Imba?

[pincopiones]

From my point of view Hunters and Druids are kinda overpowered:

Hunters wear mail, is a primary ranged class and have pet, all the other ranged classes wear cloth, so way they should wear mail? their pet is the one who holds agro so they are never on direct combat, lot of people claims Warlocks are overpowered(am one of those) but they also have pet, are ranged and wear cloth. Feign Death from Rogue's perspective is perfectly overpowered with only 30 seconds cooldown (and 60 mana cost pfff!).
Druid's shapeshift with the +armor enchant benefits a lot more than a warrior(+70 Armor enchant cloack Druids gets +280 Armor and Warrior talented only +77 Armor) well maybe am i wrong and "green" stats on items dont get the shapeshift bonus. Their dots from cat form "on paper" make more damage than the rogue's one, and i say on paper because never leveled a druid.

What do you think?

[Tanitha]

I disagree. All classes have advantages and disadvantages which are balanced by other classes. Looking at each class's unique abilities and highlighting them as being overpowered seems fundamentally flawed to me. You might as well pick Priests being able to heal, Rogues for having awesome stuns and stealth, Mages for massive crits and Paladins for having a Bubble, healing and Plate armour.

[Xlorep DarkHelm]

I play every class. I'd have to say none of them are "overpowered" -- they all have weaknesses. If you want to learn those weaknesses (and strengths) -- play the class in question for a while. Some classes (and specific specs within them) could use some improvements, but that's an ongoing thing in any game like this.

[Leandar]

Hunters cant use their bow/gun/crossbow when the mob is too close while mages can attack as long as the mob is within a distance. My druid is only lvl.13 so i very little about them but they have leather so they need a boost if they are going to tank. Warriors have plate with more armour than leather so they are fine. No class is overpowered they all have weaknesses.

[Fursphere]

The only two classes I really have a problem with is rogues in regards to PvP.

I don't know how many times I've been caught offguard, stunlocked to the point of death. Unable to get off a single shot. I'm totally cool with PvP, but why not just give them a "finger of death" ability that one shots you... it'll speed up the process.

[Valas Azuviir]

Hunters? Deadzone, enough said really.
Druids? No parry or block iirc. So if you compare them to warriors then, that little bit of extra ac isn't going to matter a lot, all the druids got is either miss or dodge. Warriors can parry and block as well, and when they do, additional attacks get opened up.

[Harabecw]

I say you probably haven't played either a Hunter or a Druid.

How easy it is to point certain class benefits and yell "overpowered".
Well:
1. Mages can make their own food\water and teleport everywhere. OVERPOWERED!
2. Rogues have stealth. Need I say more? OVERPOWERED!
3. Warriors can tank or dps well while wearing plate while rogues can't. OVERPOWERED
4. etc.

Go level a hunter or a druid to 70, gear them up and do some instances. THEN you will have some insight on those classes.

[Maelfurion]

No class is Overpowered. Some are just better at doing what they do.

If you compare armor, druids/pally/warrior are the best at. But they cant shoot fireball and stuff.

You might feel druids armor are a lot but the feeling of being feared is horrible. You don't even get the chance to control your character while feared.

[Beruen]

Hunters wear mail, is a primary ranged class and have pet, all the other ranged classes wear cloth, so way they should wear mail? their pet is the one who holds agro so they are never on direct combat, lot of people claims Warlocks are overpowered(am one of those) but they also have pet, are ranged and wear cloth. Feign Death from Rogue's perspective is perfectly overpowered with only 30 seconds cooldown (and 60 mana cost pfff!).

As others have mentioned, they've got a rather nasty deadzone. And their DPS falls through the floor when they're not at range. You'll understand that the class isn't so overpowered the first time you actually play one and wind up in a cave where you're having problems getting far enough away from your target to attack with bow/gun, but still maintain line of sight. A caster fighting at a top of the staircase has the choice of standing next to the target, making it more likely that they pull aggro but not significantly affecting their DPS, or not attacking. A hunter fighting at the top of a staircase has the choice of melee'ing the mob, and doing little DPS, or going down the stairs and getting "not in line of sight" messages, doing no DPS.

Yes, a hunter is one of the easier classes to level. It's not as overpowered as you think, however. Besides, if the hunter never gets hit as you claim, then the extra armor won't matter.

Druid's shapeshift with the +armor enchant benefits a lot more than a warrior(+70 Armor enchant cloack Druids gets +280 Armor and Warrior talented only +77 Armor) well maybe am i wrong and "green" stats on items dont get the shapeshift bonus.

The bear form armor multiplier only affects the base armor of an object, not additional armor gained through armor kits or enchants. However, this is why rings/trinkets/necklaces with armor are more popular with bear tanks than warrior/paladin tanks, since bear tanks can wear the same items there, unlike armor where they can only wear leather and have to depend on the armor bonus.

Also, druids in feral form are much more limited in what other types of mitigation they get. They can't block with a shield. They can't parry. In fact, armor, dodge, and a fair size health pool are really the only mitigation they have.

Their dots from cat form "on paper" make more damage than the rogue's one, and i say on paper because never leveled a druid.

As a mostly cat form feral druid, I beat rogues in DPS once in a while. I've NEVER beaten a knowledgeable rogue of equal gear/level in DPS though. Rogue DPS has a lot more utility than Cat DPS (druids compensate for that by getting utility by switching forms). Poisons, dual weapons, CC.

Another thing that sets druids apart from the other classes is that a warrior or rogue can drink potions without missing a beat, or even bandage during a lull in the battle. Druids have to shift out of their feral form to do any of that, costing a GCD, mana, whatever energy/rage was stored up, plus dodge bonuses in cat or bear form and armor bonuses if in bear form. Generally not a big deal if you've got a healer in the group, but when you're trying to prevent a wipe, every little bit helps.

I've played every class in the game, over half of them to the outlands. Every class has something I miss when I'm playing the other classes. They all have a weakness somewhere as well. This isn't saying they're all equally balanced, but rather that in my experience, no class is totally overpowered or totally gimped. It's easy to see the ability a class has that you wish you had, but until you get hit in the face with them, the limitations of those classes are a lot less obvious.

[NOYB]

If you want overpowered. I routinely kill targets with with 3 people pounding on me. As long as I have one health point and a bubble I have 12 seconds to unleash holy-hell in spite of overwhelming odds. If I have a fellow paladin backing me up, it is an awesome spectacle. I love it when I see warriors swinging away at my bubble in a futile effort as they watch their priest crumple like tissue paper from a stunned Judgment of Command. Then, pot up, repentance and open up another can of whoop-ass.

[JaedxRapture]

Hunters wear mail, have Feign Death and have a pet that can aggro well because their main two jobs in a group are pulling and aggro management.

Sorry to be harsh, but learn more about the game and the classes before you criticize the balance of it all.

[Kugan]

I find this pretty amusing. How is “pretending that you are dead” overpowered.

It reminds me of a new skill that somebody suggested for paladins:
Anticipation of Outcome: You enter the battleground/arena already dead.

(I do think that fd is a nice skill… I just don’t see how it can be overpowered. )

[moopy]

Wow, nice QQing, thought this was the official forums for a sec. No, hunters are about right, as are most other classes. There are some class/spec combos which are broken for PvP- blizz have promised to look into the problems with shammies, esp enhancement in PvP- but for the most part, a skilled player of any class will have plenty of options. The trick lies in learning to use the tools that you've been given.

[Raemaar]

Its funny to hear a warlock moan about class balance - I think hunter is the only class that can really make you suffer, arguably rogues and feral druids also.

On the whole, the game is balanced and all classes are op in the eyes of another class - best advice was given on the first page...if you think class x is overpowered, play that class for awhile and see how much class y is actually overpowered...

[PlayThemAll]

IMHO the classes are pretty well balanced. It's the skill of the player behind it that makes them appear overpowered. The better skilled player knows how to utilize this strengths to prevent you from exploiting his vulnerabilities.

Yes, some classes are appear to be easier to play then others but to play any of them well takes skill.

[Arthengel]

Regarding pvp and balances between classes, I tend to heavily criticize blizzards's "PvP is blanaced around group PvP, and not around 1v1".

To me this means that PvP is not balanced at all. Why?

You screw up balancing the classes, then make the above announcement to save your ass.

Take a number of unbalanced classes and put them in a group. and similarly, make another group, then make these groups fight each other. Here you go, you have balance between group 1 and group 2. Anyone and his grandmother can achieve this.

Then we are left with scissors and papers type of silly announcements by blizz.

Can someone tell me which game in gaming history had a cloth wearing ranged caster petted class had 20% more HP than a warrior?

An MS warrior can not beat a feral druid, or a lock. Rogue-warrior battles tend to be in favor of warriors. No chance for a rogue to beat a hunter. Shamans get pwned all the time to most classes.

Paper-scissor-rock....Just bull****. They just can not balance nothing.

Warrior class is nerfed over and over and over, including last patch, they took away a 5%attack speed increase bonus from us. Still I can see myself at 4th in raid damage meter with my almost pvp spec, which I shouldnt. And still I do not have a chance going on 1v1 against a lock, which I should be having.

[NOYB]

I agree with you. Stamina should not influence a cloth wearers hitpoints as much as it does a plate wearer. Perhaps strength should grant a percentage modifier to stamina bonus.

[Kugan]

I agree with you. Stamina should not influence a cloth wearers hitpoints as much as it does a plate wearer. Perhaps strength should grant a percentage modifier to stamina bonus.

Hmmm. And mess up paladins even more - they already have the lowest health of the tanking classes.

Just shows that it's pretty hard to achieve balance :laugh:

[Raemaar]

Shamans get pwned all the time to most classes.

Are you saying shamans have no chance 1 on 1 against all classes? hmm thats odd, i dont seem to have a problem with any class other than a rogue getting the jump on me...

[moopy]

Are you saying shamans have no chance 1 on 1 against all classes? hmm thats odd, i dont seem to have a problem with any class other than a rogue getting the jump on me...

I'm guessing you've never tried to play a 70 enhancement shammy in an arena then. At low levels, in BGs, they seem sort of viable, and most of the players don't have the first clue, decent gear, or most of their class abilities. Later on, you'll get a very rude awakening. A decent player of almost any other class can best an enhancement shammy if they aren't afk, asleep etc. Classes with snares, CC or decent ranged attacks can just laugh, you'll be dead long before you even close to melee range. Classes with fear or CC will give you the slip constantly. A good rogue or PvP warrior will rip you to bits while you're praying for that lucky windfury crit (assuming you aren't stunlocked by the rogue). It's a really fun class/spec combo to play, but in high-level PvP, you'll generally only beat careless or bad players of most classes. Luck is not something you can spec for, sadly.

It's not all bad, blizz know there's a problem with shammies, especially enhancement shammies- they will fix it at some point, and meanwhile there's plenty of other things to do. Breath holding not recommended, however.

Meanwhile, people who want to keep their shammy enhancement and have a yearning for high-end PvP had best play an alt- enjoy the mess made by a warlock or a hunter maybe, and be happy :)

[Kerosene]

wtf does imba mean, srsly?

we use way too many acronyms.

[DraedynLei]

imbalanced iirc.

that acronym was just for kicks lol.

[NOYB]

Hmmm. And mess up paladins even more - they already have the lowest health of the tanking classes.

Just shows that it's pretty hard to achieve balance :laugh:

How does that "mess up" pally tanks?

[Raemaar]

Moopy - surely by now you know if play a lvl 70 shammy? If not, then check my armory (Raemaar of Ravenholdt EU).

While I wont argue enhancement are appauling at high end pvp; I will argue with the sweeping statement that shamans are a walkover 1 on 1. I admit Im not the best geared nor best played shaman going, but surely if I can do alright, then the better shammies out there must be having a great time?

(Blizzard have stated that Enhancement is hardcore pvp and at this stage they are happy with that model and as not willing for a huge overhaul of that tree at this stage - I think eventually it may get some love, but i wouldnt hold your breath)

[moopy]

Moopy - surely by now you know if play a lvl 70 shammy? If not, then check my armory (Raemaar of Ravenholdt EU).

While I wont argue enhancement are appauling at high end pvp; I will argue with the sweeping statement that shamans are a walkover 1 on 1. I admit Im not the best geared nor best played shaman going, but surely if I can do alright, then the better shammies out there must be having a great time?

First off, no I don't. It's nothing personal, but I can bearly remember my own alts, the specs of my guildies or anything else, much less what you play :) My amazing memory, you see..

Secondly, no- shammies, specifically enhancement shammies, are sucking in their thousands at PvP. They get by in PUGged BGs where people lack skill or don't pay attention, but die horribly against people with a few clues. Sure, I've beaten locks or hunters one on one as an enhancement shammy, but always at the back of my mind is a little voice yelling "what is this guy DOING? Why doesn't he <useful skill>? I should be dead by now!". Just because you can sometimes beat amazingly bad players doesn't mean the class works ok. Even my heal-specced priest stands more chance in PvP, much less my shadow specced priest or my hunter :-) Oddly, as a resto shammy, life expectancy is a lot better than as enhancement, and I still stand the chance of the odd kill, go figure.

[Kugan]

How does that "mess up" pally tanks?

Won’t exactly mess us up, but:

Currently, paladins have the lowest base health of all tanking classes. We have to spend most of our stats towards obtaining uncrushable widening the gap even further.

We do not need really strength, so we don’t have strength unless it comes “with something else that we want.” (my strength (if I have to guess, can’t access armory right now) is around 200, I would guess a warrior’s would be much higher).

If a percentage of strength was converted to stamina, this would cause our health to go up a bit, but it would cause warrior’s health to go up even more, widening the gap to a point where no paladin tank would be accepted in raids…

[Findariel]

Did Blizzard state somewhere that classes are supposed to be equally powerful, then? :ponder:

I've played almost all classes to a reasonable level (about 40, no shamans and druids though) and locks and hunters are really easy-mode in PvP and solo PvE .. but well you just have to accept that. It doesn't mean other classes have no use.

[Zachariah]

I hear your point, especially against hunters. Of course I'm extra biased as I play an enhancement shaman....

Case in point: in hellfire peninsula stadium, I came across a lvl 57 hunter (I was 64). Easy kill for the higher lvl, surely?

Scattershot. Concussive shot. Ice trap. Ice aura. Wing clip. About the only thing he didn't use was Wyvern sting, but that I suppose he wasn't specced for it.

I kept healing away and trying to get nearer...every so often I could get a frost shock or a flame shock in. Looking back I suppose the better tactic would have been to concentrate on the pet first, but it was doing so little damage I ignored it.

I had to crack a mana pot to keep the healing going while I made it nearer - got there in the end and the 'weakness' of hunters showed when he quickly went down in melee. But it was very close. Nobody gives enh shamans grief like hunters. I suppose that's the way it's intended, right? After all, if we could quickly get up close and personal with a hunter any time we liked then this thread would be all about Hunters complaining about shamans.

However, I do think Hunters have obvious and unfair advantages in pvp and pve over and above all other classes. You only have to look at the bots to see this. They are overwhelmingly hunters.

Consider:

1) They have not one or two, but at the least four or five methods to stun or slow opponents. Which can be used at great range.

2) They can dump all aggro at will. Yes feign death can be resisted but it's a low chance.

3) They can spec to resist fears and stuns.

Essentially they have an escape route for every conceivable attack and a way to prevent every other class/mob from attacking them. If this isn't overpowered I don't know what is. And I haven't even mentioned the huge dps they can put out (because this is slightly more gear dependent).

Tell me, who has an easy time against hunters? I really want to know!

[moopy]

Me, when playing my shadow specced priest. Historically, hunters die more often than not. They used to be a problem, until I played my hunter enough to learn how they work.

Really, the QQ isn't needed. Most classes work just fine with a little bit of lateral thinking.

[xDarkDrifterx]

Hunters cant use their bow/gun/crossbow when the mob is too close while mages can attack as long as the mob is within a distance. .

Yup, which is why they where mail - they can only switch to melee when in close combat instetad of still being able to cast any spell like casters . . .

[NOYB]

Won’t exactly mess us up, but:

Currently, paladins have the lowest base health of all tanking classes. We have to spend most of our stats towards obtaining uncrushable widening the gap even further.

We do not need really strength, so we don’t have strength unless it comes “with something else that we want.” (my strength (if I have to guess, can’t access armory right now) is around 200, I would guess a warrior’s would be much higher).

If a percentage of strength was converted to stamina, this would cause our health to go up a bit, but it would cause warrior’s health to go up even more, widening the gap to a point where no paladin tank would be accepted in raids…

If a guild has a well-geared, skilled warrior he should be doing the tanking. If for no other reason that to allow the paladin to off-tank/buff.

If a paladin has gone out of his way to gear himself up for being a main tank and exhibits a desire to tank; then, sure, "Let the boy be your dog."

[pincopiones]

Yup, which is why they where mail - they can only switch to melee when in close combat instetad of still being able to cast any spell like casters . . .
Casters wear cloth, so ur shots hit harder to them, also u can drain their mana, u have abilityes (if know to play hunter's class) to contrarest that Wing Clip, Pet Dash, Frozen traps, the Drainer Mana Shots? sounds familiar to u?
This isn't a QQ, as JaedxRapture says:Hunters wear mail, have Feign Death and have a pet that can aggro well because their main two jobs in a group are pulling and aggro management. If that the case Warlock also have pet to manage agro (Voidwalker) and they wear not mail, to wear leather is an adventage for ranged clases, now to wear mail is IMBA. Am not sayn is overpowered the class, am say to wear mail is IMBA.

The bear form armor multiplier only affects the base armor of an object (Beruen) then is ok - in the warrior's wise -

[lula]

druids wastes alot of mana when hey shift forms, the problem with droods its they cant have everything in just one gear, if u are a feral u will have poor healing and mana, if u are a resto u damage and tanking in feral wont be good same with balance.

And hunters are a real pain until u learn how to fight, they are everywhere cuz they atrract the kids that want play legolas, and with the very easy PvE a Hunter have they are the most played class in the game, but that dont means they are OP, a mage can eat a Hunter alive, blink in dead zone, Frost nova hunter and pet and thats pretty much kills a huge % of the Hunters u will find in u wow life.Mail means nothing at end game, u get one shotted in heroics with mail,leather,cloth, also in pvp spell ignores armor, and mail wont save u against a warrior with a big epic 2 handed hitting on u ass.

[xDarkDrifterx]

(if know to play hunter's class) to contrarest that Wing Clip, Pet Dash, Frozen traps, the Drainer Mana Shots? sounds familiar to u?

Yes, because my main is a 70 Hunter - we're not OP'd at all whatsoever. And having mail is not an issue to casters becuase armor has Zero effect in blocking spells, its the resist and some resilliance that only effects it.

It's all about the player and the gear - I destoy some casters and in the same BG where I shred that mage . . the next one comes along and basically 2 shots me with 4.5 k crits - don't even get me started on locks lol Stand partially behind something and DOT everyone and watch them all die . . .

blink in dead zone, Frost nova hunter and pet and thats pretty much kills a huge % of the Hunters u will find in u wow life. Mail means nothing at end game, u get one shotted in heroics with mail,leather,cloth, also in pvp spell ignores armor, and mail wont save u against a warrior with a big epic 2 handed hitting on u ass.

whoop there it is . . . :smiley:

[JaedxRapture]

I think people need to rethink what balance means. To give every class the same strengths and weaknesses and same advantages and disadvantages over every other class makes for a flat-line, dull game. Certain classes need to have advatages over other classes, and weaknesses under others. There needs to be that chance that you'll be killed without a chance at survival to make for a realistic and enjoyable game, and to improve the skill of players and make them actually think about the game. And certain classes need to do better at certain roles than others; no class can be a perfect BG, Arena, solo PvP, solo PvE and Raid class all in one.

[xDarkDrifterx]

I think people need to rethink what balance means. To give every class the same strengths and weaknesses and same advantages and disadvantages over every other class makes for a flat-line, dull game. . . And certain classes need to do better at certain roles than others; no class can be a perfect BG, Arena, solo PvP, solo PvE and Raid class all in one.

:thumbsup:

[Valshenna]

Yup! Pretty much perfect balance would result in no variety. I'll take variety anyday!

And yet at the same time people need to understand that if things aren't perfectly balanced (which they aren't and shouldn't ever be!) then by logical necessity there will always be a "best" and a "worst" at any given task. Hence the endless arguments about "XXX class needs to be nerfed" or "YYY class is the worst BUFF PLZ!" are really quite silly! Balance is continually being tweaked and adjusted. Dealing with the changes is far less stressful than worrying about them :wink:

[NOYB]

I think people need to rethink what balance means. To give every class the same strengths and weaknesses and same advantages and disadvantages over every other class makes for a flat-line, dull game. Certain classes need to have advatages over other classes, and weaknesses under others. There needs to be that chance that you'll be killed without a chance at survival to make for a realistic and enjoyable game, and to improve the skill of players and make them actually think about the game. And certain classes need to do better at certain roles than others; no class can be a perfect BG, Arena, solo PvP, solo PvE and Raid class all in one.

*Cough* Warlock *Cough*

[Tanitha]

*Cough* Warlock *Cough*

I dont like to stress the fact that the warlock rocks, but he jus does. (Warlock in joke :wink:)

[xDarkDrifterx]

lol As I agreed with the Jaedx above . . .

*Cough* Warlock *Cough*

This is an area I whole heartedly aggree . . .

Locks are waaay to OP

No other class in the game is guaranteed to kill the other player with 3-4 shots - locks do EVERY time they DOT you up and run away - you could go sit in a corner trying to eat and drink as quickly as possible but you'll die . . .

No other class can do this . . .period.

Lock DOT damage should be lessened so that there has to be more shadow bolt and wand usuage . . . . becasue as I've said before about locks unless someones around to dispell it you are 80+% likely to die especially if you can't get out of combat to eat (even if you're not fighting at that moment - we all know how sometimes the combat sticks) or you don't have a healing potion up

P.S. - Locks can get 14K health . . . WTF!!!! That's more than alot of tanks . . . and probably why I've seen several locks get bubbled and tank for a bit in AV matches . .. . not QQ'ing here . . .but ughhhhh come on blizzard crunch those numbers and look at the outcome . . .

And what other class once you kill them (even if you do it quickly) can still you kill you a good 30+ secs after they die . . .

[Tanitha]

Sing it with me:

Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear.
One step ... two step ...
tickle you under there!

Probably my daughter's favourite song at the moment, except she's pre-empting it by tickling herself when I get to one step. It's really weird and endearing at the same time.

But do we REALLY need another discussion on "Warlocks are OP because they have DoTs and I died from them?"

Hunters have guns. I died the last time one shot me. NERF hunters!

<sheesh>

[fzyx]

Sing it with me:

Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear.
One step ... two step ...
tickle you under there!

Probably my daughter's favourite song at the moment, except she's pre-empting it by tickling herself when I get to one step. It's really weird and endearing at the same time.

But do we REALLY need another discussion on "Warlocks are OP because they have DoTs and I died from them?"

Hunters have guns. I died the last time one shot me. NERF hunters!

<sheesh>

I've never had a hunter kill me once he was dead. Imagine if a beast master hunter's pet stuck around after you killed the hunter and kept chewing on you? So, no, we don't NEED one, but there will always be somebody who has recently been feared and dotted to death that needs somewhere to vent :)

The last two long threads that I've posted on were closed soon after, lets hope my luck goes three for three!

[Tanitha]

I've never had a hunter kill me once he was dead. Imagine if a beast master hunter's pet stuck around after you killed the hunter and kept chewing on you? So, no, we don't NEED one, but there will always be somebody who has recently been feared and dotted to death that needs somewhere to vent

Well maybe we can make a separate forum somewhere for it. Where thread after thread can devolve into "I died after I killed the Warlock".

[fzyx]

Well maybe we can make a separate forum somewhere for it. Where thread after thread can devolve into "I died after I killed the Warlock".

Good idea, but most likely it will be I died after we killed the warlock.

[sohcan]

Well it's not like getting a teammate to dispell the dots is an option. And it's not like you can heal through the dots, or sit down and eat if the warlock is dead.... oh wait all of the above are viable options.

It's a shame people can't seem to figure out how to pvp on their own, it must be the warlock's fault, yeah that's it. :P

[xDarkDrifterx]

Well it's not like getting a teammate to dispell the dots is an option. And it's not like you can heal through the dots, or sit down and eat if the warlock is dead.... oh wait all of the above are viable options.

It's a shame people can't seem to figure out how to pvp on their own, it must be the warlock's fault, yeah that's it. :P

huh? lol dude . . . you must be a lock lol

Get a Temamate to Dispell them or heal you through . . . maybe if you're lucky enough to be in a BG with a healer that happens to be near you and see that you just got DOT's up). . . if you can type fast enough while trying to find a place to eat and drink . . . And, If you're lucky enough to find a place to begin eating (if the game hasn't kept you in battle for no apparent reason) then yes you can sometimes out eat / drink the DOT's

Good idea, but most likely it will be I died after we killed the warlock.

:laughing: EXACTLY!!!! LOL :laughing: :wink::thumbsup:

ahhh good times . . .good times lol

I'm just gonna roll a lock after my priest so I can be the one saying stop QQ'ing bout locks newb and LTP (whilst I cast these couple spells that will unless dispelled kill you . . . period . . . talk about not needing skills - but theres so many buttons!!! lol). . . pfft . . . lol

[Tanitha]

And, If you're lucky enough to find a place to begin eating (if the game hasn't kept you in battle for no apparent reason) then yes you can sometimes out eat / drink the DOT's

Potion. Bandage. Class specific healing if applicable. Moving out of combat range. Dots don't tick for longer than 30 seconds, generally, so you should have more than enough time.

Potion on cooldown? Tough. Then you die. Hey, it happens. But just because another class manages to kill you does not make them OP. It just means they managed to best you in that encounter.

But no, locks are OP. I get it.

But hang on a moment ... when the Rogue pops out of stealth and stunlocks me until I'm dead, is he OP? Because you know, I have no chance to respond, pop a potion, use a Healthstone or do anything. Is that OP?

This constant "Warlocks are OP" rubbish is making me sick to the stomach.

[xDarkDrifterx]

Hands Tanitha a Vomit Bag . . . :wink:


But hang on a moment ... when the Rogue pops out of stealth and stunlocks me until I'm dead, is he OP? Because you know, I have no chance to respond, pop a potion, use a Healthstone or do anything. Is that OP?

This constant "Warlocks are OP" rubbish is making me sick to the stomach.

Nope, no other class is OP in my opinion - some have some spells that are a bit much (chain lighting anyone?) but w/e

Just name another class that will kill me 30secs after they're dead - and I may call OP on them lol

Rogue stealth / sap / gouge are just that - part of them - it sux to get jumped and killed by a rogue without ever being able to even hit them once - but it happens - that's not OP . .that's skill and a wise use of the class talents . . . no ones talking about other classes in this way . . . and ppl say hunters are easy mode . . .lol

click/tab - 1,2,3
click/tab - 1,2,3
click/tab - 1,2,3

now run away fast . . .

= 3 dead

:rolleyes::laugh::grin:

[Tanitha]

Just name another class that will kill me 30secs after they're dead - and I may call OP on them lol

:grin::laugh::smiley::rolleyes::azn::wink:

You are taking the one thing that sets a Warlock apart from other classes. Their DoTs. And you're calling foul on that. Then you might as well call foul on a rogue's ability to strike from stealth, a hunter's range, a druids' shapeshifting, a Paladin's bubble, etc. It's a signature ability.

They're cloth wearers. They rely on spells. Kick? Stun? Silence? Use your frigging counters to stop them casting their spells. And if 3 of you can't take down a Warlock, then there is really only one response to that.

And a hint here - it's not that the Warlock is OP.

[xDarkDrifterx]

:grin::laugh::smiley::rolleyes::azn::wink:

You are taking the one thing that sets a Warlock apart from other classes. Their DoTs. And you're calling foul on that. Then you might as well call foul on a rogue's ability to strike from stealth, a hunter's range, a druids' shapeshifting, a Paladin's bubble, etc. It's a signature ability.

They're cloth wearers. They rely on spells. Kick? Stun? Silence? Use your frigging counters to stop them casting their spells. And if 3 of you can't take down a Warlock, then there is really only one response to that.

And a hint here - it's not that the Warlock is OP.

LOL now you begin with almost insulting / hinting at that I can't play lol that's why im the only one including warriors with over 10k that cant take down a lock . . . lol. . . I never said I couldn't, I do it everyday (cause I play everyday) Locks arent that big of an issue with silence, scatter, and conc etc, they jsut ARE OP . .sorry but you're incorrect . . .

Does a hunters snakes stay when he dies . . .no . . .does a Druids trees . . .no . . . Shammy's / Mages Elemntals? . . .no . . ..etc etc etc etc . . the list goes on . . .

We'll we can be done now as you're resorting to almost insults . . . I'm on this point b/c I beleive it to be true - not b/c I'm QQ'ing cause they wtfpwn me (1 out of 3 do roughly). . . thought this was a discussion . . .casters are usually not an issue unless they get the jump on me or have 14k health lol

So have a good evening . . . I'm going home now :smiley:

/end rant

[Tanitha]

LLocks arent that big of an issue with silence, scatter, and conc etc, they jsut ARE OP . .sorry but you're incorrect . . .

<snip>

b/c I beleive it to be true - not b/c I'm QQ'ing cause they wtfpwn me (1 out of 3 do roughly). . .

So what is it? If Locks aren't that big of an issue and only 1 in 3 of them manage to take you down how can you say they are OP?

In that case, sir, I'll put it to you that Hunters are OP. Because you manage to beat a Warlock 2/3 fights.

And yes, if three players are unable to take down a Warlock they definitely need to sit down and revise their strategies and rethink their handling of their classes. Because really! That's not an insult, it's a plain and simple fact.

[Tollin]

Locks are not overpowered they are where they should be, if you had played one back in the beginning, as i did early 2005, you would have quit in frusteration. Now they are what they are supposed to be, bleed your life slowly with damage over time, use their demons to help etc...

I just spent a 15 hour day in AV to get the marks i needed to get my epic pvp mount, I am playing as a lvl 60 full enchancement Shaman and I must say that once I figured out how to negate my weakness in pvp and enhance "haha get it" my strengths I started to climb up the ladder of heals, killing blows and damage. I NEVER topped the charts in damage given nor killing blows but I did top the charts in healing done more than once.

You have to play to your classes strengths, and as a hybrid I played like one, healed when it was needed, and dished it out when i could.

As a melee shaman i learned that if I could get in my opponents face I would win roughly 80% of the time. The problem was getting up on them. I learned a few dirty tricks to accomplish this but even when i got up there I still died to good players that know their class.

The only thing that I will say is imbalanced right now, and I say this with experience in pvp as a 60 warlock, a 60+ shadow priest and a 60+ shaman so i have a broad range of perspective is the beastmaster specced / BW hunters. I think that the cooldown on that spell is too short and that the word "chance to.." needs to be added into the equation somewhere, instead of completely immune to EVERYTHING the pet should have a chance to be...

It's rather frusterting to ALWAYS lose to a big red pet.

I dont mind losing to a stun lock rogue because i know that he/she will NOT always get the lock down right everytime and one slip and I can get a frost shock, earthbind and get some distance to heal up and go back to fighting.

I dont mind losing to a fearing lock, since i can get a chance to get my tremor totem which could help, and I know i can get up on him and have a chance at winning, yes if i kill him i have to heal thru his DoT's but thats ok.

But ALWAYS losing to the big red pet? That is insane. Non BM hunters I have an opportunity to get in their dead zone, but that BW pet just does too much too fast. I understand that this talent choice pretty much limits the hunter to pvp and pve play, and limits them in raids or groups as they cant pew pew as well as MM or trap 5 elites for 30sec like a Survivalist.

But there needs to be some look at this either in the hunter class by the developers or give the rest of the classes some sort of a chance.

I dont mind dying in pvp I do mind consistantly dying to one particular class/talent choice and i know I am not alone in this.

[fzyx]

Well it's not like getting a teammate to dispell the dots is an option. And it's not like you can heal through the dots, or sit down and eat if the warlock is dead.... oh wait all of the above are viable options.

It's a shame people can't seem to figure out how to pvp on their own, it must be the warlock's fault, yeah that's it. :P

Of course there are options to fight the dots but usually by the time the lock is dead you've lost so much health that it is impossible to eat or bandage through the dots.

And like I said, my cat isn't still chewing on the lock after I die... Why are their dots still taking my health?

[Tanitha]

And like I said, my cat isn't still chewing on the lock after I die... Why are their dots still taking my health?

The simple answer? The spells are not a part of the Warlock. They are just that, a spell cast on a target with a set duration. Heals over time do not disappear from you when the healer dies, nor do shields or buffs cast by other players disappear when they die. Because the spell has been cast - it's no longer linked to the caster.

[Aerath]

Sidenote, bandages won't work - they'll stop channeling on the first tick of the dot.

Eating does work.

Why do we only hear about Warlock dots and never about Shadow Priests ? Devouring Plague and SW:P do as much dmg if not more than a Corruption and Curse of Agony. Why do we never hear complaints about Molten Armor proccing Impact ? Simply because people have one main target only and ignore other classes. Listen, if yer gonna roll over n lay down yer never going to win against any class.

There's a few classes I think overpowered, and warlocks certainly rank high enough, but they die just as fast if you take a minute to figure out what they rely on and counter that.

Hunters are a pain exactly because of their much needed crowd control in instances, which are all on a rather short timer - gives them a lot of options in PvP. Yet, take it away and yer left with a ranged DPSer which, well, could as easily be replaced by a moonkin.

Everyone was crying (well, warriors mostly) how Warriors were underpowered. Now the epic weapons come out and they start mopping people up again.

Fact is that at different points in the game (be it in levels or in gear) different classes are going to be at the top of the food chain. That to me in and off itself is fairly balanced.

Not perfectly balanced, but I personally would hate to see a game where every warlock loses to rogues, every rogue loses to hunters, every hunter loses to warriors, every warrior loses to druids and every druid loses to a warlock...

[bmunschki]

Sidenote, bandages won't work - they'll stop channeling on the first tick of the dot.

Not perfectly balanced, but I personally would hate to see a game where every warlock loses to rogues, every rogue loses to hunters, every hunter loses to warriors, every warrior loses to druids and every druid loses to a warlock...


/agree. part of the fun is knowing that you can or could have killed the other player, but didnt. so you try to improve your skill so next time when you actually do take them down (silencing the warlock at the perfect time, fearing him etc. as a priest) it is that much more enjoyable.

[fzyx]

Why do we only hear about Warlock dots and never about Shadow Priests ? Devouring Plague and SW:P do as much dmg if not more than a Corruption and Curse of Agony. Why do we never hear complaints about Molten Armor proccing Impact ? Simply because people have one main target only and ignore other classes. Listen, if yer gonna roll over n lay down yer never going to win against any class.



I'd say its because warlocks are everywhere and everyone of them has fear and dots, at least they are on my server in the 40-49 bracket. In any battleground match you are guaranteed at least one warlock on the opposing team and usually two. All you have to do is watch the bg chat channel and you'll see the frustration people have with locks. Sometimes I feel bad for any locks that are on my team because there is so much trash talk. I don't see the same chat about other classes other than the rare, "damn... that warrior twink is bad@ss"

Shadow priests are formidable when I run into one, but it is more rare, so if occasionally I'm up against one and their dots kill me so be it.

I think people get frustrated with locks because there are so many of them and any 12 year-old can cast fear and dots and win 50% of the time. Then you put a skilled player behind the lock and all hell breaks loose.

Who is it that has the signature that says something like "If you believe nerfs are not related to class saturation, stop, drop, and re-roll?"

EDIT : One more thing, shadow priests don't have a pet acting as their dedicated tank (or worse, the felhunter thingy). Warlock's have a tool for everything, which is why people call them OP'ed.

[Shellar]

In a game where group play revolves around the tank/healer/dps trinity, and solo play is based on players being, well, solo, pet classes have trouble fitting into the overall balance pattern - they end up being either blatantly 'imba', or grossly underpowered.

[Tanitha]

Sidenote, bandages won't work - they'll stop channeling on the first tick of the dot.

True, however, if you are using a level appropriate bandage you will get at least one tick of healing out of it. That might make the difference between living and dying.

[Antiochous]

Honestly, people who say warlocks are not overpowered in their current form in 1v1 encounters either have not played other classes or are in denial. And I am saying this even though I have a 70 warlock.
I have played A mage, druid, priest, warrior, lock, and shaman to 60+ since I started wow back in 2004 and warlocks are far and away the easiest class to pvp with in general. Yes, there are some specs of some classes that are harder for a lock then others but there is no fight where the lock doesn't stand a good chance.

I think most people that play warlocks just need to branch out and try some other classes. I don't think there is anything wrong with locks but it just seems ridiculous for people to claim that warlocks are not dominant in virtually any 1v1 pvp situation. I can't remember the last time I lost in 1v1 pvp on my lock, even when getting jumped while attacking a mob or drinking or with low mana. yeah, rogues can be rough but only if I'm low on health to start with, and screw up. I have met maybe 1 or 2 rogues that can keep me stunlocked through 10-11k health. The fear and dot cycle is just too powerful against most classes. Add in seduce, drain life, health stones and the 2nd or 3rd highest health pools of any classes in wow and I am pretty much unstoppable.

3 Of my good friends also plays locks as their mains, (I play Druids and priests mostly) and they all agree. They know they are overpowered in 1v1 pvp and they don't deny it. Its one of the advantages of being a warlock. We all just shake our heads and laugh. Trust me, play some other classes, try pvping as a rogue or a priest or a mage or a warrior and you will get a sense of what "normal" wow pvp feels like. For most classes its very rock/paper/scissors in most pvp situations and depends a great deal on the class and spec you are fighting. As a druid I die to most locks and as a priest I am scared to death of rogues... as a lock.... I kinda hope anyone tries to gank me, just so I can have the satisfaction of killing them and then laughing at their corpse.

[fzyx]

The simple answer? The spells are not a part of the Warlock. They are just that, a spell cast on a target with a set duration. Heals over time do not disappear from you when the healer dies, nor do shields or buffs cast by other players disappear when they die. Because the spell has been cast - it's no longer linked to the caster.

Pets aren't part of a hunter, but they still magically disappear when the hunter dies. The truth is there are no laws that govern these things. Somebody at Blizzard decided that dot's keep ticking after death and that pets disappear. They made the arbitrary choice because somehow it fits into whatever plan Blizzard has for WoW.

I'm just giving my answer to the question of, "why do people always finger warlocks as OP'ed? why not rogues, hunters, or priests?". Its a combination of all the things people complain about that make people point the finger at locks. The range of specialized pets, unbreakable fear + dots, dots that tick after death, etc... You could take away any one of those and still have a formidable opponent. In my opinion.

[Tanitha]

Pets aren't part of a hunter, but they still magically disappear when the hunter dies. The truth is there are no laws that govern these things. Somebody at Blizzard decided that dot's keep ticking after death and that pets disappear. They made the arbitrary choice because somehow it fits into whatever plan Blizzard has for WoW.

I disagree, although I can see the point with the pet. However, if the pet were to stay around after it's soul-linked master had disappeared I'd expect it to become untamed. Would that seem more reasonable in terms of Hunters to you? My rationalization of both a Hunter and a Warlocks pets disappearing is the bond that forms. A warlock always gets the same pet. A hunter can look through his pets eyes and become a part of him. This, to me, signals that there is some form of bond between the two. In that case it makes sense to disappear.

But the DoTs still ticking was most definitely not an arbitrary decision. It's a fundamental part of the timed non-channeled spell mechanic of World of Warcraft. If you would like to see the DoT ticking after death removed, then I would accept it if you removed all Buffs, Heal over Time and other effects once the person who applied it dies. For whatever reason. So that Priest that randomly buffed you with Fortitude while you were in Ogrimmar dies somewhere in Stranglethorn and you'd lose that buff. Otherwise it's not a very consistent position to hold.

The range of specialized pets, unbreakable fear + dots, dots that tick after death, etc... You could take away any one of those and still have a formidable opponent. In my opinion.

You could, yes. The same could be said for every class. I'll give you my take on those, and I realize it's not a complete list - but they are the typical fingers pointed at Warlocks. (Interest of discussion, I find this viewpoint interesting if a bit exasperating sometimes :grin:)

1. Specialized Pets. Summoning a Pet is on a 10 second cast unless the Warlock has gone deep into Demonology. By going deep into Demonology they are usually sacrificing a handful of Dots, range on Affliction spells, range on Destruction spells, nuking ability and a variety of other things. They do gain a once per x minutes (I think it's 5 or 10) instant summon of a pet and very decent survivability.

2. Unbreakable Fear. Fear is breakable through so many different ways. Iceblock, trinket, decent Shadow Resistance, Will of the Forsaken. Not all might apply to everyone, but almost every class has some way to deal with it. It's on diminishing returns. Above level 60 now it has a chance to break on any damage. Any Warlock worth their salt will have tuned their play style to NOT rely on Fear. As a Warlock my opinion is that a reliance on Fear is for inexperienced players that do not really know how to play their class well.

3. Dots. I think I covered the over time / after death component of it above, but in essence you really need to be an Affliction lock to get the most out of DoTs, or spend the 5 talent points to get at least Instant cast on Corruption. Otherwise we face fairly lengthy casting times (Immolate, Corruption, etc.) Demonology and Destruction Warlocks will use them, yes, and they will use their Curses but will not be as reliant on them.


I think over all, for me, Warlocks are a well rounded class. That's very different to being an overpowered class though. Over powered to me means they are unbeatable, which is not the case. Especially when you look outside the paper rock scissor of 1v1 and start looking at the balance that is achieved in group play, which is where World of Warcraft's true balance lies.

(And if I'm not mistaken, you're a mage, aren't you? You're our tastiest snack available :grin:)

[Antiochous]

I think over all, for me, Warlocks are a well rounded class. That's very different to being an overpowered class though. Over powered to me means they are unbeatable, which is not the case.

That is the issue. I would agree with you that warlocks are very well rounded. So well rounded that they have a pet, and skills to deal with every class and almost every spec and every situation. There is not another class in the game that has the kind of options a warlock has along with being one of the most powerful classes offensively.

It's not that fact that you have a unbreakable fear, 2 other forms of fear, pets to deal with each class, strong ranged dps, several dots, some of the highest health pools in the game, a way to drain life and mana from opponents for yourself or the fact that you have the coolest armor =) that makes you overpowered. Its the fact that warlocks have ALL of the things listed above BEFORE you even choose your talent spec to give you Amazing/undispelable dots, or a very strong and versatile pets, or amazing direct dmg spells and stuns.

As I said, I agree that warlocks are well balanced, but the whole point of wow is that classes are not supposed to be well balanced. No class is supposed to be able to deal with all the other classes in the game all the time. Every other class has 2,3 or 4 other classes that it has difficulty with because those other classes excel in areas that you are weak or are susceptible to. A skilled Warlock is not weak against any class and only are only challenged when faced with 1 or 2 classes that have a very specific spec with very good players behind the controls, and even then there is a good chance the warlock will still come out on top.

[fzyx]

I disagree, although I can see the point with the pet. However, if the pet were to stay around after it's soul-linked master had disappeared I'd expect it to become untamed. Would that seem more reasonable in terms of Hunters to you? My rationalization of both a Hunter and a Warlocks pets disappearing is the bond that forms. A warlock always gets the same pet. A hunter can look through his pets eyes and become a part of him. This, to me, signals that there is some form of bond between the two. In that case it makes sense to disappear.


Good points, but in my head, if you kill me, my pet would go into a rage and do everything it could to kill you. Hunter pets are slightly different from warlock pets in that they aren't really summoned. I mean they are technically, but you revive them if they die not re-summon them.

And next time Blizzard invites me to a design meeting for version 3, I'll let them know that we came to the conclusion that they can stop dots from killing me after the lock dies if buffs are also removed when the buffer dies :)




2. Unbreakable Fear. Fear is breakable through so many different ways. Iceblock, trinket, decent Shadow Resistance, Will of the Forsaken. Not all might apply to everyone, but almost every class has some way to deal with it. It's on diminishing returns. Above level 60 now it has a chance to break on any damage. Any Warlock worth their salt will have tuned their play style to NOT rely on Fear. As a Warlock my opinion is that a reliance on Fear is for inexperienced players that do not really know how to play their class well.



Yeah, I just meant fear that doesn't break on dots. We've talked enough already about this point though in the other thread. In my opinion fear is an overpowered form of cc because dots don't break it. And it doesn't heal.


(And if I'm not mistaken, you're a mage, aren't you? You're our tastiest snack available :grin:)

A mage with a big chip on their shoulder :)

My point is that you can argue the contribution of each "overpowered" skill that a warlock has, but its really a case of the whole equalling more than the sum of the parts. Or whatever the saying is, my mind is shutting down for the day.

What I don't understand is why Blizzard makes it so black-and-white when they could easily adjust the warlock to offset the capabilities above so that people would stop complaining. I mean do warlocks really need a pet that seeks out and destroys spellcasters when they already have fear and dots that will destroy low stam spellcasters anyway? If they do need the pet for some reason, do they really need a form of cc that doesn't heal and allows dots? If they do need both, why can't I have a permanent water elemental and why can't I sheep people without healing them?

The only reason I keep posting about this is that I think Blizzard has gotten so close to something really great. What they've done in the balancing act of pvp vs pve vs raid vs arena is really pretty amazing. But I do believe there are some glaring issues that they have chosen to foster instead of fix.

[Tanitha]

As I said, I agree that warlocks are well balanced, but the whole point of wow is that classes are not supposed to be well balanced. No class is supposed to be able to deal with all the other classes in the game all the time. Every other class has 2,3 or 4 other classes that it has difficulty with because those other classes excel in areas that you are weak or are susceptible to. A skilled Warlock is not weak against any class and only are only challenged when faced with 1 or 2 classes that have a very specific spec with very good players behind the controls, and even then there is a good chance the warlock will still come out on top.

Well, my opinion is that it depends. Draining for example is channeled and can be interrupted easily unless you've spent talents to give you an up to 70% chance to resist that. Our second option Fear (DC / Terror) is on a massive cooldown that makes it a one shot use and only has a short duration. Every ability listed has a counter. And Fear is breakable. There is a multitude of ways to do that. (Refer to the WowWiki entry on Fear for some of them)

I can't see why all classes that do not have a designated role in the holy trinity cannot be well balanced. Hopefully I can express this clearly, but the general assumption is that Priests are healers, Warriors tank and Rogues/Mages handle DPS.

Warlocks, although arguably a DPS class like Hunters, fall into a slightly more generic category even though they are not quite as hybrid as Shaman, Druids and Paladins. Hunters, it could be argued, is as rounded as the Warlock is and is also a class that is commonly (and perhaps mistakenly) called overpowered.

I'll grant you though it is a very accessible class. It makes it easy for an inexperienced player to play well. Mastering it is a different story though, but that is true for most classes. My opinion is that were you to take an approximately equally skilled Warlock beyond the novice level and any other class there would be a decent battle.

I've had what I consider to be only a reasonably well played Holy Priest down my Warlock, and I believe that after 20 days /played with a variety of Warlocks that I've got a good understanding of the class. And to make matters worse, he was a few levels below me!

At novice level though, yes, I'll grant you that in those circumstances a Warlock, like a Hunter, seems overpowered because they are so wide in scope and are so accessible.

But again, balance comes in groups.

Edit:
The only reason I keep posting about this is that I think Blizzard has gotten so close to something really great. What they've done in the balancing act of pvp vs pve vs raid vs arena is really pretty amazing. But I do believe there are some glaring issues that they have chosen to foster instead of fix.

Before I carry on, I'd like to say thank you. Frustrating as it feels sometimes, I am enjoying this discussion and it really feels as if we're exploring different viewpoints well in it.

So, I'd be keen to hear on what changes you would make to a Warlock. I've looked at the picture and some of the suggestions make me cringe when thinking of how horribly it would play. So, bring them on and I'll try to fit them into a (this) Warlocks' playing style and will give you some feedback on how they would / would not work.

Edit2:
I have to retract all my previous comments. The Looking For Group comic, issue 52, clearly illustrates (http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/LookingForGroup/%7E3/124693990/52) Warlocks are overpowered. What class can take on a whole ship of Pirates (There was probably a Ninja or two in there too) and win? A warlock, of course.

[Rex Normal]

That is the issue. I would agree with you that warlocks are very well rounded. So well rounded that they have a pet, and skills to deal with every class and almost every spec and every situation.

You are describing a 41/41/41 warlock with all pets out at all times. show me this warlock and I will eat my shoe.

There is not another class in the game that has the kind of options a warlock has along with being one of the most powerful classes offensively.

True, warlocks have these options, but i repeat myself; in order to deal with any particular situation, we need to prepare for it either by changing to a different pet, or speccing a certain way. Changing to a different pet takes 10 seconds unless specced. If a Warrior catches a warlock off guard with his felhound out, that's one dead warlock. You wouldn't begrudge a rogue for preparing against a mage by using prep, adding combo points, and stealthing before an attack would you?

It's not that fact that you have a unbreakable fear, 2 other forms of fear,

Again, as Tanthia put it, fear is breakable soooo easily it's not even funny, it's just that people don't want to put the effort into breaking it. Do you realize that if you stack shadow resistance gear that counts against all of the fear warlocks can cast on you? and do you realise if you resist a fear that counts against its deminishing returns?

pets to deal with each class,

Addressed already

strong ranged dps, several dots,

Again talking 41/41/41 spec here, a warlock that specs in several strong dots will not have strong ranged DPS and vice versa, a 0/0/0 warlock has 3 dots only one of them is instant cast.

some of the highest health pools in the game,

We have the same access to +stamina gear as any other class, it's just that warlocks choose to stack stamina where mages tend to choose to stack intellect. a 0/0/0 warlock will not have a very high health pool compared to an equally geared mage.

a way to drain life and mana from opponents for yourself

both are highly ineffective unless specced and even then it's fairly weak in PvP.

or the fact that you have the coolest armor =)

I'll conceed that one


. . . that makes you overpowered. Its the fact that warlocks have ALL of the things listed above BEFORE you even choose your talent spec

Again, you have listed above several points that need to be specced to obtain, please read up on a 0/0/0 warlocks abilities.

to give you Amazing/undispelable dots,

there isn't a single dot that a warlock can cast that isn't dispellable, and only one when specced that is dispellable at the cost of damage to the dispeller

or a very strong and versatile pets,

again see my above comments regarding pet preparation

or amazing direct dmg spells and stuns.

Direct dmg spells yes, and only a single stun with that spec.

I would remind you that all three parts of that describe a single spec, to get one we give up the other two, it may seem overpowered when mentioning them in a single sentence, but you'll never come across a warlock that has powerful pets, killer dots, and awesome direct damage spells.

As I said, I agree that warlocks are well balanced, but the whole point of wow is that classes are not supposed to be well balanced. No class is supposed to be able to deal with all the other classes in the game all the time.

Yet again, I remind you that it is impossible for a single warlock to deal with all classes all of the time.


Every other class has 2,3 or 4 other classes that it has difficulty with because those other classes excel in areas that you are weak or are susceptible to. A skilled Warlock is not weak against any class and only are only challenged when faced with 1 or 2 classes that have a very specific spec with very good players behind the controls, and even then there is a good chance the warlock will still come out on top

If you look at the warlock as 41/41/41 with all pets out all of the time, then yeah this would be true, but it is impossible.

The warlock can be the bane of many classes but it depends largely on the spec and what the warlock has prepared himself to fight. No single warlock can be lined up against every other class and spec in the game and be expected to win regularly without changing his spec and pet choice.

[fzyx]

So, I'd be keen to hear on what changes you would make to a Warlock. I've looked at the picture and some of the suggestions make me cringe when thinking of how horribly it would play. So, bring them on and I'll try to fit them into a (this) Warlocks' playing style and will give you some feedback on how they would / would not work.

Some random suggestions off the top of my head...

1) Put some of the special abilities into talent trees so that a lock would have to spec that way. Example talents would be to move the imp and the void into the talent trees, and maybe a talent to make fear less breakable.

2) Bring fear in line with other forms of cc. Meaning that you should be able to fear me to keep me off of you, but it shouldn't give you 20 seconds to drain my health.

2b) Somebody else once suggested putting fear on a target specific cooldown so you can't chain fear the same target. In addition, multiple warlock's would not be able to gang-fear the target.

3) Remove the spellcaster specific pets (I'm sure this one will be controversial). I honestly don't think the warlock is so squishy and weak that they also need anti-spellcaster pets to have a fair fight.

4) Give me a pet that excels at fighting warlocks (this one is for my mage)

The point being to break up the "well-roundedness" that makes warlock's one of the most "capable" classes in the game. Making more skills talent choices would stop people from complaining about how warlock's are "capable" against every class in the game and downright devastating to at least one of them.

Personally, I'd prefer to buff other classes to make all as equally well-rounded, but Blizzard seems to prefer nerfs.

[fzyx]

Again, as Tanthia put it, fear is breakable soooo easily it's not even funny, it's just that people don't want to put the effort into breaking it. Do you realize that if you stack shadow resistance gear that counts against all of the fear warlocks can cast on you? and do you realise if you resist a fear that counts against its deminishing returns?



Its not that people don't want to put the effort into breaking it. Why should I have to stack shadow resistance gear and blow multiple cooldowns on one fight with a warlock? In a bg, yeah, maybe I'll survive one fight. But the warlock will come back a minute later and do the whole thing again. Only this time there is nothing I can do...

[Tanitha]

Ware the double post :wink:

1) Put some of the special abilities into talent trees so that a lock would have to spec that way. Example talents would be to move the imp and the void into the talent trees, and maybe a talent to make fear less breakable.

An interesting suggestion.

It could make an interesting change to the various trees to have the pets tailored to their use. Imp + Felhunter = Affliction, Voidwalker + (new pet) = Demonology and the Succubus + Felguard is Destruction at first glance.

It won't get much traction from Warlocks though because you take different pets for different scenarios in PvE, not even considering PvP. It does break the whole concept of a pet based class though.

Two questions come off that. Why would you not apply the same logic to a Hunter? Let them talent for ranged damage (Marksmanship), pet damage (BeastMaster) or their melee + traps type (Survival) tree?

And the second one - what else would you want to move into talents? We basically have Curses, Direct Damage spells and a few utility spells.

2) Bring fear in line with other forms of cc. Meaning that you should be able to fear me to keep me off of you, but it shouldn't give you 20 seconds to drain my health.

Fear is our get out of jail card. Warlocks have one snare in Curse of Exhaution which is talented as opposed to a mage with almost the whole of the Frost tree, Blink, Ice Block and so forth to mitigate incoming damage. Yes, it sees offensive use too which is probably where the major complaint with it lies.

However, it's not really Crowd Control, because once you've Feared something you inevitably end up aggroing a whole nest of Furbolgs. From a PvE perspective that would hurt Warlocks seriously. Fear is used to get something off you while DoTs tick. You have to cycle curses on it (Recklessness / Exhaustion) to ping pong it so it doesn't run into a mob of four or five others and bring death running back to you. It takes a bit of concentration to keep that up, knowing aggro ranges, etc.

But if you argue for bringing it in line with other forms of Crowd Control then I would expect that to be supplemented with another form of escape, like the Shadow form you suggested earlier.

2b) Somebody else once suggested putting fear on a target specific cooldown so you can't chain fear the same target. In addition, multiple warlock's would not be able to gang-fear the target.

It was that Night Elf Druid, what's his name ... I want to say Icelance, but it's not that. Icefrost! That is one sensible suggestion and that works for me, except for the multiple warlock portion. Consider the concept behind the spell - a person in service to the demonic energies of Sargeras assaults your mind with twisted and tormented visions that fill you with Fear. It makes sense to shake it off, but that's not saying that another Warlock can't affect you in a different way.

I would seriously not mind a change like that, but would prefer if other classes were given one or two more options for breaking impairing effects.

Personally, I'd prefer to buff other classes to make all as equally well-rounded

Yes, that would be ideal. It has the side effect of making the game more solo friendly though and less group focussed. Those are interesting suggestions, but my gut feeling is that the changes would effectively bring the Warlock back to it's initial release. And then they were so underpowered that just about nobody played the class.

[Tollin]

fzyx,

I have to throw my 2cents in here, since i played a lock back shortly after it's initial release and it was such a broken class that they have since gone thru mulitple talent tree revamps.

I grew so frusterated with the class that it was two years before I played another one, i started a new one recently and I can honestly say the talent tree's are nothing like what I remember.

I can see that your biggest problem is fear. Well, and since your a mage, i have a problem with getting polymorphed and with no trinket I can't break it and to sit there and watch you warm up a pyroblast that I know is going to hit me for four digits of damage.

The high stamina is due to life tap. I would raid on my lock with more hps than the warrior, and that allowed me to continue to fight even when the mages and other casters had sit and drink. We HURT ourselves for mana.

Drain life and drain soul are broken. They do not reflect their tool tips and they bring so little health in pvp that is pointless in a 1v1 battle.

FEAR is a 2 second cast. ANYONE with the interface option of cast bar turned on can see this coming and find a way to stop the cast, your a mage counterspell.

Our demons are powerful but TOO specific for a particular classes.

Voidwalker: our personnal tank useless in pvp unless you use it for the shield, which means you sacrifice it, and run.

Imp: blood pact buff = more health, shoots fireballs, unless your a destruction lock and have curse of elements on the target all it does is give you a health buff and shoot weak fireballs at your target.

Fel hunter: The anti-caster demon. But guess what if I roll into the battleground with my fel hunter I am a easy HK for rogue, warriors, shamans etc...

Sucubus: The anti melee demon, seduce and nuke. But i am easy prey for casters.

Fel Gaurd: Dunno never had him when I played but he looks to be pretty powerful. But just like a BM specced hunter You have to spend 50 talent points into one tree, demonology to get him. Let me reiterate this FIFTY talent points.
Which limits your vialbility in raids. As afflicition locks are still the raid talents of choice.

Hunters, and Warlocks are just where they should be, its the other classes that still need work that are having problems with them.

And the changes you suggested are all ready done in some form or other. You can no longer chain fear a person, its on diminshing returns, and fear breaks as soon as my first damage over time ticks.

I think its great that a curse still stays on you even after you kill the lock. Curses, dieseases, and poisons are still there after you killed that mob that did it to you right? How is this different?

IF the demon did not despawn after the lock was killed it would become a loose cannon on the playing field as the demons hate their masters. As cool as that would be to see a bunch of demons running around attacking everybody on the battleground it would be a big complaint after awhile.

Oh yea demons cost a regeant, soul shard, which you have to kill something that yeilds experience and then drain their soul as they die to get. These go into your inventory, do not stack and until recently when you died in the BG you had to resummon your demon at the cost of another shard. Same for flying etc...

Its not all cakes and cookies for locks.

[Antiochous]

No, I am not talking about a 41,41,41 lock. I have a lvl 70 warlock in mediocre gear that I can destroy 99% of people i meet with. I have played the class, I know what they have. You are just being dishonest.

Lets go through your points.

1. Yes, we all know that you need to change pets to be most effective against some classes. However, name one other class in the game that even has the BASE ability to deal with "almost" every class of every spec no matter what your spec is. A holy priest cant take 10 sec and all the sudden open up options for fighting a rogue, a warrior cant take 10 seconds and all the sudden have much needed options for fighting a mage. Huh... what class can do that? oh yeah. A warlock.

2. Stop with this fear is breakable bull**** everyone keeps pulling. YOU ALL HAVE DEATH COIL! which is the only unbreakable fear (horror effect) in the game. On top of that you have two other forms of breakable fear one of which does not have a cooldown. Yes, they "can" be broken and they have diminishing returns, but anyone who has played a warlock or fights warlocks a decent amount will admit if they are honest that 1 fear and definitely 2 fears in a fight is more then enough to give you the winning advantage. And unless you are fighting lots of undead with their pvp trinkets equipped you will almost always get that.

3. Sigh... No matter what spec you are, warlocks have a very nice base set of spells which include 3 Dots and at least 3 Direct dmg spammable spells. If you don't think 3 dots is a lot just to start you need to see how many dots any other class in the game has. Untalented your 3 dots will deal 4000 dmg to the target... Untalented.

4. The design of the warlock class is one where you can afford to focus on sta instead of the Int and spi that other classes need. I'm not saying we cant wear the same sta gear as you, we can but we are much more gimp doing it then you ever are.

5. Again... everything I listed up to that point was base warlock skills. No talents anywhere yet.

6. Huh. I wasn't aware that one class can dispel magic, and curses and can repeatedly take 1600 dmg and be silenced for 6 seconds. Oh wait! There isn't one that can dispel all your dots and there is no class in the game that can stand to take 1600 dmg and be silenced for 5 seconds and not have it be the death of them. You need warlock lessons if you lose to someone that dispels your UA.

7. Finally, when I am on my warlock it is harder but not impossible to deal with some classes with out the right pet out. In fact I should say it is easy to deal with 99% of classes without the right pet out but it is easier if I do. And the whole point I am making is you have a pet, which isn't incapacitated when you are that has skill to counter every class in wow. Every other class in the game has to change their spec in a town for a large sum of money in order to deal with certain classes... warlocks take 10 second and change their pet.

I am not sure what else to say. In my experience in the last year of playing wow (since the major warlock revamp) warlocks are divided into two catigories. There are those that have played a warlock and not really played many other classes indepth or to high lvls. These people will claim till their dying breath that locks are not overpowered and are just as hard as any other class in 1v1 pvp.
The second group is those people who have played warlocks but also played some other classes at high lvls. Maybe they played a mage or a druid or a warrior.
Pretty much with out exception these people admit that their warlock is far and away the easist class to pvp with. There is nothing wrong with it, it is not a badge or shame, it is just the truth. Call it good design, or balance or what have you but if you ask most people I know that play several classes at 70 and if they have a warlock they will tell you that it is a blast to play, and a big reason why is you can destory pretty much anyone you meet in pvp.

You could say that we all must be super warlocks or we all suck at the other classes we play or we only fight noobs. But I think years of playing this game on different servers, in BGs, in world pvp,and in arenas has given us a pretty good idea of what each class has. And time and again, no matter what server we play, no matter what class we fight ... warlocks simply kickass. =)

[fzyx]

It won't get much traction from Warlocks though because you take different pets for different scenarios in PvE, not even considering PvP. It does break the whole concept of a pet based class though.


No pain no gain :)


Two questions come off that. Why would you not apply the same logic to a Hunter? Let them talent for ranged damage (Marksmanship), pet damage (BeastMaster) or their melee + traps type (Survival) tree?


Makes sense...



And the second one - what else would you want to move into talents? We basically have Curses, Direct Damage spells and a few utility spells.


I think just those two would make me happy, though honestly I don't know enough specifics about the class to say anything else.



Fear is our get out of jail card. Warlocks have one snare in Curse of Exhaution which is talented as opposed to a mage with almost the whole of the Frost tree, Blink, Ice Block and so forth to mitigate incoming damage. Yes, it sees offensive use too which is probably where the major complaint with it lies.

However, it's not really Crowd Control, because once you've Feared something you inevitably end up aggroing a whole nest of Furbolgs. From a PvE perspective that would hurt Warlocks seriously. Fear is used to get something off you while DoTs tick. You have to cycle curses on it (Recklessness / Exhaustion) to ping pong it so it doesn't run into a mob of four or five others and bring death running back to you. It takes a bit of concentration to keep that up, knowing aggro ranges, etc.

But if you argue for bringing it in line with other forms of Crowd Control then I would expect that to be supplemented with another form of escape, like the Shadow form you suggested earlier.



Exactly, if fear is not the optimal form of crowd control and is arguably "overpowered" when combined with dots, then they have to think of a good solution. This is where I say they are fostering something they know to be broken in order to make the class more attractive.




Those are interesting suggestions, but my gut feeling is that the changes would effectively bring the Warlock back to it's initial release. And then they were so underpowered that just about nobody played the class.

Then they aren't the right suggestions, nobody wants the warlock completely gimped :) But no pain, no gain... nobody likes being "balanced". I mean they are still "balancing" mages, and from what I hear at one point mages were considered highly overpowered.

[fzyx]

Hunters, and Warlocks are just where they should be, its the other classes that still need work that are having problems with them.


This we can agree on, I would much rather new abilities were added to other classes to make them as well-rounded as hunters and locks.



fear breaks as soon as my first damage over time ticks.


Not below level 60.

[ExculMazhul]

If you want to say Rogues are overpowered, in PvP or PvE, you've apparently never really played the class enough to understand it. I know, the OP was saying Druids and Hunters, but this is to all the people who have been saying Rogues are OP.

PvE, we have to get behind the target (I know, distract, but still... Outland = 200 mobs in a 5 yard radius.) and drop the mob in hopefully 20 or less seconds, the longer the fight lasts the lower our DPS is, even in end-game, sure it only drops a tiny bit, but it still drops. That's the same with all DPS classes though, so I'm not going to specify that to Rogues only.

PvP, we have to get a PERFECT shot at the enemy, if you're daggers and PvPing that's a fun sight. There's 800 ways of making a Rogue lose a fight, and very easily. There's also 200 ways to make a Rogue lose control of the fight, AKA CC's... Which are just about our worst enemy.

I'd go on, but I have to hang out with family now. Plus I made my point.

[Tollin]

Not below level 60.

My lock is lvl 20 and my fear breaks all the time due to DoTs, but this is in PvE.

I still dont understand how you think fear is so much worse than sheep?

[Aerath]

1) Fear does not break always
2) Sheep breaks the second you take 1 dmg
3) Fear can be reapplied differently (deathcoil), losing the reduction on the initial fear since DC counts as Horror, rather than fear. Add in a Succubus with Seduce, which is yet another CC and effectively warlocks do not suffer from the reduction that other classes do
4) Fear lasts 12 seconds, if your target is not dotted. Enough time to grab a different pet
5) Claiming everyone can break Fear or that it is resisted by Shadow Res is non-sense. Let me restate that - complete and utter ********. People are -not- going to be running around on the server with the PvP trinket and their Shadow Res gear equipped 24/7. Their fault ? No. Not when they're out grinding. In the Arena - yes. You prepare for what will come. There is one race with a racial that breaks fear every couple of minutes. There is one class that can be immune to fear. There is another class that can become immune if specced for it, which is the ever popular hunter. That leaves all the mages, priests, druids, rogues, other warlocks, PvE hunters, mages and paladins on alliance side and 4/5th of the Horde population of those classes unable to break fear.

//edit; Fzyx - stop double posting. You can edit your posts to include multiple answers. You aren't going to keep getting warned for it.

[Tollin]

Quote from Aerath's post above:
1) Fear does not break always
2) Sheep breaks the second you take 1 dmg
3) Fear can be reapplied differently (deathcoil), losing the reduction on the initial fear since DC counts as Horror, rather than fear. Add in a Succubus with Seduce, which is yet another CC and effectively warlocks do not suffer from the reduction that other classes do
End Quote from Aeraths post.

Wrong, fear, as well seduce, and now the death coil horror effect, all count towards the diminishing returns rule, if i fear, then seduce then use my death coil, that is three and therefore nothing else will work.

4) Fear lasts 12 seconds, if your target is not dotted. Enough time to grab a different pet

Sap=20 sec, gouge=15 sec, sheep=20 sec, hammer of justice=15 sec, what about root, or frost trap, or frost effect, distracting shot, scatter shot, concussion shot, feign death that causes you to lose your target.
Shapeshifting that remove all slowing, stunning and poly effects, kidney shot, blind..... whats your point?

Also I can guarentee i am not going to spend what little time you are feared to grab a new demon I am going to stack my DoT's and warm up a shadowbolt. Just like if you are a rogue and you sapped me, you are going to get behind me to start doing your most damaging skills.

Like I said before, if you plan on pvp'ng and do not have cast bar turned on which will allow you to see what's coming and therefore allowing you to counter somehow then your not using all your tools in your tool box.

I am rather sad to see so many people complain about fear, two years ago yes it was overpowered, but since then its been nerfed and nerfed hard!

Some more warlock information, death coil is on a 2 min cooldown if a lock just used that on you it was a last min spell he/she needed to survive the battle.

Warlock fear is a 2 sec cast spell... use that to your advantage. See it coming, stop it from happening.

If I can pvp successfully as a Human Warlock back in 2005 when it was a terribly broken class, and now as a enhancement shaman, which that tree is broken for pvp, then you can figure out a way to deal with fear.

[Findariel]

Well I can't speak for lvl 70, sometimes it's a bit confusing to find out whether people talk about the epic geared-up lvl70 BGs or about the class in general across all BGs and levels.

But well in the 19-49 BGs it's warlocks and hunters that dominate (and twink rogues, but more due to the "twink" than the "rogue" part). I played with a mage, warlock, rogue, paladin and priest and everyone generally is prey to hunters and locks.

Fear: Well you can't compare it to Sheeping (or Ice Trap). Simply because you can be DoTted up, and even a few times in succession (my lock does it a lot). Locks can kill bring you from 100% down to 0% without you ever getting out of Fear. Especially if you're a low stamina class like a mage.
Actually sheeping isn't so bad at all since it even restores life ;)

Rogues: aren't that strong. Yes, they're anti-clothies but for instance my pally (usually protection + shield) has been killed by a rogue perhaps .. 3 times in at least 200 BGs? Mages can Blink out of stun. If you don't kill a (good) hunter before he gets out of stun you're basically dead.
And so on, they'e far from infalliable.

Specialized minions: Well in a BG you're facing a lot of different opponents in a short amount of time. 10 sec casting and dependency on Shards really doesn't give you the opportunity to adjust your minion to every single opponent.

Hunters: I found them the hardest and most well-rounded opponents of all, why don't you people complain about those? I know even my lock had great problems with them at 39+ because of the long range and fast attacks + pet attacks that won't let you cast anything except instant casts. Sometimes she's dead even before she gets into casting range.

For the rest, yes, I agree locks are very powerful.

[Kugan]

hammer of justice=15 sec

Hmmm. My hammer of justice must be broken then. Only lasted 6 seconds the last time I used it... and the person used their PvP trinket to get out of it.

Couldn't use it again for the rest of the fight /sigh.

[moopy]

But well in the 19-49 BGs it's warlocks and hunters that dominate (and twink rogues, but more due to the "twink" than the "rogue" part). I played with a mage, warlock, rogue, paladin and priest and everyone generally is prey to hunters and locks.

It makes a sort of sense, mind you. Both hunters and locks are "utility ranged DPS classes"- lots of ranged hurt with a distinct inclination very useful tricks- it's these that they're valued for in PvE raids as much as their PvE dps. This makes them a logical shoe-in for PvP, compared to (say) a primary healer. If they weren't spectacular when well-played, there'd be something wrong. Neither have the pure burst dps of a three minute mage or similar, so you pay somewhere along the line. However- it's exactly what you should expect from both classes in a BG, just as you would expect the amazing versatility of druids to present headaches when you're not 100% sure of their spec. Working as intended :)

Of course, some folks don't see it that way, and bawl their eyes out because they're not getting everything their own way. If you're having trouble beating a warlock or a hunter, the number one best way to learn is simply to play one, learn their abilities, the dynamic, their weak spots, how long their cooldowns are- know your enemy. Both can be beaten by other classes, but as the skill of the lock or hunter increases, an intimate knowledge of how they work seems to be required. Personally, I think that this is the fun part..

Oh, and for goodness sake, use some sort of enemy cast bar display!

[Raemaar]

hammer of justice=15 sec
15s stun - gief please :azn:

umm about fear compared with other forms of cc:

You have the option of either putting dots on, or not putting dots on.

DoTs

Only stuns and roots allow dmg to be added while cc'd. Stuns are very powerful - granted, but they dont last long. Roots are good, but they only work against a few classes in the game - fear works against all.

Granted a DoT does give a chance to break fear - but sometimes it may not break for 5-8s of dmg, at which point you are winning the health battle by a long shot; couple this with your heavy hp advantage already, its a formiddable duo.

Poly/sap/seduce/trap, etc... do not have this option (yes i know seduce is also a lock ability).

No DoTs

You have the option to not place dots on, meaning the fear will last its entire duration, in this form, it is a weak poly - argueably still better than sap, as you can cast it on someone in combat; better than trap maybe.

My point is, fear is so very flexible it is a highly useful skill. Without it warlocks are still a very good class, in pve and pvp - this just adds weight to that fact. If you havent already, remove fear from your action bar for a week's worth of BG and see if it makes any difference :thumbsup:

[sohcan]

Wrong, fear, as well seduce, and now the death coil horror effect, all count towards the diminishing returns rule, if i fear, then seduce then use my death coil, that is three and therefore nothing else will work.


That is incorrect. Fear has dimishing returns on itself which is shared with seduce only. Deathcoil has diminishing returns on itself only.

ie You can fear, seduce, fear and then deathcoil. Alternatively a target can be deathcoiled 3 times, by different locks obviously, and then diminishing returns kicks in on the target for horror effects and the target is immune.


4) Fear lasts 12 seconds, if your target is not dotted. Enough time to grab a different pet

Sap=20 sec, gouge=15 sec, sheep=20 sec, hammer of justice=15 sec, what about root, or frost trap, or frost effect, distracting shot, scatter shot, concussion shot, feign death that causes you to lose your target.
Shapeshifting that remove all slowing, stunning and poly effects, kidney shot, blind..... whats your point?


Also incorrect. Crowd control in pvp is capped at 12 seconds, so any CC has a maximum length of 12 seconds on an opposing player. ie Sheep will never last more than 12 seconds in pvp.


Warlock fear is a 2 sec cast spell... use that to your advantage. See it coming, stop it from happening.


Once again incorrect, fear is a 1.5 second cast.

Although I admire your tenacity in your arguments you might want to check your facts first.

[Rex Normal]

1) Fear does not break always
2) Sheep breaks the second you take 1 dmg

Fear and sheep are different forms of cc. It would be more appropriate to compare fear with frost nova. Fear is still superior to frost nova, but one can still deal damage to a target that is frozen, it affects multiple targets at once, it is very disruptive to melee and can even be enough of a flow breaker to throw most casters off their game, it's an instant cast, and it is not subject to diminishing returns. Where it doesn't match up with fear is it's duration, and the fact that it is on a cooldown.

3) Fear can be reapplied differently (deathcoil), losing the reduction on the initial fear since DC counts as Horror, rather than fear. Add in a Succubus with Seduce, which is yet another CC and effectively warlocks do not suffer from the reduction that other classes do

Not sure what you mean by that. I beleive seduction and fear are on the same diminishing returns, deathcoil is on it's own but it has a 2 minute cooldown for a 3 second GTFOff me ability that's a fair trade. Death coil is on a global cooldown just like all other spells so that gives us 1.5 seconds to quick cast something else if that's the plan. Fear is a (edit:)1.5 second cast which means that anyone with half a brain can anticipate that and deal with the coming fear, or whatever else the warlock has planned for that 1.5 seconds. Deathcoil also usually sends the target running out of the warlocks range so now we have to chase you down to continue the fight. Most of the time I see someone get deathcoiled and turn around running right into my range, if people stopped and thought about it for 2 seconds they could continue running the other way allow themselves to regroup and avoid whatever the warlock has in store for them next. Seduce is a decent CC, but not available to warlocks 100% of the time, where polymorph is available to mages without any forethought.

4) Fear lasts 12 seconds, if your target is not dotted. Enough time to grab a different pet

True, but that will never be a warlock's tactic. No warlock is going to fear with as many possible ways for fear to break, trinkets, WoTF, etc. (it still has a chance to break on heartbeat without any damage if I'm not mistaken) and count on it lasting long enough to change his pet.

5) Claiming everyone can break Fear or that it is resisted by Shadow Res is non-sense. Let me restate that - complete and utter ********. People are -not- going to be running around on the server with the PvP trinket and their Shadow Res gear equipped 24/7. Their fault ? No. Not when they're out grinding. In the Arena - yes. You prepare for what will come. There is one race with a racial that breaks fear every couple of minutes. There is one class that can be immune to fear. There is another class that can become immune if specced for it, which is the ever popular hunter. That leaves all the mages, priests, druids, rogues, other warlocks, PvE hunters, mages and paladins on alliance side and 4/5th of the Horde population of those classes unable to break fear.

Pallys can bubble out of fear, and honestly I think there are more undead horde than 1/5th of the population. That makes 6 classes that have no natural defense to fear but only if they don't see it coming. Melee classes have inturrupts that can easily stop a 2 second cast, and the dual weilders hit us so often that a 2 second cast usually gets pushed back to a 4 second cast, mages can counter spell, shadow priests can silence, any priest can instant fear which will inturrupt a warlocks casted fear, druids can use cyclone as an inturrupt, or bear form to stun, other warlocks with a felhunter can spell lock, marksman hunters can silence shot or scatter shot, tauren can war stomp as an inturrupt, am I forgetting anything? The best way to combat fear is to prevent it from happening in the first place, it's not my fault that people don't adjust their play style to counter it. Only a handful of classes can naturally get out of stun, and there isn't a single class that can counter a pally's bubble.

I only mentioned the shadow resist as a single method that all classes have at thier disposal to counter fear that nobody chooses to employ, if it was that bad you'd think that at least some people would try it.

I don't play on a PvP server so I don't really care about complaints people have about getting ganked by warlocks in world PvP, when I did play on a PvP server I got sick of being ganked by rogues all of the time so guess what I did . . . I stopped playing on PvP servers, I didn't call out for changes to rogues.

Incidently I also play a shadow priest and a rogue and don't find other warlocks to be all that much of a neussance. When I am playing my warlock, I avoid warriors like the plague, rogues give me the chills, hunters tick me off, and I can rarely outlast pallys and druids.

Honestly I've learned to PvP without using fear, so personally I don't care much what happens to it in PvP, but in PvE I use it quite often. In PvE it is a much more dangerous spell as it must be controlled with curses, or only used in wide open spaces where the mob will not aggro something else, which means it requires a bit of skill to use successfuly.

[Tollin]

That is incorrect. Fear has dimishing returns on itself which is shared with seduce only. Deathcoil has diminishing returns on itself only.

Deathcoil has a 2 min cooldown. You can not instantly reapply it. Therefore I was of the understanding that it worked with fear and seduce on the diminshing returns.

Also incorrect. Crowd control in pvp is capped at 12 seconds, so any CC has a maximum length of 12 seconds on an opposing player. ie Sheep will never last more than 12 seconds in pvp.

You tell me this, after i sat for the full 20 seconds of being sapped. Either way there are more ways to control your opponent than just fear here.


Once again incorrect, fear is a 1.5 second cast.

My mistake, again it has been 2 years since I played and I did not know that it was reduced from 2 sec to 1.5 second cast.

Although I admire your tenacity in your arguments you might want to check your facts first.

My facts come from playing the class a long time ago when it was broken, and my tenacity comes from those that complain about the warlock now that they are no longer free and easy kills. There was a time that if a rogue just looked at you it ment death.

Well for the hammer of justice I was stunned for 15seconds from a paladin and I thought it was hammer of justice or retribution something or other I do not know exactly what that skill was. If I am wrong then so be it, my point was to show just how many CC options were out there that other classes have versus the one the warlock gets and you want to take that one away from them?????

What I do not get is why all this arguing over Warlocks and fear? What about Beastial Wrath? That is my biggest pvp complaint. That in my opinion is where this Imbalanced arguement should have gone, not warlocks and fear.

[sohcan]

My facts come from playing the class a long time ago when it was broken, and my tenacity comes from those that complain about the warlock now that they are no longer free and easy kills. There was a time that if a rogue just looked at you it ment death.

Well for the hammer of justice I was stunned for 15seconds from a paladin and I thought it was hammer of justice or retribution something or other I do not know exactly what that skill was. If I am wrong then so be it, my point was to show just how many CC options were out there that other classes have versus the one the warlock gets and you want to take that one away from them?????

What I do not get is why all this arguing over Warlocks and fear? What about Beastial Wrath? That is my biggest pvp complaint. That in my opinion is where this Imbalanced arguement should have gone, not warlocks and fear.

Sap might not be subject to the 12 second limit, that is one I can't answer with certainty.

As for why talks of balance always turn into nerf warlock discussion is easy, Warlocks are the current boogeymen of WoW, just like Shaman were back in the day. Everyone has piled on the "warlocks are overpowered" bandwagon, and the complaints vary from the reasonable to the ridiculous.

But hey, if the majority of people believe something it has to be true right? Just like how, back in the day, the world was flat and everyone knew it. ;)

[Shellar]

When discussing pet classes, there is also a psychological factor to consider. A duel with a hunter is essentially a 2-vs-1. An arena match against a double lock team is a 4-vs-2 battle. And nobody, absolutely nobody* likes to be outnumbered.

* Well, except from protection specced paladins, but they don't count.

[Tanitha]

Of course, some folks don't see it that way, and bawl their eyes out because they're not getting everything their own way. If you're having trouble beating a warlock or a hunter, the number one best way to learn is simply to play one, learn their abilities, the dynamic, their weak spots, how long their cooldowns are- know your enemy. Both can be beaten by other classes, but as the skill of the lock or hunter increases, an intimate knowledge of how they work seems to be required. Personally, I think that this is the fun part.

I appreciated that post, Moopy. Warlocks and Hunters are such well rounded classes because they do not fit the standard roles. Nor are they really hybrids. They are probably the most accessible and the most solo friendly classes, but they do not compare to the other members of the game trinity for those individual roles. You said it well.

[fzyx]

//edit; Fzyx - stop double posting. You can edit your posts to include multiple answers. You aren't going to keep getting warned for it.

No problem, I was under the impression that replying to two different branches of the same thread should be ok, but now I know.

FWIW - To my knowledge (and as far as I can remember) Tanitha is the only person to have warned me about posting twice. Not that Tanitha isn't hugely important on this board for her always well thought out opinions, but she isn't a mod...

[Aerath]

I like a self-moderating forum - saves me the hassle of continously warning people when there's already been someone pointing it out.

As to the comment about noone taking their time to swap pets...

again see my above comments regarding pet preparation

You have the option to switch. You do not take it, but that's beside the point.

[Tanitha]

You have the option to switch. You do not take it, but that's beside the point.

Fair enough, that's a good point too. The Warlock who is non Demonology specced though and changes a pet in battle will be a dead Warlock though.

Can I now join the choir and call for a nerf of Druids, please? Or should I phrase that as "nrf drood plz!" I am sick and tired of beating eaten alive by Druids. A level 50 Druid called Passo mangled me into bits while I was fighting two Gorilla Stompers in Un'Goro. I made the mistake of resurrecting, dotting him up at which point he ran. I resummoned and chased after him, and he STILL killed me, even with DoTs running. And he's like 5 levels below me. I'm an embarrassment to the Warlock community. And I am starting to loathe Druids. It's the one class I cannot deal with.

[Aerath]

No worries, the feeling is entirely mutual.
Druids don't have a counter to fear (can't break it, can't interrupt it) and ferals (the most common version) need to be up close and personal - ie. within fear range.

We do have the advantage that we can't be seduced.

I quite enjoy killing Warlocks, but I will have to be very prepared and gear for it.

[Tanitha]

We do have the advantage that we can't be seduced.

*doh* He's a beast. Not a humanoid. THAT would explain why nothing happened when the Succy tried to seduce him. And there I was click-click-click-*swear*-click-click-dead. I feel like such an idiot now. But, but - the Succubus has hooves! At the very least she looks like lunch.

Over the last few months I've accumulate a reasonable amount of World PvP kills. I'm roughly averaging around 10 kills a day for this last week so I consider myself to be reasonable adept. But after his initial Mangle and the Death Coil to get him off me I managed to Fear him TWICE and still could not kill him.

Really, Druids are my bane. I think I'll just run away from them from now on and /sit and take it if they pounce before I get that chance.