Flawed mechanics is what made the game fun...

[Beyz]

I'm actually starting to feel some aching in my chest over the new mechanic deisgn. What Blizz defines as tuning and fixing mechanics, I actually consider destroying the game.

• That BoD, Immolation aura and DG for instance snapshotted your stats is a "broken mechanic". Yet it was what made the abilities not just press-on-cd abilties due to additional damage gained for timing with meta, demon soul, volc pot, ICDs and whatnot
• Insignia of the Corrupted Mind increasing DG damage with 15-20%. Again a "broken mechanic" but it also added up to the bigger picture
• Mastery also being snapshot, instead of the new meta design which updates your mastery periodically.

And really, no matter for how long you can think back in time it has always been the "broken mechanics" that made the game require just a little bit of skill in PvE content.

And while we're at the topic, the newly introduced stacking abilities is, while fun, also the biggest nerf to attention based skill... like ever. You literally have 12 seconds to react to these various abilities being off-cooldown before you get punished for not pushing them.

And this is without mentioning the obvious abilities to maintain-and-use amount by a large margin.


Skimming through the forums I can hardly find anyone complaining about the simplification of warlocks, aren't you guys pissed that what they're doing to fix our class is actually destroying it instead?

[Brusalk]

I agree to your first statement to a degree. The funnest mechanic in the game thus far for me was playing a spriest with Theralion's mirror. Having to work really hard to extend the duration of the mastery proc was one of the funnest mechanics and most rewarding mechanics I've ever played. The feeling of seeing your dps skyrocket when you managed to time it correct was the most satisfying thing I've felt in a long time.


That being said, I actually like the new stacking abilities, and I feel like they actually reward people who plan them out over people that just hit them on cd. Sure, the base skill cap with the abilities that have them is higher, but it's still rewarding to people that plan when to use them correctly.


I am pissed at the slow-feeling of affliction though. Between everlasting affliction and 4sec drain soul ticks, the spec feels slow when it should feel fast and frantic trying to keep dots up because of MG.

[Sockmaster]

• That BoD, Immolation aura and DG for instance snapshotted your stats is a "broken mechanic". Yet it was what made the abilities not just press-on-cd abilties due to additional damage gained for timing with meta, demon soul, volc pot, ICDs and whatnot
• Insignia of the Corrupted Mind increasing DG damage with 15-20%. Again a "broken mechanic" but it also added up to the bigger picture
• Mastery also being snapshot, instead of the new meta design which updates your mastery periodically.

I'm not sure why you brought these points up. The first two still work the same way.

I don't see why the last one upsets you. It's not like we ever really used meta with some random mastery proc. Theralion's Mirror was terrible because there was a good chance the proc wouldn't be up when meta came off cooldown. Moonwell Chalice was a flawed mechanic that didn't make demo more fun. It simplified demo and made it mind numbingly boring because you didn't really have to take impending doom into account, and instead just dropped moonwell and popped a meta every two minutes, then proceeded to go ham.

[Beyz]

I'm not sure why you brought these points up. The first two still work the same way.

I don't see why the last one upsets you. It's not like we ever really used meta with some random mastery proc. Theralion's Mirror was terrible because there was a good chance the proc wouldn't be up when meta came off cooldown. Moonwell Chalice was a flawed mechanic that didn't make demo more fun. It simplified demo and made it mind numbingly boring because you didn't really have to take impending doom into account, and instead just dropped moonwell and popped a meta every two minutes, then proceeded to go ham.

They were mentioned from a designphilosophical point of view. Because Blizzard is obviously trying to push mechanics to be updated on the run, rather than being snapshotted.

And really those we're just some examples, the whole pre-mastery swapping is also going down the drain. It's just that with those mechanic updates adding up to the huge rotation nerf... it really just feels like they're going overboard in the simplification.

I can see some opportunities for new flawed mechanics to bring back a little consideration into when you're pressing the stacking abilities tho, but that's really all for now.

[Sedryn]

I really enjoyed crit rolling on corruption in ICC for some reason. But the mastery snapshot is something I've never enjoyed.

[Count Zero]

I wish they'd update everything to update dynamically per tick. Just my opinion.

[Deleted]

What you talk about is exactly what made warlock fun imo, and what made it different from other classes. Easier to see a difference pr warlock then when everything comes down to gear and how many buffs you get fed with :\

[OOMM]

These kind of things made the game fun for me too. I loved building a mastery set and watching every proc, I picked up engineering and tailoring to get even more. However, I think it's too early to tell exactly what is going to happen yet. Every blue post is a guess at what they might be thinking and every beta patch is still a surprise at this point. Even if all of those things are removed, with 3 new resources there is bound to be some sort of unintended way to take advantage of them.

[Sylvre]

Mastery stacking is for me, easily the most annoying and pointless mechanic in the game, and not just because it meant grinding out the retarded Fireland dailies. Subjective topics are subjective.

[Sylvre]

" Grinding out the retarded Fireland dailies "

Newbie ? Is your lock a fresh reroll ?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...chievement#201

Earn exalted status with the Avengers of Hyjal the 09/20/2011....

Such a pain....

I just see an affliction baby reroll ... why do you care about mastery stacking then.. subjective boy ?

I sense I'm being insulted but your post is incoherent enough that I don't really care.

[Deleted]

From what I have seen so far, we are getting a lot of flawed mechanics. Every built brings in more bugs than it fixes. Then again, I think our definitions of "broken mechanics" differ. I don't think of abilities (especially DoTs) snapshotting stats as a "broken mechanic". It is how DoTs work. I don't think they changed that in MoP for Doom, or did they? I can't check right now, will do later.

I think you meant to say "Challenging mechanics is what made the game fun...", with which I fully agree. I do hope that even in MoP there will be enough space to differentiate good Warlocks from bad ones.

To clarify, just because something was not originally intended by the designers does not make it "broken" in my eyes. A broken mechanic would be the Mana Regeneration for Destruction for the last couple of weeks, which was way too low to have the spec work as intended.

[Deleted]

I honestly could not agree more! I think some of these reasons are why Warlock was the least played class; Because it actually required some thought and effort put into your class, instead of just spamming a few strokes, and hitting a cooldown every so often...


The current state of Demonology warlock is something I think we have seen the last of. MoP is the FINAL homogenization of all the classes, there is are no more "broken mechanics" to sort out the weaklings.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what the Lock state will be like when raiding hits in MoP. I for sure will have a multiple of characters I can resort to, if Lock doesn't feel "right".

[user18]

I'm actually starting to feel some aching in my chest over the new mechanic deisgn. What Blizz defines as tuning and fixing mechanics, I actually consider destroying the game.

• That BoD, Immolation aura and DG for instance snapshotted your stats is a "broken mechanic". Yet it was what made the abilities not just press-on-cd abilties due to additional damage gained for timing with meta, demon soul, volc pot, ICDs and whatnot
• Insignia of the Corrupted Mind increasing DG damage with 15-20%. Again a "broken mechanic" but it also added up to the bigger picture
• Mastery also being snapshot, instead of the new meta design which updates your mastery periodically.

So, out of where did you pull this list?
1. BoD, or any other DoTs effects snapshotting your stats is not "broken mechanic", and it is not going anywhere.
2. Spells, giving you damaging auras, like hellfire and immolation aura update their damage every tick.
3. Guardians snapshot stats the moment you summon them. It is also not "broken mechanic" I'm going to test it on beta, but i do not think it is going to change.
4. Meta snapshotting mastery broken because you have to get mastery procs before using meta, and gain nothing from them if they occur while you are in meta. It is counterintuitive.

And really, no matter for how long you can think back in time it has always been the "broken mechanics" that made the game require just a little bit of skill in PvE content.

Broken mechanics is broken mechanics. You know, something has not have to be broken to require skill.

And while we're at the topic, the newly introduced stacking abilities is, while fun, also the biggest nerf to attention based skill... like ever. You literally have 12 seconds to react to these various abilities being off-cooldown before you get punished for not pushing them.

orly? Mashing buttons right as they come of cooldown require more skill than deciding when it is better to use ability in 12 seconds window?

And this is without mentioning the obvious abilities to maintain-and-use amount by a large margin.
Skimming through the forums I can hardly find anyone complaining about the simplification of warlocks, aren't you guys pissed that what they're doing to fix our class is actually destroying it instead?

Having 20 buttons to press do not increase your skill.

Recently I leveled warrior alt.
Fury warriors have exactly 5 (five) damaging buttons to press on single target fight (excluding big cooldowns like death wish/reckl), but their rotation has way more depth then rotation of my demo lock, having 10 buttons to press.
Just one ability - colossus smash - makes warrior dps more skill dependent than all warlocks buttons. As warrior you can build up some rage while it is on cooldown and then dump it with heroic strikes. This will make difference between average and good warriors and adds "depth" to rotation.

As warlock, all you can do is to hit your 10 buttons as they come of cooldown and hope for some impending doom procs. Difference between 50k dps warlock and 45k dps warlock will be not in skill, but in gear, external buffs and rng procs.

[Nivrax]

Problem with "fun flawed mechanics" is that they provide dps boost in tier they are found, and when patch comes, you start being balanced around doing those things. So between removing snapshot and being forced to make 2 gear sets to play a spec, I'll take mechanic change any day.

Clunky mechanics (petswap, masteryset, pre-t13 doomguard) are fine if they let us sit on top of dps meters, but when you are expected to do this things, just to stay in middle... I'm not masochist.

[Inactivity]

So between removing snapshot and being forced to make 2 gear sets to play a spec, I'll take mechanic change any day.

Clunky mechanics (petswap, masteryset, pre-t13 doomguard) are fine if they let us sit on top of dps meters, but when you are expected to do this things, just to stay in middle... I'm not masochist.

I couldn't agree more.

You realize we'll just be re-balanced. No spec is easy to master, and being able to do a lot of this stuff while maintaining raid awareness makes even an "easy"-looking rotation potentially much harder in a real scenario.

I just don't get why the fuck people whine about a smoother class... maybe that's what leads to "the decline and fall"

[Deleted]

Clunky mechanics (petswap, masteryset, pre-t13 doomguard) are fine if they let us sit on top of dps meters, but when you are expected to do this things, just to stay in middle... I'm not masochist.

I completely agree, whilst I COULD play demonology to a high standard if I wished, the effort required is totally disproportionate to the output (not to mention its lack of practical flexibility). Whilst I think that having difficult and involving rotations is good, I draw the line when the level of convolution is twice that of most other specs. For this reason I pretty much left the spec dead alone this tier, mainly raiding destruction which is still pretty convoluted for its output but I find it tolerable.

Solution: make other classes harder to play ^^

[Jessicka]

DoTs are always going to work that way, they work they way they do for good reason.

Mastery snapshotting is just tedious. We didn't actually gain any benefit from it since we were balanced around it, and it was counterintuitive. It's also incredibly easy to do, and performing better than someone who doesn't know about it, isn't exactly something to brag about. It's not really 'fun', and when for fight mechanic purposes you couldn't make use of the mechanic in relation to Guardians, it pretty much rendered the spec questionable for the entire encounter such was the drop off in performance.

There is a pretty thick grey band of subjectivity in this, I don't mind following my procs with Doom, it's a pretty minor DPS increase to do it so it's not a big deal when you can't - however, I can see issues with it relating to stance dancing emerging with the MoP Demo build, so I can see good reason to fix it within the spec. I do however find the Mastery/Haste issue with Guardian's pretty tedious when RNG wont line Power Torrent and ICM up, because it makes such a noticable difference. Mastery with Meta annoyed me for different reasons, it ruined the dynamism of the spec.

Ultimately, it's all down to how much you can get out of it, and how easily it's transferable across encounters. Such 'tricks' should be readily performable, account for enough to notice it when you pull it off, but not be too punishing that the entire rotation of the spec depends on being able to do it.

[Deleted]

I will never, NEVER on earth miss this damn snapshot with mastery. This was one of the worst things of the cata-demolock. With MoP demolock finally becomes a specc i´d like to play on every bossfight, and not just on non-movement/add fights like ultraxion.

Btw: BoD, immolation aura and DG snapshotting with stats isn´t a bug. Thats how every single dot works

[OOMM]

Such 'tricks' should be readily performable, account for enough to notice it when you pull it off, but not be too punishing that the entire rotation of the spec depends on being able to do it.

That's a good way to put it. I think optimizing fury management will replace the tricks that we lose in 5.0. And even if things were to stop snapshotting, we will still want to line up as many things as possible for stacking purposes. Waiting for a trinket in order to Meta+Dark Soul+Potion+Doomguard+Wild Imps+Felstorm seems like something we might end up doing.

[Beyz]

So, out of where did you pull this list?
orly? Mashing buttons right as they come of cooldown require more skill than deciding when it is better to use ability in 12 seconds window?


Having 20 buttons to press do not increase your skill.

Recently I leveled warrior alt.
Fury warriors have exactly 5 (five) damaging buttons to press on single target fight (excluding big cooldowns like death wish/reckl), but their rotation has way more depth then rotation of my demo lock, having 10 buttons to press.
Just one ability - colossus smash - makes warrior dps more skill dependent than all warlocks buttons. As warrior you can build up some rage while it is on cooldown and then dump it with heroic strikes. This will make difference between average and good warriors and adds "depth" to rotation.

As warlock, all you can do is to hit your 10 buttons as they come of cooldown and hope for some impending doom procs. Difference between 50k dps warlock and 45k dps warlock will be not in skill, but in gear, external buffs and rng procs.

Skill have many different branches

There's the ability to keep track on many different things at once, aka multitasking
There's the ability to calculate something on the run, such as when it would be more beneficial to let your Bane of Doom stay off in order to time it with ICDs and not having wasted a GCD on 100% utpime
There's the ability to reaction time
There's the ability to plan 10 steps ahead of your current move
There's the ability of adapting


What i'm trying to say with that is that it obviously requires more skill having more buttons to push.
You can easily track this on sites such as WoL an see as the uptime on Shadowflame varies a lot from a 45k dps to a 50k dps.

----------------------

And it seems that I need to clarify some of the points which I made in OP

Their current intentions is to remove Immolation Aura from our single target rotation

Furthermore the chance of us having to use BoD on an encounter is also reduced greatly since we have to choose whether we want to use BoD or Corruption

And even in the situations where it would be beneficial to delay a BoD to save a GCD it's just going to be way to easy to calculate because our current beta rotation gives us absolutely no challange what so ever.


It's not that having to track ICDs is any hard
It's not that having to track our dots is any hard
It's not that having to track abilities is any hard
And neither is it because having to track our cooldowns is any hard

It's all of them added together that makes it difficult. And given that we only have 1 dot to maintain as demo and 1 ability on a 12 sec timer and in fact also less long term cooldowns to manage, I can't see how it's not going to be a lot easier.