What am I missing here? How so? It seems like a very slight nerf to me.
The two big benefits of SL/SL spec were survivability -- you could stay alive against MS warriors by drain life tanking in certain circumstances -- and improved mana draining, so you could run the other healer out of mana and then start exerting advantage with dots.
Now, Blizz has nerfed locks three ways:
1. Mortal Strike affects drain life -- so you can't slow the defeat down any more by facetanking warriors. So Drain Life effectiveness reduced by 60%.
2. Soul Siphon reduced in effectiveness by 20%.
But the big killer:
3. Drain Mana no longer affected by Soul Siphon, reducing its effectiveness significantly. All the dots on the target no longer contribute at all to draining mana, so we're losing about 15%-20% of mana drained/returned.
SL/SL is probably not dead; people will still spec that way for lack of any other spec that works in 2v2 with the dot nerf and the high levels of resilience and armor in s2/3; but it will not bother people nearly as badly as it does now. Whether that is good or not depends on whether you're a warlock, I imagine.
I know it's arcane. High-end shadow priests have +1100 in generic damage, right now. That number goes to 1350 or so with buffs, since flask/oil/food are all generic, as well. I would argue that this is infinitely better than any other priest racial. Shadow priests are a dps class, and this spell directly increases your dps - by a noticable amount - relative to all other racials.
Racials, priest racials in general, have always been complained about. It's absolutely unbelievable that they respond to this by introducing (essentially) new racials which widen the power gap even further. If this goes in, I will never be able to perform as well in raids as a Night Elf shadow priest. It's no fault of mine and there's nothing I can do about it. This makes me want to throw in the towel.
1128 + 1350 (raid buffed) = 2478/30 sec = 82.6 DPS. Are they really serious in possibly letting a 83 DPS racial into the game. If they do care about balance this should definately not leave the test server if this is the mechanic in place. I don't believe any other class or race has a ~85 DPS racial (or anything even 50% of that for that matter).
- Grounding Totem: This totem is now destroyed upon redirecting any spell to itself.
Ouch?
Do not want.
I like that we're getting 2h trainable (mainly the fun factor), but aside from getting spell dmg from Mental Quickness what 2h weapons will make the change worthwhile? I must be missing something obvious.
Uh, this is not true. You'll see a ~20% nerf on drain mana and a much smaller one (~4%) on drain life (assuming no MS). Soul link, siphon life and CoEx all remain unchanged.
That's what I said -- warlocks won't be draining mana nearly as well. Assuming no MS is like assuming the nonexistence of the moon, why bother?
Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.
This better apply to hidden cast times as well that can be clobbered ... like oh I don't know, Auto Shot?
Wonder if they are changing the ranged weapon skill racials to 5 crit rating? Pretty good nerf it is is, since it used to be 3% ranged hit. Glad I'm an Orc!
Another way of viewing "Soul Siphon reduced in effectiveness by 20%" is "my drain life reduced in effectiveness by 3-4%" which isn't exactly crippling.
The drain mana change also isn't that big a deal. If I get drained of 800 mana instead of ~950 mana, that still hurts a lot.
The big change is the one to heal-reducing effects. That's going to hurt the SL/SL spec more than anything.
• Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.
I know it's arcane. High-end shadow priests have +1100 in generic damage, right now. That number goes to 1350 or so with buffs, since flask/oil/food are all generic, as well. I would argue that this is infinitely better than any other priest racial. Shadow priests are a dps class, and this spell directly increases your dps - by a noticable amount - relative to all other racials.
Racials, priest racials in general, have always been complained about. It's absolutely unbelievable that they respond to this by introducing (essentially) new racials which widen the power gap even further. If this goes in, I will never be able to perform as well in raids as a Night Elf shadow priest. It's no fault of mine and there's nothing I can do about it. This makes me want to throw in the towel.
Well, you'd theoretically be flasking with the non-generic Pure Death, but that's a minor thing.
I'd also like to note that at any reasonable damage level, it's going to be the worst use of time/damage of any Shadow Priest spell except unhasted Mind Flays. Even compared to Mind Flays, you'll see more resists (yes, yes, I know t6-level Priests drop 2-3 points in Shadow Focus, still a 4-6% resist rate at best), it'll cause extra threat (not sure if this is an issue, I haven't really done anything past t4 content, so I can't comment on aggro issues in higher-end stuff), and it won't return health or mana. Oh, and it consumes a debuff slot, which may be at a premium depending on raid makeup. Basically, it's useful in the rare case where you're not able to sustain mana use through chain-potting, if you are producing mana faster than your group can spend it, or if you have to move and don't need to refresh Pain and can't cast Death.
In other words, this change is not huge in any sense of the word (except for NE Holy Priests), and it sure as hell won't make any other Priest race obsolete in PvE. I'd argue that the overall DPS gain in this fight is less than the normal DPS fluctuation caused by lag/damage ranges/boss abilities.
I also think this discussion might be more appropriate in the Shadow Priest Theorycraft thread, but that's not my call.
Base damage of Starshards is 1128 damage. As a 15 second duration DoT, it would get 100% of +dmg effects. High-end shadow priests have about 1100 +dmg from gear. This is going to tick for 450 before any debuffs are even taken into account. It costs zero mana. It can be re-cast once every thirty seconds. This makes Night Elf shadow priests DRAMATICALLY better than all other races for raiding, and probably for pvp as well. Adding this to a rotation is going to give you, bare minimum, 50 more dps.
I don't want to be melodramatic, but that's something like half a tier worth of raid gear, and it's going to be insane in any number of non-raid situations as well. How is this justifiable?
1128 + 1350 (raid buffed) = 2478/30 sec = 82.6 DPS. Are they really serious in possibly letting a 83 DPS racial into the game. If they do care about balance this should definately not leave the test server if this is the mechanic in place. I don't believe any other class or race has a ~85 DPS racial (or anything even 50% of that for that matter).
Just for reference, Devouring Plague can be anywhere from 15 to 20 extra DPS -- although at least it has a hefty mana cost requiring it to always be paired with Inner Focus.
Very interesting change to WEx. I guess I don't know if they left the rogue talent unchanged (likely not?), but if they did, then as a swords human rogue with WEx, I'm packing +15 skill/expertise, which means -3.75% dodge and -3.75% parry, in exchange for the loss of, what, 4% hit? That's a slight loss for a boss, but should be useful for trash and the like.
If I add in [Belt of One-Hundred Deaths] then that grants me another, what, 6 expertise? That means I have -5.25% dodge/parry. Arguably, this change is better for melee than it was before, because though we have to stack more of the stat, it's now actually possible to fully eliminate misses/dodges from behind, and misses/dodges/parries from the front!
That doesn't factor in the loss of crit, however, so I'll let one of the other theorycrafters work that out.
I must have missed something somewhere because I have no idea where these numbers for expertise are coming from.
I'm assuming it will just mean that you no longer get an "Unable to cast" message. The spell request will be sent to the server and if the previous spell has finished casting it will start another one.
I'm kind of worried about how this may affect server performance. That will be a LOT of traffic that otherwise wouldn't exist. A few of us are under the impression that the best way to go about this change is to maintain blocks for spell requests during the GCD, then allow the traffic.
However, I'd gladly take some server performance issues over the stopcasting issue. Being the only class with no way to passively deal damage outside one channeled spell makes this change extremely significant for DPS.
That's what I said -- warlocks won't be draining mana nearly as well. Assuming no MS is like assuming the nonexistence of the moon, why bother?
It's not a big deal. A nerf to drain mana going through walls or the pet/drinking interaction would actually be a big deal for the viability of the spec. MS affecting drain is unfortunate but honestly drain life isn't a major deal in the lock+healer vs rog/war + healer matchup. If you're draining to stay alive you're losing.
edit: Basically, a 20% nerf to drain mana is a far cry from a 20% nerf to the amount of mana a healer is expending to keep him and his teammate up in a 2v2 match.
I must have missed something somewhere because I have no idea where these numbers for expertise are coming from.
- Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called
expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to
expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly
converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your
attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.
There you go.
Edit: Assuming 5% parry chance, you'd need 4x5 = 20 points of weapon skill to eliminate parries as a tank, which I don't think is possible to achieve as a warrior. Paladin tanks might have a shot at hitting it thanks to their lovely talent which now gives them +5 skill.
Still makes expertise at any level very, very nice as a tank.
I must have missed something somewhere because I have no idea where these numbers for expertise are coming from.
• Expertise: We have added a new stat and associated rating called expertise and expertise rating. Expertise rating converts to expertise at the same rate that weapon skill rating formerly converted at. Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by 0.25%.
I must have missed something somewhere because I have no idea where these numbers for expertise are coming from.
He's directly converting from Weapon Skill -> Expertise, despite the fact they said they changed racials and talents(e.g. Humans/orcs and Weapon Expertise the talent) to account for the new mechanic. It's another "we have to test this" thing.
I'm kind of worried about how this may affect server performance. That will be a LOT of traffic that otherwise wouldn't exist. A few of us are under the impression that the best way to go about this change is to maintain blocks for spell requests during the GCD, then allow the traffic.
This isn't how it works -- instead of you pushing the button and waiting for a response back from the server saying "ok you can cast" the client is performing that check on its own and notifying the server that it's begun casting a spell. The 'dead time' at the start of the spell is what is being eliminated, meaning a 2.5 cast spell will be done on your client 2.5 seconds from when you push it, not 2.7-.28 (which you could previously chop short with /stopcasting).
He's directly converting from Weapon Skill -> Expertise, despite the fact they said they changed racials and talents(e.g. Humans/orcs and Weapon Expertise the talent) to account for the new mechanic.
Actually... they said no such thing. The only explicitly stated racial changes were related to ranged weapons. Humans and Orcs may still have a 5 point higher cap.
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
I like that we're getting 2h trainable (mainly the fun factor), but aside from getting spell dmg from Mental Quickness what 2h weapons will make the change worthwhile? I must be missing something obvious.
Ah, but this will help the always frustrated Mage vs. Shaman who counterspells just as the Shaman drops GT - and the GT eats the spell and lives!
Ah, but this will help the always frustrated Mage vs. Shaman who counterspells just as the Shaman drops GT - and the GT eats the spell and lives!
Why is said mage counterspelling a shaman who apparently isn't casting a spell at all (since if he was then he obviously wouldn't be simultaneously dropping a totem)?
Just for reference, Devouring Plague can be anywhere from 15 to 20 extra DPS -- although at least it has a hefty mana cost requiring it to always be paired with Inner Focus.
Plague is a great ability, but it costs a ton of mana, doesn't scale well, and is on a three minute cooldown. Like I said, it's still a great ability. New Starshards costs no mana, scales extremely well (unless they change the formula for this spell and only this spell), and is on a thirty second cooldown. For raiding, they are not in the same ballpark.
Unrelated note: Hortus is updating the notes even as I write this; new stuff has been added a few times now since this thread was made.
10/11/07, 4:33 PM
Similar Threads
