[pvp]It's time to talk about lock's pvp,esp Affi

[Nicola]

But then again, we'd still have our first talent tier healing as well to off set this as well. Also I'm not sure how a healing increase of a base ability should have a place in a tier of CC, it would break the logic. Truth be told though, I'm a PvP noob so if an experienced PvP warlock like you says it wouldn't be OP, then I'll gladly concede that point.

Dark regeneration is pretty much the only valid choice for pvp. 90% of the cases used in combination with a glyphed healthstone which is after BF is slightly less than a 70% heal over 12sec on a 2min cooldown.
Should a 30% mortal coil be used with it, it's about 95% total healing you do, about the same as dark regeneration + healthstone pre-battle fatigue.

Battle fatigue has fucked up a lot of our self healing, yet the healthcosts of our spells are still the same. That's the reason why we are getting a glyph for ember tap and drain life as well.

[xskarma]

Battle fatigue has fucked up a lot of our self healing, yet the healthcosts of our spells are still the same. That's the reason why we are getting a glyph for ember tap and drain life as well.

Aha, I had wondered why they decided to make that Drain Life glyph, but in this light that makes sense. Still feels rather annoying we are forced into using Drain Life just to keep up with punitive health costs. Seems to me a reduction of health costs is in order then, in 5.2.

[villie]

I'd imagine the design intent for the healing on coil was to give it a reason to be chosen over SF. However it seems not to be working judging by the amount of people taking the talent is low and out of those people I would hazard a guess that most of them are taking it because they play with a class in area with a long duration stun so they can avoid dr'ing.

Here lies the problem with the tier, SF is too good in comparison to the other two choices, it does the same job as the others just better, offensive cc/gap creator of coil on a shorter cd and defensive aoe peel like howl without the melee requirement. A buff to the coil healing and a shorter cd would make it more attractive than SF and maybe changing the effect of howl to horror and reduce its duration in pvp would give it that extra zing to pick it over SF.

Sadly tho buffing two abils is harder than nerfing one so it wouldn't surprise me to see a increase to the cd of SF to 45s :-(

[shinewaylee]

Problem with point one is that it goes against the current glyph design, it would just make that glyph mandatory which is what blizz don't want. Maybe pvp power scaling could buff dots against players therefore not affecting pve

Point two would be a nice change but essentially require a complete overhaul of that tiers talents which I just don't think is a realistic thing to ask. Baseline 45s coil could provide what perhaps you mean, then change Mortal coil to a 30 cd same duration as SF which would allow better synergy when playing with a class with a stun we don't want to dr.

Thoughts?

Edit: In retro spec baseline coil cd would have to be larger as why would you take mortal coil if it replaces it, therefore your taking a cc away from yourself in not taking SF, perhaps buffing the healing from 15% to 30% would make it more attractive.

Here are two many must-taken Glyph a lot.Why matter this one? If Pvp power can improve much more dot damage,dks or shadow priest will smile,while affi's dot is inferior to theirs.

[villie]

5.2 is eliminating our mandatory glyphs eg 4embers and shards etc, tho I can see embertap and DL being mandatory in pvp as niberion explained with battle fatigue affecting our self heals".

I didn't mean for a game wide change to pvp power dot scaleing just ment for locks only which I'm sure they could do quite easily. Eg improving the scaling coefficients of our dots with pvp power and this would only affect players to prevent ppl stacking pvp gear in pve for the damage buff. Tho this would be a thin line to tread as when you factor in MG our damage could be far to OP if the scaling was too good or too weak when MG is not up(the problem now).

Personally the above fix maybe too hard to implement and could get out of control with afflictions great int scaling. First step should be to Buff UA dispell protection and then we can see actually whether or not we need the buff to dots because at the moment they are doing shit damage/pressure due to zero risk of hitting dispell every 8s

[Schirmy]

In WotLK, on a target with 30k HP, my UA dispels hit for about 8k, that's about 26.66% of their health. Now, my UA dispels hit for roughly 25k on a target of about 400k, that's a nice 6-7%. UA dispel is so underwhelming and no one thinks twice about dispeling it.

UA should be hitting for 100k.

[pkm]

There should also be another penalty to ua dispels like a stun or long silence for the dispeler and the the one with ua on them. Maybe instead of making the dmg upfront make it a dot that ticks over x amount of seconds and can't be dispelled.

[Nicola]

There should also be another penalty to ua dispels like a stun or long silence for the dispeler and the the one with ua on them. Maybe instead of making the dmg upfront make it a dot that ticks over x amount of seconds and can't be dispelled.

Umm, ua already silences when it's not glyphed.
Honestly, if it was me being the lock dev, I'd either have dispelling ua apply a MS effect, that stacks with other MS for a certain duration, say 15sec, or a 10% manaburn to the dispeller.

5.2 is eliminating our mandatory glyphs eg 4embers and shards etc, tho I can see embertap and DL being mandatory in pvp as niberion explained with battle fatigue affecting our self heals"

Sadly enough for affliction, is drain life pretty pathetic, even with the glyph.
The embertap glyph will be mandatory, because people actually use embertap, but drain life, even pre-battlefatigue people didn't really bother using it.

As affliction, you now normally take a combination of: demonic circle - soul swap - siphon life - healthstone - curse of exhaustion - (soul shards)
In my own opinion,all of this glyphs, minus siphon life, are better than the upcoming drain life glyph for pvp.

[villie]

Mmmmmm yeah very true, further exacerbated by the channel being interrupted and locking out our shadow school. MG interrupt = no DL self heals, DL interrupt = no MG damage. Dammed if we do and Dammed if we don't, nothing says interrupt me like a big blue/green lazor beam :-(

Like the mana burn idea tho coupled with a silence interesting!!!

[Deleted]

My idea for alfi lock are a glyph that make MG into a shadow bolt. I think that can help abit in pvp

[Nicola]

My idea for alfi lock are a glyph that make MG into a shadow bolt. I think that can help abit in pvp

That wouldn't change a thing. We need more damage from dots itself, less from MG.
Now, if you could take a glyph that increases dot damage by say 75% and replaced MG with shadowbolt, then yes.

[villie]

That wouldn't change a thing. We need more damage from dots itself, less from MG.
Now, if you could take a glyph that increases dot damage by say 75% and replaced MG with shadowbolt, then yes.

This would work, but I think it would have to have a PvP only caveat like increases damage by 75% against players only, as I could see pve'rs abusing this as multi Dotting would be insanely strong

[Nicola]

This would work, but I think it would have to have a PvP only caveat like increases damage by 75% against players only, as I could see pve'rs abusing this as multi Dotting would be insanely strong

Yes, I was aware of that, but I don't think making it PvP only is a good solution. In PvE it would be a massive loss to use a glyph like that if dot damage isn't buffed.
And I'm fairly sure there are plenty of people who would want to play again with shadowbolt in PvE.

[villie]

Also been thinking about blood fear, as well we know the main problem with the new proposed ability aside from the stupidly high health cost is lack of control e.g some random pet eating the fear, so how about this:-

"Blood fear: Infuses your targets blood with terror for 1min, if that target melee strikes the warlock it will flee in horror for 4secs. Can be used while stunned/feared etc 30s cd"

Makes the ability more defensive but gives us more control over who it affects back, stops it from dr'ing fear at reduced duration.

Thoughts?

[Nicola]

Hmm, I think it's better than the 5.2 version, but it has the same problem as the 5.2 version, that it doesn't work on ranged, which we have very little defense against now our blanket is getting nerfed as well.
And when thinking about it, it's rather overpowered so it will force people dispel it instantly, unless you mean it only has 1 charge? Because that would make the difference between overpowered as fuck and perhaps balanced, against melee that is.

It's certainly not bad against melee, that's for sure, I would even say it's slightly overpowered against melee because it works during cc and doesn't share a dr with fear. You can easily deny a hard swaps with it
But as I said, it's useless against ranged, and that's a really big let down.

Honestly, I need some time to think about this, but that really is an improvement over the 5.2 blood fear... ( And I'm not saying that because it's almost impossible to make it worse)

[villie]

Yeah ment for it just to have 1 charge, forgot to add that. Did think to begin with the effect could be physical(blood) so un-dispellable but that just immediately felt op. Then I thought being dispellable could work in our favour with the 8s cd, as in healers have to make the choice between this and dots since UA dispell is fuck all risk atm. Suppose is could be changed to the next attack/spell cast on the warlock so it could affect ranged.

The cd would probs need to increase or take away the ability to cast during stuns etc as it would be up every time a Mage deeps you like you said with hard swaps. Tho thinking about it this would actually justify it having a health cost to it, as your negating large incoming damage (shatter/spike-mb/dance etc) for a smaller portion of your health.

If anything it would make locks far less of a melee train target since they just won't bend on the porting out of stuns thing that's been getting lobbey'd for since season 8!

[pokeadott]

1) Massive DoT dmg buff / single target nerf via glyph or w/e. Aff is in an awful spot when it comes to damage delivery atm. Channeling for kills just isn't possible. We're like a Shadow Priest without fiend/spike/death or a Boomkin without Starfall/Surge procs. They have neutered DoTs but can still be effective at bursting something down with other skills. We are stuck with channeling MG after casting a UA and a Haunt, and even then without DS up the damage is trivial to heal through. Give us a better means of dealing single target pressure or allow us to shine like we used to by multidotting.

2) PASSIVE survivability. We are just damage sponges atm. The only caster with worse survivability are ele shaman. We saw this coming, but it still sucks beyond belief to be a squishy warlock.

We're sitting around 6% representation in 3s atm (right next to DKs 6% - ahead of rogues 3%). Considering the nerfs to us (Blood Fear, Spell Lock), the massive buffs to rogues, and the nerfs to mages (helps Warriors/Rogues the most, and kills one of our best comps - ML*) - I am guessing we're going to see locks around the rogue numbers next season (3%ish). I kind of hope that we don't see any buffs before then so we can get the rogue treatment for 5.3 (way overly optimistic, I know).