Another Live Devloper Q&A upcoming

[Octa]

These were available in the alpha/closed beta feedback threads where the majority of the posts were from mythic raiders. There were virtually 40+ pages worth of feedback.

The truth is they simply ran out of time and put any changes in the back burner in favor of less time consuming, less expensive development tasks.

It's what happens in every expansion. The best time to get mechanical changes is during alpha and early beta. After that, you're pretty much stuck with what you have until the next xpac.

I understand there was a ton of feedback, I gave lots of it myself. I just want to know what that poster wants, specifically in light of the recent blue post.

[Jessicka]

Yeah, I don't know what people expect. They've been clear enough that 715 isn't enough time for them to fix issues raised. The class really needs pretty much expansion level changes in regards to things like Embers, Demonic Empowerment, and even Soul Effigy since realistically that needs 2 rows of talents looking at to fix properly (15 and 100); and the ramp up issues are even deeper set thanks to the Artifact.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we did get a 'we would rather you didn't use this spec' type answer, certainly in regards to Affliction. This is why much of the focus has been on Destruction as it seems to be the easiest to "fix".

Beyond that, it's a very general Q&A, expect more answers to questions about Illidan and Argus, than class design.

[Deleted]

There was more that could have been done in 7.1.5 to help affliction that they chose not to do. They acknowledged that soul effigy has issues and that change is out of the scope of this PTR cycle but they could at least have made it numerically less dominant by buffing other options, or nerfing it and buffing us elsewhere to compensate while they work on a true fix or alternative.

It's pretty clear that changes aren't coming soon and in the mean time you should play destruction. It's obvious they are balancing around destruction since empowered life tap actually makes sense in their tier but it's power level is ludicrous when compared to contagion in the same tier for affliction.

I don't think whining on that thread is going to accomplish anything though. I'm honestly just sorry I thought things might be improved.

EDIT: I would say that I don't even hate soul effigy right now, I'm quite happy using it. But that's because absolute corruption is a good pick in that tier. I'm not looking forward to soul effigy when we have to maintain SL, Corr, Agony +ELT buff though. It would be nice if SE was A choice rather than THE choice.

[Gaidax]

If there is a will to eliminate or dodge Soul Effigy for a time being, then it can be easily done by buffing Drain Soul and Malefic Grasp. For example one of Q&A questions you can ask, which I did, is, since Soul Effigy can not be reworked in this patch, then whether there are plans to introduce a temporary workaround to allow us to skip Soul Effigy.

Another good question is: Drain Soul in PTR does equal damage to live Drain Life and less healing, is this intended or an oversight?

Feel free to ask similar questions, try to not f-bomb it as it will get skipped. Up to 40 words, no bullshit.

[Shandalar]

Dont waste ur time and get angry later, be smart: they arent going to answer to anything warlock related.

[n0n3]

They'll dodge most warlock questions and focus on marketing the new patch 7.1.5

[Deleted]

If there is a will to eliminate or dodge Soul Effigy for a time being, then it can be easily done by buffing Drain Soul and Malefic Grasp. For example one of Q&A questions you can ask, which I did, is, since Soul Effigy can not be reworked in this patch, then whether there are plans to introduce a temporary workaround to allow us to skip Soul Effigy.

And what gameplay is left ? Maintain 3 to 1 dot depending on talents and spam drain ? Quality gameplay right there

[Gaidax]

And what gameplay is left ? Maintain 3 to 1 dot depending on talents and spam drain ? Quality gameplay right there

It's better than Soul Effigy, you have people literally not playing Affliction because of that shit and those who do play it overwhelmingly say Soul Effigy is terrible.

[Jessicka]

And what gameplay is left ? Maintain 3 to 1 dot depending on talents and spam drain ? Quality gameplay right there

I'd like to see Siphon Life baseline, but with the Artifact, UA and potentially Haunt the spec actually has a reasonable amount going on that's actually engaging; SE actually makes it more dull because there's just so many reapplications of the same things which are overwhelmingly instant casts with zero immediate visual feedback.

It's the plethora of rng buff procs and SE that slow it down and hold it back; the basics aren't that bad.

[Sunlighthell]

You will be disappointed op.

[Slybak]

So what do you exactly expect from Q&A? That he drops on his knees and begs for forgiveness or maybe somehow do a complete 180 and tell you "lol just kidding, next PTR all problems solved"?

What I think a lot of people don't get is that Devs try to avoid big and sudden changes for precisely the reason that we find ourselves in; its difficult to roll them back, and even if you can roll them back, you end up yo-yoing from change to change so much that the player base gets whiplash.

They did a big and sudden change in 7.0. It's not working. It's hard for them to pull it out by its roots and do something different without making even bigger mistakes, so they're conservative with what they think they can do. It's not an answer that makes anyone happy - and its still their own fault for having a shitty beta process - everybody is right for being unhappy with it, but it is what it is

[Lucrece]

And what gameplay is left ? Maintain 3 to 1 dot depending on talents and spam drain ? Quality gameplay right there

As opposed to making a set focus macro and wasting 2 globals on an additional target just so your single target DPS doesn't suck as much?

Affliction is already boring. Soul Effigy doesn't make it more entertaining, simply more cumbersome.

They should revamp reap souls is what they should do. That should be the core gameplay mechanic of affliction.

[Dwill]

And what gameplay is left ? Maintain 3 to 1 dot depending on talents and spam drain ? Quality gameplay right there

And you think having a focus macro and renewing 3(2 with AC) once every so often is quality and skillful gameplay ? Like Lucrece said, that shit is just cumbersome and annoying.

[Lucrece]

Affliction is just a shadow priest without meaningful mechanics. They placed so much emphasis on the empty dots rather than the gamplay they had with haunt, which they removed into a talent row. Soul burn, soul swap.

DoT empowerment mechanisms were not bad. Diluting dot power among 3 dots and making much of it is placed on unstable affliction, subject to the whims of glacial soul shard generation on a single target is largely why affliction feels anemic.

I go into PvP and a full corruption/agony/siphon life after 15+ seconds of duration barely dented 25% of someone's HP. That's just wrong. All the damage is on unstable affliction and affliction simply doesn't get enough unstable afflictions to prop its single target.

[Deleted]

And what gameplay is left ? Maintain 3 to 1 dot depending on talents and spam drain ? Quality gameplay right there

It's better than Soul Effigy. The vast majority of people playing affliction hate it, you have people refusing to us eit at all, or even to play affliction, and it's not the dot management aspect, it's the fact that it's horribly implemented: it goes out of range, it makes our ramp even more terrible, it's not very rewarding for the effort you put in, if by some miracle you get two of them then the only way to use them effectively by using target or focus macros (which is a wrongness in itself) is immediately borked

Unfortunately, Soul Effigy is (a) "class fantasy" and (b) to use Jessicka's phase: "someone's baby so they won't kill it though it's bad"

The argument that Soul Effigy is somehow "engaging" or "interesting"...for most people it just isn't. You just bash a macro button.

Another solution would simply to make Soul Conduit more powerful and allow people to take that.

You won;t ever take Malefic Grasp and Soul Effigy together. They fight each other too agressively - you eithe rlose too much Drain time refreshign dots, or you fail to refresh dots to maintain Drain.

- - - Updated - - -

Another good question is: Drain Soul in PTR does equal damage to live Drain Life and less healing, is this intended or an oversight?.

That's been brought up so often in the PTR discussion and bug forums that we shouldn;t need a Q&A to get the answer.

Given that the damage nerf has survived a second PTR iteration, many complaints pointing it out and that the healing co-efficient is specifically different to both Life and Soul...it feels intentional.

It's hard to see how it make any sense whatever given the stated goals for affliction, but at the same time, hard to see how it's an oversight given it's persistence.

Allowing it to stand as an oversight is thoroughly borking the testing phase, because (a) it's numbers are out of whack and (b) no one is touching MG as without Drain Soul doing at least as much damage as live, and preferably doing the doubled damage th emined tooltip suggests, it is worse than Writhe under any circumstance

It's just bad communications. They allow things like this to stand without saying anything, or drop changes into a vacuum like the stat rejig without any notes or comments so naturally people go with what they can see and get mad because what they see is a whacking great nerf

We got a Blue eventually, but it always feels like we get reactive communication from the devs, as though it has to be dragged out of them as a firefighting exercise to quell hostile player feedback

Almost ALL of the drama could have so easily been avoided by releasing that Blue statement before implementing the stat changes on PTR. A few will neve rbe happy, but most would have been satisfied knowing that the change wasn;t arbitrary and that steps would be taken to ensure it generally wasn;t a big nerf.

The debate can then rightly focus on specs that depend on stats not just for pure numbers...but for example demo which is horrible without very high levels of haste.


Overwatch and Hearthstone communications just feel different, the communications from the devs on those feel pro-active and engaged, whereas for WoW they always feel reactive and changes when they happen therefore feel arbitrary because there's so rarely an explanation or even official patch notes to put them into context of what the devs are trying to accomplish or why they felt a change was necessary

[TriHard]

Literally fuck off, there's specific livestreams for class tuning, stop ruining every other player's experience.
No class community has whined more than the warlock community, there's been broken classes before and nobody kept spamming
"go raid this thread QQ I'm 12 year old"

[Korbynn]

I'm afraid that I would be too tempted to just shit on it. /shrug

[Zandalariprelate]

And they could at least fix number or make a better talent for level 100 for single target because soul conduit is very poor, I dont know what they think about our class with a buff like they did with dk frost this matter about the core mechanic would be more tolerable

[Baconeggcheese]

there's been broken classes before and nobody kept spamming
"go raid this thread QQ I'm 12 year old"

Of course they did, people literally always do that nonstop no matter what. People were literally making the same kind of complaints they do now during mop. MOP.

But really though I dunno what the point of your posts are.

[Ryreilan]

Of course they did, people literally always do that nonstop no matter what. People were literally making the same kind of complaints they do now during mop. MOP.

But really though I dunno what the point of your posts are.

To QQ about the QQers?