Warlocks and Emerald Nightmare

[Deleted]

So you don't feel like a long ramp up, inefficiencies with switching, poor mobility, and high cost of switching to AoE are poor mechanical hamstrings to raiding? Nor an over-reliance on 'on death' procs for dealing damage for Affliction?

I mean, with the changes to CH; Unstable Affliction is looking less like a DoT and more like the band-aid fixed Chaos Bolt from MoP/Wrath Conflagrate; with up front damage and some rolled over into a DoT. It also snapshots off your Artifact.


Same data as everyone else. I don't need to manipulate anything to show you:-

Nythendra
Demo mid pack at 75%
Not quite mid pack at 95%

IHoC
Destro mid pack at 75%
Warlocks basically non-existent at 95%

Elerethe
75% just fucking lol.
Aff almost does something at 95%

Ursoc
75% filling out the bottom half again.
Same story at 95%

Next 3 fights have far less data, but:-
Dragons
Finally Warlocks doing something.
And still good here too.

Cenarius
The good news didn't last.
Still poor.

Xavius
Not great.
Poor.


"A tiny bit undertuned", when there's literally 1 spec in 1 fight that drags the class to nearing mid table in the total aggregate?


You have exceptionally low standards. It's like you consider logging on a success. Is it okay that your Class Hall portal only sometimes works too? Is it too much to expect that to always work?

Let's talk population:

http://warcraftrealms.com/census.php...ervertypeid=-1 By Warcraftrealms census data, we have 6% representation at max level. That's lower than at any time in the game's history. Granted, we have 2 new classes since then, but both are melee and shouldn't be taking excessively from our "pool". We should be 'expecting' 8%. We're not there.

And looking at the data we were given the other day in this thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...s-what-I-found (I'm not sure how and I don't have time right now to look it up to see this directly on wowprogress) it looks like those getting to the level cap simply aren't sticking by their Warlocks once they're there.


Well I'm just not going to do that. No fan of Destro, absolutely loath the new Demo. I'm stuck with reroll or quit; I'm pretty much on for the former for now but I have some weeks still before I think I can actually think about sitting down and raiding again properly so, we'll see. It just sucks to see 10 years of investment in a character gone through, frankly, what feels like ignorance on the part of the developers. The bandaid covers the bullet hole.

Dat post is how you see the good people. The smarts. The true warriors.
This is what I am talking about.

You da real mvp. Thanks for this post.

[Jondar]

They reflect the general state of the class, in particular Affliction, which is the spec I would be playing in raid if I was to decide "hey, actually I'm not really in for rerolling after all". So far though, I've been disappointed in everything I already outlined many times already mechanically; and there isn't even stellar damage to soften the blow. I played and mained Warlock, Demo mostly, for 10 years. You have to appreciate I have a pretty strong attachment to that character and this class as a result. It's bad enough losing my favourite spec to the present travesty, but I'd had enough of a fondness for Affliction too.

As it is, I can jump on my Mage and just be better and get more out of it in terms of engagement and fun.

They reflect the general state of a Warlock's ability to rank high on overall damage, not priority damage. Do you think the 53 million damage done to Nightmare Tentacles on the #1 Heroic Xavius kill mean anything?

I've literally only played Warlock. I started in BC. I didn't get my Dynamic Duo achievement until halfway through HFC because my team needed a tank for a couple weeks, and I dabbled in Mage during M HFC farm, but didn't do much with it. You aren't the only one with the attachment to a Warlock. And right now, it sounds like you care more about being able to cheese meters than you do actually trying to contribute to your raid group.

With that out of the way, can you people please begin to understand that the complaints are not (Usually) about being able to clear anything, but that there are very clear balance issues, which will hopefully be fixed next week?

What does this even mean? Why do "very clear balance issues" prevent you from playing the game? Have you even tried Emerald Nightmare yet? This is a thread about Warlocks and the Emerald Nightmare raid.Can you understand that, from the perspective of the players that are actually clearing the content, it seems like you care more about complaining that you don't have an easy path to the top of the meters than you do about actually having a viable spec to raid with? Because you do have one, it just seems like you choose to complain rather than get good enough to use it.

Every single person who posted logs here as a warlock who did relatively well in his/her raid group has also shown that everyone he/she raids with performed much worse than what is possible.

And who the hell are you to say that? It isn't enough that you're trying to shit on every Warlock that is doing decent in raid, now you have to insult their raid team? Why is it you imply that the Warlock's team must be doing way worse than possible, but not that the Warlock also has room to improve?

[Awokeh]

yo shoutout to my boi gnomedeezy keepin it real str8 outa gnomeregan

#gnomelivesmatter

[Deleted]

lmao @ the guys posting their bomb DPS at xavius while they are probably below the tanks in the xavius ST damage

[Jondar]

yo shoutout to my boi gnomedeezy keepin it real str8 outa gnomeregan

#gnomelivesmatter

ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Deleted]

They reflect the general state of a Warlock's ability to rank high on overall damage, not priority damage. Do you think the 53 million damage done to Nightmare Tentacles on the #1 Heroic Xavius kill mean anything?

I've literally only played Warlock. I started in BC. I didn't get my Dynamic Duo achievement until halfway through HFC because my team needed a tank for a couple weeks, and I dabbled in Mage during M HFC farm, but didn't do much with it. You aren't the only one with the attachment to a Warlock. And right now, it sounds like you care more about being able to cheese meters than you do actually trying to contribute to your raid group.



What does this even mean? Why do "very clear balance issues" prevent you from playing the game? Have you even tried Emerald Nightmare yet? This is a thread about Warlocks and the Emerald Nightmare raid.Can you understand that, from the perspective of the players that are actually clearing the content, it seems like you care more about complaining that you don't have an easy path to the top of the meters than you do about actually having a viable spec to raid with? Because you do have one, it just seems like you choose to complain rather than get good enough to use it.



And who the hell are you to say that? It isn't enough that you're trying to shit on every Warlock that is doing decent in raid, now you have to insult their raid team? Why is it you imply that the Warlock's team must be doing way worse than possible, but not that the Warlock also has room to improve?

Thank you man!

[Gaidax]

lmao @ the guys posting their bomb DPS at xavius while they are probably below the tanks in the xavius ST damage

You think that top parses are done by being such a great team player and being focused on executing mechanic and not on blatant cheese and damage whoring?

[Deleted]

-snip-

Actually goes through the effort to post data for each fight and the standing of Warlocks in general - gets shit on by players who'd rather remain the most unimpressive ranged class thus far. It's quite funny, but I'm looking forward to the inevitable buff to Warlocks as Blizzard will acknowledge that Warlocks are just complete shite in it's current state.

[evertonbelmontt]

I'll reserve judgment about the state of Warlocks and EN for tuesday.

But I expect buffs ranging from 10 to 15% overall increase for afflic, 10% for destro and I don't know about demon.
The way it is to be done could be by increasing shard generation, pure number tunning on baseline spells or improving some talents.

We could argue all day about how much worse warlocks are and how bad it influences your ability and will to play the game, but the data is there and we need buffs, anyone who doesn't see this is either too afraid of the nerfbat later on or have some pride issues.

[Deleted]

They reflect the general state of a Warlock's ability to rank high on overall damage, not priority damage. Do you think the 53 million damage done to Nightmare Tentacles on the #1 Heroic Xavius kill mean anything?

I've literally only played Warlock. I started in BC. I didn't get my Dynamic Duo achievement until halfway through HFC because my team needed a tank for a couple weeks, and I dabbled in Mage during M HFC farm, but didn't do much with it. You aren't the only one with the attachment to a Warlock. And right now, it sounds like you care more about being able to cheese meters than you do actually trying to contribute to your raid group.



What does this even mean? Why do "very clear balance issues" prevent you from playing the game? Have you even tried Emerald Nightmare yet? This is a thread about Warlocks and the Emerald Nightmare raid.Can you understand that, from the perspective of the players that are actually clearing the content, it seems like you care more about complaining that you don't have an easy path to the top of the meters than you do about actually having a viable spec to raid with? Because you do have one, it just seems like you choose to complain rather than get good enough to use it.



And who the hell are you to say that? It isn't enough that you're trying to shit on every Warlock that is doing decent in raid, now you have to insult their raid team? Why is it you imply that the Warlock's team must be doing way worse than possible, but not that the Warlock also has room to improve?

In some of my earlier posts, I specifically said that my issue with balance is that it lessens the enjoyment I get from the game because of an unfair playing field, and that clearing content is not an issue for me. Getting a raid spot is not an issue either. I just have more fun playing the game when I know I can actually compete with others (Others being the current upper outliers), than when I know I can't. And again, it is not an L2P issue, and the logs clearly show that.

Who the hell are you people to assume that I'm a bad player if I can't keep up with the raid? Especially when there are logs that show that it is actually just the current balance situation (Even disregarding the cheese that inflates some logs). "Well if you just got better, you could compete with your raid group" - No, because my raid group isn't below 90%, so I virtually can't.

And bear in mind that I'm not saying that I'm doing half of what they are doing. I'm roughly 80% of our rogue, and that is still fine, and way better than most, but that still doesn't mean that I have any way of catching up with him until some balance changes come out.

[DeadmanWalking]

Personally I wish the people who come here just to shit post about how pissed they are about where warlocks are right now would give it a break. We get it, we know Warlocks are in a rough spot and we all hope we get buffs. Constantly bitching and shit posting on anyone who has a positive thought about the class won't help anyone and you are not adding to the conversation or even trying to find constructive criticism. The only thing you are doing is hurting your fellow warlocks opportunities at finding groups because other people see the constant shit posting and decide to exclude perfectly good warlocks from their groups because 'Rumor has it."

The same shit happened in highmaul to the point that on twins someone was bitching that we didn't need two warlocks, the raid leader didn't pay them any attention and not only did we still manage to kill the boss with ease but the two warlocks were top 2 dps. (I was #1). We stayed top dps for the next 2 bosses as well and no one bitched anymore. Does that mean we will always be top dps? No, but we did our part and contributed to successfully beating the boss.

Just give it a rest, we know, we don't need shit posting everytime someone else doesn't turn their post into a shit post. The game is constantly in flux when it comes to specs, today we are down and tomorrow we could be up. It is at the point where we can't have a constructive conversation about how to min/max what we do have right now without someone spending every free moment of their sad day trying to convince us that everything is shit with a constant barrage of sad shit posting.

[Deleted]

Personally I wish the people who come here just to shit post about how pissed they are about where warlocks are right now would give it a break. We get it, we know Warlocks are in a rough spot and we all hope we get buffs. Constantly bitching and shit posting on anyone who has a positive thought about the class won't help anyone and you are not adding to the conversation or even trying to find constructive criticism. The only thing you are doing is hurting your fellow warlocks opportunities at finding groups because other people see the constant shit posting and decide to exclude perfectly good warlocks from their groups because 'Rumor has it."

The same shit happened in highmaul to the point that on twins someone was bitching that we didn't need two warlocks, the raid leader didn't pay them any attention and not only did we still manage to kill the boss with ease but the two warlocks were top 2 dps. (I was #1). We stayed top dps for the next 2 bosses as well and no one bitched anymore. Does that mean we will always be top dps? No, but we did our part and contributed to successfully beating the boss.

Just give it a rest, we know, we don't need shit posting everytime someone else doesn't turn their post into a shit post. The game is constantly in flux when it comes to specs, today we are down and tomorrow we could be up. It is at the point where we can't have a constructive conversation about how to min/max what we do have right now without someone spending every free moment of their sad day trying to convince us that everything is shit with a constant barrage of sad shit posting.

I'm honestly just frustrated with the people saying the equivalent of "get good". Oh, you are not beating everyone in your raid as a warlock? Did you try getting better? That is what is annoying me. The pretence that there are NO issues. I already said that clearing content isn't an issue, but if you have fun with competing with your peers, then it kinda sucks that you simply won't be able to with the current state of the game (Obviously depending on the skill and composition of your raid group).

Edit: And when I say competing, I mean actually having a chance of topping meters. Unless you are doing Nightmare Dragons, that is very unlikely right now as a warlock (Much less likely if you are not destruction).

[Jessicka]

None of these things are exactly new to the class, and they did not prevent it from excelling in the past, I'm not sure why it would be a problem now all of a sudden. If someones initial experience with the class was mop I could see how they might feel that way, but literally none of this has ever been a problem.

Stuff proccing on death actually is entirely new. Even Soul Shards as a DPS resource is relatively new.

Either way, if they weren't a problem; why did Warlocks lobby so hard to get Demon Soul, Soul Swap, Fel Flame and Demonic Circle in Cataclysm?

Long ramp is rewarded with higher sustain or stronger burst than a class with no ramp, if the specs aren't seeing those rewards then its a tuning issue not a mechanics issue. Not being able to switch goes hand in hand with ramp and its reasonings. Poor mobility is rewarded by being stronger when you get to turret, if it isn't working that way then its a tuning issue.

Not true either. The long ramp up led in to a strong execute for both Affliction - not general sustained damage - and while for Demo, it also led into big peaks and troughs of on demand damage. Both those premises of the specs are gone.

Basically every class has to deal with talents determining what kind of dmg they can do. It's either ignorance or naivety that people think warlocks are special in that regard.

I never really argued otherwise; but the extremity with which our talents delta is unique. Hitting 5 targets rather than one with Sow the Seeds is massive, but then so is losing ~20% of your ST damage from not having Soul Siphon. Those differences are not nearly as big as they are for picking the 'wrong' ones on Mage.

Affliction can very easily be balanced around its on death traits, that's again not an issue its simply a matter of tuning. I genuinely don't understand why that's not immediately apparent.

There isn't always things to die, and things don't always die where you want them to. I'm not sure quite why you struggle so hard with this. Does your raid group rally around your demands and set everything up nicely for you, and let you finish the adds to make sure you get these things just so?

No one said anything about manipulation, just that looking at stack rankings in statistics doesn't exactly give context and can be misleading about the state of a class. Hence my linking the HFC statistics, where it looks like destro is almost equally shit to what locks are currently, yet it was easily one of the best specs in the game.

Honestly, I had to sit out HFC, so I wouldn't know. I'm fully aware these things have variance by fight, and by percentile, which is why I went through exactly as I did with those EN logs, and found precisely 1 place Warlocks in general are doing okay. You could have probably shown the same aggregate for SoO and shown Demo to be terrible; except where it owned on I think Shamans and a couple of others. Nor would it be news that in fact people weren't playing Demo much even on those fights because we only had dual spec and Aff and Destro had more general all around goodness.

I'm just not seeing those times to shine when I break it down though outside of Destro Dragons.

Yes of course I do, that's how I got myself into a us top 10 guild, and raid amongst the top .6% of players in the world. Because my standards are exceptionally low.

It means you're prepared to take a whole lot more shit and put up with more shit than your average player. So yes, your standards for design are lower; your interests are in whether you can work with what you have and how to work with what you have - not how to improve what you have. I saw exactly the same thing in Zinnin. And it's exactly why I don't think high end players make good designers. It's how MoP Demo rolled out of hand when it became WoD Demo.

By the by the portals already been fixed, they made it so you just walk into it.

Not on Live yet, but there's some good news.

You're literally talking about the xpac where they released demon hunters, the very class that we were always the closest to and had all the fantasy of. They literally remade one of our specs from scratch just to take our toys and give it to them. Not to mention it being one of thee most iconic and popular warcraft hero designs since ever.

Still, they're melee and they're tanks. Not ranged DPS. You can't explain all the impact by that. Druids didn't lose out to Monks so much; Rogues were worried about it, but again, they didn't tread heavily on their toes either.

Tbh wouldn't surprise me at all, the class is a bit undertuned while also being significantly more difficult to get solid numbers out of than it has been for the last 2 expansions. It reminds me of lock pre-mop, where it was one of the harder classes to play, and that really just never jived with the general audience in the first place. You again couple that with us being under tuned and the massive hyperbole going around forums and yeah you're gonna get people who are put off.

Warlocks were not so much undertuned in Cataclysm once the first Christmas patch was out of the way. Nor was Affliction badly designed or particularly hard; we were just down to that 1 spec for the masses who'd been playing Destruction which in spite of its underperformance in ICC was hugely popular because of the Immolate-Conflagrate-Chaosbolt combo. Demo was fucking beastly overpowered, but relied on bugs and hidden mechanics like pet twisting and Mastery snapshotting; that just little bit absurd with it's 15 button rotation.

A lot of people lobbied for buffs then, but then, as now, I produced the logs, but back then those logs said 'these specs are fine', so I respected that and worked on getting better and told others to do the same.

And I can understand that, but you need to understand that the problems there are your personal ones and not ones with the class itself. I remember vividly talking to you during mop where you said something like you were using succubus all the time while playing demo simply because it made you happy to do so and you loved playing demo and having your succubus out while fully understanding it was a dps loss and you were in a guild where they respected that. I remember gaining a very high opinion of you from that convo because you seemed to have that full understanding of the state of the game and yet were still able to just do what made you the happiest while being perfectly viable. You were a cut above many other raiders of varying levels in maturity and especially the players who likely raided around the same level as you who were far more high strung. We were literally wading in the same sea of hyperbolic BS that we're in right now and yet you were there talkin' bout how you didn't give a shit and were using what you enjoyed.

Back then I could do that because I knew there was plenty of wiggle room. I'm just not seeing that for Affliction. It compounds and magnifies every other issue; in much the same way over-performance of a spec can blind players to certain issues.

It's just odd to see the opposite coming from you ever since wod. I mean I've already been through this, and I get it. It's not fun when you stop enjoying the class you've always enjoyed the most but many people have been there. I was originally a mage and for many years until they made changes and I stopped enjoying the class and swapped. I didn't blame the class for being poorly designed or what have you, because the class was perfectly fine, it was me who stopped enjoying its mechanics. So I found a different class that I enjoyed.

Like you say, I saw this in WoD 'too much change' for Demo. I moved over to Affliction and that felt pretty good, I was okay with that as I was still on the same character; but now I'm levelled with the whole same new thing all over again. I can see that Affliction could still work for me, if only they'd sort out these issues and numbers.

[Zelk]

I destroyed my guild on Dragons, locks are fine

[Jessicka]

You think that top parses are done by being such a great team player and being focused on executing mechanic and not on blatant cheese and damage whoring?

They have the time and tools to whore and still kill the boss... But it's okay, we can handwave everything with this one fight and ignore the rest of the logs with larger datasets.

[Deleted]

I'm down, lets do it!

Everything is mostly fine though, we're a tiny bit under tuned but mechanically sound and we already know a tuning pass is happening tues and we're likely to see buffs..

Mechanically sound?

Okay. So, affliction has no burst to speak of, ok it never really did but it always had good single target damage to compensate. The talent system pideonholes you into being good at one single thing by giving up everything else, affliction is a one trick pony that is good at long-lived AOE trash (it;s rubbish on short lives stuff because the dots have no time to tick and you have no time to watch seed of corruption crawl along it;s cast bar before everyone else has barraged/eye beamed etc)

Affliction has terrible rampup times but no execute phase to compensate

It has a plethora or boring maintenance buffs, like Contagion and the dire Mana Tap which I can't see anyone taking ever, plus having to watch for one buff to use another one

It has one real cooldown, the doomguard, which although you can have it every three minutes is barely stronger than the old ten minute one because they nerfed doom bolt

It has damage tied to one specifc pet, leaving you vulnerable to a flunky AI driven thing that is melee with no charge and which dies distressingly easily

It has two GOLD artifact traits which vary between overpowered in an AOE fight (exactly where affliction doesn't need a boost) to utterly useless, I mean on a figh tlike Ursoc, Soul Flame and Wrath of Consumption do absolutely nothing whatever, this is because they were both designed to work with Reap Soul, which Blizzard ripped out at the last minute and failed to adjust the other traits designed to synergise with it despite promising they would do so. I seriously doubt that will even get looked at until at least 7.2

Then there's the fact that affliction has one real interrupt again tied to a flunky pet, and fear which is about the most useless crowd control/interrupt imaginable, it either instantly breaks on damage or send a mob off in all directions...to come back again, with friends. We have no stuns at all, unless you spec into Supremacy for a one minute cooldown for Meteor Strike

We have no speed boost ability without giving up the very "tankiness" that is supposed to define us, and then it's a dumbass thing where you literally burn yourself alive to run faster

[Gaidax]

They have the time and tools to whore and still kill the boss... But it's okay, we can handwave everything with this one fight and ignore the rest of the logs with larger datasets.

...

Tell me, do you know why so many top parses for Xavius are Shadow Priests, Hunters and Fire Mages? Because they whore their asses off with tentacle damage willingly or unwillingly by spreading dots or lolbarrage.

So if warlock does his little Havoc Magic then it's oooo00Oo00OOoo HOW COULD YOU???? But when bloody top parses are filled by Fire Mages, Hunters and Spriests doing same shit then it's "ok"?

And yet you are preaching to us how we are middle of the road or weak ranking on Xavius... well duh? Did you bother to look at what is going on in these top logs? It's literally hardcore DPS whoring the bloody most of them.

Same with Ilgynoth, where most of the great parses consist of simply being very good at instantly exploding ichors the moment they are gathered or Cenarius - where you have people who tunnel him in exclusion of almost everything else...


That's your top logs. So if we whore by Havoc, then it's just as fine as everything else too and this IS how we will be topping things in the end when balance hits, because you can't have top parses without resorting to questionable stuff.

[Lisa Frank Succubus]

Actually goes through the effort to post data for each fight and the standing of Warlocks in general - gets shit on by players who'd rather remain the most unimpressive ranged class thus far. It's quite funny, but I'm looking forward to the inevitable buff to Warlocks as Blizzard will acknowledge that Warlocks are just complete shite in it's current state.

Maybe I'm misconstruing what you're saying but when you say "remain the most unimpressive ranged" class are you berating people who don't want to reroll to say, a mage, or are you simply referring to those that argue the class isn't in a bad state and needs no real changes?

[Deleted]

...

Tell me, do you know why so many top parses for Xavius are Shadow Priests, Hunters and Fire Mages? Because they whore their asses off with tentacle damage willingly or unwillingly by spreading dots or lolbarrage.

So if warlock does his little Havoc Magic then it's oooo00Oo00OOoo HOW COULD YOU???? But when bloody top parses are filled by Fire Mages, Hunters and Spriests doing same shit then it's "ok"?

And yet you are preaching to us how we are middle of the road or weak ranking on Xavius... well duh? Did you bother to look at what is going on in these top logs? It's literally hardcore DPS whoring the bloody most of them.

What? The point is that not every log is filled with cheese, and just because you figured out that some players reached high numbers by cheesing it doesn't automatically invalidate all the other logs. And I don't think anyone is disregarding Nightmare Dragons, it is more a case of "The specific situation where destruction is supposed to be unbeatable", and they still aren't.

Mechanically, destruction is solid. Boring, but solid. I think everyone knows that, that is why everyone said go destruction or hope demonology gets buffed in absurd ways to counter the specs inability to deal with anything really.

Affliction is not mechanically sound, an AoE nuke on kill is in the same boat as current havoc: It can never be properly tuned. If adds dying are required to perform at a standard level, it sucks when there are no adds. If it overperforms on 3 adds, it is too strong. If it doesn't overperform at 5 adds, the tradeoff will almost never be worth it. And so on. It also has a long ramp up time in a world where that is usually no longer a thing, while not having an execute phase to catch up again.

Demonology is currently in the same boat. If Ion's idea of making the demon army stick around longer is going to be a thing, then too much will change for me to even bother speculating about. But currently, target swapping is bad, multi target is bad, disruptions are overly punishing, and the haste stacking required to even make it work is absurd. All the while being pretty clunky to play with all the hard casting going on.

Hotfixes next week will help out a bunch with numbers, hopefully 7.1 or 7.2 will help out with more of the deeper issues of the specs.

[Gaidax]

What? The point is that not every log is filled with cheese, and just because you figured out that some players reached high numbers by cheesing it doesn't automatically invalidate all the other logs. And I don't think anyone is disregarding Nightmare Dragons, it is more a case of "The specific situation where destruction is supposed to be unbeatable", and they still aren't.

It was in response to people hounding someone who did well on Xavius, people somehow got up in arms because of Havoc, which is silly, simply because top 200 there is all about whoring by the means I told literally.