Friday, January 16, 2009

Quality of Life Tweaks

As posted here

All of the below are intended to make gameplay more fluid, aspects of the class make more sense, be more convenient, fix minor problems etc. These are not "buff my DPS or arena rating" requests so much as "clean things up a bit" so everything will be smoother in general.



-Dark Pact: Simply put, this ability doesn't offer anything that Lifetap doesn't do better. Sure, it doesn't take health, but that's not exactly a huge concern in most situations. I would love to see this reverted to how it was briefly functioning in beta, returning 200% of the mana it takes from our demon. This would make it superior to Lifetap as it should be. If that isn't a desirable solution simply taking it off the GCD would be nice as well and also would place it above Lifetap.


-Demonic Circle Summon: Change this to be instant cast. It's generally not that big of a deal functionally to stop and cast the circle, but I must say it's a pain when you're running anyway, stop to cast a .5 second spell, and start running again. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it would make this spell so much less aggravating to use.


-Drain Soul: Change this to tick every second. Both from a soloing perspective as well as using it sub-25% in raids it's very frustrating at times to have this spell tick every 3. Keeping our DoT rotations going while waiting for a 3 second channeled spell to tick, especially when we may not even see the tick actually pop up is very difficult. Sure, Shadowbolt is 2.5 seconds, but it's much easier to manage that as cast-time spells are much more discrete, allows you to queue up spells after it, etc. Drain Soul is fairly unique in this regard and changing the tick timing to every second would help make it play much more fluidly.


-Infernal: While it may be slightly worth it to use this guy near the end of a boss encounter I can't help but simply be annoyed by how it functions. It would be so much better to simply nerf the damage on the Infernal and make him spawn as a guardian type mob, not a pet. IE he would attack what you attack and other than that you would have no more control over him. I would definitely consider this ability to be worth using, regardless of how little damage it deals as long as it doesn't tread into the territory of replacing my normal pet.


-Shadow Embrace: With all the talk of simplifying the Affliction rotation the duration of this effect comes up quite often. I'm starting to believe that for at least a large portion of those complaining about the rotation that this is one of the core issues. This would do well to be increased to a 15-20 second duration.


-Consolidating Range/Threat/Pushback/Hit talents: This is somewhat of a deeper change than the others, requiring some talents be altered, and a couple deleted, but it's something about that class that simply seems incredibly wrong. Warlocks, unlike most other classes have to use spells from every spell line to be successful in raiding. IE what use is getting Destruction Reach if you can't also get Grim Reach? Likewise for the other respective talents. It's either impossible for Demonology or requires extremely cookie-cutterish talent builds to reach all of these talents. As such I'd like to suggestion a consolidation of a few talents. This might cause them to go "over budget" but I feel for the overall good of the class it would be worth breaking a few internal rules for.

    -Suppression: This talent would remain as-is other than affecting all spell schools. (Hit)

    -Demonic Reach: New talent in tier 1 Demonology. Increases the Range of all spells by 3/6 yards. (Range)

    -Intensity: Moved to tier 2 Destruction in place of Cataclysm (since everyone gets Bane anyway) Reduces pushback of all spells by 23/46/70% and threat generated by 3/6/10% (Threat/Pushback)

    -Grim Reach/Destructive Reach/Cataclysm/Fel Concentration: All removed. Replaced as necessary or not at all.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

3.1 Warlock Patch Notes

(Fake, of course, but with the purpose of giving several small PvP buffs when put together that should increase overall survivability and some PvE problems/inconsistencies tweaked)

-Backdraft: Reworked. Now gives a 33/66/100% chance for Conflagrate to refresh Immolate rather than consume it.
-Death Coil: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
-Demon Armor: Bonus armor removed. Now additionally reduces all damage taken by 10%.
-Demonic Circle Summon: Now instant cast.
-Demonic Circle Teleport: Now removes root and slow effects.
-Demonic Empathy: Effect increased to 2% per point (up from 1%)
-Destructive Reach and Aftermath talents have now switched places.
-Fel Domination: Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
-Grim Reach and Soul Siphon talents have now switched places.
-Shadowflame: DoT portion of this spell removed. Now applies "Tainted Soul" effect, reducing damage dealt by 30% for 5 seconds.
-Siphon Life: Now applied whenever Corruption is applied, similar to Shadow Embrace.
-Shadow Embrace: Bug relating to multiple Warlocks using this ability has been fixed.
-Summoned Demons now receive a larger portion of their master's spellpower as attack power/spell power as well as receive 50% of their master's Resilience.