Blizzard keeps trying to kill my warlock team >.<

[turbopinto]

I'm playing a mix of siphon life/ soul link on my 70 warlocks. This allows my drain life spells to be very powerful with 5x3 instant cast dots on the target and it is almost always my main damage when fighting mobs. Enter Blizzards reworked soul siphon talent (From mmo-champion):

Soul Siphon now Increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul spells by an additional 3/6% (up from 2/4%) for each of your Affliction effects on the target, up to a maximum of 9/18% (down from 24/60%) additional effect.
So I'm dropping from 15X4 = 60% bonus damage to 18% capped.
And so as the world turns, so the teams I play get nerfed and I end up shelving them. This is just in time to start working on my feral druids, so they can get nerfed.

[Malekyth]

That sucks. I can see the need to rebalance, but I too would prefer changes not to swing so far to one side or the other. Little tweaks I can deal with, effective retoolings of spells are a bit annoying. By the amount of reduction there, it looks like they took something they deemed very overpowered and totally overshot the nerf, but I'm sure they'll adjust it back up a little bit in a few patches. More than enough time to level them droods!

[Velassra]

Did warlocks really need another nerf?

[EaTCarbS]

that is painful. more reason for me to leave my locks where they are too.

[Redbeard]

I found myself watching the ptr a little too closely and decided to take a break til 3.1 comes around... who knows what will go live?

I hope your teams are OK.

[Chranny]

Think it was mostly too address the sub-25% Drain Soul that ticked for extreme amounts when geared at 80.

[Allesarelle]

GC said this was changed to promote the bring the player and not the class philosophy. Warlock stacking was starting to take hold in cutting edge guilds for raids as affliction locks were leading the dps meters by stacking dots and drain soul ticks. If you look at the DPS specs for warlocks under the current patch affliction is overall nerfed in dps but a lot more warlock specs are now raid viable. With a little tweak to your spec choices there is no reason you won't be see'ing the same DPS out of your warlocks after the patch.

Assuming nothing else comes along.

But it's probably not the dps that you are worried about. If you are drain tanking with these guys then I can understand how the nerf is hitting you. But four warlocks should not have a problem killing non elites so am I to infer you are doing instances with the four warlocks and no tank? Because that is the only way I can think of where it would be worthwile to cast drain life as part of your normal rotation.

Allesarelle

[turbopinto]

Yes, I've cleared almost all the normal mode instances in outlands with these guys. It also nerfs my pvp ability to remain alive when I've got a determined melee pounding my group. I know PVE raiding locks were pretty powerful, but the things they hit on 3.10 really hurt most in PVP - where I want to be playing most often. Basically ,as far as most of my fun is concerned, I'm down to sitting on the AV bridge in my 'hiding spots' and seeding 20 people before they find me and wipe me out. Ah well, the gnome mages and tauren druids are becoming more fun rt now. I'll probably wait for a PVP overhaul to break out the lox unless im farming.

[Ualaa]

Only the only plus side...

Everyone seems to consistently receive nerfs, so no matter what you play, your opposition is up the same creek.
Fine a set of toons whose flavor you enjoy and go with them for as long as they're fun.

[X-Ifist]

umm spec felguard destro for pvp and youre problems is over?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=00000000000000000000000000000032203011352 1250313503100055030015200301000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9658
On PTR shadowbolts crit buff stacks, dont know if this is a bug or not, but that means whit decent geard 5lock team you should have about 55% crit+
Metamphois is also going to increase better whit spell dmg we also get a Replenishment from desto tree
Overall we get a HUGE buff next patch
ye the soul sipho nerf sucks, but whit drain soul you can hit 6k atm ofc it was gone get nerfed.

Also pets overall gets buffed whit hp/mana

[Stabface]

You missed the biggest part of the nerf anyways.

old: for each Affliction effect on the target
new: for each of your Affliction effects on the target

So now each of your Warlocks will need to put up 3 Affliction effects -- probably CoA + Corruption, Haunt, UA and Shadow Embrace also count... not sure if drain life counts towards itself or not? to get the full benefit.

On the other hand, the Siphon Life change is a nice boost IMO, Eradication no longer has a cooldown, and they lowered to 30 minute cooldown on Ritual of Doom. So you could have 5x Doomguards out for 50% of the time :~D

[Lokked]

This was a buff to the solo warlock PvP or PvEer, as they only ever had their own affliction debuffs anyways, which allows their own Drains to be more powerful when playing alone.

It is a balance between the solo warlock and the warlock's synergies with other warlocks. Besides, it was a class specific synergy (warlock synergy with warlock) and does not promote gameplay using a variety of classes.

[Mukade]

I suppose I should be supremely pissed off with this, considering the amount of work I'm putting into making a 5x 19 twink warlock team, that is pretty much based around that talent. I guess having +60% damage on each member was a bit OP though, and chances are not even druid twink FCs would last the full duration of 10x dots and 5x drain life channels anyway.

[Freakinred]

I play my locks so heavily into Demo that it's not even funny. People see my spec and have no idea what to make of it. I'll probably go with something different when 3.1 comes out, but I'll definitely be maintaining Demo far enough for Meta.

I can't stress how usefull 4 Felguards and Meta are for locks in PvP.I've singlehandedly wiped 20+ people defending Balinda in AV using nothing but my Felguards (Placed near the entrance as a distraction) seeds and Meta/Immolation Aura when they realize what I'm doing.

Just to give you an idea: Immolation aura is like 450 dps for 15 seconds. (not counting spellpower, haste, etc).So I play 4 warlocks and that's around 27000 damage over 15 seconds to everything foolish enough to stand close to me. That's just from standing there, not counting tab/dot or tab/seed, or my Felguards.

At level 73 I had my Felguards solo a poorly geared level 80 rogue without me even realizing it.

[Vyndree]

I'm playing a mix of siphon life/ soul link on my 70 warlocks. This allows my drain life spells to be very powerful with 5x3 instant cast dots on the target and it is almost always my main damage when fighting mobs. Enter Blizzards reworked soul siphon talent (From mmo-champion):

Soul Siphon now Increases the amount drained by your Drain Life and Drain Soul spells by an additional 3/6% (up from 2/4%) for each of your Affliction effects on the target, up to a maximum of 9/18% (down from 24/60%) additional effect.
So I'm dropping from 15X4 = 60% bonus damage to 18% capped.
And so as the world turns, so the teams I play get nerfed and I end up shelving them. This is just in time to start working on my feral druids, so they can get nerfed.

My locks were SL/FG for leveling. Given the fact that the "speed levelers" for this expansion were SL/FG, I'm not too surprised with this sort of nerf -- it won't really impact aff locks, just demo really (since I don't see destro picking this up). I actually don't think they ever needed to cast Drain Life, though, so I don't think this will be TOO bad. How often were you draining? The synergy with Siphonl Life and lifetap for aoe grinding meant downtime was pretty much nonexistant.

I've been toying with a few specs on my locks when I play them solo, just to see how I want to set them up for the long haul. I haven't really played them much since they hit 80, since I'm such an altaholic. I've always been a big fan of Demo for the survivability (and the FG looks badass, TBH), but I've never gone full Meta, so I've been playing with that solo to see what I can do with it grouped.

[turbopinto]

I guess the biggest concerns I have are the voidwalker health nerf, and the affliction stacking damage on drain life. With them taking away 50% health buff of the void, and a dot+debuff slot in the siphon life damage department, along with taking 42% away in the stacked drain life cast, it just kinda kills the spec I was playing and looking forward to expand on.
I know Meta/ ruin is the way to go now, I was just hoping that the non-cookie cutter specs would have much more given than taken away with the next patch. I understand VW health was outa control, and properly played/ raid equipped affliction was max DPS, but for me since im not raiding/ specced for max, and am really into PVP, this is kinda killing the way I like to play.