• Bass

Before you instantly heap my thread, no, I'm not going to fan any wow-general "lol, warlocks are op" flames in here. I admit this is a bit unorthodox for this particular forum, but I saw no better place to put it. Please read through this and see where I'm going with it...


So we've probably all heard the cries of warlocks being overpowered, whether we want to or not, whether they are or not. The sheer amount of the whining is staggering, even after several re-evaluations of the class, and the repeated changes to the has-never-been-buffed Fear spell. The problem is, as an individual, I'm not sure what stand I should be taking on this subject, for lack of intelligent discussion to be found. As you might have guessed, that's why I have posted this... to create such discussion, to more sharply define what is up with these darn Warlock guys, what makes them such a heated point of internet contention. Hopefully, through this thread, we will define those points, and discuss what could be done to fix them. (And technically, this is all you really need to read unless you want a refresher on what makes us lolOP. Post away..)

Recently, I've been catching flak from a mage friend of mine about this topic - and as much as I tell him he's an idiot, he really isn't :P Standard things, skip if you'd like. His claims:
- Fear seems to always last full duration.
- The ability to do mage-equivalent or better dps while mobile.
- Fire and forget philosophy.
- "Even if you kill him, he kills you": DoTs through death.
- Haven't heard much out of him in the area of Felguard being OP, but I'm sure he harbors some hatred towards the poor creature.
- "10khplol": Warlock HP pools are too large for having the abilities they have.
- Deathcoil. The discussion ender. It seems that after this topic is brought up almost every non-lock finds this ability the main thing that pushes warlocks over the edge of being balanced.

Being a warlock, I of course have points to counter his. And you've probably heard them too. But here they are again in case you haven't.
- Fear almost never lasts the full duration. (Basically, the duration of Fear seems to vary wildly, and your target will only really notice it when it lasts outrageously long, and the lock will only notice it when it is outrageously short. This is more psychology than a real problem with the Fear spell imo.) The sepllcast of Fear is also interruptable unless you are 37+ affliction. AND, there's like 50 bajillion ways to break it. (Trinket, wotf, fear ward, death wish, berserker stance ability whatever it is, off the top of my head.)
- To do that kind of DPS, a very deep affliction build is required, removing literally all forms of burst damage except Shadowburn.
- ? I don't really have a case against this. I view it as a class perk.
- I also don't have a case against this. Really don't see why our DoTs aren't removed the instant we die.
- In my experience, Felguard spec is among the best for a non-raid environs, and from what I read here it isn't half bad there as well. I guess I'm willing to concede that he may be a tad OP, although in any PVP situation where another Warlock is around you have basically specced 41+ points down a tree for nothing.
- Stamina is another one of the integral parts of the warlock class, with the lifetap ability. Even if this is considered OP by some, it is one thing that must stay.
- Deathcoil again. Let me start a new paragraph for this subject.

To truly understand Deathcoil, we must delve through history. Deathcoil started at release as a 10 minute cooldown spell that did piddly damage, but happened to give you life back. It was more like chugging half a pot and doing some damage while at it than anything else. It was also one of a very select few instant cast direct damage Warlock spells available. At this time, the general state of the Warlock class was a mess. Many people felt pity for warlocks as they were easily outperformed in almost every environment.
Then one little patch note (and, I suppose, the demonology tree revamp) changed it all. Warlocks went from objects of pity and "free HKs" to blatantly overpowered. A piddly 3 second horrify effect was all it took.

Personally? I don't think the Deathcoil change was what our class needed. This has been brought many times on many forums, but a frost nova or blink-like ability would have easily been superior, and would probably have resulted in little to no outcry (although that's hard to say for certain). A self-banish, perhaps. However, at this point, TBC has passed, Deathcoil is largely unchanged, and we still have no ability of the sort. So it seems that the developers have made their stand on the subject.

Now, there's also the assertion of warlocks topping PvE damage meters, which I have not touched as I largely attribute that to Shadow Priests being a bit overtuned and taking us with them, coupled with the bad situation melee dps find themseves in, and mages/hunters in need of a PvE buff. In any case, feel free to discuss that point as well. (Just don't quote the part specifically referring to <insert class here> and say it's wrong :P WARCLOCKS ONLY.)


Anyway. I've brought up some common bitchings and counter-bitchings. I'd like to see some EJ discussion on the subject, in its own thread. (I know there are several threads that make reference to it, but I'd love some consolidation.) What do you find overpowered? Underpowered? Plain Broken? And most importantly... how would you go about fixing it?

 

Phro

I understand where this post is coming from and I assume it wont get turned into a flamewar (which it wont) and would like to give my personal 2 cents.

Honestly my biggest annoyance with warlocks is the fact that they can fill pretty much any role that are thrown at them in TBC. I mean really what would be the disadvantage of ever bringing a lock...EVER? Is there really one? Most classes has a severe disadvantage somewhere (rock vs scissors philosophy) however I can't really name one instance where they fall short other than not actually being able to cast a heal (but my god can they heal themselves indirectly anyway).

Something that is overlooked is the fact that locks are so multi-dimensional. You have an array of spells that can weigh a fight in your favor. For instance you're given a multitude of curses to apply to your opponent. It's not "lets bring a lock for curse of tongues" its "ok warlock use curse of tongues on this boss OR just DPS with curse of agony"

When I play I understand the fallacy of my class (which is debately the worst of any class, but thats not the discussion) and I adjust. To give you a short example...if I cant CC in a heroic then i kite...sometimes proving difficult but all the more necessary because of my lack of CC. With a warlock you can quickly analyze a situation and provide a quick fix by the simple click of a button. The plethora of spells that weigh the teeter-totter of encounters is what really gets to me...i believe us theorists call it "utility".

Oh ya and the synergy between spriest/lock is unreal...truly unreal.

 

songster

I think a lot of the hatred directed at fear is not because it's overpowered or because it stops you controlling your character (in terms of being able to use skills and abilities), but because it stops you controlling the game itself. I know which way I'm facing, and which way my camera is facing, and I hate to have that forcibly taken away from me. It feels much more of a violation than any other form of CC. Distract is the same, and so's polymorph, but at least they leave you in pretty much the same spot.

If fear made you stand still in frozen terror, I think you'd see much less complaining, even though it would be just as effective a form of CC (modulo a couple of second spent for the lock to get back to range while insta-casting dots). I understand the wish to distinguish it from stuns, but I think Blizzard made a poor choice when designing fear in the first place.

I don't think fear is OP - but I still loathe it with a pitch black deep rooted ire. I think it's a mechanic Blizzard should never have implemented, and would like to see it removed from the game. Do what you like to my character: she's only pixels. But don't get between me and the game itself. Don't move my character for me, and above all don't screw around with my camera angle.

 

• Bass

Phro, I appreciate the post

If those are perceived problems for you, how would you go about correcting them? More emphasis placed on the debuffs of the class, rather than their damage? I think that's originally what Blizz intended, but then you literally would have to bring a warlock for every raid encounter, rather than a "why-the-hell-not" philosophy.

We do have quite a few spells. I manage to fill four 9-button bars with all of mine. But for how much utility some spells offer, others are practically worthless or very situational. Firestone, curse of weakness, underwater breathing come to mind immediately. Though I must admit our repretoire of useful abilities is quite large, comparatively speaking, to other classes.

Is it because more of our "useless abilities" are actually useful in comparison to other classes? I can't really think of a way to correct such a flaw without giving every other class more utility, or flatly removing spells from the warlock arsenal.

Also in line with your thinking. Warlocks are one of the few classes which has 3 perfectly viable specs. We don't have a useless tree like some other classes. Could that be adding to it?

 

tetracycloide

Adding additional locks after the debuff limit is reached (roughly 5ish DoT classes including shadow priests) provides little to no utility to a raid. Unlike any other DPS class which deals primarily direct damage there is literally a hardcoded upper bound on the number of locks which can reasonably be taken on a raid. No other class has such a limit.

Destruction locks are a significant healing loss in long term boss fights. The trade off is worth it, IMO, considering the amount of damage they provide (assuming they're shadow of course and there's only one of them) but I certainly wouldn't want even one around if the healers were having trouble keeping up with the tank.

 

Jairek

I can't say that I have any significant issues with warlocks in pvp. Granted, I am a rogue, and with the inclusion of CoS, they are a bit easier to deal with than they used to be. Sure, it's possible to be caught in a kiting scenario, but there are many classes that can do the same thing. Fear is also an oddball ability, in that it has an inverse effectiveness relationship with damage gear. The more you do per tick, the less likely fear is going to last.

There may be some excess "love" of warlocks due to the flexibility that their pets grant. I can't say that I particularly respect the felguard locks, but I can see where mages have serious issues with them. However, the succubus gives a charm effect CC (which can make/break a stunlock), felhunters can spell-lock, and VWs give an escape method. While they don't have all of these options at once, if an encounter is known ahead of time, like a duel, pet flexibility does give an advantage.

In PvE, the issues can be summarized in terms of class envy. An affliction lock in raid has (had) access to Tier 5 equivalent gear, before stepping foot into a raid instance, due to the synergy between FSW and the ability of affliction locks to nearly ignore any stat outside of spell damage / shadow damage. Combine that with the added bonus of shadow weaving, and even more +shadow love when multiple warlocks are present, their damage through the initial raiding stage skyrockets. They also have no positional requirements outside of staying in range, and their damage can continue steadily even while they are removed from an encounter for a short duration.

Then, you can get into the additive effects of DOTs on dps. While the damage coefficients were nerfed on DOTs pre-TBC, an affliction lock still has a higher dps benefit from spell damage when all DOTs are rolling, when compared to a mage. The dps benefit to Corruption, CoA/CoD, and Siphon are still realized, all for the cost of a GCD per cast. In the meantime, shadow bolt spam serves as a further increase to their output. Keep in mind that *all* of these are affected by Shadow Weaving and CoS.

The root of it all, as I see it, is that gear was made available that rivaled high end tier pieces, and that specific builds scale extremely well with the "perfect" stat allocation on that particular gear.

 

diotox

One interesting aspect I've always found about these types of discussions is that the warlocks that tend to say "fear usually breaks early" are also warlocks with very good gear. What kind of an effect does a high end geared amount of +Damage have on fear breaking early? I've always felt warlocks were ridiculous, so I rolled one myself to see firsthand. My warlock alt pre-TBC at 60 I'd say had slightly above average gear, I had the good epics out of ZG and some blue set pvp gear, I had somewhere around 300ish +damage all told. And my experience with fear was that whenever it broke early, I was genuinely surprised, and it was almost always when the immolate DD portion hit, or a shadowbolt hit. Thus I would load up the dots, cast shadowbolt, and precast a 2nd fear while the shadowbolt was midair and cancel the fear if the shadowbolt didn't break it. I regularly found myself killing people from 100% to 0% with them getting maybe 3 GCDs tops worth of time to do anything. If I opted to not use shadowbolt on them I found that just dots + fear ended up with fear lasting the full duration almost every time.

Now, a warlock guildmate of mine with top notch gear in every slot always told me his fear always broke in a few seconds. Would the difference (this is all pre-TBC mind you, I don't have any frame of reference in TBC since my warlock alt is only level 65 currently), between 300 +damage, and say, 600-700ish +damage be that big of a difference in terms of fear breaking?

 

• frmorrison

At least in 1v1, World PvP, and BGs Warlocks were too good, due to Curse of Tongues lasting 30 seconds and Fear not really breaking on DoT damage.

Now that CoT is 12 seconds and Fear has a chance to break anytime damage happens, Warlocks are more in line with other classes for PvP. The PvP trinket breaks stuns to help make up for the PvP nerfs. Like was previously said, Fear plus a stack of DoTs are what made Warlocks too good, and that will happen less (but Fear can still last for the full 12 seconds with DoTs).

For PvE, melee classes not getting raped by Cleave as much and the glancing blows damage reduction being reduced by about 16%, Hunter's Mark being more powerful, as well as Shadow Priests being nerfed by 5% means other classes will have more chances to be competitive on the damage meter.

 

◊ Kyth

Yes.

I guess it counterbalances the "lol I fear you from 100 to 0" -- but it's really annoying that your defense gets worse as your gear gets better, and there's no way to counter it.

It's sort of the saving grace of my high stamina, lower damage pvp set I guess :/.


As someone said earlier: having to heal warlocks due to lifetapping, plus the fact that the debuff limit exists (and is vicious to our damage when we hit it) prevents you from stacking warlocks.

I would like to note, though, that no one complained (other than warlocks) before TBC that you could stack mages with impunity (not to mention rolling ignites). At least not that I saw. Or that most raid strats mentioned using a mage in some way, but the warlock-useful fights were few. I'm not saying this makes the current situation good, but just pointing out we've been here before just with a different class...


The stamina thing is a rather antiquated complaint. Locks have at most 1000-1500 stamina on equally-geared members of other class -- which is about what we had pre-tbc, but back then that was a 20-33% boost. Now it's closer to 8-12%. Trust me, I really notice the loss.

 

• frmorrison

You mean 1000-1500 *health*, otherwise that would be OP . However, it is more like 1500-2000 health.

 

Jairek

Affliction warlocks are capable of self-healing at the expense of a bit of dps, in addition to dark pact on a high regen pet that likely has BoW laid on it.

There is also the shadow priest "mana/life battery" aspect to be accounted for as well.

 

tetracycloide

You can't examine the health differences between classes in a vacumn though. Lock mana pools are generally smaller than a mage's or a priest's at similar gear levels so the 'extra' health we have is really just their to lifetap away.

Granted we have damage dealing abilities that heal us that and that health can be converted into mana which we can use on damage dealing abilities that heal us... Oh my I've gone crosseyed.

 

Kiralyn

I think a large part of the hate is due to three viable talent trees, with three wildly different playstyles/abilities/counters. Going up against a warlock, players are constantly reacting to someone else's moves, as they have no idea what they are getting into. This generally does not hold true with any other class, as you have a good idea what you are up against. This reactionary play coupled with the loss of control caused by fear seems to leave players feeling helpless. In my experience, the good ones come back for you with a much more solidified strat, now that they have an idea of what they are up against. Those players are also the ones that can quickly ID a spec and know its strengths/weaknesses and can counter them. Obviously I can't propose a change that would fix this reaction. Its up to the individual player to learn from an encounter and be more prepared the next time around. However I do think expanding the more useless talent trees in the game (ret paladin, etc.) would help bring a little more overall class balance into the game.

 

Kiln

I also roled a warlock because of their pvp and pve abilites. Going from resto shaman to warlock alt (64) it gives a slightly different perspective.

PvP
1. Any CC that effectivly allows one player to kill another with complete immunity is overpowered in a pvp game. Warlock fear/dot, rogue stunlock, mage sheep -> palm pyro. The warlocks cc works on more class/talent combos than the other two and has fewer counters. If tremor totem worked more than 10% of the time this might be different.

2. The damage is front loaded and is often fire and forget.

3. After dots, Affliction locks can outheal many classes dps output while doing close to full damage.

PvE
1. The warlock / shadow priest raid stacking benefits each other more than other class combo stacking. It also has the two additional benifits of not requiring the a specific group makeup to take advantage of the stack and is not limited to a 1 : 1 ratio. Warlocks also stack with themselves.

2. CC and debufs which also buff damage. Banish, poly, fear, and CoT tend to be encounter altering at the raid level. Warlocks have 3 of the 4.

Downside.
PvP
1. Without fear a warlock will not have much of a chance against any melee who have closed the distance.

2. Damage is front loaded but it takes place over time. This causes alot of ties in pvp.

PvE
1. There are only so many debuf slots and warlocks are the first to lose access to them.

 

BeeLz

As an alltime firemage I find chainfearing in combination with deathcoil very annoying.
I can counter fear twice just to get feared again straight after, the last fear is going to last for a very short time, but I will now have enough dots up too die.
Putting Fear on a low cooldown ( 5 secs ) would fix this. It would allow players to at least try to counter the lock.

As a priest I think UA is really gamebreaking. Disabling one of the core abilities of an already limited class in pvp is not ok if you ask me.

In pve I think the synergy between locks and spriests is ridiculous. And a personal manabattery is painfull to see as a manapot chainchugger :p

 

Tahapenes

I've seen much how the Warlock has changed over its first introduction into the game back during the 2004 beta where the Warlock literally was a god. When Warlocks had the best CC in the game, Fear, Seduce, and Banish that worked on everything (you can see this in action in fighting the Warlocks in Redridge mountains up at the Orc Stronghold).

Fear - this is the only power/skill in the game that has been nerfed consitently throughout. I'm actually still annoyed with Blizzard for making Howl of Terror only have an 8 second fear length in PvE while keeping it as an 1.5 second cast (untalented, HoT is worse than Psychic Scream in PvE). Fear was a much different animal in 11/04 then it is today, in some senses this is a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the changes in PvP were needed (diminishing returns and break on damage), but the inclusion of Fear breakers into the game really hurt Warlocks and to a great extent Priests since Fear is the Priest's best defense.

As to deep Affliction only using Shadow Burn, this I will argue against you. There is plenty of time when your DoTs are running even with Corruption, UA, Siphon, Immolate, and CoA/D running (if you're not on CoS or CoE duty) to be casting Shadow Bolts even with movement, stuns, and silences (hello Gruul). You also forget to take into account Nightfall which will give you an instant Shadowbolt on a 4% chance on each Corruption tick.

Also, what a lot of classes fail to realize about Warlocks and health is the fact that our Health is our Mana. So while other caster classes look at us and go, "you have way too much health," they also fail to realize that if you took the health difference between our Health and their's and took the difference between our Mana and their's they'd realize we're just about even.

The problem I see with Deathcoil isn't so much as the spell itself, but the way it is used. I've seen way too many Warlocks use DC offensively instead of saving it for a defensive situation which is what it was meant for. Too many times when I've PvPed on my Hunter or my Shadow Priest I just shook my head after a Warlock DC'd me, and being that I play a Warlock mainly, I turned around and defeated them when they had better gear because I knew what to expect next.

Also, I don't know if people remember the haydays of MC when Warlocks topped the damage meters then as well, but what happened over time is Warlock DPS dropped off significantly and the DPS meters were topped by Rogues, Mages, Fury Warriors, and Hunters while Warlocks were struggling to get into the top 10 and you felt good if you broke the top 5. Depending on how things go, I could see history repeating itself and Warlock DPS could drop off again as other classes start coming up. Only time will tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if it occurs again.

Right now, I think the situation with Warlocks is really a wait and see and in a few months when more people have gotten deeper into the raiding scene we can revist this and go from there.

 

doogless

The only place I feel warlocks are grossly overpowered is in raids. They do more damage than mages, have more base HP, and provide important debuffs. The only reason to not stack your entire ranged group with warlocks is debuff issues, and that can be solved by having your excess warlocks spec destruction and putting them into a shadow priest group. VT + VE means as long as the priest is doing damage, the warlocks in his group will never even go close to OOM. Maybe it will change with the 5% Shadow Weaving nerf, but right now I blow away mages in equivalent gear (no, I don't use FSW) as any spec, and I don't mean that as a "omg I'm so leet" type of comment, I mean "this is stupid and broken that I provide this much group utility and destroy mages specced full fire." Who knows, maybe the mages in my guild suck, but it doesn't seem unique to me, most damage meters I see have warlocks consistently beating mages.

1v1 PvP warlocks are still going to blow people away, the fear nerf really isn't going to do much. I've pretty much given up that the game will ever be balanced for 1v1 PvP. Soul Link is a good example of this. It's god mode for 1v1 because you have 20% more health than anyone else, but required for 5v5 arenas because you have no way to break an assist train other than tanking until they decide to kill someone else. Death Coil is pretty much the same thing, if I use it while fighting 1v1, they have to be really good (or an undead rogue, lol) to still kill me, but when put in the context of group PvP it's powerful but not overpowered.

I'd say warlocks are a bit overpowered in 2v2 (because we have so much CC), good in 3v3, and about average in 5v5. They look like they suck in 5v5, but I think it's more that because warriors are so strong that basically every other DPS class looks gimp in comparison.

 

Snow

Honestly, in 1v1 PVP, it's the fel hunter that is overpowered. I've only played healing classes at 70(paladin, shaman) so my experience is no doubt skewed. But having a pet with inflated resistances, a fair bit of health, a stacking debuff when struck in melee, a full 8 second spell lockout (which is not on the gcd for the warlock, being a pet ability) and a dispel that heals? Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Consider the average warlock battle(fel hunter out) I experience 1v1:

After the initial grounding totem baiting(usually good for a few dot absorbs), usually the lock sends the pet after tremor totem, curse of tongues goes up, and I am feared(after I hopefully earth shock the first one). After I get dotted up, the fear breaks. At this point, my health is dropping and I have to heal, but I'm getting spell pushback from the felhunter, my quickest heal is 3.0 seconds, meaning the warlock has 4-5 seconds to fear, death coil, or spell lock me. I barely can do any damage at all because most of my nonfeared time is spent trying to stay alive. There's simply no way I can win the fight at that point.

I think the fragility of the fel hunter and succubus needs to be tuned, to make both equally appealing for pvp(assuming I am correct in my anecdotal observation that warlocks consider fel hunter >> succubus). Buff succubus hp a bit, and give her the extreme resistances(to give her an "anti-caster" side like the fel hunter's -AP buff). Remove the fel hunter's gross resistances and lower the hp a bit, so that killing it is a strategic option rather than a waste of time. Remove the fel hunter "heal on dispel" ability. I understand lore-wise, it eats magic, but right now the thing just seems way too strong. I really don't have a problem with a petless or succubus warlock, though they are still very strong - they more or less "feel" balanced, and the skill/gear of the player factors in more than just "lol spell lock." It's telling that 6/10 times warlocks run around with the fel hunter out, the other 3/10 being felguards.

 

Tahapenes

There's no reason IMO, the final fear before immunity is going to last 5 seconds, that means 3 DoTs on you if you were breaking Fear as soon as you were hit with it. You also have Counterspell, if you see the Warlock going for another Fear, hit the CS and you'll shutdown most of the Warlock's damage.

Dispel prior to UA was way too powerful against Affliction oriented Warlocks. Warlocks complained about this and rightly so. Why should a Warlock have to expend 1.5k mana to have it all wiped away very quickly and very easily at the expense of only a couple hundred mana (the first fix Blizzard implemented was to make dispells cost twice as much, but that didn't changed the situation). UA was the thing to made dispellers pause before just dispelling left and right and it was needed (dispelling is the primary thing that left a really bad taste in my mouth for playing a Warlock in PvP and why I don't PvP with this character anymore).

This synergy can also exist between a Fire Mage and a Incinerate Warlock. If you have two Warlocks in a 25 man raid, make sure one is using CoE and the other CoS that way all DPS casters benefit from the damage buff (and if you have a third Warlock and you're dealing with a boss that doesn't get huge benefits from AP increase, CoR for the physical DPSers).

 

Quasar

Two big things for me would be:
1) Deathcoil was put in place to help Warlocks against melee adversaries. So why does it have a 30 yard range?! It's not some "Oh crap get it off me" spell, it's anything the warlock wants. Spell interrupt, prefix to a Fear, unbreakable 30 yard mini-heal and breather... That just always rubs me the wrong way, especially when on a caster getting Deathcoiled from max range.

2) Healthstones in Arenas. One warlock on a 5v5 team means their whole team has a big health pot each, something no other composition gets. Two warlocks with staggered healthstones mean two. Granted this is a problem with the Arena system (one of many), but you can see how people shift the blame to warlocks for simply being allowed to do it.

JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?

 

duostrike

Mainly it's because blizzard has repeatedly removed weaknesses across the board from warlocks.

Can't get a fear off? Deathcoil
Having trouble with a caster? Spell lock now silences so you don't have to have any skill to interrupt someone.
Dots being dispelled? UA silences the dispeller and does damage to them

Classes should have weaknesses. Blizzard seems to think warlocks don't need them.

FYI: Mages hate the felguard because it's damn near impossible to frost nova him or cone of cold him with his 50% avoidance.

 

Monsanto

Disclaimer: At level 60, my pvp character was my warlock. My druid was pure resto until the expansion, and once I got my rank with her, I switched to my warlock because it was more fun, powerful, and offered more soloability in PvP. After the 2.0 patch I took advantage of the new honor system and got him the full set of high warlord gear and weapons. At that point I had 7 out of the 9 classes sitting at level 60 (everything but hunter and pally). I PvP'd as a destro lock until the 2.0 patch, when I specced affliction for the instant howl of terror. The warlock was my 3rd class to level 70 and I've been PvPing on him non-stop for honor to gear up for the arenas.

At level 60, warlock was hands down the easiest class to PvP with. There was not a single class that you were afraid of. Fury warriors with deathwish came the closest, but that was it. I understand that it's an article of faith to deny how powerful warlocks were at this stage of the game, but it was pretty obvious to warlocks and non-warlocks alike. As a destro lock, I ran with a succubus and would seduce someone, CoE, and then soulfire -> seduce -> immolate -> conflagrate -> shadowburn. Very few people could survive that. When Soulfire was down, it was a shadowbolt instead. When I specced affliction with the 2.0 patch, things became even easier. I used to sit in the road at Iceblood Graveyard in Alterac Valley and throw 4 dots on as many people riding past as I could. I could single-handedly cut the Alliance offense in half if no one dismounted to deal with me. Dealing with melee was a breeze with instant howl of terror. Post 2.0 the only classes I had problems with were hunters and ret paladins (remember, this was right after 2.0) and even those were probably fair fights.

So anyways, my point here is that warlocks were incredibly powerful at level 60. So powerful that there wasn't a single class you could point to as your natural predator. Warlocks were the sharks of WoW.

At level 70, warlocks are still incredibly powerful, but now there are at least some natural predators. Rogues with cloak of shadows can tear apart a warlock who doesn't have very good stam and resilience gear. Mortal strike warriors now have deathwish, for an additional 20 seconds of fear immunity, which is more than enough to kill a warlock.

Also at level 70, what people mean when they say "PvP" is entirely different. It used to mean topping the charts in AV, or pwning someone 1v1 in Arathi Basin. But no one cares about that stuff AT ALL anymore. PvP is synonymous with the arenas, 5v5 in particular. And in that venue, warlocks really did not prove to be overpowered at all. In fact, they proved to be underpowered, which was a shock to me, and I'm sure others. This was due to DoTs being dispellable, and warlocks (even soul link ones) not having outright immunities like a mage (iceblock), making them high-priority targets.

Looking ahead to the future, I am really curious to see how well warlocks do in 5v5 arenas in coming seasons. Unlike some of the other underpowered classes (hunters, rogues, druids), warlocks have great potential to compete with mages for the dps slot in the arenas. Reasons for this include: mages losing their monopoly on water, and warlocks surpassing a certain stam and resilience threshold where they cannot be killed so easily, and healthstones. I don't know if this will pan out, but I'm very curious and I am watching warlock performance with a close eye.

Anyways, I'm not sure what the point of this thread was, but that was my view on warlock past, present and future. I'm sure I'll get flamed regardless.

Druid: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...hol&n=Monzanto
Warrior: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n=Thundershaft
Warlock: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...gos&n=Valdamar

 

TheSilverHand

Fear is the least of your problems when it comes to CC. The reason I say this is because during the course of the fight, Fear will more likely than not save your life rather than end it. Once the Fear gets landed, even if you are at Melee range, the warlock in question will have to have talents that reduce the casting time of his Shadowbolt or talents that increase the range of the Shadowbolt so he can hit you. More likely than not, because of the 120% speed buff when you are feared, you are going to run out of range of his spells before he can hit you with them (barring dots, which are instant-cast).

 

◊ Kyth

But you don't have an issue with the synergy between fire mages and themselves, where they provide their own +15%? And now shadow damage is always 5% behind as far as that goes, with the hit to shadoweaving and no corresponding hit to scorch.

And isn't there a frost equivalent, winter's chill?

I'm curious why spriest/lock is so bad as to be ridiculous, but the other equivalent debuffs are just fine.


(you reference a "personal mana battery" as part of your evidence: you do realize that the spriest/lock thing is a debuff on the mob, and you benefit from the spriest mana return if you're in their group just like the warlock would, so they can be *your* "personal mana battery" too without affecting the spriest/lock synergy.)

 

Maegril

That's a benefit, though, not a drawback. Not only do locks have the ability to replenish their health directly (siphon) and indirectly (armor buff with health regen) but they get to make the tactical decision of "Which is more important to me right now, health or mana?" Imagine if every other class could store a chunk of their mana pool as HP. 12k mages with 6k mana and the ability to convert HP -> mana at the drop of a hat? Heck, I'd take that even without any innate ability to heal myself as a mage, right now.

(This says nothing of the fact that the change in stamina itemization cost means that it's actually cheaper to get mana from stamina in warlock gear than it is to get a comparable amount of mana from int as a warlock.)