Q&A Summary - Blue Tracker

#1 - Sept. 9, 2016, 6:23 p.m.

Ion is done talking about warlocks. Here are the notes I took about the concerns he addressed and his thoughts:

Ramp-up Time
Acknowledged as a major issue, that it's not fun to spend so long ramping up on a mob and then have it die before you're finished. Tangentially, they're looking at a hotfix, maybe within the next week, to address the base shard count from 1 to 3.

More generally, he used demonology as an example of where they could make improvements - allowing the warlock to build up an army of demons and bring that group from mob to mob instead of having them expire so quickly, similar to a Diablo-style necromancer.

Limited Mobility & Too Many Hard Casts
Acknowledged as a concern, but not likely to change. Their design philosophy is that they should "double down on strengths" rather than "shore up weakness". The vision for warlocks is to be less mobile, more tanky, and they'll work on reinforcing that moving forward.

Destruction Mastery RNG
Acknowledged people are unhappy. The design intention is to be similar to crit - variance will average out over time. Acknowledged that it's not fun to get low numbers during a limited burst window (e.g. buffs aligning). No word of anything changing.

Feedback in General
Complained that it's hard to find the good feedback with all the petitions and spam. Said he has visited the warlock forum several times to try to find actionable feedback, and likes to be linked to consolidated issue posts that have been acknowledged as credible by the community (lots of upvotes, maybe) with good discussion.

Yes, that's all
Nothing about artifacts, visuals, glyphs, or low DPS in general. Demonic Empowerment was only tangentially addressed by the "ramp up" issue (he did mention the spell, but not that it's hated).

Watcher

Game Director

#24 - Sept. 9, 2016, 8:01 p.m.

One thing that I should have stressed more in discussing warlocks in the Q&A is that we haven't done any class/spec numerical-balance hotfixes yet, for anyone. Initial efforts have been focused on fixing bugs (where possible without waiting for a new patch), and gathering data. The basic concern of "our DPS is low" is one that we can and will address. We just need more data from the live environment, from all 24 DPS specs, in order to inform the exact changes we'll be making.

But warlocks should absolutely be numerically competitive with other damage-dealers, and we'll make sure that's the case.

The Soul Shard change got a lot of attention just because it's something that we can handle via hotfix. Concerns such as artifact trait design, visual issues, and rotational flow could only be tackled via a future patch, and are a topic of discussion among the class team.

Your feedback is being read and discussed, and threads like http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20748795049 are excellent. If it sounded like I was saying we were literally unable to find any quality feedback, that certainly wasn't my intent. I understand frustration when it seems like valid concerns are being ignored, but constructive feedback is always more helpful. We both want the same thing here: for you to have fun playing your class.