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  1. #1

    The History of Fear

    Fear is also the Most Nerfed single ability or spell:

    Patch 1.2 12/18/04
    Fear: Players now have an increasing chance to break free of the effect, such that it is unlikely the effect will last more than 15 seconds. (nerf)

    Patch 1.31 3/22/05
    Fear - Mana cost changed to a percentage of base, which results in an increase in cost. (nerf)

    Patch 1.41 5/5/05
    Seduction (Succubus) - Is now considered a Fear effect for purposes of diminishing returns. (nerf)

    Patch 1.50 6/7/05
    Warriors: Deathwish - Is now usable while under a Fear effect, and will also remove an existing Fear effect. (nerf)

    Patch 1.70 9/22/05
    Fear will now cause creatures to flee immediately, even if they are already moving. (PvE fix)
    Fixed a bug where Fear and Curse of Recklessness, when used together, would prevent targets from casting spells. (PvE bug fix)
    Druids: Druids should now be able to shapeshift back into caster form while Feared. (nerf)

    Patch 1.80 10/10/05
    Pets no longer break off attacks when their target is affected by Warlock Fear. (not much of a change really, but it can aid fear in breaking sooner).
    Death Coil - Cooldown reduced, mana cost increased, and now causes a short Fear effect that is not diminished. (DC buff - 3 second horror effect, 2 minute cooldown)

    Patch 1.10 3/28/06
    Death Coil - The horrify component no longer affects Undead creatures (they've seen it all before. (PvE nerf)

    Patch 1.11 6/19/06
    Fear: The calculations to determine if Fear effects should break due to receiving damage have been changed. The old calculation used the base damage of the ability. The new calculation uses the final amount of damage dealt, after all modifiers. In addition, the chance for a damage over time spell to break Fear is now significantly lower. Note that Fear continues to be roughly three times as likely to break on player targets as on non-player targets. (nerf)

    Patch 1.12 8/22/06
    Howl of Terror: This spell now uses the same resistance checks as the Warlock spell Fear. (nerf)

    Patch 2.1
    Chance to break crowd control from damage: The increased chance for a spell to break from taking a critical strike has been removed. Instead, all targets over level 60 have a slightly larger chance to break out of crowd-controlling effects when they take damage. (Affliction (and Demo) nerf)
    - In addition, fear and seduce both have "heartbeat" resists and can break at any time, whether damage has been applied or not. In PvP, all CC's have a maximum time of 12 seconds. (nerf)

    Patch 2.2
    -Fear (as well as all other CC's) will now have a maximum time of 10 seconds and be subject to Diminishing Returns in PvP (nerf)

    Patch 2.3
    - Fear Ward is now available to all priests at level 20. Duration reduced to 3 minutes, cooldown increased to 3 minutes.

    Patch 3.1.0
    -The damage threshold for Fear, Psychic Scream, Hex, Intimidating Shout, and Turn Evil to break early has been significantly reduced. (nerf)



    Fear Counters and BlocksCounters Ways to remove Fear effects:
    The Forsaken Racial trait Will of the Forsaken.
    The Stormwind Human Racial trait Every Man for Himself
    The Mage's Ice Block.
    The Paladin's Divine Shield and Cleanse (Cleanse, however, cannot be cast on the Paladin themself while feared)
    The Priest's Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel (both abilities cannot be cast on the Priest themself while feared)
    The Warrior's Berserker Rage (removes and make the warrior immune until the effect expires), Recklessness.
    The Shaman's Tremor Totem.
    The Warlock pet Felhunter's Devour Magic
    The Druid's Berserk
    The Death Knight's Lichborne.
    The Hunter's The Beast Within (beast mastery talent)
    The PvP Trinkets.
    Fear PreventionTalents that help preventing Fear or making you immune to fear:
    The death knight's Anti-Magic Shell
    The druid's Primal Tenacity
    The priest's Unbreakable Will
    The paladin's Unyielding Faith
    The rogue's Nerves of Steel
    The priest's Fear Ward
    The shaman's Grounding Totem



    BlocksAnother method of preventing Fear would be preventing the caster from using a Fear with a cast time through your own crowd control or anti-spellcasting abilities such as:

    The Glimmering Mithril Insignia
    The Blood Elf's Arcane Torrent
    The Tauren's War Stomp
    The Death Knight's Strangulate
    The Hunter's Silencing Shot and Intimidation
    The Mage's Counterspell
    The Paladin's Hammer of Justice and Repentance
    The Rogue's Cloak of Shadows, Kick, and any stun or blind
    The Priest's Psychic Scream
    The Shaman's Earth Shock
    The Warlock's Howl of Terror, the Felhunter's Spell Lock, and the Felguard's Intercept
    The Warrior's Pummel and Shield Bash
    The Druid's Feral Charge

    Fear now breaks at damage equal to 40% of the targets base health.
    Class Base health value 40% of Base HP
    Death Knight 8121 3248
    Druid 7417 2967
    Hunter 7324 2930
    Mage 6963 2785
    Paladin 6934 2774
    Priest 6960 2784
    Rogue 7604 3042
    Shaman 6960 2784
    Warlock 7164 2866
    Warrior 8121 3248

  2. #2
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    Re: The History of Fear

    Shorter than I remember.

    R.I.P. YARG

  3. #3
    Stood in the Fire Ravemstr's Avatar
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    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by gherkin
    Shorter than I remember.
    Was thinking the same thing!
    I like where this is going but i don't like where this is going!
    Fear was the most powerful CC in pvp and the most useless in pve. It generated thousands of pages of qq from everyone. It might even be the reason for DR.
    Blizz will not touch Fear! They won't even mention it somewhere. They are afraid of Fear(pun intended)! They now that by just putting Fear in a sentence they will start 1.233.456.763.234 posts in 234.598.321 threads of QQ.
    It was the most brilliant thing ever implemented in this game and it's become useless.
    And behold... here comes Cata with it's 5 more points and slight(minor) increase of base health but more damage done by everyone. And behold... Fear brakes even earlier...
    It will become <enter abillity that brakes on impact here> and you'll be happy with it that way... Atleast they didn't take it out of the game!
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
    Warlocks are hard.

  4. #4

    Re: The History of Fear

    And all of those changes were made to bring it in line with other CCs.

    Honestly, being feared for 30 seconds and having it not break was a kick in the ass.

  5. #5
    Mechagnome mypally's Avatar
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    Re: The History of Fear

    all but 4 of those are 1.X.Y why should i even care about how they changed an ability in vanilla? The game is barely recognizable class mechanic wise, when you compare wotlk to vanilla.

    also, I would say that other stuff could be called more nerfed. Pally reck bomb was a huge nerf (although on a broekn spell), any spell that has been removed would be more nerfed. Any spell that has had a complete overhaul can be argued to be as nerfed.

    I do still think fear is a broken mechanic, and the fact that 1 class can have access to so much CC still seems wrong to me. remove the succy and nub coil, and i think then fear may warrent a buff.
    Einstien trolled Newton so hard with general relativity

  6. #6
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    Re: The History of Fear

    Those were all solutions for a problem they couldn't define. The problem was "Fear needs to cc someone in a way that allows existing dots to tick, but new ones and nukes break it" but they thought the problem was "Fear needs to cc but not be OP."

    They didn't have the code to do this until WOTLK or late-BC. Now that its in, don't expect it to change much.

    R.I.P. YARG

  7. #7

    Re: The History of Fear

    "Druids: Druids should now be able to shapeshift back into caster form while Feared. (nerf)"

    Yea, it's a nerf for the druid. Why the hell would we want to shift out of form while feared? Yes, big nerf right there.

  8. #8

    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by Herecius
    Man, Vanilla was so cool, where the final boss of the instance dropped weapons that shared models with blues and greens!
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=17076#same-model-as
    http://www.wowhead.com/item=17074#same-model-as
    and he went on and listed about 16 more items...truly...a champion for logic

  9. #9

    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by gollie
    "Druids: Druids should now be able to shapeshift back into caster form while Feared. (nerf)"

    Yea, it's a nerf for the druid. Why the hell would we want to shift out of form while feared? Yes, big nerf right there.
    Not being able to shift out lead to complete control locks where a Druid would be feared, hibernated, horrored, etc until dead. By allowing them to shift out it broke a total CC lockdown that could be maintained indefinitely.

  10. #10

    Re: The History of Fear

    don't think you noticed his Sarcasm at all.

  11. #11

    Re: The History of Fear

    Fear is still strong, its the easyest of all chain castable CC's to break, but then its also the most versatile and useful, especially in pvp.

    also, how many times something has been nerfed is not a measurement of its current usefulness, if anything its a measure of its previous usefulness.

    in vanilla you could literally fear nuke fear nuke untill dead, now, in a 1v1 situation and thanks to wotlk damage similar things are possible in a much shorter time scale.

    fear is a good CC, stop complaining.

  12. #12

    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by Dethspawn
    don't think you noticed his Sarcasm at all.
    Oh, I noticed it. You seemed to notice it as well. Though, unlike you, I understood what he was implying with his sarcasm. He was implying that it was not a nerf to fear, but a nerf to Druids. In actuality it was a nerf to fear, not a nerf to Druids. I know reading is hard and all..

  13. #13

    Re: The History of Fear

    until fear heals the target and breaks instantly on damage i think you got it pretty nice tbh.

  14. #14

    Re: The History of Fear

    I cried the day this happened:

    Quote Originally Posted by Merlinsback
    Patch 1.41 5/5/05
    Seduction (Succubus) - Is now considered a Fear effect for purposes of diminishing returns. (nerf)
    Definition of useless -

    Q. Any plans for an untalented spell to help warlocks deal with stuns?
    A. Possibly. It’s also possible we may take a look at stuns in general. But overall stuns will feel less impacting in an environment where players have significantly more health than they do today.

  15. #15

    Re: The History of Fear

    im very confused, according to this, it says fear breaks after 4k damage or 40% base hp? but yet ive been feared and had 50 or more % of my hp gone before the fear is broken... am i reading it wrong or wat ;3

  16. #16
    Legendary! gherkin's Avatar
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    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by Candlemaster
    im very confused, according to this, it says fear breaks after 4k damage or 40% base hp? but yet ive been feared and had 50 or more % of my hp gone before the fear is broken... am i reading it wrong or wat ;3
    It's 40% of base hp before it is susceptible to early breakage. Does not imply that that is the absolute upper limit. Plus, multiple fears? I regularly Dot/Fear/Nuke/Fear/Dot if I'm not worried about DR.

    R.I.P. YARG

  17. #17

    Re: The History of Fear

    Agreed.

    Also if it's a destro lock you could get a choas/conflag 10k combo/ and if they are with an ele shaman lavaburst/lightningbolt... and it would seem as if it didn't break, when in reality you died a fraction of a second after the fear broke.

  18. #18

    Re: The History of Fear

    Fear is pretty in line now. It used to be way overpowered, to the point of people rolling locks just to get this one ability. And yes, fear has gotten a lot of nerfs, but they have all been well-deserved. It's a pretty tricky spell to balance, but Blizzard has done a pretty good job so far.
    Strikke 80 Holy Paladin/Darkspear US

  19. #19

    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by AnotherPaladin
    Fear is pretty in line now. It used to be way overpowered, to the point of people rolling locks just to get this one ability. And yes, fear has gotten a lot of nerfs, but they have all been well-deserved. It's a pretty tricky spell to balance, but Blizzard has done a pretty good job so far.
    Well measured statements like this will not be tolerated on this forum. Please be more reactionary.
    Your comments are duly noted and ignored.
    I punch a hobo every time someone says 'it's not a rotation it's a priority list lol'.

  20. #20
    The Unstoppable Force Bakis's Avatar
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    Re: The History of Fear

    Quote Originally Posted by AnotherPaladin
    Fear is pretty in line now. It used to be way overpowered, to the point of people rolling locks just to get this one ability. And yes, fear has gotten a lot of nerfs, but they have all been well-deserved. It's a pretty tricky spell to balance, but Blizzard has done a pretty good job so far.
    Supirse, a Paladin player says that, one of the few classes fear is actually reliable on that cant breakt it by a zillion means

    Back on topic, damage cap is not really what bothers warlocks it is that fear is our way of building distance since we have zero ways of breaking snares except portal, no immunities whatsoever and we have the toughest time against melee. Warlocks want to be able to at least have fear up for more than 1 sec before broken so we got some means of saving ourselves. Just so many fearbreakers and magic immunities out there that fear is kinda meh. Personaly I couldnt care much about damage cap, if a target is feared for just a few secs I at least get 2 dots up and some distance before I got a rouge, dk, feral, warrior on me as a poststamp again.

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