Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[MrHappy]

Sac was never OP with destro, i don't even understand how you could come to this Jessica. if they didn't nerf it accross the board, destro would have been in line with the other spec in single target ( as it only increase single target) and it would have a good scaling, very bad with haste and very good with mastery is a good scaling after all. today it's very very bad with haste and good with mastery so it's crap.
For affliction it was OP because of KJC, now that KJC and MG and DS are all nerfed, i don't think that sac will be good at anytime in 5.4, even with BIS gear.

t14 says hi....Sac destro on two targets was OP

[Gihelle]

Sparkuggz would be glad to offer some insight. However he is still waiting for his trinkets to proc.

This made me laugh.

[cabana]

So guys, more 25m testing tonight on the PTR...if you are testing, please spec Destro and run logs so we have some data for GC and the other devs.

If you are not able to test like myself, please reach out to some of the bigger name Warlocks and see if you can get them to run some logs as Destro. I myself have tweeted Sparkuggz to try and see if he will test some as Destro, everyone try to do your part in getting this done!

If you care about utilizing your time well in PTR, go Affliction for today's fights. Protectors, Shaman, and Nazgrim are fights where Aff is very strong.

Do you people honestly think Blizz doesn't have data from the weeks of PTR about destro? That a few people posting logs to GC...on twitter...7 days before the patch hits will be overwhelming evidence that all their data is wrong.

You guys really need to get a grip on reality. You and your "logs" are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

[Xploit]

Can't really take anyone seriously with a signature like that.

[TheBGreene]

If you care about utilizing your time well in PTR, go Affliction for today's fights. Protectors, Shaman, and Nazgrim are fights where Aff is very strong.

Do you people honestly think Blizz doesn't have data from the weeks of PTR about destro? That a few people posting logs to GC...on twitter...7 days before the patch hits will be overwhelming evidence that all their data is wrong.

You guys really need to get a grip on reality. You and your "logs" are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

Oh, well I am glad you can count...it's actually 14 days so there is that.

To be frank, I do not care if Destro is fixed or not. I will be going affliction and demo for 5.4 but as a Warlock, I understand everyone does not want to play that spec. Some people (i.e. Bru) enjoy Destro and playing a spec for the spec itself and not because it's the best.

Also, since when is it just about testing a spec that is good for an encounter? It is no mystery that Affliction is going to be very strong for almost every fight in SoO. I have news for you, the PTR testing is not about YOU, it's about the encounter...blizz could give two s*its about what spec you are playing on the fight.

I also think that your opinion is much more respected if you present actual data and not just some sim or doing a whole bunch of qq'ing to GC and crew.

[Grizelda]

Well reasoned arguments with evidence have changed the course of the spec before. Why not now?

[cabana]

Well reasoned arguments with evidence have changed the course of the spec before. Why not now?

Oh you mean a hundred people crying about KJC because it "takes fun away." That wasn't embarrassing to watch or anything.

[Xanatas]

in 5.1/5.2 chaos bolt PVP was OP, indeed.... but -25% VS player is an extreme nerf. Now destruction is broken.

Is very stupid the dot from GoSac now ...

[Grizelda]

Oh you mean a hundred people crying about KJC because it "takes fun away." That wasn't embarrassing to watch or anything.

No, I was referring to Shadowburn creating an ember when it lands a killing blow.

Also, Unending Resolve being castable while stunned.

Starting with one ember instead of none.

The toggle on FnB.

Conflagrate generating embers.

Fel Flame not reseting DotS.



...and it did improve the KJC situation....

[icedlight]

Considering GC did jack all nothing when he had beta MoP logs for destro I think this is just a stall/deflection tactic. When you take resource generation down 30% single target (even more multi target) and compensate with a 1% buff (10% buff to 10% of our dmg) its going to be abysmal. Unfortunately that level of reasoning seems lost on the devs who I think literally forgot to compensate the RoF change. It made sense to not have it single target rotationally however they did such a hamfisted hackjob of it now the spec can't aoe 4-6 mob packs which are the most common size.

So far I'm banking on 3 parts apathy, 1 part ignorance.... After SoO has been out for 3 months GC still will not actually admit he was wrong no matter how much data we can point to since he didn't care last go round. How much data is out there from heroic ToT (closest in ilvl) for destro being weak? Oh wait...its not dominant so the top locks don't play it logic right? What about players like Brusalk? Clearly one of the best and makes destro work but in 5.4 the gap is going to be so large its not something you can work around or cheese ember snipe enough into viability. Besides what kind of **** devs would be proud of a playstyle based around only functioning when you can spam your execute?!? I highly doubt any endorsement or logs we can point to on the PTR will actually make a dent. Certainly the entire collective wisdom of the lock community is flawed. He needs a little more coffee and a lot less gin.

I agree and would also add that I feel that the data is being sought out for the sole purpose of working on a teardown to disprove. Still... Werst get us some data broskie!

[Schma]

Yes... but was destruction the best warlock spec for heroic ToT? Only a couple fights... so why should be expect anything different in SoO? If you only want to play one spec and not 2 or 3, that's your decision. It doesn't matter if you're "one of the best" or not. Yes you can "make it work", but is that really skill or very high end gear level and solid raid team?

I raid mostly 10 man on my warlock. If I were to only stay one spec for progression, I would be hurting my raid team. For the majority of raiders (probably not many of us here posting) you can still play only one spec and probably do fine/have fun/whatever it is your goal is.

[Greywardenn]

Yes... but was destruction the best warlock spec for heroic ToT? Only a couple fights... so why should be expect anything different in SoO? If you only want to play one spec and not 2 or 3, that's your decision. It doesn't matter if you're "one of the best" or not. Yes you can "make it work", but is that really skill or very high end gear level and solid raid team?

I raid mostly 10 man on my warlock. If I were to only stay one spec for progression, I would be hurting my raid team. For the majority of raiders (probably not many of us here posting) you can still play only one spec and probably do fine/have fun/whatever it is your goal is.

^ This, a pure DPS class that doesn't have the ability to change specs is definitely not a positive thing for a team.

[Deleted]

I think the issue is that some people just want destruction to finally be competitive in current gear levels with the other two specs, and not have to rely on niche situations to play it. You can argue the semantics of 'viable', but ultimately if one spec is clearly better than another, you aren't going to gimp your raid just to play something you enjoy more.

[sasofrass]

Do you people honestly think Blizz doesn't have data from the weeks of PTR about destro? That a few people posting logs to GC...on twitter...7 days before the patch hits will be overwhelming evidence that all their data is wrong.

They clearly must not based on the tweet from the lead systems designer:
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...73224785616896

Obviously they're clueless and think the class still works after removing 1/3 our embers and not compensating shit (even though it's performance in single target is extremely low on live already).

[Deleted]

Yes... but was destruction the best warlock spec for heroic ToT? Only a couple fights... so why should be expect anything different in SoO? If you only want to play one spec and not 2 or 3, that's your decision. It doesn't matter if you're "one of the best" or not. Yes you can "make it work", but is that really skill or very high end gear level and solid raid team?

I raid mostly 10 man on my warlock. If I were to only stay one spec for progression, I would be hurting my raid team. For the majority of raiders (probably not many of us here posting) you can still play only one spec and probably do fine/have fun/whatever it is your goal is.

you're not getting the point tho. ppl are "whining" (cant be whining if its actually true after all) about destro being worse on ptr than on live atm, that the devs cant seem to comprehend simple logic and math that litterally proove that the 33% ember gen removal is a nerf in the 20k dps area single target. doesnt matter how good you are, you can be the world greatest wow player the world have ever seen and you would still not be able to do more dps than the maximum allow for that spec, currently the max dps potential of destro is way way below all the other specs, it isnt about playing the best spec, its about making the spec that some ppl prefer to play atleast passable and not utterly worthless on anything other than its niche.

[sasofrass]

Yes... but was destruction the best warlock spec for heroic ToT? Only a couple fights... so why should be expect anything different in SoO? If you only want to play one spec and not 2 or 3, that's your decision. It doesn't matter if you're "one of the best" or not. Yes you can "make it work", but is that really skill or very high end gear level and solid raid team?

I raid mostly 10 man on my warlock. If I were to only stay one spec for progression, I would be hurting my raid team. For the majority of raiders (probably not many of us here posting) you can still play only one spec and probably do fine/have fun/whatever it is your goal is.

On live, destruction is a viable choice on any boss with 2+ targets because of rain of fire. You generate so many embers that your filler spell becomes chaos bolt, which is very powerful. The only fights destruction was top on, because of the massive amounts of targets, was primordius and to an extent horridon (all 3 specs were could basically do the same high damage on horridon, though). On single target, we don't generate enough embers fast enough so we can't use many chaos bolts so our damage greatly suffers (which is why we're last on all single-target-type fights on live).

On PTR, destruction is not a viable choice even on 5+ targets. Rain of fire is barely generating emberbits on 2-5 targets, not enough to spam chaos bolts or sustain an aoe rotation. The damage certainly does not compare to affliction with the new soul swap mechanic or a high crit build demonology spec. At 6+ targets, our aoe is decent, so if there is an encounter with a sustained 6+ adds nearly the entire time then that will be the only fight destruction is OK at, but even then you could be demonology to do the same aoe dps or spec MF and go affliction and do even more than demo/destro aoe dps. On single target, because of the nerf to rain of fire, we will be so far below on dps that it willl honestly be laughable. It's already very, very low on live, now subtract your dps by roughly 10-15%. Absolutely a joke.

I am just unable to understand what is going through the developers minds. Do they really think taking out 1/3 of our ember gen would fix us or leave our dps fine?

[Deleted]

Had 4 warlocks on latest test, heroic Protectors. We were all in the top 5 every pull, by a large margin usually. Affliction obviously.

[Schma]

It's not simple math. There are a lot of variables involved and it's not an easy job. To say that they don't know what they're doing is kinda ignorant. Classes seem to be more balanced than ever before from what I can remember anyway.

Not every single spec is going to do the exact same damage in the exact same situation. If they did people would complain that all specs play the same (see: hunters). Warlocks are in an amazing spot still, we have 3 viable specs (yes destruction currently sucks on ptr single target, but it still has the niche aoe right? Plus it's very easy to play and maximize damage compared to Demo or affliction IMO) and amazing utility.

"You can't have your cake and eat it too" seems to apply here very well IMO. You want to play your preferred spec and be OP in all situations... how is that fair? If you don't care that much about hardcore progression, then does it really matter? If you do care, respec.


EDIT:

(which is why we're last on all single-target-type fights on live).

Huh? Last out of our three specs? Also, what single target fights? Jin rok is an RNG fest. Can't really think of any other ones that are purely/mostly single target (heroic). Maybe twins but destruction isnt that bad there either (I still don't play it though for h twins)

[Deleted]

On live, destruction is a viable choice on any boss with 2+ targets because of rain of fire. You generate so many embers that your filler spell becomes chaos bolt, which is very powerful. The only fights destruction was top on, because of the massive amounts of targets, was primordius and to an extent horridon (all 3 specs were could basically do the same high damage on horridon, though). On single target, we don't generate enough embers fast enough so we can't use many chaos bolts so our damage greatly suffers (which is why we're last on all single-target-type fights on live).

On PTR, destruction is not a viable choice even on 5+ targets. Rain of fire is barely generating emberbits on 2-5 targets, not enough to spam chaos bolts or sustain an aoe rotation. The damage certainly does not compare to affliction with the new soul swap mechanic or a high crit build demonology spec. At 6+ targets, our aoe is decent, so if there is an encounter with a sustained 6+ adds nearly the entire time then that will be the only fight destruction is OK at, but even then you could be demonology to do the same aoe dps or spec MF and go affliction and do even more than demo/destro aoe dps. On single target, because of the nerf to rain of fire, we will be so far below on dps that it willl honestly be laughable. It's already very, very low on live, now subtract your dps by roughly 10-15%. Absolutely a joke.

I am just unable to understand what is going through the developers minds. Do they really think taking out 1/3 of our ember gen would fix us or leave our dps fine?

AND then take the rppm into account and it could drop further.

if my math is correct, the ROF change is about a 20k dps nerf, with the immolate buff it will be around 18k dps nerf overall for single target. im totally with you on this sasofrass. im amazed that the devs can believe that removing RoF ember gen from single target and to an extent aoe, and then buff immolate by 10% is even remotely close to making destro passable on single target dps and aoe. just wow.

[Hellfury]

Had 4 warlocks on latest test, heroic Protectors. We were all in the top 5 every pull, by a large margin usually. Affliction obviously.

Just tested HC protectors aswell, Aff multidot its incredible, sadly can't say the same for Demo, UVLS being too erratic and without MF passive to spread HoG to all targets, I feel Demo is shit

Nevertheless, while aff is extremly good at multitarget damage I feel its mediocrely-bad in single targe situations.