Warlocks: Trying to reason things out...

#0 - Dec. 19, 2008, 2:44 p.m.

I just finished reading the thread "New Uber Warlock Buffs on PTR" http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13770007259&sid=1
It's possible that I'm simply not understanding the full range of viability that these "buffs" entail, but (apparently like many warlocks) I'm not overwhelmingly impressed with these changes.

I find myself now trying to better understand the position of some of the developers (and this thread isn't necessarily aimed at GC).. What reason(s) would there be to not buff warlocks?

I actually hope to get some feedback specifically from people who don't play as warlocks. If you're reading this post, what effect in a PvP environment would the below suggested buffs have on your class, and what specifically would make it potentially overpowered against your class? And lets say that "balanced" would mean that there's about a 40% to 60% win-loss ratio, so if you lose more than 40% of the time, you're probably underpowered, and more than 60% probably means you're OP (and this metric should probably only apply where skill and gear is about equal between two opponents).

Demonic circle removing stuns

Demonic circle being invisble to anyone except the warlock placing it

Addition of a Warlock talent that reduces stun times

Metamorph being a permanent shapeshift (at the expense of some of the stats being nerfed)

Improved pet scaling/resistance

Improved burst capability for warlocks

If you've seen other suggested changes that you want to discuss, or have any of your own, please feel free. Basically, I want to understand, what would be the down side to fixing warlock issues?

Ghostcrawler

#6 - Dec. 19, 2008, 5:31 p.m.

Q u o t e:
've kind of got mixed feelings about that sentiment. I realize that we haven't seen game-fixing changes even on the PTR yet, but it seems also like our class specifically receives a lot of attention from GC, or at least posts by players of our class do.

My primary concern though, is that we'll keep seeing more changes like the ones being implemented right now on the PTR. They seem to be positive changes, yes, but they also kind of strike me as "regular maintenence", as they don't address any of the primary concerns that we've raised.

Notably, this change:
*Glyph of Felhunter - When your felhunter uses Devour Magic, you will also be healed for that amount. (Old - Increases the critical strike chance of your Felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 6%

Threw me off a little. It's a nice change, sure, but it seems like a perpetuation of the trend of adding abilities to the warlock that are only viable "under certain circumstances", as your opponent would need to be under the influence of something debuffable. On the same boat would be Demonic Circle and Metamorph, among others, in terms of being situational skills.

The problem is that if so many of our skills are usable "under certain circumstances", what is left to help warlocks be viable on a -general- basis? This is part of the reason that I endorse many of the changes proposed by the warlock community, they are changes that apply to all specs, and you don't have to be facing a magic-using opponent, or a demon, or be wherever or with whoever to make them work, etc.

Bevelton, the reason you're not seeing changes yet is for exactly the reason you suggest. We don't want to tweak a few numbers here and there. We are taking a comprehensive look at all three trees of warlocks and then we plan to unleash all of the changes at once. The downside of this approach is that the work takes longer to complete.

I know there are a dozen threads swearing that THE PROBLEMS ARE OBVIOUS and THE SOLUTIONS ARE OBVIOUS and DEMAND CHANGE NOW!1!!. What should be obvious is that we don't think the situation is that cut and dried. I did post fairly recently (within a month or two perhaps) on what we thought the major warlock issues were. Players seem to have a hard time finding it or perhaps they are just impatient.

We don't consdier things like tweaking glyphs and changing Ritual of Summoning as major changes to the class. We don't expect to see a huge difference in how you play the game. They are just small quality of life issues. The Felhunter glyph was just a bad glyph -- a trivial amount of dps. It was a relatively easy thing to fix.

Ghostcrawler

#12 - Dec. 19, 2008, 5:39 p.m.

Q u o t e:
GC, pardon me if I just missed it, but why didn't you make this EXACT post weeks ago? This is EXACTLY what Warlocks want/need to hear.

Thank you for making it now, though.

I have made it before.

But it will be interesting to come find this thread in a few weeks when players start to get impatient again BECAUSE PROBLEMS ARE NOT BEING ADDRESSED. :)

Ghostcrawler

#114 - Dec. 19, 2008, 9:05 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Little more than a month ago, GC made a post which outlined the goals that they hoped to look into and achieve for the warlock class post expansion release. Many of the goals listed there would address a great number of the concerns that the warlock community has. Ghostcrawler probably forgot that he made that post on the beta forums so many warlocks are not aware of it.

Yeah, maybe it was beta. I can't always remember the distinction, but it's also not like those threads were hidden either.

But Letherchereo posted the list I was referring to. I suppose I need to add the standard caveat that this is not every single change we are considering.

Q u o t e:
Q u o t e:
When we set out to work on the classes in Lich King, we had some specific goals for each one. Our mission was not to overhaul every class. We had specific things we want to accomplish.

For locks, the list looked something like this:

Give Destro a rotation that involved more than just Shadowbolt.
Make sure Affliction had dps comparable with the difficulty in pulling off the rotation.
Get locks to care more about pets without it just being Imps in PvE and Felhunters in PvP (and sac'ing pets as often as possible).
Get the Felguard back out and make the Infernal and Doomguard not a joke.
Make the dps stones something someone might actually use.
Make Affliction care more about Shadow and Destro fire.
Get Demo back into the PvE game again.
Get rid of the hassles with demon training.

Now that Lich King is virtually done, we've moved on to some different topics. This is a partial list, but includes things like:

Make sure locks do rogue / hunter / mage level dps at 80.
Make sure locks have enough survivability in PvP (since we nerfed a lot of it).
Fix some of those deep Demo talents that really aren't worth the investment.
Make shards more interesting and less of a hassle.
Get the Voidwalker (and possibly Succubus?) back out.
Look at the dps spells that cost shards.
Try and make more of the dots a consistent length, so that Affliction's rotation doesn't require such a big brain.
Get dots to either scale with crit or just crit.

We also deleted several QQ posts in this thread. Consider that if it gets deleted, nobody is going to be able to read what you post.