Perhaps you've heard about the planned change to modify the resilience stat to effect DoTs? When I first read about it, I can't say I understood it. Resilience is an anti-crit stat, which reduces the chance that you'll take a critical strike and reduces the damage done by a critical strike if you take it. Specifically, each point of resilience (and at level 70, it takes 39.4 resilience rating to equal one point of resilience) reduces your chance to be crit by 1% and reduces crit damage by 2%.But the main downside to using DoTs as a damage source is that they're incapable of critting. So what in the world do DoTs have to do with resilience? Eyonix explains it for us:
As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics. The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants.
If you're as confused as I was about why this was being done, not to mention how it was going to work, read on.
DoTs are unusual spells -- as the name suggests, they do their damage slowly, over time. And while several classes have DoTs that can supplement their regular damage (Priest's Shadow Word: Pain, Rogue's Deadly Poison, Warrior's Rend, Druid's Insect Swarm, etc), Warlocks are the only class who can use DoTs as a viable primary damage source. A single DoT's damage can be shrugged off, but when a Warlock throws all available DoT's on you, their tiny ticks of damage start to add up to some major hurt.
A problem seems to have arisen in part because Warlocks are capable of relying entirely on their arsenal of DoTs and in part because DoTs scale very well with damage gear. A Warlock's ability to cause massive, and deadly, amounts of damage that takes them only several seconds to cast (most DoTs are instant-cast, though their damage is spread out over a longer period of time) to a target that's perhaps moved entirely out of range. Blizzard seems to think that Warlock damage is simply too high (this change does hurt others as well, but as I've explained, Warlocks are the only class that are capable of fully relying on DoTs for their damage), and needs to be toned down a bit.
But to Eyonix's claim that "each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment," I argue that each new tier of equipment also doesn't mitigate the damage caused by all of the Frostbolts that don't crit or the 70% of the time that a Rogue isn't critically striking me. While I could understand an argument that said Warlocks are simply doing a bit too much damage right now and need to be brought into balance with the other classes, this phrasing doesn't make much sense sense to me. All non-crit attacks scale with gear of some sort (be it attack power or spell damage), and none of those attacks are modified by resilience.
So why is resilience being brought in to fix this problem? If DoTs themselves are the issue, it seems to make more sense to alter the DoTs themselves instead of changing an anti-crit ability into an anti-crit, anti-DoT ability. Blizzard certainly hasn't explained their motivations here, but despite that, I have a guess at what's going on here:
Blizzard wants to moderate Warlock damage in high-level PvP encounters without hurting their PvE abilities.
And that's exactly what a chance to resilience will do. Monsters don't have resilience. Low-level PvPers don't have resilience. By not altering the DoTs themselves, Blizzard maintains Warlocks' current strengths in PvE and lower-end PvP. If this is, in truth, what they wanted to do, perhaps it's not such an inappropriate solution.
Now, finally, let's look at what type of impact, precisely, this change might have on Warlocks participating in high-end PvP situations. Eyonix has told us that resilience of the future will reduce DoT damage by the same amount that it reduces critical strike chance. This means that for every one point of resilience your target has, your DoT damage will be reduced by 1%. At level 70, it takes 39.4 points of resilience rating to equal a single point of resilience -- so to do any further calculations, we'll have to have a better idea of the amount of resilience found on high-end PvP gear. For a sample, let's look at the resilience found on the Arena Gladiator sets (rounded to the nearest tenth):
- Druid: 151/160/159 resilience rating, or 3.8/4.1/4.0 resilience
- Hunter: 142 resilience rating, or 3.6 resilience
- Mage: 161 resilience rating, or 4.1 resilience
- Paladin: 161/159/35 resilience rating, or 4.1/4.0/.9 resilience
- Priest: 172/175 resilience rating, or 4.4 resilience
- Rogue: 161 resilience rating, or 4.1 resilience
- Shaman: 167/160/160 resilience rating, or 4.2/4.1 resilience
- Warlock: 160/161 resilience rating, or 4.1 resilience
- Warrior: 144 resilience rating, or 3.6 resilience
So, yes, I'm encouraging calm -- while this change doesn't help high-end PvPing Warlocks, it's not really the massive nerf it's being made out to be. And if you don't PvP (or don't PvP at high levels), the change shouldn't bother you at all.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
7-11-2007 @ 9:03PM
anowack said...
"I argue that each new tier of equipment also doesn't mitigate the damage caused by all of the Frostbolts that don't crit or the 70% of the time that a Rogue isn't critically striking me."
But it does mitigate the average damage that Frostbolts do, both by reducing crit chance and the damage crits do. The fact that some (or most) individual Frostbolts don't have their individual damage reduced isn't relevant. Average DoT damage isn't (or rather wasn't) affected. Over time, as resilience increased on new tiers of arena gear, this would increase the relative power of DoTs.
Imagine if arena gear instead had... say, Shadow Resist, and more and more of it was added with each new season. Sure, some Shadow spells wouldn't get resisted at all and would do full damage. But the average damage done by them would be reduced, and over time the increasing amounts of Shadow Resist would make warlocks and shadow priests weaker and weaker compared to other classes.
The solutions would be to either remove Shadow Resist from arena gear, add new stats that had a similar effect on non-Shadow damage sources, or change Shadow Resist to equally affect all damage types.
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7-11-2007 @ 9:20PM
Apollon said...
Good article, and until Blizzard says something otherwise, I completely agree with your conclusions. This is a smart move on Blizzard's part simultaneously balancing PvP without hurting PvE. Something very rare indeed.
@1 That is probably the best reasoning for why Blizz is deciding to implement these changes. Resilience, even though it only affects crit damage, in the big picture it reduces total damage as a whole.
As far as shadow resist arena gear goes, then this would only affect Warlock and Shadow Priest DoTs and none of the others, which wouldn't be fair. Letting resilience affect DoTs I feel is a good answer to this problem, addressing ALL of the DoTs rather than a few specific ones.
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7-11-2007 @ 9:30PM
galandriel said...
nerf my ass, less QQ more pew pew.
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7-11-2007 @ 9:58PM
TDom2001 said...
Remember that blizz has repeatedly stated they would like pvp fights to go on longer. Well, now when warlocks are involved, the fights will last 0-4% longer if s/he only uses dots. Either way the lock is coming out on top. = )
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7-11-2007 @ 11:18PM
GamerJunkie said...
Its ridiculous how OP Dots and Fear is. In any Arena 2v2 and 3v3 bracket. A Warlock, Shadow Priest combo will dot and fear everyone to death and the opponents could do nothing but sit back and watch.
Resilience should make those dots tick slower and less painful so one could survive and make the Warlock fight longer.
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7-12-2007 @ 12:23AM
Devega said...
I'm ok with it. On average, dots will lose less damage due to resiliance than direct damage will (on a percentage basis). This sort of counters the fact that direct damage benifiets from +dmg, +crit, and +haste while dots really only benifiet from +dmg.
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7-12-2007 @ 12:58AM
Hidden_Agenda said...
DoTs can be can be dispelled by other classes, direct damage cannot.
@5
Are you still complaining about fear? It has been nerfed into near oblivion. The complaint that you can still be feared while being fully unloaded on is most interesting. I would like to see videos of such a feat.
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7-12-2007 @ 1:58AM
Jagoex said...
The number of PvP nerfs 'locks have seen over the past few months is unbelievable. First, our DoT coefficients were nerfed to all hell (even while stamina was and continues to be buffed). Then, the length of our Fears and Seduces were reduced. Then Curse of Tongues saw a huge nerf to it's length. Then we saw a hearthbeat check added to Fear, causing it to break during the first few ticks of DoT damage. And now, DoT damage is decreased again through some odd application of Resilience? Give me a break.
All PvP 'locks should be utterly pissed at this point.
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7-12-2007 @ 2:08AM
Aldrel said...
I will gladly trade this nerf for a promise of no more QQing from everyone that warlocks are overpowered. I know it won't happen though. They'll just start their next QQ crusade and wait until Bliz caves again.
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7-12-2007 @ 6:43AM
Tridus said...
This is one of the sanest comments I've seen on this issue. Bravo on a well thought out article.
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7-12-2007 @ 7:32AM
p3ngu11 said...
@8, play any other class and go up against a warlock.
You have about 6 months to get to 70 before this change is really made. (next major content patch)
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7-12-2007 @ 8:02AM
Ryan said...
Fine, just guarantee that the dot will do it's full damage so long as it isn't partially or fully resisted (no more dispells) and also allow it to crit.
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7-12-2007 @ 8:18AM
Kaylek said...
@8
I'm gonna echo #11, go up against yourself as any other class and you probably wouldn't be so subjective. Locks have nothing to complain about.
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7-12-2007 @ 9:41AM
ben1778 said...
Give me DoT crits either whole spell or per tick, and then i'll accept the DoT nerf without complaint.
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7-12-2007 @ 9:49AM
aerosaucer said...
Anyone complaining about this change should just reread the first comment here over and over instead of playing their warlock. Do it until you at least understand the fundamentals of how damage, and particularly damage scaling, works.
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7-12-2007 @ 10:19AM
Quoi said...
Delete resilience, IMO. It was a poorly thought out stat to begin with.
"I have an idea, let's build classes almost entirely based around burst damage, then in two years, we'll decide that burst damage is bad and introduce a stat to get rid of it."
"Sweet, let's go play on our warlocks now!"
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7-12-2007 @ 10:22AM
Hidden_Agenda said...
@15
Damage scaling aside, DOTs are easily removed by other classes. Add to that, that DOTs start out "slow" and ramp up the damage they do per tick the longer they are on a target. Meaning the quicker they are dispelled they will do considerably less damage. That is not even factoring the chance for partial resists on each tick. The mere fact that DOTs can be purged in group PvP means that they are already suffering from reduced damage (or should be if the group is competent).
I could understand said complaints about scaling if DOTs could not be removed, but that simply is not the case.
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7-12-2007 @ 10:22AM
Tonio said...
@8
Your dot coefficients were buffed, then brought back a bit, but they are still higher now then before that buff, so please, shut up about that coefficient 'nerf'.
Also, it's not exactly a huge nerf to warlocks. If you go up against a fully pvp geared player, he'll have about 400 resilience, that's about 10% (so it would be like he had about 1k health extra if he had about 10k health), tell me, is that really that bad? Besides, if blizzard is really gonna remove the gearswapping from arena, that patch will be a huge buff to the warlock class.
If you have about 350 resitance to shadow, you're mitigating 90% of the damage, and seeing how a lot of high ranked 2v2 teams have a shadowresist set in their bags, stopping gear changing will be a huge buff...
I mean, what do you prefer, 10% mitigation or 90% mitigation, which also effects your fear and other utility spells
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7-12-2007 @ 10:47AM
bswopes said...
9 says it all.
Seriously, if I hear one more warrior complain about how he was chain feared by a lock....
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7-12-2007 @ 11:02AM
Talitha said...
Just make DOT's able to crit. Problem solved. Then everyone's happy, oh wait, not everyone can be happy. I agree, less QQ more pew pew.
"Paper's fine, Nerf rock" -Scissors
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