Scourge Strike On The PTR ( Information)

#0 - Oct. 14, 2009, 1:56 a.m.

What I know from testing........

Double Dipping.......

Currently the new Scourge Strike is double dipping on all damage reduction talents, abilities.

Example... Barkskin is reducing the damage of the ability twice. Once on the Physical Portion and Once on the Shadow Portion.

The Shadow portion of the ability only has a 150% crit bonus instead of 200% like all our other spells.

The Shadow portion is also affected by resilience as well as the physical portion. So if someone has a 40% crit damage reduction they will reduce the physical damage portion that crits by 40%, and then the shadow portion if it crits will take another 40% when it is already being reduced by the physical crit portion from resilience. If it doesn't crit then it will still be reduced by whatever flat damage reduction the person has from resilience.

The shadow portion crit part is hard to test because against pvp targets it just never crits because it appears to be working off spell crit.

This is a issue because it's also working off spell hit. This is causing the second portion to miss.

Opinions......

While this might be a incredible pve BUFF (I honestly don't know), it is a massive pvp nerf. The strike is incapable of critting for over 4500 against any armor level target that is wearing more then 800 resilience. That 4500 is on a double crit and I only saw one out of all the pvp I did on the PTR.

Everything else is in the high 2ks on crits to low 3ks. The strike's damage in pvp is extremely inconsistant as well because there are so many damage reduction procs and buffs that happen in pvp that you will crit for 3300 and then follow that crit up for 2600.

I can't give any positive feedback on this ability or any constructive feedback as far as how to improve it because it's bad in so many places.

On top of all this....... It's going to require even more stat stacking for Unholy DKs, and the disease cleansing issue was so bad that I don't even know what to say. The strike's damage is so bad against pvp geared targets and disease cleansing on top of it just completely negates the ability.

Edit: Ghostcrawler locked the other thread so please keep this thread constructive and keep the whining low even though I know it will be hard if you have tested this ability out on the PTR.

Just try to add any information that I didn't list in this thread. I will post more information as I get it. I gotta go to dinner soon so I will have to test it more when I get back.

Ghostcrawler

#7 - Oct. 14, 2009, 2:08 a.m.

The crit damage should definitely be at 200% (as are all DK spell attacks). I suspect the spell hit, if that is indeed happening, is also a bug.

We're going to wait for more numbers to trickle in before we make any additional decisions.

Ghostcrawler

#72 - Oct. 14, 2009, 5:26 p.m.

1) Scourge Strike should crit for 200% damage like other DK spell effects.

2) The Shadow part of the damage should never miss if the physical part hits.

3) The Shadow part of the damage should never be decreased additionally to the physical damage. It should not "double dip" from resilience et al. Example: My physical portion that hits for 2000 is reduced to 1000. The Shadow part should then hit for 1000 (modulo bonuses) and not 500 or whatever.

4) The Shadow part of the damage will still be increased additionally by talents and anything else that buff Shadow damage. It will "double dip" in the DKs favor. Example: My physical portion hits for 2000 and is reduced to 1000. The Shadow portion hits for 1500 because I have +50% Shadow damage.

Ghostcrawler

#77 - Oct. 14, 2009, 5:45 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Since resilience has been clarified; does this mean the shadow damage penetrates resist buffs such as Nether Protection? Or will the damage be resisted on top of being effected by the armor of the target?

Anything that reduces the damage. Only the physical damage can be reduced. The Shadow damage can only be buffed, since it is essentially already reduced by the physical mitigation, resilience or other defensive effects.

The intent was just to split the damage into part physical and part Shadow. We didn't want the split itself to be a penalty, if that makes sense.

Ghostcrawler

#161 - Oct. 15, 2009, 12:44 a.m.

This thread is only going to be useful if you read the entire thread. Folks who just see a Scourge Strike thread and use it to post "I just hit some guy on the PTR and it hit like a wet noodle" probably aren't contributing much to the conversation.

Ghostcrawler

#182 - Oct. 15, 2009, 1:48 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I remember you saying that you no longer wanted to see "colossal" scourge strike crits anymore. Were you referring to both pve and pvp or just pvp? I'm asking this because atm if I spec into black ice and both the physical and shadow portion of scourge strike crit then I just did well over 12k damage. With pve gear on a zero resil target of course.

PvP. I don't want to name a number because then players will assume that that number - 1 is the new legal limit for Scourge Strike. If you do get all your diseases lined up in PvP, it will hit pretty hard. If you don't have them all up, which is totally a common situation in Arenas, then it will hit for less.

DKs are not a class about mashing one button to see huge numbers. There are thankfully few of those left at all on any class now. DKs do a lot of damage from spells and diseases. Regrettably, there are still a few DKs left who equate fun with "I hit that guy with SS and he died." I don't honestly think there are many of them posting in this thread, but those are the folks I am mostly speaking to when I say not to look for Scourge Strikes that regularly crit for half of someone's bar or whatever.

Ghostcrawler

#247 - Oct. 15, 2009, 9:08 p.m.

Q u o t e:
You stated during blizzcon that armor penetration as a stat would be removed from the game in Cata.
Yet you are to trying to balance Scourge Strike around armor penetration. Is it me or is others confused by this new direction? After armor penetration is out the door what will that do to Scourge Strike in the long run?

This question has popped up several times, so let me answer it in the hopes it gets read.

We are only removing armor pen rating in Cataclysm. We aren't removing the concept of reducing armor, most significantly Sunder and Expose Armor, but also things like Battle Stance, perhaps talents, etc.. Part of the problem we are trying to solve is that in 3.2 Scourge Strike loses a lot of its damage (or more correctly, strikes like Obliterate do more damage) against targets whose armor has been bypassed. However, it's not fair to just buff Scourge Strike because then it is going to hit for way too hard against fully armored targets. Making part of the damage physical lets us justify bringing the total damage up.

Another way to answer the question however is that armor pen stat is going away in 4.0, but it's here now and we still have to balance around it.

Ghostcrawler

#275 - Oct. 16, 2009, 1:01 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Lemme guess.

Ss hit plate for nothing.

Ss hit clothi for a lot

Clothi will QQ

Gc will nerf Ss dmg again cause of clothi QQ

Dk representation will be at 0.05%

Gc will still think it's too high and will nerf gargoyle

Many dk will switch frost cause unholy dk is useless

Gc will hear about it and will nerf frost again cause they don't want dk to be decent at anything cause they already sold enough wotlk.

Zero thinkin behind the redesign, Dk are already having big problem with disease cleanse, They're making them even more dependant on disease. dk representation is the lowest, they're lowering their dmg by a %@%!load on plate and mail and make them dependant on double crit in a row(which happen once every bluemoon in pvp) to do viable damage. They want us to gem ArP or arena in arp pve gear...? to do some damage on plate when deathcoil and gargoyle get their damage from attack power. sigh

This is whining. Don't do it here.

Also realize that when you get banned, your account gets banned. Posting on a L1 alt only keeps other players from looking at your main. We know who you are.

Ghostcrawler

#277 - Oct. 16, 2009, 1:06 a.m.

It looks like several players are still posting without reading the entire thread. Until SS is working correctly on the PTR, telling us it has double resists isn't so helpful. I don't want to hit that particular nail too hard because I would hate for players not to report any bugs because they assume we already know about them. But in this case it's not going to be effective -- yet -- to tell us about your SS hits on the PTR.

It's entirely possible we'll end up with e.g. a SS that hits for 80% weapon damage (like Obliterate) and does a lot less Shadow damage per disease. Unholy already ignores disease damage very much at its peril so it's probably okay if this one ability doesn't derive so much benefit from diseases. It will lose a little bit of its synergy with the other +Shadow parts of the tree though. It's just too soon for that decision. We need to see some legit numbers first.

Ghostcrawler

#299 - Oct. 16, 2009, 2:01 a.m.

Q u o t e:
From a flavor standpoint, the physical part should simply be ancillary. Imagine the DK swinging his giant axe or mace or sword at you, sure the cut will hurt, but the part you're really worried about is all the spooky shadow energy around the blade......

That was certainly our original intent. However magic attacks do say around 50% damage since physical attacks are typically mitigated by 50% from armor. The problem arises when you have a target with armor that is bypassed through Expose or armor pen. Then the spell attack just does less damage.

Ghostcrawler

#535 - Oct. 23, 2009, 4:21 a.m.

Q u o t e:
When I was on my warlock and "trolled" (in fact complained about the poor quality of life of the class) for an entire s5, GC's response and the proposed "fixes" are just pathetically unacceptable. As a result, a huge portion of the warlock player base rerolled other classes amongst which DK is the most popular choice.

Q u o t e:
Weeks pass... Blizzard stays quite.... and still going ahead with new SS... I am beginning to think they realized that DK's were mistake.... so they are going to announce in Expansion all who rolled DK's will get substitution for another class in equal gear...

Q u o t e:
After investing lots of time on a class seeing all of that stupid changes and unjustified nerfs (most of them were right ones i am talking about current SS, and UB change), i just want to shoot those dev and decision makers.

This is the last warning that we're going to lock this thread if it continues to get filled with QQ.

P.S. Perma-ban for Mr. shoot those devs. Classy.

Ghostcrawler

#539 - Oct. 23, 2009, 4:34 a.m.

Q u o t e:
the shadow portion benefit from vicious strikes and subversion.

It should.

Ghostcrawler

#565 - Oct. 23, 2009, 5:08 p.m.

Q u o t e:
The former could have been solved simply by buffing the attack. But blizzard felt that was a bad idea ( despite the fact that the end result is still a net buff in damage done against soft PvP targets and raid mobs ).. and the latter was wholly unnecessary because Unholy currently scales well enough with other pieces of gear, and ArP is going away after one more tier of raid content.

To reiterate one more time....

We're not going to let an attack that ignores armor do the same damage as an attack that is reduced by armor. The problem is that when armor gets reduced, a physical attack hits for more while a magical attack does not. The answer I keep reading is "Just buff Scourge Strike." No. It can't do more base damage as long as it bypasses armor.

Armor pen as a stat on gear is going away. The concept of reducing armor (through say Battle Stance or Sunder Armor) is not going away. It's entirely possible a spec or two might improve their armor pen through the Mastery feature. Even if it was going away, magical attacks still can't hit as hard as physical attacks. There would be no reason to have physical attacks.

At a very high level there are two options: Scourge Strike hits at X damage but respects armor, or Scourge Strike hits at X*0.5 and ignores armor. Talents etc. can modify this, but they all have their individual budgets too.