Patch 5.2 Warlock discussion

[Deleted]

It's not so much the pet scaling isn't great that Sup and Serv are not attractive enough. A dirty fix would be to increase the modifiers for destro (lesser extent affliction) for additional benefit on those two talents. Something ill expect we will see over the course of mop but not this teir. Don't forget any redress of pet scaling will cause a rebalance of dps tool kit, and I much prefer me doing the majority of damage while taking advantage of encounter mechanics to utilise the ultimate dot 'He who Plays All His Records Backwards'. IMO.

Add to that I would like see a minor sup buff for demo too, maybe related to wimps.

[pokeadott]

Did you account for the Wrathguard issue where it's only using it's Legion Strike to apply the Mortal Strike debuff?

I just left Cleave on auto-cast, turned off Pursuit, and sent him to attack with Ctrl+1. Whether he's improperly pooling energy for cleaves or just not getting higher energy regen, he's still bugged. If it's a WG/FG specific issues, it's easy enough to test with a different pet. Not able to atm, but will later if no one else does it first.

[jackzod]

I did a 5 minutes test on a target dummy with my wrathguard

with haste at 4717% (11%): 56 Mortal cleave and 333 White Attack
with no haste (naked) : 52 Mortal Cleave and 300 White attack

Decided to hit wrathstorm on CD during those 5 minutes:
with haste (11%) :50 Mortal Cleave and 289 White Hit
without haste: :45 Mortal Cleave and 263 white hit

I did a quick pass with a Felguard (2 minute test):
with haste (11%) :24 legion strike
without haste :22 legion strike

I think the pet definitly scale with haste as it gave me roughly a 10% gain in Mortal Cleave/legion strike and on white attack (which we already knew)

On a side note, as far as the energy capping that the wrathguard does, during the first 1min 30 sec its more obvious, after that the energy bar never flirt with the cap, and one thing I did notice is that you always have energy to wrathstorm with him(which is sometime an issue with the felguard)

[Deleted]

Ok getting some conflicting info here..

On a 3 min test that pokeadott did, the WG didnt cast any extra Mortal Cleaves, but on the 5 min test that jackzod did the WG cast an extra 4-5 cleaves after putting on haste gear? Something seems to be amiss between the tests in that case

[jackzod]

I did the test twice and got more MC each time with haste gear (in fact the first time it was 5 more MC but it lasted 5min 6sec, so the additional one was more likely due to the 6 more sec thats why i didn't post that result).

In fact I did run 4 different test ( 3 with wrathguard (2 posted in my previous post) and one with felguard) and always got more MC/LS and white attack with haste gear

[Jessicka]

Ok getting some conflicting info here..

On a 3 min test that pokeadott did, the WG didnt cast any extra Mortal Cleaves, but on the 5 min test that jackzod did the WG cast an extra 4-5 cleaves after putting on haste gear? Something seems to be amiss between the tests in that case

It's because the Wrathguard only uses it's Mortal Cleave to refresh the reduced healing debuff, so it's fixed at casting every 5 seconds rather than casting when it has 60 Energy to spend on it. That means once you have enough Haste to cast every 5 seconds (20%), it stops using it any faster and he'll be generating Energy faster than he spends it; that ultimately leads to capping the Energy bar and a DPS loss.

[Deleted]

It's because the Wrathguard only uses it's Mortal Cleave to refresh the reduced healing debuff, so it's fixed at casting every 5 seconds rather than casting when it has 60 Energy to spend on it. That means once you have enough Haste, he'll be generating Energy faster than he spends it; that ultimately leads to capping the Energy bar and a DPS loss.

Thx now I know I have to manually macro it.

[Screwtape]

It's because the Wrathguard only uses it's Mortal Cleave to refresh the reduced healing debuff, so it's fixed at casting every 5 seconds rather than casting when it has 60 Energy to spend on it. That means once you have enough Haste to cast every 5 seconds (20%), it stops using it any faster and he'll be generating Energy faster than he spends it; that ultimately leads to capping the Energy bar and a DPS loss.

So extra haste provides no benefit up until the point the pet's AI makes it irrelevant. Lol.

[Deleted]

So extra haste provides no benefit up until the point the pet's AI makes it irrelevant. Lol.

Hast gives benefit till a softcap where the energy gain is > than the energy spending of the ai of the felguard.
But you can continue enjoying haste on your pet by manually casting more mortal cleaves with macro's bound to common used spells.

[Velly]

Well, I tested it too and just to have more tests here, I did 5minute tests with the Fel Guard
Naked it did 150 auto attacks, and 55 Mortal cleaves
and with 11.20% haste it did 171 auto attacks and 59 cleaves (almost had enough energy for the 60th)
I know it's not the most useful information ever, but I just wanted to add more data proving that point :P hope I helped

[pokeadott]

I did a 5 minutes test on a target dummy with my wrathguard

I think the pet definitly scale with haste as it gave me roughly a 10% gain in Mortal Cleave/legion strike and on white attack (which we already knew)

On a side note, as far as the energy capping that the wrathguard does, during the first 1min 30 sec its more obvious, after that the energy bar never flirt with the cap, and one thing I did notice is that you always have energy to wrathstorm with him(which is sometime an issue with the felguard)

Retested it and my WG definitely did not gain any extra cleave attacks from haste. Tried resummoning/retalenting and got the same results. I am definitely not seeing haste granting extra cleaves just with autocast. Cant explain the discrepancy though. Maybe some human error in timing (although the results ahve stayed consistent). Will try a longer test anyway just to check.

I am definitely seeing the behavior of the WG not wanting to Cleave until the debuff has fallen off though - which I think is the culprit on my end. Since I'm not Fel Storming to use energy, I might be staying capped while getting an extra regen tick. Tough to see visually but I'm guessing that's the root issue.

Sidenote: trying to fill in the Cleaves manually leads to some wonky behavior. With pet on Passive and sent in via Ctrl+1, using Cleave manually will cause the WG to stop attacking the target. It also caused mine to come to the front of the target and then occasionally stay there when being told to reengage. This doesn't happen if the WG is on 'Assist'. Also, if you ever bottom out your WG energy even while on 'Assist', there seem to be times he will stop attacking altogether.

[Jessicka]

So extra haste provides no benefit up until the point the pet's AI makes it irrelevant. Lol.

Hast gives benefit till a softcap where the energy gain is > than the energy spending of the ai of the felguard.
But you can continue enjoying haste on your pet by manually casting more mortal cleaves with macro's bound to common used spells.

It's a bug with the Wrathguard only, the Felguard isn't effected.

[Myzou]

I honestly have to say, I've never seen a demo warlock with 20% haste, that's probably why the wrathguard bug was never really that much of an issue.

I'm still considering going Sac over Sup as destruction in 5.2.

I just do not like using pets as destruction. It goes against the new persona of the spec. :S

[jackzod]

Retested it and my WG definitely did not gain any extra cleave attacks from haste. Tried resummoning/retalenting and got the same results. I am definitely not seeing haste granting extra cleaves just with autocast. Cant explain the discrepancy though. Maybe some human error in timing (although the results ahve stayed consistent). Will try a longer test anyway just to check.

I am definitely seeing the behavior of the WG not wanting to Cleave until the debuff has fallen off though - which I think is the culprit on my end. Since I'm not Fel Storming to use energy, I might be staying capped while getting an extra regen tick. Tough to see visually but I'm guessing that's the root issue.

Sidenote: trying to fill in the Cleaves manually leads to some wonky behavior. With pet on Passive and sent in via Ctrl+1, using Cleave manually will cause the WG to stop attacking the target. It also caused mine to come to the front of the target and then occasionally stay there when being told to reengage. This doesn't happen if the WG is on 'Assist'. Also, if you ever bottom out your WG energy even while on 'Assist', there seem to be times he will stop attacking altogether.

I honestly don't know why you can't reproduce my results, we use roughly the same amount of haste. I did see a gain of MC even without wrathstorm tough.

Like you I did try to manually make him cleave, and as soon as I do that, he cleave and then stand still like the dumb minion he is doing nothing, he just go back to passive, I guess if you macro the cleave to a spell you'll have to not forget to add an autoattack command right after it to avois a massive dps loss, not sure it's "working as intended"...

The good thing while doing those test it's that I realised that now with my gear service is ahead of supremacy (which wasn't the case before) so I'm going to be rid of that bug.

[EvreliaGaming]

Its a BiS issue, not a t14 gear issue. Sac simply scales far better than Surv or Sup could ever hope of doing because of pets not benefiting from Haste or Mastery.

You've confused me a bit here. I'm talking about in a PTR setting with scaled up gear to 537, and I'm saying that Sup > Sac, even though sims say that Sac > Sup.

[Apero]

Anyone else today with dying pet issues on horridon hc? Mine and the hunter mates pets have been died several times during some trys trough aoe dmg. (i guess,not sure. But maloriak last phase comes in mind..).

[villie]

Retracted post: non constructive and drunk!!!! ;-)

[Deleted]

Is there any 'best' spec at the moment or is all very fight specific?

Would like to keep playing Affliction, I assume it's still viable?

[Teye]

You've confused me a bit here. I'm talking about in a PTR setting with scaled up gear to 537, and I'm saying that Sup > Sac, even though sims say that Sac > Sup.

Was this prior to the Haunt buff? That Haunt buff actually promotes the play of Sac because (To my knowledge, and again, I only played Aff on 2 or 3 fights this tier) pets don't benefit from the Haunt debuff. I could be wrong there, but that makes the scaling issue even worse.


Edit: I just confirmed this with a quick test in game on live. Unless they changed this going into 5.2, then that Haunt buff causes Sac to scale over Sup more than it already did. The increased Haunt uptime from the 2 set and the increased MG and DS damage from the 4 set have the same effect as well. Its not clear what gear you were scaling up, but if it was T14 gear, that issue wouldn't be replicated either.

[Kael]

You've confused me a bit here. I'm talking about in a PTR setting with scaled up gear to 537, and I'm saying that Sup > Sac, even though sims say that Sac > Sup.

I'd like to know the margin of difference here, and what gear was scaled, as well as when.

Teye has a point, although I think Sup will likely remain ahead because that's what Blizzard apparently wants in spite of giving us bonuses to single target that grossly benefit sac over sup - and I'm not sure just how much of an effective difference the 2p/4p this tier have on sac/sup, but I'm confident they benefit sac significantly more than sup (more MG/DS, stronger dots to channel faster on, yatta yatta). The corr bonus from this tier, on the PTR, should be 30% in favor of Sac over Sup, and if it remains a ~2% damage gain, that's .6% in favor of Sac, which is greater than the 2p for next tier, from my math below. Unsure how much more the DS:M additions benefit sac over sup, or how they compare to the 5% boost next tier. If I'm not miscalculating, the haunt buff should be a ~2.3% damage increase (130/125, 4/120 uptime, ~88% of damage effected) for Sac and ~1.795% for Sup, assuming the tier bonus. It's quite possible that would push in favor of Sup, but given the round after round of sac nerfs, if that occurred I'd expect another minor nerf to arrive.

Also, have they fixed pets on the PTR?