2.4 PTR and Patch Notes - Page 115

Sillia · 02/25/08, 5:39 PM

Originally Posted by Tacitus

I can see your (or their) point, but wouldn't it be much simpler to balance if you had different rules for PVE and PVP? I think Diablo had something like -50% damage which was needed since you could do stupid amounts of damage (teleporting necros with Bone Spirit... good times). Yes, this would detach the players a bit from the game world, but I believe that it's worth it and Blizzard needs to swallow their pride, even if it's their last time doing it.

If they were going to do something like this, it would happen in an expansion pack and not in a patch. This sort of thing requires a lot of work with the engine itself. Most of the existing arena-only or pvp-only changes were probably shoehorned in after the fact into an engine that was not intended to handle that sort of thing, and would probably require substantial reworking from the ground up to get it right. If this was their intention, it would take a lot of work to get it done properly.

I also fully agree with what Lithose said.

I remember some hearing some talks (I forget where) given by Rob Pardo (I think it was Pardo) about how the design for WoW went down; they specifically wanted to tie PvP and PvE together by making mobs have roughly the same amount of HP as players, use similar abilities, deal (somewhat) similar damage, etc. This way the whole transition to pvp was (mostly) seamless, since the players tend to function a lot like the mobs do. At this point, I'd venture that it works on a maybe 80-90% level, but it's the last 10% that makes things wonky (lifetap downranking, druid arena set 15% speed bonus, various rogue cooldowns, hunter dead zone, etc.) and not the 90% of the game we all tend to take for granted.

◊ Praetorian · 02/25/08, 5:39 PM

Originally Posted by heel

I cast a spell that hits me for 20-30% of my HP every twelve seconds, and my raid-buffed hp is barely 10000. This change isn't the apocalypse. Warlocks aren't suddenly going to have survivability problems. Warlocks aren't suddenly going to start coming in last on the damage meters. Destruction Warlock damage is going down by something along the lines of 1%. Warlocks will dip lower after casting Life Tap, but even after tapping, our worst-geared Warlock will still have more health than I do when I'm topped off.

For raiding, this change is a very marginal thing, and completely unworthy of the last several pages of complaints.

I don't think anyone is saying survivability is the problem. The problem is that t6 warlock lifetapping is going from 1800ish to 1500ish untalented at the high end, so they will have to lifetap ~20% more, which means less DPS. It's being somewhat blown out of proportion, yes, but the problem is compounded by the fact that Blizzard has painted this as a PvP nerf that shouldn't hurt PvE at all (and suggested that smart warlocks can actually somehow "stack int" to benefit even more) which makes no sense to me.

Change 15% to 20% and most of the complaints will stop.

Douglas · 02/25/08, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by Furio

In PvE, while there are a few times that a down-ranked Life Tap can be superior (see above posts for examples), the real issue is that the HP loss isn't the concern; the reduced mana return nerfs DPS.

Isn't the HP loss a concern in solo PvE?

Historically, my warlock has been my favored soloing/farming character, in part because of the degree to which the combination of food, bandages, and drain life made him completely self-sufficient even when things got a bit crazy.

I'm concerned that this change is going to make 'locks simply harder to play for all sorts of folks who neither PvP nor raid. Anyone have before-and-after (live-and-PTR) numbers for a 'lock in mostly soloist-friendly crafted/easy-to-quest gear, like mostly full Netherweave? (I can't get 'em myself right now; can't log in to the PTR this cycle.) Blizzard has got to be careful not only to balance PvP and PvE in their changes, but to balance tuning for bleeding-edge players against the needs of the people who... don't play quite as seriously.

Rouncer · 02/25/08, 5:47 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Again, links please?

Here is a complete list of warlock-usable TBC epic armor with >25 int and <20 stam:
[Cord of Braided Troll Hair]
[Medallion of the Lightbearer]
[Pauldrons of the Solace-Giver]
[Pendant of the Violet Eye]
[Powerheal 4000 Lens]
[Ring of Calming Waves]

Yeah... grats warlocks?

Items that are int-weighted really don't exist. So unless Blizzard plans on introducing dozens of new warlock items of all tiers, there's a problem here.

Would you be willing to accept that locks would need to be more balanced among their stats under the new mechanic? That the standard of ignoring Intellect is gone and that items with a more even distribution of stats among Intellect and Stamina will be more valued after the change?

Would you also be willing to accept that the change is necessary since mana and by extension mana regen is a finite substance in the game that displays none of the scaling in all aspects of play that stamina does. As classes hit harder and heal for more the bosses have to hit back harder as well which requires stamina to scale to greater and greater values as the game progresses. However the mana necessary to heal those larger hits doesn't change (much) since the costs for each spell are fixed.

Sillia · 02/25/08, 5:47 PM

Originally Posted by Kasi

Hasn't Tigole said that imp life tap is supposed to take that 15% to 18%? With the 18% value how does that compare to current max ranks of lifetap on live?

The math is pretty simple. H = Health, M = Mana, X = % above 15 you need to equalize.

0.15 * H = (0.15 + X/100) * M

X = 15(H - M) / M

◊ Praetorian · 02/25/08, 5:53 PM

There is also the fact that Imp Life Tap is not compatible with any of the highest-damage warlock specs. And affliction warlocks who do have it still suffer the same % hit to their already-lackluster DPS.

PSGarak · 02/25/08, 5:57 PM

A change is acceptable, and probably necessary, to warlock regen mechanics. The fact that the lifetap is a DPS nerf is totally not the issue for me. I saw it coming. My beef is this change, in particular.

The problem is that, after 7 or more lifetaps, survivability now scales negatively with health. After seven lifetaps, each additional point of stamina you add now requires more, rather than less, healing done to you to make you survive. HoT overhealing means this problem can be minimized in some situations (like raiding), but you have a fundamentally flawed game mechanic system if adding more survivability stat makes you easier to kill. And it doesn't provide any benefit, like the damage-lifetap scaling did. It's simply less effective life. My character is strictly superior with unenchanted gear than with stam-enchanted gear--that's poor game design.

To reiterate: The issues that this change is addressing are real, and I have no problem with them nerfing warlocks in general. We've had it coming. But this change is not a good way to address it.

Kasi · 02/25/08, 5:58 PM

Yeah I forgot the location of that talent. Well yeah then they just need to tweak the numbers a bit. Instead of 15/16.5/18 make it 17/19/21.

Renew · 02/25/08, 6:00 PM

I don't even know why they are nerfing Warlocks in PvP. Pretty much every top team is moving towards a train the Warlock strategy / group composition. It's VERY effective too.

◊ Praetorian · 02/25/08, 6:04 PM

Originally Posted by Renew

I don't even know why they are nerfing Warlocks in PvP. Pretty much every top team is moving towards a train the Warlock strategy / group composition. It's VERY effective too.

I think it's a recognition that 2s/3s needs some balance. 2v2 is really where the life tap nerf hurts the most, and where warlocks have been most dominant.

Lodekim · 02/25/08, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

The problem is that, after 7 or more lifetaps, survivability now scales negatively with health. After seven lifetaps, each additional point of stamina you add now requires more, rather than less, healing done to you to make you survive. HoT overhealing means this problem can be minimized in some situations (like raiding), but you have a fundamentally flawed game mechanic system if adding more survivability stat makes you easier to kill. And it doesn't provide any benefit, like the damage-lifetap scaling did. It's simply less effective life. My character is strictly superior with unenchanted gear than with stam-enchanted gear--that's poor game design.

Maybe I'm missing something, but you're talking a situation where the only damage you take is life tap it takes more healing to keep you up the more health you have right? I don't see how that's so awful or how that makes you easier to kill when you gain stamina. If you gain 100 hp you spend 15 more hp on a life tap yeah, but afterwords you still have 85 more hp than you did without gaining the 100 hp, that's still a benefit. How do you explain how that is less effective life when you gain stamina?

Pyros · 02/25/08, 6:10 PM

Originally Posted by Renew

I don't even know why they are nerfing Warlocks in PvP. Pretty much every top team is moving towards a train the Warlock strategy / group composition. It's VERY effective too.

Because in 2vs2 they're still very strong. Same reason they nerfed druids. At least, that's what I think, and that's despite them saying they wouldn't balance on 2vs2.

I'm finding funny there's so much noise over this nerf though, while terrible, the lifebloom nerf was discarded as being a non factor in comparison. It's a direct ~5% nerf to druid healing, assuming you lose 100DPS out of 1800ish that's pretty much a 5% nerf too to warlocks. And just like the warlock nerf, it seems to be a pvp centric nerf that affect indirectly pve.

◊ Praetorian · 02/25/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by Lodekim

Maybe I'm missing something, but you're talking a situation where the only damage you take is life tap it takes more healing to keep you up the more health you have right? I don't see how that's so awful or how that makes you easier to kill when you gain stamina. If you gain 100 hp you spend 15 more hp on a life tap yeah, but afterwords you still have 85 more hp than you did without gaining the 100 hp, that's still a benefit. How do you explain how that is less effective life when you gain stamina?

Now imagine a 10-minute warlock+healer 2v2 mirror. It's ultimately a mana war. No one's going to suddenly burst the other one down. Having more stamina ultimately means, over the course of dozens of life taps in a long match, that you take more damage and thus need more healing than you would if you didn't have that stamina.

Chirality · 02/25/08, 6:12 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

I think it's a recognition that 2s/3s needs some balance. 2v2 is really where the life tap nerf hurts the most, and where warlocks have been most dominant.

If they wanted to nerf lifetap for PvP purposes, they could have done one of the following:

(1) Make Lifetap a 1.5 second cast, and thus interruptable

(2) After Lifetap, the caster takes 10% more damage for 10 seconds.

etc.

But the more I think about it, this is actually a pretty nifty nerf. If it returned a bit more mana for raiding (say 20% instead of 16) the lifetap change would give it a much higher cost-benefit ratio in PvP, with negligible impact in PvE.

◊ Praetorian · 02/25/08, 6:13 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

Because in 2vs2 they're still very strong. Same reason they nerfed druids. At least, that's what I think, and that's despite them saying they wouldn't balance on 2vs2.

I'm finding funny there's so much noise over this nerf though, while terrible, the lifebloom nerf was discarded as being a non factor in comparison. It's a direct ~5% nerf to druid healing, assuming you lose 100DPS out of 1800ish that's pretty much a 5% nerf too to warlocks. And just like the warlock nerf, it seems to be a pvp centric nerf that affect indirectly pve.

Because HoTs overheal a lot, first off. Lifebloom in raids serves as a cushion in tank healing between heals that will top the tank off completely. The number of times that lifebloom ticking for 810 as opposed to 890 is going to mean a dead tank is far too low to really worry about, and more indicative of other problems.

Also 2.4's spirit changes are amazing for PvE-geared druids with high int and spi. Druids are getting a net buff in 2.4. Warlocks are not.

Kasi · 02/25/08, 6:13 PM

You don't. It is just an efficiency loss. Any warlock who decides these changes is a reason to drop the 15% stamina talent is pretty stupid, especially given the overhealing that goes on with hotting locks with fel armor. It doesn't really matter about the efficiency, because hot classes are getting so much better mana gains in 2.4 anyway.

Renew · 02/25/08, 6:15 PM

Well 3s locks are getting dominated by double melee + druid comps.

2s are stupid, even Blizzard agrees, so why a nerf that is going to have their item dev have to redo every piece of Warlock itemization?

Essarhaddon · 02/25/08, 6:18 PM

I have a problem with any "change" that means in some situations clicking off buffs, say Fort, is more efficient than having the buff. That is just silly. Now it may work out to be a relatively trivial amount of optimization but even so...

Copernicus · 02/25/08, 6:20 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

Because in 2vs2 they're still very strong. Same reason they nerfed druids. At least, that's what I think, and that's despite them saying they wouldn't balance on 2vs2.

I'm finding funny there's so much noise over this nerf though, while terrible, the lifebloom nerf was discarded as being a non factor in comparison. It's a direct ~5% nerf to druid healing, assuming you lose 100DPS out of 1800ish that's pretty much a 5% nerf too to warlocks. And just like the warlock nerf, it seems to be a pvp centric nerf that affect indirectly pve.

I think it's partly because they came out and said "We're nerfing life tap for PvP reasons." Technically, the life bloom changes might be PvE related, PvP related, or just a general druid change. Just like the Heroism/Icy Veins change is an unknown quantity.

If it was just a change, then people would be complaining about it with less anger. Linking it directly to PvP and stating it shouldn't change anything in PvE (and you can game the system!) just feels wrong. It's like the water change would eventually got linked to arenas-only. It's the idea of PvP changes are more important than PvE, to the extent that Blizzard isn't even examining what the change will do in raids/5-mans/soloing etc.

Right now, I'm hoping that Blizzard picks my current class/specs as being awful in PvP so I can get a random PvE buff. And I'm worried that one of my abilities is viewed as overpowered in arenas, so it gets nerfed in PvE.

Talgog · 02/25/08, 6:21 PM

Originally Posted by Douglas

Isn't the HP loss a concern in solo PvE?

Historically, my warlock has been my favored soloing/farming character, in part because of the degree to which the combination of food, bandages, and drain life made him completely self-sufficient even when things got a bit crazy.

What about this change would impact warlock self-sufficieny in soloing? It might slow them down, but when no downtime is more important than max DPS, Drain Life is fine for reloading. My Felguard lock has gone 1-68.5 doing that, and he can already chain-kill anything worth chain-killing at 70. Once he hits 69 for the max rank, his Drain Life will be filling him up at over 300 hps in leveling gear. That's 425 mana for 1500 health, which covers the *new* lifetap hit for a lock with 3K more health than Talnath has.

Destruction may have more problems, especially since they shouldn't be tanking with their face in the first place, but Destruction has always been a worse grinding spec than Affliction, Demonology or old SM/DS.

Tacitus · 02/25/08, 6:22 PM

Originally Posted by Sillia

snip

Of course, I wouldn't expect them to patch such a change in, I'm just arguing that they should revert changes like this (I'm looking at Lifebloom) until they can succesfully use different rulesets.

Originally Posted by Praetorian

I don't think anyone is saying survivability is the problem. The problem is that t6 warlock lifetapping is going from 1800ish to 1500ish untalented at the high end, so they will have to lifetap ~20% more, which means less DPS. It's being somewhat blown out of proportion, yes, but the problem is compounded by the fact that Blizzard has painted this as a PvP nerf that shouldn't hurt PvE at all (and suggested that smart warlocks can actually somehow "stack int" to benefit even more) which makes no sense to me.

Change 15% to 20% and most of the complaints will stop.

This I'd mostly agree with, since it leaves my PVE almost unchanged.

Originally Posted by Rounced

Would you be willing to accept that locks would need to be more balanced among their stats under the new mechanic? That the standard of ignoring Intellect is gone and that items with a more even distribution of stats among Intellect and Stamina will be more valued after the change?

Would you also be willing to accept that the change is necessary since mana and by extension mana regen is a finite substance in the game that displays none of the scaling in all aspects of play that stamina does. As classes hit harder and heal for more the bosses have to hit back harder as well which requires stamina to scale to greater and greater values as the game progresses. However the mana necessary to heal those larger hits doesn't change (much) since the costs for each spell are fixed.

We don't have a "standard" of ignoring intelligence, our gear is loaded with stamina instead of spirit and a small amount of int.

Kasi · 02/25/08, 6:24 PM

Why the hell would you click off fort? Is healer mana an issue so much, especially with the knowledge of the 2.4 changes that are coming for the classes most likely to be healing warlocks? If you have 1000 more health from a fort, this means yes you spend 150 more health on a tap, but you end up with 850 more health afterwards. So please stop talking about silly things like not taking the 15% sta talent or removing fort. Doing that would be stupid since it would allow lifetap to bring you much lower in health. Efficiency gains don't really matter. Gurg is right, if they bumped that number up to 18% for the base lifetap or even 20%, people would be all over this as a pve buff because the health losses in the end aren't important.

Chirality · 02/25/08, 6:25 PM

Originally Posted by Essarhaddon

I have a problem with any "change" that means in some situations clicking off buffs, say Fort, is more efficient than having the buff. That is just silly. Now it may work out to be a relatively trivial amount of optimization but even so...

I don't know about this. Every stat should have some degree of situational utility.

Look at Supremus, for example. Fully raid buffed I have between 14-15k HP, depending on what stats I aim for (Armor Pen vs Haste, namely). The first half-dozen or so attempts on Supremus I clicked off Fort and Kings so as to decrease my chances of eating Hateful Strikes in Melee range.

Galred · 02/25/08, 6:26 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

There is also the fact that Imp Life Tap is not compatible with any of the highest-damage warlock specs. And affliction warlocks who do have it still suffer the same % hit to their already-lackluster DPS.

This is related to what concerns me thus far on the 2.4 PTR. I am bothered by Blizzard designing encounters which force certain (sub-optimal for maximum DPS) talent builds on players in order to be viable for that encounter, as opposed to more honest nerfs. That's not to say that warlocks will NEED to have Imp. Life Tap (I don't know enough about warlocks to comment on it) - just that it's a disturbing trend. If the devs think warlock DPS is too high, then they have other ways to get warlock DPS down to whatever the "right" level is.

I've seen Kalecgos (final version before he was disabled) and Felmyst v3, both of which make me want to get my Tier item and not do the fight ever again as a BM hunter. The current incarnation of Felmyst, in particular, is basically saying "hey go get the extended range talents" to mages/hunters. Keeping my pet alive on both fights looks like a pain in the butt, to the point where I'd break out two pieces of my T5 (oh goodie) so I don't have to burn GCDs on Mend Pet. Nor do I want to change over to Marksmanship spec in order to have less reliance on my pet.

It's too bad, because the SW25 fights seem to have good ideas and challenging mechanics, I just don't want the devs to be dictating how to use my talent points.

Spoonman · 02/25/08, 6:27 PM

Originally Posted by Rounced

Would you be willing to accept that locks would need to be more balanced among their stats under the new mechanic? That the standard of ignoring Intellect is gone and that items with a more even distribution of stats among Intellect and Stamina will be more valued after the change?

Would you also be willing to accept that the change is necessary since mana and by extension mana regen is a finite substance in the game that displays none of the scaling in all aspects of play that stamina does. As classes hit harder and heal for more the bosses have to hit back harder as well which requires stamina to scale to greater and greater values as the game progresses. However the mana necessary to heal those larger hits doesn't change (much) since the costs for each spell are fixed.

Can you actually find any items that a warlock would like to change, currently? The best DPS set in the game at the moment is still gonna be the best (pre-Sunwell), it's not like warlocks see a piece of gear with a shitload of stamina on and think "Yeah, I'd love that stamina, I'll drop some spell damage and crit for it". Int is gonna be valued more, and stamina less, this is true. But that's not actually gonna change anyone's end-game gearing, they'll still take the same warlock tier items (laden with stamina) and the non-specific best-in-slot caster items that fill the rest of the slots, which normally have a fairly even balance of stamina and intellect anyway.