This is what I wrote, There are more things missing, There are more things missing, but it’s what I had in mind at the time I wrote it.
And when are you going to fix the defensive talents to Afly Lock in PVP?
The class most often killed in WoW’s Solo Shuffle is Affliction Warlock. And this is in your logs.
Gorebound Fortitude is a duplicate talent that doesn’t stack with Soulburn Healthstone. What’s the point?
Unending Resolve 40% damage reduction? Really? Is this a joke? why not 60%? What’s the point if, when we activate it, immunity to silence, interruptions, and pushback are useless because it stuns or CCs us. (Is it a defensive or offensive talent?) I don’t think even you know.
Burning Rush is a Joke for PVP and PVE.
PVP TALENTS:
NETHER WARD a defensive that has a minute of CD and lasts 3 seconds and is also can be dispel.
ESSENCE DRAIN Do you think we can cast it 4 times? only 10 seconds? It doesn’t even compare to the length of other classes.
BONDS OF FEL Another useless talent that nobody uses.
SOUL RIP 8 seconds? 1 Min of CD? really? This only if they do not collect their soul.
BLOODSTONE a Single use in the entire arena? Why?
And what about Afly pets that kill them with just AOE? even with the talents
Have you seen that the Healthstone does not Heal nothing when it is at 20% dampening plus the reduction of healing of some classes?
Curse of Tongues doesn’t work with this expansion where all casters don’t cast in almost the entire arena, with one exception “WARLOCK´S”, especially the Afly whose burst is cast and only has one school.
AND WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THE UNSTABLE AFFLICTION THAT AS SOON AS YOU PUT IT ON IT IS DISPELED without punishment or harm (REMEMBER THAT NOW CAN BE APPLIED ONLY “1” UA AND THE PUNISHMENT IS HALF OF THE MM HUNTER’S GREATEST DAMAGE) . Almost all classes can dispel it.
The lock supposed to be a doter but today all DPS classes do more damage with their dots than Afly Lock himself.
You understand the frustration of UA being dispel 17 times or more in a single arena match?.
Expansion after expansion it’s the same, just when you see that the Afly spec is going to disappear you give it a mega buff and a week later you nerf it worse than it was.
While I agree with buffing Unending Resolve DR, I don’t think it needs a shorter CD compared to other effects. We still have DP and teleport (which we can use often), gateway (which we can reposition as desired along with teleport)… I do think a reduction in the debuff timer for gateway use being baseline would be nice as well.
THE WHOLE POINT of Gorebound Fortitude is that you no longer need to use soulburn when consuming a healthstone, because it is now automatic. This means fewer soulshards burned in a match, but more importantly it means you can always have it available for your teleport bonus, or drain life if you use it (you can complain about DL, but it does exist and it does heal and soulburn DOES provide a shield when it ticks).
Burning Rush could probably be removed from the game nothing of value would be lost.
Now we are starting to cut our teeth on real grit… Learn to counterplay netherward steals/dispels. Most opponents won’t dispel it cause the 10sec CD on dispel and mana cost means people will be choosy. If a mage takes the time to spellsteal it, good… use use your interupt on them so it bounces and gives you pre-cog for a protected fear or shadowfury to stop a go. Or time it a little better and cause a caster to gib themselves (do you know how many Arcane Mages I have killed by popping a well timed Netherward that practically one shot them?). Netherward is fine, it just needs to be used strategically.
Essence Drain probably doesn’t need to exist or just put it in the class tree to be fair.
Bonds of FEL is used btw. I use it against comps with lots of interrupts, wanna know why? cause of Bonds of Fel is Fire school. When they interrupt it (which they do remarkably often) it locks me out of a school that I DO NOT USE. And now a kick is on CD, which means the only way to stop is to either have another teammate burn a kick, or burn a CC. It isn’t useless, it just has more niche uses… Locks aren’t unique in this. Lots of specs have lots of niche talents.
Have you never used Soul Rip against a melee cleave and laughed as they suddenly do less damage, take less healing, and then die from dot/team pressure? I would say this is a mid-tier talent that does have uses. Maybe a CD reduction is called for, but its not bottom of the barrel for PvP talents.
2 things about Bloodstones:
1- I honestly think you should NEVER take this talent outside of MAYBE battlegrounds. The healing from HS, especially with the gluttony talent is one of our BEST SURVIVAL tools. Trading that for 30% haste to use on spells that can still be interrupted/CCd is ludicrous imo.
2- do you really think blizzard would just wanton allow 3 separate 30% haste buffs on a DoT class that technically has no cooldown until the 3rd charge? Are you daft?
Run Demonic Sacrifice. You get more HP, you get a damage proc that is noticable and you don’t have to worry about your pets being CCd. Sure there is SOME downside, but as an Aff Lock who knows they are always the main target… The last thing I want is to have any part of my attention in a match being dedicated to pet management while trying to stay alive.
Healthstone does PLENTY of healing, especially with Gorebound Fort.
CoTongues is not useless. I agree that its value against dps casters is pretty low this expack, but its value against healers is still top tier. And when used with amp curse creates legit kill windows.
Listen here muh boi… The number of specs I have seen kill themselves over self dispels of UA (or even just tanked their HP low enough that they are easy kills), the number of games that have been ended cause we were able to kill someone while the healer was silenced and then self-healing is one of the main benefits. Now true, the value of the backlash damage does need to be monitored and adjusted more often to account for HP increases, but it absolutely can turn the tide of a match and being aware of when healers are likely to dispel vs ignore it will make you a better warlock.
if the other team is able to dispel that often without someone on their team dying, then sorry to say, that is something of a YOUR TEAM problem. any time they dispel and hide cause of the silence should be a solid kill window or opportunity to put that team all the way on its heels. I can promise you that as soon as the other team notices how far back they fall after each dispel, they will change their tactics. Teams only dispel as often as they know they can get away with it.
Bonds of fel is useless that’s pretty much it. You’re better off positioning than trying to cast it that is dealing DF damage and then becomes critter damage spell the second someone else is in it. You should never be using it, regardless of w.e spec you’re playing.
The only useful pvp talents for locks across every spec is impish tactics/long gate/nether ward that’s pretty much it. Aside from destros heal debuffs ground bolt.
That’s it. The rest have been made practically useless. Too many specs with magic removals/immunities that you’ll be lucky you get some of them to stick, especially with how fast alot of class are lately.
Soul rip should have been a reflection 25% to 50% of the damage to force anyone to get their souls.
Bonds of fel ( the ability design was to force players not to move out of) unless it has some forced conditional it’s useless, it either needs to do fatal damage once cast or a harsh condition (ie moment reduction to 70% if moved out of) if it’s condition to stop people to not move out of it is just damage then that damage needs to implode them for choosing to move out of it not you take 800k damage , if two players are in it you’re better off making a melee staff trike than the time it took to cast it.
Sure at low ratings, even at then it still better to using the others. But once you’re playing at some rating where people use their brains, most of those abilities fall off the grand canyon.
To be fair, warlocks do have powerful burst damage if left alone. Especially affliction because they can pressure the entire enemy team at once (in 3v3 at least). So leaving them alone to free cast isn’t an option.
We also have a pretty strong option with demonic circle. Being able to instantly LoS anyone that tries to burst us down is very powerful. Especially with Impish Instincts.
Personally I don’t mind our defensives, and I worry that buffing them means we would lose passive durability and have to start playing like mages who are fragile but have lots of tools. I prefer being passively tanky and not having to manage 20 different tools to stay alive.
UA backlash damage should be buffed by a lot and the silence it causes should never DR.
The reason people dispel it so quickly is because they know it won’t kill them and they get free silence DR for doing so.
The silence should always be 4 seconds. No DR no reduction, just a static 4 second any time you dispel UA. This would change UA from being a free silence DR to being a hard hitting damage spike coupled with a silence that can’t be DR’d. There would be no reason to dispel it except rare niche situations where the backlash outweighs leaving it alone.
I think there is a big problem when it comes to this whole ‘‘Tanky’’ thing.
I often see this comparison of mobility and survivability. Like mage has great mobility but weak survivability and lock has weak mobility but good survivability.
But there is a problem. To explain this that even Blizzard developer would understand this.
1 point of mobility ≠ 1 point of survivability.
Warlock has limited mobility options ( even with talents ) what makes it worse is that you have to set it up first. Demonic Gateway ( PvP talented ) is 60 seconds cooldown. Without spending 1 should shard and Soulburn you will never be able to cast it in the arena. The distance itself is good but 60 seconds cooldown is too long.
Demomic Circle. On its own the teleport has 30 seconds cooldown which isn’t good. With Impish Instinct it’s obviously better and basically the core of Warlock’s mobility. Again you have to set it up first, enemy can see where you are gonna port so even with reduced cd its still kinda meh mobility tool.
So overall mobility is limited and predictable. Not saying it doesn’t exist but by all means it not good.
This means the survivability needs to be good. Atm I like Warlock’s defensive options. It would be nice to see some small buffs like increasing Unending Resolve duration a bit or reduce the cooldown a little. The fact that it only took 15+ years for Blizzard to remove combat cd from stone is for a different story.
What I am trying to say is that while having these defensive options is cool, mobility will always be better ( especially in PvP ) it’s basically effortless to connect to warlock for any melee class. It’s simply better for you to have tools how to create and manage a distance ( while being less tanky ) than have limited tools how to create and manage distance ( while being more tanky )
TLDR : Mobility > Survivability and bring back Conflagrate Root.
, if two players are in it you’re better off making a melee staff trike than the time it took to cast it.