5.1 Warlock changes

[Grubjuice]

my guess is if Xelnath is done with major mechanical changes to warlocks, until 5.2 all changes will be purely changes to damage coefficients.

The mechanics are going to be more or less what they are.

Tweaking damage i suppose is relatively easy and also both gradable and reversable. Unlike mechanical changes.

[Deleted]

not necessarily ANY sort of nerf. Any change to havoc really depends on what sort of nerf CB recieves.

It could be a pvp only nerf (cannot autocrit against players) or a small global nerf (reduced 10%) or a large global nerf (reduced 50%):
and it also matters how the nerf is compensated (increased incinerate damage, faster CB cast time, CB consumes only one or only two charges of Havoc/Backdraft, increased immolate DoT damage, etc. etc.)

Frankly i would like to see Immolate DoT and Incinerate buffed and chaos botl nerfed. I would accept some more steady damage in compensation for reduced burst. Chaos Bolt+Havoc should be just slightly > 3xIncinerate or 2xConflagrate+1xIncinerate+Havoc

I agree to the point you mentioned immolate.

I disagree completely with increasing immolate and making it a larger portion of our damage, it'll be like a double nerf in pvp if more of our damage comes from dots and our burst is decreased at the same time.

Being a warlock, I stand by Chaosbolt not being overpowered, it being easy to stop/counter and the frequency of its use.

Though I concede that the most vocal QQ comes from people who only see what they want to see, and that's Chaosbolt as a single spell, hitting hard.
They do not take into consideration how easy it is to prevent, nor how long to setup.
They do not notice that other classes can dish the same amt. of damage in the same period of time utilising a spell&instant (combo) which is far harder to stop (read:shatter, starsurge procs, pyro procs, mindspike/mindblast/Dplague/death combos).

They check their combat log and see "Chaosbolt crits you got 170k" and begin to cry.
When they die to a mage who does "120k frostbomb crit, 80k icelance, 120k frostfirebolt" in the space of 2 global cooldowns and while you're CC'd in a deepfreeze or just frozen, you don't here a damage nerf is needed, moreso just mage control.

[Scathbais]

It is just crazy that Xelnath can just make a statement like that (CB nerf incoming) and then give us silence. It's not like he has a day job or anything :-)

Please don't let any perceived pvp imbalance ruin our burst potential/overall damage in PVE.
I hope the nerfs are just pvp related.

Destro is supposed to be a nuke class, please don't give us another dot.

KJ Cunning change is excellent. As are the other changes to destro.

[gez]

what about if CB crit scaling is remove and added into mastery? that way aint gonna oneshot ppl when we pop DS, and i guess that frost mages dmgs will be nerfed too

[mordale]

The half damage / half dot I think for CB would work well, it might suck for PvEr's when it comes to adds... But I think ultimately players will devise new strategies in PvE.

why should PvE players have to deal with the fallout of what is effectively a MINOR PvP issue?
let the PvPers deal with it in the meta, learn to dispel dark soul, if you have a warrior(or are one) reflect it back at the warlock.

[Tya]

this seems like a good place to post this as well, feel free to jump to whatever conclusions you will as a result of this list:

Updated arena ladders class rep %s!

going off this list, i sincerely doubt that warlocks are in need of ANY nerfs, particularly as those nerfs relate to pvp. it's not like that list isn't accurate or anything. . . ohwait. . .

Blizzard don't balance around top-end PvP. Good PvPers don't let CB combos go off. Globaling bad PvPers is easy, and that's why it's being nerfed.

To be fair I can see why they're doing this, it's not fun to just die instantly.

[helheim]

Blizzard don't balance around top-end PvP. Good PvPers don't let CB combos go off. Globaling bad PvPers is easy, and that's why it's being nerfed.

To be fair I can see why they're doing this, it's not fun to just die instantly.

my chaos bolts have never hit a target with resil for more than 180k, ever. instant death from chaos bolt? sounds like a case for myth busters.

[gez]

Blizzard don't balance around top-end PvP. Good PvPers don't let CB combos go off. Globaling bad PvPers is easy, and that's why it's being nerfed.

To be fair I can see why they're doing this, it's not fun to just die instantly.

thats not true, the part of blizz not balacing at end pvp do you remember cata when low rated lock was complaining about being bad? and blizz just said "dear lord look at high end pvp its full of locks locks are getting just nerf", and let be honest doing low/random pvp as a lock was anoying and not fun at all the other part was ok for me.

[Supernex]

I agree to the point you mentioned immolate.

I disagree completely with increasing immolate and making it a larger portion of our damage, it'll be like a double nerf in pvp if more of our damage comes from dots and our burst is decreased at the same time.

Being a warlock, I stand by Chaosbolt not being overpowered, it being easy to stop/counter and the frequency of its use.

Though I concede that the most vocal QQ comes from people who only see what they want to see, and that's Chaosbolt as a single spell, hitting hard.
They do not take into consideration how easy it is to prevent, nor how long to setup.
They do not notice that other classes can dish the same amt. of damage in the same period of time utilising a spell&instant (combo) which is far harder to stop (read:shatter, starsurge procs, pyro procs, mindspike/mindblast/Dplague/death combos).

They check their combat log and see "Chaosbolt crits you got 170k" and begin to cry.
When they die to a mage who does "120k frostbomb crit, 80k icelance, 120k frostfirebolt" in the space of 2 global cooldowns and while you're CC'd in a deepfreeze or just frozen, you don't here a damage nerf is needed, moreso just mage control.

Agreed 100%. I also play Mage & Spriest, (as well as several other classes, just not Hunter or Warrior which both have superior burst to Destro currently), and both classes have just as good, if not better burst than Destro, coupled with the fact that their burst is EASY to setup and repeatable on a much more frequent basis. (And to add insult to injury, they have better control & survivability as well.)

[Deleted]

well we can pull average number as destro (done 97k with ilvl476 on emperor normal), still afflic does better single & multidot, if we have a pve nerf, nerf to CB, and even worst : fix of the havoc shadowburn bug, what are we left with on pve ? play affli ? i'm sad :-(

[gez]

btw does anyone in PTR noted that cata some times doesnt stun ppl? vnm they need to be in the mid of the stuff god so hard to use

[Grubjuice]

cataclysm is not a guaranteed stun, it's a 'back off or you will get stunned' warning.
it's really only most useful when you have been stunned yourself to give yourself about 3 seconds of safety for your partner to rescue you.

[pokeadott]

Agreed 100%. I also play Mage & Spriest, (as well as several other classes, just not Hunter or Warrior which both have superior burst to Destro currently), and both classes have just as good, if not better burst than Destro, coupled with the fact that their burst is EASY to setup and repeatable on a much more frequent basis. (And to add insult to injury, they have better control & survivability as well.)

Yes and no. Sorry, but Destro has the highest single target combo burst of any class in the game atm. It's too good with all cooldowns popped.

However, you're right that 1) it's stupid easy to prevent even with UE, and 2) We hit like wet noodles when DS/Trinket are on CD. Our burst *is* better than other classes once every 2-3 minutes if we can pull it off. It's a little too good. But it's also the only reason locks as a whole are viable.

Reduce the burst CB combos by 15-30%, and buff our every 30 seconds burst ability substantially. I'm open to suggestions on how to do this, but the last thing we need is for CB to get nerfed and incin and/or immo to get buffed as compensation. Really want to see a conflag buff or a larger mechanic change (shadowburn usable above 20% for reduced dmg and a 30sec CD, 1.5 sec cast 50% dmg 50% ember cost CBs, conflag loses its charges gets dmg buff change CD, etc.).

[gez]

not even lol, any melee can jsut walk away from the mid whe the last tick is about to pop and then come back to hit you they miss like what 0.5 sec of dps? i wont trade an ember for a 0.5 sec panic buttom i rather to embertap, w/e cata meet searning pain on my spell book

[Xorn]

My idea would be to nerf the damage coefficients of SB and CB, but then have them apply a 5 second (or so) debuff to the target that increases their damage taken from the next SB or CB by xx%. This way, it lessens the burst of Destro in Arenas, while still maintaining somewhat similar damage in PvE. Because honestly, letting a lock get 1 CB off on you is bad enough, but if you let them get 2 off... you deserve whatever damage you incur.

[Deleted]

It would force you to always pool 4 Embers and chain CBs and SBs in PvE, I'm really not fond of a debuff system.

[Deleted]

Solution is simple:

Don't touch Chaosbolt, have the community that is crying for a change to open their goddamn eyes.

If it's unavoidable and the wave of tears is Tsunami level, make it so all destruction spells scale with critical strike and reduce Chaosbolt's damage.

One thing I fear, is that Chaos will get hit with the nerf, damage will be redistributed and destruction scaling will still be (even more) in the shitter.

[Phoenexis]

Just going to input these small but sincere words: Thank you Xelnath, thank you for everything

[luckydevours]

In my opinion Chaos Bolt is just too clumsy to be used effectively in PvP and PvE. On the other hand its damage is too high if you actually get the spell off. Therefore my solution would be the following:

• Reduce the damage and scaling to 200% of spellpower, down form 225%
• Reduce the casttime to 2.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds
• Let Backdraft no longer affect Chaos Bolt (Pyroclasm)

This would increase the applicability and adjust the burst damage. To avoid even shorter casts and give the spell more consistency in PvE and PvE i would also remove Pyroclasm completly.

[Deleted]

Luckydevours, you'll be reducing its scaling and making it cast quicker?

That will still mean it hits like a noodle outside of Darksoul and hit hard during darksoul (just doing 10-ish% less damage than it is currently) which is still the issue we have on live.

That'll have a negative impact on PvE and PvP in regards to damage output as all you've managed to do is make us hit for less and kept the availability of the spell the same (with a slightly faster cast-time).

If you reduce the damage, you'll need to increase the damage elsewhere, as destruction's dps is not constrained to cast-times, but resources, having a resource dump ability nerfed and compensating it by reducing its cast time will net a DPS loss.

Destruction already "suffers" from having worse scaling than Demonology and Affliction and albeit excels on some encounters due to a currently 'bugged' mechanic (havoc & Shadowburn) all you've succeeded in doing is exacerbating that problem.