Patch 5.2 Warlock discussion

[Resentful]

from the unofficial patch notes.

That's just shitty. I mean HL didn't do much damage anyway, but it was at least a decent instant AoE spell for when I was Affliction. If they are going to bring down the damage it will ONLY be a health replenisher, and all the numerous AoE situations while questing (Rock flinging hozen for Tillers, sap flies with Klaxxi, all the stuff you have in scenarios etc. etc.) will now have to be done in the most annoying way possible: with SoC. Need to see it in action to be sure, but I don't think I like this change at all. Such a QoL nerf.


EDIT: Just realised I'll also have Rain of Fire as Affliction. Yeah, well, using a fire spell as Affliction is stupid, but I guess that will have to do cause we have nothing else.

~poke what about seed of corruption n.n?

[luckydevours]

from the unofficial patch notes.

That's just shitty. I mean HL didn't do much damage anyway, but it was at least a decent instant AoE spell for when I was Affliction. If they are going to bring down the damage it will ONLY be a health replenisher, and all the numerous AoE situations while questing (Rock flinging hozen for Tillers, sap flies with Klaxxi, all the stuff you have in scenarios etc. etc.) will now have to be done in the most annoying way possible: with SoC. Need to see it in action to be sure, but I don't think I like this change at all. Such a QoL nerf.


EDIT: Just realised I'll also have Rain of Fire as Affliction. Yeah, well, using a fire spell as Affliction is stupid, but I guess that will have to do cause we have nothing else.

It's just a tooltip fix. Harvest Life scales with 17.5% of Spell Power since the 30% nerf to warlock AoE at the end of Beta.

[Jessicka]

Because Destro really needed to be nerfed by 4%, right ? NO
Really waiting for the next build -_-

Agree it needs a more creative way of fixing the Sac issue; since largely that's down to Havoc. That said, Destruction's problem isn't that it's weak; it's that Affliction with Sac is so strong; the nerf there will bring it more in line.

[luckydevours]

Agree it needs a more creative way of fixing the Sac issue; since largely that's down to Havoc. That said, Destruction's problem isn't that it's weak; it's that Affliction with Sac is so strong; the nerf there will bring it more in line.

I really expect them to nerf GoSac even more for Affliction. A 10% nerf to the most powerful single target damage boost of all three specs is nothing, especially compared to the 20% GoSac nerf Destruction has to suffer. Sacrifice is so much stronger than Supremacy, even a nerf down 40% additional damage will make it come out ahead in a single target situation.

[xskarma]

It's just a tooltip fix. Harvest Life scales with 17.5% of Spell Power since the 30% nerf to warlock AoE at the end of Beta.

Ah, okay. Hard to keep track of stuff like that, even when you follow things closely. Was weird to have them go after HL anyway, so glad that they are not.

[Deleted]

Just posting this here as I did on the EU forums, some thoughts on the 5.2 PTR changes.

The Felhunter ability Spell Lock is now an interrupt, and no longer applies a 3 second blanket Silence.
[li]Change to all blanket silence effects, sucks, but could be good for the game as a whole.[/li]

Blood Fear has been redesigned. This ability is now cast on the Warlock, and causes melee attacks that strike within the next 60 seconds to Fear the attacker. When cast, the ability has 1 Charge, costs 20% health to activate, and has a 30 second cooldown.
[li]As I read it doesn't replace fear anymore, which is good, the health cost is way to much for a single(possibly dispellable) fear effect which can be countered by just looking at your buffs.[/li]

Soul Leech now provides an absorption shield instead of healing.
[li]I wouldn't mind this change to much if Soul Link would also divide all absorption effects.[/li]

Sacrificial Pact now requires the pet to sacrifice 25% of its health to activate (was 50%).
[li]This would completely wreck the talent, sure it would cost less health from your demon, but at the time you actually need it? Better take Dark Bargain to save your life once every 3 minutes then slowing your inevitable death once per minute. I'd suggest increasing the effect to 300% from 200%, to give 75% of the demon's(or your own) health as a shield. It would still be a nerf, but not as ridiculous as it is now. Would make it better for those using GoSac I think.[/li]

Kil'jaeden's Cunning is now a passive talent, and its activated ability has been removed.
[li]I like this nerf, as the extra ability felt quite out of place as it was.[/li]

The passive damage from Archimonde's Vengeance no longer has a visual effect.
[li]Slowly chipping away at it, first the graphics, then the... [/li]

Grimoire of Sacrifice now increases the damage of abilities by 20% (was 25%) for Destruction, and 45% (was 50%) for Affliction.
[li]I understand why it was nerfed, as nearly all destro/affli warlocks are using it. However, I think several buffs are in order for destro.[/li]
GoSac excludes spells effected by Havoc, Havoc now always increases damage dealt by the spells cast with it by 20%, regardless of saccing or not saccing your demon.
Increased damage for Incinerate, mainly to buff PvE damage, but also helps slightly against melee.

Grimoire of Sacrifice now provides the spell Whiplash instead of Seduction when a Succubus is sacrificed.
[li]I like this change, although I'd have liked a non-channeled version of Seduction as well.[/li]

Glyph of Burning Embers has been removed, and its effects are now baseline for Destruction Warlocks.
Glyph of Soul Shards has been removed, and its effects are now baseline for Affliction Warlocks.
[li]Anyone with half a brain would take these anyway.[/li]

New Glyph: Glyph of Ember Tap. This glyph increases the healing gained from Ember Tap by 50%.
[li]I like it, but it's probably to powerful.[/li]

New Glyph: Glyph of Drain Life. This glyph increases the healing gained from Drain Life by 30%.
[li]The problem with this glyph is that it requires you to use Drain Life, the question then becomes; does it heal me more then Glyph of Healthstone or Glyph of Siphon Life? If it doesn't? Then it's a wasted glyph slot as well as lost dps.[/li]


And separate from the patch notes;
I'd like Soul Link to divide all healing and absorption effects, as well as increasing healing/absorption taken, GoSac giving increased healing/absorption taken in addition to the increased health when used in conjunction with Soul Link.

This would make the new Soul Leech actually useful for people using Soul link, as well as making Soul Link more viable by actually increasing survivability through healing.

[Deleted]

i just dont understand the destro nerf...

[Resentful]

It's just a tooltip fix. Harvest Life scales with 17.5% of Spell Power since the 30% nerf to warlock AoE at the end of Beta.

Yay I thought I was going to lose it; My favorite AoE personally.

[Deleted]

I still see affliction being top though next tier, the 5% nerf to GoSac probably isn't enough since affliction scales so well.

Ofc early PTR notes, plenty of room for changes, personally I hope they fix destructions mana issues late game.

[Deleted]

Yes, the "real" difference. The place that ONLY looks at the top 100 parses per spec (cause that's reliable), and the place where Affliction is only on top by a small margin on SOME of the fights.

So you want to say that simulation with lots of terrible bugs with results that CANT be maded from any living player is better than results of 100 best published logs from players that actually did it ?


You know that this discussion is about World of Warcraft game, not Simulationcraft game ? Those are 2 totally different games.



About changes. Its really nice to see that blizzard is doint exactly what he said he will do. They dont want "must have" tallents and glyphs, making 4 ember/ss baseline with changing glyphs is something nice.

We cant threat those changes as an actual changes. Im pretty sure they wont be in official 5.2 patch notes - well 90% of them wont for sure. But we can see what blizzard want to do. They want to nerf affli a bit (no, affli wasnt OP - fire mages was OP, dmg that can made tanks was/is OP - affli is just a little bit to strong), they want to remove must have tallents/glyphs without destroing certain spec. Thats great information.



p.s. pvp set looks amazing Just why its pvp not pve qq

[Jessicka]

Yes, the "real" difference. The place that ONLY looks at the top 100 parses per spec (cause that's reliable), and the place where Affliction is only on top by a small margin on SOME of the fights.

Actually, it snips off the top 50 of the top 200 to remove the major outliers.

[Dumaw]

I don´t understand the Destro damage nerf either. Did I miss something??
This doesn´t make any sense.

[Resentful]

I don´t understand the Destro damage nerf either. Did I miss something??
This doesn´t make any sense.

You didn't; More of a PVP nerf then anything lol combined with blood fear= LMAO

[Deleted]

I think this isn't aimed to be a Destro nerf, but really just a GoSac nerf since this was almost the only way to go in PvE. Now it would be awful if we had to reforge between every fight to be optimal... I hope there will be a buff to the spec in the future builds.

[Deleted]

after my initial whining about soul leech change, ive come to realize that it could be a potentially insane change, dpending on how it will be implemented ofc. if it is based off your most recent hit from the abilities that triggers it, then it is pretty much pointless(MG tick vs haunt dmg and then the shield from haunt would be instantly overwritten by a MG tick). not that this would be bad but it wouldnt be very good either, unless you can automatically roll the highest dmg shield by spamming MG and it doesnt overwrite the shield but just extend it. the other way it can be implemented is like divine aegis or spirit shell where the amount of dmg absorbed is capped based on your HP which for DA and SS is 30% and 60% of your health afaik. if it is like this then it would be a rather insane buff for pve. it would certainly have its uses on bosses like garalon with his crushes and wind lord for unseen strikes. it all depends on how they would implement it, at this point we dont know anything but im assuming or hoping that it will be similar to DA.

[Viggers]

im almost certain it will be DA like in the way it stacks and is applied. nothing else makes sense

[Chrispotter]

Only change that i like is the Ember tap Glyph. Siphon life is MEH because 99% of the time its better to have an on demand big heal than constant small healing/sheilding.
From a pve point - These changes arnt too bad.
From a pvp point - Okay guess blizzard really does want me to reroll =/.

And blood fear... BLOOD FEAR.... ARE BLIZZARD JOKING?! Like did they actually read what they put out or? I mean.. its not a nerf, its a decimation, its like taking a talent that takes 1/5 of your HP and gives you nothing in return.. OH WAIT THATS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. Are they trolling or what with that blood fear?!?! Only a brain damaged person would take it tbh. Id rather not have it than have it simply incase i hit a wrong keybind and accidently make use of it and get killed. Just think about it... 1 fear on a melee for 20% of hp....... ... ..... .... ?!?!! I mean... really?! Its like they have nobody at Quality Assurance making sure that things make sense, they are just complete morons when it comes to warlock pvp this season.

[Deleted]

im almost certain it will be DA like in the way it stacks and is applied. nothing else makes sense

yeah, i agree, my biggest fear is that it isnt.

[Fallensaint]

The GoSac nerf for Affliction is pretty easy to understand. Since it was changed late in beta GoSac has been about 5% ahead of the other talent choices in that tier, so this change is to bring the talent down to be more in-line with the other grimoires.

The GoSac nerf for Destro is a bit tougher to grasp. Single-target all three grimoires are fairly close for Destro, but for multi-target Destro is the only spec capable of cleaving GoSac's bonus damage via Havoc.

One of the major design goals behind the new talent system was that talents would be chosen on a situational basis. Talents like GoSac which were superior in nearly every situation go against that goal, so they got changed.

I am a bit disappointed that Demo didn't see a GoSac buff to make the talent competitive with the other two grimoires, but the PTR hasn't even started yet.

Also, something that people should keep in mind is that Blizzard usually cycles balance changes between mechanics and math. If these new mechanics changes put us dangerously far behind, then we'll see math changes to push us up back towards the middle.

[Deleted]

I am a bit disappointed that Demo didn't see a GoSac buff to make the talent competitive with the other two grimoires, but the PTR hasn't even started yet.

Eh, I think Demo is the one spec that it's justified for GoSac to be notably weaker for - it's at the core the "pet" tree, I have less sympathy for people wanting to play petless demo than I do for those not wanting to pvp on a pvp realm.

Also, am I reading this wrong, or is talenting blood fear actually nerfing yourself, does it replace fear still or not?

If it does then you're

a) Removing the one form of frequent CC the class has (?)
b) Your "new" fear only works on melee
c) Costs 20%(!) of your health
d) Only works when they hit you
e) has one charge
f) Can't be used offensively
g) Has a 30 second CD

Now, looking at that clusterfuck of drawbacks I'm guessing it can't replace your standard fear, right? Even without replacing fear it still seems absolute garbage, the 20% health cost is probably more damaging than what the fear will save you from, especially since it's a debuff that, bar the heat of the moment, is going to be easily prepared for.

I know blood fear needed a nerf, but that seems overkill - any 2 of those changes should have been enough.

Glad to see the SS / Ember glyph is being made baseline now though and I'm interested to seeing how the 30% drain life glyph will work, I imagine it still can't be used as filler as affliction since so much dot damage is baked into MG, but Drain Life might actually be usable as a heal with that glyph, though I'll laugh if they've removed a mandatory SS glyph to replace it with a mandatory DL glyph that's essential to make the ability worth casting.