more nerfs?

[vaeevictiss 17]

• Demon Skin and Demonic Circle have swapped talent locations. <--- This sucks bad as burning rush and dark pact are both very useful. Didnt Ion just say we got to be "tanky" and mages got to be mobile? 
• Devour Magic has returned for Felhunters.
• Unstable Affliction now overlaps when cast multiple times, rather than “rolling” any remaining damage into the new cast. This does not change the total damage dealt by multiple casts, but makes it easier for players to see the strength of an Unstable Affliction on a given target.
• Compounding Horror trait redesigned: its buff causes your next Unstable Affliction to deal (32% Spell Power) Shadow damage instantly, stacking up to 5 times.
• (Affliction) Soul Effigy is now immune to AOE damage.

 

• (Demonology) Demonic Empowerment now increases health by 20% (was 50%).
• (Demonology) Thal’kiel’s consumption deals damage equal to 8% of pet health (from 6%).  Do these two work out to be a nerf? looks like it.

Edited September 15, 2016 by vaeevictiss

[Genu 0]

Demon Skin and Demonic Circle swapping talent locations is actually a buff to mobility. Now you can gain 2 movemement abilities, which addresses the problem of not being mobile enough. The Demon Skin trait wasn't even only useful for raiding as you need the heal to maintain Life Tap anyway and you can't afford to get hit by anything anyway. Demonic Circle is additional Mobility and helps through many Bossfights while in PVP porting away from your opponents is a much stronger defensive Talent.

The reason Warlock is tanky was not Demon Skin, but the huge buff on drain life which gets supported by pvp talents and artifact traits. We still have Soul leech.

Compounding Horror is actually a huge rework, as you need to dump it as soon as it procs - this affects playstyle and favors the contagion playstyle where you would try to maintain Unstable Afflication rather than waiting on Shards and Compounding it on Trinket Procs (if Compounding Horror is consumed on UA cast, which is the behavior i would expect).

 

If i am not mistaken, Demonology should be a buff: If your Demons life is 1, with Empowerment it was 1.5, draining 0.06 means 1.5*0.06 = 0.09 of Demons max life in damage. The new one would be 1.2*0.08 = 0.096 damage. That should be a minor increase. In addition the baseline is raised if you should ever manage to use Consumption without Empowerement on all Demons, which is actually nice for bad players, too.

 

The only Nerf i currently see is Soul Effigy not being affected by AOE damage anymore - this means no Meelee Warlock to doubledip from GrimSac Procs for Singletarget, which i guess was not inteneded anyway. Since SimC didn't make use of the double dip, the reworked Compounding Horror could be a buff.

[vaeevictiss 17]

yea i wasnt sure about the demo one, just looked like a big nerf and a small buff but didnt do the math. The talent swap i still dont like because i find burning rush to be far more useful in more situations as its a good "oh shit i need to move now" button that doesnt require any prior setup.