Warlock Discussion with Senior Technical Game Designer Kris Zierhut.

[Count Zero]

I think maybe instead of beating this snapshotting discussion into the ground (since absolutely nothing of worth is coming of it) we could discuss options to keep Afflic interesting / engaging in the absence of snapshotting. I think if we can, as a community, arrive either at a suitable alternative or agree that there is little / nothing that could be as engaging, then we can begin to discuss whether snapshotting is mandatory (and then discuss options for how to keep it in but get off the multi-dot nerf/adjustment rollercoaster).

I think we can all agree that if you literally took Afflic as is and just removed snapshotting, it's boring. It's a fresh xpac, beta hasn't even started, and now is the time to shape the development of snapshotting's replacement, rather than arguing endlessly and pointlessly about the strengths and weaknesses of snapshotting.

[kardacz]

You mean back when you had to have a Demo lock in your raid in order for you to be OP as Affliction?

:-P

For someone who has been on both sides of this, yeah why not :]

To me the fact that a class brought something unique to the raid was a good thing (not talking about excessive class stacking), even if you had to sacrifice your own dps. This whole "bring the player not the class" thing sounds good on paper, but it's just a good excuse for overall homogenization of the game.

I think maybe instead of beating this snapshotting discussion into the ground (since absolutely nothing of worth is coming of it) we could discuss options to keep Afflic interesting / engaging in the absence of snapshotting. I think if we can, as a community, arrive either at a suitable alternative or agree that there is little / nothing that could be as engaging, then we can begin to discuss whether snapshotting is mandatory (and then discuss options for how to keep it in but get off the multi-dot nerf/adjustment rollercoaster).

I think we can all agree that if you literally took Afflic as is and just removed snapshotting, it's boring. It's a fresh xpac, beta hasn't even started, and now is the time to shape the development of snapshotting's replacement, rather than arguing endlessly and pointlessly about the strengths and weaknesses of snapshotting.

See the problem is that you can't have it both ways.
The old playstyles revolved around not having any burst and required a significant ramp up time before we could do reasonable damage. And everyone that wanted to play this spec had to accept that.

They went into a different direction in MoP and considering their recent comments they won't revamp the classes yet again. They still want to keep Pandemic in and give it to all classes so as cool as reminising old times is the old playstyle won't come back. Those MG/DS nerfs and making dots tick for more then they used to for PvP purposes combined with one global dots is in my opinion the main problem. Yes it's nice and convinient but there's no effort in it whatsoever. They could remove Soulburn: Soul Swap and make us manually apply dots once again, but I'm not sure how it would work out with Pandemic still around.
Besides without snapshotting Haunt loses it's value as well if you won't need to save it for your most powerful dots and just becomes a periodic dps boost based on a RNG source. I was never a fan of a resource that was generated by a low % rate proc, but at least in the past it was used for additional bonus abilites like instant Soul Fire and not for stuff that was a part of the rotation.

This new talent that basically changes Haunt into a ghetto Improved Soul Fire seems nice, but like I said since it's a soulburn effect and Haunt still costs a shard there's no way to make it a valid sollution since you won't be able to use it as a permanent part of the rotation without a more reliable way of genereting shards.

[Count Zero]

See the problem is that you can't have it both ways.

I'm not real sure what you're getting at with this. They've said snapshotting is on the way out. I'm trying to get us to shape the direction of Afflic in the absence of something they said they're removing. We could spend all our time debating about something that's getting removed, or we can try to make sure the community has a say in what replaces it. I've been part of the mmo-c Warlock community for years and I know that if nothing else we let ourselves tunnel-vision onto pointless arguments.

It doesn't matter how good or bad or compelling or boring snapshotting is, because it's going away. We can beat that dead horse or we can help them figure out which new horse to put in the race. Maybe we can revisit the discussion on snapshotting if we as a collective have exhausted the possibilities on what could replace it and keep Afflic engaging and competitive but not OP in various different types of fights (single target, cleave / multi-dot, aoe), but we haven't even begun to do that.

I agree SB: Haunt seems pretty clunky on paper, but in reality I don't think making sure you have two shards banked at every 30-second interval will be all that rough. I'm just wondering if they can tie it to something that doesn't already cost a shard, but I guess maximizing SB: Haunt uptime is their current way of keeping some complexity in the rotation beyond "keep Haunt up during procs / CDs, don't cap out on shards".

[deviantcultist]

we could discuss options to keep Afflic interesting / engaging in the absence of snapshotting

That's the spirit.

[Baconeggcheese]

we could discuss options to keep Afflic interesting / engaging in the absence of snapshotting.

Get out.
. . . . .

[Grizelda]

WTB new tier of talents:

Snapshotting-Mechanic Bugging
or
Gear swapping on pull-O.P Trinket
or
Stat Stacking-Encounter Cheesing

[Count Zero]

Get out.
. . . . .

Would you rather we sit here and argue about something they said they're taking away ? I don't care if they take it out or leave it in, but since they're taking it out I'd rather we as a community shape what goes in its place

[Jessicka]

WTB new tier of talents:

Snapshotting-Mechanic Bugging
or
Gear swapping on pull-O.P Trinket
or
Stat Stacking-Encounter Cheesing

The irony of having spent an entire expansion bitching about being balanced around not-entirely-intuitive mechanics, then bitching about having another removed isn't lost on me either.

Would you rather we sit here and argue about something they said they're taking away ? I don't care if they take it out or leave it in, but since they're taking it out I'd rather we as a community shape what goes in its place

The obvious answer lies in the Chaotic Resources talent, that should reward better management of resources. It does this for Affliction, it does the opposite for the other two specs - I think that odd.

[Werst]

First accept the loss of meta gem slot going forward means no more LMG procs to balance around (WoD). Accept dot specs are getting pandemic as a QoL if nothing else. Accept the bottom skillcap/competency is probably going to be easier. I'm not sure if all the specs/classes are supposed to be easier but my guess is the devs are looking to do more specs like dest/mages. We just need to find a non RNG driven way to make the specs less boring to play at a high level. By non RNG I mean the way RPPM procs can make/break a parse even though your rotation/priority doesn't actually change much, just your damage numbers.

Right now if you ignore damage and just look at say simc's "time spent" side of the coin I feel like we spend too much time casting fillers and not enough casting dots. If you cut dot duration 20-25% while bumping damage by the same amount that would be a bit more attention to dot detail and less time leaning on the MG button. It would be less of deal single target but vs 3x targets or so you would get pretty busy. Obviously I could see taking agony down to a 5x max stack or no stacking to compensate. Makes haunt use a tighter window to execute as well.

For me drain soul and MG feel too similar. You could literally change MG to do what DS does in sub 20% range and nothing would change. That means DS is basically complexity for the sake of complexity with the execution of the rotation feeling the same. Destro starts shadowburning, demo gets to spam MC (a proc limited spell), aff just channels a different colored beam. I think we could make aff more exciting by making drain soul a 4-6 second dot that does quite a bit of damage. I'd have its damage scale up by the other dots on the target so there is a big gap between using it on a dotted target and a undotted one. I'd also have this dot be different in that its full duration grants 1x shard, 4x shards if something dies with drain soul on it. The dot should be instant, without cooldown, and only castable on sub 20% targets. This combined with shorter duration dots would really spice up the aff rotation in execute range....especially since early/spammy refreshes would be viable but less effective than precisely timed ones.

Shorter duration dots also means SB:SS is more powerful, regular SS less powerful. Shard regen should be a less RNG thing, at least at a base level. I'd even put a fixed rate on it (as we have out of combat but in combat) with RNG on top of it. This would mean more haunts as a nuke which breaks up the MG spam feel. Right now I'm more thinking on mechanics and not at all on specific numbers.

AoE for aff I'm good with seed but I'd still prefer it to be an instant detonation thing. The notion of planting seeds for later detonation has NEVER worked in actual execution in any fight anywhere. Someone else kills it first or you just end up overwriting previously cast ones. You could take out soulswap or give it a 30 sec CD BUT have seed spread all our dots to its blast radius. Again, depends on how they want to model aff's aoe. If they want a more direct model then seed's blast does the heavy lifting, if they want a more sustained model then the dot spreading does some work. Sort of a cross between UH DK and destro's F&B+RoF in terms of tweaking the contribution of where the aoe comes from. Burst aoe is available from both MF (long as seed isn't gutted too hard) and cataclysm (at least in PVE).

PS...anyone else already see the RBG death stacking of aoe grip/solarbeam/mage crystal of death/cata....um, yeah.

[Baconeggcheese]

Would you rather we sit here and argue about something they said they're taking away ? I don't care if they take it out or leave it in, but since they're taking it out I'd rather we as a community shape what goes in its place

You read text too seriously.

[Dazzy]

What the fuck, how are they going to make things interesting for DoT classes when they remove snapshotting? They better come up with some huge fucking giant interesting ideas because if they don't Affliction Warlocks are literally going to be the most boring spec to play.

That's the debate, most players don't find snapshotting "interesting". They find it boring and at most times tedious. Affliction was perfectly fun to play for 3 expansions before it. Not sure how anyone can think it's interesting. On most fights you could literally put someone on follow, maximize your addons so you can't even see the game screen and do just fine, does that sound fun?

[Halyon]

As a new and (not yet) green warlock layer, it does need some tweaking. The skill cap is too high, and they have too many situational buttons. My main is a hunter, at least their fluff buttons are in actuality useless. From a pure PVE standpoint.

I'm certainly not adverse to a challenge, but something that'll feel like playing intense piano for 3 hours during a raid isn't my idea of fun. Many buttons are fine, if there's a flow in it, or if abilities were a bit more macro-able. I think the only macros I have is SP and Twilight Ward, or something else and TW.

If anything hunters need a re-vamp more actually...

DoT Snapshotting being removed is something that will affect EVERY multi-dot class- SPriests, druids, warlocks, and to a lesser extend, mages, DKs, arms warriors, ect.

DoT Snapshotting helps to seperate GREAT players from GOOD players. It's not like its a 15% damage boost to properly DoT-snap, its more like a 5% damage boost. This change should NOT happen, at all.

There will still be idiots who can't use a proper rotation even without dot-snapping. You will still have greater numbers if your skill surpass another player with the same setup as you, that's how it works. Dot-snapping should change some-what. You could technically speaking add something like DK's Pestilence to spread dots (personally think Destru works fine with FaB) on a cooldown of some sort to prevent over-use/encourage proper timing of usage.

Or an ability that puts just 1-2 dots on an aoe targeted area and then you'd manually have to switch targets to apply more.

Locks have a short rotation, with few procs. Like hunters. Unlike hunters, they have a great opportunity now for a varied, fluid rotation, that is engaging and interesting, and won't break people's newbie scrub hands. Skill will still set people apart. I really like playing a warlock so far, but yeah, that's just my 2 cents. ^^;

[Doktor Faustus]

Oaths broken, trolled.

Please, not again.

[xskarma]

You read text too seriously.

Sarcasm doesn't translate well on the internet. Don't be surprised by people misunderstanding you in a place that is notorious for the whacky and absurd opinions of random people.

[Deleted]

People who really want is to go back to tier 7, where warlocks had 7 dots to watch; never going to happen!
I'd be surprised if they changed much at all. Which is a shame as the current play-style feels good to a lot of people but it is heavily reliant on snapshotting. Without it and without major changes, would feel very dull.

RNG is part of this type of game, wish people would get over it. The reason rng led to huge disparity was because of silly trinkets, not because of the class. When you get one trinket with 30k int as a proc, even if only for one second, well that is just silly.
Keep the RNG in and keep snapshotting, just remove the silly 100% crit trinkets and things like wushoolays, 30% haste gems and BBoY.
Make them small like lightweave and jade spirit procs. Up the damage to compensate.

[Jessicka]

People who really want is to go back to tier 7, where warlocks had 7 dots to watch; never going to happen!
I'd be surprised if they changed much at all. Which is a shame as the current play-style feels good to a lot of people but it is heavily reliant on snapshotting. Without it and without major changes, would feel very dull.

RNG is part of this type of game, wish people would get over it. The reason rng led to huge disparity was because of silly trinkets, not because of the class. When you get one trinket with 30k int as a proc, even if only for one second, well that is just silly.
Keep the RNG in and keep snapshotting, just remove the silly 100% crit trinkets and things like wushoolays, 30% haste gems and BBoY.
Make them small like lightweave and jade spirit procs. Up the damage to compensate.

Again, if you remove the things that make snapshotting attractive, you won't snapshot and you'll remove any other benefits from reacting to procs too. The result is actually dumbing down even more.

[PickleballAce]

For me drain soul and MG feel too similar. You could literally change MG to do what DS does in sub 20% range and nothing would change. That means DS is basically complexity for the sake of complexity with the execution of the rotation feeling the same. Destro starts shadowburning, demo gets to spam MC (a proc limited spell), aff just channels a different colored beam. I think we could make aff more exciting by making drain soul a 4-6 second dot that does quite a bit of damage. I'd have its damage scale up by the other dots on the target so there is a big gap between using it on a dotted target and a undotted one. I'd also have this dot be different in that its full duration grants 1x shard, 4x shards if something dies with drain soul on it. The dot should be instant, without cooldown, and only castable on sub 20% targets. This combined with shorter duration dots would really spice up the aff rotation in execute range....especially since early/spammy refreshes would be viable but less effective than precisely timed ones.

Yours isn't an uncommon suggestion, but I still think Drain Soul serves a purpose in that it can become your "filler" above execute range if you desperately need shards and don't have dying adds to siphon them from or want to rely on the RNG of Nightfall. It still has utility even if you more-or-less never have to use it that way. I think it isn't the most pointless "why do we need to press this button all of a sudden?" execute by a LONG shot. I feels there's a place for something that gives us shards on demand (with an appropriate damage penalty), just that there might not be an elegant way to make us use it.

If it were merely a palette swap with no other function I agree that it'd be pretty vestigial.

[Deleted]

MG/DS difference in PvE might be trivial but in PvP using DS for shard regen is a matter of win/lose. Just the idea of pushing 2 spells into 1 is damaging to PvP. Take example of putting curses as an automatic application of our dmg spells- a change like that is automatically a buff to the enemy mage team.

inb4 stfu pvp guy

[Baconeggcheese]

DS is actually irritating in pve... it has double the time between ticks and can't be cast while moving. A lot of the time I opted to just not use it much if at all because its functionality sucks and you lose a lot of dps to being forced to move mid tick.

I'd really rather they make it so MG generates a shard sub 20% every 4 ticks.

[Last Starfighter]

DS is actually irritating in pve... it has double the time between ticks and can't be cast while moving. A lot of the time I opted to just not use it much if at all because its functionality sucks and you lose a lot of dps to being forced to move mid tick.

I'd really rather they make it so MG generates a shard sub 20% every 4 ticks.

It's fine losing dps. You lose dps by having to res somebody. But that's just how it goes. I'm glad DS can't be cast while moving. 5.2 KJC should have never been put into the game. Now everyone is "why cant i move and cast my full rotation anymore /cry".