Why warlock needs kil'jaeden's cunning

Classes Warlock
1

hey guys , today I want to talk a little bit about caster class design , and why some things are the way they are

my ideas start at mists of Pandaria , when blizzard started giving more mobility to casters and allowing them to cast while moving and such , perhaps finally realizing how unfair it is that almost all melee can easily interrupt the ranged ,but the ranged can’t really disarm or deal with melee , or perhaps there was too much counter play to casting a spell, all hunters , shamans , warlocks were offered ways to cast while moving

kil’jaeden’s cunning was removed in legion, the spell that allowed warlocks to cast while moving , finally putting an end to destro’s misery of long cast times and easily countrable gameplay, and annoyances such as the boss casting aoes under your feet in pve

demo also suffers from the same problem , we have cool as hell abilities such as nether portal , and demonic tyrant , that require you to plant and not move for over 15 seconds , that’s a long time in wow

however what blizzard seems to like doing to warlock is to make more spells instant cast so they can cast some stuff on the move( demo 4p, destro , more demon core procs, destro portals) , which is not exactly as fun as Kil’jaeden’s cunning , because no matter how many demon core procs you have, you won’t fix the brain surgery of nether portal, or the wasted shards during infernal because you have to move, and the solutions that blizzard seems to give don’t really work , you can’t solve planting requirements during cooldowns with procs , because they are random and probably won’t happen when you need them, there should be a reliable way to cast during your cooldowns while moving , or the problems with forever be present

if blizzard likes giving such toxic abilities to warlocks , then at the very least there should be a way that they can cast them without interruptions or annoyances , shamans don’t really need to cast while moving as much as warlocks do, but they have it anyway , and for some reason blizzard is okay with chaos bolt being impossible to cast in arena, and seed of corruption is 2.5 seconds cast time

to a degree yes, learning how and when to use your cooldowns and how to optimize movement is a skill in wow , but how about pvp , or how about random events like the new thundering affix ? even the best players can’t really do so,
also why does the skill floor have to be so high ? there are specs that play with 2 abilities in this game and for some reason warlock is a mess

blizzard actually knows that reign of tyranny’s skill floor is so high, admitting it in one of the patch notes , and giving it +50%damage baseline

BUT I don’t think this is the solution, warlock desperately needs KJC if even a nerfed version of it that only works for 15 seconds so you can use your cooldowns correctly , is that too much to ask for ?

plus the class tree needs a good final row talent like this, there is nothing exciting to take in the class tree really.

3 Likes
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Asking for Kil’jaeden’s cunning is too much to be asked for, even the nerfed version. Why is that you might wonder?

Some classes are already too close to each other. Have a look at Elemental shaman and Destruction warlock, see how many abilities are identical, or 90% the same.

Resource system is practically same
Lightning bolt = incinerate
Earthquake = rain of fire
Chaos bolt = Earth Shock
Burning rush is a ghost wolf. Increases running speed, cannot drop under certain threshhold and has a gcd.
Shadowfury & capacitor are almost identical.
Astral Shift = Unending resolve
Nerfed Kil’jaeden’s Cunning = Spirit Walker’s grace.

I could keep on the list because there are more. When requesting something you really need to check other classes before.

If you want to shoot something that hits hard but you also want to be more mobile than let’s say warlock, give MM hunter or elemental shaman a go.

1 Like
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Maybe you should count them and then compare to destruction warlock, you’d be surprised how close they are. While shaman has a bit more, destruction still has conflagrate, Shadow burn and Dimensional rift. You just choose not to use them because they are not meta, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Instead of copy pasting abilties from other classes, you should look at your own toolkit first. For example, would buffing shadow burn or dimensional rift already fix the issue? If warlock became as mobile as MM hunter, wouldn’t that eat class identity from both of them?

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What class identity does Destruction have exactly? Remove Chaos Bolt and its a fire mage.

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And with many things they are different.
Shaman has access to self heals that doesn’t require to damage target or has a one per fight use.
Shamans have more party based oriental spells where warlock party utility is limited to HS and Gates.

And as I understand how ppl think about Kil’jaeden’s cunning, the more elegant way to implement such mechanic would be to add a synergy between Burning rush and Soulburn talents, making an Empowered Burning rush that would allow you to cast on the move, but would put Burning rush on some CD to balance things out.

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I personally think destro lock feels fantastic atm n the issues i have with destro locks arent at all related to destro locks themselves but rather other classes tools, primarly melee mobility and CC. running n casting wont be all that revolutionary with how much mobility n CC all melees currently have.

I enjoy lock pretty much everywhere except arena, the reason i dont enjoy warlock in arena is because im the kill target in just about every single lobby im in n in about 80-95% of the lobbies im in for solo shuffle im also one caster into a 3 melee lobby. Its almost as bad being the solo melee into a 3 caster lobby however that virtually never happens to begin with, so it has to be considered a none issue. I think i´ve experienced that ONCE on my dk.

My other main issue with solo shuffle especially is that its a melee meta n due to how high dampening is its a perfectly viable strategy to sit on the lock the entire game putting every single CC onto that lock while ignoring the healer all together n win by default eventually which causes it to become an absurdly unenjoyable experience.
Unlike say warriors who functions in virtually any comp due to strong MS effect locks are quite team comp reliant.

Having experienced both sides of the argument as both caster n melee its far more frustrating to be a caster in a 3 melee lobby which happens in about 80-95% of the cases than it is to be a melee into 3 casters, which happens maybe once per season or so. Both cases are bad experiences though so i´d suggest simply changing the solo shuffle rules to always include 2 casters, 2 melees and 2 healers. This would increase que times for melees but i think it would improve the game quality and it would also prevent alot of extremely frustrating matchups for both melee n caster players.

Ill admit its not an ideal solution but as things stand currently im just not gonna play any casters in shuffle n just go along with melee apeing like everyone else because the game more or less forces me down that path if i want to actually enjoy it.

2 Likes
9

Obviously shaman and warlock has differences in toolkit. I’m not comparing restoration to destruction, I’m comparing to elemental for a reason. Elemental and destruction specifically in terms how they deal damage have too similar setups, so that is why I’m against adding spirit walker’s grace.

Each class should have distinctive advantages and disadvantages. Destruction warlock has a really good mass Aoe (M+) & 2 target spread cleave, but has to hard cast a lot in single target. And warlock as a whole is amazingly tanky as a class.

Personally I would just like to see shadowburn & Dimensional rift buffed first, and let’s see where will it lead.

And to Inagony. You just managed to type “I have no idea about fire mages” without actually typing it.

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we don’t need more buffs, destructions sims the highest but in reality nobody is capable of doing that much damage due to movement , it’s unfair that our disadvantage is " not being able to cast while moving ", because fights in every type of content is becoming heavy movement these days

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It’s more of a buff to unused talents that would aid with mobility issue. Not any kind of aura buff.

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I really don’t think warlocks need KJC.

Yes, it was an easy way out back in MoP and it was pretty damn OP too. But Warlocks grew out of this - Affliction and Demo have crazy amount of instants to gap many GCDs of movement and only Destruction is one that’s actually hampered.

Demo needs to plant for 20 seconds once in a long while? That’s hardly an issue, given that outside it - it practically spits out instants like no tomorrow.

And all Destruction needs is what it had already in past - extra conflag charge and another 3 seconds off its CD base.

Ofc Destruction as a whole needs a ton of help with talents and like, but mobility-wise the above would help plenty and the rest - take it as a challenge for a spec, that otherwise requires 2 brain cells to play.

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This is an issue in itself in the current game. Demo with all ramp up should not be forced to stay at one place for 15 seconds. It is outdated mechanic that ruins the spec in many ways, not from just your typical sense like “i’m slow where all around me is fast”, This marks demo as a slow spec in general and “other” people don’t wanna deal with demo because they probably play class/spec that is faster and designed better to fit the current game content.

I personally don’t think that we needed KJC. but rather the demo needs to be redesigned, so all our shard spending abilities would have been instacast. Instead of the typical and slow design of Cast SB to be able to cast HoG/Dreadstalkers, to be able to cast Tyrant that will cast his own abilities.

Our design is a cast in order to cast, to summon the demons that will cast.
With such class mechanic demo remains unpopular unless Blizz ramps up Demo’s damage to an absurd degree, which doesn’t fix the spec rather than mask it’s ussies by the coat of unnatural damage and praises from all DPS gypsies.

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20 seconds every minute, that’s 1/3 of the time
also that’s when most of your damage happens
and sometimes you can’t predict it due to boss rng

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