UVLS nosedives come 5.4 for demo

[Seezer]

With the change to the RPPM system, UVLS took a massive nosedive for demo. Doing a ToT run, I had extremely low uptime with this bastard. Good news in that we can ditch it, or for people with RNG issues, but Blizz needs to get rid of this RPPM system.

[Zevoa]

WTB return to ICD for all proc trinkets.

Getting 'lucky' should not be an overwhelming factor in my effectiveness as a DPS.

[Deleted]

id like to know what your definition of extremely low uptime is, in any case it will still be beneficial to us and a viable choice for us(maybe not as competative), not as beneficial as on live ofc, but even in 5.4 it will still be doing what its been doing for us on live which is to help us generate more wild imps and allow us to focus more on haste and mastery and much less on crit altho in 5.4 some ppl will prolly switch it out and go for a more heavy crit build instead, im sure there will be some proper testing about UVLS' effectiveness compared to various builds by the time 5.4 comes out or after its out. i wanted to test it out on the ptr but the servers were down most of the day so i couldnt, so i cant really make a good estimate but in any case, ill still be using it for progression coz a heavy crit build really isnt an option for me, when i switch back and forth between demo and afflic frequently, so uvls will be more or less the only option for me, unless i want to reforge/regem/regear all the time.

i do agree with nephrenka tho, with the rppm sysyem so much relies on luck, if you get the right proc at the right time and your dps skyrockets, it has nothing to do with skills, its pure luck. the return of ICD based trinkets would be very much appreciated, currently dps is about luck and less about "skill" which is bad in every way.

[crysilaero]

RPPM sucks hard. A very bad and frustrating design. Too bad blizz don't listen to their players.

[Zevoa]

i do agree with nephrenka tho, with the rppm sysyem so much relies on luck, if you get the right proc at the right time and your dps skyrockets, it has nothing to do with skills, its pure luck. the return of ICD based trinkets would be very much appreciated, currently dps is about luck and less about "skill" which is bad in every way.

An example.

We have two 549+ ilvl Warlocks in our 10man guild.

Phase 1 Heroic Lei Shen, one Warlock gets proc at pull and the other doesn't. End of phase 1, there is a 70k+ DPS disparity between the two players.

[Deleted]

Well we are getting some ICD trinket in 5.4 and a blue said there will be on-use trinkets as well, though currently on PTR there aren't any.

UVLS being nerfed significantly was not unexpected IMO.

[Seezer]

id like to know what your definition of extremely low uptime is, in any case it will still be beneficial to us and a viable choice for us(maybe not as competative), not as beneficial as on live ofc, but even in 5.4 it will still be doing what its been doing for us on live which is to help us generate more wild imps and allow us to focus more on haste and mastery and much less on crit altho in 5.4 some ppl will prolly switch it out and go for a more heavy crit build instead, im sure there will be some proper testing about UVLS' effectiveness compared to various builds by the time 5.4 comes out or after its out. i wanted to test it out on the ptr but the servers were down most of the day so i couldnt, so i cant really make a good estimate but in any case, ill still be using it for progression coz a heavy crit build really isnt an option for me, when i switch back and forth between demo and afflic frequently, so uvls will be more or less the only option for me, unless i want to reforge/regem/regear all the time.

i do agree with nephrenka tho, with the rppm sysyem so much relies on luck, if you get the right proc at the right time and your dps skyrockets, it has nothing to do with skills, its pure luck. the return of ICD based trinkets would be very much appreciated, currently dps is about luck and less about "skill" which is bad in every way.

2-3%. That's extremely low uptime.

[Deleted]

An example.

We have two 549+ ilvl Warlocks in our 10man guild.

Phase 1 Heroic Lei Shen, one Warlock gets proc at pull and the other doesn't. End of phase 1, there is a 70k+ DPS disparity between the two players.

That is a bit extreme...

[PickleballAce]

Have to admit I wouldn't be sad to see UVLS go, as long as Demo is good place otherwise.

[Alarinth]

That is a bit extreme...

Sadly, it isn't an exaggeration. In my guild, me and another warlock usually come out within a 5% deviation. This time, it went as far as a 33% difference, due to only UVLS at the right times. I'm speaking of Twin Consorts here, where the RNG of uvls can be retardedly good if you get it at the right times.

[Cebel]

Ive been saying for weeks that they should just cut the failed experiment that is RPPM and go back to ICD... Just because something is random does not make it fun, or engaging. It makes attempts on bosses during progression vary an enormous amount based on the raids RNG with trinkets, not to mention it makes having reliable dps difficult, and on top of that if you get extremely good rng it makes your damage absolutely insane and nearly game breaking.

Blizzard complains about how RPPM trinkets all procing at the start is literally breaking the game... well heres a protip: GET RID OF THEM.

Luckily next tier we only have 1 RPPM trinket as best in slot ( Alpha and Omega ) and it appears to have a relatively low "CD" as blizzard calls it.

[Biomega]

If the differences were small, it would be acceptable. It could possibly even be fun, forcing more reactive gameplay. However, the differences are not small at all - opportune procs both in terms of timing and amount have a HUGE impact on damage. This is especially true for DoT classes, and even more so for Demo Warlocks, due to the importance of Doom. The 70k DPS that were mentioned are not an exaggeration by any means. I've seen the same thing on hc LS - the difference between procs and no procs is opening on 500k or opening on 250k. That is simply way too much, and has an impact even way beyond the opener just because it's such a silly amount of damage.

I'm not sure ICD is a perfect system either, but at least it's fairly consistent. You sometimes didn't get procs for a while, but that was fairly rare. You could plan around it, organize your skills and cooldowns. Now you just mash buttons and hope that RNG loves you. That isn't "reactive gameplay", it's a lottery. You do the same thing you did before, except you refresh your DoT once when it procs; how novel and exciting! With ICD you could actually justify delaying your abilities - you knew it was going to proc, if not now, then in 5s or 10s from now. Doing that with RPPM is impossible, because you could be waiting a minute or longer.

But I personally think RPPM is here to stay. It has advantages for Blizzard and its demographic. Not only do sub-par people get their time in the sun when stars align, but gaming in general is shifting away from strategic planning and more towards "press X when it lights up" carnival games. Having lots of "reactive" elements makes fights feel more fluid and dynamic, emphasizing dexterity over foresight. The average gamer of this generation doesn't like to think too much, they like to pull triggers.

[Deleted]

Should just change it so that, when a trinket procs, it starts a 30 second cd. But on each proc it chooses sometime between the 30 seconds and a minute to proc at. This is so that once the cd expires no matter what you do you cant make it proc faster than intended due to attacks. But still adds an element of randomness and reactivity to it. To simpifiy it a bit, all trinkets have that base 30 second icd. But on each proc it chooses when it can proc next, be it 31 seconds, 42 or 59 seconds. Once that timer is exceeded almost guaranteed to proc

One minute max and 30 sec minimum used as examples ofc.

[Count Zero]

I think the solution should be to make trinkets less powerful, than to go back only to ICD and on-use. As a whole I do prefer consistency and reliability, but that's with regard to not missing and my ability to take damage.

I do think it's of course completely debatable and up to the individual, but I think having to watch for and react to procs is more compelling than pre-planning / knowing exactly when they'll happen. I don't think either requires particularly more or less "skill" than the other, particularly when both are tracked with addons.

[Deleted]

Well if the RPPM on front page are true, they are quite a bit less powerful than our current trinkets (that also will be nerfed). The 105 ICD on 20s proc is also significantly lower uptime than we currently have.

[Seezer]

sickburnblizz EA glyph GONE!

[Deleted]

2-3%. That's extremely low uptime.

yeah, i finally managed to get on the ptr to do some testing with it, and it seems to be quite low, im sitting at 2-4% uptime myself and im usually on 5-6% on live.

- - - Updated - - -

An example.

We have two 549+ ilvl Warlocks in our 10man guild.

Phase 1 Heroic Lei Shen, one Warlock gets proc at pull and the other doesn't. End of phase 1, there is a 70k+ DPS disparity between the two players.

or get UVLS proc during ball lightning /drool

- - - Updated - - -

i do however still seem to get most of my UVLS procs on pull but that is on a boss dummy, so i dont know if there is any differences between that and an actual boss pull.

[Biomega]

Procs on pull depend on the time passed since the last proc. If you take a break between pulls, the chance for a proc increases; if you wait long enough, it gets very close to 100%. That's something they will be addressing in 5.4, by the way. Still - in either incarnation the system allows for RNG. On-pull DPS matters a lot to be sure (which is why Blizzard is doing something about it, it matters too much atm), but there's plenty of RNG left during the fight. Having UVLS-Doom fall off, for example, is very bad. Having multiple UVLS-Dooms ticking is very good (Animus, Council). The DPS differences between having procs and not having them is huge; too huge, you might say. Part of it definitely has to do with how disproportionately powerful UVLS is for Demo locks, but I see significant DPS differences even outside of that, just from getting BotH procs at opportune times, e.g. with high fury and lots of MC procs, or during DS.

The R in RPPM might just as well stand for "random", because that's what this game has become. Yes, statistically things even out that's totally true - people just seem to have forgotten that you don't do 10.000 boss pulls during a tier. If you kill a boss 20 times, you could wipe 5 times each try (which is highly uncommon for farm content) and still only get to a measly 100 attempts. That's well, well, WELL within statistical variance, especially for a proc like UVLS with its low uptime. With ICD, this problem was far less prevalent; your variance was usually a mere few seconds around the ICD, well enough to plan your abilities around. With on-use, even that disappeared.

I'd very much like to hear if someone who's doing heroic raiding is actually happy with RPPM. So far the responses I've gotten have been overwhelmingly negative in the top percentile of raiders, mellowing out and even swinging into positives here and there the lower you go on the "skill curve". To me that is a clear indicator that this entire system has been conceived to bias the perception of combat results towards a more "casual" approach, i.e. one that doesn't involve a lot of math, but does involve a lot of "HELL YEAH!". If that is so, it's not going to go away anytime soon, as I think it's pretty clear where the majority of subscribers are on the curve.

I guess UVLS is special in that it's so disproportionately powerful. The effects and ramifications of RPPM are so much more evident with a proc as powerful as UVLS. Current data suggests that despite all the tuning in 5.4, UVLS is likely to remain BiS for Demo locks. That means that for the rest of this expansion, we'll be stuck in Randomland, jerking back and forth from one end of the bell curve to the other. Oh joy.

[Deleted]

well, you'd still be stuck in randomland either way coz they arent removing the rppm, that just give us more choices between on-use(apparently), icd and rppm trinkets. but with that said, i dont think UVLS will be BiS the rest of the expac, i can certainly see a heavy crit build along with 2 other trinkets do what UVLS did for demo.

[Deleted]

Current data suggests that despite all the tuning in 5.4, UVLS is likely to remain BiS for Demo locks.

I would love to see that data, as far as I know UVLS will be dropped rather quickly with all the changes to RPPM.

Overall I think RPPM was bad in 5.3 and with the current changes looks absolutely horrible for SoO. It can be ''fun'' to get great DPS from being lucky with trinkets and then feeling good about it, if you don't really know what you're doing. Pulling a boss hundreds of times, like you do in hc progress, and then having your success fluctuate severely based on nothing but luck, is not something I look forward to at all.

On the other hand, reducing the importance of trinkets by reducing uptime is a good change IMO. Having procs influence our damage output by this much has just gone too far. UVLS is an outlying example of that.