First off I have to say I am not complaining about Warlock DPS at all in anyway. My complaint is that warlock (and mage) threat generation is high compared to the hybrid classes. I feel that since Hybrids generally bring raid more raid utility and comparable DPS so they shouldn't also have superior threat reduction talents then pure dps classes. I'm not saying that Hybrid threat talents need nerfed, I'd rather have Warlocks and Mages brought up to the same level.

Here's the list of what Hybrid classes get threat-wise:

Shadowpriest:
Shadow Affinity - 25% Threat Reduction (3/3)
Shadowform - 20% Threat Reduction (1/1)
Fade - Threat reduction on a 24 second cooldown

Druid:
Nature's Reach - 30% Threat Reduction for Balance Spells + 20% range (2/2)

Shaman:
Spirit Weapons - 30% Threat Reduction for Melee Attacks + parry chance (1/1)
Elemental Precision - 30% Threat Reduction + 3% hit (3/3)

Ret Paladin:
Fanaticism - 30% Threat Reduction + 25% crit on Judgements (5/5)

Here's what Mages and Warlocks get:

Mage:
Burning Soul - 10% Threat Reduction on Fire Spells + 70% interrupt ignore(2/2)
Frost Challening - 10% Threat Reduction on Frost Spells + 10% mana reduction on frost spells (3/3)
Invisibility - Complete aggro wipe, 3 seconds to get off

Warlock:
Improved Drain Soul - 10% Threat Reduction on Affliction Spells + 15% mana on soul drain (2/2)
Destructive Reach - 10% Threat Reduction on Destruction Spells+ 20% Range (2/2)
Soulshatter - 50% aggro dump on a 5 minute cooldown (shard cost)

Could Mage/Warlock threat reduction talents be raised to 30% like the hybrids?
Maybe lower Soulshatter's cooldown significantly and remove the soul shard cost? Make the no-shard effect a minor glyph?

On a sidenote, could Blizzard possibly put Grim Reach on the same talent as threat reduction? The current "15% mana on a soul drain" is completely useless considering how Warlocks play (lifetap + life drains = we don't need mana from procs). Or possibly at least possibly make Shadow Embrace/Shadow Mastery/Contagion 3 talent points instead of 5 to clear up some talent points for us to use elsewhere? It seems in 3.0 when you streamlined a lot of specs for all of the classes you kind of skipped the Warlock talents in the affliction tree.

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Q u o t e:

Mage:

Invisibility - Complete aggro wipe, 3 seconds to get off

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/giggle


The biggest problem with warlock threat seems to be the health gain we get from gear, talents, siphon life, haunt, etc. I see my threat rocket on fights now that my gear is getting better.

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Q u o t e:



/giggle


The biggest problem with warlock threat seems to be the health gain we get from gear, talents, siphon life, haunt, etc. I see my threat rocket on fights now that my gear is getting better.

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that and the fact that nobody in their right minds atm specs into imp drain soul... affliction takes full threat from both destro and affliction spells, destro takes full threat from affliction spells but coupled with its burstyness in the begining of fights is also causeing issues.

You need to compare apples to apples. Pure DPS classes have 10% threat reduction through talents, and then an active threat reduction tool. Hybrids have 30% thread reduction through talents and no active threat reduction tool. Fade is not an actual threat reducer, since it temporarily reduces your threat, then restores it.

So you need to compare the threat reducer talents of the pure DPS classes.

Mage, 100% wipe, 3s to use (talent to instant), 3m CD (33% threat wipe/minute)

Hunter, 100% wipe, instant, 30s CD (glpyh to 25s CD) (200%/240% threat wipe/minute)

Rogue, 100%, instant, 3m CD (talent to 2m CD) + Feint (33%/50% threat wipe/minute)

Warlock, 50% wipe, instant, 5m CD, costs a SS (10% threat wipe/minute)

Given that all of the pure classes should be doing equivalent damage, the clear, overwhelming disparity in active threat reduction talents makes no sense. Why do Hunters get a free threat ride, while locks struggle, especially as lock threat increases.

If the lock Soulshatter was reduced to 90s, it would be on par with the mage tool. The 3s to use for the mage would be balanced against the only 50% wipe and the resource cost of a shard.

Left out Arcane Subtlety - 2/2 is 40% reduction for arcane spells.

The threat problem is really only "severe" with respect to deep fire.

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Q u o t e:



/giggle


The biggest problem with warlock threat seems to be the health gain we get from gear, talents, siphon life, haunt, etc. I see my threat rocket on fights now that my gear is getting better.

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This has to be the case... I have 10% reduction as a FFB mage, and with rocketing out 12k+ crits, I am nowhere near pulling aggro, even going full out.

I do more DPS than most warlocks I come up against, and there is no reason they should be anywhere near pulling aggro, unless the heals are whats pushing them over the edge.

You also forgot to mention that all of the aggro drops from the "pure" classes (Vanish, Feint, Invis, FD, Soulshatter) are permanent.

Where as fade, for example, is temporary.

The reason many of the non pures have more passive threat reduction is because they have no permanent threat drop.

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Q u o t e:



This has to be the case... I have 10% reduction as a FFB mage, and with rocketing out 12k+ crits, I am nowhere near pulling aggro, even going full out.

I do more DPS than most warlocks I come up against, and there is no reason they should be anywhere near pulling aggro, unless the heals are whats pushing them over the edge.

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Actually FFB spec gets 20% threat reduction.

Burning Soul and Frost channeling stack when you cast frostfire bolt.

Sometimes it's dangerous to compare skills between classes instead of focusing on your class's specific function in an area. Right now, warlock threat is high, and soulshatter is only part of the problem.

1. Destro uses aff dots to trigger MC procs, and aff uses sbolt spam as a filler. It's impossible to get both destro and aff aggro reduction talents (not to mention range increase talents too). That's a big problem.

2. Soulshatter is an AOE effect (i.e. range considerations), and can be resisted. That's a part of the problem.

3. There's too much bloat in affliction, so taking Imp Drain Soul for the aggro reduction usually isn't possible without affecting your DPS, unless you're hit capped and can take points out of Suppression (and don't mind the mana cost). That too is part of the problem.

Really, item #1 is the most impacting. Warlocks rely on skills from multiple trees more than any other class. Yet we can't get the aggro reduction talents for all the skills at once.

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Q u o t e:


that and the fact that nobody in their right minds atm specs into imp drain soul... affliction takes full threat from both destro and affliction spells, destro takes full threat from affliction spells but coupled with its burstyness in the begining of fights is also causeing issues.

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I guess I've lost my mind.

Not that this threat the threat reduction is really worth it, but for fights like Kel'thuzzad, where you can get extra mana off of the Sharded mobs, it's pretty nice, what with people 1-shotting skeletons.

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Q u o t e:
You also forgot to mention that all of the aggro drops from the "pure" classes (Vanish, Feint, Invis, FD, Soulshatter) are permanent.

Where as fade, for example, is temporary.

The reason many of the non pures have more passive threat reduction is because they have no permanent threat drop.

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This. Although in the case of warlocks, threat ought to be looked out, they have the double edged sword of both damage and healing in a lot of their spells and their threat wipe has a longer cooldown, less effect, and is used with a reagent.

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Q u o t e:


Actually FFB spec gets 20% threat reduction.

Burning Soul and Frost channeling stack when you cast frostfire bolt.

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These do not stack to 20%, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view.

Affliction warlocks could definitely use some love - maybe include a 2 minute reduction on shatter or hell, 3 minute.

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Q u o t e:


Actually FFB spec gets 20% threat reduction.

Burning Soul and Frost channeling stack when you cast frostfire bolt.

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Everything I've seen show that BS and FC only give you one of the threat reductions, 10% according to the EJ forums. I know it's not gospel but it's been tested.

The mana reduction and the pushback reduction are both present, which is the main reason for speccing into both of them

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Q u o t e:
First off I have to say I am not complaining about Warlock DPS at all in anyway. My complaint is that warlock (and mage) threat generation is high compared to the hybrid classes. I feel that since Hybrids generally bring raid more raid utility and comparable DPS so they shouldn't also have superior threat reduction talents then pure dps classes. I'm not saying that Hybrid threat talents need nerfed, I'd rather have Warlocks and Mages brought up to the same level.

Here's the list of what Hybrid classes get threat-wise:

Shadowpriest:
Shadow Affinity - 25% Threat Reduction (3/3)
Shadowform - 20% Threat Reduction (1/1)
Fade - Threat reduction on a 24 second cooldown

Druid:
Nature's Reach - 30% Threat Reduction for Balance Spells + 20% range (2/2)

Shaman:
Spirit Weapons - 30% Threat Reduction for Melee Attacks + parry chance (1/1)
Elemental Precision - 30% Threat Reduction + 3% hit (3/3)

Ret Paladin:
Fanaticism - 30% Threat Reduction + 25% crit on Judgements (5/5)

Here's what Mages and Warlocks get:

Mage:
Burning Soul - 10% Threat Reduction on Fire Spells + 70% interrupt ignore(2/2)
Frost Challening - 10% Threat Reduction on Frost Spells + 10% mana reduction on frost spells (3/3)
Invisibility - Complete aggro wipe, 3 seconds to get off

Warlock:
Improved Drain Soul - 10% Threat Reduction on Affliction Spells + 15% mana on soul drain (2/2)
Destructive Reach - 10% Threat Reduction on Destruction Spells+ 20% Range (2/2)
Soulshatter - 50% aggro dump on a 5 minute cooldown (shard cost)

Could Mage/Warlock threat reduction talents be raised to 30% like the hybrids?
Maybe lower Soulshatter's cooldown significantly and remove the soul shard cost? Make the no-shard effect a minor glyph?

On a sidenote, could Blizzard possibly put Grim Reach on the same talent as threat reduction? The current "15% mana on a soul drain" is completely useless considering how Warlocks play (lifetap + life drains = we don't need mana from procs). Or possibly at least possibly make Shadow Embrace/Shadow Mastery/Contagion 3 talent points instead of 5 to clear up some talent points for us to use elsewhere? It seems in 3.0 when you streamlined a lot of specs for all of the classes you kind of skipped the Warlock talents in the affliction tree.

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I agree.

Tank threat just took a hit, yet no new aggro reduction abilities have been provided to us.

For a long time, warlocks have had to time their soulshatter to maximize their DPS.

Destructive reach is also relatively difficult for affliction warlocks to work into a build.

I'm often threat capped and end up well below other classes in DPS. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. If I'm threat capped I shouldn't somehow be pulling 400 DPS less than 3 people. Worse, affliction locks can't really "stop DPS" or "control our threat."

SImply put: we don't have the options we need.

I pulled aggro on patchwerk the other day. It was a real wtf moment for me. The problem was the tank of course, but I remember how much an idiotic shaman ripped into me for doing that, even though he had 30% threat reduction, and I only had 10%, due to fire spec. I have no idea why there is that discrepancy.

Both mage and warlock could use some adjusting in their active threat dumps, and frankly I think all DPS classes could use active threat dumps.

The current situation of caster threat management is like a lot of things in caster-land: poorly thought out, inconsistent, and causes enough problems on raids to be annoying to players while not being technically game-breaking.


In this case, it's silly for one class to receive a full 30% threat reduction but no active threat management tools, while another receives only 10% and has a spell that takes 3 seconds to take effect, drops your target, and forces you to actively remove it (resulting in what's usually closer to a 4-5 second delay.)


Classes should have an instant threat dump, period. On a reasonably long cooldown (5 minutes is fine.)

And passive threat talents should be evened out.


What we have now is a situation where some classes never have any threat issues, and the primary DPS classes have problems on the fights that boost DPS -- and one of them has an instant drop at least, but it's only 50%, and the other has a 100% but it takes 4-5 seconds.

No, everything in the game doesn't "have" to be equal -- but threat management is one of the ways that it *should* be a lot more consistent than it is now.

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Q u o t e:
Shadow Affinity - 25% Threat Reduction (3/3)

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Nobody takes SA. You want it? Fine with me.

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Q u o t e:


Nobody takes SA. You want it? Fine with me.

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Yes I want it.