Why I have no faith left in blizzard.

[obleak 10]

Short and simply :

The KFC change isn't "ass fucking" warlocks. There are few fights at best that require above-average movement in ToT. And when you -do- have to move, you can do so for 15 seconds every 1.5 minutes. Not many movement mechanics require constant movement, as well. Mages and boomies have done just fine. People "losing faith in blizzard" and "ending my sub becaues this is the last straw!!! QQ" is pretty ridiculous. Just saying.

I seriously doubt a meaningful dps change. Maybe like 1% for some fights, or maybe even 2%. And if so, warlocks can't and shouldn't top the charts against equally geared members every fight. Classes are meant to have strengths and weaknesses. I know we'd want nothing more than to top the charts every single fight, but that is just unfair and boring. If you'd like to shut me up, do some PTR and link some dps results that suggest an oh-so-detrimental, class-breaking, blizzard fuck up toward locks.

I see them really just making it so affliction and demo rise ahead.. Destro is the only spec that hardcasts a butt ton. I think if they give affliction the ability to cast haunt and move demo should get shadowbolt and move. Or something.. Everyone spec should get it to balance. CB perhaps for destro.. or immolate..

I agree that it isn't breaking us though. We've gone this long before it without it. I just feel like they've given us a taste of it and now it's going to be hard to break that addiction. A lot of people favor warlocks because of that talent and now they're tearing their hearts out. Seems to be what i'm gathering. I'm not too worried.. i felt like us getting it seemed silly compared to giving it to shadow priest for MF -- -shrugs-

Edited June 15, 2013 by obleak

[Zagam 1,982]

Umm, you have it mostly covered but:

Ji-Kun: Downdraft says hi. As a full time main platform operator, I'm constantly moving to different pools to soak them up and jumping down to nests to grab extra feathers when mine wear off.

Dark Animus: With our strat we hold onto a small robot while our tanks grab them off, I basically don't need to move at all for this fight.

Iron Qon: Dodging spear fissures is highly necessary. Maintaining distance from other members with the lightning debuff, very big deal in 25 man with less overall space. Collapsing for 1st phase.

Twins: I don't know about you, but I run away from the things that make me go sleepy. If the chick comes out of the shadows and puts an ice chunk on you to knock you back it's nice, especially if you were winding up a Chaos Bolt with buffs running as Destruction. You need to move away from fire spinny chick when she comes out.

Yeah, I missed some specifics. I use my teleport on Ji'kun or Demonic Leap, so I hardly consider any 'movement' persay. As for Dark Animus, you must not be doing Heroic. I should have mentioned that. Anima Font will OWN your face if you don't move a lot. Iron Qon is short bursts of movement which really isn't going to hurt your long-range DPS. I still don't know what puts you to sleep on Twins. Sometimes I'm standing in flowers and dust/clouds and nothing happens. Sometimes I'm standing where nothing is and I go to sleep. My healers like dispelling so I just give them something to do.

One of the blue posts mentioned that they are looking at how Fel Flame interacts with DoTs. This could very well mean that the only thing that will change is that it doesn't snapshot anymore. For affliction it would be interesting if instead of snapshotting your dots, it had a MG or DS mechanic where it would cause active dots to tick for a certain percentage of their damage, and still extend by a certain amount. If they are basing Aff's playstyle around DoTs and drain mechanics then fel flame is just a weird spell to have as it stands and seeing as how rarely it is used already, something needs to change there. I'm actually surprised there isn't a Soulburn +Fel Flame interaction already. Not sure what that would be, but it is a missed opportunity I would think.

It will be interesting to see what they come out with as time goes on here. Haunt, changed to allow casting+moving, future fel flame update...more than minor changes mid xpac for affliction. Likely means changes are coming for destruction I would imagine, unless they are specifically trying to screw gahhda over . Would be interesting to see incinerate be allowed to be cast while moving with CBs be forced to be cast while remaining still.

I would like to see all ranged players have one spell they can cast while moving (preferably their filler) while making their big-time hits be hard-casted without movement. I still think this hurts Affliction. Haunt isn't spammable. Sure, it's nice to have SOMETHING to cast while moving, but I woulda preferred to stand in place for Haunt and Drain Soul and move with Malefic Grasp. Queue song lyric: you can't always get what you wanntttttt

-But destruction will be useless!

-Don't worry, you can now cast haunt while moving!

gg, I suppose I'll reroll hunter, don't want to do the legendary quest line again, but...

Traitor.

I see them really just making it so affliction and demo rise ahead.. Destro is the only spec that hardcasts a butt ton. I think if they give affliction the ability to cast haunt and move demo should get shadowbolt and move. Or something.. Everyone spec should get it to balance. CB perhaps for destro.. or immolate..

I agree that it isn't breaking us though. We've gone this long before it without it. I just feel like they've given us a taste of it and now it's going to be hard to break that addiction. A lot of people favor warlocks because of that talent and now they're tearing their hearts out. Seems to be what i'm gathering. I'm not too worried.. i felt like us getting it seemed silly compared to giving it to shadow priest for MF -- -shrugs-

Affliction hard casts more than you think. Malefic Grasp, despite being a 'drain' is a hard-cast spell. Affliction gets hurt the most, IMO, by the KJC change. Most of the complaints are in the form of "I don't like being a turret/tower" which I agree with. At the same time, I can see how some mechanics, especially in PvP, are abused by being able to move and cast.

[gahhda 95]

Affliction hard casts more than you think. Malefic Grasp, despite being a 'drain' is a hard-cast spell. Affliction gets hurt the most, IMO, by the KJC change. Most of the complaints are in the form of "I don't like being a turret/tower" which I agree with. At the same time, I can see how some mechanics, especially in PvP, are abused by being able to move and cast.

85% of destruction's damage is stand still, counting RoF which, after the nerf, puts it at 95%.

55% of afflictions damage is stand still, without counting haunt while moving which they said they're adding

Soooooooo...what?

[Cruzan 71]

Soooooooo...what?

Sooooooo....wait a couple months to see what else they change.

[Typecast 16]

I really don't see the purpose of nerfing KJC. The 30% movement speed was fine and if players struggled with it, then it should reinforce the concept that you should stop casting spells when dangers arise and require your full movement. I currently run affliction for 4 fights (horridon, tortos, jikun, and primordius), the rest I run as demo. For Horridon, I just have to minimize my movements out of area effects. For tortos, I can't be an all-star (full kick duties, bat killing, turtle slowing/killing) without tanking my dmg on bats (no more seeding while dodging). Jikun means I'll just eat caw's rather than dodge them. Primordius is a SB:Swap tabbing bonanza, only time I really stop is to channel on the boss or to burn an add quickly to get a pool down. For other fights, gateway/teleport/leap really helps dealing with any large movements so demo will be the definite choice for me post-nerf.

As far as future balance issues, I hope they aren't planning to balance around fel flame being a filler. The idea that was floated on MMO-Champion about glyphing fel flame is retarded. Fel flame and a shadow bolt revert wont happen because haunt will need another redesign/revert. Whatever change you make to balance movement for affliction you also have to make for destruction and possibly demo (as demo loses the ability to cast soul fires on the move in either form). I forsee them just making movement casting cost ember(bit)s/shards/fury for our fillers. Nobody is going to use MF on a 90s cd, AV isn't appealing at all, so we all default (again) to spec KJC and have this same conversation come 6.0.. Would not be surprised if we ended up being a gimped mage, with all the balancing required to make ice lance fel flame our filler.

[Zagam 1,982]

85% of destruction's damage is stand still, counting RoF which, after the nerf, puts it at 95%.

55% of afflictions damage is stand still, without counting haunt while moving which they said they're adding

Soooooooo...what?

For this, you wouldn't consider damage coming from stand-still spells. You'd count time spent doing stand-still spells.

As it stands, based on your Simcraft model, here are the approximate percentages:

Affliction - Spent Time

Malefic Grasp - 60%

Drain Soul - 15%

Haunt - 10%

Unstable Affliction - 4%

Without Haunt, almost 80% of your damage comes from standing still. This is troublesome.

Destruction - Time Spent

Incinerate - 40%

Chaos Bolt - 20%

Rain of Fire - 20%

Conflagrate - 7%

Immolate - 6%

Here, only 66% of time spent comes from stand-still spells (Incinerate, CB, Immolate). I still argue Affliction gets hit worse. Now, the damage component will change based on priority changes, but I still think having less MG uptime on boss fights will hurt Aff really badly.

[obleak 10]

Yeah, I missed some specifics. I use my teleport on Ji'kun or Demonic Leap, so I hardly consider any 'movement' persay. As for Dark Animus, you must not be doing Heroic. I should have mentioned that. Anima Font will OWN your face if you don't move a lot. Iron Qon is short bursts of movement which really isn't going to hurt your long-range DPS. I still don't know what puts you to sleep on Twins. Sometimes I'm standing in flowers and dust/clouds and nothing happens. Sometimes I'm standing where nothing is and I go to sleep. My healers like dispelling so I just give them something to do.

I would like to see all ranged players have one spell they can cast while moving (preferably their filler) while making their big-time hits be hard-casted without movement. I still think this hurts Affliction. Haunt isn't spammable. Sure, it's nice to have SOMETHING to cast while moving, but I woulda preferred to stand in place for Haunt and Drain Soul and move with Malefic Grasp. Queue song lyric: you can't always get what you wanntttttt

Traitor.

Affliction hard casts more than you think. Malefic Grasp, despite being a 'drain' is a hard-cast spell. Affliction gets hurt the most, IMO, by the KJC change. Most of the complaints are in the form of "I don't like being a turret/tower" which I agree with. At the same time, I can see how some mechanics, especially in PvP, are abused by being able to move and cast.

Change MG to being able to move and cast and i'll be happy with affliction as well.. Haunt isn't a large part of dps (on impact that is) and it should be a spell like MG that we get to move and cast with since we rely on that more.

Edited June 16, 2013 by obleak

[Orei 2]

Give a filler moving cast to each ranged class (all have them already besides frost/arcane/shadow), replace kjc and av with more nifty situational talents like mannoroths), and then everybody is happy. In all honesty though, now is a terrible time to be doing any of this. I thought blizzard was against drastic class changes mid expansion. That combined with rotation changers from new tier? They know it wont go over well. Given a month or so on ptr I suspect they will probably end up throwing in the towel and letting the class ride as is for the rest of the xpac. Maybe a few minor changes. Fix walls to stop casting and pvp QQ ends.

[Annoroth 5]

85% of destruction's damage is stand still, counting RoF which, after the nerf, puts it at 95%.

55% of afflictions damage is stand still, without counting haunt while moving which they said they're adding

Soooooooo...what?

For those who are confused, can you please clarify what the RoF nerf is? I recall Blizzard saying that it shouldn't be part of the single target rotation (and ember generation should be tweaked to compensate), but haven't heard much about it since then.

[gahhda 95]

For those who are confused, can you please clarify what the RoF nerf is? I recall Blizzard saying that it shouldn't be part of the single target rotation (and ember generation should be tweaked to compensate), but haven't heard much about it since then.

GC's ominous tweets have proven to be true almost all of the time. He said they want to redistribute embers out of rain of fire and back into the single target rotation (which only means more damage lost while moving) in 5.4. Doesn't mean they'll actually do it, but I've got a feeling they will.

[gahhda 95]

For this, you wouldn't consider damage coming from stand-still spells. You'd count time spent doing stand-still spells.

As it stands, based on your Simcraft model, here are the approximate percentages:

Affliction - Spent Time

Malefic Grasp - 60%

Drain Soul - 15%

Haunt - 10%

Unstable Affliction - 4%

Without Haunt, almost 80% of your damage comes from standing still. This is troublesome.

Destruction - Time Spent

Incinerate - 40%

Chaos Bolt - 20%

Rain of Fire - 20%

Conflagrate - 7%

Immolate - 6%

Here, only 66% of time spent comes from stand-still spells (Incinerate, CB, Immolate). I still argue Affliction gets hit worse. Now, the damage component will change based on priority changes, but I still think having less MG uptime on boss fights will hurt Aff really badly.

Factor in their upcoming attempt to fix RoF that will likely happen and the actual distribution changes to 87.82% of damage being tied to stand still, with the only conflag and shadowburn actually being used while moving, and the 2.3% from shadowburn is only sub execute, meaning for 80% of the fight you have 90% of your damage tied to being entirely still.

Plus, even with RoF, my math says 73.13% for destruction, you're presumably going off of the vastly outdated front page that doesn't even have legendary cloaks or upgrades.

Also, destruction does 85.83% of its damage, pet making up the rest.

Destruction - 85.83% of total damage done by warlock, 73.13% time spent still (87.82% post RoF nerf, 90% counting shadowburn being execute only), 52.79% OF DAMAGE FROM STANDING STILL (61.37% POST ROF NERF)

Affliction - 85.83% of total damage done by warlock, 80.33% of time spent still (counting UA time, which is can be refreshed while moving or refreshed in anticipation of moving), 34.67% OF DAMAGE FROM STANDING STILL

Regardless of afflictions time spent...they require that time less for the total amount of damage they do, period. On top of this, any fight with multiple targets opens up destruction to absolute death when, in fact, they are just as tied to the single target damage for cleave AS SINGLE TARGET, and affliction just throws dots everywhere, making the total damage per time-spent-standing-still negligible comparatively.

Right now, this nerf hurts destruction more, there isn't much debating this. If they put the RoF nerf through, it will hurt destruction A WORLD MORE than the other specs.

Side note, as long as the demo set bonus MECHANICS stay the same, I don't care because I can play that shit ALL DAY ROFL SHADOWFLAME. Cut proc rate on set bonuses in half, problem solved.

Edited June 17, 2013 by gahhda

[rjparker1 7]

Blizzard doesn't understand how to balance the game which is obviously a difficult task but all you have to do is look at forums to see that all the crying leads to huge blizz nerf bats consistently. Right now locks are the choice for QQ and the bat is headed for us. It's just a normal part of the cycle for blizz and casual players. If you watch what ghost crawler says I think that's enough to show you how little they know the game. It takes 2 things people complain a class is op and that class not complaining that triggers it.

Let's approach this from a different angle. Speed limits on the highway.

Since they can't control the other drivers, and cars are getting bigger engines, they go faster and people are MORE distracted, why don't they balance the speed limits and increase them to average out the performance of vehicles?

The answer is simple, you have to NERF the crazy people because it's to hard to mitigate ALL the changes that need to occur to control the faster vehicles..

Same with a game. They can't change 100 things to compensate, when it's easier to simply change 1. It may seem like a nerf (and that's ALL this is to YOU) but they do take into consideration ALL those mechanics in game before they make any changes.

There is a smaller consideration and also a bit more consideration on your part to understand that

A) blizzard isn't a new company. It's almost 40 years old! I THINK they know what THEY are doing.

the employees at blizzard eat their own dog food.. they *DO* play, and contrary to popular belief they aren't doing this to YOU it affects everyone...

C) remember that it's a GAME, it is difficult to make this perfect for everyone, impossible in fact. Therefore remind yourself that this GAME will change, maybe you cannot SEE all the things that this affects.

D) OTHER players, probably most more experienced and probably a LOT more involved then you can possible imagine found the problem, reported it to Blizzard and the action is NOW taking place.

So before you go off on a tangeant and think they are simply doing things on a whim, just TRY to remember the do play this game, they know MORE than they are telling YOU and 8 million people around the world play it EVERY SINGLE DAY!

You find a small discrepancy, scream injustice, and you have no idea what their plans or reasons are, you see it as a "nerf" when in fact it *IS* a balance fix.... Take off your single vision glasses, go outside, and LOOK at that big world outside your door.. this isn't JUST about YOU.

It's a GAME, you will live.. breathe, have fun.. stop being so PETTY!

Edited June 17, 2013 by rjparker1

[Omaric 246]

I see what YOU are doing with all the WORDS to add emphasis on certain THINGS, but at some POINT it starts to get a LITTLE annoying and comes OFF as condeSCENDING.

While I do have a good amount of faith in Blizzard, they make mistakes. They put themselves in this situation. They can't claim that warlocks were never intended to permanently cast and move after they buff it to make it a no brainer talent.

[rjparker1 7]

I see what YOU are doing with all the WORDS to add emphasis on certain THINGS, but at some POINT it starts to get a LITTLE annoying and comes OFF as condeSCENDING.

While I do have a good amount of faith in Blizzard, they make mistakes. They put themselves in this situation. They can't claim that warlocks were never intended to permanently cast and move after they buff it to make it a no brainer talent.

Those emphasis are habits from years past where people glanced over the posts and never took the time to actually read what I wrote, so I had to go back time and time again.. and finally just made people LOOK by making them standout on the page..

I guess this site is professional, so I don't have to do that.. my apologies...

[Soulzar 42]

I see what YOU are doing with all the WORDS to add emphasis on certain THINGS, but at some POINT it starts to get a LITTLE annoying and comes OFF as condeSCENDING.

While I do have a good amount of faith in Blizzard, they make mistakes. They put themselves in this situation. They can't claim that warlocks were never intended to permanently cast and move after they buff it to make it a no brainer talent.

OMG, my Ex does that upper case crap all the time and it drives me up the wall!

I agree, I do not understand why Blizz is being all hardcore "Its going, was not intended" on a spell that they specifically bufffed to its current state.

[Omaric 246]

Those emphasis are habits from years past where people glanced over the posts and never took the time to actually read what I wrote, so I had to go back time and time again.. and finally just made people LOOK by making them standout on the page..

I guess this site is professional, so I don't have to do that.. my apologies...

Lol sorry I was just trying to be a turd. You're fine! :)

[Gravyspasm 70]

i just read things like that as if they were air quotes

[Cruzan 71]

Let's approach this from a different angle. Speed limits on the highway.

Since they can't control the other drivers, and cars are getting bigger engines, they go faster and people are MORE distracted, why don't they balance the speed limits and increase them to average out the performance of vehicles?

The answer is simple, you have to NERF the crazy people because it's to hard to mitigate ALL the changes that need to occur to control the faster vehicles..

Same with a game. They can't change 100 things to compensate, when it's easier to simply change 1. It may seem like a nerf (and that's ALL this is to YOU) but they do take into consideration ALL those mechanics in game before they make any changes.

Eek. I'm not a fan of using analogies. They rarely hit the mark. I'll play along though because it's fun . I'm not sure the speed limit thing is working though. Speed limits do nothing to bring faster cars in line.

What people are complaining about with KJC would be the equivalent to...

Having a government regulation that forced all high performance cars to have their steering wheels locked in place at all times and the only way to unlock the steering wheel is to pull the e-brake. This doesn't do anything to bring the car's straight line speed in to check, just makes the thing crash whenever there's a turn unless they're yanking on the e-brake. Drivers of these cars got along fairly well like this. Some performed very well, by drifting corners to carry speed through, while others made close to complete stops. Few people were complaining because this is the norm and never thought anything different of the regulation.

The government then modifies this regulation to say that these cars don't need to use the e-brake to unlock the steering wheel anymore, but that they just have to drive more slowly around corners. These drivers now realize how awesome life, being able to turn without stopping or drifting around corners and are pretty happy with these quality of life improvements. No major changes are made to the cars' power output though which leads to these high performance cars just flying by all the soccer moms driving their minivans on the road.

The soccer moms complain that these cars are moving too fast and are driving at speeds over the posted speed limit. The government sees this and agrees, but instead of tuning back the power of the cars, they re-implement the e-brake rule. Great fix. All these drivers have become used to driving without worrying about using their e-brakes and now go careening off the road any time there is a turn for the first month after the regulation has passed. Mass chaos and carnage ensues on the highways while drivers go flying off of the roads, colliding with other cars, and causing massive 10-25 car pileups. The soccer moms, meanwhile, are laughing maniacally as they watch the bloodbath ensue.

As time goes on drivers of the high performance cars either adjust back to the way life was, or trade in their car for a Prius.

tl;dr Soccer moms are evil and ruin everyone's fun.

[Omaric 246]

I normally read your stuff Cruzan, but I think I just threw up in my mouth. XD

[Cruzan 71]

Ya I didn't read it either. but I'm going to watch the Chris Farley video a couple more times cuz that was awesome Gravy

Edited June 17, 2013 by Cruzan

[Annoroth 5]

GC's ominous tweets have proven to be true almost all of the time. He said they want to redistribute embers out of rain of fire and back into the single target rotation (which only means more damage lost while moving) in 5.4. Doesn't mean they'll actually do it, but I've got a feeling they will.

It seems you were right on the money with that.

As per: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9282218881?page=111#2212

RoF generation is getting nerfed, and Affliction will be seeing some changes. I'm curious to see how this all plays out (and really want to continue playing Aff in PvE).

[gahhda 95]

Let's approach this from a different angle. Speed limits on the highway.

Since they can't control the other drivers, and cars are getting bigger engines, they go faster and people are MORE distracted, why don't they balance the speed limits and increase them to average out the performance of vehicles?

The answer is simple, you have to NERF the crazy people because it's to hard to mitigate ALL the changes that need to occur to control the faster vehicles..

Same with a game. They can't change 100 things to compensate, when it's easier to simply change 1. It may seem like a nerf (and that's ALL this is to YOU) but they do take into consideration ALL those mechanics in game before they make any changes.

There is a smaller consideration and also a bit more consideration on your part to understand that

A) blizzard isn't a new company. It's almost 40 years old! I THINK they know what THEY are doing.

the employees at blizzard eat their own dog food.. they *DO* play, and contrary to popular belief they aren't doing this to YOU it affects everyone...

C) remember that it's a GAME, it is difficult to make this perfect for everyone, impossible in fact. Therefore remind yourself that this GAME will change, maybe you cannot SEE all the things that this affects.

D) OTHER players, probably most more experienced and probably a LOT more involved then you can possible imagine found the problem, reported it to Blizzard and the action is NOW taking place.

So before you go off on a tangeant and think they are simply doing things on a whim, just TRY to remember the do play this game, they know MORE than they are telling YOU and 8 million people around the world play it EVERY SINGLE DAY!

You find a small discrepancy, scream injustice, and you have no idea what their plans or reasons are, you see it as a "nerf" when in fact it *IS* a balance fix.... Take off your single vision glasses, go outside, and LOOK at that big world outside your door.. this isn't JUST about YOU.

It's a GAME, you will live.. breathe, have fun.. stop being so PETTY!

Specs without baseline damage while moving:

Shadow priest (who can pull procs w/ proper talenting, shadow priests are the worst damage while moving in the game, period)

Frost mage (who can EASILY pool procs)

Arcane mage

Specs with baseline damage while moving:

Fire mage

Elemental Shaman

All 3 hunter specs

All 3 warlock specs

Balance druids (who only lose a negligible amount of dps due to the mechanisms of shooting stars and lunar shower)

Your logic only makes sense if the majority of specs would need to be converted forwards to movement based damage, where as, in reality, almost all of them are already there.

[Ilion 8]

Gotta hate the "It's a game" argument.

[Kurze 0]

So the moral of the story is if you want green fire, do it before the nerf because the already difficult fight will likely be nigh impossible without casting and moving?

I really see no reason to nerf KJC. Its going to hurt us in a lot of ways. Many situations that were made soloable by a combination of various abilities will no longer be possible, which is, I admit, just an annoyance more than anything else (though watching a DK or Pally or a Hunter solo a Warbringer and bitterly reminiscing about doing it myself will not be fun). And if they couple that with a nerf to RoF...I just don't know. Its very aggravating. I liked how KJC made Warlocks slightly more identifiable as a moving caster, rather than a demonic mage with less damage capability, and the majority of the time we are still getting topped in dps by mages and warriors and a few others so why nerf it? A good example of how well it s balanced with the movement speed debuff can be seen in the Durumu fight. Can't tell you how many times I've spam casted Incinerate during the maze to only to nearly shit myself as the beam is right on my ass and catching me because I'm slowed by so much. If anything make the other talents more appealing, specifically Vengeance -.-

As a side note, if PvP is honestly the big complaint for this, here's an idea. Make some abilities that over power PvP but are just fine for PvE activate differently in BGs. You know, when you enter a BG it triggers something in the game that changes how specific abilities work? In all honestly it really wouldn't be that difficult to implement, just requires a little bit of extra coding into identifying zones and such

Edited June 18, 2013 by Kurze

[Kaboozey 16]

Cruzan. Now I know where you derived your name from. Clearly someone fell off the wagon.