Warlock patch 5.4 discussion

[Szarala]

KJC change kinda makes sense. I think all casters should be able to cast on the move, but until then I can see where they are coming from.

Let's even suppose that for a moment.. this is not the type of change you make mid-to-end of expansion. As I said before, I could understand it from a "no mandatory talents" standpoint, but you can't just rip out something that has become a fundamental aspect of playstyle like that, nor can you go from the one extreme of "mandatory" to the other of "useless". These changes would easily give warlocks the worst lv 90 talents of all 11 classes.. no contest.

As said, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.. either massive DoT buffs or mobile Malefic Grasp/Drain Soul casting baseline, otherwise I'm at a total loss as to what they think they're accomplishing.

[Skayth]

15 secs and on such a long cd wow, that's going to hurt affli a bunch, unless they plan on having the fights being stand in one place...

fights... standing in one place... 12~16 bosses.... LOLZ you may get 2 "patchwerk" style

The pvp set, after looking at it, after the shock of the terribleness of our pve set, i thought it was a god send. But... after a while of looking at it, I am saying its a good set only. It reminds me of death knights a tad bit too much, and the helm of blades through the hat sorta offbeats me. I wish the hat was simply a "wiches" hat, or similar to cata dungeons helm (top part), the face plate of a skull is nice, but still slighty reminds me death knight. Or if you want to get technical... Necromancer set straight out.

[Nazmina]

Stupid changes. People bitch about fear constantly, there's too much cc in the game so they give us baseline aoe fear, way to go. all our 90's our usless now. Homogenzation hoooo! a bland inferior cheap copy of spirtwalkers grace and a version of MF so niche It'll end up used .01% of the time if that. Back to everyone using crappy av. I like how they gave us 10% dmg reduction because we were squishy in pvp. Did nothing to improve that, and then took it away. Guess that will make AV a little better in pvp now right?

Oh but they had an issue with warlock surviability in pve, so they buff soulleech which no one uses in pvp but let us nom ground fire. Brilliant.

If they absolutely need crucify KJC for their idle whims they should wait until next expansion instead of fucking over every single warlock that got used to the play style mid expansion.

[infernity]

fights... standing in one place... 12~16 bosses.... LOLZ you may get 2 "patchwerk" style

I know i doubt we'll even have one patchwerk tbh... i guess now we wait and see until we can get onto the PTR, and see how heavily it affects us. With this change tho, it's rather important that as many locks as possible get onto the PTR, and provide solid feedback, rather than just crying about the changes. For destro, at least they'[ll still generate embers if they're spamming fel flame, and demo can still move and do shit, but affli has far too many casts, unless fel flmae becomes mana free maybe...

pfft, just let us cast our fillers

[Cathbadh]

as for KJC .. we've only had it for 4 patches.. i'm a little surprised people are claiming it made the class; but i'm a little ignorant about PvE so i will be careful here.

suffice to say.. i want it gone. casters should not be perma mobile.. but at the same - the compensation has to be massive because this was a massive crutch. i said verbatim .. verbatim the same thing about blood fear when it was on the block.. the compensation wasn't high enough and locks went to <2% representation in arena brackets.

cant wait to play PTR and see!

The problem for PVE is the way they've taken the class in general.

1) Aff DoTs just don't hit that hard anymore, MG makes them awesome. Channeling doesn't mesh with movement at all.

2) This means more fel flame use which in itself is a DPS loss. Combine that with how badly it eats into mana and you'll lifetap more. More time spent lifetapping means yet another DPS loss.

3) For Destro you have a class that's now based around a slow as molasses cast of Chaos Bolt, which doesn't mesh with immobility. Of course it also means you'll fel flame more, which again brings us back to its mana cost, except for Destro there's no lifetap. So instead of casting Chaos Bolt when your procs are lined up or whenever else its optimal, you'll do it because you're OOM.

4) This part is opinion so YMMV, but it seems like in this expansion more and more fights require much more movement than in expansions past.



Aside from the PVE concerns I find moving and casting to be incredibly fun, to the point that it is honestly my favorite part of this expansion. I'd take a flat 10% across the board damage nerf to keep it. I'd take the inane rotations of Cata to keep it. I'm not a fair weather lock who'll quit over this nerf, but there will be plenty that will, which should do wonders for a class that received so much special attention this expansion due to its incredibly low number of players.

[Shahad]

Let's even suppose that for a moment.. this is not the type of change you make mid-to-end of expansion. As I said before, I could understand it from a "no mandatory talents" standpoint, but you can't just rip out something that has become a fundamental aspect of playstyle like that, nor can you go from the one extreme of "mandatory" to the other of "useless". These changes would easily give warlocks the worst lv 90 talents of all 11 classes.. no contest.

As said, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.. either massive DoT buffs or mobile Malefic Grasp/Drain Soul casting baseline, otherwise I'm at a total loss as to what they think they're accomplishing.

Oh I agree, I just though that I could understand the reason behind it. I don't agree one bit with how they're doing it, nor the time they are doing it.

[Mezmaron]

The problem for PVE is the way they've taken the class in general.

1) Aff DoTs just don't hit that hard anymore, MG makes them awesome. Channeling doesn't mesh with movement at all.

2) This means more fel flame use which in itself is a DPS loss. Combine that with how badly it eats into mana and you'll lifetap more. More time spent lifetapping means yet another DPS loss.

3) For Destro you have a class that's now based around a slow as molasses cast of Chaos Bolt, which doesn't mesh with immobility. Of course it also means you'll fel flame more, which again brings us back to its mana cost, except for Destro there's no lifetap. So instead of casting Chaos Bolt when your procs are lined up or whenever else its optimal, you'll do it because you're OOM.

4) This part is opinion so YMMV, but it seems like in this expansion more and more fights require much more movement than in expansions past.



Aside from the PVE concerns I find moving and casting to be incredibly fun, to the point that it is honestly my favorite part of this expansion. I'd take a flat 10% across the board damage nerf to keep it. I'd take the inane rotations of Cata to keep it. I'm not a fair weather lock who'll quit over this nerf, but there will be plenty that will, which should do wonders for a class that received so much special attention this expansion due to its incredibly low number of players.

All of the above sums up my feelings as well. I'd just like to add I think all casters should have some form of moving and casting, it's been one of the best additions to the game since its inception. I was actually hoping it would be baselined next xp rather than rolled back.

[Count Zero]

We need to have some deep, serious discussion about KJC ... either how to be compensated should it go live as it currently is in the notes, or why we need it to either not change or go back to "cast while moving with movement reduction as passive, cast while moving as active use".

Destro and Demo won't be hurt too too bad by this (only one dot for Destro with Conflag and Fel Flame not being too bad, Demo can go Meta and spam ToC), but Afflic is gonna get nailed hard (with Fel Flame refreshing our dots ... it's either possibly lose empowered dots or just not cast while we move).

So either Afflic is gonna have to be buffed through the roof for theoretical patchwerk-style encounters so that in real encounters it still does fine -- which I think is just not gonna be feasible ... or maybe something like Soulburn: Drain Soul -- Drain Soul takes on its execute properties and the channel is not interrupted by movement, but channel length is reduced by half (which presents its own problems).

Just tossing things at the wall here. We need to find good ideas to rally around. Either something to at least somewhat make up for what we're losing, or a cohesive argument that they can't refute for why they just shouldn't change this now (or go back the passive/active route).

[ComputerNerd]

I think some sort of meeting mid-way might have been better for KJC.
Perhaps a passive, but with some sort of buff removed, or a cooldown activated by casting while moving.
Outside of that cooldown/without the buff then you would simply get the standard error when trying to cast while moving.

Or borrowing from the hunter aspect model, where you switch into a stance for casting on the move but with a penalty for doing so.
Such as the movement speed, or an increased cost or cast time.

[Szarala]

All of the above sums up my feelings as well. I'd just like to add I think all casters should have some form of moving and casting, it's been one of the best additions to the game since its inception. I was actually hoping it would be baselined next xp rather than rolled back.

There was even a blue post not that long ago (I can't remember by whom.. wasn't GC) where they said that the devs felt that turret casters were a bit of an outdated concept. Were it up to me ALL casters would have:

* 1-2 big windup, heavy cast time, stationary cast spells.. like how Pyroblast was back in the day. Not something you'd cast as part of a normal rotation, but something you'd use when your buffs line up, or the boss has a vulnerability or your opponent is stunned... and definitely not something that can be made lolinstant with a proc or a cooldown (that's all too common right now, imo)
* 1-2 instant spells (not counting DoT/HoTs); a weak, no-cd one or a moderate one with a short cd or both depending on what's right for the balance and flavor of the class/spec
* ..but the bulk of spells should have cast times (or be channelled), but able to be cast on the move. Whether these spells need a movement penalty or a haste penalty or no penalty for casting on the move at all can be determined on a per-spell basis.

[Shahad]

Stance dancing isn't something Blizzard is particularly keen on, nor is the playerbase. So I don't think that would work.

[Woz]

I think some sort of meeting mid-way might have been better for KJC.
Perhaps a passive, but with some sort of buff removed, or a cooldown activated by casting while moving.
Outside of that cooldown/without the buff then you would simply get the standard error when trying to cast while moving.

Or borrowing from the hunter aspect model, where you switch into a stance for casting on the move but with a penalty for doing so.
Such as the movement speed, or an increased cost or cast time.

Hunters have no penalty (any more) for moving and casting. It's just baseline "oh hey you can move and cast" now. KJC at least had the debilitating factor of the movement speed reduction. But I agree they should have met us in the middle somewhere instead of just pillaging the ability (so far) and making the entire tier of talents trash once again.

[Szarala]

I think some sort of meeting mid-way might have been better for KJC.
Perhaps a passive, but with some sort of buff removed, or a cooldown activated by casting while moving.
Outside of that cooldown/without the buff then you would simply get the standard error when trying to cast while moving.

Or borrowing from the hunter aspect model, where you switch into a stance for casting on the move but with a penalty for doing so.
Such as the movement speed, or an increased cost or cast time.

I completely disagree.
Why should we have to negotiate being bashed in the skull with a sledgehammer down to being rapped across the knee with a ball-peen?

[Deleted]

Changing how the class plays so dramatically for the rest of the expansion is really bad. Numbers can be tuned, but the fun out of playing a warlock can't. I come from a mage and this was the reason to even continue to play WoW, KJC just felt right and should be given baseline to every caster out there.

One thing I've learned while lurking with mages is that when something like this happens people should voice their concerns as soon as it happens and not wait for any final or official notes, so any warlock that doesn't want to get gutted like that please voice your concern everywhere you can.

[Hexotic]

even if they made it so moving makes you have a 20% CHANCE TO MISS... I would be ok with it..

[Szarala]

I'm also severely hoping the bright idea behind this wasn't this twitter conversation:
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...93484706238465

[lawow74]

Hopefully Blizzard will realize what a boneheaded move this is regarding our lvl 90 talents and ramp it back/not go through with it. But I kind of doubt it. Get ready for 'Warlocks suck for an xpac' time again, I'm afraid.

[Deleted]

First they take everything iconic about Warlocks.

Then they don't supply some of the most demanded stuff for Warlocks.

Then they take anything at least semi-fun still from Warlocks.


Well, might as well quit and play RIFT F2P. Same boring mechanics, but no fee.

[Deleted]

THE KJC change is welcome. Sorry but the whole talent was a fail design from blizzard. Yeh its cool to cast and move but the 30% speed debuff was meh. Plus they balance all our dmg around the fact that we were casting the whole time. If its on use 1.5m and you get a 20 sec window when you can cast and move (no speed debuff) i think its a fair tradeoff, but they have to put it off the gcd to be worth it.
Affliction 4set bonus is completely crap. I dont really know whats in blizzards head atm regarding affliction. With the amount of haste that flies around shard generation is a joke. Affliction doesnt need more shards. What they should address for affliction is aoe. Afflicitons aoe is 1 button. Thats pretty fail. They should add 1 more mechanic or something to provide some snapburst aoe on top of seed.

[Xorn]

Ok, yes, the KJC nerf is pretty bad the the tier set looks... meh

But, can we talk about how incredibly amazing our set bonuses are? I'm drooling lol