Warlock 6.2 Discussion

[Octa]

Which sucks because it makes us more dependent on having the class trinket.

Balancing around a trinket and a set bonus is good design though!

[Joryy]

Not sure why so many people are so strongly opposed to balancing with respect to tier bonuses. How long did it take you to get the 4set from BRF? Two weeks? Three?

Every serious guild will farm the lower difficulty to pick up the bonuses for the classes dependent on them, and you'll have it for when you do progression on the bosses than take more than a sneeze. Maybe you'll be weak for the sneeze bosses, but that's fine. Some classes being a little weak on the effortless bosses is well worth some lottery winning class being 10-15% ahead for 3+ months of farm. Or set bonuses that aren't powerful enough to get excited about.


Look at mages from this tier. After 1 week of highmaul fire and arcane got the massive buff treatment, and now they've been crushing BRF because the designers DIDN'T balance around the tier bonuses.

[Octa]

Not sure why so many people are so strongly opposed to balancing with respect to tier bonuses. How long did it take you to get the 4set from BRF? Two weeks? Three?

Every serious guild will farm the lower difficulty to pick up the bonuses for the classes dependent on them, and you'll have it for when you do progression on the bosses than take more than a sneeze. Maybe you'll be weak for the sneeze bosses, but that's fine. Some classes being a little weak on the effortless bosses is well worth some lottery winning class being 10-15% ahead for 3+ months of farm.

It doesn't matter too much for me, I know I'll be getting my tier fairly quickly and probably the trinket too unless there is just horrible RNG. That being said, it's still TERRIBLE fucking design to make a spec balanced around a specific item. We've seen it countless times in the past where 1 item can make or break a class and nobody likes it (and those weren't even class specific things that classes were specifically balanced around, they were just good items). That combined with the fact that the VAST, VAST, VAST majority of players aren't in the situation you just described means it's bad design, straight up.

[bio347]

How long did it take you to get the 4set from BRF? Two weeks? Three?

The population of raiders who get 4pc in two to three weeks is VERY small. The idea that only "serious raiders" deserve to be balanced is preposterous.

[kamuii]

Not sure why so many people are so strongly opposed to balancing with respect to tier bonuses. How long did it take you to get the 4set from BRF? Two weeks? Three?

Every serious guild will farm the lower difficulty to pick up the bonuses for the classes dependent on them, and you'll have it for when you do progression on the bosses than take more than a sneeze. Maybe you'll be weak for the sneeze bosses, but that's fine. Some classes being a little weak on the effortless bosses is well worth some lottery winning class being 10-15% ahead for 3+ months of farm. Or set bonuses that aren't powerful enough to get excited about.


Look at mages from this tier. After 1 week of highmaul fire and arcane got the massive buff treatment, and now they've been crushing BRF because the designers DIDN'T balance around the tier bonuses.

I would chuck that up to them designing the set bonuses horribly.

I think the idea here is to design classes and then design bonuses around the class, not vice versa.

[bio347]

Also (despite it being constantly repeated here by people who are not Blizzard developers) if they were REALLY making overpowered set bonuses and trinkets and then handing out ~20% nerfs in response, don't you think that more specs would have been significantly nerfed than just Demonology? There are other minor nerfs in the patch notes, but none of them, for any of the other 33 specs, compare even closely in magnitude.

[MycantrumX]

Let's bring this back to a 6.2 WARLOCK discussion please. This isn't a debate about Blizzard's overall design policies. We all know that they are shit at times. What I want (and I'm sure many others want) are PTR testing parses. Lets start breaking down the damage and figuring out how best to work with what is coming for Warlocks in 6.2 instead of just griping and getting nowhere.

[ZakAtack]

Let's bring this back to a 6.2 WARLOCK discussion please. This isn't a debate about Blizzard's overall design policies. We all know that they are shit at times. What I want (and I'm sure many others want) are PTR testing parses. Lets start breaking down the damage and figuring out how best to work with what is coming for Warlocks in 6.2 instead of just griping and getting nowhere.

Along these lines, we've gotten used to Demo but we've gone through phases with each spec. Destro back in Cata (at least that's what I played), Aff at start of MoP, then Destro, now Demo. We'll be fine and switch to what we need to. Hoping to see some parses from the upcoming testing rounds.

What worries me about the tier bonus is being forced to dump MC procs, a la Improved Soul Fire from Cata. On one hand, can make the spec more interesting by forcing more decisions about how to spend procs and Fury, but also could then result in wildly varied parses and many different ideas on how to play the spec. If warlocks and their raid leaders aren't aware of that, could cause some issues.

[Deleted]

So what is going to be the best raiding spec in 6.2 then? Affliction? Destruction? Or is demonology going to stay king even with the nerfs?

You'll want to switch on a per encounter basis.

[Deleted]

Not sure why so many people are so strongly opposed to balancing with respect to tier bonuses. How long did it take you to get the 4set from BRF? Two weeks? Three?

Every serious guild will farm the lower difficulty to pick up the bonuses for the classes dependent on them, and you'll have it for when you do progression on the bosses than take more than a sneeze. Maybe you'll be weak for the sneeze bosses, but that's fine. Some classes being a little weak on the effortless bosses is well worth some lottery winning class being 10-15% ahead for 3+ months of farm. Or set bonuses that aren't powerful enough to get excited about.


Look at mages from this tier. After 1 week of highmaul fire and arcane got the massive buff treatment, and now they've been crushing BRF because the designers DIDN'T balance around the tier bonuses.

It's simply bad design to balance around something not everyone can have. It creates first and second class players

First, if you balance around a tier bonus you will be underpowered and disadvantaged through the progression required to obtain the tier armour. It's of little use to tell your raid leader it's okay to suck through the attempts to kill a boss because by golly once you've killed it and sacrificed your first born to the gods of RNG to get the tier item it drops (and another one) you'll keep up with the hunters m'kay?

Second, and worse, it disadvantages people who aren't in progression guilds. A tier armour crutch that is mandatory for a class/spec to keep up with others who don't need a crutch means that the vast majority of casual players - who pay the same subscription as everyone else - become permanent second class citizens. And please no stuff about "if you're not progress raiding your dps doesn't matter" because it does - casual players still do things like dungeons and LFR, if they didn;t why bother to play WoW at all if you just do it in single-player mode? True, raids/dungeons won't fail through it, but who wants to feel underpowered - and who wants to see the dreaded "LF dps...no locks"

I'm in a casual guild and I still don't have the 4-piece set, mostly through sheer bad luck of bad drops and bad rolls. And I dispute that you can get the four set as "easy bosses on farm" because in BRF that's only really true of the 2-set, not the 4.

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Also (despite it being constantly repeated here by people who are not Blizzard developers) if they were REALLY making overpowered set bonuses and trinkets and then handing out ~20% nerfs in response, don't you think that more specs would have been significantly nerfed than just Demonology? There are other minor nerfs in the patch notes, but none of them, for any of the other 33 specs, compare even closely in magnitude.

No, I think they just majorly fucked up with demonology - like they have so many times before, we've seen absurd pendulum swings - and have painted themselves into a corner, and it's a sad fact that human beings would much rather keep and vehemently justify a stupid decision than say "okay, got it wrong, sorry!"

[Deleted]

Just resubbed and looking to raid with my old guild. Only got to kill Beastlord and Oregorger M before unsubbing, what do I need to know to get by now and going into 6.2?

[tmtb]

You'll want to switch on a per encounter basis.

Pure tax at its best.

[SpikeySquad]

Pure tax at its best.

Perhaps but to me much better than perhaps "having" to play my least favourite spec for all bosses.

[Soulzar]

I would chuck that up to them designing the set bonuses horribly.

I think the idea here is to design classes and then design bonuses around the class, not vice versa.

I understand the view of "well what do I do until..." with regards to some balancing around set bonuses....

But its not really reasonable to me to say it bad design for them to take into consideration how a class plays with the tiers intended gearing.

Unless we want to just have tier bonuses that give no DPS gain whatsoever, and no flavor items like unique class items (which I think is nice to see back)

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Pure tax at its best.

The ability to swap between multiple DPS specs to tailor to an encounters design is a strength of Pures, not a tax.

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It's simply bad design to balance around something not everyone can have. It creates first and second class players

But the community has made up this notion that they nerfed demo due to tier/trinket balance. Is it bad design that they Buffed affliction to balance around class trinkets... Or that they made no changes to destro to "balance" around tier sets?

[Uzkin]

The ability to swap between multiple DPS specs to tailor to an encounters design is a strength of Pures, not a tax.

Blizzard's stated goal is to have hybrids and pures do equal damage. But pures have to switch specs in order to do so --> pure tax. The hybrid specs, when balanced correctly, have all the tools they need in a single package. Not so for pures.

[MycantrumX]

Blizzard's stated goal is to have hybrids and pures do equal damage. But pures have to switch specs in order to do so --> pure tax. The hybrid specs, when balanced correctly, have all the tools they need in a single package. Not so for pures.

This is just not true. Feral is a great example: they are very strong at ST encounters but are on the lower end of the charts when adds are introduced (either long living or short living mobs). Their toolkit puts them in a great place for some fights but leaves them lacking on others. Hybrids are typically bound to one spec and therefore excel in some situations when their spec is well suited, but when they aren't suited for a fight they just have to put up with it.

Pures on the other hand have the opportunity to swap specs on a fight to fight basis in order to play the spec that is best suited for that fight. Take HFC for example, Affliction seems to be the best ST spec and Destro our best AoE spec. Affliction and Feral will likely suck on Hellfire Assault with its waves of adds and no real consistent targets, but Destruction is likely to shine on an encounter like this. If we were playing a hybrid such as Feral we would have to bite the bullet and do the best we can. We have the ability to change to Destruction in order to better respond to the encounter design though.

Every spec/class will not do equal damage in all situations. Every spec/class has a design that it excels at. Hybrids have to play their same spec when the encounter design is good for them and also when it is bad for them. Pures can swap so that they are good at the encounter design every time. Pure strength.

[Deleted]

This is just not true. Feral is a great example: they are very strong at ST encounters but are on the lower end of the charts when adds are introduced (either long living or short living mobs). Their toolkit puts them in a great place for some fights but leaves them lacking on others. Hybrids are typically bound to one spec and therefore excel in some situations when their spec is well suited, but when they aren't suited for a fight they just have to put up with it.

Pures on the other hand have the opportunity to swap specs on a fight to fight basis in order to play the spec that is best suited for that fight. Take HFC for example, Affliction seems to be the best ST spec and Destro our best AoE spec. Affliction and Feral will likely suck on Hellfire Assault with its waves of adds and no real consistent targets, but Destruction is likely to shine on an encounter like this. If we were playing a hybrid such as Feral we would have to bite the bullet and do the best we can. We have the ability to change to Destruction in order to better respond to the encounter design though.

Every spec/class will not do equal damage in all situations. Every spec/class has a design that it excels at. Hybrids have to play their same spec when the encounter design is good for them and also when it is bad for them. Pures can swap so that they are good at the encounter design every time. Pure strength.

feral goes balance ? yes they might not have the same stats and you need to change some items.
about the nerfs and item bonuses , since WoD most of the warlock community where outraged about all the nerfs , they raided an entire expansion in force , so few fights where warlock didn't shine , now they are scared !
imo wod start destro with servitude worked fine (did lack aoe but highmaul didn't require so much) , then we got demonbolt buff that made us insane ST bursters , after we got a change of play style for demo that makes us actually track trinkets .
my point is after all the nerfs , lock is still fine and will all ways have a spot in every good raid setup , we just have to deal with it and adapt ! OR REROLL MAGE

[tmtb]

The ability to swap between multiple DPS specs to tailor to an encounters design is a strength of Pures, not a tax.

It is a tax, if i like the direct damage style but don't like the dot style, i want to play destruction, i don't want to play affliction.
If you tell me that i had to change talents around between bosses, that's all fine.
But forcing me to go as a certain spec, it's a tax no matter what you paint it.
I loathe affliction, it's a chore to me and i will not play it (hence i play a hunter now, i dumped my warlock main).

[Deleted]

tbh you play what u want , but if you are in a high end guild , you play what does the best and what your raid needs you to play. So there are mixed feeling here.

[tmtb]

tbh you play what u want , but if you are in a high end guild , you play what does the best and what your raid needs you to play. So there are mixed feeling here.

The exact same thing could be said when there was a hybrid tax, and it eventually was deemed unfair.

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Perhaps but to me much better than perhaps "having" to play my least favourite spec for all bosses.

Ofcourse, but even better than that would be to play the spec you want to play on all bosses.