Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsHotfixes for Conflagration and Ulduar
by Eliah Hecht 
Apr 15th 2009 at 5:00PM
Servers are still getting stabilized, players are reporting bugs left and right, and in general, it's the day after patchmas. So it's not too surprising that we're seeing some hotfixes. So far, here's what Blizz have let us know about:
- Ulduar:
- XT-002 Deconstructor's heart aggro radius lowered to 60 yards.
- Trash before XT-002 Deconstructor disabled temporarily, because there was a problem with them being linked.
- Shattering a Construct during the Ignis the Furnace Master encounter will now decrease the number of Strength of the Creator stack buffs he has by one.
- Conflagrate nerfed to do 70% of Immolate's total periodic damage instantly, down from 100%.
The last point is the most significant. The stated reasoning is that destruction is too bursty in PvP, which seems to have been the reasoning for half of the changes we've seen in WotLK. I hear this nerf was not unexpected - Warlocks, how do you feel about it? Was this change deserved?
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
uncaringbear Apr 15th 2009 7:44PM
With the possible exception of my prot warrior, every one of my main classes - pally, lock, mage and DK - have undergone significant nerfs in the name of balancing for PvP. In some cases, some of the nerfs were warranted, but overwhelmingly, there is that strong stench of PvP complainers winning the day again.
The only consolation I can take away from this (being such an altaholic), is that Blizz's nerf gun has been aimed at nearly all classes, rather than focus on one class to hate on. However, there is a strong argument to be made that DKs have been viciously beaten down on in 3.1.
jeanericuser Apr 15th 2009 8:22PM
As for what to do about this situation, I got an idea. How about all of us locks chip in a penny to send a hooker to bliz with a "dots" of her own that she can pass on. We can just say its our way of giving bliz some dots of our own for screwing up ours.
vando Apr 15th 2009 8:31PM
if you are seriously crying about conflag nerf stop. I am a lock and have noticed after multiple 20k+ crits in a row that sumthing needs to be down. so stop complaing.
Melak Apr 15th 2009 8:36PM
Hmm, on a different note about the hotfix.
"Trash before XT-002 Deconstructor disabled temporarily, because there was a problem with them being linked."
Is this for only 25 men? coz last night after restart my guild did it on normal. And they were still there and linked :(
hibache Apr 15th 2009 10:49PM
the response to this article is pretty comical. Most the people crying are warlocks who arent really greatly geared. From comments such as " warlocks are burst?..." ( are you kidding me destruction is all about burst) to "omg DKS are so OP.." (op why?? b/c we own your class? let me tell you if are doing this its because of spells such as mind freeze and strangulate mainly, we arent conflagging mobs or targets for 22k...) Lastly the few warlocks that are good and understand because they are conflagging targets for 22k. I was doing a vault run and the lock in our guild was conflagging targets for 25k...thats a little over the top..and yes it does need a nerf) DKs can get destroyed by anyone who is really good at their class and vice versa
smiley Apr 16th 2009 8:03AM
I'll admit some classes when played right and with great players behind the keyboard can beat mediocre DK's ....
but when a decent DK is STILL killing everything is no good, I playe dmy lvl 80 DK again and have yet again retired him. I went blood/unholy, entered a BG and with blues/a few epics topped dmg done and KB.
I did a WG and destroyed ally with 4 stacks of tenacity 1 on 1 then topped the dps meters in a VoA run afterward...
moral of the story WAY to frickin easy mode and no challenge so he's shelved again until he is on lvl playing field with other classes.
"hero class" means you begin at a higher lvl nto that you should be completely OP and when you can 2 on 1 alot of combos something is terribly terribly wrong
Shnissigah Apr 15th 2009 9:06PM
y'know, all the energy blizz spends on nerfing locks could be spent buffing rogues... seriously, why nerf a class that finally has playability when there's a class being completely ignored/
Xavs Apr 15th 2009 9:16PM
For like, 10 minutes, I can have Conflag critting 10-12 K, but no, that's "too bursty".
WTF is the point of even nerfing Locks at this point?
I can't say I'm surprised really.
Luke Apr 15th 2009 10:00PM
I'm confused...does a 30% reduction in one ability, even a central one to warlocks, really merit such emotion?
I mean come on! It was around for one day, and yet people are treating its loss as if their first-born son was killed.
I feel bad for Blizzard. The game will never be perfect for everyone, not matter what they do. When changes come along, there's almost no middle ground in the community response. It's always waves and waves of anger and frustration.
I got news for you guys. This game is fluid. It's been out for years, and yet it's always changing. Getting all bent out of shape every time it does is a waste of energy.
Guydebord Apr 16th 2009 1:23AM
Actually, you're dead on. A bit of an insult to locks, but way over-hyped. This is a nerf of merely 300-400 raid-buffed DPS to a pair of the top dps specs (and that's out of 6 full-tilt raid-ready specs that are within 500 dps of each other atm in the upper-to-mid 6000 dps range). Oddly, this leaves 0/41/30 as the top spec in Simcraft once all the glyphs become available. Every spec but deep affliction is set to gain between 600 and 1000 theoretical dps in this patch + basic t8 gear, even after this hasty Conflag nerf. I wish Deep Destro would get a boost since it's still lagging, and I think this debacle is a pretty strong proof that Blizz was a bit lax at paying attention to warlocks after the initial redesign, since for months the Elitist Jerks forums has had hard numbers from Simcraft and WWS parses from the PTR that showed these exact massive Conflag crits... My guess is that they are still running scared and treating warlock's dps very conservatively after the mess with 0/21/40 scaling obscenely in T6.
Thelanna Apr 15th 2009 10:06PM
While I will miss the 16k crits on 0 resil targets, I expected it, the real buff that enables destro in more 2's teams is that the conflag still crits for 12k, chaosbolt now crits for 10-11k, and the glyph of shadowflame. All in all, I honestly don't care about the conflag nerf, I played destro pre patch, I'll just own more post patch. :)
James Stevenson Apr 15th 2009 11:23PM
Good Lord, the QQing of warlocks will never end. Mages were underpowered for years, now it is the locks turn. BWAH HA HA!
Khon Apr 15th 2009 11:29PM
Good lord, are mages still buttsore over that being 'underpowered for years' crap ?
LoL
Quazievil Apr 16th 2009 12:03AM
/sigh
Not to QQMOAR, but come on. Yes we all know it was OP. Yes, we all were getting those 20k+ crits to conflag. And yes, several of us completely changed talents and glyphs from our previous raiding spec of 0/41/30 to 0/40/31 just for the fact that it would be the highest dps for RAIDING. And yes, now we will all have to reglyph and retalent again to be competitive in PVE.
This really is a nerf worthy of a talent point refund at least....
Toliman Apr 16th 2009 12:21AM
i think it's a bit unexpected for blizzard to nerf conflag so close to the patch release, because usually they do a better job of quality control on the characters that the developers actually play...
and the key theme there is, they missed this. with well-intentional "hilarious"/deliberate results.
by doing it this way, it sends a message.
perhaps it's subliminal, i.e. taking away the nice new toy for destro locks, but it's going to have to offer a lot more than apologies at this stage to get those players back that have just left.
and they have left.
of course, perhaps it was semi-intentional, the way that ret paladins sauntered through the first week of 3.0.1, nigh unkillable was "fun for all" ...
but, is this becoming a pattern, i.e. several of these patches have literally burned the majority of players only to be 'tweaked' so blizzard can save face and "fix" it post-release and look like heroes after setting fire to the house ???
this seems inevitable, but it should not have to be if they had asked for feedback from the class community, or, thought about it for more than 12 seconds.
which leads to asking the inevitable question of why did it happen this way ? what possibly happened behind the scenes that would lead to new conflag being released on the PTR, then nerfed in the hotfix. did they not see this as a rotational mechanic in arena/pvp to get/stack for 12k/15k crits ??
which is staggeringly dumb of them not to recognise that.
back when ghostcrawler was asking for advice, i don't think any of the changes proposed were listened to, and instead of tweaking the class, we still largely have several DPS and balance issues that were not "solved".
so, perhaps that "message" was left in the patch hotfix to be intentional, i.e. that we are still to be the bastard children.
there are just times when one feels like taking a baseball bat over to activision blizzard and "sending a message" , old school style to get the message across the great public relations divide, since it seems patently obvious that there's a great deal of ignorance when making changes in this fashion without a great deal more honesty or apology than is currently presented.
just how is one supposed to provide feedback to activision blizzard on how bad this is.
Soulbento Apr 16th 2009 1:34AM
Conflagrate was pretty sweet while it lasted, the first time I used it post-patch it hit for over 13k on a dummy and I thought it was just crits overlapping. It ended up doing about 25% of my damage according to recount.
PVP-wise, I'm not sure, couldn't test it on someone loaded with resil. But there are other classes capable of bursting over 10k multiple times with instants on fully PVP geared targets...so I dunno why Blizzard got all up in arms over the ONLY lock spell with impressive burst.
Gothic Apr 16th 2009 2:14AM
How do I feel about it?
I stopped playing wow just now.
It's pointless.
zweitblom Apr 16th 2009 2:46AM
If you can't play without a ridiculously over-powered spell then you should indeed go back to something simpler. Minesweeper is nice.
liquidsquid Nov 24th 2009 2:05AM
rather give us lock 130% of immo damage with conflag :(
LEGofreak Apr 16th 2009 2:38PM
"To bursty in PvP" is that really necessary to nerf it destro was the only good thing about PvP now in my opinion of course, but really blizz you already gave us 1 big PvP nerf do we really need another one./facepalm