Power Infusion Rant

Yea, I have used it multiple times to bring back a dps when a boss is low enough to die and it was cool. Didn’t work yesterday when I think the group I was in was waiting to Rez me instead so the person I brezzed didn’t take theirs. It works much better when you are in discord or are playing with people you know and get what is going down.

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Someone does that and I whip out the macro that randomly casts power infusion. Maybe I’ll hit them. Maybe it’ll go on the hunters pet. Maybe the shamans totem. I don’t even know.

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Getting PI is a real treat. Many bonuses in this game only really show up in the dmg meter, but PI can really make the gameplay of your class feel more fun in the moment.

If anything, the game needs more things like PI.

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There could be many ways to try to balance PI if Blizzard cared about that but no compromise was accepted.

I think going back to what it used to be would be better.

-Make it disc priest only (it’s just annoying for a shadow to use anyway and to try to sync your cds with someone else). Arguably could think of keeping it for holy too.

-make it not stack with lust (lot of reasons why the swings with PI are so high are because it stacks with lust and make classes that scale infinitely with haste scale even more)

-make it caster only (reducing the spread of PI so more of the same classes get it, also I think it makes it more flavorful to be specific like windfury totem)

Believe it or not, yes. Some classes, and in a lot of cases, warlock, greatly benefitted from PI. And their DPS numbers, especially in raids, were immensely inflated due to receiving PI buffs through the fight. Demonology, specifically.

Classes that scale exponentially with haste, when receiving PI two or 3 times in a fight, end up gaining so much benefit from it, that they out-dps all other classes and specs by a large margin. And then they appear, when looking at just the straight DPS numbers, to be overperforming.

PI is a Cool buff, but I think it needs to leave its own lust like forbearance debuff on the player it is cast on, or something. Because PI funneling to one class/spec makes balance impossible. And when they get nerfed, they get hit very hard. Because then they need PI funneling to be competitive.

No one is debating that Warlocks benefitted greatly from PI or that a player with PI won’t do a lot more damage than one without. That’s not the same as saying that Blizzard balances Warlocks around PI though. I have not seen any evidence that that’s the case. You haven’t made the connection yet just by showing that Warlocks benefit from PI. Players have better performance while under an external buff meant to boost their performance. Shocking.

Warlocks are far from the only class to scale well with haste nor are they the only class people use PI on. They’re hardly bad without PI and looking at their current overperformance on the PTR with or without PI, it’s hard to say that PI is to blame for any tuning.

Are the other classes amongst those statistics not getting PI?

If everyone is getting PI and lock is on top, then wouldn’t a nerf to lock be fair?

I would be alright with it leaving a debuff that prevents the person from getting it again for a bit. Have the debuff reset like the lust debuff. 2m cooldown with a 40 second debuff is fair I think. Double the duration of the buff itself.

It is not a community problem that a couple of specs do 30k+ more dps overall with it vs without it, and theyre tuning around the top end. A demo lock not getting PI is not top percentiles, period.

That is an absolutely outrageous claim that I won’t let you get away with without some kind of proof.

PI the the reason Demo has received nerfs due to how well it scales with haste, and PI giga parses on logs fueling player outrage resulting in nerfs to a spec due to another classes abilities

Can you point to specific patch notes that show these nerfs and state they are due to PI?

Because Blizzard turned it into one.

There are no patch not stating that it is the direct result of PI. The reason why, is that the evidence presented by most of the Warlock Community highlights it. The Warlock Discord. Class content creators such as Kalamazi. Raiders from both Limit and Echo, as well as other top teams and guilds.

They have all shown and highlighted many examples, where the Warlock, when not propped up by PI Warlocks perform middle to upper middle pack. But when propped up by PI, they are doing 20% more DPS than the next highest class.

You have seen the difficulty they have tuning Unholy. This season, it was puzzle box plus PI and Unholy was top single target. And by a good margin. And now going into 10.1 with the removal of puzzle box, they had to nerf the trinket and keep buffing the spec to compensate. And still Unholy needs tuning. If Puzzle Box was not nerfed, it would have been BIS for Unholy, through 10.1. Even being 25+i lower.

This type of problem is what has happened to Lock and PI. With PI they overperform. Without PI they are average to above average. So in a decent spot. Instead of nerfing PI, they nerf the lock. Because the scaling with PI on a Warlock, pushed them very much into over-performing. Its a no win scenario.

It comes down to class design and balancing. If you have a class that has Haste/Mastery as their best stats. And exponential growth in performance with those stats. And you tune that class to be in line with other DPS specs. Then you have one external source, that gives them an extremely large mastery buff, and another external source that gives them extremely high haste. You then get this exponential scaling that gets out of control.

Now nerfing those external sources, impacts all of the other classes and specs in a negative way. And the source of those external buffs, is negatively impacted. So a nerf to PI hits all specs who could receive a PI and the priest casting it negatively. And nerfing the trinket or item, that gives the mastery buff, hurts every other spec that could use it.

So they decide to nerf the class that is scaling exponentially with those external sources. Because the scaling is out of control. This only negatively affects those people, who are playing that spec, who are not getting those external buffs.

Im not saying either is correct. And there is a better solution. But historically that is why some classes that scale exponentially with the external buffs are nerfed, due to them. And then, when they dont have the external buffs, they under-perform.

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Thanks for a very well thought out post!

Are these the nerfs that the Warlock Discord Community is saying are due to PI scaling out of control? Because I absolutely don’t see any appreciable nerfs after that date and several in this thread have stated it’s an on-going thing (like the specs are being nerfed daily or at least weekly). Nobody’s giving PI to Affliction (which got nerfed) but Destro (a top PI target) isn’t even on the list below. :thinking:

Or are these the dreaded stealth-nerfs that never get disclosed but dramatically impact a class/spec? If so, bad on the devs; transparency is important to an informed player base, and an informed player base is often happier than not (maybe they don’t care).

I’d roll a priest for PI if it was a set and forget thing like Dance Partner in FFXIV.

They cant use it on themselves? Big yikes. The vanilla PI was better.

There’s a talent in the class tree that duplicates it onto yourself. As far as I know, it’s always taken.

To be honest, right now in 10.1, I may be wrong, but Demo and Destro lock are both in a good spot. The tuning they have received hasnt been detrimental. I am not sure what people are currently complaining about.

I was speaking from a historical context with Lock nerfs. Currently I think there are several more specs right now that are well worse off than Warlocks…
… Coughs in Survival Hunter.

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Alternatively, give healers more abilities like PI. I like being a supporter for my group. I miss old shaman tbh.