Demonic Circle as an Escape Mechanism

#0 - Dec. 27, 2008, 7:58 p.m.

While most Warlocks will claim that Demonic Circle is an insufficient escape mechanism, I will disagree. When it is used properly, it's VERY effective. Yet, the issues I have with it is not that it doesn't break stuns and not that its range is short--it's that it can't really be used when its needed most.

Take Hunters' Disengage for example. Ghostcrawler said it was removed from the global cooldown (and I think I can quote this accurately) "so it can be used when its needed most--to escape." So why should the Demonic Teleport not be off the global cooldown if it's meant to be an escape mechanism? If a Warlock needs to escape mid-cast, then he needs to stop casting (which, by the way, should be macro'd to the teleport button). If he's caught at the wrong time, he has to wait for the global cooldown to come back up, which makes him susceptible to up to 1.5 seconds of CC. Therefore, if teleport was off the global cooldown (and could interrupt the global cooldown like bubble, vanish, iceblock, etc), it would feel like an escape mechanism because right now it doesn't. That's a lot of time considering the abundance of haste and that some CC's are instant cast (Rogue stuns).

Moreover, the circle requires foresight to place. Thus, it cannot be used while jumped. A simple fix to that would make it so that the circle can be cast while moving (even retaining the .5 second cast time). This way, a Warlock can continue to kite (or escape from) enemies. I've seen Warlocks on the forums claim that the circle should be "click-to-place." I, however, feel that is unnecessary and opens up the door to much environmental abuse.

Basically, I Demonic Circle is great, but it just doesn't feel like an escape mechanism because the global cooldown keeps it from becoming a reaction-based defense.

Ghostcrawler

#9 - Dec. 27, 2008, 10:37 p.m.

Teleport breaking snares is something we're discussing.

As I've said, we want to make some changes to the warlock class for a future patch. Since those changes will take some time and testing, we are also going to try for some more band-aid level fixes that can go live much more quickly. You will doubtless see lots of (less-informed) players say "That's it?" to which you can reply (if you so choose) that no, that's not it, but a handful of quick changes (such as perhaps teleport breaking snare) that we thought we could safely make while we are looking at the larger issues.

When we have the "sooner" changes finalized, we'll announce them. When we have the "later" changes finalized, we'll announce them too. Ideally those "later" changes can come out at the same time as Ulduar, but we'll see.

I also don't want anyone to think this was the only post on warlock (largely PvP) issues that we've read lately. There have been some insightful comments and good ideas on several threads, mixed in of course with the traditional QQ. :) For those of you who made the good posts, we thank you.