Logic behind Removal of Siphon Life

It was solely the first reason. We didn't like the spec having so many dots to manage. Nobody mortal was playing Affliction at all without third-party mods for dot timers, which should not be mandatory to play WoW.

It isn't just a CATERIN 2 THE CASAULS issue. Because so much of Affliction's damage was tied up in dots, their on-demand burst damage was low. This has ramifications in PvP for obvious reasons, but also in PvE. Locks were getting frustrated on trash for instance because they never had time to do damage. Yeah, I know NOBODY CAREZ ABOUT TRASH BLIZARD. Except that trash is a part of the game. You can wipe on it. You can spend time killing it. Several bosses have adds that you need to contend with. It isn't fun being the class that just kind of hangs out until it's boss time.

I have suggested a few times since LK shipped that we wanted to remove 1-2 dots from Affliction's normal rotation and 3.1 was a good chance to do that.

If it ends up being a small nerf on raid bosses, well Affliction can probably handle that, because there was a good chance they were going to get a slight nerf anyway.

For PvP, it may end up being a larger nerf, but that wasn't really the intent and we are looking at options for adding damage back in that doesn't also inflate sustained PvE damage.

Q u o t e:
It wasn't the intent? Meaning what, you didn't realize it would be a substantial nerf?

No, we knew it would be a nerf. We know how the class works, believe it or not.

Players tend to evaluate almost everything in terms of dps. If you could come up with a rotation with just one spell that maximized dps, many players would do it even if it was soul-destroyingly boring. If we were dumb and gave you 35 spells you needed to cast in the average fight, many players would still do it even if it made their eyes bleed. Clearly there is some intermediary point between 1 and 35. Part of our job is to think about what that number should be and not just focus on what the damage meters show at this moment.

We thought Affliction had too many spells to cast as part of their rotation (by which I mean spells they generally think about all the time, vs. cooldowns or more situational spells). What we want to do is get rid of Siphon Life and adjust everything else so that Affliction remains similar (it won't be identical) to how it was before.

That is a different intent than if the design team had sat down and said "We need to nerf Affliction. What is the best way to do it? Hey, we could remove Siphon Life." That happens sometimes, but that was not our design goal with this change.

Now, we do also want to remove Immolate, but it's a lot harder to do. The base Immolate spell does decent damage even without talents. If we nerf Immolate, then we have to add deep talents to both Destro and Demo to prop it back up. We might just leave it as is, because you could at least de-prioritize Immolate. Using it would be a modest dps increase, but nothing like your other spells. Or we might find ways to still steer it more towards the other two trees. One of the reasons we wanted to get some of the changes out early was to start getting feedback. Unfortunately, much of the feedback has been "I don't like the change because it's a dps loss and that's all that's important to me." (That's a bit of an exaggeration; I realize some of you care about it being instant cast, providing an extra debuff, like having a ton of spells to manage, or just liked the look and feel of the spell.)

Again, I understand the value of instant cast spells in PvP, but we aren't going to just design classes so that every spell they want to cast is instant for PvP reasons. We can't just write off all of those spells with an actual cast time as PvE only.

I know it's fun to say Blizzard doesn't understand this class (that they designed), or that no thought went into the decision, or drag out that tired old adjective: kneejerk. However, we put a great deal of thought into this. Just because you might disagree with the direction does not make that untrue. Sometimes we are going to make changes that may seem unpopular in the short term because we think it improves the game in the long term.

Q u o t e:
Did you factor in the use of a Doomguard when considering whether or not Affliction Warlocks were doing too much damage?

Yes, we take it into account, but it's on a one hour cooldown. It may produce some nice numbers, but it doesn't have a huge impact across the board.

Sometimes when players don't like an incoming nerf, they concoct this scenario where one player posts some eye-popping numbers under very contrived situations and Blizzard freaks out and immediately makes a bunch of changes without realizing the source of the numbers. Um, no.

If you think Affliction dps in PvE was middle of the pack on fights without the Doomguard, you are probably comparing yourself to classes that are also getting nerfs.

Q u o t e:
And another question if you'd be so kind: Many of us are wondering if the new direction for Warlock trees is in the direction of specific schools being used for specific trees, namely Shadow for Affliction, Fire for Destruction, and a blend for Demonology. The move of Molten Core to Demo demonstrates this theory. If this is the case, how will it affect future set bonuses in Ulduar and beyond?

Yes, that is exactly what we were doing, and of course we will keep set bonuses in mind.

Q u o t e:
Not really certain where the Trash QQ is coming from.

Our locks have pretty well owned trash till maybe our Rogues got uber-geared and had FoK buffed into oblivion .... btw the new glyph WILL be insane.

L2 Seed!

I try to illustrate my points with examples to help make them more clear. Sometimes it ends up having the opposite effect and players just dissect the examples and pay less attention to the point I was trying to make. The point is not that warlocks can’t manage trash. The point is that when you have a class that is so dependent on dots, a couple of things happen that we don’t think are good for the game. One, your damage is dependent on the fights lasting long enough for the dots to tick. Two, the class can be complicated to play because you are keeping up so many debuffs with different durations.

I will paraphrase a recent post I read. Affliction has a complicated rotation, arguably the most complex in the game. It may have been perfectly fine for some of you, but we thought it crossed the line. It’s a subjective call and not the kind of thing that can be “proven” with empirical evidence or the kind of thing upon which everyone will agree.

Q u o t e:
I am starting to see what you are saying.. the classes/specs that were doing massive damage had to be brought down .. so basically Affl locks/FFB mages/ Arcane Mages/Warriors and DKs to match other classes. This is great .. i guess sometimes its just about thinking out of the box for people like me :)

WoW is an enormously complex game. It is hard for most players to keep up with the latest details on more than a couple of classes. It is a very typical situation for us to get into when we nerf a class and the players respond with “But Jimmy over there was doing 8000 dps. Why can’t I?” Often players would have us buff the specs that are falling behind rather than nerf those that are ahead. We focus a lot more on the absolute than the relative.

Q u o t e:
Does this sound like a QQ thread to you? The bulk of players responding will grudgingly accept a nerf to Affliction PvE DPS. Everyone is just saying this is the wrong way to go about it. Removing SL does more harm than good. Can't you guys think of any better way to simplify the rotation and/or nerf Affliction PvE without so many other negative artifacts? I just can't believe you really think this is a positive move forward for the game, longterm. People used the same number of buttons in Affliction's rotation in TBC and no one cared, but now its an issue; I just don't get it.

I don’t think it is a QQ thread. Unfortunately it had some players who were upset when they posted and nudged it in that direction. Most of those posts have been deleted, so if you are reading the thread now, it comes across as a fairly intelligent discussion, for which I thank you (and the mods). I understand “everyone” is saying they don’t think this is the right way to go about it. We have noted that feedback and are discussing it. This does not by any stretch mean we might revert the change. We have a responsibility to do what we think is right for the game in the long term not just what will make the vocal posters in the community happy in the short term. That does not mean your feedback is not enormously valuable. It is. Otherwise, I would be out at Starbucks instead of posting here.

Okay, I take it back. The last couple of pages have been pretty full of QQ. But most of those posters are gone now. :( You should know by now that Ghostcrawler is not moved by QQ. I am more interested in reading your thoughts on the changes than I am about how long you have waited, the years of pain and neglect for us to make those changes that are so obvious to you but opaque to us because we never play your class and... [sigh]. QQ is a waste of my time and the other intelligent posters here. Don't do it.

Q u o t e:
That said you haven't address the major ~12%(3 locks per raid) loss in DPS/Damage that we lose losing 4% per warlock on our Drain Soul. you didn't just take the damage away from SL you nerfed our execute.

We will definitely address this issue. We don’t want Soul Siphon (I assume that’s what you were referring to) to be nerfed from this change. It also goes against our raid stacking philosophy in its current form anyway so it was due for a change,

Q u o t e:
Also have you thought about removing the requirement of SL->Shadow Mastery? Maybe put them both in that tier since there isn't really a point for a PvE lock to get SL. this would allow 4 points to get the reach talents in both affliction & Destruction trees. (since with out both of them it is somewhat useless.)

That is something we are considering. There is less of a chance of us messing with that than with Soul Siphon.

Q u o t e:
Perhaps Big blue sir... maybe just this one time. this teensy weensy time.. you could be wrong?

We are definitely wrong sometimes. It happens. I have no problem admitting it. But that doesn’t mean we are going to be so paralyzed over being wrong that we won’t make changes when the design team thinks they are warranted.

Q u o t e:
Then please listen to the feedback. Maybe 5-10% of all warlocks like this change. *Maybe*. Surely that degree of unpopularity says something?

There are thousands of warlocks in the game. You should not assume the forum community represents all of them, a majority of them, or sometimes even an informed minority of them. And even if you did somehow truly have access to that data, our design decisions are not subject to popular vote. Sorry. If we posted that we were nerfing a class, nearly 100% of that class would not be happy with that change. We appreciate the feedback we get, but we need to design the game. Over the long term, we want players to have fun. In the short term that is going to mean making some calls that are controversial.

Q u o t e:
Related question: Do you plan to do the same for Cat Druids, Ghost? I'm considering rolling one because I truly enjoy complex rotations and it seems like cats are the true winner as far as that's concerned...

Cats are definitely complicated. For the moment we don't think they cross the line. Once you start to consdider that is one of effectively 4 roles the class can play, then yeah, druids are very complicated.

Q u o t e:
I'm worried that Blizzard doesn't feel that a cloth wearing pure DPS class should be at the top of the DPS charts, while Death Knights who are in plate will have fun being at the top of the charts with this continued progression on changing the classes.

A cloth wearing pure DPS class should always be at the top of the DPS charts. Any other philosophy is playing favoritism to your Flavor of the Month class.

DKs should not ideally be at the top of the dps charts unless they outgear you, are better players, or are in a situation that really plays into their strengths. I don't agree that cloth wearing pures should necessarily do more damage than rogues or hunters. We try and get them all pretty close.