Warlocks - Where we stand after tuning

[Liquidsteel 279]

I normally wouldn't reroll, but pulling other people's weight is really really hard as a lock, but I am top deep on Kargath, Butcher, and twins.

Tectus (mythic 8 mote strat), Ko'ragh and Imperator are all Warlock friendly fights too.

 

We're actually OK damage wise, we just need to switch specs and talents a lot based on the encounter. I don't mind this at all for progression, but it does feel like a lot of effort.

[Astynax 24]

Tectus (mythic 8 mote strat), Ko'ragh and Imperator are all Warlock friendly fights too.

 

We're actually OK damage wise, we just need to switch specs and talents a lot based on the encounter. I don't mind this at all for progression, but it does feel like a lot of effort.

Maybe I'm wrong: but my experience is that the warlocks who are not being competitive are the more casual ones. Most of the ones I know are doing fine in raids of equally geared players. It's just that at the top end of play, there's a lot less variation in skills as previously, and those not familiar with the class are unable to exploit it like the vets, leading to really poor results. As you put it: we work harder to do what others do for easier.

[Deamux 4]

This is interesting. I agree with most people that demonbolt isn't a fun spell. Even making it more rewarding and hit harder doesn't change that for me. The playstyle it brings forth isn't fun to me. But there is no alternative (Servitude is even lamer and cataclysm is still an aoe talent.) 

 

If possible I'd go back to the playstyle of MoP for demo, spending soulfires in meta was great joy for me. But that'll never happen again. So that's a bit of a problem for me. So if they would actually make soulswap decent again I'd probably go affliction. I do like SB:H :)

 

But we'll see, damage wise its okay for me we are in the lower part but I can still contribute (not as much as I'd like but still...)

[Paracel 165]

MoP playstyle of Demo spec could only become viable again if Blizz coulda like balance out the talents.
Our 100lv talent options outside from DB are worse in terms of pure single-target DPS.

But buffing Demonic Servitude won't do the thing, it's already dominating talent in other specs...



 

[Deamux 4]

MoP playstyle of Demo spec could only become viable again if Blizz coulda like balance out the talents.

Our 100lv talent options outside from DB are worse in terms of pure single-target DPS.

But buffing Demonic Servitude won't do the thing, it's already dominating talent in other specs...

 

 

I realise that, those are times well passed now. No turning back. Too bad but hey, we still have our healthstones! :)

[Paracel 165]

I realise that, those are times well passed now. No turning back. Too bad but hey, we still have our healthstones!

I often feel like I'm a summoning/healthstone Jesus for my raid. 

Garrisons require attention, aren't they? :)

[Zagam 1,982]

I realise that, those are times well passed now. No turning back. Too bad but hey, we still have our healthstones!

 

I often feel like I'm a summoning/healthstone Jesus for my raid. 

Garrisons require attention, aren't they?

If your raid continues to use Healthstones over Healing Tonics, they're unfortunately doing it wrong.  You, as a Warlock, bring absolutely NOTHING to the raid. 

[Vile 9]

If your raid continues to use Healthstones over Healing Tonics, they're unfortunately doing it wrong.  You, as a Warlock, bring absolutely NOTHING to the raid. 

 

Hey now, people can still move really quickly between two points once every two minutes thanks to us!

[Zagam 1,982]

Hey now, people can still move really quickly between two points once every two minutes thanks to us!

40 yards every 90 seconds.  I almost forgot how useful this was until I laid one down for my tank to use against the Empowered Whirlwind on Mythic Twins and it didn't move him out of it. 

[SmoomzArathor 0]

Hey brother and sister locks , sMooMz here, long time lock

I just wanted to say my thoughts , I haven't played since ulduar, I just got the itch to come back , I have been doing reading and I see we aren't the face roll dps we used to be ATM, with that being said, I say play your lock with confidence , I would almost garuntee that it won't be long before we get some buffs , or start to scale better , lock has always been a bit of a skill driven class , get your rotations down and when we get buffed you will be that much stronger , I see people getting upset and re rolling FOTM, I think that's a mistake , keep playing you're lock if you love it like I do .

Bear with the class I think it will be rewarding .

On another subject my best friend and long time playing buddy is a rogue , I would offer them the same exact advice , they will not leave such standout classes such as rouge and lock in a bad place for long, I believe they are just being carefull with us because of how power we are with the slightest wrong buff.

Once again play on and I believe you will be rewarded before long.

-sMooMz

[Zagam 1,982]

Hey brother and sister locks , sMooMz here, long time lock

I just wanted to say my thoughts , I haven't played since ulduar, I just got the itch to come back , I have been doing reading and I see we aren't the face roll dps we used to be ATM, with that being said, I say play your lock with confidence , I would almost garuntee that it won't be long before we get some buffs , or start to scale better , lock has always been a bit of a skill driven class , get your rotations down and when we get buffed you will be that much stronger , I see people getting upset and re rolling FOTM, I think that's a mistake , keep playing you're lock if you love it like I do .

Bear with the class I think it will be rewarding .

On another subject my best friend and long time playing buddy is a rogue , I would offer them the same exact advice , they will not leave such standout classes such as rouge and lock in a bad place for long, I believe they are just being carefull with us because of how power we are with the slightest wrong buff.

Once again play on and I believe you will be rewarded before long.

-sMooMz

Your sentiments are nice, but if you haven't played since level 80, your opinion is that of other opinions and not really your own.  You're just regurgitating what others are saying and seeing. 

 

There's nothing wrong re-rolling to another class that does more damage and brings more to your raid if you're able to do so and not bring your own contribution to your raid down.  For example, swapping from a 650 Warlock to a 640 Windwalker Monk is a DPS gain for the group.  It has nothing to do with being "confident" or "not being FOTM" - it has everything to do with performance issues and seeing our one buff be relatively minor in a reduction in cooldown for Havoc.  There's nothing rewarding about playing a class to its maximum and watching others mindlessly perform better.

[SmoomzArathor 0]

My opinion is my own, I'm just going with history repeating itself , I believe locks will be extremely viable soon enough ,

[Zagam 1,982]

My opinion is my own, I'm just going with history repeating itself , I believe locks will be extremely viable soon enough ,

They're extremely viable right now.  They're just a little bit behind, which should have been addressed by now.  There are also a lot of complaints about DESIGN, not numbers.  Design is what pushes a class on being fun/useful.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Last night some twerp made a toon on my server and was whispering me asking for help with their warlock. At the end of the conversation, a 40 min long conversation where I had to break down simple concepts in to crayons style pop-up book monosyllabic words because the dude was just not understanding warlocks at all, gets MAD at me for trying to help him after I told him I was playing my monk in raids now. He wanted to watch my warlock on my stream on Tuesday and I told him that wasn't possible since I would be on my monk.

 

Comes to me for help. Gets mad at me for helping. 

 

LOVE isn't a 10-15% buff.

LOVE isn't a raid cooldown.

LOVE isn't a massive overall to the damage sources so we have more then 1 talent option per spec.

LOVE won't even put my effing heath stones on par with the effing healing tonics.

LOVE won't feed my family. 

LOVE won't kill a boss.

 

I'm not going to hold my raid group back as we twiddling our thumbs waiting for the fix that may or may not come.

[Deamux 4]

If your raid continues to use Healthstones over Healing Tonics, they're unfortunately doing it wrong.  You, as a Warlock, bring absolutely NOTHING to the raid. 

 

I disagree, we bring Healthstones for the farm bosses. Barely anyone waisting his/her money on tonics on farm bosses. But idd we are just a gimmick to summon people in the face of the boss instead of outside. Saves them a bit of a run and thats about it.

[Lockybalboa 618]

https://theunderminejournal.com/#malganis/item/109223

 

Make more gold then that killing a boss.

 

Also, health pots/cookies arent even hardly USED on farm so it is even less of a saving.

[Alphric 7]

By Grapthar's hammer, what a savings.

[Lockybalboa 618]

[Astynax 24]

So, if kazi is only 2/3rds of an opinion after his boomkin fling, what is Locky going to be when he returns to the dark side? Lol.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Astynax

[Cardio33 3]

I love this forum and believe is it the #1 location for warlock tips, tricks, and discussion but after reading through these 6 pages and looking through the numbers closely myself, I feel the majority of the community is over-reacting.

 

I would like to disclose that I feel warlock has been dumbed down more than most from MOP to WOD and believe play-style changes need to be made, but I believe we are performing acceptable enough to contribute on any mythic encounter and compete with anyone on the meters.  

 

While we do not look good looking at general performance:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#difficulty=4&dataset=90

 

If you break those numbers up encounter by encounter we always have an available spec that performs in the top 1/3 of the rankings.

 

Kargath

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#difficulty=4&dataset=90&boss=1721

Top dps Balance ~ 27,000

Top lock spec (afflic) ~ 25,700

Low dps hunter BM ~ 22,000

 

Butcher

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#difficulty=4&dataset=90&boss=1706

Top dps Feral ~ 27,200

Top lock spec (afflic) ~ 25,600

Low dps fire mage ~ 23,000

 

Tectus

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#difficulty=4&dataset=90&boss=1722

Top dps arms war ~ 36,000

Top lock spec (demon) ~ 30,000

Low dps destro ~ 22,000

*Arms warrior is a clear outlier here and the aoe needs to be looked at.  Clearing everyone by several thousand dps

 

Twins

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#difficulty=4&dataset=90&boss=1719

Top dps ww monk ~ 33,700

Top lock spec afflic ~ 28,500 (4th overall)

Low dps spec destro ~ 23,000

*Arms warriors and ww monks a clear deviation above everyone else in terms of damage

 

 

You get the point.  Do we have to work harder than other classes and learn how to play more than one spec?  Yes.  Do I like the additional challenge which keeps the class/game interesting?  YES

 

 

To analyze my numbers I only pulled 90th percentile heroic values.  Mythical does not have a large enough sample size, especially since not enough are clearing twins-type lock favorable encounters.

 

I believe blizzard is doing an excellent job balancing class dps compared to previous expansions.  Their are a few outliers that need to be brought down, not up.  For the first time since I started raiding in vanilla I actually feel that ilevel > class/spec in terms of dps. 

[Zagam 1,982]

The majority of those overreacting are unable to perform at the 90th percentile so their DPS looks REALLY bad.  By pulling samples at 90th percentile, you're literally only looking at the VERY top of players, especially with most of those top parses coming from Affliction.  Affliction still has the most RNG tied to it, so the high parses come from getting good Nightfall procs.  Item level has a huge effect as well.

 

Affliction is fine in terms of damage.  It does pretty well on most, but look where Demonology and Destruction are on most of those fights.  They're WAY below the rest.  It almost feels like all the good players are Affliction, thus skewing the results, or those specs are terrible for the fight.  You wouldn't, for example, play Demonology on Brackenspore because our job is to nuke shooters and we can't do that with a pet walking all over the place.  Demonology has one good fight - Tectus - because it's AoE is ridiculously good for snap burst.  All of the specs are ok to be played in the hands of good players, but there are clear spec winners on each fight.  Also, remember that a 2500 DPS gap isn't as small as it used to be - 2500 is now a 10% gap between 27,500 and 25,000.  10% is a HUGE variance gap.

 

Some of us have legitimate complaints because of how specs are performing in regards to certain fights.  While yes, we perform ok at some fights, there's none that we truly excel on.  This isn't a balance issue - it's a mechanical issue.  There are SO many Affliction players that want their damage in their DoTs, NOT Drain Soul.  I am one of those people.  We'd move up on a lot of multi-target fights which is what Affliction should be great at. 

[Cardio33 3]

Absolutely agree with you there, afflic does not have a lot of utility when it comes to low hp small adds that need to be burst down.  Problem with affliction at the moment is it's clearly the best caster spec in pvp, by a wide margin.  Any changes esp to soul swap would put it at unreal levels.

 

Destro could use work on RoF not gonna lie, just a slight teak in ember generation or damage would be nice.

 

 

I really like how we can separate logs based on item level, really provides another dimension of rdps analysis.  However, I wish you could sort/separate by specific pieces of gear also.  The reason that I think destro is performing poorly its the large amount of parses/logs mix in people with sub par gear.  Currently, no warlock spec benefits as well from trinket procs and on use trinkets are destro.

 

The difference between a Copeland's destro vs a regular destro is night and day.  When you can stack up 4-5 CBs inside a copeland's + DS + int pot rotation, you are pulling well into the 30k range.

 

The low average numbers for destro just dont add up to what I'm seeing ingame and I think trinkets has a lot to do with it.

[Cardio33 3]

Another thing that's surprised me about the community is a lack of problem solving and coming up with creative solutions to do additional damage. Most people are calling for adjustments instead of thinking what they can do differently.

I haven't seen one mention of using pvp 4pc bonuses at our current gear level. 4pc ilevel 660 gear is really solid right now and the itemization on gloves and pants are great. The set bonuses? 3 sec cd reduction on conflag (destro) and 1300 versatility gain when porting (afflic).

1300 versatility = 10% damage gain for 10 sec.

I haven't seen anyone mention void shield via void walker which crits for 30k in pvp.

[Zagam 1,982]

Another thing that's surprised me about the community is a lack of problem solving and coming up with creative solutions to do additional damage. Most people are calling for adjustments instead of thinking what they can do differently.

I haven't seen one mention of using pvp 4pc bonuses at our current gear level. 4pc ilevel 660 gear is really solid right now and the itemization on gloves and pants are great. The set bonuses? 3 sec cd reduction on conflag (destro) and 1300 versatility gain when porting (afflic).

1300 versatility = 10% damage gain for 10 sec.

I haven't seen anyone mention void shield via void walker which crits for 30k in pvp.

Lots of classes are using 660 stuff, but for Warlocks, item level trumps it.  In order to get the 4pc by now, you'd have to be pretty lucky or EXTREMELY devoted to PvP.  670 Heroics > 660 PvP.  Giving up 40 item levels for a 3 second reduction on Conflag seems crappy.  Giving up 100 item levels downgrading from Mythic gear is no way feasible.  Same for the Affliction bonus.

 

Void Shield also won't proc unless the Void Walker is taking damage or being hit.  I'm also fairly certain you can't force this by using Soul Link, but I might have to test it. 

 

You also are being EXTREMELY optimistic on expecting players to solve their own problems.  I wouldn't be very well known if people took 15 seconds to read tooltips or spent 15 minutes on target dummies.  The first inclination of 90% of WoW players is to look for advice to combat a problem.  The other 10% change talents, try better positioning, think about a different spec, and find ways to overcome. 

[Kazistrasz 216]

The creative ways to pump out damage are usually mechanically driven by the fight, and not something you can just say always works. Some of it's also strat-dependent.  When we first did Imperator, the timing was working out well to be able to copy 6 Shadowburns onto the boss coming out of each transition.  We changed some assignments, and now the adds aren't there when he comes out of transition. This is the kind of stuff we do. Then, we tell other people about it.  Sure, plenty of people come here looking for help and looking for what we do instead, but that's the entire reason IV exists.

 

PvP gear has often, especially at the beginning of expansions, been a place raiders have looked to pick up a couple pieces for an early advantage - especially in the weapon department.  However, this was a stronger benefit in the past when PvP item levels more closely matched PvE item levels. The last time I did this was Tier 11 (Cataclysm) - Normals and beginning PvP epics were both 359 item level. A normal mode weapon was better, but it was a good place to pick it up starting progression, especially if you were lower on the pecking order in your guild and less likely to get a weapon when they dropped.

 

The problem with the PvP sets now begins with their item level - 660 is low.  Most guilds have at least started heroics by now, which means access to 670 is a thing. A lot, probably the majority, of our community here in the warlock forums is in that place. Our mods and most active information disseminators are into mythics, but the rest have at least began getting some of those 670s. Ten item levels on four pieces of gear is way too much to give up. Getting three seconds off the CD of Conflag wouldn't make that up.  Beyond that, how many affliction fights are you using your port on?  The only fight I make heavy use of it for is Imperator, and I'm running destro for that anyway.