Are warlocks overpowered in the raid benefits department?

[mirages]

This is really crazy but a warlock can provide 13% spell damage increase, 165 resistance lowering (check your WWS on how much your damage is mitigated) which is unique, replenishment, spell crit debuff, and health buff. Not only that but you guys theoretically do the most damage as well.

Whats going on here?

[Pallieter]

The 165 resistance lowering(Curse of Elements) is good, the rest will probably get overwritten by other classes who have better buffs. Replenishment takes 5 point to get, so I dont think any lock will get it seeing a ret pally and surv hunter can have it much easier. Health buff? Are you talking about soul leech or fel armor.

[Ershiin]

Even if they provided every single buff in the game i wouldnt see them as OP in the raid benefits department.. Because unless they stacked you still wouldnt need more than 1...

[Dyo]

Health buff? Are you talking about soul leech or fel armor.

i belive he refers to blood pact

[Dominate]

Lets do a breakdwon here shall we -

13% damage bonus. Both moonkins and unholy DK's with ebon plague offer this in their rotation offer this, and considering scaling 165 damage reduction isn't much. Again not uniquie, usually CoE isn't applied as moonkins can do this with fearie fire and DK's with ebon plague, both passive in their rotation. Most warlocks will use CoA or CoD (the latter not really being used as molten core benefits off 2 shadow dots and deaths embrace benefits more off 2 dots, also curse of doom means that you need to time it.

Replenishment - deep in the desto tree, soul leech costs 5 points. Desto right now is around 5-600 dps behind the top dps builds on the ptr such as 40/31 or affliction with a doomguard. Add to that its 5 points into "utility" its going to take points off - way i see it - supression (3% spell hit) and/ or demonic aegis (30% effectiveness to fel armour - so less % of spirit to SP, less hp5). So the fact a replenishment was given to the lowest dps spec of warlock trees wasn't smart.

Spell crit debuff - passive off ISB - 5 point talent. Mages get the same for - if i recall right - 3 talent points and a glyph slot. Again, the only 2 specs to use this will be either deep affliction til 30% hp left (switch to drain soul for more dps), and at best it does 30% of a affliction warloclk's dps, or meta/ ruin builds. Whereas mages with the same debuff actually actively use it in their rotation but whine because they are required to take a break from spamming one button over and over. Even with simplifying afflictions rotation can you say that mages are more complex in raids than an affliction warlock? No, didn't think so.

Health buff - well gee so do priests. And 10% of health from blessing of kings (now trainable) and GotW. IMps buff actually stacks granted but felpups int/ spirit buff doesn't, and also warlocks don't offer a castable buff like most other classes do (aside from rogues, hunters iirc, warriors I count shoutsd and DK's horn of winter as "castable buffs")

Theroetically do the most damage - right now I believe that cat druids are said to do the most damage. You know - the class that can tank, dps and heal at the change of a spec.
Not a whine about druids - in fact I'm haing fun with cat dps but seriously - actually learn a class and how to analyse it rather than just spouting half informed rubbish and claiming it to be OP in raid benefits.

Following Blizz's mediocre slogan of "bring the player not the class" in fact I think you'll find there's nothing one class can buff that the other one can't.

[aztek]

Even non specced commanding gives more HP than Blood Pact. No warlock will use Curse of Elements, maybe in a 10 man group if no DK/Boomkin is available. Yes, new ISB is nice, and also helps mages so they can skip scorch (their worst DPCT spell, not sure but correct me) from their rotation - more filler for them equals more dps. Replenishement is a deep destro talent, and warlocks need to sacrifice some dps talents in order to get replenishement (not 100% sure also, been a while that I have specced into deep destro on the PTR.) Also, don't forget, no warlock can support the raid with 13% spell dmg AND replenishement at the same time (those are deep talents in different trees). Just for a sidenote, the number of bosses with resistance is very low at the moment. The only one I can recall right now is Rage Winterchill from Hyjal.

Just to make the list full: you forgot Demonic Pact (10% spelldmg given to party and raid members if your pet crits), but thats just marginally better than elemental's Wrath Totem, and also shamans need 1 point vs. ours 5 to get that.

You got some points there, but most of them are very weak. And if you would followed the latest changes, we got some pretty hard nerfs on different talents in order to prevent warlock stacking (Affliction stacking for 20k DS ticks)

ps: Dominate was faster than me, oh well.

[Deleted]

CoE isn't applied as moonkins can do this with fearie fire [...] passive in their rotation

erm what?

[TroyBlade]

In almost all cases, the partial resists that you see on WWS are not caused by resistance to schools of magic, they are caused by difference in level and cannot be lowered by a lock CoE (or Spell Penetration which does the same thing).

You should be able to check this for yourself on a heroic dummy.

I say almost all, because there may be a couple of situations where this isn't the case. For example Sapphiron may have frost resistance.

[Nam]

Nonsense.

First of all, there are almost no "unique" debuffs/buffs left, that is actually part of the "bring the player, not the class" politics, so for 25-man-raids, it is totally unimportant if class x brings two or five buff/debuffs, you'll easily have every buff and debuff with less than 15 people. Only for hard 10-man-raids, like sarth3D, buff/debuff stacking is actually important (and probably a thorn in the eye of blizzard).

Now to the buff/debuff situation:

Actually (pre 3.1):

CoE: The resistance-part can be ignored, there is no boss with known resistances in wotlk, and probably there won't be. The 13% spell damage debuff is very important, but it is applied by Moonkins via Earth&Moon automatically and by ebon plague of Unholy-DKs as well. Actually, every good WL will do everything she/he can to avoid the job of applying CoE because CoA is an important part of our rotation no matter what spec you are. And btw, the original CoE does only 10%, only deep affli has 13%, and they would sell their grandmother before switching to CoE from CoA.

Crit Debuff and Replenishment don't exist yet.

The health buff is given by an imp, who is still a little squishy. Affliction and Demonology use other demons, so they normally don't give that buff.

After 3.1 hits:

CoE: 13% made it baseline. Affliction still sticks to CoA, but Destruction can easily use it now. Good thing.
Crit Debuff: Affliction will apply it automatically, Destruction could apply it, but it would cost considerable dps. All the mages in our raid are quite happy about affliction applying the debuff now because they won't loose dps anymore when they have to apply it.
Replenishment: Only Destruction, and there are usually enough specs in a raid giving this.
Health buff: Still only Destruction.

I can't see anything problematic here. We give some buffs/debuffs, some of them automatically, some of them with considerable damage loss - just like ANY other class.