Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Deleted]

People need to stop whining. You know what happened before we had the completely overpowered KjC? We would lose DPS when moving and you could mitigate the effect of movement by planning ahead (delaying Lifetaps, delaying instants to fit that movement). And sometimes specs would even be chosen because they excelled at movement heavy encounters (Demo on H-SpiritKings for example). KjC means that right now moving is a non issue for Warlocks, we don't have to plan ahead or react to it (in terms of rotation), we just move. People trying to argue that the movement speed penalty is a big issue in PVE are either deliberately trying to make KjC worse than it actually is or are not reacting quick enough. Yes, there might be abilities where you need to react a smidge quicker with KjC but those are the exception. Thinking about it only 3 abilities come to mind: Thunderstruck on HC Lei-Shen, Attenuation on HC Zor'Lok (although dodging this with KjC is entirely possible by dodging through lines instead of moving within an arm as far as I remember) and the fear thingie on HC Tsu'Long.

I vote for the complete removal of KjC, AV and MF and for them to give us a ressource generation Tier which we do not have at all. Not going to happen, but one can dream.

Oh and Fel Flame having a cast time (and being basically a greenish Scorch) is just meh.

[nightfalls]

I vote for the complete removal of KjC, AV and MF and for them to give us a ressource generation Tier which we do not have at all. Not going to happen, but one can dream.

That might not be a bad idea except I think the one class with what you can call a "resource generation tier" would be the mage, and those talents are (more or less) universally acknowledged as total shit. Some time ago I came up with some ideas for unique, somewhat complex spells that I actually think wouldn't make for a bad 90 tier (they weren't intended for that originally).

Going to quote what I put on the mage forums, a good 90 row gives classes a toolkit to handle specific situations (which AV is intended to do, it just fails at it), a bad 90 row creates situations that players have to handle. Not saying resource maintenance is a bad thing, but any sort of "maintenance" should be a baseline ability, not "pick your poison"


Fel Flame's change just sounds horrible, IIRC a big problems locks have already is that they are too easily interrupted (or LoS'ed) aside from Demo in arenas.

Now I won't lie, I do have some headaches against them and I can go complain, but same goes, just because a player isn't good at LoS or interrupting doesn't mean a class is necessarily overpowered. Seems that insight is hard for many to see though.

[Deleted]

SirFlipper, i just love the ppl that calls KJC completely overpowered, there was nothing overpowered about kjc, id like you to tell me which encounters kjc is completely overpowered on and on which encounters lock top charts solely bcoz of kjc. KJC was simply the most useful of our lvl 90 talents and that is prolly blizz greatest fail, its the fact that they have given locks 3 horrible lvl 90 talents with 1 being utterly pointless, 1 being extremely situational and 1 being atleast useful most of the time, so guess what m8, ppl took KJC coz it was 10 times more useful than any of the other talents.

and why on earth would a lock ever need a resource generation tier? life tap is all we will ever need, a resource generation tier would be utterly pointless as a lock, now ofc if it was like say mage's lvl 90 and it would give us 15-20% sp/haste/mastery/crit then i might be persuaded for it.

i aggre that the fel flame getting a cast time is kinda meh, it atleast needs to be uninterruptable for pvp but it does solve a lot of things that was needed for affliction while also ruining it in some ways for afflic and a lot for demo(who wont need it) and destro.

[threads]

Fel flame change is hilarious. "Oh you guys want to cast while moving? Here let's slap on a cast time to one of your instants and let you use that. Everyone happy?"

[Docmort]

Why does it feel like a kid just snuck into the cockpit of a jumbo jet and started pushing buttons to see what works? It feels like some of these changes are being made without actually giving any thought to the implications. I understand this is PTR testing but some ideas shouldn't make it past the drawing board. Did no one sitting in on that balancing committee understand the need for an instant cast in pve and pvp? The sheer quality of life rendered by having it refresh 2 of affliction's dots, including the hardcast one? The implications of a school lockout interrupting it for all our specs? It seems like they are intent to push this change through before the end of the expansion regardless of how much time and effort would be needed to properly rebalance us afterwards. Somehow I think between us being broken or them doing a satisfactory job of it, we're going to end up holding the short stick.

[Deleted]

well the fel flame cast time i can accept, it even makes sense, well sorta, and it is still limited to be cast once every gcd, so in terms of getting it off, it will be the same as it is now, ofc the cast time thing will hit pvp but it should also be uninterruptable atelast for pvp.

[Deleted]

and why on earth would a lock ever need a resource generation tier? life tap is all we will ever need, a resource generation tier would be utterly pointless as a lock, now ofc if it was like say mage's lvl 90 and it would give us 15-20% sp/haste/mastery/crit then i might be persuaded for it.

I think by "resources" they mean SS / Embers / DFury, similar to how deathknights have a tier where they can pick to have extra rune generation in interesting ways.

Personally, I want a Doom Guard / Infernal / Pit Lord tier, but I've little hope in the devs doing that instead of just constantly tinkering and failing to balance out current ones.

[Deleted]

I think by "resources" they mean SS / Embers / DFury, similar to how deathknights have a tier where they can pick to have extra rune generation in interesting ways.

Personally, I want a Doom Guard / Infernal / Pit Lord tier, but I've little hope in the devs doing that instead of just constantly tinkering and failing to balance out current ones.

well that would make more sense, but i still see no need for it at all.

i would very much atleast like a solid buff to our doomguard/terrorguard, its such a waste of a 10 min cd as is, so a tier that increases their dmg would be nice, but like you i fear that they wont even look at our doomguard/terrorguard.

[Scathbais]

You already had people switching talents every encounter and I really would rather things not continue to slide in that direction.

But this is the core of the new talent system. The idea is that we get meaningful choices that change based on boss/encounter mechanics. I change my talents all the during raids. Why would you not want the flexibility?

There are only 3 talents I have never used in raids: Howl of Terror, Blood Horror, and AV (since the nerf).

[Lulbalance]

they have to make fel flame destro school only after this.. have to.

and it sucks that to healing tide totem i'ts probably going to take +4.5s [hopeful the dmg increase is more than i think it will be] instead 3 and even during that time we risk taking a double lock out, wtf?

i'm gonna go on to test the haunt change though because that could be the only good thing coming out of this, i dont mind the idea of shifting more damage into a spell that if and when gets dispelled will like do more dmg [assuming UA] to the dispeller AND returns a resource.

[Soulzar]

When the KJC nerf was first announced, everyone was complaining that they had "nothing" to cast while moving. Myself, and a few others, pointed out Fel Flame was given to us specifically for that purpose. EVERY SINGLE RESPONSE to that statement was "we can't use FF it refreshes our dots and makes them weak!". Now that dot refresh feature is removed, and...people are unhappy about it?

Giving it a cast time is stupid, but removing that "functionality" was, prior to the change, something people seemed to be all in favor of.

Pointing out that you can not use Fel Flame as a filler while moving due to it messing up snapshotting does not translate into no longer wanting the ability to extend snapshot dots. This change is horribly short sited IMO and seems more like a knee jerk reaction to the massive outcry. I really think they should have had a few more meetings before tossing this idea our way...

[Deleted]

SirFlipper, i just love the ppl that calls KJC completely overpowered, there was nothing overpowered about kjc, id like you to tell me which encounters kjc is completely overpowered on and on which encounters lock top charts solely bcoz of kjc. KJC was simply the most useful of our lvl 90 talents and that is prolly blizz greatest fail, its the fact that they have given locks 3 horrible lvl 90 talents with 1 being utterly pointless, 1 being extremely situational and 1 being atleast useful most of the time, so guess what m8, ppl took KJC coz it was 10 times more useful than any of the other talents.

and why on earth would a lock ever need a resource generation tier? life tap is all we will ever need, a resource generation tier would be utterly pointless as a lock, now ofc if it was like say mage's lvl 90 and it would give us 15-20% sp/haste/mastery/crit then i might be persuaded for it.

i aggre that the fel flame getting a cast time is kinda meh, it atleast needs to be uninterruptable for pvp but it does solve a lot of things that was needed for affliction while also ruining it in some ways for afflic and a lot for demo(who wont need it) and destro.

KjC completely removes movement as an issue for Warlocks. Where other casters have to adapt to movement (as in plan ahead, change rotation, maybe even change spec) Warlocks don't care anymore. That is, they don't do awesome DPS by playing really well around the movement in the fight they just do the exact same stuff they would do if there was no movement at all. On top of all that, there is no possible skill gap between players in how they handle movement because everyone does it perfectly. So all in all, it is "overpowered" maybe not in a purely DPS sense of a word but in what it accomplishes regarding game mechanics. However, it definitely is a sizeable DPS increase for heavy movement encounters for Affliction (which is what all the whining is about as far as I can tell) allthough I would be hard pressed to put a number on it.

As Nagassh mentioned already, by "ressources" I meant SS/BE/DF. You could have a Talent that passively grants a bonus to the generation, one that gives you an active spell that generates additional SS/BE/DF every couple of minutes and one that makes your LifeTap give 3 times as much mana, just as an idea.

[TyrianFC]

I really think they should have had a few more meetings before tossing this idea our way...

It wasnt tossed 'our way'. It was a proposed change that will be tossed onto the ptr, which is just a place to run experiments and present ideas.

[Deleted]

well that would make more sense, but i still see no need for it at all.

i would very much atleast like a solid buff to our doomguard/terrorguard, its such a waste of a 10 min cd as is, so a tier that increases their dmg would be nice, but like you i fear that they wont even look at our doomguard/terrorguard.

Are you serious right now? The problem back in Cata was that DG was far too big of a damage source that you were so dependant on them, making you completely shit without them. They fixed that by reducing the damage and you are now asking for an increase? Where is the "not sure if trolling" meme when you need it.

[xuros]

Wonder if they plan to buff ember generation from other spells to make up for the ROF nerf to embers. Or if it will go back to like it was in the start of MoP with SLOOOOW ember creation (.

[Rife]

These new changes are just making more Warlocks angry and showing Blizzard devs to be even more out of touch with the class than we previously thought.

Touching on a few things other posters have said:

Affliction:
This fel flame change does not fix affliction. Buffing haunt and dot damage just takes us back to being strong multi-dotters which blizzard didn't like. It also places even more emphasis on needing to stand still and spam MG during trinket procs because even more of afflictions damage will be directly tied to haunt. This is exactly the opposite of what the spec needs without KJC. They're literally nerfing the spec even more in an attempt to fix it.

Destro:
I have no idea how the hell they intend to make destro viable either. They're taking away RoF single target ember generation while killing the specs aoe in every form and doing nothing whatsoever to offset it. Fel flame will either cost too much mana and never, ever be used or it will be too cheap and either compete with or replace incinerate. There isn't really any way around this. It's already fairly close and buffing fel flame is just going to make it worse. It also does nothing to fix fire and brimstone which now be largely useless. Something that was only a dps gain with 500% aoe range when a lot of mobs are out is going to laughable when it keeps the opportunity cost of a chaos bolt and has 20% of the aoe.

Demo:
It doesn't even affect demo. That's the worst part about it. They're butchering the class as a whole and it seems like the only thing saving demo at the moment is pure luck of original design. Thank god demo locks can spam ToC in Meta or they'd be completely fucked for 5.4 also.

The only reason they're saying fel flames damage has been slightly increased is because it's going to be taking 50% longer to cast. The actual DPS will probably stay the same, which is a bad joke as it is.

I'd be pissed if they did this kind of haphazard nerf excursion for a new expansion. Doing this in the middle of one is a slap in the face.
They're taking away what they don't like and have absolutely no idea how to compensate for what they're taking. As it stands currently, they're actually making it worse while trying to appease a pissed off community by letting us know what they're trying. What they're trying is complete crap. They're throwing other spells under the bus in an attempt to fix ones they've just destroyed.

That doesn't even address the fairly huge PvP losses that such a change will incur on a class that isn't even top of the food chain.

It's getting to a point on the PvE side where I can see locks being benched for a whole tier. A pure DPS class that doesn't have alternative specs is almost certainly going to be shit on some fights in the new raid. For a spur of the moment example; what happens if a there is a fight in 5.4 that requires a lot of movement during execute phase?

25's might be able to carry locks on some fights but I can't see any 10 man raid choosing to gear up a warlock in 5.4 if they're so susceptible to certain mechanics and have no alternative but to bench them.

[Deleted]

I am really getting more angry than I should at the stupidity of some people. Even if they completely remove KjC we are at the exact same spot that every other caster is in. Why would we be benched in this case? If there is a high mobility fight you just go Demo and completely laugh at Shadow Priest (that can not do ANYTHING on the move). Sure, not being able to use SF in Meta in execute is a DPS loss, but it is by no means the thing that makes or breaks Demo.

[Soulzar]

It wasnt tossed 'our way'. It was a proposed change that will be tossed onto the ptr, which is just a place to run experiments and present ideas.

Useless semantics. Its a ptr discussion, which we can not have if we are unable to express an opinion on a proposed change because its just a test realm. My comment still stands but I'll reword it for you. This change was short sighted... and they should have had more meetings before proposing a change of this nature to the community knowing the its one step forward, but two back.

[Gorthan]

Fel flame change is hilarious. "Oh you guys want to cast while moving? Here let's slap on a cast time to one of your instants and let you use that. Everyone happy?"

At this point i would really like to know why they just don't make filler castable on the move. Do it now for warlocks and for all the other classes on the next exp (if you don't want to it right now).
Could someone ask it on twitter? I'm really curious about that.

[vaeevictiss]

god damn, ya know ive been waiting since vanilla to be able to just freely move around and cast. So they dangled it in front of us for part of an expansion and then said "NOPE!".

Ive always just shook off the bad changes and dealt with it and persevered, but this is the first time since vanilla i am upset enough to want to play my DK or Shammy as my main. Return of shadowflame is cool, i did miss that. Fel Flame was awesome even tho it was weak, it was just nice to have an insta-nuke. I could care lest about HOT...other than that these changes are nothing but bad bad news.