Cripple is the single most powerful anti-caster ability coming out of WoTLK. Along with the plethora of anti-caster abilities that already exist within the warlocks arsenal, I am finding it difficult to fathom exactly why Blizzard feels warlocks are weak against casters. Whatever their motivation may be, I think we can safely say that in WoTLK the gap between Warlocks and other casters will grow by quite a generous margin.
As I showed in my previous post, even if we assume Cripple will suffer from diminishing returns, it gives warlocks the ability to permanently CC an enemy caster all the while doing damage to him/her.
The 75% speed reduction, I believe, is just icing on an already rather tasty cake. It is exactly what warlocks need to handle melee in a very effective fashion. If I am not wrong, Cripple with a 75% speed reduction will be the single most powerful ranged, spammable snare in the game, surpassing the snares of even a deep frost mage with the chilled to the bone talent.
Coupled with the already mentioned "blink" that warlocks will get, as well as having the affliction tree do serious damage through DoTs and DD spells, I feel WoTLK will usher forth a new era for Warlocks, especially affliction specced ones
I think most Locks agree with you. Any more anti caster power is just excessive. Get rid of the silence and give back the pacify
Honestly, I would have preferred that the Pacify stay and it drop the snare. Sum of it is that snares break too easily and from too many things. Silence/Pacify with melee immunity and they get to run all they want is fine by me, since it would fill the twin roles of Healer and Melee Shutdown quite well.
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Not only is that spell still egregiously excessively, as well as unnecessary, it also doesn't remotely resemble any of the several other spells named "Cripple" in WoW or WC3. It still needs a vast retuning and a new name. Plus, it treads on the toes of Curse of Exhaustion a bit too much. CoEx does have the advantage of being multi-target, but the overlap is a bit much for two talented abilities in the same tree.
Cripple is the single most powerful anti-caster ability coming out of WoTLK. Along with the plethora of anti-caster abilities that already exist within the warlocks arsenal, I am finding it difficult to fathom exactly why Blizzard feels warlocks are weak against casters. Whatever their motivation may be, I think we can safely say that in WoTLK the gap between Warlocks and other casters will grow by quite a generous margin.
Coupled with the already mentioned "blink" that warlocks will get, as well as having the affliction tree do serious damage through DoTs and DD spells, I feel WoTLK will usher forth a new era for Warlocks, especially affliction specced ones
Casters? What casters? Most casters are hybrids and can heal themselves up. TBC and pillars buffed healing by a so ridiculous amount that anyone who has healing spells can benefit from it. Oh, you probably meant Mages... Mages obviously suffer, and mirrors become ridiculously boring (almost like Resto Druids and Holy Paladins)
Affliction? Did you check the new Mage Armor? Best anti-casters are Rogues, they can actually solo healers.
Casters? What casters? Most casters are hybrids and can heal themselves up. TBC and pillars buffed healing by a so ridiculous amount that anyone who has healing spells can benefit from it. Oh, you probably meant Mages... Mages obviously suffer, and mirrors become ridiculously boring (almost like Resto Druids and Holy Paladins)
Affliction? Did you check the new Mage Armor? Best anti-casters are Rogues, they can actually solo healers.
Mage armor will not survive in a pvp/arena environment. I can say this with utmost confidence since every single skilled warlock I have ever played against, and every single time I play against a mage on my warlock, the first thing that occurs is the warlock strips the mage of his buffs. Expecting a warlock not to strip your buffs is like expecting a druid not to use HoTs, or a rogue not to clos.
In short, its bad play.
That being said, I see little a healer can do with such intense CC. Remember, firstly, the spell is spammable. Secondly its DRs can be rotated with fear, and thirdly, none of this cycle actually breaks on damage. No matter how skilled the enemy caster is, once they are caught in the warlock's CC chain of death, there is little they can do, all the while the uber powerful afflic locks dots can keep ticking away.
Though what you say is true, mages will probably have to suffer at extreme lengths at the hand of this spell. Though, isn't that the whole point of affliction in the first place? :P
Mage armor will not survive in a pvp/arena environment. I can say this with utmost confidence since every single skilled warlock I have ever played against, and every single time I play against a mage on my warlock, the first thing that occurs is the warlock strips the mage of his buffs. Expecting a warlock not to strip your buffs is like expecting a druid not to use HoTs, or a rogue not to clos.
In short, its bad play.
That being said, I see little a healer can do with such intense CC. Remember, firstly, the spell is spammable. Secondly its DRs can be rotated with fear, and thirdly, none of this cycle actually breaks on damage. No matter how skilled the enemy caster is, once they are caught in the warlock's CC chain of death, there is little they can do, all the while the uber powerful afflic locks dots can keep ticking away.
Though what you say is true, mages will probably have to suffer at extreme lengths at the hand of this spell. Though, isn't that the whole point of affliction in the first place? :P
And that's why I'm not seeing this spell seeing the light of day as it is right now, it doesn't make sense. Against rogues it doesn't help at all, at least against Assassination rogues with the new 51 talent ability, if that one is staying like it is too.
Not only is that spell still egregiously excessively, as well as unnecessary, it also doesn't remotely resemble any of the several other spells named "Cripple" in WoW or WC3. It still needs a vast retuning and a new name. Plus, it treads on the toes of Curse of Exhaustion a bit too much. CoEx does have the advantage of being multi-target, but the overlap is a bit much for two talented abilities in the same tree.
In Warcraft 3, Cripple reduced a unit's movement speed by 75%, attack speed by 50% and reduced damage dealt by 50%. The WoW versions of Cripple from mobs (most notably the Coilfang Collaborator in Slave Pens) reduces movement speed by 50%, attack speed by 100% and STR by 50%.
Insofar as resembling these Cripples, the current Warlock Cripple gets the snare and damage reduction part right, but the Silence and physical immunity doesn't seem to thematically fit.
I agree that it deserves a rename (how about Despondency?) and a revamp of mechanics. I'd much rather they remove the silence and reinstate the pacify. Warlocks already have a plethora of tools to deal with casters, yet the whole SL/SL concept derives from having to survive melee assaults.
Hell, you could even lift the snare if it means getting the pacify, since an Afflock is going to have CoEx anyway, which should give you enough legroom to escape given that they can't reapply any snares because of the pacify (exception being Enhancement Shaman's Frostshock if you drop the silence).
That being said, I see little a healer can do with such intense CC. Remember, firstly, the spell is spammable. Secondly its DRs can be rotated with fear, and thirdly, none of this cycle actually breaks on damage. No matter how skilled the enemy caster is, once they are caught in the warlock's CC chain of death, there is little they can do, all the while the uber powerful afflic locks dots can keep ticking away.
Actually, Fear, Cripple, Seduce and Howl of Terror are all on the SAME DR. That means the "chain CC" is maxed at 17 seconds for most classes (8.75 for Mages and Ele.Shaman), while precluding any melee damage from your pet or team members. With that mechanic, it does not in any way increase a warlocks CC durations or chains, it only gives you another possibility than Fear... Which is a major issue.
Fear is already Interrupt fodder, and with PvP gloves only has a 1.3sec cast time. Cripple is 1.5seconds and (for non-casters) only equally as reliable! There in lies the problem. It's basically another Fear that we can't use when we need it. It fixes none of the problems facing Affliction, and only exacerbates the caster dominance of the Warlock class. It's 100% contrary to what should be done - An effective anti-melee ability with minimal effect on Casters.
I know a lot of mages are already afraid of Cripple, but I'll set your fears aside. You'll almost never see it. Not when you can spec 24/47 for Fel Synnergy (15% of your damage heals your demon), Demonic Empowerement (Felhunter Cooldown Reset & Felguard CC immunity+20% damage on a 1min cooldown), Mana Feed, Felguard and Demonic Empathy (33% chance to enrage your pet)...
It's not even basic math. It's common sense. The Affliction Demo Hybrid is EONS above 51 point Affliction. Cripple needs to be good enough to compete with THAT combo... Which not only has superior pet survivability, superior untility, superior damage reduction and less reliance on 4 CC's all sharing the same Diminishing Returns, but allows your the instant choice (via Fel Domination) to take out the Felguard + Intercept Stun to deal with troublesome melee.
Mage armor will not survive in a pvp/arena environment. I can say this with utmost confidence since every single skilled warlock I have ever played against, and every single time I play against a mage on my warlock, the first thing that occurs is the warlock strips the mage of his buffs. Expecting a warlock not to strip your buffs is like expecting a druid not to use HoTs, or a rogue not to clos.
You are mixing Warlocks with Shamans and Priests. Shamans and Priests can remove 2 buffs in 1 GCD, Warlocks can remove only 1 every 8 seconds, and it is subject to Shadow Resistance, and of course requires one particular type of pet, which is however de-facto the most viable PVP pet.
Subjugation to shadow resistance isn't a problem when you're armed with CoS. However, even taking Mage Armor into account, it'll hardly do much at all to a current-style draintank setup. The fact that your DoTs will need more frequent refreshing will only drop your life-drained:damage done ratio and prolongue the fight by an amount which is more or less irrelevant, as a mage is unlikely to take you out anyway, given his burst isn't enough to out-drain you. The fact that you'll have to spend a few GCDs more applying instants rather than doing one or two more drains doesn't change the dynamics much.
I mostly see my buffes stripped from locks who leave the dog on auto-everything. This is bad play, clearly, and removes a tool when you may need it. But even so, even leaving the mage armor intact, life doesn't change much.
I had thought that mage armor coupled with magic absorbtion and shatter shield would provide a good defense against a fel pup. Add in shadow protection from a priest and that should give you quite a defense from devour.
With Everlasting Affliction, if both the trinket and the ring buffs are active, simple casting a Shadow Bolt will refresh the Corruption with the inflated damage WITHOUT interruption of the tick cycle. That's a nice buff.
It's actually a slight nerf in some cases. Previously you could tie your on use effects to the cast of your corruption spell which would ensure that you got any buffs for the duration of the corruption. Now, any on use or proc effect that lasts less than the duration of the corruption spell will only effect a portion of the corruption equal to the duration of the buff (roughly) because as soon as the buffs fade and you cast another shadow bold you refresh a beefed up corruption with a weaker one.
If you combine the above scenerio with the fact that it is easier to have your corruption benifit from proced buffs, like the enternity ring, it's roughly a wash on DPS gain/loss.
That said there is still the gains from removing the recast from corruption which are offset by the requirement to put points into improved corruption anyway.
If you're going to add a priest, consider that a Priest's dispell is Holy School and as such any resistance is, funnily, futile. Shatter Shield is of little consequence to the dog: How often have you seen any spell penetrate the thing's mad resistances?
Subjugation to shadow resistance isn't a problem when you're armed with CoS. However, even taking Mage Armor into account, it'll hardly do much at all to a current-style draintank setup. The fact that your DoTs will need more frequent refreshing will only drop your life-drained:damage done ratio and prolongue the fight by an amount which is more or less irrelevant, as a mage is unlikely to take you out anyway, given his burst isn't enough to out-drain you. The fact that you'll have to spend a few GCDs more applying instants rather than doing one or two more drains doesn't change the dynamics much.
I mostly see my buffes stripped from locks who leave the dog on auto-everything. This is bad play, clearly, and removes a tool when you may need it. But even so, even leaving the mage armor intact, life doesn't change much.
CoS may or may not be desireable spell to apply to a Mage. DOTs needing more frequent refreshing means exactly less healing from Drain Life, and double mana burnout rate. How many ticks would a 2.5 sec Drain Life do? I believe it should be 2.
Originally Posted by Pintofbrew
If you're going to add a priest, consider that a Priest's dispell is Holy School and as such any resistance is, funnily, futile. Shatter Shield is of little consequence to the dog: How often have you seen any spell penetrate the thing's mad resistances?
A normal Felhunter, without any buffs or talents has resistance equal to 2 times its level. In current resistance formulas it equals average 30% reduction. MD raises it to 45% and then sharing MD bonus to Warlock as pet scaling raises it to 50%. However MD isn't going to happen together with Cripple. This is however based on oldschool resistance formulas, looking at all resistanca buffs and debuffs it seems that the average resisted percentage amount isn't going to stay linear so the mentioned bonuses are likely to yield lower results. However right now I don't possess any data which could confirm or deny the case.
From a raiding standpoint, I'm having doubts weither Everlasting Affliction will be more then a gimmick talent. Drain Life is more for grinding/PvP, AoE isn't overly common, and the bonus for Corruption and Siphon Life from the 5 points is around 18 dps total (200 damage over 18 seconds plus 200 damage over 30 seconds) per 1000 shadow damage, so beyond the Corruption refresh, it just seems so lackluster. The PvP bonus doesn't get much better, so does anyone see a point to the talent, or has Blizzard fumbled the coefficient?
Then there is Unstable Affliction's lack of coefficient buffs. It's slightly edged out by Corruption at this point, and has a cast time, so is it just me that's disturbed by this?
The main benefit of Everlasting Affliction is that it saves you 1.5 seconds every 18 seconds, effectively increasing your DPS time by around 8%. A bit more, I guess, since you also maybe eliminate a life tap or two over the course of the fight. It's not very exciting, that's for sure, but it is an improvement.
The main benefit of Everlasting Affliction is that it saves you 1.5 seconds every 18 seconds, effectively increasing your DPS time by around 8%. A bit more, I guess, since you also maybe eliminate a life tap or two over the course of the fight. It's not very exciting, that's for sure, but it is an improvement.
Right. I guess the main point to be noted with the extra DPS time gained isn't as meaningful as it would be for other specs/classes. All it does is open up extra time to cast more (relatively weak) Affliction Shadowbolts. You eventually get to the point between Everlasting Afflictions, Haste, and Eradication that you'll be using such a high percentage of your DPS time just casting your poorly scaling Shadowbolt you begin to wonder "Why am I Affliction exactly...?"
The whole mess just leaves a bad taste in my mouth but I can't for the life of me really offer anything truly constructive regarding it. Just the way everything is set up and the direction it's going in looks mechanically messy.
Actually, Fear, Cripple, Seduce and Howl of Terror are all on the SAME DR.
Since your entire post is tenuously held together by this assertion, I would ask you to provide some evidence of Cripple and Fear sharing DRs.
And yes, I have seen the videos too, however we must remember that the videos are from a private server. On private servers you can make any spell have any mechanic you wish. I can, for example, create a private server which has players doing arcane explosions on melee attacks, has Counterspell insta kill the target, as well as have conjure water summon Ragnaros.
Until the beta opens, or we get first hand evidence, we can only assume that which makes "sense". In the case of cripple, there is just as much logic for having cripple on DRs with Fear as there is of Frost nova having DRs with Counterspell, i.e. there is little to no "sense" is such assumptions.
My above statements hold true for some of the discussion happening over on the WoTLK Mage Talent discussion thread as well, where a video of someone on a private server having frostfire bolt proccing both winters chill and ignite simultaneously sparked tons of posts "theorycrafting" Frostfire bolt sharing talent benefits from both frost and fire schools simultaneously. Now, this all may well be the case, that I am not denying, what I am asserting however, is that we do not have enough evidence to make conclusions about the detailed spell mechanics until we see the beta. In the case of frostfire bolt, while people were quick to notice the ignite and wc proc, the failed to notice that the paladin who was also in the movie was running around holy shocking things faster than the GCD with no cooldown on the spell itself.
What we can glean from these spells is primarily what we read in the tooltip, as well as what we believe blizzard is trying to achieve with them. Cripple going from a pacify-silence-snare to a silence-snare says tons about the thinking of the designers (which in my opinion, is far more precious information than numerical theorycraft in the first place, mostly due to the complete communication breakdown between players and designers that is unique to WoW). What it does not tell us is the core mechanics of the spell, but we can safely assume certain things about the spell given existing knowledge of the game as well as applying common sense. These things tell us that Cripple does not share DRs with fear (as I have shown above), that it is part of the shadow school, and that it is the strongest ranged snare in the game (due to the tooltip).
I implore people to use "common sense" as well as some deduction when looking at these talents, since while it is easy form an fact less opinion on a topic that makes your point of view stronger, there is always a great chance that you view will come crashing down when facts are eventually presented.
While I would not in the least be surprised to see them eventually link fear and cripple DR's like they did with seduce, I'm with Kel on this one. Private servers prove nothing except spell graphics and there is no reason to believe that cripple is, or is not, on diminishing returns with fear. I still think a 20-second silence that doesn't break on damage is not going to make it to release though, even as a 51-point talent.
Right. I guess the main point to be noted with the extra DPS time gained isn't as meaningful as it would be for other specs/classes. All it does is open up extra time to cast more (relatively weak) Affliction Shadowbolts. You eventually get to the point between Everlasting Afflictions, Haste, and Eradication that you'll be using such a high percentage of your DPS time just casting your poorly scaling Shadowbolt you begin to wonder "Why am I Affliction exactly...?"
The whole mess just leaves a bad taste in my mouth but I can't for the life of me really offer anything truly constructive regarding it. Just the way everything is set up and the direction it's going in looks mechanically messy.
I haven't done any numbers on how it's scales with damage coefficients (I wish I had time for more of that), but with the instant cast and the DoT damage of Shadowflame, is it likely that will work itself into the Raiding Affliction Locks rotation even when on a single target fight?
With the merging of CoS/CoE, I would expect that a Malediction Warlock is obviously going to be a staple part of a Raid - so the Shadowflame DoT effect will be getting a smidge more of a buff too.
I'm not discouraged yet, I think the new talents and spells will make for more interesting and varied optimised cast sequences for Affliction Warlocks - more than just keeping everything ticking. I expect Haunt will be in the rotation for some fights, possibly Shadowflame - with a higher priority shift in focus to Shadowbolts for the final 20%.
It's an AOE, so its coefficient automatically gets cut to a third. We don't know exactly how the DoT component will work, but I think it's a safe assumption that it scales horribly. I was under the impression it was a destruction spell anyways. Not that there's any talent in either tree affecting it by name, but I don't see what about it fits in with Affliction.
As for Malediction... we'll see, but unless affliction warlock scales much better you're only bringing an affliction warlock for shadow embrace. The personal DPS loss isn't actually worth the 2.7% to other casters. Hopefully we get enough of a buff there that Malediction could push us over the edge to a net rDPS boost, but that's a far way away from being decidable.
It's an AOE, so its coefficient automatically gets cut to a third. We don't know exactly how the DoT component will work, but I think it's a safe assumption that it scales horribly.
I was under the impression it was a destruction spell anyways. Not that there's any talent in either tree affecting it by name, but I don't see what about it fits in with Affliction.
Yeah, I expect that too (horrible scaling) - however, it's currently a 1 second less cast time than the staple nuke (unhasted, when GCD is considered), which makes it more attractive. Not sure on range though, so if it can't reach from a typical Raid casting spot, it's probably mostly worthless.
I assumed it was talented too, when I first read it, but it appears currently that it's our new mid-70s nuke (the Incinerate of Wrath). I agree that it doesn't really fit in with Affliction any more than Shadowbolt will (particulary if ISB isn't helping DoT ticks anymore) - but we need something to do between DoT refreshes - and if a Shadow Bolt is lower overall DPS than an occasional Shadowflame (due to cast time considerations as well), then I speculate it might be viable early on in the Corruption's life (with the Shadowbolt cast laster to refresh)... or possibly as something to do when we need to stop Casting bolts to let the Corruption drop off (if there are any fights where there need to be no DoTs at a particular point in time).
Originally Posted by PSGarak
As for Malediction... we'll see, but unless affliction warlock scales much better you're only bringing an affliction warlock for shadow embrace. The personal DPS loss isn't actually worth the 2.7% to other casters. Hopefully we get enough of a buff there that Malediction could push us over the edge to a net rDPS boost, but that's a far way away from being decidable.
With a single Curse buffing 4 schools of Magic now, I would really hope that Affliction DPS + rDPS Benefit from Maledicted CoE is greater than the DPS of the other Specs. Of course, might be one less lock in the Raid because of the merge :/
Is the Death Knight's DPS going to be mainly Physical do we know? Might be helpful to the case for an Affliction Warlock if they issue out alot of Frost and Shadow damage.
06/17/08, 12:39 AM
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