Warlocks PvP tune up

[Recordable]

After reading several forums on both MMO-champ and wowhead, and after having my beloved toon destroyed by almost every class, the conclusion “locks need some love now” came to my mind. Clever huh? Instead of QQ ing about how X class beat me, I’d rather give some ideas, maybe OP, maybe not (balancing is not my job anyway, I’m just a player). Oh and btw, spare your “L2P your class” if possible, they’re not necessary nor of any help. Here’s some of my thoughts and ideas took from different places:

Affliction

Suddenpain: Consumes the effect of your Corruption spell, dealing damage equal to 12 seconds of your Corruption ticks.

Give it a 30 seconds – 1 minute cooldown, or some kind of drawback (maybe similar to SW). Some kind of burst DPS is needed in these times, even for an affli lock focused on dealing dmg over time.

Siphon life: Your Corruption spell also cause Siphon Life, transfering 60% of the damage dealt by your Corruption to you as health points.

Or

Your Corruption spell also cause Siphon Life, transfering 30% of the damage dealt by your Shadow spells (Corruption excluded) to you as health points.

Spriests can debuff you with like 2 – 3 effects with just 1 DoT, why shouldn’t we able to do the same? I mean, we lose like 10 seconds to put every DoT we have on a single target, then we still have to Haunt, Fear and Drain Life... too much waste of time.

Shadow Embrace: make it an improved, flat PvE talent to compensate the absence of Siphon Life. 15 – 30% reduced effects on HoT for 5 points spent is a bad joke. Warrs, Rogues and Hunters can cut by 50% every healing with a single blow, while we need 2 stacks of a (hard-to-put) debuff for a mere 30% on over times only. Oh, and DKs can simply corrupt every HoT with a single strike too ^^

Unstable Affliction: same as before, just make it instant, add a cooldown (most of 41 points skills have a cd) and maybe lower the damage (since it won’t be fair for an insta cast to have the same coefficent of a 1,5 secs cast spell).

Haunt: the idea beyond this ability sounds fairly good to me, but still, what are you gonna do while the increased damage from your dots is ticking and you’re waiting for it to returns and heal you? Now, you just die. Then why not adding some sort of Astral Shift component? In which you’re like out of your body and take less damage (not something like 50% ofc, more like 15 or 20).

Demonology

Demonic Sacrifice: When are we supposed to use that? In PvE Felhunter, Felguard or Imp are always a better choice than that, and in PvP you can’t afford losing Soul Link, no matter what. Maybe for questing/grinding has some use but, come on, locks never had problems doing that. If there’s an effective way to use that or to improve it I ask sorry, but can’t think of any decent alternative... then why not replacing it with a dual-pet management skill? Something like:

Nether Shift: allows you to shift your summoned demon into nether, making it immune but preventing it from doing any action. While the pet is shifted you can use another demon. Only one demon can be shifted at a time.

Ok, the tooltip sucks, I’ll give an example: let’s say you summon a Felhunter and Shift a Voidwalker. A rogue appears.You can just Shift the Felpuppy and let the Voidie out, benefitting from the physical damage reduction and Sac him if needed. A mage joins the fight? Take back your Felpuppy. What I mean is to allow pet’s abilities management depending on foes/situations while giving more ways to ensure the presence of the pet in first place. We’re pretty dependant on em (avoidance sure help keeping them alive) but they’re way too squishy with the current damage output. A cooldown is surely needed.

Improved Enslave Demon: Aaaaargh! Delete this useless talent form the face of earth! Replacing this with something more useful is a must, just as now is a must to skip it. Any idea out there? I don’t have any =(

Metamorphosis: lower the cooldown and make it more resistant to stun/cc effects (holy crap, Bestial Wrath only have 2 mins cooldown and it’s always been godly), this could be one way to improve our 51 talent points skill. Yep it’s 51 points, not 21. Another way could be to make it a permanent shapeshift, lowering the buffs it gives but giving some abilities based on the pet you’re using (making it despawns for the duration). Felguard or Felhunter? Melee/spell defense and attacks. Voidwalker? Tanking abilities. Succubus? Boobs. Bad joke, sorry.

That’s all for now, Destro has been left out on purpose, never tried it for PvP. Being 2 shotted as Demo is enough for me. Consider that I'm not saying to give us ALL of this, but we need some sort of deep change imo. I’d like to know what you guys think, every suggestion will be apprecieted.

[Shamb]

Interesting thoughts.

What I think is this:

Warlock's defense as always been either drain tanking or fear (more the second to be honest)

Drain tanking = no can do too much burst and everyone and their mother can interrupt drain life.

Fear = A totally useless cc, a broken joke. In PvE it is more then useless, you hurt yourself by doing it more then anything else (pull other group). In PvP ? every single class can break fear except for other warlocks and priests. Every class can interrupt you while you cast fear.

Why do Warlocks get the ONLY cc that can be broken by everyone ? I knw bubble, ice block etc break every cc, but that's ok, they break EVERY cc. Why does fear, which is a PvP cc ONLY can get broken by berserker rage (warrior), berserk druids, tremor totem and what not...

My solution ? Turn lock fear into terror effect that has a little shorter duration, like 6-8 seconds and make our demonic circle teleport to break stuns with a long cd. Rogues will more then likely still destroy us, but they are our counter class so it's normal.

[zuxia]

Interesting thoughts.

What I think is this:

Warlock's defense as always been either drain tanking or fear (more the second to be honest)

Drain tanking = no can do too much burst and everyone and their mother can interrupt drain life.

Fear = A totally useless cc, a broken joke. In PvE it is more then useless, you hurt yourself by doing it more then anything else (pull other group). In PvP ? every single class can break fear except for other warlocks and priests. Every class can interrupt you while you cast fear.

Why do Warlocks get the ONLY cc that can be broken by everyone ? I knw bubble, ice block etc break every cc, but that's ok, they break EVERY cc. Why does fear, which is a PvP cc ONLY can get broken by berserker rage (warrior), berserk druids, tremor totem and what not...

My solution ? Turn lock fear into terror effect that has a little shorter duration, like 6-8 seconds and make our demonic circle teleport to break stuns with a long cd. Rogues will more then likely still destroy us, but they are our counter class so it's normal.

Some of your ideas are very interesting and on the demonic circle thread we are discussing the issue of being able to use it while stunned..your comments there would be appreciated and welcomed.

[lewi]

really good ideas love the sound of nether shift and a permanent meta that would help alot.

[Irishop]

You know what would be a SUPER BIG help if blizzard made it so you can fear someone no matter where they are standing. In front or back. Since everybody and there mother can break it why not let us cast it. It would help us against those melee who just run around you so you can't cast it.

[Recordable]

You know what would be a SUPER BIG help if blizzard made it so you can fear someone no matter where they are standing. In front or back. Since everybody and there mother can break it why not let us cast it. It would help us against those melee who just run around you so you can't cast it.

Uhm, afaik Fear is castable even if the target is at your back =O

Interesting thoughts.

What I think is this:

Warlock's defense as always been either drain tanking or fear (more the second to be honest)

Drain tanking = no can do too much burst and everyone and their mother can interrupt drain life.

Fear = A totally useless cc, a broken joke. In PvE it is more then useless, you hurt yourself by doing it more then anything else (pull other group). In PvP ? every single class can break fear except for other warlocks and priests. Every class can interrupt you while you cast fear.

Why do Warlocks get the ONLY cc that can be broken by everyone ? I knw bubble, ice block etc break every cc, but that's ok, they break EVERY cc. Why does fear, which is a PvP cc ONLY can get broken by berserker rage (warrior), berserk druids, tremor totem and what not...

My solution ? Turn lock fear into terror effect that has a little shorter duration, like 6-8 seconds and make our demonic circle teleport to break stuns with a long cd. Rogues will more then likely still destroy us, but they are our counter class so it's normal.

The idea of undispellable Terror makes me giggle (in a devilish way, ofc), but I'm afraid blizz will never gives us such a powerful CC u.u

But what about a serious Improved Fear? Not something that can be taken off with trinket or dispel as Nightmare, but more like a Daze effect (which isn't dispellable, am I right?), this will surely help the kiting of melee classes.

Oh and btw, I just read the Demonic Circle improvements thread. Making it invisible (being able see it only with Detect Invisibility maybe?) and a stun breaking component sounds really good. And fair.

Keep posting your ideas! =)

[Deleted]

One thing i think you needed a mention of is Demonic Teleport, our survival spell so needs some attention (we're not surviving). The 40 yards range is fine, it just takes a little thought into where to place it. Being visible to enemies is a bit of a problem due to camping and obviousness to it, i'd settle for just being the bottom part of the graphic thats on the ground. Cooldown is fine. Being able to be used while stunned is the big change we need. The world currently revolves around burst damage and we dont even outlive alot of stuns, many times killed by a paladin during HoJ (bad enough they can 100-0% us in the duration of a bubble) or a rogue during a cheap shot.

I really like a couple of your ideas though. I had toyed with a similar idea in my head regarding haunt, where it would transfer our soul into the target, banishing our current body and demon. For that duration we are hidden from harms way and still dealing damage from the dots. I know this would require a longer cooldown and there would be alot of problems with it regarding pve applications and such. I just see it as a great way for us to avoid damage, as thats a big thing we need to be able to do as affliction.

Nice idea with the demon switching, not sure how it would work though. Maybe stores the 'spare' demon into a stone like healthstone / soulstone. Cooldown of about 5-10mins? Difference from Fel Domination being that you can't store the same demon as you have out.

[Vandalheart]

Unstable Affliction: same as before, just make it instant, add a cooldown (most of 41 points skills have a cd) and maybe lower the damage (since it won’t be fair for an insta cast to have the same coefficent of a 1,5 secs cast spell).

As far as I can remember the 1.5 second coefficient is the same as the instant coefficient.

Also, good job, I'm really sick of people saying that the main problem is DT's lack of a stun removal. I'm just horrified by the possibility that around the start of S6 blizz will say something like "OK, we've noticed warlocks have a problem (lulz, FU beta testers) and have decided to trawl some forums for ideas, DT now removes stuns, fixed"

And thats the point that rogues realise they should have just used garrotte anyway, they only need 3 seconds to kill us.

[Thyrane]

I really enjoyed the Suddenpain idea. Altough fixing survivability in pvp is more important then a burst at the moment. But seriously, i liked it.

[bahumut5]

Affliction

Suddenpain: Consumes the effect of your Corruption spell, dealing damage equal to 12 seconds of your Corruption ticks.

Give it a 30 seconds – 1 minute cooldown, or some kind of drawback (maybe similar to SW). Some kind of burst DPS is needed in these times, even for an affli lock focused on dealing dmg over time.

<--Sounds very lock like to me, and might be a good idea to put it in-->

Siphon life: Your Corruption spell also cause Siphon Life, transfering 60% of the damage dealt by your Corruption to you as health points.

<--Seeying Afl specc is moslty about keeping you alive, this seems like something good and afl enough to me-->

Spriests can debuff you with like 2 – 3 effects with just 1 DoT, why shouldn’t we able to do the same? I mean, we lose like 10 seconds to put every DoT we have on a single target, then we still have to Haunt, Fear and Drain Life... too much waste of time.

<--Seems strange to me... I think adding DoT's up in 10 sec is just needed for a DoT specific class-->

Unstable Affliction: same as before, just make it instant, add a cooldown (most of 41 points skills have a cd) and maybe lower the damage (since it won’t be fair for an insta cast to have the same coefficent of a 1,5 secs cast spell).

<-- Agreed, DoT's just need to be instant when they only deal DoT damage-->

Haunt: the idea beyond this ability sounds fairly good to me, but still, what are you gonna do while the increased damage from your dots is ticking and you’re waiting for it to returns and heal you? Now, you just die. Then why not adding some sort of Astral Shift component? In which you’re like out of your body and take less damage (not something like 50% ofc, more like 15 or 20).

<--How about something to instantly return the Haunt to you to heal you for the damage done so far?-->

Demonology

Demonic Sacrifice: When are we supposed to use that? In PvE Felhunter, Felguard or Imp are always a better choice than that, and in PvP you can’t afford losing Soul Link, no matter what. Maybe for questing/grinding has some use but, come on, locks never had problems doing that. If there’s an effective way to use that or to improve it I ask sorry, but can’t think of any decent alternative... then why not replacing it with a dual-pet management skill? Something like:

<-- Lots of people like it to kill their own succubus...-->

Nether Shift: allows you to shift your summoned demon into nether, making it immune but preventing it from doing any action. While the pet is shifted you can use another demon. Only one demon can be shifted at a time.

Ok, the tooltip sucks, I’ll give an example: let’s say you summon a Felhunter and Shift a Voidwalker. A rogue appears.You can just Shift the Felpuppy and let the Voidie out, benefitting from the physical damage reduction and Sac him if needed. A mage joins the fight? Take back your Felpuppy. What I mean is to allow pet’s abilities management depending on foes/situations while giving more ways to ensure the presence of the pet in first place. We’re pretty dependant on em (avoidance sure help keeping them alive) but they’re way too squishy with the current damage output. A cooldown is surely needed.

<--I seriously like this.... Seems very needed for a lock :P Add inner demon as an attack for locks and you will make me the happiest lock around-->

Improved Enslave Demon: Aaaaargh! Delete this useless talent form the face of earth! Replacing this with something more useful is a must, just as now is a must to skip it. Any idea out there? I don’t have any =(

<-- Make it so that it will be more like a Hunter Train Pet ability.... would be nice to run around wit a Sister of Pain-->

Metamorphosis: lower the cooldown and make it more resistant to stun/cc effects (holy crap, Bestial Wrath only have 2 mins cooldown and it’s always been godly), this could be one way to improve our 51 talent points skill. Yep it’s 51 points, not 21. Another way could be to make it a permanent shapeshift, lowering the buffs it gives but giving some abilities based on the pet you’re using (making it despawns for the duration). Felguard or Felhunter? Melee/spell defense and attacks. Voidwalker? Tanking abilities. Succubus? Boobs. Bad joke, sorry.

<-- Nope, CD is good with the buff that it gives, and permanent shapeshift would be to OP-->

That’s all for now, Destro has been left out on purpose, never tried it for PvP. Being 2 shotted as Demo is enough for me. Consider that I'm not saying to give us ALL of this, but we need some sort of deep change imo. I’d like to know what you guys think, every suggestion will be apprecieted.

[Recordable]

@ rakkeh:

I have to admit I've understimated the problem with Demonic Circle, I should had focused my thoughts on it, at least a little bit =P
Luckly someone is already doing this and, with given permission, I'll gladly add it to the abilities/changings posted at the beggining.

The idea of a "storing" mechanic for the demon also appeals me, making it usable every 5 minutes or so sounds fair also. And yet more, this could gives us an additional "oh crap" ability rogue-style x)

@ vandalheart:

thanks for pointing out the coefficent benefit of UA (and 1,5 secs in general), I've learnt something =)
*Off-topic incoming* btw, I loved vandalheart for Ps, if that's the reference of your nickname *Off-topic ends*

@ bahumut5

Effectively, my statement about the time required to put DoTs wasn't too much brilliant, specially now that we have Eradication procs and Haste gear available. -1 to myself.

"How about something to instantly return the Haunt to you to heal you for the damage done so far?" loved it.

"Lots of people like it to kill their own succubus..." rofl, forgot how sexy it sounds when she's sacrificed, my bad xD

Hunter Train Pet ability sounds very interesting (related to enslave demon, ofc), it could be a change similar to pet handling of Unholy DKs. You're Demo? You get a special demon, one that you like. You're not Demo? Then you won't!

Oh and btw, any thought about Metamorphosis? You like it as it is? I personally liked it before Wotlk, but now it gives me the impression that lack something =/

Thanks again everyone, keep posting!

[Recordable]

I really enjoyed the Suddenpain idea. Altough fixing survivability in pvp is more important then a burst at the moment. But seriously, i liked it.

Totally agree, I couldn't care less about burst damage in the past arena seasons. All I had to do was DoT, Fear and basically, survive. Some may say "why don't you keep doing it?", that's because having my life reduced to 0 in 4 seconds makes survival impossible... for my skill at least.

I thought about an ability for burst dps 'cause I don't know which way blizz want us to take. Are we gonna be, once again, a punching bag which doesn't deal much instant damage but, in the end, survive? Or we're gonna be a class with not much survival skills but with good burst dps? One way or another is good to me, as long as it isn't as now =/

No burst, No survival = Ghostamorphosis

[Vandalheart]

Indeed, my name is a reference to VH for the PS. Awesome game.

I'd also like to say that I doubt we'll be seeing any changes to meta. ATM it's nice, but not required for PvP, anything that would buff it past its current state would probably make pvp as anything but demo at a severe disadvantage. Personally, I'd take being forced to play as 1 spec over being forced to roll another class.

[gherkin]

Luckly someone is already doing this and, with given permission, I'll gladly add it to the abilities/changings posted at the beggining.

Funny, half your ideas are blatant rip offs of other peoples ideas (most of which do not pass the "OP?" test), and yet I see no credit given.


A few points:

Shadow Priests get three effects in one spell because it makes the spec viable in PVE. If these did not exist, then they could not do competitive dps. If they were baked in, Disc Priests could out-dps Shadow.


Haunt is fine. Burst is too high, thus why its ineffective. They've said they're looking at it and that resilience will not be enough to counter.


Instant UA makes the coefficient so low that I would be forced to drop it from my PVE rotation. As a result, Haunt's 20% buff becomes less used. Etc. etc. until Affliction dps is lower than Destruction. The point of the spell is that it's hard to get off, with a serious punishment to a dispeller. Due to the burst killing us so fast this is not a concern for healers, but imagine when this is fixed?


All in all, you're looking at a narrow view of the world: the talent tree. There's a lot more places a warlock could be buffed than here, such as Player -> Pet stamina, resilience, AP conversions.

[zuxia]

Uhm, afaik Fear is castable even if the target is at your back =O

The idea of undispellable Terror makes me giggle (in a devilish way, ofc), but I'm afraid blizz will never gives us such a powerful CC u.u

But what about a serious Improved Fear? Not something that can be taken off with trinket or dispel as Nightmare, but more like a Daze effect (which isn't dispellable, am I right?), this will surely help the kiting of melee classes.

Oh and btw, I just read the Demonic Circle improvements thread. Making it invisible (being able see it only with Detect Invisibility maybe?) and a stun breaking component sounds really good. And fair.

Keep posting your ideas! =)

Thank you!

[gherkin]

Thought:

Glyph of Death and Decay causes a 2s fear effect

Does this proc diminishing returns on OUR fear?

[Recordable]

Funny, half your ideas are blatant rip offs of other peoples ideas (most of which do not pass the "OP?" test), and yet I see no credit given.


A few points:

Shadow Priests get three effects in one spell because it makes the spec viable in PVE. If these did not exist, then they could not do competitive dps. If they were baked in, Disc Priests could out-dps Shadow.


Haunt is fine. Burst is too high, thus why its ineffective. They've said they're looking at it and that resilience will not be enough to counter.


Instant UA makes the coefficient so low that I would be forced to drop it from my PVE rotation. As a result, Haunt's 20% buff becomes less used. Etc. etc. until Affliction dps is lower than Destruction. The point of the spell is that it's hard to get off, with a serious punishment to a dispeller. Due to the burst killing us so fast this is not a concern for healers, but imagine when this is fixed?


All in all, you're looking at a narrow view of the world: the talent tree. There's a lot more places a warlock could be buffed than here, such as Player -> Pet stamina, resilience, AP conversions.

If the credit missing is only the one concerning Demonic Circle improvements, I don't really know which person to give credit in this (http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=31004.0) thread. Maybe Toastery, cause he's the author? Everyone's putting something into it tho =/

Anyway, I'll give em credits for everything concerning Demonic Circle improvements. Keep up the good work, I liked most of the idea in there ^^d

You're surely right about Spriests, but all I suggested was to make SL an additional debuff from Corruption to make foes DoTing faster. Besides, I'm not really concerned about PvE atm, it seems we're doing a sweet dps.

If the problem with Haunt being ineffective won't be resolved with resilience, maybe a little change in the skill can help making it more viable for PvP. An additional effect (such as damage reduction while active) shouldn't ruin it's PvE purpose I hope. Oh and btw, I'm almost sure I read somewhere that blizz is happy with their current pet scaling, if they changed their mind let me know!

Maybe insta-cast UA will ruin it's dps, but maybe blizz will grace us and leave it more or less the same, who knows! Ghostcrawler said he don't want complaints, but ideas on how to fix our beloved class now falled in (PvP) disgrace u.u

If you have any idea write it down, here or wherever you want. With some luck, blizz will use some of these thoughts and make it balanced for the game. I know most of em may sounds OP, but they're just raw, I'll leave the balancing progress to more competent people =)

Thanks for posting anyway, every non-offensive comment is welcome!

[Recordable]

Thought:

Glyph of Death and Decay causes a 2s fear effect

Does this proc diminishing returns on OUR fear?

Can't confirm this, but if it does, let's hope the DR is very weak =/

[lrs078]

As for UA...honestly tune the base dmg and coefficients to give it the same dpct (excel could handle this honestly) and be done with it. Or if you want to hit 2 problems at once just make it a talent that rolls dispel protection and dmg into corruption "adds xxx dmg and unstable affliction to your corruption spell spanking the naughty priest, pally, etc for removing it" The same could be done for siphon life...."adds a bit of dmg and xxx healing per tick of your corruption". Haunt's power isn't its dmg but its buff so make it instant and we are getting somewhere. Now you have Corruption as THE dot, EA and pandemic working a bit better behind the scenes, a curse, immolate optional, and a filler to work on. I'm still not nuts about shadowbolt being our main filler. Giving drain soul a more balanced and universal dmg would be a cleaner fix and open up haste/crit scaling to the tree as a whole. I'd also like to see shadow dots taken out of destro as a necessity. Blizz can't think up a better way to have a destro rotation devoid of affliction? Give us some method to live to see our dots tick. Move chance on crit to chance on hit for lower demo since resil can make pet crits impossible thus the buffs impossible or let pets ignore resilience? (ooh scary stuff the world shall end when flatuun hits you for 2K cleave) An obvious melee counter is our other armor...buff it to a hard melee counter and it might come out of the middle tab of our spellbook for once. Make it the "mage armor" vs melee.

To balance CC/fear...has anyone considered having it a "horror" effect which can't be removed until any dmg is applied which breaks horror but not fear. Give imp fear a longer horror that still breaks on dmg and we have a CC that is a CC not a dmg crutch. Same DR applies. Let's get seduce off the same cooldown though. She is seducing not scaring the crap out of you.... Let her improved seduce slow you down afterwards (realism ftw!)

Speaking of CC let's try and find something for the imp to do in arenas. Perhaps let him dps from phase shift w' a very small window to hit him during. He can still be banished, turned, etc. Can fire shield be some form of melee shield? (reflects xx% melee dmg back on attacker) As fun as some form of DD burst that kills the imp sounds I'd rather find a way for him to be viable alive.

Why the FG doesn't have the VW's armor and the pup's resists as a 41 point pet seems off to me. The other pets are a rock/paper/scissors (or should be) while the FG's cost should give him a bit more versatility vs being weak to both casters and melee.

ALL of these would be OP but pick a few and tune them up. Enough day dreaming for now...

[lrs078]

So are warriors....and ret pallies....and DK's of any flavor....don't forget hunters....mages.....even shaman are getting their jollies on us nowadays. Counter class (note singular) I'm fine with. When its everyone and their grandmother blizz clearly humped the pooch. What was so awful about some melee hard countering us, we hard countered a mage, a mage hard countered the melee that face smashes us, etc? It made teams have to be balanced and versatile. Now its just who can load the most burst and immunity fastest. Classes that do that best will dominate until changes are made.