Cataclysm Soul Shard Regeneration

[Jessicka]

• PvE applications
Many of Soulburn’s effects are gameplay oriented, so they’re less desirable in situations where all you care about is your passive damage (like say a solo boss encounter). For those situations you will use Demon Soul (which may not be in your current build), which is more or less a short term damage percent power gain, depending on what pet you have. So often in boss encounter you may use your three shards on Demon Soul, and during dungeons, soloing, or PvP skirmishes you might use the different soul shard effects depending upon the situation (since you can replenish them easily through adds on trash etc via Drain Soul).

It is all acedemic. In PvE, our Soul Shards will be used to Demon Soul once every 2 minutes; there are few fights we get more than 2 of those in anyway so the extra shard will likely be a utility 'spare'.

Frankly, I'm very disapointed - there was a lot of potential there for the new Soul Shard system yet for PvE they've attached it to Demon Soul as a cop-out to balance the limited use, by presenting us with a single use for it thus reducing it to no more than the 2 min DPS cooldown everyone else has. Yawntastic.

[tyden49]

yep so much for "a soul shard system locks will finally like" does demonsoul just feel like another demonic sacrifice to anyone but without the actual sacrificing of a demon it will be interesting to see with affliction though, as i read it DS will still return shards so for a affliction we might see a more complicated execute phase where other "soulburn" spells are used depending on how many shards we get back.

[kosuko]

What drain soul will do is grant 3 soulshards when the target dies.
I'll just assume that nearly all fights lasting longer than 6 minutes have something that dies during the fight.
So that means that nearly every fight in which you burn 3 shards ( 3 times demon merge thing) you will also be able to regain shards.

I for one am very happy with the change, looking forward to it.
Just gotta decide what button to keybind soulburn on

[Eduardomsc]

I just hope they make Soul Harvest usable while in combat before Cataclysm hits the stores...

[Jessicka]

yep so much for "a soul shard system locks will finally like" does demonsoul just feel like another demonic sacrifice to anyone but without the actual sacrificing of a demon it will be interesting to see with affliction though, as i read it DS will still return shards so for a affliction we might see a more complicated execute phase where other "soulburn" spells are used depending on how many shards we get back.

Not really, it just sounds like:

#showtooltip Metamorphosis
/cast Metamorphosis
/cast Demon Soul

Unless there's going to be a Soul Burn option on Metamorphosis of course.

There will likely be adds we can use DS on (at a cumbersome DPS loss to Demo/Destro of course) to ensure we're never out of shards, so an in-combat Soul Harvest wont be necessary. I'm starting to really wonder what the whole point of the system is if it's going to be railroaded into a 2min cooldown - which I might add will probably be the primary intended use so far as players are concerned for PvP as well, given no one else will have such a limitation on their 2min cooldown nukes; rendering all the nice utility Soul Burns redundant as people save their shards for it.

Unless they're sitting on something big or drop the Shard cost from Demon Soul, I think maybe they'd be better off dropping the shard system altogether and spending their time on something that we will actually use.

[deadman80]

I actually read the whole thread, and am surprised that no one else has mentioned this, but with the current wording, it seems possible that you only get back ONE shard per cast on a 30sec CD, so that means it is not just a simple addition into your buff rotation. >.<;; It's not clear whether you get back a shard every 3sec at the same time as the HP regen or if you only get one at the start of the cast

I for one will be royally pissed off if Blizz expects me to expect a raid to wait a full 90sec between boss attempts if there is a wipe/reset -_-;;;

[Elanale]

I actually read the whole thread, and am surprised that no one else has mentioned this, but with the current wording, it seems possible that you only get back ONE shard per cast on a 30sec CD, so that means it is not just a simple addition into your buff rotation. >.<;; It's not clear whether you get back a shard every 3sec at the same time as the HP regen or if you only get one at the start of the cast

I for one will be royally pissed off if Blizz expects me to expect a raid to wait a full 90sec between boss attempts if there is a wipe/reset -_-;;;

Um. I would assume every three seconds. That's a very sloppy way of wording it if those two effects are distinct.

[gherkin]

I disagree, gherkin. I don't see how having our cooldowns be segregated based on what sphere of game play we're currently engaged in leads to the class being more challenging. Personally, I'd like to see both spells have applications in both types of game play, with our DPS and PvP effectiveness being balanced around the assumption that we're using both intelligently.

I think I worded it wrong. When I think of warlock pvp, I think of a very thin rope that we walk along. A nudge in the wrong direction and we're extremely under or over powered. This is compounded by PVE implications - look what they had to do to Destruction just to get it under control in PVP. And then look how long it took them to un-nerf the spec in PVE.

This design seeks to let us be balanced in both PVE and PVP by having abilities that benefit one more than the other. Conflag hitting too hard baseline? Buff the Imp Demon Soul ability and nerf the base Conflag. Net loss for PVP (intended effect) with an overall Net Zero for PVE (intended effect). This is a really basic example and full of holes, but you get the idea.

Both spells have implications in both areas, but in high-end pvp I guarantee you they'll dispel Demon Soul (assuming its dispellable, and it should be). However, I don't believe Soul Burn will be dispellable because you'll macro it to everything and it will be extremely fast. Therefore we're given the tools we need to perform well in PVP (Instant demon summoning, burst, survival) that is of limited use. But we are also given the cooldowns we need to compete in high end raiding.

If your enemies let you fully use a Demon Soul effect in PVP, they had it coming - much like letting a Blood DK with Hysteria run rampant.

Overall, I think its a great design. Huge buffs in PVE with the required utility provided baseline for all warlocks in PVP, and you can use both effects in both areas. However, you'd be smarter to stick to Demon Soul exclusively in PVE and only using it rarely in PVP to maximize the effect.

---------- Post added 2010-07-05 at 03:27 PM ----------

I actually read the whole thread, and am surprised that no one else has mentioned this, but with the current wording, it seems possible that you only get back ONE shard per cast on a 30sec CD, so that means it is not just a simple addition into your buff rotation. >.<;; It's not clear whether you get back a shard every 3sec at the same time as the HP regen or if you only get one at the start of the cast

I for one will be royally pissed off if Blizz expects me to expect a raid to wait a full 90sec between boss attempts if there is a wipe/reset -_-;;;

It's 1 shard + 5% health, every 3 seconds, for 7 seconds. Currently this means that you regen two shards per 30 seconds, but this is a bug. It should be a 9 second duration, or a 2 second period over 6 seconds.

[Zygersaf]

I'm not worried about soul harvest i think we will ge tused to it pretty quickly, the only problems i have witht eh new shard system is:
1) blizz said that they were going to regen slowly in combat, but never saisd how long or if its confirmed
2) the list of spells that are usable with soul burn atm seems a bit crap atm, not sure if anyone esle saw this but as a destro lock at least i dont have much use for them, also soul burn will make the demo "pretty much instant cast" summon pointless

[nazrakin]

It's 1 shard + 5% health, every 3 seconds, for 7 seconds. Currently this means that you regen two shards per 30 seconds, but this is a bug. It should be a 9 second duration, or a 2 second period over 6 seconds.

In the current beta its 1 shard every 3 seconds. Its suppose to channel for 9 seconds but it goes for 11 and you get an extra tick of the HP regen.