List of Problems

Melee killing us to fast
Lack of Ability to fight back against melee outside of instant casts
Fear Break mechanics
little to no burst damage in viable pvp specs
Pets dieing way way to fast
Not enough ways to create distance
Viable Arena Specs very limited
Too many Anti caster abilities on melee classes, but no anti melee ability for warlocks.
No Anti Burst ability.

List of Solutions

For melee killing us to fast id say there are a number of solutions, but the best would probably be small tweaks to several abilities. For starters Make Demon Armor alot better and the clear obvious choice for pvp, id say add alot more armor or a flat damage reduction % to it. Id also reccomend having the effects of demon armor work on your pet. The reason i chose to bring up demon armor is because its an ability that is usable regardless of spec and is the easiest way to improve the situation.

For Fighting back Against melee theres only 2 ways i see this being fixed. 1 Is to give us more instant casts and the other is give us a better more simple way to create distance so that we can get our casted spells off more frequently.

IMO there need to be less abilities that break fear, Iam really worried about tremor totem making warlocks completely worthless in larger arena brackets.

If a warlock goes the only viable pvp spec for arena which is gunna be some kind of hybrid of Demonology and Affliction we have virtually 0 burst damage. The best solution in my opinion would be allowing dots to crit and make shadowflame do more damage mainly in the initial damage portion of it.

Ive made a whole thread about pets dieing to fast and ways to fix it and i also mentioned it earlier in this post but ill drop the quick version here. 1 Give pets better health scaling 2 Allow the effects of Demon Armor to work on your pet and add an additional effect to demon armor Which gives your pet a % of your resilience while its active. Another suggestion id make is to move the Demonic Resilience talent to like tier 1 2 or 3 of the Demonology tree so that Affliction and Destruction Specs are more viable.

Id say we need better distance creating capability. The best way i can think of implimenting this would be. 1 Lower the cooldown of Demonic Teleport, 2 Make Demonic portal Instant cast ,3 Make it so when you use Demonic Teleport You break all snares and become immune to them for like 5 seconds. Also it should be usable while stunned.

With the way pets are now The only viable spec with a healer seems to be a spec where you also get Demonic Resilience and master Demonologist even then with the state warlocks are in it wont be to viable. If the changes to pets i suggested earlier in my post were made it would help open up more specs to be viable in arena.

Rogue Ambush crits you 7k Rogue eviscerate crits you 7k Rogue cloak of shadows youre dead. That line is in my combat log way to much. I also think Anti magic shield is a little bit too much as well. Again this is a problem that can be fixed by solving other problems that i listed but i just wanted to mention it.

Almost every class has some kinda anti burst ability now. Iceblock, Pain Suppresion, Dispersion, Divine shield, Cloak of shadows, Cheat Death, Crazy stuff that deathknights do not even sure what it is yet :P, Shieldwall As well of a list of other things like evasion deterrence etc etc... I know warlocks got Demon form and i think i would be fine with that as our only Oh S*** Button if the other problems were fixed.

I know this post was really sloppy just wanted to get it up before i have to go raid.

PS FIX THE SHADOW EMBRACE BUG ALREADY!!

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Q u o t e:
GC has mentioned how great Fel Armor is now, giving us as much as "20% more damage!". But to an arena player that rings hollow, we know that classes are all balanced to do the same amount of damage in pve, and pve warlocks are certainly expected to use Fel Armor. So when I hear that Fel Armor gives us 20% more damage, I translate that to "you will do 20% less damage than other classes if you use any other armor".

Change Fel Armor to only increase the damage of direct damage spells.
Change Demon Armor to increase the damage of periodic damage spells.

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why give our "so called" defensive armors, more offensive causes. as i stated before all 3 of our armors need to be looked at and give more DEFENSIVE ability. I suggest a 25-35% snare/roots/stun resist. the 50% mage armor has it to much and i dont think we should have that much since we again more stuff from our armor than just armor. We gain a lot of offensive bonuses from them.

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Q u o t e:


You can go out and look at the stats of the gear. That's released, you know. >.>

And Jabbar, those were good posts and reposting them here can't hurt.

If they don't want them reposted, they can delete the reposts.

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Yes, I have seen the armor posted and am very concerned. However, since it hasn't been released I am unclear how we can comment on it so strongly.

Are we balanced around having a pet out?

If so, please make them not die so fast... It should not be the obvious strategy to just kill the pet, then the lock. We have 1 way to get another pet out and thats on a 15 minute cooldown. Why not give us a talent like night of the dead? Each time corruption ticks, the Fel Dom cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds. That would make our pets easier to replace and allow them to be killable and not ruin our chances as fast.

One of our big issues is that we depend on our pets regardless of our spec. Demo is the only spec that allows more survivability for our pets and that isn't even enough to survive when focused. If not 17 into demo than we can't even summon a new pet in less than 10 seconds....

Shadowflame and shadowfury need to change places. Shadowfury has always been, and still is a lackluster 41 point talent that is largely pvp oriented in a tree that is oriented towards raiding, but by making it trainable it would help fix our survivability issues as well as allow us to kite melee more effectively. Shadowflame needs to be a talent in destruction because it really is only useful when paired with conflagrate, I also believe shadowflame either needs a stun or needs it's damage buffed significantly, as it is now it's a fairly weak ability that I never use.

Chaosbolt is a very pathetic 51 pointer, it's damage is low and the special absorbtion piercing ability is lame seeing as we pvp with a felhunter anyway and have no problem purging the shield off in the first place. In my opinion it can be fixed in two different ways: One you could just remove the cooldown and have it replace incinerate, two you could up the scaling so that it hits for significantly more than incinerate/shadowbolt/shadowburn.

One improvement that I thought up would be to make frailty add an "energy dot" to curse of weakness, making the curse drain mana/energy/rage/runic power over time. This change would make us more effective against two of our long-standing counters: rogues and warriors.

Another idea I had would be a swiftmend like ability for our dots, pvp seems to be balanced around burst in wrath, and the only spec for warlocks that has burst is too immobile to be viable in a pvp setting.

Several points to consider that may help locks enjoy pvp and give us a fair chance against melee

1. Increased survivability or Mobility. I think it is unfair to ask for both so one or the other depending on Blizz idea on what a warlock should be. Survivability shouldn't be linked to our pet. Mobility simply needs to be - Demonic circle targetable like shadowfury and an instant cast. Can be used whilst stunned like blink.

2. Fear - ok, I get that fear was OP in vanilla wow but it is completely useless against soo many classes now. This needs to be looked at to be usefully, but not op, once again.
Maybe 4 sec horror?

3. PvP pet. What is wrong with one pet designed for PvP. Nothing sucks more than having to try and predict what arena team you are going against. Caster heavy = need felhunter. Mellee heavy or stealthy = need voidy. Succubus charm is very nice but useless as she is 2 shot and it shares the Dim ret or fear (wtf?)

4. Pet resummon. I am comfortable with pets being able to be killed as a strat against us. But we should be given the ability to get them back out quick. What about being able to resummon in .5sec whilst in the Demonic circle or after a port. This means we have to decided to use the CD of port to get a new pet out or run without one.

5. CoEX. Melee are given numerous ability to get in our face but we aren't given anyway to kite. I don't want this to be easy mode for us but some improvement here to help us kite when it is really needed. Maybe 3 sec stun, 50% reduced movement and a 30 sec CD? This gives us an ability to kite when it is really needed but we have to time it well as we can't spam.

5. Remove shards whilst in BG's and Arena's or at least make a PvP shard that can be purchased. Similar to the Water that can be used in Arena's only. Perhaps in a stack of 20? This would remove the farming but comes at a cost to us.

Affliction has some problems, because by and large, level 80 PvP is still all about burst damage.

Almost every DoT takes 3 seconds to tick, with UA being the worst at 4.5 seconds (1.5 sec cast time, 3 seconds before the first tick hits). Before UA even does any damage, a more bursty class could have already launched 3 spells or physical attacks my way.

Additionally, several classes have ways of mitigating, dispelling or completely removing DoTs. If we have to recast a DoT, that's another 3-4.5 seconds of time we're not doing any damage.

Lastly, since demonic circle, imo doesn't change the fact that we have to *tank* physical DPSers, it's very difficult to do any damage to them without any burst. Sure, I can get off curse of agony, corruption and siphon life because they're all instants, but since it takes them so long to tick, does it really make a difference when I'm taking 6K hits from them?

Although it's a long shot, I think scrapping dark pact (which is useless in pve now, at the very least) for a swiftmend/judgement/conflag sort of ability might help. It should be something that is incredibly inefficient and would never be used in PvE over a serious DoT rotation, but it should be something that would dramatically increase affliction's burst damage, preferably based on the number of DoTs the target currently has.

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Q u o t e:


why give our "so called" defensive armors, more offensive causes. as i stated before all 3 of our armors need to be looked at and give more DEFENSIVE ability. I suggest a 25-35% snare/roots/stun resist. the 50% mage armor has it to much and i dont think we should have that much since we again more stuff from our armor than just armor. We gain a lot of offensive bonuses from them.

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The issue is that Demon Armor would have to gain pretty ridiculous survivability buffs to justify the loss of spell power from not using Fel Armor.

Instead of having a defensive armor, and an offensive armor, they should just provide both in different ways. Either that, or reduce the amount of offense on Fel Armor, so that we don't feel forced to use it if we want to do reasonable DPS.

Still like my idea:
Fel Armor increases direct damage spells.
Demon Armor increase periodic damage spells.

Warlocks on arena; i'll cover only Destro ( yes, destro on pvp )

· If focused, the warlock doesn't have any way out of it, no deathcoil, shadowfury or whatever i could ever pull off will save me for more than 3 seconds from a melee train, i know i have partners to help me but that's not a reason for me to not being able to get away from melee, and im not happy with fear being my main defense.
-Suggestion : Give something that allows the warlock to make melee THINK TWICE before rushing onto him, exactly like Immolation aura

· Too reliant on long cast times to deliver its damage, wich is not that great to justify the cast times, take soul fire for example, its not worth it's cast, nor the reagent.
-Suggestion: ehehe, give moar instants ( something making Chaos bolt instant cast, or adding Soulfire to Backlash, separating conflagrate from immolate, etc )

·When a warlock is engaged in melee by surprise, wich happens really often, he doesn't have enough tools to get away, Death coil isn't something we can rely on, because of its long cooldown and the big factor ; its offensive defense, warlocks are full of it. I personally don't like the idea of giving defense to us via Shadowflame getting an effect like a disarm, think about a bubbled paladin or cloaked rogue, can you get away from him?; no you cant, because your defenses are offensive.
-Suggestion: give us clairvoyance ( rank 1 ), or maybe some defense that's not dependant on the target, because Demonic teleport loses its purpose completely against the tipical mr rogue that is already on top of you with crippling poison in your veins, even if you could cast it while stunned you didnt go far away...something in the ranks of soulshatter, leaving you out of combat or something and reducing its cooldown, doing so would also help with the pain of a resisted soulshatter in pve ( wich is such a sad sight ).

·Dispel mechan--- oh wait, you're aware of that.

·Why conflagrate is still dependant on immolate?, i understand the coolness of having that chain but it's not helping when you NEED to get an instant and casting immolate is not possible, and youre not in range to either shadowburn, shadowflame, and you don't have shadowfury.
I suggest making Conflagrate work like Howliing blast, make it do half its damage ( wich is pitiful for a 31 pointer btw ) and double it if the target is affected by immolate/shadowflame and NOT consuming it.
This would completely remove the problem with Backdraft and Immolate, seriously.

My feeling is that if i lose, i want it to be my fault, not because i didn't have tools to do what i needed, wich tends to be the case, but because i made a mistake or got outplayed, and right now my mistake is being a warlock being found by melee.

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Q u o t e:


Chaosbolt is a very pathetic 51 pointer, it's damage is low and the special absorbtion piercing ability is lame seeing as we pvp with a felhunter anyway and have no problem purging the shield off in the first place.

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CB is much much much better to use on a shadow priest through his dispersion or a rogue through his clos/cheat

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12666197067&sid=1

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Q u o t e:


CB is much much much better to use on a shadow priest through his dispersion or a rogue through his clos/cheat

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Agreed, but our 51 point talent shouldn't be an incinerate that has extra utility against 2 classes only in certain situations.

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Q u o t e:

The issue is that Demon Armor would have to gain pretty ridiculous survivability buffs to justify the loss of spell power from not using Fel Armor.

Instead of having a defensive armor, and an offensive armor, they should just provide both in different ways. Either that, or reduce the amount of offense on Fel Armor, so that we don't feel forced to use it if we want to do reasonable DPS.

Still like my idea:
Fel Armor increases direct damage spells.
Demon Armor increase periodic damage spells.

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this wouldnt help us at all with our main concern, breaking/resisting snares/stuns.

i dont care about killing you before you kill me, i would rather have a passive defensive skill i wouldnt have to worry about other than a 30 min refresh. being able to out dmg everyone cool. the ability to survive no matter how many times i get stun locked, i would love this so much more.

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Q u o t e:


Agreed, but our 51 point talent shouldn't be an incinerate that has extra utility against 2 classes only in certain situations.

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oh 100% agree my previous psot called for it, at its' current dmg to be instant cast with the same CD.

I'm jsut saying i survive currently off the tears of rogues and shadowpriests getting killed through Clos/cheat and dispersion. but lately, the tears have all gone and been replaced with laughter.

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Q u o t e:


Agreed, but our 51 point talent shouldn't be an incinerate that has extra utility against 2 classes only in certain situations.

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It's a 1.5 second cast that has flight time and decent damage. That's huge in terms of burst damage. I would gladly drop haunt's life gain portion if it did that kind of damage...at least in PvP.

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Q u o t e:


It's a 1.5 second cast that has flight time and decent damage. That's huge in terms of burst damage. I would gladly drop haunt's life gain portion if it did that kind of damage...at least in PvP.

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It does do that kind of dmg by increasing the rest of your dmg, just an fyi, it's just not front loaded.

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Q u o t e:
Thanks for everything so far.

I will repeat: this is not a place for manifestos. I am likely to skim or skip over them.

Warlocks have been commenting since beta that they are not Arena viable. We want to understand what changes the community thinks we would need to make to get you Arena viable. If that list of changes runs into the 100s and means touching every talent, then you are much less likely to see them implemented.

Challenge yourself to state the problem in as few words as possible. If you can't nail it that simply then I would argue you haven't considered the issue enough. For purposes of this thread I am trying to isolate "Gee wouldn't it be nice if" from "We can't function without."

I didn't phrase the original question this way because I didn't want you to think we would only make a single change, but, if it helps to address the topic...

What is the ONE change you would make to warlocks to help them in Arenas?

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To condense my last post to a single sentence:

Affliction needs burst damage to stay competitive in level 80 PvP, which is currently centered around burst damage.

If we had one thing and I mean 1 thing, which btw won't fix us, i would say it would be phase shift.

Much like the imp's phase shift

we become immune to dmg, and we can run around we can't cast while in it, though we can use it in combat.