5.4 Changes and Notes as of 7/10

[Alphric 7]

Now if I could get green fire coming out of my Mekingeer's chopper, then we'd be in business...or if affliction had some sort of green(id actually prefer a malefic grasp colored) aura or something. Something. Affliction needs something. Just for fun.

[Zagam 1,982]

Affliction's green should come from the aura effect of DoTs being on something. UA creates a big plushy purple thingamjig. Could be perfect if made green. Green MG would be sick.

[Omaric 246]

Affliction's green should come from the aura effect of DoTs being on something. UA creates a big plushy purple thingamjig. Could be perfect if made green. Green MG would be sick.

That reminds me of a debate our raid had during Primordius. I play Affliction on that fight as I'm focused almost solely on the adds. One of our members was adament that certain oozes will explode into purple pools if they have purple effects coming out of them beforehand. So I placed UA on a couple oozes and was like, "you mean this purple effect?" He said that wasn't it. So I spent the entire attempt running around to all the oozes examining them for any purple effects coming out of them. Nothing. It was most funny because he raged and said he's been trying to tell us all along, and I believed him at that point and was like, "This is the first I've heard of it, something important like this you should probably try to be a bit louder about."

So basically, my story sucks and there's no way to tell what color an ooze is going to explode into. :D

[Alphric 7]

My vote is for some combination of dots having a green thing on the enemy, green mg or ds, or a green, more transparent shadow aura, since aff is pretty much just shadow spells.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Alphric

[Twinkielock 15]

Just like the annoying imp said... I want blue fire!

[Alphric 7]

Just like the annoying imp said... I want blue fire!

I do find the fire from the protodrake boss in ulduar to be quite sexy.

[Alphric 7]

I also read that they are increasing the proc rate of the meta gem, but that it will no longer have increased proc from haste.

[Zagam 1,982]

That's for tanks only. Ours is remaining unchanged.

[Kaboozey 16]

The never-ending adjustments of Affliction:

• Affliction
  • Drain Soul no longer energizes Soul Shards from the pets and guardians of players, and now deals 40% less damage. If other periodic Affliction damage effects are triggered by Drain Soul, they now deal 60% of their normal damage (down from 100%).
  • Haunt now deals 50% more damage, and increases damage done by all of the Warlock's damage-over-time other spells against the target by 45%.
• Talents
  • Grimoire of Sacrifice no longer affects Drain Life.

Overall nerf to Drain Soul, but a buff to Haunt and all DoT damage through Haunt. People are going to have to really manage their shards to maximize damage, manually re-casting rather than SB:SS more than ever.

Side-thought: Execute phase possibly changes to prioritize shot-gunning multiple Haunts now. Zagam can math-turbate that one.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Kaboozey

[Juloroh 0]

I'm not personnally fond of green fire, green aura or anything related to this green thing, the only spec i could play with green fire is Destruction....For me Demonology and Affliction are shadow based spec; most of their spell is from the shadow school, and the shadow school's color is purple, and that's why i'm keeping my Meta purple...

Only things that can be tainted green is fire(for me), which fits perfectly Destruction since they already had Chaos Bolt, but for the others spec, just because of my statement, i prefer to keep my traditionnal purple shadowy feel.

[Zagam 1,982]

Drain Soul did such a low portion of damage, that difference won't be noticable. They already announced that DPS decrease when they adjusted MG/DS and the DoT effects from all of that jazz. They're just reprinting it so they can copy/paste into the official patch notes. It's easier to just see all the Drain Soul changes in one place. The only nerf here is a PvP nerf where I would use Drain Soul to replace all of my shards off of a Mage's Frost Elemental or Hunter's pet. No real nerf here, just a re-wording. Remember, Malefic Grasp now does 50% less and its effects are reduced to 30%, down from 60%. Drain Soul is just following suit here with the change to cheesing shards.

Haunt's change, again, is a net-effect of near 0. They're just modifying the damage portion of Affliction into more DoTs. Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction are still over 60% of our damage portion and that got buffed. Haunt's additional 5% increase (was 45%) is to offset the damage loss where we'd have to clip Haunt to make the next Haunt hit 45% harder. What they did here was do us a favor. Now we can completely use Haunt's duration rather than trying to clip it to make the following Haunt hit harder. This was a favor, and a simplification in the rotation.

The Drain Life change was made because the talent change, glyph change, and Grim of Sac change meant you could recover almost 75% of your life in 3 seconds. I can't see too many PvP non-Warlocks thrilled about that.

Drain Soul will still be the execute choice of spell, but you are on to what I considered a DPS gain with the Haunt damage adjustment. I think if you had 3 Soul Shards, you'd fire out a SB:SS then use Haunt twice, then go back to DS. You won't want to overlap shards because Haunt will hit like a truck.

[Kaboozey 16]

I didn't realize this was just them putting the crap down on paper, but rather, was further adjustments.

To be honest, I was just pumped to come up with and use the term "math-turbate".

Edited July 30, 2013 by Kaboozey

[juribe 1]

http://us.battle.net...ic/9573547577#1

Bad news for the Demo opener.

Edited July 31, 2013 by juribe

[Omaric 246]

We're not changing the actual RPPM proc rates at all, just how much time is "banked" before the pull. The underlying math that determines what the actual chances are isn't changing.

So, here's a couple hypothetical examples using very rough napkin math. I don't remember RPPMs for actual trinkets off the top of my head (and they're not particularly necessary for illustration purposes):

Trinket A has an RPPM that allows it to reach a 100% proc chance if it hasn't fired after 60 seconds. This trinket will have a guaranteed proc on the pull.

Trinket B has an RPPM that allows it to reach a 100% proc chance if it hasn't fired after 100 seconds. It will not be guaranteed to proc immediately, but will proc within the first 10 seconds.

Trinket C has an RPPM that allows it to reach a 100% proc chance after 2 minutes. It will not be guaranteed to proc immediately (regardless of how much time you've spent out of combat), but will proc within the first 30 seconds.

Make sense?

And more:

Aside from the fact that most groups wouldn't be ready for another pull within 90 seconds anyway, waiting has no effect whatsoever. As soon as a raid encounter is pulled, the time since last proc for all RPPM mechanics in the raid will be set to exactly 90 seconds. Doesn't matter if it's been 10 seconds or 10 minutes since the last pull.

So it seems like we don't need to worry about getting rezzed every encounter, as no matter what you do, once the fight starts the CD is reset to a static position.

[Skeletor 0]

Does this mean that Affliction will be the best spec in 5.4?

I want to give my raid the most dps possible, but I am not looking forward to playing Aff again, it is soooooooo boring and simple compared to Demo.

If it is the best spec by a substantial margin, I will play it, I'll just complain about it during raids (and on forums too apparently).

Well at least with all the changes it will be mildly interesting for a raid or two.

[Zagam 1,982]

There can't be any analysis on 'what spec is best for 5.4' because they're not done with the PTR.  Can you honestly say there is a best spec this patch?  No.  Things are variable and there is never a 'golden rule/spec' for Warlocks.  They haven't even really begun to crunch balancing numbers yet.  I anticipated Hunter buffs (coming), Fire Mage and Demo Warlock nerfs, and most of everything else to stay pretty stable. 

 

There is no playstyle change to Affliction.  You'll do it exactly the same.  The only difference is you're going to have to learn to plant and cast like a glass cannon again because KJC won't be the attractive selection.

[Skeletor 0]

Yes, I guess I over simplified/exaggerated my statement.

I agree that we can not actually determine which spec will be best in 5.4 at this stage and that there is no best spec currently in regards to one being the clear winner.

But currently at ~515-520+ iLv Aff and Demo are both better then Dest on most fights. Since Destruction started to fall behind due to scaling, unless they change that the dps gap will grow.

And the main reason Demo and Aff are so close to each other right now is in a large part due to Unerring Vision of Lei Shen. So if the trinket becomes less useful then the gap between them will grow as well.

Yes, Blizz could totally make changes that will completely change the order of the three specs in regards to dps ranking.

But with the limited info we currently have I just got a little sad inside thinking about going back to: dot, haunt, drain, repeat (over simplified priority list).

OK the play style of Aff has not changed since a talent choice isn't a play style. Its just that I have not played Aff since 5.1 and training my self to use Fel Flame and the new Soul Swap will only take a couple runs.

So I guess I should of initially said: "I hope Blizz makes some significant damage changes in the remaining time on the PTR because I do not want to have to stop playing Demo for more dps"

The last thing I would want to do is incorrectly contradict the people or site that taught me how to be the best Warlock I could be.

[Alphric 7]

If anything they're not trying to make you stop playing the ever sexy and voluptuous demo, but balance them out a little. Their dps for single target is pretty close, and with the buff to afflictions dots and the removal of the +spell power to pop seeds, it looks like they're trying to close the gap in aoe a bit. Either spec is fine, either spec will be fine in 5.4 (even if they nerf demo) the only thing that will probably really change is for destro to get more or less comparable.

[Cruzan 71]

I would expect to see more changes in the future for Destro, but there has been no talk of it lately that I've seen, so maybe theyre comfortable with that spec for now with only number changes to come before the patch goes live? If only they didn't have to tune around PvP balance I'm sure they could do a lot more with destro...

[Alphric 7]

Destro gets amazingly cool amount of green spells the other two specs get dps. Fair trade? Destro's good enough up to a certain point to say yes, I think.

[Cieron 0]

All the specs are relatively close to each other so I'm a big proponent of playing what you like. I'm an affliction lock and play it like a concert pianist. I've tried the other 2 and they are too clunky for my tastes and I play them like an organ grinder.

[Alphric 7]

They're all fun indeed! It would be interesting to be able to play like kanrethad, with meta, chaos bolt, seed of corruption etc. lol.

[Errinkel 9]

I want Sacrificial Pact's red bubble to be green as well; that always looks off now when I use it.

[Khaos 5]

Glyph of Everlasting Affliction has been replaced by Glyph of Eternal Resolve.
Glyph of Eternal Resolve: Changes Unending Resolve into a passive ability that provides a constant 10% reduction to damage taken.

 

 

Shit. <_< WTB 549 UVLS.

[Zagam 1,982]

Don't you mean "WTS 549 UVLS?"  After 5.4, this trinket won't be used by anyone.