Season 13 discussion & Warlock PvP Guide.

[icecoldsir]

Basically it was melee/hunter cleaves tearing warlocks up over and over again. Quite depressing to watch actually.

Not surprising, exactly how it is on live. Literally every time I queue around 2k-2.2k MMR we face either Jungle Cleave, Ret/Hunt/Disc or PHD and all they have to do is mongoloid me all game and I fall over. The state of physical cleaves right now is just retarded, and 5.4 is looking much worse with the nerfs locks are getting.

Maybe If they give us back the old soul link and buff our armor like they did with spriests/boomkin we might be tanky enough to survive most cleaves

[Lucidious]

Not surprising, exactly how it is on live. Literally every time I queue around 2k-2.2k MMR we face either Jungle Cleave, Ret/Hunt/Disc or PHD and all they have to do is mongoloid me all game and I fall over. The state of physical cleaves right now is just retarded, and 5.4 is looking much worse with the nerfs locks are getting.

Maybe If they give us back the old soul link and buff our armor like they did with spriests/boomkin we might be tanky enough to survive most cleaves

I wouldn't bet on it, but I hope I'm wrong. But unless they do something drastic hunter cleaves are just going to continue to train wreck warlocks with the oh so skillfully strategy of "omg zerg, zerg, zerg" lol. Sorry, don't mean to sound negative. Its just the frustration of not being able to get out pressure while hunter pets solo me from behind a pillar and I can't even drain tank a pet from behind a pillar which is just pathetic!!! Its like my healer has to babysit me the whole game and if he eats a cc its gg.

[Lucidious]

Buffs for affliction so that now haunt will hit just as hard as chaos bolt with gosac but have half the cast time? Once again affliction gets all the pvp love while the other 2 specs get left out in the cold. And still nothing on the survivabity nerfs for pvp compensation. Giving affliction its dots back won't matter if we still flop to cleave teams. Love the new glyphs though!!! Having UR as a 2 min CD will make a huge difference but again our pvp survivability will be our main weakness. No passive DR is just begging to get "cleaved" even with the new AV talent. Warlocks seem to have become the least "Tanky" caster instead of the most tanky caster. God I hope they are not done with our survivability. Anyone else think they should bring back old school soul link but just make it baseline "like it used to be" and add something else to the survival talent tier? Or maybe buff Fel armor to add more +healing to offset battle fatigue? The only thing I know is that we are going to need some help otherwise we are gonna be mellee pinatas all next season.

[Nicola]

Honestly, the affliction changes are worrying me. More damage into haunt and dots means that our pressure during dark soul will be ridiculous.

[Werst]

Nothing is going to matter if locks just get tunneled into the dirt by unhealable and unpeelable melee cleaves. Right now a far lower/derpy melee/hunter cleave can train a far superior warlock player/comp with even the most tunnelvision/bad levels of play. Add in the 5.4 changes to gateway, battle fatigue rendering our defensives almost useless, and the state of CC I don't see how we will survive to do any damage. Soul link will never work in its present form since it opens 2x the damage sources into the lock. A 50% HP pet would have to take 90% reduced damage from players or something to even think about soul link as a form of pvp mitigation.

Especially with the use of those 5.4 raid trinkets...just like heroic cloaks they need to just shut them off in rated pvp. The resil buff for 2x pvp trinkets isn't going to offset the power of those raid trinkets. Making pvp easier to get into for pve'ers is fine but not when the trinkets can transform a spec. Its not hard to grind out the honor or conquest to get pvp trinkets.

Devs wanted to dial back lock survivability but that is only in raids when we can stack up a full soul leech shield. PVP that never happens and we are the squishiest caster out there who is still the most reliant on hard casting. They are probably going to have to make our heals exempt from battle fatigue plus give us some survival buffs. With battle fatigue I'm pretty sure drain life (lol GL using it) is actually a loss even when glyph'd. That is pretty poor balance/design IMO and is a perfect example of what is wrong with locks in terms of how we are treated in pvp.

What would it take to get locks in a place they aren't just a patchwerk dummy for melee/hunters?
*healthstone, siphon life, drain/harvest life, dark regen, and our absorbs are now not reduced by battle fatigue
*10% flat mitigation back in, perhaps even just vs player targets?
*60% armor bonus
*Pets take 90% reduced damage from players
*Gateway debuff lasts 15 seconds on the warlock who cast the gate, 60 seconds for everyone else.
*Breath of Guldan now roots the target

Aff would probably need uninterruptable fillers or at the very least uninterruptable drain life. Destro needs either instant CB @ 3x backdraft or for CB to be uninteruptable/castable on the move baseline. Demo needs chaoswave treated like soulfire/chaosbolt....always crits/dmg halved, scales with crit, 33% nerf reverted. Demo could also use the ability to go DA to meta with no or far less DF loss since we are going to be tunneled senseless.

Locks are basically crap in pvp with a couple things we have been using as crutches. If the devs want to remove those crutches its fine but they need to be real about how drastic the buffs need to be to offset losing the things that are keeping locks semi viable. Gateway is a prime example...the lock needs a 15 sec escape, the lock's team doesn't.

[Lucidious]

Honestly, the affliction changes are worrying me. More damage into haunt and dots means that our pressure during dark soul will be ridiculous.

I agree, I get the feeling that we are gonna become a glass cannon dot spec as affliction "I forsee a big netfbat in our future". And I'm still worried that we won't get any survivability buffs making us the least "Tanky"caster out there by a fair margain regardless of which SPEC we play. And I guess I'm mostly upset by the fact that ill be pigeon holed into playing affliction yet again for another x Pac. I prefer playing demo/destro but destro really needs an instant proc on chaos bolt to compete with other similar caster types "ele,fire mage" and demo has amazing cc and mobility but lacks any real pressure outside of meta. Shadow bolt cast time is WAY to long and soul fire hits like a wet noodle as well as the fact that BM hunter pets DOUBLE the damage of a wrathguard which is flat out absurd considering the fact that demo is a warlocks pet spec.

[Deleted]

Honestly, the affliction changes are worrying me. More damage into haunt and dots means that our pressure during dark soul will be ridiculous.

Yeah, currently its more than fine, but I am fearing of a serious nerfbat through a hotfix.

Anyways, could Haunt spamming be a better burst in pvp then poping a swifty double conflag+chaos bolt?

[Nerraw]

After the recent nerf to Chaos Bolt in PvP conditions, it wouldn't surprise me if that would turn out to be the case.

[Deleted]

After the recent nerf to Chaos Bolt in PvP conditions, it wouldn't surprise me if that would turn out to be the case.

With the KJC change the pvp nerf should definitely go. destro is allready piss poor in pvp

[Werst]

There just isn't a good way to reconcile how hard a spell that is limited resource and 3 sec cast time needs to hit to be worth it in pvp. That is the core problem with destro. A simple numbers analysis makes it obvious that CB needs to hit really effin hard when its that problematic to use but its not allowed to for subjective "feel" reasons despite what other specs/classes do. Until the devs (and more than a few community members) get their head around that notion I doubt we can have positive progress on the issue. So far destro seems to have not seen its numbers pass for either pvp or pve so perhaps things will change but its something that cannot be ignored.

Aff is very much a glass cannon PTR. I can get dropped in a stun and all the self healing or absorbs are comically weak due to battle fatigue. Even when people aren't using the new pve trinkets (which are a new level of absurd) and I'm using 2x pvp ones its feeling more and more like early wotlk pvp. That said rolling lifeblood + darksoul + eng gloves + on use trinket into a haunt+SB:SS will give aff more "burst" than destro ever thought about. You just die in a stun or silence 9/10 times and since everyone knows it guess who the universal first target is going to be... Really the only time I feel like I'm not going to flop over the second a melee or hunter looks at me is when I run around in DA. Even with AV that isn't going to ever kill anyone and it still only buys me a couple of seconds. You could easily let demo go DA to meta and back with no DF loss as a way to let locks survive in pvp. Maybe 2x healer + aff comps? Hpal/rsham/aff?

Still not sure how 60 sec portal debuff is "needed" for locks (note: not the lock's team they prolly do need 60 sec debuff) but rogues need 20 sec shadowstep so they can enjoy higher uptime on locks than most pve encounters in the game.

[Deleted]

There just isn't a good way to reconcile how hard a spell that is limited resource and 3 sec cast time needs to hit to be worth it in pvp. That is the core problem with destro.

Yup, it's the same as some of afflictions (now possibly bandaged) problem with how much damage is tied into having haunt up and MGing the target. Still a bit worried about the next patch due to a reliance on haunt, but eh.

Chaos Bolt is a case of having all of the drawbacks but none of the benefits of a long cast in pvp - it takes forever to get off, burns a very limited resource (more so once ROF is gutted), but blizzard are refusing to let it actually deliver and hit hard.

[Lucidious]

If they want chaos bolt to be our big burst move then it should hit hard considering its cost. And if the qq is so bad that they have to nerf the damage for pvp then they need to reduce the cast time...simple as that since you still need to build the resource for it. The problem is that they nerfed the damage but kept the long cast time. EPIC fail imo.

[Werst]

You say "CB needs to hit as hard as it should for 3 sec cast time and limited resource"
Devs say "CB is hitting players too hard nerf its damage 25%"
You say "CB should be instant or easier to use in pvp if its being nerfed 25%"
Devs say "CB can't be instant even if its a pve loss just because"

Its nearing a point where its a negligible difference in pvp vs conflag...especially the non CD CB's. Something needs to give. I really think the super long/very limited thing is bad design. It makes for frustration on both sides of the situation (both caster and target). Looking at what nearly every other burst spec in the game, as well as the game moving more towards "swifty macro play", means CB should be far easier to use.

Now PVE for 5.4 they are going to have to jack up the core spells in both value and especially coef. Also due to pve the RoF change cuts single target ember generation about 30% so either the ember consumers need to hit 30%'ish harder or we need that back via higher ember generation on fillers. Failing to do so on either count leaves the spec so far behind as to not be viable even at a semi progression level. With those issues in mind the PVP side needs a serious look.

Consider what the devs did with powershot...hit too hard in a single move so they made it easier to use and more frequent. I'm not looking for homogenization but when you look at hunter damage delivery (100% mobile uninterruptable fillers, instant nukes, range, lethal pet, and uninterruptable powershots that knockback) its no contest vs destro. I'm not sure what sort of classist bias the devs have but there is no excuse to leave destro in such a sorry state and snap to the moment hunter/mage need help.

[Lucidious]

Old school soul link with passive self healing baked in? Can someone please thank the gods for I am not religious. Also the new archimonde's darkness is a little to good if you ask me. I don't see that one going live. Now hopefully they will balance the new "old" soul link for gosac users. Because for one the self healing for gosac destro users will be to high "especially if siphon life glyphed" and giving them a flat DR of 20% or even 15% sounds alot more balanced. But that remains to be seen. But regardless of the fine tuning if most of these changes go live I'd have to say that warlock will once again be a fun and hopefully balanced class to play. I would have to say that I'm pretty happy with all this. I just don't want damage to get out of control because we will get over nerfed if that happens. So hopefully they balance our numbers correctly even if they have to change AV"D?" yet again to do it.

[Deleted]

Yeah, SL is great, but Archimond frighteness me- potentionaly to be the single most op tier in wow :/

[Stuneree]

Highly appreciated, this clearly took a lot of effort and time. Bookmarked for reference.

[Werst]

The double darksoul opener on affliction is going to be really strong. I'm not so sure destro or especially demo can take as full advantage of it as affliction can but it will certainly make locks a powerhouse in short fights. We 100% needed the mitigation...especially with the melee burst that is incoming. I'm still hoping they ban/shut off/etc the 5.4 pve trinkets in pvp. It will be interesting to see how people manage their lvl 90 tier.

Those that just parrot websites will always take AV, but the question is how much aoe or how much movement is needed to make up for an extra darksoul per fight?

[Deleted]

I have couple of PvP issues.

a) When I press dark soul:misery my haste raises from 16% to 59&. Some one care to explain the math I am missing?

b) Haunt hits too much, like really too much. Removing the debuff to increase dot dmg only would be a good idea.

c) Dots hit too much WITH SB:SS. I feel that the issues of weak dots have been fixed, but still I dont know is it with the insane gear scaling or buffs. With numbers like this I feel SB:SS needs PVP ONLY nerf. Currently the warlock opener with full CDs and doting all team is over the top.

d) Kinda week pet def wise. Old SL is a most welcome change, but if we are going to promote the pet play then it needs to have at least a small defensive buff.

[xskarma]

I have couple of PvP issues.

a) When I press dark soul:misery my haste raises from 16% to 59&. Some one care to explain the math I am missing?

Haste being multiplicative has something to do with it. I checked on the PTR in season 14 gear and I went from 13% to 47% with Dark Soul. Not sure where the rest came from with you, but it's not a PTR bug from what I can tell.

EDIT: With some reforging I went from 18,64% to 54,23% So I have no clue where your 59% came from. Could you have had the 5% raid haste perhaps?

[Lucidious]

So does SB:SS still work like it does on live? I thought they were changing it. Or was that just making it work like the glyphed version normally?