Demonology
-I dislike the demon variety, red/green/white imp, red/green/white felstalker, that's it, I Would have liked our abilities to summon at-least some different skins, not just recolours. I'd be happy if there was a glyph introduced to change this, not hard to do, just some reskin work.
I saw a comment on the forums a while back, that demo warlock is
"like the warlock which found the book called Summoning Powerful Demons for Dummies and stopped reading it on Chapter 1: Imps Dogs and more Imps."
-I hate Thal'keils consumption, It's a nice idea - but it makes it almost completely useless in PvP it takes so little to deny it. I would have much rather seen the ability as more as a summon demons idea to it, You know kind of like Hunters stampede? Not the same, but the general idea of it.
- I dislike on how short our demons actually last for. ^ Relates to post above.
I play destruction and there are 2 things I want to change.
1. Give us an interupt which we dont have to spec into.
2.Giving us some kind of a cooldown which can increase our burst since doomguard is better to use at the targets below 20% hp.
Affliction
1. Number issues - I feel that despite how well I am doing rotationwise and take advantage of multidotting, the effort put in does not correspond to the reward as singletarget damage is pretty low.
2. Souls - I like our artifact weapon and the whole ideas behind the traits are awesome. To take full advantage of this artifact you have to reap souls. But on a single boss fight, I am happy if I can get a 12 stack use during the fight. Wish there was a way for me to have to manage stacks better than just wait and hope for the best.
3. Burst - fight's that requires an add or something to die fast makes affliction locks hard to contribute to the party or raid. For example adds on the Odin encounter in mythic Halls of Valor, I just ended up going destro for that fight as adds did not die fast enough in our group.
1. Number issues - I feel that despite how well I am doing rotationwise and take advantage of multidotting, the effort put in does not correspond to the reward as singletarget damage is pretty low.
2. Souls - I like our artifact weapon and the whole ideas behind the traits are awesome. To take full advantage of this artifact you have to reap souls. But on a single boss fight, I am happy if I can get a 12 stack use during the fight. Wish there was a way for me to have to manage stacks better than just wait and hope for the best.
3. Burst - fight's that requires an add or something to die fast makes affliction locks hard to contribute to the party or raid. For example adds on the Odin encounter in mythic Halls of Valor, I just ended up going destro for that fight as adds did not die fast enough in our group.
1. Favourite Warlock spec.
Demonology
2. Three things not liked about Warlocks
Suggestions
I don't think we need new spells for damage output, but the ones we do have definitely need work.
Demonic Empowerment would be better if it used an aura-type mechanism with a 12-15 second duration. This would smooth out the rotation. Also need to be able to track DE with the UI.
Doom. I agree with Nixx; just my opinion, Doom could be implemented with a nominal 15 second duration, one tick every 5 seconds, 33% chance to generate a shard.
Rain Of Fire This needs to be looked at alongside Cataclysm. If it was up to me I would roll the Immolate mechanic (just the DoT part though, not the initial damage) from Cataclysm into Rain Of Fire, and remove Cataclysm. I think this would make Demonfire more attractive to use. Failing that, just reduce the shard cost of RoF.
Pet Assist needs to include the mechanics of Defensive.
Sense Demons Ok, so I know you said "no new spells" but this isn't a DPS/survivability item. Legion is the Demon expansion, but Warlocks can't sense Demons...
Demonology
2. Three things not liked about Warlocks
- Demonology. Needing to cast Demonic Empowerment after every summon.
- Destruction. Rain Of Fire doesn't hit hard enough for its shard cost.
- Warlock. Pet AI and target switching is poor.
Suggestions
I don't think we need new spells for damage output, but the ones we do have definitely need work.
Demonic Empowerment would be better if it used an aura-type mechanism with a 12-15 second duration. This would smooth out the rotation. Also need to be able to track DE with the UI.
Doom. I agree with Nixx; just my opinion, Doom could be implemented with a nominal 15 second duration, one tick every 5 seconds, 33% chance to generate a shard.
Rain Of Fire This needs to be looked at alongside Cataclysm. If it was up to me I would roll the Immolate mechanic (just the DoT part though, not the initial damage) from Cataclysm into Rain Of Fire, and remove Cataclysm. I think this would make Demonfire more attractive to use. Failing that, just reduce the shard cost of RoF.
Pet Assist needs to include the mechanics of Defensive.
Sense Demons Ok, so I know you said "no new spells" but this isn't a DPS/survivability item. Legion is the Demon expansion, but Warlocks can't sense Demons...
Favorite spec: Destruction
3 things I dislike most about Destruction:
- Talent choices determine gameplay way too much and gimp usability (I would like to touch this in the conclusion a bit)
- Baseline abilities got removed and turned into talents instead, which made the spec feel clunky and hollow (I really miss the fact that Destruction used to be well rounded, Fire and Brimstone talented, Shadowburn talented, our movement talented (except for Demonic Gateway (?!))
- Mastery and the whole RNG fiasco.
Conclusion [might be a bit longer, sorry]:
I tried to keep it really short, but some things just have to be said: I understand that Blizzard wanted to make talents feel more important, and they do, in fact, to that extent, that you're virtually useless in AoE as a Destrolock, if you specced ST/Cleave. Rain of Fire is designed horribly, considering it is our baseline AoE ability, if you don't spec into others. Imagine if we had Cataclysm baseline instead of Rain of Fire. Immolate on all targets hit, decent impact damage, and most importantly, Soul Shard regeneration (which you need if you specced ST/Cleave?). Right now, talents for me feel like a mess and I feel useless in particular situations, which shouldn't be happening, I think. Talents should empower your ability to do something, not bring you on par with everyone else but at the same time gimp other damage-dealing aspects. With all that being said, I do think that our talent designs are plain lazy ... keep in mind that this is just my opinion, but that's how I feel. Strip Destro of its baseline abilities and reintroduce them as talents in the same row feels really, really awkward. I had to say this.
As to our Mastery ... just remove it, please.
I tried to be as concise as possible. I realize there are many more problems with Destruction, but for me, personally, these 3 stand out the most.
Thank you for your consideration.
Yours truly,
Izalyth
3 things I dislike most about Destruction:
- Talent choices determine gameplay way too much and gimp usability (I would like to touch this in the conclusion a bit)
- Baseline abilities got removed and turned into talents instead, which made the spec feel clunky and hollow (I really miss the fact that Destruction used to be well rounded, Fire and Brimstone talented, Shadowburn talented, our movement talented (except for Demonic Gateway (?!))
- Mastery and the whole RNG fiasco.
Conclusion [might be a bit longer, sorry]:
I tried to keep it really short, but some things just have to be said: I understand that Blizzard wanted to make talents feel more important, and they do, in fact, to that extent, that you're virtually useless in AoE as a Destrolock, if you specced ST/Cleave. Rain of Fire is designed horribly, considering it is our baseline AoE ability, if you don't spec into others. Imagine if we had Cataclysm baseline instead of Rain of Fire. Immolate on all targets hit, decent impact damage, and most importantly, Soul Shard regeneration (which you need if you specced ST/Cleave?). Right now, talents for me feel like a mess and I feel useless in particular situations, which shouldn't be happening, I think. Talents should empower your ability to do something, not bring you on par with everyone else but at the same time gimp other damage-dealing aspects. With all that being said, I do think that our talent designs are plain lazy ... keep in mind that this is just my opinion, but that's how I feel. Strip Destro of its baseline abilities and reintroduce them as talents in the same row feels really, really awkward. I had to say this.
As to our Mastery ... just remove it, please.
I tried to be as concise as possible. I realize there are many more problems with Destruction, but for me, personally, these 3 stand out the most.
Thank you for your consideration.
Yours truly,
Izalyth
Demo as main.
Playing warlock from TBC, PvE and PvP.
I'll start with 3 shards change:
Kind of insult really... This is not really a fix becuase in pvp and in pve you can be smart and start with 5 shards almost every encounter... So not really useful if you use your brain a bit... (This fix was targeting end gane so no need to reply that it was for questing... Where the above still applies..)
DM ability is totally redundant and currently works as a handicap mode, you dont need to empower every time you have a demon out when you know the next pack will be instant or sure to be full imp pack (rng wise..) but you still have to cast it... The fact that you have so many casts as a spec takes time, time = your life or your damage (in pvp you get interrupted and if you fake cast you still getting hits and it takes more time to get your damage out/demons/artifact setup)
PvP wise only - i know mobility is no more an option as stated in the q&a but we still need to get the option to get players away from us. Talking about a knockback or a penalty for attacking the interruptible, stationary warlock... Or, even add interrupt to us.. it's fine melees have instant interrupt every 24 sec but that applies to casters that can actually move away from them... So if we need to stay put we need to at list have to option to knockback, disarm, debuff aoe or something that protects us from all the other classes that can 3 v 1 you becuase you cant move...
Not going to talk numbers as it is still early to tell.
Playing warlock from TBC, PvE and PvP.
I'll start with 3 shards change:
Kind of insult really... This is not really a fix becuase in pvp and in pve you can be smart and start with 5 shards almost every encounter... So not really useful if you use your brain a bit... (This fix was targeting end gane so no need to reply that it was for questing... Where the above still applies..)
DM ability is totally redundant and currently works as a handicap mode, you dont need to empower every time you have a demon out when you know the next pack will be instant or sure to be full imp pack (rng wise..) but you still have to cast it... The fact that you have so many casts as a spec takes time, time = your life or your damage (in pvp you get interrupted and if you fake cast you still getting hits and it takes more time to get your damage out/demons/artifact setup)
PvP wise only - i know mobility is no more an option as stated in the q&a but we still need to get the option to get players away from us. Talking about a knockback or a penalty for attacking the interruptible, stationary warlock... Or, even add interrupt to us.. it's fine melees have instant interrupt every 24 sec but that applies to casters that can actually move away from them... So if we need to stay put we need to at list have to option to knockback, disarm, debuff aoe or something that protects us from all the other classes that can 3 v 1 you becuase you cant move...
Not going to talk numbers as it is still early to tell.
Haunt shouldn't go on CD when the target dies while haunt is traveling.
My Favorite Spec : Demonology
(OS - Affliction)
I do not like :
1 - Spamming Demonic Empowerment
2 - Demonbolt not strong enough for quick target switching (priority targets).
The third oned I want to use on Affliction
3 - Soul Effigy is way uncool and a real chore. It's like peeing in the wind and smiling. Looks fun, but only leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.
(OS - Affliction)
I do not like :
1 - Spamming Demonic Empowerment
2 - Demonbolt not strong enough for quick target switching (priority targets).
The third oned I want to use on Affliction
3 - Soul Effigy is way uncool and a real chore. It's like peeing in the wind and smiling. Looks fun, but only leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.
This is mainly from a PvE perspective. I will also add that I haven't played since early Mist of Pandaria. Long post inc (Breaking the 3 things rule, sorry.)
Affliction
I'll start of by saying I don't agree with many of the previous posters about the RNG element regarding soul shards. Destruction has RNG in its soul shard regeneration, affliction is static and I think that's ok.
Now to the issues:
- Reused abilities far worse than they used to be and bad talents
I know a lot of classes have talents / abilities from previous expansions reused (I don't expect you to completely redo the class) but I think warlocks suffer the most from this.
For example, affliction warlock talents that are reused: Haunt, drain soul, mortal coil, howl of terror, siphon life, soul harvest, demonic circle, burning rush, dark pact, all grimoire talents.
All of these are either old talents or are things we used to have baseline. But what is really annoying is that the things we got for free before are now also far worse than they used to be.
Haunt - was a cool ability that increased our dot damage to X target and also did a decent amount of damage which we had baseline - Now just a flat damage spell on a 15 sec cooldown and is useless.
Soul Harvest - used to be Dark Souls that gave us 20% increased damage for 20 seconds, baseline. Now it is 10 seconds talented which is increased by 2 sec for every agony (and realistically, even IF there are 5 targets to get it to 20 seconds it's not worth doing it)
Soul Effigy - Poorly designed and implemented as well as in my opinion being boring
I could go on about Drain Soul, Siphon Life etc but you get the idea.
- Boring playsyle
I know this is very much a subjective question but I personally think this spec is now boring and dull to play. Before you had snapshotting (I know UA still does), you had procs (instant shadowbolt in cata, don't remember if it was in MoP as well), cooldowns to manage (haunt, dark souls, soul swap) and you had soulburn.
The spec just felt more engaging before with more depth to it. For single target, all I do now is put up agony, corruption and make sure they don't fall off, spam drain soul and cast UA to make sure I don't cap on soul shards.
To me it just feels as if the spec has an extremely low skill ceiling, not that it ever was a difficult spec. It just feels slow paced, uneventful and dull.
- Boring artifact with bad gold traits
Again, I am sure there are probably more classes feeling this way but having played my rogue alt and looking at other artifacts I think this one is by far the most boring. It's just a passive damage buff which further contributes to the dull playstyle of affliction.
Given that duration can be so long (up to a minute) I understand the power increase can't be that significant and I think that is a problem. It doesn't feel impactful when you activate it. not to mention it is extremely annoying to rely on mobs to die to stack it up quickly (single target you gain stacks so slow).
Speaking of things dying, apart from the artifact itself relying on things dying, we also have 2 gold traits that are practically useless if there aren't mobs dying and soulflame is useless unless the mobs are stacked. Far too situational and again, the reliance on adds / mobs dying is annoying.
- Numbers
Even if you buff numbers everything I said above still holds true. But given how terrible affliction is damage wise at the moment, it is just the final nail in the coffin.
Affliction
I'll start of by saying I don't agree with many of the previous posters about the RNG element regarding soul shards. Destruction has RNG in its soul shard regeneration, affliction is static and I think that's ok.
Now to the issues:
- Reused abilities far worse than they used to be and bad talents
I know a lot of classes have talents / abilities from previous expansions reused (I don't expect you to completely redo the class) but I think warlocks suffer the most from this.
For example, affliction warlock talents that are reused: Haunt, drain soul, mortal coil, howl of terror, siphon life, soul harvest, demonic circle, burning rush, dark pact, all grimoire talents.
All of these are either old talents or are things we used to have baseline. But what is really annoying is that the things we got for free before are now also far worse than they used to be.
Haunt - was a cool ability that increased our dot damage to X target and also did a decent amount of damage which we had baseline - Now just a flat damage spell on a 15 sec cooldown and is useless.
Soul Harvest - used to be Dark Souls that gave us 20% increased damage for 20 seconds, baseline. Now it is 10 seconds talented which is increased by 2 sec for every agony (and realistically, even IF there are 5 targets to get it to 20 seconds it's not worth doing it)
Soul Effigy - Poorly designed and implemented as well as in my opinion being boring
I could go on about Drain Soul, Siphon Life etc but you get the idea.
- Boring playsyle
I know this is very much a subjective question but I personally think this spec is now boring and dull to play. Before you had snapshotting (I know UA still does), you had procs (instant shadowbolt in cata, don't remember if it was in MoP as well), cooldowns to manage (haunt, dark souls, soul swap) and you had soulburn.
The spec just felt more engaging before with more depth to it. For single target, all I do now is put up agony, corruption and make sure they don't fall off, spam drain soul and cast UA to make sure I don't cap on soul shards.
To me it just feels as if the spec has an extremely low skill ceiling, not that it ever was a difficult spec. It just feels slow paced, uneventful and dull.
- Boring artifact with bad gold traits
Again, I am sure there are probably more classes feeling this way but having played my rogue alt and looking at other artifacts I think this one is by far the most boring. It's just a passive damage buff which further contributes to the dull playstyle of affliction.
Given that duration can be so long (up to a minute) I understand the power increase can't be that significant and I think that is a problem. It doesn't feel impactful when you activate it. not to mention it is extremely annoying to rely on mobs to die to stack it up quickly (single target you gain stacks so slow).
Speaking of things dying, apart from the artifact itself relying on things dying, we also have 2 gold traits that are practically useless if there aren't mobs dying and soulflame is useless unless the mobs are stacked. Far too situational and again, the reliance on adds / mobs dying is annoying.
- Numbers
Even if you buff numbers everything I said above still holds true. But given how terrible affliction is damage wise at the moment, it is just the final nail in the coffin.
Spec: destruction
Pvp player: yes
1. Chaos bolt damage is awful, its way to low, other players don't fear chaos bolt atoll.
2. Demonic circle needs to return, we don't want mad mobility we just want a little something to move away from melee once or twice.
3. Destro talents and artifact traits are boring(visually and game play wise) also a lot of our talents are useless, we want to be able to pick what ever pet we need and have some actual selection, by this I mean not being forced into taking demon skin and dark pact, same with pvp talents we are forced into picking talents that boost our damage because we are lacking so much.
Pvp player: yes
1. Chaos bolt damage is awful, its way to low, other players don't fear chaos bolt atoll.
2. Demonic circle needs to return, we don't want mad mobility we just want a little something to move away from melee once or twice.
3. Destro talents and artifact traits are boring(visually and game play wise) also a lot of our talents are useless, we want to be able to pick what ever pet we need and have some actual selection, by this I mean not being forced into taking demon skin and dark pact, same with pvp talents we are forced into picking talents that boost our damage because we are lacking so much.
Favorite Spec: Affliction
Weaknesses that need to be adressed are kinda simply the damage out and ramp-up time:
Overall damage output: the spec really lacks the damage output to be competitive with other specs and/or classes. And it also has a to long a ramp-up to do that DPS making it worse on lower HP mobs.
- An idea would be to increase the buff from the "Deadwind Harvester" by increasing the damage increase from the buff it gives to 20%. This would make us also have a real cooldown, wich we also lack and is something other classes do have.
- An other idea is to increase the damage output on Drain Life and its talented version Drain Soul. DoTs themselves are also not that potent, but seeing as increasing their damage is an issue in PvP, the idea to do so might be problematic in that regard.
- And a last solution would be to make Soul Swap baseline instead of a PvP talent. Best way to make it, is that instead of "remembering" the duration of previously cast DoTs it applies all DoTs on the target but have a 1 minute cooldown. This way it is not OP in PvP but still lowers the ramp-up time.
AoE damage: the damage itself is not that bad and not OP, but that only when we spec into the "Sow the Seeds" talent. However the ramp-up time for the explosion on SoC is its main weakness and kinda makes our AoE none-existing in short AoE-moments. This because it takes too long to cast SoC (ramp-up), and when a target dies after the spell is just cast, the explosion does not go off making it be cast but do nothing.
- simple solution would be to atleast make SoC explode upon target death and lower its cast time. Another thing would be to make the talent "Sow the Seeds" be baseline. This already is kinda a to much a needed talent since without it, our AoE damage simply is not that good. And Sow the Seeds really outshines the other 2 talents in that tier (Siphon life is kinda ok as damage goes but not good enough to choose over Sow the Seeds, but Soul Harvest is just plain bad due to its low up-time and is because of that useless) so in that regard, it would also fix that imbalance.
Weaknesses that need to be adressed are kinda simply the damage out and ramp-up time:
Overall damage output: the spec really lacks the damage output to be competitive with other specs and/or classes. And it also has a to long a ramp-up to do that DPS making it worse on lower HP mobs.
- An idea would be to increase the buff from the "Deadwind Harvester" by increasing the damage increase from the buff it gives to 20%. This would make us also have a real cooldown, wich we also lack and is something other classes do have.
- An other idea is to increase the damage output on Drain Life and its talented version Drain Soul. DoTs themselves are also not that potent, but seeing as increasing their damage is an issue in PvP, the idea to do so might be problematic in that regard.
- And a last solution would be to make Soul Swap baseline instead of a PvP talent. Best way to make it, is that instead of "remembering" the duration of previously cast DoTs it applies all DoTs on the target but have a 1 minute cooldown. This way it is not OP in PvP but still lowers the ramp-up time.
AoE damage: the damage itself is not that bad and not OP, but that only when we spec into the "Sow the Seeds" talent. However the ramp-up time for the explosion on SoC is its main weakness and kinda makes our AoE none-existing in short AoE-moments. This because it takes too long to cast SoC (ramp-up), and when a target dies after the spell is just cast, the explosion does not go off making it be cast but do nothing.
- simple solution would be to atleast make SoC explode upon target death and lower its cast time. Another thing would be to make the talent "Sow the Seeds" be baseline. This already is kinda a to much a needed talent since without it, our AoE damage simply is not that good. And Sow the Seeds really outshines the other 2 talents in that tier (Siphon life is kinda ok as damage goes but not good enough to choose over Sow the Seeds, but Soul Harvest is just plain bad due to its low up-time and is because of that useless) so in that regard, it would also fix that imbalance.
Destruction
My biggest problems with the Spec right now:
1. Interrupt: I really really hate, that i "cant" interrupt anymore. Yes i know, i could. But its just stupid that you need to sacrifice Damage to do so.
Possible Solutions: Give us some general kick, without relying on a specific demon OR buff the damage of all pets by the artifact trait and make command demon avaiable again with Grimoire: Sacrifice.
2. Talents for (utility) abilities that should be standard, especially demonic cirlce for mobility. We just lack in some aspects of the game, where we used to be really good, or atleast need to make decisions that arent fun in my opinion (should i talent a stun which i will use only a couple of times or should i spec tankyness for the whole instance?)
3. AoE: We got really bad AoE-options, espacially on shot-living pack of mobs. Throwing in an instant rain of fire was nice pre-legion on such packs, but now its worthless. Sometimes they even die while you are still casting.
Possible Solutions: Maybe change back rain of fire, so it does a lot less dmg but is instant and without any cost (or maybe 1 shard) and put its current state in as a talent. Or maybe give us one of the AoE talents by default whether its Cataclysm or Fire and Brimstone. Or both solutions in combination (stated talent for rain of fire could be the replacement).
My biggest problems with the Spec right now:
1. Interrupt: I really really hate, that i "cant" interrupt anymore. Yes i know, i could. But its just stupid that you need to sacrifice Damage to do so.
Possible Solutions: Give us some general kick, without relying on a specific demon OR buff the damage of all pets by the artifact trait and make command demon avaiable again with Grimoire: Sacrifice.
2. Talents for (utility) abilities that should be standard, especially demonic cirlce for mobility. We just lack in some aspects of the game, where we used to be really good, or atleast need to make decisions that arent fun in my opinion (should i talent a stun which i will use only a couple of times or should i spec tankyness for the whole instance?)
3. AoE: We got really bad AoE-options, espacially on shot-living pack of mobs. Throwing in an instant rain of fire was nice pre-legion on such packs, but now its worthless. Sometimes they even die while you are still casting.
Possible Solutions: Maybe change back rain of fire, so it does a lot less dmg but is instant and without any cost (or maybe 1 shard) and put its current state in as a talent. Or maybe give us one of the AoE talents by default whether its Cataclysm or Fire and Brimstone. Or both solutions in combination (stated talent for rain of fire could be the replacement).
Fav spec: demo
Demonic Empowerment. Great idea but don't like how it works. I want to empower my demons, that's cool, but the player has no choice but to cast it after summoning demons. There are no intelligent choices to make when to cast it. The cast time and importance of this spell makes me feel like that is what I am doing most of the time. It is not an interesting play style. It's our most important spell, linked to mastery, yet it turned out that mastery is our weakest stat, making me begrudge having to cast it all the time even more. (And please change the sound effect. The metal-on-metal sound is driving me nuts. Have one or two other demo locks close by and it sounds like a metal shop.) TKC. Very hit and miss and requires demon tracking add-on to use optimally. Compare Doomhammer. You hit that button and you wreck. Much easier to plan and use. TKC can be more interesting. Demonwrath. Not practical to use with ranged pets. Even buffing its ludicrous damage won't fix its application in reality. HoD + Darkglare feels much more natural for AoE. Even when moving, one pretty much always can life tap since mana burns so quickly. Demonwrath feels like one of those spells that will be pruned when the next prune comes along and no one will miss it. I don't want to choose between Demonic Circle and Dark Pact. DC should be baseline. It always has been and I cannot understand why Demonic Gateway is baseline but we lose DC. Ramp up and target switching. What others have said. Damage. I know numbers will be tweaked. I know that my summoning is where my damage comes from, but I feel so weak when I look at the breakdown and see my doom and shadowbolt doing so little damage. I spend so much time casting shadowbolt solely to generate shards. The spell feels like a shadow of its former self. Most of my time spent casting is DE and SB simply so that my demons can do dmg. I'm ok with the split in damage, I get the summoner fantasy and I like it a lot, it just feels weird. I have only played demo in Legion. After playing destro and affliction in the previous 2 expansions since demo was not viable/nerfed I was really looking forward to dust off my favourite spec again. I have only been working on the demo artifact weapon and have not checked out the other two specs yet. I kinda had enough of them for a while.
I'm not a lock main by any means, only rarely play it as an alt, but I may as well contribute.
My favorite spec is Demonology. Why? I love seeing all the little numbers quickly flying up the screen as my imps and pets attack the target.
I dislike the soulshard mechanic for destruction warlocks, specifically the RNG elements, I like to feel as if I am building it up myself, not some passive ticking away. As a destruction warlock I should be responsible for the havoc I cause. I think chaos bolt is a little lackluster. As a fire mage main, I don't really see any cool distinctions / benefits of destruction over fire. Even frost mage has a deadlier 1 shot mechanic (glacial spike) so in comparison it's just underwhelming. Doom is a very boring DoT, at least have it be deadly, it just kind of feels like a chore to track it every like 20 seconds (or however long it is). It doesnt even need to be a damage increase, maybe just a big purple explosion animation or some small detail just to make it have that satisfying pop like Living Bomb has. Again, not a lock main but i raided demo during HFC after the prepatch and i never noticed doom ever going off.
My favorite spec is Demonology. Why? I love seeing all the little numbers quickly flying up the screen as my imps and pets attack the target.
I already made one post but i just need to make one more about artifacts.
2 more things i dont like:
-Affliction artifact traits: soul flame and wrath of consumption. These supposedly awesome golden traits having on kill mechanic is ridiculous. As a raider i find it really upsetting that i wont be using 2 out of 3 major traits. If there are no adds the traits simply wont proc rendering them useless.
-Demonology artifact trait: the expendables. First of all this is our most powerful artifact trait. We are supposed to rush for it first, getting our first golden trait way later than other classes and it feels completely underwhelming. Sure the expendables is way more useful than the on kill affliction traits, but it being completely passive, and constantly having the buff it provides only on our felguard (other demons have like 4 stacks and die too fast) doesn't feel good. Our felguard is really weak as of now and a 10% dmg buff doesnt feel enough as our last golden trait.
2 more things i dont like:
-Affliction artifact traits: soul flame and wrath of consumption. These supposedly awesome golden traits having on kill mechanic is ridiculous. As a raider i find it really upsetting that i wont be using 2 out of 3 major traits. If there are no adds the traits simply wont proc rendering them useless.
-Demonology artifact trait: the expendables. First of all this is our most powerful artifact trait. We are supposed to rush for it first, getting our first golden trait way later than other classes and it feels completely underwhelming. Sure the expendables is way more useful than the on kill affliction traits, but it being completely passive, and constantly having the buff it provides only on our felguard (other demons have like 4 stacks and die too fast) doesn't feel good. Our felguard is really weak as of now and a 10% dmg buff doesnt feel enough as our last golden trait.
Favorite spec : Destruction
1. Make demonic circle baseline again : fun spell and you need to plan how to use it (I'm missing it too much).
2. Not having a baseline interrupt is frustrating : you are seeing an add casting a spell that will wipe the group and you can't do anything (or use your def cd and be the last one alive, how rewarding ...)
3. Rain of Fire needs a rework/buff, our only baseline AoE cost a lot of resources and is a 8s dot : any adds movement and you are loosing everything you built ...
Not as important but still disappointing : visual should be reworked.
1. Make demonic circle baseline again : fun spell and you need to plan how to use it (I'm missing it too much).
2. Not having a baseline interrupt is frustrating : you are seeing an add casting a spell that will wipe the group and you can't do anything (or use your def cd and be the last one alive, how rewarding ...)
3. Rain of Fire needs a rework/buff, our only baseline AoE cost a lot of resources and is a 8s dot : any adds movement and you are loosing everything you built ...
Not as important but still disappointing : visual should be reworked.
Hi,
my favorite Warlock specc is Demonology.
1. Summoning demons that only last for 12/15 seconds let them appear meaningless. Casting DE like every 2nd or 3rd cast and resummoning minor demons every 12/15 seconds is too repetitive. It shouldnt be necessary to empower the demons at all, the goal of our rotations should be to extend the duration if executed correctly.
2. I miss Metamorphosis.
And its not about the visuals. I miss a bigger plan in the Rotation, a goal where i would work for. It felt so rewarding: getting your dots up spamming soulfire (which i miss aswell) to max demonic fury and then
Pop Meta
at the right moment of the bossfight
and unleash Chaos Waves or 4 beautifull Demon Bolts
Thats was the most beautifull rotation in the existence in wow and its gone. I guess Thakiels Consumption is meant to work that way. But it doesnt cut it.
And Demon Bolt is dwindled to a filler. What a shame.
3. Life Tap
It has nice flavor and class style.
But we have shards as resource
we have 1 dot plus 2 to 3 shortcooldown summons to monitor and to empower
its to much to limit us by mana additionally
my favorite Warlock specc is Demonology.
1. Summoning demons that only last for 12/15 seconds let them appear meaningless. Casting DE like every 2nd or 3rd cast and resummoning minor demons every 12/15 seconds is too repetitive. It shouldnt be necessary to empower the demons at all, the goal of our rotations should be to extend the duration if executed correctly.
2. I miss Metamorphosis.
And its not about the visuals. I miss a bigger plan in the Rotation, a goal where i would work for. It felt so rewarding: getting your dots up spamming soulfire (which i miss aswell) to max demonic fury and then
Pop Meta
at the right moment of the bossfight
and unleash Chaos Waves or 4 beautifull Demon Bolts
Thats was the most beautifull rotation in the existence in wow and its gone. I guess Thakiels Consumption is meant to work that way. But it doesnt cut it.
And Demon Bolt is dwindled to a filler. What a shame.
3. Life Tap
It has nice flavor and class style.
But we have shards as resource
we have 1 dot plus 2 to 3 shortcooldown summons to monitor and to empower
its to much to limit us by mana additionally
Affliction:
1. Ramp up time: With Writhe in Agony (the best talent for dps), the time it takes to reach 20 stacks is almost 30 seconds. A way to instantly drop ~10 stacks on a target (can have cooldown or cost a shard) would help greatly with that problem.
2. Boring/Bland damage rotation: Currently affliction has only 4 spells (and one upkeep buff and two minor cooldowns), Agony, Corruption (which can be made infinite with a talent), UA and drain life. Everything else is a maintenance buff (Artifact ability, Life Tap), which doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the playstyle. Adding one or two more reactive spells would go a long way there.
3. Ability pruning, talents and overall utility: Much of our utility got removed and then added back into our talent tree. Haunt, Drain Soul, Soul Harvest/Dark Soul, Demonic Circle just feel bad when you have to spend a talent to get functionality back you used to have. Also some talents are just worse versions of what we used to have. Grimoire of Sacrifice is the worst offender here, it removes our ability to have a counterspell (which is incredibly important in mythic dungeons). We are the only damage spec without an interrupt. Also, why are our talents arranged in a way that we have to chose between aoe and single target on so many tiers? If you spec into aoe, you gut your single target. If you spec into single target, you have literally zero competitive aoe capabilities. And at last: boring talents. Soul Effigy is clunky (mages hated their version to no end), Mana Tap just adds another maintenance buff (we already have 2 with artifact and life tap, when we should have zero), the level 45 and 75 abilities have one clear winner (demon skin and dark pact, all other talents might as well not exist).
1. Ramp up time: With Writhe in Agony (the best talent for dps), the time it takes to reach 20 stacks is almost 30 seconds. A way to instantly drop ~10 stacks on a target (can have cooldown or cost a shard) would help greatly with that problem.
2. Boring/Bland damage rotation: Currently affliction has only 4 spells (and one upkeep buff and two minor cooldowns), Agony, Corruption (which can be made infinite with a talent), UA and drain life. Everything else is a maintenance buff (Artifact ability, Life Tap), which doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the playstyle. Adding one or two more reactive spells would go a long way there.
3. Ability pruning, talents and overall utility: Much of our utility got removed and then added back into our talent tree. Haunt, Drain Soul, Soul Harvest/Dark Soul, Demonic Circle just feel bad when you have to spend a talent to get functionality back you used to have. Also some talents are just worse versions of what we used to have. Grimoire of Sacrifice is the worst offender here, it removes our ability to have a counterspell (which is incredibly important in mythic dungeons). We are the only damage spec without an interrupt. Also, why are our talents arranged in a way that we have to chose between aoe and single target on so many tiers? If you spec into aoe, you gut your single target. If you spec into single target, you have literally zero competitive aoe capabilities. And at last: boring talents. Soul Effigy is clunky (mages hated their version to no end), Mana Tap just adds another maintenance buff (we already have 2 with artifact and life tap, when we should have zero), the level 45 and 75 abilities have one clear winner (demon skin and dark pact, all other talents might as well not exist).
14/09/2016 13:19Posted by ArtomarDemo as main.
Playing warlock from TBC, PvE and PvP.
I'll start with 3 shards change:
Kind of insult really... This is not really a fix becuase in pvp and in pve you can be smart and start with 5 shards almost every encounter... So not really useful if you use your brain a bit... (This fix was targeting end gane so no need to reply that it was for questing... Where the above still applies..)
DM ability is totally redundant and currently works as a handicap mode, you dont need to empower every time you have a demon out when you know the next pack will be instant or sure to be full imp pack (rng wise..) but you still have to cast it... The fact that you have so many casts as a spec takes time, time = your life or your damage (in pvp you get interrupted and if you fake cast you still getting hits and it takes more time to get your damage out/demons/artifact setup)
PvP wise only - i know mobility is no more an option as stated in the q&a but we still need to get the option to get players away from us. Talking about a knockback or a penalty for attacking the interruptible, stationary warlock... Or, even add interrupt to us.. it's fine melees have instant interrupt every 24 sec but that applies to casters that can actually move away from them... So if we need to stay put we need to at list have to option to knockback, disarm, debuff aoe or something that protects us from all the other classes that can 3 v 1 you becuase you cant move...
Not going to talk numbers as it is still early to tell.
Adding to my post some general notation:
RNG was never a welcome thing in WOW since vanila!
That being said, raising RNG on a caster type and remove RNG from melees is a bad idea and that is something that leads to unbalance melee train rack...
Melee has white damage that acts as a DOT but also have resource to add to this damage and it will not be based on RNG.
Casters have no white damage and have to use DOTs that acts as base damage or have a really big numbers to compensate.
This is where we as warlocks fail. we need to hard cast most of our main abilitys and hope that the RNG gods will be in our favor while other classes and melees have none but still can use "soul shards" mechanics.
Take for example DKs and rogues, all have almost the same mechanics and have DOT based damage. DK have some RNG but they can still sustain the damage from their DOTs and melee attacks (aka white damage...) and they have more shards (or runes if you want...).
Rogues, not going to talk on all the options this class has but just going to take the combo points as example and again.. RNG is on crits but no cast time, resource is easier to track then pure RNG, DOT's to maintain damage and melee...
All the above works the same as warlocks but with instant casts and with other options for damage if resource is low/none.
Devs please keep that in mind when you sit down and brain storming...
I don't feel like it would be game breaking change, but if demonic empowerment affected next summoned minion with full duration it would be insanely good improvement in regards to quality of life.