Warlock got the short end of the stick again.
-We got our animations and spells updated last before every other class.
-Our casting idle animation is an exact copy of the mages, despite having a datamined unique style for us.
This is an absolute joke and incredibly annoys me.
what a surprise blizzard dropped the ball on class balance already
i wouldnt say dropped the ball at all. we have 1 essence that requires pvp that is bad for warlock in PVE. i would venture a guess that most everyone who gets this essence will be using it for the raid buff, specifically boomies and ferals. we still have the demon casino build and quite a few others based around other essences. we’re gonna be fine. while in this specific case yes it kinda sucks not getting FREAKING CALL FELHUNTER FOR DEMO, its just one essence.
They truly seem to be shuttering the doors of the demo shop for the remainder of the xpac. Hot damn. Same as last xpac but Demo at least enjoyed a healthy amount of play in the first 3 raids. Honestly I’ve lost that tremendous amount of faith I had in Blizz from the highs of Legion at this point, they’ve managed to suck any joy they can out of the game for whatever metrics they’re trying to hit. This is WoD 2 but without the fantastic class design.
yeah i would say demo still with no interrupt = dropping the ball. obviously i am biased
Sigma’s post on the matter suggests they’re not looking for the PvP essence to be something PvE Players strongly desire:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/boomy-feral-forced-choice-on-essences/179895/22
Tl;dr: Boomy and Feral PvP talents aren’t final. The focus is to provide an extra PvP talent slot, not provide a good PvP Talent to use everywhere (read: PvE).
The Demonology one is laughably bad. We could REALLY use Call Felhunter in PvE but we get Nether Ward? I’m seriously struggling to figure out where that might be useful. I guess you can reflect Grave Bolts from Reaping packs…oh but wait Reaping won’t be a thing when these come out.
The focus is to provide an extra PvP talent slot, not provide a good PvP Talent to use everywhere (read: PvE).
obviously they wouldn’t choose the interrupt - thats the downfall of demo do better then average AOE and be decent for mythic+. and loose the interrupt its a balancing game lol.
id rather have no interrupt then suck as bad as aff does in mythic + LOL
So why did they choose endless affliction for aff? That talent is horrible for pvp. Having a baseline interrupt for demo in pvp would be better than nether ward. Focused chaos also would be better for destro since demon armor isn’t always taken.
Endless affliction would be really interesting if they left the dot damage the same and let it tick for 2 seconds instead of 3.5 seconds which would be like a 60% UA damage buff. Might be too OP for ST but could potentially help AoE.
They chose Endless Affliction for aff - because they honestly think that its a good talent.
By design it makes sense increase the duration to provide dispel protection -
it only fails at it’s job because the dispel backlash damage was to low at start of expac and then got nerfed with the previous nerf during uldir to UA damage overall.
if they buffed the dispell backlash damage this would be a 200% pick all the time.
No it wouldn’t. Having an instant cast seed of corruption was better than endless affliction in legion when UA being dispelled almost killed you and UA did way more damage. Endless Affliction was good in 2s vs certain comps but it isn’t taken in 2s or 3s at all in BfA and probably will never be. If it increased the duration to 14seconds and kept the same dot damage and tick time, this talent would be 200% picked all the time.
Legion was a different aff - then what we have now. Instant seed when you had triple seed as a option sure that was great.
But BFA seed damage is worthless.
I’m confused by what you mean : it currently increases the dot to 14 seconds now. so why inst it picked now? maybe because you loose damage cause extending something that is going to be dispelled anyways. means you do less damage while the dot is up before the dispel.
increased the duration to 14seconds and kept the same dot damage and tick time, this talent would be 200% picked all the time.
with what you wrote would the dot only do damage during the first 8 seconds? and then just be a dot placeholder for dispel protection?
Also the UA dispel that was one shoting healers was only up for a few weeks before that was stopped real quick. it was so glorious
You didn’t run triple seed with instant seed in pvp. When you increase the dot to 14 seconds it ticks every 3.5 seconds instead of every 2 seconds at 8 seconds. What I meant was when it’s increased to 14 seconds it still ticks every 2 seconds which is around a 60% damage increase.
Endless affliction is just flawed cause we don’t really need dispel protection anymore. We don’t have haunt/shadow’s embrace/curse of exhaustion/tongues/shadows now. Getting dispelled is just reapply 2 instant cast dots. Aff needs more utility for pvp and endless affliction doesn’t add that.
Theres already a link with all the other essences?
I’d like to see this math, there’s no way its a dps increase. Remember you get capped at 5 UAs.
It is guaranteed to be a very SLIGHT dps increase IF you play Cascading Calamity. It’s not even close to being remotely worth a major essence slot though.
These updates just show that they don
't read these posts and or care about warlocks at all - Even more AFF : I would take either of the 2 options that destro and demo got.
Really unfortunate to see such a lackluster effort on warlock pvp essences, but let’s try to remember nothing is live yet, so -could- change. That said, giving feedback is all we can really do.
Someone earlier in this thread noted how the Endless Affliction talent could not be as terrible a thing as many of us think. I personally hate that the talent exists, but bravo to you for seeing a potential upside. Sims when this all goes live, assuming nothing changes, will have to determine things one way or another. With how lackluster this essence appears to be though, the likely solution will just be looking elsewhere for our essences.
One thing this throws back into focus for me is that Demo STILL does not have an interrupt while using the intended pet. Nor do Aff or Destro have a truly ranged interrupt (our interrupt is technically ranged, but attached to a melee mob, so travel time becomes a factor). Please, for the love of God, give all three warlock specs Call Felhunter as a BASELINE ability, not a pvp talent for one spec. And make it work exactly as it does now “cannot be used if Felhunter is your active pet”. It would negate problems with such an important utility being attached to a pet (hunters have their dispel on their pet, but not their interrupt) and it would finally allow Demo to HAVE an interrupt without sacrificing a large chunk of dps.
Anyway, food for thought/feedback on the matter is our best recourse, while hoping these are not all of the things being changed for these pvp essences. Cheers.
Yeah I tried to see a silver lining for it.
But even then it would be a small one at best -
I don’t believe it will be better then almost all of the other traits available -
EVEN in PVP like the Essence is designed for.
they updated all of the ones that were super questionable and they all got defensive/utility options. -
SO in my eyes its really clear that this wont get reworked for warlocks as basically “Endless Affliction” is a utility talent (even if a terrible one) in pvp.
Destro got a really good one for PVP
and Demo got a good one for PVP aswell.
and since the essence is designed to give an extra talent in pvp. and even a blue said not designed to be a PVE throughput essence.
that it will stay this way.