1) Deathcoil. The problem I have with deathcoil is that it's not a fear, as you clearly indicated, it's a Horrify effect. trinket doesn't break it, etc. If used at the end series of a fear/dot/nuke chain, if your target is near death, it gives you those 3 secs of dot ticks and/or time to get your last bolt off, knowing that nothing, short of Ice Block/Pally Shield, will get them out of it.
2) Fear itself. Everyone says it lasts full duration. Locks say it hardly lasts anything. in the end, the problem is, it doesn't break near often enough on damage. Look at the other CC ability that everyone loves to compare it with - Polymorph. Not only does it HEAL you while you are sheeped and unable to control yourself, but it immediately breaks on damage. Since the durations of cc abilities are supposedly normalized in PvP, which is better - something that will heal your target to full while Polymorphed, or a fear effect, that you can still damage the player?
Now, granted, this solely isn't limited to Warlocks. Shadow Priests are pretty good at it too - fearing and dpsing while you are feared.
I also agree that Deathcoil isn't a horrible thing - it's a Warlock's get out of jail free card. Personally, I think either it should be a Fear effect, or should remove the healing portion of the ability...but that's just me.
But the ability to make someone lose control of themselves for that duration, while doing damage and they can't do much of anything (yes, you list things that will break fear) - which is nice, unless you're an undead frost mage and you can break out of all 3 fears....most others will still need to contend with death coil to load up and allow regular fear be cast, then be dotted/nuked down to be refeared...Seems like a problem to me.
We'll see how the patch changes that where there's a slightly increased chance to break...
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.)
Actually we calculated the dps loss from lifetapping over the course of a fight versus casting evoc and using mana gems, and I lost more dps from wasting my time lifetapping than did the mage. Now, yes, if they can't keep up their mana via pots, gems, and evoc, they need to downrank, and that finally does hit their dps. But it was a surprise to the mage I was talking to, when he realized that I lost far more dps from lifetapping than he does from his "long" evoc.
Lifetap isn't free, and comes at quite a the dps cost.
12k health, 10k health, 8k health... it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't change my longevity (like mana regen does). It doesn't change my dps. It doesn't change *anything* other than that I need "X" lifetaps worth of HP over whatever a mage would take on the same encounter.
So the "cost" of stamina really doesn't matter. The only way it's relevent is that I can ignore int if I feel like it, and end up getting gear with stamina since there's nothing else to get really, *that's* the bonus warlocks get (unless they are destruction and want the crit bonus, in which case hey guess what, we want the same int you mages have, plus we need to figure out how to get enough stamina to allow for some lifetapping.)
Siphon life is a talent. Not all warlocks have it.
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.
I don't really see this post conforming to the nature of the post in the OP however I'd like to point out of a few things:
1) There's a good possibility I'm playing my class wrong, but a lot of times I use DC to get folks off my rogue / healer who are about to die. Everyone always likes to pretend that DC is always up, and is spammable across multiple targets. The way the world works these days is multiple targets assist on warlocks, so DCing one off isn't really going to do you much good.
2) Regarding spell lock, is there anyone who doesn't have the talisman of the breaker? Additionally, it's anecdotal, but I can counter the resists people stack these days with CoShadows and Spell Pen gear, but shadow resists (nevermind talents) pretty much own the felhunter. If you're getting silenced by him, there's a good chance you're to blame. There are very simple steps that net very tangible results if CS is causing you that many problems.
3) Playing UA at any sort of competitive level requires a very strict gear set. Even this deep into season 1 unless you're on a very good arena team, and have accumulated in excess of 80,000 honor points worth of PvP gear, you do not have that gearset. The sunk cost for making UA a 5v5 worthy spec is excessive in my opinion. But then again, my arena teams suck - and my raking in 8K of honor in a day on WSG weekend, burns me out for the rest of the weekend. Though that probably just qualifies me as a PvE kitten or something.
4) Regarding the "damn near impossible" statement, in practice it's going to be just about 50%. My felguard gets kited to shit all day long pretty much everywhere I go (note: I respec'd 0 21 40 the other day to play around, but 99% of my time is spent as some derivative of 6 44 11).
Net net in general it's pretty tough to have unbiased discussions about the state of the warlock class with other casters - however I've always perceived warlocks to be caster killers by design, who just so happen to get ripped to shreds by melee. That doesn't stop me from QQing in /g about being stunlocked for 9500 HP while mounted when I forget to wear equip my PvP gear in AV, but that's always met with a cacaphony of QQmoreWarlockL2P.
Edit: @ Marthisdil, I wouldn't qualify the change to fear as "slight", but you're right, we'll see soon enough.
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.
The issue with fear is that it doesn't break on damage.
If you are sapped, polymorphed, sleeped or seduced it will break if a butterfly lands on you. While under the effect of fear/terror you can take thousands upon thousands of damage. I once had a Warlock drop of his mount from above me, and Deathcoil while falling. I lost at that point. I was then Feared, stacked with DoTs, Howl of Terrored, Shadowburned, and then I was dead. I never had controly of my character at any point, while six and a half thousand hp was removed from me.
A guildy has noted "Well, if you crit with a Shadowbolt it breaks..." No lie. But enough QQing.
I understand that fear cannot break on any damage. That would be crippling to a class that depends on DoTs, but some level of sanity is needed. One solution would be to have a damage cap, such as a percentage of a players health that could be removed while under the effect of fear.
But you don't have an issue with the synergy between fire mages and themselves, where they provide their own +15%?
That's not synergy - the mage would be doing the 15% extra damage regardless of the group composition. As a mage, if you're getting significant benefit from improved scorch, then you put talent points in it and it's going to be up no matter what.
The synergy (I hate that word) is when you put a warlock and a shadowpriest in the same group/raid, and the priest gains 10% damage from curse of shadows and the warlock gains 10% from shadow vulnerability and 5% from misery, that's 25% player-damage that didn't exist before. Pre-2.1 with the nerf to shadow weaving, it was 30%.
Other combinations have synergies too: mage/priest gets 5% (misery to the mage). Mage/firelock gets 25% also (10% coe 15% fire vuln), fire warlocks don't seem to be common/powerful enough for people to be upset about this atm, I guess.
And isn't there a frost equivalent, winter's chill?
No other class uses frost spells for serious nukes. A deep enough frost spec for winter's chill isn't competitive raid DPS as I understand it.
(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.)
I believe the reference is to the combination of vampiric embrace and vampiric touch, similar to how shadowpriest/paladin was very powerful when the paladin could turn the (over)healing into mana.
Last edited by tunah : 05/22/07 at 9:13 PM.
Reason: shadow weaving nerf, clarification on VE+VT, paragraphs, typo
The reason mages hate warlocks is because every mage has, at least once, jumped a lock at 10%, been skillcoiled, dotted, feared, trinketed, spell-locked, refeared and died while the lock drains life back to full.
Or dotted up from range, and watch a ock run around a pole exploiting LOS while their felpuppy keeps us silenced. Should it look like we are getting in range for an instacast, SKILLCOIL FTW.
Or attacked by a felguard with 50% resist, and basically soloed by a felguard while the warlocks repertoire of skills includes throwing up A corruption and then pressing drain life. Or sheeped the lock, killed the felguard, and had another one instasummoned.
Or seduce nuked by a destruction lock with burst damage that can exceed ours. Then we break out of seduce, manage to kill the succubus, and you become immune to our main school of magic with the most overpowered passive talent in the game.
And then had to listen to warlocks go into our forums and tell us we need to L2P or L2Stamina, or told we HAVE to spec iceblock in order to fight them, when every spec from a lock can wreck a mage.
The issue with fear is that it doesn't break on damage.
If you are sapped, polymorphed, sleeped or seduced it will break if a butterfly lands on you. While under the effect of fear/terror you can take thousands upon thousands of damage. I once had a Warlock drop of his mount from above me, and Deathcoil while falling. I lost at that point. I was then Feared, stacked with DoTs, Howl of Terrored, Shadowburned, and then I was dead. I never had controly of my character at any point, while six and a half thousand hp was removed from me.
A guildy has noted "Well, if you crit with a Shadowbolt it breaks..." No lie. But enough QQing.
I understand that fear cannot break on any damage. That would be crippling to a class that depends on DoTs, but some level of sanity is needed. One solution would be to have a damage cap, such as a percentage of a players health that could be removed while under the effect of fear.
In my OP I noted this fear breaking topic. I admit there are times when a fear lasted forever, and I pretty much fearlocked a guy: thought to myself "wow, that guy is gonna bitch on the forums." But those times are extremely rare. After the 2.1 change I imagine it will become nigh impossible to recreate the scenario you just described.
I do like your solution to a degree. But such a cap should probably scale with +dmg as well. And if it were that way, the heartbeat resists and chance to break on damage should probably be removed.
edit
Or seduce nuked by a destruction lock with burst damage that can exceed ours.
Be reasonable. Properly specced mage burst blows warlock burst out of the water 95% of the time. A massive gear differential would be the only way our burst would be better. Granted, your burst cannot easily kill us. But I think that's what Blizz was going for with TBC stamina changes.
Last edited by Bass : 05/22/07 at 9:18 PM.
Reason: Response while writing
I see two issues: fear, and unmitigable damage. I see two solutions: make fear break on any damage after 6 seconds (4 / 2 with diminishing returns). That would make fear a truly DEFENSIVE skill, which it should be imo. Second, make DoTs disappear when the caster dies. It'd still be unmitigable via resilience, and I can't imagine a way to make that happen without breaking the game, but at least when an aff lock DoTs your entire team you have some recourse for survival.
As a druid I don't find warlocks overpowered, I just find those two game mechanisms broken. Hunter fear is equally as annoying, though thankfully more avoidable, and being killed by SWP or ignite ticks from a dead enemy isn't really fun.
The reason mages hate warlocks is because every mage has, at least once, jumped a lock at 10%, been skillcoiled, dotted, feared, trinketed, spell-locked, refeared and died while the lock drains life back to full.
Or dotted up from range, and watch a ock run around a pole exploiting LOS while their felpuppy keeps us silenced. Should it look like we are getting in range for an instacast, SKILLCOIL FTW.
Or attacked by a felguard with 50% resist, and basically soloed by a felguard while the warlocks repertoire of skills includes throwing up A corruption and then pressing drain life. Or sheeped the lock, killed the felguard, and had another one instasummoned.
Or seduce nuked by a destruction lock with burst damage that can exceed ours.
And then had to listen to warlocks go into our forums and tell us we need to L2P or L2Stamina, or told we HAVE to spec iceblock in order to fight them, when every spec from a lock can wreck a mage.
Warlocks are caster killers. Also, it's worth mentioning that you can't have both felguard and felhunter out at the same time, it's also possible to bait a CS, then kill a warlock w/in the 30 second cooldown. Or that neither affliction nor demon have any burst that's even worth talking about. Or that instant summon isn't really instant, can be CS'd and is a 15 min CD.
As far as having to spec ice block, be glad that's only a 21st talent in my opinion. I have to spent 44 talent points (realisitically) to get a fraction of situational survivability that a mage has. Though, as soon as my pet gets banished, I'm beyond useless.
In any case, this exact same argument could be made by warriors in relation to mages. Now, I don't know if rank1 frost bolt still owns them, but the match up is probably on the same level.
That's not synergy - the mage would be doing the 15% extra damage regardless of the group composition. As a mage, if you're getting significant benefit from improved scorch, then you put talent points in it and it's going to be up no matter what.
Not actually true, since only one mage needs to maintain the scorch stack, so the other mages get the free dps without having to spend time casting scorch.
In a less restrictive definition of synergy in fact, they're exactly the same: warlock + shadowpriest = more dps than either alone. firemage + firemage = more dps than either alone. Same thing. It's semantics whether they're the same class or the different class: you still have everyone else getting a big damage bonus from the efforts of one person.
Frost is harder to talk about, since it depends on spec balancing -- but I know that's exactly what our frost mages do (not all of them pick up winter's chill.)
Personally I always found the fact that we had to depend on an external class to be far less overpowered than a class who can create their own debuff, and then you can add in extra members of that class with no loss to maintain the debuff and just the benefit. It means warlocks only "shine" really in big raids, and when you happen to have a shadow priest. Any slight change to that shadow priest utility such that they're no longer guaranteed on raids (like pre-2.0) and we won't be seeing shadoweaving. Firemages? You'll always be able to provide that debuff for yourselves.
I believe the reference is to the combination of vampiric embrace and vampiric touch, similar to how shadowpriest/paladin was very powerful when the paladin could turn the (over)healing into mana.
Except we *can't* turn overhealing into mana.
Seriously, I'm not sure people actually think about the implementation of lifetap. It takes 1.5 seconds, I cast it once every 11 seconds. I don't magically get mana when someone heals me. I don't just simply cast off of my HP bar. I get the same amount out of that shadow priest that mages do (in fact most guilds won't even give them to warlocks because the warlocks can "just" lifetap, and the mages can't, so the warlocks take the dps hit of lifetapping and the mages skip evoc.) Then we're also likely to be missing out on actual group-oriented buffs, like the elemental shaman (if you run with one. We do.)
It's the same situation as a mage. We do not get any more mana out of a shadow priest in the group than a mage does.
Last edited by Kyth : 05/22/07 at 9:24 PM.
Reason: added second quote
In my OP I noted this fear breaking topic. I admit there are times when a fear lasted forever, and I pretty much fearlocked a guy: thought to myself "wow, that guy is gonna bitch on the forums." But those times are extremely rare. After the 2.1 change I imagine it will become nigh impossible to recreate the scenario you just described.
I do like your solution to a degree. But such a cap should probably scale with +dmg as well. And if it were that way, the heartbeat resists and chance to break on damage should probably be removed.
edit
Be reasonable. Properly specced mage burst blows warlock burst out of the water 95% of the time.
I think in my case it was the combination of terror and fear that kept the "fearlock" going. I also understand that it's not common and that if I was prepared for it I could have done something (PvP trinket).
This may be a non-issue as we speak, I haven't had a chance to test the new changes to fear. A Warlocks place on the DPS meters will also have to be re-evaluated with the Spriest synergy nerf and the change to glancing blows.
We'll see. But I will say that since the release of TBC Warlocks have been enjoying their day in the sun.
Edit: I will also add that I don't think any class can match the burst DPS of a properly specced mage. Probably not even close.
Shadow Priests are better mana batteries for warlocks than they are for mages because nine times out of ten, Vampiric Embrace is wasted on the mage, whereas it provides even more mana for warlocks than Vampiric Touch does for a mage -- and warlocks get both.
The stamina thing is a great advantage, as has been said. Additionally it provides the ability to be safe. A warlock with 10k health and 5k mana is not the same thing as a mage with 5k health and 10k mana. A warlock will survive a 6k aoe, and a mage won't. A warlock can always get more mana from their large health, but a mage can't get health from their mana (with the exception of the woefully inefficient, nonscaling mana shield which will barely absorb a DOT tick these days).
The other problem is simply utility. Banish. Fear. Enslave. Curse of Exhaustion. How many mobs can a warlock take out of the equation at once? I've seen a warlock solo a 5 pull in heroic slave pens. Having two warlocks on Aran makes the encounter trivial. More warlocks on Magtheridon is great, from what I hear. There are undoubtedly more encounters along these lines. There's not a single thing in Karazhan that a mage can sheep. A mage in Karazhan can basically always be swapped for a warlock. Seed of Corruption is the best AOE in the game.
Warlocks are just always about choice. There's very few situations where a warlock will be useless. They can change their curse, they can change their pet, they can seduce an add if a humanoid, banish it if a demon or elemental, or fear if not undead. Or all three at once to separate targets. They have a personal offtank. Their primary stat scales better than all other class's primary stat, and gives more benefit in the first place.
Damage isn't even the issue. It's the fundamental mechanics of the warlock that make it so powerful and versatile. Most of the spells have no drawbacks.
What can be done? Well, the problem is the warlock is an incredibly fun class to play (mine is only 40), with heaps of options, and a combat routine beyond "spam frostbolt". It would be dumb to make them unfun just to assuage the other classes. Blizzard needs to bring the other classes up to that level of versatility and complexity. Let mages track elementals and have brilliance aura. Let hunters craft their own arrows. Let Shamans have some actual melee attacks. Give Druids a proactive heal (not rejuvenation). Make every class have more special things about them -- they don't even have to affect combat. The worst thing in this game is to feel like you're a duplicate of another class, only worse -- that you bring nothing unique to the table.
Most people rage from the DoT's, it takes no skill whats-o-ever to tab and throw 2-3 DoT's on a single target. Combine the capabilities of a Warlock with a good player and the outcome is usually pretty nasty.
Warlocks are caster killers. Also, it's worth mentioning that you can't have both felguard and felhunter out at the same time, it's also possible to bait a CS, then kill a warlock w/in the 30 second cooldown. Or that neither affliction nor demon have any burst that's even worth talking about. Or that instant summon isn't really instant, can be CS'd and is a 15 min CD.
As far as having to spec ice block, be glad that's only a 21st talent in my opinion. I have to spent 44 talent points (realisitically) to get a fraction of situational survivability that a mage has. Though, as soon as my pet gets banished, I'm beyond useless.
In any case, this exact same argument could be made by warriors in relation to mages. Now, I don't know if rank1 frost bolt still owns them, but the match up is probably on the same level.
Another thing that irritates mages is the standard response that "warlocks are caster killers." :P Additionally, I am aware that you can only have one pet out- that is why I said "or." I don't fear the mythical 41/41/41 warlocks- the 41/020 or 0/41/20 are nasty enough, and they are real.
As to warrior v. mage, we can still hold our own against most warriors. The gap, however has closed. Make one mistake these days against a warrior, and you are dead, and dead quick. Warriors running around with Deep Thunder and 2 minute trinkets and hamstring and spell reflect and loads of resilience and 5/5 mace spec, and the gap has closed. I used to get furious with myself if I died to a warrior. Now, it happens more than most mages will admit.
And that is just it. Mages look across the aisle, and see all of our former "easier" fights are much, much closer, while the warlock seems to be just as dominant versus everyone but UD rogues. In addition to the dominance in pvp (I am just resigned to the fact that a fire mage can not beat a good lock, an average lock is 50/50) it is the little insults:
no comparable nerf to your talented nukes
the new dominance of locks in a raid environment (which I like- I like killing bosses, thank you, the more dps the better)
the nerfs to the frost tree
the ever popular L2P catcalls
no shadow resistant bosses
the fact that most of the new fights are mobile and really favor DOT classes
the fact that mana gems and healthstones share a cooldown
Factor all that in and mages have EVERY right to be at best jealous of locks, at worst, downright hateful.
Depending on how many times I get owned by locks in BG on any particular day, I go from one to the other. Not to mention that in my battlegroup, there are a million locks. I did WSG dozens of time this past weekend, and on half the occasions at least 4 of the opposing faction were locks. The only saving grace is that a lot of them are FOTM rolls (I get excited when I see a BE lock, I know that one is dead), and are really terrible.
I don't even know what this means. What are all the mage spells that have drawbacks such that warlocks have none?
When I'm providing those debuffs you guys like (CoE) I can't do CoA which is 13-17% of my dps.
If I am providing blood pact, I have to be one of the builds that doesn't want to sacrifice a pet or use a different pet, which means if I *am* that spec I lose dps.
Lifetap costs both time and HP -- more time than gems+evoc do, and the HP means I have to make sure I have more HP than a mage does on any given fight.
My fast-cast spell, shadowburn, is on a 15-second cooldown and requires a soulshard.
My equivalent of pyroblast requires a soulshard and is on a cooldown.
My burst option, conflag, is on a cooldown and ends up actually being lower dps than *not* using it, because it consumes the last tick of a dot.
Incinerate requires that you have previously cast immolate on the target if you want it to come close to the dps of shadowbolt, and there's no "improved incinerate" option to let it scale as well as frostbolt, fireball, and shadowbolt.
Providing healthstones and soulstones both requires soulshards, which I can't just cast a bunch up ahead of time. I spend 20-45 minutes each raid collecting the shards I need. They don't stack, so I carry almost nothing with me other than about 70 shards on a raid night.
Yes, warlock is a fun, twitchy class.
But the only thing that changed in raids between 1.0 and 2.0 is that the debuff limit was lifted, and dots actually scale decently now. Nothing else has changed.
Pre-1.0 mages had far more of a monopoly on caster raid utility. It's nice that warlocks are more useful now.
Originally Posted by Cwealm
In addition to the dominance in pvp (I am just resigned to the fact that a fire mage can not beat a good lock, an average lock is 50/50) it is the little insults:
no comparable nerf to your talented nukes
How fast people forget. Our dots got nerfed (in terms of what they gain from damage gear) long before your nukes did, and for more than 10%.
The other problem is simply utility. Banish. Fear. Enslave. Curse of Exhaustion. How many mobs can a warlock take out of the equation at once? I've seen a warlock solo a 5 pull in heroic slave pens. Having two warlocks on Aran makes the encounter trivial. More warlocks on Magtheridon is great, from what I hear. There are undoubtedly more encounters along these lines. There's not a single thing in Karazhan that a mage can sheep. A mage in Karazhan can basically always be swapped for a warlock. Seed of Corruption is the best AOE in the game.
In fact, I have a holy pally that is revered with Violet Eye because on occasions where my group is short healing, I pop on and drop the mage, and usually we invite a second or third lock to replace the mage. I then make 300 water and disperse them, hop on the pally, and we do not miss a beat. No one needs the AB, and the only thing that is slightly more irritating is no frost nova on some trash mob pulls, but hey- I can always BOP the locks.
We can and do raid without a mage. Frequently. We wouldn't and couldn't without a lock.
I actually think warlocks are underpowered in 5v5 pvp.. which is a big topic. They are like that really big, heavy hitting guy in traditional fighting games who is impossibly slow and flimsy as hell, but brutal if he ever lands a hit. That's what warlocks are like. Inherently, warlocks have so much offense and so little defense it's comical.
But the problem can be put much simpler. Fear is too good, but warlocks have nothing else. You only need counter one of the warlock's abilities to claim an undeniable advantage (fear/dc). At the same time, a warlock only needs land a successful, non-broken fear to claim an extreme advantage and most likely win. This should be toned down, and different defensive abilities added so that warlocks do not have nearly *everything* wrapped up into a singular ability.
From looking at a lot of people's posts here there's little understanding of how the Fear mechanics work and how Deathcoil was intended to be used.
Fear does break on damage, but the lower the overall damage the Warlock has, the less likely it is to break. As Kyth noted elsewhere, as +spell damage increase, fear break also increases. So, with lower +damage fear will last longer, but as +damage scales upward fear will last less time and break more often. From what I have noticed and other Warlocks have noticed, there seems to be a DPS threshold for fear breaking as well. I've seen quotes that in PvP the fear threshold is 500 DPS (in PvE is about 3 times this) and this information was found prior to 2.0 and tBC, so the thresholds may be different now due to the increase in spell base damage (I would say it's probably about double to 2.5 times as much now).
In the case of Deathcoil, this comes back to Warlocks using Deathcoil in a way unintended by Blizzard. Blizzard intended Deathcoil to be used in a defensive manner, either to someone or something off you or one of your party members. What ends up happening is you see a large number of Warlocks using it offensively in PvP by trying to get in the first shot. I doubt Blizzard will ever change it because if they do, it would be hard to find an adequate defense (Fear really isn't defensive, it is more offensive, Howl of Terror can go either way).
How fast people forget. Our dots got nerfed (in terms of what they gain from damage gear) long before your nukes did, and for more than 10%.
Unless I am mistaken, one DOT got nerfed slightly, one got buffed, and curse of doom and siphon life were both buffed rather significantly.
Comparing a slight nerf coupled with amazing buffs to something that makes up a fraction of your total dps to an across the board nerf to our MAIN nukes is not the same thing at all.
My only real issue with fear and deathcoil is how it messes with your camera so much and deselects your target. So a 4-5 second fear turns into 6-8 seconds depending on how quick I get my bearings back/what geometry I'm now stuck on. Maybe I hate it so much because it's compounded by getting deadzoned, but I imagine other classes also get irritated by it.
the new dominance of locks in a raid environment (which I like- I like killing bosses, thank you, the more dps the better)
This is one comment I think people need to step back and wait and see. I don't know how many people remember what it was like early on in MC where Warlocks typically were the top of the DPS charts, but as time went on and people progressed through MC to BWL to AQ and finally into Naxx we saw Warlocks take a pretty severe slide in DPS until 2.0 came about. Prior to 2.0 a Warlock was having a good night if they could crack the top 5 DPS in AQ or Naxx, but in MC the Warlock was king and pretty much topped the DPS charts there. What we may be seeing right now is history repeating itself, the only way we'll really know for sure is see what happens as people get deeper into The Eye and start making headway into Mt Hyjal and Black Temple. Also, with the changes to the way melee is handled, Rogues will probably get a lot of help in DPS with reduction in the cleaves and sweeping strikes that a lot of mobs have been throwing around.
While I can kill almost anyone in 20 seconds, they can kill me in less than 10 if they can close the gap and will die with me if they don't take care of the dots I throw on them. Is this fair?
Absolutely. Other classes' spells don't vanish after their deaths and I spent the mana on them. I also sacrifice almost all my passive defenses in order to spec so that my dots can do damage.
As much as warlocks are designed to kill classes that are nearly unstoppable to many other classes, especially in pvp, they're unique in that they can hold players accountable for their actions and force them to rethink their standard play strategies. Many of the spells and strategies I'm thinking of are new to BC and warlocks aren't the only ones that have them, but the class has more of them than any other in the game. Because people aren't used to this, they find the skill that is the most noticable (something that causes them to lose control of their character) and scream that it's overpowered.
It does seem like half the time I kill someone in large-scale pvp, they do it to themselves or someone else does it to them. Think UA is overpowered because it crit you for 5k? Stop spamming cleanse! Kinda funny, but if you read the combat log for a UA dispel, it says "your UA does X damage to yourself." You do it to yourself! Think seed of corruption is overpowered? Maybe you should start directing your anger at the guy standing next to you who refuses to get out of the way instead of at the warlock class. Annoyed because you died after you killed a Warlock who dotted you up? Sit down and eat something! It's not that difficult.
And to deathcoil being intended as a "defensive" spell: Did blizzard ever say that Warlocks are not using it the way it's supposed to be used? It's like saying frostbolt is not intended to be a nuke, but a defensive snare only. It's one of the tools at a lock's disposal and they should be able to use it in any situation they deem applicable. I will use deathcoil whenever I think I need to use it- whether it be offensively or defensively. I also use imp howl of terror offensively and psychic scream offensively on my priest when I feel like it, but I do so well aware of the fact that I will have no defenses whatsoever until the cooldown has finished.
A mage can only cast fireball over and over. A warlock can lay down 3-5 dots and then cast shadowbolt at the same time.
For every spell damage warlocks get like 2-4 effective spell damage. It will be disgusting once people start hitting 1500-2000 spell damage months from now.
Unless I am mistaken, one DOT got nerfed slightly, one got buffed, and curse of doom and siphon life were both buffed rather significantly.
Comparing a slight nerf coupled with amazing buffs to something that makes up a fraction of your total dps to an across the board nerf to our MAIN nukes is not the same thing at all.
You're mistaken. They were buffed, and then the bread-and-butter dot was nerfed severely, along with both curses. There was never a subsequent buff. Siphon life is only *barely* more dps than a nuke, I very rarely cast it.
And dots are 70% of an affliction warlock's dps. (and their nukes are only 50% damage increase on a crit, plus low crit rate because crits add nothing to dots.) So yes technically it's a fraction, but it's an extremely large fraction.
Personally I'd far prefer the dots returned to their previous state and our nukes take a nice little 10% nerf, that would sit *very* well with me .
Either way it's a silly argument -- no one ever got anywhere taking two small slices of two classes and crying "OMG THEY'RE NOT EQUAL!!!" All I'm saying is, you stated warlock nukes hadn't received any nerfs and in fact we did to your dots, and they were earlier in the cycle, and they were quite substantial.
(edit) just looking at some WWS's from past raids right now, and I see our mages often clocking in with around 70% (64-79% specifically) of their damage coming from their main nuke, which matches up with the affliction lock and dots (which is what everyone complains about in raids.) Things like ignites, AB, etc. making up the rest of the dps. Maybe our mages aren't normal though, and most mages just spam the one spell for all of Gruul or Mag.
If they are normal though, then it's a fraction both classes, eh?
I could make a similar set of mage vs. locks complaints, and point out things like how our tier bonuses are all far worse than yours (e.g. your frostbolt gets 5% dps increase, our shadowbolt gets 6% but no lock spec casts shadowbolt enough such that that 6%, modified by percent-of-damage-done-by-shadowbolt, will equal a 5% dps increase.) But this thread is going downhill enough already anyways, not much is distinguishing it so far from a General Forums thread other than capitalization and punctuation.
Originally Posted by Azurai
Locks have real scaling issues right now.
A mage can only cast fireball over and over. A warlock can lay down 3-5 dots and then cast shadowbolt at the same time.
For every spell damage warlocks get like 2-4 effective spell damage. It will be disgusting once people start hitting 1500-2000 spell damage months from now.
Is this actually true? Can someone with more MathFu than I verify it?
Just using the lock spreadsheet, I get more dps gains out of a single point of damage when I use a nuke-based spec than a dot-based spec. Dots don't scale very well for damage relative to their cast time, and crit never affects them nor does spell haste.
(do they still have the bug where they take a double-hit from resists on the mob also? I remember that at tbc launch.)
From looking at a lot of people's posts here there's little understanding of how the Fear mechanics work and how Deathcoil was intended to be used.
Fear does break on damage, but the lower the overall damage the Warlock has, the less likely it is to break. As Kyth noted elsewhere, as +spell damage increase, fear break also increases. So, with lower +damage fear will last longer, but as +damage scales upward fear will last less time and break more often. From what I have noticed and other Warlocks have noticed, there seems to be a DPS threshold for fear breaking as well. I've seen quotes that in PvP the fear threshold is 500 DPS (in PvE is about 3 times this) and this information was found prior to 2.0 and tBC, so the thresholds may be different now due to the increase in spell base damage (I would say it's probably about double to 2.5 times as much now).
In the case of Deathcoil, this comes back to Warlocks using Deathcoil in a way unintended by Blizzard. Blizzard intended Deathcoil to be used in a defensive manner, either to someone or something off you or one of your party members. What ends up happening is you see a large number of Warlocks using it offensively in PvP by trying to get in the first shot. I doubt Blizzard will ever change it because if they do, it would be hard to find an adequate defense (Fear really isn't defensive, it is more offensive, Howl of Terror can go either way).
I gave you a fix for deathcoil that still let's it be DEFENSIVE in nature. Remove the heal and/or make it a fear so it's on the same DR as the other fears.
Deathcoil, right now, as it is, is a 4th fear that you can't do anything about unless you spec 21 points in frost, or are a Paladin.
As far as your +damage point - by making it a chance to break on damage, and albeit, before this patch, a seemingly insignificant chance compared to other CC abilities...still doesn't negate the fact that unless you are an undead frost mage, you're gonna be relatively dead by the time you're done being out of control of yourself.
I'm really waiting for all the locks to tell everyone else "wear shadow resist"...hehe
05/22/07, 8:55 PM
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