Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Schmeebs]

We can still hope they adjust numbers a little more, maybe haste scaling or an Incinerate buff of some sort.

We have a week. Not optimistic but I was honestly not expecting anything at this point so who knows.

[MrHappy]

1) CB Buff is no where near enough. Based on my most recent HIQon parse, CB was 29% of my total dmg (sup spec, mastery build). Let's round that up to 30%. A 15% buff nets me a 4.5% overall dmg buff. Now let's remember that thanks to the RoF nerf, I'm also casting less CBs. Let's be generous and say that I'm casting 20% less CB's than Live. That lowers the net dps gain to 3.6%. Some very very back of the envelope guesstimating, but that CB buff is nothing short of 'meh' and still leaves well behind the pack.

2) The Devs need to address Backdraft/Metagem/Destro 1 sec GCD situation (and Lust/Zerking if you wanna extend things). The combination of those absolutely kills haste scaling for us. We already have a portion of our damage unaffected by a scaling stat (pets and mastery), we shouldn't be saddled with abysmal haste scaling on top of it.

3) Related -I know they want to minimize our 'on the pull' stuff, but I'm also worried about our opener dps now that we don't have multiple haste-boosted RoF's feeding us with embers. I'm a troll lock still saddled with the Shadowpan trinket, so this is more of an issue for me, but on Live I can pump out a good amount of chaosbolts on openers thanks to RoF embers. More of a frustration thing I guess unless there are a lot of 'hard open' fights in SoO. But is sucks being the 'burst' spec and having by far the worst burst dps of all 3.

yea having 0.6sec cast time on incinerates serves no purpose if you are waitin on GCD's....>.> my toon feels like he is coughing when casting



EDIT: I really wanted to roll destro in 5.4 with all that lovely Mastery gear (most of em Mastery Crit too) but i feel like i have to roll 2pc 2pc demo with another Haste Mastery build...sigh

[Hellfury]

UVLS is procing consistently at the start @ Iron Juggernaut HC testing.

But it could be a product of the scalling since the trinket its 555. But Iam suspicious since they said no mater the ilevel UVLS like trinkets wouldnt proc at start so I dont know

[Grizelda]

Y'all should be happy that we bitch about Destro so much. Hopefully it distracts them from how OP Affliction is going to be.

[Deleted]

All those who can raid hm on ptr please raid as destro & send the parses to lore/ghostcrawler, this is our chance to have the destro dps analyzed by Blizzard.
See http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...r-logs-needed/

- - - Updated - - -

I dont understand why they are using chaos bolt to tune. Its the first thing they nerf when people complain about PvP issues and warlocks so why buff it now when your just inviting the same cycle to continue of buff/nerf. I suspect they are too close to the release of the patch and we are getting a bandaid again. Hopefully enough testing on the PTR will yield a bit more.

Indeed but do note that this is a reversal for many classes e.g. Kill Command buffed, ice lance buffed and so forth.
Maybe Blizzard assumes the increased base resilience (65%->72% if memory serves) is enough to give some leeway for hard hitting abilities.

[Vinavi]

I posted this in the thread, but I think it needs to be said here too.

A lot of really good points made in this thread about improving Destro QoL and performance, but a little too much sifting through "Blizz ignores feedback." I've read enough blue posts over the years to understand that they deliberately withhold information from the players regarding how a spec is supposed to work (because just telling them ruins the fun of figuring it out yourself, and makes people worse at the game because they don't do their own theorycrafting).

I'm not really a mod or anything, but I would ask that feedback remain constructive.

Looking at the set bonuses and trinkets this go around, I think we might see more results maximizing our ember regen during DS and the set bonus crit buffs, so that when those uber trinkets DO proc, we can unload and make the most of them. It feels like the heavy crit-stacking, combined with the fact that we get more embers from crits, means haste/crit is intended to be our "spirit," if you will, while Mastery/int becomes our throughput stat. Assuming this is the case, it encourages smarter playing of Destro during filler casting (as opposed to RAWR incinerate), and possibly flipping the backdraft philosophy to only use for CB in order to mitigate the short window of casting time.

[Destroxo]

I'm going to get off the topic off Destro since I've basically totally switched and fallen in love for Demo's skillcap/playstyle now.

Has anyone had a chance to test Demo much in PTR, I am just going to say stuff it with the UVLS because due to the changes it will be way too RNG for my liking.

1) I've based my BiS list off Hit 15%>Haste(8100)>Mastery>Crit>Haste (Haste given the lowest priority after 8100)
In my mind I think this would be the best set up...but Im not sure if I would want to go this build or the one below.

2) Hit 15%>Haste(Highest haste cap I can manage)>Mastery>Crit
If I was running 4 set demo this would also increase the chances/uptime of the 2 and 4 set peices as long as more Imp Swarms. It would also meld nicer with an offspec affliction (sigh...hate affliction but progression calls)

Does anyone have any stats on the above questions? I would be running Bindings/KTT with both builds most likely, along with GoSac for Build 1.

[Hellfury]

Y'all should be happy that we bitch about Destro so much. Hopefully it distracts them from how OP Affliction is going to be.

Please tell me, Aff only shines if the fight has more than 1 target where they leave for a considerate amount of time and they are further apart, if they are closer, DK, Rogues and warriors destroy aff with cleave.

Single target seems ok but isnt OP like you say.

AoE with MF its decent but not OP, I see warriors Bladestorming destroying everyone mostly because of the deep wounds buff that its insane.

[Woz]

Aff single target is in a very strong place right now. Easily able to break 900k on an opener with Lust and sustain 300k (or more) completely single target running 9778 Haste (or at least lowest I could get towards it) then rest into Mastery (which ended up being somewhere around the 18-19k marker in raid.

I wouldn't say it's OP but it's certainly in a good spot right now.

[Cebel]

Please tell me, Aff only shines if the fight has more than 1 target where they leave for a considerate amount of time and they are further apart, if they are closer, DK, Rogues and warriors destroy aff with cleave.

Single target seems ok but isnt OP like you say.

AoE with MF its decent but not OP, I see warriors Bladestorming destroying everyone mostly because of the deep wounds buff that its insane.

clearly didnt see heroic iron juggernaut dmg today..... aff locks are amazing single target... we're just even better with multi-dotting. lol.

[cabana]

updated trinket

[Deleted]

Yeah BBoY looks good now.

About Affliction, personally our warlocks were easily top damage on Juggernaut (1 target) and also top damage on Immerseus heroic-only adds. I'm talking 20-30% ahead of all the other DPS. Rogues came second, and everyone else behind. On top of that Soulburn + glyph Curse of Exhaustion is really good there.

[Bonkura]

you're not supposed to talk about this.

[Deleted]

Wich of the 3 specs will be the better one in 5.4?

[cabana]

Affliction is currently the best spec on PTR for lock. Destro will also be amazing for 4 or 5 fights.

[Lionor]

I agree with Brusalk in the theory behind MF for destro. After the RoF change something needs to give. That and/or a fix relating to aoe sustainability of F&B use on say 4-6 targets (which is a very common grouping size).

My suggestions for destro are pretty simple but would fix quite a bit.
*Incin, conflag, FF (dest only) buffed 10% to match immolate
*Conflag's recharge reduced by haste rating
*Backdraft minor glyph trading 30% haste for 30% crit to incinerate
*Ember consumers buffed about 30%

Having seen the direction they went with the buff (hey at least the noticed destro's underperformance) can someone twitter them with the above idea?

I think so far it's the most well rounded idea and goes a long way towards fixing our scaling issues.

I would only add a point to buff ember generation on crits ONLY which would give us some nice crit scaling (otherwise not so useful) plus play nicely with the re-designed backdraft.

[Chrispotter]

Nevermind

[Deleted]

Having seen the direction they went with the buff (hey at least the noticed destro's underperformance) can someone twitter them with the above idea?

I think so far it's the most well rounded idea and goes a long way towards fixing our scaling issues.

I would only add a point to buff ember generation on crits ONLY which would give us some nice crit scaling (otherwise not so useful) plus play nicely with the re-designed backdraft.

the problem with those ideas is that they also buff incinerate and conflag, which in turn buffs destro's aoe which isnt a problem. with those ideas, FnB needs a nerf and ember generation needs a buff still so aoe on 4-6 doesnt feel so clunky, something that could easily be done by adding old RoF ember generation on 4+ adds and its current on less than that.

[Lionor]

the problem with those ideas is that they also buff incinerate and conflag, which in turn buffs destro's aoe which isnt a problem. with those ideas, FnB needs a nerf and ember generation needs a buff still so aoe on 4-6 doesnt feel so clunky, something that could easily be done by adding old RoF ember generation on 4+ adds and its current on less than that.

That is a valid concern indeed. Perhaps then focus only around the two "key" points:

*Conflag's recharge reduced by haste rating
*Backdraft minor glyph trading 30% haste for 30% crit to incinerate

And tune fillers/CB accordingly? The point is to fix/improve our scaling issues (primarily with haste).

[Deleted]

idd, haste scaling will be awful for destro.