Anyone feel like the KJC nerf has ruined the Warlock class?

[Jessicka]

Warlocks seriously lucked out in 6.0 in that they weren't nerfed into the ground like many other classes were hoping. Locks are still pretty OP in raids they are just losing KJC which is a minor annoyance. I definitely LOL'd when I saw the new Aspect of the Fox for Hunters; are they seriously going to announce to the raid that players can move and cast for 6 seconds? Hell it would take 6 seconds to say that much on Vent. The only thing Fox will be used for is trolling casters that start to rev a cast before the pull and then cancel it by moving & the Fox will troll them into pulling early.

Pretty sure any raider playing a caster will have a prominent Weakaura to show it's up, like we have them for Devotion Aura on Thok.

[Astromedes]

For some of us this is simply reverting to a Pre-MOP "Playstyle". The only negative here is I don't have the passive movement anymore. It's more a quality of life issue than a game-breaking issue. In other words, passive movement is fun but by no means necessary.

[Turturin the Warlock]

For some of us this is simply reverting to a Pre-MOP "Playstyle". The only negative here is I don't have the passive movement anymore. It's more a quality of life issue than a game-breaking issue. In other words, passive movement is fun but by no means necessary.

How so? From a mobility perspective:

Demo's playstyle is essentially the same as MOP, fel flame is the minor loss.

Since pre-Mop i.e. Cata, Affliction lost instant shadowbolt procs, fel flame and shadowflame

Since cata, Destro lost instant soulfire procs, corruption, agony/doom, fel flame and shadowflame, not to mention backlash (which actually did proc in some encounters)

I don't think any of this means we're broken, but it's also true that your statement oversimplifies and marginalizes what were actually significant changes. Since cata with respect to mobility, we're far worse off as destro and somewhat worse off as affliction.

[Xenocastra]

From someone playing lock since TBC, KJC was the most stupid shit they ever introduced and I'm glad its gone.

I've played my warlock since 05, and i don't feel that way.

Removing all the cast on the move spells from classes is a step backwards, being so mobile was fun. And they can tune boss difficulties with that in mind, so it's not like it made boss fights easier.

Destruction's charred remains is the only spec that feels truly horrible on movement(and even when you can stand still, it feels like utter shit to me)

I'd also take Scorch over 8sec KJC even if it deals no damage.

[Kashii]

I for one welcome the change to KJC, suddenly it's now worth looking at for Demonology and all specs now have a new means of moving during aggressive play, and to handle 'dodge' phases like annihilates and magnets better than before. Strangely I feel like the 2m/20s version would be better for that, but *shrug*

I am seriously looking forward to the torrent of QQ that'll hit this forum in November crying about move-cast Fears and Chaos Bolts again. Remember that pre-5.4? It'll be beautiful to see those tears after the vindictive shit we've put up with about how we should languish at the bottom of the meters and rankings for no good reason.

I will miss Fel Flame however, it never has been anything to do with our being overpowered, but for some unfathomable reason it's taking more blame even than KJC in spite of that, and paying the price as a result.

Honestly, after playing other MMO's that allow casters to move it's really painful shifting back to the WoW turret model - but I agree that the KJC change is good for PvE. It really sucks for PvP though. The whole notion that you can create breathing room to cast in PvP is a myth unless you're in 3v3 arena comp that will create the room for you. There is actually PvP outside of 3's - but nobody wants to talk about that.

I also agree that the loss of Felflame seems pointless.... but maybe it's just that I always like to feel like I've got SOME button to mash when I'm playing a game.

[Claymore]

Honestly, if you just *DON'T LIKE* moving while casting, buff the other talents, so that you can keep on playing that way. For those who enjoy KJC, though, I feel like Blizzard owes fans at least the consideration of other means of "balancing" it.

I'm not upset about KJC getting *a* nerf, because I totally agree a nerf of some kind was needed. My issue is the particular route they chose, which is simply lazy, uninspired, and does nothing to maintain the "feel" of the character. As I said, I've played a Warlock since Vanilla, but never as a "main" until MoP, because KJC was just so damn much *fun*. Not because it was "overpowered", but because it had the same fast, frantic feel of playing a Melee, which gave them a niche wholy unique from Priests or Mages.

Like I said; if I wanted to play a character who felt like a Mage, then I'd play a goddamned Mage. Warlocks finally felt "different" and exciting because of KJC. Nerf its damage, mobility, or cast-range, but for the love of God, least it as a passive movement.

[Baracuda]

Played since vanilla.
The turret idea about caster is so old fashioned that i can't really find any good reason to keep it in the game anymore. Besides lazyness by the devs. I haven't played beta but after 9 years i'm thinking about reroll 'cause i really enjoyed the cast-on-the-move mechanics.

I think that the actual version of KJC is finally a good solution, you trade some dps cd for movement. But i would rather see it removed as a talent and transformed into a core mechanic. For every class.
Just ONE spell castable on the move FOR EVERY SPEC FOR EVERY CLASS. The one that you spam and does not an absurd amount of damage. Maybe with a mechanics like scorch but punishing, every cast on the move your movement speed is reduced by a X%. Or your damage is reduce by Y%.

I don't see any big problem in something like that pve wise. It will be fun, balanced for every spec and class (no more whining) and it will not make boss mechanics trivial. I don't see any skill involved in not casting anything while moving due a boss ability. If you are a good player planning is something you do anyway, and not for the filler abilities.

As always, forgive me for my bad english. Not native.

I've suggested all spells should be useable on the move, but with a noticeable dmg debuff. Your suggestion is good too though.

[Kathranis]

Ruined? No. But I do feel that the class is objectively less fun without KJC and Fel Flame.

[Astromedes]

How so? From a mobility perspective:

Demo's playstyle is essentially the same as MOP, fel flame is the minor loss.

Since pre-Mop i.e. Cata, Affliction lost instant shadowbolt procs, fel flame and shadowflame

Since cata, Destro lost instant soulfire procs, corruption, agony/doom, fel flame and shadowflame, not to mention backlash (which actually did proc in some encounters)

I don't think any of this means we're broken, but it's also true that your statement oversimplifies and marginalizes what were actually significant changes. Since cata with respect to mobility, we're far worse off as destro and somewhat worse off as affliction.

I don't feel it's overly simplified or marginalized at all. I do believe, with a little perspective, it is JUST simple. We have lost and gained, that's the way of things. All the things you mentioned have been / were compensated for. I would say the only thing anyone would have an argument for NOT being compensated for would be fel flame to some degree. Since MOP hit I never found myself once saying "I sure do miss corruption, agony, and bane of doom as Destro" for example. Was I used to them? Yeah. Did I like the complexity? Yes. Did they hurt my performance at the end of the day? Not at all.

tl;dr : Things being simpler than other may perceive it is a valid point of view in the long run. So is quantifying small things into something complex.

[Claymore]

Like I said, the issue is that KJC introduced a completely new style of gameplay for Casters, something closer to the feel of playing a Melee, and now they're ripping it away with, as far as I can tell, no real attempt to actually "fix" the Talent. I played my Warlock up back in Vanilla, but like every other ranged character, I found them boring as hell, only playing him enough to get the Dreadsteed in Vanilla, and the Tier 5 in TBC.

KJC made the Class feel fun enough that I main'd it. Completely gutting KJC will just reduce the Warlock to another bland "Ranged" character again, instead of something genuinely fun and unique. Like I said, reduce your cast-range if you've taken KJC (Passive), and problem solved!!!

[Osiria]

I don't think it has ruined the class. KJC alone, I mean. It certainly ruined the fun of it, the same way the nerf after 5.2 made KJC boring (the one that made only possible to cast a single spell instead of a completely different playstyle).

Thing is, lvl 90 tier is pathetic now. They changed and nerfed it so much that it could be completely cut without feeling anything was taken at all.

- AD is the epitome of boredom. Might create some opportunity for management, but that's just as interesting as DK rune regenaration tier. Could've been interesting, if they at least tried. But they didn't, so they thought a bandaid, making it a talent with oversimplified effects would be "the best thing possible".

KJC... a slightly different 'casting while moving' Shaming cd. (Uh, look! They reduced the CD to 1 min along with the duration! That makes it so different!!!! /sarcasm). It actually brought an interesting playstyle to cast everything while moving, but the cost for such mobility was poorly designed, so they thought dumbing it down to 5.4 KJC was "the best thing to do" too.

And MF. So situational that makes AD the 'must go' choice, after all, it's an improvement to DPS anyways, might as well just pick one that can at least be used for single target. This talent is the most controversial. The passive version increased the dmg in certain fights by a LOT but it never added ANY damage boost. The only benefit was "it reaches more targets. Again, it was something that could've been interesting, either by making many spells become AoE or just improving a bunch of AoE stuff (no need to buff damage ever), but still they did nothing good about it, only nerfed into oblivion and boredom.

Lvl 90 tier needs to be reworked into something consistent. But Blizzard is using the fact Warlock got a lot of work in MoP to ignore the class. Look at all the problems with mobility (KJC changes and FF removal). The encounters don't seem to require any less mobility but some spec/classes are getting their mobility nerfed into oblivion.

I predict lvl 100 will suffer of the same problem. Devs will be indifferent to what happens with the class, they will just bandaid if it occurs a problem, then move on to ignore the fact they just made something that could be interesting into something that could be replaced by a glyph.

But if you can pull numbers in an encounter... they will think everything is perfectly fiiiiiine...

[Shamran]

I've played lock since early TBC, and I can't quite grasp why KJC and FF removal is *that* big of problem. As far as I can see, there are two aspects to this issue:

1. Being worried about your damage while moving.
2. Being worried about not having a button to push while moving.

Ad 1) Isn't this a tuning issue? I mean, you do have damage components at play even without KJC (talking about Destruction here, but the same sort of applies to Aff and Demo, only with other spell names): You've got immolate ticking, a pet dealing damage (bar GoSac, but then, in turn, Immolate ticks harder), you've got Conflagrate, you got RoF, and, at 20% mob health, you got the hardest hitting instant in the game, SB. That's four, conditionally five, damage components at play while moving. As such, you're not damageless while travelling and should parses show that movement heavy fights result in gushing wounds in general Warlock end product, those damage components will, likely/hopefully, be altered/tuned to compensate.

Ad 2) This, to me, is an issue of boredom - and can that really be the case? That if you have to spend 3 seconds running out of the fire, or to get into nuke-that-add position, you simply get bored? Maybe I just lack basic multitasking abilities, but if I'm stood in a big pool of molten lava, it's generally enough excitement for me to get the frak out of the way before I'm burned to a crisp.

I appreciate that some people get stressed and feel like their performance is going down the drain if they don't have a button to push every second of the fight. However, I submit that for a lot of people, there's also a very basic psychological issue at play here. It's called: DON'T TAKE AWAY MY COOL TOY!!!11 For more than two years now, Locks have grown accustomed to being able to dish out 200K crit, 1,6 second cast time, ember generating fillers while moving. And no matter if that's reasonable or not, going from awesome to slightly less awesome, is not a transition anyone makes willingly. I'm no different.

However, going against my normally vain, completely irrational and want-the-best-gadgets-at-all-costs personality, I've decided to get all proactive and positive about this. And eventhough acting all mature like that makes me very uncomfortable, I've specced into AD and simply removed FF from my actionbars and done a lot of raiding lately. Much to my surprise, it handles quite well. I know doing that doesn't quite resemble beta state, but I can safely say that in my experience, KJC and FF removal doesn't ruin the game at all. It does force you to think for an extra second or two about where you position yourself during a fight, though.

[Jessicka]

I've played lock since early TBC, and I can't quite grasp why KJC and FF removal is *that* big of problem. As far as I can see, there are two aspects to this issue:

1. Being worried about your damage while moving.
2. Being worried about not having a button to push while moving.

Ad 1) Isn't this a tuning issue? I mean, you do have damage components at play even without KJC (talking about Destruction here, but the same sort of applies to Aff and Demo, only with other spell names): You've got immolate ticking, a pet dealing damage (bar GoSac, but then, in turn, Immolate ticks harder), you've got Conflagrate, you got RoF, and, at 20% mob health, you got the hardest hitting instant in the game, SB. That's four, conditionally five, damage components at play while moving. As such, you're not damageless while travelling and should parses show that movement heavy fights result in gushing wounds in general Warlock end product, those damage components will, likely/hopefully, be altered/tuned to compensate.

It's more about the inability to generate resources while moving, which leads to loss of damage while not moving as well. Not a problem for Affliction, less of an issue for Demo than Destro.

[Stefanus]

Nope, KJC should go. What rly ruins the class are all other nerfs like gateway(won't be worth placing it at all anymore), HS (shifted from percentage of hp restored), soulswap was nerfed to the bone(i agree it needed a nerf but it should have been reversed to a state it was back in cata, because i think cata was xpac where afflic locks had the best mechanic), all self healing was reduced, and most of all Fel Flame will be gone(I liked the idea of how before this spell was designed it dealt less dmg, but it was extending the duration of your corruption,UA,immolate).

[Tya]

It's more about the inability to generate resources while moving, which leads to loss of damage while not moving as well. Not a problem for Affliction, less of an issue for Demo than Destro.

Surely if you're just comparing resource generation, then aff and destro are about the same when moving.

Aff - Gets 3 chances of a soul shard per 2s while stationary. 1 chance per 2s while moving.

Destro - Gains full ember generation while stationary. Gains embers from immolate+conflag+rain of fire while moving.

I've not done the maths (I honestly can't be bothered to), but it seems like both specs suffer a lot.

I also don't know if drain soul ticks can proc soul shards. Going by the wording of Corruption's tooltip, it's a resounding yes, but I've long since stopped trusting those tooltips!

[Shamran]

It's more about the inability to generate resources while moving, which leads to loss of damage while not moving as well. Not a problem for Affliction, less of an issue for Demo than Destro.

That's a fair point. However, it does fall into the category of the first point, kinda: Being worried about your damage. First off, I concur with Tya that we do still have Conf., RoF and Immolate to generate embers. Secondly, as I mentioned, and maybe I'm simply being blatantly naive here, I'd hope that if parses show warlocks to suffer disproportionately on movement heavy fights, there'd be a re-tuning.

[Jessicka]

Surely if you're just comparing resource generation, then aff and destro are about the same when moving.

Aff - Gets 3 chances of a soul shard per 2s while stationary. 1 chance per 2s while moving.

Destro - Gains full ember generation while stationary. Gains embers from immolate+conflag+rain of fire while moving.

I've not done the maths (I honestly can't be bothered to), but it seems like both specs suffer a lot.

I also don't know if drain soul ticks can proc soul shards. Going by the wording of Corruption's tooltip, it's a resounding yes, but I've long since stopped trusting those tooltips!

The wording is from 'your most recently applied Corruption', so I don't think that they do, in which case the chance of getting a Shard whether you're moving or not doesn't change. It would do some very weird things if you DoT something and return to an 'old' target otherwise.

Destruction gains the bulk of its Embers from Incinerate, which doesn't happen while moving.

[Deleted]

Time to return to the wonderful stunlock by rogues ... Hate to be a turret

[Master Guns]

Warlocks are "ruined" because KJC is gone? You do realize that KJC was introduced in MoP, right?

So..you're saying that vanilla-Cata, warlocks were pointless and ruined? Lol.

[Brusalk]

Warlocks are "ruined" because KJC is gone? You do realize that KJC was introduced in MoP, right?

So..you're saying that vanilla-Cata, warlocks were pointless and ruined? Lol.

The class got a major overhaul for MoP and rotations including the number of hard and instant cast spells changed. Damage sources changed. Most specs got new gameplay in the form of secondary resource generators and consumers.

Comparing KjC/redesigned Warlocks to non-KjC/originally designed Warlocks is foolhardy and a completely false comparison.

- - - Updated - - -

I've played lock since early TBC, and I can't quite grasp why KJC and FF removal is *that* big of problem. As far as I can see, there are two aspects to this issue:

1. Being worried about your damage while moving.
2. Being worried about not having a button to push while moving.

Ad 1) Isn't this a tuning issue? I mean, you do have damage components at play even without KJC (talking about Destruction here, but the same sort of applies to Aff and Demo, only with other spell names): You've got immolate ticking, a pet dealing damage (bar GoSac, but then, in turn, Immolate ticks harder), you've got Conflagrate, you got RoF, and, at 20% mob health, you got the hardest hitting instant in the game, SB. That's four, conditionally five, damage components at play while moving. As such, you're not damageless while travelling and should parses show that movement heavy fights result in gushing wounds in general Warlock end product, those damage components will, likely/hopefully, be altered/tuned to compensate.

Ad 2) This, to me, is an issue of boredom - and can that really be the case? That if you have to spend 3 seconds running out of the fire, or to get into nuke-that-add position, you simply get bored? Maybe I just lack basic multitasking abilities, but if I'm stood in a big pool of molten lava, it's generally enough excitement for me to get the frak out of the way before I'm burned to a crisp.

I appreciate that some people get stressed and feel like their performance is going down the drain if they don't have a button to push every second of the fight. However, I submit that for a lot of people, there's also a very basic psychological issue at play here. It's called: DON'T TAKE AWAY MY COOL TOY!!!11 For more than two years now, Locks have grown accustomed to being able to dish out 200K crit, 1,6 second cast time, ember generating fillers while moving. And no matter if that's reasonable or not, going from awesome to slightly less awesome, is not a transition anyone makes willingly. I'm no different.

However, going against my normally vain, completely irrational and want-the-best-gadgets-at-all-costs personality, I've decided to get all proactive and positive about this. And eventhough acting all mature like that makes me very uncomfortable, I've specced into AD and simply removed FF from my actionbars and done a lot of raiding lately. Much to my surprise, it handles quite well. I know doing that doesn't quite resemble beta state, but I can safely say that in my experience, KJC and FF removal doesn't ruin the game at all. It does force you to think for an extra second or two about where you position yourself during a fight, though.

From a Destro PoV:

1) Immolate ticks for essentially no damage. GoSac buffing Immolate damage isn't comparable at all to pet damage. (Even then, pets also have to move too.) Conflagrate is used rotationally for stand-still damage. You can at best have one charge saved for movement at any given time. SB is not spammable; its damage is predicated on being able to generate the resources needed to cast it. In addition, SB should only be cast under full procs during execute phase. Using it for sub-optimal movement is like telling a fire mage to hit combustion on a tiny ignite tick.

One hopes that if damage for any spec is shown to be low that it'd get retuned.

2) It's not that unreasonable for people used to a fast-paced spammy spec to feel like there's something wrong when they're suddenly able to do nothing while they have to move.