[Warlock] Action button bloat: Which spell would you choose to cut off

[Polyamorous]

Haven't they removed enough flavor and dumbed down our class enough for you already? Here's hoping they remove nothing.

[Deleted]

Would love to see fel flame go, I just hate instant cast, no-cooldown spammed spells...

Wouldn't miss curse of the elements, just annoying to have to throw it up every single time. The debuff could come automatically with some other spell, but I suppose that would somehow be OP in PvP so we can't have that.

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Haven't they removed enough flavor and dumbed down our class enough for you already? Here's hoping they remove nothing.

Because having 71 keybinds with even more spells incoming in the next expansion is so very necessary. You can't just keep on adding spells upon spells without ever removing some. Or would you rather not have any new spells at all? You can easily keep a class both fun and if necessary complicated with far lesser spells than what we currently have.

[Deleted]

If I must, I would cut:

Dark Regeneration, Unending Resolve, Dark Bargain and Twilight ward and replace them with a single relatively short cd (~90 seconds) defensive cooldown.

Agony and Demonology Corruption, bake them into the other abilities.

Summon Succubus, Summon Infernal and Summon Doomguard, while 10 min cds are great, these 2 are particularly redundant and become "that button you press once per fight, for the sake of having done it". As pets are atm I'd actually remove all of them. They have no impact on the game play, aside from the occasional brainlag when the pet is not attacking, stuck somewhere or despawned, OR that once-per-week dispel, knockback or interrupt. I know the abilities are useful, but they could just as well be in the warlock's own spellbook. There's no graspable interaction with our pets.

Seed of Corruption, Fire and Brimstone. Without Mannoroth's Fury as a passive the aoe becomes too small.

Banish, Enslave Demon, Drain Life, Unending Breath, Felguard Charge.

Malefic Grasp reworked

Incinerate reworked

Touch of Chaos reworked

[Baconeggcheese]

Haven't they removed enough flavor and dumbed down our class enough for you already? Here's hoping they remove nothing.

Were you not around for 1-2 button rotations?


Elements / enfeeblement: These things are dated and not at all intuitive, you simply place them on the boss at the beginning of the fight and 5 minutes later refresh. Just remove it and tune accordingly.

Twilight ward: situationally useful, could very easily turn it into a passive that automatically applies the shield every 30 seconds since it's going to be used on cooldown anyway in any applicable situations.

Life tap: old dated way of getting mana back, we hardly use it as is at the moment and the more exaggerated our health pools get the less we use it. Could easily be replaced by chaotic energy a la destro and be forgotten about considering we're the only class besides arcane mages that even have to think about their mana pools.

Kinda stumped on what else can be reasonably removed without hurting us in either pvp or pve in X situation.

Edit: doom guard's a good call, there really is no utility in it its just there. Infernal on the other hand can be the difference between living and a wipe in heroic raiding so that I don't see being easily removed.

[Asrialol]

Jesus. This ability bloat disease is getting out of hand. People seriously think its a problem?

[Dietrik]

I don't have any problems with bloat, i use almost everything...

My least used abilities while raiding are Eye of Kilrogg, Enslave Demon, Fear and Health Funnel... but i use Soul Link which just leaves the other 3, and they are my out in the world utility...

Twilight Ward is situational and i rarely use it, but i would probably miss it if it were gone.

[Dristereau]

Only started playing Lock at 90 in 5.2, and only really as Destro, but for me I would say two abilities:

Eye of Kilrogg - Only every used it during the Warlock Black Temple Scenario. Doesn't even warrant a place on my bars, and never used it in PVE or PVP currently.

Fel Flame - Given that in 5.4 it no longer extends our DoT's, it could potentially be removed. The only positive I still see it having is not being locked from Shadow or Fire.

[Polyamorous]

If I must, I would cut:

Summon Succubus, Summon Infernal and Summon Doomguard, while 10 min cds are great, these 2 are particularly redundant and become "that button you press once per fight, for the sake of having done it". As pets are atm I'd actually remove all of them. They have no impact on the game play, aside from the occasional brainlag when the pet is not attacking, stuck somewhere or despawned, OR that once-per-week dispel, knockback or interrupt. I know the abilities are useful, but they could just as well be in the warlock's own spellbook. There's no graspable interaction with our pets.

This is so absurdly wrong I can't even grasp it. You don't think that warlocks wouldn't lose any flavor or fun from just removing pets? You people want to remove things for the sake of removing them, not because they are actually an issue. The only abilities I can see someone making a case for getting cut are-

Unending Breath
Eye of Kilrogg
Enslave Demon
Soulshatter
Potentially rolling curse of enfeeblement into curse of elements

Even then these are flavor abilities that make warlocks unique and I would hate to lose them.

Were you not around for 1-2 button rotations?

I've been playing since vanilla, but I'm not sure why you are even bringing that up. What does the vanilla/TBC rotation have anything to do with them dumbing down affli and destro from what they were in WotLK / Cata?

[Grizelda]

As far as CoE, we've always been something of a debuff class. We curse things and weaken them. Part of the flavor.

Our curses have been streamlined quite a bit. We have what? 2? 3?

This whole thread is sounding like crazy talk.

[La]

I think some of you are missing the point of the 'action button bloat'. On top of removing spells that you never use like Eye of Kilrogg, I think they mean more to how they added specific abilities classes had and built them in to other spells. There's no reason to say "Yeah, they should remove eye of kilrogg because it clutters my action bars" when really, how many people actually have it on their action bars? You know the last time I used that spell was in TBC.

To give an example I would say instead of applying a curse to a boss that lasts 5 minutes and you only cast once or twice, a specific ability would simply add the curse automatically instead ie an ability that is very important and part of your actual rotation.

[Hellfury]

As far as CoE, we've always been something of a debuff class. We curse things and weaken them. Part of the flavor.

Our curses have been streamlined quite a bit. We have what? 2? 3?

This whole thread is sounding like crazy talk.

I don't agree, with the "we are a debuff class". We arent a debuff class infact we never were not even in Classic, We are damage dealers that have a extremely limited debuff toolbox.

Ppl have this notion of debuff class from other MMO's that have supportive roles, WOW don't have supportive roles anymore and so having COE go wouldnt be that bad.

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I think some of you are missing the point of the 'action button bloat'. On top of removing spells that you never use like Eye of Kilrogg, I think they mean more to how they added specific abilities classes had and built them in to other spells. There's no reason to say "Yeah, they should remove eye of kilrogg because it clutters my action bars" when really, how many people actually have it on their action bars? You know the last time I used that spell was in TBC.

To give an example I would say instead of applying a curse to a boss that lasts 5 minutes and you only cast once or twice, a specific ability would simply add the curse automatically instead ie an ability that is very important and part of your actual rotation.

I think they could solve some of the "bloat" and even give us some more flavor by linking spells with pets we already have like, instead having a button for DI, UB, TW, Killrog etc they could put another "sacrifice" type not linked with Gosac and that could let us keep our combat pets for example.

Raid needs DI, "sacrifice" a Imp and gives everyone in the party/raid the spell.
Need TW, "sacrifice" voidwalker
Need UB, sacrifice succubus

This could give us more flavor merging as much as 4 buttons into 1. Without removing any utility we already have.

[ComputerNerd]

Jesus. This ability bloat disease is getting out of hand. People seriously think its a problem?

If you do not believe it is a problem, then try to state some reasoning.
Calling our opinions a "disease" when even blizzard stated that the bloat issue does exist really does not help your arguments at all.

[Grizelda]

To be fair, I don't think that anyone has shown it to be a problem for Warlocks either.

[ComputerNerd]

To be fair, I don't think that anyone has shown it to be a problem for Warlocks either.

That is because it cannot be "shown" as simply as that.
It comes down to individual abilities since there is no simple measure such as frequency of use alone that will tell you if it is bloat or not.
Bloat I described as an ability being equal in effect, but way more tedious or difficult to bring than it is for other classes especially when its usefulness is largely limited to one half of the game, and practically unused in the other.

[Grizelda]

I don't agree, with the "we are a debuff class". We arent a debuff class infact we never were not even in Classic, We are damage dealers that have a extremely limited debuff toolbox.

We can make you cast spells slower. We can make you move slower. We can reduce your ability to damage. We can make you take more damage. We have offensive dispells. We have defensive dispells. We can disarm. We can reduce healing taken. I don't know man...sounds like we have some pretty potent and comprehensive debuffs.

Used to be even better in the past.

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Cool, let's define what we mean by bloat.

When I talk about it I mean 5 spells that do the same thing. Redundancy. That would be pretty easy to show if it were the case.

I don't think that we are in that situation with the exception of damage reduction cool downs. A solution would be to reduce the number of options and reduce the CD on the ones we keep. Personally I'd rather keep them all.

Or, "Holy shit how the fuck am I going to fit all this stuff on my action bars?" That also would be pretty easy to show if it were the case. If it is the case, maybe unbinding talent pane, profession pane, achievement pane etc.

[Vulcanasm]

I don't agree, with the "we are a debuff class". We arent a debuff class infact we never were not even in Classic, We are damage dealers that have a extremely limited debuff toolbox.

Actually, yeah, we were. Warlock damage was extremely low at launch. The original class design was for debuffs. For example, Curse of Weakness originally reduced damage done by 50% and lasted 20 seconds, and Fear had a negligible chance to break on damage.

[Azutael]

I dunno, I think it is fine as it is now really. Though some spells could be baked into others or made into auras.

[Deleted]

Warlock is soooo awsome the way it is now,i wouldnt change it.
SO what if I have 30 key binds, go play another class that has less key binds.

[Baconeggcheese]

I've been playing since vanilla, but I'm not sure why you are even bringing that up. What does the vanilla/TBC rotation have anything to do with them dumbing down affli and destro from what they were in WotLK / Cata?

Because I'm confused where you're getting dumbed down from when we have abilities in excess of what we ever needed back in the day. I had to buy a naga to be able to bind all this bloat. See just because we're looking to remove abilities doesn't mean we're looking to dumb down, 1-2 button rotations were not fun and we've progressed soooooooo far from that that even dropping a ton of shit would still be far more complex than arguably the best periods the game has ever had.

Reducing ability bloat isn't something silly like removing unending breath either, which doesn't even need to be on your bars with how insignificant it is. Reducing ability bloat is about reducing the number of spells you feel obligated to have key bound for encounters, of which some classes (like locks) have a lot more than others for no good reason.

[Deleted]

Warlock is soooo awsome the way it is now,i wouldnt change it.
SO what if I have 30 key binds, go play another class that has less key binds.

How do you only have 30 keybinds as a Warlock? I got over twice that.