Do you guys feel like drain life is super undertuned atm for demo and destro?
I mean it does like 5-6k healing per tick in pvp
Even warriors can heal for like 100k every 30 sec.
I don’t know I miss old warlock where you could actually heal for a while with drain life or even do some dmg.
It would be nice if it got some love on the left tree.
Maybe replace Fel synergy (I dont like this at all it’s super weak) with buff on drain life ,even 100% would be to low I think
Or maybe an increase on its dmg to actually hurt and adjust the healing or cap it let’s say at 5% each tick.
lol, Yea no sh*t sherlock
Well was thinking previous expanansions before the bad redesign of Demo on Legion
All 3 specs could use Drain Life to heal and do some dmg if talented,and actualy Demo could also burst with Drainlife in Metamorphosis.
Anyway i guess u only want affliction to heal with drain life.
Well the spell exists for all 3 specs and theres several talents in the GENERAL talent tree for it so i think making it usable would be appropiate personally. Destro n Demo drains should be alot weaker than affliction but currently no one is ever going to drain life as destro or demo outside of baiting a kick from some lobotomized ape.
Wouldnt ever compare drain life to warriors though, Warriors self sustain is absurd n makes DK self heals look like garbage. No idea how warriors went from 0 self heals and one charge to leaping across the map like a DH n having the best self sustain in the entire game for a dps spec.
Alternatively they could also give options to demo n destro such as embertap etc n simply make drain life affliction exclusive. I however quite like the idea of all specs having drain life as its an iconic spell for warlocks in terms of lore n such but theres no doubt its unusable for destro n demo atm. Besides, drain life has a ton of counterplay unlike most other classes self heals which is just “click to heal” so i personally prefer drain life as a source of sustain.
The spell is iconic for the warlock class imo and should actually be a viable spell to cast. It should be buffed at least for demo and destro.
My suggestions would be either: make it castable while moving acting as a filler spell for movement, generate soul shards/fragments on tick, or drastically buffed in dmg and healing. Right now you are struggling to stay alive with it against 1 or 2 dots while very low hp so it’s really no point ever to cast it to survive if a melee is PvEing you down.
I think they just need to increase its damage and healing, i dont think it should be castable while moving but it should be a viable means to self sustain as a warlock, afterall warlocks are iconic for their self heals and currently they´re not even self sustain royalty but quite low on the list, even affliction in favor of classes that ironically enough never had self sustain at all originally such as warriors.
There needs to be a balance of course, you shouldnt be able to sit n spam drain life n outheal a bursting melee either but it should certainly heal more than it does by perhaps like 2-3x, then again you´d have to balance that somehow for affliction with inevitable demise. I dont want demise to be changed either because i actually think its a super cool gameplay feature although be it predictable and quite clunky compared to other classes burst and heal.
Cant stress it enough though, i think drainlife is the perfect example of how self sustain should be designed where it has a ton of counterplay where as things like victoryrush should either not exist at all or have like a 1-2 min CD. Makes no sense that warriors can use healthstone on a 25s cd while locks healthstone is a 1 min cd n requires leaving combat to even recharge, which to be fair should also be adressed n instead turned simply into a 1 min regular cd.
As u guys said Drain Life is so iconic for warlock , a great ability and super unique but atm if u are not Affliction is unusable and classes that couldnt heal now heal x5 what warlock does while also pump dmg and sacrificing nothing.
I dont think it should be usable while moving but it would be cool.
What i believe they should do is pump the dmg by x3 or even more because atm it does only 1500 dmg a tick and heals for like 6-7k.
So increase the dmg of Drain life thus its healing and nerf Inevitable demise in half or even more so the dmg would be the same as it is now at max stacks but the base Drain Life with no stacks will be stronger.
Also great adition about Healthstone, There is no reason it doesnt reset in combat i dont know why it is still like that,atleast make a talent or a passive for warlock that make it usable more than once in combat only for him.
Maybe redesign it so warlocks always has a “permanent” healthstone as a regular cooldown that functions identically but unlimited charges n just a regular 1 min cd n keep the 3 stack healthstones as team utility that functions the same way they do now.
Well we shouldnt get to the point where drain life is an actual damage tool, for example a demo lock shouldnt be using drain life as a filler. I would personally be more in favor of simply increasing the healing % based on the damage as opposed to buffing the damage. I dont like that classes can heal without compromises. Victory rush for example is unhealthy for the game, if they either increased the cooldown substantially or made it consume a significant amont of fury to force compromises it´d be alot better.
If a lock is using drain life it should be to sustain, not to deal damage. hence the damage output should take a huge loss. In order to form that type of gameplay it actually needs to heal for a decent amont though.
Well i dont think u can use Drain Life as a filler even if it was strong for demo or destro cause it doesnt regen any soul shards.
But it would be nice to do some dmg to finish some1 off .For example if the enemy is low hp and going to run behind a pillar and u can use ur drainlife to kill him.
I am not saying to be super strong but 4-5k dmg a tick woulnt be crazy strong.
Its 20-25k dps in 2,5 seconds if talented (before dmg reduction from vers etc it would be do way less).
I kinda still want drain life to be primarly a tool for affliction, if we start poaching afflictions identity even more there´ll be even less reason to play an already struggeling spec.
I think my biggest annoyance with drain life is the fact that there are so many GENERAL talents related to it n yet its unusable for 2/3 specs with or without talents.
Although to be fair the entire warlock talent tree needs a rework. Some new talent trees like warriors looks absolutely fantastic where as the warlock tree looks like something an intern slapped together 15 minutes before release as if they went “oh crap! we forgot the purple people talents!”
The general talent tree is the biggest offender since its all over the place with 3 quite undesirable milestone talents where one is drain life related, middle one is utterly uninspired not to mention useless and the third one is the only appealing option n they mega nerfed the utility of it for affliction n for demo n destro its exclusively used for instant gates n empowered teleports n healthstones n beyond that has no further synergy with anything what so ever.
Destro tree can only pick up one milestone talent in their tree due to bloated mandatory talents that could´ve aswell been named “statstick” and affliction are forced to pick between single target and aoe options while ending up behing awful at both. The demo talents arent much better either. Essentially i feel like primarly the milestone talents needs another look at for warlock.
How are defenses of Demo and Destro different from defenses of affli?
We all share basic defenses from main talents and Affli is the only one who can ramp up healing of drain life.
If affli didn’t have access to soul link or dark pact then such gap in effectiveness of Drain life would have been justified.
This raises a question why only affli should have good healing from drain life?
Because Affli, unlike demo or Destro, utilizes all of its abilities to generate shields from soul leech.
The key damaging abilities of demo doesn’t generate shields from demons because
Demonic strength is AoE - thus doesn’t generate shields.
Dreadlash (talent) - turns dread bit into AoE and it prevents dreadstalkers to generate shields for you.
Bilescourge bombers are AoE.
Hand of Gul’Dan is AoE.
Implosion is AoE.
On top of that, Demo, unlike Affli and Destro, cannot utilize the leech stat, because attacks of your demons heal themselves and not you. And with that in mind you can understand that Lifeblood talent, that gives you 7% of leech for 20 sec after HS is useless for demo.
It is worth noting though that demo is alot more passively tanky than both destro and affliction, yes the survival cd´s are the same but most afflictions n destro looks wants to opt for grim of sacrifice which substantially reduces the tankiness. It is also worth noting that even when playing with a pet the demo pet is SIGNIFICANTLY more tanky than the regular pets. Most regular pets tends to die alot in arena from cleave alone where as the demo pet deals alot of damage on its own ontop of higher stats which makes it able to for most part sustain itself entirely.
Another fact that is entirely ignored here is that demo has access to TWO additional instant stuns that no other lock spec has access to. Granted one of them is on a long CD.
Demo also has access to MS through the pet.
Demo certainly has its issues and currently its in a fairly rough state ( i still find it far better than affliction due to being viable in alot more comps where as affliction is extremely comp reliant to even get to play the game )
I personally want to see a full scale rework for demo because i dont think it´ll ever be in a healthy state due to its fundamental design. I played demo myself when it was the only viable lock spec and no one can convince me that demo is healthy gameplay. Due to the passive shard regen from doom and pet i barely ever casted at all and when i did i dident even bother fakecasting because if i get kicked it doesnt particularly affect me since all damage is tied to pets meaning that ccing the player does virtually nothing.
Whenever im on my dk n see a destro or affliction lock i´ll tunnel them intill i eventually win by default more or less, against a demo i prefer to ignore him because tunneling him wont reduce his damage output significantly n demos are still extremely tanky even if i sit on him like gorilla glue. With the amont of CC demo has access to it paired with passive damage it quickly turns into a very toxic spec to fight against whenever its strong. I like it in terms of theme but the gameplay is awful n unhealthy for PvP.
Alot of people mention destro n its instant casts which is accurate, destro does rely alot on instants but its also worth mentioning that through purely instant casts destro has no solo kill preasure what so ever and the reason you barely cast chaos bolt is because its high risk low reward. If you get kicked on fire you still have chaos n shadow n vice versa but if you get kicked on chaos you´re fully disabled for the duration and chaos bolt doesnt do anywhere near enough damage to justify casting most of the time in a meta where you´ll spend half the arena fight in CC. Even with precog you´re generally better off casting faster incinerates as the damage difference isnt all that substantial n the exception to this rule is if for some reason you get into that one game where you as a destro is completely ignored n allowed to free cast.
Doom is a waste of talent and bar space, not only damage is low for a talent ability but in 20-15 sec of uptime it is easily dispellable, it doesn’t has any form of dispel protection and shard generation is now worth it at all.
Affliction unlike destro and demo can generate shields from soul leech (and hp with a talent) just by hiding behind the pillar or under the pressure.
The sole fact why affli is a better target for tunnel is that affli has only one school of magic, interrupt affli and you will lock it from ALL spells.
