Word from Blizzard on the Warlock "situation"?

[infernity]

@finn

Nice post. As with most forums, you've outlined the issue with feedback from such a diverse group of people. Especially considering we're asked to provide feedback on 3 different specs, that are played in different situations (pve/pvp/casual). Collating that is a huge undertaking.

My issue with locks is that the things that were cool are gone, or are stripped so hard (or made talents) that they may as well be. As has been said here, having to pick between ST and aoe is dickish. There isn't another word for it,it's just dickish. Having so little mobility is awkward, and makes raids unfun. Having so little "burst this add down fast" in both aff and demo is dogshit.

Overall, not just with locks, the thing that bothers me is that we're gonna be tied to a spec or class because of the weapon. And regardless of what blizzard may say, i have very little hope that they will balance the specs properly. So i can just see me putting in the effort to level my aff weapon, get it near maxed - jk fam, need to go destro - then 2 weeks later we're going demo. I don't know. Maybe i'm jaded with the whole game.

[Finnigast]

@finn
I don't know. Maybe i'm jaded with the whole game.

My dad and I were talking about just this the other day. We have both been playing MMO's since UO, and we are starting to feel that current MMO's just aren't holding us the way they used to. I don't think that the earlier MMO's were better, it is just that we have been playing them so long the "magic" is dwindling. As such, we end up criticizing things that, 10 years ago, we would have been amazed by.

"I don't have to spend 20 minutes buffing my entire raid, then do it again in 10 minutes? Holy shit!!!"

We all bitch about ability pruning, things being too casual, class homogenization, etc... Then we realize that we are turning into the crotchety old guys on the porch talking about how "Kids are bitching about flying....back in my day we had to run to Vox..."

We can nit pick all day long about how things should be better balanced, changes are good/bad/destroying the genre/etc. But at the end of the day, we realize the market has changed, demands and expectations are different, and we aren't the wide-eyed gamers we used to be. The amazement is gone.

Either you still have fun playing the game, or you don't. If you play for the "competition" of world-firsts, then, frankly, none of this shit makes a difference, as you will play whatever fotm class/spec will get you there fastest. Either way, don't expect ANY expansion, change, rebalance, release, etc. to make you feel the same way you felt the first time you walked into Molten Core.

[Deleted]

thats why i go 13/13/13 in every specc. no joke!

[Gaidax]

I kind of believe @Gaidax is hired by blizzard and paid to spread the love.

Sorry for having a free will and ability to think on my own.

Frikkin' sheepies.

[Jaman]

I'll just mention it again. People are frustrated with mechanics and specific damage issues. Noone is asking for every warlock spec to get a flat 20% damage buff.

I'd be careful of generalizations like that. I have seen comments along the lines of "at least buff our damage to make us worthwhile".

I agree with you that the gameplay mechanics are not great. But realistically they're not going to change until 7.2. They may tweak numbers - and if they overtweak the numbers and make warlocks (or any class) OP then lots of people will play that class. And then Blizzard can look at the numbers and say "I don't see why you think there's a problem - look at how much damage you're doing and how popular you are in raids!">

- - - Updated - - -

My point is, if this varied, oft-uninformed, occasionally ignorant, feedback is what is gathered on this forum, I can only imagine how much worse it is on the Bnet forums. Given how difficult it is to find definitive, conclusive evidence as to how Locks perform in-raid, at 110, with Artifacts and Legendaries - is it any wonder that Blizz hasn't just taken the "feedback" and "fixed" Warlocks?

Don't get me wrong, I know there are broken and un-intuitive things with Lock mechanics that should be addressed. I see them, and anyone who tries to play lock at a half-way serious level sees them. However, before saying "the community has spoken - fix this shit", or "We have 1500 posts on how locks are broken, why aren't you doing something Blizz?", maybe we should keep in mind the quality of the feedback that Bliz is receiving. We can't seem to get consensus amongst the relatively small group here beyond "There are things that need fixing".

The feedback on the forums does present some half-assed solutions. And there are different opinions about exactly what is wrong. But there is some general consensus about what the big problems are. Almost nobody out there thinks Demonic Empowerment is a good mechanic. Nobody seems to think 3 Shards is a reasonable cost for Rain of Fire, nobody thinks it was a good idea to make Backdraft and Shadowburn talents, nobody likes Destruction's mastery. Nobody thinks removing Buring Embers and replacing them with Soul Shards that only refresh automatically off of one spell with a cooldown made Destruction better. I haven't seen anyone who likes having Unstable Affliction be a Shard dump. None of this has anything to do with performance in raids at max level, and the Artifacts don't really alleviate most of those concerns.

You can huff and puff all you want and say that our opinions don't matter if we weren't in beta - but pretty much everything I wrote was feedback that beta testers did provide Blizzard.

[Finnigast]

The feedback on the forums does present some half-assed solutions. And there are different opinions about exactly what is wrong. But there is some general consensus about what the big problems are. Almost nobody out there thinks Demonic Empowerment is a good mechanic. Nobody seems to think 3 Shards is a reasonable cost for Rain of Fire, nobody thinks it was a good idea to make Backdraft and Shadowburn talents, nobody likes Destruction's mastery. Nobody thinks removing Buring Embers and replacing them with Soul Shards that only refresh automatically off of one spell with a cooldown made Destruction better. I haven't seen anyone who likes having Unstable Affliction be a Shard dump. None of this has anything to do with performance in raids at max level, and the Artifacts don't really alleviate most of those concerns.

You can huff and puff all you want and say that our opinions don't matter if we weren't in beta - but pretty much everything I wrote was feedback that beta testers did provide Blizzard.

Fair enough, and as I said in my original post, I do agree that there are several mechanics that seem wonky at the moment. I was not in beta, so I don't know the specific feedback regarding each mechanic, but I think that several of the issues can be tweaked as opposed to entirely reworked as some people suggest.

My overall point was not that there isn't legitimate feedback out there, it is that it often gets drowned out by regurgitated, anecdotal feedback.

My personal thoughts on the issues that you listed:

- Reduce RoF cost to 2 shards, or improve damage to make it worth 3 shards. HOWEVER, consideration would need to be made for how this would interact with the Artifact talents that increase RoF and overall fire damage.

- Demonic empowerment: I agree that in its current form, it is clunky. HOWEVER, I think small tweaks can make it more viable and have it "feel" more impactful. I don't think a complete redesign of the mechanic is necessary.

- Baseline abilities being moved to talents: This sucks, I hate it, but I think it has happened to every class. Whether or not we are more strongly affected than they are is up for debate. I am against ability pruning in general, so I am a bit biased here. Time will tell (after we get our artifacts/legendaries with their subsequent abilities/effects) if their overall intention of "distilling" works.

- Embers/Soul Shards: I am indifferent about this. With Artifact talents and legendaries, I think the SS generation/spending will be less of an issue. We can't see it now because we don't have access to them. This seemed to be less of an issue from first hand beta feedback I saw.

- Unstable Affliction being a shard dump: Haven't seen much about this. I don't think that people care about it being a shard dump, I think they just want it to be more meaningful if it is going to be.

Bottom line, this is a prime example of differing opinions regarding feedback, even if it is on a lesser scale. We have two people here discussing things calmly, yet we disagree. Now adjust this to the scale of the feedback Blizzard gets...

[runique]

Did you ever hear of a boss refusing to pay $15 a month because it got tired of being beaten by a warlock in SoO and quitting?

Oh yeah, Blizzard should definitely balance the game solely around PvP. That is exactly what brings in all of the money for WoW.

[Lucrece]

All I know is that doing legacy raids is kinda miserable with rain of fire costing 3 shards. That spell needs a cost reduction, and we need smoother shard generation that isn't some ridiculous swing of RNG tied to dot crits or a 12 sec cd.

Our DPS cooldowns like doomguard/infernal/grimoire pet should NOT cost a soul shard. Why is it that we're paying a resource cost to start our burst, which only delays our burst period because we can't use our chaosbolt/unstable affliction since we just spent those shards summoning the damn doomguard/imp?

And why did they go back on the idea that warlock specs should be free to choose what pet they use? Why do I as a destruction warlock have to use a tiny imperceptible imp, because my only other option for a pet is grimoire of supremacy and they've made that talent trash?

I want to use my demons based on utility, Blizzard has no business trying to force a pet on my spec.

It also feels like a kick to the balls that 3 of our talent rows are made of abilities we had baseline, removed from us while other classes got brand new abilities from talents instead of having their old abilities pruned and offered as something new via talents.

[bio347]

It's always important to remember that "listening to feedback" does not mean "acting on feedback". Particularly since player feedback tends to be biased in favour of the player and is often drenched in hyperbole.

All I know is that doing legacy raids is kinda miserable with rain of fire costing 3 shards.

Why are you not spec'd into Fire and Brimstone for legacy content?

[Finnigast]

It's always important to remember that "listening to feedback" does not mean "acting on feedback". Particularly since player feedback tends to be biased in favour of the player and is often drenched in hyperbole.


Why are you not spec'd into Fire and Brimstone for legacy content?

Or just spec into GoS and have the Infernal (or Abyssal, or whatever they are calling it these days), AoE everything down...

[ThePhantombox]

I kind of believe @Gaidax is hired by blizzard and paid to spread the love.

So by that logic I can call you out for being a literal whiny child AND get paid by Blizz?

Sign me up.

[klogaroth]

Speaking of legacy - new shadowburn is decent for old content now that it can be cast at any time. That should feed RoF fairly easily if you've got massive packs of enemies and don't want to use an infernal.

[Count Zero]

inb4 they remove the shard cost on summons but tell us for anything else really it'll have to wait until next pre-patch.

[Pull My Finger]

Well, they did comment on the Hunter situation yesterday, with something like: "Holy shit! We did not know that something was wrong, despite constant complaints on all levels from beta testers and hunter players! Now hunter population is at its historic minimum, and we would like you to send us more feedback. Maybe we'll get around to fixing it in a year or so. Or maybe not. Tell us what is wrong."
That is probably the way they are going to deal with warlocks. I would not be surprised if Blizz won't even do proper numbers tuning before mythic opens, god forbit fix any gameplay issues.

Oh wow, it's incredible how hurt and offended you sound. I could never write or say something like that, I'd feel incredibly embarrassed.

[Zandalariprelate]

I would like the doomguard/infernal does not cost sould shard and maybe a bit more movility with portals, the rest seems fine to me.

[Fang7986]

"Working as Intended"

if you mean I'm having more fun with my 'lock than I've had in years it is working as intended

[Shibito]

We got a floating skull weapon, we dun need anything else.

[Jessicka]

Fair enough, and as I said in my original post, I do agree that there are several mechanics that seem wonky at the moment. I was not in beta, so I don't know the specific feedback regarding each mechanic, but I think that several of the issues can be tweaked as opposed to entirely reworked as some people suggest.

My overall point was not that there isn't legitimate feedback out there, it is that it often gets drowned out by regurgitated, anecdotal feedback.

My personal thoughts on the issues that you listed:

- Reduce RoF cost to 2 shards, or improve damage to make it worth 3 shards. HOWEVER, consideration would need to be made for how this would interact with the Artifact talents that increase RoF and overall fire damage.

- Demonic empowerment: I agree that in its current form, it is clunky. HOWEVER, I think small tweaks can make it more viable and have it "feel" more impactful. I don't think a complete redesign of the mechanic is necessary.

- Baseline abilities being moved to talents: This sucks, I hate it, but I think it has happened to every class. Whether or not we are more strongly affected than they are is up for debate. I am against ability pruning in general, so I am a bit biased here. Time will tell (after we get our artifacts/legendaries with their subsequent abilities/effects) if their overall intention of "distilling" works.

- Embers/Soul Shards: I am indifferent about this. With Artifact talents and legendaries, I think the SS generation/spending will be less of an issue. We can't see it now because we don't have access to them. This seemed to be less of an issue from first hand beta feedback I saw.

On this specifically, right now on Live we have far, far more haste than we'll have in the first tier and a half, or more, of raiding - shard generation is going to be poor and unreliable at best for a very long time. Those echoes of 'Haste will fix it' for Rogues feeling like shit to play until the final tier still resonate.

- Unstable Affliction being a shard dump: Haven't seen much about this. I don't think that people care about it being a shard dump, I think they just want it to be more meaningful if it is going to be.

Bottom line, this is a prime example of differing opinions regarding feedback, even if it is on a lesser scale. We have two people here discussing things calmly, yet we disagree. Now adjust this to the scale of the feedback Blizzard gets...

These are the exact same complaints that were raised when testing was still in Alpha. They are simply not going to act on them at this point. I'll add as well that nobody thinks Soul Effigy as an extended ramp up DoT regulator is a good mechanic - it did get a pass as 'it's a dot spec' for a while until people realised the implications. And nobody thinks the 14s+ ramp up for Demonology is even remotely acceptable. And yes, they will "fix" it eventually by buffing one or two most 'acceptable' specs through the eyeballs to shut people up, while killing off the mechanically least acceptable so people don't play it. That's been the tried and proven MO for years.

[ambident]

...nobody likes Destruction's mastery.

what is wrong with the mastery?

[Spunt]

what is wrong with the mastery?

It's pure RNG.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77220/m...aotic-energies

Not that RNG is inherently bad, but this seems a bit much. Just personal opinion. Some people like it, others don't.