Warlock WoD Beta test - General chat

[Bullettime]

Seems we will also lose this one
http://strawpoll.me/2380111/r
close enough, but I guess there are just more DK players out there

It really comes down to which playerbase is going to be the most active/vocal about bad stuff. I would argue that DKs have been a lot more collective and vocal about concerns. Warlock discussion has come down to myself and a couple others driving almost all of it and pretty much discussing amongst ourselves. And I'm not even a Warlock main.

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What are they angry about, Chimaera and Sniper Training?

Survival mechanics radically changed with a fluid and widely loved playstyle being devolved into an incredibly choppy and jarring mess.
Marksmanship stripped to total barebones without any rebuilding like Arms was. It's near a two button rotation with talent options being nothing but cooldown fire and forgets or passives with zero gameplay interaction.
Beast Mastery design untouched, leaving it as a jack of all trades and master of all while the other two specs have been designed to have more niche strengths.
Some of the most boring talent options for any class.

There's plenty of issues for a bunch of classes but Hunters have been one of the most vocally disgruntled classes this cycle because two of their specs have been totally and completely butchered.

edit: Also note that there's been more vocalness about the state of Hunters coming from Hunters towards the top of the chain as well. Your Warlock class heroes have been staying near silent on the problems and have done fuck all when it comes to giving feedback and discussion. These are often the people who help drive discussions or draw more attention to problems and they've been nonexistent on both Twitter and feedback forums.

[Baconeggcheese]

I don't think we have a chance in the Celestalon poll, and we may lose the Holinka one aswell

Lol when I posted that it had just started and everything was even.

Shit MM hunters are making him hold to his word.

We're neck and neck in the holinka one.

http://strawpoll.me/2380111

Come on gents! we need more people to vote aff!

edit: aw it ended. He probably saw he was about to have to play aff and ended it the second DK got ahead.

[Hellfury]

I would really really like him to play Aff lock in a dungeon envoirment, its so awkward with SS costing 1 shard.

[Orkokhan]

It really comes down to which playerbase is going to be the most active/vocal about bad stuff. I would argue that DKs have been a lot more collective and vocal about concerns. Warlock discussion has come down to myself and a couple others driving almost all of it and pretty much discussing amongst ourselves. And I'm not even a Warlock main.

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Survival mechanics radically changed with a fluid and widely loved playstyle being devolved into an incredibly choppy and jarring mess.
Marksmanship stripped to total barebones without any rebuilding like Arms was. It's near a two button rotation with talent options being nothing but cooldown fire and forgets or passives with zero gameplay interaction.
Beast Mastery design untouched, leaving it as a jack of all trades and master of all while the other two specs have been designed to have more niche strengths.
Some of the most boring talent options for any class.

There's plenty of issues for a bunch of classes but Hunters have been one of the most vocally disgruntled classes this cycle because two of their specs have been totally and completely butchered.

edit: Also note that there's been more vocalness about the state of Hunters coming from Hunters towards the top of the chain as well. Your Warlock class heroes have been staying near silent on the problems and have done fuck all when it comes to giving feedback and discussion. These are often the people who help drive discussions or draw more attention to problems and they've been nonexistent on both Twitter and feedback forums.

I totally understand where you're coming from Bullet, but for me this is indicative of the problem with Blizzard. They SHOULD be testing EVERY spec themselves and not leaving it to just the theorycrafters for most while they test or play-test which one won by the most number of votes. It's their product, they should be concerned with every last one of them as well they should be willing to test every last spec in the content they expect others to have to trudge through in any of the available specs, for the simple reason of quality control. When they sit there and speak to posters as they do and then even go so far as to say they have their internal numbers (Which conveniently never get released to us) and use that as a reason against following community suggestions, I have to think that quality control is one of the last things on any of their minds.

I mean, do we really think as a Warlock community that Xelnath wouldn't have been able to recognize the issue we pose with losing Fel Flame? Yet, Celestalon apparently can't see it period? I find it ridiculous that they don't have someone who's paid to actually be an expert (to whatever degree that means within reason) on every single class and spec. Sure, they can main whatever they want on their own personal time, but for the sake of their work and position, class expertise should be a given, especially when they change the playstyle every couple of years.

For me to sit here and think, oh it's OUR fault that OUR grievances aren't being addressed and not theirs is ludicrous. It also shifts the blame from them to us. Oh, well if YOU had been more vocal in Beta... I'm sorry, the issue(s) have been cited, it's Blizzard who has failed to address. I refuse to take the blame on this because I don't have a beta-key. There's too many hurdles and obstacles for class feedback representation to be equal. One class is surely going to surpass another in terms of feedback because of the model we have for testing. This is why I say it's ridiculous that they don't have class experts themselves that can immediately (or within a very short timeframe) address an issue raised by not only someone who's qualified to be a theorycrafter, but by the average Joe warlock or someone trying out the class for the very first time.

[rhorle]

I totally understand where you're coming from Bullet, but for me this is indicative of the problem with Blizzard. They SHOULD be testing EVERY spec themselves and not leaving it to just the theorycrafters for most while they test or play-test which one won by the most number of votes.

They do test every spec themselves. This was a poll for a Blizzard employ to have fun playing a certain class for a beta community event. It was not and never has been a poll to decide what class to test. The notion that Blizzard doesn't play all of the classes for testing purposes has always been a silly one and I never understood why it gains so much traction.

[Orkokhan]

They do test every spec themselves. This was a poll for a Blizzard employ to have fun playing a certain class for a beta community event. It was not and never has been a poll to decide what class to test. The notion that Blizzard doesn't play all of the classes for testing purposes has always been a silly one and I never understood why it gains so much traction.

Ok, if it's so then it's so. So then why is it that the community's feedback on issues like Fel Flame and Affliction's issues have seemingly been quashed or ignored or dismissed? Where are the detailed responses from them? Why don't I see something like: Ok I saw that the loss of Fel Flame has caused concern for the PVP Warlock community and here is a result of my testing; I did an RBG with a comp of X-Y-Z-A-B-C-D-E-F-G and had specific classes (melee) train me so that I could see how a Warlock would feel while being trained due to the changes we made to them, as well as the things we didn't change for melee and here is what I found.... why do we not see this type of reverse feedback? Address the ISSUE at a micro level and explain how it's to be dealt with. Because you know that the hardcore Warlock PVP'er is thinking this and wants to know how they will play in the worst case scenario, not in the perfect scenario where teammate A is constantly peeling for the lock so he doesn't have to sit on Conflage charges or run OOM from casting ROF while moving, all-the-time.

Stuff like that is what I expect to see. Stress test the shizzle out of that spec and provide us the results so we can not only see that you did, but that we might then be able to replicate that test and see what results we get too?

[gildelicil]

... Because you know that the hardcore Warlock PVP'er is thinking this and wants to know how they will play in the worst case scenario, not in the perfect scenario where teammate A is constantly peeling for the lock so he doesn't have to sit on Conflage charges or run OOM from casting ROF while moving, all-the-time.

Stuff like that is what I expect to see. Stress test the shizzle out of that spec and provide us the results so we can not only see that you did, but that we might then be able to replicate that test and see what results we get too?

This is what I was getting at. Having some internal people testing the classes is one thing, but this event would draw a bit more attention to some of the problems with a spec that I feel has not gotten the attention it needs due to the "we didn't change warlocks much so they must still be fine" fallacy.

[Jessicka]

If they don't know the spec it won't feel 'wrong' to them, and any issues wont be immediately obvious to them. It's kind of a pointless exercise if you're trying to make an example of it.

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edit: Also note that there's been more vocalness about the state of Hunters coming from Hunters towards the top of the chain as well. Your Warlock class heroes have been staying near silent on the problems and have done fuck all when it comes to giving feedback and discussion. These are often the people who help drive discussions or draw more attention to problems and they've been nonexistent on both Twitter and feedback forums.

Mhm I think zinnin's been pretty conspicuous by his quietness, guess he's just got other stuff on. But even so it does strike me that a lot of the "proper" numbers folks pretty much solve the "rotation equation" but don't tend to ask if how they got there was intended. That disappoints me most because that's exactly how you end up with weird unintended mechanics that take 2 years to fix.

[Deleted]

Wait, you're concerned with movement speed when you're not even currently using the movement speed boot enchant?

Can we stop the personal attacks and stop assuming we know everything about someone by just looking at the armory once and/or a few warcraftlog parses?

[fguru482]

Can we stop the personal attacks and stop assuming we know everything about someone by just looking at the armory once and/or a few warcraftlog parses?

Have they even said anything about fel flame or what were supposed to cast while moving???

For as much time money and effort we put into this recreational game/sport they could at least spend 30 seconds to write a post about why fel flame is gone. Its absolutely ridiculous and im not going to stop posting until its fixed. Everyday i will be checking and posting until they give us back warlocks.

[Phoenexis]

Ok, if it's so then it's so. So then why is it that the community's feedback on issues like Fel Flame and Affliction's issues have seemingly been quashed or ignored or dismissed? Where are the detailed responses from them? Why don't I see something like: Ok I saw that the loss of Fel Flame has caused concern for the PVP Warlock community and here is a result of my testing; I did an RBG with a comp of X-Y-Z-A-B-C-D-E-F-G and had specific classes (melee) train me so that I could see how a Warlock would feel while being trained due to the changes we made to them, as well as the things we didn't change for melee and here is what I found.... why do we not see this type of reverse feedback?

Because they don't know who to give Beta keys to.

[PickleballAce]

edit: Also note that there's been more vocalness about the state of Hunters coming from Hunters towards the top of the chain as well. Your Warlock class heroes have been staying near silent on the problems and have done fuck all when it comes to giving feedback and discussion. These are often the people who help drive discussions or draw more attention to problems and they've been nonexistent on both Twitter and feedback forums.

Sparkuggz has been giving feedback since Alpha but he never really seemed to get much response, and at this point sounds really defeated.

[Deleted]

Can we stop the personal attacks and stop assuming we know everything about someone by just looking at the armory once and/or a few warcraftlog parses?

What's funny is that I am actually using said enchant, so I have no idea where that came from.

[Ulthlian]

Well, I think I'm a bit late, but I have a few ideas about level 90 talent row. Can this talents be all about our burst - Dark Soul? AD stays the same, KjC allows you to cast on the move, while DS is active and MF increases AoE damage (don't like MF at all, but meh). And something about interaction of GoSac and Demonic Servitude. GoSac will allow you to sacrifice more powerful demon, and you will gain a tiny damage increase over saccing our usual demons, and a rotational spell (not just utility). For Doomguard / Terrorguard it can be Doombolt (whatever name it has), that can be casted on the move and spammable with moderate or low damage like scorch for fire mages. For Infernal / Abyssal it can be Meteor Strike with moderate damage with ministun and a cooldown. This will solve some problems aff and destro warlocks have and will make their gameplay more fluid and interesting.
P.S. Sorry for bad English, just want to make a suggestion. =)

[Yusero]

So i think you play your Warlock toon mostly for farming. For destruction, there will be no important changes for farming like in the Vale. Demo AoE is still stong on Beta but i think if you only want to farm like in MoP Destro will be the best specc with the current Beta build.

[Zinnin]

I mean, do we really think as a Warlock community that Xelnath wouldn't have been able to recognize the issue we pose with losing Fel Flame? Yet, Celestalon apparently can't see it period? I find it ridiculous that they don't have someone who's paid to actually be an expert (to whatever degree that means within reason) on every single class and spec.

I just want to chime in quick and just point out that we as a community need to be careful about putting specific devs or ex-devs on a pedestal and assume that if they were still around and / or get their way that all of our problems would vanish. Its been very clear that the movement disarmament is something that they are sticking too and don't find nearly as big of an issue as some players in the community.

The reason I have been quite about our supposed 'issues' recently is not because I haven't been around, its because I don't see the same issue as most players. I find that our movement is solid enough with planning, and that losing Fel Flame isn't going to grind our damage to a halt. I have been on Beta now for every single test and I honestly haven't found an issue with our damage or mobility.

That said, I do believe that the players that are actually really feeling the loss of Fel Flame are PvPers which means that I also don't bring great insight into the issue since I haven't PvPed regularly in about a year and have done literally zero PvP testing on beta.

edit: Also note that there's been more vocalness about the state of Hunters coming from Hunters towards the top of the chain as well. Your Warlock class heroes have been staying near silent on the problems and have done fuck all when it comes to giving feedback and discussion. These are often the people who help drive discussions or draw more attention to problems and they've been nonexistent on both Twitter and feedback forums.

Not all feedback is given in channels that everyone has access too or is watching. Just because some players have been silent on MMO-Champ, doesn't mean they aren't active in official forums, twitter, through personal contacts or other ways of getting feedback through.

Affliction, for example is in a terrible place. Shard generation is painfully slow and so much of your time is spent channeling that it almost feels like going AFK. Without dot snapshotting, the spec is a shadow of its former glory.

Current tier sim puts Haunt uptime about about 72%, Beta sims for wearing the PvP put it at about 74%. With the perk this does mean you are casting it less often, but the in order for them to really increase Shard Gen they would have to get rid of the perk or uptime would just get too high. 75% uptime also means that you have to still be aware when trinket and cooldowns line up, on top of the fact in order to do maximum DPS you still want to cast DoTs outside of procs as much as possible. It isn't like Aff suddenly isn't having to play around procs, you just don't get to do more DPS then everyone else in the raid because you press your SB: SS when black blood proced.

Personally the few times I've played Aff I have found it more enjoyable on 2+ targets then on live because I loathe soul swap and am excited to actually have to cast DoTs again.

Now, as an end, I want to talk about the issues that Warlocks 'actually' have and one that bothers me the most; We have no stackable utility and outside of the admittedly often times when we are not balanced and overpowered, there is no real reason to bring a lock to a raid. Gateways are a worse Roar in most cases, and useless as often as its better then roar. Currently the only reason we have ever said 'oh we need to bring a warlock to this fight' is because cataclsym is overpowered. Not once has it been because of utility that we offer the raid.

TL DR:
-I think our mobility is fine
-I think our rotations are fine
-I think our utility is none existent is it should be something the community is more angry about

[Grizelda]

No issues with incompatible talents?

[Zinnin]

No issues with incompatible talents?

I assume you are talking about GoSac + Demonic Servitude?

I don't have an issue with it being a loss, mainly because (arguably incorrectly) I am just used to Warlocks having dead talents at this point. Rotationally I enjoy the specs so if that means to do damage I have to refrain from taking a spec that has nothing to do with my rotation then I can live with it.

GoSac in my eyes already has enough issues getting tuned correctly, giving it more issues by having it increased by DS would most likely result it in always being useless or overpowered.

Personally though, I think that GoSac should just be removed and GoSyn given to all 3 specs.

[Jessicka]

I just want to chime in quick and just point out that we as a community need to be careful about putting specific devs or ex-devs on a pedestal and assume that if they were still around and / or get their way that all of our problems would vanish. Its been very clear that the movement disarmament is something that they are sticking too and don't find nearly as big of an issue as some players in the community.

The reason I have been quite about our supposed 'issues' recently is not because I haven't been around, its because I don't see the same issue as most players. I find that our movement is solid enough with planning, and that losing Fel Flame isn't going to grind our damage to a halt. I have been on Beta now for every single test and I honestly haven't found an issue with our damage or mobility.

That said, I do believe that the players that are actually really feeling the loss of Fel Flame are PvPers which means that I also don't bring great insight into the issue since I haven't PvPed regularly in about a year and have done literally zero PvP testing on beta.

I don't think it's just PvPers. As a mere mortal, I had a lot of issues with movement, particularly on H+F and Trains; I found I basically had two options - do nothing with my Fury and wait until I could plant to DPS, or use it ToC until I could do nothing and hope I could rebuild 'enough' when I could plant to be able to do some DPS during the periods of heavier movement. Both involved a lot of frustration and down time. Clearly, it's not a problem you had yourself, but it would have taken a fair few extra tries to figure out which was working best for me unless I could figure something else out entirely. I just honestly don't think you, or the developers would ever see it that way.

TL DR:
-I think our mobility is fine

I posted about this on the other thread, and made a new thread on the official forums discussing it. Mostly it works, but I do feel there are areas it falls over. Particularly for Destro.

-I think our rotations are fine

Do you base this on 'intended mechanics' or the maths from simcraft based on numbers on beta, which are frequently flawed and cause some weird behaviour?

-I think our utility is none existent is it should be something the community is more angry about

Utility just isn't something the majority of the community care about; more casual players tend not to want to spend a global saving the raid. :/

[Zinnin]

Clearly, it's not a problem you had yourself, but it would have taken a fair few extra tries to figure out which was working best for me unless I could figure something else out entirely. I just honestly don't think you, or the developers would ever see it that way.

Honestly, I think this is fine. So with what you said here I can assume that you think that you yourself would be able to figure out how to maximize movement after enough pulls. Now assuming this, it isn't hard to slowly meld that knowledge into more and more encounters once you are used to the new movement paradigm. I never said our movement isn't different then on live, just that I think it is workable and is something that people can learn.

Do you base this on 'intended mechanics' or the maths from simcraft based on numbers on beta, which are frequently flawed and cause some weird behaviour?

So far we have been actually trying to NOT implement mechanics that aren't intended in simcraft (something that isn't made easy by devs since they can take months to fix an issue after you ask them about it). I am basing it on just playing the specs and the feel of the rotations. I don't take too much stock in any numbers posted anywhere yet, so I don't really have many opinions on our rotation that are based on numbers. Demo actually feels way closer to live then I was initially guessing it would be, mainly I think because since you no longer have to go into Meta after HoGs you have a little extra fury then we used to. Mobility wise for Affliction I find that most fights there are always extra targets that can be DoTed on the move (even true a bit with Corr for Demo).

One thing I want to add that might be skewing my view on mobility a bit; On a fight where the is a phase with a lot of movement very often do to avoidable mechanics, a lot of the time I don't plan on avoiding them unless 100% needed. Instead of rotate cooldowns (Dark Regen / Unending Resolve / Sac Pact) in order to just plant and cast.

As far as unintended mechanics go, I haven't personally been playing with a rotation or using an ability in a way that would think would fall under unintended. I am assuming you mean how Shadowweaving was in MoP right? Most things like that have been fixed via spell changes and DoTs no longer snapshotting.

Utility just isn't something the majority of the community care about; more casual players tend not to want to spend a global saving the raid. :/

I agree that this seems to be the case, makes me sad.