Unpruning done badly

[Dâedra-argent-dawn]

This is a direct question for blizzstaff, like Ion Hazzikostas or Brian “The unpruner” Holinka.
How come that with the task of unpruning the classes and specs, Warlocks has been left behindt hat task apart from curses and baseline demonic circle?
IF you loor at spec tabs in WoWhead and your spell book, you’ll find that baseline you have very little amount of spells and abilities speciefic for your spec.
Demo has 14 spells: 6 active and 8 passive.
Affli has 13 spells.
Destro is lucky, it has 15 spells.

I’ll use demo as demonstration…

So with only 6 active spells in demonology spell book, and current design, blizzard (Ion and Holinka) has decided to put key abilities like inerrupt in PvP talents and behind Axe toss of our felguard, mixing it with stun… quite a clunky decision if you ask me.
What situation such design decision creates for demonology.
First - if we will relly on or felguard for interrupting the enemy, we will have interupt with longest CD in game on our hand - 30 second CD, against 24 of regular caster and 12 of melee classes… and i’ll remind you, Felguard is Melee fighter after all.
Second - it diminishes need role of Felhound for demonology, because of number of questionable design decisions of Blizzard.

• Demonology has Felguard dedicated talents.
• Blizz for second Xpac in the row has pushed Felguard as only viable option for demonology, completly neglecting legacy of previous demonology itterations where all demons was viable and could be good or great.
• • This completely narrows demonology variety of choices in its playstyle, while class now is starving for gameplay options. Look at the last talent row for example, we don’t have option there.

Third - It goes completely against PvP options that blizz created for demonology, because in PvP we have talents that designed to work with other demons, thus Picking up PvP talents like Pleasure trough pain, neglects us from using 2 main talents like demonic strenght and soul strike.
Fourth - Locking interrupt behind PvP talents, while leaving Felhound utterly useless, makes for the most parts Call Felhunter pvp talents mandatory. With this in mind, demo only has two free slots for PvP talents with such design, because you can’t overestimate need for interrupt.

Another question is why, with such ability starving spec, you @blizzard has locked Demonology burst behind talents? Without Demonic consumption, demo has no burst. And with Shadowlands redesign you did more then locked our bust behind talents, you locked key components of our burst locked behind talents. Yes. i’m talking about Vilefiend and Grimoire: Felguard Talents. Without these talents, Demonic consumption loses major part of it’s power, and if we look at this situation from above, we’ll see that we have most of our key abilities locked behind talent trees.
Our burst is locked behind talents and combined of three talents - is this a wise gameplay design decision from developer team? Spec has barely minimum to work, and you lock all good stuff that should have been baseline behind talents.

I can name several spells from the past that could fit demonology well and don’t
Master sumoner - talent from the classic, that reduced cast time of demons and maked cast cheaper, or Fel stamina, Improved Healthstone, Master demonologist, Demonic knowledge, Improved Health Funnel, Fel intellect

> https://tbcdb.com/talents/index.html?en&warlock

These an easy examples of good talents that could have been added to demonology, yet you left demo somewhere behind.

Yet with minimal changes for the spec, you decided to make summon spells 6 second cast, and add half-baked version of fel domination to demo.
Fel Domination states - Your next Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, or Felguard Summon spell is free and has its casting time reduced by 6 sec.

Question - My cast time of summoning spells is 5.3 seconds, then why when i activate fel domination my cast time of summoning spells is still 0.4 seconds?

But back to the 14 spells that we have… With such little amount of spells to work with, how do you planing to balance demonology? Because right now, with gameplay demo has, it is not near where it should be. With such hardcasting nature of demo it deals not as near damage with most crutial spells like Tyrant and demonbolt, not to mention that our demons(main/prime ones) deal less damage then ghouls of DK. How do you plan to balance demo? Because we need more then raw numbers of our spells like Dreadstalkers that you tries to buff again and again.

[Xanatas-nemesis (Xanatas)]

Main warlock since vanilla here!

I admire your dedication to the warlock cause in the forum and having also other classes, i see the huge difference between this classes and warlock. But it is enough to meet them in pvp situations to understand it.

You have understood a basic thing, the unpruning is very very bad. The curses in practice in pvp are almost nil and at times useless, more choreographic than anything else.

I knew it was going to be another expansion the warlock would suffer in when I simply saw that they were giving back the non-instant corruption to all specs and that the main daemon had 6 seconds of cast time. These two clues were enough for me to understand it.

A novel would have to be written about warlock and his problems. You hit a crucial point, the lack of spells and the fact that most abilities/spells are talents instead of being baseline or otherwise embedded.

First problem: the warlock has had a constant evolution over time until MOP where it reached its peak, its golden moment. After this peak, the class was literally and constantly stripped of everything.

Second problem: blizzard want that warlock is the “tanky caster” in the game. But right now is the less tanky in the game and ALL your playstile is focussed around the gateway and the “kiting” in a preconfigured scenario like arena. Warlock are supposed to be tanky and face your foes “draintank them”. In this espansion need to ally with the faires and little creatures of the forest to become a blueish vulpin to escape “like a mage”. What the hell, i hate you blizzard so much, i am a netherlord, i summon demons to destroy my foes, i curses and drain the life from my victims and i destroy them with chaos unelashed! You forced the warlocks to ride moths and take refuge in a sacred tree in the middle of a forest and use nature spells and bind your soul to a FAIR. What a humiliation! I will never forgive you! (i’am demonology and i go necrolord). And this covenant spell hit for nothing compared to some devastating spells like chain harvest, the hunt, condemn, mind games, CONVOKE (the dumbest spell in the whole game history).

Third problem: the warlock’s playstile is very very old in almost all contest of the game. Your healing is very very low and totally insufficient compared to the ultra-fast dynamics of a game that has evolved over the years. How to compete against classes that have a monstrous and instantaneous and almost infinite self-healing, if your way to recover life is a very long channeling easlily kicked and heal for nothing compared to other healing systems? But is the warlock a tank or not? The class need to hardcast almost everything, and even when it can have an “instant” ability… they give it that 0.5 second cast which is annoying. Why does a warlock portal have 0.5 seconds of cast and a monk that has the same spell does not have time to cast?
The game is too fast, frenzied, and you have very few procs for instant damage (only demonology actually with the demonic core) and the rest is an infinite cast time to do ridiculous damage compared to all other classes.
It is clear that if you are not tank, you do not have a sufficient healing system and to cast a shadowbolt you need an half day to do a miserable damage and at the same time you face classes that are hyper fast, with unbridled and continuous healing, immunity, instant cast and covenants incredibly scary and instant abilities, with istant and monstruos burst damage and istant CC, a warlock have no chance.
Thought: if the warlock had a disarm of 6 seconds every 15, and could be invisible hiding in the nether to have the first (and last) attack, with instant bursts and instant and ruinous spells, with infinite fears that do not break with damage and could also be immune to physical hits for 6 seconds while hitting you … what would melee say? Yet that’s what a rogue has been doing against us from morning to night since the game has practically existed.

I have billions of ideas to improve the warlock gameplay, I write for years on the various dedicated forums in the hope that some complaints and ideas will be noticed by someone at blizzard.

[Khooba-argent-dawn]

Blizzard straight out, lied about uprunning and just gave us token changes, bit harsh words, coming from me but there is literaly no other way to say it.

What was unprunned? Demonic cirlce, which I have been asking for since Legion launched (And only thing they did with it before SL was moving the tier, completely cutting our defense at half)

Curses? They’re kinda cool but Weakness was made completely useless, Exhaustion is good but we won’t be able to do much kiting after SL is over and soulshape is gone and Tognues, pretty niche but ok. And still even then it’s just button press.

Apart from that nothing? Like Blizzdevs voice one of their main reasons for making lvl 60 cap again so you always have smth to look forward to while leveling, and besides the fact I agree with the common sentiment, MoP spellbooks for Locks had 6 pages

No unprunning happened and I’d like to point out that while this is a problem for Warlock, like for nobody else.

This is a problem that affects every single class in the game

[Xanatas-nemesis (Xanatas)]

you right, mate

but i have also other classes, a fire mage, a dk frost, a elemental. The difference between this classes and the warlock are absurd. It seem lilterally to play another game!

If you see only the conduits, you see massive difference between the warlock and the rest of the classes. Just to see the defensive conduits to reduce the CD of icebound fortitude for dk frost, then see how “work” the “resolute barrier” conduits which “should reduce” the recovery time of unending resolve…

Try to see how works some covenants spell for some classes and how to works for warlock. Some covenants spell if non kicked (if you can kick…) destroy half raid in 2 seconds! Sometimes when i go in rated with my friends, if they have a moonkin… NO ONE use kick or silence leaving in free cast the enemies for the real horror to be dissolved in convoke! And often the druid cast convoke in stealth, and have 2 free sec of “immunity”.

Meanwhile a lock can scare the critters in the map with massive covenants spells with cast time. “OH MY GOD, SOUL ROT! SOMEONE STOP THIS ATROCITY!” “FOR THE GOOODNESS SOMEONE STOP SCOURING THITE OR THIS LITTLE SHEEP CAN GET HURT!”

It’s a joke, literally a joke.