Quickly Decaying

There has been some drama surrounding a rather recent warlock nerfed, that hit us just after 3.3. It was labeled as a “fix” but had a major decrease in dps. Of course this caused some sort of uproar in the forums, mostly QQ about the ability being broken etc. The ability in question is corruption, refreshing under the effects of Everlasting affliction and Glyph of Quick Decay.

Blizzard’s change to quick decay was stated as follows: 

Quote from: Nethaera

This is really more of a bug fix than a nerf. The problem here was that players could inflate the initial cast of Corruption and have the spell tick for that damage indefinitely as long as it was refreshed. This resulted in some “jaw dropping” damage. Technically this was a tricky one to fix but we wanted to keep the Glyph of Quick Decay and were able to ultimately find a solution. When this fix goes live, the hasted Corruption should correct itself to your current haste within a tick or two of the spell being refreshed.

Prior to the hotfix, when corruption was refreshed by haunt, it was set to an 18 second duration but with faster ticks. Apparently this gave plenty of time for haunt to come off cd, be cast,and  hit the target to refresh it. Now, after the hotfix, when corruption is refreshed by haunt it has the shorter, hasted duration based off your current haste. Problem is, it is extremely easy to have enough haste that corruption falls off the target before haunt comes off cd, is cast, and flys and hits the target.

Corruption falling off is a bad bad thing for affliction dps…

Luckily they were quick with another hotfix…

Quote from: Bornakk

Warlock

• Everlasting Affliction can now refresh the duration of Corruption on a target when the Warlock casts Shadow Bolt. This talent also refreshes the duration of Corruption with Drain Life and Haunt.

This should make everyone happy again and dry up those tears. This change effectively allows us to keep Corruption up 100% of the time while not really altering our rotation as affliction which is already a mess…

Funny thing about all this is I never really had a chance to raid as affliction with Glyph of Quick Decay yet, so… I really didn’t have to be around when the accidental nerf bat hit. Hopefully I can try out this spec soon and see what its all about, heard it can top meters (though not by much…)

The original thread can be found Here:

What you guys think about this change? I know you affliction locks are out there. Did the 18 sec corruption with fast ticks really add that much dps? Did this hotfix solve the problem? let me know in the comments

Peace
~Aphroditi

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