 minutes and then averaged at 530k. IF they will not nerf MG affliction will be burstier than destro. Unstable affliction's damage contribution to overall damage is at 50% agony, corruption, doom guard is at 11% Comprounding horror still very bad.
Good news is - build with haunt is not very different dps wise from MG. Also it obviously better on fights with movement and can be used on multitarget fights like dragons.
They fixed agony tooltip and probably buffed drain soul.

Has 3min ICD from equip time. Silly things.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20752287680

Add your voice here! Let's get it changed.

[Bullettime]

Demo before the nerfs wasn't even top 3, and it lags considerably behind both sub/assassination and arms. Those 3 specs are mongoloid specs to begin with.

If anything, demo needed buffs to single target considering it sucks at everything else and even in ideal stand still turret fights like Nythendra it lags behind assassination/sub/arms, all of which don't suffer anywhere as much from mobility/mechanics.

All demo has is basically long ramp up single target assuming very little movement. It should be if no the best very close to that given the constraints the spec has. It has no aoe, it has no good cleave, it sucks at target switching.

If destro/affliction ever gets bumped to do competitive damage with demo, there's very little reason to play demo at all. In terms of toolkit it's got the least flexible one.

Which is further proof that Demo needs more akin to a soft rework than just minor tweaks, given minor tweaks to a spec as loosely held together as Demo is can make it god mode or garbage. It's wayyyyyyyyy too binary of a spec to actually work.

It'd be great to see more in terms of actual summons such as a baseline Darkglare to handle multitarget situations and play up the master summoner vibe. Instead of making Demo that master summoner that can pull a rabbit out of its magical hat (or portal in this case) it's just a binary borderline rotation spec that just turrets into a target and prays it never has to swap or has any remote amount of flexibility.

[Brightamethyst]

We're not talking BiS as some triviality. We're talking a difference of 20k+ DPS between legendaries. It's far from trivial.

That's all relative though. Most people don't really know or care about BiS legendaries. It's easy to forget during discussions like this, but in the grand scheme of things very few people are hard core mythic raiders, and the vast majority of the actual game does not involve fighting a raid boss. The percentage of people actively fishing for specific legendaries is INCREDIBLY small.

[Lucrece]

Unfortunately I'm calling BS on making "top picked talents baseline". As we see from this PTR they simply don't want to make new skills/modifications to replace those vacant spots made by baselined talents.

I'm not expecting baseline darkglare let alone implosion. And one has to wonder why Demonwrath even exists when not only is it tied to pet position, many of whom you don't control for movement, and the simply horrendous damage it does.

Demonwrath is only used because you don't need to use life tap and it's the only spell you can use while moving.

[bio347]

I'm not expecting baseline darkglare let alone implosion. And one has to wonder why Demonwrath even exists when not only is it tied to pet position, many of whom you don't control for movement, and the simply horrendous damage it does.

Demonwrath doesn't actually do that much less damage than Shadow Bolt. It lines up more poorly against Demonbolt, of course, but you're taking that talent for single-target damage so it makes sense that it's more valuable than the AoE filler spell.

[Lucrece]

Demonwrath doesn't actually do that much less damage than Shadow Bolt. It lines up more poorly against Demonbolt, of course, but you're taking that talent for single-target damage so it makes sense that it's more valuable than the AoE filler spell.

You're taking Demonbolt anyways because a raid doesn't bring you to be a poor man's affliction or destruction warlock. Without Demonbolt, your single target tanks, and it's not like you're gonna beat cleave classes/specs with Darkglare anyways in any cleave fight. They bring you for the boss damage, so Demonbolt isn't really up for debate.

[Deleted]

Just to get ahead of it, the minor nerf Affliction took to its tier set is likely just because the spec was buffed pretty heavily. The 20% made more sense when it didn't hit for much as opposed to the new MG+Contagion.

Indeed. Looks like a pro-active change to stopaffliction getting out of control when it attains tier armour: good, because it sucks to depend on tier to perform, and double sucks when they nerf the spec instead of the tier armour when people with the four-set are too strong. I'd rather tier stuff gets nerfed than base damage. Although perhaps this explains the state of destro and demo - their tier stuff hasn;t changed, and destro's is very strong. Not sure where they are going with this.

However, the flat 25% buff for Shadow Priests is absurd, they're already OP as fuck lol

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I assume because they'd have to re-tune the entire kit since that'd dramatically reduce your time spent casting DE.

Indeed, Blizzard always have a problem when they decide "most of your damage comes from pets" becuase of the potentially for the player to simply summon them and passively stand to one side whilst the AI does his dps

Personally I;d much rather see something like :

Daemonic Command: You summon a demonic commander from the depths of Hell. Whilst lead, your demons are inspired and strike for x% more damage

Something along those lines:but make it expensive, so you have tobuild resource. Fits more with the fantasy. New model demon of course.or a fel-lord.

- - - Updated - - -

edit: To note, I'm unsure about what's going to happen to Malefic Grasp. They may not nerf it at all since it has a bunch of restrictions.

Yeah, training dummies can be really deceptive. Malefic Grasp is rather like Run of Power that the mages are complaining of. Movement really bones it. You probably will take Writhe+Effigy or even Haunt in a high movement fight. If you're not channeling it;s a massive dps loss because MG does nothing at all

I'd have said that in a fight like Odyn you'd still go for Writhe+Effigy. It's a sustained "cleave", affli and destro already do very well there with existing talents. It's in fight sliek Guarm we need something like MG, and Helya I'd guess Haunt.

Both Haunt and MG make Soul Conduit more valuable and a viable choice, which is also one of the stated aims.

- - - Updated - - -

Demo before the nerfs wasn't even top 3, and it lags considerably behind both sub/assassination and arms. Those 3 specs are mongoloid specs to begin with.

If anything, demo needed buffs to single target considering it sucks at everything else and even in ideal stand still turret fights like Nythendra it lags behind assassination/sub/arms, all of which don't suffer anywhere as much from mobility/mechanics.

All demo has is basically long ramp up single target assuming very little movement. It should be if no the best very close to that given the constraints the spec has. It has no aoe, it has no good cleave, it sucks at target switching.

If destro/affliction ever gets bumped to do competitive damage with demo, there's very little reason to play demo at all. In terms of toolkit it's got the least flexible one.

Demo's problems are so entrenche din it;s basic design - the ramp, the Demonic Empowerment spamming, I'm afraid my "we'd rather you didn't play it" sense is tingling. They aren;t nerfing demo hard - just buffing the other two specs, for the same effect.

[Deleted]

Demo's problems are so entrenche din it;s basic design - the ramp, the Demonic Empowerment spamming, I'm afraid my "we'd rather you didn't play it" sense is tingling. They aren;t nerfing demo hard - just buffing the other two specs, for the same effect.

having been inactive in WoD and most of MoP I just recently saw this video, and ever since then I have no idea why anyone in here expects Warlock to actually be good. if a design team even dares to make such statements then there is absolutely nothing left to hope for. seriously we know that for at least some time class designers would lobby to only buff the classes they themselves played, we have blue posts taunt the players to stop whining and be happy about being mediocre, and we have lead designers outright say they want specs to be unplayable instead of just balancing them. Blizzard class design is a mess.

[Shandalar]

They have a lot of time to buffing shadow and talk about it, but too to nerf the Affli tier and nothing else to demon: where are the usual blizzard defenders?

[Norzaki]

They have a lot of time to buffing shadow and talk about it, but too to nerf the Affli tier and nothing else to demon: where are the usual blizzard defenders?

For what it worth - affliction set bonus was way stronger than bonus for other classes/specs. With current plans to avoid separate titanforged caps for different tiers, it could have been the only set that affliction would need to use through whole legion.

Have you actually tried it on PTR before nerf to tier set?
On my lock and previous iteration of the set, with bracers and back legendaries - I had nearly 1M crits of UA during reap+MG. And shard regeneration together with SC tallent allowed to keep 2-3 UA on target for quite some time.

[Shandalar]

I have to remember that live Shadow Priest is the most op shit never throwed into this game, and they actually seem pretty concerned about buffing it, seems like be out from doing 50% more dmg than everyone else is unnaceptable for shadow priest.

Meanwhile, affli get nerfs and demon nothing.

[Sunlighthell]

They have a lot of time to buffing shadow and talk about it, but too to nerf the Affli tier and nothing else to demon: where are the usual blizzard defenders?

What affliction nerfs you're talking about? I do 100k-150k+ single target dps more than on live and this is with 200 ping on ptr.

[Norzaki]

@Shandalar
you are repeating yourself in a slightly different way...

Go to PTR and try it yourself. UA is still critting over 900k on my affli warlock with 4 set pieces, contagion and legendary bracers during Reap+MG... and this is crit from individual UA ... and you can put 5 of them at the same time on a single target...

Do you mean to say it is nerf or nothing....

[Demonidze]

STOP WHINING. We are getting what we wanted. Embers back. Mechanical improvements. Demonology reworked... Isn't that what we asked for ? So now get patient, and "thanks" them that for once we've been heard.

We'll have to get them tons of feedback once the time will be required. For now, enjoy your lock and make the best of it in its current state.

we dont get demonology rework, not this patch. at best we will see it at 7.2.5 which coming in a good 3~ month, at the very least. meanwhile we got a serious amount of demonology nerfs, which can indicate that blizz agree that demo's gameplay is sub par and they dont want us to play it until they fix it.

now as someone who played demo from the start of Legion. i like raiding but due to work, family, etc i cant do it hardcore like i used to, so i play casually and raid with pugs. i didnt level any of the offspec artifacts, i dont have legendaries for other specs too. its a weird situation... either i switch to an alt, who got at least the AP leveled a bit. i dont think ill be able to get into an any pug as demo if demo stays even close to its current PTR state. so what my other option, to quit? =/

[Sunlighthell]

@Shandalar
you are repeating yourself in a slightly different way...

Go to PTR and try it yourself. UA is still critting over 900k on my affli warlock with 4 set pieces, contagion and legendary bracers during Reap+MG... and this is crit from individual UA ... and you can put 5 of them at the same time on a single target...

Do you mean to say it is nerf or nothing....

with 108% mastery and 40k int i get 600k~ crits with UA with 4p set and legendary bracers(4% dmg ones) are you talking about sindorei spite or what?

[Apero]

I have to remember that live Shadow Priest is the most op shit never throwed into this game, and they actually seem pretty concerned about buffing it, seems like be out from doing 50% more dmg than everyone else is unnaceptable for shadow priest.

Meanwhile, affli get nerfs and demon nothing.

And you do realize that surrender is basically gone, and without surrender current shadow performs below the tanks? Even with 25% to everything (not even factoring in the 10% voidform dmg loss) shadow is nothing more than mediocre in raids, and still utter shit in mythic plus and solo stuff. But keep whining without realising the whole thing.

[Dwill]

@Shandalar
you are repeating yourself in a slightly different way...

Go to PTR and try it yourself. UA is still critting over 900k on my affli warlock with 4 set pieces, contagion and legendary bracers during Reap+MG... and this is crit from individual UA ... and you can put 5 of them at the same time on a single target...

Do you mean to say it is nerf or nothing....

900k is with the Sin'dorei Spite bracers so the chances of you channeling into 5 UA while having Sin'dorei up alongside enough shards + souls is next to non existent.