The problem with convoke isn’t that it’s OP, it’s that it’s laughably easy and cheap vs people who don’t instantly deal with it.
It’s completely ruining newcomers’ perception of PvP, and it lets bad balance druids auto-win against equally bad players who didn’t pick the noob-stompier spec.
I see a lot of players saying “git gud”, but why should they have to be so much more skilled than the druid to win?
Why should the druid be handed a spell that can win the entire match for them?
Other classes have stupid OP burst, I’ve seem my partner deleted by sub, arms, WW, MM and Fire in the blink of an eye, but please don’t pretend convoke is fine and good for the game just because other stupid stuff exists.
TL;DR:
Convoke can end games in 1 key press, and that’s bad design.
w
Isn’t that the whole point to be better than your opponent?
Key word here is “deal with it.” Most bursts barely have a counter. Here you can actually interrupt, stun etc.
Many other bursts like WW, Mage, Demon hunter etc can’t be dealt with, without pressing your “oh shiet” button or nuking them back.
You just have to predict it and either pre buff yourself somehow or press the “oh shiet” button and hope for the best. Or just hope you have the stronger burst and nuke them first.
Same could be said about the other classes aswell. Mages throwing out 12k crits of instant pyros. Thats literally 1 button to make that crit.
No one is pretending it’s fine. But tbf if you gonna nerf convoke, you better nerf every other classes one shot potential to. Otherwise you’re just putting another specc as the “bad specc.” And then just lowering amount of ppl playing it and going for something else.
To take OPs example. Thats not even to crazy. Again mages (the class i see the most and watched alot of,thats why i keep using em) can do that type of bursts, OVER and OVER again. They don’t even need a long 2min CD or whatever, to do it.
If you survive the convoke, thats 2mins he can’t burst you.
Do you see other classes being like “aw damn, my 2min super shot is over, guess im doing decent dmg for a while.” No most classes still claps your cheeks with insane sustain dmg.
In relation to Torghast I couldn’t agree more, it was the stupidly easy design of Balance using convoke compared to the struggle I was having on other classes that made me give it up as a bad, untuned job in which the outcome really depends on your class, spec, covenant and anima powers, with skill playing only a smallish part.
In terms of pvp, its the one thing I quite like in SL, but the tuning is all over the place. One place they could tone that down without fundamentally affecting covenant abilities is by buffing the damage reduction portion of the versatility stat which is currently just too low and cannot be compensated for by gear and ilvl. It would take some tuning because if they were to go too far then we would be back to the kind of spongy pvp I really don’t like.
The problem here is that the druid can be an absolutely awful player and still win against someone much better than themselves. The druid needs to push a button. Their opposition needs quick reflexes and good situational awareness, and knowledge of what is to come.
The druid can be literally clueless about the game because once again, one button.
You can see these classes coming, getting more than 0.1 sec of prep time, and as such, most people have the time to actually push their “oh shiet” buttons. Even a mage will poly someone before popping their lolcombustion. The druid can hang around in max range, watch their opposition being forced to open on their partners, and push the convoke button from a safe distance, from stealth, with zero forewarning except the knowledge that “somewhere out there there’s a druid, and at some point they’ll convoke.”
A 12K pyro in 1 button is indeed 1 button. But it’s not killing a player in 1 button.
I’m not saying pushing pyro, fireblast, phoenix, repeat is rocket science, it’s fairly brainless as well, but compared to Convoke’s potential to deal 32K damage in 0.6 seconds?
Sure, Full Moon into Starsurge doesn’t happen that often, but I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of it more than once. A mage at LEAST has to press more than 1 literal button after popping CDs in order to kill even a terribly bad opponent.
And as I said (and you responded to) earlier, there’s oodles and oodles of other broken stuff around as well, and I’m not pretending that’s not the case.
Fire mages, WWs and arms ARE more overpowered than balance druids. It’s not OPness that’s the issue, once again it’s how incredibly, stupidly cheap it is.
“If I channel convoke for 1 second from my perfectly safe, max ranged hiding spot directly out of stealth I’ve probably won.”
And that only highlights how poor balance is atm. If they absolutely rely on convoke to deal damage, that means they’re complete trash without their borrowed power, and power should be shifted away from it (i.e convoke nerfed, baseline abilities buffed).
I know Blizzard doesn’t give a toss about how covenant abilities are ruining PvP, but it’s got to be admitted that if a druid chooses Necrolords and is therefore completely useless regardless of their kit outside the covenant abilities, that’s a serious problem.
I don’t even know what they’re capable of outside of convoke, because I’ve literally never fought a Kyrian balance druid (who’re supposedly the superior covenant for skilled players) and don’t even know what their covenant ability does.
If I interrupt convoke, I notice a large portion of balance druids simply giving up, standing around letting us hit them, some have even AFKed out because their insta-win didn’t work out.
Expect Convoke, therefore;
3.1 Avoid splitting off from the group (that way the burst doesn’t hit just one person).
3.2 Learn to pillar hump.
3.3 Learn to interrupt, stun, fear, blanket silence etc.
3.4 Trade defensive cooldowns for offensive cooldowns.
Enemy team wastes their Covenant ability and therefore their main burst. You now have the initiative.
At this point you will learn that instant cast Starsurges are a much bigger threat.
To be fair, while Convoke is only 2min CD, the killy Convoke is macroed with Astral CD (dps cd) from balance tree that increase damage a lot as well as activating our best legendary Balance of All things (+40% crit on activation of the macro. Decreasing with 8% each second after that).
Actually it is 80% crit. It procs twice during CA because your activating two eclipse. so convoke during CA has a very high chance to crit which is what makes it so devastating. You are a one trick pony though. You won’t see that combination in high rated area much.
But yea as you said, convoke without that coolsown is hugely less lethal
“Much” compared to the amount of paladins, firemages rogues etc. There was what, a single team running a convoke druid for a few matchups lol…oh and only reason they lost is because the paladin tried to be greedy with bubble. So gg
Your taking one single match up and using it as your argument? What about the 5 other matches where there firemage globaled someone? But that’s fine right. The unsinkable instant pyro and meteors. Vs the completely kickable convoke…
Not at all they baited counterspell, rootbeamed into cc and the paladin saved the monk with sacrifice but tried to hold bubble.
If he uses bubble, they survive. The druid used celestial alignment, pvp trinket and convoke. 3 cooldowns. If you don’t trade cooldowns u deserve to die. Paladin was greedy, simple as that. What that druid did took setup and coordination. Whys that any different to any other 1shot setup. Yet this one actually has a ton of RNG involved…
You can’t just make a druid and do this. It requires a specific legendary, very high mastery and verse stacking, a big on use mastery trinket or badge… convoke minus those things is pretty pants
See the issue in my eyes is that everyone else who could kill someone in 1 second got nerfed but not Druid. Either bring them all back or nerf convoke.
Except you can just make a druid and do that… I have a Hunter friend that has a balance druid alt that is about 180 ilvl cause he haven’t touched it since launch and that thing can still one shot people in PvP with convoke
Are you living under a rock? Mages can legitimately global someone, so can monks and rets, ele shams with minor setup and no rng.
Yeah ur druid friend might randomly one-shot some guy in a bg with no verse and defensive. In arena when there’s 2 to 3 people and cooldowns and watched and monitored its not as simple as that… pvp has and never will be balanced around casual pvp, no one cares about crazy 1shot builds in battlegrounds. In high rated pvp, this might work now and then. Considering all high end pvpers have arena target kick macros most combinations can deal with convoke easily.
Intact the only useful thing convoke will so consistently is make teams hold ranged kicks far more…
This clearly shows you either never played with a boomie or never played a boomie. It’s not that easy to get it off and it’s really easy to line of sight it to.
If you have 2 ppl in a team just completly ignoring the fact theres a druid in stealth and just stands in the open, then well, you kinda deserve to lose at that point.
This might be true at idk 100 rating. But when i played with a boomie, i had to bubble him with the pvp talent version of guardian of ancient king, to make him immune to dmg. Because otherwise, everysingle time, they interrupt him, stun him or anything. It’s soo easy for most classes to interrupt it.
And ye ppl with 190 ilvl gets oneshotted true.
But anyone with 30k+ hp don’t get oneshotted by convoke.
Because you DO have time to pop your “oh shiet button.”
It doesn’t happen as fast as OP claims about half a global or whatever. It takes longer than that. Even the convoke cast is like 2seconds. And it doesn’t oneshot.
You need to follow up with more spells and thats where you can avoid this.
If a rogue opens on a guy with 190 ilvl hes gonna die in half a global aswell.
And also to add, the MORE targets there are, the less dmg it does because the dmg spreads. Convoke is almost useless vs WW, DK, hunter etc with their safari pets. Because convoke won’t prioritise players.
No but a follow up of 6k fire blast, a few k in fire burns and another 12k pyro does. That happens in 2 globals. One tick of convoke won’t kill you either.
This is false, it doesn’t. Lvl a boomie and try it yourself.
So does a boomie aswell. Because again the dmg happens over a few seconds, not 1 global. The OP didn’t pay attention and pop his dispersion and he died.
If it is as easy as you claim, why are there like 40 mages in top 100 and like 5 druids? This “lol easy convoke” prob works to 1100 rating but beyond that, you’ll get stomped if you just think convoke will carry.
Because it doesn’t work the way you claim it does.
Against someone with 20k hp, yes, 30k? no.
Well thats just a bad druid player. They have a kit to deal dmg, it’s not just constant sustain like Dk, ww, dh, warr,hunt,sham etc has in 2v2.
Ive played against these classes, even outside of their cooldown bursts they hit for like 6k each ability over and over.
Druid would def need alot of buffs if convoke gets nerfed. Atleast for 2s. They might work better in 3s without convoke, because cyclone and still having decent sustain.
Rogues can still global within a cheapshot lol what more do you want… hunters didn’t need a nerf. They scale bad with gear it would have sorted it self out once people got some high verse. Hense why there’s like 3 hunters in top 100 arena rankings. Besides half decent burst and scatter trap, they don’t have much to offer a team. They were fine they are just gods in early expansions, like every time. The opposit of afflic locks who are terrible, but are now approaching godlike status and will be invading the top 100 pretty soon
I just wanna add to. For ppl claiming “convoke is 30k dmg in 0.6s omegalul.”
It’s highly false for another reason.
I can pop bubble (guardian of ancient queen) on a boomie, he casts convoke, they have time to stun the queen and interrupt the boomie, before they even take any fatal dmg at all.
Just that one deletes any argument that it works as fast as in a global, it doesn’t.
and this is why we don’t nerf stuff because OP links a combat log heavily out of context. If there is a video where he dies in 0.6 seconds from the start of a convoke cast, then theres an argument.
But this is just crying and offering 0 constructive arguments.
Then that was a bad “roll” on the boomkin’s RNG because Convoke starts firing off 0.3 secs from press, so you’re telling me that upon your buffing druid and the druid casting convoke, your enemy managed to stun the angel, locate the druid and kick the druid within the space of 0.3 secs?
Because it’s entirely possible within 0.6 secs for two starsurges to come out and crit, which IS lethal damage. Sounds like the Boomkin rolled badly tbf, but acting like it never happens that Convoke can kill people in under a second is just wrong, because it absolutely can. it might not happen all the time, but it’s definitely possible.
A lot of defences of convoke are “well in theory it can be kicked” the point is a clued up druid and team will not just cast it in your face begging for a kick, be it by using immunities, or having a team mate stun the potential kicker, and if you don’t kick it, you die. SImple as.
No ability in the game should operate on the principle “if you can’t interrupt this spell you lose the match” it is absolutely ridiculous. This doesn’t just go for druids as well, but any class that has abilities where if you do not happen to have the precise counter available and use it within a second or two it kills you.
They should absolutely punish you for not countering them, enough to put you at a major disadvantage for example, but i’m sorry no ability should be strong enough to kill an entire team if you don’t kick it, because there are lots of ways to impair kicks and behaving like every pvp battle happens “as if according to theory” is just naive. Not every player will react in less than a second. Should the punishment for this be they lose the match? Don’t you think that’s a bit steep?
i mean with druids coming out of stealth it is already difficult to respond to them instantly when they pop out if they’re sensible with their destealth. This whole manouver alone can buy them a free second of convoke before the enemy even realises what is happening. It’s not like the druid’s partner is just standing there letting the opponents keep watch for the druid is it? Let’s say it’s a mage. If “kick/CC” is the go to for convoke, is the team expected to hold this for the druid? So they just let the mage happily nova them, split them, poly one and set up their meteor oneshot with no resistance? Because even a defensive will struggle to save them from that. Let’s say they kick the poly to stop the mage exerting control and try to CC him to burn combust duration, out comes the druid- the team now deserves the loss because they used their CC on the mage?
Can people not see the problem here? A good druid knows when there’s little risk of kick and CC or when the opponents won’t be able to respond correctly. Pair them with another class that demands kicks or CC to be dealt with and it’s a nightmare situation where if you don’t use them on the first class, they’ll get you, but if you don’t save them for the druid, you’re dead, so what do you do?
Ranged CCers (bar hunter) can be nullified by a boomkin with a solar beam/root combo so a lock/mage/priest “saving” their controls for the boomkin whilst their partner deals with whoever will be pointless as the boomkin can just stop them casting whatever it is they would try. So then the melee has to try and move back to the boomkin to kick them in time.
Let’s say it’s a melee class assigned to be ready to kick, so they need to hope the boomkin appears in a position that is easy for them to travel to, get the kick/CC off all without the boomkin’s partner (whom they have been prior engaged with in all likelihood) trying to stop them.
There’s a good reason the classes that were more popular than boomkins in the AWC were such, they’re the classes that can immunity magic damage in many cases- which seems to be the only reliable counter for convoke you can absolutely depend on. It also has the knock on effect of making them immune to other whambham combos like fire mage and in several cases other stuff like hunter (in case of paladins and mages).
Basically, the top performing classes are ones that can immunity. This tells us something is really up with the “prescribed counters” for several abilities. Fire Mages, Boomkins and to a lesser extent ret and WW (in WW’s case it’s not so much the whack burst, although it’s good, it’s that their damage doesn’t seem to fall off, in ret’s case my main issue with them and prot is their massively OP healing of others) are such ballaches that having an immunity is pretty much highly recommended when facing them.
Rogues, sure, but even way back in the first weeks of rated as a rogue myself (Outlaw) in pvp i never had huge issues with sub rogues so long as you save trinket for the CS and then immediately follow up with a hard CC plus defensive (which is to be expected as they are using 3 dps cds when they open) but this would reliably work and force their vanish for example. I had much more issues dealing with mages and boomkins because if CLoS was down and they had distance on me (and I was out of range to gapclose) there’s pretty much nothing I can do and unlike a rogue, these guys can use their burst whenever they like . A rogue will always leave their burst for the opener, which means your trinket will likely always be ready for them.
If you don’t trinket CS, what do you expect? Pretty much most classes can kill you in a 4 second stun if you just stand there. I mean the argument against convoke is “it takes 4 seconds, if u just stand there, then you deserve to die” yet cheap shot is 4 seconds and people acting like eating the entire stun and dying is somehow massively unfair. IT’S THE SAME PRINCIPLE if you don’t stop the obvious burst you lose!
The difference is the counter to a rogue is entirely dependent upon me, it can take me myself less than a second to press my trinket and CC button every single time. With the druid it’s a factor of “where are they?” “have they be immuned by a paladin?” “where are they going?” which means at the very least you’re eating some damage. If you’re anticipating a sub you can stop their burst rotation cold as soon as cheap shot hits and force them to trade several cooldowns to remain on you or force their retreat and reset attempt with vanish. At this point though you know they’ll be reopening soon (and you’ll have the stun DR) because Shadow Blades does not alst forever and without Shadow Blades they are not globalling you (i’d argue even with it they’re not killing you in 2 secs of a cheap shot on DR unless your gear sucks)
Yesterday I teamed up with my Sub rogue friend to try out this cheap tactic of convoking from stealth. And surprise, that stuff only works in Skirmish and not rated. People in rated instantly lock you down even at my rating.
Okey then you have to nerf rets, enh, elem, dk,dh,rogue,mage, affli, Sp.
So call me up when you have nerfs for those.
Right but it’s only lethal if you are paying 0 attention, have no cds ready, no hots on if you play with a healer etc. And you separate yourself from all your pets (if u have any) and do like a monk did when we played. The monk rolled the hell away from his healer, so i just had to run up and stun the healer and we killed him.
They had like 26k hp so low rating and low geared players.
This doesn’t happen on high ladders. Check the 2s arena ladder, if convoke is so broken as everyone claims, then why are there so few boomies and half the damn classes are mages.
But this is literally what every dps class can do right now. Don’t punish the affli? He bursts you down. No cc on rogue, dh, dk, etc etc they all burst you down.
Every class has what convoke has. But difference with them it’s a 20+ second long buff that makes them super strong. I mean rets wings and seraphim, hello?
You could even divine with the seraph and attack without any consequences.
Like rogues? They can pop a few abilities before they’re seen, can even duel a player in an arena and kill him.
You have pillars, you have line of sight. And as you said, theres 2 of em, 1 can kick the mage. 1 can hold for druid. Like just as you say this, what about the other classes with their bursts? Oh should i hold my hoj incase a WW pops all his cds? What about his rogue friend, should i not stun him then and just wait for the ww?
Also you can STUN, incap whatever, blinding light on the druid, you don’t have to necessarily kick.
Hell with these classes they have trnkets and whatnot to continue their barrage, convoke is literally a 1 trick pony you have to avoid.
Tbh if its a 1 trick pony class, the ability should do what it does today.