WARLOCKS
<3 Shaman
http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/thread. ... 1866&sid=2
cool shaman wrote: 0. Nerf... warlocks? | 26/11/2006 15:27:50 PST
I am tired of hearing this goddamn line of words littered ALL ACROSS the forums.
A goddamn 90% of the frickin beta forum seems to suffer from tunnel vision or something, cause they only see your dots, your SF (which has reagent and CD -.-) your SB (which is in all ways inferior to FrB and FB) your Fel Guard (which is strong only in conjunction with the Black Book) and your Fear (which doesn't last more than 12 seconds anymore in PvP, even).
They CANNOT see the fact that mages can STILL one-shot people, Warriors are STILL DPS powerhouses, Druids, shamans and Paladins have GAINED insane DPS, Shadowpriests can STILL solo any class without probs, Rogues are STILL the nr1 world pvp class, hunters can STILL rip you a couple of new ones before mashing your face into the dirt.
You, overpowered? Hell no, you are by no means the ONLY one that is overpowered. Everyones overpowered, but people are busy having their heads shoved up their arses to see that.
My point: all these nerf cries against you can't be justified just because you have gained new advantages in TBC. Because... (sigh) everyone has gained advantages in TBC. Goddamnit.
http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/thread. ... 1866&sid=2
Just found out today that Shadow Embrace (the talent in affliction that decreases melee dmg with 5% if u waste 5/5 in it) only affects meleedmg on warlock.. not for entire raid. So much for debuffer hope 
Apparently there is a blue post somewhere about it.....
edit: btw as he described lvl 70gameplay as a warlock it sounded like this:
demonology = a has to in 5v5 arena to survive.. mostly arena build
affliction = farming
destru = endgame raiding (tho fire will do more dmg than shadow here) /crai
Apparently there is a blue post somewhere about it.....
edit: btw as he described lvl 70gameplay as a warlock it sounded like this:
demonology = a has to in 5v5 arena to survive.. mostly arena build
affliction = farming
destru = endgame raiding (tho fire will do more dmg than shadow here) /crai
Mjah, play what you want to play. A wl's spec won't make or break a raid.Lateralus wrote:Just found out today that Shadow Embrace (the talent in affliction that decreases melee dmg with 5% if u waste 5/5 in it) only affects meleedmg on warlock.. not for entire raid. So much for debuffer hope
Apparently there is a blue post somewhere about it.....
edit: btw as he described lvl 70gameplay as a warlock it sounded like this:
demonology = a has to in 5v5 arena to survive.. mostly arena build
affliction = farming
destru = endgame raiding (tho fire will do more dmg than shadow here) /crai
I ain't leaving without your soul and I am sober this time.
2.0 Warlock Report
Introduction: I have played the PTR extensively, using several different talent builds and tried lots of the PVE/PVP content of the game with these, trying out different playstyles. Here are my conclusions...
Section 1: Affliction
Strengths - Solo grinding, group DPS, PvP/staying power/dispell-killer
Weaknesses - Not much burst DPS
Affliction is the traditional warlock levelling specc, and some say the quintessential Warlock tree. It is easily our strongest grinding spec, since it has virtually no downtime between fights.
Basically you dot up as many mobs as you feel like, instant Howl of Terrror, Life Drain, they die, Dark Pact to full mana. You can do this with mobs up to 3 levels above you, then the resist factor kicks in, and it's no longer mana efficient to go on.
(Note that HoT breaks much easier than Fear, don't know why. I thought it was the same spell...)
With up to 4 dots and one drain going, you can reach a pretty good damage level in groups, which you can keep up for a long time.
Unstable Affliction, Corruption, CoA, Siphon Life and Life Drain (or Drain Soul if you haven't lifetapped) gives you higher DPS than straight shadowbolting. With Life Tap and Dark Pact you can keep going for a long long time.
Two points in Improved Drain Soul helps somewhat, but it's still pretty easy to pull aggro after a while, especially after a couple of Nightfalls.
In larger groups, Malediction becomes somewhat viable, but I'm unsure if 3% more mage damage is worth the talent points.
And noone will ever specc Shadow Embrace, which now is the weakest talent in the whole talent tree.
For PVP, Affliction is great (but so are the other talent trees
.
You have a Priest/Paladin killer with Unstable Affliction. They will rather try and heal through the damage than try and dispell your dots with UA on.
Some sort of psychological thing, I don't know why. It's the obvious opener in most fights.
If you are getting meleed, you have an instant fear with Howl of Terror. No need to waste Death Coil.
Curse of Exhaustion is still a lifesaver, and the only thing that can save you from rogues sometimes.
Curse of Weakness has now the potential to be pretty good against feral Druids and Hunter pets (more?).
Overall, the Affliction tree is extremely fun and versatile.
Section 2: Demonology
Strengths - Decent solo grinding, very strong PvP build (obviously because of the Felguard)
Weaknesses - group DPS, not much burst DPS
Solo grinding with Felguard is very fun and quick, but because of the damage the FG takes, you will have to stop a lot and Health Funnel it.
Mana Feed will help with the mana problems the FG has, but it still means some downtime.
Raiding with Demonology spec is somewhat more useful than it was before with Soul Link. You get a lots of buffs to spell damage with Demonic Knowledge, Demonic Tactics and Soul Link.
Since DK gets better the more intellect and stamina your pet has, it's suggested you take both Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina. You will still probably be expected to use Imp, so you get threat reduction, but Soul Link will be wasted.
For PVP the Felguard is pretty awesome, as one can see from all the "nerf Felguard" posts in the forums. Admittedly, for one on one, the Felguard will help you tremendously, being able to stun and do a fair bit of damage (especially with The Black Book).
However as has been said over and over again - WoW PVP isn't one on one, it's 10/15/40 people on a team. For serious warlock PVP:ers, the FG will be a favourite unless it's gets seriously nerfed, so other classes will need to learn how to deal with it.
That said, agressive mode Felguard in Nesingwarys is pretty damn fun, he kills while you /dance.
Overall, the Demonology tree is very fun for PVP, you get very high crits and you love your Felguard.
Section 3: Destruction
Strengths - Big damage output in groups, very strong PvP build/quick deaths to all involved
Weaknesses - weak solo grinding
Grinding sucks with Destruction, unless you like drinking between every second fight. Admittedly, the fights are shorter since you can just nuke everything down in a few seconds, and it's fun to deal 5-6k damage in 4 seconds. But mana is as always a big problem here.
For groups you can output lots of damage, you can help save healers by pulling mobs off them (since you can always pull aggro whenever you want, heh), and if you get healed, you can use Life Tap to keep on nuking.
Soul Leech helps somewhat, giving you 2-300 health back now and then, which means you never want to be at full health. You get about 6% of the damage you cause back as health, which isn't enough to sustain lifetapping.
A very improbable but fun idea I heard; if you are more than one warlock in an AoE situation you can stagger your Shadowfurys. Mages can AoE without risk while you keep the mobs stunned with consecutive AoE stuns.
For PVP, Destruction is the traditional build. And it just got a lot better.
You have a 2 second AoE stun for helping your healer who is getting pummeled by 3 melee types (it's not very good for helping yourself due to the cast time).
The big winner however is Backlash. Basically you have a guaranteed Nightfall going off everytime you get meleed. Time it right with a Death Coil and you have time for a Shadow Bolt, Conflagrate, Shadowburn before the DC wears off. That is minimum 3900 damage in my case (about 690 +dmg).
Nether Protection also goes off all the time, and will save your life a lot (expecially the POM/Pyro/Fireblast/Blast Wave combo we all dread. You only take the Pyro dmg. And opposing factions Warlocks hate it with the passion of a 1000 fires when you have this talent.
Section 4: Overall
I haven't tried the new CoW, but one can safely say that it will be harder to determine which curse is best now, especially if you only have one Warlock.
CoS for shadowpriests, warlocks and arcane mages (fights where casts get interrupted all the time, read Vael)
CoE if you have more mages than rogues/fury warriors/feral druids
CoR for melee heavy fight
or
CoW to reduce damage, if your tank is weak or boss hits hard
My overall feelings about the talent review is that Blizzard has done an awesome job, every talent tree is now suddenly fun, viable and has a place in warlock gameplaying. Also, all three trees are very viable in PVP.
About all the cries for nerf from other classes - it's not so much the warlocks that are "overpowered", rather it's the other classes that isn't totally finished yet, wait until 70.
We had a incomplete talent review a year ago, we have lived with it. Now I feel we're getting where it was intended from the designers all along.
I also have a nagging feeling that Blizzard wanted to make Warlocks more attractive to play, make it a more popular class, but I might be wrong there. Just a thought.
This is all I have to say for now, if I've left something out, feel free to add it.
Thanks from,
Fafhrd
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.htm ... 1186&sid=1
Introduction: I have played the PTR extensively, using several different talent builds and tried lots of the PVE/PVP content of the game with these, trying out different playstyles. Here are my conclusions...
Section 1: Affliction
Strengths - Solo grinding, group DPS, PvP/staying power/dispell-killer
Weaknesses - Not much burst DPS
Affliction is the traditional warlock levelling specc, and some say the quintessential Warlock tree. It is easily our strongest grinding spec, since it has virtually no downtime between fights.
Basically you dot up as many mobs as you feel like, instant Howl of Terrror, Life Drain, they die, Dark Pact to full mana. You can do this with mobs up to 3 levels above you, then the resist factor kicks in, and it's no longer mana efficient to go on.
(Note that HoT breaks much easier than Fear, don't know why. I thought it was the same spell...)
With up to 4 dots and one drain going, you can reach a pretty good damage level in groups, which you can keep up for a long time.
Unstable Affliction, Corruption, CoA, Siphon Life and Life Drain (or Drain Soul if you haven't lifetapped) gives you higher DPS than straight shadowbolting. With Life Tap and Dark Pact you can keep going for a long long time.
Two points in Improved Drain Soul helps somewhat, but it's still pretty easy to pull aggro after a while, especially after a couple of Nightfalls.
In larger groups, Malediction becomes somewhat viable, but I'm unsure if 3% more mage damage is worth the talent points.
And noone will ever specc Shadow Embrace, which now is the weakest talent in the whole talent tree.
For PVP, Affliction is great (but so are the other talent trees
. You have a Priest/Paladin killer with Unstable Affliction. They will rather try and heal through the damage than try and dispell your dots with UA on.
Some sort of psychological thing, I don't know why. It's the obvious opener in most fights.
If you are getting meleed, you have an instant fear with Howl of Terror. No need to waste Death Coil.
Curse of Exhaustion is still a lifesaver, and the only thing that can save you from rogues sometimes.
Curse of Weakness has now the potential to be pretty good against feral Druids and Hunter pets (more?).
Overall, the Affliction tree is extremely fun and versatile.
Section 2: Demonology
Strengths - Decent solo grinding, very strong PvP build (obviously because of the Felguard)
Weaknesses - group DPS, not much burst DPS
Solo grinding with Felguard is very fun and quick, but because of the damage the FG takes, you will have to stop a lot and Health Funnel it.
Mana Feed will help with the mana problems the FG has, but it still means some downtime.
Raiding with Demonology spec is somewhat more useful than it was before with Soul Link. You get a lots of buffs to spell damage with Demonic Knowledge, Demonic Tactics and Soul Link.
Since DK gets better the more intellect and stamina your pet has, it's suggested you take both Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina. You will still probably be expected to use Imp, so you get threat reduction, but Soul Link will be wasted.
For PVP the Felguard is pretty awesome, as one can see from all the "nerf Felguard" posts in the forums. Admittedly, for one on one, the Felguard will help you tremendously, being able to stun and do a fair bit of damage (especially with The Black Book).
However as has been said over and over again - WoW PVP isn't one on one, it's 10/15/40 people on a team. For serious warlock PVP:ers, the FG will be a favourite unless it's gets seriously nerfed, so other classes will need to learn how to deal with it.
That said, agressive mode Felguard in Nesingwarys is pretty damn fun, he kills while you /dance.
Overall, the Demonology tree is very fun for PVP, you get very high crits and you love your Felguard.
Section 3: Destruction
Strengths - Big damage output in groups, very strong PvP build/quick deaths to all involved
Weaknesses - weak solo grinding
Grinding sucks with Destruction, unless you like drinking between every second fight. Admittedly, the fights are shorter since you can just nuke everything down in a few seconds, and it's fun to deal 5-6k damage in 4 seconds. But mana is as always a big problem here.
For groups you can output lots of damage, you can help save healers by pulling mobs off them (since you can always pull aggro whenever you want, heh), and if you get healed, you can use Life Tap to keep on nuking.
Soul Leech helps somewhat, giving you 2-300 health back now and then, which means you never want to be at full health. You get about 6% of the damage you cause back as health, which isn't enough to sustain lifetapping.
A very improbable but fun idea I heard; if you are more than one warlock in an AoE situation you can stagger your Shadowfurys. Mages can AoE without risk while you keep the mobs stunned with consecutive AoE stuns.
For PVP, Destruction is the traditional build. And it just got a lot better.
You have a 2 second AoE stun for helping your healer who is getting pummeled by 3 melee types (it's not very good for helping yourself due to the cast time).
The big winner however is Backlash. Basically you have a guaranteed Nightfall going off everytime you get meleed. Time it right with a Death Coil and you have time for a Shadow Bolt, Conflagrate, Shadowburn before the DC wears off. That is minimum 3900 damage in my case (about 690 +dmg).
Nether Protection also goes off all the time, and will save your life a lot (expecially the POM/Pyro/Fireblast/Blast Wave combo we all dread. You only take the Pyro dmg. And opposing factions Warlocks hate it with the passion of a 1000 fires when you have this talent.
Section 4: Overall
I haven't tried the new CoW, but one can safely say that it will be harder to determine which curse is best now, especially if you only have one Warlock.
CoS for shadowpriests, warlocks and arcane mages (fights where casts get interrupted all the time, read Vael)
CoE if you have more mages than rogues/fury warriors/feral druids
CoR for melee heavy fight
or
CoW to reduce damage, if your tank is weak or boss hits hard
My overall feelings about the talent review is that Blizzard has done an awesome job, every talent tree is now suddenly fun, viable and has a place in warlock gameplaying. Also, all three trees are very viable in PVP.
About all the cries for nerf from other classes - it's not so much the warlocks that are "overpowered", rather it's the other classes that isn't totally finished yet, wait until 70.
We had a incomplete talent review a year ago, we have lived with it. Now I feel we're getting where it was intended from the designers all along.
I also have a nagging feeling that Blizzard wanted to make Warlocks more attractive to play, make it a more popular class, but I might be wrong there. Just a thought.
This is all I have to say for now, if I've left something out, feel free to add it.
Thanks from,
Fafhrd
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.htm ... 1186&sid=1
Just read that too
Necrosis:
http://necrosisldc.free.fr/download/
Might try this again now that shardtracker is out of order.
Necrosis:
http://necrosisldc.free.fr/download/
Might try this again now that shardtracker is out of order.
I ain't leaving without your soul and I am sober this time.
Hope the dot counter works better in necrosis now, not sure if countdoom is updated but i need an addon that keeps track of different mobs now.Fenz wrote:Just read that too
Necrosis:
http://necrosisldc.free.fr/download/
Might try this again now that shardtracker is out of order.
"go all out, i wont lose aggro"
DoTimer does that, I am using that on the PTR.Gupim wrote:Hope the dot counter works better in necrosis now, not sure if countdoom is updated but i need an addon that keeps track of different mobs now.Fenz wrote:Just read that too
Necrosis:
http://necrosisldc.free.fr/download/
Might try this again now that shardtracker is out of order.
http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/thread. ... 6441&sid=1
Can't link to Curse atm since it is overloaded.
I ain't leaving without your soul and I am sober this time.