Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Azutael]

It being instant gives us the ability to maintain our current movement ability going into 5.4. RoF is the vast majority of our available instant casts in a fight.

Ahh yes, ofc. I had a version of searing pain in my mind that was suggested earlier (it being cast-able while moving).

I like the idea of having another spell to cast every now and then for sure. And bringing back searing pain in some form like you suggested would be awesome.

[Deleted]

I had nothing against SB in Affli, but I always percieved Affli as THE DoT spec, so having a DoT filler feels better for me.

Eh, it actively make our dots themselves weaker than they used to be and it makes me feel far more like a spriest than I'm comfortable with. That and I don't really equate channeling to dots, dots are things that I can apply and they'll deal their damage over, er, time - like it says on the tin. Old affliction felt far more about dots when it was the dots doing damage and firing shadowbolts which provided a fair chunk of damage over the course of the fight, but were secondary to dots and applied a nice debuff (even if shadows embrace was an iffy mechanic, I'm not going to defend it's removal), as opposed to being a class where you put up a few dots that felt more like THEY were the debuffs that made your filler hit hard.

MOP affliction was the first time in however many years it was since classic -> MOP launch that I've EVER felt alienated and uneasy with affliction, no other change had managed to do that. It's grown on me over the course of the expansion, but it's mostly been a case of becoming more at ease with the proc play and an overall feeling of resignation than growing affection for MG - I currently have demo and destro as my active specs, which is the first time since dual spec was introduced that one of them hasn't been affliction.

All personal preference / opinions and whatnot, but I'll never miss an opportunity to gripe about MG when I see a chance.

That said - I agree with you on the other points - destruction has been improved a heap in my opinion, though I'll repeat my concern over losing a button in the filler rotation. Demonology has had a nice time too, much prefer the current incarnation of meta over the way it was in Cata.

[Werst]

I don't mind aff having channeled fillers. The devs just overdid it big time when marrying dots to those fillers in the name of obsession against multidotting. In an incredibly hypocritical fashion its okay for unholy DK's, shadowpriests, boomkins, firemages (or mast stacking arcane!), etc to multidot powerfully. I mean compare how easily unholy puts up dots and spreads them but "SB:SS is OP/holing aff back/etc". They turned affliction more into a caster feral kitty druid but without the super powered single target bleeds. Meaning that the power was based on fillers you had to cast almost constantly not the dots themselves.

At that same time either intentionally or not they also forced afflocks to be just as married to KJC as aff's dots are to MG/DS. That direction has brought us to the problems we face now. Aff has to be constantly channeling and in the name of target swaps and ramp up needs a mechanic to put up its dots asap. The dots themselves don't do considerable damage they act more like debuffs for channeling damage than the driver of actual damage on their own. So far we haven't seen anything to support the "buff to haunt/nerf to channeled fillers" mentioned though its unclear if that is scraped or just not in any public PTR builds yet. Yet that still doesn't change the dots themselves just where their external muscle is coming from.

Demo is in a better place (ignoring numbers for a minute) than the button bloat that was cata. It is obviously too dependent on UVLS right now. Not sure whether or not the 5.4 trinkets will change that. Yes its viable without UVLS but you don't see non UVLS demo locks competing vs UVLS using demo locks right now. The concern is that the spec isn't competitive without the trinket. Devs aren't known for fixing a strong/overpowered lock synergy with a balanced replacement anymore than 3rd world warlords are known for humanitarian behavior. In fact they often handle things the same way...when it comes to locks at least.

Destro is actually pretty decent. Again massively improved over cata's mess of a spec. I'm glad to see RoF go from single target but you will need to buff ember generation from immo, incinerate, and conflag about 30% to cover the single target loss from RoF. It can feel a bit boring but its always been (this expac) about pressing the right button at the right time moreso than spamming just a few of them. It also gets people into playing locks that wouldn't touch aff or demo which isn't a bad thing necessarily. What new player will look at a mage vs a lock and think the lock is more user friendly? Destro has some major scaling issues to overcome for 5.4 patch. GCD capping incinerates during meta procs or bloodlust being a major one. PVP the spec has big issues since its binary on CB which keeps getting nerfed despite being the longest in combat cast in the game in an era where casting in pvp is happening less and less. Devs need to either let it hit harder thus its worth the headache or make it easier/more frequent to use. Personally I hope for easier/more frequent since the current binary design is frustrating for both warlock and victim. It sucks hard trying to use the spell in pvp and its frustrating to be hit so hard by it on the rare occasion it goes off. I wouldn't mind seeing a destro where you use backdrafts for incinerate, fel flames as a optional filler when incin isn't backdrafted, conflags, and spend via CB/SB. If they mean to cap chaosbolt's damage vs players then it needs to go instant at 3x backdraft. Using it in pve that way will oom you but would let the spec use its tools in pvp.

I think devs could do better when it comes to warlock glyphs as well. Tons of room for improvement there. Things like the darksoul glyph....its been a loss in every facet of the game since its inception in beta. The idiot who would benefit since he/she forgets to use darksoul isn't going to be smart enough to know they should use it lol so that logic is flawed. My lock glyphs might look like:

*Immolate: your immolate is now instant but loses the initial tick damage
*Dark Soul: your darksoul now has a 60 second cooldown but only grants 15% increased stat gain (down from 30%)
*Backdraft: your backdraft no longer grants 30% haste to incinerate but increases incinerate's damage 30%
*Curse of Exhaustion: your CoEx snares 50% but is now a secondary effect of your enfeeblement curse.
*Glyph of Shadowflame/HoG: your hand of guldan radius is increased 5 yards

[Deleted]

I don't mind aff having channeled fillers. The devs just overdid it big time when marrying dots to those fillers in the name of obsession against multidotting. In an incredibly hypocritical fashion its okay for unholy DK's, shadowpriests, boomkins, firemages (or mast stacking arcane!), etc to multidot powerfully. I mean compare how easily unholy puts up dots and spreads them but "SB:SS is OP/holing aff back/etc". They turned affliction more into a caster feral kitty druid but without the super powered single target bleeds. Meaning that the power was based on fillers you had to cast almost constantly not the dots themselves.

And even then, affliction is still very strong at multidotting (a lot of it being due to SB:SS - which is arguably a problem in it's own right) if their intention was to knock affliction off it's pedestal, they didn't do it and demo is stupid-broken with UVOLS.

[Baconeggcheese]

The change works for Affliction and Demo somewhat more because of where AoE dmg is loaded, but for RoF and Destro... it needs to be thought out more.

Not sure if its changed on the PTR but at the moment ember generation aside ROF does roughly the same damage as a single incinerate, if you doubled that on a short cooldown this would pretty much become a mandatory talent and ROF would become part of your single target + rotation again. Not entirely sure what blizzard is thinking there.

[Phoenexis]

Yeah, the "new" one is much better both gameplay-wise and damage-wise in most situations.

No, not in PvP at least. The new Chaos Bolt is the incarnation of the lulz one-shot macro with barely any clever use whatsoever.
The old Chaos Bolt was awesome, given you knew how to micro-manage it. It never was because of the damage though, but rather the additional effects that came along with it.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could make the difference between dying and surviving in a match when your healer is CC'ed thanks to Soul Leech.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could dish out an extra spell cast or two before Life Tapping in order to finish off a healer thanks to Soul Leech mana regen and Replenishment.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could keep pressuring a Disc Priest without breaking his Shield and therefore preventing him from keeping his mana up.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could heal yourself for a good 40k over the course of a duel against a rogue when used smartly.
Chaos Bolt meant being able to kill a rogue under CoS or a shielded opponent.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could open a gap through Shadowfury and still get a good cast off.

Just because Chaos Bolt didn't hit hard back in Cataclysm doesn't mean it sucked or was "linear". And besides, everyone loved the feeling of it, much more than casting a 2.5 second half-assed spell.

[Deleted]

I was mainly speaking of Havoc (and PvE)

But yeah PvE-wise, Chaos bolt was pretty useless.

[Deleted]

No, not in PvP at least. The new Chaos Bolt is the incarnation of the lulz one-shot macro with barely any clever use whatsoever.
The old Chaos Bolt was awesome, given you knew how to micro-manage it. It never was because of the damage though, but rather the additional effects that came along with it.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could make the difference between dying and surviving in a match when your healer is CC'ed thanks to Soul Leech.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could dish out an extra spell cast or two before Life Tapping in order to finish off a healer thanks to Soul Leech mana regen and Replenishment.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could keep pressuring a Disc Priest without breaking his Shield and therefore preventing him from keeping his mana up.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could heal yourself for a good 40k over the course of a duel against a rogue when used smartly.
Chaos Bolt meant being able to kill a rogue under CoS or a shielded opponent.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could open a gap through Shadowfury and still get a good cast off.

Just because Chaos Bolt didn't hit hard back in Cataclysm doesn't mean it sucked or was "linear". And besides, everyone loved the feeling of it, much more than casting a 2.5 second half-assed spell.

This is why wow is a pve game and not a pvp one, there is nothing good about the old chaos bolt in pve.

[Deleted]

No, not in PvP at least. The new Chaos Bolt is the incarnation of the lulz one-shot macro with barely any clever use whatsoever.

Just because Chaos Bolt didn't hit hard back in Cataclysm doesn't mean it sucked or was "linear". And besides, everyone loved the feeling of it, much more than casting a 2.5 second half-assed spell.

Isn't CB currently at the point where incinerate hits almost as hard in pvp these days?

[ykza]

I don't get this obsession with old Bane of Havoc. Never liked it and never will. The new (currrent) Havoc is a much cooler design. I'm again and again surprised by the conservatism of some of the members of this community. We have arguments like "Old CB was better, SB was better in Affli, old Meta was better and (now) old Havoc was better".

Old CB was a horrific spell, barely worth using, I had nothing against SB in Affli, but I always percieved Affli as THE DoT spec, so having a DoT filler feels better for me. Old Bane of Havoc was very, very situational spell. It worked only if there was a target that would be alive for a extended period of time and it was completely useless if you wanted to cleave two adds.

You remind me of those music fans, who always say how the "old stuff" was great and the "new stuff" is complete garbage and the band is not the good old "insert random band name" anymore.

And I don't get why one must think that something is better just because it's new. The new Havoc is way, way clunkier and more of a hassle we have to go through to pull higher numbers and worst of all, it also means less of a dps increase. Shit changes, sometimes for the best sometimes for the worst, but it all depends on the PoV. The old affliction for instance was way better on PvP and had alot more DoT damage, which is what a DoT spec should have. Still it did improve alot in PvE. So as I said, new or old means nothing, it's all in the eyes of the people who use it. Besides, just because I prefer one old mechanic, doesn't make me a conservative person. It was just an idea to improve cleaving for Destro. If you don't like it you're entittled to it but don't call me a conservative, because I'm not one. just be mindful that just because something changes, doesn't mean it's for the best and you're a fool if you think so.

[Deleted]

No, not in PvP at least. The new Chaos Bolt is the incarnation of the lulz one-shot macro with barely any clever use whatsoever.
The old Chaos Bolt was awesome, given you knew how to micro-manage it. It never was because of the damage though, but rather the additional effects that came along with it.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could make the difference between dying and surviving in a match when your healer is CC'ed thanks to Soul Leech.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could dish out an extra spell cast or two before Life Tapping in order to finish off a healer thanks to Soul Leech mana regen and Replenishment.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could keep pressuring a Disc Priest without breaking his Shield and therefore preventing him from keeping his mana up.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could heal yourself for a good 40k over the course of a duel against a rogue when used smartly.
Chaos Bolt meant being able to kill a rogue under CoS or a shielded opponent.
Chaos Bolt meant that you could open a gap through Shadowfury and still get a good cast off.

Just because Chaos Bolt didn't hit hard back in Cataclysm doesn't mean it sucked or was "linear". And besides, everyone loved the feeling of it, much more than casting a 2.5 second half-assed spell.

mop CB is everything what is wrong with todays pvp- not worth to cast without cds, with your swifty you get to insta gib someone and afterwards it gets nerfed. 2 times.

imo cata destro was way more fun than mop- fast paced with a big toolkit but zero to none place for mistakes; they just overdid it for this xpac. if they made a little bit tweaking I would gladly rock cata destro in pvp than todays boringfest.

Isn't CB currently at the point where incinerate hits almost as hard in pvp these days?

Almost. There is a reason why some people go full intellect and disregard CB in pvp, ember tap is a far better use. Hell, our Unending Resolve hit us more then our cb without cds hit.

[Phoenexis]

I was mainly speaking of Havoc (and PvE)

But yeah PvE-wise, Chaos bolt was pretty useless.

Oh well then yeah, new Havoc is pretty awesome, especially if you use it smartly. If only we didn't rely on its gimmicks so much though.

---------- Post added 2013-06-30 at 06:47 PM ----------

This is why wow is a pve game and not a pvp one, there is nothing good about the old chaos bolt in pve.

Blizzard's mountain of fixes don't really agree with that anymore.

---------- Post added 2013-06-30 at 06:48 PM ----------

Isn't CB currently at the point where incinerate hits almost as hard in pvp these days?

Tbh I don't know, I haven't touched my lock in a month. I have my sub active for different reasons atm.

[Deleted]

Blizzard's mountain of fixes don't really agree with that anymore.

But the game is always going to be balanced on pve first, pvp is a sidegame that will never take prio over pve, if you notice the majority of the pvp changes are to help casuals into the game more so than 'high rated' balance changes.

[Phoenexis]

But the game is always going to be balanced on pve first, pvp is a sidegame that will never take prio over pve, if you notice the majority of the pvp changes are to help casuals into the game more so than 'high rated' balance changes.

The current Chaos Bolt is much more of a problem to new players than veterans. They're the ones that demanded the spell to be nerfed because it was so frustrating being killed in two Chaos Bolts while doing a BG without much gear.

[Deleted]

Fair point, although with the gear scaling Chaos is actually not even worth casting.

+ Destruction in high level pvp is beyond pointless, and nothing they are going to do with the spec is going to change that because of the direction they want it to go in pve (massive numbers and few damage sources), that doesnt work in pvp.

[Deleted]

The current Chaos Bolt is much more of a problem to new players than veterans. They're the ones that demanded the spell to be nerfed because it was so frustrating being killed in two Chaos Bolts while doing a BG without much gear.

pretty much this

they are going to do with the spec is going to change that because of the direction they want it to go in pve (massive numbers and few damage sources), that doesnt work in pvp.

dumbing down the class mechanic and simplifying rotation, pretty much the sum of mop

But the game is always going to be balanced on pve first

and they cant even do that right

, pvp is a sidegame that will never take prio over pve,

bet you said that with a smile on your face

[Phoenexis]

Fair point, although with the gear scaling Chaos is actually not even worth casting.

+ Destruction in high level pvp is beyond pointless, and nothing they are going to do with the spec is going to change that because of the direction they want it to go in pve (massive numbers and few damage sources), that doesnt work in pvp.

And that's why they have to rebuild Chaos Bolt, if not warlocks, from scratch. AGAIN.

[Gohzerlock]

And that's why they have to rebuild Chaos Bolt, if not warlocks, from scratch. AGAIN.

Doesn't seem like they're doing much this patch with exception to gutting them.

[Deleted]

And that's why they have to rebuild Chaos Bolt, if not warlocks, from scratch. AGAIN.

No.

If you want a mage with differently coloured spells, roll a mage and use your imagination.

There has to be a room in the game for spec identity.

You want to get rid of that because it's bad for PvP. Get over it, roll affliction, roll a mage, do a barell roll but don't come on these forums asking for a Warlock rebuild when, even with their flaws, they are one of the most interesting and fun classes to play.

[Gohzerlock]

No.

If you want a mage with differently coloured spells, roll a mage and use your imagination.

There has to be a room in the game for spec identity.

You want to get rid of that because it's bad for PvP. Get over it, roll affliction, roll a mage, do a barell roll but don't come on these forums asking for a Warlock rebuild when, even with their flaws, they are one of the most interesting and fun classes to play.

So....... what you're saying is chaos bolt is the only thing keeping us from being mages? lol? Warlocks could use somewhat of a rebuild because a lot of the dumb shit that was implemented *i'm lookin' at you AV* is being reworked. Also pointing out we're a flawed class doesn't help your case implying it doesn't need rebuilding.

I'll agree with you maybe it doesn't need to be "from scratch". Because there was some cool things done for mop, but thats about it.