Warlock Change & General Feedback about Blizz's hyperfixation on Shadowbolt

I posted something similar to the bluepost, but felt like this deserved its own post, so feel free to share your feedback, thoughts and feelings about the heavily Shadowbolt focused playstyle that Warlocks had to endure for so many phases now :slight_smile:

Rain of Fire and Hellfire are both useless because of their horrible scaling and inability to crit or interaction with basically any sets.

The devs have a crazy hyperfixation on Shadowbolt, both on ST and AoE, while dots are still trash and are horrible to apply as we don’t have any way to spread them.

We are now in Phase 8 and Dark Pact, the last talent of the affliction tree is still the by far most useless, unused, and ignored ability next to Siphon Life, meanwhile everyone and their mother is abusing the Ruin crit talent, and this has been the case for all of SoD.

Basically every single set directly buffs, or rewards spamming Shadowbolt on ST and AoE, and the entire strat has been to stack as many % multis on Shadowbolt crits as possible.

Not only was the T3 Agony Bonus bugged & is still bugged on a ton of Undeads, even a ton of bosses in Naxx, but they also decided to nerf the dot dmg bonus from the T3 set, leaving again literally only Shadowbolt spam (Tier 2.5 2-set, T2 6 Set, and now T3.5 set) while they crushed the already niche Fire spec, that was already awkward as it had horrible missing overlap with SBV (gone now anyway lol).

The raid now already received a ton of nerfs, adds die too quickly to dot, and SBV is basically just pad besides on the last bosses, and the only people that “abused” SBV on the last bosses, were already strong enough to even acquire the set pieces and trinket.

Basically every single Tierset needs their effects changed, runes need to be adjusted, so that using stuff you talented in, like Siphon Life and Dark Pact actually do something and stop this degenerate abuse of the Ruin talent, and actually make dots strong & easier to apply.

You could make Dark Pact a buff that is required for the Pandemic rune to work, similar to Backdraft, and then buff it to compensate for the loss of Ruin + make it buff Siphon Life significantly/or have it so your dots automatically apply Siphon Life & make it worth to actually play Invocation by making it reduce the GCD of Dots & Nightfall based SB proccs.

You could also change Haunt, or other runes to spread or apply our dots, just something so we don’t have to spend like an hour applying our dots to mobs, only for them to die while you’re still applying them.

The fact that Everlasting Affliction is still anti-synergistic with Invocation, while taking up the spot of our only raidbuff is insane, especially when Demonic Pact received the 10% buff to not make it a choice anymore.

We have so many mandatory runes, that are Jack of all Trades, even if they go against the theme of the spec you play, just because they are just better/easier in all cases, while cool runes are impossible to pick because of how mandatory the others are, while there are so many cool things that you could change is so sad.

I really like SBV, but this change only hurts the only really useful place we had, while still leaving it 10000000% mandatory, just worse for everyone without the BiS set.

You could’ve literally just removed Shadowbolt from being affected by the T3.5 4-Set bonus (similar to how you crushed Fire-lock with removing Incinerate) and buffed our dots to compensate on ST.

This is an issue that you created yourself by hardcore fixating on Crit, Crit Dmg, Spellcasting Speed, and overlapping buffs to Shadowbolt.

You already made us spam Shadowbolt for so many phases, play the exact same talents, please don’t now punish us for doing the only thing that we could do without compensations.

2 Likes

ABSOLUTELY TRUE!!!
Cannot agree more!

seeds of corruption that contains both CoA and corruption would be a nice swap, then make SBV Baseline toggle ability.

1 Like

Also a spicy idea!
We absolutely need a method to at least spread Corruption with how much revolves around it, but also how fast adds die.

mate. zirene hates locks. flat out. killed firelocks last phase. and no firelocks are somewhat back but we’ve spent half of last phase being diabolical to other specs and classes that the gear we have is way underpar. chaos bolt hits absolutely shockingly bad . this SBV change is their way of saying oh just afk on trash fights anyway. meanwhile mages get a set bonus for living bomb that absolute claps. honestly i dont understand the hate for locks fullstop. its not like it was overpowered for god sakes.

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The weirdest thing is that they could literally just change the set bonus that already contains 30% SB damage and just change it to something else to compensate & not negatively impact everyone without the set :confused:

To play devil’s advocate a bit. You do realize Living Bomb kinda sucks in cleaving outside Scarlet Enclave, right? In most situations the mobs will die before it goes off with only few outliers like some elites in AQ40 living long enough. That does change With 2p of SE Set but before that? Yeah, no. And just to say it our default AoE tools also never received any love from SoD.

The problem here is that Blizzard Balances things around the assumption that Set Pieces are in play. It’s Week 3. Anyone will now get at least their first 3.5 piece with some lucky likely already having 4p. And frankly Lock’s Bonuses would make SBV crazy if unchecked. 25% extra damage on any non Periodic Crit and 30% Damage increase on Bolts when target has Corruption on itself. Sounds very strong.

Just to clarify I don’t enjoy the idea of balancing around specific endgame sets. I do find it dumb and understand and harmful to classes during progression when players don’t have access to said sets.

1 Like

i started back on Warlock before swapping over to paladin and yea i think there is far too much emphasis put into Shadow bolt.

I would have loved to see an actual DoT based class, that isnt just apply 3 dots to buff a spam filler.

one where DoTs are your damage, 100% remove end talent point and maybe have Seed of corruption there.

and come on Blizz, you can make 4 tier sets for Druids, Why not embrace the Affliction Spec, and have 3 Sets on warlock, 1 DoT focused ,1 Hard cast focused and 1 Tank?

Afflcition should be all about the DoT management, have a Tier set that converts Spirit into Haste or something and add in the quicker ticks! would be way more fun

2 Likes

Would love to see something like : dots do dmg every second but their duration is reduced by a lot ,so you all have to do is manage the dots and lifetap and buff siphon life somehow or change it to fuse with corruption that way even the fkn rune that no1 ever played: “Invocation” sees some play!

Also buff Health funnel its justt CRAZY to have to summon new pet everytime my pet is low healtth cause its faster tthan heal it .
Turtle wow did it Great i mean steal some ideas for mother of god!
Fel domination also 15min cd is just crazy! if u die in raid and u get CR and have to act quick its GG lol if its on cd

1 Like

Yeah I totally agree, that is why I would like them to stop focusing on Shadowbolt/Volley, and instead buff dot spellpower scaling, or letting us spread dots, or letting us dot faster, or making us spend 31 points in Affliction so that we don’t have to take the Ruin talent which overwhelmingly buffs Shadowbolt’s damage.

The increased spellcasting speed, tons of overlapping buffs and enhancements to Shadowbolt, its good spellpowerscaling with the absurd amounts of spellpower we get, the tons of crit we have, the semi infinite mana we get with shadow priests, and and and all create way too powerful Shadowbolts & thus too powerful Shadowboltvolleys with the full set and BiS items.

They also already removed the 30% dmg buff to Incinerate from the set because of the ST damage, but now they nerf the only playable AoE rune for everyone at every level at every gear level & the gameplay will still be the same as dots have the same problems, but SBV is now just worse for absolutely everyone.

We have been spamming SBV now since its release, and almost all tiers were SB/V focused, and I hope they will significantly change our runes and/or the set bonuses.

it’s not new that warlock sod dev are the laziest , the class was dead P1-P6 and just came back with bwl.

the only cool thing we got in sod was the quest staff in bwl everything else was garbage.

At last dps wise , the tank spec is cool tho.

Think positively. You’re still loved by raids and groups due to your ability to summon people from across the globe xD

meh , the only reason they want us is for recklesness/chaos curse/spellpower pet buff/shadow debuff
we’re just supports in disguise

2 Likes

Yeah 100000%!

It is very very sad that we have so many dots, but the mobs don’t live long enough for them and if they do, they are just buffs for SB because of sets or fillers while SB does the overwhelming majority of the damage.

So sad that something like Invocation etc see no play because they are just so bad :C

To be fair you at least have that. Before the changes to Pyroblast few days back Mages basically became unwanted in SE. Frost still can’t find the place in outside casual guilds while Fire was only really wanted in Horde to buff up Shamans. While it does suck you guys still have a decent utility which does warrant more than one of you.

As long as summon is a thing in SoD you will get your raid spots guys no need to worry about ur dps.

So sad that you cant even run T3 6 piece to support because of much you’re destroying your own damage + it requires undead.

If the setbonus was at the least on 2/4 set, you could run it, but now it is gone again ffs

well at last the t3.5 looks great for both dps& tank.
can’t wait to get both 4p

playing an hybrid dps/tank lock sounds fun

Well, with how little loot and progress there is, especially with inflated grp sizes, this seems like a loooong road

So… looking at the cleave from melee classes with ashbringer is straight up rediculous (and any other ranged / caster with uncapped aoe). Can we revert the SBV changes now? Warlocks are in need of an AOE buff atm.