Tuhalu

Yes, it is annoying that you can't always just take the gems you want. But the alternative being suggested is giving everyone the best gems whether they raid or not.

Gems do not care what gear they are put in. So the moment you make epic gems widely available, it simply means everyone will have them (even people who aren't loaded with gold) and every piece of gear with gem slots will become more powerful than it currently is.

It will also reduce the value of being a non-raiding jewelcrafter as you won't be able to sell your blue gem cuts any more and your jewelcrafter-only gems will be significantly less of an upgrade over what you can get without being a jewelcrafter.

While it sounds simple, the change being rumored would have strong flow-on effects to the rest of the game. A far better proposal would be to make new pvp gems available through arena points that are non-unique (currently there are a few unique honor gems and token gems available).

 

• Playered

More sets... well untill we see how they handle it exactly, it could be an attempt to remove some randomness (for now), the unlucky streaks of the same tokensthat people get 'all the time' (assuming they do one of each, not 3 random out of 3).

Then theres their method of making content more available (and attractive) to the playerbase, via nerfing the encounters themselves or by giving players access to more/higher level gear so they are more able to best it quicker.
- I highly doubt they would ever admit this one if its true. We know, they know we know, its somewhat an unspoken aknowledgement I guess, in the end of the day content for <10%(at max) of the population is a poorly invested resource.

Haste... works well for all physical DPS classes, it works fine for nuking classes, and it was complete garbage for instant cast classes - the change really only gives some push to making it actually work (slightly) for those builds/classes where before it did (next to) absolutly nothing.


For the majority its easy to understand why they do things, if you try and look at them from the bigger picture. There are some things they do which are really just.. well even they struggle to explain them.

 

Shadout

3 tokens are a pretty clear change for making the raiding more accessible/faster as I see it.
Adding more non-set drops might have a bigger effect on gearing up fast, but maybe they think that effect would simply be too big. By adding more set drops, they open up progressing into next raid instances a bit faster, while at the same time keeping incentive for running the old instances for the non-set items.
Im sure the actual patchnotes will have some other small changes which try to reach the same goal, none of them making huge impact alone, but combined it might allow a bunch of people to progress through more of the content before Wotlk.

 

• frmorrison

Blues have posted that they want to get more people interested in Arenas, allowing people to buy BT gems with arena points (they need to be unique) will increase usage of Arenas.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Angeron

Why would they need to be unique? As long as they're precut, you can just make them BOP. Seems like an easy fix yeah?

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

Gumibear

Unless Affliction started becoming competitiive with Destruction, I don't think any increases to Affliction DPS are too much in PvE. I burned through a mana bar faster as Affliction than I do now as completely-Shadowbolt specced Destruction. DPM on dots is high, but DPM on Affliction filler spells is very low. If dot durations corresponded with haste buffs to the filler spells such that an Affliction Warlock casted roughly the same ratio of dots to Shadowbolts with attainable amounts of spell haste, there's not going to be a change to DPM.

 

• sadris

They also said that they had no plans to nerf WOTF, yet its duration was reduced by 15sec and that they balance around 5v5, yet warlocks were nerfed (who were already at 11% representation in that bracket). They change their mind about a lot of things, a lot of the time.

'[The main argument against gay-marriage] always revolves around ... "the gay agenda"... Apparently all these gays only want to get married so they can adopt children, turn the children gay (probably using their mystic gay voodoo, passed gayly down from one gay generation to the next), and perpetuate their gayness.'
-- rantingkitten

 

Draele

vs. a Mage or Destrolock 1% Haste directly corresponds to 1% more damage(of course with 1% more mana usage)

Affliction Locks in fact will gain less benefit from Haste than Destruction even with the GCD change. Sure, it might open up 1 more Shadowbolt in the rotation, but shadowbolt is *not* the strong suite, nor the purpose of Affliction. 1% Haste needs to speed up DoT ticking speed by 1%.

Ultimately one of four things need to occur to fix Affliction endgame itemization:

1) Haste effects instant spells more than it does cast-time spells. 3% GCD reduction per 1% haste.

2) 1% Haste effects the tick speed of DoTs/HoTs by 1%. This is by far the most logical solution.

3) Crit effects DoTs in some manner. Just another option, not necessarily fond of this one.

4) The penalty for "stacking one stat" in the ilevel formula is removed. More items that *do* stack +DMG are made available and those that do are not penalized for sticking to just 1 stat. We continue to look for the same gear we look for now but can find it more easily and they will be slightly better with the change to the formula.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

◊ Kyth

Your second option impacts pvp more negatively than the 2.4 changes, which I assume is why they didn't go with that obvious solution.

Unfortunately the pve game is at the mercy of pvp balancing.

 

Northerner

Well, affliction locks perform poorly as a dps spec in T6 content but they still are not without merits at present. Malediction and especially shadow embrace are hardly trivial after all and in some situations (AE, multi-DoT mostly) they are significant contributers. I'll freely admit though that the spec is a "respec while learning a new fight" sort of thing but still, it's viable already.

I'd hate to boost it too much.

 

Draele

Fair enough. I'm starting to like #4. It will effect all items to a degree though and help specs that happen to like 1 stat a *lot* ultimately bringing us in line with specs which prefer 2-3-4 stats on their gear.

Resto Druids like +healing, why penalize their items for having a lot of +healing? It's what they want. It's what Blizzard designed them to use. Why should there be any inherent penalty for gearing your spec the way it's meant to be geared?

The same goes for Affliction and other similar specs that prefer to stack a stat.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

Draele

I wouldn't want to boost it too much either. The problem is we're OMGWTFBBQ awesome in Kara/Gruul gear, but fall to mediocrity when compared to everyone else geared out in T6. In an ideal situation we'd neither be overpowered nor underpowered at any point in time.

(I hope I'm not derailing too much here...)

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

◊ Kyth

The itemization model seems to be largely designed around classes who benefit from multiple stats. Take a look at melee, they actually get something out of more than one stat. And mages (seemingly the class used in all caster design/balancing) also can make use of more than one stat.

From that perspective, it's a "good" thing to encourage people to develop multiple areas of their characters. "When Game Design Goes Wrong" happens when you don't carry that philosophy through and find different ways for every class/spec to work within your design (druid, spriest, affliction lock.)

I was initially wondering if this was Blizzard trying to create more variety in the caster stats, so we're more like the melee where some prefer crit/dmg, some prefer dmg/haste. But that really doesn't work since mages benefit from everything, and warlocks (even destruction ones) are dmg/haste, so there's not a clear itemization separation.

I think Blizzard is moving in the right direction since I doubt they will change how item budgets work, but that means serious thinking about how lifetap scales (and what that does within the itemization context) and how dots and channeled spells both work.

Especially when, based on the talents, the clear push from Blizzard is towards affliction as our raiding tree, yet the game doesn't support it.


(semi in reference to another thread with a post by a mage asking, essentially, who cares if warlocks can't have two trees)

While few outside of the warlock ranks mourn the position that affliction is in right now, it's very frustrating to have rolled a dotting class and be a shadow mage yet again due to itemization, class design, and the debuff limit. (not to mention that affliction lags more behind destruction than frost lags behind fire.)

Shadow priests are in the same boat.

No class should be consigned to zero gear progression no matter how "overpowered" anyone feels they are in pve (or, god help us, pvp.) If the class is truly overpowered, then nerf the base class (or avoid doing stupid shit like frozen shadoweave in the first place.) It's unfun to raid for 12 months and gain essentially 100-150 +dmg while everyone else is getting significant power gains. Character growth is fun, and gear is the only way it's done in the game.


I went destruction when we were regularly hitting 40 debuffs and I got a look at the end-game gear sets and realized that, no matter how annoyed I was at not being able to play a "warlock", I was more annoyed at debuff limits and lack of character progression.

 

RunsWithScissors

I disagree with the "respec while learning a new fight" comment. Affliction requires you to pay a lot more focus on just dpsing then destruction does

 

Draele

I think he may have meant it the other way around- Affliction respeccing *to* Destruction to new fights. You could create a just argument for either one, though :P

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

◊ Kyth

At the T6 level:

A rogue posted in another thread that the difference between hemo and combat swords is less than the difference between affliction and destruction. (I have no personal data, just repeating.)

And based on numbers I've seen, the difference between frost and fire is less than the difference between affliction and destruction.

Given that, I'm not sure where hesitation comes from. Especially since this is our raiding tree with all the talents every raid wants, and is the one that actually plays uniquely (if I wanted to spam nukes I'd roll a mage. If I wanted to be the pet class, I'd be a hunter. Warlocks are the most interesting dotting class, with more going on than shadow priests.)

 

◊ Acustar

I'm fairly certain what he meant was Malediction (more damage going out) and especially Shadow Embrace (tank taking less damage) to give the raid a little more leeway on a new encounter.

 

graver

From what i know destruction warlocks benefit from spell crit much more than mages. Thanks to ISB.

 

• Maels

Your 1) is a really good idea that I personally haven't put into account when regarding the haste affecting GCD change.
For all we know, 200 haste could be enough to put you at 1 second GCD!
It probably isn't going to be implemented like that, and most people (including myself) would be surprised if the haste to spells:haste to GCD isn't a 1:1 ratio, but speculating's fun, isn't it?

2) and 3) would be ridiculous in PvP, for different reasons.
2) Imagine a bloodlusted haste lock casting all his dots (including a much improved siphon life) then draining life - do locks really need more buffs? Dots currently scale way too efficiently for haste to be fair.
3) would require a rework of resilience and how it interacts with dots, not to mention many other factors that would do nothing but feed the warlock hate machine.

The stacking stat penalty is ultimately a good thing in regards to mudflation, so 4) is a simple, but inelegant fix.

I really like 1).

 

Wodahs

15.7 spell haste rating = 1% haste, which drops the gcd by 1%.(unless blizz changes things, but I dont see any reason, nor comment that blizz will apply a different ratio to the gcd)
518.1 passive haste rating drops a 1.5 spell/gcd to 1.0. 518.1!

 

heel

This is wrong. The correct formula is newcasttime = (oldcasttime * 1576) / (hasterating + 1576). You need 788 haste rating to get a one second global cooldown.

 

PsyBomb

Mages get almost as much out of it, due to Ignite. In any case, the discussion at hand (though not the original purpose of the thread) is how to change itemization to let Aff locks (and other single-stat classes) keep up with their primary specs.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

• frmorrison

Not really, especially since Ignite can be knocked off and possibly overwritten. Warlocks get the best usage out of spell crit in a raid, that is one reason why the int/crit ratio is highest for Warlocks.


On 2.4 details, it appears the PTR character copy is up, however it says it is busy.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Melador

This actually makes a lot of sense to me, and is the first real justification for adding another token drop that I've read. Basically flood the market with tokens so that everyone can be assumed to have 4 or 5 piece T6 going into Sunwell.

Also (and I suspect this is a bigger reason than any other), it's easiest for them to implement. Adding an additional off-set item means that they'd need to through every single boss that they wanted to buff and re-do the loot table -- since a lot of bosses drop 2 items from 2 distinct tables, what would the third drop be? From either table? Re-split the drops into 3 distinct tables?

Much easier and safer to just add an extra token and call it good, sadly.

 

Nathanyel

Wait, are you talking about warlocks or ferals here?