#1 - March 17, 2011, 10:54 p.m.
Currently, the penalty for dispelling Unstable Affliction is a mere 10k dmg (on resil targets) and a 4 sec silence. I am thankful we have something compared to nothing. However, the current penalty is not anywhere near enough to deter all healers from spam dispelling all our dots as much as they possibly can.
It was made clear to players that in Cata blizzard wanted dispels to be a choice, and not remain something that is done with little to no thought. I mention that because at the moment there is absolutely no thought on the healers part when it comes to dispelling all our damage. Resto shamans are by far the worst offenders of this. When a resto shaman faces a team who has a warlock (really any caster for that matter) they literally almost never have to cast to heal their team. It's completely ridiculous that a resto shaman can heal his entire team by just dispelling. Where is the thought in that? The same goes for other healers too. They all do it, but by far shamans do it more then anyone else.
Its simple math on their part really. If they dispel our dots they take 10k damage, and as a result they prevent about 15k damage. Aside from the math of it, the biggest rewards they get by dispelling are 2 things:
1. They destroy our pressure (in the course of a 3v3 match pressure is what forces cds and ultimately leads to kills)
2. They don't need to cast a heal and subject themselves to an interrupt or a cc.
Aside from damage, UA having a proper dispel penalty also effects our cc ability fear. Fear rarely sticks on a dps target because again there is no reason to not dispel UA. At the moment warlocks are good in arena for 2 reasons: Fear and our defensive mechanisms. As the seasons go on and healthpools continue to go up along with spellpower (bigger heals), it will be even less of a threat to dispel UA then it currently is.
Bottom line is that UA must force healers to think about dispelling our dots. We can't function properly until that happens. Im not saying that we aren't viable or good etc. I choose the word properly for a reason. No dps should have 100% of their damage negated by an ability that has no cooldown without a serious consequence.
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Change UA's dispel penalty in 2 ways:
1. It deals no less then 35k damage to the dispeler
2. It must scale as gear does. When healthpools go up so must the damage.
This change would have 0 pve side effects and would actually threaten a healer without making it overpowered.
Thanks for your time.
