Rather conservative wishlist for Warlocks

[Zathrendar]

Not much has improved for locks, so few changes to my suggestions:

Destruction:
-Chaos Bolt is meagre, and needs a buff. I've been using DrDamage to monitor its theorycrafted damage output, and it's barely a few hundred points above Incinerate. For a spell on a 12 sec CD, it's weak. It should go back to piercing all immunities/absorptions as well as reflects and the like. In addition, there was a suggestion to make hit rating over a certain point add bonus damage to the spell, to replicate its piercing effect in PVE. For PVP, this could scale with Spell Penetration. Either way, it needs much higher damage. Perhaps guaranteed crits if Conflagrate was used in a time period would also work.

-Overall destruction's dps output in PVP is a bit low, though its main focus is sheer speed over single high damage nukes. It still needs a review, particularly Immolate's sensitivity to dispels and the amount of interrupts flying about. Potentially move damage from the Imp and Corruption to other nukes in the spec. A redistribution away from dots and back to direct damage would be ideal. Destro has never been the epitome of a dot spec.

-Removal of Corruption from destro's PVE rotation. It ill fits the spec. Destro isn't made harder by another dot (in a DD fire spec) but clunkier. Instead, buff Empowered Imp to compensate. This won't lead to being OP in PVP as SF doesn't even hit so hard. If buffed to reliably proc SF when SB isn't off CD it'll also ease maintenance of ISF.

-A possible defensive mechanism like Barkskin for melee protection, could trigger for instance if you're stunned twice in a row.

-Immolate direly needs some form of dispel protection, or even made undispellable. It's destro's main source of damage, as without it Incinerate hits even less hard, you cannot cast Conflagrate and you lose a fairly high DPCT spell from the target. It's not like any of these spells save Conflagrate hit very hard as it is, and even in its case, it's nothing phenomenal at all. Alternatively: let dispelling it do something like reset the CD for Conflagrate or SF or make BoD hit like a ton of bricks in one go. Or spread a dot. Just make it hurt. Dispelling isn't as idiot proof as it was a while ago but it's still lethal to destro.

-Backdraft made undispellable, like FoF.

-A talent converting BoD to fire damage, or felfire even (call it Baleful Flames or something.) Possibly Burning Embers. I'd like Demonology to be the shadow/fire spec and the other two more specialised in their domains. Additionally, for Destro BoD could have a small chance to disorient on each tick, an idea I saw suggested here.

Affliction:
-CoEx going back to 30% makes it borderline useless. There's no two ways about this. If the spell was deemed to strong, a more sensible solution would be to limit the number of targets it could have and/or put a small CD on it. When other classes have more powerful snares baseline in their main nuke, one wonders what it is that made this one, finally useful spell, OP?

-Give Shadow Bolt a Soul Burn effect that reliably procs Eradication and makes it instant, simulating the mechanics with shadow spells. Affliction needs a big damage boost right now.

-Buff Drain Soul damage. The execute filler is very weak.

-Change Nightfall to buff Drain Life, effecting a nuke switch similar to SB -> Incinerate with MC. Nightfall currently doesn't change much. It's instant damage, but like the old Empowered Imp, it's boring, and you cannot rely on it to refresh SE for movement phases. Possibly change its filler to Drain Life and make it rely on instant Shadow Bolt procs instead. Consider making SE a self-buff. The spec's damage is not high enough for this to be deemed OP at the moment since most of its power comes in the form of high survivability, not damage.

-Unstable Affliction. Maybe implement a mana burn feature in it (idea courtesy of Jessicka.) Its damage is still on the low end.

-A suggestion for Drain Mana (courtesy of Gaahl on the EU lock forum) is to let it have DR, reducing its effectiveness the more it's used but allowing us to keep it in our arsenal. Very few locks are satisfied with the loss of this spell.

-Subject its Demon Soul (felhunter) to a re-evaluation. Fact that it doesn't apply to existing dots is an issue.


Demonology:
-Its execute is weak. This also ties into Soul Burn having very little PVE use for the spec. Perhaps let Soul Burn function with Demonic Empowerment (spell we rarely if ever use in PVE) to give a temporary buff to demon damage when activated together. I know Blizzard aimed to reduce its dependence on its execute nuke but I think they overstepped the mark a little. Maybe let MC affect SF again and buff it when it procs.

-Improve MC's proc rate slightly.

-Demo is mostly good right now. Its single-target damage received a mild buff and it still puts a lot of weight on Metamorphosis, but I don't think the spec has any serious design flaws worth noting. Its talent spec is somewhat forced in how much freedom for variation you enjoy and how many low tier talents add much to the leveling experience and this is a flaw mirrored with affliction and to a lesser extent destro, but not gamebreaking.

-Green fire for Soul Fire and Immolation Aura. Cosmetic but nice.


Pets:
-Succubus needs a buff and to be brought in line back to being a good PVP pet. IIRC, haste does not affect Seduction (a spell which, I might add, shares DR with Fear as it is.) Whiplash is nice for getting melee off you, but why use the Succubus over the Imp with Singe Magic or the Felhunter with offensive dispels? Her Demon Soul could focus on PVP usages, perhaps giving a disarm effect with a 5 - 10 sec ICD for the 20 secs it's active (so it wouldn't be notably more powerful than Psychic Horror), as well as a more universally useful buff than a damage bonus to SB. I'd like to see some sort of talent reducing Seduction's cast time as well as haste affecting it (if it doesn't, I've not been able to get a clear answer on this), and for her to return to being the Warlock's choice for melee. I was perfectly happy with our existing pet selection. Do they really think throwing in another pet for its own sake was a good idea?

-Drop the Imp from PVP (or give it some different utility), and revert defensive dispels to the Felhunter (reason behind its recent nerf to begin with.) This was never so much a nerf as much as the silly notion that we should be forced to vary our pet usage more. Yet now we're stuck with even more useless pets, when other classes get our abilities baseline. Granted, pet summoning is easier, but still not costless. Offensive/defensive dispels shared a CD anyway. Revert DM to an 8 - 10 sec CD. I fail to see how this was OTT.

-Sacrifice made into a baseline Warlock ability, retains 1 min CD. Possibly, let SB/HS trigger the effect instead of what it does now. It's not very powerful as it is, requires a pet switch and is on a 1 min CD. The VW serves precious little other purpose.

-A melee range interrupt for the FG on a slightly higher CD than the FG's. Demo's main feature is its more powerful pet, and I don't see this as making the spec too powerful as its anti-caster tools aren't very great. Possibly a disarm too, but on a higher CD than the Succubus's if she got one as well.


General:
-Make Demonic Circle: Teleport targettable and/or instant. If this is prone to abuse, just don't let it be targetted in certain areas and make SB give the target effect. Possibly let it "remove" the Warlock from being selected like Mirror Image does with Mages. Adjust range as necessary.

-Make SL automatically on, passively, and give the ability to clear the buff. Possibly design it as an aura effect on the pet's toolbar.

-If the Succubus is not redressed, a stunbreaker. She used to function as the equivalent of one. Perhaps one where you swap spots with your pet.

-Shadowflame glyph becoming baseline. I remember on the PTR there was a version of it that had a small Horror effect appended, but I'm not sure this is the right spell to attach that too. A possibility would be for Soul Burn to give it that effect? That way, you lose other uses for it but gain additional CC.

-Extend Soul Burn's utility.

-Give a 2 - 3 min CD spell that lets you use Soul Harvest in combat. Mages can regenerate their most important resource, mana, in combat, as well as HP. Intelligent use of CC would mean we can at least heal a bit more in combat, and get back those important SS's.

-Buff Fel Flame's damage somewhat. It hits for incredibly little.

-Potentially reduce demonic guardian CD, even if only for demo, so that it's usable on a more frequent basis in instances.

-Put interrupts on shared DR. Something like Rift's location check only being enforced at the beginning of casts would also be cool, so melee can't just exploit the lack of realistic physics to run through to avoid spells being cast.

-Fel Armor nerf has hit demo and destro hard, reducing their survivability. Consider letting each talent it (destro via Soul Leech, demo via another talent) to restore passive healing to the spell. If affliction needs nerfs to self-healing, they should be isolated specifically to that spec, not in an across-the-board fashion.


So anything you guys would add? Any thoughts on these? I say this is a conservative wishlist because I'm asking for some nerfs (which weren't even really intended explicitly as such) to be reverted. Overall, I'm very happy with the class in PVE. In PVP it could do with some tweaks, primarily with respect to pets.

Edit: Formatting/additions.

Edit 4: Some minor changes.

[Strafer]

Please bold some of the stuff, it was really hard to read.

[Zathrendar]

I'll space it out a bit more.

[Naibil]

Succubus needs a buff and to be brought in line back to being a good PVP pet.

To be honest, I think the Succy is more in line for a nerf than a buff. From what I have read, (for PvE Afflic at least) this is the strongest pet when glyphed. You also mentioned the same when talking about the Felguard and Demo. I know your statement was more aimed towards PvP but that is just my opinion from a PvE standpoint.

[Zathrendar]

I'd prefer she exited the PVE scene altogether, aside from CC.

[Nexxia]

Lock is fine, I just want to RENAME MY MINION.

[Zathrendar]

You can. If you mean you giving her the name, they won't ever allow that.

[Tinkerspell]

I liked it. There was really nothing I didn't agree with.

[Jessicka]

Pretty much agree with it. From my perspective as a Demonologist though:

Decimation: Needs to proc from Hand of Gul'dan.

Impending Doom: Needs to proc from Soul Fire.

Molten Core: Needs a higher proc chance, right now it feels under utilised.

Inferno: If they're to nerf the range, this feels like an ideal place to put an extra tick on Immolate where it still has potential PvP use, where MC doesn't.

Between these changes, you'd polish the spec's playstyle and buff it's single target damage to allow it to keep up with the other two trees. The extra Incinerate damage would also make the glyph more desirable, and put the Felguard back ahead as the desired pet. All this without effecting PvP.

[Zathrendar]

Those are pretty good ones, I'll add them in.

[Strafer]

I would like them to make the Voidwalker more tankable while leveling if you decide not to go Demo.

A Hunter in my guild has a Spider that can tank raidbosses for god sake, my Felguard/Voidwalker looses aggro after five shadow bolts. :P

[Deleted]

make soulburn a fun and useful spell....its only function is for imp soulfire
the rest is very situational

[Deleted]

- Decimation: Let it proc from HoG..

Would that not change too much? Would with the cooldown on HoG and the length of Decimate, im feeling that SF would suddenly be the new main filler?

[Stingray0011]

totally agree with Hordie on the soul burn ...

as for what i would like to see .. how about some more T4 2 piece bonus? hehe

with the very rare time you DON'T want to use soul link, maybe make is a passive ability, active whenever you summon a pet, but you can disable it when you don't need it, just one less random thing to worry about, also helps with soulburn summon in pvp. or just remove it from the GCD.

and perhaps a bug .. whenever i respawn doing rated bgs it auto summons an imp for me .. wtf? lol

[Carighan]

-Some form of interrupt protection, what with the number of interrupts now about.

I find that to be kinda lame when you're asking for more ways to interrupt healers - who are much more affected - above.

What the game needs is less interrupts. There is no need for "interrupt protection", that's just an arms race. Instead, we need interrupts to have more meaningful costs. Say a Rogue's Kick lowers energy regeneration by 30% for 10s, a Paladin's Rebuke stops all manaregen for 15s, a Warriors Shield Bash halves armor / block from the shield for 10s. Blizzard keeps saying dispels need to be more choicey, I think Interrupts need a similar treatment. It's all fine if one is a mage and bunnyhopping around throwing instants, on an Elemental with ~nothing to do but getting interrupted it's a little bit more annoying.

And yeah, Soul burn needs to be expanded. It has a ton of potential, if given to enough spells that one always wants to use it on 10 ends at the same time. Say a Soul Burn Shadow Bolt would apply an undispellable 5% crit debuff (just like Shadow&Flame) for 120s, one could even skip the talent for raiding that way if one is confident to only use Soul Burn for that purpose and that the fight is over in 6 minutes.

[Zathrendar]

Well if interrupts were meaningfully toned down, sure. I didn't ask for more interrupts so much as dispel protection (the best being to remove Immolate from the list of dispellable spells, it is too crucial for destro.) If affliction could dish out insane damage in a few globals, I'd understand why buffing UA would be over the top, but as it is, it's the only real protection the spec has against offensive dispels, and even then it fails at that. The spec pretty much relies on putting pressure on healers. The alternative again would be for offensive dispels to also take a nerf, and UA to just deal hefty damage when dispelled, and/or put up some sort of debuff (maybe spread a MS effect.) Part of the reason why Mages resort to IL spam is precisely because of interrupts and dispels. IL is immune to the former and has a greater chance of hitting a frozen target before freezes are dispelled than a cast Frost Bolt. Even if FB can hit harder, the time spent casting it could be wasted if interrupted. Do you know if interrupts currently share DR with one another btw?

As for:

Would that not change too much? Would with the cooldown on HoG and the length of Decimate, im feeling that SF would suddenly be the new main filler?

She means just to let the buff proc from using HoG as it does from Shadow Bolt, Soul Fire and Incinerate, which is reasonable.

[Jessicka]

- Decimation: Let it proc from HoG..

Would that not change too much? Would with the cooldown on HoG and the length of Decimate, im feeling that SF would suddenly be the new main filler?

It'd just be nice polish around the 25% mark, rather than having refreshed Immolate with it then having to revert to a couple of Shadow Bolts before Decimation kicks in properly. It really wouldn't make a huge difference, but it'd make things a little smoother.

[Bri]

We need a way to regain soul shards IN COMBAT.

[Dethh]

We need a way to regain soul shards IN COMBAT.

We do its called shadowburn.

I'd settle for our promised soulstone BR any patch now plz.

[Deleted]

We need a way to regain soul shards IN COMBAT.

Shadowburn for destruction. Drain Soul for Demo/Affl.

gg.