This may be a tired subject, but I strongly believe it is one the designers should reconsider for the future. Soulshards are a gimmick of the warlock class, which, while cool in concept, are a royal pain in the ass in practice. This is not a big deal while leveling up, but at the raid level, it blows. Let's evaluate their uses:
# Summoning demons - Not a huge deal, as most raid warlocks just use their imp 90% of the time anyway.
# Summoning portals - Depending on the raid zone, this uses up a majority of their soulstones a warlock will use in a given night.
# Healthstones - I can't remember the last time I saw one of these.
Warlocks are supposed to be a support DPS class that offers more utility than just their debuffs. The limitation of healthstones being tied to soulshards generally prevents their use for anyone other than the tanks. The physical limitation of bag space and time required to actually farm soulshards (on top of everything else a raider has to farm) makes it incredibly inconvenient, if not impossible for the warlock to maximize their usefulness to the raid.
The as yet unfinished debuff prioritization system negates their dots, and the soulshard system marginalizes their support utility. As a result, most guilds see little reason to bring more than 2 warlocks on a raid. There is a reason they are the least-played class.
As I see it, there are two fixes to this issue:
1. Make soulshards stackable. Yes, I know. Old argument. On top of all the gear we're expected to carry, warlocks have the added joy of trying to cram shards into their already overflowing bags. Adding extra-large soulshard bags was a nice gesture, but doesn't resolve the issue.
2. Make soulshards vendor reagents. The design philosophy of "Well, we want people to have to make these kinds of choices and manage their special abilities" doesn't hold up very well in practice. Consider the following possibilities and tell me if these sound like good ideas to you:
# Druids now have to pick herbs for battlerez reagents.
# Priests now have to collect candles from humanoid opponents and have them sanctified by an NPC in major cities (one at a time) to cast group fort.
# Shamans have to craft mini-fetishes by hand using a variety of components to use reincarnation.
# Warriors have to carry tiny vials of consumable chloroseptic (that don't stack and drop off humanoids) for every battleshout.
# Rogues now have to buy fadeleaf to make flash powder if they want to vanish.
# Hunter pets now only eat food made with cooking. It has to be level-appropriate, too.
Designers, I know you guys raid. Do any of these changes to class abilities sound fun to you?
This is a nice suggestion, but with unlimited (basically, just go back to vendor) soulshards, the Lock class would be overpowered in PvP.
They could go around Shadowburning everything, atm they already are one of the most powerful classes 1on1.
Now a good suggestion I have seen is having the soulstealing talent in Allifiction tree change to give 2 shards instead of 1.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
How's about there's a special Shard "vendor" near a warlock trainer where you can buy 10-20 shards per 4-8-12 hours or something? Cuts your pre-raid shard farming in half, but doesn't take the act of in-game shard allocation out of the game?
As for the rogue argument, we already spend quite a bit of time sitting at vendors combining poisons and organizing our inventories. Along with having to buy or gather Fadeleaf to make into blind powder.
Or since healthstones and summoning portals are the major usefullness of soulstones for raiding, just remove the soulstone requirement from this in the first place. Make them farm the shards for pet summons and shadowburn and that's it.
Edit - or how about this one: vendor sells stackable soul shards that have a 5-6 hour timer on them before they are destroyed. Makes them useful for raiding and thats about it.
This is a nice suggestion, but with unlimited (basically, just go back to vendor) soulshards, the Lock class would be overpowered in PvP.
They could go around Shadowburning everything, atm they already are one of the most powerful classes 1on1.
Now a good suggestion I have seen is having the soulstealing talent in Allifiction tree change to give 2 shards instead of 1.
And they're not already?
I honestly fail to see what being able to shadowburn on demand would do to honestly change things. Any lock pvping is going to have 30+ anyways, this just cuts out the -NOT FUN- time of gathering them. They're the only class that has to stop what they are doing and spend 10-15 minutes to power up. Its getting rediculous to ask a class that is subpar at its main jobs - debuffing (hell, even warriors are better, arguably with demoshout, thunderclap, and sunder armor.) and dps to invest time to be temporarily better.
Just put a Soul Conduit in each major city - where a warlock can harvest as many shards as they want. Make it cost 2-5g a fill up - no matter how many you pick to make it slightly cost prohibitive to spam it in bgs and such, and we're there. I fully support Digo's thesis here.
Of course, according to Blizzard "Warlocks are performing as intended" :/
Originally Posted by Apate
Zyla, International Man of a Certain Standard.
Originally Posted by Wraithlin
What have you brought to this discussion? The usual vacuous and contentless tripe that you contribute to these forums - no more and no less.
I've always advocated a spell with a 5-10 minute cooldown that creates a soul shard at the cost of health. Nice for emergencies when you're out, but it doesn't remove the need to farm shards for raids and such. It would just allow Demonology warlocks, or instance, free reign with their summon/sac/whatever at occasional inconvenience.
I've always advocated a spell with a 5-10 minute cooldown that creates a soul shard at the cost of health. Nice for emergencies when you're out, but it doesn't remove the need to farm shards for raids and such. It would just allow Demonology warlocks, or instance, free reign with their summon/sac/whatever at occasional inconvenience.
Being stuck with no shards when a guildy wanted a run through an instance was something that really annoyed me when I was a Warlock. I think this is a great idea, like the Abyss Shard.
I am sorry, why are soul shards in the game in the first place? The only response I got from CMs was that soul shards are 'class flavor.' You know, to differentiate us from mages. Aside from all the other crap we have to put up with compared to mages. Can anybody think of another class in any MMO whatsoever that had this kind of braindead, irritating class flavor? I sure can't!
Of all the things that annoy me about being a 'lock. Soul shards couldnt be any lower.
Seriously i'd rather they fix us for PvE first.
I d rather they put some decent thought behind warlocks and fix everything at once. Soul shards are a symptom of the poor design that was unable to sufficiently differentiate locks from mages, imo.
The best thing that they could do to soul shards is make the abilities that use them more powerful. Considering that they're the most difficult reagent in the game to obtain, the effects they produce should be appropriately spectacular, I mean, you're fuelling your spell with a disembodied soul, come on. Just remove the shard component from summon and healthstone altogether, make a soulstone rez someone with full life/mana and with a shield, keep the restriction on pets, especially with the fixes coming next patch. Make shadowburn do a little more damage. Give Soul Fire a shorter casting time and make it return a shard like shadowburn. There are a lot of things you could do to make the concept of using the shards more attractive.
While we're on the subject of idle wishes, I always thought it'd be rather neat to increase/add soul shard consumption of "utility" spells (CoS, DC, etc) dramatically while leaving only staple barebones abilities (shadowbolt, CoA) reagent-free. Then increase soul shard bag storage and make it spawn a free shard every 30 seconds (or whatever). The idea is a sort of paced cooldown for abilities. You can horde shards for the pvp/pve encounter and blow through 8 at once but at the cost of running dry should you need a DC/pet switch in an emergency. It plays off the whole reckless entropy theme. Think of it as a focus bar that accentuates mana, letting the warlock achieve burst utility/dps that far outstrips a mage but at the cost of becoming more generic in role as shards reaccumulate. And obviously, the more you kill the faster you can artificially replenish shards. It would require some buffing of curses and the like, but whatever.
Retarded ideas are fun to type out. For the rest, I really don't see the point of complaining about these mechanics until BC ships. This entire argument will resurface again when we see what the new abilities are and since class balance is in limbo until then, why not wait?
While we're on the subject of idle wishes, I always thought it'd be rather neat to increase/add soul shard consumption of "utility" spells (CoS, DC, etc) dramatically while leaving only staple barebones abilities (shadowbolt, CoA) reagent-free. Then increase soul shard bag storage and make it spawn a free shard every 30 seconds (or whatever). The idea is a sort of paced cooldown for abilities. You can horde shards for the pvp/pve encounter and blow through 8 at once but at the cost of running dry should you need a DC/pet switch in an emergency. It plays off the whole reckless entropy theme. Think of it as a focus bar that accentuates mana, letting the warlock achieve burst utility/dps that far outstrips a mage but at the cost of becoming more generic in role as shards reaccumulate. And obviously, the more you kill the faster you can artificially replenish shards. It would require some buffing of curses and the like, but whatever.
Retarded ideas are fun to type out. For the rest, I really don't see the point of complaining about these mechanics until BC ships. This entire argument will resurface again when we see what the new abilities are and since class balance is in limbo until then, why not wait?
The idea of a bag that adds a new soul shard every X minutes if it's not full is an old one and floated frequently on wowforums. It's a cool idea, but again shards aren't there for balance reasons -- warlocks don't have any burst utility/dps that outstrips a mage, nor can they (it would be unbalancing, everyone would just make sure to always be full on shards). Shards are flavor.
I stopped worrying about soul shard issues upon realizing that I was quickly becoming damn near useless on raids even with the things. Life has been much easier, since then.
Edit: I'd say arguing on class changes at this point is moot, but linguists still cannot agree on whether or not that is proper usage of the word. I'll simply say the discussion is silly and pointless, instead.
Blizzard will obviously fix Warlocks along with all other classes based upon their new mindset toward balance and order in TBC. All classes on both sides will be turned into exactly the same uber-utility class of mage-tank healers so any individual can perform any given role at any time. This will be a "casual friendly" change that even diehard raiders will be able to get behind, I am sure. Race/Class will simply be used to determine how armour looks, but racials would remain varied to give people a sense of "uniqueness" without actually heavily unbalancing anything. Nobody is different or disadvantaged in this system and balance becomes easy for content developers. It is obviously the perfect solution for progression of the game.
I stopped worrying about soul shard issues upon realizing that I was quickly becoming damn near useless on raids even with the things. Life has been much easier, since then.
the easiest fix i can see to shards is to change soul drain to a debuff (hell, make it a curse) with a cooldown (or no cooldown) 10-30 secs duration, that will allow you to gather shards in both pvp and pve without hurting your dps. improved drain soul could add some damage to the debuff, or increase the duration / lower the cooldown. the mechanic is already in place from shadowburn.
Ugh, what is this thread doing off the blizzard forums?
There is no issues with soul shard management for any competent warlock, save for those who pvp exclusively, and even then you can gather shards fairly easily.
Use some basic logistics, keep a banked bag with shards for world spawns or emergencies and you're fine. There is no reason you should be burning through shards faster than you can gather them, except when you're shadowburning on every cooldown and then you're paying the price anyways.
Ugh, what is this thread doing off the blizzard forums?
There is no issues with soul shard management for any competent warlock, save for those who pvp exclusively, and even then you can gather shards fairly easily.
Use some basic logistics, keep a banked bag with shards for world spawns or emergencies and you're fine. There is no reason you should be burning through shards faster than you can gather them, except when you're shadowburning on every cooldown and then you're paying the price anyways.
Sorry Greybone, but this simply isn't always the case.
When you are wiping over and over to a boss, and you're demonology specced, you're using 1-2 shards every encounter. Then when you have to summon occasional replacements, soulstones, etc, you're using up a lot. I brought 30 shards to Naxx last night. And because we did no trash, had no opportunity to get any new ones. After two and a half hours, I was out of shards and using an imp for the fight.
I think fel domination removing the soul shard requirement when summoning a pet would at least bring demonology warlocks' rate of soul shard consumption in line with other warlocks. Managing soul shards isn't bad for other specs, but it is really annoying with demonology because your effectiveness relies heavily on the type of pet you are able to summon. However, it would still be nice to cut out the asinine soul shard farming with another solution.
07/21/06, 11:37 AM
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