EJ note: I've written and posted this on the EU Warlock forums, so some things are written to make sure I don't lose the attention of people on those boards.

I've been brainstorming for a while on how to give Warlocks a defensive side in PvP less one-dimensional than Soul Link.

Currently, we've got two genres of defensive tools available to us:
1. HP increases. Mainly Demonic Embrace and Soul Link.
These are boring and scale poorly with 5v5 arena combat. When 3 people in Season 3 arena gear are on your case, DE means nothing, and even SL starts feeling like not enough.
2. Offensive CCs. Fear, Howl of Terror and Death Coil, possibly CoEx too. The problem with all of these is that they're easily resistable and removable.

In 5v5 arenas, and to a lesser extent this applies to 3v3 and 2v2 as well, you're forced as a Warlock to spec Soul Link to be of use to your team. The only obvious exception to this is UA Warlocks in 4-DPS 5v5 teams, who only get by because other teammates are just as squishy.

Destruction is almost entirely useless in high-end PvP and Affliction is unfortunately not far behind it.

I think the best way to give the Warlock class a fresh start in PvP and make the class less one-dimensional, which is something even Warlock haters should support, a couple changes need to be made:

-Our main defensive spell should be one requiring heavy investment in a specific tree: Fel Armor.
-Each tree should have a couple PvP-focused defensive talents that synergize with Fel Armor.
-The trees should retain their current strengths and weaknesses, just balanced better.

All specific numbers used are examples, if anything turns out to be over- or underpowered it should obviously be tweaked. What I'm looking for feedback on is the concept, not the specifics

For some details on how I'd do this:
-Demonic Aegis should reduce the chance Fel Armor and Demon Armor are dispelled by 25% per point, for a total of 75%.
-Fel Armor should increase healing done by your own spells and effects by 15% and friendly spells and effects by 30% before talents. Warlocks are way strong by themselves as it is, our problem is poor results from having healers with us.
Alone, this would make the SL/SL build a bit less powerful on it's own against most classes, but would make Warlocks a bit more durable with healer support.

Now, to make these changes harder to work around completely:
-Give Warlocks a base spell learned sometime after 60 that removes healing reduction effects (MS, Wound Poison, Aimed Shot) and makes the Warlock immune to said effects for 30 seconds. 5 minute cooldown.
This would be our Ice Block. Instead of taking less/no damage, we'd be receiving significantly more healing from our teammates. This way, Warlocks would be a better fit for 2-2.5 healer setups.

Now, each tree should be revamped slightly to fit with this.

Affliction:
-Siphon Life should be nerfed, mainly by gaining less from +damage gear. It just scales TOO well at the moment.
-A late (40 pt +) Affliction talent should be added that does much the same as the Frozen Shadoweave set bonus atm, making all spells heal a little. The end result between this and the Siphon nerf should be a slight increase in self-healing done for Affliction Warlocks, but a reduction for SL/SL Warlocks.

Demonology:
I wouldn't make too many changes here. SL/SL would be a bit worse off in the smaller brackets, but eg. a Felguard spec would probably scale a bit better with good healer support.

Destruction:
-Soul Leech could be turned into Destructions version of Siphon/FSW bonus talent. Make it work on Shadowfury too and turn it into a fixed % of damage to health instead of a chance effect, ending up a bit higher in total yield than before.
-Shadowfury should be instant so it can actually be cast while trained and CoT'd without interruptions. Between this and the Soul Leech change, Shadowfury would be a solid instant self-heal Warlocks could use when being pressured. Possibly change the casting style to Nova-esque to make it more geared towards defense.
-Make Backlash work with Immolate too, and reduce the cooldown to 6 or 7 seconds, opening up a bit more options for Destruction Warlocks being focus-fired.

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End results/Conclusion:
-Buff Fel Armor, make it harder to dispel.
-Nerf Siphon Life. Move some of its power to a later Affliction tree.
-Buff Soul Leech and Shadowfury and make them synergize.
-Give Warlocks a spell that protects against Mortal Strike/Wound Poison for a short time with a reasonable cooldown. Design this to be our Iceblock and combined with Fel Armor our main defense.

Instead of being the comedy class with high HP but no real protection that is too powerful in some areas but too weak in others, we'd have a unique defense not like any other classes', that would make all three Warlock trees viable to some extent in all arena brackets as well as other PvP.

To make this very, very clear: I'm not looking for comments on the balance of these suggestions, as I'm sure that could be tweaked later. I'm more interested in what people think about the concept, vs what we have now.

I'm curious what non-Warlocks think too, of course.

My main concern when being focused is not how can I tank better but rather how can I escape better. If a rogue or warrior is beating on me it's tough to get any non-instant damage out. Add a priest in there dispelling your dots and you pretty much just have a pet. I would suggest adding an effect such as "chance when hit to fear the attacker for 2 secs" My main concern is how much I get shut down when being focused without any escape mechanisms (except death coil).

The idea would be that focusing Warlocks wouldn't be as attractive as it is now. If people DO focus you, you'll be easier to keep alive, while your teammates are free to DPS or whatever else they're doing.

The only problem with soul link is that it relies on your pet, and pets die quite easily.

Other than that, it seems your asking for PvP viability across all talent trees. Blizzard does seem to be making an effort for all specs to be somewhat viable (mage iceblock changes, rogue subtlety changes) but I don't think that it's really a priority for them. I'd count yourself quite lucky that there are two/three viable specs for warlocks (SL/SL, felguard, and UA).

While you may hate relying on soul link in arenas, keep in mind that soul link warlocks are really quite hard to kill. It's true that with 3 DPS attacking you, it doesn't seem to be very significant, but there's not a class in the game that can survive long against that, not even the "defensive hybrid" paladin. I certainly don't believe that warlocks need more passive defenses. An escape tool may be reasonable, but you have quite a large repertoire of spells that can be cast while you're being attacked. Other classes don't even have those options.

Agreed. One of our early dungeon sets had this bonus and it would be nice to see added again. Maybe make the proc do either a remove movement imparing effect/stuns bonus too so we could actually get away when it goes off.

All the HP giving stuff was nice at lvl60 when we had as much health as tanks, far more than any other caster or squishy. Now for 'pvp balance' it seems like most mages that gear for pvp are just as well off as a warlock geared for pvp, and in PvE the gap isnt that huge either.

I could see considering some of these changes if warlocks were underpowered, one dimensional, or under represented in arenas but as it stands I'd put them near the bottom of the priority list when it comes to class balance.

I think spell pushback is also a big part of survivability. I wish they would make fel concentration affect all affliction spells and maybe move intensity down a tier (replace improved lash or pain or firebolt).

In terms of balance. I think each tree should have a impact survivability talent deep within so each tree felt different in it's survivability. I think Imp howl of terror is somewhat there for affliction but at a 40 sec cooldown is too situational. I would also target shadowfury for the destruction tree to provide a bit more survivability. I don't think the goal of this thread is to neccessarily buff warlocks but rather to provide them with a few more options in terms of speccing to get survivability tools.

Also, I think it's desired by the warlock community to have somewhat more active survivability abilities. Right now Soul link is always on (passive) and doesn't really require any skill, whereas Ice block requires a decision to be made by the player which leads to good players ice blocking at better times than bad players. A good mage can manage nova's, blinks, ice blocks, hypothermia, cold snap, etc to increase his survivability well past that of a poor mage. A good mage can last minutes longer than a poor mage and will usually die only when they run out of mana. The main difference between a good warlock and bad warlock in survivability is positioning and to some extent death coil (although on a long cooldown) since both have Soul link active.

Pretty much what Beef said. They're not underpresented at all. They're viable in all 3 brackets and very strong in 2 of them. I believe there is a much stronger need to fix ret pallies, enh shamans, non ice mages (ice block won't magically save a fire mage, just too much survivability talents in the ice tree). Being forced to spec a certain way is something that most other classes have to do, and really with UA, Felguard and SL/SL they have 3 different specs.

From my experiences in 5v5 warlocks are not a class we like to go for first. They have too much survivability with SL and yes you can kill their pet but they can bring another one fast. Add in that they can do a lot of stuff when under pressure and it becomes more optimal to go for a priest, hunter or even shaman who do much worse under pressure. The fact that warlocks can be locked in place and dps'd pretty well is imo the only thing that makes them killable. If they had an escape like mages it would be impossible to get one down.

Are you kidding? Mages in top pvp gear are not even in the same ballpark in regards to HP with warlocks in the same level of gear.

As far as the OP is concerned, I do not really see the problem. Warlocks are not stuggling in any of the three brackets, for the reasons you have already mentioned. SL/SL is a huge deterrent for the dps train in 5s, and I am struggling to conceive of any 5v5 lineup where this would not be the case. It may be one dimensional, or even "boring", however it is effective and it allows for a consistently guaranteed level of freedom in most situations.

Shadowpriests are a bad example, as they're only viable in 4 DPS 5v5 as well.

Most classes are forced into a spec. Paladins are forced into Holy, Shamans are forced into Elemental, Warriors are forced into MS, druids are forced into Resto, Mages are forced into frost, and every single spec for those classes is pretty much the same with little to no variation in playstyle.

Count yourself lucky that you can go SL/SL or felguard and succeed at high levels. They play quite differently, from what I understand.

it seems I was working on outdated info, I haven't pvped at 70 much since S1 (not enough time for PvE and PvP and I choose the PvE route). S3 gear seems to be a big enough stamina gap that it is noticable. I still think its not as significant as it used to be (~double a mages HP in typical naxx gear?) but thats probably just a result of everyone having access to pvp orientated gear.

I stand corrected.


as for the topic at hand, I honestly wouldn't mind being forced into a spec as much if it didn't mean being forced to respec every time I want to do arenas-- Or rather, that I didn't have to farm so much to pay for the respecs on top of all the other gold sinks in wow.

I think a lot of people that hate how boring SL/SL is would probably be a lot less annoyed if they could go back to something more fun when not in an arena. Maybe if you had one free respec per day, or a hunter stable like system for talent specs and some cooldown for switching between saved sets.

That is a totally different topic that is common among pretty much every class. Off the top of my head I can't think of any class that has an optimal PVE/PVP spec all in one. They seem to do it intentionally, what would be the purpose of multiple talent choices if 1 template was the best for everything?

Yeah, it is particularly annoying for me since I basically have to respec to change 1 talent point around. If not for that I could probably work out a spec that worked together for pve and pvp.

The only classes I can think of who can pretty much get away with one spec are holy pallies, resto shamans and maybe MS warriors. And I guess warlocks if you are your guilds warlock tank. :p

Wait now just one minute. There are some classes with almost 0 viability in arenas (save VERY specific team/spec compositions) and we are discussing how the most prolific arena class needs more options. Seriously?

Holy paladins would probably be the closest. The difference between PvP spec and PvE spec is a couple talents switched around that hardly make a difference (imp wis, imp devo).

I'd say they're doing quite well since the 2346 team has risen to be as strong as 2345 and in ways is more difficult to deal with. Add in that drain teams are very powerful with something like hunter/lock/priest/druid/pally and I don't think locks have too much to worry about. What 2.3 has probably done has hurt the UA spec, but it looks like felguard and SL/SL are better than ever.

The problems with warlock design reach down to the very fundamental level and, while I do think armchair game designer is fun, the ops suggestions don't offer any concessions... at all... which almost suggests that warlocks are underpowered currently, a laughable notion.

While not underpowered, I personally find a soul-link warlock to be an extremely boring and one-dimensional character to play compared to a mage. Warlocks are essentially the passive offense/passive defense caster. It's limiting in the sense that warlock are another "stat throughput" class which, instead of countering enemy abilities, simply tanks them. Or vice-versa.

This is more of an armchair game designer discussion though, which I do find interesting, but not really productive.

Yeah but what are the numbers for warlocks in 2's and 3's? This is only 1/3 of the applicable data. I wonder how skewed these numbers are by exploiting too.

Also, if Fel Armor shouldn't be dispellable, then Inner Fire shouldn't be dispellable either, not to mention the fact that it has charges that get eaten up by a melee class (especially rogues) in about 15 seconds...

Blizzard has stated on numerous occasions that they balance around 5v5, not 2v2/3v3.

See the other thread about dispel mechanics.

Blizzard might state that, but I think the player base would much rather have things balanced around 3v3. Polls have shown that 2/3 of the players would rather have it balanced that way. And since it is easier to get the rewards in the small brackets I feel it should be balanced around 3s. Its an issue right now with shamans and paladins. They struggle in the smaller brackets because they have less classes to support. If the game was balanced around 3s where all classes were pretty much even, it would help balance things more overall. 2s and 3s share things. 3s and 5s do to. 2s and 5s only share stuff when 3s also do. I believe balancing around 3s would do a lot more to promote the health of the arena game.

This is a major shift in design orientation, and would require some pretty significant rethinking on how certain classes (read: hybrid healers) work. Not likely to happen anytime before WLK, if at all, but I'm not seeing a good way to balance things in 3v3. Doesn't mean blizz won't think of one. But the reason 5v5 is used as balance is because many, many mechanics are designed to work with that size group and lose significant effect in smaller groups. Or vice versa.