Guest Post: The Demon Within
Today’s guest post is submitted by Shadowhold from “From The Ashes” guild on Arthas-Us. They seem to be recruiting one warlock right now so hop over there and apply!
All of the recent QQ by warlocks has dampened my spirits and made me seriously reconsider my motivation for playing my warlock, who has been my alter ego since the inception of WoW so many years ago… I have spent hours upon hours poring over preferred specs, gear itemization, and spell rotations and cross referencing all of it with other sources, and even running a few numbers myself, and after everything I’ve done I have come to a conclusion: warlocks need to be rebalanced.
I’m sure that’s an earth-shattering realization that you’re all reading for the first time in my post, and I’m equally certain that this is your first introduction to sarcasm. As far as PVP is concerned, warlocks are little more than a free kill and slightly less than a free kill that you have to earn. Regardless of your spec, albeit some are marginally worse than others, you are absolutely certain to be Rick Rolled by any comparatively geared player capable of targeting you who realized you’re a warlock, and promptly giving a LOL as he tears your head off. Your only real chance is if you’re fighting another warlock who has become so disillusioned that he PVPs with glasses over eyes and a wistful nostalgia for being a decent class.
In PVE you are doomed to a life of Soul Wells and Soul Stones, with little else to contribute to the raid. If you meet a comparatively geared DPS player, be prepared to use the irrefutable excuse of “Yeah, but I play a warlock” if they say anything about how they beat you on the DPS charts. It seems that warlocks have truly come full circle from the olden days of yore, aka Vanilla WoW, when we were useful for – you guessed it – Soul Stones, Health Stones, and Banishing the adds on Garr.
This return to less than mediocrity comes with a bitter sadness and resent after our days of glory in TBC. The dawn of Seed of Corruption which saw all warlocks rise to heights unimaginable, raw power coursing through our evil veins. It is with a slight hope, then, that I say that we warlocks must not lose heart; we must continue to QQ on all message boards and spitball ideas about how to fix our dismal and neglected class so that we may return to a spot of respectability in both PVP and PVE. We aren’t asking to rule on high like death knights or to be armed with a full arsenal of ridiculously OP stuns or Cloak of Shadows, we aren’t even asking to be able to kill 300 people in Bear Form and pop out and heal ourselves before killing another 300, we’re only asking to not be the new ret pally (pre-God Mode patch) in all of our specs.
Little things like soul shards can be forgotten in a time of crisis like this. We should all turn our attention to the bigger picture of awful damage output, laughable survivability, impotent fear and the fact that at level 80 I still can’t summon a Doom Guard who will permanently remain in my control even though I’m Demonology (I mean WTF? I’m level 80; let me have a Doom Guard for once…).
i agree.. they tried to solve a real prob in pve where groups werent able to do instances because of a tank and healer shortage.. There was never a problem finding dps classes.
Its cool for the hybrid classes to be able to dps well but it means there isnt a need for range dps classes anymore.
mages have the tools to deal with melee.. and hunters have uber dps..
we are just a little glass bubble waiting to get smashed .. lol
I was always skeptical about Kalgan playing a mage, but it seems that there have been some biased design decisions made for certain classes that we cant deny. At Blizz con once.. his girlfriend asked a loaded question about rogues, which of course she plays.
So the moral of the story is to find a hot girl who plays a warlock.. get with Kalgan and we’ll suddenly all be uber. ROAR!
make that 90% evasion + stun/blind/gouge/hamstring resistance. Once a rogue pops CoS, he’s invulnerable as far as warlocks are concerned.
that’s a tall order. he’s butt-ugly
Stop blaming Kalgan. Kalgan was actually good for the game, despite what the majority of you (who are dipshits, incidentally) seem to think.
Given he is in charge of class design and balance, exactly who else can we hold accountable for the appalling state of locks in pvp? Please explain to us ‘dipshits’ oh enlightened one.
Its all Kalgans fault. He mentioned that some classes should come to the spotlight too instead of having the same OP classes. I accept that and I think its great but the way he achieved that is what is wrong. He nerfed the warlock to ground to make mages and pallies look good because face it, the warlock was strong enough for the current patch without any nerfs or boosts. That creates a bad image for DKs also who are supposed to be that great war machine. The problem here is that: DK, rogue, pally and mage who are shining this patch coexist just fine, warlock had to had his survivability nerfed and turn the class useless. The warlock gurus are yet to come with the same number of viable builds for pve and pvp as in TBC. Worse of all you get false promises, just say we are working on that and shut it. Start building a true image for v4 warlocks that will make them look forward to it. As other people mentioned pve is good in lich king for warlocks and hell this patch I had time to do my professions since I dont smash people in BGs and arenas. But the warlock missing out on S5? IS this balance and great game design? no its failure and since he is having the last say on balancing pvp in warcraft its his failure. Rerolling is a complete joke for advanced warlocks since only the rogue can match the class complexity and quite frankly we love our locks we are not switching. Most people would and have quitted wow on this issue so the failure reflects on blizzards revenue to.
Now lets go to phase two of my attack:
Your class is shining now and clearly Blizzard must bring the warlock back into the came since the forums are about to be /incinerated. So in kalgans theory of some classes need to shine next release and the rogue has been in the spotlight for long they are in huge danger of been nerfed. So this will come full circle and we will have a http://www.roguesucks.com. Do I need to go on?
Now you will all wonder how did I find out that Kalgan said each class should have its day in the spotlight so I will provide a link as soon as I find it again
He used to be in charge of PvP. Now he isn’t, apparently Ghostcrawler is. If you think now is better than BC, kill yourself.
Have you got any information to show that Ghostcrawler is in charge now? Appart from rogues been OP
Tom Chilton (Kalgan) is balancing PvP. Here are some of his views and some peoples reaction:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft......p;pageNo=1
that’s 2007 you utter dickwad. KEEP UP.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008.....ournament/
http://www.wowwiki.com/Tom_Chilton
http://wow.consolenewsblog.com.....h-knights/
can you see wow lead designer all over the place?
At least try to behave a bit more maturely here and keep your nerdrage for the actual wow forums
first link: { 9 months ago }
second link: Last edit: 31 August 2008
third link: yet another blizzcon 2k7 link.
You’re stupid, wrong, and bad. To digress slightly: I’m sure I’m the one nerdraging, what with me blaming the problems with my class on someone who hasn’t really surfaced much since 3.0 and all. Oh wait. I don’t even know why I bother reading this blog; Horns posts less than the guests/Smatter and his posts are the only ones worth reading.
Dude.. why dont you just bugger off. You come on here insulting random posters by calling them dipshits, stupid, and dickwads. With arguments like that you are either clearly trolling or retarded. Either way please do us all a favour and shut up.
wtf.?? r u guys retarded i hv been doin just fine in PvE always on top 5 on 25 and 10 mans. stop excusing ur alck of talent and dont come telling me i run with ppl who dont kno how to play cuz im currently part of a #3 guild realm wide. “the undying” achivement shud tell how good. learn to play ur class as the complicated machines they were ment to be and 4 god’s sake RE-SPEC!!!!!! ive fixed 10th’s of warlock friends this way
What an idiot you are? Blizzard went like: Lets do lich king on the 15th of october and they packed up for release and worldwide distribution the next day. Go fuck yourself you idiot. They designed lich king in 2007-2008 so all the videos are pretty much valid. What job you do? sell hotdogs? here take mine.
ok theres ur problem. we are nothin like other classes. we are way more complex. specially on affliction. just need to figure out ur rotation right, choose the right glyphs….. and i lost my train of thought……. ok here we go. use ur cooldowns correctly. u need to understand how they work. and remember to ALWAYS keep Haunt and Corruption up
Maybe I’m trolling you because I think you’re stupid and incapable of grasping the current situation. But okay, sure, if you really think KALGAN IS SATAN then I guess satire won’t make you change your mind.
our warlock CL pulled 6200dps on patch last night as afflic, some of the guys in the euro guilds have pulled 6500 to 6700 dps on fights like patch, problem is the majority of locks dont want to take the time too learn and become good at the affliction spell rotation, plain and simple. it has been noted by ghostcrawler that they are looking into simplifying afflivtion a little but i wouldnt count on anything b4 3.1 at the earliest.
pvp isnt goood and still needs work but that will all come in time, for now i do alright and dont even have the 600+ resil some of the other locks in my guild do…it is a grin it and beaqr it time for pvp but at least we are not unwanted by those who know their ish in pve
This post is the biggest load of crap I have ever read. Affliction warlocks are the highest dps in the game as of patch 3.0.8. I have seen as high as 6.5k on some of the more highly geared warlocks. 0/41/30 is a joke build. Haunt/ruin will destroy almost any raid group on pure dps meters. We offer nothing to a raid? Mages have polymorph and tables we have soul stones, soul wells, banish. A warlock that knows what he’s doing is useful in any raid situation even ones that require a lot of movement.
tl;dr you people need to l2p warlock.
Arcane can hit higher DPS levels, but yeah, affliction warlocks are pretty damn good too.
So will we ever get a new post horns? or have you quit too?
There might be a post or two coming, and it’s likely those will be the last.
Awww, that sucks =(.
Make a video I want proof. I left the game because comparable classes out dpsed me with equal type of gear. In 5 mans my affliction spec was a -JOKE- with people patting me on the head. I know how to play affliction, I got addons and years of experience timing my cycles. I was DEEP affliction, and I hate the thought of going destro. I don’t want to immitate a mage, I prefer a shadow priest imitates ME.
Let’s assume that you’re right and I just suck, in comparison to you, at PVE for some reason and that PVE is just fine. Why the FRIG do I have to suck at PvP?
I pay MONEY to play both in PVE AND PVP. I want the full range of the game not just half of it.
This isn’t a joke, is my hard earned cash and by god I want blizzard to respect it.
Its the gear. It doesnt matter your specc. I am out-dpsing almost everyone now with… demonology! So unless you get some purple items and preferably of the highest rating (216) then you cant dps. This is the problem; warlocks who hit lvl80 right now cant dps while a mage can - and other classes. So that warlock gets pinned to the ground, facerolled kicked from groups and raids cos he cant dps as a virgin level 80. This is horrible because we also had the same issue in pvp in TBC - and we still have it.
Worth to mention that I went for timed stratholme today and by the time i dot up and cast a shadow bolt the npc was down because I was playing with a DK, Rogue and Pally. Clearly my DPS in that group was awful cos they also outgeared me and I definetely had no time to cast anything.
Affliction will never be good for 5 mans. It is a raiding build. If you want to farm 5 mans go destro for the burst damage.
WAIT! Someone is wrong on the internet!! Quick, hurry tell them otherwise!!
I did 4,4k on Patchwerk this Wednesdaynight with a mix of blues and 10-man epics, DPSing is just a l2p issue. On the other hand there’s a full25-man Demo/ruin lock who barely does 3k. And what the hell are you saying we can’t DPS with bad gear, we can do immensely nice DPS with blues and stuff.
I know we’re bad in PvP, I agree with that, but this constant “OHNO THE SKY IS FALLING” theme is pissing me off, maybe it’s good that you quit if you don’t have anything else to post than questposters QQing and heavily in need of a l2p-lesson.
So well Horns, gl in life and other stuff, I really liked your old posts and especially the humorous ones!
dude you cant ask all warlocks to go destro so that they can dps. That is pure bullshit
Oh, come on wlam!!
I was thinking that only spec that cant dps was Demonology, but 4 days ago I recruited new warlock to the guild. and he did 4-4.5k dps with meta/ruin.
I am demonology as well and when I started raiding everyone was laughing at me for 1,1k-900 dps. That was cos I had absolutely no armor. Nowdays I have a decent armor and I do 2,1k DPS. Then a mage or DK or rogue or pally that just dinged 80 comes in and walks over me in DPS. Yea you can do high DPS without armor! I know the bitter end of the story having people in random groups bitching on me: Your 1,1k DPS wont even take you to spider wing in naxx! Although not true cos i did naxx with 1,1k DPS. So then I decided to go full PvP again and after my first 3 deaths of within 5 mins I changed my mind too. Thats the point where you get pissed off, wished you didnt roll a warlock and want to quit the game cos blizzard wants to take your class for a ride.
In defense of the warlocks, they are a great utility in raids. Not just for the healthstones, soulstones and or the least important summon. When I tank with my DK and I am in a group I can often think: we could use a warlock right now for the curses aoe etc.
Well mate, can you link your armory?
I had 1.1k dps too when i was in green and moron geared ppl were jokin with me in UP…
but with only (!!) HC gear, I already started to outdps others.
problem is - that without gear, warlock dps sucks. but gear scales very very good with warlocks dps.
They announced some of the changes coming with the next patch:
* Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).
* Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)
* Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn’t die.
* Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.
* Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell
* Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.
* Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.
* Additional new talents have been added.
Some good stuff in there so far, and obviously there are other things coming, as indicated by the line about new talents.
Yes the changes in 3.1 seem great so far. I am also excited because we are going imba since most talents had their points reduced and we have new talents in store. We will finally see more imba builds and it cetrainly feels like a fresh air. Now lets see them in practice
Meta/ruin has become a viable spec now somehow. I have no clue what happened but i guess gear scales very well with demonology and that was unknown till now(duh).
where did you get your information on patch updates for 3.1? I rarely ever see anything posted on the forums and the official site.
nvm. i’m stupid and been offline for a few days. this info is everywhere. :p
You’ve just got to want it more! Buckle down, gtfo out of destro/demo and go aff. Scales amazingly well with gear.
http://i446.photobucket.com/al.....1234819430
Obv the 6k dps in this screenshot is done with 24 bads ie mages who should have done 6.5k+ with their gear >>
However dont get me started on pvp /wrists
i am still highly amused when locks complain about being rolled over. you had all of BC and never got nerfed
mages bitched for 2 years and it took 2 expansions to be mildly fixed. deal.
Sup with this site, they used to have new good stuff all the time, now there’s not been anything new in a month.
the other specs are fine too.