Warlock threat management

We have made threat much less important than at previous times in WoW. It's still a part of the game though. Our design is not that you just ignore threat and attempt to do maximum dps. If you are wiping because of enrage timers (meaning you can't chill out your dps much more), then we are more sympathetic. If you're dying because you keep pulling off the tank, then it might not necessarily be your class mechanics that is to blame.

Some of this falls on your tank too. If he or she is just stacking stamina and ignores anything that can improve dps, then you might want to reconsider your strategy. Also don't discount threat transfer abilities like Misdirection and Tricks of the Trade. Maximizing threat is almost as important as survival for tanks, and don't let them try to tell you otherwise.

EDIT: Changing the title to, you know, something that actually conveys the topic.

Does anyone have any evidence, even anecdotal, that you feel no threat problem if you don't have Fel Armor up? I realize your dps will go down too which feeds into that.

Incoming "GC sez to dps with Demon Armor" but really I'm just trying to figure out if it is truly Fel Armor or just the talents that is driving this feedback.

Q u o t e:
GC

Have you played your own game?

You do realize what the hodir hard mode fight is?

Destro lock + crit damage buff = dead lock

So I'm supposed to tell my warlocks to "chill out" when we are trying to do 32.5 million damage in 3 minutes? (yes we are having all rogues and hunters misdirect him every time its up)

Then you insult my tanks?!!? HOW DARE YOU!

Hodir...? That name sounds familiar. Is he a giant or something?

Look, those buffs of which you speak are not just there so you can do spectacular damage. They are part of the encounter. Managing your threat when doing the huge dps that those buffs give you is part of the encounter. If we hadn't wanted that, we would have given them a passive threat reduction aura or something. Trying to maximize your dps within a small window is what that fight is all about.

I don't know your tanks. If you say they're awesome, I'll take your word for it. Do you know if they try resist gear for the hard mode? Some do. Some don't. Threat is obviously a much bigger deal if they do.

Q u o t e:
I'll start blaming my tank once we homogenize the pure's -threat talents and abilities. Soulshatter is an outdated spell that should have a lower cd and reagent removed. I can't believe GC did not even mention soulshatter ..sigh.

The purpose of Soulshatter is not so you have a spell that you can hit as part of your regular rotation to drop threat. It's there for emergencies. We're not sure the gameplay of frequent Soulshatters is a good way to go.

Q u o t e:
Considering that you design fights taking into account that tanks must max out their stamina/mitigation/avoidance, how can you expect them to do anything other than stack the factors that you balance around, rather than threat?

Just read what you wrote there. You are essentially saying “The fights are so hard, that our tanks MUST stack survivability, and our casters MUST do the maximum dps they can possibly do.” You’re making it sound like the content is horribly stacked against you, which just doesn’t jive with the results we’re seeing. Yes the hard modes are hard. They are supposed to be.

Q u o t e:
I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but you are one out of many Destro locks complaining about threat when you have only taken half of the threat reducing talents available in your tree.

I don’t want to single out anyone either but make sure you aren’t arguing “Well, we can’t get our threat control talents.” That is what they are there for.

Q u o t e:
Do NOT try to build a case by building it on the fallacy that you're the only class with issues. Mage's only real viable high end raid spec is Fb/TTW, which has 10% aggro reduction, and an aggro wipe that if you get sneezed on gets interrupted leaving you NO Aggro wipe. This nonsense about Ice Block is absurd. Mage dps is insanely streaky, and even with Vigilance (yes, I get it over the two warlocks in my raid), I'm still at the top of the aggro list and yes, they're doing over 5k dps on the first half of the Ulduar fights.

Right, This is why I posted what I did. We don’t want to make any changes to warlocks if this is a widespread phenomenon or a problem that only selected groups are seeing, in which case it could be a bug. I will tell you that not all raids are seeing the problem which suggests something else may be going on. I also know mages and sometimes warriors complain about their threat while dpsing.