6.1 Warlock Suggestions

[Deleted]

You all seem to be mistaken about what the issue is.

Our damage is fine. Not great, but fine. If nothing else, I always enjoyed the position of the underdog.

Our problems lie in our spec mechanics. In how it feels to play a warlock right now. How are we pigeonholed into certain talents and the possibility of choice is completely missing.

Let me just adress the KJC issue, because I have a feeling that for most people here, QoL means being able to cast on move, which is not what I mean, and this thread could move to a completely different direction of bitching about KJC.

And honestly, I don't care about not being able to cast on move. I've been playing WoW for far too long to remember that casting-on-move is a recent thing and nobody was complaining before it was introduced. Hell, I was progressing HC ICC as a Demonology warlock. There was no Touch of Chaos, no KJC... hardcasted Soul Fires, Incinerates and Shadow Bolts. I had to dodge the same amount of shit as I do now and I was fine. In fact, I was loving it. Honestly, do you remember someone during Ulduar progress saying.. "Boy, I'm so pissed about not being able to cast this incinerate on the move.. oh gosh golley, I'm so angry right now!". No. Nada. You know why? Because it was the status quo and have been for a long time (three, four expansions). And people, in general, have the tendency to take the status quo as given if it exists for so long.

Let me give you a real life example. Nowadays, the state provides you with money in case you loose a job (at least for some time... for Czech republic, where I come from, it is 5 months). How do you think people would react if somebody were to take this away from them? Revolts, fires in the street. Why? Because people are used to that. They think that it is their right, it's normal that state provides this, isn't it?. Yet this unemployment support is only some 90 years old. But for people living now, they've grown up in this system. It's status quo for them. Exactly the same is happening with KJC. Wake up people. KJC is a recent thing. It's exactly 1 and a 1/10 of an expansion old. We've been playing for four expansion without it and nobody missed it. So deal with it.

The only reason people are complaining is because they were given a christmas gift on a silver platter in the form of KJC and became used to it so quickly (because it was a game-changing and ungodly-good talent) that they are now angry they can't use it in its previous incarnation. I think us, that remember the days before KJC, don't really care about it being in its current form.

What we now lack is a good feeling about playing our specs, as they feel like "something" is missing in them. That and the last two talent tiers which are total clusterfucks.

Damage-wise, we are fine. Not great, but fine.

[Werst]

Some stuff is blanket, some clearly specific, but as itemized as possible:

Destro:
*RoF damage now works like the kalecgos (blue aspect) buff on the madness encounter IE it explodes to everything in its radius when it deals damage. Bring ember generation back but its now clearly good for aoe, less so for single target.
*Mannoroth now works with F&B
*Conflag on a 10 sec cooldown, backlash back (pvp)
*Charred Remains gets a damage buff of 8-10% flat its just too weak and balancing around 4/4 T20 isn't okay this early.
*Fel Flame back (you get what...5x off before oom anyhow? mana forces sparing use...
*Change ember generation to have a higher base/hit and lower crit generation value and slightly bump generation.

Affliction:
*soulswap now has 2x charges on 12 second cooldown
*Nightfall unlucky streak protection tightened up significantly, RNG generation slightly - should have enough shards to keep it up without worry. Procs should make you feel powerful not mandatory to keep the buff up. Target nightfall restriction at 2 if not 3x targets.
*SB:Haunt is now a 30 second buff with haunt as instant cast
*SoC has a .5 faster cast time, detonates on impact, and needs a buff.
*SoC minor glyph: your SoC is now instant but detonates when you haunt it or expiration (think lock shrooms but needing targets)

Demo:
*haste % increases ToC damage similarly to crit scaling on soulfire
*pets take FAR less damage in pvp (like 50% less)
*Imp swarm glyph now baseline, 2 min CD, launches 5 imps
*Hellfire damage buff, can also channel it on a distant target

Mana:
*Destro: get mana refund on soulburn back I mean c'mon
*Demo: Lifetap: grants 350 DF 90 sec CD, baseline mana regen far higher
*Aff: lifetap grants 1 shard, 60 sec CD, baseline mana regen far higher

General:
*Health funnel given back to destro c'mon
*KJC needs to last longer or have a shorter CD
*Dserv pet attacks grant equivalent amounts of emberbits or mirror nightfall tick chance.
*Drainlife no longer shadow school, call it nature or fire OR make it uninterruptable (pvp), castable while shadow is locked.

[Deleted]

Some stuff is blanket, some clearly specific, but as itemized as possible:

Destro:
*RoF damage now works like the kalecgos (blue aspect) buff on the madness encounter IE it explodes to everything in its radius when it deals damage. Bring ember generation back but its now clearly good for aoe, less so for single target.
*Mannoroth now works with F&B
*Conflag on a 10 sec cooldown, backlash back (pvp)
*Charred Remains gets a damage buff of 8-10% flat its just too weak and balancing around 4/4 T20 isn't okay this early.
*Fel Flame back (you get what...5x off before oom anyhow? mana forces sparing use...
*Change ember generation to have a higher base/hit and lower crit generation value and slightly bump generation.

Affliction:
*soulswap now has 2x charges on 12 second cooldown
*Nightfall unlucky streak protection tightened up significantly, RNG generation slightly - should have enough shards to keep it up without worry. Procs should make you feel powerful not mandatory to keep the buff up. Target nightfall restriction at 2 if not 3x targets. 2 or 3 target nightfall sure.
*SB:Haunt is now a 30 second buff with haunt as instant cast. Nah.
*SoC has a .5 faster cast time, detonates on impact, and needs a buff. Maybe.
*SoC minor glyph: your SoC is now instant but detonates when you haunt it or expiration (think lock shrooms but needing targets). Sounds really cool.

Demo:
*haste % increases ToC damage similarly to crit scaling on soulfire. Why in the world should haste increase the damage of an ability? What about shorter gcd?
*pets take FAR less damage in pvp (like 50% less) or maybe 20%?
*Imp swarm glyph now baseline, 2 min CD, launches 5 imps. Dunno, could be too good maybe, too flexible.
*Hellfire damage buff, can also channel it on a distant target. Sure.

Mana:
*Destro: get mana refund on soulburn back I mean c'mon. Destro doesnt have soulburn anymore.
*Demo: Lifetap: grants 350 DF 90 sec CD, baseline mana regen far higher. Whats wrong with old life tap?
*Aff: lifetap grants 1 shard, 60 sec CD, baseline mana regen far higher. Nah, haste will fix it.

General:
*Health funnel given back to destro c'mon. Have all of my yes.
*KJC needs to last longer or have a shorter CD or make unique. Its a copy paste of shamans SWG.
*Dserv pet attacks grant equivalent amounts of emberbits or mirror nightfall tick chance. Would be too good i believe.
*Drainlife no longer shadow school, call it nature or fire OR make it uninterruptable (pvp), castable while shadow is locked. Dunno, should be an different school for affli maybe.

Loving some of the suggestions.

[Werst]

Only thing I forgot was mana re demo. I would like to see spells cast in demon form restore mana approximately equal to their mana cost equivalent. This however, requires blizz look at soulfire's absurd mana cost (should be shadowbolt's or less...) Oh and put a flipping DR on interrupts or mate them to stun DR please.

[sugarfree]

They just need to make dots be able to break caps. As a GoSac affliction warlock, I have to either waste a survivability talent to break a cap. That is just terrible design. TERRIBLE. It's not like they can't cap again. I have to Melee a target to break a cap. Pathetic! Blizz answer to this was have a pet, yeah jackass, force as GoSac players to not spec for it then.

Also, they need to address the whole lvl 100 talent. Charred Remains is terrible. Cataclysm is underwhelming and highly useless in pvp. DS is a trap for GoSac players and the Infernal is just terrible.

Tanking Pets also need to not die while tanking two regular mobs in Nagrand. Health funnel should be available for Destro.

KJC needs to be on a 30 sec cooldown and its duration should be upped to 12 sec.

I don't agree with uninterruptible drain life. That is too strong, it is already very strong now.

[Pyuras]

I think everyone can agree that Affliction needs a better shard regen system. Maybe, instead of a fixed % chance to proc, we could get an increased chance every time a corruption tick fails to proc nightfall. It could start at the current value (or even a little lower) and be increased by 1 or .5% every corruption tick that didn't proc. That would probably take care of long streaks of bad RNG, similar to the way capturing pets in battle work.

In addition, they could change Life Tap to give a bit more mana back, have a CD (say 30s) and generate a shard. That would reinforce the idea of "trading life for power" that's so iconic about the spell (and the class in general) and also force us to be more smart about it's usage, instead of just 'I need to use this to keep doing damage at all'.

I also miss the way SoC used to work during Wrath-era. It probably was too powerful and too easy to do great AoE damage for it's own sake, but there's got to be some middle ground between what it was then and the terrible, TERRIBLE AoE damage we output now.

[Jessicka]

I think everyone can agree that Affliction needs a better shard regen system. Maybe, instead of a fixed % chance to proc, we could get an increased chance every time a corruption tick fails to proc nightfall. It could start at the current value (or even a little lower) and be increased by 1 or .5% every corruption tick that didn't proc. That would probably take care of long streaks of bad RNG, similar to the way capturing pets in battle work.

That is exactly how it does work, and I wish they'd fix the tooltip to clarify that, even if it means a new ability like the Fire one that you can see stacking to make it more transparent. I'd actually also like to see it proc from Multistrikes as well so you can at least feel by gearing you can do more about it than rely on the effect of Haste alone which is far less tangible.

[Stefanus]

I've already got used to all changes blizz threw at us. I won't ask to revert all the changes to where they were back in MoP and previous xpacs, but if I would to pick that one change that I would like to see back it's fel flame, but not MoP version of it but Cata version of Fel Flame where it was extending duration of UA/Corruption/Immolate when it was used. This benefits all specs, especially affli and destro the most that underwent huge play-style changes with WOD. For affli it would be great compensation for soulswap costing 1 shard nerf and for destro it would be a great way to do some dmg on the move since atm the way it is there is no way you will do some dmg on the run especially when WoD is swarming with melees + you will always be able to squeeze that extra ember you needed to which you otherwise would never get since multiple melees were training you...

The previous is a necessity I think, and if I had to pick the one change I would pick that one...
Now, blizz should be thinking of redesigning Demonic servitude and Charred Remains especially, the later one I need to emphasize because of obvious reasons which I won't bother explaining...

[Deleted]

Still, relying on RNG for our resource is not a good design. If affliction felt good without the Haunt on the target, I can see how that can work, but it doesn't. It feels like a purgatory and you are just waiting for that glimps of hope that is the Nightfall proc.

How about Drain Soul Generating a Soul Shard every 4th tick? It would be a damage boost for sure (I'm not sure how affli does dmg wise) (100% uptime on both Haunt and SB Haunt), but that could be adjusted. We would be left with the same DPS output but with much more fluid rotation.

I have a Priest as my alt and I gotta say, Shadow feels much better that affliction does. Don't know why, but I got the feeling it has to do with MB generating Orb on a cast, the possibility of various procs and better interaction with their talents.

[Tya]

Fix Flames of Xoroth to revive the correct pet. Right now you have to resummon your pet each time you zone, else it'll return an imp.

GoSac has no synergy with Demonic Servitude. It should. Right now it's a trap combination. Sacrificing a more powerful demon should yield stronger results.

Fix Servitude infernal damage. It's not okay to have such narrow roles for a pet.

Healthstones are weaker than ever. At least give the option to consume a healthstone directly from the spellbook without having to create each and every one, so that they at least feel like an advantage instead of a burden.

The "walk on water with felsteed" glyph stops working if you enter and exit combat. Aggro a mob but escape and then leave combat? Glyph will stop working until you re-mount.

Do something with Mannaroth's Fury. Anything.

Drain Life shouldn't be balanced around using a glyph slot and a talent slot just to make it worth a slot on your action bar.

Same as above but with Ember Tap. Ember Tap is clearly balanced around having Searing Flames and Charred Remains. This just isn't right.

The "heal your pet for 1% of your hp when you use Ember Tap" draenor perk is terrible and doesn't fill the role of a pet heal. We're a pet class, after all. Maybe make it reduce the cooldown of Flames of Xoroth by 10-15 sec instead?

Destro and demo are terrible in all aspects of the game. This isn't okay.

Pets are so poorly balanced. Is it really that hard to make 4 pets different and equally useful?