Warlock Discussion with Senior Technical Game Designer Kris Zierhut.

[Jessicka]

Are you seriously saying that one second difference in haunt uptime while having proc is going to be huge damage difference? And imagine people with lag, do they now start doing noticeably worse dps because they have 5% less uptime in haunt while procs up? That is one of the stupidest things I have heard. How can you not see how stupid the spec is going to be like this? I mean, many people already dislike the simpleness of destro. Pool 3.5 emberbits and use them all with procs. With affliction is going to be even simpler since haunt duration will be big partition of proc duration.

If Haunt is a bigger deal, then yes, 5% uptime over procs will matter. The other side of that coin is that snapshotting is going easy on people who slack refreshing and getting Haunt up, because the damage just gets carried over (which is why, as above, snapshotting wasn't that big a thing in previous expansions).

Sure, there are people who dislike Destro because it's easy, they dislike Demo because it's too hard, they miss Cataclysm Affliction because it was well polished. People have all kinds of reasons for liking or disliking every spec in the game, there's just no point trying to invoke groups to support your case. Snapshotting is going because it's become something that's become more important than things within the class mechanics that are supposed to matter; with Pandemic going global, it would cause a lot of homogenisation in playstyle across many specs. A global mechanic that does that is bad for the game on too many levels, it's better all around to de-emphasise it and make the class mechanics matter on an individual basis.

[Deleted]

It will change a lot if the proportion of damage the Haunt debuff is responsible for is substantially increased. Do you really not see that Snapshotting "complexity" has forcibly overridden the actual intended mechanics that are actually supposed to matter?

If you remove snapshotting it substantially moves most of the attention you have to place on dots to just refreshing during pandemic range. It will all just boil down to "lol proc, haunt up, channel". You still want haunt up during procs currently so it is all just dumbing down the spec.

The disparity between "skilled" and "lesser skilled" players due to snapshotting has just been hugely exaggerated by blizzard's stupidly powerful trinkets and RPPM. I would much rather they toned those down and let those who are keen enough still have more to optimise in their gameplay.

[Jessicka]

If you remove snapshotting it substantially moves most of the attention you have to place on dots to just refreshing during pandemic range. It will all just boil down to "lol proc, haunt up, channel". You still want haunt up during procs currently so it is all just dumbing down the spec.

Something you're not doing now because snapshotting is broadly doing most of the refreshing for you. It always gets me on my SPriest how much I let my DoTs lapse because I pay too much attention to DoT power rather than the actual timers; because Pandemic has given me such bad habits.

The disparity between "skilled" and "lesser skilled" players due to snapshotting has just been hugely exaggerated by blizzard's stupidly powerful trinkets and RPPM. I would much rather they toned those down and let those who are keen enough still have more to optimise in their gameplay.

That's not going to happen. They're not going to change how every other spec in the game interacts their resources with their trinket procs because Affliction amplifies their effect more than those other specs; which is again, due to Pandemic. They like Pandemic, they're making it global, and they like the trinkets.

Arguing for them to break Pandemic and Trinkets to keep snapshotting just isn't a rational in the bigger picture, because then you wouldn't be snapshotting anyway.

[Deleted]

Removing dot snapshotting makes balancing classes easier and I think that is the main reason why they remove it. With multiple procs, troll racial and darksoul it gets pretty out of control. And from trinket like BBoY affliction get so much more out of than any other class. Current Soul Swap mechanic is also a big joke. Didn't they really not see how OP that is going to be, lol. Main thing for me is that I don't like dumping down the game, but removing dot snapshotting doesn't necessary mean that if they revamp some aspects of the specs and give us something complex. I can only hope. There are some pretty joke specs in game like Assassination Rogue, which is pretty much 2 buttons, so nothing surprises me.

[DenniZ]

It would make Afflic feel a little dumbed down though

[JV Chequer]

Are u arguing about the class mechanics without even know what spells and changes are coming? Even the talent tree can change a lot until PTR.

That's a pretty big waste of time iMO.

They can introduce a new spell, or a new resource or w/e they want and all this arguments and statments will be just irrelevant.

[Jessicka]

Are u arguing about the class mechanics without even know what spells and changes are coming? Even the talent tree can change a lot until PTR.

That's a pretty big waste of time iMO.

They can introduce a new spell, or a new resource or w/e they want and all this arguments and statments will be just irrelevant.

Well yeah, if you pick up the Chaotic Resources talent you get to watch your Improved Soul Fire Soulburn: Haunt buff.

[Grizelda]

I'm wondering if DoTs will automatically update to new power levels or will they have to be recast during procs to benefit?

And which scenario would lead to more engaging game play?

[Deleted]

Something you're not doing now because snapshotting is broadly doing most of the refreshing for you. It always gets me on my SPriest how much I let my DoTs lapse because I pay too much attention to DoT power rather than the actual timers; because Pandemic has given me such bad habits.

I guess there are a couple of ways of looking at it with respect to potential changes:
- Removing both pandemic and snapshotting requires you to time your dot refreshing well to get good uptime and not waste casts (compelling gameplay)
- Keeping snapshotting, regardless of pandemic, means you react to procs etc to optimise your dot damage (compelling gameplay, even if affdots does a lot of the number crunching)
- Removing snapshotting, giving everyone pandemic means you (or any dot class) hardly have to think about when you refresh dots and just resorts to 'keep dots up, spam filler'.

Bear in mind that Haunt usage - with procs and in execute - changes a very very small amount in any of the above options.

I've resigned to the fact that the trinkets are here to stay - it is my opinion though that half of this "skill cap" barrier they are talking about wouldn't be as big a deal if they didn't make the trinkets such a huge source of damage - and is bringing everybody more in line at the cost of more interesting gameplay.

[Rustjive]

If it was so prevalent and such a big deal before, the add-on would have come along sooner, that's all. It didn't because of everything else I said.

The idea that snapshotting didn't matter pre-Pandemic is wrong. The idea for AffDots came about because Shadow Priests already had something like it that they had been using during Cata - Shadow Priest DoT Timer, which provided a buff score. This makes obvious sense because sometimes clipping a tick was worth getting a substantial temporary proc. Even for the Warlock class, snapshotting was a big deal for Cata Destro locks, differentiating the good from the great via getting in 2x Conflags when your Immolate was buffed.

Did Pandemic exacerbate the situation? Of course. We knew this as soon as Pandemic was announced. For DoT snapshotting to be gutted though...

[Jessicka]

The idea that snapshotting didn't matter pre-Pandemic is wrong. The idea for AffDots came about because Shadow Priests already had something like it that they had been using during Cata - Shadow Priest DoT Timer, which provided a buff score. This makes obvious sense because sometimes clipping a tick was worth getting a substantial temporary proc. Even for the Warlock class, snapshotting was a big deal for Cata Destro locks, differentiating the good from the great via getting in 2x Conflags when your Immolate was buffed.

Did Pandemic exacerbate the situation? Of course. We knew this as soon as Pandemic was announced. For DoT snapshotting to be gutted though...

Except Vampiric Touch was the only thing SPriests really thought about casting. Devouring Plague doubled up as their Fel Flame (there wasn't exactly much by way of tears about that clipping compared to Warlocks this expansion), and SW: Pain was refreshed by Mind Flay.

[Baconeggcheese]

I feel like jess is just arguing this for the sake of arguing this.

On another note I still don't understand why people think snapshots add all this depth and complexity to affliction. It can be boiled down to a rather short check list...

~Are strong procs up? yes?
~Does your last snapshot have strong procs on it? no?
~You should refresh your dots.

~Are strong procs up? no?
~Does your last snapshot have strong procs on it? yes?
~You shouldn't refresh your dots.

Affliction is by far the easiest of the 3 specs to play at the moment. It has thee easiest time handling procs as all you have to do is press 2 buttons and VIOLA! you're back in business and have gotten the most out of your procs. The other specs actually have to pay attention to timing out casts etc in order to get the most out of procs.

[Jessicka]

I feel like jess is just arguing this for the sake of arguing this.

It's not for the sake of it, it's because it's simply not true that this mechanic has been exploited forever and simply isn't as engaging as it's made out to be. People are just worried about not being able to exploit it to feel overpowered anymore.

Now we can agree on that, can we not have this forum turn into the official US forum echo-chamber of self pity about the loss of this and look ahead to the new talents, and how terrible they are and provide some useful feedback and discussion that might actually lead somewhere?

[Baconeggcheese]

Except it has been, I was tracking dots / procs with power auras back in cata in attempts to do the same thing we're doing with affdots now. Hell I use weak auras to do a lot of that tracking still and affdots is just a lazy way for me to get all my dot timers etc in the middle of my screen without needing to make more weak auras.

People have been doing this shit with procs since pandemic came out in MoP (and even before mop) and someone decided *man it would be really awesome if I had a good way to see this to take out the guess work* and then made affdots. The chicken and the egg are very clear in this one.

Saying people would have made affdots sooner is a total cop out. That's like saying obvious ideas for improvement have never been completely missed by people for extended periods of time until someone realizes and decides to make everything better.

[Grizelda]

I remember doing it with the Never Ending Ice Crystals trinket in Wrath.

[Deleted]

Really hope other classes are getting changes too...really seems like Locks always take the short end of the stick.

[Baconeggcheese]

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see significant rogue and hunter changes with how the devs have been talking about them the entire xpac and how they'd like to change them so all 3 specs feel more unique.

[Turturin the Warlock]

To me what blew the doors off wasn't the trinket strength, pandemic, or snapshotting. It was the soul swap re-design for 5.4.

Despite ridiculous single target openers (which should be toned down) affliction was not much (if at all) stronger than rogues single target, it was more like mages and hunters were a little low if anything.

5.4 Soul Swap was the real reason guilds were stupid to give BBoY to any class other than warlock, that warlocks could dominate on so many of the early fights etc.

It took away any form of ramp up the spec once had (remember when aff's weakness was target swaps?), allowed it to abuse trinket procs on multi-targets to a degree no-one else could even dream of, and we got an unsurprising result.

To fix it imo:
revert soul swap to 5.3 version (wipes dots or 1 transfer every 30 secs with glyph)
Take legendary meta out of the game
Get rid of Pre-potting
Have RPPM trinkets start at 0 seconds since last proc, so that the first minute of the fight is like any other minute. increase total # of real procs per minute to compensate.
Make ICD trinkets have a lower chance to proc, so pull procs aren't guaranteed
bring back On-Use trinkets but make the tradeoff in proc value significant.

Leave Pandemic and Snapshotting in.

These changes in total would tone down the multi-target ridiculousness and opening burst in general, while preserving the "skill cap" difference for affliction.

optional: you could also make active racial and profession abilities share a use CD so they couldn't be used together, and/or decrease the effectiveness of both or make them static values like blood fury rather than percentage based like berserking.

[Grizelda]

To fix it imo:

Get rid of Pre-potting

What? NO! It took us all this time to teach our tanks to count to 5!

[Strifey]

To me what blew the doors off wasn't the trinket strength, pandemic, or snapshotting. It was the soul swap re-design for 5.4.

Despite ridiculous single target openers (which should be toned down) affliction was not much (if at all) stronger than rogues single target, it was more like mages and hunters were a little low if anything.

5.4 Soul Swap was the real reason guilds were stupid to give BBoY to any class other than warlock, that warlocks could dominate on so many of the early fights etc.

It took away any form of ramp up the spec once had (remember when aff's weakness was target swaps?), allowed it to abuse trinket procs on multi-targets to a degree no-one else could even dream of, and we got an unsurprising result.

To fix it imo:
revert soul swap to 5.3 version (wipes dots or 1 transfer every 30 secs with glyph)
Take legendary meta out of the game
Get rid of Pre-potting
Have RPPM trinkets start at 0 seconds since last proc, so that the first minute of the fight is like any other minute. increase total # of real procs per minute to compensate.
Make ICD trinkets have a lower chance to proc, so pull procs aren't guaranteed
bring back On-Use trinkets but make the tradeoff in proc value significant.

Leave Pandemic and Snapshotting in.

These changes in total would tone down the multi-target ridiculousness and opening burst in general, while preserving the "skill cap" difference for affliction.

optional: you could also make active racial and profession abilities share a use CD so they couldn't be used together, and/or decrease the effectiveness of both or make them static values like blood fury rather than percentage based like berserking.

Most of those are terrible suggestions. Changing the game for all classes because of one specs opener, you actually suggested removing meta gem? lol.

Obviously removing snapshotting which largely affects a few specs is much simpler, more realistic, and has less of an imprint on the game as a whole. I personally love my warlock, love snapshotting, and love the complexity of the class. But it's hard to take suggestions seriously when you make unrealistic fixes that obviously would never happen.

Reverting 5.4 soulswap because of how strong it makes aff on multi-target/council type fights is valid, obviously that's a spec mechanic that makes aff super strong on a few fights. The rest of it doesn't make sense when your talking about on class or spec balance. Can you imagine if blizzard changed everything you suggested anytime one class needed balancing, it would be a nightmare and would cause them to have to re-look at every single class. Removing meta, changing RPPM, changing trinkets in general, etc. now means the entire base for dps has changed and they need to look at the effects across all dps classes, not just warlock or aff. Changing something like Soulswap means they only need to concentrate on one spec. Let's be realistic here.