I don't really understand the need to keep your Warrior mobile. Roots yeah sure, (but CoEx? Hamstring/Intercept > CoEx) but these fights will be long fights (no?) and it doesn't seem to me to put you at a huge disadvantage if he has to eat a root for a few seconds if it means killing the pet (which puts the Warlock in a really crappy situation).
Killing a pet accomplishes nothing against this team, since any decent Lock/Druid will autowin the mana war due to the druid being able to drink if I can't keep him clean, and the Lock being able to resummon on a whim due to root/cyclone spam.
Again, we don't have a problem with these teams, we just ram the druid in the face and ignore the lock. But killing the pet is almost fruitless vs. a good lock/druid combo.
Warrior / pally is probably one of the best suited teams to killing a druid, with judgement of justice and the ability to land a 5 second stun at a crucial moment (ie midshift) combined with big burst damage. Other teams aren't going to have that same advantage though.
I played with an SL/SL warlock for a few weeks, and we did quite well, although teams that focused the pet generally caused a lot of trouble. I was always very reluctant to "waste" BoP on the pet, and if it was being hammered by a melee DPS class it could often be very hard to keep up (especially with the ability to easily drag it out of LoS of heals).
Still, it was a gamble. Teams that took too long to kill the pet (and there were quite a few that simply couldn't get through two quickly enough) generally ended up losing, because ultimately despite the large drain on my mana from healing it, my warlock friend could drain their healer's mana even faster. We often had a lot more trouble with rogue teams that would just focus the warlock. They could put so much pressure on him with wounding and high DPS (even with soullink) that the pet would eventually die from soullink damage because I didn't have time to stop spamming heals on the warlock, or was trying to LoS a manaburning priest, etc.
This was all in the 1500 -> ~1850 (can't remember exactly how high we got, it wasn't past 1900 though) bracket, so it's probably pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Hrmmm ... carry on!
My personal opinion, about pets not allowing drinking and so on is simply, why is the arena now a drinking war? They will have to do something or other to address the issues mana users face compared to non mana using classes. Assuming pets suddenly are on a shorter leash, cant keep going if they're out of LoS etc, ignoring just how badly this would mess up PvE all the way from raiding to grinding everyday. What this means is...you now (maybe) spend more time drinking and end up with games lasting longer? More than likely, people will just find some other way to keep you from drinking. Not quite sure if that's awesome, i'm not really a fan of drinking the other team to death in the first place.
I'd rather they find a way to make the playing field level between rogue's, warriors and locks (to an extent) on one hand, and every other class in the game being at a natural disadvantage just because of mana. Not sure how they'd do that without games lasting 5 hours though.
As far as taking devour magic off autocast, its got a much shorter CD than skills like intimidate, and quite frankly i'm not sure it will change much. All it means is people will toss it onto a macro along with some other spells. Some micromanagement is really cool i guess, but there's something like having too much of it, the most glaring example being hunters and shot rotations.
I would argue despawning the pet would be too powerful but maybe leash it to the warlock at 20 yards or something "protective". Providing a humourous neck-gag response when the pet hits its tether (ala Warner Brothers) would ice that cake at least for me.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. - Dwight Eisenhower
My personal opinion, about pets not allowing drinking and so on is simply, why is the arena now a drinking war? They will have to do something or other to address the issues mana users face compared to non mana using classes. Assuming pets suddenly are on a shorter leash, cant keep going if they're out of LoS etc, ignoring just how badly this would mess up PvE all the way from raiding to grinding everyday. What this means is...you now (maybe) spend more time drinking and end up with games lasting longer? More than likely, people will just find some other way to keep you from drinking. Not quite sure if that's awesome, i'm not really a fan of drinking the other team to death in the first place.
I'd rather they find a way to make the playing field level between rogue's, warriors and locks (to an extent) on one hand, and every other class in the game being at a natural disadvantage just because of mana. Not sure how they'd do that without games lasting 5 hours though.
As far as taking devour magic off autocast, its got a much shorter CD than skills like intimidate, and quite frankly i'm not sure it will change much. All it means is people will toss it onto a macro along with some other spells. Some micromanagement is really cool i guess, but there's something like having too much of it, the most glaring example being hunters and shot rotations.
How would the los change affect pve? I'm not suggesting an instantaneous heel command, but after a few seconds (5? 10?) the pet returns to its owner. What situations is the pet out of los for any noticeable amount of time? The only case I can think of off hand is Lurker during spout but I didn't think pets were very viable as is on Lurker. The los should probably not apply to phase shifted imps though as that could cause issues with keeping it near the tank you want it by.
So let me get this straight, this thread is about trying to figure out a creative way to nerf warlocks, even though everyone now has at least 1 immediate escape from fear, fear is nerfed harder every patch and breaks from almost any damage now, dots haven't scaled with hp, soul link was nerfed, resilience affects dots, felhunter silence was dramatically reduced in duration and made resistable, most of our CC was put on the same diminishing returns timer, mortal strike will affect drain life, resilience makes felguards and the destro tree useless in arenas, our quest pets are still level 60 equivalents, 3/4 of our pets are pointless in the arenas, voidwalker sac doesn't scale, pet health hasn't scaled with damage, easily obtainable endgame crafting gear makes a player completely immune to our damage, our primary form of damage can be dispelled for far less cost than the casting in shorter time, dots were made partially resistable, deathcoil was put on diminishing returns, soul link has demonic sac as a precondition, and shards -- the primary currency of the class -- still cost an inventory slot and farming time apiece even now, two years later.
Look. A warlock touched you when you were little. We're sorry. We're warlocks, that's what we do. But the game has changed, and it's time for the crying to change too. Like shamans in the first year, we've now received nothing but nerfs. We were the best -- now we're just pretty good. Alter your focus.
How would the los change affect pve? I'm not suggesting an instantaneous heel command, but after a few seconds (5? 10?) the pet returns to its owner. What situations is the pet out of los for any noticeable amount of time? The only case I can think of off hand is Lurker during spout but I didn't think pets were very viable as is on Lurker. The los should probably not apply to phase shifted imps though as that could cause issues with keeping it near the tank you want it by.
Considering something as little as stairs can cause LoS issues with short characters, gnomes especially, and my early experiences with some funky LoS in Gruul's lair before speccing out of Dark pact, i'd say it would probably be a bigger impact than you think. For some reason i'm reminded of mage blink bugs.
Look. A warlock touched you when you were little. We're sorry. We're warlocks, that's what we do. But the game has changed, and it's time for the crying to change too. Like shamans in the first year, we've now received nothing but nerfs. We were the best -- now we're just pretty good. Alter your focus.
Someday. Not today, but some day in the distant future people will understand that getting X nerfs/buffs is meaningless and I won't have to read this sort of crap again. Until then I guess I'll keep repeating myself. It only matters how strong you are now. Lets take a mythical class that can do 1,000,000 damage per hit. Let's say this class takes a 1000 damage nerf every patch until now. They would still be overpowered because they'd still be 1-shotting everyone even though they would be the most nerfed class in the entire history of time.
And for anyone who played at the beginning a warlock didn't touch them when they were little because warlocks used to fold up and die like the little bitches they were back then. Also note how only the extreme idiots complain about shaman being godly because they're no longer what they used to be and people can see that. I'm not going to go into whether warlock are too strong, I just don't care to argue with someone so obviously biased, but what people are thinking/saying about warlocks is based entirely on how warlocks are performing now, after those nerfs you mentioned.
Killing a pet accomplishes nothing against this team, since any decent Lock/Druid will autowin the mana war due to the druid being able to drink if I can't keep him clean, and the Lock being able to resummon on a whim due to root/cyclone spam.
Again, we don't have a problem with these teams, we just ram the druid in the face and ignore the lock. But killing the pet is almost fruitless vs. a good lock/druid combo.
Maybe in 2s you're right, my experience was more from 3s
The Warlock pet issue is something I have been trying to battle on the WoW Suggestion forums, such as in this post:
"Felhunter Pet should have "Devour Magic" as a player activated ability such as a Hunters Intimidate, with NO autocast option. I feel that in its current form the Felhunters ability to remove other players lengthy, critical and class defining powers/CD's without any action from the player itself is very imbalanced.
When a Felhunter eats a 41 point talent such as Earth Shield, or a Druid's Innervate, it should be because the Player should be monitoring his opponent and selecting the best time to use it. If he misses the opportunity, then it his own fault. At the very least, there should require some level of player involvement in a power that is so, well...powerful."
Okay that is almost pure luck, if you read anything of the posts before you'll realize that killing pets is a very VIABLE option even against a demo warlock. It is crazy stupid to call for an easier time killing a demo warlock's pet since that effectively makes him lose the bulk of his talent points.
I play 2on2 as SL/SL with my druid partner and I know from first hand experience how powerful this pet ist. But, if more teams just took the time to kill it ( Warriors with S2 / BT Weapons 3-shot my pet, constantly! It is NOT healable with the MS Debuff, and if the druid does try to heal it he has to stand there like an idiot because hots alone just can't cut it, thus making him vulnerable to manaburn / -drain / fear ) they would have a much higher chance at winning.
If a team with a rogue or a warrior kills my pet, I have to resummon a Voidwalker and since that thing does not heal itself I can't risk sending it after the enemy healer ( I had priests kill it easily with smite ! ) to stop them from drinking. So that leaves me completly on the defense, My pet and I have to be in LoS for heals from time to time, I have a Melee sticking on me and the enemy healer only has to heal the miniscule damage that my dots and non-interrupted drains do to the warrior / rogue.
Right now I can tell my druid to go and drink for a few seconds and stay alive, draining life from the melee, but come 2.3 this option will be gone too. In this situation I can exercise next to no pressure on the enemy healer but my healer has to heal far more incoming damage on me.
The only way for us to turn this match is to wait for the enemy healer to run away and drink and then try to lure the melee away in the other direction ( not an easy task with hamstring and crippling poison on me, during that "pull" we can't really root or cyclone the melee either ) where we can only hope to do enough dmg to him to force the enemy healer into LoS and then either cyclone / fear him and try to kill the melee or drain the enemy healer's mana.
I also rarely ever see people just snaring my pet ( very easy with hamstring, maybe not so easy with crippling poison due to nature resistance ) allowing the enemy healer to just run away and drink for a few ticks.
It certainly seems absurd that you have to pay so much attention to a pet but believe me, any good warlock will tell you that he has to pay an equal amount of attention during his play to the pet to really use it to it's fullest ( against certain classes, autopurge is a very stupid idea, auto-counterspell is always stupid ). And if he does not and loses the pet the match is basically lost. So the time dealing with the pet is very well worth it since the SL/SL warlock in particular is completly useless without it.
Finally I would like to ask you if you have noticed your pets disapperaing ( they just despawn! ) in arenas after the patch (2.2)? I had my felhunter despawn twice (!) against the same team in the same match in the Lordaeron arena ( I think they might have exploitet some pathing / terrain issues ) and once it got "stuck" at the edge of a pillar in the Nagrand arena. Secondly I think Blizzard buffed the felhunter. It seems to automatically purge any new enemy buff even on an enemy that it is not currently attacking ( I noticed that when we played against a warrior / paladin team, my pet instantly devoured the blessing of freedom every time it was in range to the warrior, I didn't even have to do it myself ). This seems new to me or maybe I just never noticed it before.
If a team with a rogue or a warrior kills my pet, I have to resummon a Voidwalker and since that thing does not heal itself I can't risk sending it after the enemy healer ( I had priests kill it easily with smite ! ) to stop them from drinking.
You gotta be fucking kidding. A holy priest killing a soul-linked demonology void walker with smite in 2 vs 2 while wearing Arena gear?
Why do people just lie through their teeth when they are discussing arena balance?
Well a soullinked Voidwalker still takes 100% spelldamage and I sent it after the priest not even thinking about the possibilty that it might need heals. I was on the other end of the arena and we tried to pull the Rogue further away as I described above. Well, suddenly the rogue sprints back to his priest and we thougt "Oh well, he realized what we are up to" but all of a sudden I saw my Voidwalker at ~45% HP, out of LoS at the complete other end of the arena with the rogue now too beating on it and the priest's castbar showing him casting smite after smite. Well they killed it and we lost.
Paladins have an even easier time killing that thing with exorcism ( which costs fewer mana with 2.3 ) and putting JoW on it, regenerating mana. Don't forget, with no Spelllock and the possiblity to heal his teammate without being LoS to my druid the enemy healer does not have to heal that often or quick.
So no, I am not lying about this. If a team with a melee kills my felhunter early and I have to summon a Voidwalker I simply can't "fire and forget" it on enemy healers because they can just kill it or regenerate mana off of it.
A holy priest cannot 'easily kill a voidwalker'. He has no pushback resist, most likely has a 2.5 second smite unless he has a shitty build, and probably has at most 200-300 spell damage in arena healing gear and his smites might at most hit for 1000.
Whenever I debate the Warlock pet issue with locks they always bring up two points:
1) "Kill the pet, its easy to do" (sometimes this is the case, sometimes it is not)
2) Specifically to the devour magic points - "throw a proxy buff out before innervating" (for example).
A pet is supposed to supplement the class/player controlling it, and I think the simple fact that you need to engineer a "counter" for the pet just goes to show how powerful it really is.
I still maintain that Devour Magic should not have an autocast option, and not only should it be a player controlled ability (such as Intimidate), it should only work while in line of sight of the target.
I still maintain that Devour Magic should not have an autocast option, and not only should it be a player controlled ability (such as Intimidate), it should only work while in line of sight of the target.
My favorite thing in the world is when I'm cycloned, need to cast an emergency NS heal on y partner the second cyclone ends, and then a felhunter autodevours my NS mid-macro.
A holy priest cannot 'easily kill a voidwalker'. He has no pushback resist, most likely has a 2.5 second smite unless he has a shitty build, and probably has at most 200-300 spell damage in arena healing gear and his smites might at most hit for 1000.
It's not the healer alone that kills the pet, it's the damage it get's from the soul-link while the healer(you) keeps the pet out of LOS so the lock's healer cant heal the pet. This is especially the case with felhunters(any good warrior will hamstring/nuke them though), but also the case in long vw fights.
Pretty sure it's macroed based on other matches against the same warlocks, but macroed isn't the same as truly simultaneous -- spamming purge preemptively when you expect the summon is about to happen, you have a chance of catching it in that tiny window before the summon cast begins. I'm pretty sure, anyway. Maybe the warlocks I've done this to were terrible and/or had bad macros. It's a rare occurrence, but I've seen it a few times.
I have mine macro'd and it definitely still allows for good shamans/priests to dispel it if they are spamming their dispel button.
I don't think it's that hard to prevent the Warrior from getting bursted down by a SL/SL Lock, even if he has dots up.
Um, actually as Druid/Lock it is quite easy. I wouldn't exactly call it "bursting", but it is effectively killing a warrior without the healer being able to heal him. Here's how our fights go vs Warrior/Paladin every time at 2300+.
I trinket and put up my 3 dots on warrior. My stealthed druid in cat form stuns the Paladin to start putting him behind as far as healing goes. Once my 3 dots are applied, I tongues the paladin and start drain lifing the warrior often proc'ing nightfall for an instant SB into the warrior.
The paladin begins to channel a heal, which I counterspell with felhunter.
At this point the paladin is really behind and I fear him and he trinkets (which I am expecting) and I cast another fear as soon as I see him trinket it. Now he is forced to bubble, as the warrior is at 30 percent-ish. While bubbled, the druid chain cyclones the warrior so that the paladin cannot heal the warrior while bubbled, essentially making the bubble useless. Once bubble is down, I re-tongues and can either counterspell the next heal with my pet (as the CD is up at this point) or have the druid cyclone lock him, allowing more than enough time to finish the last 30 percent from the warrior.
Warrior/Paladins that go for the felhunter in this strat usually have no shot of winning because basically all I want the felhunter for is the first counterspell to force a bubble and they can't kill it before I need to use the felhunter lock. I don't care about my long-term ability to keep the paladin in combat as this is one of the very few combos that I don't play the mana-drain strat versus.
With Druid/Warrior however, it is true that is is basically impossible to "burst" down the warrior because it is simply too hard to counteract HoTs, swiftmends, and NS'ed Healing Touches etc. Versus Druid/Warrior, which I think is nearly an impossible matchup for Healer/Lock assuming very good players on both sides, I summon a voidwalker as soon as possible as the only purpose of the pet in that matchup is to keep the druid in combat and I need to keep damage on myself as low as possible.
Um, actually as Druid/Lock it is quite easy. I wouldn't exactly call it "bursting", but it is effectively killing a warrior without the healer being able to heal him. Here's how our fights go vs Warrior/Paladin every time at 2300+.
I trinket and put up my 3 dots on warrior. My stealthed druid in cat form stuns the Paladin to start putting him behind as far as healing goes. Once my 3 dots are applied, I tongues the paladin and start drain lifing the warrior often proc'ing nightfall for an instant SB into the warrior.
The paladin begins to channel a heal, which I counterspell with felhunter.
At this point the paladin is really behind and I fear him and he trinkets (which I am expecting) and I cast another fear as soon as I see him trinket it. Now he is forced to bubble, as the warrior is at 30 percent-ish. While bubbled, the druid chain cyclones the warrior so that the paladin cannot heal the warrior while bubbled, essentially making the bubble useless. Once bubble is down, I re-tongues and can either counterspell the next heal with my pet (as the CD is up at this point) or have the druid cyclone lock him, allowing more than enough time to finish the last 30 percent from the warrior.
Warrior/Paladins that go for the felhunter in this strat usually have no shot of winning because basically all I want the felhunter for is the first counterspell to force a bubble and they can't kill it before I need to use the felhunter lock. I don't care about my long-term ability to keep the paladin in combat as this is one of the very few combos that I don't play the mana-drain strat versus.
With Druid/Warrior however, it is true that is is basically impossible to "burst" down the warrior because it is simply too hard to counteract HoTs, swiftmends, and NS'ed Healing Touches etc. Versus Druid/Warrior, which I think is nearly an impossible matchup for Healer/Lock assuming very good players on both sides, I summon a voidwalker as soon as possible as the only purpose of the pet in that matchup is to keep the druid in combat and I need to keep damage on myself as low as possible.
Yeah I'm aware Paladins are pathetically easy to lock down, but with smart play on their part they could counter your kill I think. But also look at the context in which I said it, I said that no SL/SL Lock is gonna kill you in the time it takes a Warrior to kill a pet, which I think is true (barring some totally BS Nightfall procs or nice healing, which admittedly Druid has a huge advantage over Paladin in).
Um, actually as Druid/Lock it is quite easy. I wouldn't exactly call it "bursting", but it is effectively killing a warrior without the healer being able to heal him. Here's how our fights go vs Warrior/Paladin every time at 2300+.
I trinket and put up my 3 dots on warrior. My stealthed druid in cat form stuns the Paladin to start putting him behind as far as healing goes. Once my 3 dots are applied, I tongues the paladin and start drain lifing the warrior often proc'ing nightfall for an instant SB into the warrior.
The paladin begins to channel a heal, which I counterspell with felhunter.
At this point the paladin is really behind and I fear him and he trinkets (which I am expecting) and I cast another fear as soon as I see him trinket it. Now he is forced to bubble, as the warrior is at 30 percent-ish. While bubbled, the druid chain cyclones the warrior so that the paladin cannot heal the warrior while bubbled, essentially making the bubble useless. Once bubble is down, I re-tongues and can either counterspell the next heal with my pet (as the CD is up at this point) or have the druid cyclone lock him, allowing more than enough time to finish the last 30 percent from the warrior.
Warrior/Paladins that go for the felhunter in this strat usually have no shot of winning because basically all I want the felhunter for is the first counterspell to force a bubble and they can't kill it before I need to use the felhunter lock. I don't care about my long-term ability to keep the paladin in combat as this is one of the very few combos that I don't play the mana-drain strat versus.
With Druid/Warrior however, it is true that is is basically impossible to "burst" down the warrior because it is simply too hard to counteract HoTs, swiftmends, and NS'ed Healing Touches etc. Versus Druid/Warrior, which I think is nearly an impossible matchup for Healer/Lock assuming very good players on both sides, I summon a voidwalker as soon as possible as the only purpose of the pet in that matchup is to keep the druid in combat and I need to keep damage on myself as low as possible.
How come the warrior didn't pummel your fear? I guess my might have pummeled the drain life, If that's the case I've seen many warriors that I duel pop into intercept range and interupt the fear. Admitedly harder with 1.3 sec fear now (I haven't dueled any warriors since the new 4 piece). In any case it's clear that the paladin just gets behind especially with tongues. With the nurf to drain life perhaps this will be tilted in favor of warrior/paladin.
How come the warrior didn't pummel your fear? I guess my might have pummeled the drain life, If that's the case I've seen many warriors that I duel pop into intercept range and interupt the fear. Admitedly harder with 1.3 sec fear now (I haven't dueled any warriors since the new 4 piece). In any case it's clear that the paladin just gets behind especially with tongues. With the nurf to drain life perhaps this will be tilted in favor of warrior/paladin.
With the new 4pc it isn't actually impossible to get fears off anymore. Warriors have a 1.5 sec gcd so if a warrior hits something .2 sec before to .1 after I hit my own fear there is no way he is going to pummel it. This is 100% true with a paladin partner. However, a druid/lock team can do it as well with the 50% gloves and being lucky. You have to remember that on paper .2 sec off doesn't seem alot but in reality that is giving us .3 sec of a grace period which is huge!
I must agree with Viia.
Every good warrior / hunter or any other melee class can kill a felhunter easily. Its impossible to heal a felhunter with mortal strike or wounding poison. Just casters have a problem with killing a felhunter, but isnt that fair ? I mean a worlock is a pet class, why should the pet be so weak taht u can just kill it with 2-3 blows ? If u have a SL/SL specced warlock and he loses his pet, he loses spell lock, dispell, 20% dmg red., 5% dmg, 200 spell dmg. So a SL WL is totally worthless without his pet.
I think wl pets need resilience which scales with the worlocks resilience or something. They are just to easy to kill. FG gets owned by casters/melees und felhunter gets easily owned by melees, and there is absolutely nothing you can do against it.
10/10/07, 9:06 AM
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