Warlock: The Death of a Class in WoW

[Zandalariprelate]

Your mightier than thou attitude seems to have blinded you to the very simple idea that different people are wanting different things from their class.

Some people want to do strong damage and feel like they're contributing to kills. For them, number tuning can solve their problems, but it will introduce new ones. This is currently what's happening with Shadow Priests, and is the reason StM is being nerfed.

Other people want to be engaged by the gameplay, and don't care about numbers. For them, tuning is irrelevant if they don't enjoy the playstyle.

Your rhetoric that greater skill means you have more authority to speak concerning problems of the spec is completely ignorant to people in the latter group. Some people have fun in different ways. Take the time to understand that before trying to silence other posters.

It's seen you don't see the real problem, as a warlock a pure dps class with should compete with others pure dps class like mages,hunters, rogues if we cant do our roles and our utility is not so great compared to others class(our battle res is not instant and our portals have a 2 min cd to use it again, and our warlock stone can be replaced by healing pots) now mechanic speaking is more a subjective thing for every player, for example you have the s2m build to spriest that not everyone like it but at least in numbers they are doing more great that most of the specs of the game.

Giving statistics is not the same as giving facts. First of all, you picked 2 fights that are not the best for Warlocks, especially destruction. Second, the number of parses is far to low to be in any way statistically relevant.

So: Yes, if you play against the best of the best of the best, you would not be number # on the meters with equal skills. If you look at odyn M, warlock (actually surprisingly all specs) are in the top 6.

So: We're good at some fights, not so good at others. Where is the problem exactly?

Are you drug or what? We are useless for two bosses in trial of valor that is much show how bad is the performance of the class in fights with many adds or single target without any cleave with wreak havoc, also get 90% percentile is not really hard if you follow the rotation and if you do the homework to learn properly the class you are playing

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#boss=2008

75% Heyla and affliction is not even there

[Gaidax]

Your mightier than thou attitude seems to have blinded you to the very simple idea that different people are wanting different things from their class.

Some people want to do strong damage and feel like they're contributing to kills. For them, number tuning can solve their problems, but it will introduce new ones. This is currently what's happening with Shadow Priests, and is the reason StM is being nerfed.

Other people want to be engaged by the gameplay, and don't care about numbers. For them, tuning is irrelevant if they don't enjoy the playstyle.

Your rhetoric that greater skill means you have more authority to speak concerning problems of the spec is completely ignorant to people in the latter group. Some people have fun in different ways. Take the time to understand that before trying to silence other posters.

Oh really? Look - 1 PTR build and everyone suddenly fawning over Affliction from previously "sky is falling" attitude... The amazing gameplay changes? 1 number change...

It's literally as I said in this very thread, people don't REALLY care about "bad gameplay", they care about "low damage".

[Dwill]

Oh really? Look - 1 PTR build and everyone suddenly fawning over Affliction from previously "sky is falling" attitude... The amazing gameplay changes? 1 number change...

It's literally as I said in this very thread, people don't REALLY care about "bad gameplay", they care about "low damage".

Except the fact it's multiple changes, not a single one and those allows us to ditch Effigy and go into Conduit for a smoother gameplay. So what's your point again ?

[Gaidax]

My point is and was always the same, submit feedback and let Blizzard sort it out, because they will one way or another. And if it does not happen immediately then you keep giving proper feedback and not go into bullshit mode like "lol see you at 8.0" after Watcher tells you they are not going to sort out Soul Effigy in 7.1.5.

I told people that they will balance Soul Effigy out of the window and that's what they did. And same will happen to Demo and Destruction if they end up lagging behind, there is no antiwarlock conspiracy in progress.

And my second point is that people are full of shit, everyone was trying to prove how it's not about the numbers, yet the moment they bumped the numbers everything became peachy for most of the people besides a couple of oddballs who can't help but hate on anything Blizz does ever.

[A dot Ham]

Looked at his post history since you said something and wow.

That and are there several other reasons he has posted he might quite (Death of Varian being one)
@carlos9949
You are just looking for attention and a reason to quit.

Do it already!

[Roujeaux]

Yes, but it still had charges and you still did not spam it. Basically instead of a tactical powerup when you are at your best it pretty much became additional cast time for summons it is now.

All done by feedback which said what you say now. So instead of "punishing" or rather the better word challenging and skillful, it ended up being pointless and annoying spam it is now. A fine example of bad decisions as a result of players not really seeing beyond their noses.

This is a good reason why Blizzard does not rush to pick every little scrap thrown their way, because they may patch one issue, but create another issue nobody thought about in excitement.

Seems like the only thing that needed to have done to the original DE iteration from Alpha was to change it from working on a limited number of your pets to all of them. The cd should have stayed, would have added a timing skillcap, and could have kept people from having to spam it after every summon. Why this isn't being tested on the PTR I don't know. It seems simple enough of a code fix.

[Dominus89]

It's seen you don't see the real problem, as a warlock a pure dps class with should compete with others pure dps class like mages,hunters, rogues if we cant do our roles and our utility is not so great compared to others class(our battle res is not instant and our portals have a 2 min cd to use it again, and our warlock stone can be replaced by healing pots) now mechanic speaking is more a subjective thing for every player, for example you have the s2m build to spriest that not everyone like it but at least in numbers they are doing more great that most of the specs of the game.

Theres nothing as a "pure dps class" anymore in wow. Theres tanks, healers and dps. Any class that got a dps spec should be viable to raid with. Just because a class can fill more than one role doesnt mean that their dps spec should perform worse than others.

[Deleted]

Oh really? Look - 1 PTR build and everyone suddenly fawning over Affliction from previously "sky is falling" attitude... The amazing gameplay changes? 1 number change...

It's literally as I said in this very thread, people don't REALLY care about "bad gameplay", they care about "low damage".

The problem is that the changes made no sense without the buffs because

(a) They did not address any of the problems the patch was supposed to address
(b) The new talents and changes were simply worse than the existing ones under any circumstance and therefore no one would have used them

Take Malefic Grasp, for example: with only a 20% damage buff to dots, it was inferior to Writhe in Agony under any condition: Malefic Grasp is very obvously intended to be a single-target talent, and yet even in a pure single target fight it was inferior to Writhe. As soon as you got more than one target then Writhe just blew Malefic Grasp out of the water.

Moreover, Writhe works very well with Soul Effigy: Malefic Grasp does not. The result would have been - no one would have taken Malefic Grasp, so it was just a pointless change. And that meant that 7.1.5 was doing nothing to improve affliction's "burst" or low pure single target, yet the devs specifically stated those were design goals for the patch.

With Malefic Grasp damage buffed, as with Haunt, they are both viable alternatives to Writhe, Malefic Grasp can potentially buff affliction's damage on pure single target without making any difference to multi-target. Many people hate Soul Effigy, for reasons which have been repeated many times, in Malefic Grasp + SOul Conduit you have an alternative to it.

In short now that the new talents are actually viable alternatives instead of being just dps losses that no-one woul dhave taken leaving affliction exactly where it was, you have affliction that has amuch broader choice of viable talent builds, and it feels much less "hyper-specialised". I think that is the reaosn for the change to Seed of Corruption: bake more damage into the base ability, which means that the Siphon Life-Sow the Seeds choice feels less like a pidgeonholing punishment: liek many other classes, you can now choose to enhance your single target without such a heavy cost to AOE, or vice versa.

I repeat: without buffs, the changes and new talents made no sense, and would not have changed anything. No one would have used them. They were, quite literally, pointless window display changes that accomplished nothing.

People were upset by the first iteration because of that, not simply because they weren't "massive dps increases"

The buff to Malefic Grasp is large: but it has to be. If you tunnel into how things work out when you take MG at the cost of Writhe and Soul Effigy, it's nowhere near as huge as it first appears. And Writhe will still probably be the pre-eminent choice for council fights, because the boost to Agony, our strongest dot, is so large and it multiplies as targets multiply.

The biggest gameplay change is that Malefic Grasp + Soul Conduit is now a very viable choice to take - it therefore allows people to avoid Soul Effigy, which is probably by far and away the most hated aspect of affliction. If youlook at Pyro's "survey", you will see that people who play affliction name it as their numbe rone beef a LOT.

[Gaidax]

I repeat: without buffs, the changes and new talents made no sense, and would not have changed anything. No one would have used them. They were, quite literally, pointless window display changes that accomplished nothing.

People were upset by the first iteration because of that, not simply because they weren't "massive dps increases".

And they told people 500 times that they did not even tune anything yet and were just putting more mechanical changes in first, but people were busy spreading "boohoo evil blizzurd PR stunt, see you in 8.0" crap.

It was bloody obvious they were not done, yet everyone and their mothers were claiming that this is it and the end is nigh, despite all evidence pointing to otherwise. Changes made no sense? Somehow they made perfect sense to me because I told they are sorting shit out first and balance later, but I got bullshit, accusations of fanboyism and hysteria as response. Nobody cared to listen to what I say.

Well guess who was right in the end, eh? Little faith won't hurt.

And let me tell you this, they are STILL not done.

[Deleted]

And my second point is that people are full of shit, everyone was trying to prove how it's not about the numbers, yet the moment they bumped the numbers everything became peachy for most of the people besides a couple of oddballs who can't help but hate on anything Blizz does ever.

Nope, you're just ignoring what people were and are saying about talent slike Malefic Grasp, because it doesn't fit your narrative.

I made many posts commenting about Malefic Grasp making no sense and how it failed to achieve the stated design goals because it was inferior to the existing talents we already have in live.

Bumping MG's numbers make it a viable choice: before it just wasn't. Look at the commenators liek Terryn on YouTube, who tested Malefic Grasp prior to today's change and reached the same conclusion: worse than Writhe under any condition, therefore, pointless, achieving nothing.

That's why people reacted badly to it. And that was the bulk of the feedback on it.

[Hyrja]

I love destro/demo in MoP and Afflic in WoD. Wish they revert it back sometime =/

[Deleted]

And they told people 500 times that they did not even tune anything yet and were just putting more mechanical changes in first, but people were busy spreading "boohoo evil blizzurd PR stunt, see you in 8.0" crap.

It was bloody obvious they were not done, yet everyone and their mothers were claiming that this is it and the end is nigh, despite all evidence pointing to otherwise.

Well guess who was right in the end, eh? Little faith won't hurt.

Peopel react to what they've got. And many of us have been around long enough to know that Blizzard have made all sorts of crazy changes that make no sense and let them go live: I remember they changed destruction back in Wrath that meant Conflag+Chaos Bolt that would literally one shot anyone in PVP. Load sof people said it wuld never go live. It did. After two weeks of mayhem it had to be hotfixed.

Or look at Soul Effigy on alpha/beta. Horrible, widely hated, problematic, most of the feedback was that it was too much of a pain in the ass for the reward. What happened? They nerfed it, no one could figure out why as it wasn;t as though affliction was dominating anything (except aoe. Which got buffed). And it was part of the mess that was warlocks going live

Kinda hard to "have faith" in the face of stuf flike that. I rather suspect that the new changes to affliction are more to do with internal sims number crunching than feedback. The apparently huge Malefic Grasp buff makes people suspect it's a "lets get load sof peopel to try it out and then nerf it" thing.

Then there's Contagion. The last change to that was to nerf it. No one coul dmake any sens eof that at all, I mean, was afflcition putting out amazing single target numbers. Nope. No statement was ever made as to the thinking that drove that. And now Contagion is getting buffed again. To where it was, plus some.

[Gaidax]

Nope, you're just ignoring what people were and are saying about talent slike Malefic Grasp, because it doesn't fit your narrative.

I made many posts commenting about Malefic Grasp making no sense and how it failed to achieve the stated design goals because it was inferior to the existing talents we already have in live.

Bumping MG's numbers make it a viable choice: before it just wasn't. Look at the commenators liek Terryn on YouTube, who tested Malefic Grasp prior to today's change and reached the same conclusion: worse than Writhe under any condition, therefore, pointless, achieving nothing.

That's why people reacted badly to it. And that was the bulk of the feedback on it.

People, such as you, had a very simple case of reading comprehension issues alongside with a severe case of cynicism and paranoia. Blizzard told you - "we did not do tuning yet, we first make changes and then tuning".

And what did you and your pals do? Turned this forum into cesspool, spammed your bullshit accusing Blizzard of mortal sins instead of like... waiting until tuning actually happened, while calmly submitting sensible feedback?

You were wrong, it's just you have hard time admitting it really.

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You simply have no argument and are grasping at straws and excuses now. In the end I was right and you were wrong, deal with it.

[Strepp]

Oh really? Look - 1 PTR build and everyone suddenly fawning over Affliction from previously "sky is falling" attitude... The amazing gameplay changes? 1 number change...

It's literally as I said in this very thread, people don't REALLY care about "bad gameplay", they care about "low damage".

Yet I still don't see "everyone fawning". A group of people have been placated, and yet there's still a group who are complaining about core mechanics being clunky and uninteresting. Read my previous post (the one you quoted) to understand why that might be.

That there are still a number of posts on this forum and others with players coming up with new gameplay ideas (spells, talents, changes to artifact, etc.) should tell you there are still people dissatisfied with warlock playstyle. They're not doing it to boost DPS, it's because they are unhappy with the current iteration and want the mechanics changed.

I'm really failing to understand your position here. Do you really think people don't care about bad gameplay? If numbers is all that matters, why aren't you playing a flavor of the month class like Shadow Priest?

[Jessicka]

Yet I still don't see "everyone fawning". A group of people have been placated, and yet there's still a group who are complaining about core mechanics being clunky and uninteresting. Read my previous post (the one you quoted) to understand why that might be.

That there are still a number of posts on this forum and others with players coming up with new gameplay ideas (spells, talents, changes to artifact, etc.) should tell you there are still people dissatisfied with warlock playstyle. They're not doing it to boost DPS, it's because they are unhappy with the current iteration and want the mechanics changed.

I'm really failing to understand your position here. Do you really think people don't care about bad gameplay? If numbers is all that matters, why aren't you playing a flavor of the month class like Shadow Priest?

'Everyone fawning' over the changes because those changes amount to:-
- Soul Effigy being 'balanced out' of the game to make it an inferior choice; an important change that improves gameplay by making a more fluid talent more desirable.
- The nerf to StS and buff to Seed of Corruption baseline narrowing the delta that talent was creating that pigeonholed Affliction too heavily into an AoE OR ST build. Again, an important improvement in gameplay.

Those are solid gameplay improvements, they're not hinging entirely on DPS being overpowered. We know numbers are still being tuned, and it's entirely possible those numbers are 'exaggerated' to prompt people to actually bother to test it out and see how it plays and could (maybe should?) yet be nerfed to be better balanced.

[Gaidax]

'Everyone fawning' over the changes because those changes amount to:-
- Soul Effigy being 'balanced out' of the game to make it an inferior choice; an important change that improves gameplay by making a more fluid talent more desirable.
- The nerf to StS and buff to Seed of Corruption baseline narrowing the delta that talent was creating that pigeonholed Affliction too heavily into an AoE OR ST build. Again, an important improvement in gameplay.

Those are solid gameplay improvements, they're not hinging entirely on DPS being overpowered. We know numbers are still being tuned, and it's entirely possible those numbers are 'exaggerated' to prompt people to actually bother to test it out and see how it plays and could (maybe should?) yet be nerfed to be better balanced.

It is almost certain it will be toned down, but it shows the intent you described is there. Maybe they will drop MG to 40-50% to not have DoTs ticking for silly numbers, for example, and maybe compensate back with Drain Soul buff a bit just enough to both accomplish their declared goal of improving affliction ST and indirectly declared goal of allowing people to not bother with Effigy, while they figure out what to do with it.

They said they will buff Affliction ST and they can't fix Soul Effigy in 7.1.5, so they act precisely on that. It just shows there is a good faith there, really and they are not out to get people for their own sadistic satisfaction.

Maybe their notes about Soul Shards for Destruction and Demonic Empowerment for Demo being imperfect also will end up being reflected in some changes to help there as well, in any case I am pretty confident that at least Demo will get more changes, simply because they tamper with Synergy and it smells like they are prepping something there too. Long shot - either some sort of filler buff or DE somehow becoming less frequent and thus making you cast more fillers, which would in turn increase Synergy power back.

[Medicine Man]

Maybe their notes about Soul Shards for Destruction and Demonic Empowerment for Demo being imperfect also will end up being reflected in some changes to help there as well, in any case I am pretty confident that at least Demo will get more changes, simply because they tamper with Synergy and it smells like they are prepping something there too. Long shot - either some sort of filler buff or DE somehow becoming less frequent and thus making you cast more fillers, which would in turn increase Synergy power back.

That seems logical. My sense is that they are turning a couple of knobs for Demo, but the nerfs to talents are the only changes that require little coding, and thus are coming first. If re-tuning Demo to lessen our reliance on haste is at all on their radar, then I can see how some nerfs may indeed be necessary.

[Deleted]

You have no idea how I perform, and I've never once complained about it being 'hard', nor have I complained about throughput since the buffs a couple of months ago. I've complained about things like the basic UI being unable to support the playstyles properly, or mechanics being too opaque for the average player to notice or pick up (I have a heavily customised UI myself, so I point these things out because I hate having to mess with it). But I've always been confident in my own ability to 'handle it'.

I'm not just talking about you, I'm talking about everybody. Everyone that wants Demonic Empowerment to be removed because it's deemed "Not fun" when it's largest impact on the rotation is it would just make it easier, partly ruining the high skill cap.
Those which suggests it to be remade into something else make ludacrous suggestsion on overpowered spell whose purpose is to prune out Demonologies weaknesses. People just aren't capable of dealing with the spec.

That would be an ideal, but that's not actually what we get; we do get drug abusers, our previous Chancellor was a renound coke-fiend, the PM fucked a pigs head, and our current foreign secretary has been sacked from several jobs for habitually lying as well as paying to have a colleague beaten up; most of the cabinet have qualifications entirely unrelated to the departments they've ended up running. People don't always get the jobs they get through being qualified. That's true of every level of society.

I'm not sure why you decided to BM your politicians when I was trying to make an example. I was mainly focusing on what the ideal choice would be.
You want someone knowledgeable and experienced to represent the class when it comes to making beneficial changes.

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Are you seriously that thick? Never once said I struggled to play the class, nor did I ever say I was having trouble with knowing what to do. It's just not a fun playstyle to me and to many others. What's so hard to understand about that? The best iteration of warlock the game has ever known was Tier7 affliction IMO and it was far more complex than any warlock spec in game right now. It's not about how difficult it is, it's just that it doesn't feel fun.

Maybe you didn't, but I am just pairing you with all the other meatheads that whine excessivly about everything. You havn't given me a reason not to.

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https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...962&dataset=90
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=90&boss=2008

As I say if you are topping with your warlock them the performance of your raid guild or pug is very bad or you are playing against people with very low gear, I gave you facts

90% percentile? Is that a joke? Why don't we look at more relevant numbers for a specc with a high skillcap. Like 95th or even 99th percentile. Suddenly Warlock start creeping back up.
Also: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...958&dataset=95
Yeah, that's a fight too. Way to try and twist information for your own agenda. You learned much from the recent American election.

[Zandalariprelate]

90% percentile? Is that a joke? Why don't we look at more relevant numbers for a specc with a high skillcap. Like 95th or even 99th percentile. Suddenly Warlock start creeping back up.
Also: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...958&dataset=95
Yeah, that's a fight too. Way to try and twist information for your own agenda. You learned much from the recent American election.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...962&dataset=95

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...008&dataset=95

Guarn and Helya fights at 95% and guess what affliction is not even present, the thing with that spec is that very few persons use it and is just for farm which they already overgear those players that is why you see affliction so high even more than a fire mage but if you look the parses you would see the numbers aren't so high comparte with others specs. While in Odyn we are fine thanks to wreak havoc which is op for cleave but unfortunate useless in single target damage and our 100 level talents are crap

[Jessicka]

I'm not just talking about you, I'm talking about everybody. Everyone that wants Demonic Empowerment to be removed because it's deemed "Not fun" when it's largest impact on the rotation is it would just make it easier, partly ruining the high skill cap.
Those which suggests it to be remade into something else make ludacrous suggestsion on overpowered spell whose purpose is to prune out Demonologies weaknesses. People just aren't capable of dealing with the spec.

I don't tend to talk a lot about Demo, I've never been a fan of combo point style mechanics even since the Assassin in Diablo 2 and I find Demos current iteration reflects that too strongly. It's such a fundamental thing that, like Rogues it's easier to just step away and not play it. I never got a Rogue past level 20 before, I'd have been the same with Demo.

I'd rather see DE as the resource spender, just as the resource spenders for our other specs are about high damage abilities to combine with other effects. They're important, the spec is built around them and they provide the bursty 'wow moment'. At least in principal. Demo it's 100% everything maintenance all the time. It's very flat.

That said, "overpowered" is usually about numbers, whether it's damage, effect duration, or availability (cooldown/resource cost). I don't tend to feel that something can never be balanced around those things, unless there's some synergy with something else that's underlying it.

I'm not sure why you decided to BM your politicians when I was trying to make an example. I was mainly focusing on what the ideal choice would be.
You want someone knowledgeable and experienced to represent the class when it comes to making beneficial changes.

I had no fucking idea why you brought it up. Figured it was some 'the development team know what they're doing' shit. Seems it's worse than that.

When I vote for someone I vote for those who's values and views are reflective of my own based on what I've seen, read or tried to educate myself about. Not the one who just insists they know best.

I've played the game a long time, I've seen a lot of high end raiders defend some ridiculous shit because it was conferring them an advantage and they could just deal with it. I see an awful lot of that still. Your whole attitude is reflective of exactly that; you say you can handle it, so for me your only reasons to oppose change or improvements is either competition or risk of nerfs. Or, like Gaidax, you want to protect your favoured spec because you can easily defend playing it right now and don't want people to ask you to swap if another pulls ahead (something I'll freely admit I've done myself).