Chaos Bolt change depressing

The main problem was that Chaos Bolt ignored resilience. When one class (spec even) can get around the major stat that is supposed to let characters live longer in PvP with a heavy hitter like this, you're bound to have problems.

We didn't want to nerf the burst damage because it was finally hitting for a reasonable amount. But it didn't feel fair to have it ignore resilience. The other damage reducers didn't feel like a big problem either way. It still ignores resistance and absorptions, which is technically all the tooltip said in the first place.

EDIT: As it turns out, Chaos Bolt does NOT ignore resilience. When the developers went to make this change, they found out that the resilience bypassing was just a myth. They still thought making the change to have CB not bypass other damage reduction affects was an appropriate change. I try to stay on top of all of the changes my team makes, but it's a big game and we typically make a lot of changes every day. The mistake was mine, and I do apologize for any confusion.

TLDR: The 3.1.3 change remains, but resilience is not (and never has been) affected.

Q u o t e:
So are Icebound Fortitude, Anti-Magic Shell, Pain Suppression, Shield Wall etc. considered Absorption effects, or are they considered 'damage reduction' effects?

We can get you a full list of what qualifies as damage reduction vs. absorption tomorrow when we can look at the spells.

I know a lot of warlocks (and maybe some other classes) were expecting a nerf when they saw what the new Fire and Brimstone talent can do. We didn't want to nerf the damage straight up, since that was the whole point of the talent change. We thought actually fixing the undocumented bonus, which felt more like a bug than anything (in the sense that the tooltip never even claimed it bypassed damage reduction) would keep the spell balanced in its current form. You can call that a nerf if you want to, but really it was the change that convinced us we didn't need to nerf CB's raw damage.

We expected Sanctified Wrath to have the same bug, but if you read the tooltip is actually says it bypasses damage reduction. So we are leaving it as is for now.

I hope I am remembering all this accurately. It's a bit late. :)

I edited my previous post to correct my mistake. Resilience is not treated as a damage reduction effect. Nevertheless, the team still felt like the 3.1.3 change to Chaos Bolt was appropriate. You can find more details above or in the related Chaos Bolt thread.