Demo and Destro both desperately need tuning passes. Mechanically they're mostly fine; Demo has issues but those go beyond hotfix levels they really should have received some substantial design changes in SL to not be an immobile turret in every scenario.
Affliction meanwhile is the opposite. It scales really well and that's why it's pumping in raids right now, but man is it a nightmare to play. I've never felt this much stress since the >9,000% haste Shadow Priest days (and they made sure THAT is gone in SL). Pure ST it's alright, but you add anything more and the moaning begins. Raid prep now includes pots, flasks, and ice packs for my fingers because I'm mashing multi-DoTs like a madman. This is not my idea of a good time, especially considering how much easier of a time most other ranged specs have in that respect.
Destro is almost perfect, the only thing that is superfluous is us having corruption. Seems like they gave us that ability just so they could attach some crap to it in Torghast. Numbers changes are simple, the design is solid though.
The only spec that still feels like old school warlock is Destro. The other two, especially Demo have been so weird since Legion. Nothing is smooth gameplay wise. And there is hardly much synergies there.
Well deserved considering he was the best class designer WoW and WL ever had. Shame WL had to be brought back down instead of other classes getting brought up.
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Yes. Demo has no covenant synergizing with it. Maybe necrolords, but that is soo generic... It feels really forgotten. But we got the 40s imp duration, that's something I guess.
Last edited by LordVargK; 2020-12-26 at 02:00 PM.
Demo and Destro suck. And Affli is so horrible to play now.
I said this exp would be the Doom of the Warlock. I was right.
All specs are better than in Legion and strictly (meaning in every possibly way) better than in BfA. This Expansion is the first step up from the bottom. Still not good, demo is superfluous ans affliction not rewarding enough. Destru is okay, but boring. As it was ever since MoP, but then you at least had mana management.
Current warlock is either feels like shit to play (Affliction in literally any situation, except pure ST) or feels fine, but horribly undertuned (Demo, Destro).
I've switched to boomkin and enjoy the game x10 now.
Warlock will have to wait for better times.
Last edited by Pury; 2020-12-26 at 03:58 PM.
yeah yeah, it was fun in MoP when the class was OP for the entire expansion and each spec was legit busted for at least one point in the expansion. But having it so the entire class and all specs are strong and it has only pros and no cons is not really that great a class design.
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DOOOOOOOOM!
Next time be sure to say 'SHADOWLANDS IS A SLAP IN THE FACE TO ALL WARLOCKS! SLAP IN THE FACE!!!"
Yes, WL was OP in MoP. And still the design philosophy in MoP was better, because talents didn't affect performance that much and much of the class toolkit was baseline with talents being the icing on the cake.
And honestly, they were mostly OP because of snapshotting. Not just because of it, but a large part stems from it.
Last edited by LordVargK; 2020-12-26 at 06:45 PM.
Demo needs another rework. The actual "turret imp master" is impossible to be competitive even with a +25% dmg aura. Dunno why they have decided to despise in this way Demo. And Im not going to talk about the demons themselves or comparations with Hunters.
The same for Destro, literally playing with 4 buttons + 2 each 3 minutes for cds.
The problem with warlock design is that the developers are too scared to explore and redesign the class. 16 years + and none of the classes have a 4th spec to add flavor and fun to the class. You could say that it is the players fault as well. What I mean by that is that as soon as the class gets a spell added, the players cry "Op" or "Broken". Add that together with developers mentality of laziness and you have a class that has gotten "Stale" and old with the same shit spells and same o demons to summon. Honestly i don't see warlocks or any classes for the matter to be really fun until the developers can literally learn to expand their mind beyond what classes do now. What I mean by that is fun spells and I would love to see more demons then the same ones that have been around for years.
Edit.....The class will also stay the same, as is, cause people whine that their is no balance with the 3 trees already implemented. But like I said before, and will continue to say so, there will never ever be balance. Blizzard does not know how to do that. So a 4th spec to all classes will add flavor and fun back into warlocks.
Be careful who you chat it up with here on these forums. If you are NOT for WoW and about WoW, people will report whatever you say and get you banned
Speaking strictly in terms of class design (how the class actually felt to play), cataclysm was a golden age for warlocks. All 3 specs were fun and viable in both pvp and pve. It might've been OP in MoP but the class design completely killed the fun for me. I mained destro before MoP but the rework made the class so unfun that I rerolled to warrior. Destro in cata: mobile, utility-based, quick casts, survivable and mediocre burst with decent attrition. Destro in mop: completely immobile (they literally had to implement a talent that allowed you to cast while moving because it was THAT immobile), some utility, snail-paced casts, squishy and completely overpowered burst but no damage outside of that. Balance-wise it was stronger in MoP but you were nothing but a chaos bolt/incinerate turret (these 2 spells would literally account for 80%+ of your damage usually), I've never played anything more boring in my life. Not to mention they swapped out the nice looking chaos bolt animation for the abomination that we still have now. Compare how many destro pvp movies were made in cata and mop. There were more than you could count in cata with a lot of skill-based usage of utility and dealing with groups of enemies by outplaying them. In mop there were a handfull of movies about people blowing opponents up with chaos bolts and some utility usage, hardly any of the interesting stuff that was possible in the previous iteration of the spec.
tldr i miss cata destro bring back pls
Thats a big issue, having a lot to do with the Legion talent revmap which made most talents focus on output rather than mop/wod which were mostly utility.
But specifically for afflic, i think it also has to due Malefic Rapture scaling linearly with dots (doing x dmg with one dot, 2x with two etc). This means if locks are reasonable in single target, they will be only okish in aoe, because you have much less dots in aoe and most class rotations nowdays basically do their st on aoe or close to it.
It could perhaps be fixed by changing Malefic to doing a set dmg number, say 70% spellpower, and then increase it by 30% per dot. That way it still scales with dots but you're not punished as much in aoe cuzz the base damage is alright.
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Cata destro was kind of a rotational abomination. You had incinerate and conflagrate as fillers, chaos bolt as a weird 12 sec insignificant nuke, and you had to maintain corruption, immolate and doom. Maybe agony too if I'm misremembering. It wasnt really dest in any way beside incinerate as filler.
Yes, mop focused it down on nuking, but it was a much more complete package of nuking, with chaos bolts hits being satisfying, shadowburn executes and havoc glory. Mop aoe was also fairly interesting (pay embers, all your rotation becomes aoe, but also gives embers back).
Dest was def the simplest of the three mop lock speccs though. Affliction had Soulburn to use shards in so many ways (atleast 6 augemented spells of the top of my head, prolly more). Soulswap to spread dots.
Demo in MoP was prolly the most unique specc ever made in wow. Full agency over when to demon form, ton of your spells augemented in interesting ways in it. Glorious.
I don't know what you're on my dude, but Affliction Warlock is genuinely one of the most fun classes in the game.