I do wonder if we're not regarded as overpowered and overly useful next tier whether the jury will still be out as to whether the overhaul would be regarded as "successful". Until now, it's hard not to accept that being an 'outlier' was just compensation for the continual rollercoaster this expansion has been as a consequence.
It may change some people opinions if we are middle of the pack next tier but I wouldn't call us on a rollercoaster for MoP strictly from a PvE standpoint. While we have gotten a lot of changes and have had to adjust, assuming you are willing to play all 3 specs, we have been at the top or near it for the entirety of the expansion. Now, I personally think the overhaul was a success, but I am a MoP reroll, but I think Blizz is more thinking in terms of success not based on numbers in a raid environment or pvp ratings, like we would, but in % of wow playerbase who plays a lock. I haven't seen whether our % of the playerbase has increased or not since MoP started.
Since the end of T14 we have seen destro go from a strong spec (when we were all gearing from 500'ish to 525'ish in normal) to completely left in the dust by the time we were 535 and distant in the rearview by 550'ish/bis. The only times you did see destro competitive was when it was playing in the shadowburn/havoc niche but even with that niche it couldn't hang on over the gap between it and other specs. Now sure UVLS is taking it in the pooper with blizz going out of their way to break the demo synergy however aff needed no such gimmickry to say nothing of other classes.
Its a sh** performing spec that took a major nerf in the name of mechanics that fubar'd its capability to aoe whilst cutting its single target ember generation 30%. In "compensation" we got 10% to immolate which is about 1% overall. Its primary and secondary stat scaling are behind with mechanics that further handcuff it. Even if they blanket buff numbers of ember consumers it still has the other mechanics issues plus the gimp set bonuses.
Really the destro 4pc should have no ICD and simply be able to be "rolled" in that it can overwrite itself (but never stack on itself). The 2pc needs to be somewhere between 100% chance on crit if not 100% chance on hit....depending if they let conflag's recharge reduce/scale with haste or not. If you look at the potential power gains from those set bonuses they need a bump to compete. Right now long RNG on top of RNG and a inversely scaling buff just set destro up to fail to keep pace as gear/ilvl increases which is the primary issue with the spec to begin with.
Demo I think will be okay with a crit > mastery > haste build...it just will not offspec well to anything. The KTT and cleave trinkets not impacting guardians is going to be rough and demo has no way to stack garrosh's trinket fully in its duration either. Even the amp trinket doesn't help pet/guardian crit multipliers which leaves only the isle trinket which has no heroic version.
That in a nutshell is why it feels like we all are going to be going aff for the start of 5.4 but at least now we have a couple weeks to see what blizz does with things. Hopefully destro/demo get some fixes. Though I'm half expecting aff to get nerfed back down to destro's level so locks are "balanced" among each spec. Sooo...about those open raid/pug raids to farm for a heroic/htf wush?!? j/k
They changed garrosh trinket to behave like wush, instead of increasing stack per spell cast. http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102310/b...ood-of-yshaarj
Wushoolay i541
+1752 Hit
Equip: Your harmful spells have a chance to grant Wushoolay's Lightning, granting 1592 Intellect every 1 sec for 10 sec. (Approximately 1.21 procs per minute)
Garrosh i553
+1959 Haste
Equip: Your attacks have a chance to trigger Wrath of the Darkspear for 10 sec. While Wrath of the Darkspear is active, every 1 sec you gain 1565 Intellect, stacking up to 10 times. (Approximately 0.92 procs per minute)
Hmm... what ?
Im so blaming You if they'll notice now. :<
Last edited by whi; 2013-08-22 at 04:35 PM.
We kind of need to face the facts with demo, it soared to the near top of the dps charts because of 1 single item. The spec is a middle of the pack spec without the abuse of UVLS.
IMO the devs have some serious work to do for both Demo and Destro (more destro obv) to bring them up to speed with Affliction. A few posts back someone said something about nerfing affliction, they already did that. They decided we channeled too much and they want out focus to come from our dots. What do they do, buff the dots, nerf the channel, I have no issues with this. I do not think they are going to come right back and nerf dots again. The problem they have revolves around the beginning of this post, Affliction is standing at the forefront of the spec...alone. In 5.4 as it stands now I do not believe it has any competition from either of the two other specs, barring a fight with add waves that require quick bursting (demo) to kill.
TL;DR Affliction is fine, Demo and Destro need some attention/love.
So how exactly did they nerf unerring for demo? Is the amp trinket going to replace it or be coupled with it. LS keeps being an asshole and won't drop a heroic one for me and my gold rolls are the best in the world.
Quote Originally Posted by Kirroth View Post
Eh, I have little sympathy for such complaints. Mythic raiders will have mythic weapons and mythic trinkets that will be far more powerful than a random legendary world drop. Power wise they'll still be at the top of the mountain. This is just a way for other people to have other special things, which is not anything mythic raiders should get to have a monopoly on.
They nerfed the proc rate on it. I cannot recall the exact numbers, but its not even close to a guarantee on the pull anymore and the time between procs is obscene, even on the HTF one come 5.4....
On September 10th you can feel free to either melt it or vendor it IMO.
As long as they didn't nerf it to the point where it won't count for spawning imps off doom crits or something stupid like that I'm holding onto mine for demo. I already read about the proc rate but I don't see why you would drop the trinket. Nothing but the amp trinket looked appealing for demo unless they changed some of the other trinkets very recently.
Quote Originally Posted by Kirroth View Post
Eh, I have little sympathy for such complaints. Mythic raiders will have mythic weapons and mythic trinkets that will be far more powerful than a random legendary world drop. Power wise they'll still be at the top of the mountain. This is just a way for other people to have other special things, which is not anything mythic raiders should get to have a monopoly on.
How about something else entirely, buffing the incinerate emberbit generation and lowering the damage of incinerate. Now you may be thinking, "WTF, why buff the emberbit generation and nerf the damage?" The answer is because think of it, the increased emberbit generation would fix AoE FnB problems as let's set it up so 3+ targets with RoF and FnB Incin will be self sustaining. On single target though, the needed increased generation will mean more chaos bolts getting off. Which may be perfectly fine, may not, but if destro ends up needing a quick hotfix boost it's easier to buff Incin's damage and know exactly what will happen than to screw with anything else.
As for haste issues with Destro, honestly it's the same issue as Balance druids have, the only way to fix it is to get rid of rotational haste procs like backdraft and nature's grace. The haste boost should be swapped to a flat out damage boost so incin doesn't go below the gcd (In a mastery destro spec with backdraft and the meta gem up I can get ~.7 sec Incin cast I think, with just backdraft it drops down to a .9 sec cast). I mean that or just add more variations of the caster meta so specs who go under the gcd cap because of the gem proc can pick something else, like mastery or crit. Personally I'd prefer backdraft getting swapped to damage from haste boost. Haste boosts were super cool when haste didn't exist as a stat, ever since haste was introduced haste boosts mechanics have caused issues with spec scaling, same with crit boost mechanics as well.
What are you willing to sacrifice?
I do not see the point in gimping yourself with a trinket that is barely going to proc, and certainly not anywhere close to reliable on the pull. You are much better off going with other options...the days of 100% crit dooms for the entire fight are over come 5.4.
If you have a Heroic Wush it would be a much better option as you can at least line up your Meta burst phases with it.
Last edited by TheBGreene; 2013-08-22 at 06:00 PM.
You have to realize that not everyone in that group is from Midwinter. Also, I tested Demonology along with 2 other locks. There was a 4th lock playing Destro. While the destro lock had us for quite awhile, I started pickin up my damage up to 700-800 then hover around 600k for the rest of the phase. Personally i like Demonology for the fight. Not saying I'm better than other locks but be careful what you see on streams. Even if someone in the group is able to pull absurd numbers chances your guild replicating a said strat or you performing at the same level of said player more than likely won't happen.
I've tested all 3 specs on most of the 25m versions of the fights an have to say that besides Garrosh, can't really comment on the others as far as dmg output. This is due to ilvl scaling affecting hit etc.
Last edited by Ravoks; 2013-08-22 at 06:12 PM.
From what I got from Holinka, the "fix" for ember generation was already done, it was the RoF nerf.
There is no compensation, it was a straight nerf, cause it was too much ember regen...
I noticed the change to the garrosh trinket. That said its what 30% less procs than wush that are similar strength but half as long with only slightly better static stats. Plus the heroic version isn't possible till progression is done. I did mess with it on the PTR and it didn't exactly blow my skirt up.
Even a 2/2 HTF UVLS will have a RPPM rate of .6x while even the lowest of the other trinkets are at least .9x minimum. Wush is more than double UVLS and chanye (as I understand it) with a crit build or a spec that crits often can get to a pretty high RPPM as well. Your non uber normal or LFR UVLS's will be so infrequent and unreliable that they really are no better for demo than say UVLS is for destro.
Holinka or any of the other devs can't be so dense as to think destro is "okay" when it wasn't keeping up going from 522 to 535 packing an extra 30% ember generation. Let alone the gap that forms to 550+ and with "intended" ember generation. I think the normalization of gear to 530 probably is cloaking destro's inadequacies to some extent.
Also don't forget that they removed the everlasting affliction glyph, so now you will run into shorter doom times with UVLS proccing even less than it does on live.
- - - Updated - - -
Wush duration is now 10 seconds down from 20 seconds. Duration on both trinkets is the same, the Garrosh one is just noticeably worse than Wush.