For the record, I was looking into this in the Mage thread to try to determine if Burnout worked this way, and Sancus determined that for Burnout, at least, it's definitely a critical strike damage bonus mod (like ruin, spell power, etc), not a total crit damage mod. I asked him about Eternal Flames, and he replied:
I asked him to check the aura on CSD and Monster Slaying for me so we could compare the wording, but no response yet.
CSD aura:
Apply Aura: Mod Crit Damage Bonus (Melee) (895)
Value: 3
Monster slaying:
Effect #1 Apply Aura: Mod Damage Done Versus (Beasts, Dragonkin, Giants)
Value: 3
Effect #2 Apply Aura: Mod Crit Percent Versus (Beasts, Dragonkin, Giants)
Value: 3
The RED seems to have the same aura as the CSD, so i'm not really sure whats up with the wording on that.
Its nice to see that they atleast try to fix Demo in the expansion, the extra 10% scaling on sta and int is a start, but where is the scaling with spellcrit, spellhit, haste and resilence, armor for pvp? Demons will be fine early on, but im worried that they will be hopeless left behind late in the expansion if nothing more is done.
Another issue is aoe-dmg, if I remember correctly, hunter-pets take 50% dmg when hit by aoe, while our pets have a 50% chance to avoid aoe. I would really prefer the hunter version here, fights like Najentus is impossible with a pet out, since he gets oneshot. Another issue is pethealing, the 2 t5 bonus got changed to a talent, long overdue but better late than never, but think that it needs to be upped in order for us to be able to keep the pet up. Last we got our nice 10 second channeled or so heal, health funnel, just WHY havent they changed this to be a HOT yet? Think they figured that out for hunters when TBC came out, how hard can it be to copy/paste the code to health funnel?
Looks like a good start for us so far atleast, much to do but just alpha so lots will change, hopefully to the better for our class.
The Warlock trees need some work (and I am sure the Blizzard employees are getting some feedback) and Soul Shatter needs to be a Destro or Affliction spell instead of Demonology.
I thought of that, but I think at the end of the day it just needs to be unresistable. It's frankly not unreasonable for a spell that is on a full 5 minute cooldown, requires a soulshard, *and* only drops half our threat (making it the worst threat drop in the game in terms of the restrictions on it) be unresistable.
That way there's not an issue of blocking one tree from making its hit talent useful.
As to the responder who said he doesn't care about threat-caps and being hit-capped on a deaggro: I do not know a fight in the game that I am not pushing our tank on threat in, and I can't think of a situation in which I would want to know that 6% of the time I might as well either afk, or soulstone/hellfire/resurrect in order to help my guild win the game.
Adding a measly 5% hit to my gear can reduce the chance of that happening to 1/6th of what it would be if I tried to use the talent, and I will definitely opt for that. It's not fair to my guild to do otherwise, not if fights are tuned tightly again in the future (we're at 5/6 Sunwell, and I can't imagine having a soulshatter resist on our next M'uru kill and not making the dps timer by 1% because I'd skimped on hit gear.)
I just wish I didn't have to make that choice, and they would solve the *one* spell which is preventing our hit talents from being truly useful to us.
Originally Posted by PSGarak
Kyth: You're still thinking in very restrained terms about the potential for Molten Core to break Sac's lock. It's a first-draft alpha talent undergoing revision, not a released talent being patched. The only thing about it that's remotely close to finalized is that it makes shadow spells buff fire spells. At this stage it's still possible to revise it so that shadowbolt crits make the next incinerate instant, and change backdraft to the converse. That pair of talents would shake Sacrifice and give crit some value, especially if they added an incinerate-like bonus to shadowbolt on corrupted targets. But then again, I'm crazy enough to considering adding Conflagrate to Eternal Flames, which would be quite the coup.
I'm saying that it needs more than just a coefficient tweak to be good. And if they're bumping the coefficients it has to be pretty high to overcome the automatic loss of having to cast corruption, dealing with the threat/range/hit issues of splitting trees, and *also* the demonic sac issue.
That they put in a talent on day 1 that's a dps loss to cast concerns me, particularly since I don't think the most damning part of it is the dps loss. Again, it's also very hard to construct a tree with anything less than 30 in destruction that can actually pick up Molten Core. If it were a tier 1 talent it'd be easier. As it is, competing with tier 2 and tier 3, it's very rough to try to pick it up.
Shadowbolt crits making the next incinerate instant? Still very weak. ~30% of the time you shave less than 25% off the cast time of a nuke that doesn't have the +15% from sac. Not to mention you're now talking about nuking primarily with shadow, where you have a weaker ISB, no +10% buff to it in the tree, and Eternal Flames doesn't apply.
As for "shaking" sacrifice, your problem is that you somehow need to come up with a replacement for those 21 points that beat +15% damage to one element, and early affliction has so few dps boosts that that pretty much has to be a single talent. And you have to do this with an incredibly weakened corruption since the 2.0.2 (?) patch which killed the dot coefficients (corruption is even weaker than it was in original WoW.)
But if you do that without removing sac, then you just make it that much more powerful because, hey, you get sac, AND the new talent. Unless you make the new talent 51 into destruction, which I'd be fine with.
I also think they can just finesse sac in one of several ways (I listed one) which don't break the demo tree at all, don't break levelling at all, but allow for more interesting builds and let us actually major in destro with a minor in affliciton, rather than 0/21/X specs for all eternity.
Demonic sac is unreasonably strong. It should either be a base ability (and other trees weakened a bit to compensate) or banished to deep demo in some way.
Right, speaking about Eternal Flames, thinking about the RED sparked my memory about the old Aura mod it applied when it functioned for both physical and spell damage.
The first draft introduces some interesting concepts (element juggling, Haunt) and some very bad ones (Eternal Flames - seriously, why would you want an automatic refresh on your Immolate beside the dps increase? Noone wants to spam 1 button for another 2 years.)
For the element thing to have a chance of working, the shadow-fire restriction on Demonic Sacrifice needs to be lifted, and the ability nerfed. Procced ISB? Continue firing bolts. Procced Molten Core? Switch to fire. One of my favourite fights was pre-nerf Shahraz - I'd really like to see them get me more involved to do better dps. I think moving DS to deep Demo is not a really good idea (it would either be worthless or very strong, to make up for the loss of those talent points spent to make your pet stronger).
Suggestion:
Sacrifice Succubus: Increases all damage done by 10%
Sacrifice Imp: Reduces threat generated by 10%
If DS gets changed like this, and they give pets more survivability in raid encounters (the Imp talents suggest this), a deep Destro + Imp build might be able to compete with Destro+DS. At a level of 3000 dps your Imp would need to do 250-300 to make up for the loss of DS. We are a pet class and we shouldn't need 40+ points in the pet tree to be able to be one imo.
This requires ofc that there are actually 51+ points to spend in Destro. Kindling Soul and Eternal Flames are ok upgrades (assuming 500+ raid buffed spirit at lvl 80), but Backdraft and Torture are pure PvP talents and need to be changed to have at least -some- relevance in PvE. Other classes even get useful PvE 51-pointers, while our trees are crowded with PvP crap. In comparison to Priest and Druid trees for example our new talents are very disappointing.
Regarding the other trees, the basic design flaw is, you can't give Affliction the same single target dps as Destruction, because it would completely destroy Destruction in multi-target fights (and in PvP as such, see dot-coeff. nerf). Destruction needs to compete Mages and Hunters in single target dps. Thus Affliction will always remain the underdog, unless we see a shift in encounter design (we can find only a handful of fights where Affliction is actually better), but Naxxramas being the entry raid doesn't point that way. Demonology depends on pet survivability so we clearly cannot judge its strength yet. The Imp-cannon looks like an interesting concept.
P.S.: I don't always raid hit-capped as our guild has an elemental shaman, but I haven't had a soulshatter resist on bosses for ages. Am I just lucky?
I agree with a lot of posters about the 51-points. They really need to be a viable alternative to the 21-points. But I really dont think nerfing them is the way to go. Warlocks still need to scale with the rest of the dps classes and imp shadowbolt nerf already hurts. I bet all shadow locks will go fire when 3.0 hits, before the expansion.
Demon form looks promising, but as it is now it's pure pvp. Why does it need to be on a 45sec duration? Does any other shapeshifting spell in game have a cooldown and duration? No. I guess there will be a problem with pvp balance. I'd like demon form to be something like this:
shapeshift while the imp is summoned: You get a selection of fire spells to nuke with
shapeshift while the voidwalker is summoned: You get high survivability at the cost of dps
shapeshift while the succubus is summoned: you get shadows spells to nuke with
shapeshift while the felhunter is summoned: you get enhanced pvp abilities but at lower survivability
shapeshift while the felguard is summoned: you get melee attacks
That is just a rough example. But it would sure be fun to play. When demonic circle was proposed before the alpha started it was said that it should be easier to summon pets while in the circle. I'm guessing there will be some advantages to being in the circle. And are we limited to having only one circle up at the time? 6min duration and 30sec cooldown could be alot of circles. Maybe a talent point that allows you to summon more than one?
After staring at all the warlock talents for quite a bit, I find myself very puzzled. As many of you have already stated, the devs are trying to do...something. I'm not sure if they themselves know what.
In their current state, the talents seem to be switched around, messed with, and not really doing what they were supposed to do in the first place. There are some glaring shortcomings that I can't really explain.
1. Why give affliction a talent that gives you spell haste? It makes sense that you would want to put it in a tree that gets the most use out of it, such as destruction.
2. The 51 point talents are lackluster. The affliction one is interesting (but doesn't work at the moment), and seems usable on aoe packs, and Morogrim-like encounters. The demonology one is a gimmick, and the destruction one helps us hurt rogues with clos on, and bubbled paladins.
3. The "fire buffs shadow and the other way around" approach is interesting, but very poorly implemented at the moment. Due to the fact that there is no 51 point talent to make us go WOW, NEED!, I assume the raiding spec will still be 0/21/50, or a variant of affliction. With the pet sacrifice giving us school-dependant damage, why would we even cast the other, weaker school in the first place?
4. A lot of the talents in the destruction tree are aimed at improving spells that have marginal usage already. It looks more and more like they're holding back from giving USEFUL pve buffs, because of the way it might affect pvp balance. Backdraft is a completely useless 41 pointer. Torture is laughable. Kindling soul seemed like an interesting mechanic at first, until I realized it does not stack. Eternal Flames has potential, but an extra 10% critical damage for 5 points is slightly low.
5. Most of the buffs are only apparent. Without ds, a full destro-specced lock will hit and crit for less than with ds. However, this just means that the build is extremely dependent on a 21-point talent, and I can't imagine that is the intended way for things to work.
6. Death's Embrace seems like an interesting talent, similar to a mage's Molten Fury, only a lot crappier. Going back to my statement at point 4, I think they're throwing ideas around, and then going "oh wait that would give too much burst in pvp, we can't have that". And that's laughable, there are very few raiders that actually care about pvp in any way, or about the (fragile) balance they are trying to maintain.
Demonic Empathy(40 point) - When you or your pet is critically hit, the other has a 33/66/100% chance to have their casting or attack speed increased by 30% for 8 sec.
They should change the wording abit in my opinion :
Demonic Empathy(40 point) - When you or your pet scores a critical hit, the other has a 33/66/100% chance to have their casting or attack speed increased by 30% for 8 sec.
Add an internal cooldown or something ( just like backlash ), create a talent that actually worth taking and/or interesting for both pve and pvp.
The Ferocious Inpiration and Go for the Throat talents for hunters works great in conjuction, why should the other pet class not having something similar to it?
But hey, only wishful thinking... just sick and tired of a passive abilities/talents in the demo tree.
1 more thing/suggestion/wishing :
We are the only 'pure' dps class with no cd for burst dps on demand. 51 point meta might be the answer to it, which I highly doubt with so much pvp centered talents in the demo tree.
Do locks need burst dps on demand? I don't know, but those talents are at least worth taking.
PS : yes, I am jealous of fellow raiders popping cd's left and right while I am stuck spamming nukes
We are the only 'pure' dps class with no cd for burst dps on demand. 51 point meta might be the answer to it, which I highly doubt with so much pvp centered talents in the demo tree.
Do locks need burst dps on demand? I don't know, but those talents are at least worth taking.
PS : yes, I am jealous of fellow raiders popping cd's left and right while I am stuck spamming nukes
M'uru really highlights this. We had a mage die early on entropius and he still beat out everyone other than the other mage because he lived long enough to hit all his cooldowns which were during bloodlust (we hit it at ~80% there due to the fight design and raid damage.)
Warlocks are almost entirely a passive class. While mages have the same mechanic (spam a nuke) and don't even have lifetap for added entertainment (man, when I tapped 3x in a row instead of 2x in a row on M'uru, I thought the healers were gonna shit a brick on vent), they do have a lot more choices just due to their class design versus ours.
Our AE is a single spell without much else we can do.
Our utility is fire-and-forget (there's a reason we don't show up as often as, e.g., mages do in strat descriptions: outside of two gimmick fights for soulstones, we don't do anything different ever.)
Our talents are passive; we don't even have proc-based talents outside of ISB.
Our survivability is passive: +15% HP. We don't have a blink or an iceblock to choose to use or save for a worse occasion.
Even our tanking doesn't have anything to it other than "hold aggro, soak damage." There's nothing special about us as a tanking class goes other than more stamina and more health. It's why it's hard to actually design a fight where we need to tank and can't just be replaced, particularly with the epic-quality resist gear meaning you're not as desperate to have a felhunter out (and twins doesn't even use resists, you're just a soak.)
We do have active utility outside of curses -- unfortunately it's *all* bound up in our pets which due to:
- imp's HP buffs (some guilds require this; we never bother)
- demonic sac
- the lack of ability of most of our pets to survive in a raid environment
means that this is pretty much entirely a solo/pve set of active utility, and anything you want to do is always better done by someone else because pets are at -16% +hit so you can't rely on their abilities happening.
It's also what's in the way of us getting more interesting things to do because our pets *do* have those strengths, and if you buff/fluff the base class too much you run into issues in pvp when we *do* have a pet out.
Bosskillers is a good entertainment for this, if you thumb through the strats and see how many times it's just "warlocks curse and do dps and don't die" (paraphrase.) Rogues and hunters are in a similar position except they don't have curses going for them (hunters have raid dps boosts, but I think they're lower than +4% to all melee damage or +10% to fire damage. Rogues are worse off and it wouldn't hurt at all to give them some more utility, both passive and active.)
As a general thing, I'd prefer we give up some of our passive utility (curses are a *very* strong passive utility and are probably what's in the way of more active utility -- they're what's keeping us at 2-3 in each raid) in exchange for actually playing a role on raids and actually having talents and abilities that are more interesting.
We are the only 'pure' dps class with no cd for burst dps on demand. 51 point meta might be the answer to it, which I highly doubt with so much pvp centered talents in the demo tree.
Do locks need burst dps on demand? I don't know, but those talents are at least worth taking.
PS : yes, I am jealous of fellow raiders popping cd's left and right while I am stuck spamming nukes
TBH, then I would see we'd need to be less "pure DPS", and more DPS/Debuffer. But that is tricky as heck, and debuff strong enough to be good for raidplay will be underpowered for PvP (see Shadow Embrace), any debuff powerful enough for 5man/PvP has to not work on bosses or would completely imbalance raidplay.
It'd also mean our DPS has to be ~removed since otherwise we'd be too necessary for 10mans. -1 DPS for powerful debuffs would work, but would be too big a change. So it's a tricky thing to do, still better than just giving Warlocks more cooldowns though. IMO.
SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
Well, it's one thing to complain about having a very straightforward and one-dimensional class compared to a multifaceted one; but then, Mages would point out that fact that despite this simplicity, Warlocks:
- Tend to do more DPS in almost every fight.
- Improve rDPS far, far more.
- Never have to worry about a fight being *designed* to use their utility; it's *always* wanted.
It's a fairly simple dynamic: Warlocks are simple and outright more powerful; Mages are weaker, but more complex. Mages can find niches and exploit encounter designs creatively to eke out better results; Warlocks just muscle through no matter the conditions.
The fact is that Warlocks are probably fine, but Mages need a higher potential than Warlocks, if only because they can so rarely actually reach that potential. Having Warlocks chug along at X,000 DPS while Mages bounce between (X-1),000 DPS and (X+1),000 DPS based on how skilled they are and how much the fight favors a Mage seems fine to me; the problem is right now, according to WWS parses, Mages top out at a level lower than Warlocks no matter how skilled.
Perhaps if encounters stop being designed solely around sustainability and longevity and move towards more dynamic encounters that enphasize burst more, Mages will more often be in their niches and feel better about themselves.
A post that complains about how simple Warlocks are without acknowledging the power that comes with the simplicity often comes across as complaining about how boring it is that you hit Home Runs all the time; maybe it would be nice to bunt once in a while, but no, you're so damn strong that every time you're at bat it's at least a Triple and that's boring; it's refreshing to see you haven't fallen into that trap.
A post that complains about how simple Warlocks are without acknowledging the power that comes with the simplicity often comes across as complaining about how boring it is that you hit Home Runs all the time; maybe it would be nice to bunt once in a while, but no, you're so damn strong that every time you're at bat it's at least a Triple and that's boring; it's refreshing to see you haven't fallen into that trap.
I'm not sure if you're missing the last paragraph of my post or not, I'll highlight it just in case:
Originally Posted by Kyth
As a general thing, I'd prefer we give up some of our passive utility (curses are a *very* strong passive utility and are probably what's in the way of more active utility -- they're what's keeping us at 2-3 in each raid) in exchange for actually playing a role on raids and actually having talents and abilities that are more interesting.
I sorta chuckled when I read the description of Eternal Flames because it removes one of the few remaining interesting things from the destruction spec. We're left with lifetap -- and even there, they're reducing our dependency on it (thankfully -- the health loss on raids right now from tap can become an issue.)
Similarly I think that rather than rogues being "we are guaranteed always the best dps no matter what nyah nyah", that either their existing utility needs to be more raid-viable, or they need additional utility added.
Blizzard has done a good job so far of dodging making a pure debuffer class (spriest in TBC is the closest pure utility class), but I think they need to think a bit more about the dps/passive-utility/active-utility distribution amongst the classes. Unfortunately the warlock pets, and their lack of raid viability, are always going to throw a pve/pvp wrench into any plans for us.
The burst versus constant damage is just an extension of the same problem.
Ya I literally read that paragraph a few times and couldn't quite follow whether it was sarcastic or not, heh. Since I realized I forgot to mention the rogue thing in my last post, I figured I'd make a polite reply and then follow up with the rogue comments so it wasn't a waste of a post entirely.
I have both a mage and a lock and I actually somewhat prefer my mage because I enjoy having a more active role on the raid in exchange for what is a pretty small dps loss at the top. But it allows for a perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of both classes (which have significantly different designs -- although some days I hesitate to call the warlock "designed" and prefer "manically thrown together with a lot of hope and luckily it mostly works"), and nights when I'm tired, well, not having to care if a rogue breaks sheep on trash again really *is* nice, and not having to decurse on Kalecgos, heh...
- the lack of ability of most of our pets to survive in a raid environment
even if they do give our pets more survivability i wonder what it's going to take to make people buff them. It think i want some kind of spell that allow be to buff my own pet with whatever buffs i already have. Then i only have to ask the paladins for a might buff. Unless i was fast enough to summon it before warriors go their buffs.
even if they do give our pets more survivability i wonder what it's going to take to make people buff them. It think i want some kind of spell that allow be to buff my own pet with whatever buffs i already have. Then i only have to ask the paladins for a might buff. Unless i was fast enough to summon it before warriors go their buffs.
The new demonology on-pet-hit buff should be some incentive. But in general, pets should be receiving the same buffs as the rest of the group, and the same blessings as Warriors, no? I'm pretty sure that's what happens with Hunter pets.
The new demonology on-pet-hit buff should be some incentive. But in general, pets should be receiving the same buffs as the rest of the group, and the same blessings as Warriors, no? I'm pretty sure that's what happens with Hunter pets.
It does. But sometimes the group buffs start before i have had time to summon a pet. Or he dies. I've not been using dismiss macro to save his ass so i can partially be blamed for that. But when you do lack a buff it's usually pain asking for a new one. It was the buffing that made me drop demonology in the first place. But hopefully wotlk will make it fun again.
Demonic Pact(45 point) - Increases your Spirit by 1/2/3/4/5% while your Demon is active. In addition, your pet attacks have a 7/14/21/28/35% chance to increase your party's total Health and Damage by 1%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 10 sec.
Has anyone been able to confirm whether this applies only to successful pet attacks or whether every swing (or cast) has a chance to proc?
If the former, I could see a 50/21 build as being decent as a dps/utility hybrid (although soul link dmg nerf hurts), even if we are not given scaling additional scaling for our pets on haste, hit, and crit. Other than the obvious 5% crit bonus and flexibility of the 3% health/3% dmg for one's party (over malediction), there would be the added benefit of lack of stress on the debuff cap.
Of course coming changes could either shift demo to start looking really really good (if say, we got scaling on all stats + instant corruption by default), or could be very "meh" relative to destruction if some of the inconsistencies (that other posters have illuminated) are instead synergized and demonic sac remains in its current form.
Either way, my greatest hope is that skill will determine the effectiveness of our class in endgame WoTLK. Currently gear is the only difference.
Warlocks are almost entirely a passive class. While mages have the same mechanic (spam a nuke) and don't even have lifetap for added entertainment (man, when I tapped 3x in a row instead of 2x in a row on M'uru, I thought the healers were gonna shit a brick on vent), they do have a lot more choices just due to their class design versus ours.
...
Bosskillers is a good entertainment for this, if you thumb through the strats and see how many times it's just "warlocks curse and do dps and don't die" (paraphrase.) Rogues and hunters are in a similar position except they don't have curses going for them (hunters have raid dps boosts, but I think they're lower than +4% to all melee damage or +10% to fire damage. Rogues are worse off and it wouldn't hurt at all to give them some more utility, both passive and active.)
As a general thing, I'd prefer we give up some of our passive utility (curses are a *very* strong passive utility and are probably what's in the way of more active utility -- they're what's keeping us at 2-3 in each raid) in exchange for actually playing a role on raids and actually having talents and abilities that are more interesting.
You are seeing thing from a purely raid perspective. As a whole, locks have a lot more interesting mechanics than mages.
1) You have different pets with different abilities. Mages need to spec deep frost just to get a temporary one.
2) You have curses and DOTs, which we don't have.
3) You have bolt spells just like we do except they are marginally more powerful than ours when they are spammed.
4) You have AOE, just like we do. And SOC is a much more interesting AOE than AE is.
5) You will be getting some kind of teleport circle, so our blink won't be unique any more.
6) You will get to transform into a demon. We can't transform into anything.
All in all, you have a big variety of ways in which to kill things. While we just cast different color bolts out of our hands. So, I would say that from an overall prespective, locks have more variety and interesting mechanics than mages ever do.
We just mostly spam one type of colored bolt in raids (be it fireball, frostbolt or arcane blast). How are we that much more interesting than locks in that sense?
Anybody have any solid info on the demonic circle spell? I'm not even sure it was in the alpha build, but according to Kalgan the idea would be that we could preset it, and blink to it. In addition, we would be able to summon demons faster in it. Could there be a third effect that the demon within the circle takes significantly reduced damage? It's the only explanation as to why they seem to playing around with the idea of the imp being used offensively. The imp is our only ranged pet, so therefore the only one that can do dps on a "stay" setting.
Considering that Najentus does 8k damage to everyone in the raid, I can't see an imp being viable. Supremus volcanoes do 4+k a tick. SoA's hellfire hurts. Teron Gorefiend's incinerate and shadow blossom can 2 shot an imp. And the list goes on..T5 bonus or not, if any ability has the ability to one-shot your pet in short order, it's worthless. Anybody else see us summoning a demonic circle and having the pet stay in it?
You are seeing thing from a purely raid perspective.
Yes, my post actually explicitly said that. I explicitly was talking about raid abilities.
And in fact I pointed out that since our class design and the game design make most of our abilities unusable on raids, we get boring on raids even though we technically have a wide variety of things we can do. That's all in my original post -- indeed, I pointed out that as much as I might hope for a more interesting class, we'd overpower pvp/solo play if we had additional raid-viable abilities because we *do* have a bunch of toys outside of raids.
It's just a shame that the class falls into the "mage without active utility or variety" style on a raid due to how the game is designed, and we're not seeing anything yet out of Alpha to suggest that this has changed.
Also: I would pay everyone a large amount of gold in game to not turn this thread into mage versus warlock. I think it's very valid for us to be able to comment on the weaknesses of our class without this devolving into a standard WoW forum thread.
05/25/08, 2:38 AM
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