Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Teye]

Yeah, Fel Flame is a very small dps increase for Demonology when using Fel Flame in place of Shadow Bolt. Blizzard needs to address this, hopefully with something other than a Fel Flame nerf.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 09:56 AM ----------

Quoting myself to add, that I just realised the modifier I have in mind is most likely Mastery, which would be quite tricky to balance probably. So might not be as easy as I thought.

It is modified by Mastery, but its also modified by Demonology's Mastery. What really need to happen is a 10% buff to Incinerate to compensate for RoF nerf, and a small 3 or 4% buff to Shadow Bolt to keep Fel Flame from replacing it. They'd likely nerf us somewhere else, but with the number of nerfs we've already seen this week, I'd hope they wouldn't.


Small note on a bug: MF is still extending the graphical range of Hellfire and Immo Aura, but not the effects themselves.

Edit: After further testing, it appears MF isn't working for Immo Aura or Hellfire when the effect is active on the PTR. Tested and confirmed that its still working for SoC.

[Deleted]

the soul leech nerf and gateway nerf will make getting green fire a living hell for people who dont have it yet.

the soul leech nerf is annoying, but the whole point of using the gateway on the green fire quests was to dump your threat, so that the boss would focus on your pit lord, with the change to the gateway, instead of lasting 15 secs, the debuff AND threat dump lasts for 60 secs, meaning more pew pew and less time flying back and forth between gateways.

[xskarma]

It is modified by Mastery, but its also modified by Demonology's Mastery. What really need to happen is a 10% buff to Incinerate to compensate for RoF nerf, and a small 3 or 4% buff to Shadow Bolt to keep Fel Flame from replacing it. They'd likely nerf us somewhere else, but with the number of nerfs we've already seen this week, I'd hope they wouldn't.

Well numbers is the last thing they do, unless we start using Fel Flame everywhere en masse on the PTR, then they'll likely make changes before, so they get good data. Kinda annoying situation to be in. If we don't abuse this powerful Fel Flame on the PTR they won't see it's too powerful, but it will stand in the way of us actually testing how well the talents are doing, since our rotations are screwed up. This might be a case where I hope Blizz does a pass over our numbers first, so we can test like we should.

[Elise the Seeker]

the soul leech nerf and gateway nerf will make getting green fire a living hell for people who dont have it yet.

Omg, That's so true. Just realized that. I'm happy I got it already or I would be so pissed.

[Hexotic]

the soul leech nerf is annoying, but the whole point of using the gateway on the green fire quests was to dump your threat, so that the boss would focus on your pit lord, with the change to the gateway, instead of lasting 15 secs, the debuff AND threat dump lasts for 60 secs, meaning more pew pew and less time flying back and forth between gateways.

the debuff is what does it, but my issue is that when imps come out, with fresh aggro, you cant re reset it on them lol.

All in all these nerfs make it even harder for us to solo stuff. Like war bringers in particular...

[Deleted]

Gateway nerf-now that I didnt expect after the recent nerfs, fml

[Deleted]

the debuff is what does it, but my issue is that when imps come out, with fresh aggro, you cant re reset it on them lol.

What do you mean, "fresh aggro"?
When you have the gateway debuff, whatever dmg you're doing to any target, you'll have 0 'aggro point' towards them. Any action you do continues to build up threat, but you'll only get that threat when the debuff fades from you.
That doesn't mean the imps won't target you when they spawn, because your pet won't have any aggro at first too, so they'll target you for sure. But there will be no need to reset it again as long as you have the debuff.

If you only use the gateway for aggro management, the 15s->60s change is a buff, not a nerf (Assuming it'll work the same way as now with just a longer debuff).

[Teye]

Gateway debuff is mechanically the same as Fade. That might clear it up for a few people.

[Jessicka]

Yeah, Fel Flame is a very small dps increase for Demonology when using Fel Flame in place of Shadow Bolt. Blizzard needs to address this, hopefully with something other than a Fel Flame nerf.

They'll likely bump the mana cost back up, and pull the buff back to 10% to keep the DPET the same as Shadow Bolt but rely on the mana cost to keep it out of the basic rotation, similarly to how we had things pre-5.2. The idea was to buff it as much as they can before it gets into the single target rotation - and that's about as far as they can go since it was so marginal to begin with.

Gateway debuff is mechanically the same as Fade. That might clear it up for a few people.

Possibly not. To explain that, Fade withdraws you from the boss's threat considerations for it's duration, but does not remove threat, or stop you generating further threat during that time. Once the duration is up, you're back where you should be on the threat table.

[Deleted]

the soul leech nerf and gateway nerf will make getting green fire a living hell for people who dont have it yet.

Why?

I did green fire without using either gateway or soul leech iirc, should be perfectly doable, hell - it'll be way easier if anything due to ilevel inflation.

[Grizelda]

Lol pre pull doomguards mastery meta gem, heroic firelands tank necks, heroic agility dragon soul staves.. and tanks who fucked up timers and pulled while you still had your full mastery set on plus pet twisting.. good times. Interestingly enough by the end I enjoyed the absurdity of it sometimes.

This mage me laugh.

"It goes 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 pull dumb ass! Not 10, 7, LOL pull!"

[luckydevours]

May i mention that shadowpriests and balance druids got a 60% armor buff attached to Shadowform and Moonkin Form to compensate the removal of passive damage reduction and warlocks got ... what, baseline Howl of Terror?? Combine this with KjC nerf, gateway nerf and Fel Flame change and you can just remove affliction warlocks from arenas again ...

[Deleted]

Why?

I did green fire without using either gateway or soul leech iirc, should be perfectly doable, hell - it'll be way easier if anything due to ilevel inflation.

yea true I dont needed it too and did it with 499 ilvl I now have 530 and I think it would be very easy also with 5.4 even lfr guys will have about 530 I guess


I hope they will add some function for Fel Flame and destro rotation because now after RoF nerf single target rota would be very very boring!

maybe some kind of procc chance with incinerate so that your next fel flame is 100% crit or sth..

yea and please 25% longer cast time on incin with 25% dmg boost... I hate to have this spell below GCD it feels so wrong.... (and haste still being a good stat)

[Grizelda]

warlocks are hitting zero points where they hit scaling walls as their base cast times are long enough to stack haste for days

I don't know that this is true for Destro. Particularly after we lose RoF.

[saucywench]

Meanwhile hunters can still DPS while moving, come on blizz please tell me thats a tooltip error

Last time I checked hunters weren't spell casters. If you want to move while dpsing pick a spec that does so.

[Grizelda]

The obvious fix is to give +50% damage to Incinerate.

Really, I wouldn't mind if they even increased the cast time while increasing its damage. Haste would be a little better for us. Still a net increase in DPET.

[Brusalk]

I don't know that this is true for Destro. Particularly after we lose RoF.

Unless they increase Incinerate's base cast time, with the removal of RoF we'll be back to stacking Mastery as before. Without RoF to boost haste's value, Destro hits a brick wall with haste very quickly.

[Humungo]

I haven't played in 2 months time, I've been waiting for a fix to make things fun, but this seems like they are just Cleaving all the fun out, I DO NOT IN ANY DAMN WAY WANT ANOTHER FUCKING BUTTON TO KEEP TRACK OF via a 90 talent. If shit doesn't look good soon I'm letting my time run out.

[Vistire]

Unless they increase Incinerate's base cast time, with the removal of RoF we'll be back to stacking Mastery as before. Without RoF to boost haste's value, Destro hits a brick wall with haste very quickly.

I was doing testing with rof on ptr earlier today and it would seem that rof has a 25% chance to grant an emberbit after the first tick. The first tick never grants a bit regardless of how many things it is hitting. At one point I gathered about 15 things and with nothing but rof spam I got 3 embers total. From what I can tell this will hinder our aoe a bit.

[Grizelda]

Unless they increase Incinerate's base cast time, with the removal of RoF we'll be back to stacking Mastery as before. Without RoF to boost haste's value, Destro hits a brick wall with haste very quickly.

Even more of a shame due to the new proc system rewarding haste.

We scale worse with Bloodlust.

Legendary meta is crap for us. So many reasons to do this.