Warlocks and Emerald Nightmare

[Verdugo]

Gaidax at this point you are more annoying than all the whiners combined.

[Jessicka]

Or how about taking a more moderate stance that improvements are needed, instead of insulting people, lying through their teeth and general obnoxiousness of spamming their shit in just about every thread possible?

They even pop in the guides now with their shit "all hope is lost", for fucks sake? Like literally, even there.

Have I insulted you or called 'all hope is lost'? Maybe in that I've looked for a new class because I don't see the mechanical issues I'm seeing being fixed any time soon, but that's not a DPS issue.

I took the pretty moderate stance until I saw the data. I've actually tried even with the data to keep focused on the actual mechanical problems the class has, so that those don't get swept under the carpet and everyone pretends it's all okay because big numbers after a tuning pass.

The data though says more than half the DPS specs in the game have better throughput than Warlocks.

It says Warlocks have less than half the representation that they should have.

The general feedback about the spec's toolkit and playstyle even before we had that data was pretty overwhelmingly negative too.

My conclusion:

The class very clearly has issues.

And people are pissed.

Taking a deliberately contrary view that 'everything is fine' is absurd. Telling people to get good on a premise that no one else in their raid group is also wanting to get good with any other class, is equally absurd.

Telling people to play Destruction, isn't entirely helpful either for those not invested or not enjoying that spec either. I guess 'relearn, spend the next week farming AP to catch up, and hope for some decent relics along the way' is okay at the very high end when your character is just your tool (which makes me wonder why anyone who sees it as that would remain invested in Warlock at all when better alternatives are available), but less so at most other levels.

[Gaidax]

You need to play whatever is viable at the moment, until better times come. It's nothing new - over 11 years of me maining my warlock the one thing remained true - every time there is one very good spec, one okay/situational spec and one shit spec.

And every time you end up playing the very good one and in a whole microcosm called "Warlock" the hierarchy at the moment is that Destruction is good, Demo is okay/situational and Aff is shit.

Deal with it the same way you dealt with it for years now. Sucks? Yeah. But that's how WoW works and warlocks are not the only ones with this issue.

Of course you can tryhard and be a hipster and play what is pretty much hands down underpowered, but then, the result will be according.


It's undeniable that the times are hard now and everyone has high hopes for changes, but before those come you need to decide for yourself whether you bite the bullet and play spec you don't like, but can compete at least to some extent or you just play spec you like, but then not expect to perform.

[Nerfarien]

That is where you are wrong. Warlocks are currently the ONLY ONES having this issue. The other, notorious specs - Boomkins and Rets - actually have a choice of rerolling into the other, working specs of their classes... Warlocks do not have this luxury.

Moreover, the fact that besically our viability as Destro is baked into the tier set bonuses and one legendary - one that you happen to own - makes the situation even worse and more stupid than it even needs to be. Why would you bring a lock who is inferior when you can have better classes? In my guild all of us locks rerolled for now to play better classes until the situation is fixed because you are simply just a detriment to your own raid. It does not matter on normal and hc but once mythic rolls around you will have bosses like Ursoc... and you will understand what it means to warm a bench if there are other, better functioning classes that are there to come in instead of you.

[Gaidax]

You have a working spec of your class - called Destruction. It needs a small bump and it will be just fine.

The talk was about Aff being shit, which I agree about. It has some very niche awesomeness, but that's it. Aff players do need to bite the bullet and spec Destruction, that's what we were talking about.

[Nerfarien]

" Working " is only valid for you since you have the only legendary that matters - for the other 99% of us who do not own it know it to be very clunky and is clearly only being superior on massive cleave fight, outclassed even there by classes who have either utility or mobility - or both.

Do not spew bullshit around if you have a fundamentally altered vision of the class, it will never work. That you claim that you are objectively right does really mean little once you realize that you are among the lucky few who actually experience how the spec is meant to play. And that changes nothing about the fact that it might be 'working' - but working is not enough to justify bringing it to mythic progression. It needs to EXCEL, not just work.

[Gaidax]

You are assuming too much, you have your data in warcraftlogs, Destruction is just a little undertuned that's it. Even a small 5% buff will put it in decent core position at like 84%.

10% and you will be a Fire Mage 2.0.

This means that Destruction is working in a current state, it's a bit weak, but you can pull decent numbers with it too, so wise person would play it, because it does allow to be decent in the raid (and not dead weight people claim).

Also, I think you overestimate Feretory... It's ok, but it's not like "the new and transformed Destruction".

[Deleted]

You are assuming too much, you have your data in warcraftlogs, Destruction is just a little undertuned that's it. Even a small 5% buff will put it in decent core position at like 84%.

10% and you will be a Fire Mage 2.0.

This means that Destruction is working in a current state, it's a bit weak, but you can pull decent numbers with it too, so wise person would play it, because it does allow to be decent in the raid (and not dead weight people claim).

Also, I think you overestimate Feretory... It's ok, but it's not like "the new and transformed Destruction".

Yeah, I'm guessing it is pretty nice, but not exactly the difference between broken and fine.

The 30% damage increase + 2 sec CD reduction for every summon on Summon Doomguard for demonology on the other hand... Those two together, I could imagine that would change everything for demo.

Edit: Everything except for being rooted to the ground of course

[Deleted]

One thing I don't understand why people have this "Fire Mage 2.0" or "as OP as demon hunter" attitude. So what? If Blizzard doesn't tone them down every dps specc should be exactly as powerful as those classes.

I don't see anything wrong with why warlocks shouldn't be as good as the best classes. Why settle for mediocre? Although to be fair right now I wish we were mediocre instead of bottom tier garbage.

[SpikeySquad]

That is where you are wrong. Warlocks are currently the ONLY ONES having this issue. The other, notorious specs - Boomkins and Rets - actually have a choice of rerolling into the other, working specs of their classes... Warlocks do not have this luxury.

So if a Ret rerolled Prot or Holy they would do more DPS? Many players only play one role. As a Boomy player there is no way I would roll feral as I don't play melee in raids. In my opinion they have far more issues than us as Destro works though yes it is a little weak. Anyhow, tuning is coming (supposedly).

[Deleted]

One thing I don't understand why people have this "Fire Mage 2.0" or "as OP as demon hunter" attitude. So what? If Blizzard doesn't tone them down every dps specc should be exactly as powerful as those classes.

I don't see anything wrong with why warlocks shouldn't be as good as the best classes. Why settle for mediocre? Although to be fair right now I wish we were mediocre instead of bottom tier garbage.

If every class had the same dmg and possiblitys you would cry for not being unique and that every class was the same.
A Little bump in numbers would help but putting every1 at the same lvl is Close to impossible if u dont want to remove the classes all togheter.
I actually Think blizzard made it very clear from my personal experience that they managed to fulfill the statement " bring the player not the class".
It is still a rpg and there will allways be diffrence in speccs and classes were some will be better and some weaker and atm we seem to be one of the classes.

[Baconeggcheese]

Same with this one... 15% to Destruction and it will be as broken as DH is. You have no measure.

I'm down, lets do it!

my own behind is apparently worth more than your mouth.

You never go ass to mouth ji.

Maybe in that I've looked for a new class because I don't see the mechanical issues I'm seeing being fixed any time soon, but that's not a DPS issue.

Thing is there really aren't many actual mechanical issues with the specs. A lot of the time people seem to be unable to separate mechanics they don't enjoy from mechanics that are actually issues with the spec, which are two very different things. There is plenty about the design of each spec I would change because of personal preference, but there's damn near nothing inherently wrong with any of them that can't be solved with tuning.

I took the pretty moderate stance until I saw the data.

What data are you looking at? Just wondering because statistics data from logs can be very misleading if you're looking at that.

Here's some statistics data from HFC:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8#timespan=1000

Destro must have been an awfully shit spec back then looking at this right? Hell its below demo and demo was gutted. And yet it was one of the best specs to have in your raid for half the fights and was actually built into the strategy of mythic archimonde.

Taking a deliberately contrary view that 'everything is fine' is absurd. Telling people to get good on a premise that no one else in their raid group is also wanting to get good with any other class, is equally absurd.

Everything is mostly fine though, we're a tiny bit under tuned but mechanically sound and we already know a tuning pass is happening tues and we're likely to see buffs.

I'm struggling to figure out how the current situation isn't fine.

Telling people to play Destruction, isn't entirely helpful either for those not invested or not enjoying that spec either.

It isn't, but it is. It's literally always been the answer for the last 12 years, you play the spec(s) that's strong if you want to perform at a certain level. It's not something I think is great, in an ideal world all specs would be equally balanced and viable but that would require a level of homogenization that is simply not going to happen.

So telling people to be ready to play multiple specs and swap to the "best" one at the time is the correct advise.

[Rhaxus]

I really hope they don't just tune our numbers, so much about warlock feels incredibly backwards, like not having a baseline kick, having to deal with Life Tap for no actual benefit ( imo if i have to stop dpsing and sacrifice part of my lifeforce, i should do way more damage than others for that. that's the whole warlock fantasy, right? - power at any cost).
demo having to deal with doom and dot-pets ( i like that they want abandon that system), and the most stringent timing windows for their damage

destro should by all means crush anything on sustained 2 target cleave, that is the whole deal of having strenghts and niches. being tuned around the assumption that this is too abusable and therefore neutering the ST damage of any spec is absurd; affliction suffers from the same problem.

Afflictions artifact just needs a higher spawn rate for escaped souls and they need to count for our gold traits as killed enemies.

Ramp-up is the obvious funkiller for aff and demo, especially if there is no payoff for the excessive ramp.

The whole debacle with the mobility/survivability theme for mythic has been discussed to death, too.

Really awkward talent setups, baseline spells being turned into talents, missing fun glyphs and visuals ( green fire, updated demon forms on glyphs) are all just icing on the cake.

Now this might just fall under your "mechanics i don't enjoy" bacon, but i feel all this stuff makes the specs actually not as mechanical sound as you guys picture it.

Those problems are, for me atleast, clearly felt when trying to play my warlock specs and get worse when i get in situations that force me to compare myself to other classes in mythics, mythic+ and raids.

That said, their "tanky caster fantasy" feels incredible as affliction doing world quests, it just needs some serious adjustment for group content.
I'd say Soul leech should be baseline, because without it, the specs don't feel tanky and it quickly becomes no choice at all.

[Deleted]

I'm down, lets do it!



You never go ass to mouth ji.



Thing is there really aren't many actual mechanical issues with the specs. A lot of the time people seem to be unable to separate mechanics they don't enjoy from mechanics that are actually issues with the spec, which are two very different things. There is plenty about the design of each spec I would change because of personal preference, but there's damn near nothing inherently wrong with any of them that can't be solved with tuning.



What data are you looking at? Just wondering because statistics data from logs can be very misleading if you're looking at that.

Here's some statistics data from HFC:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8#timespan=1000

Destro must have been an awfully shit spec back then looking at this right? Hell its below demo and demo was gutted. And yet it was one of the best specs to have in your raid for half the fights and was actually built into the strategy of mythic archimonde.



Everything is mostly fine though, we're a tiny bit under tuned but mechanically sound and we already know a tuning pass is happening tues and we're likely to see buffs.

I'm struggling to figure out how the current situation isn't fine.



It isn't, but it is. It's literally always been the answer for the last 12 years, you play the spec(s) that's strong if you want to perform at a certain level. It's not something I think is great, in an ideal world all specs would be equally balanced and viable but that would require a level of homogenization that is simply not going to happen.

So telling people to be ready to play multiple specs and swap to the "best" one at the time is the correct advise.

Whenever you post, i get hungry. damn you

+1

[dakalro]

I really hope they don't just tune our numbers, so much about warlock feels incredibly backwards, like not having a baseline kick, having to deal with Life Tap for no actual benefit ( imo if i have to stop dpsing and sacrifice part of my lifeforce, i should do way more damage than others for that. that's the whole warlock fantasy, right? - power at any cost).

Since when is Life Tap a problem? Being tuned around wasting 1 gcd every few seconds for Life Tap means you do the same damage as other players but you can bundle them together for movement. Timing your taps is one of the skills you want as warlock to maximize dps.
Sure you can't actually do the same damage as other players right now but that can be fixed

[Rhaxus]

Since when is Life Tap a problem? Being tuned around wasting 1 gcd every few seconds for Life Tap means you do the same damage as other players but you can bundle them together for movement. Timing your taps is one of the skills you want as warlock to maximize dps.
Sure you can't actually do the same damage as other players right now but that can be fixed

it is, because it feels needless, when every other caster besides arcane isn't actually thinking about mana any more

[Lightwysh]

I really hope they don't just tune our numbers, so much about warlock feels incredibly backwards, like not having a baseline kick, having to deal with Life Tap for no actual benefit ( imo if i have to stop dpsing and sacrifice part of my lifeforce, i should do way more damage than others for that. that's the whole warlock fantasy, right? - power at any cost).
demo having to deal with doom and dot-pets ( i like that they want abandon that system), and the most stringent timing windows for their damage

destro should by all means crush anything on sustained 2 target cleave, that is the whole deal of having strenghts and niches. being tuned around the assumption that this is too abusable and therefore neutering the ST damage of any spec is absurd; affliction suffers from the same problem.

Afflictions artifact just needs a higher spawn rate for escaped souls and they need to count for our gold traits as killed enemies.

Ramp-up is the obvious funkiller for aff and demo, especially if there is no payoff for the excessive ramp.

The whole debacle with the mobility/survivability theme for mythic has been discussed to death, too.

Really awkward talent setups, baseline spells being turned into talents, missing fun glyphs and visuals ( green fire, updated demon forms on glyphs) are all just icing on the cake.

Now this might just fall under your "mechanics i don't enjoy" bacon, but i feel all this stuff makes the specs actually not as mechanical sound as you guys picture it.

Those problems are, for me atleast, clearly felt when trying to play my warlock specs and get worse when i get in situations that force me to compare myself to other classes in mythics, mythic+ and raids.

That said, their "tanky caster fantasy" feels incredible as affliction doing world quests, it just needs some serious adjustment for group content.
I'd say Soul leech should be baseline, because without it, the specs don't feel tanky and it quickly becomes no choice at all.

Easy things to fix gameplay wise. Mana should be near irrelevant. We should be focused around out respective shards almost exclusively. Life Tap needs to be a talented dps boost at the cost of life.
For affliction: more souls and make the button light up when you hit 12. Drain Life/Souls should increase ramp-up speed of agony.
Demo: the castable pet buff needs to be instant.
Destro: I have no idea I haven't touched destro yet.

[Narwal]

You have a working spec of your class - called Destruction. It needs a small bump and it will be just fine.

The talk was about Aff being shit, which I agree about. It has some very niche awesomeness, but that's it. Aff players do need to bite the bullet and spec Destruction, that's what we were talking about.

Destruction is certainly in a good spot for sustained cleave fights, which this zone has a decent number of. Blizzard can't simply buff the single target damage of the spec without breaking (overpowered) us in sustained cleave fights, however. Unless they change around actual talents, such as removing 100% uptime on havoc, in order to allow our single target damage to come up. It's just a situation where they're going to have to make real changes.

I will say one strength of the lock right now certainly feels like it's tankiness. I'm not standing with the group in many situations for raid heals because that moving around hurts the dps a lot. Logs are showing my self healing at 40k hps, and of course we get the bubble. In all of normal and heroic the first week, I may have died before a wipe was called twice, and normally due to my own mistake. In mythics, a healer was actually happy to see me and when someone asked why, he/she said because warlocks don't need to be healed, and i find this to be mostly true.

[Deleted]

Easy things to fix gameplay wise. Mana should be near irrelevant. We should be focused around out respective shards almost exclusively. Life Tap needs to be a talented dps boost at the cost of life.
For affliction: more souls and make the button light up when you hit 12. Drain Life/Souls should increase ramp-up speed of agony.
Demo: the castable pet buff needs to be instant.
Destro: I have no idea I haven't touched destro yet.

Don't know what to do about life tap. I really dislike having it, since in my experience it never feels good to press that button. Any melee / any other caster being effectively disarmed / silenced every X seconds until pushing a button would be a hard sell for Blizzard, and I really don't understand why that shouldn't be true for warlocks.

Affliction either needs virtually no ramp up, or an execute phase again. Otherwise your ramp up will simply just become lower overall DPS in the end.

Demo needs something done about haste stacking, and a semi permanent army would probably fix that. Also demonic empowerment not being cast after (almost) every summon. Also needs some cleave / multi target love, preferably by making Doom tick 2 or 3 times. That would also fix doom being binary at the moment (Either it deals damage or it doesn't).

Baseline interrupt is also something warlocks should have by now, if they want the various specs to use different demons. And destruction is mostly fine I guess, tweaks on damage and cast times would do a lot to make it feel better to play. I would still argue that destruction is more braindead than ever, since there are pretty much no interactions between any of your spells. Other than human error, talent choices and gear, I really don't see how destruction can vary much from player to player, as long as they follow the simple rules that destruction has.

[dakalro]

it is, because it feels needless, when every other caster besides arcane isn't actually thinking about mana any more

You do understand that you're designed in theory with wasting GCDs on Life Tap, right? So if you use those GCDs when you wouldn't be able to do damage anyway (since it's instant cast) you gain damage. Affliction is the only spec that has a lot of instant casts and has a lower chance of having dead time to cast Life Tap.

It is also true that it may also be the reason why we get so many cast time spells as demo. Removing Life Tap might net us some more instants.