Pre-Patch Nerfs Make People Lose Their Shit

[Kjarl Grimblood]

Title is pretty much self explanatory.
At least wait untill you're 110 and geared up for raids.
People should calm dafuq down.
All this moaning just make newcomer players dump their Warlock and go play something else.

[Deleted]

Except, most of the complaints are not about numbers (which can be tweaked easily in a hotfix) but about :

- clumsy gameplay mechanics : which will not be changed until next major updates, if we're lucky
- visual not being updated: aka Green Fire visuals
- lazy talents : taking baseline spells to go in our talents, while other classes got new ones
- unnecessary pruning : bye bye water walking warlock mount, bye bye Dark Soul
- ramp up time : in demonology for example, you have at least 14 seconds before STARTING doing your average damage
- aoe : Destruction was aoe king in Mop, now we have to gimp our solo damage to do aoe when others classes don't have to (hello to you fire mages)
- RNG ressource gathering : a secondary ressource, necessary to our dps rotation tied to RNG (except for Demono)
- RNG mastery : Chaos Bolt, Destruction's big hit spell, now hit like a wet noodle if you're not lucky
- ZERO communication from Blizzard : many of these problems have been said since Alpha and there have been zero response or explanation from Blizzard, hence people getting the feeling their feedback goes in the trash can.


All of these are not problems which will be solved with better gear. I would gladly be the worst dps if all of the above, or even the half, were answered.

I'm talking for PVE. I don't PVP much

[tratra]

its fair to say that things will get fixed 1-2 months into the xpac, issue is that people like me that are looking into coming back to WoW and will try and find a guild to play with etc, will have extra trouble into doing so.

[Vorpalspork]

A major issue is that with the lack of any changes based on player input during the Alpha and Beta, it is very likely things WON'T get fixed in 1-2 months. If that is what happens, people have put 1-2 months of effort into an artifact of a class that is broken and never fixed. They then have to switch toons and level a new artifact. It just makes no sense to spout this "everything will be fine at 110 after Blizz fixes us" crap.

[Deleted]

Title is pretty much self explanatory.
At least wait untill you're 110 and geared up for raids.
People should calm dafuq down.
All this moaning just make newcomer players dump their Warlock and go play something else.

It's easily explained.

Destruction has been nerfed, it was the best performing warlock spec but being beaten hands down by a lot of other classes.

Warlocks are angry because their mediocre-at-best class is being nerfed whilst others *cough mages cough* are toppping charts all over and haven't been touched.

Demo and affliction have mechanics issues that make them inherently less desirable to do progress raiding in, and now our most viable spec is being nerfed heavily even though it wasn't winning any prizes anyway.


What's frustrating is that even if you buy into "well yeah Blizzard are going to let the mess that is warlocks go live but don;t worry it will all be put right with hotfixes just you see" is that you have every chance of spending a month pissing around levelling your artifact only to find you chose the "wrong" spec

Destruction feel clunky, at the mercy of RNjesus the entire time, dated (with hardly any visual or spell updates) and mediocre in performance and is hardly a prime target for nerfs, and yet here we are, Blizz using their sledgehammer approach with an ability nerfed by over 60% with a lesser one buffed by about 15% - it's an overall dps loss in something that wasn;t winning prizes anyway

When you look at that and then look at how other classes ar eperforming and not getting touched at all, it's hard to get away from feeling that Blizzard are just playing favourites and pandering to classes with high populations by ensuring they are constantly top performers - at the expense of low pop classes.

I don;t have any faith in the "it will be fixed in 1-2 months" - I've played WoW long enough to know that they have let classes and specs go live in overpowered or underpowered states and let them stay that way for whole expacs or at least whole content patches. And who wants to be the dumpster class for months when trying to get raid places anyway?

Not to mention the way the artifact tends to lock you into a spec in Legion. It's not just a case of "oh they buffed demo to the sky, click change spec and learn new buttons" anymore.

[Orwell7]

It's like saying nah, this girl is not completely mad, wait until marriage to find out!
How basic is this...

[Kjarl Grimblood]

A major issue is that with the lack of any changes based on player input during the Alpha and Beta, it is very likely things WON'T get fixed in 1-2 months. If that is what happens, people have put 1-2 months of effort into an artifact of a class that is broken and never fixed. They then have to switch toons and level a new artifact. It just makes no sense to spout this "everything will be fine at 110 after Blizz fixes us" crap.

I beg to differ.
I dont believe Blizzard will leave specs, let alone an entire class in the dumpster for the rest of the expansion.
If something is broken, and underperforming, it will be fixed. Im talking weeks here, not months.

[nodq]

Most ppl that freak out about nerfs currently are those, who do not have access to beta i guess. There you can get a very accurate impression of how its gonna be with 110 and artefact and all that, especially pvp.

ppl should relax. at 110 it look fine for the most part. better than many other expansions on release tho.

[Friendlyimmolation]

I will say im a little confused, as mages were still good, better than locks at cap. These nerfs don't make alot of sense to me, but I will assume Blizz knows what they are doing with locks. (lol)

[Deleted]

I beg to differ.
I dont believe Blizzard will leave specs, let alone an entire class in the dumpster for the rest of the expansion.
If something is broken, and underperforming, it will be fixed. Im talking weeks here, not months.

This one is a big one
It's not like arcane mage stay broken during 16month of HFC for example

The thing you don't understand i guess, we are warlock with 3 dps specs, for thoses who want to pve Mythic with ambition actually you have 3 spec completly useless for Mythic Roster, and you still have to choose one over others to spend you artifact point but if you pick the one blizzard will let useless and buff other, you waste at least 1 month of progress.

Oh and yeah forget to tell you about legendaries Which spec you loot depend on which legendarie you will drop and that's a fucking huge dps up in certain case. So if you start destro then finally demono get buff for raid and you have no demono legendarie Have Fun

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Except, most of the complaints are not about numbers (which can be tweaked easily in a hotfix) but about :

- clumsy gameplay mechanics : which will not be changed until next major updates, if we're lucky
- visual not being updated: aka Green Fire visuals
- lazy talents : taking baseline spells to go in our talents, while other classes got new ones
- unnecessary pruning : bye bye water walking warlock mount, bye bye Dark Soul
- ramp up time : in demonology for example, you have at least 14 seconds before STARTING doing your average damage
- aoe : Destruction was aoe king in Mop, now we have to gimp our solo damage to do aoe when others classes don't have to (hello to you fire mages)
- RNG ressource gathering : a secondary ressource, necessary to our dps rotation tied to RNG (except for Demono)
- RNG mastery : Chaos Bolt, Destruction's big hit spell, now hit like a wet noodle if you're not lucky
- ZERO communication from Blizzard : many of these problems have been said since Alpha and there have been zero response or explanation from Blizzard, hence people getting the feeling their feedback goes in the trash can.

Most of these are certainly how I felt. Feels pretty dumb having to choose a talent when the whole tier used to be baseline warlock spells. The ramp up time is too similar to fury.. and yet we have no "enrage" type abilities to compensate. It feels like little over simplified and lazy.

- - - Updated - - -

I will say im a little confused, as mages were still good, better than locks at cap. These nerfs don't make alot of sense to me, but I will assume Blizz knows what they are doing with locks. (lol)

Maybe the better our artifacts get, and the closer we get to 110 the more even the classes will be ... ./shrug

[Uzkin]

Except, most of the complaints are not about numbers (which can be tweaked easily in a hotfix) but about :

- clumsy gameplay mechanics : which will not be changed until next major updates, if we're lucky
- visual not being updated: aka Green Fire visuals
- lazy talents : taking baseline spells to go in our talents, while other classes got new ones
- unnecessary pruning : bye bye water walking warlock mount, bye bye Dark Soul
- ramp up time : in demonology for example, you have at least 14 seconds before STARTING doing your average damage
- aoe : Destruction was aoe king in Mop, now we have to gimp our solo damage to do aoe when others classes don't have to (hello to you fire mages)
- RNG ressource gathering : a secondary ressource, necessary to our dps rotation tied to RNG (except for Demono)
- RNG mastery : Chaos Bolt, Destruction's big hit spell, now hit like a wet noodle if you're not lucky
- ZERO communication from Blizzard : many of these problems have been said since Alpha and there have been zero response or explanation from Blizzard, hence people getting the feeling their feedback goes in the trash can.


All of these are not problems which will be solved with better gear. I would gladly be the worst dps if all of the above, or even the half, were answered.

I'm talking for PVE. I don't PVP much

That was a very good summary of my issues with the legion warlock "design" as well. Warlock specs simply feel bad and poorly designed in a way that simple damage buffs cannot fix it.

[Kjarl Grimblood]

This one is a big one
It's not like arcane mage stay broken during 16month of HFC for example

The thing you don't understand i guess, we are warlock with 3 dps specs, for thoses who want to pve Mythic with ambition actually you have 3 spec completly useless for Mythic Roster, and you still have to choose one over others to spend you artifact point but if you pick the one blizzard will let useless and buff other, you waste at least 1 month of progress.

You're not racing with anyone here mate. Even if they do nerf something you chose to use as a raiding spec, and buff something else - you will still have by that time a decent amount of Artifact Research to close at least some of gap that was created between your main and off-spec.
I will say to your credit, that this is indeed a terrifying thought. I hope we wont come to this.

- - - Updated - - -

That was a very good summary of my issues with the legion warlock "design" as well. Warlock specs simply feel bad and poorly designed in a way that simple damage buffs cannot fix it.

So why are you still noodling around? Sounds like your opinion is final, isnt that a good time to start looking for a new class?
If people are so botherd with the class mechanics, and they wont be content with buffed numbers, why not just reroll to something else NOW? When you still have time.
Looks like you guys chasing after your own tail in pursuit for what? Trying to make Blizzard change the class fundamentals? I assure you, they have their own plans in mind - you wont be heard.

[Duckz0rs]

I beg to differ.
I dont believe Blizzard will leave specs, let alone an entire class in the dumpster for the rest of the expansion.
If something is broken, and underperforming, it will be fixed. Im talking weeks here, not months.

Personally I prefer to look at the bright side, but WoD left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Warlocks played only Demo essentially through most, if not all, of BRF and it promptly got slashed by 25% across the board and left that way for around a year. I'll leave in the middle if that's because of Demon Hunters or not because I honestly don't know their true intentions. Meanwhile Arcane mages were doing 1 mil DPS (with lucky RNG streaks admittedly) and nothing was done about it.

I settled on a spec for Highmaul and two weeks (?) later Demo got such a huge buff I had to switch anyway. Warlocks have always been viable for one or several reasons despite the roller coaster, but this is looking a bit gloomy. Rain of Fire got stomped into the ground and was left that way for 2 content patches. This wasn't such a big deal then but might be with the advent of Artifacts, let alone Legendaries.

As for the Beta, they promised to adjust Soul Flame and Wrath of Consumption so it works with the new Reap Soul mechanic ~3 months ago but never actually fixed it. At 110 we're comfortably middle of the pack in numbers, excelling on some fights (Aff is really bonkers on Skorpyron for example). I just don't really worry about numbers, but more the actual way we can or can not deal with fight mechanics. Demo is a prime example of that, it can pull the highest numbers of any class but it'll still lack the tools to deal with target switching when compared to, say, Destro.

Warlocks will be viable for sure, but these kind of things make it a bit hard to blindly trust the balancing. Again, for emphasis, Warlocks will be fine.

[Mehrunes]

I beg to differ.
I dont believe Blizzard will leave specs, let alone an entire class in the dumpster for the rest of the expansion.
If something is broken, and underperforming, it will be fixed. Im talking weeks here, not months.

Did you start playing today?

I will say im a little confused, as mages were still good, better than locks at cap. These nerfs don't make alot of sense to me, but I will assume Blizz knows what they are doing with locks. (lol)

I'm confused. You seem drunk again but this time your spelling did not suffer.

[Deleted]

I literally loged in to tell you this.

Warlocks are being BENCHED for raids. There is 0 reasons to bring a warlock over, Shadowpriest or fire mage etc.

[Mehrunes]

Most of these are certainly how I felt. Feels pretty dumb having to choose a talent when the whole tier used to be baseline warlock spells. The ramp up time is too similar to fury.. and yet we have no "enrage" type abilities to compensate. It feels like little over simplified and lazy.

Ehh, ramp up doesn't begin to cover current Demo. Aff had ramp up in WoD. In Legion, Demo's ramp up has ramp up. And Demonic Empowerment makes me miss Improved Soulfire even for Affliction spec.

Maybe the better our artifacts get, and the closer we get to 110 the more even the classes will be ... ./shrug

For Demo and Destro, sure. Affli's Artifact is a steaming pile of Felhunter crap that relies on there being tons of adds to not be subpar compared to any other Artifact around.

[Gum]

Trying to make Blizzard change the class fundamentals? I assure you, they have their own plans in mind - you wont be heard.

Contrary to popular belief, a lot of us actually want to play warlock. But are sadly forced to play what is actually a good spec.

Destro had the niches to make it good, or atleast, viable, to bring for some mythics. That means that in most guilds sub rank 20, you'll proilly be able to keep your spot 100%, as the bosses where you dont shine, others will carry you..

But with constant nerfs to the legit ONLY viable spec in terms of mythic progression, its going to be harder and harder to live with overall, yea im gonna say it, piss fucking poor design of the current warlock specs.
Its clear to everyone, that the ones that created Warlocks, started with what limitations each spec should have, and build them up around that. While those of mages and other good specs, started with "what would be super cool to have" and then nerfed them later.

Its always like that, thats why warlocks are notoriously bad at any and all launches of expansions and only though constant buffs through all tiers or totally broken tierset, end up being viable.

Now i understand that blizzard has their own idea of what they want.. Or well, the team in charge of warlock changes has atleast, but holy fuck its annoying to spend 7 months on the alpha, with constant feedback on changes, only to be met with a 100 feet wall of silence.

I dont really care about the end result. Ill play multiple classes anyway, warlock will be used if its good. But for those that have mained it for 10 years? I feel their pain.. And its totally different to how blizzard in other games convey their changes.. See Sc2 or OW. They spend tons of time explaining on why a certain change was made. In wow? Total silence. I doubt most of us are asking for a lengthily debate, but some words and reasons would make us able to see where this ship is sailing, and decide if we want to get off or not.

[Uzkin]

So why are you still noodling around? Sounds like your opinion is final, isnt that a good time to start looking for a new class?
If people are so botherd with the class mechanics, and they wont be content with buffed numbers, why not just reroll to something else NOW? When you still have time.
Looks like you guys chasing after your own tail in pursuit for what? Trying to make Blizzard change the class fundamentals? I assure you, they have their own plans in mind - you wont be heard.

I don't intend to main warlock in legion (assuming I will even continue playing) in its current, quite miserable, state but since warlock has been my main since TBC I would like it to be better so that I could return to the class as soon as possible. That is the entire purpose of criticism, isn't it, to voice disapproval in order to change things for the better.

BTW, I'm absolutely not trying to make Blizzard "change the class fundamentals" -- quite the contrary in fact: I want Blizzard to NOT CHANGE the class fundamentals the way they are doing for legion.

[Delekii]

Title is pretty much self explanatory.
At least wait untill you're 110 and geared up for raids.
People should calm dafuq down.
All this moaning just make newcomer players dump their Warlock and go play something else.

Why in the fucking hell would you wait until after it's too late to try and unbreak your class?

There is no evidence supporting in any way the changes made to warlocks today that is available to players; thinking those changes are ok thus requires blind faith that Blizzard knows something we don't and are deserving of that faith. Nothing supports that being a reasonable thing to offer them.