T 20 set bonuses

[Sartre]

Wording with the affliction bonuses feels off. Fully channeling Drain soul grants haste bonus until cancelled. Until cancelled what? The channeling? If so, it isn't fully casting? Seeing the 2p bonus they may mean each tick grants/refreshes the bonus?

I seriously hope that they just mean channeling drain soul grants haste. Otherwise they are planning to change DS to ~3secs channel (with 0 haste), or they are seriously out of touch with the design...

...oh wait.

[kavousanos]

Sigh...
MG will be the only option in the row with the tier and the new soul generating trait no matter the fight.
And how does Blizzy respond to talents being picked exclusively?
Enjoy MG while you can boys..
And start maxing out that offspec. You're gonna need it. Better change that lootspec too.

Edit: Oh.. and seriously.. DAT Destro 2p. I swear these people have not played warlock this expansion 2 hours combined.

[App]

Wording with the affliction bonuses feels off. Fully channeling Drain soul grants haste bonus until cancelled. Until cancelled what? The channeling? If so, it isn't fully casting? Seeing the 2p bonus they may mean each tick grants/refreshes the bonus?

I seriously hope that they just mean channeling drain soul grants haste. Otherwise they are planning to change DS to ~3secs channel (with 0 haste), or they are seriously out of touch with the design...

...oh wait.

It's most likely a placeholder duration. The Gul'dan trinket said until cancelled before PTR for NH went live.

[BannedForViews]

Meh, i love DE. Not like i dislike the bonuses (more gcd's, more deepee esss), but this whole hatred towards it is purely subjective.

I don't like how it turns every cast into a 2 parter. You summoned some pets? better DE. Oh, you summoned some more? Time to DE again.

It isn't terribly different from draining with MG, but at least I can have a reason to cast my dots on other targets outside of the need to buff it all the time. If you aren't instantly casting DE as demo, you are losing a lot, and the DE only affects the pets just summoned because they all last shorter than the duration of a DE buff, outside of your felguard.



As far as the set bonuses are concerned, the Affliction one pisses me off greatly because with this tier and the new Rend Soul trait, anything but an MG build is completely worthless, and it's highly possible our meta strat will be to focus target on council fights, or do nothing but tag an add so you can get a WoC stack when it dies, or maybe a few agony ticks for shards.

[Advo]

Really don't like the affliction bonuses. Anything involving drain soul just locks us into a ST spec. The 2 piece especially is a joke, who gives a flying fig about drain soul damage? For gods sake, give Corruption some freaking love. Make it so it doesn't feel like a chore maintaining dots on 2-3 targets.

Bonuses like this would have made me so much happier:

Aff 2P: Casting Unstable Affliction on a target refreshes its Agony to maximum duration, and Agony damage is increased by 10% for each active Unstable Affliction on the target.
Aff 4P: Corruption deals 20% more damage, and when it deals damage it has a (small) chance to make your next Unstable Affliction free and restore 10% of your Mana.

[Sartre]

It's most likely a placeholder duration. The Gul'dan trinket said until cancelled before PTR for NH went live.

Thanks for clarification. Then it's even worse. Fully channeling drain soul, seriously? And that's a 4p bonus. I guess ToS is filled with patchwerk fights then. Am I missing something?

[App]

Thanks for clarification. Then it's even worse. Fully channeling drain soul, seriously? And that's a 4p bonus. I guess ToS is filled with patchwerk fights then. Am I missing something?

Nope - you're not missing anything. Blizz devs are really just that out of tune with Affliction this expansion (outside of MG; that's the only thing they did right.)

[Deleted]

The T20 for affliction is horrible. Once again it bundles affliction into a single target specialist because everything will be tied to Drain Soul which will make Malefic Grasp the only game in town. Like it wasn't already going to be that with Rend Soul.

It already sucks thatShadow Priests are way better multi-dotters than afflocks, we are supposed to be the iconic dot users. If you have T20 you won;t ever take Writhe or Haunt, not ever, because your tier bonuses are tied to Drain Soul and you will be massively punished by any DS downtime.


Gotta love the way they are buffing fire mage AOE and the icing on the cake has to be the stupid beyond words cooldown on Reap, oh that is going to work wonderfuly with Rend Soul, I mean, won;t it limit the current usage of UA+UA+Reap+Drain or at least render it less efficient if DS is proccing extra tormented souls?

Absolutely everything is tied up with Drain Soul, great, lets make affliction a turret like demo :rolleyes

[BannedForViews]

Really don't like the affliction bonuses. Anything involving drain soul just locks us into a ST spec. The 2 piece especially is a joke, who gives a flying fig about drain soul damage? For gods sake, give Corruption some freaking love. Make it so it doesn't feel like a chore maintaining dots on 2-3 targets.

Bonuses like this would have made me so much happier:

Aff 2P: Casting Unstable Affliction on a target refreshes its Agony to maximum duration, and Agony damage is increased by 10% for each active Unstable Affliction on the target.
Aff 4P: Corruption deals 20% more damage, and when it deals damage it has a (small) chance to make your next Unstable Affliction free and restore 10% of your Mana.

Yes, I would much rather see all of our bonuses revolve around our dots and not drain soul. I have a thread on official forums about how rend soul shouldn't be attached to drain soul. It's no coincidence that these tier bonuses reinforce a terrible play style. And shadow priests get to have their dots exist fulltime without ever recasting, just hitting another damage skill to refresh them. The irony of how I rolled shadow as my very first toon when I started in TBC just to switch to a warlock, and how I just came back for legion after many years off to go lock over shadow.

- - - Updated - - -

Nope - you're not missing anything. Blizz devs are really just that out of tune with Affliction this expansion (outside of MG; that's the only thing they did right.)

What especially great is that most everyone recasts DS mid channel anyway, because you don't lose anything, and it gives you something to do instead of waiting a round for 5 seconds. Guess they WANT us to have a lower APM.

- - - Updated - - -

The T20 for affliction is horrible. Once again it bundles affliction into a single target specialist because everything will be tied to Drain Soul which will make Malefic Grasp the only game in town. Like it wasn't already going to be that with Rend Soul.

It already sucks thatShadow Priests are way better multi-dotters than afflocks, we are supposed to be the iconic dot users. If you have T20 you won;t ever take Writhe or Haunt, not ever, because your tier bonuses are tied to Drain Soul and you will be massively punished by any DS downtime.


Gotta love the way they are buffing fire mage AOE and the icing on the cake has to be the stupid beyond words cooldown on Reap, oh that is going to work wonderfully with Rend Soul, I mean, won;t it limit the current usage of UA+UA+Reap+Drain or at least render it less efficient if DS is proccing extra tormented souls?

Absolutely everything is tied up with Drain Soul, great, lets make affliction a turret like demo :rolleyes

Actually I like the cooldown on reap (in theory) if it does what I think it does. Currently you can reapply deadwind if the duration from casting new souls is longer than the current buff, which means we can overwrite a single stack with another single stack. This stops that.

The problem is, it's more a solution for lower skillcap players, and it ignores that I might need to recast it slightly early for rotational reasons, which I'm now not allowed to do.


So I guess I actually don't like it....lol.

[Deleted]

Make it so it doesn't feel like a chore maintaining dots on 2-3 targets.

Can't do that: they'd have to rename us Shadow Priests.

[Sartre]

Nope - you're not missing anything. Blizz devs are really just that out of tune with Affliction this expansion (outside of MG; that's the only thing they did right.)

I am a game designer, although not on this scale, I've been working in the industry for quite some years now, and I am trying very hard to emphatize with my colleagues. Trying hard to think "insightful". But... unless these data-mined notes are completely wrong;
- Maybe they are trying to control our UA+MG maximization with such bonuses (players can just skip 4p and get non-tier BiS pieces anyway),
- Maybe they think we are too mobile (mythic raider will keep being mobile anyway, again they just won't use 4p when it's a movement heavy fight),
- Maybe they gave up trying, telling players to "just roll with MG some more"
- Maybe they had some "fantasy" that had no base on the mechanical side.
- Maybe it was some random dude's wording, filling the "design task" with some random words just before leaving the office.

But -also keeping the new DS trait in mind- tying EVERYTHING to drain soul in a game that's been trying very hard to avoid "cookie-cutter" specs and aim for flexibility & choices? I think this really was a quick 5 seconds of design work just before leaving the office. Hope they fix it tomorrow.

Edit: Only way of this makes some sense is that the haste buff is very, very good. Still it doesn't change the fact that they create a cookie-cutter on their own. It also feels like a mechanical ripoff from the hunter's damage buff (if stayed stationary increased damage for some time thing, I don't remember its name)

[Deleted]

Actually I like the cooldown on reap (in theory) if it does what I think it does. Currently you can reapply deadwind if the duration from casting new souls is longer than the current buff, which means we can overwrite a single stack with another single stack. This stops that.

The problem is, it's more a solution for lower skillcap players, and it ignores that I might need to recast it slightly early for rotational reasons, which I'm now not allowed to do.


So I guess I actually don't like it....lol.

They're finally giving us a tool to deal with the godawful tormented soul starvation arising from RNG procs on no-add fights so they decided to throw a wrench into the works by attaching a five-second cooldown on Reap

So we'll still have the damn RNG stuff but also a five-second limiter to deal with as well

As to Shadow Priests, why are they so good at cleave? They dump a dot on everything and then hit one button to refresh. Whilst an afflock has to tit around manually recasting the bloody things. And our dots are weaker anyway, unless you take Writhe which really hurts single target but taking out Grasp

Not that in 7.2 you will ever take anything but Grasp anyway. Affliction is going to entirely revolve around Drain Soul.

Bloody hell, it's like the old joke about Spam. You can have any meal you like, so long as it;s Spam. For variety you can have it fried, grilled or baked.

Spam, spam, spam, spam and spam.

But I don't like spam (everyone looks at you incomprehendingly)

[Tryhar]

Maybe it means your dots tick faster when you are channeling drain soul? Many other specs have set bonus descriptions that are worded in a confusing way.

If your dots tick faster while draining, won't you get many more shards to spend on harder hitting attacks? Why should they make a set bonus that buffs your aoe when it is already the best in the game?

[Deleted]

Maybe it means your dots tick faster when you are channeling drain soul? Many other specs have set bonus descriptions that are worded in a confusing way.

If your dots tick faster while draining, won't you get many more shards to spend on harder hitting attacks? Why should they make a set bonus that buffs your aoe when it is already the best in the game?

The wording sound much more like you cast a full duration Drain Soul and get a Haste buff at the end of it. It's an absolutely horrible tier bonus and disappointing they'd even come up with it at all. But then they did give us Mana Tap and took months and months to finally get that it was garbage no one wanted or used.

[Xeranath]

Gonna have to wait for clarification on these placeholders for Aff, but as they are, it's bloody awful.

The demo ones are going to make the rotation sooo smooth.

[Deleted]

This is why I hate AP.

I've been dumping it all into affliction, but that tier bonus looks abhorent while the demo ones look pretty tasty. Still, quite enjoying destro atm.

Also potentially interesting that we can have the 4 set and 2 set from each tiers at the same time unless blizzard do something strange and artificial to prevent it.

[Violetti]

Destro both 2p and 4p bandaids at best

[Spunt]

Reap Souls now has a 5 second cooldown.
Developers’ note: Previously, casting Reap Souls at 5 stacks (which would grant 25 seconds of the buff) with 20 seconds currently left on the buff would just overwrite your old 20 second buff with a 25 second buff. Now, in this case it will increase the buff duration to 45 seconds.
Warrior

At least you won't waste as many souls now.

[Deleted]

I don't like how it turns every cast into a 2 parter. You summoned some pets? better DE. Oh, you summoned some more? Time to DE again.

It isn't terribly different from draining with MG, but at least I can have a reason to cast my dots on other targets outside of the need to buff it all the time. If you aren't instantly casting DE as demo, you are losing a lot, and the DE only affects the pets just summoned because they all last shorter than the duration of a DE buff, outside of your felguard..

I already know that. I am not against people disliking it. But when people talk about it as "factually annoying" i voice my disagreement.

[Sunlighthell]

most useless set bonus. Sure it will go live as is.