Hello Warlock friends.
English is not my primary language, so forgive me for any mistakes. My sub is about to expire, so before I go, I would like to put some toughts for everybody to read, and hopefully discuss.
PvP problems:
• High Ramp up time: Agony takes too long to reach max stacks, but the damage is not good enough to justify the ramp up time. Compounded by too many DoT removals/dispels/immunities.
•DoTs’ duration is too short: In Legion, DoT damage was increased and duration was reduced to compensate. Came BfA, the damage was nerfed and the duration kept short. Biggest proof about this issue is we can’t even pick Siphon Life for Arenas, as we are GCD capped already.
•Dark Soul: Why my TALENTED, 2 MIN CD skill is purgeable by BASELINE, NO CD SKILLS?
•Siphon Life: Weak, short lived and very low heal. Useless in PvP.
•Fragile: We are obliged to pick Demon Armor, a skill we had before, when against any form of physical damage. More about that on PvP talents.
PvP Talents: Blizzard really put itself in a corner here. in 9.0.5 we are receiving buffs to Demon Armor, Amplify Curse and Casting Circle, but it’s almost useless, as we are 3/3 talent locked with Demon Armor/Nether Ward, Rampant Afflictions and Rapid Contagion.
•Demon armor buff is a measly 2% increased physical damage reduction. As we MUST always have it against physical damage, why do I have to pay a talent slot for that? It’s a spell we had before and should return to baseline. Would not affect PvE.
•Rampant Afflictions: design trap 1. Blizzard made Warlock damage balanced around 1 UA only, now there is no other way to change this other than PvP talent without altering PvE.
•Rapid Contagion: design trap 2. Blizzard shoved all our damage into Malefic Rapture, leaving DoTs dealing very weak damage. Again, there is no other way to change this without altering PvE balance. Why must we pay a talent slot for a spec that is supposed to be around DoTs?
• I would love to use Deathbolt, Amplify Curse and Casting Circle sometimes, but for the reasons aforementioned, I can’t.
Suggestions:
• Make Demon Armor baseline: I don’t see any reason against it. Would at least free 1 PvP Talent Slot.
•Rampant Afflictions: In addition to the current effect, also increases DoTs duration by “x” seconds. This would allow us to use Siphon Life.
• Rapid Contagion: Costs 3 5 Soul Shards. 30 Sec CD.
For the Next 15 30 seconds, your periodic effects occur 30 50% more often. In addition, passively makes DoT’s GCD reduced by 0.5 sec (Old Amplify Curse).
With 100% uptime and 5 shard cost, we promote alternative shard spender for those who want a DoT centered build, while maintaining a compromise of putting damage into DoTs OR Malefic Rapture and giving the Warlock a choice.
•Siphon Life: can only be used if we get a + duration for DoTs as we are GCD capped. Buff the healing to make it worthwhile. Since it ticks once every 3 seconds, make it tick for 3% of the Lock’s HP, it’s 1% HP/sec, not that much but helps when focused, making it true to the proposal of “Tanky Caster”. Alternatively, you can make it a passive extra debuff applied by Corruption that interacts with Malefic Rapture.
•Ramp up time: If some form of ramping up is necessary, there is a simple and easy fix that doesn’t affect PvE: cut Agony stacks in half. Baseline = 5 stacks and Writhe in Agony = 9 or 10 stacks. Or give us Soul Swap Back.
•Dark Soul: Baseline/Dispellable OR Talented/Undispellable. We can’t have the worst of both Worlds, come on.
Sorry for the long text. Toughts?