Warlock Threat, Part 2 - Blue Tracker

#0 - Nov. 9, 2009, 9:55 p.m.

First thread was locked for a reason. You may or may not agree with the reason, but Blizzard doesn't require you to agree.

On to the subject...

Warlock threat seems to be higher than other classes, and our threat drop is probably the worst. My comparisons are going to be between the pure-DPS classes only. The reason for this is they are the most comparable to Warlocks and how their threat should be.

Soul Shatter is the only one that isn't a 100% drop.
Soul Shatter is one of two that can be resisted.
Soul Shatter has the longest cool down.
Soul Shatter has no other effects.

Basically, it's inferior in almost every way. It only beats out Invisibility in one way, in that you have to wait 3 seconds for Invisibility to take full effect. I think it might not even win out there given that you still drop threat while going invis, but I'm not sure if you drop 50% in a GCD with invis.

Now, let's look at passive threat reduction:

Warlocks have two talents that reduce their threat, but they are school specific and are in separate trees. This means that even if you get the 10% threat reduction in Destruction, your Affliction spells are still causing full threat. There is no good Warlock spec that can get both. Furthermore, most Warlocks don't even fully talent the threat drop talent, as you must sacrifice some key talent to get it.

Rogues, on the other hand, have an innate 29% reduction to threat.

Hunters have no threat reducing capabilities that I can think of, but honestly, Feign Death is so good that it doesn't matter. Hunters are laughed at when they pull threat.

Mages are typically Arcane, TTW/Fireball, or Frostfire Bolt. Arcane has an incredible 40% threat reduction, TTW/Fireball has a 10% that is typically taken because it can be taken, and Frostfire Bolt I believe has 2x 10% reductions, making a 19% total reduction.

Then there's Fel Armor. This armor spell is extremely irritating, especially in a situation with adds. Normally, I'd expect them to go for healers, but more often than not, they are headed straight for me. I don't get why, as I'd expect them to go for a healer, but it's not what I'm observing.

Given, some of our threat is on our pets, but in all reality, I'd gladly trade places threat-wise with any of these other classes/specs. I never see issues with a Mage, Hunter, or Rogue pulling threat (oh yeah, I forgot about Tricks of the Trade, whatever), but Warlocks are always having to stop and stand there to not pull.

Ghostcrawler

#51 - Nov. 10, 2009, 4:08 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Soul Shatter is one of two that can be resisted.

How certain are you that this is still the case? As far as we know, this was fixed back in patch 3.0.2 or so.

Ghostcrawler

#164 - Nov. 10, 2009, 8:33 p.m.

It's not terribly helpful when a blue asks a straight-forward question and you respond with "You asked the wrong question." :)

As far as we know, Soulshatter always hits. It isn't tied to any other talent, such as Suppression. It would still hit if you had zero +hit on your gear. This was changed at some point after LK launched.

Fel Armor causes no healing threat in 3.3. This was a relatively recent change though.

Ghostcrawler

#299 - Nov. 12, 2009, 12:59 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Listen Ghostcrawler , I know you mean well, but this isn't some kind of a Deli where you can just make demands and get exactly what you asked for.

Some times you're just going to have to accept that as players, we have a certain vision, and while you are free to disagree and critique that vision, we feel no obligation to cater to your every desire. There are a lot of other developers, and we can't assume that the ones that post here are some kind of a majority.

We try to read all of your posts, but this forum is just never going to work if you expect to get a direct response to every one.

Well played, Mystal. Well played.

Ghostcrawler

#301 - Nov. 12, 2009, 1:08 a.m.

There is nothing to warlock spells that make them cause more threat than a similar spell by say a mage. The exception are spells like Searing Pain that specifically state that they generate increased threat. That issue is from a (possibly antiquated) design where the lock might need to pull off of their pet to save its life while soloing.

In general, it's not a good strategy to compare your spells to other classes. They are different for a reason, which is namely that we want different classes to play differently. One of the first arguments we tune out is "The only class who...". Our response to that is usually: Good! :)

If you feel like you have threat issues, those are totally valid to discuss. I would do so without saying "But this other class has a better spell."

Ghostcrawler

#369 - Nov. 12, 2009, 8:52 p.m.

It's fine to discuss class disparities. These forums are full of them. This one in particular obsesses with whose dps is too low.

My caution was not to obsess too much with class abilities. Saying "Soulshatter needs to be 100% because Invisibility is 100%" isn't going to do much to convince us. They are different abilities each with their own advantages and disadvantages. It would be odd to compare Incinerate to Fireball even though they both do the same basic thing. It is, however, appropriate to compare Destro lock to Fire mage damage, survivability or threat generation. Make sense?

This is clearly one of those threads where some players are jumping in after reading my comments but not the entire thread. This is the reason I am often so reluctant to post in some discussions. A few pages back Lhivera argues that the passive threat talents should be adequate, especially considering how much damage done by a lock is from the pet. So if you're just going to post "Acane has a sexier talent than us -- we want that too," you should really address his data.