drain soul nerf?

[Greyarea]

Well after some thought the only way for aff to be remotly viable now is to get power infusion and other temp buffs chain cast on them to be able to keep up with the other cast and pure classes. As it stands aff will look to loose 2-2.5k DPS minimum I would guess at due to this change, dropping it to 1-14.5k DPS using the same gear on the EJ lock thread, which is a full 1k under a raid buff spec.

I dunno, it just seems Blizz wants to totally demolish affliction as a viable raiding spec. They nerf the hell out of our self heals, screw with bane of agony, decide it's too hard to fix then drop it from pandemic (think it was that talent) and now pretty much remove our signature ability and in the process removing aff as a viable raiding spec.

Let's just hope they buff our dots otherwise we are dead in the water. I dont want to have to play as a fire mage wanna be...or a damned buff bot, but seems thats what blizz is corralling us into being. I pray they give us something back, or we are boned

[Glnger]

I wouldnt take it to this extreme ^^ I simply didnt see a post for this change.

it used to be fun to get someone >25% in pvp and drainsoul them... people can heal through it now.

speaking of finsiher/executes...soulburn not cutting it

[Affectionate]

no one was using drain soul as a filler, you're confusing it with drain life. which was nerfed before 4.0 even hit live.

however affliction required the over the top execute dps to remain competitive, this makes me sad

[Glnger]

^^ good point, didnt think warlock posters would get the two confused .oO

[The Trunk Munky]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...n_Citadel/dps/

"Holy Shit a few Warlocks got ranked in the top 10 for once! NERF THEM TO THE GROUND." - Blizzard

[Deleted]

I do get terribly bored of this constant pushing and pulling us around. On the one hand they say "don't worry, it's balanced for 85" then turn around and say "it's imbalanced at 80 so we're breaking it". What is it to be? I know the game play may change over time mantra but it does get a bit tedious when we sink research time and into things which turn around in a matter of days. I didn't actually see the blue post until after I'd been showing a friend who was considering coming back to wow some DPS on the dummy. I'd just reforged some of my mastery back to haste as the published scaling factors have changed a little bit and thought "oh, my DS execute has lost about 3k DPS... dunno why... maybe I shouldn't have reforged to haste and left it as mastery". A quick look on here and the official forums confirmed that Drain Soul had been "reduced slightly". Slightly in this case resulting in about 50% less to DS or 3k DPS less overall. Was doing about 13k (topping out at 16k) and now topping out around 10k. So much for an execute.

TL;DR: I just wish Blizz would make small increments in damage rather than cut it right back after what seemed to be an acceptable level given other casters current state. If it crept up gradually to a level they (or more importantly other classes) are happy with it might not be so aggravating.

[Zoots]

^^ good point, didnt think warlock posters would get the two confused .oO

eBayers is the only explanation I can think of. Either that, or people from other classes that that applaud Warlock Nerfs no matter what they are, and they make mistakes justifying the nerfs. I've seen plenty of those kind of people around to.

[gherkin]

It was imbalanced for 85. It was nerfed, for good reason. On my premade warlock without any caster buffs other than what I could provide, I could crit for 70k. Think about what this means with full raid buffs and level 85 epics and heroism. Estimates put it at 100k crits.

HOWEVER, they broke it in the process. If some of you would actually look at the numbers, you would see that above 25% it isn't always hitting for 0x modifier (normal damage) and sometimes hitting for 2x. You would also see that it is hitting for 2x modifier instead of 4x modifier under 25% sometimes.

I can get 67k crits with Drain Soul pre-nerf. The number they were aiming for was 40k. The number they got was 20k. It's a bug and will be fixed.

[deevicoos]

It was imbalanced for 85. It was nerfed, for good reason. On my premade warlock without any caster buffs other than what I could provide, I could crit for 70k. Think about what this means with full raid buffs and level 85 epics and heroism. Estimates put it at 100k crits.

HOWEVER, they broke it in the process. If some of you would actually look at the numbers, you would see that above 25% it isn't always hitting for 0x modifier (normal damage) and sometimes hitting for 2x. You would also see that it is hitting for 2x modifier instead of 4x modifier under 25% sometimes.

I can get 67k crits with Drain Soul pre-nerf. The number they were aiming for was 40k. The number they got was 20k. It's a bug and will be fixed.

Where do you get those figures from? If your source is half as good as boub's then colour me elated. On one hand, DS takes a lot of effort to maintain at the level we get, you don't just slam it on CD like many executes, on the other it was making affliction about 20% better than any other spec on fights with a viable execute. The DPS was literally doubling, which is a bit extreme.

I really hope you're right and they fix it before we try to zerg sindy for all you can eat (we did her on heroic 3 days before 4.0.1)

[Jessicka]

I was feeling the 4x modifier now it can Crit would work out both excessive, and leave the spec too heavily backloaded. Nerfing the damage is probably only the first part of what they have in mind.

[gherkin]

I agree Jess, the nerf was mandatory but by breaking it in the process we can't see much else

@deevicoos, my only source is common sense and experience. Consider that we'll have 10-15% crit rate at 85, and that the spell must be a very high DPCT. To be in line with other spells at 85, it must do ~50-60k crits to have a DPCT high enought to be a 25% execute. Backing out to level 80, this means 40k crits.

[ZzXK]

I KNEW THEY NERFED IT!

Honestly I wish they would give us the damage back elsewhere I can barely keep up with boomkins and mages now. They should just make our mastery include SB since its a good 30 sometimes up to 50% of our damage

[Deleted]

I never liked it anyway, not knowing when it ticks was really annoying (Have they done anything about that?)

[Diaxx]

Blizz wants to make Warlocks more than just execution, I guess they will probably compensate somewhere.

[Jahrastafari]

I never liked it anyway, not knowing when it ticks was really annoying (Have they done anything about that?)

Add-ons like Quartz will indicate the tick times in the channeled cast.

[deevicoos]

I agree Jess, the nerf was mandatory but by breaking it in the process we can't see much else

@deevicoos, my only source is common sense and experience. Consider that we'll have 10-15% crit rate at 85, and that the spell must be a very high DPCT. To be in line with other spells at 85, it must do ~50-60k crits to have a DPCT high enought to be a 25% execute. Backing out to level 80, this means 40k crits.

True, though it's still better DPCT than shadowbolt and that's enough to make it worth it. Infact it'd only need to match it given UA being refreshed, but that's a really tenuous upgrade. The execute doesn't have to be a massive boost but I'll agree as far as it must be noticeable to really be any fun, rather than our rotation changes at 25% and our DPS might edge up a little rather than it shooting up in the killzone.

However it depends if they intend to buff anything else. If they buff afflic elsewhere it might not be the case. They might want affliction to be less backloaded and buff the DoTs for example. Or just up our 25% shadow damage bonus. The spec passives are a very easy way to give us a flat % bonus if they want, they can just up a class 4% by putting the bonus from 25% to 30% without disturbing anything, and I suspect once they feel the rotations have the right "feel" they can twiddle these numbers for the sake of balance. Actually I'm amazed they didn't just do that for fire mages given that they basically changed all their spells.

They won't include shadowbolt as they'd have to then nerf the % given, the value of mastery is balanced around it not buffing our nukes.

I guess I also feel that common sense isn't always a given with blizz design team. They have a nasty habit of pulling their best Devs off WoW for other games and I expect a D3 surge this blizzcon. TOC was what happened when SC2 needed designing and half the changes they made had to be undone. I do wonder why they even bother in those sort of circumstances. Common sense would have also dictated that the ICC buff went up as blizzard met certain design milestones for cata so that they didn't end up getting it up to 30 too fast as if they were on schedule for a september release and then having a gimped ICC for 5 months, but it happened.

If your assumptions hold though, which I assume also include them being happy with a large backload, what you say is sensible. And they might. But then they might not. We'll see I guess.

[Knuffelbert]

I don't know, Drain soul does less damage per tick, however it can crit, bringing it to about the same level as prepatch. But it also refreshes the dots (Corruption was a bitch with Heroism as you couldn't refresh it with haunt in some cases and no need to recast UA). I like it, all thinks considered still a wast improvement. The execute was nice, but overpowered. And still I rape meters. (If this changes much for Cata, I know it will be fixed, sooner or later, has been in the past at least. I'm content that I'm balanced more or less at the time I'm playing)