Patch 5.2 Warlock discussion

[Hellfury]

hopefully they bring out the buff to supremacy and maybe also service in a new build

[Netherspark]

Shame to see that stam is boiled into DI too, would have preferred the aura suggestion that's been banded around and GC has been tweeted about a fair bit - the fact he knows a better alternative and they still went with baking it into DI does little to help my concerns about the dev team knowing what warlocks need - just cranks dispelling DI up a notch, but that said - it's better than no stamina I guess.

It's because people kept asking for it, but Ghostcrawler didn't understand what they really wanted was just to have the stamina buff in any form, but the people couldn't think of another way than merging it into DI so that's what they asked for and that's what we got.

If people had simply asked for stamina without mentioning Dark Intent then Blizzard wouldn't have merged them. The problem is that Blizzard listened to the few vocal fools without consulting the rest of us, and took them too literally.

Xelnath would have come and asked what we thought about it. We would have been able to give detailed opinions wheras Ghostcrawler's use of Twitter severely limits the quality of feedback.

[Spektroman]

It's because people kept asking for it, but Ghostcrawler didn't understand what they really wanted was just to have the stamina buff in any form, but the people couldn't think of another way than merging it into DI so that's what they asked for and that's what we got.

If people had simply asked for stamina without mentioning Dark Intent then Blizzard wouldn't have merged them. The problem is that Blizzard listened to the few vocal fools without consulting the rest of us, and took them too literally.

Xelnath would have come and asked what we thought about it. We would have been able to give detailed opinions wheras Ghostcrawler's use of Twitter severely limits the quality of feedback.

I submited the very first tweet (to my knowledge) asking if they would consider baking stamina into dark intent. You're right to believe that I couldn't think of any other way (at least not at the time I wrote my tweet), but to be frank I'm offended that you're calling me and whoever else supported the change one of "a few vocal fools". If you had a genius idea before anyone else, why didn't YOU tweet it then?

I asked for a change taking into account (to the best of my knowledge) that we couldn't ever provide the stam buff to a raid group, because that's my reality; that of a warlock that's mostly focusing on PvE gameplay. Is it nice to have the stam buff in PvP as well without the imp? yes. Will it suck to have dark intent dispelled and lose more than just 10% spell power? absolutely.

Do we have more buffs now than we did before? Also yes.

So, sorry I couldn't think of every possible scenario before I made my suggestion. Maybe next time, since you're obviously so much better than anyone else, take some action, create a twitter acount, and submit it. If anything, I proved that they do listen to reason, and are willing to make QoL changes. That being said, I'd appreciate if you would think about how your posts affect people who are only trying to help create a better game for us all to enjoy.

[Netherspark]

Maybe I worded that a little strongly, but my point stands.

I did actually Tweet Ghostcrawler about it but by then he'd had so many requests for the merge that my suggestion was drowned out and he didn't see the point given that the request for a direct merge was far more common. What I was trying to say is that Twitter is far too inadequate for getting feedback compared to the forum discussions that Xelnath held.

But yes, too many people requested something without considering the alternatives and as such they are the ones that Blizzard heard. In my view merging two buffs into one is silly and should never have been considered but that's what people asked for because it's the simplest solution.

My point isn't against you, it's against Blizzard for following what the vocal ones want even when Blizzard know that there's a better solution.

[wholol]

since we're at it, try pushing the idea of intent becoming an aura , sure fixes the dispel problem, doubt anyone would really mind it that way. ^_~

[Deleted]

The tier-14 2-piece set bonus now causes Dark Soul to incresae the duraton of Haunt by 4 seconds (instead of the previous Nightfall modifier).

In fact this effect is now worse than the previous one, is it real.... gaining maybe 8 or 12 seconds of haunts effect every 2 min, in single target.... it's like fixing some rng more or less, at least the previous one gave More haunts effect.

In multi target, more shards wasted than previously, particularly if adds die quickly.

PS: More typo fail in this sentence than everywhere else in the patch note and guess why... GC u chimp

[Count Zero]

First step of the change. Mechanically it's better, imo. DPS-wise, well -- I think all of us were expecting the set bonuses to be a backdoor nerf for Afflic, but even with that mindset we're plenty of time away from going live. I think this is a good sign that further balancing is at least not off the table for all our specs (such as perhaps re-tuning how Havoc works [so they can slightly buff Destro single target in light of the Sacrifice balancing], Supremacy buff, etc)

[Zinnin]

I think the entire idea behind our 2pc is that we have to save less resources before DS comes up and the old 2pc for affliction accomplished that sort of indirectly. I almost feel like the 2pc might need to increase the duration of DS slightly to make it more interesting.

[Count Zero]

Ok, something lighter for us to chew on:

"Staves and polearms can be transmogrified to each other."

I hooooope this synergizes with our Glyph of Felguard !!! Especially if they eventually relax the legendary xmog restriction ... man, I may or may not be salivating over the thought of my trusty servant Bleekvazin wielding my Dragonwrath. The legendary part I'm not really concerned about, but if the staff/polearm xmog holds up with the glyph, this greatly increases my pet xmog choices (as I've been collecting staves far longer than we've been able to xmog weapons for these two pets).

[Fallensaint]

Ok, something lighter for us to chew on:

"Staves and polearms can be transmogrified to each other."

I hooooope this synergizes with our Glyph of Felguard !!! Especially if they eventually relax the legendary xmog restriction ... man, I may or may not be salivating over the thought of my trusty servant Bleekvazin wielding my Dragonwrath. The legendary part I'm not really concerned about, but if the staff/polearm xmog holds up with the glyph, this greatly increases my pet xmog choices (as I've been collecting staves far longer than we've been able to xmog weapons for these two pets).

I don't see how it would be possible for a Warlock to transmog a polearm into Dragonwrath. I mean, the way it works is you change an equipped item to look like something else, and you can't equip a polearm.

[Deleted]

5.2 lock changes for PvE so far:
- 5% Sac nerf for affli & destro
- huge nerf on set bonus


and we wont get more. Why should be ? topic on each forum shows what we want:
- green fire
- stamina for DI


Well seems that im the only one who dont like those 2 above and instead get nice changes/bug fixed/good tier bonus. Just ppl dont cry after 5.2 release that something is wrong with locks.

[Deleted]

I submited the very first tweet (to my knowledge) asking if they would consider baking stamina into dark intent. You're right to believe that I couldn't think of any other way (at least not at the time I wrote my tweet), but to be frank I'm offended that you're calling me and whoever else supported the change one of "a few vocal fools". If you had a genius idea before anyone else, why didn't YOU tweet it then?

I sent a grumpy tweet to him the second he said DI was worse than every other int buff because we also had stamina, which is an absolute bullshit answer that suggests he has no idea how warlocks play right now, nor how long they've played for ages - when was the last time you used an imp regularly? Nethersparks fairly accurate in what he says though, even after being tweeted about the aura suggestion (which I did after netherspark brought it up on here, and I saw he tweeted it himself), GC brushed it aside because "warlocks want it baked into DI", which is silly - warlocks simply want their stamina buff, if it comes on a bicycle or a unicycle, I don't think they care as long as it gets there. Aura is certainly a far better implementation - a minuscule but noticeable buff to pvp, but it's been brushed aside for no good reason.

The tier-14 2-piece set bonus now causes Dark Soul to incresae the duraton of Haunt by 4 seconds (instead of the previous Nightfall modifier).

In fact this effect is now worse than the previous one

I'm starting to wonder if heroic, upgraded T14 gear will be worth keeping over T15 gear at this rate, at least for affliction.

Ok, something lighter for us to chew on:

"Staves and polearms can be transmogrified to each other."

I hooooope this synergizes with our Glyph of Felguard !!! Especially if they eventually relax the legendary xmog restriction ... man, I may or may not be salivating over the thought of my trusty servant Bleekvazin wielding my Dragonwrath. The legendary part I'm not really concerned about, but if the staff/polearm xmog holds up with the glyph, this greatly increases my pet xmog choices (as I've been collecting staves far longer than we've been able to xmog weapons for these two pets).

I don't think you can transmog items that you can't use (A warrior can't transmog paladin tier for example, since they can't equip it - even if it's in their inventory), so I doubt we can transmog our staves to poles.

I'd be happy with the felguard glyph letting us use maces, I want Sulfuras to be usable by it - had it in my bags for years and ended up making a second one on my warrior since I can't equip it to get credit - would be nice to get some use out of it.

[Count Zero]

I don't see how it would be possible for a Warlock to transmog a polearm into Dragonwrath. I mean, the way it works is you change an equipped item to look like something else, and you can't equip a polearm.

I don't think you can transmog items that you can't use (A warrior can't transmog paladin tier for example, since they can't equip it - even if it's in their inventory), so I doubt we can transmog our staves to poles.

Yeah, I got super excited when I saw this and forgot about that. Oh wells. The euphoria was nice while it lasted.

[Teye]

Demonic Circle: Teleport now correctly shares the same cooldown when in Metamorphosis.

Lol, Demo takes a pvp nerf in the form of a bullshit "bug fix".

[Deleted]

Lol, Demo takes a pvp nerf in the form of a bullshit "bug fix".

I wonder if they'll bugfix gateways to actually work. Sick of getting gates that refuse to work despite spamclicking them.

Portal costs DF while in meta doesn't it, or is my memory failing me? That cost should go if it's intended to share CDs - I can live with a DF cost when it's for a double portal, if it's going to shove it on the CD then it has no right to cost DF, either free or mana.

[Surutcra]

The tier-14 2-piece set bonus now causes Dark Soul to incresae the duraton of Haunt by 4 seconds (instead of the previous Nightfall modifier).

There's some uncertainty whether it applies to haunts ending cast under DS or hitting under DS, but in any case, you can only expect to land two such haunts during 20s of DS.
Justification : the window of time during which a haunt you begin to cast is going to profit from that effect is about 20s under both assumptions (actually: 20s + delta_haunt_cast_time_with_vs_without_DS if the effect is computed @hit, 20s - haunt_cast_time_with_DS if the effect is computed @cast_end). Even assuming best case scenario where first haunt is cast at time t=0s of that window and a second at time t=12s, the haunt effect of a third buffed haunt cast at t=20s would fade at the same time (t=32s + cast_time + travel_time) which it would have if refreshed without the buff at time t=24s.

On the other hand, you will (almost) always be able to land two such haunts.
Justification : Assuming worst case scenario (dumb, but anyway) where you just casted haunt right before entering the "buffed" window (and thus, you don't want to cast haunt before 8s to not waste uptime), you will still have the opportunity to cast two buffed haunts (one at t=8s, the other at t=20s).

=> This "new" 2P bonus is worth an additional 8s of haunt uptime / 2 min (outside of DS, where 100% uptime was already assumed with shards pooling). It is less random than the previous version, but we also loose the benefit of the haunt damage.

Rough estimation of the induced DPS increase :
Using simcraft to model DPS outside of DS (Affliction T14H gear, DS removed from the APL), we get 114k6 DPS. This also reports 66% haunt debuff uptime (for a 16.5% average DPS increase), which means the DPS without the haunt debuff effect would be ~114.6k / 1.165 = 98k4 DPS. With 8s * 25% / 2 min = 1.67 % DPS increase on average, the bonus is worth about 1k64 DPS, which is a 1.28% increase from the baseline Affliction T14H profile (127.8k dps). A "good" shard utilization (with int procs and/or currently active dots cast under int procs, possibly not refreshing dots or life tapping while haunt debuff is active, but all that proves really challenging to execute perfectly when considering you also need to recast dots under int procs) can increase that number, I'd say by a rough 10-20% as a wild guess, but this gives a blunt idea of what it's worth.
=> Expect ~1k6 DPS increase in T14H gear, or more generally a ~1.3% DPS increase.

[Deleted]

I think the entire idea behind our 2pc is that we have to save less resources before DS comes up and the old 2pc for affliction accomplished that sort of indirectly. I almost feel like the 2pc might need to increase the duration of DS slightly to make it more interesting.

Less ressources but... the problem is the 20 sec window effect and you're right saying that DS should be longer. Changing the haunt effect reduce its utility to its DD, two haunt will give more than 20 sec with this " new design ". In single target, it's zero dps gain. And gain with multi tar only if adds live longer than 15 sec....

They want to balance the 2P around " one haunt bonus per 2 min " in single target.... Is it serious...


Pongueur bring nightfalls' rng in your calc, because at the end it's just a rng polisher for one shard.

GC......foreva.

[Count Zero]

I wonder if they'll bugfix gateways to actually work. Sick of getting gates that refuse to work despite spamclicking them.

I was having a real bad time with this the other night during a raid. First few attempts on a new heroic for us and it was working just fine. All of a sudden it's just refusing to work for me. Eventually I caught on that right clicking wasn't working but left clicking was working.

I have no idea if I had been left or right clicking the first few times when it was working, but I imagine I got surprised because I was doing the same thing and it stopped working. In any event it was saying "You can't do that right now" or whatever the message is when you have the debuff from having just used it, implying it should have been working and was just bugged.

Anyone else encountered this ?

[Deleted]

I had this bug on the main platform of Sha of Fear, I just couldn't have it working even after recasting it after a wipe.

[Daggot Ur]

I had this bug on the main platform of Sha of Fear, I just couldn't have it working even after recasting it after a wipe.

We had that problem yesterday. We got two locks this time and placed 2 gateways and 2 teleports. We tested them before the pull and everything worked fine. However, when after a few moments into the fight me and my fellow lock were moved to pandaren platform after we returned neither gateways nor even our teleports were working. This caused my death because I was dpsing the small add till the last few seconds hoping to teleport back, but got stack near the add and eventually dead (Dark Bargain was on CD after the pandaren platform). After we have killed sha during the same try all of us tried using the gateways but they did not work.

Edit. Oh, and another thing. We had several pulls on sha yestarday and everything was fine until the moment me or another warlock was teleported to the pandaren platform. It seems like when u get too far away from the gateway it doesn't disappear but refuse to work.