GC on Dark Intent/GoS in 5.2

[Jessicka]

Also, in response to my tweet...

We agree Havoc plays a big part of it.

- source

[demonik]

It's a buff, cast on you. It should be up before someone is on your face and therefore, before the health cost matters. Again, it is NOT a reactive emergency button - Mortal Coil and Howl of Terror are for that, so if you want a button that does that: Pick either of those. I really cannot understand why people continue to paint it as something it clearly isn't.

don't get me wrong i agree yeah it was op before this and i understand that it has been changed to a defensive ability not a emergency button type spell, but when in pvp(besides when you have a healer) does health cost,especially a 20% health cost not matter? use it twice and almost half of your life is gone just by the damage you did to yourself. would you disagree that maybe that health cost is a little too steep for what it does, perhaps if the health cost was 10% it'd be ok or if it gave maybe 2 charges for 20% but right now that's just far too much health to be considered a good or viable talent.

[Nerraw]

Also, in response to my tweet...

We agree Havoc plays a big part of it.

- source

Faint hope.

[Nicola]

It's a buff, cast on you. It should be up before someone is on your face and therefore, before the health cost matters. Again, it is NOT a reactive emergency button - Mortal Coil and Howl of Terror are for that, so if you want a button that does that: Pick either of those. I really cannot understand why people continue to paint it as something it clearly isn't.

Howl, coil and fury are level 30 talents, blood fear is a level 60 talent.... Just saying

Also, warlocks need oh shit buttons we can use when the shit actually happens, not stuff we have to use before it's going to happen, not to mention that it doesn't work on ranged.
We already have to drop our teleport and gateway and make our health stones beforehand.

Also, the only way to use it effectively, is to use it when you are being focused, otherwise people will simply get rid of it and then they crush you.
Just like spell reflect that's already up for a while, you won't see anything big happening on it, just something small so the big stuff can follow.

And I'm not sure how it goes at sub 1.5k rating, but at a higher rating, 20% is a hell of a lot for something that terrible. So stop defending the spell is anything good, it's plain retarded. Aside from people who have fallen on their head, you won't see anyone using it. Mark those words.

[Jessicka]

don't get me wrong i agree yeah it was op before this and i understand that it has been changed to a defensive ability not a emergency button type spell, but when in pvp(besides when you have a healer) does health cost,especially a 20% health cost not matter? use it twice and almost half of your life is gone just by the damage you did to yourself. would you disagree that maybe that health cost is a little too steep for what it does, perhaps if the health cost was 10% it'd be ok or if it gave maybe 2 charges for 20% but right now that's just far too much health to be considered a good or viable talent.

It has a cooldown, you're at no risk of spamming it. When you consider Unbound Will is also 20%, it doesn't seem unreasonable; Life Tap is 15% so although it sounds a lot, it's really not especially if you're making sure it's pre-cast.

If you're not playing with a healer; that's something else. Blizzard attempt to balance around 3s under the assumption one of those is a healer. Not every class is going to work in triple DPS or necessarily well in 2s - but then some classes in 2s can pretty much solo to a decent rating (and drag you with them).

[Deleted]

I just don't get why warlocks are, as far as I'm aware, the only class that still has this archaic system that requires us to gimp our dps to apply a buff.

Hunters don't have that - they had their pets made so that any pet could be any spec (ferocity, cunning etc) so that it didn't matter what pet they brought to deliver a buff - it didn't change their dps, it's the equivalent of forcing a hunter to use a tank pet to apply a fort buff. No other class to my knowledge has to do this anymore, it's like back when we had to pick COE OR COA, you can either do dps or apply the debuff for the raid - it was removed because it's as un-fun as anything in pve.

Why they don't just bake the stamina into DI, which GC justified as being weaker than a mages AI "because you also have stamina", is beyond me - what are they losing? The imp still has a perfect role as both a ranged pet AND giving you a dispell.

I really don't dislike GC, but the dev team don't seem consistent on what they do and say in regards to warlocks.

[Jessicka]

Howl, coil and fury are level 30 talents, blood fear is a level 60 talent.... Just saying

And it's comparing with other, health costing spells.

Also, warlocks need oh shit buttons we can use when the shit actually happens, not stuff we have to use before it's going to happen, not to mention that it doesn't work on ranged.
We already have to drop our teleport and gateway and make our health stones beforehand.

Also, the only way to use it effectively, is to use it when you are being focused, otherwise people will simply get rid of it and then they crush you.
Just like spell reflect that's already up for a while, you won't see anything big happening on it, just something small so the big stuff can follow.

And I'm not sure how it goes at sub 1.5k rating, but at a higher rating, 20% is a hell of a lot for something that terrible. So stop defending the spell is anything good, it's plain retarded. Aside from people who have fallen on their head, you won't see anyone using it. Mark those words.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm saying people are looking at it, and judging it based on a misperception of it's functionality.

[Deleted]

It's a buff, cast on you. It should be up before someone is on your face and therefore, before the health cost matters. Again, it is NOT a reactive emergency button - Mortal Coil and Howl of Terror are for that, so if you want a button that does that: Pick either of those. I really cannot understand why people continue to paint it as something it clearly isn't.

It doesn't work as pre fight buff. Letting an opponent decide when he will be feared is never a good idea. The spell will be have to be used when needed but the health cost, use of a global and the short duration make it useless for this purpose. Maybe if the spell is on it's own DR but otherwise it well never work as preemptive defense.

[Jessicka]

It doesn't work as pre fight buff. Letting an opponent decide when he will be feared is never a good idea. The spell will be have to be used when needed but the health cost, use of a global and the short duration make it useless for this purpose. Maybe if the spell is on it's own DR but otherwise it well never work as buff defense.

I don't understand why you can't use Mortal Coil or Howl in that position instead?

[Nicola]

I don't understand why you can't use Mortal Coil or Howl in that position instead?

Probably because howl is to punish the other team for stacking up, mortal coil is not taken for PvP because it's pretty bad, especially after the healing nerf..

[Jessicka]

Probably because howl is to punish the other team for stacking up, mortal coil is not taken for PvP because it's pretty bad, especially after the healing nerf..

You don't just Fear bomb a team just because they're stacked. There are implications for DR and such. Howl works well for what you're asking the new Blood Fear to do, and it'll do it against 2 opponents and their pets - 40s really isn't much of a cooldown and certainly not worth saving for such an opportunity you present. You of course have Teleport as well to similar ends.

To me, it just feels like you're asking it to do the same thing as stuff we already have; and I can understand the desire therefore by Blizz to take it in another direction. Whether that's good or bad, remains to be seen; and I'm not convinced this will actually be the final iterration of the talent.

[Gohzerlock]

You don't just Fear bomb a team just because they're stacked. There are implications for DR and such. Howl works well for what you're asking the new Blood Fear to do, and it'll do it against 2 opponents and their pets - 40s really isn't much of a cooldown and certainly not worth saving for such an opportunity you present. You of course have Teleport as well to similar ends.

To me, it just feels like you're asking it to do the same thing as stuff we already have; and I can understand the desire therefore by Blizz to take it in another direction. Whether that's good or bad, remains to be seen; and I'm not convinced this will actually be the final iterration of the talent.

You do fear bomb a team thats stacked with howl, especially if that team is a few melee RAPING the healer. Also howl cd doesn't usually last 40sec..
I do see your point in relative terms with lifetap being a pretty big hp cost as well, this talent is still bad.

[Nicola]

You don't just Fear bomb a team just because they're stacked. There are implications for DR and such. Howl works well for what you're asking the new Blood Fear to do, and it'll do it against 2 opponents and their pets - 40s really isn't much of a cooldown and certainly not worth saving for such an opportunity you present. You of course have Teleport as well to similar ends.

To me, it just feels like you're asking it to do the same thing as stuff we already have; and I can understand the desire therefore by Blizz to take it in another direction. Whether that's good or bad, remains to be seen; and I'm not convinced this will actually be the final iterration of the talent.

The only times when you don't, is when howl is on cooldown, or you are going to chaos wave them. In most cases warlocks are teamed up with either a mage, or a warrior, 2 classes that can punish stacking up fairly good as well. In arena you simply don't stack except for spiritlink, because people will punish you hard for it. Having your whole team cc'ed at once, means the other team can pull out something big, being unable to do anything against it.

Also howl is rarely used as a defensive spell, teleporting away is your best option since it will likely get you out of LoS/ out of range from their ranged as well. Not to mention that most melee you meet now are warriors, something you are not going to use your howl, or blood fear on defensively since they'll simply zerk it.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I agree with him when he says there shouldn't be a single choice. But I don't agree with him when he says Sac is used too much. I switch off between Sac and Improved pet depending on what I am doing. Even in PVP, things can change.

I do agree that Blood Fear was a pretty clear choice for me in pvp and solo content. Raiding not so much. People just see its an "instant, 20 second fear"... what they either forget about, or ignore is that the original fear is also 20 or so seconds, and you are pretty much just trading 20% HP for an instant cast. TWENTY PERCENT? How is that OP? 1/5th of your life?

I love the Warlock changes, but I think too much random QQ will get us overly nerfed.

[demonik]

It has a cooldown, you're at no risk of spamming it. When you consider Unbound Will is also 20%, it doesn't seem unreasonable; Life Tap is 15% so although it sounds a lot, it's really not especially if you're making sure it's pre-cast.

If you're not playing with a healer; that's something else. Blizzard attempt to balance around 3s under the assumption one of those is a healer. Not every class is going to work in triple DPS or necessarily well in 2s - but then some classes in 2s can pretty much solo to a decent rating (and drag you with them).

a defensive ability should not require a health cost that steep, if you can name one ability that another class has that requires a health cost like that and one that people use plz show me.I don't know if you pvp lately with your lock but our class seems to be the most balanced around always having a healer more so than others and that really is part of the whole balance problem with this class. also as far as i can tell it will most likely share diminishing returns with our regular fear which is another thing going against this talent now.

I'm not saying your wrong in that this talent needs to be looked at and used differently than how the old bood fear was and is not useless, I agree with you on that completely, at this point no one is really sure how well or bad this talent is gonna be in the long run, but all I am getting at is maybe the health cost should be looked at, that or maybe give us 2 charges instead of just one, or even make it proc based off of how much damage we take.

[luckydevours]

Blood Fear in its current state on the ptr is just completly useless or even dangerous to ourselves in any imaginable PvP situation. In my opinion the whole talent tier centered on health cost abilities has to be overhauled since our self-healing and defensive capabilities have become so unreliable.

[Spektroman]

On Dark Intent: Fuck knows. Literally no one ever wants Blood Pact activated anyway since it causes ranging issues and has a habbit of overwriting then leaving people unbuffed. I think a huge proportion of the community still wont acknowledge it provides as big a buff as the other Stamina buffs as well. It does need looking at.

What I find not cool is that I must choose every time I do arenas what my utility will be, whereas no other class in the game has to make those choices. If I see a warrior/healer combo in 2s for example, I have to choose: do I want a disarm (VW), more health/dispel (Imp buff), more CC (succubus) or some way to counter that healer (felhunter)?

Now I don't have a problem choosing, but a priest doesn't have to: he gets all of the above and more. A mage doesn't suddenly gives up his mirror images to be able to buff crit. It seems to me every other caster (or at least the cloth casters) has it easy, while warlocks for some reason need to make tough choices. So my question (that tweet about Dark Intent is mine) really was "why do I have to make choices about utility, when no one else has?"

The way I see it, we get treated as though our pets were like those of a hunter, but the reality is different. I would just like to have my utility tied to my class spec and talents, not my pets. I shouldn't have to bring a pet just to counterspell. I shouldn't have to bring a pet just to buff stamina. My pets should provide other things (unique things like the water elemental's freeze for instance), and let buffs/utility come from the warlock instead.

[Kuroto]

The problem with pets is that they don't have ANY kind of interaction with Affliction or Destruction.

In Cataclysm, you used to have Felhunter that did more damage the more DoTs you had on the target, which was OK since every spec had a lot of DoTs. I suggest that this returns for Affliction only, and applies to all pets. Alternatively, you can have something like "refreshes the duration of Corruption", or maybe different spells (UA/Agony) based on which pet you are using.

For Destruction, I suggest something tied to ember generation, or ember expenditure, such as "whenever you spend an ember, your pet instantly combusts and deals fire damage to nearby enemies". This could have some cool synergy with Grimoire of Service

I think these suggestions would make pets more interesting for Affliction and Destruction, making them at least feel more useful, and you would pay more attention to pet targeting and positioning to maximize damage, even if the numbers are tweaked fairly low to make it balanced.

[Tya]

Surprised that GC defended the new "unreliable, 110k health to cast, single target howl" blood fear.

It'll be released. Nobody will take it. They'll change it in 6-9 months. The usual.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Surprised that GC defended the new "unreliable, 110k health to cast, single target howl" blood fear.

It'll be released. Nobody will take it. They'll change it in 6-9 months. The usual.

I just feel like its a huge turd on a such a great Warlock revamp. "Whats that? Almost all classes that this new fear would affect have an easy way to get out of it? Cool!"