8.0 Warlock changes from Beta

[Lucrece]

PVE also used to just be about raids, now its just as viable to look at M+, perhaps even moreso given how accessible higher keys are to smaller groups of skilled players relative to mythic raids. In that light the ranged vs melee debate blurs yet again and on a new front. With the elimination of tier sets in BFA the importance of raids may decrease further meaning the more M+ style advantages will become more important going forward.

What does that mean? We need at least one spec, really all our toolkits to better degree, to be competitive in that environment. Refrigerator mobility and long ramp up on everything may be the "class feel" to some but we need to think about it in terms of "what will make someone want to play this class"? So pushing some areas of mobility on some things for locks are overdue, especially compared to the ranged competition. Destro needs to not play like a ramp up spec nor a turret. CDF being castable on the move, dropping cata to 1.5 cast time, instant soulfire, those are within reason. Now that Haunt does weak damage and is just a single target only debuff it could go instant. Demo is headed in a good direction. Honestly its too soon to tell for sure...wildly better than live lol. Wouldn't mind seeing the CD recapture mechanic on phantom singularity when the mob you tag with it gets blown up early or something...very minor QoL thing though but easy to do.

Melee vs casters isn't a debate we will settle here or today or tomorrow. The lines need to blur and the kits of each need to overlap in M+ content, less so in raids. Ultimately I would put that more on content designers than on class balance. Make fun to play characters/classes...challenge the content team to make content that doesn't overly pander to a demographic within that meta's mechanics.

The relevance of M+ is directly tied to raids. You only care for the higher ilv gear because it is merely a necessity to progress in raids. If you're not raiding, you shouldn't be worrying about ilv pursuits to begin with.

Fact is, M+ is impossible to balance. You have a group make up of 5 people instead of 20, so by design you'll have a group excluding any class that can't bring hero, brez, and stuns/CC.

There is virtually zero reason to bring a priest or feral druid, for example. That won't change short of giving them utility competitive in power to spells of such magnitude like hero/brez/stuns.

Then there's the fact that the variety of keys and the design of aoe will necessitate that all classes be capable of aoe burst and CC, since that's what favor M+ for the time being.

If you balance all classes to have aoe burst and CC, you introduce problems into raids where they'll just pick the class with the highest ST/boss DPS since aoe is no longer a niche to justify bringing in low boss DPS specs like ele shaman/balance druid/ret paladin.

You'd also wildly overpower the dot specs since by giving them strong aoe they'll also dominate council fights, leaving only patchwerk bosses as a possible weakness, of which there are very few.

I agree that ramp up and immobility are shit weaknesses to have without being turned into arcane mages on steroids to compensate for the lack of mobility and burst. So I'd rather they reduce the degree of such weakness rather than eliminate it outright, while providing talents to fill in a niche when necessary.

An example of this is affliction's doombolt. With this new talent, affliction will have competitive contribution to priority adds, at the cost of sustained DPS and cleave (if haunt turns out to be better ST sustained DPS).

I think the best way to make M+ more accessible is to deemphasize trash mobs severely.

To me, for M+ having been a tank main, there has never been an encounter where I think trash is less dangerous than a boss. The trash are the tank's main headache and where I'm using most of my cd's, which makes no sense.

Keep trash, well, trash, and balance the dungeon along extra mechanics for boss fights.

[Baconeggcheese]

The relevance of M+ is directly tied to raids. You only care for the higher ilv gear because it is merely a necessity to progress in raids. If you're not raiding, you shouldn't be worrying about ilv pursuits to begin with.

I don't agree with this at all, M+ scales "infinitely", a group that decides they want to push M+ to its limit will absolutely want the highest ilvl they can get and they'll have even less reason to step into raids without tier bonuses.

It'll come down to whether or not there's unique effects on the azerite pieces or trinkets to make it worthwhile for them to step into raid.

Fact is, M+ is impossible to balance. You have a group make up of 5 people instead of 20, so by design you'll have a group excluding any class that can't bring hero, brez, and stuns/CC.

Its... possible at certain levels but not possible across the spectrum.

The issue is what blizzard views as "balanced". If you listened to the last Q&A I get the impression that they consider having X spec / class that brings strong ST for tyrannical week balanced vs Y spec / class that brings strong aoe for fortified week as long as those two can play their roles strong enough to justify bringing them.

The issue is that different things are valued more or less at different levels. Burst Aoe is hyper important at lower levels where sustained aoe becomes significantly more important the higher you go since mobs won't be dying in 3 globals. The same goes for ST having any real value at low levels vs high levels for tyrannical.

That's where this design leaves players behind, because it doesn't balance for how players consume content.

I think the best way to make M+ more accessible is to deemphasize trash mobs severely.

Or alternatively introduce mechanics that emphasize pulling differently so that more damage types can remain relevant.

That's a lot bigger of an ask, but as long as they intend to "double down on strengths" its realistically what they'll need to do.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Its... possible at certain levels but not possible across the spectrum.

The issue is what blizzard views as "balanced". If you listened to the last Q&A I get the impression that they consider having X spec / class that brings strong ST for tyrannical week balanced vs Y spec / class that brings strong aoe for fortified week as long as those two can play their roles strong enough to justify bringing them.

The issue is that different things are valued more or less at different levels. Burst Aoe is hyper important at lower levels where sustained aoe becomes significantly more important the higher you go since mobs won't be dying in 3 globals. The same goes for ST having any real value at low levels vs high levels for tyrannical.

That's where this design leaves players behind, because it doesn't balance for how players consume content.

Or alternatively introduce mechanics that emphasize pulling differently so that more damage types can remain relevant.

That's a lot bigger of an ask, but as long as they intend to "double down on strengths" its realistically what they'll need to do.

Maybe, but affixes won't solve the low level key issue if fortified/tyrannical is moving to +2 as they suggested. Said new affixes wouldn't matter until a decent rank at which point burst is becoming less valuable anyway. That said, the fortifying early on might be enough to offset it on those weeks, we'll have to see.

[Dmitro]

I dont get why you all people are so upset about immobility, I mean its alright, cause less mobile specs indicates they not gonna add a trillion more mechanics to every boss so we need numerous abilities to dodge/escape them, so tired of this bs in legion, its so artificial, bosses no longer feel they are real creatures, they're just a soak/jump/spread simulator.

plus people blinking around here and there in pvp was pure cancer.

dont be so mad, its a good change!

[Baconeggcheese]

Maybe, but affixes won't solve the low level key issue if fortified/tyrannical is moving to +2 as they suggested. Said new affixes wouldn't matter until a decent rank at which point burst is becoming less valuable anyway. That said, the fortifying early on might be enough to offset it on those weeks, we'll have to see.

I'm not talking about just affixes, I'm talking about mechanics in general. As an example a mob could be a damage sponge that is fairly manageable on its own (like the giant dude in the maw of souls underbelly) but if he's pulled with other mobs around him he starts doing Y ability and or gets X damage / health buff and becomes a problem to the point where you would never want to pull him with other packs. Now all of a sudden ST is relevant for a pull, now say there's a handful of these guys sprinkled throughout the dungeon that you can't skip. The same goes for other packs tailor made to promote certain kinds of damage. Those kinds of things then get combined with the affixes, potentially further promote varied comps where you need to bring different classes and specs that bring different kinds of damage to the table.

There's not going to be a solution to fixing things at the levels that people are outgearing, the best they can do is try and balance for the levels people will be running on average and especially around whatever level is the cap for the weekly chest if they bring that forward (which seems likely).

[Lucrece]

If isolation becomes a thing it'll still favor CC heavy classes, at which point I hope they restore the fear glyph that makes mobs tremble in place.

Rogue alone would dwarf other melee due to their wealth of CC and mob skipping features via cloak of concealment. Hunter with wyvern sting+freezing trap would become a highly desirable ranged DPS over a shaman who can only hex every 45 seconds (and both bring heroism so that's hardly a help for the shaman).

I think there is very little way to trim the inequality of utility kits. Utility is immensely hard to balance around since it needs to feel unique, but that very uniqueness is the basis for inequality.

The best way imo to make utility not overpowering is to reduce the payoffs of that utility usage. They already do some of that with required mobs counts so you just don't stack stealth classes, so they can do the same with the effectiveness of CC/immunities/mobility.

I do think an emphasis on the boss makes for easier balancing than trash clearing itself.

[Baconeggcheese]

If isolation becomes a thing it'll still favor CC heavy classes, at which point I hope they restore the fear glyph that makes mobs tremble in place.

Why would that be?

[Lucrece]

Why would that be?

If the strategy revolves around disabling and separating mobs so their auras don't overlap, you'll need CC to peel the mob off to allow the tank to move the rest of the mobs away.

[Baconeggcheese]

If the strategy revolves around disabling and separating mobs so their auras don't overlap, you'll need CC to peel the mob off to allow the tank to move the rest of the mobs away.

That's assuming that they were in packs or for some reason needing to be separated instead of isolated in the first place (and not immune to CC). And again, it was an example of how 1 type of damage could be made more relevant. Not the whole scope of the point I was trying to make which was simply, add mechanics to make other kinds of damage relevant.

[Deleted]

PVP "arena balancing" led to many negative outcomes for the game, I worry that trying to achieve M+ balance may have similar outcome.

[Challenge]

PVP "arena balancing" led to many negative outcomes for the game, I worry that trying to achieve M+ balance may have similar outcome.

Game has never been balanced around arena from an outside perspective.

But even so, balancing around M+ is much better than designing everything around raids (like they did with wod and to a lesser extent legion) which makes for super shitty class design. With M+ more of your tools such as CC, mobility, utility, special debuffs and flavourful stuff like flare/spectral sight or AoE rogue cloak are utilized, which also translates better to the open world, bgs and arenas, questing, other pve stuff like brawlers guild , etc etc.

For example i like that they are specifically making it so only 3 classes have aoe stuns. It makes having them feel more valuable in a group setting and it could open up comp diversity rather than pure meta shit based on effective dps/hps like we have now.

[Deleted]

Game has never been balanced around arena from an outside perspective.

Not true at all, there were plenty of instances where balancing issues occurred due to pvp ramifications, an example being frost mage mastery required a total rework to allow it to be a viable raid spec, as it was totally unbalanceble whilst it was in its frostburn iteration.

And lets not even go there regarding Chaos Bolt.

Granted now it should be zero issue with separate modifiers and talents.

I do agree that it is logical to balance specs around high mythic+ keys as like you said, you use far more of your toolkit in dungeons on a regular basis by the pure nature of there is more of them than raid bosses, so if a class is good at all aspects of M+(im talking high keys here, not zerging low keys) they will naturally be good for raiding as well. The other way around you can end up with some specs like SP being great for raiding but toilet for M+

[Deleted]

That's assuming that they were in packs or for some reason needing to be separated instead of isolated in the first place (and not immune to CC). And again, it was an example of how 1 type of damage could be made more relevant. Not the whole scope of the point I was trying to make which was simply, add mechanics to make other kinds of damage relevant.

They were in old raids, when CC'ing trash was a thing, which reached it's ultimate expression in the Sunwell, where you could wipe quite easily from getting your priority kill and CC chaining wrong, or when someone decided to do something that would break the CC. The trash was indeed in packs nonetheless. -shudder-

One of the biggest reasons Sunwell was viewed as being wildly overtuned compared to it's preceding Black Temple. I remember my guild's first few Sunwell raids, where we took a coupel of guys from what would now be a "mythic guild"....just to get past that area with all the lethal trash in it.

Hopefully they won;t repeat that mistake again.

[Werst]

We went a bit too deep. Perhaps it’s enough to look at in in that it’s easier to get 5 friends together of similar skill than a raid. Or maybe these 5 are former mythic raiders who have families and now raid casual but like to stretch once a week and can’t in raid. Point is, more people get their pve on in mythic plus now. As such it has to be a balance concern. Let’s not over complicate it.

Our general toolkit’s and at least one spec should be well suited to that venue. Long ramp up, low mobility, derpy pet AI...these have been warlock “class flavor” for a long time. While the devs have their mindset on how we should be, there has to be some concession to reality of the meta game’s direction and state. Those historic traits are historically severe handicaps in dungeons. Mechanics need improvement such that we don’t need high/OP numbers to make people want to play the class. Trying to offset those weakness with big numbers has always led to balance whiplash.

I would love to see an iteration for testing where locks got some of these tools (see my above destro recommendations) Especially now when numbers don’t matter. What is the risk? Eradication still is a maintenance buff nightmare playstyle waiting to happen with a duration too short to be realistic for starter gear. Stand by Soulfire needing to be instant or gtfo. Eradication is still cancerous playstyle. I stand by it should be a buff to CB only, last 2-3x as long, 20% vs 10%, though perhaps it should stack on the warlock? OR eradication let’s CB be cast while moving and leave it at 5-10%. Still not opposed to ditching it entirely for a version of the current rifts.

[evertonbelmontt]

How does the new GCD policy from Blizz affects Warlocks in BfA?

Which of these are in the GCD now?

- Dark Pact
- Dark/Demon Soul
- Unending Resolve
- ????

[Warning]

How does the new GCD policy from Blizz affects Warlocks in BfA?

Which of these are in the GCD now?

- Dark Pact
- Dark/Demon Soul
- Unending Resolve
- ????

Not in game right now but Dark Soul is on the GCD which is very awkward for destro PVP. You won't be able to get backdraft-> coil -> darksoul cbolt anymore without risking it being stopped.

[bio347]

How does the new GCD policy from Blizz affects Warlocks in BfA?

Which of these are in the GCD now?

- Dark Pact
- Dark/Demon Soul
- Unending Resolve
- ????

So far, on GCD: Dark Soul, Shadow Bulwark (VW sacrifice).
Off GCD: Soul Harvest, Dark Pact, Unending Resolve.

[8bithamster]

Happily playing alpha, but at this point Affli lock feels.. strange. As if I'm playing a weird "level 40-50" warlock so to speak. It misses something, dno how to describe it.

[Lucrece]

Happily playing alpha, but at this point Affli lock feels.. strange. As if I'm playing a weird "level 40-50" warlock so to speak. It misses something, dno how to describe it.

It misses the fucking artifact, for which its play revolved around. Sorta like a shadow priest without void torrent/sphere of insanity/mass hysteria/tentacle procs, or a balance druid missing all his full moon spells.

BfA is virtually Legion classes sans the artifacts with the belief that somehow a few nether crucible-like passives from azerite armor will fix the gaping hole ripping out the artifact passives and abilities left.

[Deleted]

It misses the fucking artifact, for which its play revolved around. Sorta like a shadow priest without void torrent/sphere of insanity/mass hysteria/tentacle procs, or a balance druid missing all his full moon spells.

BfA is virtually Legion classes sans the artifacts with the belief that somehow a few nether crucible-like passives from azerite armor will fix the gaping hole ripping out the artifact passives and abilities left.

Whilst a lot of what you are saying is totally true, and for some classes i wholeheartedly agree, however for affliction, the artifact weapon effect must be dropped, it is the whole reason the spec is so overpowered on live due its effect on our stats and how we scale so well, so with it the spec impossible to balance for ST or Multi target without breaking one or the other.