Warlocks in WOTLK – Our Future – Part 2

Warlocks in WOTLK – Our Future – Part 2

My original blog indicated that this would be a series of three installments regarding the future of Warlocks in WOTLK. I expressed some major concerns about demonology, demon form, and the overall state of Warlock competiveness. As I mentioned in the previous blog demon form is just not worth putting 51 points into demonology to get. I don’t intend on blogging about warlocks very often after this series is complete. Warlocks aren’t looking good for the future and you’ll more than likely see me beginning to blog about different classes that I intend on playing in the future such as paladin and priest. We can’t fully predict what Blizzard has in store for the warlock class in 2009 but unless something drastic occurs I won’t continue playing a warlock for either Got Game West or online play, but that’s all for another blog. For the time being, let’s take a look at what we have and what we should have as far as destruction goes.

Destruction since day one has focused on high damage spells with medium to high cast time. We received some nice additional instant cast spells such as Shadowfury (originally a .5 second cast). Shadowfury is almost identical to instant howl of terror. The combination of shadowfury/hot will allow us to get at least a few cast off each game, during which we have more than enough burst damage to drop somebody or at least blow defensive cool downs. I really do think the devs had the right idea with chaos bolt. Going through everything but complete immunities is incredibly powerful, and it’s honestly not that hard to get the cast off with the change to a few conflag talents. Basically every time I conflag, it grants me a 30% haste for the next 3 spells making chaos bolt a 1.2ish second cast depending on gear. No more cheat death, no more cloak or pain suppression if it’s timed right. The problem with destro is that it is almost entirely based on cast times other than backlash procs and shadowburn. All of the interrupt GCD’s have been removed so faking cast is not as easy as it use to be. I also don’t think warlocks should have to be the only class that has to turret cast to do damage. One of the nice things about destruction is we have two extremely powerful tree’s at our disposal, even if we do end up getting kicked, our damage output for the duration more than likely isn’t going to change. However, I think we need a few more outs to secure uninterrupted cast times in clutch moments. Novas, deepfreeze and more novas allow mages to cast freely if they play correctly and well. My recommendation would be to add one more stun either AoE or single target to our arsenal. While, of course, this would not be anywhere near the duration of nova, maybe around 2 seconds, it would be not only an excellent escape spell but a fantastic offensive spell, similar to deep freeze. With all of our utility anything longer than 2 seconds would be a bit much. From slow dot damage to one of the highest burst classes in the game, destruction is really panning out to be our most viable spec, and although I may be wrong I will surely be trying it first upon hitting level 80. There are a few other things I’d like to talk about before this blog comes to a close.
The whole problem with the class is we are still the easiest target to train. I often find myself saying mid arena match “If all else fails, just shit train the warlock” which still holds true with 99% of the teams we play. This brings me to my next topic of contention, Pet survivability.

Since the beginning of season three and the introduction of spell penetration our pets have become easier to kill. Originally only really killable by melee our pets are now very easily 2 shoted by mages and 1 shoted by melee, as opposed to 2 shoted by melee and (maybe) killable by other caster classes. From what I can make out of beta 70-80 felhunters only receive a 2k hp buff which doesn’t exactly help us. Our pet’s resistances only go up a few points and casters will have equivalent of not more spell penetration at 80. Being that our chance of survival without soul link is slim to none, I really hope the devs look into this addressing this problem. It takes so little effort to drop a felhunter now it’s out of control. Today I had Venruki pet nova, frostbolt, and lance my pet. Poor jhhuzzum didn’t even see it coming. Let’s put that in an arena situation, not only would I more than likely have a rogue or warrior cramming damage down my throat, but if all it takes is a quick tab shatter combo I might as well have entered the arena without a pet. I don’t think our pets should be unkillable, but I do think it should take a little more than a whirlwind and a white hit to kill them since we are a pet based class. My suggestion would be a bigger boost in the percent of our stamina they receive. Also, Blizzard definitely needs to look into pet resilience. Perhaps they could add armor/item slots for additional stats. That way both hunters and warlocks could customize their pets for their preferred play style. Fel-domination also needs to be instant or undispelable. I’m fine with good players reacting fast enough to stop it but if it only takes a dispel to remove I might as well just skip it in the demo tree; it should have been undispelable from the beginning of season 4. Either buff pets or make fel-dom irremovable and on a shorter cool down, you pick.

Also, what the hell are soul shards still in the game for….. bah maybe I’ll save that for part 3. Stayed tuned for affliction next week.
-Didy
Team GotGame