Overall I think it looks pretty good. Bit of a bummer about the Drain Soul changes, during the beta I was getting maybe 1 extra shard per full channel +1 shard for kill. I don’t know what “Reduced significantly” means, I would prefer hard data but I’ll see how it feels later.
Improved Drain’s mana changes should be good for pvp against mana classes
Wrack looks insane. Can’t wait to try it. Maybe I’m overhyping it.
Pet health coefficient is also a bummer, but I guess demonology needs something. Any demonologists out there care to comment?
Is it just me or is Affliction looking cracked?
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Unless there’s something they’re not telling us, leveling a warlock to 60 is going to be painfully slow. These changes don’t do anything except possibly take triple-pulling off the table due to the pet losing even more durability. Affliction is very much lacking in damage potential, but they continue to increase mob HP. It’s very concerning, to be perfectly honest. At best, there’s going to be some dumb hybrid Affliction/Demonology build that everyone is forced into for drain proficiency and Brand.
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idk, I remain optimistic. Crit procs on dots felt like they existed. 1-30 was buttery smooth even at a relaxed double pull, damage meters looked nice in dung. Maybe I’ll actually have to use the heal pet ability (I forget the name cause it never went on the bar) Drain mana is going to be a threat to mana classes in pvp. I, personally, like the dot and drain playstyle, wholly unique to aff lock.
I guess we’ll see on launch day. Or, more realistically, when Raids unlock.
This 100% I might honestly just level an alt first thinking about it, why would I want to struggle playing a warlock to 60 when it would get buffed eventually a week or 2 after I finish leveling. I guess warlocks will continue to be the least played class.
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I still think there’s some mechanical conflicts with affliction. Spell stone haste is still a problem. I’m still worried about nightfall procs while casting wrack. Our dot damage will be very low. It’s likely that BoA and Imm for destro will be just as powerful and their filler looks to still deal roughly 30% higher dps than wrack. We’ll have to see. It will likely need another pass before raiding gets fully underway.
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Crits on dots did not feel good at all to me honestly, even with pandemic and your base 5% chance to crit, this translates to a straight 5% increased damage overall to the dot. That’s worse than a single talent node increase to agony or corruption.
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I really don’t think soul shard generation needed a nerf. It was pretty balanced for time spent farming shards IMO.
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Paladin, hunter, and even druid all sound promising for various reasons and felt much better in beta. Warlock right now just seems plagued by gimmicky mechanics and needing a high amount of resource management.
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Admittedly, I don’t have much to compare the beta experience to. haven’t played retail in years, didn’t even bother with the entire classic saga. So I am not able to compare beta’s warlock to anything but my last wow experience in 2012 or whenever it was. Honestly, I think that is a benefit.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
and after reading this forum for the last 3 days, I would have to agree.
Judging by the aggressiveness of the balancing passes, I doubt anyone has to wait long for a version of the class they want to play for a week or so until its changed again anyway…
As a demonology major.. that cut to pet health is a lot.
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That’s no joke. I did the math and going from 7.5x caster’s stam to 2x is a 73.33% reduction.
That is hefty.
If I had to assume a reason, I would hypothesize it is to combat triple pulling as Amelia mentioned in another thread. Sure wish I could be a fly on the wall in the balance meetings.
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My other thought is, as frustrating as it is, they want to force group dependency as well. You’re not going to want to even consider touching something like the Yowler quests or the Blackrock Orcs areas in Redridge without a group.
Increasing it to a flat 5 or something would still be a reduction but at least not a life threatening one.
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I remember Affliction being mad Wrack wasn’t consequential enough and made them want to spam sbolts. I hope this works for them.
Well it’s good to see some people happy with the changes they made. Idc much for numbers, all that can be tweaked, for me gameplay and class rp is way more important
Tbh I was mostly looking forward to play destro lock but since that spec hasn’t gotten a proper pass it’s looking very dead.
The capstone being incinerate, an already done filler spell that exists in every iteration of wow is very uninspired. Other than conflagrate and shadowburn not consuming their respective required resource, the spec isn’t doing anything it hasn’t done before.
There are spells in the game they could play around with and change to give the spec more flavor. For example they could change hellfire into a shadowfury like spell, not stuning but just flat onetime damage, and give it some triggers through talents. Remove incinerate and maybe give them some fel laser type of ability. Idk do something different that’s not spam incinerate for the 100th time they’ve done before.
destro is looking super uninspired. I hope they make some big changes to that spec sometime soon. Make it feel like the chaotic fel/fire slinging caster it’s meant to be.
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5/11/35 might be okay now that shadow and flame damage has been doubled to 4/8/12/16/20.
Still probably falls behind deep demo builds though.
Incinerate is just a bad capstone and I still worry about fire immunities
I really hope Blizzard does (or already did, and is waiting to surprise us…but I fear thats copium) something with Inferno and Ritual of Doom.
Those spells were barely useful in Classic, despite the reagent cost and 1hr CD. If they’re the same in Forever, they’ll be completely useless.
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These devs are really working hard to kill the hype of playing.
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I kinda agree that pet health was a bit too high (though i stopped playin beta relatively early), but isnt a reduction from 7.5 to 2 a bit too extreme?
Did the devs test this number, especially at max level?
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These choices are completely insane; leveling a Warlock is going to be even slower now. The nerf to shard farming is entirely uncalled for and stupid—it’s going to be a disaster during boss encounters in raids for certain specs. The nerf to demon health is absolutely crazy and excessive. In short, it’s the usual Blizzard nonsense: the best, highest-performing, and most-played class (a.k.a. Hunter) gets a BUFF…
…while a less-played class—one that already has a cumbersome resource system to manage—gets a NERF
12 Likes