Dear Aggrend!
In your X Post from April 18. you said:
“So, feel free to post suggestions …”
So here i present you some simple yet effective and necessary suggestions for mostly Affliction Warlock, but some also in general (as you wished i will first tell what the problem is, and afterwards my suggestion to solve it)
Most of them are my own ideas, but some of them i “stole” from other players here in this forum.
Problem: Spellpower Scaling with DoT effects is too weak (a Core problem for Affli DPS and also Shadow priest and Moonkins) Solution: Reduce DoT base damage by -30%, but increase the amount of damage that is generated from spellpower by ~+100%.
Problem: Curse of Agony is not usable in Raids because of Utility Curses. This feels like a punishment and is somehow frustrating. Solution: a new Rune (for p4) Rune of Agony: When casting any Curse besides Agony on a target, this target will also be affected by your highest rank of Curse of Agony for 24 seconds.
Problem: The Leg Rune “Demonic Pact” feels like a punishment. Solution: Take a look at Heart of the Lion Aura from Hunters. Like this Hunter Rune Demonic Pact should provide 15% of spellpower for the wearer of the rune, and +10% spellpower for party members. (And also tune heart of the lion self effect down to +15% instead of +20%)
Problem: Soul Siphon Rune (Chest) is totally weak. Solution: Increase the Effects of this rune by the factor x10 so Drain Life is the new filler spell instead of shadow bolt, or completely rework this rune to make Drain soul the new filler spell (Drain Soul now ticks every second instead of 3 seconds and channeling Drain soul increases dot damage on the afflicted target by +20%).
Problem: Lake of Fire Rune (chest) is now pretty useless after the last change. it rarely happens that you channel a full 8 seconds of rain of fire and after that 8 seconds it is too late to really benefit from the effect. Solution: The effect should appear after 3 seconds of channeling and not after 8 seconds.
Problem: Taking away Soul Link Talent from Demon form users was too harsh. Solution: Return soul link for Metamorphed warlocks, but change it to be +30% increased Healthpool instead of 30% of all damage Transfered to Pet.
Problem: Shadow Cleave for Metamorph Tank is too weak. Solution: Either Remove the 6s cooldown, or make it hit 5 targets instead of 3.
Problem: Felguard pet deals less DPS than Imp. Solution: increase Felguards Attack Damage by +50%.
Problem: Master Channeler Rune: Increases Heal instead of Cast range, the heal is overtuned, but the cast range is a punishment. Solution: Remove the “+50% Bonus Healing” and replace it with “+50% bonus Cast range” for Drain life spell.
Problem (Edit: they fixed this):Invocation Rune does not include Unstable Affliction. Solution: Include Unstable Affliction into the Invocation Rune effect.
Problem: Devastation Talent does not apply for Pandemic Crit chance, it feels like a punishment. Solution: Change Devastation Talent to be straight +5% Spellcrit chance instead of “only Destruction spells”
Problem: Dark Pact (affliction final talent) is useless. Solution: make it scale 100% with Spellpower (only the awarded mana amount and not the drained amount!) and remove it from the global cooldown. And it gives the warlock a buff that increases the warlock’s bonus spellpower by +10% for 10 seconds.
Problem: Soul Shards are a bagspace punishment! Solution: Add a Skillbook that enables the possibility to stack soul shards up to 5.
And here some general improvements:
Problem: (Edit: already taken care of) Players die too fast in pvp (and slowly dying by dots also makes people cry) Solution: Reduce all damage taken from other players by -25% and damage taken from player’s dot effects by another -15%.
Problem: A Raw Gold Hyperinflation is going on. Solution: Reduce the raw Gold reward for Nightmare Quests by at least -50%. Solution 2: Introduce a new Vendor that sells exclusive, but not too impactful consumables in exchange for raw gold, maybe a battle potion that increases your crit chance by +3% for 20 seconds for 5g (burns gold away from the market as long as people consider 5g as “cheap”).
Problem: Raid difficulty is too low for some players, and yet too high for others. Solution: Make an optional enable / disable zonewide Aura in every raidzone, where you can weaken all enemys dmg and healthpool by -40%.
Raidtuning Aura enabled = Easy mode with -40% creature damage and HP.
Raidtuning Aura disabled = Hard mode for people who want to have a challenge in Raids and as reward the amount of loot will be +50%.
Problem: Faction inbalance (the old Paladin vs. Shaman dispute) Solution: Make Dwarf Shamans and Undead Paladins possible.
The god of ez tuning is among us and his name is Xicht!
All of these suggestions make sense.
Some of the values should ofc be checked first how the impact would be before implementing them (like the -30% direct pvp damage and -50% dot pvp damage)
And if they just boost the soul siphon rune by 10x then it would still be a worse filler than shadow bolt.
Yes this really seems a bit over the top, maybe -25% damage taken from direct damage and -40% from damage over time effects? I will change it in the text.
I might add one though. We currently have one feet rune completely overshadowing the other options. It feels like there is no choice.
Suggestion:
-Revert back Dance of the wicked to its prenerf state. Not having to lifetap anymore felt really good. This or 100+sp seem like a fair trade.
Shadowflame : damage is now good but the mana cost is too high. Reduce its mana cost by 50%.
Dear Xicht,
I quite like your list! Rune of Agony is just a great idea! So i hope you won’t mind if i use your topic to add some ideas?
Problem:DoT takes to much time to apply in AoE Solution: Rune of Pestilence/Outbreak - Spreads existing DoT effects Balanced by: Casttime, Cooldown time (<20s) or effectiveness of spread DoT
Problem:DoT feels static Solution: Add a DoT-Trigger, e.g. Shadowbolt Hits trigger (not consume) DoT Balanced by: Triggering Cast: Channeled Abilities vs Cast on Hit, Triggering a percentage of the DoT’s Damage (based on casttime?)
This would be nice in tandem: Apply DoT → Spread → Shadowboltvolley triggers and refreshes corruption, pls be aware!
Spread and Trigger may be better on the same slot balance wise…
Shadowbolt Trigger could open up a more Shadowcleave focused playstyle for Metamorphosis!
yes this would be “my” idea with the soul siphon rune reworking.
Drain Soul is the new filler spell, it now ticks every second instead of every 3 seconds (=dps +200%), and while channeling it increases the damage of all active dots by +30% or something like that.
i don’t remember which expansion it was, but a Affli rotation like this already existed many years ago.
Rune of Dark Pact: Your Dark Pact now drains mana equal to 150% the amount of your Life Tap from your pet and grants you and your pet a bonus to Spell Power equal to 25% of your Intellect for 10 seconds. Additionally, your pet gains mana equal to 5% of the damage you deal for 10 seconds.
Rune of Cursing: Using any curse besides curse of agony or doom, now also applies your highest rank of agony for 24 seconds tho the cursed target.
Rune of Soul Siphon: Reworked:
Increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul spells by an additional 6% for each of your Warlock Shadow effects afflicting the target, up to a maximum of 18% 24% additional effect.
Gives your Drain Life additional 6% on proc Nightfall.
If the target is at or below 25% health, your Drain Soul causes six times the normal damage.
Problem: No one picks anything by Lion because it overshadows the other runes.
This same problem is going to happen for warlocks where all other choices are invalidated by a group rune that is just too good to pass up.
I agree with the other problems broadly but the solutions seem a bit off.
Soul-Link should just work as it was intended to, you sacrifice a stupid amount of damage to take it, and feels fair, if PvP was the issue then change/nerf the % effect in PvP while allowing it to still be the full tank PvE option.
Base Spellpower DoT scaling isn’t the issue, the issue is that there are no runes to both make them even remotely worth caring about ST and they take too much time to cast in AoE situations.
Either rework a useless/bad rune into one that lets us spread dots (specifically shadow dots, inci is already strong af) or at least add something like a passive to UA that reduces the GCD of shadow spells to 0.5s like the Resto-Druid one for hots.
Demonic Pact is really cool but it absolutely feels horribly placed there for how “little” of a gain it provides.
Something like sharing LifeTap mana replenishment with your pet, the 10% crit of the chest rune etc could be combined into one and maybe placed into another slot where it doesn’t feel like we are missing out extremely on person gain/fun for the team.
Dance of the Wicked was only good when it was bugged and even then it wasn’t actually benefitting us a ton while a bug of similar magnitude would be broken af on other classes and after that stayed untouched while the mana gain is pathetic, dodge is useless for a caster in most cases and gets outclasses by a ton.
If the Imp mana share was potentially tied to this rune or this rune would allow us to dodge while channeling/casting it would give it a lot more value, but I’d say scrap the rune and make a new one that solves any of the other issues.
Lake of Fire was always terrible, either gameplay-wise when it was just used at R1 to buff fire spells and now because it is absolutely unusable (which I am thankful for as it was very annoying to play around) and could be changed to ramping up the damage it deals the longer you channel it to be a valid choice over Hellfire that would reward committing to the full channel for the last strong ticks (similar to CoA).
Shadow Cleave is and was always pathetic, the CD was not needed and the target cap wasn’t either, while it should also interact with Nightfall.
It is a totally new spell for only Meta and has always felt horrible to press.
Felguard not benefitting from like half the Demo tree and being absolutely pathetic shouldn’t be allowed, it needs a big base buff to at the very least beat the Imp, especially after the shared mana-gain from LT and should then further interact in a cool way with the demo talents for other demons, at the very least beating the Imp by a lot in damage or providing another effect as Imp buffs stamina.
Perhaps attach Demonic Pact to Felguard as the icon already hints at it and it would be way way better and also solve the DP problem.
Dark Pact is completely horrible and should provide some buff or passives and replace the mana-gain effect it currently has as LT is magnitudes better and would still be horrible even if it gave you infinite mana.
Possibly gain/provide one of the functionalities that was mentioned earlier.
Siphon Life has no specific rune it gains from and is disgustingly weak and a DPS loss, even if you got it for free.
One of the earlier runes that could’ve gotten scrapped/reworked could make it so that Siphon Life spreads the current shadow dots on the target to everything around it.
Master Channeler was usually picked not for its original purpose of providing constant healing but because it usually just deals more damage, proccs effects and allows casting other stuff for 15s.
But despite being called “Master Channeler” it only applies to Life Drain instead of also Soul Drain and Mana Drain and Health Funnel, which it should.
Soul Siphon still being untouched since release despite being absolutely horrible is crazy to me.
You lose out on crits, you lose out on applications of ISB, it loses in all scenarios, LD interacts with basically no other runes really and also doesn’t work with Pandemic while denying you the effects of many crit-related runes.
It needs a baseline buff as a hotfix and then further could do cool stuff like chaining to all targets affected with Corruption to be the filler spell in AoE situations with Nightfall + Shadow Bolt Volley, which combined with the other rune changes would allow for a cool dot spread → mass drain → Nightfall proccs.
You could allow healing only from the first target so it doesn’t go crazy in that aspect or even nerf the healing.
Haunt and SBV sharing one slot just feels horrible for no reason and should be moved to not make just Shadow Warlocks choose between them & could gain the ability to spread dots or at the very least Corruption to everything around it, while SBV would still be able to be picked from another slot like feet to allow the multidot-spread nightfall SBV gameplay that is fun but currently takes too much time.
Demonic Grace needs the GCD removed and allow stuff like dodging during channels or something, but tbh should just be scrapped and replaced with one of the other potential solutions from above.
UA was released not interacting with what it should, still after a 1 2 0 %!!! buff is an absolutely horrible ability that needs to be hardcast and doesn’t provide anything interesting passively like Shadow/DoT GCD reduction and is skipped entirely for anything not ST.
Vengeance is a joke that doesn’t need to exist at all.
At the very least if you want to keep it, allow it to make SL work as it did at the start.
Also, please give Meta spell pushback protection.
Getting pushed back for casting simple stuff like Immolate or Inci feels absurdly bad, at the very least make it apply to all fire spells
Yes it is. Do the math… compare how much Overall DPS a fire mage gains for adding +35 spellpower (greater arcane elixir) and then how much DPS an affliction warlocks gets for adding the same elixir. Bad scaling with gear (or buffs) is a tragedy.
As an affliction warlock who uses all 5 dots (UA+Corr+Agony+Siphon+Drain) then there is 60% of my damage done by dots (wich scale 100% of SP per 15 seconds on average) and 40% of my damage is from direct spells - shadow bolt +haunt(wich scale with 100% of SP per 3.5 seconds)
Therefore: Firemage gets 35/3.5=10dps from greater arcane elixir (all modifiers excluded)
And affliction warlock gets about:
0.6x35/15+0.4x35/3.5 = 5.4 dps (also all modifiers excluded)
And even if the scaling for dots is doubled to be 100% of spellpower for every 7.5 seconds then the result would be only:
0.6x35/7.5+0.4x35/3.5 = 6.8 DPS.
So doubling the scaling is even too weak IMHO but i know asking for more would be unrealistic.
ok then maybe make it 10% effect for others and only +5% bonus effect for the wearer of the rune, not only for demonic pact but also for Heart of the Lion?
but it somehow must be scaled the same way as Lionheart aura. it is not really fair the way it is now.
Firstly Nice list of ideas, i think some of them are problematic and wanted to give feedback, and sometimes another solution.
Problem Dots: Dots already scale with 100% of spellpower / Execution, i dont think buffing that is the solution, and for example SP,s dots are already insainly strong in pvp. so if they want to
balance pvp and pve another solution for buffing pve damage is req, maybe more debuffs that are not automaticly applied so they dont become as powerfull in pvp as in pve (to be fair i care mostly about pve but we have seen several pvp nerfs, that effects pve already so they obviusly try to balance it)
Problem CoA:
Problem DP: Good suggestion, but i think that the scaling of the warlocks sp is a good and nice thing that should stay
Problem Soul siphon: I totaly dissagre that Affliction should abandon shadowbolt as there filler spell,
they can sertanly buff the rune, but not to a point or for the reason that affliction should only use affliction spells, that not how warlocks should be played, they use things from all 3 schools, even destro uses pets from demo and curses from affliction.
Problem LoF: They should completely redesigned to a rune to help with only aoe, rather then having it as a potential singeltarget buff. one suggetion is that the rune removes the channeled nature on it just like Master channeler do for life drain with a 8sec cd, then we can use it and still do other stuff that way we get alot more competative aoe damage without an possibility for clunky and insaine singeltarget damge.
Problem SL: Another possible solution that would give similar effect and keep the theme of the spell is that instead of transfering the damage, the warlock and the pet combine and completely share a heath pool, both take damage and both receive healing when one do(with a limited range ofc, so you cant cheese it having the pat faraway with a pocket healer), That way SL would not be as dominant in pvp since physical classes could easy circumvent meta by attacking the pet instead and dot classes could dot up both targets.
and if you want this could be a feature only when in meta aswell, since thats when all issues are.
Problem Shadow Cleave: Im Fine with the CD still being there if they remove the target cap and increases its damage slightly,
Also even if i dont play affliction tank, Nightfall should make shadowcleave not trigger a CD next time used instead of current effect
Problem Felguard: Felguard definitely needs a buff, and it should have better synergy with demonolgy talents, make it gain 3x effect from Unholy power(since it gains the effect that all 3 pets get) let it gain the effect of Improved imp, Improved Woidwalker, Improved Sayaad (all 3 are just talents that increase the spells the pet use effect by 30%, just add felguards spells to that list aswell)
Problem Master Channeler: I dont think increasing the range of Master channeler is a good idea, peopel already dont like how hard it is to break “channeled” spells, especially one you can use while running after them. (i know you want to be able to use it on bosses when you stand 30ft away. but they gave drain life 20ft range as a limitation and i dont thing the rune that removes it channeling ability should also remove its range restriction
(and i belive the intent of the rune was self-heling for tanks, and then range is not needed and the extra healing is)
Problem Devastation: If they are to go down that route they should at the same time change Supression and Destructibe reach to effect all spells. but i dont think that nessesary is a good thing to do, it would make all of them obvius BiS talents for all specs.
but maybe they should since all warlock specs should and do use spells from all 3 schools.
Problem Dark pact: They should give Dark Pact the Conflag treatment, give it a rune with on use proc that increases Affliction damage in some meningfull way. to promote going deep affliction,
Also dont think spells of GCD belong in non-retail wow, even if this is not totaly classic anymore.
Problem Soul shards: Firstly 5 shards would to way to low, and i defenetly dont want them go down the retail rout with soul shard as just a combopoint.
but if its possible im sure even hunter would be happy if soulbag and ammobag dont take up a normal bag slot, just like the key ring(this is prob way outside the scope of SoD, and i think even your suggetion is)
Problem PVP damage: PVP damage i a mess, and it have always wierd to me that all the spells datamined on wowhead have a PVP scaling variable set to 100%, why are not that variable used to balance pvp instead of destrying pve balance all the time if the tec is already implemented? or is that just something wowhead have slapped on and dont come from the spell data?
Personal Rune suggetion for the future:
Crit damage for direkt damage spells are realy inpactfull, witch is prob why mages got a boot rune that give all specs access to that Critical damage increase.
I Suggest that you give warlocks a mutch need rune that do the same thing.
i would suggest you place it in the Head slot, then it would be meaningful choice for all 3 specs if they wanted to take it, and not an automatic pick.
Affliction would have to chose between Dots criting of their filler spells criting harder.
Tanks would have to chose between a defensive CD or a dps/threat increase.
Destruction: would have to chose between 30% cast speed or more crit damage
Demonology if it becomes viable for dps they would have a Head rune that do anything for them.
You know that there could be runes that would do just that?
Changing the inherent scaling of base spells is not something they usually do in SoD, and buffing base dot scaling would push fire Warlock for no reason, that is why the runes are what we need.
Yes i know and 100% is clearly too weak for being viable in a Raid; 200% would be fine.
As i said in exchange the base damage should be reduced.
If they dont change it somehow then i see no future for affliction warlock dps in endgame raids. BiS gear is wasted on Dot classes.
Let’s take a look at unstable affliction.
Now: 890 base damage + 120% spellpower (yes they made an exception here because they changed it from 15s to 18s - adding an extra dot tick without downscaling the ticks from 20%SP to 16.67%SP)
Total damage with 400SP is then
890+400x1.2 =1370 damage.
New version if my changes would be implemented:
890x0.7 + 400x2 =1423 damage.
So as you can see the "increase scaling to 200% instead of 100% at the cost of -30% base damage " is not as dramatic as it sounds.
People seem to not understand this. They often only read “+100%” and stop reading the rest.
PvP is not really of my interest - i added 1 idea to take care of your concern…
Make dot effects by -15% or even -20% weaker than other spells and attacks in pvp situations. That should do it.
You forgot about destruction hit chance spells boost that is missing. Can incorporate it to reach. All caster specs have it, locks have it to affliction only.
