A way to increase warlock survive ability

[Natixsphere]

So I am sure a lot of you heard how Azael received an email from the devs saying sorry we don't know how to make warlocks good again. One big issue we have is living long enough to make anything happen. Why don't they just make it so the glyph of dark apotheosis can be used by all 3 specs but make it so that when used in destruction or aff that the damage the warlock does would just be reduced by 10%. This could deff improve warlock survive ability and make the class better all around. Thought opinions?

[dawawe]

want to see where this goes. I was not aware lock were in a bad place in pvp cuz i seem to do fine. we have higher health pools tan everyone in the same gear, big defensive CDs, increased healing received, high mobility, decent CC, and an escape not tied to LoS. I have not had a problem living long enough to do anything.

[JJShadoe]

want to see where this goes. I was not aware lock were in a bad place in pvp cuz i seem to do fine. we have higher health pools tan everyone in the same gear, big defensive CDs, increased healing received, high mobility, decent CC, and an escape not tied to LoS. I have not had a problem living long enough to do anything.

Agreed. I thought people were complaining that locks were too tough/had too many defensive CDs, not the opposite. I mean, I'll get burnt down by a hunter and a rogue focusing me pretty quick regardless of my CDs, but without a healer, most classes would.

[Nicola]

Nah, it was mainly about affliction doing way to little damage, but not knowing how to fix it.

[dawawe]

Nah, it was mainly about affliction doing way to little damage, but not knowing how to fix it.

Personally affliction is my favorite spec, but i haven't played it much since Malefic Grasp. Blizzard was so against us using channeled fillers in Cata then gave us one. I just don't like the feel of it. It seems its going to be even worse with the KJC changed. I heard something about them making haunt castable while moving baseline, but that seems pointless casting haunt isn't the problem having an channeled nuke tied to us is. Maybe nightfall procs make your Malefic grasps channel faster or make it so if you're interrupted while channeling it deals a % of the extra dot dmg.

[Deleted]

Personally affliction is my favorite spec, but i haven't played it much since Malefic Grasp. Blizzard was so against us using channeled fillers in Cata then gave us one. I just don't like the feel of it. It seems its going to be even worse with the KJC changed. I heard something about them making haunt castable while moving baseline, but that seems pointless casting haunt isn't the problem having an channeled nuke tied to us is. Maybe nightfall procs make your Malefic grasps channel faster or make it so if you're interrupted while channeling it deals a % of the extra dot dmg.

Agree with a lot of this.

Haven't heard any implications of making haunt casts doable on the move, but that isn't going to fix things - the cast is quick enough as is, if there's any problem with haunts it's that it's jockeying for SSs with SB:SS, but they've tried fixing that with dispel protection.

The main problems seem to stem from MG.

A lot of dot damage is tied into it, making dots impotent without it.
It's also channeled filler, bad enough with KJC, let alone when the upcoming patch is aiming to remove KJC's passive.

Probably a bit bias since I detest MG as filler even in pve, it feels bleh - I don't want to feel like a shadowpriest, give me shadowbolt back. And that would be the solution I wish they'd go for, revert some aspects of warlocks back to Cata - they did some good work making the soulshard system work and be interesting to some degree, which was my only major problem with affliction in Cata - I'd have been happier if they left our core rotation a little more intact instead of rebuilding it from the ground up. MG has fixed a few problems in pve, but it's also caused a few in pve and a heap in pvp.

I don't expect blizzard to go changing things back so soon after the revamp since it's basically saying they fucked up, but I certainly wish they would, though considering how many people enjoy afflictions current pve incarnation, I might be a minority in my loathing of MG.

[Last Starfighter]

So I am sure a lot of you heard how Azael received an email from the devs saying sorry we don't know how to make warlocks good again. One big issue we have is living long enough to make anything happen. Why don't they just make it so the glyph of dark apotheosis can be used by all 3 specs but make it so that when used in destruction or aff that the damage the warlock does would just be reduced by 10%. This could deff improve warlock survive ability and make the class better all around. Thought opinions?

I'm sure it totally said. "Sorry, we don't know how to make make warlocks good again" XD

[Deleted]

Survivabiity wise I don't think warlocks need anything. Every spec is not always gonna work out, especially when it comes to true dps classes like warlocks.

[Nicola]

Survivabiity wise I don't think warlocks need anything. Every spec is not always gonna work out, especially when it comes to true dps classes like warlocks.

Hmm, I wouldn't mind some good buffs though. Compared to 5.0, our self healing and shielding is pretty much halved and the current changes on the ptr ain't improving that at all.

[Lockpower]

So I am sure a lot of you heard how Azael received an email from the devs saying sorry we don't know how to make warlocks good again. One big issue we have is living long enough to make anything happen. Why don't they just make it so the glyph of dark apotheosis can be used by all 3 specs but make it so that when used in destruction or aff that the damage the warlock does would just be reduced by 10%. This could deff improve warlock survive ability and make the class better all around. Thought opinions?

You're basically asking them to revert the fel armor change they did. Seeing as how they see locks having too much survivability in pve I don't know if they would change it back.

[Nicola]

You're basically asking them to revert the fel armor change they did. Seeing as how they see locks having too much survivability in pve I don't know if they would change it back.

Fel Armor is not the problem for PvE though, it's soul leech having a too high cap and scaling too good with dps.

[Bsod]

i though warlock are in a good place with that shield and selfheal
in duels they can outheal (with shield added as heal) a ret pala so no problem there.
the problem is that nearly all classes are doing to much burst so everybody things they are glas cannons

[Erolian]

I'm pretty sure the only way they're going to fix affliction after this is going to be giving shadow bolt back, removing MG and buffing dots. At least that's what I'd do. I also cannot believe fel armor got the nerf instead of soul leech. I mean... what? They might just be removing all of those passive damage reductions for range dps but IMO that change just makes the PvP problems worse and hardly scrapes the problems in PvE.

[Lockpower]

Fel Armor is not the problem for PvE though, it's soul leech having a too high cap and scaling too good with dps.

Is that why they buffed soul leech then? huh...

[Natixsphere]

Sorry ended up becoming very busy yesterday. If most of you do arena and by the way it looks you do. You will notice that even with a healer other classes burn threw our defensive's very fast. On my battle group literally all you face is KFC Hunter/feral/x or thug or somethign where i am the train target. using pet sac is pointless since they will burn threw that shield in one gcd most of the time and dark bargain is great but its on a 3 min cd and we take 50% of the dmg after the shield goes away. All in all if we are forced to use our defensive's early we are screwed on the next burst set up. Now my normal mmr is around 2100-2200ish as of right now and ive been running demo/enhance/x for fun but even as demo i feel like i am taking so much damage as soon as i go into any form other then dark apothoesis which is why i was thinking maybe giving that to every spec could help out more.

[Nicola]

i though warlock are in a good place with that shield and selfheal
in duels they can outheal (with shield added as heal) a ret pala so no problem there.
the problem is that nearly all classes are doing to much burst so everybody things they are glas cannons

I think you are either really underestimating how strong retribution healing actually is or overestimating how strong our own healing is.

Is that why they buffed soul leech then? huh...

I wouldn't be calling that a buff, more like a minor fix to something that should have happened several patches ago.

[Lockpower]

Soul leech proccing off of 300k+ shadowburns doesn't seem like a minor fix. I'd say it's still the 10% to all damage reduction.

[justinmccray111]

Our survivability is fine.

I'm surprised they didn't nerf our survival cooldowns in the ptr.

[Werst]

PVE raid warlock survival is too strong.
PVP warlock survival is way too weak.

That is the distinction the devs are having problems with. Sadly they can't seem to wrap their heads around the notion that dps inflation combined with soul leech's cap being 100% of lock HP is what fuels the pve survival since they are completely absent from pvp. PVP locks need better passive survival and a way to fight back better when focused. Melee uptime on locks is higher than most pve fights which means we need to escape better, fight back when focused better, or survive better. A far better option is give locks the 10% back and cap soul leech at 25-35% of the lock's HP.

DA is one of those things the devs really aren't comfortable with and don't know how to handle. You could "fix" lock pvp by letting demo go DA to meta with no or minimal DF loss (just like dk's/feral/warriors using their defensive options without completely giving up a secondary resource that is extremely slow to build in pvp) It just will never happen and since its one of those things the devs are squeamish about.

You could fix aff pvp quite a bit letting DL/MG/DS be uninterruptable.....0 pve impact, major help in pvp and takes less of the load off trying to balance dots doing all the work in pvp while NOT wanting dots doing all the work in pve. Aff especially needs its fillers to be mobile since we are balanced around them being up 100% of the time to keep up.

Unfortunately we get KJC gutted and no thought of how things can function thereafter. Finding the middle ground of say mobile castable fillers with KJC being an option like SWG is a choice. That is a decent middleground. 5.0 KJC was used by less than 1% and modern KJC is used by 99% of afflocks. Blizz needs to be better at finding a balanced option but with locks they err on the side of "to the ground" when "adjusting".

[Natixsphere]

Ok so since they are nerfing our survive ability because its to good in pve now would be a great time for them to let all three specs use DA to help counter the amount of dmg we will be taking. At this point I really see warlocks just falling over in 5.4 arena/pvp.