Holy warlock love batman

[LrdVoldemort]

Well, the change to Soul Link, which wasn't mentioned in the original post, sucks (50% to 30%) but based on tests by people on the test server, the 3 second fear from Death Coil truly has the following traits:

1. Does not affect diminishing returns for existing fears/seduces.

2. Makes a player run "backwards" for 3 seconds, and their toon is completly uncontrollable. They do not even have enough control to pop a trinket or WoTF or shapeshift as in a normal fear.

3. Even if the player feared ALREADY has WoTF, trinket or Berserker rage active, the fear will work.

4. It interrupts casting.

5. Hunter pets new skills cannot defeat it, either.

The only real problem with DC is the 750 mana cost. It is not really a last ditch skill like we used to do, as most last ditch efforts=out of mana anyway. But it should be a good way for us to put some distance between us and our foes. Should be interesting.

[Oprichniki]

50% to 30%? yea, ill probly be re speccing MD/Ruin...

[krk]

The new death coil will be overpowered

[Oprichniki]

overpowered? at 750 mana? keke, overpowered is hardly what i thought...oh for the record, i kinda wanted it to be breakable by trinket/wotf etc-thatd blow it so we could really get em with a good fear/seduce

[LrdVoldemort]

IMO, we can probably buy a good 2-3 more seconds if we get off a normal fear right after the DC one. Enough to cast a SB or two, I hope...

Also, Opri, you realized they nerfed the ruin bonus from 100% extra crit damage to 60% extra crit damage.

[StormCrow]

i dont know why you noobs Shadowbolt in pvp, i find i never have time to pop one off, either way i can easily kill any nonwarrior/priest class without shadowbolts at all

[LrdVoldemort]

Agreed, Storm, but that's mainly because you can't cast the damn things without being interrupted, silenced, or whatever. They are still the most mana-efficient DPS we have, especially if we crit and proc shadow vulnerability...

[LrdVoldemort]

Additional Notes from Blue:

Thanks for the feedback. We do have some more tweaks to make before these changes go live (and one change that won't be until patch 9). So, I'd like to hijack this thread and provide some updates...

1. We've listened to the feedback that Death Coil's mana cost is now a little high, so we'll be toning that down somewhat (565 mana for rank 3 as of the next test server build). In addition, the tooltip is being updated to clarify that the fear effect cannot be countered.

2. Soul Link's mana cost is being reduced to 20% of base mana pool rather than 30% (however it will still transfer 30% of incoming damage to the pet).

3. Initially, we had planned to reduce ruin to a 1.8 damage multiplier and in patch 9 also fix the bug that allows resistance lowering effects (ie: Curse of Shadow and Curse of Elements) to drop the target's resistance below zero (this was never actually intended). However, rather than "nerf" both abilities, we plan to make the following changes instead.

First, Ruin will retain its 100% bonus (this will be updated in the next test realm build). However, in patch 9 we expect to make several resitance related changes. Resistance-lowering effects will no longer be capable of reducing the target's resistances below zero. However, in order to ensure that Curse of Shadow, Curse of Elements, and any other resistance lowering spells continue to be useful against a wide variety of targets, they will now also increase Shadow and Elemental damage (respectively) done to the target.

Although this damage bonus will not provide as much damage to low-resistance targets as the current resistance-lowering effect does (this is the "nerf" part to reduce shadowbolt spam damage), it still remains a useful spell in many circumstances (since it still increases damage dealt to the target from primary sources) while also eliminating the potential for massive damage spikes caused by crits on vulnerable targets doing double the normal critical damage (which tend to be bad for both raid agro management and for pvp balance). In addition, other elemental attacks that previously garnered little benefit from negative resistances will now see a greater benefit from Curse of Elements (ie: Frostbolts).

[LrdVoldemort]

Comments:

1. Looks like ruin is going back to its original state. Good.

2. Besides the damage reduction change to Soul Link, it looks like they had also SERIOUSLY increased mana cost up to 30% of base mana (about 1700 for me in my MC gear). Wow! At least that's being trimmed to 20%, but still.

3. Sounds like the changes to the resistance curses are going to put a halt to these insane 5K+ shadowbolt crits, etc. We'll see how much the damage increase is when the curse is in effect, but it looks like our overall DPS is going to be more level with less burst damage. This is better in raids for aggro control, I will agree, but not so cool for damage-meter biotch warlocks.

4. If CoE will actually work with Frostbolt, man, that would cook!

[CookieMan]

4. If CoE will actually work with Frostbolt, man, that would cook!

frost mages gonna have fun now on rag

[StormCrow]

Soul link better fucking be undispellable or i'm going to throw those devs in a rusty wood chipper

[LrdVoldemort]

Poor devs...

Dispellable. Still.

[Oprichniki]

so fuck soul link, pos...jesus if it isnt broke dont fucking fix it

[newworldempire]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... post592618

Looks like their changeing Soullink to an ever present aura that is only dispellable off the pet. That's pretty cool

[LrdVoldemort]

so fuck soul link, pos...jesus if it isnt broke dont fucking fix it

Well, reading the latest Blue post, they broke it, then mega-fixed it. Holy Moly!

No more 30 sec timer, has to be dispelled from the pet (and I'm talking a Felhunter with 300+ all resists) and an extra 3% damage. It IS only 30%, but damn, I'll take these changes anyday! Especially when you consider the DoTs will be killing faster, Death Coil with an unbreakable, non-degrading 3 second fear on a 2 min timer, and woot! Well-geared locks will STILL be pure ownage.