Warlock Concerns

#0 - Oct. 31, 2008, 1:09 a.m.

Pvp
-Still hard countered by rogues - Still wondering why Stuns don't have some sort of dimishing returns or break on damage effect. Why is it that a Rogue can take me from 100 to 20% and no one cares but yet if I get off a lucky fear and dot people scream blood murder.

-Soft-countered by anything melee aside from Ret paladin.

-Gained new counter in mage. Lost some of our grip against paladins and shamans. I'd be fine with all of this, if we weren't countered by certain classes ourselves.

-Soul Shard system not even touched
-Pet survivability extremely low
-Damage overall is too high, arenas feel "scrubfriendly" and even more luck-based
-Completely reliant on having 11 points in Demo, maybe 17 (or even more).
-Still looking to pigeon-holed into Demo.

-Practically no new PvP utility options.
-Shadowflame is a pathetic addition, it's as if they've run out of ideas and don't want to bother thinking of any good ones. We're already strong enoguh at AoE, damnit. I mean really if you want to give us dragon's breath from mages, just give us the green version and call it green dragons breath with all the same goodies of dragons breath.
-Teleport spell again pathetic (Can't used while stunned) I mean really Blizzard you give us a good Defensive spell after all this time and you do it half assed. I mean we actually have to set this spell up in order to use it. Tell you what make it so that Pallys have to cast a spell first before they can bubble, make it so Rogues have to do something before they can vanish/COS, make it so Mages have to cast a spell before doing ice block or blink.

Affliction
-Complex PvE rotation is impossible to accomplish in PvP; you have to do far more work than before to do the same relative DPS as in BC - the spec is more reliant on spells with cast times.
-Still no haste scaling.
-Ridiculously weak against Mage Armor - And just so you get this I'll have I'll have Garrett Morris the headmaster of the new york school for the hard-of-hearing help me out

AFFLICTION LOCKS ARE RIDICULOUSLY WEAK AGAINST MAGE ARMOR!!!!!!!

Demonology
-Still pigeon-holed into this spec. Hell, GC even suggested that Demo is looking to become our PvP spec again. Yet, out of all of the builds, this one by far has gained the smallest number of interesting additions... arguably in the entire game.
-Boring passives connected to more boring passives, with procs that will only rarely proc and don't have enough impact to make up for having those points in Demo.
-Felguard provides very little utility, and as 41 pointer his actives are practically all just weaker versions of the Ghoul's.
-Improved Enslave Demon pathetic
- Mast Conjourer Ummmm pathetic
-Demonic Empathy pathetic
-Every point I put into this tree past Master Summoner feels painfully weak. I don't spec into this talent tree because it's fun or becuase I like to, I spec into this talent tree because [i]I'm forced to if I want my warlock and his pet to survive anything worth a damn.[/b]
-Why did you add glaringly PvE-based talents and changes like Master Conjurer, Demonic Empathy, Demonic Pact, Imp. Demonic Tactics, and others when you expect this to be our PVP tree?

Destruction:
-Still too easily pressured, still extremely vulnerable to physical damage
-Chaos Bolt: Could have fixed our problems with quick, reliable burst damage, but was ultimately changed into a "add this into your rotation for a few more DPS!" spell.
-Fire and Brimstome: Tries to be Shatter, but fails in every way possible. Immolate can be hard to land and even harder to wait out to 5 seconds. 25% crit isn't even that big of a deal. Conflag doesn't hit very hard in PvP. It could be 100% chance to crit Conflag at any time, and it still wouldn't be that great.
-Everybody wants this to be a viable talent tree. If you really wanted to make people happy, you would have done that for this tree, rather than add the gimmicky, retarded demon form.
-Destruction completely pointless in PVP

Ghostcrawler

#36 - Oct. 31, 2008, 6:05 a.m.

I can't comment on every single point you made or I'll be here all night. I did read them though.

Q u o t e:
-Soul Shard system not even touched

I have said many, many times that this is something we're looking at right now. I am going to be less sympathetic to QQ that we don't read your posts if you don't read ours. :)

Q u o t e:
-Damage overall is too high, arenas feel "scrubfriendly" and even more luck-based

We think there is some truth to this. The recent resilience change was intended to help. We also expect health and mitigation to increase much faster than damage increases as players hit 80, but it is definitely a concern right now in PvP.

Q u o t e:
-Completely reliant on having 11 points in Demo, maybe 17 (or even more).
-Still looking to pigeon-holed into Demo.

This is not a major concern for us. As I have also posted, good talents are good. If you didn't want them, they would be bad talents. If you had so many good talents that you had a hard time deciding, I'm pretty certain the response would be that the trees are bloated.

Q u o t e:
-Shadowflame is a pathetic addition, it's as if they've run out of ideas and don't want to bother thinking of any good ones. We're already strong enoguh at AoE, damnit. I mean really if you want to give us dragon's breath from mages, just give us the green version and call it green dragons breath with all the same goodies of dragons breath.

Shadowflame fulfills a very specific role. If you hadn't noticed, we are pushing Destro more towards fire and Affliction more towards shadow. Shadowflame is one of the few spells that crosses over because it does both types of damage (which should have obvious ramifications for a lock).

Q u o t e:
-Teleport spell again pathetic (Can't used while stunned) I mean really Blizzard you give us a good Defensive spell after all this time and you do it half assed. I mean we actually have to set this spell up in order to use it. Tell you what make it so that Pallys have to cast a spell first before they can bubble, make it so Rogues have to do something before they can vanish/COS, make it so Mages have to cast a spell before doing ice block or blink.

We think Demonic Circle is going to end up being a big deal. It's not a trivial spell to use -- it's a thinking person's spell. It takes planning and some intuition. I suspect it is being underestimated because so few people have actually gotten to use it yet.

Q u o t e:
Affliction
-Complex PvE rotation is impossible to accomplish in PvP; you have to do far more work than before to do the same relative DPS as in BC - the spec is more reliant on spells with cast times.

We think the complex rotation is very hard to pull off in PvE too and seems to almost mandate a mod, which is a problem. We have some long-term plans to change Affliction around a little bit.

Q u o t e:
-Why did you add glaringly PvE-based talents and changes like Master Conjurer, Demonic Empathy, Demonic Pact, Imp. Demonic Tactics, and others when you expect this to be our PVP tree?

There are no PvP trees anymore. My comment was that Demo may not have the sustained dps of the other two trees in PvE, but at least it would still be taken for PvP. We need to see if the survivability offered by the tree offsets its lower dps or not. (And before anyone responds that you would raid with 10 health if it would improve your dps, I'll remind you that your dps when dead is 0.)

Q u o t e:
-Chaos Bolt: Could have fixed our problems with quick, reliable burst damage, but was ultimately changed into a "add this into your rotation for a few more DPS!" spell.

Destro's rotation was among the least interesting in the entire game. It needed major help.

I probably would have responded to more if you could have made more points without trying so hard to work an insult into half of your comments. Maybe a more thoughtful PvP warlock thread will rise up.