Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Werst]

Hoping the guild ilvl can make normals a snooze since all I have are 543 UVLS/Chan....we have terrible luck on trinkets. Was really hoping for a wush before 5.4 but oh well. Might try a deep crit demo build but aff w' bad trinkets is probably going to be better than demo w' mediocre trinkets....especially since gear is all biased for haste/mastery.

Seems destro gets to be the leveling spec baring a hail mary.

[sasofrass]

Hi guys im pretty scrub and new to warlock but how gonna destro be 5.4? I really enjoy play that spec so hope it can be decent atleast

Currently, destruction is looking very bad in 5.4.

[Vinavi]

Gotta admit I'm getting a little nervous about the lack of a major tuning pass for Destro and Demo. I'm not a big fan of Affliction (and it doesn't help that Codex doesn't modify any of its spells), and I would be a little disappointed if it overshadowed the others. On the bright side, I like dot damage more than I do channel spamming, and hopefully Haunt will deliver a satisfying big number hit.

[sasofrass]

I personally feel they'll be delaying the patch. No release candidate on PTR yet and they haven't started heroic 25 testing.

[Deleted]

Gotta admit I'm getting a little nervous about the lack of a major tuning pass for Destro and Demo. I'm not a big fan of Affliction (and it doesn't help that Codex doesn't modify any of its spells), and I would be a little disappointed if it overshadowed the others. On the bright side, I like dot damage more than I do channel spamming, and hopefully Haunt will deliver a satisfying big number hit.

Yeah bit of the same, i mean i'll play Aff is that's what it takes, but im rather Demo/Destro

[Teknicon]

I personally feel they'll be delaying the patch. No release candidate on PTR yet and they haven't started heroic 25 testing.

Who knows, they are finishing up 25-man Normal tonight. And this is EXACTLY what happened when patch 5.2 was releasing, they steamrolled through 25-man Normal/Heroic over the course of the last 2 weeks before release.

[Werst]

Demo isn't that far off other than trinkets kinda suck for it since guardian (imps) don't work with KTT/cleave and don't get the crit bonus multiplier of amp. However with a full crit setup you can get to the ballpark of pre 5.4 ULVS (live) or at least I could last I tried it a build or two ago.

Aff seems like it will be dominant with a haste/mastery setup using amp+KTT. You could theoretically offspec demo and still use UVLS to make the crit a non factor....at least for normal modes.

Destro is just so bad with no hope in sight. I'd almost think there is some grand thing all of us are missing as to how the spec might not suck but I just can't riddle it out. Its set bonuses are long odds RNG and inverse scaling w' the ICD on the crit bonus. It doesn't do anything special w' trinkets like demo did w' UVLS. Its primary and secondary stat scaling is behind both lock specs and quite a bit behind other casters. I just don't see where it will pull a rabbit out of its butt in any fashion to avoid failing come 5.4 patch.

[warlockSTAR]

General
Corruption damage has been increased by 10%.
Immolate damage has been increased by 10%.
Affliction
Agony damage has been increased by 16%.
Drain Soul no longer energizes Soul Shards from the pets and guardians of players, and now deals 34% less damage. If other periodic Affliction damage effects are triggered by Drain Soul, they now deal 60% of their normal damage (down from 100%).
Malefic Grasp now deals 34% less damage, and causes all of the Warlock's other periodic Affliction damage effects to instantly deal 30% of their normal periodic damage (down from 50%).
Unstable Affliction damage has been increased by 21%.

Is this in the PTR yet or not?

[Deleted]

Is this in the PTR yet or not?

Yes for a while.

On Destro & T16 :
I've not tried the T16 set during the PTR tests, since there is an ICD on the "crit buff on ember gain", are we supposed to sometimes just stand there doing nothing for 1-2 sec for not missing out on the proc ?

[Deleted]

Yes for a while.

On Destro & T16 :
I've not tried the T16 set during the PTR tests, since there is an ICD on the "crit buff on ember gain", are we supposed to sometimes just stand there doing nothing for 1-2 sec for not missing out on the proc ?

I doubt it. The embers you get from shadowburn do proc the set bonus, so that's kinda nice. During longer periods of aoe, you will have close to 50% uptime, as the buff is 5 sec and the icd is 10 sec (and you regen embers rather quickly, depending on how many adds you aoe). During normal rotation it kinda sucks, but given that your spells can crit and generate double the embers, you'd have to stop at .8 embers, which is just not worth it in my eyes. Rather hurry to build the next ember quicker :P

[Count Zero]

Granted, it was at 550 ilevel and I have 2/2 HTF UVLS on live so the results may not be the same for people that don't have it

Sooo I guess me and my LFR UVLS are gonna go eat worms : /

[TheBGreene]

Sooo I guess me and my LFR UVLS are gonna go eat worms : /

You and me both. I think it procs about every 15 minutes!

[Deleted]

im happy to unequip uvls when 5.4 hits fuck rppm

[Deleted]

Yesterday during the PTR tests the Wushoolay trinket (fixed at 540ilvl iirc) seemed to proc all the time on the pull and then continue to proc as soon as it faded. I had up to 50% uptime on Spoils of Pandaria as Destro

[Deleted]

Well, wush is kind of special because it cannot proc for I believe 11 seconds after you got a proc, because that would screw over the stacking part of the proc.

BUT, even though during those 11 seconds the chance to proc is equal to 0, the time_since_last_chance_to_proc keeps incrementing and will equal to 10 at the end of the proc as if you did no dmg at all for 10 seconds (it's not gonna be 11 because it's capped at 10).

So basically, the first time you deal damage after the proc faded, you are gonna have 1.21 * (10/60) = 20.16% chance to proc. This is just the very first instance of damage you deal. After that, the proc chance is back to normal.

You can get lucky and sometimes have proc after proc, but it's not gonna happen that often (1/5 of the times). Proc after proc doesn't really benefit destro anyway, since you burn your embers during the first proc.

[Deleted]

You can get lucky and sometimes have proc after proc, but it's not gonna happen that often (1/5 of the times). Proc after proc doesn't really benefit destro anyway, since you burn your embers during the first proc.

Well I was talking of the "Spoils of Pandaria" so I was spamming Chaos bolts and Shadowburns...

[Hurtlocker]

Probably going back to the crit build for demo come 5.4. Anyone test if Cha-ye's still has a decent proc for crit hits? I might replace UVLS for that one until I get something From SoO or I might go after the trinket from Timeless Isle.

[TheBGreene]

Probably going back to the crit build for demo come 5.4. Anyone test if Cha-ye's still has a decent proc for crit hits? I might replace UVLS for that one until I get something From SoO or I might go after the trinket from Timeless Isle.

Only down side to the Isle trinket is no heroic version available, but I think for the time being it will be quite good, at least until you get some SoO drops.

[Deleted]

Demo isn't that far off other than trinkets kinda suck for it since guardian (imps) don't work with KTT/cleave and don't get the crit bonus multiplier of amp. However with a full crit setup you can get to the ballpark of pre 5.4 ULVS (live) or at least I could last I tried it a build or two ago.

Aff seems like it will be dominant with a haste/mastery setup using amp+KTT. You could theoretically offspec demo and still use UVLS to make the crit a non factor....at least for normal modes.

Destro is just so bad with no hope in sight. I'd almost think there is some grand thing all of us are missing as to how the spec might not suck but I just can't riddle it out. Its set bonuses are long odds RNG and inverse scaling w' the ICD on the crit bonus. It doesn't do anything special w' trinkets like demo did w' UVLS. Its primary and secondary stat scaling is behind both lock specs and quite a bit behind other casters. I just don't see where it will pull a rabbit out of its butt in any fashion to avoid failing come 5.4 patch.

Why amp? Wushoolay has an absolutely dominating proc, and as affliction the high duration, low nr of procs on Bindings is quite bad.

- - - Updated - - -

Probably going back to the crit build for demo come 5.4. Anyone test if Cha-ye's still has a decent proc for crit hits? I might replace UVLS for that one until I get something From SoO or I might go after the trinket from Timeless Isle.

It has 0,85 RPPM, multiplied by your crit. So if you go heavy crit, it will have relatively high RPPM. Wushoolay still seems stronger though, with a monstrous proc on 1,21 RPPM.

[Deleted]

So apperantly 5.4 is going live on the 10th (or 11th) of september. This gives them some time to fix destro. Source is an interview on Gamescom: http://wow.gamona.de/2013/08/21/wow-...-11-september/