Warlock class design in Cataclysm

[Jessicka]

I posted this over on the EU forums as I was bored and a little fed up on my lunch break, I've added a few things to it based on things others have said and thought so enjoy the wall of text and stuff; just thought it might enjoy a slightly bigger audience here.

Right now, it feels like something has gone horribly wrong with the design of our class. There were issues - obvious ones - that I noted prior to Cataclysm's release, that simply haven't been registered, or have only just now been noted, and attempts made at fixing them put forward, which have in the process led to even more problems, which again, don't appear to have been noticed. I'm not about to quit the class over them as we're still playable, albeit frequently frustrating, and with a good number of out of place 'workarounds' in order to remain competative.

My first issue, is a pretty general one, and has annoyed the hell out of me since they were announced. It's our talent trees. We're completely talent starved, and at the same time bloated with mandatory DPS talents. If there were talents available for utility, we couldn't pick them up. The trees effectively allow for 6 builds, one each for PvP and PvE on each tree, with little or no wiggle room between the two. This is not the choice we were promised, and has made the cookie cutter specs of previous expansions more hard baked than before, not less so.

Furthermore, they are horrendously designed from a levelling perspective, with only Affliction actually offering anything as an insight to it's playstyle from the very first tier - Demonology is horrendous, with nothing but PvP and survivability talents in the first two tiers and a very minor buff to your pets' damage. Destruction is almost as bad with a second tier dedicated to high level spells and a buff to Searing Pain, which now we have Fel Flame is now almost a completely redundant spell in every aspect of the game.

My second gripe is our Demons. I love the notional idea of it not mattering which Demon we choose from a damage perspective, but instead choosing them based on utility. However, the implementation of the attempt is absolutely horrific. So bad, that the disparity between their outputs runs into the 1000s of DPS. The problem is the strange attempt to make Dark Arts optional, by making the Succubus viable via Glyphing. A nice idea in principal, but we don't actually have the spare, or optional talents to take as alternatives to make it a real choice. Dark Arts should be simply removed altogether, it is the worst kind of boring passive DPS increasing talent there is, as it doesn't do anything for your own numbers, and has no kind of interaction whatsoever. The fact that it's effect across demons is so wildly different just makes it harder to balance, and I see no reason why on Earth you'd even want to make a rod for your own back in that way; it's utterly nonsensicle.

Added onto this, we have the Mana Feed issue. Different pets will grant you differing benefits from this. Why? I don't get why the Succubus and Imp should be so much better for this talent, more than twice as good in fact, than the Felhunter and Felguard. It's a horrible implementation, and actually leads to the already wild differential between our pets' output making a bigger difference because having to use LT more because you're using FG or FH means you're spending less time using DPS spells. Why does it make a difference whether our pet is using a spell or melee swing to deal damage, and why does this matter with Hand of Gul'dan? It just feels like it's a part of an outdated design which probably made sense then, but the reasons for which have been long forgotten.

Related, is Demon Soul. Again, the different effects from different Demons is a nice idea, but it's adding yet another layer of complexity that doesn't need to be there. The different pets could offer different secondary stats (Haste, Crit, Mastery, and Spellpower), and they'd be different enough to be 'cool', but much more easily managable.

Third problem is our Masteries. Destruction is fine. Affliction is awkward, purely because of this idea of using Drain Life as a temporary filler during periods of high damage. Which again, is a nice idea - but it only applies to Affliction because it has the talents to make Drain Life a viable DPS spell in the first place. Destruction and Demonology aren't ever really going to benefit from that, so why make DL so powerful for Affliction that it's a viable DPS spell, and in the process cause obvious scaling issues with it's intended Shadow Bolt filler? Furthermore, it's actually leading Affliction to be arguably too good in certain encounters right now, as we move up tiers this will only get better and most likely lead to nerfing, as it's unlikely they'll change their encounter design philosophy just to accomodate one spec for being too potent.

Demonology's mastery is just bad. Against a backdrop of massive nerfs to Soul Fire and Decimation to redress the imbalance between the early stages of the fight and execute, it makes absolutely no sense at all to have Mastery bolster our cooldown so much. It'll cause a huge see-saw of damage between up time and down time at higher gear levels making comparisons to Wrath's Decimation seem tame. Furthermore, this will have a profound effect on PvP, where pressing that button would cause all kinds of problems with an incredible amount of burst damage.

Furthermore, such is Demonolgy's Mastery's implementation, that if you get a trinket proc during Meta, you receive no benefit, but if you wait and pop meta while the trinket is proced you'll get the benefit for the full duration. This is making a badly designed Mastery awkward to actually use, especially in working around a dynamic cooldown (which I love) which also can be a little awkward in certain encounters.

Our new spells too, Fel Flame and Dark Intent. Nice ideas, poorly thought out with no consideration for the consequences. Fel Flame has rendered Searing Pain and it's associated talent points almost entirely redundant, which they attempted to fix in a laughable and disasterous manner which in spite of so much discussion and simming totally took them by surprise when it went live. Dark Intent has added a needless throttle to our DPS output based on raid composition. I don't mind loosing some numbers because a raid buff is missing, and I don't mind a little added ramp up if it helps balance PvP, but I do mind loosing out because a couple of people didn't sign for the night's raid. It's a bizarre position, and I just don't get how it either slipped through or continues to persist.

All in all, these give an impression that the class is designed by a number of people who simply aren't communicating. A lot of very nice ideas, but badly implemented, ill thought out and frequently contradictory in terms of idea against overall design philosophy. Improved Soul Fire has been the central focus of that, and has actually caused these, and other issues to be glossed over and seemingly forgotten. It adds unnecessary awkwardness to the experience and puts people off not just the class, but the game as a whole and it's just not cool.

Anyway, that's the rant... discuss and stuff.

TL: DR This is not a discussion about DPS. Please don't go all "our DPS is fine therefore everything is fine there's more to the game than that.

[grimdok]

I agree with you on the talent stuff. I'm not crazy about the talent revamp in general - you are correct in that there are few real choices to be made now, but it's not restricted to Warlocks. Most classes have similar issues. Frost Death Knights, for example, are almost entirely identical to one another - your choice is 2hand weapons vs dual wielding. That's it.

The way the class actually plays now (at least at 85, I haven't leveled up a new one), though, I like very much. No more soul shards, no more soul bags, just lots more blastum. I can't really argue with the effectiveness either. I routinely put out extremely high DPS, and I'm not very good, and it will be getting even easier in 4.0.6 (no more Soul Fire to mix in). I also have pretty good results in PvP (aside from Warriors). So I feel effective and I have fun playing the game.

I think the talent revamp is just an abject failure, though. It's not so much that they got rid of cookie cutter builds as they made the cookie cutter mandatory for everybody.

[Nest]

I recall Blizz saying that they were going to add more "fun" talents in talent trees.
Could someone point me the "fun" talents on Warlock trees? D;

[leaks]

I've played a warlock since release and I honestly have to disagree with you. In fact half your complaints seems more like you expecting to get one thing and you're now upset it didn't turn out exactly how you wanted it. In other words nit picking. Warlocks are far better than they were, a lot of their problems were fixed or addressed in someway and I've had more fun with my warlock in this expansion than I have for the 2 previous expansions.
If you're complaining that warlocks still have a few problems that weren't instantly addressed well then, welcome to every other class in the game. Warlocks are no exception, other classes aren't perfect either.

[gherkin]

imo they stopped caring about the feel of the class (cough isf cough) and started focusing on the gameplay mechanics and numbers, thinking that's what 80% of us wanted. Destruction turned into the single target nuke spec with a 5 minute auto-cleave, Demonology turned into some strange hunter hybrid with pets that don't work properly but you are 100% reliant on, and Affliction and Shadow Priests became copy/pastes of each other with the only difference being a nuke filler vs channelled, and fear instead of dispersion and bubbles.

I'm upset about it, but I don't think there's much that can be done about it. Open to suggestions though

---------- Post added 2011-02-03 at 10:49 AM ----------

And I agree with Leaks, but I don't agree with the implementation. It's nice to be high dps, high control, without being ridiculously OP in PVP, and it's fucking awesome to no longer be on a thin tightrope in terms of balancing, where a gentle sneeze in one direction gets you a giant push in the other every patch.

[silentk59]

Idk man. My friends main is a Warlock and he has been playing since the beginning of BC and he says he has never loved them more then now.

I guess to each his own or something. But he loves it every time he plays.

I dont play a Warlock my main is a mage so we both have alot on common class wise and he tells me the changes and shit and most of them sound pretty good. To name one the soulstone things. Every now and then he would say,"I got to go grind soulshards ill brb." And it would take a while to fill his bag up, now you get them like DKs get runes.

I think thats a pretty cool feature.

[gherkin]

Affliction: Same as WOTLK and almost the same as BC, now with different pet selection (which are subsequently nerfed) and better PVP balance.
Demonology: Hasn't changed since WOTLK 3.3.0
Destruction: Oh goodie, more dots

Where are my utility talents? Aftermath? Aura of Foreboding? These aren't utility, they're cheesey knockoffs of utility that you might find in a drug store. Affliction doesn't have the free talent points to pick up the good ones, Demonology's all require specific sets of circumstances to occur (Hey, these mobs that are immune to root but not stun, make them stand still for 7 seconds and then KABOOM IM USEFUL), and Destruction's are all mandatory because you have no valid choices, and someone who picks Aftermath over Nether Protection doesn't really understand the concept of raid damage and healer mental stability.

The only boon from this expansion is that we now do bad-ass dps, and that's good enough for some but not nearly all.

Edit: Shards being gone is more of a "fuck, finally" than a feature to celebrate. I like the implementation but I disagree with the quantity:quality ratio.

[lilisk]

Farming shards wasn't all that big of a deal for me (rolled my lock in Wrath so idk how it was before) I would just duel a friend outside of w/e raid we were doing while waiting for the raid to form. But yeah I'm pretty unimpressed with the changes function/utility wise, output wise i'm quite happy though.

One of my guildies is leveling a warlock, he wanted to level destro for a "mage like" feel, but he was complaining about every single talent being useless to him, I told him to try demo since he was resistant to aff, but he didnt like just afking out of boredem while your "tank" kills everything for you. So I do agree the lower tier talents need a significant look at for leveling. Very well thought out post btw, and it was actually written well enough where I could stand to read all of it XD.

[Jenerena]

Well, I love the class right now. Personally I don't choose to go through every single little thing about the class and 'nitpick'. I just play and enjoy my lock, and I enjoy every spec.

I think ISF is annoying (which is getting fixed), and demo too situational, but then again people focus far too much on what a spec can offer overall in a tier, without considering a spec's value on even a specific phase of a fight, never mind the fight as a whole.

We are VERY lucky right now that we have 3 decent raiding specs. It sounds to me like that's just not enough for some people.

I've played a warlock since release and I honestly have to disagree with you. In fact half your complaints seems more like you expecting to get one thing and you're now upset it didn't turn out exactly how you wanted it. In other words nit picking. Warlocks are far better than they were, a lot of their problems were fixed or addressed in someway and I've had more fun with my warlock in this expansion than I have for the 2 previous expansions.
If you're complaining that warlocks still have a few problems that weren't instantly addressed well then, welcome to every other class in the game. Warlocks are no exception, other classes aren't perfect either.

100% agree with this. We can't be perfect, and we can't have everything. And I don't really know what you (gherkin, Jess) mean by 'lack of utility' - we have plenty.

[Deleted]

I can aggre with u on some points, like the fun talent part and some others.

But Dude, comeon! If u dont like how the class is designed or how the game are overall, just dont play its as simple as that.

[Zero infiniti]

to the OP, do you even play a warlock, cause you are talking a lot of nonsense.

i have enjoyed playing my warlock and she has the most play time by me, more than all of my other characters combined. i have no issues with topping the damage meters or getting my 'fun fill' out of playing the class through the expansions. if you don't like the class, go play another. all i see here is a huge troll block of text.

[Xanoectos]

to the OP, do you even play a warlock, cause you are talking a lot of nonsense.

i have enjoyed playing my warlock and she has the most play time by me, more than all of my other characters combined. i have no issues with topping the damage meters or getting my 'fun fill' out of playing the class through the expansions. if you don't like the class, go play another. all i see here is a huge troll block of text.

If you're topping meters, you're not playing with any good Unholy DK's, Fire Mages, or Survival Hunters.

http://stateofdps.com/#totals

Don't get me wrong, I love my warlock and will continue to no matter what Blizzard throws at us, but there are a few "quality of life" things that I wish would be looked at. Also, having spells changed/removed every time someone complains on the PvP Forums, is getting quite old. I know some were "justified" but others make absolutely no sense. But I do believe Jessicka and Gherkin made some good points. Anyway, just my two cents.

[Vastis]

Farming shards wasn't all that big of a deal for me (rolled my lock in Wrath so idk how it was before) I would just duel a friend outside of w/e raid we were doing while waiting for the raid to form. But yeah I'm pretty unimpressed with the changes function/utility wise, output wise i'm quite happy though.

Having to be in burning stepps an hour prior to BWL killing mobs and draining souls sucked... Back to OP. I would have to agree with some of the stuff you said. ISF is too clunky, talents leave no room for wiggling. As for pets I kinda like being a Destro lock with my imp. Wouldnt make a ton of sense to me to have a felhound out, but that my preference. As for play I like what they have done with them for the most part. So far I have played affliction and destro in cata and I dont mind them. Once ISF is fixed both will be fun to play.

[Doktor Faustus]

I love my Warlock.

However, since I started playing at the end of Vanilla, it has changed so much.

I played mostly Destruction through TBC and early Wrath, then switched the Demo and still play that in raids.

The annoying thing is... come patch 4.1 or 4.2... everything will change again.

I would just love some fun for us locks... you know mages can poly and make portals, druids have forms, rogues have stealth... I don't even feel special anymore summoning 'cos once the portals up eveyone else does it... and I can't summon of cliffs anymore :/

[Jessicka]

I started playing my lock late in TBC, so aside from a couple of Karazhan raids, I didn't really get into raiding properly at the level cap until after Wrath hit. It was late in 3.2 before I actually levelled an alt, and even now rarely play them. I enjoy the playstyle like I say, and have no real problems with our DPS overall. So that's not the issue here, and has nothing to do with what I'm discussing. Sure, some people are only happy while they see big numbers, regardless of how they come about. I don't want to feel like I'm using borderline exploits to get them, but I will if I have to, yet I do feel it saps the fun from it like why the hell should I have to do this shit just to compete. It's like buying something and discovering you need to make a bunch of parts yourself just to make it work.

As I say, I like a lot of the ideas, but I feel the way they were implemented is half arsed and rushed. The Masteries, Soul Shards, the new spells: all awesome in principal, but in terms of the bigger picture lack any forsight or real development. I've even grown to like ISF, but the scaling issues that would have resulted in maintaining it as is meant it wouldn't, and couldn't have lasted the expansion.

I am now levelling another Warlock, and it's really strange seeing, and knowing how to play each tree at the level cap, but not seeing any sort of path through to any semblance of that until very late on. A couple of people in my guild have said much the same as they've levelled: 'when do I get Incinerate?' 'what's the point in Molten Core/Impending Doom/Improved Soul Fire etc etc at this level' etc. It's not like they didn't have the forsight to move other classes' spell levels at which they were learnt to accomodate new/changed talents.

[Deleted]

they can nerf us, they can remove some of our spells but still we find our way to survive and make ppl QQ about warlocks being OP!

problem dev team?

[Hermanni]

Well written, but I honestly don't think I've ever agreed less with anyone on this subject. You might be right about the talents that aren't really in sync with leveling, but then again that isn't really limited to one class and isn't much of a concern to myself :>

[Micke]

The warlock issues are so minor compared to the issues of many other classes, you don't know how good we have it.

[Dochaelian]

The warlock issues are so minor compared to the issues of many other classes, you don't know how good we have it.

LoL ! yea, haha ok then. That's a good one.

[Stefy]

I recall Blizz saying that they were going to add more "fun" talents in talent trees.
Could someone point me the "fun" talents on Warlock trees? D;

It's the same for every other class. At least in WoTLK there was a few individual choices when it came down to PvP and such, but noe it's just dull and boring.