Dinadass

Fearing things like lieutenants in AV is definitely a lot more tedious now; where before a good 75% of my fears would last the full duration if I just used DOTs and maybe Drain Life, they are now breaking after an average of 6-8 seconds. The same is true for players also.

My 2v2 partner is a shadow priest, and we had a 2200+ rating going into the patch. We've only played 1 night so far this week, and it was most noticeable using AE fear or psychic scream. Normally my single target fear gets cast on whoever we're not burning, so that's not a big deal. But with both of us on 1 person, an AE fear used to give us a couple seconds to DPS them on average, now it's practically not worth casting.

I think this affects warlock 1v1 combat a lot more than group combat. While the trinket change was awesome, it's still quite hard to kill smart rogues(argh deadly throw), and warriors to a lesser extent.

I wouldn't mind at all if fear was changed to break on any and all damage. But they would have to do something like change Psychic Scream to a horror effect with maybe a 5 second duration, or give warlocks a defense other than fear.

 

drole

I just have to:

FIX DEATHCOIL

30 sec coolddown, damage cut to half of now and same duration or something like that.

 

Xunwael

Maybe with melee range and no damage a 30 second cooldown would be tolerable. As it is right now, the ability to use this more than once in a 1v1 encounter would render the encounter pretty much unwinnable for whoever's under attack when combined with fear and intercept stun/spell lock. I could easily picture a 30 second 'stunlock' that starts with death coil and ends with death coil without the target having any real chance to fight back.

"You're treating a symphtom and the disease rages on - consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head, as they say - so my thinking is, why not cut off the head!"
"...of the human race?"
"It's... not a perfect metaphor."

 

◊ Shadowed

Damage is rarely something that I worry about when DCed, it's the fact that it lets someone get off a free cast which is pretty big if you use it to get a free right after, or for Affliction CoEx and start kiting melee around.

 

Jugalub

Yes but with the close proximity of the patch and 2nd season I think it would have made much more sense to co-ordinate them to arrive together. I expect quite a few teams to be moving around the rankings due to these changes, when in all fairness, teams are now having to restrategise when they shouldn't have too. Haven't had much chance to see how the Hypothermia debuff is going to be affecting me either yet.

 

Xunwael

I wonder if the chance to break depends upon the targets HP? I was just in a blood furnace heroic with a mage friend of mine, and he hit a feared mob with three 3.5k frostbolt crits without the fear breaking (then he complained about people complaining about the nerf).

A free 1300 damage and 1500 heal is nothing to laugh at in caster vs caster fights.

"You're treating a symphtom and the disease rages on - consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head, as they say - so my thinking is, why not cut off the head!"
"...of the human race?"
"It's... not a perfect metaphor."

 

Trippy

Its more like 800 damage and 1000 healing. And it cannot crit.

However, it is still an amazing tool. By using Deathcoil in a series of Fears, it allows for some pretty devastating combinations (iHoT, Deathcoil, and then a Fear can easily lock someone down for 14 or so seconds, all the while with DoTs ticking).

 

◊ Shadowed

Again, damage is relatively minor the power in DC comes from the fact that you can get a cast off no matter what class you're going up against pretty much, unless they waste something like an IB or DS to get out of it.

 

drole

The DC idea wasnt really as absolute as people are taking it. But i get the feeling we are gonna see a lot of angry warlocks if fear was changed to break on any damage without giving something back and i honestly think deathcoil is the by far most broken/misuderstood spell in the game. So why not make it two flies with one bash?

 

Ignayshus

Why is it when changes to fear are proposed/discussed, it's primarily in regards to how it affects Warlocks? How do you think a 100% chance to break fear on any damage would affect priests?

Imho fear has been sufficiently gutted and I highly doubt you want or need me to post all the ways fear breaks.

The last digit of Pi is delicious.

 

drole

Well if you read my post you would see that part of the suggestion was changing Psychic Scream to a horror effect.

 

Xunwael

For a affliction warlock in strange crit/hit-heavy PvP gear and unimproved fel armor, perhaps. The indestructible multi-damage buffed soul link warlocks are a different matter entirely - those death coils hurt. Naturally I know it doesn't crit - managed to pick that up on the way to 70 with my warlock.

It's not like casting is very difficult against other casters, as a warlock, in between the fears and silences, not to mention things like nether protection or howl of terror. It's impossible to get off anything but instants and 1.5 sec casts against a warlock with his pet out, untill you become immune to fear. And even then, as a priest, I have to waste several seconds of DOTing them only to have them spellstone it all away.

Frankly, warlocks did have a need for fear back in the days when they didn't have enough instants and proccs to almost never have to stop casting, but nowadays, with things like howl of terror, intercept stuns, shadowfury, intensity and death coil, I see no valid arguments for its continued ability to persist through damage. It would put them in a tough spot against melee and hunters, but at the rate they're eating up casters effortlessly it's only fair they're given anti-classes like the rest.

Psychic Scream is a entirely different spell than the warlocks' fear, really, and I don't understand why it remainds unchanged after all these nerfs, unless somebody in blizzard feels it's only right priests lose a little PvP power with the PvE utility and damage they provide. Again, not that I really mind, it extremely rarely laste more than a few seconds in PvP, even before the patch. Changing it to horror might be a little too much, though. Rogues, especially, would be utterly helpless against shadow priests unless they were to use both cloack of shadows and sprint during every encounter.

"You're treating a symphtom and the disease rages on - consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head, as they say - so my thinking is, why not cut off the head!"
"...of the human race?"
"It's... not a perfect metaphor."

 

Aphyrax

Please, no more horror effects. It was lame the first time they did it and in my book never more than a crutch to help warlocks against UD rogues. One uncounterable instant cast CC is enough.

 

TheCutlery

But cyclone is a-okay?

 

stampy

I have on numerous occasions since the patch, been jumped and fearlocked to death while out farming in my block value gear. All it takes is a lock to deathcoil me while I'm in battle or defensive stance (which is frequent and noticeable when I'm farming, now that revenge does damage), and its usually over... I have about 13k hp in my block value set, and I have been routinely had an easy 8k burned out of me without the fear breaking on damage... even in defensive with 3/3 imp defensive stance.

No, I am not under the impression that it is 100% for fears to last to duration with a couple of dots running and shadowbolts/incinerate being thrown. I am sure that from a warlocks perspective, with a much larger sample size, fears seem to break often... and for them, the noticeable event is "aw crap my fear broke," not "full fear to death -- working as intended." For me, the noticeable event is "at no point could I have used any ability or item to prevent myself from being killed without taking a swing," and it still happens more frequently than not, as long as the warlock is smart enough to hang out 30 yards behind me and wait until he sees me leave zerker to deathcoil.

However, the idea that fears are likely to break on a single tick of a dot is ridiculous. When I have 3 dots running on me, and a shadowbolt still fails to break fear, I have a hard time understanding what has been nerfed. This is not a gripe about an isolated incident, this has been the norm. Yes, I have had fears break early, and I can see that things were changed; but as often as not im at less then a quarter health before I can so much as change stances.

The idea that the fear victim's health pool makes some difference in how hard it is for the fear to break is ridiculous to me, but would actually fit with my experiences; if indeed players with <10k are having the fears break reasonably early. Depending on which set im wearing, ive usually got 13k-15k health running around out in the world, and fears just dont break. If this is the case, its magnificently stupid... you may as well put spells in the game that hit targets for X% of their max hp.

I'm not under the impression that I should be able to beat a warlock. I'm a prot warrior, and thats just not supposed to happen, unless the warlock in question has spent the entire afternoon eating retard sandwiches. But the fact that I can easily burned out of 10k health without fear breaking is ridiculous. I'd just be happy to be able to get an intercept and a shield slam off before I'm a lump of ashes.

 

drole

I realise that the idea by no means is perfect, not even close, but it doesnt change my feeling that although changed fear mechanics are still... weird. Even putting deathcoil issues asside.

 

• Cryect

Because Cyclone is an instant cast spell that you can deal damage to the player who is effected by it as well deals damage on cast as well as heals the caster...

They are two completely different spells besides neither of them are removable CC's.

I need to do something useless.

 

Trippy

To be honest, its been over 2 years now, and I'm still trying to understand if there is any rhyme or reason to where Fear takes you.

I thought for awhile (waaaayyy back before even BWL) I could control fear by facing different directions while casting, and well, sometimes it actually felt like I could predict where it would go.

 

Keline

Death coil actually is magic.

 

TheCutlery

No offense or anything, but that wasn't your criteria for bitching. You said one uncounterable instant cast CC is enough. Okay, cyclone isn't instant, but you can cast it straight outta stealthed cat form, so I think that's more than good enough for instant cast purposes.

On top of that fact, warlocks were in a sad, sad situation pre-death coil. If my warrior found one, he died. Period. There wasn't a thing he could do about it. Rogue? Even worse. At least the warlock can do some damage to me before he dies, a rogue wouldn't even let him do that.

Like it or not, DC was necessary to not be completely and totally hosed by some classes (and to be honest, with the way cat druids are nowadays, it wouldn't surprise me if they were lumped up with the other 2 vs a non DC warlock). Cyclone doesn't fill that role for your class, so it's amusing to me that you think one uncounterable CC is enough when you have the other one.

 

• Calantus

Not really... full fight fear locks aren't all that rare from the warlock perspective prepatch if the enemy doesn't break or immune to the fear. Though the rare event for me was always realising that my target actually could be feared because they were non-undead, non-warriors, and now with CLoS I imagine non-rogues. That's what is so crappy about having fear, sometimes you just win because your fear goes off and they can't stop it, other times they're just immune to it, or it breaks early all fight (rare), or they run really fast right out of range (my favourite). It's sketchy to rely on it for external reasons beyond just breaking early and that's very frustrating. That's why a lot of warlocks and priests get angry at fear nerfs, while the spell itself is perhaps overly reliable, there's just so many counters to fear out there.

 

Aphyrax

This pretty much sums it up. Fear is both the best and the worst CC. On one hand it has more counters than any other CC. On the other hand, it is the only one of the bunch that allows the caster to take his opponent from 100% to 0 life without them being able to fight back (other than extremely lucky one-shots while under another CC).

That disconnect is what is fueling all the bickering. Warlocks and priests see the first case, the rest of us sees the second. Selective memory and all that. Ultimately, any CC that does not break on damage while allowing the target to be damaged is going to be problematic, which is why a lot of games stay away from it. It also diminishes player skill, as coordinating not to break CC is a skill. And lets not forget its PvE issues where feared mobs tend to bring a bunch of their friends back with them making fear a complete gamble in instances.

In short it is not a good mechanic.

EDIT: And the new changes are not helping. They might make fear more balanced but even less predictable. "Always breaks on damage" and "never breaks on damage" is predictable and I can plan around that. How am I supposed to plan around "sometimes breaks on damage"? Where is the skill in me blowing my trinket early only to get bailed out by the dot on me breaking fear on its next tick?

 

• Tahapenes

No, it wasn't just undead rogues. Warlock have no defense outside of DC, none. If something gets into our faces, we're screwed without DC, we cannot escape unless have tailoring (for nets) or engineering. If you look at all other classes, only Priests are equally screwed, when it comes to having defensive measures, Mages can frost nova and blink away, Druids can shift to cat and dash, Hunters can trap, Pallies and Warriors have armor to mitigate, Shaman have ghostwolf, and Rogues can blind, sprint, gouge, vanish, and kidney shot. If something gets into the face of a Priest or a Warlock, they have not escape mechanism except PS and DC, and with the total nerfs to fear, they're sitting ducks being their armor mitigation is pretty pathetic.

I'm not advocating taking fear back to the way it was in 1.0 and initial beta, but switching PS over to a Horror effect would certainly help priests a lot.

And personally, I think they over did it on Fear from a PvE standpoint, it's fine in PvP now, but in PvE it's now very problematic (seeing mobs break your fear on a single tick of your first DoT before other DoTs get started is pretty bad, at max, maybe 33% of my fears last the entire length compared to 90%+ prior to 2.1 in PvE which is just sad).