This info is for level-60 characters, because there are no low-level premades.


Fear will now break if a certain DPS threshold is breached. You have to do about 500 DPS over the span of one game tic (about 1.5 seconds) to do this. It means that one direct damage spell that does over 500 damage breaks fear. It also means that the fear-breakage criteria now implicitely takes into account the effect of +spell damage gear.

Dots work this same way. If a warlock loads up an opponent with Corruption, CoA, and Immoliate, then fears them, and then all three dots happen to do damage in the same tic that totals more than 500 damage, fear breaks.

Pet damage and damage from third-parties (like a warrior who charges you while you are feared) also figure in to the DPS threshold calculation. If a warlock fears someone and does nothing, but a hunter autoshots the feared person for 500 white damage, then fear breaks.

This is advertised as fear having a decreased chance to break from DOTs, but it's only decreased compared to direct damage because it isn't gauranteed that multiple DOTS will do damage in the same tic. Now for fear to be reliable, warlocks actually need to use *less* +spell damage to keep under the DPS threshold where fear breaks. 500 DPS in one game tic is easily exceeded by any warlock in epic gear.

Basically, expect to see seduce+nuke coming back into style big-time, especially versus healing casters where slowly grinding down health is not a viable option. If you remember warlocks in patch 1.6, this is what it will be like at level 60 post-1.11.

The secondary effect is that the PVP trinket isn't so usefull anymore, unless you want to use it to break seduce. Fear will break on its own pretty fast if the warlock is actually trying to fight you.

Finally, note that these are PVP changes. Fear doesn't break this easily in PVE -- I was able to do major DPS against mobs without fear breaking. I would guess that the fear-break threshold is calculated as a percentage of the target's total life. For players the percentage works out to around 500 damage on average, but for the mobs I tested on the percentage gave a higher DPS threshold (I tested the WS elite demons which have about 18K hp).

There was an interesting post on the official Blizzard forums describing the new fear mechanic going live in 1.11. According to Putricia:
A CM said earlier that fear breaks three times more easily in PvP than in PvE, so perhaps you have to break the 1500 dps barrier for fear to break in PvE? How does shadow resistance factor into this?

I hate to be cynical like this... but how much do you want to be Entangling Roots accidentally feels some collateral damage?

There was an interesting post on the official Blizzard forums describing the new fear mechanic going live in 1.11.

Is it just Fear? What about Howl of Terror, Psychic Scream, and Intimidating Shout? Death Coil's horror effect is getting a change too, is it not?

Fear is, I think, more abused in its current form than priests' or warriors' fears since Psychic Scream has a cooldown so it can't be used to keep a target feared indefinitely and warriors can't heap on ranged damage while their target(s) are feared.

Those first three are classified as "fears". Ie anti-fear trinkets can break them. I think Death Coil was made different because it's one sure-fire way for warlocks to get something off of them.

It probably matters more in BGs where you'll often see 2-3 AOE fears in a fight. As a MS warrior (not undead), if I'm in the wrong stance when a fear goes off, I will often spend the next 15 seconds running around feared -- and I may die before it breaks.

Group PVP, it's a fair change. But how it effects world PVP is going to define how the community responds to it.

Don't remind me. Rogues are still smarting because of the advantage Stealth gives us in world PVP, which I still have only participated in maybe 4 times total.

Which was your choice, of course.

Howl of Terror and Intimidating shout have been skipped over in previous fear effect nerfs, notably by having the same base duration for PCs as NPCs.

Don't remind me. Rogues are still smarting because of the advantage Stealth gives us in world PVP

That is due to the cool down on the spells. There is diminishing returns on spells that where the effect lasts longer than the cooldown (Fear, Seduce, Frostshock, and others). Anytime the effect is shorter than atleast double the cooldown, there is no diminishing return from that player (this may extend to other players as well as I remember several times being ganged up on by a pair of rogues and never leaving stun until I was dead).

That is due to the cool down on the spells. There is diminishing returns on spells that where the effect lasts longer than the cooldown (Fear, Seduce, Frostshock, and others). Anytime the effect is shorter than atleast double the cooldown, there is no diminishing return from that player (this may extend to other players as well as I remember several times being ganged up on by a pair of rogues and never leaving stun until I was dead).

And even with DR, 2 rogues can keep you in stun for 9 seconds (CS 4 , KS 3 , KS 1.5). I'd think that long enough for 2 rogues to mutilate a warlock.

This is absolutely not the case.

I've used howl of terror and intimidating shout and seen an 'Immune' because DR had set in. Similarly with stuns (as a warrior charge is often the first thing you do... and the stun is 1 second with a 15 second cooldown, so fits into the Lissa-craft diminishing returns categories... to get an 'immune' on that pretty much guarantees things don't work like you think they do).

Kidney shot is the same thing, When using my rogue I'll cheap shot to open most of the time. People catch up and do some other stuns and I can get an immune on kidney shot (6 sec stun / 20 sec cooldown)

In my experience, diminishing returns works just like Blizzard has advertised, effect durations are reset after 15 seconds of not having the effect on them.

And even with DR, 2 rogues can keep you in stun for 9 seconds (CS 4 , KS 3 , KS 1.5). I'd think that long enough for 2 rogues to mutilate a warlock.

Not against a Warlock, against a Hunter with good armor. Stunlocked for around 15 to 20 seconds before they killed me. So, care to explain that?

I'll continue to believe big IMMUNE letters rather than somone's sense of 9 seconds vs. 15 seconds when in the middle of getting a serious beatdown by 2 rogues at once.

Sorry, but sense of time when PvPing is quite skewed. And big IMMUNE letters when using charge, kidney shot, howl of terror or intimidating shout are about as clear as it gets.

[snippy].... which I still have only participated in maybe 4 times total.

Simulating World PvP 101: Standing in the middle of the field of strife when the zerg is elsewhere easily stands in for roaming pvp in realatively high traffic zones like EPL. While you're there, why not try ganking in front of the portal. It's just like camping the flight master in thorium point!

Dying to try a little Blackrock Mountain PvP? No problem! Just stand under the opposition's graveyard in Warsong Gulch. Defending a flag in Arathi Basin feels a lot like being the only person out front of the UBRS portal: you know something bad's coming, you just don't know when.

Unfortunately there's no equivalent to dressing up as pirates and taking over the Menthil-Theramore boat.

The moral of this story? Battlegrounds are okay, but pirates kick A#$@.

Back slightly on topic: Does anyone have any impressions of fear post-patch yet? I'm dying to have a bash at some warlocks to find out, but won't be able to play for a couple of days.

I didn't mean diminishing returns- those spells had the same mechanics for handling duration and break chance with players as with NPCs, meaning they usually lasted their full duration regardless of what was happening. Fear and Psychic scream haven't done that in a very long time, for good reason.

I don't see a reason to nerf Intimidating Shout further. It's on a very long cooldown (three minutes compared to thirty seconds for Psychic Scream and however long Howl of Terror is), costs a significant amount of Rage, and has been reduced to a maximum of five targets, and the primary target is automatically broken out of Fear if he takes any damage of any kind from any source.

Howl of Terror has a 2 minute cool, BTW.

What the hell, is that new? I could have sworn it was a couple minutes.

Use to be 30 seconds and 15 seconds, now it's 40 and 20.

as of when? Thott still has it listed as 15 second duration on the fear.

What's the effective PVP duration?