Conflag haste scaling intended?

#0 - Oct. 4, 2010, 1:46 a.m.

Currently on the PTR/Beta haste increases the damage of conflag because it causes immolate to do more damage in the time span. This leads to haste creating a non-linear spell damage like scaling for conflag. I do not believe a direct damage spell should benefit from haste like this, especially when destruction can force a good bit of haste via the soulfire talent. I believe this issue directly correlates to the astronomical conflag numbers seen on the PTR.

For example, lets imagine conflag ticks for 100 (I'm using low numbers to show the effect of haste).

At 0 haste immolate would do 500 damage, 100 damage every 3 seconds.

At 33% haste (easily achievable with a little gear and the soulfire talent) immolate does 750 damge, ticking every 2 seconds for 100 each (I know the last tick wouldnt actually happen but for math purposes we can assume it would given the increase of haste).

At 50% haste ( add bloodlust) immolates damage doubles. Conflag now hits twice as hard. Along with the warlock casting spells a mile a minute.

It gets really stupid after this point but you can easily see the non-linearity of haste scaling.

Personally, this kind of scaling (the way haste works) is why I thought haste scaling dots were a bad idea to begin with. Haste already helped dot classes by lowering the GCD on instant casts so you can fit in more nukes/channeled casts. But if that's going to stay then the way conflag works is an abomination of the system, granting the lowered GCD on an instant nuke as well as increasing the spells power.

And gear doesn't really matter here, Soul fire talent + bloodlust + haste totem/effect will put any warlock at around 40%+ haste granting insane return to conflag. You cannot balance an ability around that kind of scaling.

I think we need to take haste out of the equation for conflag, make conflag do damage equal to X ticks of immolate.

Ghostcrawler

#286 - Oct. 6, 2010, 9:18 p.m.

Conflag behaving a little differently with regard to haste is cool, and certainly better than the alternative, which is that it doesn't care about haste at all.

So then the question is whether it does too much damage with high haste. It might at level 80 and probably won't at level 85.

Here's the deal: level 80 is going to be a little crazy. There is a reason we're going to end the PvP season before the next patch goes live. There is a reason we had to make PvE adjustments, such as Chill of the Throne. Critical new abilities aren't available until higher level. Combat ratings are much higher than they will be once everyone starts leveling, and likely higher than they ever will be again. Health ratios are much lower than they will be with higher level gear.

We're not totally throwing up our hands at level 80, but it's also far less of a concern than level 85. If there is truly broken stuff going on, we'll fix it, but some things will also fix themselves once you can level again.

The "lame duck session" before a new expansion goes live is always a little odd and exciting. My advice is to chill a little, sit back, and watch Deathwing destroy your world.