[w.a.i] 3.1 Pandemic in PvP (80% nerf)

Under the new system, dots don't get hit more from resilience than direct damage spells.

If the dot doesn't crit, then its damage is reduced as it is on live today. If it does crit, then it is treated like a normal (non-dot) spell and the damage is reduced from the crit, but not the dot.

That may sound confusing, so I will try and explain it another way. Resilience does the following (among other things):

A) Reduce the chance to crit
B) Reduce the damage of crits
C) Reduce the damage of dots

If a dot has a chance to crit, then A applies. If the dot does not crit, then C applies. If it does crit then B applies (the same way it does to Shadowbolt) but C does not.

I am confused. You can keep posting "dots get affected twice by resilience" if that's supposed to be a rallying cry or something but it really has no balance implications. Ultimately I think you are trying to use an AND when an OR is called for.

Current: Dots have their damage reduced by resilience.

Future: Dots have their damage reduced by resilience. The exception is if the dot crits, then it is treated as a direct damage spell, in which case its damage is... guess what... reduced by resilience.

There is no double dipping here. If you like, think about it as a coin toss. If it's heads, the dot is affected by dot resilience. If it's tails, it is affected by direct damage spell resilience. Dot resilience OR direct damage resilience. Just because something can be affected by two things does not mean the impact is double. I can pay with cash or a credit card but that does not mean things are twice as expensive for me.

The only thing you could really be logically arguing is that dots that do not crit should not be affected by resilience at all. But that is basically arguing that the way the spells work today on live is unfair and dots should be immune to resilience. Obviously we don't feel that way because dots have been affected by resilience for a long time. They are balanced around the fact that (read: their damage is higher) they do not crit. A talent that allows them to crit without lowering their base damage (which we aren't doing) would just be a big, free buff that is not warranted. Allowing dots to crit does not change the need for them to be affected by resilience. It only means dots should not be affected by resilience twice *at the same time* which they are not. Cool?

Now, of more relevance is whether or not the crit change represents an overall damage nerf to shadow priests and warlocks. We can see how that is possible because you used to be able to do an extra 100% damage (or 200% total) and now you just get a normal crit, which for spells is 150%. Like most other spells, your dots probably need to get boosted to 200% crit damage (possibly through talents).

Q u o t e:
No, that's not what we are arguing at all. What we are saying is that for a dot that *can* crit, the "reduce all damage" resilience effect should never apply. Reduce the crit damage of such dots, but not the non-crit damage. Just the way direct damage works.

If we do not reduce the non-crit damage of those spells, they will do too much damage in PvP.

Assume Corruption ticks 10 times for 7 damage. Total damage = 70.

Assume Shadowbolt hits once for 40 damage, but 50% of the time it crits for 60 damage. Total damage = 70.

If Corruption was not affected by resilience, then you always want to use it in PvP. In fact, any class with dots would be awesome in PvP because they could ignore resilience. So dots have resilience.

Now imagine Corruption can crit. If normal hits no longer pay resilience, then Corruption is now overpowered again in PvP when it fails to crit. It is balanced against Shadowbolt, which has lower damage (40) to make up for the fact that it can crit. Another option is to lower the damage of Corruption to something like Shadowbolt, say 10 ticks of 4 damage a tick. We didn’t go with that option because that feels like a nerf when you pick up the talent.

If it seems complex, just remember: If dots crit, they are treated like direct damage spells (with regard to resilience). If they do not crit, they are treated exactly like they are today.

Q u o t e:
Corruption, talented to Crit: Chance to Crit reduced by Resilience Crit reduction
If it Crits - Reduced by Direct Damage Resilience
If it does NOT Crit - Effected by DoT resilience? Should it be? Are DD spells that do not Crit subject to Resilience reductions?

Yes, it should be. If not then a Corruption that fails to crit is more powerful than a Shadowbolt that fails to crit. Why? Because Corruption does more damage to make up for the fact that it originally couldn’t crit. Lowering its damage would be the other alternative, but if Pandemic said “Makes your dots do less damage but crit” that would be a confusing and a strange-looking talent.

Q u o t e:
What I'm arguing is that if the change goes through and non-crit UA and Corruption ticks are still reduced at a flat rate by resilience, this talent point will add approximately zero damage to my UA and Corruption when I fight people who have high resil:

Whenever UA and Corruption crit, they do 50% (possibly 100%) more damage. How can that translate to zero damage? Is it because your crit rate is so low? If that is the case, then it might not be a good talent for you. Part of the draw here is so that dot classes can benefit from +crit gear and buffs.

Q u o t e:
this right here. I'm not saying that DoTs that cant crit shouldnt be impacted by resilience - merely that the ones that CAN crit, for whatever reason, be treated identically to all other forms of damage that can crit - that is all. Which means, for DoT's that can crit - and ONLY DoTs that can crit - the base damage shouldnt be reduced by resil - only if it crits.

Okay, but that means the damage of the dots needs to come down then because they are designed assuming that they can’t crit. Using my example above, Shadowbolt hits for 40 arbitrary units and Corruption hits for 70 arbitrary units. Corruption would need to go down to 40 units when talented in order to justify it being treated exactly like a direct damage spell with respect to resilience.

The talent is supposed to provide a dps increase. It is not supposed to let you care about resilience on opponents less.

Q u o t e:
And here, I think, is where the ultimate confusion is. We get that the dev team feels that dots do extra damage to compensate for the fact that they don't crit. What I don't think we get is why the dev team feels that they do enough damage when the dot style of damage delivery is blatantly inferior to other styles.

Your argument seems to be: "Well, its been this way for a long time, and its worked well in the past, so its obviously a good mechanic."

If your argument is that it isn’t fair for dots to pay resilience today on live, then that’s a different argument. I was trying to help players understand how the new system works and why it makes sense for dots to pay resilience if they don’t crit (like they to today) and also pay resilience if they do crit.

Q u o t e:
I see what you are saying GC, but Corruption doesnt do as much damage as Sbolt at once .. it does it over time .. Its like saying a Mage fireball should do the same damage as Corruption .. but that Fireball does the huge chunk of damage faster than corruption does which ticks every 3 seconds

That sounds like you are just arguing Corruption’s damage isn’t high enough. It doesn’t change the fact that we balanced the numbers knowing that Fireball can crit and Corruption cannot. Now that Corruption can crit (talented) we either have to drop the base numbers or keep the current rules. We are going with the latter.

We use slightly different balance rules for dots. They often have different coefficients, take longer to do their damage, don't require LOS after the initial cast, can often be dispelled and a host of other disparities. The fact that they can (sometimes) now crit does not make them something other than dots. Perhaps I would have better explained it by saying the resilience associated with Corruption is because it is a dot, not because it can't crit. However, to avoid paying a double resilience tax, when Corruption crits, we treat it as a normal, direct damage spell for purposes of reducing the damage to a target with resilience.

Q u o t e:
But if resilience reduced the chance to crit AND reduces the crit damage is that not double dipping on the stat?

That is true, but it is how all spells and abilities work.

Q u o t e:
Whenever UA and Corruption crit, they do 50% (possibly 100%) more damage.


Uh say what? You do realize ruin is destruction only RIGHT? Nope, didn't think so.

You do realize I said earlier in the thread that we would likely have to give the 200% crit bonus to the dot classes. It was post 195, but I will quote it again:

Q u o t e:
Now, of more relevance is whether or not the crit change represents an overall damage nerf to shadow priests and warlocks. We can see how that is possible because you used to be able to do an extra 100% damage (or 200% total) and now you just get a normal crit, which for spells is 150%. Like most other spells, your dots probably need to get boosted to 200% crit damage (possibly through talents).

Q u o t e:
mainly because the original reduced-by-resilience DoT damage is what is used to calculate the new critical strike damage

No, it is not. When a crit occurs, that original reduced-by-resilience DoT damage is not used. The game essentially says “Oh this spell crit, so I should apply direct damage resilience and not dot damage resilience to it.”

Q u o t e:
I have X resilience that lowers crit by 10% and crit damage by 25%.

Since DoT damage is reduced based on the crit mod reduction, I take 10% less damage from DoTs.

If a DoT spell does 3000 damage to me over 15 seconds (time doesn't matter), I will only take 2700.

If the DoT ticks for 600 per tick, pre-resilience, it will only tick for 540.

If a crit happens, the game uses the 600 pre-resilience number, and then lowers it based upon the crit damage modifier. If the bonus was 200%, then the tick would be 1200. With resilience calculated it would hit for 900.

This is the same for every class so why would they bend the rules here? That is NOT the answer. If the #s look hideous, a damage boost might be needed.... but to bend the rules for classes because now a couple DoTs can crit? Insanity.

Yes, Astronaut gets it.

And no, I didn't address your Righteous Vengeance point. Sorry. This thread has had a hard enough time staying on one topic as it is. :)

Q u o t e:
What I originally didn't get in this thread, and what GC probably didn't understand, was that Pandemic is apparently currently bugged to the Warlocks' advantage. It's chance to proc is not mitigated by resilience in any way. In 3.0.8 they explicitly changed Wandering Plague to be effected by resilience but I'm guessing they simply didn't realize the same issue existed with Pandemic.

Yes, I believe this was true. Shadowform was affected by resilience, but Pandemic was not. It was not out intention that the talent let you skip around resilience. Making sure the talent is an appropriate damage increase is important to use, but we won't do it by letting you avoid the damage reduction that resilience is designed to impart.