It sounds fine on paper to nerf all traits by 50%, we get 2 times more of the important traits and all. But for some specs, 1 trait is the core of the spec in PvP. Like for my main spec, affliction. The only kill window affliction has, is during 50 stacks of inevitable demise trait, that gives drainlife 99% of its’ damage.
Now that you nerfed all traits by 50%, affliction no longer has any kill potential, and rot dmg isn’t viable in PvP. No one will die to just dots.
This nerf takes a good 50% away from afflicion lock burst, while it affects other classes way less. And warlocks were the 3rd least played class in 2k+ 3v3, and the least played class above 2k in 2v2s.
Destruction also takes a hard hit, since they really relied on chaos bolt damage increases, or the haste. But it’s less terrible for destro, if you can build the perfect gear loadout with only chaosbolt dmg and a couple of haste traits.
I’d suggest some rather quick hotfixes for affliction PvP to balance out the loss of their main burst tool.
Also thanks for leaving it out of the PTR and patchnotes, so I literally noticed the huge nerf and the need to reroll an alt, when we tried to cap 2s and just couldn’t score a kill with full burst CDs on a cross CCd team.
You will not be competitive while your gameplay core design around some mandatory azerite/normal/PvP talents, or around some gameplay trick.
Warlocks personaly and casters (excluding mages) need a serious rework. And diffirent people who design them, current dev team are can’t provide us with good gameplay design for secodn Xpac in the row.
Look at all warlocks. All warlocks share similar gameplay mechanic - spend your time to ramp up your damage, you don’t have good initial burst capabilities - maybe destro is in the slightly better spot, but it doesn’t change a thing for us in general.
Balance exist only in competition between melee classes and mages, rest of us don’t fit in this fun category.
I was hoping that was just a temporary band-aid fix they improvised for the old Inevitable Demise but with the 8.1 trait revamp i expected this hidden penalty to be removed.
I’m not sure if they just forgot about it or they really have no idea on how to balance this game.
You are wrong on one point though, azerite nerf did not nerf some classes, instead, some classes got buffed because their azerite traits were nerfed up to 90% in pvp and are now only 50%.
I feel exactly same… aff doesn’t have any chance in arenas after this trait nerf… even with that trait aff was clunky because in 2k+ arena they wont allow you to cast 50 stacks ID drain life…
I just don’t understand why devs don’t fix weak classes… especially then its so obvious it should be done immediately…
