Big set of Warlock Changes

[Quark]

Eyonix posted a pretty detailed detailed post for warlocks, talking about some changes they're getting.

Snippit:

Death Coil - The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to two minutes and there will now be a short duration (3 sec), non-diminishing fear effect applied to the target. The mana cost has been increased so the spell is less efficient for purposes of DPS.

Some DoTs will be same damage, but less time so it'll have a higher DPS. SM/Ruin will be less cookie cutter, as Ruin's bonus is getting reduced. Guess this means in duels against warlocks my reaction won't be "tick, tick, tick, tick (80% health), WHOA (10% health).


Blue seems really busy on the forums last two days, here's another notes:
Casting perception won't break stealth. I'm never dueling Human Rogues again :P

[Lissa]

Eyonix posted a pretty detailed detailed post for warlocks, talking about some changes they're getting.

Snippit:
Some DoTs will be same damage, but less time so it'll have a higher DPS.  SM/Ruin will be less cookie cutter, as Ruin's bonus is getting reduced.  Guess this means in duels against warlocks my reaction won't be "tick, tick, tick, tick (80% health), WHOA (10% health).
Blue seems really busy on the forums last two days, here's another notes:
Casting perception won't break stealth.  I'm never dueling Human Rogues again :P
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Hmmm...still think I would stick with SM/Ruin, not just because of SM, but also all the things you get along the way to it. With the increase in the number of debuffs and with the change to debuff priority, this could get pretty interesting. As a side effect, they may have to buff Blueberry to hold agro more because of the higher DPS.

I only hope that the Infernal and Doomguard finally become non-enslaves as that is the biggest reason I don't use them. It has nothing to do with their power against two level 60 mobs, it's the fact that the summons turn on me so quickly. At level 60, most rank and file demons (read non-elites) should bow and scrape to the Warlock (elites are not the normal rank and file demons). As such, the Infernal and Doomguard need to be made so they don't come back and beat on the Warlock in 5 minutes times, especially when the spells to summon them (not using CoD to bring in a Doomguard) are on 1 hour timers.

[Drasca]

As a side effect, they may have to buff Blueberry to hold agro more because of the higher DPS.[right][snapback]89930[/snapback][/right]

This part, they already have, but it'll be interesting to see how well pets hold aggro.

I only hope that the Infernal and Doomguard finally become non-enslaves as that is the biggest reason I don't use them.

Given there's an one hour cooldown, I agree. The the balance I'd enjoy is keeping enslavement and either removal of 1 hr cooldown or vast reduction of cooldown to say 2-5 minutes. This way, the warlock keeps the danger level of using doomguard/infernal.

I'd prefer Ritual of Doom to auto-enslave if the warlock survives.


They finally admit Deathcoil's 10 minute cooldown was abysmal, and Pyroclasm not functioning. (I'm told actual rate is ~1-2%, while some people never see it proc given this chance).

Deathcoil's new two minute cd is once or twice a battle instead of once almost never. Warriors and Rogues beware! Mana inefficiency never justifies pvp balance (especially since its more likely we die with over half mana unused in a ganking). The fear effect balances PvE aspect, as fear is fairly dangerous to use when it can aggro everything else. Good, much needed move, that took almost a year to make.

The dot issue is because priests get one dot with better dps than all ours combined. Warlocks were behind the dps power curve in both instant (having few to no instants) and dot (needing more dots & cast time for less dps) damage options. Heck, life drain can still be dispelled.

[Lissa]

Given there's an one hour cooldown, I agree. The the balance I'd enjoy is keeping enslavement and either removal of 1 hr cooldown or vast reduction of cooldown to say 2-5 minutes. This way, the warlock keeps the danger level of using doomguard/infernal.
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If they got rid of diminishing returns on Enslave, I wouldn't have an issue, but right now, these pets are simply toys. They are to cast and walk into IF or Org and just let people gawk and such. Their actual use is minimal.

[Warlock]

I've found the Infernal useful on occasion as is - it summons in two seconds, doesn't need a soulstone and doesn't cancel a Demonic Sacrifice buff. It's not often that I reenslave it, though.

[Lissa]

I've found the Infernal useful on occasion as is - it summons in two seconds, doesn't need a soulstone and doesn't cancel a Demonic Sacrifice buff. It's not often that I reenslave it, though.
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There is only one real use for the infernal, and that's PvP. Outside of PvP, the infernal is a toy pet. Even in PvP, as soon as the other side deals with it from the initial shock, they typically hunt down and kill the Warlock.

If Blizzard removes the diminishing returns on enslave, then these pets would be worth using on a regular basis. Right now, they have little use and are just toys to show off.

[Zippyy]

Eyonix posted a pretty detailed detailed post for warlocks, talking about some changes they're getting.

Snippit:
Some DoTs will be same damage, but less time so it'll have a higher DPS.  SM/Ruin will be less cookie cutter, as Ruin's bonus is getting reduced.  Guess this means in duels against warlocks my reaction won't be "tick, tick, tick, tick (80% health), WHOA (10% health).
Blue seems really busy on the forums last two days, here's another notes:
Casting perception won't break stealth.  I'm never dueling Human Rogues again :P
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I'm really excited about the DoT buffs, and even moreso the huge Death Coil buff. I haven't heard anyone mention it yet (might be too obvious?), but this turns Death Coil into an instant interrupt, effectively. We finally get a way to interrupt mob and player spells without having to have a felhunter out or land a luckily timed fear!

End-game pets would sure be nice too. I hope they add them someday. :P

[Quark]

Some Warlocks went berzerk after testing the new Ruin, and this was Kalgan's response:

We're trying to accomplish three things for warlocks in 1.8.

1. Improve warlock emergency defense (and yes, the mana cost of Death Coil may need to be lowered... deciding things like this is part of the reason we have public test realms).

2. Reduce a warlock's Shadowbolt spam DPS potential. Currently, a shadowbolt optimized warlock can get drastically higher raid damage than any other class in the game by combining Curse of Shadow, Demonic Sacrifice, Ruin, Improved Shadowbolt, Bane, and lots of +shadow damage and spell crit gear (which can be further exaggerated with Shadow Weaving from a shadow priest or multiple warlocks affecting the target with Improved Shadowbolt). We intend for warlocks to deal very high amounts of damage in a raid, but not drastically more so than other classes.

3. Improve warlock DOT's so that it's less likely that much of the damage will be lost due to combat not taking as long as was assumed when those spells were designed.

[Lissa]

Some Warlocks went berzerk after testing the new Ruin, and this was Kalgan's response:
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The sad part is, Blizzard still just does not get it why Warlocks do such large damage. It has nothing to do with Ruin. The real culprit is how resistance works.

If you compare someone with say, 50 Fire Resistance and someone with 300 Fire Resistance and if luck goes the way of the 50 FR person compared to the 300 FR person, the 50 FR person could take less damage. If anything, what really needs to be done is Blizzard needs to rethink how resistance figures into damage instead and make it a straight scale with the higher your resistance the less damage you take and, conversely, the less resistance you have the more damage you take. Blizzard had this concept prior to 3rd/4th push in Beta and it was upon this time frame that they changed to the variable amount of resist/damage boost which made spells like CoS and CoE so powerful.

[Skandranon]

2. Reduce a warlock's Shadowbolt spam DPS potential. Currently, a shadowbolt optimized warlock can get drastically higher raid damage than any other class in the game by combining Curse of Shadow, Demonic Sacrifice, Ruin, Improved Shadowbolt, Bane, and lots of +shadow damage and spell crit gear (which can be further exaggerated with Shadow Weaving from a shadow priest or multiple warlocks affecting the target with Improved Shadowbolt). We intend for warlocks to deal very high amounts of damage in a raid, but not drastically more so than other classes.
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At least they see it.

[savaughn]

At least they see it.
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No. They see something, but not the real problem. Guarentee you, they aren't going to fix the issue with shadow spells coupling to higher levels than expected in 40-man raids. They're just going to do an across the board nerf and kill warlock DPS. Joy. :angry:

There's a Blizz board room somewhere with the following discussion going on:
"Wait ... you mean people still let Warlocks raid?"
"Yes, they're specializing in shadowbolt and the interaction between priest spells and multiple warlocks are creating surprising synergy."
"But ... didn't we make virtually every Warlock spell come with a debuff and then cap debuffs in raids so they aren't effective?"
"Yes, but we didn't put a debuff on shadowbolt."
"But didn't we make it one of the least mana effective direct damage spells in the game and give it a top level damage that was 80% of the equivalent Mage spells?"
"Yes but the players found ways to combine abilities."
"Well, screw that. Pick the ability most critical to using shadowbolt and nerf it until they learn to stop putting Warlocks in raids."
"But that will make direct damage Warlocks much harder to play everywhere, not just in raids."
"All the better..."

[Quark]

You sound like a b.net kiddy. Honestly, you do. That diatribe is something straight out of the General Forums.

Scrap comparing Warlocks to Rogues/Warriors/Hunters for now, because weapon itemization compared to caster itemization throws the system out of whack right now. Not that it matters much because Tahapenes can just as easily get #2 on the DPS chart as I can. Just compare Warlocks to other casters. You see the huge discrepancy? When you see that, remember that Mages are the advertised "top caster class" for DPS.

Whether or not you feel their nerf is "right" - and I'll admit, they should look at resistances first, Ruin second - doesn't change how Warlocks outshadow other classes more than they should.

[Lissa]

At least they see it.
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No Skan, as I noted above, they don't see the root cause. The root cause is not the synergy, it's the way resistances is handled. Mages have very similar synergies, the problem is, they don't have a way of lowering resistance and when resistance goes negative with the present resistance system, things go haywire. As I noted in my post above, prior to 4th push, Blizzard had resistances right and then they got a burr and totally changed around resistances. The way to fix this is to fix resistances because then you would see things come back in line.

Resistances should be linear in how much they decrease/increase damage. Someone with -10% resistance should not have a remote chance of taking 4x damage and someone with 10% resistance should not be able to negate 75% of damage (which the system allows for now).

[Kevin]

Resistances should be linear in how much they decrease/increase damage.  Someone with -10% resistance should not have a remote chance of taking 4x damage and someone with 10% resistance should not be able to negate 75% of damage (which the system allows for now).
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Linear resistance means that you can completely trivialize someones damage though. This was an issue in D2. You get resistance high enough on a linear scale and you start to make it so that you are immune. Throw a renew on you and if you resist 95% of the damage you now make encounters with mobs that do that type of damage completely pointless. Gnolack has no FR on his belt, boots, or bracers, or rings, right now and there are better shoulders, gloves, legs, and chest piece resistance stuff that I can get for it without too much more effort. I can already get up to 207 unbuffed FR in that with 4800 unbuffed HP and still have around 6500 armor I think. Slap some auras under me and and a few potions and in a linear system unless they changed it a lot I could just stand and laugh at Baron Geddon and any other fire elemental. I'm not even looking at PvP where it could get even worse for some classes.

So what are your choices? Well do what they did with physical damage put massive diminishing returns on it or you do what they did with resistances the way they are now. Make it so that you still have a chance to take some damage even if you do some kind of resistance 100% of the time.

If you do it like armor you then have to go back and completely change how available resistance is so that people can get high enough values to get up to the cap so that they can have encounters as they are now doable. They may need to look at how much damage can be done with the negative resist side but I like the random component to resistances. I think it helps with itemization values as well.

I'm not saying linear couldn't work but I think it would take a lot of work to make it work. Prehaps the main issue is what happens when resists go negative and just that needs to be fixed.

[Lissa]

Linear resistance means that you can completely trivialize someones damage though.  This was an issue in D2.  You get resistance high enough on a linear scale and you start to make it so that you are immune.  Throw a renew on you and if you resist 95% of the damage you now make encounters with mobs that do that type of damage completely pointless.  Gnolack has no FR on his belt, boots, or bracers, or rings, right now and there are better shoulders, gloves, legs, and chest piece resistance stuff that I can get for it without too much more effort.  I can already get up to 207 unbuffed FR in that with 4800 unbuffed HP and still have around 6500 armor I think.  Slap some auras under me and and a few potions and in a linear system unless they changed it a lot I could just stand and laugh at Baron Geddon and any other fire elemental.  I'm not even looking at PvP where it could get even worse for some classes.

So what are your choices?  Well do what they did with physical damage put massive diminishing returns on it or you do what they did with resistances the way they are now.  Make it so that you still have a chance to take some damage even if you do some kind of resistance 100% of the time. 

If you do it like armor you then have to go back and completely change how available resistance is so that people can get high enough values to get up to the cap so that they can have encounters as they are now doable.  They may need to look at how much damage can be done with the negative resist side but I like the random component to resistances.  I think it helps with itemization values as well.

I'm not saying linear couldn't work but I think it would take a lot of work to make it work.  Prehaps the main issue is what happens when resists go negative and just that needs to be fixed.
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Or you set the threshold for effective immunity higher than what is possible in the game. As it stands right now, their resistance model is why this happens it has absolutely nothing to do with the synergies of talents (because other classes do have the same synergies).

As proof to why Blizzard has to relook at resistances, I could take any fire speced mage that is around 60 to some place like Scholo or Strat, use CoE on all the mobs and stand back and watch as the the fire mage totally out damages everyone involved. Yet if you take CoE out of the picture (and thus negative resistance), said mage doesn't do as well and yet still has the same synergies available. The system that Blizzard has for how resistance effects damage is what's borked and Blizzard has to go back and relook at that (and the fact that there are Warlocks out there that are Affliction/Demonology spec that have no Destruction talents can regularly put out 2k+ crits with about +300 damage with the curses pushing resistance negative should show why the synergies aren't as powerful as people think). Warlocks have been saying this for months on end, yet Blizzard continues to ignore us.

[savaughn]

The system that Blizzard has for how resistance effects damage is what's borked and Blizzard has to go back and relook at that (and the fact that there are Warlocks out there that are Affliction/Demonology spec that have no Destruction talents can regularly put out 2k+ crits with about +300 damage with the curses pushing resistance negative should show why the synergies aren't as powerful as people think).  Warlocks have been saying this for months on end, yet Blizzard continues to ignore us.
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But you're listing synergies right there. It's not JUST the fact that when you hit a negative resist roll you do double damage (at least, I think it doubles the base when you hit a negative crit roll). It's negative resists stacked on top of massive +damage, stacked on top of a 20% improvement from ISB, a 15% improvement from shadowweaving, a 10% bonus from shadow mastery, and a double damage crit from ruin. I haven't a clue how all those bonuses relate, but I suspect several of them are multiplicative instead of linear. For example, +damage and shadow mastery increase the base damage of the spell which is then doubled by a resist hit and effectively quadrupled by a ruin crit.

I've seen the argument on resists and it may just be that I'm misunderstanding something but I don't know if it fixes the problem. I don't know the formulas but lets say for example, that you have enough negative resists that you have a 10% chance to get a negative resist hit that doubles your damage. If you change that so that you have always do 10% more damage your DPS doesn't really change. It's just not as obvious because you don't see the large numbers pop up as often.

If Blizzard truly believes what they're saying on the forums, to wit: that in raids Warlocks are using combinations that are creating excessively high damage... my point is that changing Ruin does not fix this problem. It nerfs Warlock damage across the board. If Blizz is stating that synergies are excessive, nerf the synergies. If shadow weaving didn't increase shadowbolt damage and ISB was tracked on a per warlock basis you've eliminated the bonuses inherent to a raid without significantly reducing overall warlock damage. This is not the solution that was chosen. Instead, it was decided to reduce warlock damage across the board rather than correct the specific raid based condition.

Suffice to say, Blizz has made it known that this is the way they're handling this stuff. Paladins take heed: if they're consistent on this, your Blessing of Salvation is history.

[Lissa]

But you're listing synergies right there.  It's not JUST the fact that when you hit a negative resist roll you do double damage (at least, I think it doubles the base when you hit a negative crit roll).  It's negative resists stacked on top of massive +damage, stacked on top of a 20% improvement from ISB, a 15% improvement from shadowweaving, a 10% bonus from shadow mastery, and a double damage crit from ruin.  I haven't a clue how all those bonuses relate, but I suspect several of them are multiplicative instead of linear.  For example, +damage and shadow mastery increase the base damage of the spell which is then doubled by a resist hit and effectively quadrupled by a ruin crit.

I've seen the argument on resists and it may just be that I'm misunderstanding something but I don't know if it fixes the problem.  I don't know the formulas but lets say for example, that you have enough negative resists that you have a 10% chance to get a negative resist hit that doubles your damage.  If you change that so that you have always do 10% more damage your DPS doesn't really change.  It's just not as obvious because you don't see the large numbers pop up as often.

If Blizzard truly believes what they're saying on the forums, to wit: that in raids Warlocks are using combinations that are creating excessively high damage... my point is that changing Ruin does not fix this problem.  It nerfs Warlock damage across the board.  If Blizz is stating that synergies are excessive, nerf the synergies.  If shadow weaving didn't increase shadowbolt damage and ISB was tracked on a per warlock basis you've eliminated the bonuses inherent to a raid without significantly reducing overall warlock damage.  This is not the solution that was chosen.  Instead, it was decided to reduce warlock damage across the board rather than correct the specific raid based condition.

Suffice to say, Blizz has made it known that this is the way they're handling this stuff.  Paladins take heed:  if they're consistent on this, your Blessing of Salvation is history.
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No, you're missing my point. Mages using similar synergies to those of Warlocks without the benefit of negative resistance are going to do a similar amount, probably more, to a Warlock with synergies and not using CoS/CoE. The problem isn't in the synergies, it's in how negative resistance and positive resistance works.

The way resistance works is as follows. When you are hit by an attack to which you have resistance (either negative or positive), the game then weights whether you get no reduction, 1/4 reduction, 1/2 reduction, 3/4 reduction, or full reduction (conversely, no bonus, 1.25 bonus, 1.5 bonus, 1.75 bonus, 2 bonus and rarely, 3 bonus for damage increase). The server then rolls and sees which of the weight ranges you fall into based on your resistance. This is why someone with little to no resistance can completely resist the full effect of a fireball or similar spell even though the spell did hit (not the inherent 5% miss) and why someone with a high resistance may only reduce damage by 25% of total. The problem is that resistance is a crap shoot on what happens and those unusual crits Warlocks get are due to these crap shoots.

When you throw in spells that reduce resistance, like Curse of Shadows and Curse of Elements, suddenly mobs can go from having a slight positive resistance to a -50 or less resistance. Then the server weights the damage bonus and then you get an unusual roll and suddenly your damage is way up there. Case in point, I have seen where my synergies gave me about +300 damage, I have around +270 shadow damage due to items, yet have had crits over upward of 2.8k, my base shadowbolt did around 700 damage due to slight lose of 85.7%, then up to 1000 for the synergies and then Ruin would pop it up to 2000, yet I cleared an additional 800 to 900 damage...which came from the crazy resistance system (I have also seen Dem/Aff speced 'Locks without the synergies score over 2k+ crits while wearing similar +damage gear and their crits should have been around the 1.4k to 1.5k mark, so it's definitely not the synergies that is causing this huge boost, it's the way resistance is handled).

Resistance is what is borked, not the synergies and Warlocks have been pointing this out to other players on the Blizzard forums for months (myself included) yet Blizzard pays no attention. It's funny, the players know how the resistance system works better than the Devs do, otherwise the Devs would have moved to deal with this in the proper way, against the resistance system, instead of the talents in question.

[Skandranon]

If Blizzard truly believes what they're saying on the forums, to wit: that in raids Warlocks are using combinations that are creating excessively high damage... my point is that changing Ruin does not fix this problem.  It nerfs Warlock damage across the board.  If Blizz is stating that synergies are excessive, nerf the synergies.  If shadow weaving didn't increase shadowbolt damage and ISB was tracked on a per warlock basis you've eliminated the bonuses inherent to a raid without significantly reducing overall warlock damage.  This is not the solution that was chosen.  Instead, it was decided to reduce warlock damage across the board rather than correct the specific raid based condition.
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Now that I've thought about it, I agree. I never thought the Ruin nerf was the right solution, but now I'm fairly certain that it's the wrong one. Warlocks are doing excessive damage in raids, and something needs to be fixed about that, but changing Ruin isn't going to do much other than reduce lower-level Warlock DPS.

Just as a note as to how much damage warlocks can do: I witnessed an impromptu "test" one day on Sulfuron. The whole raid DPSed the marked priests and a warlock, a tank, and a healer went off with another flamewaker priest to a corner and let the warlock do the DPS. The warlock just about killed his flamewaker in the same amount of time it took four rogues, six mages and three hunters to kill three. Yes, the warlock was well-geared, but not better geared than at least two of the mages and two of the rogues. Nonetheless, he managed at least a third of the DPS of thirteen other people.

[Warlock]

All the caster classes benefit from -resists in raids, so I don't think that is the core reason why properly equipped warlocks do such high damage. There are more buffs available to shadow than to other types, which isn't a problem with base value spells that are balanced around the available buffs but shows up as +damage gear accumulates. Warlocks gain significantly more than mages from this type of gear and I think this is the source of the issue.

For each +35 arcane damage, a Mage gets +35 damage to each five second cast of arcane missiles which is just 7 dps. That can benefit from a curse for about 20% more on average, so 8.4 dps.

For each +35 frost damage, a Mage gets +30 damage to each frost bolt - +12 dps. A few talents can boost this a bit but not significantly - raid targets don't freeze.

For each +35 Shadow damage, Warlock gets +30 damage to each shadow bolt - on the surface the same as the Mage gets from frost, but unlike the Mage this may also benefit by 20% from a prior ISB proc and 20% from Shadow weaving as well as Curse of Shadows. Oh, and possibly a further 10% from Shadow Mastery.

ISB and to a lesser extent Shadow Weaving only really come into their own in raids. If I was the one adjusting the warlock I'd look at ISB and try to make it less raid friendly while trying to keep it at least as useful in 5 man and solo play.

Another area I'd look at is statistic benefits - warlock equipment selection doesn't have the tradeoffs that a mage needs to make. A warlock with nothing but +damage gear can keep casting as fast as he can liftap; a mage will run dry well before a boss goes down.

Finally I'd look at the buffs from spammed spells. Spamming several mage spells is somewhat discouraged - for instance the fireball dot goes to waste if cast again too soon. Shadow bolt is the reverse - using Shadowbolt discourages the use of other shadow spells since Shadowbolt gains the most from the debuff it leaves.

[Lissa]

All the caster classes benefit from -resists in raids, so I don't think that is the core reason why properly equipped warlocks do such high damage. There are more buffs available to shadow than to other types, which isn't a problem with base value spells that are balanced around the available buffs but shows up as +damage gear accumulates. Warlocks gain significantly more than mages from this type of gear and I think this is the source of the issue.

For each +35 arcane damage, a Mage gets +35 damage to each five second cast of arcane missiles which is just 7 dps. That can benefit from a curse for about 20% more on average, so 8.4 dps.

For each +35 frost damage, a Mage gets +30 damage to each frost bolt - +12 dps. A few talents can boost this a bit but not significantly - raid targets don't freeze.

For each +35 Shadow damage, Warlock gets +30 damage to each shadow bolt - on the surface the same as the Mage gets from frost, but unlike the Mage this may also benefit by 20% from a prior ISB proc and 20% from Shadow weaving as well as Curse of Shadows. Oh, and possibly a further 10% from Shadow Mastery.

ISB and to a lesser extent Shadow Weaving only really come into their own in raids. If I was the one adjusting the warlock I'd look at ISB and try to make it less raid friendly while trying to keep it at least as useful in 5 man and solo play.

Another area I'd look at is statistic benefits - warlock equipment selection doesn't have the tradeoffs that a mage needs to make. A warlock with nothing but +damage gear can keep casting as fast as he can liftap; a mage will run dry well before a boss goes down.

Finally I'd look at the buffs from spammed spells. Spamming several mage spells is somewhat discouraged - for instance the fireball dot goes to waste if cast again too soon. Shadow bolt is the reverse - using Shadowbolt discourages the use of other shadow spells since Shadowbolt gains the most from the debuff it leaves.
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But the problem is, Warlocks can still obtain 1.1k to 1.2k non-critical SBs with about +250 damage and only the benefits of Shadow Mastery (no ISB debuff, no shadowweaving debuff). I bet if I paid more attention at times, I might even see higher non-critical SBs in the 1.4k to 1.5k range as well.

So if Warlocks can still achieve 1k+ damage on non-critical SBs without the benefits of an ISB debuff and Shadowweaving debuff and only the benefit of moderate +damage gear and shadow mastery, we can firmly point the finger at negative resistance as the culprit.

As I've been harping throughout this thread, the true cause of Warlock high damage has nothing to do with the synergies. +Damage does play a definite role, but, the major component is negative resistance and how Blizzard handles how negative resistance boosts damage.

If another caster was given access to negative resistance much the way Warlocks are, you would see the same kind of behavior that Warlocks see on a regular basis.