World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 2)


I'm curious on everyone's thoughts about the announced changes? I'll be more intrigued to see what new talents are being created. I do like the idea of combining spells such as SL/Corruption and CoR/CoW

Edit: Fixed link.

All of these changes, especially adding Replenishment to Imp Soul Leach and combining SL and Corruption are very exciting. I would, however like to see more Destro changes, such as making F&B a more attractive talent, or at least reducing the 5-talent point investment for such a lack-luster talent so high on the tree.

I'm sure we are all eagerly awaiting more detailed information.

The Imp Shadow Bolt change is defniitely a nice one, and thus, another reason to have an afflock in your raid.

I am intrigued by the drain soul change...I hope the proc rate isn't terrible. And really, how would that all work anyway? The only spec that uses DS in any kind of rotation is affliction.

I, too, want to see the additional talents, and hopefully in there is a F&B fix to make it more attractive. If there's no F&B fix, I can see ISL being the preferred filler for points in Destro to get down to CB.

edit: I changed my mind about my post.

So does this mean that reducing the AP of melee in PvP now grants them immunity to fear? That would be the fix we have been waiting for...

That would make, not break, my day.

What's your source for the warlock changes? The post you linked to just lists the lock changes as "coming soon".

Part 2 - World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 2)

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Class Change Highlights (Part 2)

Someone beat me to posting the link, bah.

Anyway, I don't think the change to SB really changes much; it now gives us a 5% crit rating buff of some sort for a limited amount of time. DoTs obviously can't crit sans perhaps Haunt and Immolate applications, which don't count for much on meters. Shame.

I highly doubt that we will get shards, even during channeling Drain Soul, off of mobs that are too low of level. It isn't something in the mechanic of the spell, and I'm going to stand by that until Blizzard says something to the contrary.

I'd really like to know what they exactly changed in Eradication and Suppression, though. Hopefully they removed the diminishing returns in Eradication so it's worth all 3 points again.

I use a macro to trash all but 28 soul shards (still using a small soul bag).

It's not a buff to ourselves, it's a debuff on the target, like imp scorch. Which makes me think one of the upcoming mage changes will be to reduce the imp scorch bonus to 5% from 10% - it wouldn't make much sense for us to have a similar raid buff that was only half as good as theirs. It's also pretty obvious that 10% crit from a single raid buff was a bit unbalanced.

The interesting point here is that even though affliction locks currently take ISB, they probably won't in the future because they can't be relied on to keep the debuff up when the boss is below 25%. This leaves deep demo as the only viable "ISB raid bitch" spec, so let's hope the demonic empathy change turns out to be a nice buff.

Ah, alright, I didn't realize that for some reason. I thought it would be the same as the self-buff that ISB currently gives. 'scuse me, going to go drink some more coffee.

In the hopes of actually making this post semi-relevant, I can't see them taking away the imp scorch bonus since most Aff warlocks won't be taking it. Like you said, sub-25% that buff won't be applied anymore, and a popular raiding spec will tend not to even take the talent. Why reduce it?

Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)

So we going to be the 4th class to be able to provide replenishment or is this just going to be a self replenishment making improved SL better?

Are we assuming that the Siphon Life/Corruption roll up will still provide an additional affliction debuff to not hinder Soul Siphon's damage?

I assume Siphon Life will stay as a dot that just tags along Corruption like Ebon Plague/Crypt Fever does for DK's.

Can't really get excited or dejected by these changes without further explanation and context really.

ISB looks to be somewhat useless in that there's usually a fire mage for scorch, 10% > 5% and since afflic are the only (current) build using SB fillers it won't be up under 25% unless you purposely nerf damage to reapply it or get a lucky nightfall proc.

Combining corruption and SL is their great idea for simplifying afflic rotation? Mkay. Is only useful if corruption does extra damage to compensate for the loss of SL either through corruption itself or a pandemic-like extra. Does that also mean we're losing 1 DoT per afflic warlock when we start DSing too? Mind if they make pandemic affect all DoTs that make up for the damage lost.

Need moar info =P

The way it reads it will be a slight damage hit (same as just dropping SL from your rotation), but we will get to keep the healing portion. Probably not going to be 100% of damage done though, as that would have some pretty major pvp consequences.

ISB change will be nice for affliction since that makes it an easy skip now for 25man raiding (where having a mage can be assumed), but a possible pickup for 10 mans. Hopefully incinerate gets added to it so fire-destro can provide the debuff as well.

@emolate: What macro do you use to destroy shards? The one I had stopped working, and I haven't seen another one floating around.

Blizz stated that the imp. Scorch debuff was too powerful, so its pretty given that it will be decreased to 5%.

About that soulshard issue that some see:

/run i="Soulshard"d=GetItemCount(i)-28 for x=0,4 do for y=1,GetContainerNumSlots(x) do if (d>0) then l=GetContainerItemLink(x,y) if l and GetItemInfo(l)==i then PickupContainerItem(x,y) DeleteCursorItem() d=d-1 end end end end

Thats the macro I use. Saves 28 shards and destroys all above 28. Just incase some ppl dont have it yet.

This changes raises some questions,

. Improved shadowbolt, will the 5% be added to the existing effect or replace it? If is a replacement it will mean a DPS reduction for affliction locks, not only that but below 25% it will be impossible to keep it on, so is basically making the talent useless for afflction,

. Siphon Life, will corruption just give life back en casted? If that is the case will corruption damage be improved with the talent? This will also make Drain soul worse due to one less debuff. The only way for this to not be a DPS nerf will be to make corruption apply the siphon life dot, that way there would be no need to increase corruption damage, and in PvP it would still be 2 debuffs to dispell. This would require Haunt to refresh the siphon life also.

. CoR and CoW no one uses and no one will start using them anyway, hopefully they remove the fear immunity from it or it will have negative pvp effects.

It is a shame that it seems they are not planning to change either to the curses or soulshards mechanics.