I've always been one to say that Blizzard know what they're doing and are correcting something most of the time rather than nerfing it but these changes feel very strange. I feels like they're basically trying to homogenise classes and talent tree's to me to a much greater extent than they led us to believe.

But this is the PTR lets give them a chance. If things go horribly wrong come patch day then fair enough but until then lets let them do their stuff. Although I must say I'm intrigued as to how some of these changes came about it's hard not to immagine 10 guys sitting in a conference room hot sticky and annoyed in total silence. Then one of them randomly goes "Hey you know what would piss those warlocks off? - Lets just randomly move Molten Core into 35 Pt Demo" it just feels really really random. But if the tiers are somehow not crystal clear or are still being finalised I must say almost all the changes feel good they just feel like they're in the wrong place.

Decimation sounds awesome for instance but what you would think is a core Destruction talent both practically and in terms of lore just isn't. I always invisiged my Destruction Lock as pouring his anger and frustration into his spells summoning the biggest and badest balls of death to hurl at his enemy wheras my Demonologist as sneaky sitting at the back and channeling his energy into his demon.


Anyway; if these talents stick I expect every guild to run with a Demo lock especially as we get geared in Ulduar its already not unreasonable to expect raid buffed (and with Illustration) roughly 3.3k spell damage far more than an elemental shaman brings and considering how much they seem to be buffed I immagine Demo would push some interesting numbers.

Except unless I'm badly misunderstanding the notes, Improved Shadow Bolt is no longer crit-related in any way.

Oh good catch well guess it doesn't matter then o.o

Cheers!

What are you talking about? It still clearly states that ISB puts a scorch-like effect on the target, increasing crit chance against it.

Before, ISB was only applied on critical hits. Now it is a on hit talent, much like scorch (with the talent) is; crit or not, it is applied on hit.

Anyway, am I the ONLY affliction warlock not too concerned about his DPS? Eradication nerf is hurtful, and while I use immolate and siphon life, as any good lock would, I don't think it's going to be a HUGE DPS decrease.

Who knows, a few glyphs are now opened up (no more Siphon Life, Immolate0 -- perhaps they will be able to aid in said loss of DPS.

Rotation will clearly be easier, though it's not that hard now...

Yeah, sorry, I was referring to the application, not the effect.

Something will have to be implemented, I'm sure.

I know we're going to lose some DPS, hard to deny that. I just think there are things that will happen that will help make up for that loss. Personally, having played a warlock for several years, these changes does not surprise me, and after every single nerf Blizzard gives us, we come back on top of the meters somehow.

Hang in there, we will all work something out and figure how to maximize our damage from these losses.

I'm pretty disappointed in the changes to affliction.
For me the idea behind affliction is to actually not spam shadow bolt. It already is too big part of our dps. We are basically getting as a simple rotation as the Meta/Ruin.

Luckily this is PTR and not confirmed permanent changes. I would be gutted to see this as the solution for people who can't play affliction right now. Some of these changes feel like they are made by someone who has been very alienated with the affliction tree.

I still don't get why CoE is not a passive ability yet, it compared to earth & moon seems such an out of place ability.
With basically all our abilities able to crit with these changes and crit gets interresting for affliction it seems like the eradication change might actually be a little OP for affliction.

With the change of corruption healing 40% of it's damage while siphon life heal/damage is about 50% the damage of corruption it is a slight nerf (unless they account for having a "critting heal" of corruption when corruption crits).

Another lock in my guild and I were discussing the new demonology. I came up with a spec but I was implementing imp ISB into it. Would a meta/ruin spec be using sb or immolate and incinerate instead after the changes in 3.1

I never considered a critting heal being part of siphon life since it is now combined with corruption. That could prove to be interesting if it happens.

Lets compare the talents in PvE affli build

Eradication - Nerf/boost?
When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.

vs

Your Corruption ticks have a 10% chance to increase your spell casting speed by 20% for 12 sec. This effect cannot occur more often than once every 30 sec.

Proc chance too low, and the boost realy doesnt seems too good for me


New Siphon Life - Nerf

The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.

vs.

Dot

We need to use filler instead. If it will not leave debuff on boss - weaker soul drain ticks


Haunt and SE change for Immolate- Nerf
Who will ever use it? We need to use filler spell instead


Pandemic - Nerf
grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.

vs.

Each time you deal damage with Corruption or Unstable Affliction, you have a chance equal to your spell critical strike chance to deal 100% additional damage.

13 percent crit in raid are debuffs. This crit is not counted now for pandemic. So it will have higher chance to proc... But crits have only 1,5x dmg.


Improved Shadow Bolt Nerf/Boost?
Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.

vs.

Your Shadow Bolt critical strikes increase Shadow damage dealt by 10% until 4 non-periodic damage sources are applied. Effect lasts a maximum of 12 sec.


Atm we had 35 percent to crit with SB so the debuff was there almost always, and this effect was there for haunt too. Now its only for SB and only 5 percent. I know, new ISB will bring raid utility, but not boost for our DPS. And fire destro will need to SB in 10man raids. Nerf for me.


I see only one boost and thats - Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.


Correct me if im wrong anywhere but i think we will fall down too much in DPS . Thats a lot of love for warlock which was announced

I think they're trying to bring affliction down closer to the damage of destro. Demonology seems to have received a major buff though. And it really does seem that demonic pact would bring a new level of raid buff once our spellpower is high enough. Anyone care to analyze that?

Is there any way that affliction scaled too well with Ulduar gear, so they had to nerf it? Just curious, I haven't done any tests or seen any gear.

That Molten Core thing must be a mistake. They can't be that stupid really. Putting it into that spot means a mainly destro lock (who dev's said they want to be fire specced) can't access it any more. Maybe they want full demon locks to be fire? Still it would suck to have it in a tier where you have to spec the 5/5 talent in the same tier.
If they think destro dps is too high and they want to give MC in a destro spec the axe sure, but atm that doesn't really seem like it's needed.
And yeah, Affliction is getting a huge axe. Probably should start regearing cause the new affliction build looks like it wants to use a lot more destro gear and no longer stack pure spellpower/spirit, you just aren't using enough dots to make great use of that.
I'd guess Affl will die with those changes anyway, the massive amount of dots we used were needed. We'll be a mainly nuking spec without a 200% crit talent, I really doubt that will be competitive in any way, but PTR should show that.

I'm kinda confused with these changes as well. They just don't seem too well thought out for a patch that was months in the making.

If it stays this way it'll prolly mean some regearing when it comes to affliction specs. Whole tree seems to be pushed more towards crit now. Sadly my char isn't copied over yet so I can't really compare live DPS to PTR DPS.

Where exactly you get more from crit rating? These dots already were scaled with crit and alot better (with coef. x2, now it will be only 1,5), and SB does not get more from crit

Src

So I doubt moving it into deep demonology is anything other than deliberate.

That was a lot of changes for a class in one patch, I guess it's going to take some time to get a full overview regarding the full extent of these changes.

The change to Conflag stood out a for me. It makes me wonder how it's actually calculated. My guess is that it would take the damage you where going to do with the Immolation and use that. But this also means it gains power from talents like;

* Aftermath
* Improved Immolate
* Emberstorm
* Fire and Brimstone
* And Pyroclasm if you cast immolate after a Conflag crit.

This is a lot of scaling talents, and I would think it would make conflag a very important part of your destruction rotation.

Most people probably weren't enjoying it. On top of that it was the best dps tree by 1K + dps. We don't even know what Ulduar will have as far as fights are concerned, when you are mobile affliction dps goes down to the trasher with the current rotation, won't be the case after the patch.

Your shadow bolt will be an even larger part of your total damage done. You are losing 2 dots that couldn't crit (apart from the direct dmg from immolate ofcourse). This results in all your spells but 1, your curse, benefitting from crit, making it more valuable.

I don't know why everyone seems to think the Master Conjuror buff is a typo - it amounts to about 3.2% crit for 2 talent points. Yes, that finally makes it a good talent, but it doesn't seem too overpowered - it's only 1.6% crit per talent point, compared to 2% per talent point for Demonic Tactics.

As for affliction, it's getting a nerf, yes, but it doesn't seem all that huge to me. And it was obvious that a nerf was needed - we were far above other classes/specs in max theoretical damage output, and we also scaled better with gear than any other class/spec.

Yep, my thoughts exactly. I guess we'll have to wait for math to be done, but I'd say crit got a bit more in value.

I don't know what you aff locks are doing because I can rock some really mobile fights if you choose your best casts. Grobbulus is one where affliction DECIMATES everyone else. I can take an aff nerf fine, although aff is really my playstyle it'll be nice to start looking at other trees again.

As others have said, the loss of 2 casts in our rotation kills me, brings it to demo difficulty, but demo definitely looks more attractive, and I'm curious to see how destro plays now.

Either way, I feel as though those aff nerfs might seem ENORMOUS, and if the new demo talents will for for PvP. I was hoping for more general lock changes, because it seems like aff still might have a lot of the same issues in PvP,

but one question, any ideas on how new siphon life works for healing? I assume you couldn't just spam corruption on a target and constantly get instant heals, what are the restrictions to it?