SW Hadar's Grasp: Net damage has been reduced rather than increased

vorphied

A few posters in the M15: Scourge Warlock thread have called this out. Here is an example:

bellkazi said:

commanderdata002 said:

There is a 20% dmg buff to KF, HG, FB.

balanced#2849 said:

Hadar's Grasp: Activation time slightly increased

Hadar's Grasp: Base duration increased to 2 seconds (up from 1.5)
Hadar's Grasp: Rank-up duration reduced to 0.5s (down from 1s)
Hadar's Grasp (Curse Consume): Duration changed to be +1.5s (instead of +50%)

M14 - Hadar's Grasp (Curse Consume) - 13 hits
100*13=1300
M15 - Hadar's Grasp (Curse Consume) - 9 hits
100*1.2*9=1080

1. If the intention is as stated (to buff damage), this does not appear to be doing the trick.
   
2. Why the decrease in duration? The ticks of this power are important for Soul Spark generation in addition to basic damage-dealing.
   
3. Following from #2, if the decrease in duration and the increase in activation time have been applied due to PvP, please consider an alternative correction to accomplish whatever it is that you're looking to do. The result appears to be counterproductive to the stated intention in PvE. One of the common criticisms of SW DPS (aside from the not being on par with the physical DPS classes) is the slowness and clunkiness of its rotations. It seems odd to streamline some parts of the rotation, like Killing Flames, and at the same time add molasses to a bread-and-butter power like Hadar's Grasp.
   

Listing this in the Bug Forums to increase visibility and also because it genuinely appears not to be WAI.


EDIT:

While we're on the topic, what's up with Dreadtheft's rework? Increasing the damage by 20% isn't that great in the context of reducing the number of ticks from 12 to 10 and animation-locking the caster so that they can no longer activate At-Wills and such. While the activation of other powers during Dreadtheft was no doubt an unintended behavior, the result is that damage output should be declining quite a bit while channeling Dreadtheft. Unless SW is intended to deal less damage than before, this, too, seems like a counterproductive fix.

darkzod

In this context, I do not think why Hellish Rebuke only 25% of the damage makes as before. Is this a bug?

ibz4ez

Hadar's Grasp wasn't a problematic ability in PvP prior to this in terms of DPS. It was weak pre mod15 and is still weak in PvP now. The only logical reason I can think of to reduce ticks is to try and solve the problem of the Hadar's Grasp not properly respecting Crowd Control resistance in PvP. Which, by the way, when curse consuming it still doesn't.

In all honesty they've made the power worse.
Still cluncky and unusable in PvP (In a proper rotation).
Still underpowered in terms of DPS.
Still has exceptional CC potential.

So the argument used to justify the reduction in ticks and DPS for this power in both PvE and PvP is nonsensical.
And even if the power WAS over-performing in PvP it would still be nonsensical to make the power worse in any way because the SW class as a whole is bad in both PvE and PvP.

schietindebux

Never overperformed in PVP, grabbing a GF with that encounter looked more like tickeling that class than dealing any damage, compared to be "oncycle-cc'd to death" by a combination of: IS/Crescendo (Daily)/ + 2-3 Griffon (+/-lion)
I really hope, that the nerf was not triggered by a PVP issue, maybe more triggered by CW´s crying about their underperforming entangeling force being weaker
Who knows what devs though going that way.
They obviously don´t play their game and by that they go on walking through the " fog of cluelessness" hehe