5.4 KJC changes.

[Jessicka]

Even if you disagree with people and they infuriate you, it's good that they make you think and organize your own thoughts to dispute them.

Granted some also make me bang my head against a wall. But my brain needed a good shaking anyway.

This. Also helps discuss potential resolutions and bring out suggestions. Ignoring everyone just leads to it turning into an echo chamber of self pity, which is completely deconstructive and will only serve to bring you down further as everyone agrees the sky is falling.

Ive never played anything but my warlock so ive never thought too much about how a melee can constantly move while casters must stand still most of the time.

After using kc for the past 6 months it seems very silly that we should be casting a filler spell standing still. I guess my ignorance was bliss, but now that i see the light it's like wtf... Casting while standing still seems so primal at this point in wow.

They will probably end up giving all casters full movement during filler eventually, but wont be until next expansion.

At this point in the game it just seems very silly to have to stand still to cast drain soul, for 12 very long seconds

Target switching and "Stack over here" are the bane of melee's existance. Ranged just pivot and keep nuking.

[Hugginz]

This is quite interesting. I agree about malefic grasp + KJC being mandatory ATM. But it shouldn't be that way. One talent can't be/shouldn't be mandatory to make a spec work. Refreshing dot's can be easily done while moving but I agree it's not an option most of the time.

As for demo and destro, no spells to cast o move? You gotta be kidding me!

Destro - conflagrate (save 1 charge if you anticipate movement), recast RoF for embers, fel flame (thats 3 spells), SB (below 20%). Not to mention all destro casts (except CB) are fast - for god sake, we're not talking about casting fireball but generally a 1,5 sec cast!

Demo - ONE WORD, touch of chaos.

No spells to cast on move???? lololol
-------
People keep bringing mages. Yeah, frost has a lot of instants (maybe too many, kinda like demo huh?). Fire has scorch, Mage Bomb and Pyro (oh wait! 3 spells, kinda like Destro!) - AND NO, no fire mages take Icy Floes, no fire mages waste inferno blasts only for movement. And there is arcane, which has a bomb, Barrage and weak fireblast (casting barrage purely for movement can mess with your rotation, severely affecting dps).
-------
KJC is stupid. It trivializes what should be (as Blizzard states) a CHALLENGE for casters, movement. There is no "should I cast this right now?". It's always "fuck it! If a sand trap spawns on me, who cares? I lol hard!"
If you don't believe it, youtube any boss video in a LOCK PoV (hint: he/she is always jumping, moving, which makes much easier to deal with many mechanics).
-------
KJC is stupid. If 100% casting on the move has to be implemented, it has to be for everyone as a baseline game mechanic.

WRT Destro:

They are planning on nerfing ember generation by RoF so you can put that spell on the back burner.

They made Fel Flame a 1.5 second base cast time that does not extend dots so you can put that spell on the back burner. Unless they buff the damage significantly (They said they buffed the damage slightly... whatever that means).

Ok, so then you have incinerate, chaos bolts to cast when standing still. This is fine, really.

I however, do not understand the RoF ember generation nerf without a compensatory buff to ember generation somewhere else. They're already nerfing movement/AOE capability of Destro through KJC and MF changes. The RoF ember nerf just doesn't make sense and the Fel Flame change/nerf just doesn't make sense.

Feels like double nerfs, not to mention from a pvp perspective destro is basically ground into the ground (at least on first glance... you'll rarely get a cast off if trained and now you have 2 instants every 12 seconds, then you get kicked on either shadowflame, fire or shadow... and a shitty RoF that generates fewer ember for ember tap). Really the changes wrt destro and PVP look absolutely atrocious.

Today's patch notes:

Got a few updates for you guys. Standard disclaimer applies that this is all still in early testing and subject to change.

Fel Flame has gotten a slight rework. It now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can always be cast while moving. Also, it no longer extends the duration of damage over time effects (and, as such, no longer causes them to lose their "snapshotted" stats) and has gotten a small damage buff. The intent here is that you should be able to use this to keep up some damage when you need to move, but you'll want to stick to your standard rotation otherwise.

Looking specifically at Affliction, we're lowering the bonus damage that Malefic Grasp provides and moving that damage over into Haunt and the DoT effects themselves to compensate. We still want Malefic Grasp to be your primary filler for single target DPS, but this will make it a bit less punishing when you can't afford to channel it (especially in PvP). Haunt will once again be interrupted by movement, in favor of the Fel Flame change.

There's been a couple adjustments to the level 90 talents as well. Both Kil'Jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury have had their cooldowns and durations lowered to 60 and 10 seconds, respectively. Mannoroth's Fury now only applies to the core AoE damage spells (Seed of Corruption, Hellfire, Immolation Aura, and Rain of Fire), but increases their damage by 100% while active in addition to the range increase. Note that Rain of Fire is being changed to no longer generate enough Burning Embers to be worth using in a single target rotation (so, Destruction shouldn't feel forced into Mannoroth's Fury).

These should hopefully be hitting the PTR in the next build. Once again, please remember that we're very early in the 5.4 development process. Any or all of this may still change before the patch goes live.

[TyrianFC]

The simple fact is the snare didn't offer enough of a downside to make people consider the alternatives, because it really is no downside at all.

Indeed - Honestly, for movement fights in trivial content I just leave Burning Rush up full time and continue to run around (using KJC) - to effectively stay at full movement speed. I doubt this is intended behaviour, where the 'penalty' for casting during movement is effectively nullified by another talent. It is, however, amazingly fun!

I think a good course of action for Blizzard is to design ONE warlock spec around having something like KJC as baseline and mould that spec into being a very mobile caster. But not what KJC currently is, giving that honour to the entire class.

I agree with others saying that this is an odd (for better or worse) time in the expansion to undertake such a potential change.

As Jessicka has commented, much of this thread at times just devolves into an echochamber. Whereby, anyone who disagrees that KJC should stay is a troll.. evil.. and a bad person etc etc. You cant just blame players though, its only human to sometimes let (blind) passion get in the way of reason. Look at the huge threads on the official forums.

[Illiterate]

Casters should not be as mobile as melee. This talent should never have made it into the game.

[Gohzerlock]

casters / melee it's an old tired argument, melee have so many gap closers now it's retarded.

As Jessicka has commented, much of this thread at times just devolves into an echochamber. Whereby, anyone who disagrees that KJC should stay is a troll.. evil.. and a bad person etc etc. You cant just blame players though, its only human to sometimes let (blind) passion get in the way of reason. Look at the huge threads on the official forums.

Are you even reading what people are saying? They're giving you good tangible answers as to why they think KJC should/shouldn't be changed, reworked or deleted from the game. There is a good amount of varied opinions, it's really only people like you who sound like a broken record. Most of what i've read you saying previous to this last comment (which was actually the only constructive comment i'd read) sounds like a mage saying "LOL UR TALENT THAT I THINK WAS OP GOT NERFED".

ps gonna change my sig to echo chamber of self pity cuz it's been used quite a few times not only in this thread.

[Wobe--Vodka]

These nerfs are definitely sad for the Warlock class, but overall, they were needed. Being able to move and do 100% of your damage was just unbalanced and overpowererd. "Oh, but we had a slow if we move and DPS!" Yes, but that slow could be completely negated by simply using Burning Rush, so this isn't really a viable argument seeing as how Burning Rush can be used in almost every situation and the damage you take from it is negligible and almost unnoticed by healers. This will GREATLY affect affliction, but most likely you won't see much of a DPS change for top Demonology Warlocks. They are able to manage their fury and plan for movement and use Meta form to deal with it.

[Deleted]

WRT Destro:

They are planning on nerfing ember generation by RoF so you can put that spell on the back burner.

They made Fel Flame a 1.5 second base cast time that does not extend dots so you can put that spell on the back burner. Unless they buff the damage significantly (They said they buffed the damage slightly... whatever that means).

Ok, so then you have incinerate, chaos bolts to cast when standing still. This is fine, really.

I however, do not understand the RoF ember generation nerf without a compensatory buff to ember generation somewhere else. They're already nerfing movement/AOE capability of Destro through KJC and MF changes. The RoF ember nerf just doesn't make sense and the Fel Flame change/nerf just doesn't make sense.

Feels like double nerfs, not to mention from a pvp perspective destro is basically ground into the ground (at least on first glance... you'll rarely get a cast off if trained and now you have 2 instants every 12 seconds, then you get kicked on either shadowflame, fire or shadow... and a shitty RoF that generates fewer ember for ember tap). Really the changes wrt destro and PVP look absolutely atrocious.

GC's Tweet Today

[Kinetick]

casters / melee it's an old tired argument, melee have so many gap closers now it's retarded.

Casters also have a lot more gap makers(?) now too.

[Deleted]

So seems that some change is coming in 1 way shape or form in 5.4. From reading it seems that there gripe is that they dont want us doing our full max dps rotation all of the time but they dont mind us doing dps on the move.

KJC - maybe remove/reduce the speed reduction

destro - allow incinerate to be cast whilst moving, allows dps but not max, also have conflag when off cd then and generates secondary resourse in embers. sub 20% you switch to shadowburn anyway which is instant cast.

demo - shadowbolt, again allows dps on the move whilst not max you generate fury and you have the option of meta for movment aswell.

Affliction - drainsoul. Allows dps on the move whilst not max. Allows you to generate secondary resource in shards and the excecute would remain allowing you to move. You would also have the option to refresh agony/corruption if needed or get procs.

this would allow the playstyle to remain the same more or less, allows us to move without massive changes.

[Cocobutters]

So much crying over some well deserved nerfs.


Post more constructively, please.

[keefbeef]

I actually felt compelled to register so I could comment on this topic here since the discussion is so thoughtful.

I really do not understand the need for Blizzard to try to go about these changes in such a roundabout way. The way I see it, if allowing filler spells to be cast on the move is unacceptable to the devs, and their (previously stated) desire is to avoid large sweeping class/play changes, then why not just make a minor change to current/live KJC?

Kil'jaeden's Cunning Warlock - LvL 90 Talent
You can cast and channel while moving, but each cast reduces your movement speed by 15% for 6 sec.

With no limit to the number of stacks, they would just keep building up until the player is rooted in place (aka a turret) for the duration of the debuff.

This way, Warlocks can continue casting their spells while moving but the stacking debuff will put a limit on the number of consecutive spells cast. The debuff percentage could be adjusted to suit the desired limit. (e.g. 20% slow to make the limit 5-6 casts) Remaining Passive, it would give players the freedom to choose when and where to use it but still imposes limits. If you use it "too much" then you will be stuck in place for some time and have to deal with the consequences. Given the importance of positioning and movement in current encounters, it could easily be fatal. The debuff duration could even be adjusted/lengthened. Also, it should bypass Burning Rush.

What do you all think? This gives players the power to "control their own destiny" while still rewarding smart use of standing still to cast. It is a simple change that doesn't involve any new mechanics and could be applied with a hotfix.

[Hugginz]

It's not a bad idea Keefbeef, but it won't get implemented.

Here's the deal, and this has been the deal lately with Greg and the developers.

They keep adding in things, then taking them out.

They had Aspect of the Fox which allowed hunters to cast Steady Shot, etc on the run with a significant damage reduction penalty. It was still useful when you were on the move. So then they said "Well we don't want hunters to stance dance because it favours people who know how to write macros". So they did away with Aspect of the Fox and added casting steady shot/aimed shot to hunters as a baseline ability.

Then, in 5.0/5.1 KJC was implemented with a 20% reduced cast time (or whatever it was) and it was still relatively good, but not always the best. Then they did away with the cast time snare and put a movement snare in for 5.2, 5.3. Fine.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure they allowed Shammys to glyph some spell so that they could cast on the move.

Overall they have continued to allow some classes to cast and move and not others (Boomkins, spriests and mages mostly). Why they would ever think that this is a good idea, I have no idea.

So now they want to go back to the model of "Casters shouldn't be able to move and cast without a DMG penalty". Then why implement the 5.2 changes at all???

Even so, then why fiddle with Mannoroth's Fury?

With these changes all I see is a:

Complete and utter destruction of destro lock PVP utility.

Mainly a massive Destro lock PVE nerf (MF increases only *some* spells... incinerate, immolate and conflag appear not to be impacted by the AOE radius? Am I reading the patch notes wrong? It appears that only RoF gets the 100% dmg buff and the radius increase).

Add to this fewer ember generation by RoF. This has to be compensated by increased ember generation somewhere else, but how? All the spells generate embers a 1 bit per tick and 2 per crit. Is it going to be 2/3 now?? How is this going to be balanced?

I'm not totally against the movement while casting penalty, however it seems like they're really going overboard. I used to play a spriest and the moniker of a good spriest was the way that you moved through your GCDs to position yourself. However, this was in CATA/WOTLK and the encounters had, in general, much less movement.

[Grizelda]

Immolate could be more consistent with awarding embers.

I really don't see why they don't just give RoF the same glyph they gave to HoG.

People clearly like the spell. They are writing code to increase the particle density they like it so much.

[Lionor]

Personally I don't like the new changes much better than the castable on the move Haunt.

I get it that PTR is their petri dish and all but their starting point is so far away from what the class needs, it's annoying! Not to mention that they introduce more problems instead of solving the ones they create by making us susceptible to double school lockout with the cast time on green Searing Pain (i.e. Fel Flame).

An idea would be to swap the penalty of KJC to consuming our secondary resource as a band-aid solution till the end of the expansion and then figure out what they want to do with the class:

Affliction:
So SB:MG and SBrain Soul allow them to be chaneled while moving. This means that moving is still a DPS loss albeit not as detrimental as without any form of ability to DPS while moving.

Destro (this has been said already by someone else in this thread):
Backdraft stacks allow spells they affect to be cast on the move (so 1 stack for incinerate and 3 for CB).

Demo (the least exciting since Demo is the least affected):
MC charges allow you to either cast the buffed version of SF OR cast a Shadow Bolt while moving.


I believe changes along the above lines, while not optimal are a valid middle ground (actually more towards the nerfy side but whatever). We still get to cast our spells on the move if we really must (trinket, meta procs) but at the cost of our secondary source/buffs, so at the cost of potential DPS.

Moreover we will need a glyph for Fel Flame which removes the dot refresh component in return for a 2.5X crit multiplier on the spell (can be changed to 2.2 -2.4 for balance). Of course it remains instant and with a reduced mana cost.

AV is completely scrapped from the game and instead we get something else (perhaps mobility based). An idea that came to me that could compensate the loss of KJC is for a talent (it is last tier keep in mind) that would replace Demonic Circle placement/teleport with a single reticule spell. So imagine it as a reticule-targeted blink (or a heroic leap-blink crossover), perhaps with a slightly lower cooldown (2-4 secs lower) or 2 regenerating charges.

MF retains the passive as is on live and the proposed new version becomes an active version of the spell (the 15/90 version). The passive is disabled while the active is on cooldown. So now you have some decision making to do instead of passively AoEing like crazy. You can go for a short burst of +100% AoE but loose the range for the remaining 90 seconds or you can keep the passive bonus (which has no +dmg buff).

[Deleted]

So much crying over some well deserved nerfs.


Post more constructively, please.

You mean like this ? Youtube channel named: [MOD SNIP]
[The video uploaded a couple hours ago named KJC nerfs. I can not post the link since this is my first post.]

Greetings

[xskarma]

You mean like this ? Youtube channel named: [MOD SNIP]
[The video uploaded a couple hours ago named KJC nerfs. I can not post the link since this is my first post.]

Greetings

No, cause linking youtube channels is just helping them advertise their youtube channel, which we don't allow.

When I put in that mod edit to post more constructively I meant people should post some argumentation about WHY they feel KJC is fine to be changed. Simply stating it's well deserved doesn't cut it. And neither does simply linking a video of something. Linking a helpful or enlightening video is fine, but there needs to be a constructive post around it to explain why you feel this way, and what the contents of the video are. The video should be there as further explanation, not as the only thing in your post.

[Seezer]

Post of the year here folks? Come back with any sort of eveidence that backs that up and you will be the first.

---------- Post added 2013-06-18 at 12:48 PM ----------




Like what? A marker on the ground that lets people know whre you are going and a gateway that can be killed. Please link the other gap makers that have come into the game?

Uh, yeah. Because planting melee at your portal is really efficient. And that's totally what happens. /sarcasm

Say what you want but Demonic Portal is nothing short of amazing in pvp. And excellent gap maker/escape/LoS.

[Cocobutters]

Post of the year here folks? Come back with any sort of evidence that backs that up and you will be the first.

Do I really need to provide evidence on warlocks on how strong we are?

[evertonbelmontt]

Do I really need to provide evidence on warlocks on how strong we are?

Sure. Go ahead. Tell us why KJC is the reason lock is overpowered. If not, then you're still wrong.

[FurtyIRL]

Do I really need to provide evidence on warlocks on how strong we are?

I'd love to hear why KJC is the reason locks are a strong class right now. It's got to be the movement casting and not soul leech, fel armor, and a wide array of strong personal cooldowns.

Sure KJC is a problem child in it's current iteration and everyone should have seen a nerf coming, but let's not pretend like their proposed solution is a good one.