I agree with the previous posters, its too early to cancel your account over a nerf. Meta was looking pretty pathetic just a few days ago, and now it's completely different, and potentially really good. I can't say I'm surprised about the Destruction nerf though, being able to double dip on crit buffs through empowered imp just seemed like a bit much. Hopefully they didn't overdo it and make it too weak.
Yeah...because that 21 point Demo talent was just aweful, wasn't it? Granted, Affliction didn't have much, but the 21 point demo talent is just as often used as the 21 point destro.
Lets refocus your statement:
"After 3 years of having the 21 point Demo talent outperform every single 31, 41, and until recently, 51 point talent from Destro and Affli, I'm more than happy with the way things are shaping out right now."
Well what do you know, that works too!
Do you have an actual point to make, other than sounding like a mentally handicapped 12 year old?
Where did I say Demonic Sacrifice was awful? I wasn't comparing 21 point talents between them, I was saying that the specific 21 pointer (Ruin) has been outperforming the other trees' final talents for 3 years now. This is obviously wrong design and a long overdue change has been implemented.
And no, DS hasn't been used as often as Ruin, not even close.
am I really the only one who likes the idea that Blizz wants affliction to be raidcompetitive to destruction ? Affliction actually shows the difference between the ones who really focus and knows what they'r doing to those who doesnt. For me, destruction is boring and too easy, even with the new casting rotations with shadow/fire talents.
Stacking clams! It is a glorious day, clamrades! There are enough clams for one and all, no need to be shellfish.
Perhaps they'll make the logical leap from clams to soul shards...
Like they did with instant corruption after making arcane explosion an instant cast by default? Maybe in another 3-4 years Seriously I woke up that morning and couldn't believe they finally gave that to us, they had held steadfast to the 2s cast time for so long. Who knows, as it was posted earlier they have bumped the damage up on drain soul when targets are at low hp, maybe they'll look at shards again.
Like they did with instant corruption after making arcane explosion an instant cast by default? Maybe in another 3-4 years Seriously I woke up that morning and couldn't believe they finally gave that to us, they had held steadfast to the 2s cast time for so long. Who knows, as it was posted earlier they have bumped the damage up on drain soul when targets are at low hp, maybe they'll look at shards again.
I don't see Soul Shards getting a review any time soon.
It will require a substantial revamp of the Warlock class; not the subject of a content patch or even what happened with Paladins just before the game released (Strikes go kaput, welcome aboard Seals+Judgment!). This is arguably much larger in scale since a number of our spells are supposedly balanced on the assumption we have a finite quantity of shards. I'm thinking of Shadowburn as the biggest potential problemchild, though there would be some ripple factor in other ways: What exactly should be done with Ritual of Souls? Stones (including the possible "oil" change to Fire-/Spellstones)? Pets?
I could be wrong and the system is easier to rectify than I think, but personally I see it as the proverbial "bomb" to just up and remove the whole idea at this point. I won't disagree that it's not in need of some attention, but I just don't see them giving it any attention whatsoever without some very persuasive speaking being done to the class team directly/in person (at BlizzCon?). It's much too late in beta to even consider the idea, let alone have something ready for Wrath's launch.
Yeah, shadowburn would likely be the biggest problem with removing them. My old complaint was why they had to come from things that gave xp, but since the introduction of shard bags I really don't think it's been an issue. It's not like I need use shadowburn every 15s to kill something.
Assuming they aren't changing the scaling or base damage on drain soul, I figure mine should be ticking for around 3k. That would be a killing blow to most mobs/players, since 3k hp at 20% would be 15k total hp. Perhaps drain soul will be like our version of molten fury or execute on boss fights, especially with affliction's soul siphon now effecting drain soul too.
Does the drain soul change make the second part of Death's Embrace (shadow crit) useless? Quadruple is a rather large number.
Soul Shards are a non-combat aspect of the class. They're limited by your inventory space, and in order to be fair, you have to assume that a player could walk around with a crapton of them if he wanted to (just like you used to be able to walk around with 12 elixer buffs or a 100 potions), regardless of the logistic difficulties. In order for this to be balanced, we have the situation now where basically all shard-requiring combat spells are balanced even without the soul shard requirement. Shadowburn isn't a particularly amazing spell; it's a fairly standard instant burst spell, like fireblast or mindblast or any of the shocks. Even if it didn't have the shard requirement, I would pretty much use it only for finishing blows, or on-the-run PvP damage which most people do anyways without regard for the shard cost. Soulfire might have a rather low mana cost for its damage range, but it's basically balanced by the cooldown. In short, shards don't actually do anything in-combat. We farm for our buffing reagents directly rather than farming for money for reagents. That's about it.
The major impediment to redesigning the shard system is not taking out what's already there. You could drop all shard requirements and no one would bat an eyelash, because they're irrelevant for balance. The impediment is actually the new system that you would have to replace it, because if it's not totally irrelevant like the current one, it's going to do some strange things to balance in a way that both we and other classes will have to account for when playing.
Does the drain soul change make the second part of Death's Embrace (shadow crit) useless? Quadruple is a rather large number.
Soul Shards are a non-combat aspect of the class. They're limited by your inventory space, and in order to be fair, you have to assume that a player could walk around with a crapton of them if he wanted to (just like you used to be able to walk around with 12 elixer buffs or a 100 potions), regardless of the logistic difficulties. In order for this to be balanced, we have the situation now where basically all shard-requiring combat spells are balanced even without the soul shard requirement. Shadowburn isn't a particularly amazing spell; it's a fairly standard instant burst spell, like fireblast or mindblast or any of the shocks. Even if it didn't have the shard requirement, I would pretty much use it only for finishing blows, or on-the-run PvP damage which most people do anyways without regard for the shard cost. Soulfire might have a rather low mana cost for its damage range, but it's basically balanced by the cooldown. In short, shards don't actually do anything in-combat. We farm for our buffing reagents directly rather than farming for money for reagents. That's about it.
The major impediment to redesigning the shard system is not taking out what's already there. You could drop all shard requirements and no one would bat an eyelash, because they're irrelevant for balance. The impediment is actually the new system that you would have to replace it, because if it's not totally irrelevant like the current one, it's going to do some strange things to balance in a way that both we and other classes will have to account for when playing.
QFT. The idea that Shadowburn, Soulfire, or any other spell would be OP without the soul shard requirement is ridiculous.
There are far more important aspects of balance and mechanics that need work. I'm glad this is not at the top of the developers priority list, and some of the warlock whining about this is over the top. At worst, its a minor inconvenience.
I think most would be happy if the shards stacked to 5 or 10. No further changes needed.
QFT. The idea that Shadowburn, Soulfire, or any other spell would be OP without the soul shard requirement is ridiculous.
There are far more important aspects of balance and mechanics that need work. I'm glad this is not at the top of the developers priority list, and some of the warlock whining about this is over the top. At worst, its a minor inconvenience.
I think most would be happy if the shards stacked to 5 or 10. No further changes needed.
I think you're right. I thought about it some more, and shadowburn wouldn't be a problem after all. It's lower dps than shadowbolt so you wouldn't be spamming it in PvE, and in PvP other classes use instants more often than 15 second intervals (mages and shamans come to mind). I think maybe back when it was first conceived the lack of a reagent cost might have made us better at burst damage than they intended, but nowadays we have a lot of the same kinds of spells mages do.
Probably. Raid buffed to achieve 2.3k spell damage, ~15% haste:
(710 + 15/3.5/2*2300)*1.2 (haunt) *1.1 (SE) *1.1(SM)*1.6(Soul siphon) *1.13 (CoE/ebon plague) * 4 = 59209.97 damage, or 11,842 damage per tick. In other words, 4539.42 dps.
One hell of a finisher, though
Do Haunt and SE affect Drain Soul or, more importantly, Drain Life?
Edit: Darn, Drain Life still can't beat shadow bolt + bane. By my reckoning, it still has about a 10% inferior spellpower to dps multiplier [non-execute range, max debuffs, nightfall included].
And no, DS hasn't been used as often as Ruin, not even close.
It's not really Ruin asset really, but rather the fact that early Destruction is so good for other tree support, unlike other trees where out of first 21 points there are only about 2-4 useful ones.
Originally Posted by Nehrak
It will require a substantial revamp of the Warlock class.
Out of countless number of various suggestions there was one that suggested to replace reagentt Soul Shards with a tool for each spell currently using one. The biggest problem is that most of the time you don't even need a lot of them, the exception really is wipe raids, where one doesn't have source of shards anywhere close for about 2 hours.
Originally Posted by PyroTEK85
Yeah, shadowburn would likely be the biggest problem with removing them.
I don't know the purpose of Soul Shards on Shadowburn, except to prevent spell from being used frequently. But the question is: how useful is it to be used frequently in the first place? Sure Affliction could use some extra instant damage and has some talents to support it, Demonology has some talent support for it too, while Destruction doesn't really have. Also the spell has ridiculous mana cost, think about Soul Fire change in 2.0 when its mana cost was reduced. Shadowburn overall is as odd as casting time on Corruption.
Just as a sidenote, I am still updating my stats spreadsheet. My problem is limited time, plus a constant flow of new info is keeping it out-of-date. I also changed my priorities a bit, due to talent and ability changes.
EDIT: Ok, preliminary results are in. Well, one of them, anyway: Even avoiding Tier gear, unenchanted, and sans Trinkets, the gearset broke 1700 spellpower while maintaining the hitcap (of 17% on gear). This can be used as an absolute minimum figure to base calculations on. Gear is taken exclusively from Naxx(25 and 10)
Last edited by PsyBomb : 09/13/08 at 2:16 AM.
To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.
A mage in a kit of Naxx-10 gear and lower has 2.2k spell power, 17% crit, 15% haste, 1200 stamina, 1000 intellect, 600 spirit.
Spell damage and stats are raid buffed. Hit cap is reached with raid (de)buffs. Crit/haste values are before all the modifiers.
1%+3%+5% ~= 9% haste comes from ToW/WoA/SwR, 3%+5%+10%-3% = +15% crit comes from ToW/MKA/WC, losing ~3% crit to crit depression on bosses.
Fully gemmed with blue gems and the enchants that are actually in game.
That setup does use +46 spell power from ring enchants, but JCers and LWer get a similar boost.
A mage would then add Molten Armour, you would add Fel Armour.
You'll have a little bit less intellect and spirit and more stamina from tiered gear.
I've been using that as baseline gear for spec comparisons, you should probably do the same.
You should probably use something like that as well, a Naxx-10 kit seems like the first stepping stone for gear that matters.
Yeah, it was literally just my first pass through setting up a preliminary gearset, I just went through and took the hit-skewed items. It's why I put up 1700 as an absolute minimum, the set has only around 14% crit and 6% haste at the moment. Now that I have the basic gearset, I'm going to go about incorporating basic raid assumptions into it, not to mention enchants (and I still need to go looking for trinkets, the ones in Naxx aren't implemented yet), though I'm going to just assume Blood Elf Inscriber and not use any profession-based or racial bonuses.
EDIT: turns out I was forgetting to add the 180 spellpower from Fel Armor, brings the total to almost 1900 even in its current state of suck.
To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.
Also the spell has ridiculous mana cost, think about Soul Fire change in 2.0 when its mana cost was reduced. Shadowburn overall is as odd as casting time on Corruption.
Actually, the mana cost isn't so odd; it is deliberately too high. If the DPM of Shadowburn was too great, it may becomes a viable spell in a normal rotation. However, because it costs a shard, that would require 4 shards/minute/attempt. So an eight minute boss fight would take 32 shards, which warlocks can carry, it's just annoying. Can you imagine the complaining if it turned out optimal DPS on some boss required 32 shards per attempt? So in order to nip that in the bud, Blizzard simply costed the spell high enough that DPM would never be a selling point for it.
This is also a limiting factor on Shadowburn's damage: too high a DPCT would make it part of raid rotations as well.
Any math fiends crunched any numbers for 3.02 specs?
I'm thinking 0/10/51 or something similar.
What do you get out of 10 point in demonology? I would think 51/0/10, 0/51/10, or a heavy destro spec(which can't be determined until we have final chaos bolt/fire and brimstone info)
I think if you're going to stick with destro, you do something like 5/21/43 with 2 points left over. Spam shadowbolt, but you maintain corruption and cast immolate whenever molten core is up.
I think if you're going to stick with destro, you do something like 5/21/43 with 2 points left over. Spam shadowbolt, but you maintain corruption and cast immolate whenever molten core is up.
Corruption is becoming instant base in the coming build, so the only reason to go Affliction at all is if you want to go 7 points in for Frailty. I think 0/21/50 will be left behind by 0/13/58, though, since with the latter you can grab Backdraft, Emp. Imp, and Imp. SL in addition to SnF. Even though those recieved nerfs recently, it still represents a LOT of damage.
To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.
I think the question was referring to the 3.02 "pre-release" so you are going to be capped at 61 talent points. I'm assuming a Destruction based build is going to be 0/3/58 where as Affliction and Demonlogy will probably want to pick up Bane and most likely ISB.
I dont post here often but i have been playing beta and if you go a 0/21/50 spec on beta you are running about 1100-1200 on doom where on live i run 1400-1700 on dr doom, this is un raid buffed. but as affliction i am running a constant 1400 so ya, but this is with the talent tree being screwed up. I think affliction will be the new raid spec after they change curroption and other things. I dont know what you guys think but in the x-pax i am seeing affliction being strong.
in full bt and hyjal epics sunwell wand, look me up soulcaster
I dont post here often but i have been playing beta and if you go a 0/21/50 spec on beta you are running about 1100-1200 on doom where on live i run 1400-1700 on dr doom, this is un raid buffed. but as affliction i am running a constant 1400 so ya, but this is with the talent tree being screwed up. I think affliction will be the new raid spec after they change curroption and other things. I dont know what you guys think but in the x-pax i am seeing affliction being strong.
in full bt and hyjal epics sunwell wand, look me up soulcaster
If you spec something like 13/58 with all imp talents and either do immol/inciner or conflag, 3 sbolt, immol, 2 incin+lifetaps, conflag, repeat, you should be doing a lot more then that dps vs drboom. I tried a lot of different specs on him on beta at lvl 80, not remembering exact values but I used full lvl 70 gear, somewhat worse then in my armory link, with only two lvl 80 rings.
It averaged out to about 1750 dps with affliction, doing UA, cor, SL, CoA and casting haunt on CD and about 1900 destro. Flasked/Oiled I did around 2250 with affliction in nax vs static bosses without a spelldmg raid buff and while doing CoE. Destruction is bugged atm as devastation and ruin do not work/cannot be specced, which also limits affliction dps a bit, wouldn't mind getting those crit points for sbolt.
Once talents are fixed, I'll run some more exact tests and post some numbers.
09/11/08, 9:18 PM
Seriously I woke up that morning and couldn't believe they finally gave that to us, they had held steadfast to the 2s cast time for so long. Who knows, as it was posted earlier they have bumped the damage up on drain soul when targets are at low hp, maybe they'll look at shards again.
Similar Threads
