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The Decline and Fall of Warlocks in Cataclysm
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Post by
446836
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
DraconisAerius
Spriest-3 dots and mindflay filler. Pretty simple. Use shadowfiend and archangel on cd.
You seem to have forgotten a few things there.
Post by
AWildmann
Spriest-3 dots and mindflay filler. Pretty simple. Use shadowfiend and archangel on cd.
You seem to have forgotten a few things there.
Just add the maintenance of shadow orb power to that, plus refreshing dots before activating dark archangel to boost mind blast, and you still got a very simple rotation. The worst that can happen is Shadow orb not proc due to RNG.
Post by
Cordana
Hence, the lower down the skill (or practice/familiarity) scale you go, the more error there is, the greater the dps loss, the worse people feel about playing a warlock and the less likely they are to consider the game "fun", which is after all what a game is all about, having fun.
This is exactly why I read through this article and wanted to share it here.
My warlock has been my main since I started playing the game in 2004. And despite numerous attempts, I've never found leveling another character to be of any interest until this expansion. Why? Because I couldn't (and still can't) figure out how in the hell I'm still not in the top ten on DPS. So I leveled a shadow priest to check it out. 3-5 buttons pushed over and over again and I'm on top of the charts in lower gear. Get this... I leveled a death knight and the guy's still wearing blues and pulling far more DPS than my warlock with 10 more ilvl points... again with 3-5 buttons pushed repeatedly.
Now do I think complexity has something to do with it? Partially, but not really. It's clear there are a ton of locks out there who haven't figure out their rotation. But it irritates me to no end I work my butt off with my lock and can't sit near the top of the charts... hell I'm lucky if I'm in the top ten and it has nothing to do with ME. It also irritates me even more now that I know virtually everyone else sitting in a raid doesn't have to do anything... they just sit there, hit their 3-5 buttons and they instantly topping the charts.
This simplicity in characters shows for the game. In vanilla I had tried other classes, but found their mechanics just as daunting as mine, so I stuck with what I knew because I didn't just want to be a good lock, I wanted to be a damn good warlock! Players must be so bored with their characters now, no wonder people get bored with each patch's content and demand more stuff... pushing 3-5 buttons on the same content must be misery. Hell, each raid, fight, mob, etc is different on my lock EVERY time. Man it's awesome! Blizzard seems to have created their own universe of increasingly anxious players by making everything extremely easy.
I for one,
enjoy
the complexity of warlocks... being a lock is fun for me, even now. I love having that soulstone and being the guy to rez a downed tank in mid battle. I love the flexibility I'm given to adjust to different fights that other classes don't have. The summoning, the healthstones and on and on. Unfortunately as it stands right now, for me, it's just simply not rewarding. Being a warlock is difficult to get down right. I would love it if I was rewarded for that effort. In fact I found it disheartening to learn that all the other classes I tried were trivial at best. Other classes were fun at first, but I found myself very bored very quickly with each one due to simply the lack of thought I had to put into each one; so not fun in the long run. My warlock
never
gets boring... ever!
Now... as for the MoP beta. I currently HATE, absolutely
loathe
the changes Blizzard has made to warlocks. No dots, no lifetap, incinerate literally drains ALL your mana in three casts, I hate having myself "burn" to have to use other spells (it feels like I never exit battle and I'm worried that I'm dying... just very poorly thought out), not to mention its damn near impossible to cast enough spells to get yourself to burn, conflag sucks, no soulburn, no hellfire, no shadowfury, no shadowflame, no fel/demon armor, ALL pets are too friggin big, no unending breath, no manual pet controls, AOE is crap, etc.... being a warlock is nothing short of an absolute nightmare in MoP beta. Some of these thing may be available
in another spec
, but any and all flexibility of the class... gone! Burning Rush is flat out pointless and because of the lack of lifetap... THERE IS NO WAY TO INSTANTLY RESTORE YOUR MANA... the days of killing yourself for mana, what made a warlock a warlock, are OVER. It really looks as though as warlocks are getting dumbed down with everyone else which scares the living sh1t out of me. I do understand though that this is beta, but I DO NOT at all like the direction Blizzard is headed with my class. I feel I've been stripped naked... and I'm not sure what to do without lifetap, which is literally a worn out key on my last three keyboards. Could I kill a mob? Yes. Was it fun? Absolutely not. It was extremely linear... there was one way to kill the mob and that was it... it was miserable.
This isn't to say the beta is all bad... there's a lot I like. No wands... excellent! New talent system... I could see it working... don't completely dislike/love it... it's just different. I think the content is coming along great! And although in beta I really dislike my class, I do believe it will improve dramatically.
*EDIT
I also wanted to point out that the warlock community itself is unique. We tend to thrive on our own and are perfectly content with our numbers... in fact the fewer the better... because we believe we are unique. We don't really like mingling with other classes, but ask another lock for help and you'll almost always get it. Reading through the article I look at the numbers and I find myself hiding a smile. It's not so much an attitude as it's a personality trait.
Post by
DraconisAerius
I do hope you posted these critisisms on the offical beta forums.
Post by
446836
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
AWildmann
I stand with lock13 on what he said. I don't find the warlock mechanics hard. I do my best and I do tend to be always in the top 2 or 3.
Last night I ended in second in Madness with 49k dps as affliction, the only one above me was a legendary equipped combat rogue, with 52k dps.
I hate to see someone say we suck because we are too hard. But I guess not everyone likes to live by the quote on Lock13's signature.
Post by
DraconisAerius
True there do seem to be Fashions as to which classes people play. I recall the first two tiers of this expac we had massive trouble finding healers. It's not as bad now however.
Post by
badbee
I wonder if personality has something to do with it? I've done less and less during Cata, to the point of not raiding at all. This is less to do with my opinion of the way my lock plays (I think) and more to do with just not being so interested now. Another lock I knew quite well and raided all through ICC with has had a similar experience in Cata, whereas the majority of the other members of our regular raid team have continued.
Maybe the type of people who favour a lock as a main are also the type of people who have stepped back a bit more?
Post by
225109
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
455621
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
LuisGD
Oh well, i gave up of my new warlock. Playing a priest now.
Post by
446836
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Cynwise
4th post in the series is up.
http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/warlock-complexity-and-the-magic-number/
Thanks again for reading.
Post by
DraconisAerius
I did read that, and damn. It's actually really dissapointing that Destro has DOUBLE the things to look after now than it did in wrath. Adding a few more is great and fun, but double is just overkill. Just looking at the current list I can see 4 things I'd really like to see trimmed from the Destro spell list, which in and of themselves would bring it down to a much more manageable number of things to keep track of. (In line with shadow priests if I recall the numbers correctly from your previous posts).
Post by
Cynwise
It's actually really dissapointing that Destro has DOUBLE the things to look after now than it did in wrath. Adding a few more is great and fun, but double is just overkill.
It surprised me as well. I thought for sure I'd misremembered how Destro played, even though I went Destro/Destro in 3.2 (the patch where it was buffed to much) and again in late 3.3.5.
Nope. Yikes.
Post by
Cordana
great post cynwise! Another great read
Post by
Cynwise
great post cynwise! Another great read
Thanks!
Post by
446836
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
DraconisAerius
Now regarding his Wrath rotation, did we not use BoA? I believe we did. Well it wasn't a bane, but still. He has a point there. But the numbers make it look harder then it is. Destro is not hard. Idc if your a good or bad player.
And adding in things like Doomguard, its 1 button once a fight. Your dark intent, its a buff. Like focus magic. He is doing what he says not to do early in his post, inflating numbers to re-enforce his point.
BoA was a Curse in Wrath. It was not used in any situation where you needed to have either CoE or CoW up, which is most raid bosses.
Doomguard may be 1 button, but it's still something you have to think about and time it just right to get the maximum dps out of it.
Dark Intent is a buff yes, but it's the stacking component that you have to track so that you are putting your DOTs up when it's fully stacked to get the most dps out of them. Which is not easy to do most of the time.
It might just be 1 button, but it's something extra to think about and that's the issue here. The human mind can only deal with so many things at any one time, and the warlock priority system at the moment really stretches that. Some people can do this better than others and it's mostly something you are born with. Just because someone can't doesn't make them a bad player, and even saying that someone is a "bad player" or using that term in general shows your arrogence and ignorence.
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