Warlock class design in Cataclysm

[nocturnus]

It's a problem when you end up picking talents that actually doesn't benefit you. The structure of the trees, while logical from a level 85 point of view, is horribly rough at best at certain points in the trees.

So even leveling up is reason for concern now huh? So what happened to "affliction until 55 and from that point on go demo". Back in TBC that was the idea. No one complained about the fact that the other 2 specs were far from viable for leveling up. Now, we have 3 viable leveling specs and you guys get your shorts in a twist about incinerate not being available yet? About MC being useless as a result?

Who the fuck cares? Are the trees unplayable for that reason? No. So again, what's the big deal here? Get freaking over it man. If your guildies didn't have the foresight to read the talents, press 'P' and look at what level certain abilities are learnt, it makes their capacity to make rational decisions broken, more than it does the trees.

SURE, it would make more sense to pick talents that are useful from the moment they're available to you. Which would undoubtebly bring along balancing issues. But again, does it even matter?

What a nitpicky bunch we've stumbled upon today. By golly.

[Hermanni]

Almost if not every class has talents that boost an ability you won't have by the time you can get the talent, and it's not really a big deal.

I wouldn't be amazed if the "oh my god I have to use imp because simcraft says so" comments came from the people who've been like "oh my god I have to cast Soul Fire because simcraft says so" for the past 2 months. Destro is the only spec confined to using only one pet at (almost) all times, Felguard still remains your best shot in at least half the fights for Demo and Felhunter has it's uses in some. I don't see anything wrong with pet output being higher than before and pet choice being an actual dilemma at times, even if there are some imbalances that undoubtedly are going to be fixed anyway.

@Jessicka, I don't really understand why you jump every person disagreeing with you because they tangentually touched the mundane subject of DPS. I played my warlock for 6 years minus some breaks for little things like military service, and to me the class has never felt better. Every tree has some moving talent points and even a bit "special" custom builds for certain bosses aren't out of question. Which is basically what every class has. And I would have loved being stuck with Fel Flame for some 6 years instead of some Searing What, and unless your guild raids exclusively with Warriors and Paladins, I don't really see how you'd lose your raid spot to lack of viable Dark Intent targets.

I was going to be like yeah I think we now lack utility too, but then I remembered the time when was assigned to stop Toxic Spores with Shadowfury and stop Worships with Spell Lock, or those times when our raid or myself was saved by Healthstones, or that one crazy time every week when I use CoT on Maloriak, or that time when I got hit by Hydro Lance and survived thanks to some boring Demo stamina talents that have been there since forever, or those times when I teleport like I just don't care, or when I can drop 70% slows with Shadowflame, or when I had to stumble through the entire V&T room in Twilight Realm to catch a vanishing portal and survived thanks to some useless things like Soul Link and Nether Protection, and and

My hat's off to nocturnus for saying most of what I kind of wanted to post in the first place.

[Jessicka]

@Jessicka, I don't really understand why you jump every person disagreeing with you because they tangentually touched the mundane subject of DPS.

Because there were a good few posts which simply go along with "DPS is fine, therefore the class and everything about it is fine". I appreciate there are those who genuinely don't give a shit about anything else other than their end-game numbers, and would tolerate just about anything that allowed them to compete. There is however, a lot more to the game than that.

Sure, we have a lot of cool baseline utility, but the talent trees don't offer anything by way of 'should I take this, or a small DPS hit and take this' - the utility within them is locked in already. So sure, the utility is there, some of it very very good, but it's never a tradeoff. That's the point I'm making. A tradeoff should mean mid fight you might think on occasion 'I could really use X right now' - we always already have it.

[murfle]

blizzard must have a new game coming out

[Demonidze]

the issues not that bad as it may seem .. blizz removing the somewhat wrong soul fire from affliction priority list, the dmg very good for all 3 specs.

however, i do agree on the pets part, dont like at all how pets work, succubus is not an affliction pet, it has bad synenergy with affli spec, but even tho felhunter is just perfectly fits the dps is still higher for succubus .. same goes for demo tree.

fel flame gonna be very interesting with the new t11p4 bonus, making it x3 dmg for next 2 FF. the dmg gonna be around 10-15k, not bad imho.

also I like the design of having shadow bolt as a main filler for affliction, and having the possibility to use drain life without losing dps when there are lots of raid dmg, like at crackle at Nefarian fight, or at chimaeron fight, isnt it great option? why to complain about it? would it have been better if we didnt had that option at all?

[Ethioz]

So, when this thread stop getting replies...what will be the next whine post you make Jessicka?

[LordVVar]

So even leveling up is reason for concern now huh? So what happened to "affliction until 55 and from that point on go demo". Back in TBC that was the idea. No one complained about the fact that the other 2 specs were far from viable for leveling up. Now, we have 3 viable leveling specs and you guys get your shorts in a twist about incinerate not being available yet? About MC being useless as a result?

Who the fuck cares? Are the trees unplayable for that reason? No. So again, what's the big deal here? Get freaking over it man. If your guildies didn't have the foresight to read the talents, press 'P' and look at what level certain abilities are learnt, it makes their capacity to make rational decisions broken, more than it does the trees.

SURE, it would make more sense to pick talents that are useful from the moment they're available to you. Which would undoubtebly bring along balancing issues. But again, does it even matter?

What a nitpicky bunch we've stumbled upon today. By golly.

100% /agree
tbh the only complaint i have is that i wish they would implement more spells to use with soulburn, for example every spec having a soulburn talent like how affl has soulburn: SoC or like giving Hand of Guldan and shadowfury a soulburn effect (and since those spells are only avaible to there spec there would b no need for a new talent) , or a Soulburn: Deathcoil, maybe increasing the healing received from deathcoil or increasing the duration the fear, or add a snare effect after the fear, just throwing some ideas out.

Oh, and I wish Meta was a shapeshift and you could fly while meta'd w/o meta being nerfed to the ground xD but that might be a little extreme (lol iknowrite)

[brakke]

i can't say how it all was in earlyer xpacs. i always raided with healing classes. even now i got 2 raid geared healers( shammy & hpaly) but rencently got my lock up to max lvl and i realy love the play style of affliction. i do understand what the op is saying but still it's a very nice class to play with. there are some improvements that could be made but that goes for every class.
about mastery it 'sucks' for more classes then just locks. maybe it will change at higher tiers, like armor pen was at start.