Warlock - design philosophy that ruins warlocks

Classes Warlock
1

Warlock class design is overwhelmed with tons of semi-working mechanics, AI unreliability and things that are just broken.

No other class is suffers like we in current Xpac.

Look for example at our talent tree design and philosophy behind it.
Look for example at 60 level row of talents.

  • From the shadows - a debuff on the target.
  • Soul strike - a shard generating ability.
  • Summon vilefiend - a a shard spending ability.
    I mean, what the fel is this? What is desing theme behind that talent row?

Now 45 level row of talents.

  • Demon skin - a passive source of soul leech and improvement of it.
  • Burning rush - a sprint that eats your HP.
  • Dark pact - a big shield ability.
    what the fel is burning rush doing here, outside of the fact that this is terrible spell, what mobility spell doing on defence tier row? Burning rush is useless as defence in PvE, in PvP it is laughable garbage that only allows your enemies to kill you faster - this is primamy ability for doing solo old raids, nothing more.

In MoP we had a cinsistant idea behind each row of talents

http://wow.mmosite.com/tools/mop_talent_calculator/#Va!1.....
Old level 60 talent row.
Blood fear, Burning rush and dark bargain. This was a totaly diffirent spells from ideology stand point, but all those spells used your health as resource, and it was the theme of this talent row.

This was a clear design, with clear ideas and it’s implementations.

And current design flaws goes beyond simple talents problem.

Let’s take a look at hidden mechanics and straingt unfixed problems.
Implosion and wild imps…
There is no tooltip in the game that will tell you that implosion does more damage the more energy imps have… to be clear…

  1. When imps are spawned via HoG or Inner demon talent - they have 100 enegry.
  2. They cast fel firebolt at your ennemies -each fel firebolt consumes 20 energy per cast.
  3. Implosion deals less damage the less energy imps have, if imp has 80 energy, then implosion from taht imp will deal 20% less damage.

So what we have in the end with that mechanic? We are forced to operate in really small window, in order to deal max damage with implosion. Does this gravely affects our damage overall? Yes and no, what is important is that mechanic work as a bad gimmick.

Another example - vilefiend’s AI.
This demon won’t attack your target until you will deal damage to that target. And if you were struck by eny enemy, vilefiend may or may not start to charge at RANDOM enemy around you.

Another example - grimoire: felguard.
Not that this is overnerfed and overpruned cutted piece of it previous self, that spell has a one big problem.
grimoire: felguard has 40yd range, and will summon a felguard that will attempt to stun your target, BUT the axe toss ability that felguard will try to use has a 30yd max range. How is that cool?!

On top of that affction nightfall proc has a limit/cap how offten it can proc per minute.

And other big problems in warlock mechanics.

to be continued.

4 Likes
2

Why do you think that “themed” talent rows is such a good thing?
Why isn’t the level 60 row clear design with clear ideas and implementation? If all those abilities costed 3% of your HP would it be better? Or if they were named “Archimonde’s Strike”, Kil’Jaeden’s Shadows" and “Mannoroth’s fiend”, would that be ok with you?

3

Grimoire of felguard could be good if we were able to use the stun instead of throwing it for no reason.
Actually it’s not that good because like you said it got nerfed and got a bigger CD than legion, but the fact that the stun put a target on Dr for no real reason makes it nearly unusable as a burst CD in pvp.

And for the vilefiend you waist everytime 2sec when you cast him cause of the animation, looks like he is yelling and after that jumping to his target (travel time), it might be something like 2 or 3 second wasted only for animation.

2 Likes
4

I wouldn’t say that the real problem is the lack of philosophy behind the talent rows: that problem already existed in MOP, where for example tier 4 mixed a movement ability, a CC and a defensive, or tier 6 mixing a mobility ability, a AoE one and a burst damage one.

The real problem is how this abilities are three, in my opinion:

  • Blizzard doesn’t really know if talents should be relevant, gamebreaking abilities that completely change how the class is played (MoP style), or in the other hand, if they should be minor tweaks that allow minor adjustments to the playstyle. Worst part, they mix this two philosophies, sometimes even in the same row.
  • Lot of talents are unfun, which is made specially evident in pvp: a lot of rows do not have even a single talent that really makes you want to use them in pvp, and, at best, there is a single viable pvp option.
  • A lot of talents are either badly thought or badly implemented, or someone forgot to properly asses how the changes to the class and the meta would affect the already existing talents. Perfect example is burning rush: it is exactly the same ability than in MoP, but since then we have lost our tankiness and our self heals. Which means that an ability that was good has become useless.
5 Likes
5

I was thinking about something interesting. Why not make port baseline with 1m CD so we can take for example coil for extra cc healing and make the actual port talent reduce the CD by port for 30sec.

It will not be retarded imo and you could get the choice to select more mobility or more cc.

2 Likes
6

Demonic circle should be baseline, period.

1 Like
7

With current design, where we don’t have mobility to escape or catch our enemies, and with slow ramp up burst mechanic, all warlock specs should have not only demonic circle baseline, we also need to have howl of terror back as a talent, and mortal coil should became baseline spell.

let’s just look at two pure DPS classes rogues and warlocks.

Rogues.

  • Rogues have their CC spells baseline, and talents only improves existent CC spells or add some new ones.
  • Rogues have baseline mobility spells, and talents only improves existent mobility spells or add some new ones.
  • Rogues have all their defence spells baseline, and talents only improves existent defence spells or add some new ones.

Warlocks

  • Warlocks have limited baseline CC, and should pick new CC spells from talents or improve existent ones.
  • Warlock have limited baseline mobility spells, and should pick new CC spells from talents or improve existent ones.
  • Warlocks have limited baseline defence spell, and should pick new CC spells from talents or improve existent ones.
1 Like
8

I know it will prolly not gonna happen soon or even one day but I’m tired of getting destroyed VS melee cleave and sometimes be dead in opener by using wall+port or coil (cause I tried them both) it actually doesn’t change anything :confused:

9

It’s alright though.

We’ll get epic in 9.0, then kids will cry with puppy eyes to daddy blizzard and become mediocre by 10.0, then we’ll show blizzard why their decisions are bad again and get epic in 11.0 again.

10

I have mixed views about a number of points posted in this thread.

I feel demonology was and still is suffering from poor implementation overall, it has its merits however it comes across as very lop sided, it has insane PvE cleave in stack fights while being really underwhelming in spread fights or single target. As a pvp spec demonology is just not catered for overall , it has pvp talents from pre bfa that are completely redundant to its current design and functionality (sing magic for imp anyone ?) and id say has taken a step BACKWARDS from legion in being viable and rewarding by having no real game plan other than “gogo gadget tyrant”

I dont mind summoning demons but i do wish the philosophy of its design was moved more towards demoms we simmon being more of a resource towards the warlocks personal spells much like how consumption was in legion. It felt way more rewarding as a player to have the larger abilitys and big plays be more attached to the warlock. Basically, the minions were the “bread and butter” of your game play but the filling of all the good stuff was more attached to your self, This would make some of the current flaws a little less problematic and without doubt improve the quality of life of the spec if they went this direction.

Personal opinion i felt more fun was made in mop/wod for demonology right off the bat. It was not a problem that the spec had more of a learning curve it was one of the VERY reasons it was enjoyable by many and engaging to play. Basically , MoP demo was just more fun and rule of cool trumps what it is now.

For destruction pvp is epic good but its … A one trick pony with very little depth and as a player you are tunnel visioned into a very select option to talents with no real motive to try anything different than stack all into infernal and chaos bolt burst.

Affliction iv hated since UA became a stackable spell, its very boring regardless of its balancing and has been since soul burn vanished . I refuse to play it purely because its not fun or engaging on any level.

I feel warlock is probably one of the most heavy hit by pruning offering underwhelming game play and hopefully ill spend less time on alts someday because its a class i have a sentimental attachment to.

"dear blizzard, stop dumbing down classes and understand that players actually dont mind complexity , if it can be picked up in an hour of game play then chances are, its not very interesting to learn or master "

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