Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Meleti]

Wondering if the cloak ends up being a bit weaker for Affliction if it's a spell cast proc.

[Acaila]

And now what prevents players from grouping 2 warlocks that would spam fear on mobs while they'd get nuked, making dungeon trash and encounters obsolete?

It's no different to chain sheeping, stunning or other spammable CC's.

Edit: Added missing quote

[Brusalk]

Wondering if the cloak ends up being a bit weaker for Affliction if it's a spell cast proc.

A little bit. Not a whole lot though. Because of how channels work if you really wanted to, you could spam cast MG/DS with no ill effect beyond slightly more mana consumption.

And besides, it's RPPM. The number of proc chances has very, very little to do with it's uptime.

[Deleted]

Wondering if the cloak ends up being a bit weaker for Affliction if it's a spell cast proc.

Really doesn't matter, RPPM accounts for that.

Though I am curious how this is actually implemented. Do they simply have a hidden proc chance that uses a fixed number of casts for each spec, assuming average play, or does it update dynamically?

- - - Updated - - -

A little bit. Not a whole lot though. Because of how channels work if you really wanted to, you could spam cast MG/DS with no ill effect beyond slightly more mana consumption.

And besides, it's RPPM. The number of proc chances has very, very little to do with it's uptime.

To clear up how little it costs to chain channel, first of all you must know the time until the next tick is saved any time you start another cast of the same channel you were already doing. That time gets added to the new channel, with a tick where normally the channel would start.

Assuming you get 1.5 ticks of MG in every global (true unless you have very high haste), chain casting will cost you 7500 mana per tick versus 5625 if you only re-cast during the last tick. So you are ''wasting'' 1825 mana per tick of MG by casting it every time the GCD is over. Assuming 600k max health, a Life Tap gives 90k mana, so in the end for every 48 ticks you are losing 1 global to Life Tap.

In total, that means you are losing 3% of your MG ticks. Not completely irrelevant, but if you have a reason to chain cast MG it's probably worth it.


Things get more complicated with Drain Soul. If you clip in on the GCD, you will never get any shards, because it only counts to 2 during the same channel. So unless you are drowning in shards anyway, this is not advisable. Note that in 5.4 Haunt is getting a huge damage boost, making casting as many Haunts as possible the best tactics under 20%; you will basically use DS only to get more shards so you can Haunt again.

Of course you could clip it after every second tick, but that is over double the time of a GCD. You also generally want to take advantage of haste procs by starting a DS just at the end of it, because the channel ticks will stay at the same time even after your proc fell off, so long as you don't re-cast it. That further discourages spamming DS.

[Phoenexis]

It's no different to chain sheeping, stunning or other spammable CC's.

Edit: Added missing quote

Sheep heals a Mob and isn't usable on everything, it also breaks on the 1st hit.
Stuns all have CDs and usually DR on mobs.

Fear on the other hand has a cap before breaking and does not heal a target.

It's not the same.

[Kildragon]

Sheep heals a Mob and isn't usable on everything, it also breaks on the 1st hit.
Stuns all have CDs and usually DR on mobs.

Fear on the other hand has a cap before breaking and does not heal a target.

It's not the same.

It's not the same, but lol at the people that would "stack" warlocks in the hyper difficult 5 man dungeons of today. And in challenge modes you wouldn't want to stack locks. But let's go do some 5 warlock 5 mans and fear the place to hell. LET'S DO IT

[Deleted]

And now what prevents players from grouping 2 warlocks that would spam fear on mobs while they'd get nuked, making dungeon trash and encounters obsolete?

You've always been able to do that without the glyph? I think fear has DR on mobs too btw.

[Kildragon]

You've always been able to do that without the glyph? I think fear has DR on mobs too btw.

Not that CC is needed or even desirable in MoP dungeons. Maybe a stun sure but not fears. If it wasn't a damn major glyph I could see myself using it with certain arena comps though.

[Shadowygoodness]

You've always been able to do that without the glyph? I think fear has DR on mobs too btw.

Nah, it doesn't. You could spend all day spam fearing the same npc.

[Jessicka]

Nah, it doesn't. You could spend all day spam fearing the same npc.

Actually depends, think trash tends not to, but adds in boss encounters invariably do.

[Asrialol]

Should be fun to see what kind of spec is the best next patch.

[Kildragon]

Depends entirely on some things that are still unclear. Are they going to make demo viable without the broken lei shen or amp trinkets? Are they going to touch destro at all or leave it as is? If destro got a buff to damage or embers then it could be competitive. They could also finally make destro fully utilize the legendary. Didn't they also say that add spec mastery was something they implemented to tune specs outside of mechanics? Why don't they EVER use it?

Anyways, by now my best guess would be affliction. They made sure that the single target dps didn't get fucked with their changes, they made sure that affliction won't get fucked by movement without KJC and multi dotting only got stronger.

[Grubjuice]

Anyways, by now my best guess would be affliction. They made sure that the single target dps didn't get fucked with their changes, they made sure that affliction won't get fucked by movement without KJC and multi dotting only got stronger.

I would say this appears to be very likely at the current moment with the changes as we know them. Afflictions will be a strong spec and will be particularly strong on 2/3 targets.

[Deleted]

i also think affliction will be the way to go next patch with the way things are atm, ofc demo will still be strong, but it is really too early to say, the patch is still atleast a month or so away and things are bound to change but atm i really like the way afflic feels, their opening burst and execution will be very strong, albeit changed a bit towards spamming haunt instead of drain soul i think but over all its looking good since the lvl 90 talents all compliment afflic very well, AD will make the openers and execution even stronger for all specs, KJC is decent for all specs, better for destro and afflic and not really usable for demo but thats fine and MF makes afflic the best burst aoe spec we have, turning afflic's weakness into a strength, all in all many things that will benefit afflic, and i think afflic will changes between those talents a lot.

[Shadowygoodness]

I think affliction will be the way to go for pvp in 5.4 as well. With DoTs being stronger and less of a focus on MG, our ability to wittle a team will be strong again. Add to that the fact we can have 2 Dark Souls now for bursting. Plus Haunt will hit/crit for nearly as much as a Chaos Bolt with less than half the cast AND will increase our DoT damage even further. Overall, Affli has the on demand burst for clutch moments, and it has the sustained pressure for longer matches. It will also be the go to spec for RBGs with the increased DoT pressure, ability to spam Soul Swap across a team without using a shard, etc. '

The following is just speculation: considering how hard SoC is hitting during MF, we may even see affli locks speccing into MF for MF + DS aoe seed spam pressure during team fights (obviously subject to just how hard SoC will be hitting player targets). SoC on the PTR takes much less damage to pop, so I'm not sure how susceptible SoC will be to dispels given they explode so fast. Just to reiterate, this is all just theory at this point.

[justinmccray111]

And destro is left being mediocre because it only affects Rain of Fire.

/cry

Mannoroth's fury has always since it came into the game only affected Rain of fire.

[Deleted]

Mannoroth's fury has always since it came into the game only affected Rain of fire.

It also affects Fire and Brimstone.

[Brusalk]

Mannoroth's fury has always since it came into the game only affected Rain of fire.

You're quite mistaken.

On first introduction it affected all of our AoE spells.

Then they made it damaging spells.

Now it's only certain damaging spells.

[Grubjuice]

has the new effect for Glyph of Everlasting Affliction been announced?
my guess is that it will allow Fel Flame to extend dots like it does now.

[Xyronic]

Something interesting to think about - The amplify and Int Trinket with crit proc both appear to have 105 second ICD's. With Archimonde's Darkness, we can use Dark Soul every time these trinkets proc (whichever we may end up using) for the first 14 minutes, assuming the trinkets proc on CD. After 14 minutes you can only use it every 2 minutes, as the charges come off cooldown.