Shrouded Suffocation next on the chopping block?

[Karry]

Ok, so this might sound stupid to you, but how is this "aoe burst on trash is going to be huge" thing gonna occur if I'm just bursting down ONE target, same thing that can be done with toxic blade. I know this is in writing so dont confuse my tone, I'm just asking so I understand.

[Deleted]

Ok, so this might sound stupid to you, but how is this "aoe burst on trash is going to be huge" thing gonna occur if I'm just bursting down ONE target, same thing that can be done with toxic blade. I know this is in writing so dont confuse my tone, I'm just asking so I understand.

You have the 3 buffed garrotes + ~ 3 or 4 Ruptures + ~ PB ~ enough Energy due to rupture and exang on one taget to have enough Energy to get the evenom buff up to 100%

[shaunika123]

Ok, so this might sound stupid to you, but how is this "aoe burst on trash is going to be huge" thing gonna occur if I'm just bursting down ONE target, same thing that can be done with toxic blade. I know this is in writing so dont confuse my tone, I'm just asking so I understand.

exsang gives you energy regen

[Deleted]

You have the 3 buffed garrotes + ~ 3 or 4 Ruptures + ~ PB ~ enough Energy due to rupture and exang on one taget to have enough Energy to get the evenom buff up to 100%

You'd need high crit to be able to get 3/4 ruptures off before the initial buffed garrotes drop...sometimes it's possible but ohers its 3 FoK and just 3 cp...

[Coldkil]

And as i thought now Shadow Blades got nerfed aswell. I agree it was over the top and fortunately i had no gear with it - but still, there were some traits clearly unbalanced and they should even have made it live in this state.

Especially since they trump easily over raid traits excluding the stacking one.

[elfporn]

And as i thought now Shadow Blades got nerfed aswell. I agree it was over the top and fortunately i had no gear with it - but still, there were some traits clearly unbalanced and they should even have made it live in this state.

Especially since they trump easily over raid traits excluding the stacking one.

I imagine you meant the sharpened blades trait for shuriken toss and poisoned blade? I was surprised to see a third nerf to it. Iirc it was in line with the best traits, but not way ahead.

The trait imbalances we've seen since launch should never have made it in - they've affected gearing highs and lows more than any other expac i can remember. Though Legion had the same issue, with less overall impact across the entire playerbase - legendaries were rarer and more random.

Of course, it was fairly boring and straightforward as a trait, but it was something to change your rotation and ability-use-decisions during play.

[Mafic]

I imagine you meant the sharpened blades trait for shuriken toss and poisoned blade? I was surprised to see a third nerf to it. Iirc it was in line with the best traits, but not way ahead.

The trait imbalances we've seen since launch should never have made it in - they've affected gearing highs and lows more than any other expac i can remember. Though Legion had the same issue, with less overall impact across the entire playerbase - legendaries were rarer and more random.

Of course, it was fairly boring and straightforward as a trait, but it was something to change your rotation and ability-use-decisions during play.

I do not know what they intend to do with trait interactions beyond patch 8.1 because it seems that specs are subjected to wild balance swings as a result while generic traits seem the safer option long term.

[Varolyn]

The system definitely needs to go... It has to be one of the most user-unfriendly game systems ever in WoW. Having to hold on dozens of random azerite pieces in order to prepare for balance swings is not fun. Artifacts were cool in Legion... but please blizz, go back to a more traditional progression system for wow. Even WoD was acceptable with the extra talent row and the perks that came with leveling.

[pay928]

The system definitely needs to go... It has to be one of the most user-unfriendly game systems ever in WoW. Having to hold on dozens of random azerite pieces in order to prepare for balance swings is not fun. Artifacts were cool in Legion... but please blizz, go back to a more traditional progression system for wow. Even WoD was acceptable with the extra talent row and the perks that came with leveling.

One solution is that azerite reforger would let you use any azerite set that you found, instead of just resetting it to that item's defaults. In addition, it should reset for free when they re-balance. However, they'll never do this since you don't want you to use your BiS 340 traits on your 385 piece with worst traits.

[Coldkil]

I imagine you meant the sharpened blades trait for shuriken toss and poisoned blade? I was surprised to see a third nerf to it. Iirc it was in line with the best traits, but not way ahead.

The trait imbalances we've seen since launch should never have made it in - they've affected gearing highs and lows more than any other expac i can remember. Though Legion had the same issue, with less overall impact across the entire playerbase - legendaries were rarer and more random.

Of course, it was fairly boring and straightforward as a trait, but it was something to change your rotation and ability-use-decisions during play.

Yeah, that is the one It's an "interesting" trait, because it makes you do something more; nothing fancy but it's something. Anyway even after the first two nerfs it was way too powerful - the point was that only one was mediocre but 2 was already better than most of the others while 3 made everything else irrelevant.

I still don't get why or how traits from M+ can be this better than raid gear given also the fact M+ actually don't drop azerite gear (excluding the weekly cache).

[csguba]

The Sharpened Blades nerf seems really overdone and it now appears near the bottom. Unsurprising though from Blizz. Considering it's a trait that actually requires management to play effectively rather than 'equip and forget' I really think this should have been nerfed less. You have traits like Double Dose beating it out significantly which doesn't change playstyle at all.

Really frustrated with the constant Azerite nerfs across the specs. Sure you could say don't farm azerite gear but some of us wish to be as competitive as possible and it's getting tedious. I've lost 400 simmed dps this week and kills any character progression.

[Kaver]

The Sharpened Blades nerf seems really overdone and it now appears near the bottom. Unsurprising though from Blizz. Considering it's a trait that actually requires management to play effectively rather than 'equip and forget' I really think this should have been nerfed less. You have traits like Double Dose beating it out significantly which doesn't change playstyle at all.

Really frustrated with the constant Azerite nerfs across the specs. Sure you could say don't farm azerite gear but some of us wish to be as competitive as possible and it's getting tedious. I've lost 400 simmed dps this week and kills any character progression.

I Legion they had a design philosophy about not giving too many nerfs as they didn't want people go backwards in character progression.. I guess they changed their minds since then :P

[Rixxis]

I Legion they had a design philosophy about not giving too many nerfs as they didn't want people go backwards in character progression.. I guess they changed their minds since then :P

In Legion I farmed my dick off for AP as Outlaw believing they were going to take this approach only to have them nerf Outlaw overall and then also neuter Dispatch. It was tons of hours farming AP for nothing because Outlaw didn't again become playable until late Antorus.

Here they seem to be doing the same shit, nerf overall damage and then also nerf a trait. At least now I just need to reroll the trait or use different gear. But this brings up the question of what is even the point of this system if all traits are going to be near identical anyways. Like how do I benefit picking a certain path if ultimately it doesn't matter? It's like they want to squish everything into equality but at that rate just fucking give us base stats back on the gear. I thought the point of traits was to make them appealing in certain situations rather than bland minor increases to damage.

[Karry]

I Legion they had a design philosophy about not giving too many nerfs as they didn't want people go backwards in character progression.. I guess they changed their minds since then :P

I mean, Outlaw was amazing in EN, and then shit for the entire expansion. Or at least not on par. With Sub and Muti going way head. And muti being clear winner in Antorus.

[Argonion]

You'd need high crit to be able to get 3/4 ruptures off before the initial buffed garrotes drop...sometimes it's possible but ohers its 3 FoK and just 3 cp...

You want to go crit/mastery heavy for most mythic+ dungeons anyways. At 30% crit & 38% mastery I have no problem maintaining a rotation with garrote, rupture & crimson tempest in 10+ keys and higher.

[Deleted]

You want to go crit/mastery heavy for most mythic+ dungeons anyways. At 30% crit & 38% mastery I have no problem maintaining a rotation with garrote, rupture & crimson tempest in 10+ keys and higher.

Damn, some of us have really bad luck with gear...I have half my bank full with different itmlvl azerite pieces and some old non-azerite stuff but 30% crit? im hardly at 20% and 30% mastery, while "swimming" in haste (~1400 rating which is around 21/22%).

[Argonion]

Damn, some of us have really bad luck with gear...I have half my bank full with different itmlvl azerite pieces and some old non-azerite stuff but 30% crit? im hardly at 20% and 30% mastery, while "swimming" in haste (~1400 rating which is around 21/22%).

The more you play the more gear you get. I've done about 70 m+ dungeons since m+ was released. It does help that my usual comp includes a demon hunter & druid though. Pair that with heroic & mythic raiding and gear should come in a steady stream.
I do keep sets of gear for different content. For raiding I go crit/haste heavy gear for example.

[Coldkil]

The Sharpened Blades nerf seems really overdone and it now appears near the bottom. Unsurprising though from Blizz. Considering it's a trait that actually requires management to play effectively rather than 'equip and forget' I really think this should have been nerfed less. You have traits like Double Dose beating it out significantly which doesn't change playstyle at all.

Really frustrated with the constant Azerite nerfs across the specs. Sure you could say don't farm azerite gear but some of us wish to be as competitive as possible and it's getting tedious. I've lost 400 simmed dps this week and kills any character progression.

Agree on the management of Azerite and the system istelf being convoluted for no reason (it seems every player just agrees that power should have been managed via some sort of "orbs" to put into the neck's sockets but oh well no one at Blizzard thought about that).

As for the nerf, you're not completely correct. Agree however that passive traits will just gain ground now since they're comparable to "active" ones BUT you simply cannot use them wrong.
https://bloodmallet.com/index.html#r...tacking&tier=3
Even with the nerf, it's still the top trait for Subtlety and it's never been one of the top choices for the other two specs. It was out of control anyway in beta and nerfs were needed.

If you look at the charts you get the real reason of the nerfs - they weren't made to fix unbalanced ones, but to make the raid ones actually desirable. Now that we're 3(?) resets into Uldir, the stacking buff is kicking in and having 3 of them actually outperforms other traits (like it should be, otherwise raiding would be meaningless). However they're strong only for the stacking mainstat buff, the proc itself is mediocre at best and still inferior to M+ traits.


EDIT 10-01-2018: bloodmallet updated and sharpened blades now sucks. everything above is bogus.

[Deleted]

Would kinda love it when the azerite ktem itself is a empty mainstat shells, while traits have to be found/droped. So with that it would make sense to do all the content like emissarys normal dungeons and so on.

[cparle87]

There's a strong precedent in the game for trash damage to just come primarily from one spell, though.

Blade Flurry, Arcane Explosion, Bladestorm, Sundering, Cataclysm... the list goes on.

Can attest to this. I remember at the Wrath as a bear tank running random heroics I was doing 50-70% of the group's total damage just spamming swipe as I auto ran from the start of the dungeon to the first boss. Kill boss, spam swipe to next boss. Repeat.