Cataclysm: Affliction Question for Devs

#0 - June 3, 2010, 10:55 p.m.

If you want to tear my post to shreds, You are well within your right to do so.
I request only that you read me out first, as I believe my logic to be well reasoned and non-biased.
The current design of the PvE Affliction specs require at least 15 points in Destruction to bring our DPS up to par with the other Pure classes.
Since Affliction Warlocks are no longer able to cast Unstable Affliction and Immolate on the same target, these talents are used solely for buffing Shadow Bolt.
Sadly, even though it is our intended "bread-and-butter" spell, Shadow Bolt is the only Destro spell in Affliction's rotation, and as such does not benefit from cast time, mana, etc., reduction talents from Affliction.

Thus, to bring Shadow Bolt up to par we need to spend points on the equivalent Destro talents:
Bane: to reduce the casting time of Shadow Bolt.
Ruin: To buff the critical strike damage bonus of Shadow Bolt.
Improved Shadow Bolt: The only talent that effects spells other than Shadow Bolt, and it does so indirectly through Shadow Bolt casts applying a +Damage debuff like Haunt.
If we wish to go one step further, and get Shadow Bolt the same 36 yard range as every other spell we cast, we're looking at an extra two points in Destructive Reach, For 17 points total in Destro.
Again, if we wish to have Shadow Bolt's mana cost lowered to the level of our Affliction abilities it's yet another 3 points into Cataclysm, effecting only Shadow Bolt.
That's 20 points for one spell that's not even from the Affliction tree in the first place, just to bring it in line with the others.

My question is this:
Why is that necessary, when Affliction Warlocks could simply use Haunt as a nuke instead of Shadow Bolt?
Other than it being a shadow spell, Shadow Bolt doesn't seem to belong in the Affliction rotation anymore do to it's long cast time, and bursty nature.
Especially with Haunt refreshing Corruption, Drain Soul and our new insta-nuke(Fell Flame?) refreshing Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony, I fear that Affliction will have a rotation (post wind-up) consisting of Shadow Bolt spamming with a Haunt and a Fell Flame thrown in every once in a while to refresh DoTs.
Even talents such as Improved Shadow Bolt are awkward and superfluous, as it basically grants Shadow Bolt a raid-wide, non DoT specific version of what Haunt does, on a lesser scale.
This talent could be easily moved into Affliction and changed to effect Haunt as well as Shadow Bolt and I don't think anyone would even notice a difference in gameplay.

If Haunt was changed to apply a DoT to the target, along with it's burst damage, it would make up for the loss of Shadow Bolt damage in our rotation; a fix which passive talent bonuses could make completely unnecessary, anyway.
More importantly though, if Haunt applied a HoT to the Warlock instead of granting a burst heal upon it's return, and the new system for refreshing spells without clipping ticks was used, I think it would go a long way towards making Affliction a much more well defined spec, centered very clearly around non-bursty, sustained damage via Drains, Debufs, and DoTs.
Just what Affliction is supposed to be about, right? Right.

Furthermore, The current cool-down on Haunt would be pointless, since recasting the spell would simply do our nuke damage and refresh our HoT, so we couldn't spam Haunt for endless instant burst heals and it’s coefficient could be easily adjusted to suit it’s lack of a cool-down for PvP, just as Shadow Bolt is not imbalanced due to it’s lack of a cool-down.
A mechanic could even be added to allow for Haunt to do less or even no damage if our dots are not present on the target.
Haunt would feel more Affliction-esque being a drain-like effect, instead of a burst heal, and it would make the heal counter-able via dispels and such, which I’m sure many non-warlocks would rejoice in.
Haunt could officially replace Shadow Bolt as Affliction's bread-and-butter nuke, allowing us to spend more points in Affliction, and Demo for overall damage, instead of points in Destro to buff the one non-Affliction spell we still use for no good reason.

Overall this change would open Affliction up to a decent amount of those "fun choice" talents you Devs keep saying you want us to have in Cataclysm. It would also make Affliction a much more cohesive and organized spec, with a clear cut set of related spells, generally buffed by the same talents and stats, just like every other pure DPS spec in the game only spookier.

Is a scenario like this ever something you guys would consider, or do you still believe that Shadow Bolt is the proper spell to center the Affliction tree around moving into Cataclysm?
I, for one, would at least welcome some beta-testing on the subject,
Since I fail to see a flaw in this logic, or down-side, and there are a whole lot of up-sides for Affliction as a spec and a lifestyle.

Thanks for your time, and let the flaming commence.

Ghostcrawler

#31 - June 4, 2010, 5:10 a.m.

We like Shadow Bolt being the nuke for both Demonology and Affliction. That isn't likely to change. Talents don't have to be in "your tree" for them to be good talents for your build. We generally consider 0 / 0 / 71 builds to be a failure.

Fel Flame's role is for situations where you have to move a lot, or possibly in situations where you don't have time to get multiple dots up. We don't anticipate it becoming a rotational ability for any warlock.

None of this is to say that talent trees and possibly even rotations won't be changing. I'm pretty excited with the current state of the Cataclysm warlock talent trees. We've fixed up some awkward parts and come up with some cool mechanics. Hopefully we can share them soon.

Ghostcrawler

#42 - June 4, 2010, 7:06 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Speccing 15-20 into destro just to buff our nuke is not interesting or fun.
It's not broken, or totally game-changing either, but from a quality of life standpoint it really just blows.

We just disagree on that. It's not like the talents you spend in Destro are useless. If you had to get Improved Immolate on your way down, then okay, I could see your point. But if you didn't have an attractive talent in Destro to pick up, then we'd likely hear one of two things from Affliction locks:

My tree is bloated. I can't get all the dps increasing talents I want. - OR - I can't find any more talents to improve my damage. I just have to get useless filler talents.

Now having to deal with separate hit and range talents does suck. You have my complete sympathies on that and we have plans to change it.

Overall, we still want to engineer choice into all of the various talent builds. It realistically won't be of the level that every lock out there has a totally unique build, but it should give you a few points of flexibility to get talents you personally like.

Q u o t e:
I was really looking forward to demon bolt being the new demo nuke.

It's a big part of the rotation, but it doesn't push out SB.

Ghostcrawler

#90 - June 4, 2010, 5:51 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I find the mismatched threat issue to be worse than range/hit.

We want to get rid of all passive threat talents, so this shouldn't be an issue.

Q u o t e:
Shadowbolt as Affliction's bread and butter is bad design. Affliction should be about dots and channeling, rather than cast-time nukes.

Affliction has UA, Corruption, BoA and Haunt in addition to Shadow Bolt. It's fine for specs to have their niche, and I think Affliction does, but when you carry that to an extreme degree ("Affliction should ONLY cast dots. Discipline should ONLY cast shields. Resto druids should ONLY cast hots") then the classes risk becoming overly-focused or even one-dimensional. Some of the problems we got into with gear for example came because classes without traditional cast-time spells cared a lot less about haste and crit.

That's also just on the base "long boss fight" rotation. You should have a different rotation for AE fights, short kills, wounded states or movement fights. That's a lot going on.

Q u o t e:
Did anybody else read that as Demo spec now gets 4 nukes to play around with during a single fight? Seems demo is going to be pretty fun. Just not sure if it is in a good way or bad way yet. . .

Demo has BoD, Corruption, the new spell, and Shadow Bolt / Incinerate (depending on Molten Core). Again, that will change depending on exact encounter mechanics.

Q u o t e:
On this topic, do you mean that you wish to give flexibility in the primary talent tree(i.e. that has the most talent points spent in it), the secondary talent tree, or both? I suppose it could be interpreted either way so I just wish to clarify.

We'd just like to see the "cookie cutter" builds say things like "spend the last 5-10 points wherever you want." If it is "spend 50 points wherever you want" then it feels like talents aren't really making you better at your role (in this case doing damage). It doesn't really matter to us whether the flexibility is in the primary or secondary (or rarely tertiary tree) but we don't want to encourage spending every point in one tree.

Q u o t e:
That is, if I'm Affliction, putting points into Demo gives me absolutely 0 additional DPS except Demonic Aegis, and even that has dubious usefulness.

Sure, but that kind of mechanic exists everywhere. Both Holy and Shadow priests subspec into Discipline, but there is no such thing as a competitive Holy / Shadow build. We could make one I suppose, but I'm not sure the bang for the buck is really there. Granting that extra flexibility might come at a sizable expense if the trees become over-constrained or so pliable that the talents aren't interesting.

Q u o t e:
We are the only spec that doesn't get full use of fel armor (Demonic Aegis talent).

Right, but why is that important? If it's just because you think your dps is low, there are a hundred ways to fix that without constructing an Affliction / Demo build that is equally competitive with an Affliction / Destro build. If you just really love Demonic Aegis and the other mechanics you mentioned then I'm more sympathetic, but then why not just play Demo?

Q u o t e:
Shadowbolt for affliction is fine if they fix

1) Range talents being unobtainable because of talent requirement for dps
2) threat talents being tough to pick up
3) pushback talents being expensive and hard to pick up
4) all of these talents being separated in 2 diff trees that make it impossible for any warlock spec to get both, yet all specs use both types

Yeah, I'd agree with that. My opinion is that some of the Affliction SB hate is really that it feels like you are supposed to enhance both your Affliction / Shadow and Destruction / Fire magic independently in order to your job. We think we can fix all that without giving Affliction a Shadow Bolt clone.

Ghostcrawler

#221 - June 9, 2010, 1:53 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Affliction shouldn't get 30% or more of its damage from a spell and talents in the destruction tree, any more then an arcane mage should get the same 30% from frost or fire, or a prot pally get 30% of their threat and damage reduction from holy spells and talents.

Sorry, we just don't agree that that is a problem. It doesn't really matter if the talents are in a tree with a different name than your spec as along as the talents are useful, and those 15 certainly are.

To reiterate, we like Affliction using Shadow Bolt. We don't want Affliction to rely so much on Drain Soul because that feels a lot like a Shadow priest, and we don't like any class casting nothing but dots. So Shadow Bolt is sticking around. We also don't have a problem with Shadow Bolt being a Destruction spell and being buffed by the Destruction tree. Furthermore, we have no problem with Destro using something other than Shadow Bolt even though it's a Destruction spell. Finally, we don't mind that all of those talent points buff one spell. It's a really important spell! If you had to spend 15 points to buff a spell that was a trivial amount of your damage it would be a bigger deal, but then I'm fairly sure nobody would make that talent point investment in the first place.

All of those arguments seem like they offend your logic or something, which isn't enough grounds for us to want to change it. Different classes work differently. Mages focus on a school of magic while warlocks focus more on a source of damage (dots, pets and nukes) but even in that case, that doesn't mean they focus on their damage source to an extent that the mage focuses on Fire, Frost or Arcane (and in Cataclysm all mages will care a lot about Arcane Missiles in any event). We are really trying to resist class homogenization and having talent trees constructed similarly for every class works against that goal. Not similar is fine. Not functional is not fine.

What does bother us is having to get both Affliction and Destruction versions of hit, threat reduction, pushback resistance and range in addition to the crit damage from Ruin. Our plan is to put generic (affects all spells) talents for hit and pushback resistance in the first tier of Demonology and then just make the spells longer range so there is no need for a range talent. We're getting rid of all threat reduction talents. With the extra Cataclysm talent points, you should have more than enough points to get some in Demo and Destro as Affliction, and in fact we're leaning towards warlocks being one of those classes that does invest a little in all three trees. (Though again, not to the extent that you have no flexibility.)

If you're one of those warlocks who just really, really wants Affliction or Shadow Bolt to work differently, well, you have my apologies. No doubt if you were in our shoes you might design different talent trees. I have tried to explain our choice for the design above.

Ghostcrawler

#261 - June 9, 2010, 5:13 a.m.

Q u o t e:
If so, does that mean smaller crits, or does that mean 200% spell crits baseline?

We're not sure yet. For the hybrid classes, having the 200% crits is a good way to distinguish the casters from the non-casters (jn terms of keeping healers or melee specs from doing quite so much damage with spells). For mages and locks there is less reason for them.

Q u o t e:
Since Warlocks will be "one of those classes that invest in all three trees", this implies that other classes won't. This is not a problem in itself except isn't Mastery being added that strongly rewards putting more points in one tree versus several???

Almost everyone at max level will want at least 51 / something / something to gain full benefit of their passive talent trees. A Shadow priest might be something like today's 14/0/57, (Maybe 21/0/55? Maybe 15/0/61?) because we're not giving them much reason so far to subspec Holy at all. A warlock or hunter at the moment (in Cataclysm) might choose a 51/10/15, meaning points in all 3 trees. This is all early though and sometimes players don't end up going with the builds we think they will and we want you to have more flexibility than you do today.

Q u o t e:
The problem with TTW isn't so much that it's 18 points deep -- I don't like that fact, I feel like putting 60 points into your primary tree shouldn't be too much to ask, but Blizzard disagrees -- the real problem is that many of the 15 points we have to spend to reach TTW aren't useful if you're not specced Arcane. Five points for Fire, and nine for Frost -- arguably more, depending on how essential you consider Clearcasting in the modern game -- are completely wasted. If we felt we were getting something interesting/useful/fun out of those points, I don't think there'd ever have been nearly as much complaining about TTW as there has been.

Right. Burrowing down to get a good talent isn't bad when the talents you're picking up, even if not something you'd get without the juicy reward at the bottom, are at least useful for you. On the other hand. Torment the Weak is pretty close to just a passive damage bonus. If the mage had to do something to apply the snare, it would be an interesting talent. As it is, it really has near 100% uptime in PvE.

Q u o t e:
I was half-expecting it to be good for Frost thanks to Deathfrost. I was not expecting it to be good for Fire, which already has a pretty good priority list.

The idea is to keep Arcane Missiles as a core mechanic that all mages want to use when it procs, but it's possible some spec may end up not using it if their other spells are propped up enough that you don't want to spend the cast time. We'll have to see when we get a little further in beta.

Ghostcrawler

#324 - June 9, 2010, 9:33 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Between Ghostcrawler stating that they don't really like you having to take Ruin, and him essentially confirming that Ruin, Ice Shards, Spell Power, etc., are going away (with a decision yet to be made on baseline crit damage)...

I didn't mean to imply that Ruin is necessarily going away. I was more saying that there is less need for 200% crit talents for mages and locks than there are for druids and shaman. The other "you need one version for Affliction and another version for Destruction" talents are more than likely going away.

Q u o t e:
Does it sound to anyone else like locks will actually have much LESS flexibility than we have now if they are going to have mandatory 15 points in Destro and 5+ in Demo?

But a lot of the Affliction talents you feel you must get right now are going away too.

Q u o t e:
Does "might choose" mean the same thing as "is required to choose?"

No. The whole point is to provide more flexibility. We'll try to share our work-in-progress talent trees soon. Many of them are probably changing more than you suspect.

Q u o t e:
See, THIS is why MMOs suck. You get to a point where you like your character, like the way it's played... and then the Devs go and change it all up because "it's an expansion and it's expected that things change".

I guess "if it ain't broke don't fix it" doesn't apply to MMOs. Still... I really hope they don't royally screw up my fire mage. (Though based on the little information I have, it's not looking hopeful.)

It's a tough thing to balance. What might feel like it's working perfectly to you may feel awkward or even untenable to someone else. We really try not to make change for the sake of change, but we do use expansions as an opportunity to address problems. Players will leave if they feel like problems in the game are never addressed. The trick is just to make sure we don't change too much that stuff is unrecognizable. I'm sure there are players who will disagree (and they don't need to do so in this thread), but my impression is that most players prefer the LK versions of their classes to the previous versions. None are without problems of course, but it at least suggests we are trending in the right direction.

Q u o t e:
* Molten Core and Decimate stick out like a sore thumb in the Demo tree. Reworking Molten Core to proc off of pet damage instead of Corruption ticks would be a quick fix that would tie it to the tree much better. Decimation should probably be shoved out the door, with it's damage buff worked back in some other way.

I find both of those talents to be a lot of fun (and no, I didn't design them). Tying them to pet damage leads to some unintended effects, such as an even more severe dps loss when your pet is dead or otherwise unavailable.

Q u o t e:
* Very deep Destro talents like Soul Leech and Shadow & Flame which buff Shadow Bolt seem very odd, head fakes from Blizz to lead new Destro locks down the wrong path. This quickly leads to the thinking that Shadow Bolt doesn't fit well as a Destro spell any more.

I agree with you more here, but there's a simple reason why Shadow Bolt is included, which is that we can't make certain you'll have Shadowburn and Chaos Bolt before you get Shadow and Flame. So essentially you could talent into a talent that does absolutely nothing for you. Sometimes I think we probably worry about this too much, but consider the extreme case: a 45-point talent called "Improved Fel Flame." You can get the talent much earlier than you can get the spell. Also consider that locks of levels lower than 80 do exist, and they need to have rotations too for dungeons, PvP or soloing.

Q u o t e:
Frankly after WOTLK, Lock players (or ex locks like me) have very little reason to trust Bliz about the class.

Okay. You might be one of those locks who liked spamming Shadow Bolt in Black Temple and Sunwell. But we know there are a lot who prefer the current warlock design.

Ghostcrawler

#367 - June 10, 2010, 4:16 a.m.

Q u o t e:
No offense GC, but that's just a slap in Affliction's face. Now if we knew how Mastery worked and that any talent points beyond 51 have zero added benefit to Mastery, then you are absolutely correct. Keeping Shadow Bolt in the Destruction Tree has zero impact!! However, we aren't led to believe that based on the current known description of Masteries. Buffing Shadow Bolt immediately places Affliction down 15 buff points to our Mastery. Gee thanks :(

You went there! The dreaded slap to the face! The kryptonite of the WoW developer....

As others have pointed out, passive talent tree bonuses indeed cap out at 51 points in a tree. Any points you spend beyond that are presumably for the talent benefits themselves because they have no passive bonus.

It's also possible given the relatively low passive benefit per point (it's not like you get 5% damage for each talent point spent) that you might be able to have fewer than 51 points in a tree. We're not really trying to engineer that decision, but we're not going to slap your wrist either.

Now your face maybe....