we got buffed!

[vaeevictiss 17]

strictly numbers, but it was a hotfix so they werent about to touch mechanics...but its a start.

• • Drain Life damage increased by 10%
  • Drain Soul damage increased by 10%
  • Corruption damage increased by 10%
  • Agony damage increased by 5%
  • Unstable Affliction damage increased by 15%
  • Seed of Corruption damage increased by 15%
  • Siphon Life (Talent) damage increased by 10%
  • Haunt (Talent) damage increased by 15%
  • Phantom Singularity (Talent) damage increased by 15%
• Demonology
  • Hand of Gul’dan impact damage increased by 20%
  • Demonwrath damage increased by 15%
  • Shadowbolt damage increased by 10%
  • Doom damage increased by 10%
  • Wild Imps damage increased by 10%
  • Dreadstalker attack power increased by 10%
  • Felguard attack power increased by 10%
  • Doomguard (Demonology)’s Doom Bolt damage increased by 18%
  • Demonbolt (Talent) damage increased by 10%
  • Implosion (Talent) damage increased by 15%
  • Shadowflame (Talent) damage increased by 10%
  • Darkglare (Talent) damage increased by 10%
• Destruction
  • Chaos Bolt damage increased by 11%
  • Incinerate damage increased by 11%
  • Immolate damage increased by 11%
  • Conflagrate damage increased by 11%
  • Rain of Fire damage increased by 11%, and cast time removed
  • Cataclysm (Talent) damage increased by 11%
  • Channel Demonfire (Talent) damage increased by 11%

 

 

rain of fire change is a nice touch too. that cast time is awesome. would still love to see demonic empowerment go.

[spikeysquad 50]

Pretty awesome! 

Surprised by the RoF thing too though shame it has a cost now so doesn't have use as a proper mobility spell.  

Oh and Seed of Corruption... What?

I wonder how the changes the hierarchy. 

[spikeysquad 50]

Demo is probably going to be very strong now (Demo got buffed more than Destro). However, they have actually made it harder to do as well with by buffing Shadowflame and DB/Darkglare and leaving the passives in the same tier alone. Perhaps Implosion also belongs here with that buff being more than the other pet ones. I believe that they did say they wanted this though at some point. That actives give you more back. 

[Jayros 0]

Will be interesting how it all plays out, and what kind dmg/dps we will be looking at. Since all of this has only been damage increases, still nothing addressed about the classes/specs mechanical issues.

[Genu 0]

I do think these changes are weird.

Affliction AoE is excellent, yet Phantom Singularity and Seed of Corruption receive a buff and passive increases through the improevements of the dots, while the Single target, where the real problem of affliction lies only has minor increases. In M+ I am able to Bomb around 750-800k (Maintained on 6-7 targets or 2 Mob groups, which is pretty damn good) while struggling at 130k through missing the siphon life talent on single Target. When specing talents in ST i can achieve about 220k which is okayish, however having talent choice affect nearly 50% of the single target damage you can deal is a pretty heavy investment and cripples the ability to do AoE.

For Demonology - it is nice that they upped the numbers, however the rampup time is still nearly a minute - you reach your full potential damage when bosses change phases and start ramping up again. Upping all the damage is only a temporary fix and definitely improves overall encounter performance (while you don't have the time to ramp up, you still deal more damage in the time you have), but makes demonology prone to getting nerfed because of butcher fights as other classes won't be able to compete anymore (we all know how that turned out, i think it was 5 Demonbolt nerfs in a row into Oblivion). It is promoted as a hotfix, so these changes are okay for viability, but not what the spec needs to feel good to play. I don't think they will rework the gameplay anytime soon (meaning this addon, as reworking a spec that has been reworked in the last three month would mean that someone got fired), so i would assume we are stuck with this gameplay and either hope there will never be an encounter to show the specs true potential, so that it won't get nerfed back into unplayability.

The Destro tuning is excellent, destro is quite smoothe to play and the biggest issue was capping out on shards in AoE fights while casting Rain of Fire (which feels really really bad), so this actually addresses a gameplay issue and makes constant AoE easier as shards can be utilized to more effect. The overall increase is excellent, as destro mainly missed out some flat damage to be competetive to other classes. Destro is and will remain the go-to for most raiding situations.

But if they will keep these Hotfixes coming and tune faster than before in order to achieve and maintain viability for all artifact specs during the addon with leveling artifact weapons (as balancing for every perk of every class in artifact weapons is unrealistic to achieve) there might come some good out of the situation. In previous addons a class was either viable for 6 month and then unplayable or vice versa.

If the frequency of balancing patches will be kept high, i wouldn't be too concerned about the non-Destro specs.

Edited September 24, 2016 by Genu

[Valks 2,373]

More than anything, I'm glad to see them acknowledging that there IS a problem. It's the first step to improving everything.