For as long as COD exists, there is still the problem that you're still rewarded for stacking warlocks. The barrier of entry has just been made easier. It is good however to be almost guaranteed to get COE.
Exactly. With the Curse change, CoE > CoR with normal raid comp, so it should always be up.
Well, when they finally nerf Destruction, this will mean that people won't still need to bring three warlocks, or that the two warlocks run curse-less. Until then, it's a damage buff of one CoD per raid.
For as long as COD exists, there is still the problem that you're still rewarded for stacking warlocks. The barrier of entry has just been made easier. It is good however to be almost guaranteed to get COE.
If in the expansion they balance a Warlock around using CoD, then only the 2 Curse bitches will be screwed.
I wouldn't celebrate only having to bring 2 warlocks just yet. Supposedly they're changing curse of weakness to "reduces attack power by 350 and "increases time between melee and ranged attacks by 20%" This would provide demo shout and thunderclap in one debuff, without needing your tank to waste rage and global cooldowns on applying them. It's a welcome change to me, if only because it'll make druid, paladin and deathknight tanks less dependent on warriors to apply debuffs. It would also allow raiding protection warriors to spec something other than improved thunderclap. It still means you'll benefit a lot from bringing that third warlock for a third curse.
Both Death Knights and Feral Druids have incoming attack speed debuffs as well, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if Prot Paladins got some sort of similar Judgement. Depending on how it works out, Curse of Weakness' attack speed debuff might not be all that important.
If in the expansion they balance a Warlock around using CoD, then only the 2 Curse bitches will be screwed.
Well, what I meant by that 'between the lines' is that COD is an abomination and should probably be removed. Either make it part of warlocks, so that all warlocks can use it (ie: don't make it a curse, so that you can cast it in addition to coe/cos/cor/whatnot), or remove it altogether. As much as 'screwing only 2 warlocks' sound appealing in a strange way, it strikes me as bad design, or worse, balance the class without COD.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Well, what I meant by that 'between the lines' is that COD is an abomination and should probably be removed. Either make it part of warlocks, so that all warlocks can use it (ie: don't make it a curse, so that you can cast it in addition to coe/cos/cor/whatnot), or remove it altogether. As much as 'screwing only 2 warlocks' sound appealing in a strange way, it strikes me as bad design, or worse, balance the class without COD.
Why? Those two warlocks aren't "screwed". They are contributing more DPS to the raid than the 3rd or 4th warlock are, because the curse they put up is yielding more DPS than CoD would.
Other classes, stacking beyond the minimum doesn't increase the utility. For example, two MS warriors don't give two blood frenzies, and two retadins dont' keep all your judgements up twice as much or give another 3% crit. Beyond two warlocks you stop getting the DPS curses but their personal DPS is buffed so that the dropoff is not as severe while still making the first two debuffs so damn sexy. I think it's a great model for ameliorating class utility issues.
Other classes, stacking beyond the minimum doesn't increase the utility. For example, two MS warriors don't give two blood frenzies, and two retadins dont' keep all your judgements up twice as much or give another 3% crit. Beyond two warlocks you stop getting the DPS curses but their personal DPS is buffed so that the dropoff is not as severe while still making the first two debuffs so damn sexy. I think it's a great model for ameliorating class utility issues.
This seems disingenuous, as you're comparing class stacking versus spec stacking. Sure, a second MS warrior doesn't provide the benefit of an additional blood frenzy, but that's why any dps warriors beyond the first spec fury for improved personal dps. I'd say this is similar to warlocks beyond the first two being allowed to use damage curses for improved personal dps. And yes, ret paladins beyond the first don't give additional crit, but pallies of any spec beyond the first bring additional judgements (assuming you have the one ret to keep them up) and blessings. Granted, both judgements and blessings show severe drop off in value beyond the third pallie (arguably beyond the second in the case of judgements), but a class losing synergy beyond 2-3 doesn't seem like it's out of whack with what we should expect.
A better comparison would be shadow priests, which are still a spec but are more easily treated as an almost-class. The second one doesn't improve your Misery or Shadow Weaving at all. He still provides DPS and mana regen, but he provides exactly the same as the first one. There's not something he can provide instead of the misery and SW that he effectively doesn't contribute to.
If you want to look at classes, note that the first mage gives you D/amp and AI (and food/water/portals), the second doesn't provide any ancilliary benefit. Ditto priests and fort/shadow, druids with marks. With the exception of Fort this isn't as big a deal because the difference between having the buff and not having it isn't that great. That's the exact situation that CoD gives, but I think it does so in a better way: the actual buff provided is quite noticeable but because there's a stackable substitute the difference between providing it and not providing it isn't as great.
Paladins aren't directly comparable because their additional judgements and blessings slope off in effectiveness gradually rather than sharply. How this works with stacking is fine (in isolation, ie without considering any other aspects of paladins).
I wouldn't celebrate only having to bring 2 warlocks just yet. Supposedly they're changing curse of weakness to "reduces attack power by 350 and "increases time between melee and ranged attacks by 20%" This would provide demo shout and thunderclap in one debuff, without needing your tank to waste rage and global cooldowns on applying them. It's a welcome change to me, if only because it'll make druid, paladin and deathknight tanks less dependent on warriors to apply debuffs. It would also allow raiding protection warriors to spec something other than improved thunderclap. It still means you'll benefit a lot from bringing that third warlock for a third curse.
That's a nice idea in theory... But as the tank I want to make sure those debuffs are up at all times. When we assign Demo shout to a DPS warrior, it's often forgotten about. I'd prefer to let the warlocks concentrate hard on pressing their shadowbolt key furiously, because in the age of DPS meters keeping Demo shout and Thunderclap will be the last thing on a warlock's mind.
That's a nice idea in theory... But as the tank I want to make sure those debuffs are up at all times. When we assign Demo shout to a DPS warrior, it's often forgotten about. I'd prefer to let the warlocks concentrate hard on pressing their shadowbolt key furiously, because in the age of DPS meters keeping Demo shout and Thunderclap will be the last thing on a warlock's mind.
He only has to drop CoW every 2 minutes, however, and a mod like Demon lets anyone in the raid monitor CoW uptime, meaning re-application of a forgotten CoW is just a ventrilo shout away =)
He only has to drop CoW every 2 minutes, however, and a mod like Demon lets anyone in the raid monitor CoW uptime, meaning re-application of a forgotten CoW is just a ventrilo shout away =)
Making CoW so good it can completely replace tclap/demo (or the new equivalents being introduced) means for an optimal raid, you'll still want three warlocks (elements, recklessness, weakness), since having to refresh tclap/demo every 30 or less seconds for a tank means a significant loss in TPS vs a warlock being able to do both with a single GCD every 2 minutes.
Making CoW so good it can completely replace tclap/demo (or the new equivalents being introduced) means for an optimal raid, you'll still want three warlocks (elements, recklessness, weakness), since having to refresh tclap/demo every 30 or less seconds for a tank means a significant loss in TPS vs a warlock being able to do both with a single GCD every 2 minutes.
It'd be taking one step forward, one step back.
Arguably it's a better situation to be in than how things are now. Thunderclap is essentially irreplaceable. If CoW is the new 'optimal' attack speed debuff, at least there's a second option in thunderclap and a third option in whatever the death knight thing is to mitigate the situation you'd be in with no warlock in the raid.
Ideally you have a similar situation for every make or break buff/debuff in the game. Classes need to be more fungible if 10 man raiding is going to work. If that comes at the expense of more class homogenization, so be it. The depth of gameplay isn't enough to support 10 highly differentiated classes anyway. The illusion that it can should be sacrificed in the name of increased playability and lower organizational overhead.
It costs your raid more DPS to have a warlock put up CoW, compared to a warrior. Why on earth would you want a warlock doing it? Its the same attack speed modifier as thunderclap (imp CoW does not affect the attack speed) and the same AP reduction if he's specced for it. This is the reason you don't see the 4th warlock use CoW right now in a raid, the talent is out of the way no matter what spec you are, and even if you do have the talent, it would be more efficient to have a warrior of any spec put it up.
It would see use in 10 mans without a warrior, i'm not too sure it would see a lot of use in 25's though.
It costs your raid more DPS to have a warlock put up CoW, compared to a warrior. Why on earth would you want a warlock doing it? Its the same attack speed modifier as thunderclap (imp CoW does not affect the attack speed) and the same AP reduction if he's specced for it. This is the reason you don't see the 4th warlock use CoW right now in a raid, the talent is out of the way no matter what spec you are, and even if you do have the talent, it would be more efficient to have a warrior of any spec put it up.
It would see use in 10 mans without a warrior, i'm not too sure it would see a lot of use in 25's though.
Are you aware how much it costs for a dps warrior to apply thunderclap? Applying demo-shout is only 10 rage every 30 seconds not counting resists, so 40 rage every 2 minutes. Thunderclap is only usable in battlestance, so first the warrior needs to shift stances wasting any rage they have, build up enough rage to use thunderclap, and change back again to berserker losing any extra rage they've built up in battle. You're talking about losing hundreds of rage every 2 minutes to keep both up, not even mentioning the crit you lose for attacks done in battlestance. Compare this with a warlock using one global cooldown every 2 minutes?
It's easier for a tanking warrior to apply both sure, but that comes at a cost of threat generation. If your tank is already generating more threat than anyone can match, it's less useful. But can you seriously say you've never been aggro-capped in a boss fight? The reason raids don't use Curse of Weakness now is that applying demoralizing shout is pretty painless for a dps-warrior, and curse of weakness doesn't provide anything extra over it. If the change is implemented, using CoW would not only free up one debuff slot, but also either increase your tank's threat generation, or iincreases your raid-dps if you were using a dps warrior for both.
I'm assuming there will be protection warriors in just about every 25 man. I've been threat capped on a boss fight sure, but its never because 'if the tank didn't have to use thunderclap, i wouldn't be threat capped', and frankly right now locks are the only class i can think of that would actually have much of a problem with threat. Its usually something solved with the tanks group composition, or a soul shatter at a reasonable point on the encounter. Every other class either generates significantly less threat, or has a complete threat wipe.
If for some reason prot warriors aren't viable tanks, I know what it costs for a DPS warrior, i have one. Does he lose ~200 DPS (probably more with the new CoD rank) from applying it?
I imagine the proposed Curse of Weakness change is just to make 10 man and 25 man easier without a Warrior present. With the changes to itemisation coming in the expansion, Thunderclap will likely no longer be the weak part of a Warrior's threat rotation. With the +hit and +crit changes, chain resists of Thunderclap will be a fair bit rarer with some decent amount of +hit. Quite how Thunderclap will be affected by melee crit talents, or base crit, I don't know, but with Prot talents, it should be critting at at decent rate. Then of course there is the scaling with AP it'll recieve. If you assume it'll get even 20% of AP as damage, and the tank is at oooh, say, 1k AP buffed at level 80, then it's an extra 200 damage base. 200 damage * 110%, due to Imp TC and 1 handed weapon spec. From the datamined info, Thunderclap final rank is placed at 200 damage. 200 + 200 from AP would be 400. After talents, 840 damage before mitigation. I assume it's based off spell crit damage, I may be wrong, but if it is, it's a 1.5 modifier each time it crits, so before mitigation, TC will be critting for around 1260. Thunderclap threat is twice the damage done. So a crit like that is 2520 base threat. And in Defensive stance, 3654 threat.
3654 threat over 1 GCD is 2436 TPS.
Obviously a lot of this is spitballing maths, but at very least, TC should no longer be the threat liability it is now.
Oh and I may also say, any Warrior who gives up Improved Thunderclap needs a head examination. It's just such a good talent that not taking it is crazy, especially since you'll always be spending the 5 pre-requisite points in Arms for Deflection. Improved Thunderclap is probably the best 5 man talent that a Prot Warrior has. And sure, you meet Warriors who never tank anything outside of raids. But even in raids, there's aoe tanking to be done, where the bonus threat from Imp TC is very helpful. Not to mention having that backup there in case your CoW Lock dies, DC's or simply isn't available for the night, forcing you to run with 2 locks.
Urotas, the cost to the warlock isn't the GCD, it's the lost DPS from the CoD that he could have been casting instead.
Assuming a 2 minute timer on it (like CoR), that's 2 Dooms, which is >20k damage in T6 content, assuming they don't get pushed off. It has the additional bonus of making warlocks use the types of spells initially promised. Blizzard's description describes warlocks as a debuffing class, and this would make that more true than it is today. Big lore win, and a number of warlocks would be quite happy at that. Maybe not the same crew that crows about DPS meters, but as always, can't please everyone!
I'd welcome the third curse being a combo of Demo/TC, with a potential talent to increase its effectiveness to Imp DS/Imp TC levels.
Heh, maybe Blizz should give Mages the alternate Thunderclap/Demo Shout (seems like it would be nice as a Frost spell). That would give them some good utility.
The point of Curse of Weakness being a "Thunderclap and Demo Shout in one" isn't necessarily to replace Thunderclap and Demo Shout on a Warrior's rotation, but to give more flexibility to 5-man and 10-man groups - specifically, groups wherein the tank is a Paladin, a Feral Druid or a Death Knight.
If your raid has enough Warriors to apply TClap and DShout and you compute that your MT can hold aggro even through the rage costs of applying both, then go right ahead and use that. If not, then have the Warlock do it.
However, if you have a Paladin as your MT, then your Fury Warrior will definitely lose a big chunk of his DPS from having to apply TClap and DShout all the time, which makes it preferable for a Warlock to apply CoW instead.
As I said previously though, we currently know that both Feral Druids and Death Knights will get their own TClap-ish attack speed debuffs, and it's not much of a stretch to expect the same of Paladins, so the CoW change may end up as more of a convenience option in the end.
Certainly that's probably what's happening in this case. The debuffs are being spread out so that you're no longer as dependant on a Warrior to provide them. TC is no problem to a tanking Warrior, and will be even less so in the expansion. Demo Shout is however a big loss in TPS, but easily taken care of by a Fury Warrior, who has the spare points to improve it, lots of rage, and downtime in their rotation to fit it in.
If however Warriors lose the "unique-ness" of TC + Demo, perhaps it's time that we're able to refresh judgements on our target? Seems only fair.
If however Warriors lose the "unique-ness" of TC + Demo, perhaps it's time that we're able to refresh judgements on our target? Seems only fair.
To be fair, Thunderclap's original incarnation and the current are fairly different, and this version is ripped off of Ice Armor. Let mages use shields now?
In all seriousness, until pally talents come out (*taps foot*) I think its a pretty easy assumption that we will be getting some sort of slowing effect (a new tanking specific seal perhaps with a debuff Judgement?). It would make tank-stacking a bit less important, and as Warriors are getting some increased AoE techs (Challenging cooldown, Shockwave, TC buff) it does seem like they are trying to homogenize the tanks a bit.
06/18/08, 5:54 PM
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