mages versus warlocks (patch 5.4 changes)

[Biruta]

Mages (Blizzard darlings):
Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Talents
Frost Bomb now deals 70% damage to players (up from 60%).
Living Bomb now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).
Nether Tempest now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).
Temporal Shield now also reduces damage taken by 15% while active in addition to existing effects.
Glyphs
Glyph of Blink now increases distance travelled with the Blink spell by 8 yards (up from 5 yards).
Glyph of Remove Curse now increases the damage dealt by 15% after successfully removing a curse (up from 10%).
Glyph of Spellsteal now heals the Mage for 5% of their maximum health after successfully stealing a spell (up from 3%).

Warlocks (the neglected):
General
The debuff from using a Demonic Gateway has been increased to 60 seconds (up from 15 seconds). (they destroyed the skill)
Fel Flame now deals 13% more damage, costs 2% less mana, and no longer increases the duration of damage-over-time spells.
Rain of Fire now has a reduced chance to generate Burning Embers. (what spell will increase Burning Embers generation now to compensate this nerf???)
Talents
Kil'jaden's Cunning no longer reduces movement speed, and will now allow the Warlock to cast Incinerate, Malefic Grasp, and Shadow Bolt while moving. . (as chaos bolt was nerfed I'm using my embers to heal myself and casting only incinerate)
Mannoroth's Fury is no longer a passive ability. Mannoroth's Fury now has a duration of 10 seconds with a 60 second cooldown, and increases the area of area-of-effect by 500% and increases damage by 100% for Hellfire, Immolation Aura, Rain of Fire, and Seed of Corruption. (big nerf)
Soul Leech can now also activate from Shadowburn, and caps out at 15% of the Warlock and their pet's maximum health (down from 100%). (big nerf)

[Lobstarrr]

Warlocks neglected? Some joke forum this has become.

Those buffs to mage glyphs are very minor, not to mention nobody uses them.

[Zechs-cenarius]

Warlocks neglected? Some joke forum this has become.

Those buffs to mage glyphs are very minor, not to mention nobody uses them.

I second this. This is yet another doomsday prophecy by people.

[Nivrax]

The bomb changes are pvp tweaks only, the Soul Leech change only affects pve, so from what gameplay perspective are you looking for? If from pve, Destro was said that it will be buffed, so just be patient, and survivality change was needed (though 15% might be slight overkill). Fire will most likely be nerfed bit later too, as always its scaling is way out of bound. From PvP perspective, frost mages got their mastery gutted and will work, from what I managed to gather, as more of a proc spec? No more bomb globalling in Deep.

[Deleted]

Warlocks (the neglected):
General
Fel Flame now deals 13% more damage, costs 2% less mana, and no longer increases the duration of damage-over-time spells.

This is a buff. Particularly for affliction, but also for destruction.

Rain of Fire now has a reduced chance to generate Burning Embers. (what spell will increase Burning Embers generation now to compensate this nerf???)

This is a huge quality of life buff. No more keeping up a ground-placed 3.5 seconds duration "dot". Most annoying playstyle in the history of WoW.
Obviously something will be done to compensate for the damage loss.

Talents
Kil'jaden's Cunning no longer reduces movement speed, and will now allow the Warlock to cast Incinerate, Malefic Grasp, and Shadow Bolt while moving. . (as chaos bolt was nerfed I'm using my embers to heal myself and casting only incinerate)

I'm a little torn here. For Affliction I think it's a nice buff, while for destruction it kinda sucks. It should've been Chaos Bolt and Immolate that you can cast while moving and then you replace your regular filler (incinerate) with Fel Flame for movement.

Mannoroth's Fury is no longer a passive ability. Mannoroth's Fury now has a duration of 10 seconds with a 60 second cooldown, and increases the area of area-of-effect by 500% and increases damage by 100% for Hellfire, Immolation Aura, Rain of Fire, and Seed of Corruption. (big nerf)

Mannoroth's Fury not being passive still has me crying myself to sleep every night...

Soul Leech can now also activate from Shadowburn, and caps out at 15% of the Warlock and their pet's maximum health (down from 100%). (big nerf)

It was wildly overpowered for something that you didn't have to do anything to trigger. It's like the physical DPS legendary quest meta gem. Colossal DPS (in this case HPS) increase for absolutely no effort.
Dark Regeneration which requires to be activated should, by common sense, be better than Soul Leech, which it now (probably) will be again.

---------- Post added 2013-06-21 at 02:15 PM ----------

The bomb changes are pvp tweaks only, the Soul Leech change only affects pve, so from what gameplay perspective are you looking for? If from pve, Destro was said that it will be buffed, so just be patient, and survivality change was needed (though 15% might be slight overkill). Fire will most likely be nerfed bit later too, as always its scaling is way out of bound. From PvP perspective, frost mages got their mastery gutted and will work, from what I managed to gather, as more of a proc spec? No more bomb globalling in Deep.

Taking away 15% from Warlocks AND taking away the Soul Leech while also GIVING 15% to mages is just silly.
Reminds me of WOTLK, when one hunter spec was OP so they nerfed that AND buffed the others to the high heavens... I had so much fun that expansion, laughing at Blizzard's poor methods of balancing the game. Now I laugh again.
Oh and Frost Mages needed pvp buffs . . . . . . and ofc warlocks needed pvp nerfs . . . . . . .

[Leonofhyjal]

I can only speak about the warlock changes because I don't/never will play a mage.

Gateway change: To be honest gateway was being used to cheese so many fight in ToT. Iron Qon tornados and warlocks can be the only ones that get matter swap on Dark Animus. It also made soloing almost to easy in my opinion.

Fel Flame: More then likely blizzard will have a glyph that causes FF to still extend dot duration.

Rain of Fire: I have been waiting for this change all tier. Dropping RoF every 7 seconds is a pain and just clunky. Also the tier 16 2 piece bonus will give a nice buff in ember generation.

Mannoroth's Fury: In the PTRs current state, I'm not a big fan of the change myself. Not to say that it didn't need a nerf, I just think it needs some work still. Although, the 100% damage buff would be glorious for so many situations. For example, killing worms on Megaera, spirits on Twin Consorts, Horridon. There's ever some talk about using it on single target as Affliction. Using it to get an empowered corruption on fights with low movement. The MF change gives some actual reason to spec it over KJC for affliction at least, so i'm pretty happy.

Soul Leech: Warlocks were completely mitigating mechanics on so many fights. Dire Call on Horridon for example. I just say "Hey it barely tickled me cuz I have a 250k bubble." I'm not going to even go into the raw amount of HP we have compared to other classes.

[Deleted]

Cant se the sweeping nerf to Frostburn anywhere in the op? Mastery no longer being applied to Frostbolt, Frostbomb (any bomb), Orb and non procced Icelances. Thats ~35-45% dmg (depending on reforges, armor used and buffs) no longer being applied to a major part of Frost Mages pvp dmg, including the burst delivered on Deep Frozen targets. I think thats worth including in your comparrison tbh

[Teye]

Public TEST Realm. Not even close to being ready for release yet.

[Deleted]

Howl baseline. One more instant crap fear to be wary of when fighting oplocks.

[Teye]

Howl baseline. One more instant crap fear to be wary of when fighting oplocks.

One more? So, the total is... 1 now? They took our instant fear away from us bro, like 2 patches ago. We have a Horrify talent, which is pure shit, and Mortal Coil which usually isn't as good as Shadow Fury in pvp. Take your bullshit QQ somewhere else.

[xskarma]

I see little discussion value in this thread beyond going over the PTR changes allready being discussed in other threads on this board OR even worse starting a mage vs warlock flamefest. Neither of them are worth it to keep this thread open.

Closed.