Monday, August 11, 2008

Virulence needs a change:

Link.

Edit: Scratch that. Blizzard fixed the problem a completely different way.

"As far as a PvP- snare ability goes, we are going to try something like removing the cooldown and root from Chains of Ice. It will drop the target's movement to zero, and the target will regain 5% movement speed per sec for 20 sec (10 in PvP). It's a physical debuff that cannot be dispelled and isn't subject to diminishing returns. Let us know how it goes. If it's too spammy now, we can put a cooldown back on it."

34 comments:

Unknown said...

While I'm not in beta I have done my fair share of pvp and I've never seen anyone stack resists(unless you know your up against an all shadow team in arena). You mention mages having high resists but mage armor gives 40 to all and ice armor gives 40 cold.

I don't see any ability for warlocks to raise their resists since felhunters just reduce dmg taken by 10% now.

I don't think giving a -resist talent is necessary seen as how the resist cap will be around 400? I would however like to see the talent changed to something more useful since spells are supposed to use melee crit and AP to boost them.

Sam said...

Mage armor + arcane shielding talent + magic absorption = 140 resist all with mage armor on. Shadow protection from all priests = 70 shadow resist minimum.

Our spell penetration = 0 currently, with no way to raise it.

Seeing as how a large portion of our damage is magic based, unlike other melee classes (holy doesn't count for ret), this is a problem, no matter how you slice it.

Unknown said...

This is a bit of an aside, but it got me thinking of another major talent problem to do with mechanics changes, namely the Aura talents being unlinked from Presences.

Unholy aura is medicore now if you PvP is Unholy spec - it's some shadow resist (which is okay, but not really my idea of a good talent point sink) and speed for your group.

But if you switch to Blood Presence... you now get the 10% speed boost of the Unholy aura WHILE keep the 15% damage 4% healing Blood presence... So the only benefit left to Unholy is really the GCD boost (because the attack speed change is just naturally inferior to Blood's damage boost).

With mind freeze (and death grip) off the GCD down... who even needs a 1 sec GCD? Why would anyone ever touch Unholy presence ever again if you got Unholy aura?

Seems like it wasn't thought through fully.

HDL said...

mages dont wear mage armor in arena for BGs...

it's fine.

Anonymous said...

Jayde you focus too much on the unholy try. Please adress some Frost issues. Tbh we lack way more ruens than unhoyl spec since we basically in pvp need to use chaisn of ice or icy touch for crap dmg all the time. We hardly get top use our frost ruens for dmg.

Anonymous said...

Forgive my typo's :P

Anonymous said...

Can you imagine how loud warriors would cry due to hamstring being resisted and not being able to try again for 15 seconds? I don't even want to think about it.
_________________________________

But warriors still are the easiest class in the game to lock down, where as DK can still be that uber tank while putting out DPS, not to mention DK has range as well.

Anonymous said...

Mage armor + arcane shielding talent + magic absorption = 140 resist all with mage armor on. Shadow protection from all priests = 70 shadow resist minimum.

naah, mage armor..

Dks should be countered by something so everyone who doesnt have a mage/priest to buff them is still fully affected.
you get the idea

i also don't think giving them a -resist talent is necessary

Anonymous said...

There are a few extremely critical flaws in your logic, as well as some factual errors and a wide array of oversights in your reasoning. I will try to keep this short since I am not commenting so as to "bash" you, but just to point out how and why you are wrong.

Firstly, Virulence does not, in fact, scream PvP talent. Any raider worth his epics will know how important spell hit is on bossfights. Given that, to some extent, DKs dps will come in the form of magic, having even the slightest bit talented spell hit means that that is just that much more itemization points you can spend on other, non-spell hit stats. Furthermore, as you may/may not know, almost all classes who have magical damage output are getting 3% spell hit or more, talented. The secondary effect of Virulence in fact seals the idea that this is a multipurpose talent. Look at, for example, the tier 1 arcane mage talent, Arcane Subt. You could argue that the dispel resist on it 'screams' PvP, yet you will quickly notice that this talent is not a 'singel purpose' talent, but in fact a talent that is useful in both PvE and PvP (nb, Arcane Subtlety's second effect is a 40% threat redux). This just proves that for some (not all) talents blizzard is intent on having them be useful in BOTH pve and pvp. This is equally important for DKs, since blizz has already stated that they do not want DKs to necessarily have to 'spec' for pve (tanking) and 'spec' for pvp. A multipurpose talent will be useful in that regard.

Your second large error was in the assertion that spell pen will be very very important to DKs due to the WoTLk mage's inherently high magical resist. The thing that debunks this assertion is the simple fact that there is precedence. Mages (who unlike DKs have ALL their damage being magical), have already experienced high end arenas as well as normal PvP in an environment where inherently high magical resist exists. This being, Warlocks. Warlocks inherently high magical resist in TBC has already set precedence. And as we all saw, Mages weren't hungering for spell pen like they should have using your logic. The simple fact is, since mages and other magical classes dealt with warlocks in TBC without bleeding spell pen out their ears, DKs (who only partially rely on spell damage) will be fine in WoTLk against high resist targets. All this makes your suggestion for spell pen on DK talents a very mute point.

Your third major error is part oversight and part incorrect facts. Firstly, your main snare being magical is again, no new thing. Mages' main snare has always been magic. Yet again, we never saw mages hungering for mass spell pen. Secondly, your factual error is the fact that frost will no longer suffer from binary resists. WoTLk beta mages have reported that their frost spells are indeed, no longer binary. Furthermore, the resist mechanic itself has changed in WoTLk, with it doing resist tier calculations at smaller intervals, hence reducing the total probabilistic chance of a full resist.
Now true, mages may have more frost snare spells in total than DKs, but this is design. DKs are not meant to keep their opponents perma-snared like mages do (something that, I'm sure, you are not willing to accept).

All in all, let us remember; firstly, this class (DKs) are not a single purpose solo PvP class. This game has other areas that require focus as well. Second, the DK is not meant to be the 'be-all-end-all-can fight anything' class. Making the DK have a weakness against a specific class is not 'bad design' but in fact a good decision, since otherwise DKs would not rely on anyone else to help.
And lastly, "knowing your pvp" does not an argument make.

Sam said...

Nice post, albiet flawed.

Ask any mage how easy it was to deal with warlocks before I convinced the devs that losing games simply due to LOL RESIST messages are not fun. It affected warlocks just as much as mages and shadow priests. Having spell penetration cuts through class buffs such as shadow protection, the new mage talents, the old felhunter master demo buff, paladin auras, mark of the wild, pet resists, etc etc.

Mages were never really that effective at DPSing warlocks until season 3 and 4, just as warlocks and shadow priests had a difficult time landing critical CC's against teams that had high shadow resists. To try and argue this point means you never experienced it back when it was a problem. There's a REASON a lot of spell penetration gear was introduced after season 2. They don't do things like that just for shits and giggles.

Also, while mage frost spells may or may not be binary any more (i haven't tested it, since I don't have a mage), I can tell you for a fact that chains of ice is. Right now, the popular strategy to fight against another DK is to simply switch to frost presence. I can negate a lot of their physical damage via 45% higher armor, and flat out resist things like chains of ice, and greatly reduce the magical damage I take from them by simply pressing that button.

The dev team doesn't want DKs to feel forced to twist presences in PvP, so this is a problem. Also, they don't want to nerf frost presence since that would affect PvE balance. The only option left, then, is to grant death knights spell penetration. It's for this reason, as well as the fact that they are the first and only melee class that relies heavily around a magic-based, binary snare that can be flat out resisted, and has a lengthy cool down (by design). Obviously, this has the potential to be a problem.

By the way, to the poster saying that mages don't PvP with mage armor: I have to wonder how much you've played with them in WotLK yet? Do you realize that mage armor cuts down the duration of ALL magical effects on them in half, in addition to raising their resists and mana regen?

Magical Dots, Fears, deathcoils, sheep, hungering cold, etc etc. They all last half duration. It's a pretty depressing sight for warlocks when they realize the longest they'll ever be able to fear a mage with mage armor up is 5 seconds. Assuming, of course, that it doesn't get resisted. :P

Corruption, siphon life, etc as well, half durations on them. It's actually a really sweet change for mages.

Oh, and LOL @ my argument flawed because mages snare being magic. Last time I checked, frost bolt didn't have a 15 second cooldown.

Anonymous said...

"Firstly, your main snare being magical is again, no new thing. Mages' main snare has always been magic. Yet again, we never saw mages hungering for mass spell pen."

As you stated earlier, DKs are also a melee class, thus relying A LOT on snares to actually do damage, so that comparison was (sorry) totally worthless.

I dont have time to cover all your points, this one just made me post. Anyways, as much as Leiah seems to be a bit "pro-DK" which is understandable, you seem to have an "anti-DK" bias. I may or may not (jk!) be right...

MG

Anonymous said...

jayde

Any chance you could do a post on the us beta forums about the state of locks please ?

Sam said...

Once I have time to fully play test them out, sure! I've been relying a lot on some of my beta invites (socio, lemonayd, draele, etc) in the mean time. And I discuss with them a lot of things that need to be brought up and/or suggested to help them out. I'm still not completely satisfied with how locks have turned out quite yet, especially chaos bolt. I think that thing has been redesigned about 5 - 6 times now. It's a work in progress.

Anonymous said...

How about some hunter love.

What made you completely abandon your hunter?

Sam said...

Who said I did? I just played it in 5s last night.

Sheesh.

Uhm. Time constraints? I don't have time to work a full time job, do the girl friend thing, test the shit out of alpha/beta, give solid feedback to the best of my ability, and play my 5 classes full time on live, while taking night classes at a college.

It's just too much.

Anonymous said...

"Ask any mage how easy it was to deal with warlocks before I convinced the devs that losing games simply due to LOL RESIST messages are not fun."

YOU convinced the devs? Riiiiight. I guess the one benefit of having your own blog is that you can take credit for things even though you deserve none. I'm pretty sure the devs realized the resist issues far, faaar before you even came onto the scene. And I am certain that people were complaining about it far before that. YOU hardly did much, apart from be loud about it, but then again, so did around 1000 other people.

"To try and argue this point means you never experienced it back when it was a problem."

I find it charming that you have either; A] Failed to understand my point, or B] Understood my point, and in an effort to save face on your own blog, construed it to mean something else just so you can make a counterpoint (a counterpoint to a point that didn't even exist). I am not stating that high resists were not a problem in high end arenas. I am just stating that the problem of high resists are already a part of arena strategy, and tactics have already been created and evolved to deal with classes with high inherent resists. These tactics do NOT revolve around stacking spell pen.

"There's a REASON a lot of spell penetration gear was introduced after season 2"

Bullsh!te more please, the grand total amount of spell penetration on BOTH season 3 and season 4 of the mage arena sets is a COMBINED SUM of ZERO. I think you make sh!t up for sh!ts and giggles.

"Also, while mage frost spells may or may not be binary any more (i haven't tested it, since I don't have a mage)"
This is the kind of self centered, egotistical bullsh!te that got you ousted on the official forums as well. There is pages and pages of data, with screenshots, combat log parses as well as a vast array of personal feedback from numerous mages that PROVE that frost is no longer binary, yet in your mind it's not true, since you don't have a mage.

"The dev team doesn't want DKs to feel forced to twist presences in PvP, so this is a problem. Also, they don't want to nerf frost presence since that would affect PvE balance. The only option left, then, is to grant death knights spell penetration."

ROFL this sh!t actually made me laugh out loud. "the only option left" is to give DKs spell pen? Giving or not giving spell pen has fuk all to do with aura twisting since there is around 50 thousand other ways to prevent such a behavior.

"By the way, to the poster saying that mages don't PvP with mage armor: I have to wonder how much you've played with them in WotLK yet?"

Thaaaats right, a little more meandering to prove a mute point eh? So...when did random world PvP encounters EVER give ANY indication of arena play? A mage running around in arenas with Mage armor on will be the biggest laughing stock of the entire community, unless of course he is going up against a 3 warlock team. No, mages sacrifice too much protection putting up Mage Armor instead of Frost Armor. Any retard with even a lvl 20 mage would know this. The buff to mage armor won't help the mage when he has a double melee on him.

At the end of the day, you are just whining now. DKs are NOT meant to keep people in melee range, they are NOT warriors. Warriors do NOT have ranged attacks (Deathcoil). Warriors do NOT have ranged interrupts and silences. Warriors do NOT have the plethora of anti-caster tools available to DKs. You may argue that the anti caster tools are weak. But most of them, by blues own admission, are not even working properly yet. Warriors have NONE, even in a non-working state.


"Oh, and LOL @ my argument flawed because mages snare being magic."

I don't even think "pro-DK" will describe this. You want DKs to have snare and kiting tools to rival Mages? You are completely insane. This entire blog is a sham. You're nothing more than a whiner who will actually waste making entire blogs of whine since his class is not OP.


You played a Warlock faar too long. Wanting EVERYTHING delivered to you on a silver platter is the end effect of that. Wanting DKs to CC like mages, hit as hard as fully raged warriors, have anti-caster tools that would shame a rogue, and kite and snare like hunters is nothing short of insane.

GG sir, your blog is yet another one that I can safely jot down as nothing but the ramblings of a whining madman. Well done, you can now safely pat yourself on the back since you have joined the exclusive club that the rest of us mock.

I'm done here.

Anonymous said...

Frost shock is resisted plenty of times even with 3% spell hit. It sucks but it's not an issue.

Anonymous said...

Bullsh!te more please, the grand total amount of spell penetration on BOTH season 3 and season 4 of the mage arena sets is a COMBINED SUM of ZERO. I think you make sh!t up for sh!ts and giggles.

Season 3 introduced a spell penetration off-hand, staff, wand, and it is included on the season 3 caster ring, for a total of 69 spell penetration with either the offhand or staff + ring + wand. Arena gear is more than just the 5 piece sets...

The rest of your post is just as ignorant and/or biased as this, to be honest.

Sam said...

Yep, and cloak enchant for 89 spell pen. Which every caster who has issues with resists had the choice, then of buying. And a lot of mages did (and warlocks... and shadow priests) did.

Sooo... what was your point again? That you don't have one?

lol nerdrage.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry but there's no such thing as a "PvP" talent. There are talents that are better for PvP (take Natural Perfection), but I defy you to find a talent that has absolutely no use outside of PvP, in live or beta. (I'd go through every talent calculator right now but I don't have the time.) Go back to Natural Perfection. It reduces damage taken after a crit is received. In raiding, if you get critted you're usually dead, so that part of the talent is useless. However, the 3% spell crit is universally useful, making it a talent useful for both PvE and PvP restoration druids. What you're asking for is, to follow the metaphor, is to remove the 3% spell crit for another 3% dispel resist. That's pretty lame, because it pigeonholes resto druid talent selection both ways, making the PvP'ers pick up the talent and the PvE'ers avoid it like the plague.

But that's not my point. You can't expect to be a good beta tester if you don't keep all aspects of the game in mind. This post about changing Virulence is going to piss off a ton of raiders, myself being one of them. 3% spell hit is huuuuge in the endgame, while spell penetration is absolutely useless outside of PvE. (IMO that mechanic needs a change, but that's not the issue.) I'm sympathetic to your argument that DKs are going to need spell pen as a general stat for PvP--in fact I agree with it--but taking that 3% hit away from PvE DKs is not the way to do it. Virulence does not need a change; the PvP balancing of the class does, not the talent.

TL;DR: Don't change Virulence, just find another way to get spell pen. It's not a "PvP Only" talent.

Anonymous said...

This post about changing Virulence is going to piss off a ton of raiders, myself being one of them. 3% spell hit is huuuuge in the endgame

Remember that hit rating affects melee *and* spells now, and I believe Blizzard said they were planning to make the hit cap equal for melee and spells.

That extra +3% spell hit may be useless, for both pvp and pve, once you are properly geared.

Anonymous said...

That extra +3% spell hit may be useless, for both pvp and pve, once you are properly geared.

I realize that hit is gonna affect melee and spell abilities, but when you get in the endgame you're gonna want the option of dropping hit for other stats like spell power or strength, and talents like this one will allow for it. Besides, "properly geared" players are going to constitute a very small portion of the PvE crowd. A vast majority of DKs are gonna find a lot of use in this talent.

Anonymous said...

don't know the more i read leiahs blog the more it feels kind of..wrong? wont come here again

Myrag said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Myrag said...

Hello Leiah,

well I will give my thoughts here.

I'm playing this game for quite long time now, about from begining of it. I dont have beta key but in matters of pvp and hit I can say something. You compared DK to other melee that uses spells which is paladin, but you cant say that you need penetration in your talents instead of hit because your diseases and spells can be resisted.

The point of it is, warlock or priest can have theyr dots resisted aswell, but none of classes has spell penetration talent at this point, in fact in the matter of ingame mechanics spell penetration and spell hit work together.

Lets take some imaginaged situation, theres a priest with 10shadow res from UD racial and 70from buff, which gives total of 80 shadow resistance, if you would cast shadow spell agaist that target it would have lets say 10% to resist (5% base chance for resist when 70 vs 70, and 5% from resistance) if you would have 80 spell penetration the resist chance would get down to 5% due to -80shadow ress, but if u would have 5% hit chance (5% spell aswell in WotLK) it would be also 5% to resist

so u could claim whats the diffrence, and the diffrence is that hit also applies to blood strikes, melee hits, other strikes etc, if I look at it then I think all DK's would probobly want to stack with some hit raiting/hit chance over than penetration, most of pvp sets have hit raiting on it, so you will get pretty high chance to hit and not get resisted by target

the matter is also balance of PvP, if blizz would gave you talented penetration and lets say more penetration or hit u would get from items there would be inbalance because priests wouldnt even need to use shadow res buff cos your spells would go through the resistances anyway, its all about balance, the buff has to be dispeled not get thorugh with gear/talents

I know atm you can get so much penetration from pvp items that you would get through all resistances anyway, but you lose other important stats to do it, spell penetration works only with spells and only with targets that actually have resistance, other way its useless

other situation
imaginage that, you and your oponent are both 70level, he has 0 shadow resistance, so he has only 5% base chance to get resist, and if you have to chose between penetration and hit what would you choose ? if this case penetration would give you absolutly zero, but hit would lower that 5% chance of base resist and also increase your chance to hit him with melee abilities, isnt that better

if that situation isnt enough lets say that priest with 80 shadow res, if someone dispell his buff all your penetration that you have on your items is waste, but hit is never waste, infact hit will affect melee and spell now so its really powerful stat, it is never to much of it, ofc if not gimping yourself, hit affects rogues on evasion, druids in forms, other DKs that parries alot, rogues with cloak of shadows, and many more, and spell penetration doesnt do anything at all about skills only lower resistance

same goes with 80levels since blizzard will try to do the balance,

anyway the hit raiting on that talent is completly amazing and it should stay as it is now imho

ps. are you going to post more of footage if you find a bit of free time to record it ?

cheers Myrag.

fred290881 said...

Hi ;-)

I'm actually more concerned with the other portion of this talent, wich is the disease dispell resist chance.

Seeing as how a lot of our abilities are very reliant on diseases to have some meaningfull effects (blood/heart strike, death strike, obliterate), I fear that spells like abolish disease (priest), disease cleansing totem (chaman) or even cleanse (paladin) might be our bane in competitive pvp.

In this regard, i don't think that a low 30% resist chance will be enough, even more so that we can only apply our diseases twice every 10 seconds at best (and only once every 10 seconds for frost fever, if you cast a chains of ice - wich, I assume, you should do every rotation).

To solve this problem, I think the devs should buff our resist chance by a wide margin. What about 50% resist chance ?
You can implement it like that :

-------------------
Virulence:

Increase your chance to hit with your spells by 1/2/3% and your chance to automatically reapply your diseases if cleansed by 30/60/100%. This effect cannot trigger more than twice every 10 seconds.
--------------------

The "This effect cannot trigger more than twice every 10 seconds" part is there to prevent having your diseases reapplied indefinitely. And, obviously, this effect sould occure twice every 10 seconds, since you have 2 diseases.

Now, with this you have an effective 50% resist dispell mechanic, AND you are no more subject to RNG (wich is bad for competitve pvp).

Et voilĂ  !

What do you think of this idea ? ;-)

Oh, and I thank you a lot for your GREAT job, efforts and feedback on this blog and the official beta forum, Jayde ;-)

And, by the way, sorry for my horrible english ;-)

Unknown said...

So yay for the change to chains of ice.

Now if someone can just get them to add the 3 second stun Deathgrip my life will be complete. Well maybe not complete, but I'll be a much happier player :P

Anonymous said...

More than 30% dispel resist on your diseases would be silly. Every other class relies on their buffs and, aside from locks and mages, has only 30% resist.

Anyhow I doubt you'll need spell pen much. Being melee you're not likely to have a mage use mage armor against you and you'll have the 20 from cloak already. So you'll generally be looking at 50-60 resist which isn't much, especially with a raised cap that will likely lower the effectiveness of lower amounts of resists.

Anonymous said...

I follow your blog pretty much every day and I love some of the Insights you give into talents and the working of the Death Knight.

If you have chance would you be able to make a few builds for PvE lvling / Tanking you feel are best with the current Talents Please?

I made http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents2.html?tal=2305320500033310503105020300000000000000000000000000000012300303204200110000000000000000 currently but then I was thinking should I take Blood Gorged / Dancing Rune Weapon over the Gargoyle / Pale Horse for example

Anonymous said...

I'm an EU beta player so sadly can't post on the US forums, so i'm replying to your scrap bloodworms thread here, if you don't mind the semi hijack.

You have to consider a number of playstyles when balancing trees, Bloodworms are staggeringly good leveling and soloing talent, and a large number of warcraft players will benefit from Bloodworms.

Removing them to focus on a more Pvp/Pve endgame use is not the way to go. Sadly your threads seem to be dev magnets, and i'm really hoping they discount your idea on bloodworms. Such a talent really helps create a unique style for the DK, as opposed to being a 'rogue in disguise' that you seem to want it to be. You discount the fact that bloodworms deal a pretty nice amount of damage too, and aren't just there for a 'hp top-up'.

Please, when posting such bold suggestions on the fourm, think about a) the variety of players who play WoW and b) what helps DK feel like a unique class.

Sam said...

Hrm, so you're saying you want the talent to stay friendly to the leveling process only, and not be useful for end game scenarios (which it isn't, currently)?

Why would you want talents that are only useful for the leveling process, when that takes 2 or 3 weeks tops? You'll be looking at that talent when you're level 80 wishing it did something far, far better.

Anonymous said...

To add to that too, Bloodworms also sevre as handy dps and healing *even when you're stunned/unable to attack*.

DK's are incredibly vulnerable to crowd control and stuns right now, and rolling bloodworms into an improved death strike would be a considerable nerf.

Even in PVP they can server as a casting interrupt tool, and a pretty handy distraction.

Bloodworms could simply be made resistant to AOE effects, like totems, and we have a pretty handy PvP AND solo tool. They're not too shabby for pve either, with the small damage and health topup.

Anonymous said...

You responded to my first post while I was typing the second sorry.

I don't feel they're *only* good for leveling at all. They excel when leveling, but the Bloodworm mechanic can still be change to allow for a viable pvp/pve talent.

Perhaps give bloodworms a chance on hit to ensare the arget for 6 seconds, hell, we need all the pvp utility we can get right now.

I just feel the bloodworm (and other semi-pet abilities) bring alot to the unique feel of the deathknight, and simply scrapping them to buff death strike will leave us with less abilites and a much more bland playing experience.

fred290881 said...

@anonymous poster who said :
More than 30% dispel resist on your diseases would be silly. Every other class relies on their buffs and, aside from locks and mages, has only 30% resist.

While it's true that the other classes only have a 30% talented resist dispell chance and do rely heavily on their debuff, they also don't suffer as much as the deathknight from dispells.

Why ? Either because they can easily reapply their debuff (rogue poisons), can protect their debuffs with other debuff (frost mage with the stackable winter's chill), or both (affliction warlocks : their dots can be instantly reapplied AND are under the protection of unstable affliction).

On the other hand, you have the deathknight, who does no less than these classes rely on his debuff to be effective, but who must spend a really high cost to reapply his cured diseased (because each application of these diseases cost a rune, wich locks the deathknight from being able to cast other important abilities for the next 10 seconds). This, and these diseases aren't under the protection of another debuff.

This is why I think the deathknight could help a little more love in the "cure diseases" department.

But hey, I can entirely be wrong too : I don't have access to the beta, so I don't know how things all play out in the battle fields ;-)