Say bye bye to Blood fear

[Spektroman]

sure blood fear is always taken because it's OP

That's all that needs to be said about it really. I've used burning rush in BGs to great effect. It's a good escape tool, and it's a good chasing tool as well. Whenever you have a healer with you, Burning Rush has pretty much zero cost, because you (usually) have GoSac recovering 2% max health, and you have soul harvest when out of combat. Like I said before, a single hot rolling on you and the health cost for burning rush is effectively zero. Go try it out.

The question is, why would anyone take burning rush when the super duper mega OP blood fear is sitting right next to it?

the same is true for UW. It's extremely useful to break yourself free of a CC chain when your partner is getting focused. It's not meant to be a second trinket for when you are getting focused, but even then it might still save you. Not being deep frozen means frost bomb hits for nothing (it gets dispelled by UW, don't forget) and all you eat is a fire blast (maybe an ice lance if the mage didn't realize what just happened). 20% health is a fair price to pay for such a powerful effect.

But again, why would you take it in a world where Blood Fear is right next to it?

My point is, nerf blood fear first, then if a nerfed blood fear is STILL better than those talents, sure change them around. Right now any change to those is a premature decision, which will ultimately lead them to revert to what they are now, or worse, nerf their current forms. And either way in my opinion it just takes away time that could be better spent looking at other QoL changes.

[Forgottenone]

Imo add some sort of cooldown that makes one or two of our spells under 5 seconds instant. Mages don't have an instant CC unless you want to count Deep Freeze, but with Presence of Mind they can get one free sheep everyone minute and a half or so. We don't have to have mirror images of mages but we do need some way to turn a cast fear into an instant fear at the cost of a decent length CD.

I am fine with nerfing many things, but I feel there is a need to somewhat compensate for what is nerfed. That doesn't mean we have to become OP, it can simply mean trying to give us something that is half of what the OP spell was. I did dislike having to always take Blood Fear because in pvp because the usefulness of it is superior to other options:3

[Jessicka]

That's all that needs to be said about it really. I've used burning rush in BGs to great effect. It's a good escape tool, and it's a good chasing tool as well. Whenever you have a healer with you, Burning Rush has pretty much zero cost, because you (usually) have GoSac recovering 2% max health, and you have soul harvest when out of combat. Like I said before, a single hot rolling on you and the health cost for burning rush is effectively zero. Go try it out.

I can see Sac getting nerfed heavily in 5.2. It's far more popular than the alternatives, because it's more effective.

[Deleted]

I can see Sac getting nerfed heavily in 5.2. It's far more popular than the alternatives, because it's more effective.

Rather than nerfing sac, they should just buff pet damage, so it would be worth bringing one instead of going solo, nerfing sac would be stupid, but then again, it's blizzard.

[PutressFIRST]

Because they are very short-term CCs and have substantial cooldowns.

Are they not instant ccs? Doesn't matter if its short-term or has a massive cooldown, most of the replies in this thread are complaints about other classes getting instant cc's and ours being removed, or even "we are no longer viable without "x" instant cc." We have multiple insta cc's.

[Jessicka]

Rather than nerfing sac, they should just buff pet damage, so it would be worth bringing one instead of going solo, nerfing sac would be stupid, but then again, it's blizzard.

Damage with pets is fine, damage with Sac is more. They're more likely to hammer Sac down than bring pets up; especially when virtually all our burst issues in PvP are related to Sac.

[Flaks]

My main is a paladin, my 2nd most played toon is a lock. Paladins still have bubble, bop, 2 instant cc's, a lot of burst and yes i know they do no dmg without cds, well warlocks dont do any dmg even with cd's up, now all they have is blood fear thats the only reason to bring a warlock to your arena team. If they take blood fear away they may as well just remove the class.

Warlocks in mop have hands down the strongest defensive cds out of any class. They have instant cc as well lest you're forgetting you're level 30 tier. You'll only be shit with the removal of blood fear if you're just not a good player to begin with.

Also I love how everyone is ignoring the fact that the interviews talked about instant cc's across the board. Expect nerfs to things like shockwave, psyfiend and pom as well.

[Taoforums]

Tell me more about how everyone has instant CC's.. (Ele)

[Kildragon]

I can see Sac getting nerfed heavily in 5.2. It's far more popular than the alternatives, because it's more effective.

Sac is only far more popular for Destro. Afflic is split between Sac and Supremacy, however only slightly ahead of Sac. Demo takes Supremacy most of the time and Sac about a third of the time.

Analyze why this is the case and it becomes pretty clear.

For Destro, Sac buffs our Incinerate, Conflag and Chaos Bolt. All of our main damage spells are there. Immolate doesn't even count because it's only used to keep stealthies out of stealth and chip away at absorbs in between casts. Destro relies on those main damage spells so buffing them makes the most sense. Sure we could use Supremacy with an Observer, but the extra damage on our burst is by far more valuable. Don't even start with Service, because double pets that are weak don't really help much at all. Could use it as a double silence, but it still doesn't even compare to the 25% buff to our other spells. On top of that, pets without Supremacy are weak as fuck and just fall over and died if targeted at all. Destro is a direct damage spell and as such feels better when buffing our direct damage abilities.

For Afflic, it's obviously a toss up between Supremacy and Sac. Sac doesn't increase the damage of our DoTs at all and only affects Drain Soul, MG and Haunt really. The extra Haunt damage is nice for burst, but Affliction doesn't burst the same way Destro or Demo do, so I can see why some people take it and some people don't. For Service, Afflic faces the same problem Destro is facing: it doesn't do enough burst damage and our secondary pets are weak. Two Felhunters won't exactly kill a target. Supremacy works for Afflic because it doesn't just rely on direct damage spells and a lot of people just remember the way Afflic always played. Afflic without a Felpup/Observer or Succubus feels weird.

For Demo, Supremacy is also the obvious choice because of the Wrathguard. 25% MS is great, you get steady damage and he doesn't die as fast. Service would be viable for Demo in both PvP and PvE if it didn't have to compete with Supremacy. In PvE it actually maths out ahead of Supremacy but then it's just another CD to hit, lowering overall consistent damage. In PvP it can't compete since the burst isn't high enough to score a kill. The only reason people are taking Sacrifice is because it increases burst by a lot, but then they still run with a pet until they want to burst. DF generation is too important for Demo so nobody wants to give the pet up, especially since DF generation already feels slow as hell.

So as you can see, Sac isn't the only good choice and it's actually not by far the best talent. Service should need to be looked at again, but Sac and Supremacy are fine.

---------- Post added 2012-12-11 at 05:34 PM ----------

Damage with pets is fine, damage with Sac is more. They're more likely to hammer Sac down than bring pets up; especially when virtually all our burst issues in PvP are related to Sac.

Burst issues aren't related to Sac, burst issues are related to the insane difference between our hardest hitting spells and our lowest hitting spells. CB hits for up to 3x as hard as Incinerate and Conflag. Immolate simply tickles other teams. I've said this plenty of times before, but the only way to lower burst is to decrease CB damage, cast time and ember cost, buff Conflag, Incin, and Immolate. Actually, don't even focus on the fix I just described, just realize that as long as our top damage spell is so far beyond all of our other spells our burst will be a problem. Sustained is shit, burs too high.

Same goes for Demo. Shadowbolt hits for too little and has too slow of a cast time. Soulfire simply doesn't hit hard enough. The initial Hand of Gul'dan doesn't hit hard enough, the Shadowflame DoT is fine though. Demo has crazy burst with all CD's up and those Chaos Waves, but it just doesn't do a lot of damage outside of that. I've always advocated for at least a 2 second base cast time for SB, not the shit we have right now.

Affliction is actually exactly where it needs to be, burst healing is just out of control.

The same burst problem is seen with every burst class by the way. Frost Mages don't do enough damage with Frostbolt outside of Freezes and too much with all their instants, Frostbolts and Frost Bombs while targets are frozen. The idea is good, the difference between frozen and non frozen is simply too extreme.

Warriors have the same thing. Their abilities hit for good amounts, but while burst is up they hit for insane amounts. They don't attack as fast as Fury and as such have less attacks that hit for more. Add burst CD's and you have OP things happening.

SPriests have the burst problem too. They don't do enough damage with casted spells but too much burst with instant Mind Spike and Mind Blast procs on top of Halo.

Hunters are actually fine right now, though their burst problem came from 30 times the amount of attacks as other classes in the same small window. Blink Strike might become a problem, but Hunters aren't too bad anymore.

Frost DK's are similar. They have a lot of sustained damage and crazy burst with CD's up. Obliterate hits for a crapload, especially against casters.

I could continue, but as you can see, the burst problem is often times due to every class having those 1 or 2 abilities that hit for far more than the rest of them. It feels great when playing them, but it also results in crazy burst when coupled with CD's.

[Jessicka]

Analyze why this is the case and it becomes pretty clear.

I already did a long time ago. Sac has tremendous synergy with Havoc for Destruction, and the numbers for Affliction are just a country mile ahead of using a pet. That's just how it is. Pets only come in to those specs when you're single targetting, have a lot of movement and for whatever reason aren't using KJC.

I see a lot of your analysis goes into PvP; and like I said, much of it is Sac related. Sure, burst on it's own might be a problem but for Warlocks; Sac only serves to exacerbate it, stretching those big numbers further. There's not really anything else to be said about it.

[Stormspellz]

No they don't, please do not speak for the WHOLE warlock community o.k. please don't do that. before blood fear warlocks fear was a joke.people forget that fear is the main cc/defense a warlock has, the demonic circle needs to be cast before the fight to be of use, and demonic gateway takes way too long to cast to be considered a useful pvp defense, and our silence, charm and disarm have to be chosen between our pets so those are not really main cc's. druids have had the ability to use cyclone on instant cast for a good while and it was never an issue, heck priests have an instant fear, and an instant horror and thats not an issue not to mention their psychic horror pet that keeps casting horror or fear or whatever it is.

the main issue here is warlocks use to be able to be rofl stomped to the point where everyone thought of them as a joke and now that people have to strategize and think about how to beat them they're "op" and things like blood fear are "op" and ridiculous. I'm sorry but don't blame the spell blame the people who combine this ability with other class abilities and exploit and spam it. the spell itself is not an issue, heck half the people who are complaining are the same people who exploit any broken mechanic and are prone to using the flavor of the month class

ok every decent lock that has the basic understanding of overall balance wants blood fear gone, happy?

instant spam is bad game design there was to much in cata and for what ever stupid reason they added truck loads in mop.

[Kildragon]

I already did a long time ago. Sac has tremendous synergy with Havoc for Destruction, and the numbers for Affliction are just a country mile ahead of using a pet. That's just how it is. Pets only come in to those specs when you're single targetting, have a lot of movement and for whatever reason aren't using KJC.

I see a lot of your analysis goes into PvP; and like I said, much of it is Sac related. Sure, burst on it's own might be a problem but for Warlocks; Sac only serves to exacerbate it, stretching those big numbers further. There's not really anything else to be said about it.

Yes, Sac has tremendous synergy with Havoc, but it doesn't make it OP on its own. Blizz balanced the talents for Destro to be almost exactly equal in terms of single target damage. This would work only if single target fights were still the norm and if pets weren't such a liability. On any multi target fight where you have to swap targets, Sac comes in first anyways because none of our pets move at the speed that Hunter pets move at. With Havoc, this just increases the gap further.

On top of that, pets have always had dumb AI's and have been annoying since the beginning of time. If you have it on passive so it doesn't do dumb shit you need to constantly monitor it. On the assist function it often decided to run between targets you may be multi dotting and spends half its time running around. This is an inherent problem with pet classes and is only furthered by our pets being half as fast as Hunter pets and our only ranged pet being dead last in damage.

The problem doesn't lie with the numbers that Sac provides, the problem lies with what Sac means for us; finally being able to run without the liability of our pet turning our damage to shit. Sac is just too useful to nerf into the ground, plus nerfing the numbers that Sac gives us would make the talent entirely useless AND make Destro and Affliction shit in PvE. If anything they need to make the other talents more attractive.

As for PvP, Sac doesn't stretch those numbers further. It's an across the board damage increase so in relative terms, our hardest hitting spells don't hit even harder when compared to our weaker spells. Lessen the gap between Chaos Bolt and Incinerate, Conflag and Immolate and our burst is fixed.

Edit: Also forgot to add, burst will naturally be highest on those classes with the fewest damage sources. Destro didn't have burst in Cata cause we had 11 damage sources instead of the 4 we have now.

[Tya]

I can see Sac getting nerfed heavily in 5.2. It's far more popular than the alternatives, because it's more effective.

It's more effective because pets have retarded pathing issues, are unreliable and die to a harsh glance. The problem isn't that sac is too strong.

[Jessicka]

Yes, Sac has tremendous synergy with Havoc, but it doesn't make it OP on its own. Blizz balanced the talents for Destro to be almost exactly equal in terms of single target damage. This would work only if single target fights were still the norm and if pets weren't such a liability. On any multi target fight where you have to swap targets, Sac comes in first anyways because none of our pets move at the speed that Hunter pets move at. With Havoc, this just increases the gap further.

On top of that, pets have always had dumb AI's and have been annoying since the beginning of time. If you have it on passive so it doesn't do dumb shit you need to constantly monitor it. On the assist function it often decided to run between targets you may be multi dotting and spends half its time running around. This is an inherent problem with pet classes and is only furthered by our pets being half as fast as Hunter pets and our only ranged pet being dead last in damage.

The problem doesn't lie with the numbers that Sac provides, the problem lies with what Sac means for us; finally being able to run without the liability of our pet turning our damage to shit. Sac is just too useful to nerf into the ground, plus nerfing the numbers that Sac gives us would make the talent entirely useless AND make Destro and Affliction shit in PvE. If anything they need to make the other talents more attractive.

For Affliction, take a look at the sim numbers; the spec doesn't go to shit, it just ends up on par with Demonology instead of being ahead of the entire DPS pack.

As for PvP, Sac doesn't stretch those numbers further. It's an across the board damage increase so in relative terms, our hardest hitting spells don't hit even harder when compared to our weaker spells. Lessen the gap between Chaos Bolt and Incinerate, Conflag and Immolate and our burst is fixed.

Edit: Also forgot to add, burst will naturally be highest on those classes with the fewest damage sources. Destro didn't have burst in Cata cause we had 11 damage sources instead of the 4 we have now.

Stop talking rubbish. It means that your damage output is split between fewer sources, meaning your burst damage is less spread over time. That means bigger burst.

[Hellfury]

Rather than nerfing sac, they should just buff pet damage, so it would be worth bringing one instead of going solo, nerfing sac would be stupid, but then again, it's blizzard.

Imo the problem isnt pet damage its the time on target, in a BG a warlock is constantly changing targets either becuase they died or focus caller changes the target etc etc.

They move slow like a crawl and seems like they spend 80% of the time traveling than actual doing damage, compared that to Hunter pets with sprint, charges, passive movment speed warlock pets are snails.

For Affliction, take a look at the sim numbers; the spec doesn't go to shit, it just ends up on par with Demonology instead of being ahead of the entire DPS pack.

that means nothing cause in reality aff isnt that much different than some other DPS specs by real parses

[Rarespawn2012]

meh, I don't use blood fear anyways. Of course I'm not much into pvp so I can understand the pvpers rage over this.

[Deleted]

Just an fyi. I don't think I have seen anyone mention Shadowfury once. Just letting you all know we still have an instant cc.......

It's also a 30 sec cd 3 sec stun and magic sharing dr's with most other stuns. It's pretty damn awful really.

[wholol]

That's all that needs to be said about it really. I've used burning rush in BGs to great effect. It's a good escape tool, and it's a good chasing tool as well. Whenever you have a healer with you, Burning Rush has pretty much zero cost, because you (usually) have GoSac recovering 2% max health, and you have soul harvest when out of combat. Like I said before, a single hot rolling on you and the health cost for burning rush is effectively zero. Go try it out.

The question is, why would anyone take burning rush when the super duper mega OP blood fear is sitting right next to it?

the same is true for UW. It's extremely useful to break yourself free of a CC chain when your partner is getting focused. It's not meant to be a second trinket for when you are getting focused, but even then it might still save you. Not being deep frozen means frost bomb hits for nothing (it gets dispelled by UW, don't forget) and all you eat is a fire blast (maybe an ice lance if the mage didn't realize what just happened). 20% health is a fair price to pay for such a powerful effect.

But again, why would you take it in a world where Blood Fear is right next to it?

My point is, nerf blood fear first, then if a nerfed blood fear is STILL better than those talents, sure change them around. Right now any change to those is a premature decision, which will ultimately lead them to revert to what they are now, or worse, nerf their current forms. And either way in my opinion it just takes away time that could be better spent looking at other QoL changes.

I understand where you're coming from, and you do have a point, but what I'm trying to prove to you is that ,right now, in mop we're the only classes that have penalties when using abilities, why should it be so ? the effects are strong, but I can tell you of a few other talents for pretty much all classes that have strong talents with no downside, I'm not asking to be like that, but I just want it to have less of an impact overall on my health pool, there are times where you could use neither of these talents, in example, you have no healer, no GoSac ( which is no longer the talent to choose in arena now unless you're going destro ), and your hp is pretty low like lets say around 15%, you wouldn't dare gamble on it by using burning rush , you would die if you take the risk and take 1 hit randomly ( consider HS /DR out of the equation for now , just proving a point), same for UW, if you are lower than 20% you cannot use it focused or not, I'm just saying that why should we have such negatives in our talents, the point I said earlier about "fixing" them was so that they would not be considered OP if their health cost was removed.

Anyways, we've veered off the topic a bit, and most people are just avoiding us lol, let's just hope the change to bloodfear will be decent or if they remove it completely hopefully we'll see some interesting things that actually have some good uses instead of extremely situational at best.

[Jessicka]

Imo the problem isnt pet damage its the time on target, in a BG a warlock is constantly changing targets either becuase they died or focus caller changes the target etc etc.

They move slow like a crawl and seems like they spend 80% of the time traveling than actual doing damage, compared that to Hunter pets with sprint, charges, passive movment speed warlock pets are snails.

And yet, the argument for pets having lower potential is the ease of higher up time by fixing them against one target, particularly during high movement, as well as having a high proportion of your damage unaffected by rotation errors.

that means nothing cause in reality aff isnt that much different than some other DPS specs by real parses

It's very much top end, just not by an unreasonable margin as Fire was pre-nerf. Someone has to be top, so that's not really a problem; I just can't see Blizz buffing Service and Supremacy to bring them in line with Sac, rather than going the other way when the class would still be competitive and it would give them an opportunity to deal with some of the burst issues. I'd like to be wrong.

Anyway, this has digressed a long way from the subject in the title and probably deserves it's own thread...

[Sylar Hao]

Warlocks in mop have hands down the strongest defensive cds out of any class. They have instant cc as well lest you're forgetting you're level 30 tier. You'll only be shit with the removal of blood fear if you're just not a good player to begin with.

Also I love how everyone is ignoring the fact that the interviews talked about instant cc's across the board. Expect nerfs to things like shockwave, psyfiend and pom as well.

Uhmmm... strongest defensive CD's??? what?? Our strongest one is also one of our offensive moves and can easily be countered with a single CC (Unending Resolve).
Unbound Will can waste an enemy's CC, yes, but it also can help an enemy team who's CC-chaining you by reducing your health by 20%, CC->UW->CC. Finally, Sacrificial Pact shield strength is the same as a single hit, Soul Link means "please, attack my pet and kill me in the process" and Dark Bargain have two sides, either you're being trained and when it finishes you're also getting a nice dot to help them kill you or you just make them change their focus making it a wasted defensive CD.

I, of course, won't say our defensive toolkit is bad, cause it isn't, in fact, it's pretty cool because they feel very warlock-y, but they're definitely not the strongest in game.

As for instant CC... uhmmm... Felhunter's spell lock... uhmmm, uhmmmm... and then talents... a talent tier dedicated to CC just like many other classes, and Blood Fear which costs health, and replaces our regular Fear... so yeah...

Sorry but you're not right about warlocks.