Regarding the GCD for life tap, why not make it channeled? As long as you're lifetapping, you're getting mana (evocation done warlock style). Also, maybe they could implement (along with the reduced threat, an increased damage buff). In other words the act of channeled lifetapping puts you into some sort of blood frenzy ... or something. Too much RP, sorry.

They could also change the mechanics of lifetap, to make it a % based feature, something like for every X% (of post gear/buffed stam) of life drained you get a temporary factor of X% damage self-buff. Again, just making up numbers. But the idea behind it to allow it to scale, increase threat reduction beyond its' current state, and to increase the efficiency of life tap (by limiting it to one GCD, as opposed to many multiple ones).

Yes I completely agree that things right now as it stands is fubar. Although on your AOE point other classes can do it. Warriors, warlocks, heck even holy priests. Although Silya if you switched warlock/mage damage you'd want to bring at least two locks cause of the COS, not COE of course. I think the misunderstanding was that people are arguing different things here. I'm not arguing that warlocks don't need help. They do. I was just arguing that mages don't have more (or more valuable) utility. That is all.

That's a pretty moot point. AI is a targeted spell, and, as such, you only need one to buff an entire raid. If they made it so that, for example, a mage automatically buffed AI on his group, but no others, as is the case for a Warlock, the raid would "require" more.

As it is, though, the marginal utility of adding an extra mage is relatively constant, whether it be from making water faster, more polymorphs, more slowing/rooting/kiting ability, etc. Not to mention that, at least in the case of fire, the mages work synergistically. Frost as well, with Winter's Chill procs, and Frostbite/Shatter.

The marginal utility of a warlock is relatively small after the first two. Maybe you'll have a few more people buffed with extra stam, or be able to apply a CoS as well. But what you're giving up (a fair amount of DPS, decent AoE skills, and synergy with other mages [though warlocks have the imp shadowbolt debuff]) is much larger if you bring an additional warlock instead of an additional mage.

I no longer buy that Warlocks have less dps than Mages. It simply isn't true. Maybe, yes, if you have 5 Warlocks, they're not as viable, but that could be solved with a simple debuff slot size tweak. Other than that, Warlocks are fine. Lifetap tweaks would overpower them.

Why do I feel this? Simple:



Sorry about the shitty damage meters, my settings were bad :/ Anyway, the fight duration was 6:44. The top mage was top because he got most of the ignites, ending up with a 705 sustained dps. Warlock's dps was 589. He did not have a shaman. He had a flask and pots, just like the mages did, and nothing more.

I'd also point out that the Warlock at 10th also did extremely respectable dps, so this isn't a case of 1 Warlock taking all the debuff slots. Bottom line is, with 32 debuff slots, I don't see a single reason why you couldn't have 5 Warlocks doing that dps, and that _is_ competitive dps on a single target fight. Warlocks do vastly outdamage Mages(and basically anyone else) on Noth, and any other fight where they can use their dots on multiple targets. Don't know what more you could want.

People claiming Warlocks need a boost are either trying to use 5 and so they are cannibalizing eachother's dps, which is a debuff slot issue, or they don't know how to play their class.

I love these 'warlocks are fine, look at my random damage meter screenshot' posts. Especially when you don't provide any information about relative gear, or evidence of everybody pulling their weight. On a long duration single target fight there's just no mathematical way for warlocks to get close to mages given equivalent gear, anecdotal evidence nonwithstanding.

Mages don't have a serious competitor for the general AoE role. On Jindo you put a mage in the skeleton pit. During Nefarian warlock call it is mages that do the AoE. Red draconids in phase 1? Mages. Suppression room? Warlocks play second fiddle. Kicking the crap out of Rag's sons? Mages. etc. etc.

So how much spelldamage do the top 4 folks have? If your fight lasts 7 minutes warlock dps would tank due to lifetap, that's just all there is to it. Although the 5 pc AQ40 WILL help quite a bit because of the -15% to shadowbolt mana, which is huge.

Don't you see, that this is exactly what's not fine? Warlocks are the only class that suffers diminishing returns with itself. The 6th Rogue you bring on a raid can do just as much damage and brings just as much to the raid as the first 5. The 6th Mage does just as much as the first five. The 6th Hunter you bring on a raid does just as much as the first five. Warlocks? Once you bring more than two, you have them stepping on each others toes. Once you have more than two Warlocks, each Warlock is limited by his companions.

You bring it up, and casually toss it aside as if bringing two Warlocks would be the perfect solution. That's exactly the problem we are trying to fix.

Sancus is a mage, so his opinion is automatically disregarded. 99% of mages have gotten spanked too many times in PvP by Soul Linked Warlocks to be able to talk rationally with about Warlock PvE concerns.

Even if a Warlock is free to put up whatever DoTs he chooses, he still runs into mana problems in a long fight. It only takes me about 45 seconds to go from full mana to nothing when I'm chain casting Rank 10 Shadowbolt. I can spec DS Succy (at the cost of +15% shadow damage), wear 5 pieces of Doomcaller, and waste points in Cataclysm (5 points for only 5% less mana, wtf?) to ameliorate the problem, but even still a mage will be more mana efficient. Life Tap is not a viable solution, since it is affected by the global cooldown and its mana restoration does not scale.

Vulturex:

Dmg: +720(shadow)
Crit: 7.59%(including int)
Hit: 7%

Sancus:
Dmg: +633
Crit: 9.88%
Hit: 10%

Halakarie:
Dmg: +697
Crit: 10.65%
Hit: 9%

Note, all these numbers include use of Rune of the Dawn in a trinket slot.

I realize this. The problem is, giving Warlocks more mana regen is not a direct solution to this problem, and will increase their power in areas where they don't need it. The only sensible way to fix the diminishing-returns-with-self problem is to raise the debuff slot limit.

Nice ad hominem. I think you win at worst argument on this thread. PvP in WoW is an utter joke and a total waste of time. Anyone so foolish as to engage in it enough to end up biased against Warlocks that much started off as an idiot.

This is gonna be the stupidest thing ever said by a WOWer.

I mean, tank should gimp their tanking ability, wearing a bunch of pre-naxx to-hit gears just so their ZOMGLETMESHADOWBOLT warlocks wanna have some DPS fun?

If you wanna see big #s, go shoot your shadow bolt to some level 1 rabbit in your spawn zone. Please spare the rest of raid from your stupidity.

Yeah, but Hala also ended up with the majority of Ignites(we're all Fire mages). I should also add that all top three Mages had a shaman providing spring and tide, while Warlocks did not. I will have to save a full event parse from our next patchwerk so I can normalize the Ignite damage based on people's crit rates so I can account for the fact that a lucky person steals more Ignite damage.

Anyway, one set of damage meters isn't a perfect test, and there are some other issues(Warlocks were missing CoS for the first couple of minutes because the person in charge of that was asleep...).

My purpose was not to show that Warlocks are *equal* to Mages, but that they are competitive.

I didn't say better mana efficiency would affect PvP. I said it would affect other areas. Mostly, I mean dot multi-target fights. Warlocks already outdps the rest of the raid here, and there's not even a remote chance anyone could ever compare. Add improved mana regen, and it'd be off the scale.

If -anything-, Warlock dot superiority matches mages AoE superiority as a secondary dps job, but, Warlocks have a significantly useful AoE, and Mages have zero dots... Warlocks can do single target and dot dps well, and aoe dps mediocre(actually, they synergize well with mages aoeing, so I would call their aoe decent at worst). That's three things to a Mage's two.

Not to mention, the fact that Warlocks will have higher hp matters a great deal for survivability more than a Mage's "avoidance" spells, which are rendered completely useless in raids.

It's pretty clear that you want to be blatantly superior in dps in the vast majority of situations. That's not going to happen, and it's unreasonable.

There are maybe 2 boss encounters where it's possible to dot but not possible to AoE, maybe 3.


AoE is far, far, far more applicable than dots in raids as a means of scaling damage to multiple opponents.

That's stupid. If a clothie gets aggro in raids a clothie gets one shotted -- the extra 1-2k hp warlocks have will do diddly squat. You know what WILL help? Things like blink and ice block.

Ok buddy. Whatever you say. I am done here, this thread has turned into wowforums.

How often do you blink to get away from boss in raid?

DPSes should learn not to OT.

Thank you for proving my point. Aggro is an extremely important issue, and all DPS classes are limited by it. Hunters and Rogues have the best of it, and Mages can get a passive -30% with a minor talent investment. Warlocks are forced 30 points into one tree, limited to a single pet, without any talent damage modifiers to get -20%.

It's not that mages don't want warlocks to be better - they do, in PvE. Pretty much every mage would acknowledge that, if they had any sense, after the mage review.

The problem is, EVERY SOLUTION offered is all about turning warlocks into purple mages. Increased mana efficiency, increased shadowbolt damage, improved Lifetap - all these things do is make warlocks better at nuking. That's just wrong - especially considering that outside of raiding, warlocks pets are a great advantage and ability. You can't balance a class around one aspect of the game - and Blizzard certainly doesn't.

Warlocks should be focussing on making their pets viable raiding tools, their debuffs more effective and worthwhile. Instead, all most want is to be doing damage equal to mages whilst providing what is seen by most people as far more utility both in raiding, and outside.

I still think the idea of giving Life Tap its own cooldown and taking it off the global cooldown would solve all the problems we have with it.

Which again - just increases warlock nuking power, turning them into purple mages. Why not try coming up with something that actually plays toi the classes "strengths" - demonic summoning, debuffs and DoT's? Why argue to be turned into mages?

I could say something silly like this...

"A single one of your warlocks did good damage in the patchwork fight? Holy shit! I think I saw somewhere on page 4 from another person that an individual warlock can break the top 5 on the patchwork fight. Amazing! Where are the DM shots showing him in the same position on trash and other bosses throughout the rest of the zones in the game? I'm sure you've got them on file somewhere. As efficient as his DPS is, he'll certainly be number one in most other places, as the mages can't crit ALL the time and nobody else could hope to challenge his might in shorter fights where he never has to tap. Why aren't your other warlocks right up there with him, by the way? Lesser geared? That's a shame. You should obviously stop giving things to other classes until you gear up the rest of your locks, as having equally geared warlocks would do so very much for your overall raid DPS, based on your personal opinion of the class."

But no...I shouldn't say anything silly like that. That's what the majority is doing. This poor bastard needs support! No worries, mate. I have a damagemeters shot here somewhere from when I topped mages, rogues, and everybody in a pubbie ZG run. Or wait...I think there's an old Chromaggus meter where we warlocks were like the top 5 in damage. That would be even better! I should find and post those bits of equally arbitrary nonsense in support the whole "w0rlocks R fine" point.

But wait yet another moment...I regularly play both a well geared mage and warlock, along with a rogue. The vast difference in their dps abilities in all of the various zones HAS to be the fact that I suck at warlocking or sinister striking in spite of the fact that I still forget what half my spell icons are while playing the mage, eh? Gotta be!

In short, you're all a bunch of bloody retards.

:stop: