GC on Dark Intent/GoS in 5.2

[Phoenexis]

Haha your logic is still very off. You are making it way too grey area, and your definitions conveniently leaves many holes and loop holes.

If your enemy couldn't hurt you, would you still need to fear them? No. Again, you are totally forgetting how much intent plays in this.

In basketball, would you say blocking a shot is defensive? Well, many times after you make a block, your team can recover the ball. So now blocking is offensive?

Fear is most often used to keep yourself safe, or keep people away.

You seem extremely confused, and I'm not sure that I'm getting what you're saying anymore. Basically you're saying that if you kill your enemy, then you're playing defensively since he can't kill you anymore...

---------- Post added 2013-01-08 at 09:51 PM ----------

I'd be ok with that if all of our pets did the exact same damage. At that point you choose your pet based on the buff you want, and the utility skill the pet provides (which is a choice hunters already make). I'd be fine with that.

What I'm not fine with is having pets with varying amounts of DPS, and having to bring the worst possible pet (dps wise) just to bring an essential raid buff.

Although that'd be probably impossible, I can't help but admit that I'd always like to see the Imp benched. Always hated that demon since level 10 (yes, level 10).
But I really doubt Blizzard would ever give us that benefit, it's just too much. I mean, you get 5 sets of utility which would make up for almost all the buffs and CCs in the game.
The idea with all demons bringing a buff with the badass Demo raidbuff icon would be lovely though :3 But no Blood Pact mechanics, just a buff that doesn't depend on range.

[pokeadott]

Old Blood Fear - OP. New Blood Fear - Garbage. Lock Survivability in 5.2 - Awful.

On topic - AI = Sp/Crit, DI = SP/Stam. Current imp mechanic is stupid beyond belief and another random legacy of old wow. Bliz being bliz, shocktastic.

[xskarma]

Current imp mechanic is stupid beyond belief and another random legacy of old wow. Bliz being bliz, shocktastic.

I think this is more Blizz being smart and changing things incrementally instead of changing everything all at once and not wasting developement time but sticking to specific design goals. There was a need to severe the spec identification being tied to certain pets ( meaning some pets were never used) so that's what they changed. Now they face the fact that those changes left some appendixes, like Blood pact, so now they can say that that is a problem and change it when they take their next look at pets. Not saying it wouldn't have been better to change it immediately, but it makes sense that they put in the hours to make sure certain design goals are met and not worry about every single detail all the time, cause that would simply cost too much developement time.

[Rayaleith]

Fear is a defensive spell. That can be used offensively. And just because it can be used offensively, they added the diminishing returns. It is like priest's scream. That shouts "I am defensive", yet you see priests charging towards you to fear. Some people have the urge to talk all the time.

[Deleted]

I think the problem was less that "blood fear is an offensive spell" and more "people are using blood fear as an offensive spell".

It was designed as a means of peeling a melee who is on you, which it can do just fine - you pay a slight health cost and get them away from you, unless they're a warrior or dk, and get a breather. It works, people use it like that - there's no problem, blood fear worked as a defensive ability.

Unfortunately, it also worked as an offensive one - as often, if not more often - you'd blood fear a member of the enemy team when going for the kill - and it certainly worked in that fashion just as well, if not better, than it did in it's previous one.

As much as I hate to defend blizzards choices on warlock pvp balance, they're right on this one;
Blizzard can give you a knife to eat your meal with, but when you start using it to stab people, don't be surprised to have it replaced with a plastic one.

The problem is that
a) the new blood fear is absolute trash that no one will take, and I'm sure they'll be less hasty to give us a better replacement than they were to take our crutch
b) Blood fear is exactly that - a crutch, and they don't seem to be addressing any of the problems we have, though I can only hope after neo-blood fear makes us even worse that it's a glaring enough problem for someone to do something about it

[Biruta]

New Blood Fear: Only when hit by melee damage you gain a 15 seconds buff (45 s cooldown) to instantly fear an enemy for 5 seconds. No health cost, doesnt replace fear.

Ok, now we have a good defense skill, not that shit coming in 5.2.

[Rayaleith]

The bad thing is that you can waste it on a pet.