Warlock PvP input

[venomancer]

Warlock PvP remains unchanged, whil eenhancement and feral are getting buffed for PvE, therefore ruining warlock's life in arena even more.

[evertonbelmontt]

The hope is they are taking their time to make something huge and gamebreaking for us. We sure need it.

I don't remember seeing the ladder that bad for warlocks in quite some time.

[Walrock]

The hope is they are taking their time to make something huge and gamebreaking for us. We sure need it.

3x ID is pretty bonkers if you ask me, that thing will surely get nerfed.
But thats pretty much it, besides that, we are paper.
But still dangerous if left alone.. which is never going to happen bc everyone knows that warlock is just melee food atm.

[Nicola]

All Affliction really needs right now is the old Demon/Fel Armor back; passive armor/damage reduction and increased healing taken, and shadowfury having it's cast time significantly reduced.

If they want to make Destruction decent as well, all they have to do; in addition to Demon/Fel Armor and Shadowfury buffs, is increasing the damage they do. Currently Destruction relies a lot on hard casting but getting your casts off is not rewarding at all, which is mostly because of your damage is too low.

As for Demonology, I would not count on it becoming a viable PvP spec anywhere in this iteration without some absolutely ridiculous buffs. You're pretty much playing a BM hunter with ramp up time and interruptible casts.

[evertonbelmontt]

@Walrock

I don't know. The more I play with it and see Maldiva and Wallrikz play with it, the more I think this will be just a cheesy strat unviable for any comps like Blizzcon coming "soon" if things stay as it is.
It does a tremendous ammount of damage but basically anything can stop it. Knockbacks, stuns, interrupts, CCs, Reflect. You got it.
And you can't use it for self defense as I figure that was the intended way the devs wanted it to be used (and thus making it stack to 100, instead of expecting people would go with 3x ID as an offensive trait).

Aside from killing someone who basically let you, the best you can do with it is trick your oponent with a "baby drain" arround 70~ stacks to try and get a cooldown out of it. The stacks also take significantly longer to ramp in 2's.

[Walrock]

@Walrock

I don't know. The more I play with it and see Maldiva and Wallrikz play with it, the more I think this will be just a cheesy strat unviable for any comps like Blizzcon coming "soon" if things stay as it is.
It does a tremendous ammount of damage but basically anything can stop it. Knockbacks, stuns, interrupts, CCs, Reflect. You got it.
And you can't use it for self defense as I figure that was the intended way the devs wanted it to be used (and thus making it stack to 100, instead of expecting people would go with 3x ID as an offensive trait).

Aside from killing someone who basically let you, the best you can do with it is trick your oponent with a "baby drain" arround 70~ stacks to try and get a cooldown out of it. The stacks also take significantly longer to ramp in 2's.

Yeah thats the problem with 3xID, no team thats semi competent will let you get a full cast through, or even half.

And for everyone's sanity, I would suggest to not Q for 2s, you get a rogue+x team every 2nd or 3rd game, which will just steamroll you.
Right now, 2s are far from fun as lock, same goes for 3s but its a tiny bit better there.

[Sylar Hao]

Step 1. Discard current warlocks.
Step 2. Re-implement MoP warlocks.
Step 3. ???

Profit.

[kail]

Instant Shadow Fury or Howl of Terror. Any one of these would be a decent start to improve our survivability. Having a way to kite the dominating melee classes would be welcomed as well.

[venomancer]

I don't think giving us a way to kite is a viable option, they'd have to give us like 3 extra tools to do that given how much mobility every melee has.
I'm not sure what the answer is, Demon Armor might do it, together with port/coil baseline or howl of terror or idk what, but SOMETHING NEEDS TO HAPPEN ASAP. The expansion has been out for almost 2 months, they announced upcoming changes in "a near future" for locks and dks more than a week ago and we've been a freakin meme in PvP since day 1.

[Deleted]

I don't think giving us a way to kite is a viable option, they'd have to give us like 3 extra tools to do that given how much mobility every melee has.
I'm not sure what the answer is, Demon Armor might do it, together with port/coil baseline or howl of terror or idk what, but SOMETHING NEEDS TO HAPPEN ASAP. The expansion has been out for almost 2 months, they announced upcoming changes in "a near future" for locks and dks more than a week ago and we've been a freakin meme in PvP since day 1.

The problem feels two-fold.

a) Warlocks have tended to be pretty damn competetive in pvp, I imagine they're not sure what they've done to make us bottom of the barrel and are afraid that tweaking things willy-nilly will result in us being overpowered.

b) We have two specs with a huge damage potential if the other team are complete idiots, and God knows the second Chaos Bolt starts hitting for any noticable amount the forums light up with "Nerf warlocks, I got killed by the 2.x second cast I didn't bother to interrupt, LOS or defensive".

I wish they'd do something though, I'm not a stellar pvper to begin with but it's absolute asinine trying to play right now, especially since the friends I usually pvp with are a holy paladin and a DK. Maximum wheelchair comp and it's noticable.

[wholol]

If you guys want to talk about functionality, all they have to do is give soul link to all specs ( instead of just demo ) and then reduce unending resolve cd down to 2 mins.

The above will solve affliction and destro's issues in arenas at the very least ( since damage isn't really a problem for those specs), demo though is where it gets a bit complicated, since the spec has the biggest ramp up out of any spec in the game and limited options for dealing damage while moving , it needs a huge ass buff to it's single target potential ( not just in pvp ), I guess what the spec is missing most is a niche, it's got nothing going for it at the moment ( no burst/ST sustain/cleave , nothing really).

[Deleted]

If you guys want to talk about functionality, all they have to do is give soul link to all specs ( instead of just demo ) and then reduce unending resolve cd down to 2 mins.

I keep seeing SL banded around as the fix, is that really the best direction to take things though? It's been a while but I have vague memories of SL being pretty unpleasant at times because your pet would just get butchered by melee, didn't it push players into sac for the health boost back in mop? wod? I forget.

[wholol]

I keep seeing SL banded around as the fix, is that really the best direction to take things though? It's been a while but I have vague memories of SL being pretty unpleasant at times because your pet would just get butchered by melee, didn't it push players into sac for the health boost back in mop? wod? I forget.

The other option is to buff soul leech and demon skin significantly , at least it would be easier to implement than adding new (old) spells and effects since we know blizzard doesn't bring any relevant changes quickly enough and we need some increase in survivability as fast as possible.

People asking for buffs often do full revamps and add a shitton of op spells to the list and this throws blizz off because they dismiss such ideas 99% of the time, what we need right now is a fix and we can worry about shitty mechanics and how bad the class is compared to prior expansions later.

[venomancer]

I honestly don'tcare too much about Demo, since it's never (veryrarely) really had a place in PvP.
About Soul Link, I wouldn't reallyknow... all the melees have like very easy and free cleave that I think Soul Link wouldn't make that much of a difference; though it might help with not getting bursted down in 2 seconds on every opener. It could also become a probem against casters - who I think our survivability is fine against -
I'd rather get a more reliable option like Demon Armor ( %physical reduction, maybe 8 or 10% + healing received increased) and some utility/toolkit help like port or coil baseline, or instant shadowfury that'd enable us to be a little more threatening.

[lummiuster]

Honestly they should make warlocks immune to interrupts period.
Seriously, Mages have roots and blink, boomkin have root and dash and tank form, Ele have root and ghost wolf. We have 1 portal with long cast/CD so make us un-uninterruptible.

[wholol]

I honestly don'tcare too much about Demo, since it's never (veryrarely) really had a place in PvP.
About Soul Link, I wouldn't reallyknow... all the melees have like very easy and free cleave that I think Soul Link wouldn't make that much of a difference; though it might help with not getting bursted down in 2 seconds on every opener. It could also become a probem against casters - who I think our survivability is fine against -
I'd rather get a more reliable option like Demon Armor ( %physical reduction, maybe 8 or 10% + healing received increased) and some utility/toolkit help like port or coil baseline, or instant shadowfury that'd enable us to be a little more threatening.

Soul link has been the defacto lock damage reduction ability since the creation of the game tbh, pets getting cleaved is part of the toolkit, proper pet micro management adding a layer of additional depth, not that it's hard to resummon a pet these days ( long before your pet dies).

Something like demon armor can work of course but would require blizz creating an entirely new talent/pvp talent and adding it to our class which postpones it a while longer than it would if they decide to add soul link for all classes or do a numbers tuning on soul leech.

[evertonbelmontt]

Soul Link would hlep a ton, but then pets needs to be able to be insta summoned again. It costs a sould shard FFS.

And yeah, I gave up PVP for now. Still waiting for something to come, and if nothing else changes I'll wait for the season's end and try again because right now it's a joke being trained by anything and if your healer do a very forgiving mistake for other classes, as a warlock you're dead. It's not only about us, my goddess told me it's really stressfull for her to play with a warlock instead of basically any other class. lol

[Warning]

The problem feels two-fold.

a) Warlocks have tended to be pretty damn competetive in pvp, I imagine they're not sure what they've done to make us bottom of the barrel and are afraid that tweaking things willy-nilly will result in us being overpowered.

b) We have two specs with a huge damage potential if the other team are complete idiots, and God knows the second Chaos Bolt starts hitting for any noticable amount the forums light up with "Nerf warlocks, I got killed by the 2.x second cast I didn't bother to interrupt, LOS or defensive".

I wish they'd do something though, I'm not a stellar pvper to begin with but it's absolute asinine trying to play right now, especially since the friends I usually pvp with are a holy paladin and a DK. Maximum wheelchair comp and it's noticable.

I think what you're saying here is very accurate. Besides being so weak that you at times will face unwinnable matchups no matter what, Locks are also extremely unforgiving right now and require very specific setups to even be able to play. I can't imagine what it would be like for newer players trying the class in rated PVP. Imo a few things need to happen for warlocks to be a fun and balanced spec, these include both buffs and nerfs to address some of the issues you bring up.


Buffs:

1. Give every Warlock spec baseline coil on a 75 second CD.
//General improvement to baseline CC and survivability which is currently lacking. Coil is as staple a warlock ability as mage blink or rogue vanish, we should always have it. Its place in the talent tree should be taken by Shadowflame or Curse of Exhaustion.

2. Give affliction and destro Soul Link but with damage transfer reduced to 10%. Demo keeps its 20% version.
//Limited passive survivability buff for these two specs. Locks should be tankier but not immortal in the way that Edge of Madness shadow priests currently are.

3. Buff incinerate and Conflagrate another 5% (destro).
//This improves general dps/offsets Grimoire nerf below and adds to our burst without inflating our biggest number any further.

4. Give Destro 0.5 second cast shadowfury with a 0.5 second GCD.
//Short cast time to allow counterplay and short GCD to allow us to begin casting afterward immediately.

5. Give affliction increased healing from the now baseline mortal coil, 30% instead of 20%.
//With these changes all 3 specs now have one of three main baseline defensives/ccs improved in accordance with spec flavor: Aff has improved coil, Demo keeps improved Soul Link and Destro has improved Shadowfury.

6. Give Demo Master Summoner as baseline (Instant cast Dreadstalkers), Demonic Calling gets its proc chance increased to 25% and the now redundant instant cast effect removed.
//Improves PVP talent choice freedom and general mobility.

Nerfs:

1. Nerf Inevitable demise to only stack up to 50 in PVP.

2. Nerf Grimoire of Supremacy to only grant 6% damage per Soul Shard.
//These two nerfs deal with a the outlier situations in which Cbolt hits for 75k+ and drain life ticks for 40k+

3. Remove the stun from Grimoire: Fel Guard
//Demo CC will be enough without it with baseline coil.

[Craaazyyy]

warlock design is a joke since WoD

just bring back cata affliction and keep it

[Schirmy]

warlock design is a joke since WoD

just bring back cata affliction and keep it

Cata Affy PvP was so fucking smooth.