New PTR 13/3, thanks Blizzard!

[Joryy]

Glad to get standardized, but was hoping for 3-4 souls to be the standardization, so that we weren't punished so hard by the default 'lust on pull' situation. Maybe the new trait will make up for it, since it makes haste generate souls.

EN legendary farming going to be a lot less fun now.

Makes we wish that we had Dark Soul still, but Ulathesh giving us "when a mob you've damaged dies, cooldown is reduced by X seconds" and a standard big nuke artifact ability. Is it weird that I enjoyed the granularity of souls a lot more before MG?

[xuros]

Careful what you wish for. Lots of aff locks wished for a minimum "resource" (= no. of souls) at the start and now ended up with that minimum equal to maximum of 0

If you wish that same for demo, you might just run into the next PTR note of "all existing demons of Demonology warlocks will disappear at the start of an encounter. So will the artifact buff from dying/expiring imps."

However: I do agree with Blizzard that it is MUCH easier to balance when every fight starts with 0. This way, they can still make reap somewhat meaningful, despite the fact that with the new trait and the leggy cloak, you could theoretically have 100% uptime.

You even demo bro?

[Liarparadox]

Their reasoning is insulting. Why not just say they think it's unfair for locks to stack resources for boss pulls? That'd be way too easy.

[Demetrion]

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

If you had more than 30 insanity game resets it back to 30. If you had less it lets you start with that amount. If you had 0, you start with 0 so I don't see what's the issue there?

[noaim]

If you had more than 30 insanity game resets it back to 30. If you had less it lets you start with that amount. If you had 0, you start with 0 so I don't see what's the issue there?

Would you see the issue if it could take you somewhere between 10 second and 2 minutes to get enough insanity to activate void form, independant on what you do?

[Demetrion]

Would you see the issue if it could take you somewhere between 10 second and 2 minutes to get enough insanity to activate void form, independant on what you do?

I doubt that it's 2 minutes, but yes, it would be an issues if I was stuck outside of VF for longer than 15 seconds.

[BannedForViews]

20% chance of a soul, that's 20% more than we've got right now, and right now there are plenty of times when we're absolutely fine on souls already. Don't forget that SC works entirely different to this trait. SC needs you to have shards to have them refunded. Rend Soul allows you to have no souls, and get some souls. That is quite different from the feast and famine scenario that SC can create. It's also more likely that you'll be casting drain soul more in fights where you would have lacked souls before - single target fights. It's not terrible design at all, you just don't like affliction without the ability to start a fight with 12 souls it seems. Relying on having 12 trash mobs to kill whenever you want to do your best damage, that's comparatively worse design for a game where you expect people to repeatedly wipe on bosses before they kill them for the first time.

It is 20% more than we have when casting drain soul. It isn't 20% more of a chance. Also, the comparison to Conduit was not about if you need the resource first or not, it was about how proc isn't normalized, i.e. I can cast 20 UAs and not get a free shard, or I can cast 6 in a row that are all free. I don't support low probability procs in multiple aspects of the spec that all play a huge roll in outcome. Rend Souls also has no initial benefit for lust which is our biggest progression problem. We need to have souls at the start for consistency, because even Rend Souls won't be consistent. I could get 1 souls through a lust, or 8. There is nothing consistent about that damage output. Meanwhile Demon Hunters all start with meta and they last for the same duration, as does wings, and basically everything else in this game. There will always be random, even without procs, because of crit and the like. I understand there is random. I accept it, and don't mind it. What I do mind is how many layers of it are assigned to UA, and how large the variance in those layers is. It doesn't make for engaging game play, imo.

I do not think we should start fights (outside of dungeons) with 12 souls. I think we should start them with 4, possibly 5. I also think the generation should be more predictable similar to shards. I say similar because shards aren't 100% predictable at all, but they do come reasonably consistently, which souls do not. I don't know that anyone would argue affliction would be MORE fun/engaging/skillcapped with a less predictable version of shards, and I don't see why that is somehow the case with Souls. The only reason they are RPPM imo is because we still get them by killing things, which they neutered in raids anyway by making most things not grant souls.

The top and bottom of an equal skill level will always be separated by RNG. That has always been the case, it will always be the case, and it is the case for every spec. We do not have a massive RNG range. As demonstrated by our relatively stable rank throughout percentiles. We're actually at a fairly low point on RNG impact relative to the old days of monstrously powerful trinkets and snapshotting combining.

Yes, we are seperated by a massive RNG range. You are conflating stability between warlocks with stability across thousands of parses. I said already, I don't give a shit about where the class itself ranks. I give a shit about how consistently I rank. If you look at 50 similar wipes on say, krosus, most other classes will be doing similar damage from pull to pull. Affliction will have a large spread in the top and bottom. That isn't good. I stated already, I compared my recent Botanist kill to Felstav's r1 kill. The only thing, outside of gear, that separated him from me by a bit over 150k dps is he had about 20 more fatal echoes procs, and he had more shards generated from Conduit and Agony, even though we had pretty identical agony ticks, and I generated 35 souls and he had 53 (no souls are given for kills on bot) which was the difference of around 43% and 70%. All of the damage difference was in UA, because he had something like 100+ more UA ticks due to those 3 things. That isn't good for the class to have the variance be so large.

At least in the future the RNG will be our RNG. Rather than "oh someone else fucked up and wiped the raid? Goodbye 12 soul start". Start us all at zero, balance around zero, have it be in our control to at least deal with our RNG, rather than deal with whether an entire raid can one shot a fight, something which doesn't apply on progress, which is when it really matters.

You keep pretending this is about 12 souls at the start, but it isn't. It's about ANY souls at the start, gaining them through RNG, and how greatly that can affect us through a lust. There is no reason we shouldn't get 4 souls to create a little consistency in a lust pull. None at all. If Rend Souls (which I hate being attached to DS) smooths souls so that we have massive uptime, that's all well and good, but it still doesn't help our pull. Also, you've said multiple times, as has Bacon I believe, about "balancing around zero" or a similar concept. This is foolish, and won't ever happen. You can't balance around something that isn't consistent. If it was a low use skill with say a 20% uptime in which you had to pool hard and use wisely, that'd be one thing. if deadwind had an 80%+ uptime always, that'd also be one thing, but as it is now the same geared players starting with no souls could have 40% or 70% based on how many souls they generated. You can't buff the baseline without the outliers getting out of control, which is why they need to reign in how much RNG we actually have. Should fatal echoes really proc 50% if you're lucky? Should you really have nearly 100% more deadwind uptime? Should Conduit proc over twice as often from pull to pull? Are we really better, more fun, or more balanced as individuals to have all of these things working at once that all buff a single skill dealing over 50% of our damage? I seem to think you think "yes" to these questions. I think no.

[klogaroth]

It sounds like the RNG you're taking issue with has nothing to do with whether we start on a certain number of souls or not. The rank 1 Botanist kill that you're looking at; it's after 2 wipes. In a discussion about starting souls, you are looking at a log from after a wipe. Given that, you had the opportunity to start the fight with just as many souls. Starting with more souls would have just added the same amount to both reap uptimes. It would not fix what you're taking issue with.

Also when it comes to reap; Felstav has got the Reap and Sow legendary. That's a whole other barrel of worms, but isn't starting souls either.

[Roblinz]

I doubt that it's 2 minutes, but yes, it would be an issues if I was stuck outside of VF for longer than 15 seconds.

We can literally go well over a minute without a soul proc. It's pretty common actually.

[hurja]

They seem to be making rend 12% down from 20%

[Deleted]

They seem to be making rend 12% down from 20%

yeah because you know. we'd rather you didn't play warlock.

[Sunlighthell]

Hahahah they NERFED this USELESS trait sinister seeds. At this point I just don't know how any sane person could defend their retarded decisions. Really nice 15m ap waste. Every time I tell to myself "they couldn't be that retarded and they couldn't do any more harm to already useless/dead spells/talents" yet Blizzard finds a way to ruin their bad designs even more.

[Baconeggcheese]

yeah because you know. we'd rather you didn't play warlock.

Reading the way people talk in the class section, according to people they apparently don't want us playing much of anything.

[Gihelle]

Remember when they said they were done with sweeping changes?

Yeah; guess not.

[ehxy]

I would just like to see us start at 3 souls on a pull. Depleting us entirely is us a full on neuter. Middle ground please.

[evertonbelmontt]

The Harvester of Souls, the doom of Sargeras (one day) has no souls?
What blasphemy is that?

How will I be able to enjoy Heroism with no souls? Give at least 3 to 4 souls, and I don't mind the reset. Much easier to balance anw.

[erinthea]

yeah because you know. we'd rather you didn't play warlock.

It appears that reap is now doubling the proc chance at about 24% with reap up per drain tick it will still give 100% reap uptime after the buildup of a couple reaps which means we will be balanced around that and will make the lack of reap on pull that much more crushing.

[kavousanos]

Hahahah they NERFED this USELESS trait sinister seeds. At this point I just don't know how any sane person could defend their retarded decisions. Really nice 15m ap waste. Every time I tell to myself "they couldn't be that retarded and they couldn't do any more harm to already useless/dead spells/talents" yet Blizzard finds a way to ruin their bad designs even more.

Thing is, while Reap was active it was a100% chance. So it blew instantly. Which made the point valuable. :P Made.
Also, have you checked out which legendaries they "fixed"?
Was it half the useless destro crap?
Guess again
Oh man, this is a blast

[Harsesis]

Thing is, while Reap was active it was a100% chance. So it blew instantly. Which made the point valuable. :P Made.
Also, have you checked out which legendaries they "fixed"?
Was it half the useless destro crap?
Guess again
Oh man, this is a blast

They stated that they were only adjusting legendaries without throughput increases. All of Destro's had some kind of throughput increase on them.

[Baconeggcheese]

Remember when they said they were done with sweeping changes?

Yeah; guess not.

I don't, I remember them specifically stating specific changes that would happen at a later date that were large and sweeping.

They stated that they were only adjusting legendaries without throughput increases. All of Destro's had some kind of throughput increase on them.

They also had caveats that could have included destro's based on wording but, no such luck *shrug*