Nalmeena

What would happen to class balance if the key warlock spell "corruption" (plus seed of corruption of course) was made into a disease like the undead priest racial spell "devouring plague"?

Corruption: Putrefaction or decomposition of recently living animal matter.
(it would of course deal shadow damage and not nature damage - just to be clear about that)

Well, lets think about it;

• Paladins and Priests can still remove it, but can do so avoiding Unstable Affliction, giving a slight disadvantage to shadowpriests who would need to get out of shadow form to remove that particular spell.
• Dwarves racial would be able to remove it also.
• Warlocks would lose their ability to devour/spellstone other locks corruption.
• Shamans would be able to remove it .
  For the rest of the classes it would remain the same.

Basicly - it would be a nerf to warlocks (UA) and to a small extent shadow priests, a slight buff for Shamans, Paladins and dwarves.
Losing some of its power to protect all DoTs in solo play, the Unstable Affliction is still powerful protecting other debuffs/buffs in group play. (shadow word: pain, vampiric embrace, vampiric touch, scorch, slow, iceblock, paladin bubble etc)

Would this skew things in the right direction, or would it make one of the hardest healer to take down even more powerful?

Any thoughts?

 

Zerakor

I love the idea, but I'm biased as a shaman though!

I like the idea of more diseases in wow, as there is only one disease type player debuff as of now if I remember correctly.

 

• Rizzen

Well, it wouldn't exactly be a buff for Paladins because Cleanse removes a Poison, Disease, and Magic effect. So there is still the chance of it removing UA. But I like your idea, Disease cleansing could really use more uses in pvp. It would be a nerf to warlock dots, but I think they kind of need it, and this is as slight of a nerf as you can get.

 

Nalmeena

Well Rizzen, a paladin could downrank to "Purify" instead of "Cleanse" to avoid triggering Unstable Affliction. You, as a Paladin can probably find that spell somewhere in the pages of your spellbook.

 

tristantio

Yea, but what reason does he have to do so now other than a hunter sting and a warlock teaming up and not wanting to remove the warlock's UA while removing a viper sting? (I've never seen a hunter/warlock combo in all my arena'ing in 2v2 and 3v3).

Also changing it to a disease completely nullifies the usefulness of Unstable Affliction in many situations, simply because UA was put in to cause healers to actually have to leave DoTs on and out heal the damage, instead of simply dispelling all a warlock's potential damage instantly.

Having UA up and the only protected warlock DoTs being Siphon Life and Immolate(rarely used by affliction warlocks in PvP) is stupid to say the least.

As a side note, on your spec (http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...zar&n=Nalmeena) why did you take 2/2 improved curse of weakness and no points in curse of exhaustion (Also you didn't max out demonic knowledge/demonic resilience) in what is clearly meant to be a PvP build?

 

Bibdy

I'm sure this was brought up while they were creating the class and they didn't make it a disease for those very reasons.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

• frmorrison

Maybe Locks need to be nurfed for 2v2s, but all other areas of the game they seem fine.

Corruption is the best Warlock spell, it needs to be somewhat able to be protected by UA.


To Nalmeena, Demonic Resilience is one of the Lock's best PvP talents; try a 20/41 or 24/37 build if you are mostly into PvP and like Affliction spells.

 

Silmeria

Hamstrings non-UA warlocks considerably too, given that cleanse can remove all three effects simultaniously, so a cleanse on a corruption and immolated target which in effect would remove both with one GCD.

 

Nalmeena

This thread was not about what talent spec I currently have on my warlock, and how to make it better for pvp. (although if that interests you more, I'm more than happy to discuss it, but in a different thread perhaps, or in PMs)

This thread is about picturing a scenario where the warlock spell "Corruption" is made into a Disease debuff instead of a Magic debuff. I know this is far fetched and most likely will never happen, none the less - for those who have no interest in this, or thoughts about such a scenario - feel free to navigate to other threads.

edit:
To Bibdy; I'm not sure what reasons you are referring to. That shamans would be able to remove Corruption? I dont think Blizzard had Unstable Affliction in mind when they made the class. Of course that is only speculation.

To Tristantio; It doesnt completely make UA useless. UA itself deals decent damage, and Siphon Life for an affliction lock is 1 of 2 reasons why he can survive. Drain Life is the other. But true enough, for said warlock Immolate would not make much sense except to avoid getting school locked, all this from a solo perspective.
Now, if you add a second player or more to the equation, UA still will be a powerful tool.

Silmeria has a good point.

 

• Greybone

I'm not too big a fan of these sort of speculation threads, and this doesn't seem to go anywhere.