T21 warlock set bonuses

[Synthium]

I am absolutely positive that Destruction's 4P has been a 2P or a 4P from WoD or MoP because I could swear that I have already had the bonus where CB left a ticking dot. Or am I mistaken? It can be that it wasn't a tier but a passive bonus from something else but still, 100% Destruction had that bonus before. Absolutely completely uninspired.

[Jaman]

I am absolutely positive that Destruction's 4P has been a 2P or a 4P from WoD or MoP because I could swear that I have already had the bonus where CB left a ticking dot. Or am I mistaken? It can be that it wasn't a tier but a passive bonus from something else but still, 100% Destruction had that bonus before. Absolutely completely uninspired.

It wasn't a tier bonus. It was built into the spell during Cataclysm (i think) as a way to tone down it's burst in PvP while still keeping the same overall damage in PvE.

[Synthium]

It wasn't a tier bonus. It was built into the spell during Cataclysm (i think) as a way to tone down it's burst in PvP while still keeping the same overall damage in PvE.

Hmm. But I don't seem to recall it being in the tooltip or the baseline of the spell. Again, I might be mistaken but I was kinda certain it was sort of a bonus similar to tier or something. Oh well.

[Turturin the Warlock]

Not cataclysm, MoP. Was built in to tone down initial burst while keeping overall dmg the same, for PvP reasons

[RidN]

Yes it was in MoP and you got the dot from GoSac.

[Deleted]

They look pretty interesting. Also people should keep in mind this is the first iteration so they're likely to change.

What's getting people angry is that for affliction, this is more or less exactly the dumbass stuff about Drain Soul that we got for T20 which they pulled and replaced after masses of negative feedback about how awful it was.

Either they pull these bonuses from a hat and aff got unlucky and pulled the same ticket as last time, or it's someone's Bright Idea they won;t drop despite it being terrible.

There's no rationale at all in reworking aff to be a multidot spec which excels at multitarget and then pidgeonholing it with tier bonuses into being a motionless, single target Drain Soul tunneler. It was bad for the original 7.2 iteration, its bad now.


Only thing I can possibly think of is that they regard aff's multidotting as as powerful that it should not benefit at all from either tier bonus - because both bonuses do nothing whatever for it , and the T21 is a silent buff to our single target damage. Which makes it a gear crutch.

Einstein defined madness as repeating the same actions and expecting a different result, the devs keep trying to make the tier bonuses Drain Soul based.

Even disregarding that, they are both awful. Extend the duration of Unstable Affliction? Really?

The one and only dot we don't and can't maintain at all times, there is a really good chance half the procs willbe wasted because UA won't be up. Given we lose the T19/T20 shard gen bonuses, we'll have less UA's than now. Which also hurts our single target.

Oh dear.

[Synthium]

Yes it was in MoP and you got the dot from GoSac.

Ah EXACTLY! So it wasn't baseline, but a talent gave it to you. Well either way, it's just unimaginative as it's a very basic effect we once had.

[Demoros]

well i thinks that this tiers are nothing more than an excuse to distract us from anything regarding locks, like animations, nerfs and baseline fantasy! I may be wrong but this changes seem to lazy to even be consider ('come really going back to the soul drain mechanic? where are the de changes we were promised? why are we going back to destro mastery issue? why are we going back to 7.0 affliction shards generation, even worse this time 'cause we lost effigy?), and for those who keep saying that this is the first iteration, you're right they never end up letting anything just announced on ptr from the begging go live (like they did with wod 25% nerf to demo, 7.0 destro mastery random buff, demonic empowerment fantasy build on demo, 7.0 poor and random shard generation for affliction and destro, 7.1 survivability nerf for all locks, movement skill turned talents, bis legendaries nerfs, etc ….)! It seems that we have to say thank you for just receiving some changes!

[Deleted]

New PTR changes to Affliction T21

Item - Warlock T21 Affliction 2P Bonus - Drain Soul Increases UA Duration When Drain Soul deals damage, there is a 0% 15% chance to increase the duration of Unstable Affliction on the target by 0 sec. 1.0 sec.
Item - Warlock T21 Affliction 4P Bonus - Corruption Causes Drain Soul Tick Faster When Corruption deals damage, you have a 2% chance to increase the speed at which Drain Soul deals damage for the next 0 sec. by 100 for the next 10 sec.

Seems they are still pushing this bullshit bonuses centered around Drain Soul. I just can't fathom what they are thinking regarding these, they are totally counter intuitive to the changes made to the spec in 7.2.5. Initially when they first came out i thought that they were place holders but now i'm really concerned that they are not since they have started to iterate on them.

The 2p for starters nevermind turning us into a tunnel turret just seems useless. Now correct me if i'm wrong but UA has a baseline of 8s and 4 ticks so before haste you get a tick every 2s, now with my current haste it compresses the UA into ~6s so i get a tick every ~1.5s so how the fuck is extending UA by 1s going to benifit me as it wont give an extra tick?! Essentially the 2p has to proc TWICE per drain soul to add any dps at all and even then its one poxy tick???!!!! Am i missing something here or is just really that bad!!

And now the 4p, HOLY SHIT they have really gone full fucking retard on this one a 2% chance per corruption tick that by the looks of it initially when it procs we just want to tunnel drain soul and forget about dots entirely? (prolly still keep agony up which makes the proc even weaker if it overlaps with this) i mean WTF!!! And heres the hilarious thing the more targets we have the more likely this will proc due to having more corruptions out but we want to be multi dotting in those type of fights not draining anyway.

Fuck me ragged.................really hope these get changed like the T20 did, but it seems they are for certain for the moment so time to pick up our pitch forks and get some hasty feedback in before they get set in stone!!!

[Deleted]

New PTR changes to Affliction T21

Item - Warlock T21 Affliction 2P Bonus - Drain Soul Increases UA Duration When Drain Soul deals damage, there is a 0% 15% chance to increase the duration of Unstable Affliction on the target by 0 sec. 1.0 sec.
Item - Warlock T21 Affliction 4P Bonus - Corruption Causes Drain Soul Tick Faster When Corruption deals damage, you have a 2% chance to increase the speed at which Drain Soul deals damage for the next 0 sec. by 100 for the next 10 sec.

Seems they are still pushing this bullshit bonuses centered around Drain Soul. I just can't fathom what they are thinking regarding these, they are totally counter intuitive to the changes made to the spec in 7.2.5. Initially when they first came out i thought that they were place holders but now i'm really concerned that they are not since they have started to iterate on them.

The 2p for starters nevermind turning us into a tunnel turret just seems useless. Now correct me if i'm wrong but UA has a baseline of 8s and 4 ticks so before haste you get a tick every 2s, now with my current haste it compresses the UA into ~6s so i get a tick every ~1.5s so how the fuck is extending UA by 1s going to benifit me as it wont give an extra tick?! Essentially the 2p has to proc TWICE per drain soul to add any dps at all and even then its one poxy tick???!!!! Am i missing something here or is just really that bad!!

And now the 4p, HOLY SHIT they have really gone full fucking retard on this one a 2% chance per corruption tick that by the looks of it initially when it procs we just want to tunnel drain soul and forget about dots entirely? (prolly still keep agony up which makes the proc even weaker if it overlaps with this) i mean WTF!!! And heres the hilarious thing the more targets we have the more likely this will proc due to having more corruptions out but we want to be multi dotting in those type of fights not draining anyway.

Fuck me ragged.................really hope these get changed like the T20 did, but it seems they are for certain for the moment so time to pick up our pitch forks and get some hasty feedback in before they get set in stone!!!

the 4pc is just irritating. increasing the speed at which drainsoul deals dmg by 100 what does that even mean? do we get double the ticks in the channel? or is the channel just shorter by half and we have to spam DS during that proc window?

[Deleted]

the 4pc is just irritating. increasing the speed at which drainsoul deals dmg by 100 what does that even mean? do we get double the ticks in the channel? or is the channel just shorter by half and we have to spam DS during that proc window?

Well it's basically 100 haste as I understand it. Probably stacks. Still very underwhelming. But: It is to be expected that affli will be nerfed to the ground next raid tier because they simply couldn't make that happen for 2 tiers now. In Blizzard's typical reaction method, now they will hit it even harder.

[Deleted]

Its strange that after they actually listened to feedback on the horror t19 drain soul bonuses that they would come up with these type of bonuses again. My guess is its a reaction to whats happening in Tomb where affliction is fairly pitiful single target but monstrous as soon as adds or multi dotting opportunities become available. These ones at least seem better than the original t19. They have pretty interesting synergy if nothing else, though its going to once again massively favour Malefic Grasp(and contagion) which was a big problem with last ones.

I assume the 2 set will work like Rot and Decay just with a % chance, question is whether it will affect all UAs like old rot and decay or just the oldest one like the new version. The 4 set is presumably meant to say 100% for 10s, which I think would be pretty solid for single target with interactions with rend soul and the 2set.

[Harsesis]

So let me get this math straight. Drain Soul is 165000 mana for a full channel. With my current haste Drain Soul is a 4.8 second channel. Buff that by 100% so it goes to 2.4 seconds. In 10 seconds I could cast that 4 times. That's 660000 mana. That's 60% of my mana in 10 seconds. So there is a 2% chance on a corruption tick that I could just go oom in 10 seconds. Fun.

[Shandalar]

Item - Warlock T21 Demonology 2P Bonus - Each Soul Shard spent on Hand of Gul'dan increases the damage of your next Call Dreadstalkers by 25%.
Item - Warlock T21 Demonology 4P Bonus - When you cast Demonic Empowerment, your Dreadstalkers will immediately use Dreadbite again at 50% increased damage. This can only occur once per cast of Call Dreadstalkers.


Lulz, 25% each shard? At that point you can easily cast 3 full HoG. Thats a 300% extra dmg on Dreadstalkers.

[Deleted]

So let me get this math straight. Drain Soul is 165000 mana for a full channel. With my current haste Drain Soul is a 4.8 second channel. Buff that by 100% so it goes to 2.4 seconds. In 10 seconds I could cast that 4 times. That's 660000 mana. That's 60% of my mana in 10 seconds. So there is a 2% chance on a corruption tick that I could just go oom in 10 seconds. Fun.

It's not 100%. It's 100 haste and seems to still be a placeholder.
Affli definitely got screwed over with these, especially since they seem to have given up on the extra shards that T19 AND T20 provided.

[Deleted]

Yeah, the affliction bonuses have all the appearanc eof being locke din and they're shit, just like the T20 ones were shit until they got changes, and for the same reason, they are centred on Drain Soul.

They rewrote aff to be a multidot specialist and now they are giving us tier bonuses that are only good for single target tunneling. GG Blizz.

They do nothing whatever to increase our damage outside of single target. Nothing. At all.

The twoset is particularly awful. Without the T19 or T20 shard generation bonus, we won;t be casting UA anywhere near as often. The T21 encourages Drain Soul Spamming, but there's a good chance that the 2-set proc will be wasted because you won't have UA up to extend duration on.

They chose the one and only dot we don't maintain. Unstable Affliction is the one dot you bank for burst windows, or to align with other procs. So there's a really good chance the 2-set proc will simply go to waste. It only extends and existing UA, so you can't cast UA after it procs.

The bonuses also skew the talents. If you choose MG you want to bank two UA's and snap them out with Reap and do a drain cycle. It also inflates the value of Soul Conduit because you want more UA's out in the hope of extending it. The tooltip isn;t even clear about whther the proc extends one UA or all of them, since each one counts in it;s own right.

So yeah, the T21 is total garbage, the procs are shit and they are completely counter to the way they just redesigned aff to work.

I am guessing that the thinking behind it is this: aff's multidot is too strong, so this is a stealth nerf, by making sure that multidotting does not benefit in any way whatever from the tier armour.

[croghan]

Item - Warlock T21 Demonology 2P Bonus : increase the damage of Call Dreadstalkers by 25%. (old was " Each Soul Shard spent on Hand of Gul'dan increases the damage of your next Call Dreadstalkers by 25%.")
Item - Warlock T21 Demonology 4P Bonus : When you cast Demonic Empowerment, your Dreadstalkers will immediately use Dreadbite again at 50% increased damage. This can only occur once per cast of Call Dreadstalkers.

[Gaidax]

Destruction bonuses are seriously shit and here I thought they could not get any worse, man...

Not only these bonuses have no function in anything but ST and Havoc cleave, but 4p is basically a weaker version of current 4pT20, which is already somewhat weak AND is a DoT with all the downsides coming from that. 2p is nothing to write home about either, you could say it's +20% damage to Incinerate and a bit more shard generation, which at least makes the bonus decent in ST together, but this another Eradication-like mechanic being now baseline AND unlike 2pT20 it has no function in AoE.

Weak play really. I feel 2pT20 will be almost mandatory unless you have absolute shit pieces.

[noaim]

Yeah, the affliction bonuses have all the appearanc eof being locke din and they're shit, just like the T20 ones were shit until they got changes, and for the same reason, they are centred on Drain Soul.

They rewrote aff to be a multidot specialist and now they are giving us tier bonuses that are only good for single target tunneling. GG Blizz.

They do nothing whatever to increase our damage outside of single target. Nothing. At all.

The twoset is particularly awful. Without the T19 or T20 shard generation bonus, we won;t be casting UA anywhere near as often. The T21 encourages Drain Soul Spamming, but there's a good chance that the 2-set proc will be wasted because you won't have UA up to extend duration on.

They chose the one and only dot we don't maintain. Unstable Affliction is the one dot you bank for burst windows, or to align with other procs. So there's a really good chance the 2-set proc will simply go to waste. It only extends and existing UA, so you can't cast UA after it procs.

The bonuses also skew the talents. If you choose MG you want to bank two UA's and snap them out with Reap and do a drain cycle. It also inflates the value of Soul Conduit because you want more UA's out in the hope of extending it. The tooltip isn;t even clear about whther the proc extends one UA or all of them, since each one counts in it;s own right.

So yeah, the T21 is total garbage, the procs are shit and they are completely counter to the way they just redesigned aff to work.

I am guessing that the thinking behind it is this: aff's multidot is too strong, so this is a stealth nerf, by making sure that multidotting does not benefit in any way whatever from the tier armour.

This is like listening to your rant over T20 bonuses all over again (at least you claimed that the 2p was shit even after changes). I'd rather see some actual math and an explanation on how they work exactly before concluding that "they are shit".

[Deleted]

This is like listening to your rant over T20 bonuses all over again (at least you claimed that the 2p was shit even after changes). I'd rather see some actual math and an explanation on how they work exactly before concluding that "they are shit".

Math not required to understand that they are total shit and counter intuitive to how the spec now plays after the changes in 7.2.5;

2p Drain Soul Increases UA Duration When Drain Soul deals damage, there is a 15% chance to increase the duration of Unstable Affliction on the target by 1.0 sec- This has to proc TWICE per drain soul cast to actually add a tick to UA since UA's baseline tick rate is every 2s so even after haste its still over 1s per tick so adding 1s does fuck all. Not to mention it is the dot with the least uptime so for the duration of those casts we are severely punished for movement even more now since its all about DS (if it worked with haunt it would go someways to fixing this issue).

4p When Corruption deals damage, you have a 2% chance to increase the speed at which Drain Soul deals damage by 100% for the next 10 sec - So this makes the above 2p not so bad(its still bad) as it basically doubles the amount of ticks that have the chance to extend UA. A 2% chance on a dot with a 3s baseline tick rate is a fucking joke for a single target proc rate, not to mention DS is totally the opposite of what you want to be doing on multiple targets fights where this will proc much more..........how fucking stupid is that!!! But it gets worse as they seem to have forgotten that DS's mana cost is by the tick not a flat cost per cast so having it do damage 100% faster sends you OOM 100% faster LOL!!!! I mean really??

This is all while turning us into a turret that just wants to play malefic grasp and DS even though the whole design change philosophy of 7.2.5 was to shift away from that playstyle and be more about multi dotting?????

No math required......the only way these bonuses would not be shit is if every fight in the 7.3 raid was single target no movement patchwerk and even then we'd still be fucked compared to the ST damage of other classes!!!