Guest Post: The Death of a Warlock
This is a guest post submitted by Moldru, a fellow warlock who like many of us is frustrated with the grim state we are in. If you want your voice heard, don’t forget to check out the Submit a post feature! Be sure to post a comment below, perhaps we can cheer him up by lying how everything’s going to be okay.
A while back I realized I didn’t have the gear necessary to get in the top raiding guilds and decided it would be prudent to wait for Wrath. My reasons where simple: new levels, new gear, equal chance to progress.
I was willing to spend the hours a week, a night, raiding to be a top dps machine. I was quite excited. Once I got to 80 (about 1-2 levels per day), I went about getting gear, items, and soon found I wasn’t half bad equipped -at the time- but definitely could use improvement.
Yet … yet … damn it … I didn’t seem to be topping the scales in dps. The DK, the PALADIN, wtf, the Rogue, the druid, the shaman (if not healers) and the Hunter all out dpsed me constantly. Well ok, the paladin and DK do AoE damage, so whatever. I checked the rogue and hunters … their equipment was subpar to mine. Significantly so.
The realization I was a dps dump, a waste of space, made me research and finally came up with the fact that it seems ONLY destruction spec warlocks can dps effectively. My god, I had to become A MAGE, to dps effectively! Noooooooo.
When did my class become obsolete? Yes, you all read me, obsolete. Here is why:
- Affliction = Shadow priests do it better, AND they can change spec to heal, thus more useful.
- Demonology = Extremely gimped, hunters do it much, much better, and the additions feel superficial, I sure haven’t found any extra dps in it and the survivability … what a joke.
- Destruction = If I want to throw insta nukes and huge balls of flame I’d be a mage. They can nuke better and have Ice Block (don’t tell me u compare an invulnerable block of ice, to the crappy damage absorption sacrificing a voidwalker gives us)
In short, my warlock felt like a crap class, but its not over…
So one day I see a mage. Hey, I might be crap but I can still take out a mage baby!
I died in 8 seconds… 5 to 7k nukes, 4-6k insta blasts. I got hit by a hurricane of damage. No bloody way. I tried again, was smarter about it, went in with a felhound, fears, boom boom boom. I went splat.
Holy crap… I can’t PvP! I can’t DPS unless I imitate a mage, what the heck am I supposed to do?
The simple fact of the matter is, warlocks will do less dps than other classes with equivalent equipment, and they can’t PvP worth a damn any more. So why play one? I feel like the bastard son that doesn’t get anything and has to look up at the scraps table to see what falls in reach. The additions Blizzard has provided are gimmicks, nothing concrete. The warlock is just … dead.
Thus, I had to end it. I never had any real interest than my warlock. Since the beginning of my WoW adventure in 2005 I play a warlock. Yes I got other classes, but warlock is my love and pride.
The ride is over.
Goodbye my Moldru, you’ve been screwed and it doesn’t seem you’ll get any love any time soon.
Account Cancel.
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I was in a group in Heroic Draktharon with an affliction lock who was well, but not insanely geared who was pulling 3k DPS without blinking. My ret pally hung his head with his 2200 dps at that point.
Don’t mean to sound insulting but have you looked into the preferred specs, rotations, gear etc?
Thanks for submitting the post!
But I kinda disagree with you. Although I understand perfectly why you quit, many ex-locks found refuge in other classes, mostly death knights. It’s new and fun and might take you mind off of our troubles; who knows, you might want to stick with it.
Our fixes will come, no doubt about it, but we’re all always impatient which is not unreasonable either. 2 months, 6 months or two years down the road we’ll be “fine” again but I wonder how many of us will simply give up by then.
I agree with the poster that we are in fact somewhat broken, but it really all comes down to terrible talents in two trees, Demonology and Destruction are both horrible right now, while affliction is currently the highest DPS lock spec. I think it may have to do with every other dps class getting a new DPS spell why we get… blink. At 80.
Every other pure dps class got new spells to play around with to substantially increase their damage. Warlocks got none, Shadowflame is a joke, and Demonic Teleport will give you at most one additional Shadow Bolt.
Overall, all the classes are quite even right now, anyone who knows how to effectively gear and play their class will succeed, but warlocks certainly did take a hit, we used to be able to vie for the top spot, but now, it would take a perfectly played warlock to beat a monkey with a mage or hunter.
The “fix” that warlocks need right now is something akin to what hunters got, useful new talents in all three trees making the game more fun as one levels beyond the previous cap, whereas now, the new spells we got are situationally useful at best, or in some cases (Demonic Empowerment, I’m looking at you…) downright bad.
There is some hope. Ghostcrawler has mentioned a few times that they are planning changes for us, and that we might get an overhaul. On the downside, this overhaul will take forever, probably dissapoint everyone, and be nerfed a month or two after going live (as the hunter nerf shows us is likely). Its rather disconcerting that Ghostcrawler and co. deny the existence of many of our most obvious issues, but hopefully things will get better.
Seriously. Locks have been OP for ages, and now they QQ because other classes are competitive. Cry me a river.
How are some of you warlocks not pulling top DPS? Right now i am pulling, as affli, on patchwerk 3100 dps and i am still in a few greens and blues, though the rest is naxx gear. Here is a link to my armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/chara.....=Rockeroad . you guys just have to gear up, that is all i can say. Another fellow warlock in my guild ran with me on patchwerk and pulled 3.3k dps. I am sorry but warlocks are still top notch. The closest to me and my friend was a Dk who pulled 2.7k.
Yes we are gimped in PVP and i suggest not doing it until we are fixed PVP wise. Otherwise we are still the very best to bring.
/rant off.
Oh and that warlock was Destruction and had 2.5k spell power while i have 1.8k in raids. Affliction is definitely good for now and destro is still a VERY nice spec to go as. Just trust me on this one. I might not be a well known lock but i can pull dps like a madman, i know the class very well in PVE and somewhat in PVP.
I couldn t agree more, going to quit game when game card ends.
Things are fine. Really, I don’t understand all the tears.
I so agree, except that Affliction is the highest rated raiding spec i think.
So you are juggling CoA, Cor, SB, Haunt, UA, Immo, SL and eventually DS rotation from ElitistJerks. And that might have been OK, but this very, very annoying WotLK idea that all the instances/raids need their “dance” (lot of movements.) When you combine the two, it really is just too much of a hassle to be fun. If I wanted to play a FPS ( and I really, really do not ), I would use a console (PS3).
And if you endure all that, you get competitive DPS.
Many of the bloggers/responders like it; I don’t and suspect a considerable portion pf the future ex-warlock players don’t.
I’m rerolling rogue.
I noticed all the things the orginal poster mentioned. I quit playing wow after the last warlock debacle where they screwed up drain mana, and I had to listen to how Kalgan used normalised data to nerf or buff classes. I had enough, and quit.
With Lich King I thought it would be a chance to compete with other players as the whole gear and arena system was being reset. My focus was primarily on PvP, until they messed up the premade queuing system a while back. So I get to 80, and the arena seasons starts. I tell you being killed with a rogues ‘i win’ one shot button really didnt impress.. Nor did being death gripped and pretty much dyng before I had hit the deck.
If I survived for more than 5 seconds in the arena I was generally doing very well. We are told they are going to sort this burst damage out. But in the mean time am I expected to endure this? They had over a year of development time on this, and I am not impressed. The game was released unfinished in my opinion. And I think Tom Chilton needs garroting for his poor and biased design decisions. So I have quit and I wont be playing again. I gave WoW a second chance, I wont be giving it a third. GL guys..
My Warlock got shelved, too. But also my whole WoW account. It has become super easy casual food and doing daily quests and then running a super easy Naxx over and over… it does not feel right for me. Some of my friends felt the same boredom, strange, as Northrend is much more fascinating than all other continents that they ever created.
I think destruction is our best tree right now. Works in PvE and also PvP, ok, not versus rogues that know what they do. And capable mages either.
Rockeroad is right though, I am outdpsing rogues and, despite theorycrafting, fire mages as well. Shadow Priests are on the same level as me. Hint: Use Rain of Fire in 5 mans or raids, not Seed of Corruption as Destro lock.
That they felt the need to give DKs some buffs instead of even more nerfs shows that they are silly melee lovers to boot…^^ The nerf to the outrageous swirly bones thingie is not enough.
Ghostcrawler, Kalgan and Balance do not go well in one sentence…^^
I quit WoW. The game itself lost appeal for me, and my class feels gimped at times.
Time to send them a message, play another game. Play some other games… they are often not as polished, but right now I am playing Close Combat III remake “Cross of Iron” and Navyfield and especially the latter is really remarkable.
BTW, Rogues complain a lot, too. They are totally screwed in instances. No proper AoE, and tanks, mages, warlocks, shadowpriests all outdamage you easily.
There is much more broken in WoW balance than the Warlock class.
I have no issues with tanks doing more dps and being more fun to play in solo play. But they have gone too far, they outdamage DDs at times, especially Death Knights.
Hey Long.. I will agree with you northrend is a nice piece of work. Without being totally negative, some places are really impressive. And the music in parts of the game was very enjoyable whilst leveling. Sadly, there is little reason to frequent any of these places in the ‘endgame’. ROFL.. unless of course we consider shard farming.
I think in many ways its time to move on. I have felt attached to wow for a long time, as perhaps we all have.
I understand Rogues have issues in PvE at the moment; its another clear demonstration of poor design. being able to complete an instance by AoEing the whole thing is probably why they are left out.
There are many other problems in game, and I am surprised because I thought Blizzard would be on top of these things.
My only real conclusion on that note is that whilst Blizzard continues to make tones of money they arent going to replace people at the top who make the design decisions. In effect I would say they are not hungry anymore.. The passion that once graced the company seems to have escaped them.
I wonder how many of their ‘devs’ have moved on? And how many of them should have. I have worked in software development for years and egos and power battles are fife. When warlocks were created there was clearly and a drive, a passion. You only have to look at the warlock epic mount quest to agree with that idea.
I am left feeling very disappointed because when WoW was good it was exceptional. LIke I say, its time to move on.
Well what to say… I am not having too many issues with the warlock in PVE but as I have often said on my own blog we’re pretty much hopeless in PVP. I am sure the 4% warlock participation numbers in arena PVP will attest to that.
I am not lamenting issues… my warlock made it to 80 and is indeed a lot more complicated to play than it was in PVE… rotations are pretty complex these days.
People that say warlocks are fine in PVP however need to actually go play one for a few weeks.
I do feel for my shadow priest buddies, but they at least have a few alternative specs… I feel for my rogue friends when it comes to pve but at least they can pvp.
Warlocks are sitting on the bottom of the ladder so the data says, that much is beyond argument.
What a lot of doom and gloom. Blizzard’s just gotten through implementing a major change in their combat system, and they’re working the bugs out. Yes, right now the mail and plate crowd is out of control. Yes, right now it seems as if cloth gear is just there to make you look good so some DK can give you that “come hither” deathgrip, bend you over and rape you. But Blizzard has shown a great deal of willingness to work towards balance. We’ll get buffs. Others will be nerfed. Do try to keep some perspective. In the meantime, go roll a DK. For my part, I’m going to level the paladin that’s been sitting on the shelf. Blizzard watches the numbers. When enough ppl do that, they’ll act, as they always have.
Wow, the trolls are showing up on here now too? Amazing.
I like how you said how much you don’t want to play a console FPS and then stated the console that you’d play it on.
Thx! It was mostly to make the ancillary point that I am not so devoid of taste or indifferent to quality as to use a Microsoft product when an alternative exists. And I was worried we could have mages reading this - or having it read to them - and not know what “consoles” were.
thats stupid panik,i dont wanna roll another class cause ours has to suck,warlocks are a bit nerfed,but we will be better,but why are we talking about rogues being bad in pve?all i see is rogues HAT doing 8.3k dps all the time,theyre most OP atm
The problem with you all, its that you DOMT KNOW HOW TO PLAY LOCKS!!, you got used to the damn shadowbolt spam,and now that blizz makes the class funnier to play you guys cry, its stupid, i cna put a decent dmg with my gear, 2,5k dmgand 3,5k on patchwerk, yes we all do more dmg on patchwerk, anyways. its just a mater of knowing your class, and learning how to play it, sit down for 20 mins with a talent calculator, and youcan get nice specs, that can put a LOT of dmg, just LEARN HOW TO PLAY!!!
man rogues are good at PvE right now, but that 8k its prob from some AoE dmg, the only OP class on DPS right now, are BM hunters, and they are getting nerfed, so stop crying
Hmm, so you are leet and everyone else couldn’t find the elitist jerk website with both hands? Perhaps. Even in a universe where that were true, doesn’t it still mean locks need to be changed? If only a few people like yourself can play a lock, and perhaps a million paying customers can not play one - or more accurately do not find it enjoyable to play it, then it seems to me that it is in the financial interest of the Blizzard corporation to make some changes,
Even if funnier were a word, then just because it is more fun for you does not mean it is for me. In fact, SB then keeping COA,SL,Ht,UA,Imm and SE is not too bad in static situations. But due to the unfortunate increased amount of movement in WotLK, then trying to keep all those up while doing a Nax dance is not the sort of video-game like entertainment I am remotely interested in. YMMV
Well some ppl actually enjoy challenges, I do enjoy playing affliction on raids, half of the casts are instant, so its not actually that hard to keep em up, its just that you got used to the SB spam….
oh and I never said that locks didnt need a change, but quiting the game coz you gotta move while combat now? or reroll another class?,maybe warlocks did get a lot of nerfs and not buffs lately, but if you know how to play, you can still be on top 5 DPS on your raid group.
PD: If you dont wanna move around during a boss fight, go felguard/emberstorm, and spam incinarate, that shouls do the job
YMMV, but I find it frustrating that everyone assumes that real-time stress and reaction time are the only measure of challenge. E.g., it is very rare for someone to be able to hit a 105 MPH fastball; but it does not necessarily require any intelligence. But it is also true that it is rare to be a chess grandmaster, and Stephen Hawking could do that, just not quickly.
It seems like a poor business decision for Blizzard to make all of the 30+ classes/builds to require similar skillsets that will appeal to the same people.
Meh, it’s only a game and there are alternatives, but it is frustrating they (IMHO) broke locks and even the 3.0.8 patch does not seem to address it.
Two letter review of this guest post:
QQ.
I have been having a blast with Destro (for the first time since vanilla WoW) in BGs/WG/Heroics. Just tried Demo for the third time (try = at least 10 hours /played with a spec) today, haven’t tried Aff for a few weeks (It doesn’t matter to me if I can kill my opponent in 30s when he can kill me in 10s).
Destro is full of stuns, snares and Damage reduction now (Aftermath, Pyroclasm, insta-shadowfury, nether protection, and insta-seduce from 3rd tier Demo), and while it is more ‘mage-like,’ I’ve been having a lot of fun working on my nuke/CC combos.
not rly m8,all my time played ive been fire/afflication,and im always 2nd or 1st on dps meter,but im outdpsing rogues now that my gear is a bit better,but that whine was a hope that they whould still nerf them a bit since i can get ganked for hours just 12k ambush x2 and its rly frustrating man..and i never stand still in a fight tbh since u rly cant stand still atm,and im imp/shadowflame pretty nice spec,whats ur spec?tell me how it is since u comment like u have a good dps rotation
look it this way, if you look at the top pvp team members, non are warlock!
I agree 100%. I just let my account expire and won’t buy any more game cards until major changes to locs happen. I mean we have gone on for years with issues like our taps getting stolen. which they are FINALLY going to fix. Bag space issues because of shards. plus we continue to se other classes get improvements and we are stuck as a after thought. like it was said most of our changes are gimmicks at best.
why bring a loc to the raid? very seldom has high DPS unless the rest of the grp just sucks. on top of that a lot of our spells have better options with other classes. Shadow priests and druids come to mind. and now we have DK to compete with, loc is almost a useless class.
never mind we will survive like 5 sec once we pull agrro and have no reliable aggro dump, soulshatter is not very reliable plus only 1 every 5 minutes.
I am just very dissappointed with Blizzard. loc was my first roll and played it ever since and won’t be back until they fix the problems or maybe they will wait to long and i will find out i don’t miss it that much.
this just isn’t correct, maybe if you can spend every waking moment getting all the best gear yeah you can out dps noobs or classes with low lvl gear but the norm classes with similar or lower gear than you will out dps you. its also pretty shallow of you to say its because you have to move or work for it now is just bogus. you should know what you are talking about.
this is in response to casual players probably who don’t have the keyboard setup with all the correct macros and crap like that. You are only better because you have you sequence down pat. sure if i hit ever spell correct nothing is resisted, trinket correct, take my pots correct yeah its nice but thats not talent thats just a memorized sequnce you got.
i think they should take battle tactics in account. let players flank for more battle, you seem fire damage does more damage to earth creatures or water to fire?
absolutely its amazing when you take a break how shallow and repetitive this game really is. the rep grinding and the grinding for your skills and for gold to buy overpriced items gets old and boring..
i mean i don’t see how you can play this game casual and enjoy it.
Wow, while I agree we still are in need of some help from blizz all of the locks in my guild have no issues pulling 3k-4k dps on boss fights, and trash where I can aoe consistently I am 7k plus…. if you don’t like complicated rotations(qq) go fg/ember I can easily pull 3k dps on most boss fighhts and it is just 3 dots and inc spam….
I see post after post saying my lock pulled 17 million dps etc
I just can’t see it. Entry level lock dps is 1/2 that of mage, and fury warrior. It sux ballz
I have done all the reading done all the specs, and I got OK gear, but then I read i pulled 5 k in greens and blues, and quite frankly I just can’t believe it.
Affliction spell rotation is a pain, but at least it is interesting, destruction is easy but very boring.
I suspect a few guys are bigging themselves up on the dps front.
In our guild a high rated lock is averaging 2.4 k in 10 mans, similar geared mage is averging 3.5 k, lesser geared fury war 2.5k, and same geared retri pal 3.3k
not balanced, just sux
17 million… pfff
56 is better
i went on my lock last night to help a friend in heroic nexus. I have nearly 1500 bonus damage and i did .8k dps for the whole instance. which worked out at 14% of all dps done. Other than the healer, the other members of the group were DKs. I was specced affliction/sl.
Im finding it hard to believe these stories about locks being able to pull their weight in raids. The game is pretty awful; I get lectured by OP DKs about how I should read up on spell rotations to improve my dps.. when all they are doing is spamming death and decay, their diseases and pestilence. I raided upto BT in TBC so I am no novice when it comes to raiding, but the game is in a shocking state right now. Its such a disappointment.
Perhaps they are dumbing it down so toddlers can start to play it on an xbox console paddle.
dude, what the hell are you doing PvEing with aff/SL, first you need a real PvE spec to DPS, shadowbolt its the 40% of your dmg on an affliction tree, so you NEED bane and improved shadowbolt, respect, and youll see the difference
My 2 cents
Main lock since 2005, WOTLK PVE spec trials
0/50/21
0/30/41
0/41/30
0/40/31
All of them with the same gear (full blue ~1700sp,26%crit,>158hit HC cap), and on a 80 dummy I’m scoring 1500-1800 dps.
I did a Gundrak run with an 80 frostfire mage that had 4 epics and rest blue, I went as destro fire.
We both went flat out on the last boss (78 elite). I did 2.2k. He did 3.8k.
I don’t think 2.2k in blues against a 78 elite is too bad.
But I’m pretty damn sure that 3.8k is a huge difference for 4 epics. Enough said about balance.
Irrespective of that, I think rain of fire is rocking atm for destro, much better than CoS even if spec is shadow oriented.
The last time I used rain in raids was in MC on the hounds. But now, it’s working very well. Litte confort.
dont re-roll; thats what bli$$ard wants yall to do..they think gamers are unintelligent sub-humans. see, blizz openly tells us what they think of us, you just have to look; in game i saw mobs of ZOMBIE npcs running around with ENCHANTED BROOMS; click on a DK ZOMBIE pet to hear it talk, it says “me like shiny” sound like anyone you know? hello? i also saw mobs called “loot crazed” i suspect thats a term they use to refer to players. they give us quests to pick up DUNG, put mining nodes/herbs on cliff ledges, hoping players will click-to-run & fall, do u not see it? blizz hates u. [carrot on a stick] anyone? open your eyes & see YOURE BEING PLAYED. protest by quitting altogether.
1 is warlock, but he has a paladin partner. Not top 5 though, more like top 10.
Mmk.
This story is what im looking for, took the words out of my mouth.
Just un-installed and cancled my wow account, the class is RUINED and ANYBODY that says otherwise has hardcore learn to play issues and needs to learn to keybind ^.^.. “warlocks WAS op..”…I was not around at the time but what has that got to do with anything?
I refuse to re-roll, its to time consuming, im a warlock and very proud to say we suck and i wont be coming back to this game anytime soon.
Unless blizzad decide to do the doubtfull and give us 10k more hp on our gear ^.^
<3 warlocks.
I’m running a pretty cookie cutter affliction spec atm. While I agree that there are locks that can pull 5k+ dps (I’m in almost full t7.5 and bustin’ my butt to pull 4k on patchwerk) I think for the majority of us locks it’s just not happening. I’ve subscribed to forums, had headaches over WWS reports, followed EJ’s rotation to the dime, all the tricks. However, I’m getting benched in S3d 10 man b/c I don’t have enough burst dmg and I refuse to change my much loved affliction spec. From what I hear about the PTR Uldaur is going to require just as much burst dmg/movement as the other wrath instances and a demo/destro build is the way to go. TBH, I’m happy for the much ignored hybrid classes that our getting some blizzard love but my question is should pure dps classes really be getting out dps’d by a hybrid class of any kind? About balance…mages in my guild are pulling a good 3k dps more than me at most times and I’m not exaggerating on that one. At the moment it seems like people topping the recount charts are classes w/tons of burst damage.