Warlocks totally ignored during the Q&A

[Sunlighthell]

*Cross-posting from a General Discussion thread.*

Got some answers from the development team on this.

The aim and ultimate goal of the swap is to create competition in the talent rows, with a secondary intent of adjusting tankiness and mobility overall. With this change (taking tuning into account), there should now be more interesting choices in some rows, instead of the usual feel of "mandatory-ness" that we've seen in this past cycle.

Demon Skin previously dwarfed its competition in nearly ever situation, and its combination with Dark Pact offered too much survivability.

With Demonic Circle, we heard the broad feedback about how it was missed when players had to opt-out of taking it because of better picks in its row. Now that it's lined up against more equally-powered and niche talents, we believe Demonic Circle will see more use overall.

Hope this answers some of your questions - I'm here for feedback and discussion on this.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...page=2#post-24

So much for doubling down on our strengths.

Nice. Now i want reason for huge nerfs to affliction damage. My bet that it will be even more retarded answer.
Seriously. They're nerfing spec that compete with tanks in pve. And do close to zero damage in pvp. And don't forget the only "mechanics" changes they made are both nerfs to ua: 1) ua caps at 5 stacks 2) comprounding horror nerf. Who gives a damn about useless golden traits right? Sweet souls bug? Reap souls not doubling all traits? Nah, better nerf all interrupt immunes esp close to useless casting circle while giving ww monks disarm because they're "undertuned" in pvp. Blizzard crusade agains warlocks, affliction in general goes on. What did you expect when "we rather you didn't play demonology" guy takes game director seat?

- - - Updated - - -

Also you want confirmation that only warlocks got these amout of hate from devs? Look at this.
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...page=4#post-62

[transparent]

I am no pro in PvP, but I'd like to believe I am somewhere between middle and upper tier being that I have around 160k kills under my belt which equates to a massive amount of experience. I'll give anyone a good challenge, I'll destroy newbies, while giving the pro's a bit of a hard time.

As Affliction, I had a fight against a DK during a BG in Isle of Conquest, he flat out ignored me until around ~10% of his HP, which was around ~240k HP. He proceeded to AMS, I had a full row of DoTs (including Agony stacked at 8 or 9), blew through my first shield, then Demonic Pact (by which time I was silenced), I then used Unending Resolve to try and stabilise my HP a bit, whacked him with Phantom Singularity, Succubus's knock back and also Grimoire of Service Felhunter, stunned him with my Infernal and you know what?

I still died and he had FULL HP. Absolutely retarded.

Also you want confirmation that only warlocks got these amout of hate from devs? Look at this.
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/t...page=4#post-62

Unreal, the hate is oozing out the dev's mouths. Seriously, WTF are they doing, they honestly are projecting total hate towards Warlocks. This...this is...this is so utterly borked, totally at a loss of words here.

[Lucrece]

Why is every argument about warlocks have some sort of comparison to fire mages, we get it fire mages are overtuned, its old news

Switch fire mage for hunter, same crap. Disengage, baseline movement speed increase, much more mobile DPS.

[Nadiru]

Well yeah Mages are stronger but it's not because of survability though so I think bringing that point doesn't serve a purpose when giving feedback about the class.

Mages hold a numerical superiority over Warlocks that persists pretty strongly across both specs and encounters, even though the clear outlier is Fire. But the ability for a good Mage to clear a whole bunch of mechanics with just Blink, and then having Ice Block and Ice Barrier on top of it, in addition to a talent row dedicated to survivability? I wouldn't discount the Mage's ability to ignore mechanics which is supposedly the Warlock's specialty. Mages have the same amount of non-spec-specific defensive cooldowns that Warlocks do, and the grossly better version of the mobility cooldown. For the "Warlock survivability supremacy" argument to be valid, Ice Barrier would need to not exist, or Demonic Circle would need to have some draw to it that makes it as good as Blink despite having twice the cooldown and tied to the Demonic Circle.


Just like the comparison between Warlocks and Fire Mages need to stop, so do the comparisons between Dark Pact and non-talent Mage defensives. Not only is it harmful to the "Warlocks aren't bad" camp as a whole, the argument itself is irrational. Ice Barrier isn't a talent, so it's not comparable. And Dark Pact honestly isn't better than Cold Snap or Cauterize or Shimmer. As good as, certainly. But Warlocks have to talent for the same number of defensives that Mages just have by virtue of being Mages. And...Warlocks won't be able to do that next Tuesday anyway.

[Deleted]

I'd use other definition, but it's infraction-worthy.

Basically, you are dug in into your "warlocks are bad" position and seem to be desperately maintaining it at all costs, despite opposition to this approach from numerous people in this thread.

I don't think you are worth my time, frankly, as you are beyond redemption. The time I wasted on you is just too much, so I'll just ignore you and spare myself from reading further nonsense coming from your direction.

Yes, and you are basically entrenched in your "warlocks is fine it's just that most people playing them are bad" routine, the fact that you happen to enjoy destruction and it's the best spec enables you to blind yourself to the fact that some people dont want to feel forced into playing it, and the fact that you happen to have the skill and time to overcome the differences that to the majority of players results in destruction representing more work for less reward lets you repeat your "warlocks are completely fine, it's you that have the problem" routine, even as all the while we watch the warlock playerbase shrink and shrink again, even as we hear the developers admit that the warlock playerbase is deeply unhappy and the class is plagued with design issues like entrenched ramp that causes big problems particularly in five-man content

Your whole posts come across as edicts graven upon tablets from the Almighty Gaidax, you aren't even prepared to listen or debate views that leaning on Wreak Havoc really isn't very good design, you just dismiss people as "snivelling" or "wasting my time", which is basically resorting to personal abuse whilst skating around the infraction rules

I'm not worth your time? Frankly, it doesn;t bother me in theleast, did you think I'd be "oh no, how terribly, I don't have approval from the Great Gaidax?"

Please do put me on ignore. I shall reciprocate, then we can be happy .

[Mehrunes]

Ah, so they are going to put balance changes in the last PTR build before 7.1 goes live and as such won't be able to test them properly, let alone change what doesn't work out. Didn't expect them to be this incompetent, alas, having any expectations for Blizzard whatsoever once again turns out to be the wrong path.

And you don't see this as poor design? Okay.

There is no poor Warlock design. Warlock design ranges from godlike to almost not amazing.

[Jessicka]

I honestly wasn't expecting them to say much of anything; the mechanical issues we have aren't going to be fixed over night and there is still probably significant internal discussion to be had. 7.1 has probably been pretty advanced internally for a while, so it's unlikely they'd put anything big in at this point anyway. There will be more balancing happening in the next week or so, so in terms of numbers we can just hope they throw a bone to Affliction then. If we see nothing for 7.2 though I will be very disappointed.

[Mehrunes]

I honestly wasn't expecting them to say much of anything; the mechanical issues we have aren't going to be fixed over night and there is still probably significant internal discussion to be had. 7.1 has probably been pretty advanced internally for a while, so it's unlikely they'd put anything big in at this point anyway. There will be more balancing happening in the next week or so, so in terms of numbers we can just hope they throw a bone to Affliction then. If we see nothing for 7.2 though I will be very disappointed.

We'll see tier bonuses in 7.2 (presumably) and everything will be fixed with their coming allowing Blizzard to do nothing else which is their favorite past time activity. And they had Alpha and Beta for having internal discussion about mechanics because the mechanics didn't pop out of the Twisting Nether when 7.0 hit live so there's really no excuse for them doing nothing about the mechanics still. Especially after their damage control acknowledging mechanical issues but asking the players to wait till a patch for them because hotfixes can't deliver mechanical changes (except for Destro, of course). And it's been what? Around a month since then? Not exactly "over night".

[Dominus89]

You must've missed the Q&A before this one, where they talked about warlocks a fair bit.
Did you honestly believe that they would do the same in this? lol get real.

Theres specs in a much worse state than warlocks right now.

[Jessicka]

We'll see tier bonuses in 7.2 (presumably) and everything will be fixed with their coming allowing Blizzard to do nothing else which is their favorite past time activity. And they had Alpha and Beta for having internal discussion about mechanics because the mechanics didn't pop out of the Twisting Nether when 7.0 hit live so there's really no excuse for them doing nothing about the mechanics still. Especially after their damage control acknowledging mechanical issues but asking the players to wait till a patch for them because hotfixes can't deliver mechanical changes (except for Destro, of course). And it's been what? Around a month since then? Not exactly "over night".

A lot of Beta testers actually said the class was fine. In fact, I distinctly remember calling out so many of the same issues that are being called out today in the Alpha/Beta threads very early on myself and being shouted down on them. To the point I actually stopped bothering following it. It's hard to lay this entirely with Blizzard when the likes of Gaidax and Bacon were saying Affliction was fine since almost day one; and plenty of people saying "derp if you don't like Soul Effigy and multidotting, why play Affliction?" It was not all Blizzard.

[noaim]

A lot of Beta testers actually said the class was fine. In fact, I distinctly remember calling out so many of the same issues that are being called out today in the Alpha/Beta threads very early on myself and being shouted down on them. To the point I actually stopped bothering following it. It's hard to lay this entirely with Blizzard when the likes of Gaidax and Bacon were saying Affliction was fine since almost day one; and plenty of people saying "derp if you don't like Soul Effigy and multidotting, why play Affliction?" It was not all Blizzard.

But it was only beta. It was gonna be fixed. You were just a whiner etc etc. No?

It always amazes me when people say "dont whine about this or that, it is only beta". I wonder wtf those people think a beta is for, if it is not to test things and point out the issues.

[Deleted]

You must've missed the Q&A before this one, where they talked about warlocks a fair bit.
Did you honestly believe that they would do the same in this? lol get real.

Theres specs in a much worse state than warlocks right now.

Sure, they talked about warlocks. Then proceeded to do the opposite of some of what they mentioned (Tankiness vs mobility) and not doing anything (Demonology). They made a very minor bandaid fix (3 shards OOC), and that was pretty much it. I guess a lot of people (including me) were expecting to have some updates on what it is they plan on doing with warlocks.

Frontpage FinalBoss discussion about warlocks should tell you all you need to know. The class "works", but it is riddled with bad design, and they cover most, if not all of it, in that video.

[Gratlim]

Theres specs in a much worse state than warlocks right now.

I would argue that mechanicaly, nothing is worse than Demonology Warlock and DPSwise nothing is worse than Affliction Warlock. But that is just me (playing 5 classes at 110 and a warlock main since 2007).

[Gaidax]

The issues for Demo and Aff were acknowledged and will be worked on, but it will take time.

Meanwhile, yes, you will either play Destruction which is completely fine and competitive with all DPS specs in game apart from 3 which are (on average) above everything else in game.

Of course you can take a stance that EVERYTHING is bad, but I am not sure what one wants to achieve with that, simply because this is objectively false and simply lowers the value of whatever actual credible feedback that person may provide.

As a side note, the tinfoil hat worthy conspiracy theories should die in fire really. It simply dillutes the discussion further with garbage and nonsense.

[Deleted]

Yes, and you are basically entrenched in your "warlocks is fine it's just that most people playing them are bad" routine, the fact that you happen to enjoy destruction and it's the best spec enables you to blind yourself to the fact that some people dont want to feel forced into playing it, and the fact that you happen to have the skill and time to overcome the differences that to the majority of players results in destruction representing more work for less reward lets you repeat your "warlocks are completely fine, it's you that have the problem" routine, even as all the while we watch the warlock playerbase shrink and shrink again, even as we hear the developers admit that the warlock playerbase is deeply unhappy and the class is plagued with design issues like entrenched ramp that causes big problems particularly in five-man content

Your whole posts come across as edicts graven upon tablets from the Almighty Gaidax, you aren't even prepared to listen or debate views that leaning on Wreak Havoc really isn't very good design, you just dismiss people as "snivelling" or "wasting my time", which is basically resorting to personal abuse whilst skating around the infraction rules

I'm not worth your time? Frankly, it doesn;t bother me in theleast, did you think I'd be "oh no, how terribly, I don't have approval from the Great Gaidax?"

Please do put me on ignore. I shall reciprocate, then we can be happy .

It would be tragic if they made a change to wreak havoc, it's something actually unique to warlocks and it's a ton of fun. It has so much use in the majority of boss fights so I don't see a problem with it. Besides, while destruction may be lacking somewhat in pure single target, demonology is a monster in this niche and the stat priority is basically identical to demonology with just the relative weightings changing a bit. Plus we share 2/3 relics so it should be pretty easy to main destruction and keep demonology up to a pretty decent level. Personally I'm having a lot of fun with this, I'm glad we have the situation where we want to swap talents and even specialisations in a raid, we have the summoning stone too so you can port out and swap in a matter of seconds at no cost. I'd MUCH rather see other classes and specs have to do a similar thing to us than for us to be normalised around having a cookie cutter spec and talent set up for everything.

Affliction is another story though, they really do need some help.

[Duckz0rs]

Yes, and you are basically entrenched in your "warlocks is fine it's just that most people playing them are bad" routine, the fact that you happen to enjoy destruction and it's the best spec enables you to blind yourself to the fact that some people dont want to feel forced into playing it, and the fact that you happen to have the skill and time to overcome the differences that to the majority of players results in destruction representing more work for less reward lets you repeat your "warlocks are completely fine, it's you that have the problem" routine, even as all the while we watch the warlock playerbase shrink and shrink again, even as we hear the developers admit that the warlock playerbase is deeply unhappy and the class is plagued with design issues like entrenched ramp that causes big problems particularly in five-man content

Are you aware how easily this whole section can be flipped and used against you? The only reason Gaidax and a lot of others are content is because they like Destruction and it's decently balanced. Equally, the only reason you're so dissatisfied is because Affliction isn't.

Yes, Warlocks require more work to perform equally to Mages. That's in all sincerity a matter of preference. The whole reason I play locks is because they're more complex on a mechanical level than the Fire Mages you like to mention in every other paragraph. If I'd prefer to play something simpler I'd do just that; I'd play a Mage instead.

That's the whole idea of having so many different specs in a game, there's something for every playstyle. If we would do more damage than other classes as a reward for having to do more effort that would plain and simple be unbalanced. It's more difficult because some people just like difficult mechanics and playing them well is a reward in and of itself. For the people that like to do little effort and still put up good numbers there's mages.

Oh, and before everyone jumps on me and calls me a heel-licker; yes, Affliction is definitely under-tuned. Yes, there are issues on a mechanical level with Warlocks overall. And yes, Blizzard is heavily contradicting the "doubling down on strengths" statement by making our 2 tanking talents mutually exclusive and removing Drain Life from Destro/Demo. No, I don't think middle of the pack is a bad place to be. Yes, I think bottom of the barrel is a bad place to be.

[Sunlighthell]

The issues for Demo and Aff were acknowledged and will be worked on, but it will take time.

No. They didn't asknowledged affliction golden traits (they kinda promised rework during beta but two patches in row zero changes) and didn't asknowledged any of affliction bugs that were reported since last april. Also they started with NERGING affliction hard in 7.1 so how can you expect them to do some qol or just bug fixes after that? I dont want to wait 1 year before they START to fix affliction. They fixed ret paladin issues in 1 tuning pass. They also reverted nerfs to rets in 7.1 because of their qq. Blizzard is totaly biased towards melee. They admitted it in one of the interwievs by saying that in the past raiders were stacking more rdd and they didn't like it. And if you look at pvp side there's melee fest too. Also pure dps class outperformed by every other pure dps and ALL hybrids, this is silly.

I can pull decent numbers with destruction right now. But at the same ilvl (862) withlout any legendaries mage/hunter/rogue/SP will output more dmg/dps by at least 50k if they're not complete morons and they don't need to even change talents for every fight to do that.

[Deleted]

And yes, Blizzard is heavily contradicting the "doubling down on strengths" statement by making our 2 tanking talents mutually exclusive and removing Drain Life from Destro/Demo. No, I don't think middle of the pack is a bad place to be. Yes, I think bottom of the barrel is a bad place to be.

Still they havent fixed the missing drain life bug for destruction and demo on PTR?

[Sunlighthell]

Yes, Warlocks require more work to perform equally to Mages. That's in all sincerity a matter of preference. The whole reason I play locks is because they're more complex on a mechanical level than the Fire Mages you like to mention in every other paragraph. If I'd prefer to play something simpler I'd do just that; I'd play a Mage instead.

There's no reward for playing warlock. You need to work harder in every spec and you will still be below mages and other dps classes. Pure dps class should not be in middle of the pack in 2 specs and bottom of the barrel in 3rd.

[Duckz0rs]

@theblackharvest Can't say for sure, haven't checked since it was first found out.

@Sunlighthell Please read the rest of my post. My entire point was that successfully playing something that's harder IS the reward. We should achieve similar numbers as easier classes when playing well. Doing flat-out more damage for more effort would very clearly be unbalanced and force all the higher end raids (or any remotely skilled player) to just stack locks since their players can always achieve those levels. Different specs cater to different target audiences. Hunters are there for people that want to faceroll, Warlocks are there for people who want to be challenged and mages are there as a nice middle-ground.