Patch 5.2 Warlock discussion

[EvreliaGaming]

Was I the only person who was watching midwinter test magara. Single target fight as only 1 head is targetable at a time and the DPS chart went.

Warlock
Warlock
Warlock
Feral druid
Warlock
Warlock
Frost DK
Frost DK
Everyone else 10-15k behind

Bad logic. You can't take one sample and assume its representative of everything else. If Warlocks are 15k ahead of everyone else then they're multidotting and everyone else isn't, or everyone else is just bad. Prior to these nerfs on PTR locks were at the top of the pack on some fights, middle of the pack on others.

[Brusalk]

I really think people are severely underestimating just how much crit is on gear, and how the RPPM system favors a good Destro watching procs with access to far more CB's than in the previous tier. I'll try to get the sim working with the latest changes, assuming I can get trinkets to work, and test it in game to see what happens this weekend if I can. Destro gains a great deal more DPS from lining up CB's with procs than is reflected in the sim results, probably on par with Aff using perfect haunt/pandemic extension. If someone can get the sim to be a bit smarter at taking advantage of procs, that'd probably work too.

I think most people, and at the least me, are concerned not because of simcraft results, but something completely different. Demonology already out-performs Destruction on many fights when looking at WoL, and they just got a huge buff to a lot of their damage sources (more so than Destro) and hasn't received any nerfs. However, Destruction which is already behind or just barely keeping up with Demo, received lesser buffs to damage and have now received a 10% nerf to both single target AND cleave in the form of the 10% Sacrifice nerf.

If things stay the way they are I don't see any way for Destro to keep up with either Affliction or Demo on any fight.

EDIT:

To clarify, I believe someone mathed the destro buffs to be about a 9% overall damage buff for all talent choices. They've now nerfed Sacrifice 10%. For people using Sacrifice, Destro is now worse in 5.2 than they are in 5.1. Sup/Serv receive the full 9% damage buff, but that only counts for single target fights because for as long as Sacrifice buffs cleave damage Sacrifice will always be taken on non-single target fights by Destro.

[Deleted]

The major problem with Sacrifice as I see it is that it's filling the same purpose as Supremacy by offering a flat +%damage buff, that means there will always going to be a conflict of questioning which of those two is better when you don't want the burst from Service. To make that third place an 'option' it has to do something different to those other two, and I suggested long ago that something should be to split off the Terrorguard/Abyssal from Supremacy and make them their own thing, either with just straight damage and/or a shorter cooldown.

I would love it if they did this, unleashing the Doomguard is always my favourite part of the fight, he's just so badass! But how would you see it work exactly. Shortening the cooldown too much (to say 3 minutes) would make it feel like an improved version of Service, and you'd then run the conflict of which does more damage. A 5 min cooldown would let you use it at the start and again at execute. Would the summoning of these 'greater demons' be tied exclusively to the new talent?

[xskarma]

If things stay the way they are I don't see any way for Destro to keep up with either Affliction or Demo on any fight.

I don't see it at the moment either.

Had to get rid of my Destro spec to switch to Demo so I can get some practice in, I'd hoped things were going to stay more even so I could keep dabbling in Destro here and there. As things stand now though I'll be Demo, and keeping my Affliction spec, cause I've never NOT been Affliction. Keeping my hope up that Affliction will still be strong enough to win a 2-3-4 target multidot fight from Demo, so that there's a solid reason to keep playing it. Destro though, it pretty much only had 2 target cleave and spread AoE, and both got nerfed in some way.

[Kuroto]

It would be ridiculous if they keep the CB DoT component with this 15% GoSac.

I think Blizzard is going about game balance the wrong way. In my opinion, you should only buff, never nerf. Every patch should be about empowering every class, spec and talent, making everything seem so overpowered that it's hard to make decisions about what to use. Every player would log on to find their character more powerful. You would still be able to balance by buffing some things more than others, but the important point is that you are never taking anything away from the player. Encounters and content can always be tuned accordingly, and this will also automatically nerf previous content (without the need for artificial nerfs).

[Moshots]

Bad logic. You can't take one sample and assume its representative of everything else. If Warlocks are 15k ahead of everyone else then they're multidotting and everyone else isn't, or everyone else is just bad. Prior to these nerfs on PTR locks were at the top of the pack on some fights, middle of the pack on others.

Correction BAD warlocks were middle of the packs on some fights. Good warlocks like midwinter US 4th who i was using as my data sample are top of charts vs top class players.

[Screwtape]

People have been arguing about what sims/logs/deviations are relevant for months. Never mind that you have no idea what data Blizzard is looking at. Arguments are pointless apart from assuaging your own ego.

[Medieve]

To clarify, I believe someone mathed the destro buffs to be about a 9% overall damage buff for all talent choices. They've now nerfed Sacrifice 10%. For people using Sacrifice, Destro is now worse in 5.2 than they are in 5.1. Sup/Serv receive the full 9% damage buff, but that only counts for single target fights because for as long as Sacrifice buffs cleave damage Sacrifice will always be taken on non-single target fights by Destro.

I'm not convinced by that quite yet. It's a lot of confirmation bias, to be honest, coupled with Destro being severly underplayed (and Demo, in truth). Havoc could use a slight CD reduction to help Destro on 2 target, but I don't think it's actually dead compared to Aff or Demo. Destro still brings considerable single target damage that can be cleaved to full potential quite often, and aligned with CD's it's extremely potent. To compare, Aff can only truly MG one target, and Demo has a slight shadowflame advantage if the targets are stacked, but that rarely happens. Sacrifice will probably be dead in the water, but Destro works just as well with pets, since the only thing Sac truly buffed was 2 target damage, and it more split the damage instead of a pet focusing on one target. I do have in game data from several fights that show GoSac and GoSup to be even within expected variance when actually played in a multi target or cleave scenario. GoSac didn't affect FnB AoE, so it's actually a gain in strict AoE to use a pet.

Of course I'll need more math on it and see if I can replicate the results on the PTR, but I'm not ready to admit defeat with Destro yet. Destro is the only spec that got any sort of multi-target buff that doesn't require bosses to be stacked. It may not be enough, but I've got a good feeling it'll be very competitive with Demo. Here's hoping I can back up a good feeling with some good math.

[Gohzerlock]

Correction BAD warlocks were middle of the packs on some fights. Good warlocks like midwinter US 4th who i was using as my data sample are top of charts vs top class players.

I did see affliction/sac locks from midwinter doing well, are the recent sac nerfs live on the ptr yet?

[AlmightyGerkin]

Well GocSac has been needed again according tithe lasted post by blizzard.
Grimoire of Sacrifice (Affliction) now increases the power of many of your single target spells by 35%, down from 45%.
Grimoire of Sacrifice (Destruction) now increases the power of many of your single target spells by 15%, down from 20%.

IMHO I think their making warlocks from being near to the top of the list of dps to last place.

[Skayth]

with go sac nerf, and it being quite irrelevant to even take now, I think they may need to redo two of those talents. 1, make goserv permanent, but the two pets do the same damage as lets say observer/wrathguard/shivarra of the supremacy(basically both are lesser but equal to the amount of damage as the sup), so it is more sustained and people will take it, +rp with double succubi. And the last one, burst (like go serv current) but its slightly more powerful (equals out to be slightly better than the other two but because you have to do more)

[Kathranis]

I don't really follow changes from build to build very closely, but didn't they just gave warlocks a pretty big overall buff a couple builds ago?

That general baseline buffing to spells plus the Sacrifice nerf should make Supremacy and Service at least a bit more desirable for people who want to use them, without necessarily making numbers drop too much for Sacrifice users, if at all.

At least, I think that's theoretically what they're going for.

[PickleballAce]

It's easy to get caught up in the numbers surrounding the Sac nerf, and it's a legitimate issue, but there are other things about this that are concerning as well.


My problem with the way the talent is being treated is this:

If anything, this talent should be rare.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...61?page=33#648

In Ghostcrawler's world, Sacrifice is a talent that is supposed to be legitimately bad to take.

I very much doubt that the latest round of nerfs are any way of really trying to balance anything, they're an attempt to make the class fit his own conception of what Warlocks are supposed to be.

Then end goal isn't to make the three tiers roughly balanced in terms of DPS tuning. It apparently isn't even to make the three tiers roughly balanced in terms of popularity. Unfortunately, if you're a fan of Sacrifice on a conceptual level, Ghostcrawler doesn't think you're playing the class correctly.

[xskarma]

I don't really follow changes from build to build very closely, but didn't they just gave warlocks a pretty big overall buff a couple builds ago?

That general baseline buffing to spells plus the Sacrifice nerf should make Supremacy and Service at least a bit more desirable for people who want to use them, without necessarily making numbers drop too much for Sacrifice users, if at all.

At least, I think that's theoretically what they're going for.

You should have followed the changes a tiny bit better. The buffs were only to Demo and Destro, not Affliction, so with this latest nerf Affliction has only been nerfed this tier, making it now be behind Demo presumably. Destro was in last place anyway, while using Sac, so the buffs, and then nerfs they got should not bring them any closer to the buffed Demo then they were before.

EDIT: meaning that the point of all these moves was not just to encourage different Grimoires being used, but also very much to nerf Affliction.

[Hatelocker]

You should have followed the changes a tiny bit better. The buffs were only to Demo and Destro, not Affliction, so with this latest nerf Affliction has only been nerfed this tier, making it now be behind Demo presumably. Destro was in last place anyway, while using Sac, so the buffs, and then nerfs they got should not bring them any closer to the buffed Demo then they were before.

Destro's only nerf was to GoSac. Brusalk did some rough math earlier and showed GoSup/Observer was close to GoSac single target before the latest nerf today. So, if you run GoSup/Observer with the buffs destro did get it may not be that much worse than demo as it was only buffed if you took GoSup.

[xskarma]

Destro's only nerf was to GoSac. Brusalk did some rough math earlier and showed GoSup/Observer was close to GoSac single target before the latest nerf today. So, if you run GoSup/Observer with the buffs destro did get it may not be that much worse than demo as it was only buffed if you took GoSup.

Well not completely. There was also the nerf to our AoE spells range, which impacts Destro's strong point of spread out AoE. There's also the point that the cleaving bit, which was what kept Destro up to par, was propped up by using Sacrifice and a mastery heavy build to deliver fewer, but heavier hitting CB's and SB's. With this nerf to Sacrifice that's now down in power and cleaving in GoSup is by definition not as powerful, so the cleaving power has gone down. So yes, Destro should be round and about the single target mark of the other 2 specs, but it lacks anything besides that, meaning Demo and Affli will still have more going for it. We'll know more when the numbers start coming in with SimC, but for now it's not unrealistic to worry about what Destro has that cannot be done better by either Demo or Affliction.

[Brusalk]

Sacrifice will probably be dead in the water, but Destro works just as well with pets, since the only thing Sac truly buffed was 2 target damage, and it more split the damage instead of a pet focusing on one target.

Havoc doesn't split damage, it completely duplicates it. When cleaving you have 3 abilities to work with on the secondary target, Immolate, RoF and Havoc. Immolate is the only ability that reduces primary target damage because you have to cast it on the second target. RoF is a damage increase on 1 target, and Havoc completely duplicates an ability to the second target.

Sacrifice buffs both single target (by buffing literally every spell except for FnB modified spells) and cleave (by buffing the spells that are copied to the second target).

There has been ONLY nerfs to Destro's cleave, which is debatably the only niche Destro has left. They haven't buffed SB/CB, and they've only gone and nerfed Sacrifice which for all intents and purposes IS destro's cleave damage.

I don't want to be seen as overly pessimistic, but when a spec that was already behind receives something as drastic as a 10% nerf to it's only niche, that spec is dead in the water when you have other options at your disposal that do very similar damage before the buffs.

[Leyl]

Havoc doesn't split damage, it completely duplicates it. When cleaving you have 3 abilities to work with on the secondary target, Immolate, RoF and Havoc. Immolate is the only ability that reduces primary target damage because you have to cast it on the second target. RoF is a damage increase on 1 target, and Havoc completely duplicates an ability to the second target.

Sacrifice buffs both single target (by buffing literally every spell except for FnB modified spells) and cleave (by buffing the spells that are copied to the second target).

There has been ONLY nerfs to Destro's cleave, which is debatably the only niche Destro has left. They haven't buffed SB/CB, and they've only gone and nerfed Sacrifice which for all intents and purposes IS destro's cleave damage.

I don't want to be seen as overly pessimistic, but when a spec that was already behind receives something as drastic as a 10% nerf to it's only niche, that spec is dead in the water when you have other options at your disposal that do very similar damage before the buffs.

I don't intend to disagree here, from what I can tell Brusalk is right on the money. With fights like the Twin Consorts, Megaera, Iron Qon, and the Elder Council I was for sure hoping against hope we'd have a return to Destro's multi-target days with Bane of Havoc. Now, these are dashed on a rock - a rock Ghostcrawler is holding in his hand. I don't like prescriptive nerfs/buffs based on an idealogy of a designer. If the nerf was justified, and perhaps it was, I would love to hear it from the mouth of the dev.

Doing this much of a nerf one week before live seems hasty, knee-jerk, and irrational without justification. I've been stuck playing Affliction for quite some time now due to multi-target fights, and how flexible it is on those fights. Not to knock Evrelia's fine guides, and great advice on an awesome spec - but I'm BORED of it. I've been sucking the teat of Affliction since T13H and I would like a change. And no, I don't like how Demo's on-off-on-off playstyle sits.

We'll see, maybe there is a glimmer of hope somewhere, and I'm just emo-raging lol.

[Alaira]

It's a little disheartening to see Ghostcrawler force people into using pets via DPS loss, knowing well that people are going to take even the slightest DPS advantage, just because he thinks a warlock without a pet should be rare. I know it's been a staple of the class for so long, but playing with a pet on all but the cutting edge of content isn't interesting gameplay. It's already been said here, but it's worth repeating: pets are a vehicle for auto-attack damage (read: DoT) and the occasional special ability, such as Felstorm or Spell Lock.

Warlocks as a class have more flavor and kit than a caster with a pet. Demonology is a specialization, just like Destruction and Affliction. Those give the class flavor more than the ability to have a pet. Class flavor is abilities and theme. I'm ok with having a minor DPS hit if Sacrifice is very close to the others, but it seems to be putting my current favorite spec in a coffin: GoSac Destruction.

I guess all we can really do is wait and see what Blizzard does. I'd hate to give up GoSac Destruction, but then again it's not up to the players. It's more in Ghostcrawler's hands than anyone else's. I'll just wait and review the final numbers when they're posted, and see how far down the list GoSac Destruction falls. Blizzard might surprise us and not bury the spec, but it doesn't look hopeful at the moment.

[Medieve]

Havoc doesn't split damage, it completely duplicates it. When cleaving you have 3 abilities to work with on the secondary target, Immolate, RoF and Havoc. Immolate is the only ability that reduces primary target damage because you have to cast it on the second target. RoF is a damage increase on 1 target, and Havoc completely duplicates an ability to the second target.

Sacrifice buffs both single target (by buffing literally every spell except for FnB modified spells) and cleave (by buffing the spells that are copied to the second target).

There has been ONLY nerfs to Destro's cleave, which is debatably the only niche Destro has left. They haven't buffed SB/CB, and they've only gone and nerfed Sacrifice which for all intents and purposes IS destro's cleave damage.

I don't want to be seen as overly pessimistic, but when a spec that was already behind receives something as drastic as a 10% nerf to it's only niche, that spec is dead in the water when you have other options at your disposal that do very similar damage before the buffs.

If X is your pet damage, and your total damage Z, Y would be the damage you'd have to overcome to mitigate the loss of X through sacrifice(Z-X<=Z-Y for GoSac to be superior). For 2 targets, you'll lose X from one target (Saccing a pet) from Z, and Y will be split through havoc to targets A and B, instead of pet sticking to A. YA (main target) and YB (cleave target) are both less than X on their own, and Y(A+B) itself wasn't that far higher than X to begin with, if it was indeed higher (haven't conclusively proven it outside of, again, confirmation bias). Pets really weren't that far behind, I believe the sim put it 2 or 3k behind in perfect play.

Obviously simplistic, but it's the general idea. Z from Y wasn't significantly ahead of Z from X in the in-game data I could acquire (mastery > Crit > Haste GoSac reforge vs. GoSup Crit=haste > Mastery), actually within expected deviance to say it was a wash. I could be missing something, I'm honest enough to admit that I do that from time to time. If Destro was a third as popular across the player spectrum as Aff, this would be much easier to solve.