soul shards

Right now it’s still very vague as to how exactly this would work. I was thinking that since the warlock is a pure DPS class, the new use of the soul shard would also be used to boost their damage. In the Warlock class Q&A, Ghostcrawler mentioned that the new soul shard system would give warlocks a combat boost and that’s why more damage was the first thing on my mind (in the form of more spell power, crit, or haste for a short period of time). But Ghostcrawler recently came out in the forums and said that the new soul shard system would indeed be cool but not necessarily a dps buff. This statement poses a few questions right away.

If it’s a combat boost but not a dps buff then exactly what is it? The only stuff that I can think of are more of the cute maintenance things that the current shard system already has. Maybe more threat management abilities or survivability abilities? Maybe they’re things like more stuns and other crowd control effects? But these don’t scream core class mechanics to me.

If it’s not a dps buff, would making it more prevalent in class mechanics actually make it more annoying? I mean, this means you’ll have to worry about shards even more than before. It’s really got to be so cool and so fun to make the extra effort worth your trouble. Somehow i wish Ghostcrawler would give a clearer picture about what he’s really talking about but I guess even giving an example would come across to other people as “this is what it’s going to do” instead of just an idea.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

warlock shadowbolt

In the mage Q&A, the devs mentioned that they’re planning to make mages and warlocks feel less similar and that since they’re happy with where mages stand right now from a design perspective, warlocks will be the class that would be drifting away. Ghostcrawler said that the soul shard system is the area they want to make a few changes to achieve this goal. Right now shards are more for maintenance and thus take a back seat to the actual warlock game play. Shards are used to summon the minions, healthstones, summoning portals and other things that are “cool” but necessarily totally needed. They want to change that. They want to make using shards a core mechanic and that using a shard would provide a combat boost instead of used for just minor things. They want shard usage to be a big deal! [maybe things like a trinket like ability costing a shard to increase spell power or things similar to that? That would be so cool if it were].

The devs also want to make pet usage and abilities more interesting. Some pet abilities just aren’t used that much anymore (imp fire shield) and some pets aren’t very interesting to use like the voidwalker. They want us to make interesting decisions when deciding which pet to use for a certain scenario. They also feel like it’s time to improve pet survivability especially in PvP. They said that they’re going to address this by slowly going to make pets scale with all stats, starting with spell penetration and resilience.

They also recognize that warlocks have a problem with threat management especially since other classes can reduce their threat by just spending a couple of points in one talent while locks have to spend a lot on talents that even belong to different trees. They’ll have to figure out a way to solve this problem without moving around the talents too much. A partial solution is lowering the cooldown of Soulshatter to 3 minutes. Talents that affect the range of certain spells also suffer from the same problem as the threat reducing ones and thus are in the same boat.

Here’s a list of other things that were discussed in the Q&A and are being considered for implementation (meaning they’re still just thinking about it, okay).

1. More burst damage for Affliction warlocks through Haunt and Pandemic

2. Hellfire doesn’t have much of a niche and could get cut in the future.

3. Green fire! Instead of giving it to all fire spells, they might just make a new spell have it.

4. Class specific flying mount

5. Being able to customize or change the appearance of the warlock pets.

Looks like warlocks have quite a bit of interesting and cool things to look forward to going forward and I wish the devs some luck and success in trying to address the issues mentioned in this feature.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

warlock 666 damage

He was around level 64 when I decided to play him more seriously again and he just hit 70 this morning, which I’m quite happy about. When I was level 68, I looked at my bonus damage at my character screen after getting a few gear upgrades and I was quite surprised at what I saw. Being a warlock, a magic user of the dark arts who also has a demon minion, it was quite amazing to find that my bonus damage was 666 thanks to my gear and the right abilities like fel armor and the demonology talents. For that short amount of time he was a warlock that was really true to his calling for the dark arts! Right now I have a lot more bonus damage than that because of the gear, fel armor rank upgrade, and level but that was really amazing that I caught that moment. Of course, in no way do I advocate what my warlock stands for but it’s cool for a little role playing.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Soul shards are getting easier to get and easier to manage with the following changes in patch 3.1:

* Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.

* Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.

The first change all fun, making it possible to get shards while wiping on boss fights and much easier to get shards in trash fights. It seems though like the second one isn’t great at all, especially if you’re used to running around with more shards than that. Ghostcrawler has an explanation and it’s all part of making shard management easier.

Drain Soul will produce enough shards that you should never be without them. Even if you are learning a boss through repeated wiping, you should be able to get the new shards you need each attempt.

In fact, it produces so many shards that we figured you’d end up having to delete them constantly, which would be annoying. The 32 limit will fill up your largest bag (which only holds shards anyway) without spilling over into the rest of your inventory. We figured very few locks carried around a lot more shards than that, and like I said, they are easy enough to replace now for those of you who do manage to go through them quickly. source

So basically warlocks will be getting shards out of their ears so it’s just best that they put a cap to it. they figure it’s more convenient to just grab the shards you need rather than having to get rid of the ones that could fill up all your bags. It’s a sound reasoning especially if your factor the minor glyph, glyph of drain soul which has a chance of giving you an extra shard! What I’m wondering though is that with this change, locks will have to cast drain soul even boss fights if you’re running low on shards so how will this practice affect their rotation? It might not be much of a big deal but it’s something that has to be asked.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

According to the patch notes, Demonic Sacrifice will be removed from the game. Obviously the patch notes are incomplete since we still don’t know what’s replacing it, even if some new talents have been revealed. This is sort of the same fate of the paladin talent Blessing of Kings (which will be made trainable in the patch) and still no announcement of what will take its place.

The removal of Demonic Sacrifice from the game is a bit of a toss-up for me. On one hand, a lot of Demo warlocks didn’t take the talent anymore since it seemed like having your demon up is nice even in dungeons because of the buffs from Master Demonologist and Demonic Empowerment. Keeping your pet up has been made easier by the new Fel Synergey talent which was moved to the first tier and has a 100% at max rank to heal your demon by 30% of damage you deal. It doesn’t help the cause that Destruction warlcoks like having their imp out because of the increased crit chance given by Empowered Imp.

On the other hand, Demonic Sacrifice was introduced to the game to allow warlocks put their demons to good use when they’re better off gone than there. As I stated above, perhaps this thinking is obsolete but there could be instances when it could still be useful. The most obvious one I could think of is the Heigan dance in Naxx where a pet could be at high risk of dying and thus be off no use to the raid, so a sacrificed demon would probably be better. Perhaps the Sapphiron fight is also another instance where it’s better to have a sacced pet because of the air phases where you need to get behind an iceblock or die.

Well no matter what you think about the talent, it’s no question that it was a cool concept while it lasted and I hope that it’s replacement will be something just as cool and hopefully something that could be an integral part of a demo build and others like destruction as well.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.

Mage

* Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
* Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
* Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.
* Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)
* Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Arcane Missiles — Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old – Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)
* Glyph of Mana Gem — Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)
* Glyph of Arcane Blast — Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)

Paladin

* The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
* Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
* Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
* Glyph of Seal of Righteousness — Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old – Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)

Priest

* Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

Rogue

* Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
* Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
* Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
* Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Shaman

Glyphs

* Glyph of Windfury Weapon — Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)

Warlock

* Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.

Dungeons and Raids

The Obsidian Sanctum

Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

User Interface

* The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.
* A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.
* When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum .

Bug Fixes

* Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.
* Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.
* Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

taken from MMO Champion

If these changes are true then that means that we generally have a good mix of nerfs and buffs coming. Unfortunately the nerfs and buss aren’t spread out across the classes. But I guess hat’s ok since it’s not about the number of nerfs and buffs you get but about what Blizz thinks has to be changed. The winner here is hands down the Paladin since they didn’t get any nerfs at all and the buffs they got are pretty awesome if you’re playing a Ret pally. I guess everyone else will just have to wait for patch 3.1 to get their awesome buffs.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

WARLOCK

# Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).
# Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)
# Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn’t die.
# Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.
# Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell
# Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.
# Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.
# Additional new talents have been added.

DRUID

# Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.
# Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.
# Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.
# Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
# Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.
# Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
# We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

WARRIOR

# Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.
# You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.
# Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
# Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.
# We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.
# We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries. source

Just like the changes for priests, rogues and shamans in the part one changes, it seems like the changes listed here are pretty much all buffs. There’s a lot of interesting changes announced that will make the three classes here very happy. The change to Improved shadowbolt for locks has been a long time coming and it’s actually really good now. Drain life having a chance to grant a shard even if the mob didn’t die is quite an interesting change. I’m wondering how making destruction warlocks a replenishment spec just like survival hunters, shadow priests ad ret pallies will change things. I’m thinking that shadow priests don’t have much of a niche going now that the other shadow damage class can be a mana battery.

Feral druids are looking stronger with the new savage defense passive ability for bears and the note that sustained kitty dps will be increased. For warriors, the most interesting change is that stance dancing is going to be easier to do now that you’ll only lose a maximum of 20 rage (untalented) doing it. This will benefit warriors of all specs as they will be able tank and dps better with more rage at their disposal. Another cool change is the one about absorbed damage giving the warrior rage, making things like power word shield a more viable option when healing warriors. Strangely enough, there’s no mention about this same mechanic for bear druids.

Now that part two is out so soon after part 1 came out, I think we can expect to see the final part out in a few hours or at least soon enough. I’m crossing my fingers that the last installment will see a lot of interesting changes as well.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

The new change coming to the Ritual of Summoning is in effect something from the pages of the Mage Ritual of Refreshment spell or the Warlock Ritual of Souls spell where a tangible object is summoned for the rest of the group to benefit. In the case of Ritual of Summoning, the warlock creates an object that acts like a meeting stone. For one shard, the warlock can summon the whole raid from anywhere where summoning is allowed. In fact, since it acts like a meeting stone the warlock doesn’t even need to be there. H e just creates the object and can leave the summoning to the rest of the group present.

Just like Ritual of Refreshment frees the mage from having to do the hard work of conjuring so much water and trading it to the party, this new change to Ritual of Summoning frees the warlock from having to do so much clicking to summon people.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

OMG New Drain Animations! Or is it actually old? I don’t really know…

This is something I just noticed earlier when I was playing my warlock. It’s possible I never noticed it until today because I haven’t really been playing my warlock much. For some of you, this might not really be very new since I’ve seen videos of this as early as September from the beta and I’ve also read that it might have been implemented when Patch 3.02 came out. As for me, I never noticed it until today and I’m very fascinated by it since it looks awesome!

Instead of looking like a colored lasso connecting drainer to drainee, it actually looks like something could be getting drained there! The new twisting animation makes it look more classy and believable Drain Soul, Drain Mana, Drain Life or Health Funnel share this cool new animation with the appropriate color of course. Pardon me for being excited about this just now.

Below is a video of the animations in action.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

While this is not final and could absolutely change, here is what we’re thinking about for the new design:

You keep your pet.
You keep your spells.
It buffs spell damage (for that “blow your cooldowns” feel).
It buffs mitigation (you could even tank for a bit).
It provides the current snare reduction for PvP.
You’ll still get a few fun demon abilities, but you can just use your normal spells if you’d rather.

The most important thing about these changes for me is that you get to keep your pet. The whole Demonology tree is about you and your pet giving each other benefits. Aside from the occasional times when you use Demonic Sacrifice, Demonology is all about keeping your pet with you and the talents are all about exactly that. So the current design of metamorphosis doesn’t make sense at all since the whole duration you’re morphed all your other talents are worthless since your pet is not there.

The other problem I had with the very first version of the talent was that the cooldown was 5 mins. For a then underwhelming talent that was too long long especially for something that lasts just 45 seconds. The current 3 mins is much more sensible.

Being able to have your pet with you while having all your regular spells at your disposal and having increased spell damage, increased mitigation and snare reduction while morphed – that’s what I’m talking about when it comes to a 51 point talent and i didn’t even mention that you still get to have cool demon abilities. Now it feels like it’s a celebration of what the Demonology tree is all about. I really hope these changes make it to live and I know a lot of warlocks who would be happy to see them too.

Post from: WOW Obsessed