New PTR 13/3, thanks Blizzard!

[Nefarious Tea]

The buff also lasts a maximum of one minute now, so that means if you have the legendary cloak you cap out at 8 souls and any more than that is useless (since 60/(5+2.1) = 8.4 souls). I feel like that really reduces the usefulness of the cloak given that most of its benefit is either

a) in keeping the reap buff up while you're massively starved on souls because most adds on boss fights don't have any.
or b) being able to have the reap buff up for longer compared to a lock without the cloak.

[Bjarkan]

Dont make such a scandal for something dont even have one day on... Sure, Blizz is not trusty on making fair balance on the classes, but getting all workout for something almost not one have tested yet is quite childish...

The buff also lasts a maximum of one minute now, so that means if you have the legendary cloak you cap out at 8 souls and any more than that is useless (since 60/(5+2.1) = 8.4 souls). I feel like that really reduces the usefulness of the cloak given that most of its benefit is either

a) in keeping the reap buff up while you're massively starved on souls because most adds on boss fights don't have any.
or b) being able to have the reap buff up for longer compared to a lock without the cloak.

As i see it, the cloak is for change the flow of the spec according to you own preferences... I mean, if you dont care to wait for collect the 12 souls for the 60s duration, then use another cloak. But in a personal matter, the cloak cut down the gattering time for 33% or something like that.

[Tarov]

Starting a boss fight with 0 souls is frustrating. If their purpose is to make all starts the same, they could at least increase the chance to get a soul or two a few seconds after the encounter starts. How many times have we waited more than 30 seconds for one soul to pop up?

[slickwilly]

Dont make such a scandal for something dont even have one day on... Sure, Blizz is not trusty on making fair balance on the classes, but getting all workout for something almost not one have tested yet is quite childish...



As i see it, the cloak is for change the flow of the spec according to you own preferences... I mean, if you dont care to wait for collect the 12 souls for the 60s duration, then use another cloak. But in a personal matter, the cloak cut down the gattering time for 33% or something like that.

If there is a potential problem it should be discussed. Go ahead and be a wall flower and take it straight in the ass without lube.

[Apero]

They could have given us 5 souls or something baseline for every pull, but then every pull would feel decent, better make every pull feel miserable. Flawless blizzard logic right here, as usual.

[Baconeggcheese]

This change makes me optimistic, it means they didn't see aff's farm performance and think the spec is super strong. Has implications for how the spec will be tuned in the future, which would imply its more likely to go up than down.

Its not necessarily the route that will feel good to people in general, but its not inherently a bad thing. Its just one of two ways to achieve the same goal, with this one pushing reap soul away from being a maintenance buff. Though the rend soul trait still has the potential to turn it into a maintenance buff, so we'll see how that goes.

[Sunlighthell]

It was so much fun to progress on mythic Krosus. One pull 5 souls just pops out of nowhere and I'm happy to see numbers that I should see every pull with my lvl of gear, and then 5 pulls in row I starve for souls for until first adds and do dps comparable to my dk twink. It's "double down on strengths" all over again. And I wonder when they will stop with nerfs and actually start to fix issues class/spec plaqued with. It's so much fun to rely on shards rng, souls rng and whispers in the dark proc rng to deal damage comparable to other classes minus 10-15 ilvls, at least our mana is not rng - rate of mana consumption during lust is still higher than mana consumption of 10 arcane mages.

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This change makes me optimistic, it means they didn't see aff's farm performance and think the spec is super strong. Has implications for how the spec will be tuned in the future, which would imply its more likely to go up than down.

Its not necessarily the route that will feel good to people in general, but its not inherently a bad thing. Its just one of two ways to achieve the same goal, with this one pushing reap soul away from being a maintenance buff. Though the rend soul trait still has the potential to turn it into a maintenance buff, so we'll see how that goes.

Except affliction performance on progress is not strong and for bosses like Gul'dan and Ellisande you simply don't want affliction at all because haste buff don't do anything for them and the're classes in game who can tunnel boss better without BS rng. If they make so we will start with 3-5 souls from every pull this change is good, if they leave it as is (and this is clearly what will happen) it's just plain nerf "just because", let them make shards to also drop down to 0.

This quote from blizzard forums sums everything in my opinion:

Us: Hey Blizzard every attempt other than the first attempt feels kinda horrible because we start with no souls, any chance of giving us a baseline 2-3 to start each fight?

Devs: Now removing all souls so every attempt feels equally horrible, problem solved!

Cannot understand what makes you optimistic about that decision. It's like 10% MG nerf "just because" warlocks came close to melee overlords in EN farm logs before NH was out.

[Hctaz]

Would be ok, if the reset every resource of every other class too.
Rage
Insanity
everything else that counts...

They do I'm pretty sure. Not sure about rage or insanity but as a frost dk my runic power drops to like 2 when the boss is pulled. Not sure why it's not a full reset.

[Baconeggcheese]

Cannot understand what makes you optimistic about that decision.

Because I'd rather the design focus around reap souls being a commodity and having meaningful game play than having it become a maintenance buff which I find completely dull.

I made a longer post in the official forum thread, if you want to know where my head is at.

[noaim]

They do I'm pretty sure. Not sure about rage or insanity but as a frost dk my runic power drops to like 2 when the boss is pulled. Not sure why it's not a full reset.

Problem again isnt really that it drops to 0. The problem is that the rate at which we regen the souls in combat is completely rng, and if no adds are present, way too low the way we are currently balanced. Imagine your runic power dropping to 0, and you might gain none for basically the entire duration of bloodlust (yes, not the same kind of resource bla bla, but the point stands, is there any other resource that resets when an encounter starts that is also 100% rng in the rate at which you gain it?)

[Deleted]

We should start with 2 at very least. All fights where people go "just bloodlust at start" makes me annoyed if its pull with 0 souls.

But thats about it, it was something I saw happen. It doesnt "ruin our class" like some people claim. It doesnt make affli "only multi-target spec" like some claim.
Not much changes tbh. You just see less affli locks topping meters with 80% reap uptime because 2 min farmboss and 12 reap stacks.

[Hctaz]

Problem again isnt really that it drops to 0. The problem is that the rate at which we regen the souls in combat is completely rng, and if no adds are present, way too low the way we are currently balanced. Imagine your runic power dropping to 0, and you might gain none for basically the entire duration of bloodlust (yes, not the same kind of resource bla bla, but the point stands, is there any other resource that resets when an encounter starts that is also 100% rng in the rate at which you gain it?)

Yeah I understand the point you're making but the issue of souls is a tough one. I never really liked it tbh. If anything your weapon effect should be the frost dk weapon effect. I mean... you guys still have soul shards too. Seems weird to use souls and soul shards both as resources for the same spec. Seems even weirder that frostmourne doesn't do anything with the soul at all.

That's besides the point though. Anyway your spec got stuck with the soul thing... but I always thought it was an awful idea. Maybe your spec is just doomed to be relegated to add fights and being m+ god tier fun tier. But it would make more sense to like... have your weapon "keep" a few souls that spew out of your weapon right as the fight starts.

[Sunlighthell]

Because I'd rather the design focus around reap souls being a commodity and having meaningful game play than having it become a maintenance buff which I find completely dull.

I made a longer post in the official forum thread, if you want to know where my head is at.

If you start the fight with no souls, you're more reliant on procs and add deaths, which keeps souls being a commodity.

I would agree that this would be better, but, and I already made a point about that, only adds on 2/10 fights in NH stack souls when you kill them, so Blizzard obviously don't care/have no things like this in their minds.
And because of that bad game design where they made spec relying on adds deaths but in the same time made said adds into "soulless husks" this change is nothing more than a nerf because you simply can't benefit from having souls on pull while you also cannot benefit from souls at all because adds you kill give you no souls like on trilliax/anomaly/spellblade/botanic/krosus/tichondrius/ellisande/gul'dan, you can only rely on souls procs and without new trait from 7.2. ptr those procs are not consistent at all, and I guess tendency will continue in Tomb. Which interferes with your point that spec will now be "balanced around consistency".

[Uzkin]

Because I'd rather the design focus around reap souls being a commodity and having meaningful game play than having it become a maintenance buff which I find completely dull.

I made a longer post in the official forum thread, if you want to know where my head is at.

This.

For the past year or so, many within the warlock community have complained about ELT because maintenance buffs are not fun. They are a chore without any interesting game-play. And Blizzard's response is to impose ANOTHER maintenance buff on warlocks?

Do they not listen?

Do they listen, but not understand?

Do they listen and understand, but choose to annoy warlocks on purpose?

[Orwell7]

This.

For the past year or so, many within the warlock community have complained about ELT because maintenance buffs are not fun. They are a chore without any interesting game-play. And Blizzard's response is to impose ANOTHER maintenance buff on warlocks?

Do they not listen?

Do they listen, but not understand?

Do they listen and understand, but choose to annoy warlocks on purpose?

They have a handful of warlocks who _DO_ like all of these annoying things, and they _DO_ listen to them.
It kinda fits the masochistic, sociopathic, generally hated and not unterstood, power hungry-but always failing class fantasy tho.
(just look up the most "powerful" warlocks in wow... no self respect, simple-minded decisions, etc-etc)

[Baconeggcheese]

I would agree that this would be better, but, and I already made a point about that, only adds on 2/10 fights in NH stack souls when you kill them, so Blizzard obviously don't care/have no things like this in their minds.
And because of that bad game design where they made spec relying on adds deaths but in the same time made said adds into "soulless husks" this change is nothing more than a nerf because you simply can't benefit from having souls on pull while you also cannot benefit from souls at all because adds you kill give you no souls like on trilliax/anomaly/spellblade/botanic/krosus/tichondrius/ellisande/gul'dan, you can only rely on souls procs and without new trait from 7.2. ptr those procs are not consistent at all, and I guess tendency will continue in Tomb. Which interferes with your point that spec will now be "balanced around consistency".

Then your issue is with adds not giving souls, not with not having souls on the pull. Address the problem, not the bandaid.

[hulkgor]

Finally removed the annoyance of starting a fight with 12 souls, wiping and then have to start with 0. Now we always start with 0! Problem solved.

Oh and if we have the buff up when an encounter starts, we lose it. I believe affliction is now fixed.

Source: Front page, pasting here too.

Souls are now reset to 0 at the start of an encounter. The buff is also canceled at the start of an encounter.
Reason: Souls are a resource, and we have a rules about resetting your resources/stacks of a buff before an encounter, so that every attempt is standardized. Having souls the first time you fight a raid boss feels good, but it makes every other attempt after that feel worse by comparison.

Did the same with Balance Druid's Astral power at Legion launch. So, at least you got 6 months worth of pooling.

[Phyrexium]

7.2 Drain Soul = 7.0 Demonic Empowerment?

[BannedForViews]

Demo cant, Unholy cant, Shadow cant, Survival hunters,Mistweavers

Demo can. Lust helps get more imps out so you can pop TKC. Way to pervert my point.

Same as Unholy. You get can more festering wounds out more quickly in lust and then get your 6 skeletons lusted.

Shadow can't but how long does it actually take to get enough Insanity to us it? It's pretty obvious that once again, lust helps them use their power faster, which is ultimately stronger than lust anyway.

Surivival is just like Demo. Lust helps you get more mongoose fury, which means your Fury of the Eagle does more damage.

Mistweaver, who give a fuck, because you're not using it on pull anyway.

I honestly don't know how you posted such a foolish response. Everything that isn't used "instantly" on pull is used very quickly in a rotation that is predictable. What exactly is predictable about maybe more maybe not getting souls so that I can buff my damage?

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All in all it's a meaningless change done for consistency between classes.

On progress bosses it doesn't matter cos you don't have souls. On farm bosses it doesn't matter cos farm doesn't matter

But it can matter on "not quite farm" bosses. Your 2nd/3rd/4th kills don't always go down as 1 shots. On fights where dps matters like Krosus/Tich/Auger/etc, having those souls stored up can add extra millions of damage that could help you hit an enrage. It is silly to assume it doesn't matter based on their only being 1st time progression kills or 1 shot farm kills.

[klogaroth]

I've been hoping for this from a while, since farm always muddles the issue when it comes to balancing. We're not in a bad place DPS wise starting at zero souls, so this removes the chance that we get nerfed elsewhere due to people whinging about what we can do on farm and hampering aff as a progression spec.