Another set of Hotfixes and Where Are The....

[Deleted]

Bashiok just basically told warlocks we are fine, so they are smoking some heavy shit to not understand that we want fun gameplay and just not damage buffs.

well they always assume a class wants buffs when they whine, they never assume the ppl just want to have fun and if they do, they think that fun equals OP'ness.

[Zevoa]

and yet you can stick with frost and still do passable dmg, locks cant atm.

I find it hilarious that people don't think warlocks can do competitive damage.

[Charge me Doctor]

I'm assuming you're a mage? If so you do get to swap specs, Arcane for Butcher and Fire for Tectus, just like how we go Destro for Margok and Demo for Tectus, people just seem to dislike switching to a 3rd spec to be more efficient on this forum for some reason.

Yep, and i'm so happy that frost isn't shoved down my throat anymore, now all 3 specs do comparable damage and you pick them not "because this one is better", but because "this one fits the encounter better".

I have heard complaints from my guild warlock about ember generation for destro and something about "fucking haunt is shit", but nothing about not being able to pull numbers needed for encounter

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and yet you can stick with frost and still do passable dmg, locks cant atm.

Then you play wrong game i guess, and you can do passable dmg in any spec as any class for LFR if you go further "i'ma lazy ass and want free epics" way. If you want to compete - you have to compete

[Deleted]

I find it hilarious that people don't think warlocks can do competitive damage.

wasnt my point tho nor what i personally believe, but oh well.

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Then you play wrong game i guess, and you can do passable dmg in any spec as any class for LFR if you go further "i'ma lazy ass and want free epics" way. If you want to compete - you have to compete

you should still be able to somewhat compete even if you dont take the optimal spec tho.

[Charge me Doctor]

you should still be able to somewhat compete even if you dont take the optimal spec tho.

And you can pull ~18k DPS in any spec, and that's enough for normals to progress

[Deleted]

And you can pull ~18k DPS in any spec, and that's enough for normals to progress

yeah ofc but that isnt enough to be viable in all difficulties, if i want to be destro on a mythic boss where demo is optimal, i should be able to have that option without utterly sucking, the optimal spec should still be better ofc but not to the extent it is now.

[Shepshep]

I just play affliction all the time. I don't switch at all and I still stay competitive for my level of play. I just pick one I like and try to get really good at it. Since I like it, it gives me motivation to do my very best. Would i switch if a boss kill required it for progression? Absolutely. But let's not kid warlocks aren't the bees knees this xpac. So what. Get over it or play something else.

Also, part of playing a pure dps class is knowing how to play all specs of that class. Maybe your gear or enchants or gems aren't optimal but you need to know how to play that spec.

[Novx]

and yet you can stick with frost and still do passable dmg, locks cant atm.

Yes we can. If you want to do Tectus as Affliction be my guest, it isn't a hard boss. Sure, Margok you may need to swap but even then there are warlocks with public affliction logs (in kills) for Margok.

[Charge me Doctor]

yeah ofc but that isnt enough to be viable in all difficulties, if i want to be destro on a mythic boss where demo is optimal, i should be able to have that option without utterly sucking, the optimal spec should still be better ofc but not to the extent it is now.

No you shouldn't, that's the whole goal of competing, you have to put effort and research stuff to play on top-notch raiding, you have to play at maximum of your efficiency, which means that you don't even think about "rotations" or "encounter", you should know everything and not react to what happen, but to know what will happen and have a picture of what you will do and where you have to be in next 10 seconds.

And in the end of a day, you still should be pulling at least 18k or you do something wrong, but 18k is not enough for mythical raiding from my experience. If you can't pull more in this gear and can't get new, you should switch to another spec where the gear you already have (or easily obtainable) give you more efficiency than in current one.

Again, you shouldn't be able to "cookie cutter" mythical raiding, ever. Period, that's the whole point of mythical raiding

[Novx]

No you shouldn't, that's the whole goal of competing, you have to put effort and research stuff to play on top-notch raiding, you have to play at maximum of your efficiency, which means that you don't even think about "rotations" or "encounter", you should know everything and not react to what happen, but to know what will happen and have a picture of what you will do and where you have to be in next 10 seconds.

And in the end of a day, you still should be pulling at least 18k or you do something wrong, but 18k is not enough for mythical raiding from my experience. If you can't pull more in this gear and can't get new, you should switch to another spec where the gear you already have (or easily obtainable) give you more efficiency than in current one.

Again, you shouldn't be able to "cookie cutter" mythical raiding, ever. Period, that's the whole point of mythical raiding

This x10000, you are my new favorite person.

[Deleted]

Yes we can. If you want to do Tectus as Affliction be my guest, it isn't a hard boss. Sure, Margok you may need to swap but even then there are warlocks with public affliction logs (in kills) for Margok.

yeah ofc, its ultimately your choice what you play but if you look at parse on imperator heroic(since there is no mythic parses), you'll see a difference of 25ish% between afflic and destro, imo that is a way too big a difference between specs for any encounter.

[Charge me Doctor]

yeah ofc, its ultimately your choice what you play but if you look at parse on imperator heroic(since there is no mythic parses), you'll see a difference of 25ish% between afflic and destro, imo that is a way too big a difference between specs for any encounter.

And imperator heroic was killed in both afflic and destro specs, it just depends on if your raid can afford you do 25%ish less DPS because you don't want to respec. If your raid struggles DPS vice and you still refuse to respec to gain that huge amount of increase for single encounter, you'd better to look for another raid then, because when the solution is so obvious and not that hard (3 or 4 wipes will get you into how to play vague-familiar spec in this particular encouner) it's all up to you what do you want more, click buttons that makes screen flash in your favorite colour or kill the boss.

Tho, to be honest, proper gear is quite a gate in this situation

[Deleted]

And imperator heroic was killed in both afflic and destro specs, it just depends on if your raid can afford you do 25%ish less DPS because you don't want to respec. If your raid struggles DPS vice and you still refuse to respec to gain that huge amount of increase for single encounter, you'd better to look for another raid then, because when the solution is so obvious and not that hard (3 or 4 wipes will get you into how to play vague-familiar spec in this particular encouner) it's all up to you what do you want more, click buttons that makes screen flash in your favorite colour or kill the boss.

Tho, to be honest, proper gear is quite a gate in this situation

i still feel that 25ish% difference in dps between 2 specs on a specific fight is way over the top, 10-15% would be more appropreate imo, but thats just me it seems.

[Charge me Doctor]

i still feel that 25ish% difference in dps between 2 specs on a specific fight is way over the top, 10-15% would be more appropreate imo, but thats just me it seems.

It's one of the problems of isometric game, it won't be balanced. Ever. These DPS gaps between specs will exist as long as we have different playstyles for different specs, because the reason why Destro does almost 50k on this encounter not because of "all destro warlocks do 25% more damage in this fight", but because the fight itself favors destro much (and from what i've heard it punishes them less) than two other specs. These 25% damage difference can't be really addressed without gameplay overhaul, and one spec doing 25% more damage than others is not a reason for gameplay overhaul.

If you want to rant about gap between specs look at Shamans, Ehancement pull almost two times more than Ele in this fight depending on how fast adds die.

And i would agree with you if the difference of 25% would be kept on all bosses, but single encounter is not enough to judge about spec being IMBA or vice-versa

[Nadiru]

Imperator Mar'gok favors Destruction largely because of Havoc execute cleaving. The issue I take with it is that particular use of mechanics is unintuitive and not explained in-game to the extent of which competitive Destruction DPS mandates that you do it. The problem is that those are pretty much Blizzard dev's stated reasons for removing dot snapshotting. Now, it could be that the degree to which this is prevalent means this is a non-issue, and certainly the scale of this mechanic usage is smaller than snapshotting, but it leaves Warlocks in a weird position. Raiding Destro locks must do this thing, but this thing, at least on the face of it involves things Blizzard has used as cause to remove and change mechanics.

[Grizelda]

Yeah. That's Destros thing.

That's an opportunity where we get to do that thing. Don't take away the thing.

It's the only thing we really have. And you argue to take away the thing?

I'm not an elitist by any stretch. You too can learn to do the thing.

[HalfBakedCake]

The problem with Locks in and of itself isn't a lack of competitive DPS it's the lack of insight by Blizzard. Their goal recently, and especially more-so this expansion has been to make classes and the talent system themselves 'fun'. Now while some people can have fun with multiple specs of their favorite class, such as myself, others can not. They only enjoy, lets say, playing Destruction, and that's it, it's their favorite spec in the game and they don't like the way Affliction or Demonology plays in this example. For them to progress through raiding they shouldn't be penalized for this by performing at a lower dps threshold depending on each boss. While yes, I do agree that you should be doing everything in your power to help your raid out, even switching specs, it's not a viable option when designing a game, especially one that Blizz has been trying to open up more and more to the general public so everyone doesn't feel left out.

Now as far as the talents go, the new system was designed to be strictly fun. Pick what you want and that is that. However Warlock talents are a bit different, and this is true for a few other classes. Our talents feel like condensed versions of the original talent trees. Where you are forced into respective talent choices based on your individual spec, because of the way they interact with certain abilities, or are forced to constantly be switching on the fly just to increase a marginal difference of 1-3% utility to feel like you're actually contributing something, because our abilities are based around talents, as opposed to talents being based around abilities. Which in my opinion, you may disagree, is poor design choice.

The way Blizz has chosen to go about the game and the recent changes to the game as the years have gone on, do not lend itself to what has actually transpired, especially with the Lock class, this was even true in MoP as a lot of people felt they had to be Destruction for the majority of the expansion just to feel like they were worth a damn. This is a huge problem with a lot of the classes as a whole, and seems to be more prevalent with the Casters by a decent enough margin most of the time. Lets take a look at Frost Mages for example. They recently got a buff solely because 'more people play that spec', also poor design choice, to which Blizz doesn't understand that more people play that spec because it was already the best spec in a lot of aspects and for various reasons. Warlock doesn't have this, as their abilities are all a mess and are focused around such specific and individualized encounters that as they have said, "Warlocks don't particularly shine on". Now can a Warlock be competitive in a lot of these scenarios, sure they can, anything can really be competitive, but it's not competitive that we're looking for. It's a fun experience which they are claiming to give and failing, between class design, shard RNG, DoTs being completely tuned based around Haunt, Destro's huge lack of mobility, Demo's clunky system and abilities, etc, on top of required talents for very specific encounters.

This is the problem with Locks as I see it, disagree or not. Sorry if I ran on or lost my train of thought here and there.

[Mormolyce]

Yeah go 5 expansions with at most a line or two in the patch notes squeezed in between Paladin and Shaman novellas and then complain to me.

-Sincerely,
A Rogue.

P.S. If they'd just fix my AoE I'd be totally happy with my destro lock. RoF generates embers when it hits more than 3 targets. Boom, done.

[Nadiru]

Yeah. That's Destros thing.

That's an opportunity where we get to do that thing. Don't take away the thing.

It's the only thing we really have. And you argue to take away the thing?

I'm not an elitist by any stretch. You too can learn to do the thing.

I'm not arguing for or against the thing, just acknowledging that the thing itself lies in a grey area with regards to Blizzard's design mentality.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Our warlocks are doing fine.
Probably a case of what was up with rogues.
Lots of people play it, very few are exceptional. Those that are exceptional were very solid DPS, those that were mediocre were bottom of the pack.
Thus people assumed it was the class, and not the difference in skill.

I'd learn all three specs, figure out where Demo shines etc, and make use of everything you have available.
Warlocks are certainly not bad, they just aren't top any more.