New PTR 13/3, thanks Blizzard!

[Violetti]

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

double soulgeneration definitely results in double the fun
just like 100% uptime on sb:haunt in hfc made every fight fun

[Orwell7]

Affli will be fine numbers-wise, remember, you can put a 4th point in all our 3-point traits, and that means with Reap we'll have an effectively 8 point level of those traits.

[noaim]

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.

And that is the problem for us If our spells said "Generates X souls/part of souls/whatever" that removed the RNG, so we knew that 10-15 seconds into the fight we could use them and get more than a 5 second buff, starting at 0 wouldnt be a problem. And 1 minute, 2 minutes...the problem is still that it can take the entire BL duration and we might get 5 seconds of it buffed, maybe 20, maybe 0.

[Tikishock]

My favorite part of being an Affliction warlock right now is when we've wiped on a boss but this next pull is the last pull so leave everything on the table that I'm able to pop all my cooldowns and buffs on the opener with Lust up.

Oh wait, I just resume my normal dot, dot, dot, drain rotation. Silly me, we have no cooldowns or buffs to use.

[Baconeggcheese]

And that is the problem for us If our spells said "Generates X souls/part of souls/whatever" that removed the RNG, so we knew that 10-15 seconds into the fight we could use them and get more than a 5 second buff, starting at 0 wouldnt be a problem. And 1 minute, 2 minutes...the problem is still that it can take the entire BL duration and we might get 5 seconds of it buffed, maybe 20, maybe 0.

The probability of getting 0 with the rend soul trait during bloodlust is virtually non-existent. You should be more concerned that reap is going to potentially become a maintenance buff as opposed to the lack of opener.

[Harsesis]

The probability of getting 0 with the rend soul trait during bloodlust is virtually non-existent. You should be more concerned that reap is going to potentially become a maintenance buff as opposed to the lack of opener.

The number of Krosus pulls I've had where my first souls are coming from dying adds begs to differ.

[Bjarkan]

The number of Krosus pulls I've had where my first souls are coming from dying adds begs to differ.

20% chance to gain souls from DS ticks... With that, in BL, if you dont gain any soul, is REALLY bad luck...

This new trait, plus the cloak, is the reason behind souls reset was implemmented... With both thing would be almost to easy to keep Rep as a Maintenance buff.

[Harsesis]

How's about a little math? First off the proc chance is now 12%. Drain Soul ticks 6 times for a full channel. So chance of failure on any tick is 88%. (.88)^6=.4644 or a 46.44% chance of failure for an entire channel. Now let's take my current haste of 13.27%. With that it would take me (1.32*3) seconds for dots and 5.3 seconds for a full drain channel. So that is 9.26 seconds total. So almost every other pull you could get 0 procs in the first 10 seconds or so. That's 25% of lust. Basically flipping a coin isn't really bad luck. If I work the math all the way through is somewhere in the ballpark of 1/25 pulls the trait will generate 0 shards during lust.

[Cyclone Duke]

Folks complain about RNG and how it skews performance and removes the importance of skill.
I don't play affliction but I understand Blizzard have removed a mechanic that stacks a buff you gain from killing mobs/trash.
One available once per attempt of each boss on the first try.

I understand it's not fun to have something give you power and then you lose that. But don't make it your objective and goal to be angry and upset over this, it's only shooting yourself in the foot, and sabotaging your own fun in your life.
The change makes sense. It's not good design to have a huge amount of pressure on your first attempt on a boss and then feel like you are far weaker on all following attempts. Just because it's fun to use some of the time doesn't excuse the obvious problems the mechanic was bringing or how it punishes you for a wipe.

And people quoting things like "They should make all classes start with no rage or energy" and stuff - This change is not about removing pre-buffing or not wanting players to go into a fight with any buffs or resources. Warriors have access to a shout or some spell to gain rage with 100% of the time - they can start every pull of the night with 30 (or whatever) rage simply because they have a spell to always let them at least be able to get that much - trash or no trash.
It's about making the first pull of a boss have the same chance and same fairness as the 5th pull or the 20th pull. They are removing an effect which fairly largely effects your chances at beating an encounter - and the effect is explicitly not part of the encounter. Your odds at completing an encounter should not rely on factors outside what is part of that encounter or available to you consistently 100% of the time.

[Baconeggcheese]

The number of Krosus pulls I've had where my first souls are coming from dying adds begs to differ.

You have rend soul on your krosus pulls?

[Sunlighthell]

The number of Krosus pulls I've had where my first souls are coming from dying adds begs to differ.

It's funny because adds on Krosus cannot give any souls only WoC procs.

[klogaroth]

The following graphs are from the top 5 Krosus logs on aff: http://i.imgur.com/8ib6902.png

The green bars at the top are reap uptime, the graphs just below them are DPS. The blue zones are bloodlust. These graphs show us that whilst our damage does go up during lust, it does not contain a huge chunk of our overall damage, and that we are capable of similar levels of damage at other points of the fight. Only 1 of these logs is from a warlock who starts the fight with any souls. That log does not contain better bloodlust burst than the ones where people didn't start with any souls.

Our damage is not all packed into lust. It increases there, but we're not dealing with things like the old super powerful 10 minute cooldown doomguard any more. Is it a DPS loss to not have 100% reap uptime in lust? Yes. Is it devastating to our DPS? No. So much of our damage comes from UA, and haste is there to provide more UAs rather than increase the damage per shard.

Short bosses do have starting with 12 souls as a bigger impact, but I'd much prefer something more baseline than having to one shot the boss. I'm not holding out much hope for a complete rework of how reap works, so I'd rather damage be tuned around one starting point. If that starting point is zero, then I'm fine with that as long as we don't fall behind.

[vaeevictiss]

for months now i was thinking....sure would be nice to just start each fight with even say...4-5 souls. Kinda went the other way on that one huh blizz *rolls eyes*.

I just hate the proc rate of it on ST fights...and oddly enough star auger seems to do it more than any other one. 1 min into the fight and i finally get one or two souls. Way to just screw my opener up.

[Angeredsoul]

Ha-ha-HA!

I think that MANA should reset to 30% (or even 0% because class fantasy) so we'll start every encounter with a few GCDs of Life Tap!
Soul Shards, Mana, Reap Souls. The only spec in the game with 3 resources, be proud of it!
Ha-ha-HA!

Unholy dks also have 3.

Warlock and spriest and unholy Dk are the only classes I believe that cannot use their Artifact abilities straight off the bat without building resources.

[Terryn]

The number of Krosus pulls I've had where my first souls are coming from dying adds begs to differ.

That's pretty amazing considering adds don't give souls


Overall I think all this changes is farm. its highly unlikely now you open on a progression boss kill with souls from the previous (and if you do I envy your pull turnaround time) so the points where it REALLY matters it doesn't apply. It would be NICE if we started with even 2 or 3 souls, but this at least puts every pull on the same level.

[ehxy]

Wouldn't this change push us towards soul harvest in a lust on pull situation?

Yes a more reliable bar has been set but we were saving reap because let's face it, it is our damage cooldown. Our only damage cooldown. We're already juggling soul shards which isn't terrible thanks to the 3 shard at start change.

I think what bothers me the most about reap souls is simply put it should not work the way it does. We should not be obtaining random tormented souls on a single target fight out of some magical nowhere it's a deus ex macina design. You kill something, it leaves behind a soul, were you draining that thing when it died? collect soul, did it die from your damage? get a tormented soul. Makes sense.

Let's just hope this standardisation brings to light the obvious.

"Having souls the first time you fight a raid boss feels good, but it makes every other attempt after that feel worse by comparison."

This makes me laugh. I main a demonhunter and my alt is aff. I open up every encounter feeling pretty good and every subsequent pull feeling that good. I guess feeling good just doesn't apply to all classes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think what makes me laugh about this the most is...affliction isn't even in the top tier bracket.

[Uzkin]

Yeah, what kind of class design is this?

"Having souls the first time you fight a raid boss feels good"
--> "Souls are now reset to 0 at the start of an encounter."

FUN DETECTED! FUN REMOVED!

[xuros]

The number of Krosus pulls I've had where my first souls are coming from dying adds begs to differ.

No you didnt lol.

[Tikishock]

So it looks like our Tier 20 set bonuses are here to stay right? So does that mean the only acceptable Aff Lock talent spec is one in that includes MG and we are basically now the tunnel-ST spec instead of a DoT class?

Also, LOL on having to fully channel Drain Soul. So great. Hope I don't have any latency or lag. Great choice Blizzard. If anybody that designed these tier bonuses actually played a warlock they would know almost nobody finishes a drain soul cast 100% completely. They refresh it with no negative consequence.

I'd say I'm playing a Mage but the Arcane bonuses turns a defensive ability into a mini-offensive cooldown. Again, so stupid.

[Baconeggcheese]

So it looks like our Tier 20 set bonuses are here to stay right?

In that interview yesterday he pretty much confirmed that tier bonuses are subject to change until ToS opens, and that there would be another large tuning pass with 7.2.5 similar to 7.1.5.

So its still very much up in the air right now.