Warlock 3.2 Changes

tkoreaper · 06/18/09, 4:26 PM

*Pets: All pets now receive 40% of their master's resilience and 100% of their master's spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.

* Banish: Effect will now be canceled if Banish is recast on a banished target.
* Dreadsteed: Can now be learned at level 40.
* Felsteed: Can now be learned at level 20.
* Soulshatter cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes
* Talents

Affliction
- Pandemic: Now also increases the critical damage bonus of Haunt by 100%.
Demonology
- Fel Domination cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 15 minutes.
Destruction
- Empowered Imp: The warlock's critical hit chance is increased to 100%, up from 20% for the next spell cast after the Imp critically hits a target.
- Fire and Brimstone: Reduced to 2/4/6/8/10% increased damage from Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on targets afflicted with Immolate, down from 3/6/9/12/15%.

* Items

Glyphs:
- Glyph of Lifetap: Duration of the buff from this glyph increased to 40 seconds.

Souce: WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes

Jackinthegreen · 06/18/09, 5:09 PM

Also worth noting are extras to pets:

Originally Posted by Blizzard

All pets now receive 40% of their master's resilience and 100% of their master's spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.

With the resilience, perhaps a VW tanking Sarth is viable again? Even if it isn't, the SPen and hit chance certainly helps out pets.

Swyft1 · 06/18/09, 5:14 PM

Originally Posted by matthewseidl

Missed the lifetap glyph change, which seems fairly meaningful.

Reads like having 100% uptime on the buff now. Together with Destro nerf affliction will most likely be the new TopDps build, since it does scale slightly better with gear improvements then the hybrid specs. I do not think, that the improved Empowered Imp does make up for a loss of about 3,5% dps.

tkoreaper · 06/18/09, 5:33 PM

They straight up buffed Affliction even if it's just a minor one, but it's hard to tell if the Destro changes are a nerf or a buff. One thing is for sure though... they made crit more valuable for both specs.

Mico · 06/18/09, 5:34 PM

Originally Posted by Swyft1

Reads like having 100% uptime on the buff now. Together with Destro nerf affliction will most likely be the new TopDps build, since it does scale slightly better with gear improvements then the hybrid specs. I do not think, that the improved Empowered Imp does make up for a loss of about 3,5% dps.

The new changes to destro are going to be a small dps increase not decrease, they have done this because of pvp reasons, "we are two strong"

scarrylock · 06/18/09, 5:39 PM

Originally Posted by Mico

The new changes to destro are going to be a small dps increase not decrease, they have done this because of pvp reasons, "we are two strong"

depands if the fight is pet friendly or not.
did pplz considered you may have to renew immolation while having the crit buff form the imp?
does it worth to screw ur rotation for an extra incinirate/chaos bolt wihtout the immolation just for the 100% crit?
u cant be sure when its gonna proc, if it proc just when you have to conflag, its a dps loss since u have shitload of crit chanse on conflag already, if it procs on immolation yet again its a dps lost since its doesnt crit for much.

if u get it proced while conflag is ready, do you deside to pop another incinirate in that gcd rather then conflag and get the haste buff?
if you need to renew immolation while the buff proced, do you choose cast incin or chaos bolt rather then renewing it?

what if it procs mid cast time? that you cast somethink that aint worth it with this buff...

there`s way to much rng here. so i dought its a dps increase.

tkoreaper · 06/18/09, 5:39 PM

Also, I believe they inadvertently buffed Demonology in way with the changing to pets benefiting from the master. Maybe now all the Felguard's attacks won't be glancing blows. My only question is does the benefits from suppression effect the pet as well?

tkoreaper · 06/18/09, 5:46 PM

Originally Posted by scarrylock

depands if the fight is pet friendly or not.
did pplz considered you may have to renew immolation while having the crit buff form the imp?
does it worth to screw ur rotation for an extra incinirate/chaos bolt wihtout the immolation just for the 100% crit?
u cant be sure when its gonna proc, if it proc just when you have to conflag, its a dps loss since u have shitload of crit chanse on conflag already, if it procs on immolation yet again its a dps lost since its doesnt crit for much.

if u get it proced while conflag is ready, do you deside to pop another incinirate in that gcd rather then conflag and get the haste buff?
if you need to renew immolation while the buff proced, do you choose cast incin or chaos bolt rather then renewing it?

what if it procs mid cast time? that you cast somethink that aint worth it with this buff...

there`s way to much rng here. so i dought its a dps increase.

How does that change at all from the way it was before? Only difference now is you have a 100% chance to crit instead of 20%. It doesn't change the damage, but it does increase the amount of damage you do in the long run. If you're smart and you run into one of the situations you said above, using immolate would be the least priority. Correct me if i'm wrong but the priority would be CB would be your highest priority because it's your highest hitter with incinerate being the next best option if it's on cooldown. There are plenty of addons out that they make buffs more noticeable so u can adjust on the fly for this kind of situation.

As for pet survivability, the imp does very well and in some cases where he can die it can be easily avoided. Not to mention Fel domination is now on a 3min cooldown and it wouldn't be so hard to spec into. you would probably take 1 point out of improve soul leech.

mikelock · 06/18/09, 6:13 PM

Originally Posted by Mico

The new changes to destro are going to be a small dps increase not decrease, they have done this because of pvp reasons, "we are two strong"

In a real dps situation the fire and brimstone changes looks like it is going to be a direct nerf, i cant see the imp buff being consistant dps increase like the 5% extra damage.

bonhoeffer · 06/18/09, 6:39 PM

I'm really excited to learn what you guys think of the lifetap glyph change. I have around 690 spirit, and when I lifetap I gain about 140 sp. That doesn't seem huge, but I'm really curious to know if that will somehow push 3/13/55 beyond 0/13/58.

tkoreaper · 06/18/09, 6:54 PM

Originally Posted by bonhoeffer

I'm really excited to learn what you guys think of the lifetap glyph change. I have around 690 spirit, and when I lifetap I gain about 140 sp. That doesn't seem huge, but I'm really curious to know if that will somehow push 3/13/55 beyond 0/13/58.

If anything I think if would do the opposite. The purpose for using that glyph for 3/13/55 in the first place was because u would be life tapping often anyway, so it was like a passive buff at all times without sacrificing your rotation which isn't any different with the changes so it's pretty much no DPS increase for that build. But with 0/13/58 you're not life tapping near as much so you see more of a dps gain. Before it wasn't worth using that glyph with 0/13/58 because u wouldn't be be needing to life tap nowhere near as often and life tapping just for the sole purpose of getting the buff was actually a DPS loss, but since the duration is increased it may now actually be a buff to 0/13/58 and wouldn't change anything for 3/13/55.

Steveonub · 06/18/09, 9:28 PM

Well, it's about time they lowered the Fel Domination cooldown. 5% hopefully won't break destro as the top damage spec, I have really been enjoying it.

Kalku · 06/18/09, 10:08 PM

Edit: Thanks Njald, rookie mistake

. Fix'd.

Overall the destro changes are not much change, and make us more RNG (and increase our crit scaling).
Here is some napkin math, based on my breakdowns from the raid last night.

I had 65 Emp Imp, so that is up to 52 bonus crits with the changes. With a 46% crit rate thats 28 actual extra crits.
My cast breakdowns:
Spell | hits crits | % casts of total | # extra crits | extra crit damage
Incinerate | 197 173 | 54.4% | 15.2 | 107k
Conflag | 50 63 | 16.6% | 4.6 | 32k
Immo | 65 41 | 15.6% | 4.4 | 13k
Chaos Bolt | 57 34 | 13.4% | 3.8 | 30k

Total extra damage = 182k (before FnB nerf), ~190k after nerf

Loss due to FnB:
Total CB+Inc damage = 4843 k
nerfed damage ~= old * 1.1 / 1.15
Nerfed damage = 4632k

Loss = 211k

Overall loss in damage : 21k out of ~8.5 million, less than 0.25%.

Njald · 06/18/09, 11:03 PM

Originally Posted by Kalku

Overall the destro changes are a small buff, but make us more RNG (and increase our crit scaling).
Here is some napkin math, based on my breakdowns from the raid last night.

I had 65 Emp Imp, so that is ~52 bonus crits with the changes.

How do you arrive at 52?
Wouldn't that asume that any spell cast after empowered Imp procced that crits do so only because of empowered imp?
From that calculation of 52 bonus crits wouldn't you have to subtract those spells that would have critted anyway? Say some 30% atleast.

From your wording I don't get the impression you went thru the combat log and found every empowered imp proc that didn't result in next spell cast critting. (if you did I apologize)

Zaleiria · 06/19/09, 3:45 AM

Originally Posted by Jackinthegreen

With the resilience, perhaps a VW tanking Sarth is viable again? Even if it isn't, the SPen and hit chance certainly helps out pets.

For the changes to resilience itself, the wording in the patch notes seems to indicate the new damage reduction is versus damage done by players only now. I guess you could still get your pet uncrittable, at least, but that's as far as it probably goes. Of course, your Voidwalker's health pool is still poor.