Fire vuln stacks up to 5 in the first 10 seconds of a fight where you don't want to go full bore anyway for fear of a giant fireball crit. Thereafter it's one scorch every 25 seconds to make sure the stack goes up. So the mage/mage synergy through imp scorch is maybe 5%.

1) this synergy is worth ~10%, compared to the 30%+ (forgot imp sbolt) complained about.

2) it means at least one person speccing for suboptimal damage. Winter's chill is pretty deep frost, and deep frost doesn't do competitive damage.

You're comparing apples with oranges - warlocks have debuffs like this too, see curse of shadows.

Right, the issue with these relationships between classes is that if for the sake of argument, mages and warlocks are designed to do equal dps, then either you balance that with a shadowpriest (and the warlock falls behind when it's missing), or without a shadowpriest (and the warlock is ahead when it's present), or some sort of medium so that group-dependency is both a strength and a weakness (like gear dependency for warriors, I could ramble here). The implicit assumption people make when complaining about the synergy is that shadow damage was balanced without it in mind, and from reports of spriest/warlock damage in 25 man raids that seemed to be the case. (I wouldn't know first hand, small guild).

Short version: when you have classes whose DPS varies a lot with group composition, and classes whose DPS doesn't, it's hard to balance the two.

Overhealing was in reference to paladins. Warlocks can turn healing into mana with life tap. Yes, it takes time. Other casters cannot and so in the absence of AOE they get no benefit from VE.

That said, we put a fire mage into the spriest group over our afflic lock simply because our mages have mana problems on long fights and our lock doesn't. I gather this is partly a spec thing, we don't have any destro/demon types. The synergy is certainly less when the warlock doesn't have significant issues with mana.
[/quote]

The previous equation for dot coefficient was duration/15*100% duration was capped at 15 but that removed.
So the dot coefficients changed to, they were later changed to
Corruption 120% - > 94%
Curse of Agony 160% - > 120%
Siphon Life 100%
Curse of Doom 400% -> 200%

So yes dots got nerfed from their buffed form.

Mages and warlocks both have coefficient increasing talents. Yes the warlock decrease cast time talent doesn't decrease the spell coefficient. However you must remember that while shadowbolt gets 20% more from +dmg in the destruction tree it doesn't get any other percentage increases from the destruction tree apart from imp shadowbolt. Incinerate gets 10% from firepower and then gets 20% coefficient but it still scales slower with +dmg due to its cast time. You can do the weird spec of 21/40 and get another 15% to either fire or shadow.

Fire mages get higher damage crits, 15% from improved scorch, 10% from firepower, 3% from playing with fire along with 5% coefficient increase overall.

So complaining about coefficient nerfs without reference to the tree that surrounds it is silly.

Mage burst damage is FAR beyond warlock. A warlock has 3 instant damage spells conflag, death coil and shadow burn. Conflag requires a cast time spell first death coil is a 2 minute cooldown and has low damage with no 2* critical and shadowburn is 15 second cooldown and has no increase damage talent in destruction. A mage can AP fireblast, Pom pyro, blastwave, AE, AE, fireblast.

We have FOUR fear spells or fear-like abilities with no counters except for pally bubbles and ice block? What happened to the warrior class? My warrior has three fear breaks, alone. Were they nerfed? And where do I sign up for this fourth spell?!?!

I was pushing 1500dps easy on our Al'ar kill stage 1 yesterday. Shadowbolt was over 85% of my damage, CoD the rest. I'd wear that set in a heartbeat. I'm just disappointed that our sets are so heavily geared towards destro/demo with no real high spell damage alternatives. I guess they are trying to keep Shadow Priests in check with non set gear but I see no reason they couldn't have made 2 sets to please both crowds.

Quite frankly we are overpowered in PVE. While I realize that the only Mage Spec worth a shit is fire, It was still a bit whacked to see 4 warlocks pulling literally 200,000 more damage than any other class on Al'ar.

I'd like to see how the melee changes fall out, as well as how the classes scale with gear. I don't know enough about the later game to have an opinion on the Al'ar fight in particular.

I think mages need a buff -- but it's tough, because if mages are peers with locks on interrupt-based fights, then they'll utterly own them on every other fight and neither class should be in a position where locks were in Naxx (and hunters are now) where you don't want to bring them. I'm also very worried about how these "zomg amazing" affliction locks are going to scale given how gear goes (as you note in the bit I didn't quote).

I just get very tired of threads like this with misinformation all over the place -- I'm probably stopping with this reply, because it's not going anywhere, it's just a whine-thread about fear, and mages fussing that they're not always top spots. There's little constructive discussion here, and nothing new. There's a lot of tunnel vision in all classes, where people only notice nerfs to their own class, or want to compare only narrow aspects (see the post about two posts up talking about various coefficient-changing talents, a very good post.)

Bits like "warlocks have no downsides to any of their spells!" -- when as you pointed out, 15% of your damage came from a curse that you couldn't have used if you were doing one of the other curses. 2-3 of your warlocks on any encounter take a base 15% damage drop (average) to provide the utility.

That's part of what makes people so angry. The DoT coefficients were nerfed fairly hard, and with all of the various synergies and gear your typical warlock still butchers everything that they come in contact with whether it be PvP or raiding.

He's talking about the coefficient nerf that took place during TBC beta, which shaved about 20% off the damage the DoTs were doing. If you think Affliction warlocks are bad now, well, you haven't seen anything. Same with Shadow Priests.

10/48/3 "The Magebuild to be(tm)"
Fireball modifiers: 3.5/3.0 * 0.9 * 1.15 * 1.1 * 1.03 * 1.15 * 1.04 * 1.05 * 1.1.

Imp fireball is the 3.5/3.0 * 0.9 part, 1.15 imp scorch, 1.1 firepower, 1.03 playing with fire, 1.15 emp. fireball, 1.04 molten fury (20% damage increase, 20% time of the fight, actually worse due to execute damage increase shortening the last 20%), 1.05 misery, 1.1 coe
Total Coefficient: 1.636

Deep Destro Nukebuild for warlock:
Shadowbolt: 3.0/2.5 * 1.1* 1.2 * 1.05 * 1.1
3.0/2.5 is bane, 1.1 shadow weaving, 1.2 shadow and flame, 1.05 misery, 1.1 cos
Total Coefficient: 1.830

Incinerate: 1.1 * 1.15 * 1.2 * 1.05 * 1.1
1.1 is emberstorm, 1.15 is imp scorch, 1.2 is S&F, 1.05 is misery, 1.1 is coe
Total Coefficient: 1.753

Sot both warlock nukes scale considerably better than mages primary nuke! Ok, we should probably add the crit modifiers: 2.1 for mage, and 2.0 for Deep destro warlock. And that warlock gets 5% crit from talents, while mage gets 9% crit and 3% hit from such build. To make calculation easier, I'm assuming that 5% crit is 5% increase in coefficient for warlock and 9% crit is 0.09*1.1 = 9.9% increase for mage and 3% hit is 3% increase for mage, but these should be calculated additevely due to hit table system.

Mage total coefficient: 1.636 * 1.129 = 1.847
Lock Sbolt coefficient: 1.830 * 1.05 = 1.921
Lock Incinerate coef: 1.753 * 1.05 = 1.841

Now, I have to admit that mages scale better when increasing crit due to ingnite being 2.1x crits, but shadowbolt scaling should still be faster than fireball scaling. Not to mention that due to ISB (too hard to model here) sbolt scaling for crit is probably about on par with fireballs crit scaling. AND the possibility of 0/21/40 build is still there, giving locks still another 15% increase to scaling coefficient, so by sacrificing imp, even incinerate surpasses fireball scaling! And all this while you still have dots like immolate, and doom/agony, which even with 0 points in affliction are better ways to convert +dmg to actual DPS than nuking. (Not that every lock could use doom)

Affliction specs... maybe some other time. But atleast it seems that destro build scale faster than fireball for raw dps. Now the question stands if mage's better manaefficiency can give us edge due to 'locks having to lifetap every now and then? The answer is not clear, but considering that most bosses in TBC include movement, lifetapping doesn't necessarily mean losing DPS time at all! Not to mention that you can still cast Immolate that keeps ticking while your run / lifetap.

Also, DS/Destro still has the option to sac Felhunter, which removes much of the lifetapping.

Quick Note: Empowered Fireball and the warlock equivalent (as well as the base +dmg coefficient) are not a flat 1.15 or 1.20 as they affect only the +dmg portion of the spell and not the base damage. This makes the increase with them larger the more +dmg you have, making it unfortunately not modellable in a generic way.

Regarding Fear, people cry about it because it's fucking ridiculous. If it sticks for 6+ seconds 1v1 you've won the fight if it was anywhere close to an even match to begin with. If it sticks, Warlocks win. For Priests it's basically the same. The kicker is that Warlocks need this spell because it's designed as their primary defence. Without it (or DC), melee eat them for lunch. Locks have the worst armor in the game and no escape abilities. It's an entirely broken mechanic but it's only ever going to be replaced, not removed. Fear is obscenely effective when it works, so people need a counter to it. But because they gave most classes some counter to Fear then Warlocks were left defenceless with just Fear. So, forth from the abyss came Death Coil. It's been said before but Warlocks really need an alternative to Fear in PvP, and I wouldn't miss Fear if I never saw it again.

Yeah, right. Food is not going to fix Corr, CoA and Siphon (UA usually wears off first and is hardest to reapply) ticking you down from 20%. I don't think it's unfair, that's how I kill half the Warriors MS/DW (fuck MS+DW Warriors btw...) trying to gank my alt in Nagrand, but it's not like everyone can counter dots just like that.

All of these are meant to be used for just measuring how classes scale for increased +dmg, they don't really take basedamage of the spells into account. So for scaling's perspective they are flat modifiers. For whole spell damage, however, they are not.

I'm more conserned about the fact that warlocks seem to scale better than mages. And as 'locks already surpass or are atleast on same level than mages in pure damage, it's clear that unless we (on behalf of every other dps class) get buffed, or warlocks nerfed, we'll keep on falling behind the longer endgame progresses. Not to mention that with exactly the same gear, warlock has 100 +dmg more, which together with faster +dmg scaling really gives an edge over mages.

Pretty much exactly how I feel, closing the range to 15 yards would bring it into line with what (I feel) it was originally meant for.

Zepi: I'm not sure I understand the way you're setting up those coefficients. For starters, why do you have 3.5/casttime, rather than cast time/3.5? Second, Shadow & Flame and Empowered Fireball are flat modifiers (additive) rather than multiplicative. Third, I thought that modifiers from debuffs on the mob stacked additively before they multiplied the damage of the spell landing on the mob (possibly talents stack additively as well?)

This significantly changes the outcome of the scaling equations.

Edit:
Nevermind about the cast time thing, I guess you're calculating +damage coefficient over time rather than per cast.

The numbers I wind up with by changing the above are that Fireball scales 83.66% better with the listed talents/debuffs, Incinerate scales 83.05% better, and Shadow Bolt scales 85% better. So yes, Shadow Bolt gets very slightly more +damage per second casting than Fireball does, but not much; in fact you'd only see a 1 dps difference every 75 spell damage.

The single biggest advantage I see myself as having in PvP? People don't counter me. I deadzone hunters for 90% of the fight without fear. I rarely get slowed in any, way, shape or form. I kite a hell of a lot of melee classes (Which...shouldn't you be slowing me anyway?). Mages throw out a random counterspell when I'm not casting anything.

The only class I really feel overpowered against is druids. I have no idea what they can ever do to win. Whereas most classes I look back on the fight and go "Oh, shoulda kicked my drain life."

I was actually going to come into this thread and quote your front page:
Obviously satirical (I hope!), but it should get the point across, as you all are one of the top guilds in the country/world. It's hard to argue that Warlocks aren't out of whack right now in the PvE end game. I have a very difficult time coming up with drawbacks for warlocks in raid. Their damage output is one of, if not the best, their sustainability is infinite, their utility is very high (curse of <insert your favorite curse here> plus healthstones, soulstones, group stam buff when an imp is out) and their survivability is probably only outdone by hunters for a dps class.

I dunno, when I think about class balance, I tend to break things down into a class' primary role, survivability, and everything else they bring to the table. As the "everything else" stuff increases in quantity and quality, the class' ability to fill their primary role, or their survivability, should decrease. As it stands right now, Warlocks are at the top of all their categories, and that sends up all kinds of red flags that something is drastically wrong.

ahh never mind.

Let's put some numbers to the unquantified assessments made above:
On longer bossfights as a 0/21/40, I have to spend 15% of my time lifetapping.
Well, let's take Gruul as an example. When am I running in the Gruul encounter? Mostly after the Ground Slam. Do I want to lifetap at this time, with the imminent Shatter?

I am aware this is just one specific example, as I have not seen anything of SSC yet.
Can we please keep this stupid and wrong argument of "your DoTs allow you to do damage while you are moving" out of the discussion?

If Blizzard decided to change Corruption into an instant cast direct damage spell that did the same damage as Corruption does now, and gave it an 18 second cooldown, Warlock DPS would not change one bit. (Well, technically we would have fewer problems with the debuff liit, but that was not the point.)

What makes DoT based builds good in movement heavy fights is NOT the fact that the DoTs keep ticking while you are running, it is the fact that an affliction warlock has a very wide variance of damage/cast time in his spell repertoire, with some very high damage/cast time spells (the DoTs).
This math also has been done. The 15% you loose because you can't sacrifice Imp or Sukkubus is far worse than the DPS you get because you have to lifetap somewhat less.

Main issue with fear is that it does not break with damage at the moment.

It just works like a stun, and a stun thats extremely frustrating and even more punishing for melees as it also puts them at range to the warlock.

Now i played a rogue at 60 pvp and while stunlocks when executed perfectly with use of majority of all cooldowns were my target would die literally always (altough my t2.5 gear did also play a role on this). This was balanced in so far that it required an excessive amount of cooldowns and gave me a free kill every 5/10 minutes. Also one lucky resist or pvp trinket would break an entire stunlock.

Now looking at fear, it still too often lasts its full duration and does not really take any skill timing to "stun" the target for 10seconds. If there is trinket used the warlock says "lolololl" and just refears, and dot kills. as a rogue the entire stunlock combo was broken and most of the skill of the rogue class was based around quickly improvsing in such a case. Just refearing (altough with dr) is alot simpler than quickly reevaluating how to get that stunlock back on as a rogue.

Well but all of this is getting changed in 2.1, so i am curious how fear will end up, maybe it will finally serve as real cc.

The difference between DC and psychic scream / HoTerror is that DC is not a point blank spell. Indeed, it's a valid strategic choice for someone to expend their defensive abilities on the offensive, but with DC's current iteration there is no drawback. With Psychich Scream, if you want to fearbomb you have to get in melee range with your intended targets, and that's what makes it balanced - you having to balance the risk of going in the middle of the enemy camp vs. the reward of disrupting them. With DC, there is no associated risk, just stay in the back and use it to disrupt whoever you want.

In conclusion, if DC had its range reduced from 30 yards to 10 yards, it would be a far more balanced spell, in my opinion. It would still retain all its defensive abilities (especially against melee opponents), while not being as ridiculously powerfull on the offensive. If you want to use it offensively, then you'd have to plunge in melee range.

Coming from a mage here since day 1, how we typically view warlocks:
PvE:
We see warlocks as a "better mage", you do more damage, while having more life, while bringing more useful buffs (Curse of Shadows/Recklessness/Healthstone/Soulstone > 41 intellect + imp scorch which we only stack with our 2 classes, and winter's chill only our own)

We also lack an unlimited mana pool. If fights go on long enough, we WILL reach a cap on the damage we do, simply because we are restrained by mana. Not getting a shadow priest in our group on very long fights means we must chug mana pots every time they're up, and even that sometimes doesn't cut it

Pve Fel Armor > Mage armor/Molten Armor, by a lot

Also, the truly funny thing is that blizzard makes us respec to do bosses (Hydross, Al'ar, Supremus), what other class has to change RAID specs on a weekly basis to do content, in addition to respeccing PvP every week in order to pvp (No, don't even try and say 10/48/3 is anything in arena). As a fire mage what AM i supposed to do against Al'ar and Surpremus, when 48 of my 61 points (other 13 are spent in mana efficient talents...) help FIRE, and only FIRE. We're talking the effect a shadow immune boss would have on an affliction build or shadow priest, what's supposed to be our nuke? untalented frostbolt? 1 minute oom arcane blast/missles?

Reliability on Conjured timers: Giving us a healthstone is fine and all, but we can never use it, if we want to do damage we have to pop mana gems, if we get really low we can't go back in time and not pop that gem, mages simply lose out on conjured times, period.

Warlock grinding. Enough said.
Vastly superior damage AoE (Why blizzard...?)

Finally, health regen is insane. Drain Life + Siphon Life + 540 tick bandages > Mage's +400 tick bandages and... that's it. The lowest HP class is the only one who can't pop healthstones, and/or potions (again, chugging mana potions to compete)

PvP:
- 15% more stamina almost regardless of spec
- A mirror CC that owns polymorph in almost every way
- MULTITUDES of "Oh Shit" counters like: Healthstone (healing for 3k...), Death Coil, instant AoE fear
- Vastly superior mitigation (Soul Link, +15% stamina) + Siphon Life, + Extra powerful bandage ticks, compared to a mage
- Negligible cooldown self-dispel (Felhunter)
- White damage (DoTs, Pet), in other words you continue to do damage while locked down
- Counters to a classes' strongest abilities, Paranoia against rogues, Banish against my 41 point talent, Felhunter dispel against my other 2 41 point talents, Detect invisibility being blatently overpowered against invisible targets (There is 0 reason for a mage to ever invis against a warlock)
- Sacrifice before fight starts, seriously now, i can spend 10 seconds, half my mana bar, to spellsteal something that will end the second i get it.

Let me give you an example: We were (me + mage friend) 2v2 rating 2100, 6-7 back to back battles 2 AP Pyro mage team (quick way to gain rating at the time), against 2 SL Felguard healthstoning death coiling Sacrified warlocks who charged us. Let me give you an example of what happened: We both AP Pyro crit for 5k a peice, then magically (with our 25% crit rates, 3% less because of demonic resilience but oh well) 3k crit fire blasts a peice, before one of us is down/CCed due to felguard charge + blink, or death coil + fear. That's 22.5k damage assuming the 25% crit rate ap pyro and fire blast of both of yours crits, after ignite ticks! Hold on sparky

No way in hell a warlock isn't going to resist part of that, typically something like 20%, that brings it down to 18k. He's also not stupid, and has a spellstone on instead of a 23 damage shadow wand, so he dispels the ignites, bringing total damage done to 13k. Oh wait, he's Soul Link, so now it's 10.4k hp. Oh look, the 3 seconds he gave you to do that he pops his instant healing macro, healing for 3k healthstone, 800 death coil (heal portion), pvp trinket that he gets extra healing from, 1200, and the 3712 sacrifice shield he started with (3 points in improved voidwalker) BEFORE THOSE HEALING SPELLS CRIT. And despite the gods smiling down on these mages to give them those awesome crits, the warlock has lost 1.7k hp, down from the 22.5k damage any other non-immune class would have had to suffer, on one of the warlocks, assuming worst and best case scenario in the warlock's favor.

- Polymorph immune druids = Death Wishing warriors
-"The Uncounterables": Spell Lock + Fear caster combo, Intercept + Fear on melee, Death Coil + Fear on any class. As any spec except ice block, after i pvp trinket the other uncounterable is uncounterable for me (Death Coil + Fear if i trinket out of spell lock + Fear). 6 seconds of fear against me is 4 dots, or 3 dots + Heavy Nuke, or bandage, or just a straight out Soul Fire critting for 6k. Intercept + Fear is also uncounterable if my arcane tree is locked down, or i burned blink already
- Ignite is downright horrible in PvP

Playing a mage right now is harsh, our strongest arena abilities have been nerfed (Hypothermia, loss of monopoly on arena only regen food/water), and looking over the fence i can't help but wonder at blizzard's logic

Yes. Cast time of spells is irrelevant for spells that get 1.5sec / 3.5sec out of it. 3.0/2.5 is "coefficient" you get out of Bane / Imp. fireball etc.

S&F and Emp. Fireball are multiplicative afaik for SCALING part of the spell. IE. DPS of spells is calculated by:
([baseDPS] + [+dmgDPS] * [Shadow & Flame / Imp. Fireball]) * [Rest of the coefficients] equals
[baseDPS]*[Rest of the coefficients] + [+dmgDPS] * [S&F / Emp. Fireball] * [Rest of the coefficients]

Since the first part of the equation (basedps * coefs) doesn't scale, I'm not taking it into account. Thus when I compare scaling of the classes I compare [+dmgDPS] * [S&F / Emp. Fireball] * [rest of the coefficients] part of the equation for both Warlock and Mage. This tells how effectively mages and warlocks convert +dmg to DPS. Completely untalented mage gets [+dmg]/3.5 DPS from each point of +dmg, thus 1 DPS for every 3.5 +dmg in their gear.

10/48/3 mage gains 1.847*[+dmg]/3.5 DPS from each +dmg due to talents / class mechanics.
sbolt gains 1.921*[+dmg]/3.5 DPS from each +dmg due to talents / class mechanics.
Incinerate gets 1.841*[+dmg]/3.5 DPS from each +dmg due to talents / class mechanics.

Also, sbolt lost 5% of scaling due to SW nerf in 2.1, last patch it had 2.008 coefficient compared to mage's 1.847 coef. But still, no Imp / succu sacrifice. Some warlocks also seem to forget that most of the lifetap time can be removed by chaingdrinking manapotions and being in spriest group. Mana is valuable, health regen isn't. It's just that chaindrinking manapotions just haven occured to locks... One warlocks I know said "I rather take healing potion and lifetap" not realising he was loosing about 2000damage every healthpot! (1.5sec worth of casting time which is almost 2000 damage for fully buffed Shadowbolt!)

"While running" in this case just indicates that the damage / cast time of immolate for deep destruction is good. Actually so good that you should probably renew for instance at gruul right after Ground Slam instead of trying to fit a shadowbolt between Slam and Shatter. Even if it means losing one or two immolate ticks.

I believe so also, but a swstats skillusage parse from ~8min hydross pull showed that a warlock in my guild who sacs Felhunter spent only 6seconds (4 lifetaps) lifetapping during a almost non-stop nuking againts adds / hydross and destroyed everyone else in DPS. Chainchugging manapotions, Saccing Felhunter, Shadowpriest + manaefficiency of Incinerate means that warlocks actually don't have to tap more than ~1% of their time. Atleast on a boss like Hydross, where you have to be a tiny bit careful about what you do. He'd probably have gained bigger damage potential by saccing imp + lifetapping more, but he said that the increased dps / burden on healers was not worth the risk of dying due to aggroing after transitions.

The "problem" with Warlocks in PvE or whatever is that despite hyperbole of "Fear lasts forever" or "Fear breaks right away", the fact of the matter is: Fear TYPICALLY lasts long enough to make the target lose a significant amount of their life with the inability to do anything about it. Period.

Really, one cannot argue this. Other than the occasional trinket, WotF, CLoS, whatever... if you land a fear and if they don't have cooldowns, they will be crowd-controlled taking damage for a non-trivial amount of time. I have PvP'd a lot, and as a general rule I think anyone else who has PvP'd a lot will mirror such a sentiment.

Why people hate Warlocks is mostly tied to that fact, in addition to the fact that most of their damage can be freely applied to multiple targets simultaniously and also that affliction Warlocks are one of the few classes that can do extreme amounts of DPS -while- healing at the same time.

People hate Warlocks because almost everyone has had an experience where they are dead watching an arena battle (or alive, for that matter) that is close, having a 1 remaining teammate at 90-100% and 1 opposing Warlock at 10-20% HP...then watch the Warlock proceed to fear+DoT+drain life back to 80% health while systematically destroying the teammate with little chance of doing anything about it.

Warlocks are arguably the best 1v1 PvPers in the game when they reach a high gear and skill level.

Honestly, my opinion is that fear simply is too good in PvP. I'm perfectly aware that many Warlocks don't think so, but that's how things usually go. The fact of the matter is, you can't really make the argument that "because people can break fear with abilities, when it DOES land it should be wtfpwn"--because, honestly, all other forms of crowd control get broken in similar ways. It's not like Polymorph doesn't get trinketed, dispelled, Ice Blocked, eaten by a Felhunter, etc. Fear is not the only form of crowd control that breaks early; they all do. On the contrary, fear and certain stunlock combos are the only forms of crowd control where the player will lose a significant amount of their HP when a counter is not used.

It has nothing to do with Warlocks being self-appointed "caster killers"--the fact is, if a Warlock lands their DoTs followed by a fear, you are dead. There is literally nothing you can do about it unless you bubble or Ice Block. You watch your HP bar go down, and maybe get out of fear when you are near death with no chance of doing anything to prevent it.

The DoTs and Fears piss people off, the Drain, Siphon Life, and Healthstones push them over the edge.

Warlocks may argue these various elements are perfectly balanced--which I would expect them to, honestly--but, realistically, that doesn't really change much. People still get owned by Warlocks on a regular basis with a feeling of total helplessness, compounded by a feeling that it look little more than a 1-2-3-4-5 button string, no movement, and no particular "skill" to execute.

The sad part is that this is only the PvP element. If Warlocks were lower on the totem pole in PvE damage (like they used to be) I doubt people would be so sore about their PvP dominance. But, hey, when the same guy can top damage meters (nobody CARES if it's due to "Shadow Priest/Warlock Synergy", it still happens anyway) in a raid then turn around and be "imba" in PvP with the same spec...yes, people get frustrated about class balance issues.

Also, Mages aren't really going to be receptive to the "plight" of losing a bit of DPS in order to regain mana. The fact remains: Mages can and often do run out of mana. Mages with no mana do 0 DPS.

Actually, it'd be a lot nicer (for me) if I stood in the same place.

a) Tremor totem would be more effective
b) The warlock would have to do the running to increase the distance between us after the fear instead of having me do the work.