It is funny how some tiny little changes can radically change warlock play. Let's take a look at what the current 3.3 plans mean.
First of all: pets are kind of getting buffed and nerfed in PvP. (burfed?) They're getting 100% of your resilience, yay! But avoidance no longer applies to PvP damage, boo! So your pet can get AoEd down, and most likely will die a lot more in battlegrounds due to incidental AoE (and may die from stuff like heart strike in arenas). On the plus side, the PvE avoidance got buffed to 90% reduction, yay.
The demonic pact build is getting SUPER BUFFED. You heard it here, Blizzard Loves Demonology. Decimation has had its mechanic changed. The overall reduction is the same, but the decimation proc seems to last for 8 seconds, and it can proc off of Soul Fire. I don't know if the "8 seconds" wording in there means the buff lasts for 8 seconds or if it still gets consumed, but the big deal is that soul fire can now proc decimate. No more annoying decimate weaves, when you get to 35% just unload with chain soul fires. Wheeeee! Plus, demonic pact is getting buffed with a flat 5% spelldamage bonus for the warlock on top of its already tasty existence. This is good news for me, because while I know that I should probably be speccing demonic pact at least some of the time, I never do because I hate the decimate weave.
It looks like the people at blizzard decided that affliction warlocks should raid with a felhunter and not a succubus. Shadow bite is getting seriously buffed, with the bonus damage going from 5% to 15% per DoT, and improved felhunter reducing the cooldown on Shadow Bite as well. We'll have to run the numbers, but the succubus used to only just barely edge out the felhunter with demonic power going, so I imagine that the felhunter is back. This is pretty cool, I like the felpuppy and his abilities more than the succubus. But really, affliction warlocks don't care all that much about pet damage, they're the least pet-reliant of the specs.
I have no idea what the conflagrate change means. It's a nerf for PvP, reducing straight-up burst, but still does the same overall damage for PvE. So, meh.
I also have no freaking clue why the buffed the rank of Curse of the Elements you learn at level 69 from 10% bonus damage to 11%. Why? I'm convinced it was a bug or something that they just don't care enough to fix.
The most interesting potential change came from ghostcrawler earlier today. They're thinking about making a glyph (I assume major) that would make corruption tick faster based on your haste. He said that he wasn't sure if this was good (since you'd have to cast corruption more often), and while this might be true for other classes that will be affected by this test (they're looking at shadow word: pain as well as some HoTs), affliction warlocks don't have to recast corruption. So, yeah. That's just a flat DPS boost as it is, although affliction already has three good glyphs to use so I'm not sure what I'd get rid of.
This patch is looking like they're trying to make non-destruction specs more viable without really buffing destruction. It's a straight PvE buff to meta/ruin and affliction, and a slight PvP nerf to destro. Holy cow, I think I'm going to faint. Warlocks getting buffed, forsooth.
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PTR reports are confirming that the decimation change is really an 8 second buff that doesn't go away on spellcast (and refreshes with future spellcasts). This REALLY REALLY ROCKS, as it means that if you can occasionally throw a shadowbolt at an add that's sub-35%, you can have 8 seconds of pure soul-fire goodness on the boss. And all the bossfights have adds these days. It's like they took all the things I didn't like about warlocks and fixed them elegantly. Nice.
ReplyDeleteThere's something you didn't like about warlocks?
ReplyDeleteHehe, well I was kind of getting bored with the One True Destro Spec. Looks like 3.3 will mix it up a bit.
ReplyDeleteFelguard raid build?
ReplyDelete