Why are warlocks getting nerfd in 5.2 when Arena rep is low?

[luckydevours]

Hell yeah, Sacrificial Pact is OP as fuck!! It has to be nerfed by 50% so melee classes have an actual chance to do damage to a warlock ...

[Nerraw]

They've said it quite a few times they don't consider class rep to be any representative of class quality.

Also, GC's main is a frost DK.

I thought it was unholy.

---------- Post added 2013-01-07 at 03:45 PM ----------

Hell yeah, Sacrificial Pact is OP as fuck!! It has to be nerfed by 50% so melee classes have an actual chance to do damage to a warlock ...

The nerf to it actually means that it'll be viable to take for people using Sac. I steer clear around it at the moment solely because of the health cost associated with it when using Sac.

[Nicola]

Hell yeah, Sacrificial Pact is OP as fuck!! It has to be nerfed by 50% so melee classes have an actual chance to do damage to a warlock ...

It's already so overpowered that it's not even affected by resilience right now, meaning it breaks extremely easy right now.

Also, warlocks will be underpowered in 5.2, right now they are already slightly underpowered with mainly blood fear keeping them somewhat viable.
I've explained my reasoning several times on the pvp forums already, but oh well, I have a boring life.

Fist of all, did warlocks have demon armor in cataclysm, giving them 30% increased healing taken. Right now, that is only 10%. In addition to that, we lost our old soul link, a passive 20-25% damage reduction ( You really didn't have to worry about pet health at all). Because of those 2 changes, warlocks have a lot less durability then they had cataclysm, making them extremely squishy.

Now, to help us out, blizzard decided to give us dark regeneration and more healing from health stones and more active defensive abilities.
But now, all healing is nerfed by 30%, making that self healing a lot weaker. In addition to that; our 2 greatest counters, warriors and rogues, can both reduce our healing even more. For a warrior that is a total of 50% healing reduction. A rogue with the new 5.2 talent, will reduce it even more, to a point where it is a second wind you have to activate manually on a 2min cooldown.

Now you say, you have sacrificial pact. True, however, only demonology warlocks that play with a pet out use it. Also, as I said above, it isn't affected by resilience, making and, it depends on the current health of your pet. Because of the cost and the fact it isn't affected by resilience, it is a rather weak defensive cooldown.
Blizzard realized the cost was too much, that's a good thing, however, the shield itself will only absorb half as much now, making it even less useful.

The soul link is a joke and needs to get reworked, not gonna spend to many words on that.

Dark bargain, that's a nice defensive and so is unending resolve. However, I really do think unending resolve will need it's cooldown reduced to 2min, but that's my own opinion.

Now, as offensive abilities, mainly cc, we aren't doing amazing either.
Sure you can complain about blood fear being too strong now, I agree, deal with it. However, from the transition from cataclysm to mop, we lost a good amount of cc.

Remember the days you had both shadowfury, death coil and (non intstant) howl of terror as a destro warlock? Right now, you have to choose between those 3.
Not to mention, we are getting our blanket silence removed as well, and while some people might agree blankets were a "noob" thing, at high rating, knowing when to use a blanket silence is a hard thing. It can make or break the whole game.

Lets talk about damage, we all love seeing someone getting crit for 50% of his health, don't we?

But serious, after the chaos bolt nerf in 5.1, it has lost a lot of it's deadliness. Not only is getting a cast off a hard thing, if you aren't lining your chaos bolt up with cooldowns, you won't see a crit above 100k on geared opponents. Even if you get the cast off with cooldowns, before it actually lands they still have time to pop a cooldown or to trow a quick heal. After getting hit by it and losing max 40% health, you have at least 3 seconds before the next one lands, which honestly never happens, so plenty of time to heal.
And once your done trying to land that 1 chaosbolt that crits for 160k every 2min, you don't do any damage till your cooldowns are back up.

As for demonology, the same story kinda applies, however, instead of having a spell with a very long cast time that always crits, you get one spell that's instant, has 2 charges, and doesn't always crit.
If you manage to crit both chaos waves and use a petless build, you can deal about 60% damage to someone not using cooldowns. However, the chance of getting 2 crits in a row is 1-1.2%. After that, you do no damage till your cooldowns are back up.

Affliction is known for not being good already. Why you say, it lacks pressure and burst.
Sure you can dot everyone up, doing more damage then other people, however, it brings to little pressure. A single HoT is enough to outheal your dots on secondary targets while for your main target, you are required to channel MG, which is sadly enough a big 'interrupt me' - sign.
Not to talk about haunt. If you want to do some more serious damage, you need to have this up, however, UA is too little of a dispel protection, allowing healers to just instantly dispel haunt as soon as you use it.

I can keep going on about this but I guess people get the point.

And now, our control is getting nerfed very hard, our damage is getting nerfed, our survivability is getting nerfed. While a nerf to blood fear was obvious, we need a serious buff to our cc, which we ain't getting. We have to little sustained damage and right now we are so squishy we have to run when other classes look mean at us.

They've said it quite a few times they don't consider class rep to be any representative of class quality.

Also, GC's main is a frost DK.

It really helps spotting imbalances tho. If a class suddenly gets a high representation, you know they are overpowered. If a class is getting a serious drop in representation, you know something is wrong.
Warlocks went from one of the best represented classes in cata, to one of the worst, despite more people having leveled a warlock because of the revamping.

[Nerraw]

Warlocks went from one of the best represented classes in cata, to one of the worst, despite more people having leveled a warlock because of the revamping.

Only reason we were somewhat highly represented in Cataclysm was because of our synergy with resto shammies. Comparatively speaking, we sucked in most other regards.

[Nicola]

Only reason we were somewhat highly represented in Cataclysm was because of our synergy with resto shammies. Comparatively speaking, we sucked in most other regards.

Warlocks had a good synergy with all healers but disc... resto shamans just happend to be the top healer for caster comps, but resto druids, and holy paladins worked as well.
Since SL/SL (s2) warlock have had an amazing synergy with healers, it was just a matter of playing with the healer that happened to be the best.

[pokeadott]

Low representation in high end Arena for a class that has a low global representation just suggests the class isn't overpowered. I saw some numbers someone pulled from various sources that Arena representation is actually about where it should be relative to the overall representation of the class with a preferential skew toward playing Destro over the other specs.

Not true. Warlocks have always had abyssmal overall population, but we have always had excellent arena representation. Go look at 2200+ 3v3 representation in cata and look at locks miles ahead of warriors depsite being woefully less populated overall. Overal class popularity has NOTHING to do with arena rep above 2200. People will play the best class/spec for a given season regardless of how much they like the class (see Reckful switching to War from Rogue this season if you want a high profile example of this).

We are currently bottom feeding with DKs and Rogues. With the 5.2 changes in the pipe, I bet we fall to rock bottom of arena representation (not counting monks obv.). It's good thing at least cause we'll get balanced eventually I guess. Honestly, I am just gonna quit lock pvp for now and go Shdow or level my War - it's just not worth it atm.

[Deleted]

Low representation in high end Arena for a class that has a low global representation just suggests the class isn't overpowered. I saw some numbers someone pulled from various sources that Arena representation is actually about where it should be relative to the overall representation of the class with a preferential skew toward playing Destro over the other specs.

Warlocks have always been underplayed, arena representation dropped between cata -> MOP, and as far as I'm aware warlocks have more players in MOP than we did in Cata, where we were really underplayed. The only class that's as consistently as underplayed as us is rogues, which when you consider how much their playerbase seems to think there's a problem, says something about us.

Considering we've just had a big revamp, I'm curious as to how the rogue facelift in 5.2 will mix things up.

[pokeadott]

Considering we've just had a big revamp, I'm curious as to how the rogue facelift in 5.2 will mix things up.

Apples and oranges though. The 5.2 rogue changes are primarily massive pvp buffs. Rogue representation will assuredly go up (whether they end up OP/balanced/underpowered still remains to be seen, but most people are leaning toward borderline OP).

Our redesign was to make the class more appealing to play - mostly by improving feel and play style. PvP wasn't much of a focus during the revamp as we have always been good in arena. But they didn't realize that some of the dynamics of those changes (making Aff a single target multi cast time spec, gutting our passive defenses in favor of cooldowns, etc.), along with a meta game shift (dead multi dotting, dispel changes, improvements to other classes - notably Warriors, etc.) was going to kill our viability in 3s.

[Deleted]

Apples and oranges though.

I agree to an extent, but larger total pop should equal larger arena representation (if not an increase, then at least it should prevent or help out with the loss in representation since Cata ended) - the main thing that dragged me into arena this early into the expansion was pvp upgrades for pve, and I don't pvp on my warlock because I find it a riveting experience right now - I pvp on it because it's my class, it's what I play. Neither of those depend on our inherent pvp power - it's simply because I play the class, having more people play the class should boost numbers - even if it's not to the extent of FOTM classes getting their influx. I certainly agree our revamp won't have driven people into arenas, but it might have driven people into the warlock class, and a fraction of them will surely try to arena - especially considering how hyped chaos bolt was early into the expansion.

My interest in how the rogue buffs will play out is more a case of wondering if it will pull rogues out of the gutter enough for warlocks to be noticeably low - if there are 3-4 classes with low representation, it doesn't really scream that they're underpowered (though it might whisper it), if there's 1 or 2 then maybe it'll show up on blizzards radar.

[Screwtape]

Dear Ghostcrawler,
I'm very upset about being insta-feared and then hit for a quarter of my health before I'm able to kick the shit out of the warlock. This is increasing the time spent per win by almost 15 seconds. Please fix this oversight immediately.
Signed,
Mages and Warriors

[Tya]

[Sacrifical Pact is] already so overpowered that it's not even affected by resilience right now, meaning it breaks extremely easy right now.

This is false information.

[Livevil]

Sacrificial pact on ptr in full malevolent gear( non upgraded), 100k absorb best case scenario meaning pet at full hp.

Spriest PW:Shield in same gear, 60k.

Quality talent design.

Didn't check if sac pact is still affected by Battle Fatigue though.

[pokeadott]

I agree to an extent, but larger total pop should equal larger arena representation.

Overall, yes. Over 2200, no. (tbf, we should probably use 2000 as the new benchmark since deflation and participation declined, but it's the number people are used to seeing - same principles apply).

Simply put, high end arena play does in no way shape or form reflect class population at max level. It never has. Go look back at Lock/Rogue 2200+arena rep throughout cata (2 least played classes at the time) and compare to Warrior (one of the most played classes). Warlocks and Rogues tripled Warriors in 2200 representation. Less stark, but similar thing happened with Shaman (mid pop class) vs. Pally (most pop class) where Shaman dominated representation despite a much lower player base.

At the highest levels of play, the best classes will achieve the highest ratings regardless of overall pop. I don't think locks should be ahead of the curve, but we should have the same representation as Mages/hunters/Warriors/DKs/Rogues in a perfect world. We're currently second to last by a large margin (tied with DKs and less than 50% of mage rep) and with the rise of rogues, decline of locks/mages (which further promotes melee cleaves) - we are headed for bottom of the barrel status in 5.2.

[Deleted]

Simply put, high end arena play does in no way shape or form reflect class population at max level. It never has. Go look back at Lock/Rogue 2200+arena rep throughout cata (2 least played classes at the time) and compare to Warrior (one of the most played classes). Warlocks and Rogues tripled Warriors in 2200 representation. Less stark, but similar thing happened with Shaman (mid pop class) vs. Pally (most pop class) where Shaman dominated representation despite a much lower player base.

At the highest levels of play, the best classes will achieve the highest ratings regardless of overall pop.

I can't argue with that. You win Mr.