Warlock PvP input

[Deleted]

Don't really agree with the above, Destro damage in arena is extremely scary. We are the most dangerous class if left alone to cast and even outside cooldowns we can take 40-45% of someone's hp in a single cbolt + 2 conflags with cremation up.

The spec needs help but it has to be measured, we aren't weak against double casters for example so against those comps we shouldn't get much stronger.

A complete fairytale scenario. Everyone knows not to let destruction hardcast, everyone knows warlocks are paper squishy and people are quickly learning how to deal with infernal just like they quickly learnt to deal with the felguard back when it was surprising people and butchering teams in early Legion when people didn't know to look for it.

Destruction is so easy to counter I'm not even sure I even want to consider it - it's damage window is to heavily broadcast and so easy to avoid that if it shouldn't be catching anyone at high rating out, especially when some maps like CoB are borderline unplayable due to how easy it is to just walk away. There's a reason affliction is still the go-to spec in arena despite warlocks sorry state despite having piss-weak dots and being hard-carried by an azerite trait.

I agree melee are the main problem, but acting like destruction is even close to being strong seems farsical, especially when the proposed fix is a pvp talent, something destruction already struggles to cope with so many "mandatory" choices since making CB do even it's mediocre damage is religated to a pvp talent and now apparently so is making us able to live against anything - that's going to leave one slot, which is probably going to be the mandatory root that's required to even have a chance at setting up your oh so scary CB chain casting, but you're losing spell reflect which is arguably just as important for preventing people just sheeping you or the sort in your 30 second window where you can do damage if the enemy team lets you cast / stands somewhere convenient.

[Deleted]

Don't really agree with the above, Destro damage in arena is extremely scary. We are the most dangerous class if left alone to cast and even outside cooldowns we can take 40-45% of someone's hp in a single cbolt + 2 conflags with cremation up. .

The point being that you will never, ever be left alone to cast, and every other class, particularly melee, with always target a warlock because the warlock is virtually helpless once they are targetted. You can't escape, you can't immune, and you can't peel your attacker off you. You're basically a free kill. A portal that you have to precast and which advertises your destination is meaningless with everyone and their mom having gap-closers, soem of which are so good it allows melee to catch mounted players.

After all, Blizz didn;t spend the whole of Legion training everyone to "go for the purple dot" for nothing.

Your scenario is a fantasy since it never happens.

[Warning]

A complete fairytale scenario. Everyone knows not to let destruction hardcast, everyone knows warlocks are paper squishy and people are quickly learning how to deal with infernal just like they quickly learnt to deal with the felguard back when it was surprising people and butchering teams in early Legion when people didn't know to look for it.

Destruction is so easy to counter I'm not even sure I even want to consider it - it's damage window is to heavily broadcast and so easy to avoid that if it shouldn't be catching anyone at high rating out, especially when some maps like CoB are borderline unplayable due to how easy it is to just walk away. There's a reason affliction is still the go-to spec in arena despite warlocks sorry state despite having piss-weak dots and being hard-carried by an azerite trait.

I agree melee are the main problem, but acting like destruction is even close to being strong seems farsical, especially when the proposed fix is a pvp talent, something destruction already struggles to cope with so many "mandatory" choices since making CB do even it's mediocre damage is religated to a pvp talent and now apparently so is making us able to live against anything - that's going to leave one slot, which is probably going to be the mandatory root that's required to even have a chance at setting up your oh so scary CB chain casting, but you're losing spell reflect which is arguably just as important for preventing people just sheeping you or the sort in your 30 second window where you can do damage if the enemy team lets you cast / stands somewhere convenient.

My remarks about damage were mainly aimed at the person who said casting wasn't worth it. I agree that Destro is not strong overall in the current meta, it's underpowered and needs buffs to survivability (especially vs melee) and to its CC (shadowfury) so it can better create opportunities for itself, as I've said. It's also very unforgiving because without the right comp and great teammates you can't really play destro at all. But it has very good damage and if you have proper traits you can do scary damage even without infernal. You can cast during cross CC or with proper kiting. One thing we have now that we didn't have before is the ability to achieve insane levels of haste (50%+) which also helps. There ARE options and you can score kills even at high rating. When people retreat to a pillar you AoE and your healer can get drinks while theirs cant. Its not a fairytale it's just significantly harder to get rating as a destro than it is as say assa enhance or frostmage.

[Deleted]

My remarks about damage were mainly aimed at the person who said casting wasn't worth it. I agree that Destro is not strong overall in the current meta, it's underpowered and needs buffs to survivability (especially vs melee) and to its CC (shadowfury) so it can better create opportunities for itself, as I've said. It's also very unforgiving because without the right comp and great teammates you can't really play destro at all. But it has very good damage and if you have proper traits you can do scary damage even without infernal. You can cast during cross CC or with proper kiting. One thing we have now that we didn't have before is the ability to achieve insane levels of haste (50%+) which also helps. There ARE options and you can score kills even at high rating. When people retreat to a pillar you AoE and your healer can get drinks while theirs cant. Its not a fairytale it's just significantly harder to get rating as a destro than it is as say assa enhance or frostmage.

You talk like Chaos Bolt is scary on its own. Without the Infernal and some Azerite traits, Chaos Bolt tickles. And thats with an insane cast time for PvP. And the other abilities aren't even worth mentioning in regards to damage.

How do you achieve these insane amounts of haste? We have three items this addon who don't even have secondary stats. These items give mostly random proccs, which don't have to be haste all the time. You can have Azerite Armor where you don't have any haste abilities available, because the RNG god wasn't on your side yet. So do i have to pray to the warcraft gods that the ability i choose, which could give me more haste, if i have the proper Azerite Armor, will procc in my extremely short and foreseeable damage window, which the other team can counter with simply walking behind a pillar? And i don't know one warlock who has 50%+ haste at the moment.

What are you even talking about. Your scenario's are extremely theoretical and have nothing to do with reality at the moment. I can construct superb circumstances for every class/specc, that has major problems in PvP right now. When my Infernal is ready and my random haste proccs are active and the enemy team is so retarded and stays in the open instead of getting out of line of sight and let me cast two chaos bolt without interrupting me, then Destruction Warlock does scary damage. That sounds like such a realistic situation. I'm not sure where you experience this kind of situation in Arena. Its so unbelievably far from realism i don't know what to say. There is a reason literally no one plays destruction in Arena at the moment above 1800. And under 1800 you still have to be carried by your team mates and team composition.

[Deleted]

I dunno why people come with these made up scenarios which whilst hypothetically possible are just never, ever going to happen and using them as a way of saying "destro can do lots of damage kk"

Even Warning goes on to admit that there is such a high bar to achieving this fairytale where a destrolock gets to freecast "very good damage", it requires so many improbables piled on top of each other that in reality it's never going to happen. To even have half a chance of makign it work you'd have to have an exceptional team of just the right makeup on your side, made up of players willing to carry you AND have the opposing team with a terrible comp who are played by morons.

It's basically saying that destro can do OK if all the stars align just right for it at exactly the right moment plus your opponents are incompetent idiots. It's like saying a boxer can win matches so long as his opponent stands there like a hapless punching bag.


Like xendral says there is not a single high-ranked destro lock, anywhere. It's simply not viable. Affliction is shit too, it's just that it's a bit less shit than the other two specs. Look at the top 100 arena rankings - there are two - count 'em, two - locks in the top 100 for 3x3 and they are both affliction. There is not a single warlock in the top 100 2x2.

It's only when you move to BG's that warlocks start to make a presence, and in the top 100 of rated BG's just 4% of them are warlocks. And they are probably members of good combo teams where their mates are willing to make a wall for the warlock to hide bhind and do spread damage.

[Warning]

You talk like Chaos Bolt is scary on its own. Without the Infernal and some Azerite traits, Chaos Bolt tickles. And thats with an insane cast time for PvP. And the other abilities aren't even worth mentioning in regards to damage.

How do you achieve these insane amounts of haste? We have three items this addon who don't even have secondary stats. These items give mostly random proccs, which don't have to be haste all the time. You can have Azerite Armor where you don't have any haste abilities available, because the RNG god wasn't on your side yet. So do i have to pray to the warcraft gods that the ability i choose, which could give me more haste, if i have the proper Azerite Armor, will procc in my extremely short and foreseeable damage window, which the other team can counter with simply walking behind a pillar? And i don't know one warlock who has 50%+ haste at the moment.

What are you even talking about. Your scenario's are extremely theoretical and have nothing to do with reality at the moment. I can construct superb circumstances for every class/specc, that has major problems in PvP right now. When my Infernal is ready and my random haste proccs are active and the enemy team is so retarded and stays in the open instead of getting out of line of sight and let me cast two chaos bolt without interrupting me, then Destruction Warlock does scary damage. That sounds like such a realistic situation. I'm not sure where you experience this kind of situation in Arena. Its so unbelievably far from realism i don't know what to say. There is a reason literally no one plays destruction in Arena at the moment above 1800. And under 1800 you still have to be carried by your team mates and team composition.

Don't really want to continue on about this damage issue too much because it's kind of a minor point that right now seems to overshadow the main points that we agree on, which are that destro locks need tankyness and better CC so they can set up kills more reliably without having a glad level team. That said my thoughts on damage are not based on made up scenarios, but come from personal experience.

There's basically two viable T1 traits for destro pvp: Flashpoint and Chaotic Inferno. Everything else is far inferior. With triple flashpoint you'll stay at 30+ haste all the time and go way beyond during Reverse Entropy or Overwhelming power procs. I personally use triple Chaotic Inferno with triple Overwhelming power: PVP helm, Shadra silk shoulders and Mythrax chest. During Reverse Entropy + overwhelming I get over 50% haste and non CD cbolts do 30k damage and more with procs.

As I've said the spec is very unforgiving and you need great synergy with your team just to be able to play which is a big issue. Warlocks should imo be a powerful 1v1 class that when geared and played by a good player feels like a raidboss. That should be the tradeoff for our lack of mobility and currently that absolutely is not the case. That said, given the proper gear and teammates you can still succeed to a degree: if you look at the EU 3v3 ladder on Xunamate you can find a number of destro locks above glad rating.

[Keldion]

Quick tip with armor calculations, the 125% modifier should only be considered with effective health in mind. Armor is tuned to award bonus health per X amount of armor, hard capping at 75% DR / +300% EH.

If you had enough armor to grant +20% EH, the bonus from Demon Armor would boost that to +45% EH.

DR tooltip before (20) : 16.67%
DR tooltip after (45) : 31.03%

I don't think this would significantly improve locks even if it was a baseline feature.

[wholol]

Look at the top 100 arena rankings - there are two - count 'em, two - locks in the top 100 for 3x3 and they are both affliction. There is not a single warlock in the top 100 2x2.

Aritros ( one of the two locks) is at 2.9k cr with destro , can't really say it's that far behind affliction, don't get me wrong though both specs are pretty subpar compared to the current meta.

I'm not sure what you guys are debating though, warlocks definitely need buffs but that does not mean you cannot climb to glad as a lock given how low the cr requirement is for glad in bfa, it's not until upper glad to R1 range that the class starts to feel like it cannot keep up with all the other meta classes atm.

The biggest issues with locks atm definitely lies in our inability to mitigate damage the way our class requires us to; getting casts off or not having enough damage is NOT one of those issues.

[fakaroonie]

Last time I pvped semi seriously was in wotlk, got 2k as WLD, and 2.2k as resto aff. It was easy, but always challenging against rogues, warriors / priests. Or turtle cleave, or any melee cleave. But. It was doable. You could win games, even if they trained you the whole game.

Now though, jumped in some 3s, 2s, and it's like I have a bullseye on me. I pop Unending, Sac, HS, Portal away (and die due to all classes now having amazing mobility and gap closing shit).

People that say locks are ok, or even decent, need to try it first. And don't give examples of Snutz, Maldiva, and rank 1 warlocks. Irrelevant. that's 0,001% of the players. And they have highly experienced teammates that may know a thing or two about peeling.

Warlock in arenas is a joke. No one even receives you when you are LFGing.

And yet by putting a few dots you do the most damage out of all classes right now.

1+1 = Nerf damage, buff mobility / survival

I wonder how many patches and hotfixes they'll need to figure this shit out.

[wholol]

I found a very interesting post on the official forums that I would like to share with you guys.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769697015

Basically the idea of giving a % damage reduction component for each shard held can be a twist on Spriests' edge of insanity talent which can give us the trade off of damage vs tankiness, somehow reminds me of defensive stance for warriors.

Although that talent would mean less damage dealt, it does however appeal much more than the demon armor talent on ptr.

Thoughts?

[Deleted]

I'm not sure what you guys are debating though, warlocks definitely need buffs but that does not mean you cannot climb to glad as a lock given how low the cr requirement is for glad in bfa, it's not until upper glad to R1 range that the class starts to feel like it cannot keep up with all the other meta classes atm.

You can but it's a damn sight harder than it is for many other classes. Effectively you're climbing the mountain with a ball and chain round your ankles.

Liek fak says, any warlock in PVP has a huge "come get your free kill" arrow pointing at them. Everyone makes a beeline for the lock not because he's more dangerous than anyone else is left alone, but because it's just so easy to eliminate hm as a potential danger, they prioritse the lock even over others which are more dangerous.

[Warning]

I found a very interesting post on the official forums that I would like to share with you guys.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769697015

Basically the idea of giving a % damage reduction component for each shard held can be a twist on Spriests' edge of insanity talent which can give us the trade off of damage vs tankiness, somehow reminds me of defensive stance for warriors.

Although that talent would mean less damage dealt, it does however appeal much more than the demon armor talent on ptr.

Thoughts?

I'm not a huge fan of that design because I've seen several incarnations of it in the game before and they've always been unfun to play against. Those incarnations are: spammable rogue feint with 30% dr, warrior defensive stance with only a damage dealt reduction as a tradeoff and the current spriest edge of insanity you've mentioned. When these talents are good or even the best choice they allow teams that are getting outplayed to drag out a match they would otherwise lose while at the same time doing nothing back, which makes the match frustrating.

For the player using the talent it can also be frustrating. For example, shadowpriests are currently locked out of using a number of their talents as well as a number of their abilities because their survival outside of edge of insanity is so bad that they are practically never allowed to use voidform at all.

I absolutely think we need extra tankyness simply because we're too weak right now, but I wouldn't want that tankyness to come at the cost of being locked out of casting some of my most significant spells for extended duration: enhance shamans, rogues and warriors are already doing a good enough job at that by themselves.

I think the best way to do tankyness on locks involves a fairly strong, but not unlimited passive defense mixed with some skill based active mitigation or kiting. I think roughly 10% passive DR on top of what we have now would be adequate if it was complemented by an improvement to our active tools: baseline coil at a higher CD, reduced shadowfury cast time.

[wholol]

I'm not a huge fan of that design because I've seen several incarnations of it in the game before and they've always been unfun to play against. Those incarnations are: spammable rogue feint with 30% dr, warrior defensive stance with only a damage dealt reduction as a tradeoff and the current spriest edge of insanity you've mentioned. When these talents are good or even the best choice they allow teams that are getting outplayed to drag out a match they would otherwise lose while at the same time doing nothing back, which makes the match frustrating.

For the player using the talent it can also be frustrating. For example, shadowpriests are currently locked out of using a number of their talents as well as a number of their abilities because their survival outside of edge of insanity is so bad that they are practically never allowed to use voidform at all.

I absolutely think we need extra tankyness simply because we're too weak right now, but I wouldn't want that tankyness to come at the cost of being locked out of casting some of my most significant spells for extended duration: enhance shamans, rogues and warriors are already doing a good enough job at that by themselves.

I think the best way to do tankyness on locks involves a fairly strong, but not unlimited passive defense mixed with some skill based active mitigation or kiting. I think roughly 10% passive DR on top of what we have now would be adequate if it was complemented by an improvement to our active tools: baseline coil at a higher CD, reduced shadowfury cast time.

I'm not a fan of that type of mechanic either but it seems to have become a necessity within the current meta for casters that do not have much mobility.

Although I'd say even if they give coil out , the issue with not having enough mitigation is that 3 mins cd on our defensive is too long.

properly kiting as a lock heavily relies on outside forces ( like frost mage for example) helping enable locks with the kiting, most of the opponent comps' kill windows occur in stuns and as such low DR will not change the outcome of how affliction functions outside a MLx comp.

It's either a big chunk of passive DR ( let's say 20% to all damage ) or minor dmg reduction + shorter wall ( let's say 1.5 mins), coil and port would not change how fast we drop while in a stun.

So unless blizzard is balancing warlocks around only being able to play with frost mages , they need to do something more than the current version of demon armor on ptr.

[evertonbelmontt]

You can but it's a damn sight harder than it is for many other classes. Effectively you're climbing the mountain with a ball and chain round your ankles.

Liek fak says, any warlock in PVP has a huge "come get your free kill" arrow pointing at them. Everyone makes a beeline for the lock not because he's more dangerous than anyone else is left alone, but because it's just so easy to eliminate hm as a potential danger, they prioritse the lock even over others which are more dangerous.

Yeah, plus 1 to this statement.

There are some locks over 2.4k, some over 2k, majority under it. But why botter when you know you're underpowered and have to do pretty much double the effort to achieve something other classes don't?

And even those locks over 2k are saying they feel like crap when playing, because they honestly feel they put too much pressure onto their own team to make it work.

- - - Updated - - -

It's just not healthy playing something like pvp like this. I rather not do it unless we go with the mentality of zero expectations.

[Deleted]

Yes, a high ratign with a warlock can be done. But it's much more work, take smuch more skill and places a much bigger load on the res tof the team who have to constantly try to keep the warlock alive because the warlock lacks the tools to do it himself.

There are just so many classes where none of that applies, and aside from the handful of diehards, most people just shrug and reroll, why work twice as hard for the same end reward, it makes no sense.

I don;t think it's so much underpowered, the potential is there, it's just that you won;t ever reach it because it's so easy to stop you, the other team can just chain stun-lock you, or kill you easily.

If you watch the vids you can see just how much time the rest of the team has to put in to babysit the warlock. That's just about Ok if you have a longstanding, established team (and even then it probably starts to get very trying)

It's absolute death if you don't. No one is interested in taking on a warlock liability in a random group. There are just too many other players in the queue playing much more effective classes.

The rankings tell the picture - a tiny handful of diehards who are viable because of their supreme skill and have an ideal, dedicated team to play with.

[Kagthul]

Upcoming PvP hotfixes.....!!!

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not a single thing about Warlocks. At all. Fun times to be a warlock.

[Werst]

What locks need so pve isn’t upset and the reality we can’t run from or after any spec of any class is a durability boost when burst and when cc’d. Say 30% less when locked out/50% while stunned so shutting down a lock is fine but riding us forever is not ALWAYS the best strategy to force the rest of the team to bail out the lock constantly or make us the de facto target in any bg. Then something like a auto dr% when burst past a % of max HP since that seems to be the meta by a player. Get rid of stupid talents like the UA extension that isn’t possibly useful in any circumstance...

[fakaroonie]

When I first saw PvP Hotfixes I was like: Yeh, meh, probably some minor buff to locks to stop them bitching.

I kept scrolling down, and shiet, nothing. Probably for the better, they have no idea how to balance this class at all. 14 years of game, they still don't know how to balance classes in PvP. In PvE they seem to be rather proactive, at times...

[evertonbelmontt]

Every time they nerf someone they slow down the game a little bit for us, but at this pace we're going to be gold in 8.3 heAUHAEUHUEHA

[Warning]

Every time they nerf someone they slow down the game a little bit for us, but at this pace we're going to be gold in 8.3 heAUHAEUHUEHA

Yea, not complaining about these patch notes. They make sense and actually do help us a little.

8.1 PTR has inevitable demise max stacks nerfed to 50 btw, which is also a sensible change as long as its part of a number of adjustments to lock.