Warlocks and health gains.

[ComputerNerd]

It does seem that the recent discussion on life taps and the drain vs siphon debate despite being seen as QQ by a lot was bringing up some valid points, partly about playstyle and partly about simply being tedious.
For whatever the reason proved to be, it seems that blizzard agree with that and a statement by Ghostcrawler does indicate a step in the right direction.

We're trying to keep under control the healing abilities of the non-healing classes. Since healer mana is supposed to matter now, self heals become much more potent than they are on live. Warlocks were always intended to sacrifice some health to restore mana, and then restore that health through drains and health gain effects. As WoW aged, that gameplay diminished. On live, you generally Life Tap because of the glyph, and expect overpowered heals to just heal you up. For Cataclysm, we’re boosting Drain Life’s damage and healing and making Life Tap stronger so the lock has more control over his resources.

Affliction is intended to have an edge over the other specs in terms of how much health they gain, through Siphon Life, Death’s Embrace and Haunt. The other specs also have some mechanics to reduce their need to Life Tap / Drain Life such as Mana Feed and Soul Leech.

That said, numbers aren’t final yet. We’re boosting Siphon Life in a future build, but then again we’re also reducing Drain Life’s heal restore. We’re also tuning Life Tap to consume less health, and give more mana for that health consumed.

The new Nether Protection change is designed to give the warlock more control over when Nether Protection procs, instead of it happening in the background with an ICD. If the boss is about to hit you really hard with a Frost spell, you can Nether Ward and count on Nether Protection happening, whereas before it could or could not proc randomly.

Pets: For Affliction, the Succubus and Felhunter will do comparable DPS. The Felhunter will probably come out with a slight DPS edge. But if you were doing an encounter such as Heroic Anub, you would use the Succubus over the Felhunter and you see only a minimal DPS loss. For Demonology, all pets will do similar DPS, but the Felguard will have an edge on fights that require AOE. But you could use an Imp on a Patchwerk-style fight and see a minimal DPS loss vs the Felguard. On the other hand, an encounter like Heroic Freya would make the Felguard shine. For a heroic dungeon, the Succubus helps with crowd control. Keep in mind these are goals, and may not reflect the numbers in the current beta build.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...&pageNo=45#893

Siphon Life to be boosted, and Drain Life to be nerfed perhaps only slightly.
It still does help to address the concern of Drain Life becoming mandatory after a tap.

[Deleted]

Siphon Life to be boosted, and Drain Life to be nerfed perhaps only slightly.
It still does help to address the concern of Drain Life becoming mandatory after a tap.

still doesnt make LT sound like a worthless ability, that makes you go kamikase for little mana (when compared to the health loss)

[ComputerNerd]

The concern was about the pretty substantial, and seen by many including myself as excessive health loss.
The wotlk format was to provide the buff via the glyph to give you an incentive from the regular tapping outside of it being solely a class mechanic.
The new implementation is meant to reduce the frequency we believe at which you have to tap.

That still des not change that there was a fear of putting our health at even greater risk, so really forcing us to stand still and drain to get it back, which is then either less than convenient if even possible at times in pve encounters or inviting interruptions in pvp.
The seemingly necessary drain afterwards was the issue, and as I said this indicating a yet to be announced in size buff and nerf to siphon and drain accordingly will reduce our need to rely on that for the bulk of the health return. How much remains to be seen, but a step in the right direction it is at least.

[Deleted]

If on single target Felguard and Imp do comparable damage...

For Demonology, all pets will do similar DPS, but the Felguard will have an edge on fights that require AOE. But you could use an Imp on a Patchwerk-style fight and see a minimal DPS loss vs the Felguard.

compare the Felguard Glyph (5% to legion strike dmg) to Imp glyph (firebolt by 20%).
A 5% increase on an ability with CD, compared to a 20% increase to total pet damage.
Unless GC intended "Glyphed FG" and "Glyphed Imp", on any fight where AoE isn't needed, Imp will be much better for demo (in every fight in which AoE isn't need)

[Spastic_Dreamer]

We're trying to keep under control the healing abilities of the non-healing classes. Since healer mana is supposed to matter now, self heals become much more potent than they are on live. Warlocks were always intended to sacrifice some health to restore mana, and then restore that health through drains and health gain effects. As WoW aged, that gameplay diminished. On live, you generally Life Tap because of the glyph, and expect overpowered heals to just heal you up. For Cataclysm, we’re boosting Drain Life’s damage and healing and making Life Tap stronger so the lock has more control over his resources.

Affliction is intended to have an edge over the other specs in terms of how much health they gain, through Siphon Life, Death’s Embrace and Haunt. The other specs also have some mechanics to reduce their need to Life Tap / Drain Life such as Mana Feed and Soul Leech.

That said, numbers aren’t final yet. We’re boosting Siphon Life in a future build, but then again we’re also reducing Drain Life’s heal restore. We’re also tuning Life Tap to consume less health, and give more mana for that health consumed.

The new Nether Protection change is designed to give the warlock more control over when Nether Protection procs, instead of it happening in the background with an ICD. If the boss is about to hit you really hard with a Frost spell, you can Nether Ward and count on Nether Protection happening, whereas before it could or could not proc randomly.

Pets: For Affliction, the Succubus and Felhunter will do comparable DPS. The Felhunter will probably come out with a slight DPS edge. But if you were doing an encounter such as Heroic Anub, you would use the Succubus over the Felhunter and you see only a minimal DPS loss. For Demonology, all pets will do similar DPS, but the Felguard will have an edge on fights that require AOE. But you could use an Imp on a Patchwerk-style fight and see a minimal DPS loss vs the Felguard. On the other hand, an encounter like Heroic Freya would make the Felguard shine. For a heroic dungeon, the Succubus helps with crowd control. Keep in mind these are goals, and may not reflect the numbers in the current beta build.

Stuff like this really annoys me. It seems instead of actually providing a unique use for each of our pets, blizzard wants to make it so they're all interchangable. This sucks.
The whole point of having different demons is for them to fill different niches, not for us to only use one because it has a higher DPS count. If blizzard really wants to make it so we use different pets, then they really should revamp ALL pet abilities, not just a select few. Make felhunter back into the spellcaster killer it once was, make succubus the melee destroyer (give her the old felpuppy's tainted blood thingy) and make it so voidy is actually a valid tank, instead of a makeshift one.
As for the Siphon Life thing, I don't know why we needed to complain about it for them to realize it was a BAD IDEA. 0.5% of ANYTHING short of 10,000,000 is terrible, and our health pools aren't that big yet. What they need to do is make Siphon Life a DoT again, and make Corruption leech a tiny bit of mana too (the 0.5% is good here) that way it isn't over-powered.
But it's totally expected that they're screwing this up, they've been confused as to what a lock is SUPPOSED to be since Vanilla. They still haven't addressed our survivability issues or the fact that our fear spell is about as useless as Superman's cellophane "S".
(for those who don't get the reference, watch the 18 second link below :P)
youtube.com /watch?v= CoqXoSDws8Ec (without spaces)
Yes, fear has become THAT useless.

[adynn]

Stuff like this really annoys me. It seems instead of actually providing a unique use for each of our pets, blizzard wants to make it so they're all interchangable. This sucks.

I'm afraid we're going to have to disagree there. More pet choice for specs is always going to be a good thing. It'll mean we can choose between the utility of each pet depending on the situation. The option to be able to dispel in pve as demo (using the imp) is very powerful and a great help to healers, while we wouldn't have to gimp our dps. In pvp pet damage isn't a real large concern, as their utility against certain classes/specs far outweighs any loss of dps that would occur. On a fight like saurfang, being able to use the succy as affliction would be great, due to the pushback.

[Deleted]

I love the Felguard, the with the new abilities it got even better, but I think it's cool if they make it possible to also use other pets if we wish. Having one pet render all of the others pointless is kinda dull.

[Lachdonin]

Is it just me, or does that Blue Post directly contradict its self?
"For Cataclysm, we're boosting Drain Life's damage and healing... we're also reducing Drain Life's heal restore"

If their talking about different builds to see which works out better, fine, but as it is thats a very confusing statement.

[Spastic_Dreamer]

I love the Felguard, the with the new abilities it got even better, but I think it's cool if they make it possible to also use other pets if we wish. Having one pet render all of the others pointless is kinda dull.

That's my point exactly. There's no point in even having the other pets if we have no incentive to use them, besides SPECIFIC encounters, and if we only use them for those specific encounters it will feel awfully tedious.
I think each pet should have it's specific use depending on what the warlock wants.

The imp gives +Health...so maybe they should gear it around keeping the warlock alive longer; which it does with that dispel. Other things it could potentially have? Phase Shift that the warlock can use on himself/herself, maybe even a "Demonic sacrifice" that kills the imp to remove the warlock from combat.

The voidwalker has his shield for the warlock and the tanking thing going on, so obviously he's supposed to be a tank. Maybe give him more health, better taunts/aggro gaining, and perhaps a spell that he has to cause 50% of the warlock's threat to be transferred to him.


Succubus is the wild card, but she's obviously meant to be a DPS pet, the "rogue" (as they've said countless times) so she should really get a better stealth like ability, and maybe a shadow-step that would stun the target and increase the initial damage of her first attack by 40%, making her better. The seduce is good, but the soothing kiss was just never used to begin with. Still think she should get tainted blood though.

[ComputerNerd]

More pet choice for pve is a bit of a mixed bag though.
If they intend for our supported pet to be putting out around 30% or more of our damage, then if we need to use the succubus for CC, then that pretty substantially hurts our dps.
If we find ourselves in a situation where we do not need to CC, then we can pick and choose the one with the most utility, usually the most applicable buff or ability.

Actually the demon soul ability will do a threat transfer for a period of time to the voidwalker.
That contradiction is compared to the current numbers of drain life, which are too low, and the current beta implementation which is too high for drain life and too low for siphon life.

[5648945621]

looks like they're balancing our self healing to only outheal Life Tap dmg? This is just absurd... whats the point of having self healing if you still need as much healing as everyone else?? And what hope do we have to drain tank ppl in PvP? Spriests can still heal themselves in raids.

Why cant they just make drain life heal for the amount of dmg you do, so that demo and destro locks wont have to use DL after life tap?? And give us back siphon life as a dot, seriously... everyone got 3 dots now. What cool and unique things is left in the warlocks class? They're completely fucking locks up in cata. If they dont start fixing things, im happy to say that i wont ever buy cataclysm.

[ComputerNerd]

While I understand the intent, the self-healing will need to be balanced to at least counter life tap.
An environment where we cannot rely on heals so much is rather harsh to a class who's core mechanic for returning mana involves sacrificing a portion of our health.
The self-healing largely defined the affliction warlock, and lets hope that they do not screw that up badly.

[ultimar235]

I dislike these changes as it just means in order to not be a mana leecher you have to sacrifice DPS to restore your HP. Your already sacrificing DPS everytime you tap but now we'll have to sacrifice even more to heal ourselves so healers don't QQ?

It just doesn't sound like fun to play.

[Jessicka]

Demonic Aegis, Mana Feed, Siphon Life and Soul Leech were all originally, as I see it, intended as the 'optional' backfiller talents to provide a little utility and survivability without having to sacrifice DPS talents to pick them up.

By balancing us to use them for covering hit point loss from Life Tap, reduce the need to Life Tap in the first place, and cover DPS loss from having to Drain Life after Life Tapping; they've converted them into DPS talents with no choice to skip over. We're already talent starved as it is compared to other talent trees which have up to 42 points to spend in them, when we're stuck with just 37 in each - I just don't see how this is a move away from the cookie cutters of WotLK they brought in all these changes to try to get rid of.

On pets. He says himself quite clearly, using the 'alternate' pet for each spec will result in a minimal DPS loss. A DPS loss is still a DPS loss. It's a minimal DPS loss for a Hunter to use a Cat over a Wolf on live right now, but how many Hunters do you see using Cats? Standard pets will still be standard pets so long as there is any variation in DPS between them. The biggest irony is that GC has already made a post about exactly this in relation to Hunter pets.

Lastly, as the Glyphs and Talents do not all effect each pet equally, the Succubus does not receive any benefit from Dark Arts, nor do her Glyphs improve her DPS, so there is no way her DPS can be expected to be competative with the Felguard or Imp whos talents and Glyphs do benefit them. So even when you're not loosing damage simply because she's stood CCing something, you're loosing damage from using her in the first place.

Cataclysm is only a couple of months away, and still they seem at a loss as to what to do with Warlocks.

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

The thing that confuses me the most is their reasoning behind the smaller talent trees. In a smaller talent tree with a smaller amount of points, each point is more important versus having a large tree with lots of points. This means that dropping points into utility versus DPS becomes a much larger DPS loss per point, meaning we have to commit to more of a loss than before, meaning we're less inclined to spec differently.

I mean, some of the things are really cool about the Beta so far, I really do love some of the stuff, I died laughing at Flee/Bladestorm, but I just can't get past the huge glaring flaws that have been pointed out in this thread.

[Jessicka]

The thing that confuses me the most is their reasoning behind the smaller talent trees. In a smaller talent tree with a smaller amount of points, each point is more important versus having a large tree with lots of points. This means that dropping points into utility versus DPS becomes a much larger DPS loss per point, meaning we have to commit to more of a loss than before, meaning we're less inclined to spec differently.

I mean, some of the things are really cool about the Beta so far, I really do love some of the stuff, I died laughing at Flee/Bladestorm, but I just can't get past the huge glaring flaws that have been pointed out in this thread.

The point is that we are meant to be picking up all the DPS talents PLUS some utility. With these changes, they're turning utility into DPS talents, leaving us with no options for utility. Not that the utility options are actually there since we're so short on talents to begin with.

It does feel like some talents, like Mana Feed are so expensive simply because there aren't the talents elsewhere to pick up.

[Deleted]

Lastly, as the Glyphs and Talents do not all effect each pet equally, the Succubus does not receive any benefit from Dark Arts, nor do her Glyphs improve her DPS, so there is no way her DPS can be expected to be competative with the Felguard or Imp whos talents and Glyphs do benefit them. So even when you're not loosing damage simply because she's stood CCing something, you're loosing damage from using her in the first place.

Cataclysm is only a couple of months away, and still they seem at a loss as to what to do with Warlocks.

Actually there's a Succubus glyph (Lash of pain - 25% to lash) but this doesn't make your reasoning invalid.

It seems to me, looking at the various builds, that warlocks were given to the "innovate & buff guy" for the first builds, to be passed then to the "dull & nerf guy" in the "Codename: ninja" build where we had
- changed LT
- removed Nemesis (bringing Meta from 2 to 3 min CD, big nerf considering demo mastery)
- removed fear from Shadowflame
- reduced health/mana gained from Soul Leech
- reduced Empowered Imp procs

probably the same guy that in "Codename: fluffy"
- nerfed SL
- made MC procs from SB (so no more MC under Decimation)
- removed dps increase for FG & Imp from DE

[Spastic_Dreamer]

Well another problem with the succy is that Seduce is channeled. Maybe if they made Seduce sort of like the priest's shackle ability, where she can still dps and the target remains seduced until damaged, that way you're not sacrificing on your pet DPS while CC'ing.
This wouldn't really be broken, as the target still cannot be attacked without breaking CC, and you still ge to DPS, it's a win-win.

I think most of our fears are confirmed though. As the poster a few before me said, I don't think blizzard honestly has a clue what they want warlocks to do.
Demonology isn't the master of demons that it should be, Beastmastery hunter spec has MORE of a pet-master synergy than Demonology, hell, hunter pets have MORE customization than us. They get talent trees, and hunters get several hundred different pets to choose from, while locks are shafted in that department. We only get 5 demons in THREE expansion packs, last new demon was Felguard.
You'd think that since there's a whole FREAKIN burning legion of them, that we'd have our choice pick...but nooooooo.
:P

[SirMeo]

Tbh I'm actually one of the few locks who seem to be perfectly happy working with only one demon - namely the Felguard. Heck, Felguard was the reason I picked demonology and haven't looked back ever since; imp is annoying, voidwalker is ok, but he's a "tank", not damage, succubus is... well, ok, but not as cool as felguard and felpuppy is boring (I'm talking style/coolness factor here, not actually dps here

I wouldn't mind swapping demons for some trash for additional CC or something, but to raid with non-felguard... eugh I love my felguard. The fact I'm more than happy working with only one pet does not change the fact warlock trees, especially demo, do not seem to know where they're going. We have some AoE and some PvP and... what else? When I look at demo tree I don't really see "interesting choices" but rather "do I have to pick this or THIS boring talent I won't probably need just to get further in the tree". Now when our utility talents really affect our dps it's even worse. I've always thought that survival talents are not useless for dps (after all, dead dps does not do dps at all!), but this is a bit too much. Just where is Blizzard going with this? I am not afraid of change, at one point I was eagerly waiting for new stuff, but now I'm just not sure if Blizzard knows the best.

</QQ>

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

The point is that we are meant to be picking up all the DPS talents PLUS some utility. With these changes, they're turning utility into DPS talents, leaving us with no options for utility. Not that the utility options are actually there since we're so short on talents to begin with.

It does feel like some talents, like Mana Feed are so expensive simply because there aren't the talents elsewhere to pick up.

Right, why couldn't they do the DPS + utility with a larger tree? Having a smaller tree makes each point more valuable, and even with utility options, there's going to be obvious picks as it is now.