Blood Fear.

[Demonized]

Make new blood fear horrify effect. Protects us against Warriors and DK's much better. Problem solved, you're welcome.

I'm gonna quote this because it's the best and most realistic (minimal effort for Blizz) fix idea I've seen so far.

[Lulbalance]

I think the new blood fear is a weak design for a nerf. Why don't blizz just increase the health cost of the spell? If a pet hits you during blood fear you have wasted a charge and the talent becomes useless.

true.. i dont think many people will be taking it for pvp anyways with UW available same tier.

but GC admitted that pet thing was a problem.. also said it wont get changed because it might be a nerf as well. so he's admitting basically that the talent is fkn garbage.

the risk of fearing a hunter trap snake or something stupid isnt even the biggest problem with it imo.. it's just awful. and making it a terror wont make it a better choice than UW imo..maybe in duels etc, not for 3s. ridiculous health cost for UW or not.

---------- Post added 2013-01-30 at 03:52 AM ----------

The reason it's being redesigned is because it's supposed to be a defensive ability, but everyone uses it offensively. It's absolutely a no brain skilless talent that can't get deleted quickly enough.

If you want to get melee off you, there are several tools available to you already:
- Tier 2 talent
- Pet ability (Knockback, Seduction, Disarm)
- Spec specific snare (Conflag, Shadowflame, CoEx)
- Teleport
- Gateway
- Regular Fear
- If you're Demo you can also use Leap.

If none of those work, then you have Unending Resolve, Tier 3 talents, Dark Regeneration, and Healthstones to help you sit through some of the damage.

Finally, the class is also receiving a significant buff to survivability in 5.2 with the change to Fel Armor that's gone under the radar with the change from Armor provision to flat 10% damage mitigation.

painfully obvious you dont pvp at any worthwhile level. maybe stay in the pve threads <3.

[Spektroman]

In my opinion blood fear just needs two things to be a competitive (and not OP) talent with UW:

1) it needs to be a horror effect, even if that means the duration is shortened to 3-4 seconds. If I'm paying health for it, they better run. no "lol zerker/cloak/ams/lichborne/tremor, continue to beat on you anyway" shenanigans. It costs health, and has a moderate cooldown. It better do what it says it does and keep freaking melee DPS off of me.

2) you need to cast this on someone else, not on yourself. It needs to be a debuff that's put on someone, and if that someone hits you in melee = they run. That way you ensure the warrior eats it, instead of a pet. If you really WANT to fear a melee pet instead, then you have the option to simply cast it on the pet.

I believe those two changes would make blood fear fill the desired role (being an effective, but exclusively defensive cooldown) without being overpowered.

Thoughts?

[pkm]

Finally, the class is also receiving a significant buff to survivability in 5.2 with the change to Fel Armor that's gone under the radar with the change from Armor provision to flat 10% damage mitigation.

You call that a significant change?...

Wut.

[shinewaylee]

BF is op in 5.1 abvirously,but in arean we are the weakest classes.
Why?I cannot image what we will be in 5.2 with losing BF,perhaps to reroll is the best answer.
Aff and destro spe,as the rogue in 5.0 and 5.1,we are taking 85 talents to play with the 90 talent classes.
We need be remade rather than a single change of a spell or some spells.

[Jessicka]

Did I say we didn't? I can't think of a single cc spell that is mainly used defensive...

Maybe that's where you're going wrong. Any root or snare is going to be used defensively by a ranged against melee, that's kinda the point of them.

I suggest you get some PvP experience first before making yourself look like an idiot by saying such things. It's nice you lurk forums all day long, but you seem to have no PvP experience, nor raid experience, so honestly, are you just pulling everything out of your ass? No offense.

My PVP experience isn't great, I never claimed it was, but I have made sure I've done my homework to take part in it. As for my PvE experience, this expansion no, we had a lot of guild issues from the start, stopped seriously raiding after 5.1 and I've only just started getting back into it after the guild disbanded a few weeks ago and I moved on. Previous to that, if you're so keen to armory police, you can epeenbot or wowarmory police and see where we were on my tiny server. Raiding isn't about an individual in any case, it's about the group you put together - you can't solo current content. (Also, attacking the person rather than the argument is generally considered a bit weak).

You really think we don't use the tools available to use, that are actually worth using? You don't seem to understand that most tools we actually have are not worth using, or simply don't help at all with what we have problems with.

Why would one use an inferior pet, using certain talents or glyphs when the gain is less then what you lose?

I saw the exact same complaints being thrown around now as when Drain Mana was removed. "We don't have anything else", I point out all those tools, and "they're all useless", and I'm sure by comparison with an 'I Win' button, they probably are. Loosing DM didn't stop the class remaining comfortably one of the best PvP classes in the game for that expansion, however.

As for using an inferior pet, well, I dunno why you'd use the FH if you're playing against triple DPS with no casters, or if you're running random battlegrounds alone where your biggest threat is generally melee. Same as I wouldn't use Shivarra against an all caster team. Pets are situational, and I can appreciate that's a problem when situations change and I've seen plenty of argument that Mages and SPriests 'have all their tools right there', but overall they actually have less choice on those tools (and can't use them while CC'd or while casting something else).

This one line, I spent roughly 10min laughing at that. "Hey, you can use this glyph so it's a little bit easier to keep melee off you, but your burst gets more or less halved".... See what I mean?

Keep laughing, I didn't even mention the glyph, you clearly don't understand how the stacking snare even works. If you're using it defensively, you're probably not blowing your cooldowns to loose a significant amount of burst. If you're in danger of dying and need to get away or keep the melee off you, then it's an option you have; if you choose not to use it because you'd rather risk saving it for burst in less than 30s time, that's entirely your call. Just don't cry when you died because you made the wrong call.

I'll also note right now I was screaming out in Beta for the HoG snare to be disconnected from the nuke precisely because it broke that clarity of purpose - instead they added the snare to Chaos Wave.

And really, blood fear doesn't make up for all those problems we have, else warlocks would have been a good class for PvP, unlike now, where we happen to be one of the worst classes. Blood fear is very strong yes, might even say overpowered, and it only makes up for 1 thing really, that it's very hard to get casts off against melee.
It's just that 10sec cooldown, that allows us to constantly use it offensively that makes it that strong, otherwise it would have been a perfectly fine spell.

The problem is that it's a massive crutch for a lot of people. It does enough to cover up for bad play and enough to replace so many other abilities that people forget they even have them. From your own response you evidently feel it alone is better than a lot of the tools I listed at doing the job those tools are intended to do and by covering up those inadequacies it prevents them being fixed if they are as bad as you claim. If you do feel the class is poorly placed (a great many on the PVP forums would disagree), then it's better to see them fixed than covered up by a bad talent because those tools are always going to be accounted for when Blizzard decide to apply buffs or nerfs and thus less likely to buff and more likely to nerf. They'd just ask the same question I did, and 'because it sucks' isn't helpful.

In my opinion blood fear just needs two things to be a competitive (and not OP) talent with UW:

1) it needs to be a horror effect, even if that means the duration is shortened to 3-4 seconds. If I'm paying health for it, they better run. no "lol zerker/cloak/ams/lichborne/tremor, continue to beat on you anyway" shenanigans. It costs health, and has a moderate cooldown. It better do what it says it does and keep freaking melee DPS off of me.

2) you need to cast this on someone else, not on yourself. It needs to be a debuff that's put on someone, and if that someone hits you in melee = they run. That way you ensure the warrior eats it, instead of a pet. If you really WANT to fear a melee pet instead, then you have the option to simply cast it on the pet.

I believe those two changes would make blood fear fill the desired role (being an effective, but exclusively defensive cooldown) without being overpowered.

Thoughts?

Agree with the first. Second, kinda agree; I think it should 'light up' when hit in melee for 5s or so, giving you a chance to pick your target, so if you want to hit a pet, that's fine, but if you'd rather remove the Warrior, that's fine too.

Also think UW is too expensive; there's just such a massive difference between using that on my Belf and EMFH on here.

You call that a significant change?...

Wut.

Someone else linked the maths earlier.

[Sylar Hao]

What about if Blood Fear was totally changed to a passive that self activates at a health percentage, much like Second Wind? A % reduced damage taken, or activate Harvest Soul (our passive) while in combat, or something like that? You trade health to activate it anyway.

Or modify it so we have our regular fear and make it so after receiving X% of total health or under certain Z% health to activate for use and make the next Fear Instant.

I agree that Blood Fear is in a reactive health trading Talent Tier, and it's actually used offensively. The problem is the new Blood Fear is really useless, specially with pets around.

[Nicola]

Maybe that's where you're going wrong. Any root or snare is going to be used defensively by a ranged against melee, that's kinda the point of them.

Now only if snares and roots were actually considered as cc.... And they are being used offensive as well

My PVP experience isn't great, I never claimed it was, but I have made sure I've done my homework to take part in it. As for my PvE experience, this expansion no, we had a lot of guild issues from the start, stopped seriously raiding after 5.1 and I've only just started getting back into it after the guild disbanded a few weeks ago and I moved on. Previous to that, if you're so keen to armory police, you can epeenbot or wowarmory police and see where we were on my tiny server. Raiding isn't about an individual in any case, it's about the group you put together - you can't solo current content. (Also, attacking the person rather than the argument is generally considered a bit weak).

There's a difference between knowledge and experience. Without experience, knowledge is meaningless.
As nice something can be on paper, in reality it isn't always like that.

I saw the exact same complaints being thrown around now as when Drain Mana was removed. "We don't have anything else", I point out all those tools, and "they're all useless", and I'm sure by comparison with an 'I Win' button, they probably are. Loosing DM didn't stop the class remaining comfortably one of the best PvP classes in the game for that expansion, however.

As for using an inferior pet, well, I dunno why you'd use the FH if you're playing against triple DPS with no casters, or if you're running random battlegrounds alone where your biggest threat is generally melee. Same as I wouldn't use Shivarra against an all caster team. Pets are situational, and I can appreciate that's a problem when situations change and I've seen plenty of argument that Mages and SPriests 'have all their tools right there', but overall they actually have less choice on those tools (and can't use them while CC'd or while casting something else).

And this proves the statement I just made...

The tools are "useless" because you have to give up something else for it that is clearly better.
It's like giving warlocks the option to get a button that will oneshot everyone in a 30y radius on a 30sec casttimer, however your max hp becomes 1. It's a tool, but it's useless because you have to give up something better for it. See where I'm going?

The only exception to not use felhunter is against a team that exclusively exists out of warrior/rogue/monk/hunter. In that 1 single case, that you actually never meet at high rating, you use a voidwalker instead of a felhunter. Against every other comp, you play with a felhunter because it's better.

As for the succubus, seduce only prevents you from taking full damage while being cc'ed, nothing else. Mind that seduce instantly breaks from any damage, so as affliction, it's not really a good pet, and for destruction you stick with a sacrificed felhunter because GoSac is simply better.

For PvP, pets are so situational that in 99% of the cases you'll use the same pet. Any other high rated warlock will agree with me on this, because that's just how it is.

And really, I'd rather have 5 tools available at once then having to pick 1 set of 2 tools out of 4 sets, where 1 set is superior in 99% of the cases.
Choice is a thing, if the choices were equally good, but in this case, they ain't.

Keep laughing, I didn't even mention the glyph, you clearly don't understand how the stacking snare even works. If you're using it defensively, you're probably not blowing your cooldowns to loose a significant amount of burst. If you're in danger of dying and need to get away or keep the melee off you, then it's an option you have; if you choose not to use it because you'd rather risk saving it for burst in less than 30s time, that's entirely your call. Just don't cry when you died because you made the wrong call.

I'll also note right now I was screaming out in Beta for the HoG snare to be disconnected from the nuke precisely because it broke that clarity of purpose - instead they added the snare to Chaos Wave.

What my simply math skills understand is that 30% + 30% doesn't make 70%.... The only way to get 70% slow with shadowflame is by using the glyph.
You clearly didn't do your homework good enough >.>

And if you are going to die and you need to get a melee off you, you really are not going to waste 2 sec to get a 60% slow going on, that's useless against ferals, rets, monks and can easily get countered by a stun or a snare.... If you think that's an option to survive, you deserve to die in such a situation...

The problem is that it's a massive crutch for a lot of people. It does enough to cover up for bad play and enough to replace so many other abilities that people forget they even have them. From your own response you evidently feel it alone is better than a lot of the tools I listed at doing the job those tools are intended to do and by covering up those inadequacies it prevents them being fixed if they are as bad as you claim. If you do feel the class is poorly placed (a great many on the PVP forums would disagree), then it's better to see them fixed than covered up by a bad talent because those tools are always going to be accounted for when Blizzard decide to apply buffs or nerfs and thus less likely to buff and more likely to nerf. They'd just ask the same question I did, and 'because it sucks' isn't helpful.

You really think a multi glad doesn't know the tools he has and perfectly knows how to use them?
And yes, blood fear is better then many of the tools we have available. Not only because of how strong blood fear is, but also because of how weak the rest is, and it seems you are not understanding that part.

And the class is bad, with blood fear included. The sole reason there are still a few warlocks at high rating is due dark soul and blood fear. And I've posted that on PvP forums a lot already, and every time people people agree with me. Warlocks are in a very bad spot now PvP wise, and 5.2 isn't improving it at all.
Feel free to keep going in denial about that, but honestly, no one takes a sub 1.5k rated player serious.

[Phoenexis]

Last time I checked, Blood Fear incurred a 5% health penalty because it had the word "blood" in it. So basically you're not getting anything extra out of it just because it has a higher cost than Nature's Grasp for example. I'm guessing it won't ever truly be balanced, just as I'm guessing that the other two options follow the same logic...
Source: https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...28073939587072

There are lots of things in this thread so I'm just going to add some small points:
-Blood Fear will always be used reactively, otherwise you'd just waste it on some random attack prior to burst. So unless you've got an internet connection faster than the speed of light, as well as the reflexes of a ninja, you'll never be able to use it pro-actively before the first melee hit lands during burst. So it's a clunky CC that has better chances of getting countered. Did I mention it had a higher cost for no particular gain?

-Drain Mana was a completely different issue: It first of all did not determine warlocks' viability in arenas by itself, it had its own consequences and was counterable, as well as better synergy with Affliction due to dots. It also did not play as big a part in 3v3 as it did in 2v2. Affliction was already top dog in arena prior and after Drain Mana's removal. It was mostly used as certain tactic in fights where mana wars were focused on, and therefore proved most effective against a certain amount of comps. It was admittedly clunky/weird/annoying design (for enemy players) but at the same time unique, defining and not so OP if not coupled with Affliction's DoTs. You never saw a player complaining about a Destro lock draining mana, simply because he did not do any damage in the meanwhile and it was a fair trade-off. (In my opinion they should've kept Drain Mana in at least 3v3 and World PvP while incurring a DoT Damage nerf during its channeling)

-As Niberion said we have major core class problems, mainly Dark Soul and Blood Fear (but also an abundance of active defensive cooldowns, which result in squishy passive defense and healing, and other issues). This leads us to have a very "extreme" playstyle, where we have an overdose of skills in certain domains (active defense, burst, direct CC), but shitty tools in others (sustained damage/healing/defense, long-term CC, assists).



I do agree however with one thing that Jessicka said: We aren't using all of our arsenal because of certain abilities like Blood Fear. But I don't think it's because we're "incapable" of doing so. It's more like because it's not worth doing so. For example (long sentence inc), it's not worth switching pets mid combat during burst and taking a succubus out instead of a Felguard to focus interrupt the healer with a knock-back and maybe even attempt to CC him because you're simultaneously getting trained by melee; simply because of the way the game currently is: The target you're killing is normally dead by the time you've used up Felstorm, Axe Toss, Blood Fear x2 and Death Coil. If he isn't then switching to the succubus, or even Felhunter, most likely won't do much because the focused target is probably going to get easily topped by his healer when you finish all of your "OP abilities".
I've personally noticed a severe lack in my own skillcap simply because it's "not worth" going for the most complex of possibilities that you think will get you great results.


Warlocks are the best example of MoP's PvP dilemma: Too much dependence on radical abilities (like Blood Fear, Dark Soul, Chaos Bolt and KjC) that make the game unpleasant in a way. If stripped of these abilities that ruin the PvP experience, they are no longer viable. It is therefore impossible to truly solve the problem without doing a major overhaul.

Blood Fear might be the biggest consequence of MoP's unwanted mechanics. However, completely changing it/removing it will not solve things as much as it will hinder warlocks. For balance's sake, Blood Fear has to stay, or go away with every other ability that shouldn't have made it into live.

[Nicola]

I do agree however with one thing that Jessicka said: We aren't using all of our arsenal because of certain abilities like Blood Fear. But I don't think it's because we're "incapable" of doing so. It's more like because it's not worth doing so. For example (long sentence inc), it's not worth switching pets mid combat during burst and taking a succubus out instead of a Felguard to focus interrupt the healer with a knock-back and maybe even attempt to CC him because you're simultaneously getting trained by melee; simply because of the way the game currently is: The target you're killing is normally dead by the time you've used up Felstorm, Axe Toss, Blood Fear x2 and Death Coil. If he isn't then switching to the succubus, or even Felhunter, most likely won't do much because the focused target is probably going to get easily topped by his healer when you finish all of your "OP abilities".
I've personally noticed a severe lack in my own skillcap simply because it's "not worth" going for the most complex of possibilities that you think will get you great results.

Felguards bring a stun and a 15% MS, 25% if upgraded pet in addition to a stun.
Switching mid combat to a succubus not only makes you vulnerable to getting your pet killed because you placed a cooldown on summoning pets, it also costs a lot of demonic fury that is better spend elsewhere.

Seduce is worthless unless you have it glyphed, which rarely anyone does since there are better glyphs available. And even then it's not that amazing since you sacrifice a lot of damage for it, and it still breaks instantly on damage on the cc'ed target, and when damaging the succubus... Channeled cc is bad, mmkay.

The knockback is well, weak... If you wanted to interrupt a healer, you should just have sticked with your felhunter/felguard.

And on a side note, as demonology you don't use mortal coil, either howl or fury.

As I've said in my previous post, to use most tools we have, we have to sacrifice something else that's better. Blood fear has nothing to do with that, it's just how our tools work.

Warlocks are the best example of MoP's PvP dilemma: Too much dependence on radical abilities (like Blood Fear, Dark Soul, Chaos Bolt and KjC) that make the game unpleasant in a way. If stripped of these abilities that ruin the PvP experience, they are no longer viable. It is therefore impossible to truly solve the problem without doing a major overhaul.

Negative on the KJC part. Demonology uses MF by default and destruction has also proven that it works with MF.

[Phoenexis]

Felguards bring a stun and a 15% MS, 25% if upgraded pet in addition to a stun.
Switching mid combat to a succubus not only makes you vulnerable to getting your pet killed because you placed a cooldown on summoning pets, it also costs a lot of demonic fury that is better spend elsewhere.

Seduce is worthless unless you have it glyphed, which rarely anyone does since there are better glyphs available. And even then it's not that amazing since you sacrifice a lot of damage for it, and it still breaks instantly on damage on the cc'ed target, and when damaging the succubus... Channeled cc is bad, mmkay.

The knockback is well, weak... If you wanted to interrupt a healer, you should just have sticked with your felhunter/felguard.

And on a side note, as demonology you don't use mortal coil, either howl or fury.

As I've said in my previous post, to use most tools we have, we have to sacrifice something else that's better. Blood fear has nothing to do with that, it's just how our tools work.



Negative on the KJC part. Demonology uses MF by default and destruction has also proven that it works with MF.

I don't know if you understood what I wrote, but basically I was saying that it isn't worth switching to a succubus (or any other pet most of the time) mid combat as opposed to what Destruction could do in cataclysm. So to make things clear you're proving my point even further.
As for KjC, it was more of a slight reference to the gameplay in general, but yes you're right.

On a side note, why would you want to take shadowfury against say a caster cleave when Mortal Coil is just better? Less DRs in common, can be used defensively, has less counters, etc... Howl of Terror is just meh in my opinion. Great for some zerg comps or when you get your Blood Fear instantly countered, but Death Coil seems just plain better with all the chain CCs it allows you to do.

---------- Post added 2013-01-30 at 05:08 PM ----------

And a small friendly tip (as in really friendly, no offense meant), try to look less condescending while posting even though you don't mean it. Some people will take it really badly, especially when you're trying to make yourself credible but end up looking arrogant.
Oh and seduce glyph is now tied with glyph of demons, which I find good for demonology because of the felguard health buff -> Sac. Pact buff.

[Nicola]

Yeah, might have misunderstood you a little there...

On a side note, why would you want to take shadowfury against say a caster cleave when Mortal Coil is just better? Less DRs in common, can be used defensively, has less counters, etc... Howl of Terror is just meh in my opinion. Great for some zerg comps or when you get your Blood Fear instantly countered, but Death Coil seems just plain better with all the chain CCs it allows you to do.

Because it allows you to punish stacking really hard, something demonology is very good at, and as long as you ain't fucking up with DR, both shadowfury as howl of terror have an equal or longer duration then mortal coil.
Not saying mortal coil is bad nor that you are wrong about your statement, it's a nice spell, it has it's uses, perhaps I was a bit biased there, but I find howl a lot better then mortal coil.

And a small friendly tip (as in really friendly, no offense meant), try to look less condescending while posting even though you don't mean it. Some people will take it really badly, especially when you're trying to make yourself credible but end up looking arrogant.
Oh and seduce glyph is now tied with glyph of demons, which I find good for demonology because of the felguard health buff -> Sac. Pact buff.

I'm kinda aware of that, it's not easy to explain stuff to people that are less experienced and don't really know what's going on. And I'm french, blame it on that xD
And well, sometimes I get a bit annoyed when someone with no experience comes to say: No it's like this, this and this, just because they've read something somewhere.

As for the glyph, I'm aware it's the glyph of demon training, it's just easier to say seduce glyph. But since affliction and destruction don't use the glyph, nor does every demonology warlock, I just said, well if you want to seduce, you need the glyph.

[weakdots]

new change today looks like no melee can touch you for 1 minute, this makes it pretty OP again right?

[Deleted]

new change today looks like no melee can touch you for 1 minute, this makes it pretty OP again right?

Indeed. Either we are completely misreading the tooltip or it seems to be insanely OP. Maybe i should play lock in 5.2 after all? ;P

[Deleted]

new change today looks like no melee can touch you for 1 minute, this makes it pretty OP again right?

Ìf you scroll over the ability it still mentions only one charge.

[Deleted]

Ìf you scroll over the ability it still mentions only one charge.

So basically its just a wording pointless change of words.

[Nicola]

So basically its just a wording pointless change of words.

Yep, seems to be like that... Was hoping some better then just some tooltip changes.

[Spektroman]

Holy crap! Good news, everyone!

Warlock
- Blood Fear is now Blood Horror and is a 4 sec horror effect instead of a fear. It otherwise works as it does on the PTR.

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...5?page=68#1345

EDIT: now all we need is a way to make pets not eat it and we'll be golden

[Solidhype]

I am more into the choice of WHO you choose to horror as mentioned earlier, seems like an awsome idea. And of course usable while stunned. If you get 2 melee on you, and have the choice to get rid of either a high geared warrior rather than that rogue that all ready been red 20s ago.

[Azutael]

But we still lose fear ? because it will be annoying to not be able to fear non melee classes :P
Nice that hey made it a horror effect though, but now people will scream OP I bet.