Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Deleted]

I actually think that buffing base damage and nerfing our bonus crit damage would be a good option at this point. Bring up the base of our abilities but lower the burst end. Something along the lines of:

Type: Normal Class | Destro
Crit: 200% | 175%
Non-crit: 100% | 125%

Couple this with a change such that Chaos Bolt doesn't always crit, but is a guaranteed crit during DS and I think it'd put Destro in a better spot in general, especially for PvP concerns.

(I wish PvP didn't exist so Destro could be the amazing burst-phase centered spec it should be.. /sigh)

This would be a much bigger change to balance, but it would also devalue crit quite a lot, but i do wish DS would play a bigger role for destruction.

Personally i like the slower play for destruction but i really feel we dont get the reward we should out of it due to pvp (so i really really agree here about pvp not existing)

[Werst]

Just to offset RoF change you need to jack up ember generation for conflag, incinerate, and immolate equally (about 30%). You are also going to have to buff the spellpower coef for those same spells even if you leave the base value the same. You could fix the haste scaling issue by making a minor glyph that had backdraft increase damage or crit rating of incinerate instead of hasting it while also reducing conflag's recharge based on haste.

I think doing those changes would be a good first place to start in terms of pve balance. To get pvp more in line destro needs a way to get chaosbolts off reliably which means either uninterruptable/mobile or making them instant at 3x backdraft. Lots of people hate on the instant thing but they certainly don't hit any harder than what other classes toss around in terms of instants. PVE it would be a loss to use backdraft like that outside of extreme short term burst situations which is an okay trade to make since its a playstyle choice. Devs have an artificial cap for how hard CB can hit a player so we need to be able to do it more frequently and/or more reliably to offset that.

4xT16 is also terrible to the point of being ignored for destro. RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG is piss poor design. 100% chance on conflag crit or even just flat 100% chance on hit...especially if we don't have conflag's recharge being reduced by haste. You are also going to have to tack F&B'd spells onto the MF list of buffed spells or destro will never be able to keep up in terms of aoe/talent use with just RoF.

[Deleted]

4xT16 is also terrible to the point of being ignored for destro

You meant 2 part?

[Rayaleith]

I read all these on destro and I realized that blizzard has not mentioned anything on this subject yet. When are they going to propose/release for testing their solution on this? Time passes and they will come up with a stupid solution like SP scaling out of hand and when new season starts and they hear the first cries, they will nerf it.

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In the mean time...

Thank you mages :P

[Deleted]

I don't really think trying more ember generation to Immolate is a good idea. Plus that makes Immolate an insanely good DoT for Destro while Destro is a nuke spec.

Trying more ember generation to Immolate suddenly makes Destro extremely good at multidoting for single target gain. That's more of a role for Aff/Demo.


The other ideas are decent enough. If they do implement that RoF change they should really un-nerf RoF so we can actually AoE again.

I think that destro suffers a lot in non-aoe multi-target compared to affli/demo and even other specs like balance, shadow, or fire mages for 3-4 clumped targets. Look at a fight like council, destro is so much behind already.

Giving ember regen via immolate is imo a good thing (decent single target compensation, more so for multi-target), especially since both MF radius and RoF ember regen will get nerfed.

[Werst]

I meant the "20% chance on conflag crits" thing...sorry if I got it backwards. /moarcaffeine

Even IF they fix destro single target it will never be a viable choice for aoe fights (ie MF talent) until F&B spells are included in both the radius and damage boost from MF. Just RoF on MF will forever relegate the spec out of serious raiding if it can't aoe.

Forgive me for sounding jaded but devs are just about fapping to mage feedback on how the mage community likes icicles yet they can't be bothered to get destro to a functional approximate ballpark so people can even properly test it. I get damage pass should fix things in theory but if its so awful its not practical to test with how do you expect to get data on it? Mages get feedback in hours...locks may or may not get anything all PTR cycle. Then devs will strawman or scapegoat on not getting enough data.

[kornoth]

MF just need to increase the radius of every damaging aoe we have by 500% ( just like what we have now ) for 10sec and increasing the damage of RoF, immo aura and SoC. It doesn't need to increase the damage of F&B, it's already high enough. Affliction really needed the damage for seed, it was like the worst aoe in the game.

[helic]

I just noticed that the warrior 5.4 thread is only 25 pages long. . .

[Jessicka]

They already made clear that they don't want to buff ember generation to fix it, as they want CB to feel special, not spammed. They will buff damage directly when they come to do numbers pass, I don't expect more than that.

[Werst]

Fincher do I really have to spell it out for you? Ele with fulmination or lavabursts, MM with aimed proc/chimera, frost's FFB/icelance spam, firemages with 3x to 4x instant auto crit pyros, starsurge, not to mention lots of high burst melee combos (shadowdance, PoF oblit spam, etc)

Jessicka your logic is as flawed as the devs... So lets just say we run with the notion of CB feeling special. Okay...well its not permitted to hit players harder than what it does now or they wouldn't have nerfed it vs players 25%. Safe to say that is the subjective cap in pvp. Empirically speaking destro doesn't compare to the successful pvp specs which would take its place in a team comp. Now we have to consider basics like ember spenders need to hit harder than ember generators. However you are going to have to buff the ember generators quite a bit to keep the spec viable.

Right now destro falls behind due to inferior primary stat scaling vs aff/demo or other classes so for the raw int/spellpower on ilvl it needs bigger coef. Destro falls behind on secondary stat scaling compared to aff/demo and other classes. (especially haste) The RoF change was a 30% nerf to single target ember generation so the damage has to come back in somewhere. If you think it through at even a basic level destro has some conflicts that need to be resolved. PVP if we can't have CB hit any harder (again subjective false cap) it needs to be more frequent and easier/more reliable to use in pvp.

[ZaneBusby]

They already made clear that they don't want to buff ember generation to fix it, as they want CB to feel special, not spammed. They will buff damage directly when they come to do numbers pass, I don't expect more than that.

Source? Because my sources say the complete opposite.

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...14656250302464
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...72108046057474
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...57210099511296

Every single time GC has responded to someone's mention of RoF and ember generation on Twitter, he has stated he wants to put that ember generation somewhere else to compensate. Not once, anywhere at all, have I seen an official Blizzard post, in any form whatsoever, state they wanted "Chaos Bolt to feel special".

[Kildragon]

Fincher do I really have to spell it out for you? Ele with fulmination or lavabursts, MM with aimed proc/chimera, frost's FFB/icelance spam, firemages with 3x to 4x instant auto crit pyros, starsurge, not to mention lots of high burst melee combos (shadowdance, PoF oblit spam, etc)

Chaos bolt has a bunch of problems, one of them being it always crits, the only other spell like that is lava burst and lava burst crits for about 50k in PvP.
None of the other spells you mentioned hit as hard as chaos bolt crits. The only spell that always crits when set up right is pyro, and that's easily countered by purging the mage and dispelling deep freeze.

Nibe edit: Soul Fire and UA dispel always crit as well
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Also I've learned a while ago to not get riled up about what jessicka says, since he/she has always had a bit of a pessimistic outlook on things.

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Even IF they fix destro single target it will never be a viable choice for aoe fights (ie MF talent) until F&B spells are included in both the radius and damage boost from MF. Just RoF on MF will forever relegate the spec out of serious raiding if it can't aoe.*

Actually, all they need to do is make MF increase RoF damage by X% more than SoC or Immo aura. In full aoe, RoF only does about 27% of destro's damage, while SoC and Immo Aura do about 36%. It's not like demo and affliction are getting these increases to a gigantic part of their AoE while destro gets nothing. If you were to include F&B however, destro would suddenly have 100% of its AoE buffed by MF while the other two specs still only get 36%. Please stop asking for ridiculous buffs that make no sense just because they seem right to you. Do some research on what effects your changes would have, then post constructively.

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I actually think that buffing base damage and nerfing our bonus crit damage would be a good option at this point. Bring up the base of our abilities but lower the burst end. Something along the lines of:

Type: Normal Class | Destro
Crit: 200% | 175%
Non-crit: 100% | 125%

Couple this with a change such that Chaos Bolt doesn't always crit, but is a guaranteed crit during DS and I think it'd put Destro in a better spot in general, especially for PvP concerns.

(I wish PvP didn't exist so Destro could be the amazing burst-phase centered spec it should be.. /sigh)

These changes would completely devalue crit for destro, especially since CB not always critting but then always doing so during DS would probably mean its damage doesn't scale with crit anymore. Not to mention that your changes would just put us right where we are already in terms of damage. Buffing base damage is something that blizzard can do easily, I really don't like the idea of sacrificing our big crits for us. Really no point to such a change.

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You can either buff ember generators (which makes the spec feel weird when they hit similiar to stuff like Chaos bolt)or*You can buff Ember comsumers (pvp cry fest)orYou can buff Ember generation (this needs to be done through immolate i think and makes the spec stupid strong with multiple targets)

What is it with people thinking our generators are suddenly going to overtake CB if we buff them? In full BiS gear, Incinerate only crits for 188k on average and conflag only crits for about 225k on average, while CB crits for over 600k on average. Even with my previously proposed glyph of reducing cast time, damage and ember cost by 50% it would crit for 80k more than conflag. Not to mention that CB always crits while our other spells do not.

On to embers. One issue with only having 40 ember bits total is that small adjustments to ember gain from spells end up having huge effects. Just by making incinerate and conflag give 2 per hit and 4 per crit for example, our ember generation goes through the roof. I much rather have a system like demonic fury, simply for the purposes of tweaking it. If they wanted demo to get more fury they could just make corruption give 1-2 more fury per tick, which results in a much smaller change than making incinerate give twice as many embers.

So really, our ember generation needs to come from somewhere and since destro only has 4 single target rotational spells, it needs to come from either immolate, conflag or incinerate.

New proposed changes:
- Buff incinerate damage by 20%, buff conflag and immolate by 10%.
- Make immolate give 1 ember per tick but none for crits and make conflag give 2 per hit and 4 per crit.
-(I still really like this one) Glyph that reduces damage, cast time and ember cost of chaos bolt by 50% and chaos bolt is no longer affected by backdraft
-Revert CB nerf against players
-Backdraft now increases damage done by 10% and reduces cast time by 20%.
-RoF only generates embers when it damages 3 or more targets.

So, straight buff to our spells for obvious reasons. % amounts can of course always be changed. Increase ember generation through immolate and conflag. Decent ember buff without going overboard. Would devalue crit a bit for immolate but would gain it through conflag. Leave RoF in slightly nerfed state since immolate buff. Implement new glyph to make CB usable in PvP without KJC. Since the pvp nerf would be reverted, 50% on CB would still hit hard, plus it still always crits. Backdraft change is simply to ensure that we don't hit the GCD cap all the time. Could also change to give 10% crit instead of damage.

[Brusalk]

These changes would completely devalue crit for destro, especially since CB not always critting but then always doing so during DS would probably mean its damage doesn't scale with crit anymore. Not to mention that your changes would just put us right where we are already in terms of damage. Buffing base damage is something that blizzard can do easily, I really don't like the idea of sacrificing our big crits for us. Really no point to such a change.

The damage of Chaos Bolt crits would still scale with crit %, it's just that it doesn't always auto-crit. During DS that means that you get 100% bonus just like now from the Crit CD. Outside of DS if you crit then the crit would be bigger depending on your crit %.

The point is to bring down our super scary crits (/s) without losing any damage for sustained. It opens up some headroom for scaling for Chaos Bolt and our other abilities due to PvP concerns with no appreciable difference in PvE.

Crit wouldn't be any more devalued than it already is, and if anything it would be of higher value.

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What is it with people thinking our generators are suddenly going to overtake CB if we buff them? In full BiS gear, Incinerate only crits for 188k on average and conflag only crits for about 225k on average, while CB crits for over 600k on average. Even with my previously proposed glyph of reducing cast time, damage and ember cost by 50% it would crit for 80k more than conflag. Not to mention that CB always crits while our other spells do not.

There's a big difference between averages when played correctly, and self-buffed damage. Chaos Bolt does not hit for 600k when you have no temporary buffs/cooldowns. You spend a ton more time casting unbuffed Incinerates and Conflags than you do unbuffed Chaos Bolts. You can't just look at the averages for the two and compare them directly.

You have to look at how much damage they do under the same conditions. There's not a huge difference in PvP between unbuffed Incinerates/Conflags and Chaos Bolts.

[Darkith]

" Demonology. Imp Swarm Summons 4 Wild Imps" now instead of 5.

[darkarches]

"Harvest Life: Increases the damage of your Drain Life spell by 50% and the healing of your Drain Life spell by 150%. Warlock - LvL 15 Talent. 40 yd range."

boner kill. whether you use it or not, harvest life was a pretty cool spin on the spell.

[Brusalk]

So really, our ember generation needs to come from somewhere and since destro only has 4 single target rotational spells, it needs to come from either immolate, conflag or incinerate.

New proposed changes:
- Buff incinerate damage by 20%, buff conflag and immolate by 10%.
- Make immolate give 1 ember per tick but none for crits and make conflag give 2 per hit and 4 per crit.
-(I still really like this one) Glyph that reduces damage, cast time and ember cost of chaos bolt by 50% and chaos bolt is no longer affected by backdraft
-Revert CB nerf against players
-Backdraft now increases damage done by 10% and reduces cast time by 20%.
-RoF only generates embers when it damages 3 or more targets.

So, straight buff to our spells for obvious reasons. % amounts can of course always be changed. Increase ember generation through immolate and conflag. Decent ember buff without going overboard. Would devalue crit a bit for immolate but would gain it through conflag. Leave RoF in slightly nerfed state since immolate buff. Implement new glyph to make CB usable in PvP without KJC. Since the pvp nerf would be reverted, 50% on CB would still hit hard, plus it still always crits. Backdraft change is simply to ensure that we don't hit the GCD cap all the time. Could also change to give 10% crit instead of damage.

Backdraft should just be a straight damage buff rather than anything fancy with cast time reduction.

RoF needs to generate embers on 2 targets. Destro is supposed to be the "cleave" spec with Havoc. RoF is a huge part of that.

The immolate/conflag change is pretty much neutral in embers gained per unit time. No real reason to change that.

Simultaneously making CB easier to cast in PvP and reverting the nerf against players is only asking for trouble down the road.

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"Harvest Life: Increases the damage of your Drain Life spell by 50% and the healing of your Drain Life spell by 150%. Warlock - LvL 15 Talent. 40 yd range."

boner kill. whether you use it or not, harvest life was a pretty cool spin on the spell.

Well that's a huge nerf to Demonology AoE when not in melee range..

[Thelm]

" Demonology. Imp Swarm Summons 4 Wild Imps" now instead of 5.

How big (or small) of a nerf is this?

[Netherspark]

This new Harvest Life is absolutely terrible. Who in their right mind would ever take it as a talent over the other two?

They need to make it into a debuff/dot with a short cooldown (like a suped-up original Siphon Life).

[darkarches]

Well that's a huge nerf to Demonology AoE when not in melee range..

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Not to mention it's just plain fun.

[Rayaleith]

Cannot understand yet what they have in mind for demo and destro. These changes seems a bit weird to say at least...