#0 - July 9, 2007, 10:51 a.m.
Small introduction first. I been playing since beta and I would say I know my class fairly well. I been testing raiding with felguard with somewhat succesful results.
This is not a request to make warlocks more powerful (even if felguard spec might be pretty strong when raiding even as it is if player has mastered playing with felguard), but a request to make game more diverse and make playing same class have more options you could choose from. It's about making spec I love playable in AoE involving encounters.
I put a lot of time to this and I think you would listen to my concerns:
Problem With Avoidance:
I wish you would do do small adjustments to demonology tree to make it easily work in raids. This post also concerns some itemization problems that concern warlocks (as well as some other classes).
First of all ability avoidance that is supposed to make it workable in PvE, isn't really doing what it's supposed to do. I know that effect is 50% ignore because of PvP purposes (like nova). But I would wish you would search if it was possible to change the ability from:
Requires Level 60, Passive, Increases your chance to avoid area of effect attacks by an additional 50%.
To:
Requires Level 60, Passive, Increases your chance to avoid area of effect attacks by an additional 25%. This effect also reduces damage from AoE effects by 25%.
This small change that might be a nerf in PvP, but would actually make the build much easier to play in PvE as well.
Also I wish you would consider some fights from pet point of view. I'm not saying archimonde can't do doomfire, but changes you made to shatter for example vere really appreaciated. If that small change would be made to Felguard ability it would make it a much more working pet in PvE. Why?
Because this would allow chain heals and shadow priest to heal the pet. There's also problem with self healing, which is blood funnel, but changing that to dot, would have too much impact on PvP. Still this should also be reviewed and given thought if it could be made working somehow. Problem with luck based AoE damage migitation comes when some boss like high warlord naj'entus hits you for massive AoE effect. Problem especially with felguard is when you use Soul Link, it gives pet 105% damage from AoE, even if you count demonic resilience.
One example would be reducing cast time to 4 seconds which would apply healing over time after being succesfully casted for whole duration. This would make it also not so powerful in PvP.
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Problem With Itemization:
Some items that are very must at the moment, like void star talisman, are random drops with 17% chance to drop from the boss. Now I wonder if it was your intention to make some talent tree raid viable only if you get lucky with loots?
Wouldn't it be more logical to make class token as static drop, similar to tier tokens which could be shared by different classes.
Also there's bit problem with splitting sets, so that mage gets 1 set and warlock gets 1 set, when paladins for example get to choose from three sets. It might seem to outside observer that warlock is a warlock, no matter what build he plays. But giving items that are tied to one talent tree as rewards like exalted with ashtongue, is just planned really badly. It's somewhat affliction favored trinket. This problem for example could easily be fixed with small patch that introduced items that are exactly same named, but you have three trinkets there (in warlocks case at least) that would be unique, so if you buy one, you can't get another to your inventory, so when you do plan to change your build, you would go and sell your trinket and buy one that supports another talent tree. There's working "multitrinket" for druids already, but such trinket wouldn't work for warlocks. It would be too powerful.
Wouldn't it be possible to add talent based sets for each class that gets big change in playstyle depending on where majorty of talents are spent and empower that tree or make up for something it lacks.
Some ideas:
affliction: per dot tick procs / heal / increased damage on dots / additional effects on spells like UA.
destruction: Shadow bolt / Incinerate tied effects (like current tier 6 4/4 bonus), crit boosting.
demonology: Pet survivability, life drain on pet attacks / chance to gain stats increase in some percentage for pet, when when pet hits.
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Basically same kind of sets you are basically giving to paladins and druids at the moment.
I know it might be bit too late to start fixing things now, but in the future.. if you want to give class specific items (sets, trinkets etc) please make it optional for players to choose items to support their way of playing.
I'm not saying this is only problem to warlocks, I'm sure mages for example wouldn't mind some talent tree based bonusses as well, making arcane more powerful.
Sincerely,
Nyarlathotep of Method
