Lets also remember that warlocks will be getting a big pass upcoming in Beta, as far as I know at least. It could be that there are nice changes that we have not yet seen already being discussed in light of the....evisceration of many warlock utility talents.
I agree though, Shadows Embrace as self buff only is mind bogglingly awful.
Last edited by Haphnet : 08/28/08 at 11:40 PM.
Reason: Don't know my own ability names...
Originally Posted by Fellwraith
[Y]ou will tank 3 mobs, and only 3 mobs. 5 shalt thou not tank, nor shalt thou tank 4. Thou shalt not tank 2 mobs unless it is on the way to tanking 3 mobs.
I also notice that Moonkin make a generally superior support class to affliction locks under those changes. In addition to moonkin aura, they can duplicate CoR and CoE (and misery =P), and CoW is not a particularly valuable or unique debuff anymore. I don't mind sharing support functions, but I do feel like moonkin are encroaching on our function to an unreasonable extent that I would like to see scaled back.
The good news is, now that they're done with this they have to look again at individual classes, and glyphs, in light of redesigned abilities. I look forward to that.
It's like this for every spec now. No one is a unique snowflake anymore. Elemental shaman now have the equivalent of moonkin aura. All a moonkin does for an affliction lock is raise their personal DPS by allowing them to use damage curse. Similarly when a shadow priest is in the raid, Balance Druids will gain DPS by not wasting GCD's on improved faerie fire.
On the other hand, moonkin won't have a secondary option when there's a ret pally or an elemental shaman in the raid that provide those particular raid buffs.
It'll be interesting to see how much changes for individual specs now. Blizzard is definitely making it very easy to have every possible debuff/buff without stacking your raid.
I like the stacking changes in general. I don't like the way the warlock changes fel out. I would have prefered fel intelligence sharing stacking with BoK rather than AI and DS. The ISB and SE changes... hurt currently, but I'm willing to wait how they shake out. If shadow destro really is dead than that basically makes crit an important stat for an affliction warlock, in a way other than having DoTs crit, which I like (I would like it more if ISB were moved to affliction). Shadow Embrace, I don't know what they have planned. 5% on self isn't worth 5 talent points, 6% might be worth 2 while grinding. Or they could redesign or totally scrap it.
I also notice that Moonkin make a generally superior support class to affliction locks under those changes. In addition to moonkin aura, they can duplicate CoR and CoE (and misery =P), and CoW is not a particularly valuable or unique debuff anymore. I don't mind sharing support functions, but I do feel like moonkin are encroaching on our function to an unreasonable extent that I would like to see scaled back.
The good news is, now that they're done with this they have to look again at individual classes, and glyphs, in light of redesigned abilities. I look forward to that.
Well imp scorch and winter's chill are both giving crit for all spells now. Coupled with raid wide moonkin and ret paladin you are probably looking at all the crit you need.
The changes from what we knew yesterday are basically..
-10% shadow
-15% fire
-5% magic
-6% dmg from spirit
-Flametongue totem
-Totem of Wrath (I am assuming demonic pact is better)
-mana regen from mana battery classes
+10% shadow crit
+3% haste (new imp moonkin aura)
+3% magic (ie 13% coe will defintely always be there now)
+superior ISB uptime(at the expense of dks, spriests)
+always getting to use a damage curse
Suffice to say I think raid damage is going to be lower in 3.0.2 than it is now(which may make brut/felmyst/kj impossible, especially for guilds that don't outgear them). As far as the damage change I think demo/aff/shadow destro all gained a lot on fire destro today. Demo could be in rough shape if mana regen is going to be as bad as I think it will be, no improved soul leech, no dark pact.
I definitely agree that moonkin are the best place to get the 5% crit, 3% haste(ret paly probably not in range anyways), and CoE. Plus it also gives misery(meaning you don't need spriests at all) and CoR, and it is certainly better for a moonkin to do no drawback faerie fire, than it is for a lock to get talented cor and do no damage curse. I don't really see a need to have elemental shamans in the raid at all anymore. Their personal dps is lower currently than moonkin, they don't provide any buffs if you have a demo lock, moonkin, and ret paladin, and heroism can be handled by 2 shamans now.
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 08/29/08 at 12:02 AM.
I don't really see a need to have elemental shamans in the raid at all anymore. Their personal dps is lower currently than moonkin, they don't provide any buffs if you have a demo lock, moonkin, and ret paladin, and heroism can be handled by 2 shamans now.
From the way they were very vague on flat spell power buffs I got the feeling Totem of Wrath is going to have the highest flat spell power buff (They specifically mentioned this was the one group where things were not going to be equal). That could be fairly significant as well.
Shadow Embrace (again, presuming it remains unchanged from current form other than as specified in the list) appears to now be a strictly PvP/solo talent. The only way it'll be of any use otherwise is if they modify it with some other ability as well.
From the way they were very vague on flat spell power buffs I got the feeling Totem of Wrath is going to have the highest flat spell power buff (They specifically mentioned this was the one group where things were not going to be equal). That could be fairly significant as well.
I sort of expect it to be better than demonic pact early expansion when you just get the level 80 rank, and worse than demonic pact end expansion since it doesn't scale. I sort of doubt it is going to be a 180+ spell dmg buff and have crit on top of that. I interpreted their line about not being equal to mean that flametongue and improved spirit were the lesser, not that wrath is the greater.
I don't mind that moonkin and affliction warlocks share some utility, in principle. It's a better thing for the raid. What I have an issue with is that a moonkin covers the big (and defining!) buffs of both an affliction warlock and and some of those of an elemental shaman. In general they seem too powerful of a utility class. They also cover both of our best curses, which irks me a little, especially since we can only cover one of those debuffs at a time. I'd feel a bit better about it if when the specifics come out, theirs is strictly inferior to ours, like how Fel Intelligence is going to be strictly inferior to AI + DS.
The more I think about ISB, the more I think it's for the best. It'll probably even out in personal effect with changes in duration and charges and stuff. Shadow Embrace I am sure will get an overhaul, and I would not be surprised to see it show up again as a debuff/raid buff.
Fel intelligence doesn't really make sense anymore. It was never any good for pvp really, but now it's useless in a 25 man raid? Is it intended to be just a weak replacement buff in 5/10-mans, that you could just replace with scrolls anyway? They might as well just drop it and bring paranoia back.
Mark my words...the idea of mages or rogues having inate higher dps than other classes just went *poof*. I'm sure some will hold onto the idea, but really, if with all the buff/debuff non stacking, you will be able to get all the necessary buff/debuffs out of maybe 10 classes. If DPS isn't competitive among all classes, you will see the likes of stacking never seen before. Remember, buffs are raid wide now. There is nothing stopping you from stacking a raid with 8 rogues...or 8 warlocks...or 8 death knights.
If Blizzard is going to do this, they have to be on the ball with DPS adjustments--no waiting 2 patches to remove the mage damage tax, no ignoring affliction scaling and allowing destruction damage multipliers to send them through the roof. Toning down BM hunters, etc.
IMO..they just made it a LOT harder to balance PvE and PvP classes.
I am kind of confused, if fel intellect is still +5% int/spirit it is going to be better for some people than ai/ds. Neither of those spells give numbers that couldn't be reached by what a healer could potentially get from +5%. I can only assume FI is getting changed to a flat amount, which basically makes it useless unless there is no disc priest is in the raid.
Nothing is stopping you from stacking 8 warlocks at the moment, yet why didn't it happen? Two reasons..
1. People know warlocks won't be op like this forever.
2. You can't gear 8 warlocks like you can gear 4 warlocks, 2 rogues, and 2 hunters.
Dexia: I have a feeling they won't throw out the ideas of rogues/hunters/mages/warlocks being higher innate dps classes. Should they even throw out the idea? 5 man/10 man are incredibly unbalanced if moonkin are the same dps as rogues but bring 15 raid buffs. These changes make it so they can only balance for either 10 man or for 25 man. Either all classes do the same dps and the classes with the most buffs are op in 10 man, or the same classes deal the most damage as always and raids become completely stacked with rogues, mages, fury warriors, etc in 25 man.
Edit: Is this new way better or worse? Basically we gained class freedom, the freedom to stack raids with class X and Y. Is having to stack the raid with those classes better than having to bring 1x of every spec as it was shaping up to be?
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 08/29/08 at 1:56 AM.
I am kind of confused, if fel intellect is still +5% int/spirit it is going to be better for some people than ai/ds. Neither of those spells give numbers that couldn't be reached by what a healer could potentially get from +5%. I can only assume FI is getting changed to a flat amount, which basically makes it useless unless there is no disc priest is in the raid.
"Fel Intelligence: Has replacement ranks that grant flat values of Intellect and Spirit. "
So it does indeed seem as though they are changing to to be a flat buff, inferior to AI/DS. Homogenization to this level makes me nervous, but as I said before I'll withhold my overall judgment at least until warlocks have had their pass.
Originally Posted by Fellwraith
[Y]ou will tank 3 mobs, and only 3 mobs. 5 shalt thou not tank, nor shalt thou tank 4. Thou shalt not tank 2 mobs unless it is on the way to tanking 3 mobs.
My assumption is that imp sb or some other talents is going to be buffed to make up for the loss of shadow weaving, but there is no guarantee of that. Nor is their any guarantee imp scorch will be made up by any talents for fire mages/locks. I am very nervous atm especially for level 70 raiding.
My guess is that Blizzard does not give a care to what will happen to level 70 raiding because they are focused so intently on level 80. While I cannot say I blame them (surely it would be near impossible to balance anything well, let alone perfectly, at both 70 and 80 with new spells, talents, and a class?), it is certainly a bitter pill to swallow for guilds such as my own that wallow around at entry T6 content trying to get a foothold.
In the long run I am glad that they seem to be taking so much consideration towards making raid setups accessible to all. However, in the short I am anticipating that these changes will be the dagger to the heart of my guild's raiding and many guilds in situations similar to mine.
Originally Posted by Fellwraith
[Y]ou will tank 3 mobs, and only 3 mobs. 5 shalt thou not tank, nor shalt thou tank 4. Thou shalt not tank 2 mobs unless it is on the way to tanking 3 mobs.
Dexia: I have a feeling they won't throw out the ideas of rogues/hunters/mages/warlocks being higher innate dps classes. Should they even throw out the idea? 5 man/10 man are incredibly unbalanced if moonkin are the same dps as rogues but bring 15 raid buffs. These changes make it so they can only balance for either 10 man or for 25 man. Either all classes do the same dps and the classes with the most buffs are op in 10 man, or the same classes deal the most damage as always and raids become completely stacked with rogues, mages, fury warriors, etc in 25 man.
Edit: Is this new way better or worse? Basically we gained class freedom, the freedom to stack raids with class X and Y. Is having to stack the raid with those classes better than having to bring 1x of every spec as it was shaping up to be?
I see your point, and like you said, I have seen some raids stack as many as 6 warlocks now. In Sunwell, 5+ shamans are common. In vanilla WoW, our first Patchwerk kill was 10 mages and 2 warlocks. My point is with party-wide buffs, you were limited in how many rogues you could bring, or how many mages/locks, because in order for them to achieve their high dps they had to have party support. That is no longer the case. If BM hunters continue to do the DPS we see them doing now with (party going to) raid wide buffs, you can stick them in the healer group or tank group and they still will output top dps. Classes cease to be party-constrained.
My point is that is now easier than ever to bring as many of 5 or more of your favorite DPS class..and if all your friends are hunters, great. But any DPS class (mage/lock/hunter/rogue/DK/warrior) that does not bring anything unique and does substantially less DPS will be left out of the top progression raids.
Where does this leave the hybrids, or more specifically, the hybrids that can heal (druid/paladin/shaman)? For a Boomkin to output the DPS of other classes and still be able to heal himself would be ridiculously overpowered in PvP unless they had glaring weaknesses in other aspects. Basically, I look at these changes and I don't see anything that makes an affliction lock desirable, so maybe it paves the way for their DPS to be buffed--or maybe not..after all, they do have limited healing abilities with Siphon Life and a strong drains. How do you balance affliction = rogue dps when they have limited self-healing abilities in PvP? I think the high DPS/low utilty, Low DPS/High utiltity was easier to design to balance raids and PvP. I kind of like the new philosophy from a PvE standpoint..but I don't think it's practical because sure enough 'ability X is doing too much damage in arena, incoming nerf'. Affliction is a prime example of a spec that has no guaranteed raid viable use now, but will probably underperform due to scaling and PvP reasons. Color me very skeptical about Blizzard's ability to balance classes and specs in a PvE and PvP setting with this philosophy.
I personally don't think Blizzard was proactice enough in TBC in buffing/nerfing classes for PvE (locks/hunters know this from vanilla WoW, mages know this from TBC) precisely because of PvP balancing.
My assumption is that imp sb or some other talents is going to be buffed to make up for the loss of shadow weaving, but there is no guarantee of that. Nor is their any guarantee imp scorch will be made up by any talents for fire mages/locks. I am very nervous atm especially for level 70 raiding.
Warlocks/mages/hunters whatever don't live in a vacuum. Pretty much all classes will see a DPS nerf with these changes. To me, it isn't important that we achieve our old DPS highs, just that our expected DPS is inline with other classes.
In a perfect world if locks and hunters and mages and rogues were all doing 2100 dps in Sunwell and topping the charts based on our skill level, it would be acceptable if we were all doing 1600 dps and topping the charts based on skill after these changes (assuming they nerf boss/mob HP accordingly). You don't need to do 2100 DPS for solo grinding.
Warlocks/mages/hunters whatever don't live in a vacuum. Pretty much all classes will see a DPS nerf with these changes. To me, it isn't important that we achieve our old DPS highs, just that our expected DPS is inline with other classes.
Hmm? The weaving/imp scorch/isb removals are huge changes(far huger than recklessness/faerie fire not stacking) and they only affect those that use fire/shadow damage. Warlocks of all specs are going to see huge drops at 70,
You can probably discern why I am nervous. Warlocks went from a situation where it was looking like we had 3 guaranteed raid slots, and were likely to be overpowered. To a situation where it might be like naxx except we aren't even needed for coe. If warlocks don't have very competitive dps we are dead in the water now.
The ideal warlock amount might be 0 now. I see no reason to have any faith in blizzard magically balancing every class to be competitive in dps start to finish.
Considering what we've just seen here, I think everyone needs to do several things: Ignore Blizzard's site calc forever (Demonic Empathy PROCS WHEN YOU OR YOUR PET CRITS), get a drink of their choice, find some place to relax, and wait for the revamp. I think we're at least a week behind Blizzard as it is, and things seem so chaotic that it'll really take concentrated in-game testing to find out what works and what doesn't.
I just came from the mage thread were several people exploded over the removal of 15% fire damage from the improved scorch redesign. The rest of us cleaned up the mess and sat back and had a reasonable discussion about how the fire tree will probably be buffed by 15% somewhere to make up for it and talked about the new raid stacking concepts. The trees will be redone. ISB and shadow weaving will be made up for, and blizzard gets to experiment with affliction being allowed to be a full-blown DPS spec for the first time ever, which I expect will be hilariously broken and overpowered for a few days during WLK beta.
Long story short: What we just saw is only one facet of the revolution. The rest will happen.
Ignoring pvp implications, is there any particular reason for the 1 curse per warlock thing now?
Well, at the very least separating them into damage and debuff curses would be nice. Considering none of the abilities that replace the warlock curses come at a loss of dps beyond a gcd every so often, if that.
I am wondering how this will all turn out. It looks like the first rough draft of some very serious game wide changes, though anything that makes 10 man raiding easier is a good thing for my guild.
Hmm? The weaving/imp scorch/isb removals are huge changes(far huger than recklessness/faerie fire not stacking) and they only affect those that use fire/shadow damage. Warlocks of all specs are going to see huge drops at 70,
You can probably discern why I am nervous. Warlocks went from a situation where it was looking like we had 3 guaranteed raid slots, and were likely to be overpowered. To a situation where it might be like naxx except we aren't even needed for coe. If warlocks don't have very competitive dps we are dead in the water now.
The ideal warlock amount might be 0 now. I see no reason to have any faith in blizzard magically balancing every class to be competitive in dps start to finish.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that all the dps classes are being hit by this. Its not like rogues arn't going to take a dps hit by battleshout/blessing of might no longer stacking, curse of reck/faerie fire not stacking and imp hunters mark not granting AP to melee anymore.
Funnily enough I'd imagine shadow destro to be the least affected by the changed at 1st glance, sure you lose shadow weaving but you gain winters chill which should be pretty much a wash.
Now obviously the change to DS and ISB(though as a personal buff it's a dps increase I'd imagine) will mean it's doing different damage to live but from an overall raid buff rebalancing theme it seems to be one of the few specs to have weathered the initial storm.
Sorry I havent read the entire thread as its fairly long but Ive skiped through sections here and there...
I was wondering if anyone has looked at how well DS might work with the Felhunter when used in conjuction with Improved Soul Leech? Since the hard damage of Shadow and Fire % got nerfed on DS by 5% I'm curious if saccing the felhunter may be competitive or better now with the addition of imp soul leech and with the raw dmg nerf?
I'm wondering just how much, if any Life Tapping you would have to do now with the set up if say, using mana pots and in a perfect world, being group with a shadow priest for VT?
Do you think it would be possible to maintain a steady or full mana bar and not have to blow GCD on LT and would the dps gain of not LT during a fight be greater than the 10% buffs from fire/shadow DS saccing?
Imp soul leech, and the new VT/pally/hunter thing mean that a destro warlock will need like 1 lifetap every 3 minutes or so. But using an imp for dps and emp imp is better than saccing an imp/felhunter anyway.
Is CoE still the only debuff which reduces the targets resistances?
Why did they increase it to 165? Should it be used in PvE to remove resistances?
Besides that, CoE does not have to be refreshed every 12s like to Moonkin one which means the curse will stay up even if the Warlock ist dead. This is not true for the Moonkins Earth and Moon which will fade 12s after the Moonkin ist dead.
Is CoE still the only debuff which reduces the targets resistances?
Why did they increase it to 165? Should it be used in PvE to remove resistances?
Besides that, CoE does not have to be refreshed every 12s like to Moonkin one which means the curse will stay up even if the Warlock ist dead. This is not true for the Moonkins Earth and Moon which will fade 12s after the Moonkin ist dead.
That does seem kind of odd. Dont most mobs and bosses have very low resistances currently with the exception of a hand full? I wonder if they will be increasing boss base resistances then?
Do you know if the new CoE is affected by the debuff priority system? As far as I can tell from observation, the new lvl 70 CoE still isnt while it appears the new lvl 60 CoE still is.
08/28/08, 11:39 PM
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