Heroic Maloriak, that is, not the idiots in trade chat.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Slayer of Stupid, Incompetent, and Disappointing Minions
Heroic Maloriak, that is, not the idiots in trade chat.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Patch 4.1 for Warlocks: Still with no Battle Rez!
A second class is getting a long awaited in-combat resurrection! But much to everyone's surprise, it's not warlocks. That's right ladies and gentlemen: the Death Knight's ability Raise Ally will now function similar to the Druid's Rebirth ability. But where is the Soulstone's redesign? Nowhere in the 4.1 Patch Notes, that's where.
The Soulstone remains the most useless form of in-combat resurrection. True, shaman resurrection is limited to themselves. But the shaman Ankh functions more as a personal cooldown anyway. Druid Rebirth -- and now Death Knight Raise Ally-- are intended to allow the group to save themselves from a wipe by resurrecting a fallen comrade. Soulstone ostensibly fills the same role, but its use is checked because you must predict beforehand who is most likely to die. This is counter intuitive in almost any encounter. In any scenario, preventing the death from happening in the first place is far better management of resources (read: damage mitigation is better than healing cooldowns), which thus renders the soulstone useless.
I can't believe I have to reach to find arguments that "Not dying is better than dying."
My raid group seldom calls for a soulstone: if one person is stupid enough that we suspect they will die more than once to the same mechanic, we aren't wasting a battle rez on them anyway. Even in situations where a soulstone is correctly used, it is seen less as a wipe-saver, and more as a mechanic that allows a player to get away with sloppiness. When you further punish its use by precluding the possibility of resurrecting a player who didn't win the "Who is most likely to mess up?" contest, well...
Blizzard seemed to recognize this weakness, and stated that they were exploring the possibility of redesigning the Soulstone to be used on a player after their death, and not before.
And yet another patch is underway, and Death Knights (what?!) are stealing our Soulstone!
Aside from this oversight, Patch 4.1 is looking pretty good for us. Warlocks are in a pretty good place at the moment: our damage is strong, without being truly overpowered, all three of our specs are more or less viable, and we aren't playing with any more clunky mechanics like the old Improved Soulfire.
Warlocks were missing from the first round of patch notes altogether (aside from the hug!) and the few tweaks that have been added since are universally palatable.
None of these changes significantly alter the playstyle or priority of warlocks. The majority of these changes are designed to beef up Affliction damage, which is perfectly appropriate since it is currently lagging behind. I personally could stand to let Affliction languish for another content patch, (I've had enough of shadow bolts) but it is the signature warlock spec. These are quality of life changes.
I am excited about the changes to our pets! It will be a relief to put the Succubus away when playing Affliction: she is easily my least favorite demon companion. The Felhunter also aligns much more closely with the Affliction flavor: it was unnatural to eschew a pet that increases your shadow damage-over-time effects in favor of a...dominatrix. With any luck the Felguard will be similarly buffed to bring Demonology back in line as well. Eff Succubi.
Mana Feed gets me much more pumped this week than it might have last week: I started playing Demonology to work on Heroic Maloriak, and Holy Mana Eater, Hellfire. Breaking the cast to refresh DoTs doesn't help, I know, but that's grapefruit. I hope to have the fight (and many others) on farm by the time of 4.1, but my healer will thank me not to Life Tap all the same.
If I have any reservations about these changes, it is that they are coming far too late. We won't see these changes until new raiding content is available, when they could make a significant difference now. Particularly in regards to Felhunter viability and Demonology's mana regeneration, we could make good use of these abilities in our current raiding tier. Being able to use the Felhunter's Devour Magic without suffering a DPS loss would give us much better utility -- especially given the number of interrupts demanded by early Cataclysm raiding. I only hope the next tier gives us the same opportunity to be useful: or the change will be written off as too little, too late.
The lack of early implementation is especially disappointing given the amount of hotfixing for similar situations. The shaman mastery was recently increased, and it drastically changed the perception of their raid healing capabilities. Why should Affliction not benefit from the same urgency? True, healing output has a greater effect on raid success than warlock pet choice or a single under-performing damage spec. Still, these changes will have such a small effect and likely require little testing -- why not include them in a hotfix? We are months away from Patch 4.1. Am I really stuck with the Succubus until then?
PS. Also included in 4.1: Non-Sucky Non-Demo AoE!
The Soulstone remains the most useless form of in-combat resurrection. True, shaman resurrection is limited to themselves. But the shaman Ankh functions more as a personal cooldown anyway. Druid Rebirth -- and now Death Knight Raise Ally-- are intended to allow the group to save themselves from a wipe by resurrecting a fallen comrade. Soulstone ostensibly fills the same role, but its use is checked because you must predict beforehand who is most likely to die. This is counter intuitive in almost any encounter. In any scenario, preventing the death from happening in the first place is far better management of resources (read: damage mitigation is better than healing cooldowns), which thus renders the soulstone useless.
I can't believe I have to reach to find arguments that "Not dying is better than dying."
My raid group seldom calls for a soulstone: if one person is stupid enough that we suspect they will die more than once to the same mechanic, we aren't wasting a battle rez on them anyway. Even in situations where a soulstone is correctly used, it is seen less as a wipe-saver, and more as a mechanic that allows a player to get away with sloppiness. When you further punish its use by precluding the possibility of resurrecting a player who didn't win the "Who is most likely to mess up?" contest, well...
Blizzard seemed to recognize this weakness, and stated that they were exploring the possibility of redesigning the Soulstone to be used on a player after their death, and not before.
And yet another patch is underway, and Death Knights (what?!) are stealing our Soulstone!
Aside from this oversight, Patch 4.1 is looking pretty good for us. Warlocks are in a pretty good place at the moment: our damage is strong, without being truly overpowered, all three of our specs are more or less viable, and we aren't playing with any more clunky mechanics like the old Improved Soulfire.
Warlocks were missing from the first round of patch notes altogether (aside from the hug!) and the few tweaks that have been added since are universally palatable.
Warlock 4.1 Changes Affliction:
Demonology:
Pet:
|
None of these changes significantly alter the playstyle or priority of warlocks. The majority of these changes are designed to beef up Affliction damage, which is perfectly appropriate since it is currently lagging behind. I personally could stand to let Affliction languish for another content patch, (I've had enough of shadow bolts) but it is the signature warlock spec. These are quality of life changes.
I am excited about the changes to our pets! It will be a relief to put the Succubus away when playing Affliction: she is easily my least favorite demon companion. The Felhunter also aligns much more closely with the Affliction flavor: it was unnatural to eschew a pet that increases your shadow damage-over-time effects in favor of a...dominatrix. With any luck the Felguard will be similarly buffed to bring Demonology back in line as well. Eff Succubi.
Mana Feed gets me much more pumped this week than it might have last week: I started playing Demonology to work on Heroic Maloriak, and Holy Mana Eater, Hellfire. Breaking the cast to refresh DoTs doesn't help, I know, but that's grapefruit. I hope to have the fight (and many others) on farm by the time of 4.1, but my healer will thank me not to Life Tap all the same.
If I have any reservations about these changes, it is that they are coming far too late. We won't see these changes until new raiding content is available, when they could make a significant difference now. Particularly in regards to Felhunter viability and Demonology's mana regeneration, we could make good use of these abilities in our current raiding tier. Being able to use the Felhunter's Devour Magic without suffering a DPS loss would give us much better utility -- especially given the number of interrupts demanded by early Cataclysm raiding. I only hope the next tier gives us the same opportunity to be useful: or the change will be written off as too little, too late.
The lack of early implementation is especially disappointing given the amount of hotfixing for similar situations. The shaman mastery was recently increased, and it drastically changed the perception of their raid healing capabilities. Why should Affliction not benefit from the same urgency? True, healing output has a greater effect on raid success than warlock pet choice or a single under-performing damage spec. Still, these changes will have such a small effect and likely require little testing -- why not include them in a hotfix? We are months away from Patch 4.1. Am I really stuck with the Succubus until then?
PS. Also included in 4.1: Non-Sucky Non-Demo AoE!
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