Pre-Patch Nerfs Make People Lose Their Shit

[Spunt]

It honestly feels we're heading back towards that. Painful maintenance buffs, having to stand in melee for optimal dps, movement killing dps, target switching killing dps.

You don't enjoy putting 50% more effort into DPSing for 50% of the result?

[Jessicka]

It honestly feels we're heading back towards that. Painful maintenance buffs, having to stand in melee for optimal dps, movement killing dps, target switching killing dps.

Yeah, all it needs is the entirely unintuitive hidden mechanics and being balanced around bugs you need to exploit and take months to figure out. So every lock you see in a pug or anywhere else will be embarrassingly bad; that's going to do a lot for perceptions and chances of getting an invite into those things on alts and stuff.

[Deleted]

What does Bob from Blizzard cares what you play in your free time. Dude snap dafuq out of this attitude.

Simple, Blizzard care about keeping the most players happy, to keep the subs rolling in.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to ensure that the most played classes are the best ones. And because they are the best, they are the most played.

Anyone who thinks a game based around subs doesn;t do this must think that supermarkets put stuff on their shelves at random or to convneience shoppers, they don't, supermarkets design everything and I mean everything from size of trolleys to placement of lights to putting more expensive stuff at eye level deliberately to maximise sales

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not a good player. But I watch good players. Good players never get benched. Good players level every class and bring the class that they're ordered to bring. Top warlocks are annoyed by the state of lock, it's true. But they've moved on to their alts as their guilds pursue world's firsts. In the case of ranged, top guilds are completely excluding locks in favor of mage, spriest, hunter.

This. The top progress guilds expect their players to have alts because they know that Blizzard play the Flavour of the Month game and always have, so they just stack the top classes and bench the rubbish ones

And for Legion they are benching the warlock class because they don't bring anything to a progress raid that other classes can't bring more of. Sure, you'd bring a skilled warlock if it was between that and a bad mage, but if your choice is equal skill players then you choose the mage every time, particularly if you're going for achievements because having a ranged dps doing even 5% less dps than another one would do playing a different class can make the differenc ebetween success and failure

Unfortunately, given that locks are already a low-population class then so long as they are "barely adequate" nothing is going to change.

We've seen it over and over again though the history of Wow, classes and specs left in absolutely shocking states for whole expacs

They nerfed demo into the ground because "too many people were choosing it" with the excuse people "felt they had to play it though they didn;t like it". Demo was left flushed down the toilet for how long? And the result, everyone switched to destruction lol. They promised us a redesign for demo which they kept, but look what they came up with! Sure it has novelty and fun, but it's tools and mechanics are so bad in raid encounters you won't see it outside of lfr because no-one will want to feel like a third wheel in a raid with bottom of the barrel dps for most of the fights

You only have to look at how badly balanced things have been for the history of WoW and you realise they are either hopelessly incomeptent at it, which I don;t think is true at all, or it's a deliberate policy of pleasing the most played class player groups and is used as a driver of more hours played, there is an obvious hours-played benefit if you can get people to switch and therefore level different classes rather than sticking with one

The most basic driver in the development of WoW is simply this:

"How can we maximise the number of hours people stay logged in and playing in order to make them feel they are getting their money's worth, but at the same time, not make it too much of a repetetive grind so that people feel fed up and cancel, whilst spending as little money as possible in developing and maintaining the game?"

And having different classes at different times being top dog is an obvious hook, "dont; like being bottom of the table playing your warlock, why not level a mage nudge nudge wink wink"

[striderZA]

Simple, Blizzard care about keeping the most players happy, to keep the subs rolling in.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to ensure that the most played classes are the best ones. And because they are the best, they are the most played.

Anyone who thinks a game based around subs doesn;t do this must think that supermarkets put stuff on their shelves at random or to convneience shoppers, they don't, supermarkets design everything and I mean everything from size of trolleys to placement of lights to putting more expensive stuff at eye level deliberately to maximise sales

Yep, that's why one of the least played classes (Warlock) has been god-tier since the start of MoP. Infallible logic there.

[Orwell7]

God-tier?!

Are you nuts, man?
Without DK's you could not do Mannoroth or Xhul'horac.
There is no such fight that was impossible without warlocks. Mannoroth was a little exception because Demo with the previous tier set was forgotten, and you needed 1-2 to be effective.
On Archimonde they were good vs. infernals, but so were a few other specs.

And.. since the start of mop. So thanks for reminding us how we sucked in wotlk and cata.
Also, MoP was full of unintended abuses that even developers acknowledged was a mistake and FIXED the next tier: namely more gateways and snapshotting. Also, in T14 we were not bad, but nothing special. T15 was demo heaven because of one trinket that dropped from the endboss (!), and T16 was good I'll admit.

Now on to WoD; go and check on the patch logs which buffed warlocks near the end of Highmaul. They were good, but not mandatory on Blackhand, and Demo was immediately nerfed by 25% at the start of HFC.

Thanks for trying tho!

[striderZA]

God-tier?!

Are you nuts, man?
Without DK's you could not do Mannoroth or Xhul'horac.
There is no such fight that was impossible without warlocks. Mannoroth was a little exception because Demo with the previous tier set was forgotten, and you needed 1-2 to be effective.
On Archimonde they were good vs. infernals, but so were a few other specs.

And.. since the start of mop. So thanks for reminding us how we sucked in wotlk and cata.
Also, MoP was full of unintended abuses that even developers acknowledged was a mistake and FIXED the next tier: namely more gateways and snapshotting. Also, in T14 we were not bad, but nothing special. T15 was demo heaven because of one trinket that dropped from the endboss (!), and T16 was good I'll admit.

Now on to WoD; go and check on the patch logs which buffed warlocks near the end of Highmaul. They were good, but not mandatory on Blackhand, and Demo was immediately nerfed by 25% at the start of HFC.

Thanks for trying tho!

Yeah, we were nowhere near god-tier in WotLK and Cata.

But it seems that you weren't around for 5.1 Destro, 5.2 Demo and 5.4 Affliction? Remember that Affliction was literally able to do 2-3x the DPS of other specs? I'd hardly call that "good". Affliction was making Destruction look bad, even when it was ridiculously strong in SoO. Or when Demo was destroying burst AoE (on top of doing top-notch single target) in BRF, not to mention how ridiculous Demo became after the Mastery buffs early in Highmaul? Or when Destruction had the toolkit to effectively deal with everything HFC threw at us better than the vast majority of other specs?

And I never said that anything in HFC was impossible without warlocks. Mass grips sure, too bad DK dps was more or less garbage.

[Aggrophobic]

I wonder what Fire would look like if they took the destruction approach to their talents....

Blink - talent
Watered Down Combustion talent
Baseline Mirror Images :O
Rune of Power's duration reduced by haste. Just so they always get the same amount of spells in the window Kappa...
Ice floes replaced by Scorch as a talent...

Well, you already pick a talent to get shimmer so thats fine, I guess.
Cumbustion is already "watered down". It used to be much cooler.
More CDs never hurts, yeah?
Ok, that one would suck but I guess you could live with it.
You really don't need scorch all that much on beta so I'd be fine with this as well.

[vaeevictiss]

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.

i was on alpha, and on beta. Warlocks have been a consistent shit show from alpha to live. This is the phase of an expansion where blizzard is most open to changes and fixes, and there have been none. Im not confident in them fixing a class. Just look at rogues in Cata i think it was. They were junk for literally the entire expansion.

Warlocks were a phenomenal class for a long time, and i think blizz wants us to be punished for that and see no reason for it to not stay that way the entire xpac...especially since they have their new demon hunter golden child. They literally took abilities from us and gave them to another class. That says a lot....and im probably a sell out cause if i see another lock nerf i will probably main my DH as its been my backup plan since alpha after seeing the state of warlocks.

On top of that, the destro artifacts gold talents are pretty lackluster, two of affs talents only work when you get the killing blow so for raiding they are completely useless, and demo, which has pretty solid artifact talents, is a shitshow of a spec to play.

[TooTwisted]

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.

I will go out on a limb here and say you either don't play a warlock, don't main one, or play so many classes the time is split evenly between them.

Every xpac most classes have something to be excited about, warlocks seem to always struggle with getting decent player input and concerns addressed. Every xpac launch for me always have the looming warlock nerfs and gameplay changes there to make me cautious.

[Deleted]

I myself mained warlock for the last 3 expacs, i wont be playing warlock for EN but as soon as NH comes out im planning on going back to my warlock and playing demo, people underestimate how strong the tier bonuses actually are and some of the synergy you will have with 2 legendary's (granted you'd have to be born with a silver spoon up yo ass to get the 2 right ones but if you do ooooh daaaaayum)

I know the state warlocks will be in for the first months of legion is not uptimal but its not the end of the world either IF blizzard stick to their January release for NH

[vaeevictiss]

I myself mained warlock for the last 3 expacs, i wont be playing warlock for EN but as soon as NH comes out im planning on going back to my warlock and playing demo, people underestimate how strong the tier bonuses actually are and some of the synergy you will have with 2 legendary's (granted you'd have to be born with a silver spoon up yo ass to get the 2 right ones but if you do ooooh daaaaayum)

I know the state warlocks will be in for the first months of legion is not uptimal but its not the end of the world either IF blizzard stick to their January release for NH

tier bonuses and artifacts dont change playstyle. Damage is only part of the problem, the shitty playstyle is most of it.

[Deleted]

It honestly feels we're heading back towards that. Painful maintenance buffs, having to stand in melee for optimal dps, movement killing dps, target switching killing dps.

I'd take Cata Demo or Affliction over what we have in a heartbeat, at least provided there's no MWC, that ruined demo for me.

Yeah, we were nowhere near god-tier in WotLK and Cata.

But it seems that you weren't around for 5.1 Destro, 5.2 Demo and 5.4 Affliction? Remember that Affliction was literally able to do 2-3x the DPS of other specs? I'd hardly call that "good". Affliction was making Destruction look bad, even when it was ridiculously strong in SoO. Or when Demo was destroying burst AoE (on top of doing top-notch single target) in BRF, not to mention how ridiculous Demo became after the Mastery buffs early in Highmaul? Or when Destruction had the toolkit to effectively deal with everything HFC threw at us better than the vast majority of other specs?

And I never said that anything in HFC was impossible without warlocks. Mass grips sure, too bad DK dps was more or less garbage.

I don't see why Blizzards inability to balance the class well in MOP / WOD is an excuse for them balancing the class horribly in Legion, especially when despite how "godly" they were, they've still often played like shit and still often been outclassed by other classes. "Mage-tier" is probably a better descriptor.

[Deleted]

Unless I've missed something, Backdraft interacts NEGATIVELY with haste once you reach 50% haste (even if it's from temporary procs or buffs such as bloodlust or trinkets) since the Conflagrate GCD becomes capped at 1 sec while the buff duration keeps getting smaller. Of course such silliness was quickly removed from the other classes (e.g. fury's enrage was quickly changed back to constant duration).

Edit. No wonder Roaring Blaze must be nerfed to the ground to keep Backdraft competitive with it

That is no longer true. The GCD cap is 0.75 sec or 100% haste for most classes. Some classes/specs (WW, if I recall correctly, for example) get a 1 sec GCD that cannot be improved.

[Schattenlied]

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.

I don't play a lock but I want to remind you of something: These aren't just prepatch nerfs, they apply to Beta too, which is still active, we already know how the classes perform at 110 in raids.

[Rgthreex]

let me guess mages are in the top 3?

[striderZA]

I don't see why Blizzards inability to balance the class well in MOP / WOD is an excuse for them balancing the class horribly in Legion, especially when despite how "godly" they were, they've still often played like shit and still often been outclassed by other classes. "Mage-tier" is probably a better descriptor.

Never said or even implied that.

If you didn't follow the conversation, this is what I was trying to argue against:

Simple, Blizzard care about keeping the most players happy, to keep the subs rolling in.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to ensure that the most played classes are the best ones. And because they are the best, they are the most played.

Anyone who thinks a game based around subs doesn;t do this must think that supermarkets put stuff on their shelves at random or to convneience shoppers, they don't, supermarkets design everything and I mean everything from size of trolleys to placement of lights to putting more expensive stuff at eye level deliberately to maximise sales

Which I'm still dismissing as garbage, and follow up arguments have derailed (no surprise there though).

[Durantye]

I think people do need to chill out a bit, at the very least they aren't leading us on like they did during WoD beta/pre-patch/pre-raid and let us be gods among men and then destroy us a week before raids open. I would be more worried if they just kept buffing warlocks tbh.

[Deleted]

Just consider this, Deepshades and Furty BOTH confirmed that serenity WILL NOT HAVE A MAIN WARLOCK IN LEGION.
THE WORLDS BEST GUILD HAS NO WARLOCK. What does that tell us? Right fuck Warlocks, we are trash in Legion.

[Rhaxus]

they said that 2/3 warlocks will reroll, not that they won't take any

[Rakaji]

Everyone needs to chill. The way Blizzard has been tuning lately, it really does look like they're trying to bring everyone close to in line with one another before Emerald Nightmare opens up, and I have faith they will. Every time something is noted as performing way ahead of the pack, it's been getting toned down a tad to bring it back in a bit. Assassination Rogues were performing too well because of the bleed build plus Exsanguinate, so Exsanguinate was brought down, and now they're still really good, just not miles ahead of everyone else. Surrender to Madness was causing Spriests to be able to pull of ridiculous numbers in situations where they could effectively use it, and it was brought down a bit. It's still great and Spriests using the talent will still pull ridiculous numbers when they can get away with it, but not quite as ridiculous. These are just a few examples in a long list.

Balance patches will happen; that much we know for sure. If we as Warlocks simply want to be in line with other classes in our bracket, I'm sure Blizzard is going to do a decent job this time of improving us where we greatly under-perform, and we'll get toned down in areas where we shine too brightly. If all the people crying doom and gloom are expecting us to return to the MoP days, well... Sorry guys, but that's not happening. No class is that ahead of the pack in beta right now.