Shadowlands Beta/PTR Compiled Feedback Thread

Reiggnn-tichondrius · April 14, 2020, 4:06pm

6 second pet cast needs to go. My only complaint.

Kaldrett-destromath · April 14, 2020, 4:38pm

Aff; Sudden Onset and most certainly Inevitable Demise. ID would be Aff’s burst, SO to keep WiA and stuff from requiring 25+ seconds to stack all the way.

Cheezedot-zuljin · April 14, 2020, 4:45pm

yeah when i initially read about soul rot i was like “thats an AOE drain life, with ID stacked thats gonna be insane damage i love it”. then remembered ID wont exist anymore from what we know, and now i am sad.

Rilatha-elune · April 15, 2020, 4:50am

I haven’t mained my warlock since the start of WoD. I’d love to play her full-time again, but for me, there are a few changes that would need to happen first.

Most people here have been talking about spells and abilities, and since I don’t really play my warlock a whole lot in high level content, I don’t feel like I can offer many suggestions there.

My biggest issues are mobility, or rather, the lack of it. Especially having on-demand mobility versus pre-placed. Out in the open world, whether pvp or fighting harder mobs, we don’t have much mobility.

Edit to clarify- I’m not referring to lack of mobility while casting… I’m referring to lack of mobility in terms of gap closers, and ways of moving quickly if we need to get somewhere fast. I’d never use burning rush in pvp; why would I give my opponent that advantage, and in PvE if I might take a big hit and need to break LoS or get out of a big aoe, again I wouldn’t use burning rush and risk dying, or add extra work for my healer. In its current form, burning rush is ok, but I’d like a movement speed increase that doesn’t tick 4% health every second, and something that doesn’t require pre-placement and a guaranteed safe spot to land.

My suggestions:

-Leave Demonic Circle as a talent, and make Gateway baseline in its current form. Add a talent so that we can instead use it as a solo ability, and have it function similar to Heroic Leap.

-Make Burning Rush baseline in its current form, and add a talent to alter its functionality. A short burst of speed with 2 charges, and a 30 sec recharge on each, and remove the ticking health component.

Put both talents on the same row so that we can’t double dip on movement buffs, you can only have one or the other.

I’d also love to have Glyph of Fear back, so we can use it in dungeons to help with CC, especially if an extra pack is pulled or whatever. I haven’t run dungeons on my lock in ages, so as far as I can remember, fear still causes the mob to run everywhere. While that’s fun in pvp, not so much in pve.

And please… take the interrupt off the felhunter and let us have it baseline, just like every other class has an interrupt. Out in the open world, I generally have my voidwalker out, especially for new content that I don’t outgear. Not having an interrupt sucks. Sure I can use Mortal Coil, or try to time Shadowfury as an interrupt, but I’d rather just have an actual interrupt.

Edit- another ability I’d like to see changed is Grimoire of Sacrifice. I get that it can’t be a permanent buff because each of our demons gives us access to different utility, but having it last one hour is silly. Let it last until we summon a new demon or we die. And give the spell damage buff a flat % increase as opposed to a proc. I’d love to use this talent since pet pathing can be really annoying (more so in dungeons), but in its current form it’s not worthwhile to use.

Kronk-malganis · April 15, 2020, 5:51am

Demonic Circle baseline frees up a space for potentially other options. Tongue Tied seems underwhelming though for the other choices in the row it replaced Demonic Circle. Howl of Terror replacing it would be a much better choice for both PvE and PvP over what seems to be just PvP Tongue Tied would be picked for (if even).

I think Burning Rush is fine in it’s current row. There is some choice there but I’ve found myself always picking Burning Rush much more than Demon Skin and hardly ever Dark Pact. But this isn’t to say the row doesn’t offer good choices its all very niche on how you handle a situation.

When it comes down to it I think having a filler spell (like Fel Flame!) would go a long way to help ease the mobility and hard-stuck casting problem Destruction has. Any downtime of movement, much like Demo has felt like since Legion, can be like playing catch up every time it happens. Hell, lets see a form of Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning return. Maybe only applied to Incinerate?

Morgician-saurfang · April 15, 2020, 6:15am

Demonology getting nothing new while losing baleful invocation and explosive potential azerite traits feels really, really bad. Like how many classes felt at the start of bfa all over again, losing artifact traits and nothing taking their place. Its hard not to look at demo in alpha right now and see it as “exactly the same, but much slower.” Am genuinely upset about this. The spec needs something to speed it up, increase soul shard generation, make more spells instant cast, or something. Demonic tyrant generating 5 soul shards baseline would be really nice. Honestly I just really want to keep explosive potential but I can’t see it happening, maybe as a legendary option?

It’s not acceptable for a spec to just be made worse in the next expansion. And if demonology doesn’t get something, that’s what this is. We are only losing things. Hard-casted Corruption and a covenant ability with no synergy with the rest of our abilities do not make up for this. We are just going to be less than what we were. This feels awful.

Asphyxia-lethon · April 15, 2020, 10:32am

Trust me, it’s not fun it PvP either if you’re fearing someone to get casts off and they end up running around a corner.

Delocated-kiljaeden · April 15, 2020, 10:52am

I’ve only a couple thoughts so far, and it’s really late for me so I’m going to keep my input short.

Affliction:
Malefic Rapture is a way better shard spender than UA, and I’m really glad that UA stacking is gone. Now that UA can only be applied to one target at a time they might be able to put some power back into it whenever it’s dispelled and pretty much will need to do so, because unless it’s a threat then our dots on everyone will be removed in a single global when currently it takes us a ton of them just to start setting up. If they don’t want to make it a threat then that’s going to have to change to back to how it was with the ability to apply it to every target.

I’m still not happy that darkglare is a thing, but if we’re not near as reliant or held back from it being a thing as we were in BFA I guess I can live with it. However, it’ll need a shorter CD because 3mins is just a bit long for something that isn’t that strong anymore. I still think Dark Soul should be our baseline CD, and darkglare should be removed. Maybe giving us haunt baseline making it a bit more powerful with a CD on it could give us another power boost CD in glares place.

The tongues talent should be a PvP talent as it’s very situational outside of it, and it should be replaced with either Howl or Blood horror.
Demonic circle is a welcome addition to the baseline kit and was something we’ve needed back for a while now to give us a bit of movement in PvP and PvE encounters. It’ll give us a chance to breath from the melee train for at least a bit of time while allowing us to choose another CC in it’s place. Very good change all around.

Shadowbolt should be changed to an instant cast small damage ability with a higher mana cost so we have something to stop flag caps and etc in PvP, and our filler should be drain soul. Shadowbolt just doesn’t feel right at all as a filler for affliction since it’s a spec based entirely around debuffs and DoTs.
On that note Deathbolt should also be entirely reworked, or replaced. It basically nerfs our base damage just existing because of how powerful of a tool it can be, and as long as it exists, and especially exists on the first row, none of the other talents will ever be considered.

Soul conduit still sucks and should probably be removed/reworked, but if Dark Soul became our baseline CD than it might open up the last tier a bit more to some actual choice.

We should also receive our old GCD passive back for the amount of DoTs we have to maintain on mobs to AoE. I think it was 1 or 1.5 secs, it’s pretty tough to constantly maintain the amount of them on mob packs. Or, we should get soulswap back to help alleviate this issue. You currently can’t do anything else outside of tab dotting in mob packs of 3+. Not fun.

Destruction:
Overall I’m disappointed in what’s been said about it so far. The base idea and rotation are there, but it’s pretty lack luster in feel and playstyle. Most talent tiers are so bad that there’s really only one choice in them, and they are mostly just passive buffs that was originally part of the spec in order to make it flow. Losing azerite we’ll lose the fun insta incinerate cast and some other things. Cataclysm should be baseline as it’s just the best ST and AoE in that tier, and something should be put in its place. No one will ever choose any of the other talents.
No shadowburn returned baseline, or anything, just diappointment all around for Destro.

Demo I’ve got nothing to say about as I don’t really play it.

This post is probably a bit jumbled, and all over the place and I imagine I’m forgetting some things, but like I said it’s really late and I’m tired. I’ll probably add more thoughts later, and maybe a bit more cohesive ones at that.

Noskulls-illidan · April 16, 2020, 2:46am

So… Who believes that the developers working from home (I’d imagine that they would have the most freedom when it comes to reading forums and doing online stuff) or in the office have even glanced at this thread? I guess we’ll see the next time they post a new blog or update the alpha client.

Kaldrett-destromath · April 16, 2020, 3:18am

I’m hoping they do, but the more likely thing is that they most likely won’t even glance over at the non-alpha threads.

Vexice-destromath · April 16, 2020, 5:08am

“Spec-wise, we’re making relatively minimal changes to Demonology and Destruction, as we feel their core rotations and talent options fit well with our goals for Shadowlands .”

How does this statement make any sense when both Destro and Demo are riddled with dead talents that are never picked? This isn’t a helpful post, I get that, but it is interesting to go look at for example the mage forum, where a similar thread exists. It only has 10 replies and I would say they are generally praising the changes and are asking for fairly minor changes. Locks have a 200+ reply thread going which won’t get read.

I am willing to bet money that Xelnath told Watcher something that penetrated his thin skin so hard that he has held a grudge against the class ever since and into perpetuity. BfA is the most boring that playing a lock has ever been, and the feedback coming back from alpha is abysmal so far.

Kaldrett-destromath · April 16, 2020, 5:47am

Admittedly, yeah the feedback from a lot of people on the alpha forums regarding affliction is actually pretty terrible. some of it is pretty good but for the most part most of it is pretty bland and not so helpful outside of “doesnt feel good” or “this is good! keep it up!” kinda things. i do not know about demo/destro as i only play / worry about aff. so i cannot/do not know about how the feedback is for them, though i will say since demos whole thing is about summoning demons and stuff, i think you should have a few imps, and then begin summoning much better and greater demons. i imagine demo locks are saying the same thing though and blizz is going “wut?! we heard you want felguards, fel lords, wrathguards, voidlords and every other kind of super minion?! here you go! more imps”

Archigadh-malorne · April 16, 2020, 11:16am

My main issue with the alpha feedback thread is that it’s always almost very PvE focussed, because 95% of the playerbase just plays PvE only… and this makes me worried as well… Zero regards to PvP as of now, mostly.

Malgarian-scarlet-crusade · April 16, 2020, 1:57pm

It makes sense when you understand their goal for Shadowlands is to minimize work/expenses and maximize profits. That aside, I suspect that many if the issues with dead talents and incoherent design is because of the rented power systems Blizzard has to make up every 2 years. Imagine if all the time and energy that will have to go into balancing all the soulbinds and all the new legendaries and all the new Torghast powers was instead concentrated, distilled and built into the specs on a permanent basis as baseline passives and skills as well as gasp new talent rows.

It’s no surprise that base classes feel dull as dishwater, they are just skeletons to bolt all the cool ideas on to. For my part, classes have lost a lot of their grandeur since the rented power philosophy came about. It didn’t feel as bad in Legion because many specs were redesigned with the artifacts in mind and admittedly the artifacts had some great gameplay and great aesthetics (not all but many). Despite that, Blizzard dumpstered it all and just keeps re-inventing the wheel and with each cycle the base classes get more disfigured because in the 2 years the xpack is out, the base classes are tweaked and changed and altered to better fit with the borrowed power system of the xpack and aren’t curated with any care toward gameplay outside that xpack system.

Blizzard is just continuously eating away at the life-blood of an rpg, class gameplay, because they dont want to or are afraid to curate class growth over time. This is a problem, but a developer problem and not a customer/player problem. I think it unwise to solve developer problems at the expense of the players.

Baalsamael-turalyon · April 16, 2020, 2:44pm

I think that’s a big issue.

Blizzard needs to keep the game “feeling new”, and the primary way they’ve done that in the past is substantial or partial class reworks.

Likewise Warlocks, given our low population in general, historically high learning curve, and small representation in high end PVP and PVE, we tend to be the “experimental” class, their petri dish, as every time there’s a class revamp over the decades, they take away our abilities to give to a class with a higher playerbase.

I’d argue given the nature of our class changes over the decades, it’s clear Blizzard keeps shifting the goal posts as to who we even are. They’re not sure what we are partly due to the fact within the Lore, anyone who doesn’t obey the rules becomes a “warlock” in some capacity. Yeah Gul’dan is the prototype per se, but then we have the likes of Cho’gall or Fandral or what have you that the in-game lore claims for Warlocks.

Examples:

Warlock Searing Pain became Fire Mage Scorch
Soul Harvest became Arcane Mage Invocation
Metamorphosis was given by necessity to Demon Hunters after giving us Dark Apotheosis to experiment with
The Malefic Grasp animation was given to Shadow Priests
Our Verdant Spheres were taken away because they wanted to give only Fire Mages that fantasy
Mortal Coil was changed for Death Knight Death Coil
The concept of “permanent big pet” was also given to other classes

The other issue is also that Warlock class fantasy shifts goal posts every other expansion. At the end of Cataclysm/Early MoP, our class fantasy via Legacy of the Masters was solidified as:

Affliction = Twilight/Void magic, both warlocks in the lore representative of the class were considered “insane”
Destruction = combination of void-rooted Chaos magic in the style of Deathwing, and elemental magic in the style of Ragnaros
Demonology = investigation of summoning and enslaving demons and self-empowerment via demonic souls and/or fel magic

Then with Chronicle and late MOP/early Warlords, Shadow (which had historically been both Death and Void rooted) became primarily Void rooted, so Shadow Priests became The Void Spec/Class, Unholy Death Knights leaned into the Death Magic Necromancer identity, and Affliction were “returned” to being about… poisoning/corrupting the enemy? With unspecific Shadow Magic.

Then Destruction lost some of our toolkit and was given mainly to Fire Mage.

Then we lost almost all of our inherent Tankiness (e.g. Fel Armor, Demon Armor, baseline everything regarding movements and shields, the implementation of Healthstone CD even for selfheals, Drain Life self heal, Soul Link, etc) because we were the only caster class with that toolkit.

Then Legion came and Demon Hunters became a class and we lost Metamorphosis and with it a lot of flavor like Demonic Leap and stance-dancing (which DHs dont even have! Their Meta is our WOTLK/Cata Meta, not our MoP/Warlords Meta!), etc, so Demonology was reduced only to “summoner” identity, which in material reality meant we became an Imp Mother with a demonic kennel.

Even within the lore we get the short end. Meryl FELstorm for example is a former human mage that uses shadow magic for self sustainment and to serve (pre-Legion) as a living prison for a Dreadlord! And to whomst did Meryl go? The Mages.

Kael’thas’s verdant spheres were originally in the lore as a blood elf blood mage thing where they used demonic souls for power. Instead they became magical floating arcane keys in Legion via retcon again for Mages.

It’s been a tedious ten years. But I still love the game. I love being a warlock even if Blizzard historically doesn’t manage our class fantasy-class mechanics balance well.

Ergo why I made the thread.

I disagree with Kalamazi’s point at the end of his first alpha feedback video where he said, to paraphrase, that we need to compromise and settle. “Be realistic”.

I personally believe we should give honest feedback as to what is dumb, what is great, what is bad, what is good, and what are ideal solutions. It is not the job of the player giving feedback to compromise. That is the job of the developers, to look at what the community percieves, look at their time and resource constraints, and see what is possible.

Plus all the feedback we’ve given outside of the “fun” section (all of which is unpruning save for the demonic grimoire taming system) keeps the “core mechanics” of each class, like they said they’re happy with.

All of our complaints are regarding intra-rotation interactions and the making of certain Azerite Traits baseline for the sake of spec fluidity. That’s it.

Mope-wyrmrest-accord · April 16, 2020, 4:14pm

The feedback isn’t actionable, and that’s worrisome because it means nothing will happen. Personally I think a lot more would be done by just trying to repeat a couple easy things they might actually do.

Destruction:

Cataclysm baseline
Infernal cooldown of 2 minutes

Affliction:

Find some way for Haunt and UA to be differentiated
Darkglare cooldown 2 minutes
More damage on the dots, longer durations
Pvp penalties for dispelling that actually matter

Demonology

Explosive potential baseline
Felguard stun interrupts unstunnable targets

All specs:

6 second summon demon cast time unacceptable
Tongue tied replaced with the old “eye of kilrog allows you to set your demonic circle” glyph, tongue tied moved to pvp talent
Doom damage increased or effect changed

Kwaai-grobbulus · April 16, 2020, 4:41pm

Pretty much agree with these.

The big things I want are reduced reliance on cooldowns. The UA change is great for making Darkglare less important, but I’d also like to see a nerf to Infernal and DS:I stacking. At the very least I’d like to see GoSup nerfed into oblivion. Chaos Bolt should just hit hard. Not hit like a noodle outside of cooldowns.

Otherwise I’m pretty optimistic. Rapture seems like it has a reasonable chance at making Aff decent in 5 mans, even more so if they do somehow get us to stop massive AoE pulls (not that target caps are the way to go) that everyone pops cooldowns on.

I’m reasonably happy with where Destro looks like it’s going to be. Baseline Cata would be great, because otherwise that row will continue to be dead.

Demo would be fine if they make EP and Baleful Invocation baseline.

Kaldrett-destromath · April 16, 2020, 4:57pm

I agree with this.
I do not agree with this. It just literally doesn’t fit the spec theme. I also do not like Affliction having a CD. Why does it need one? You can say for progression status, but that is not true. Aff had no cd in Legion when 99.9% of the playerbase playing it took the perma pet talent. We did good in, and I mean pre-NH hotfix since our weapon didn’t work properly until the NH hotfix. We were doing good before then , even with a terrible spec that, was supposedly “third worst spec in the game.” It just wasn’t there. Besides, what it doesn’t need is a cooldown, but people want some burst. How do we fix that? Just making Inevitable Demise baseline fixes that issue entirely. Agony or Corruption, doesn’t matter. Probably Agony since you cannot make Agony permanent like you could corruption.
Yes, absolutely agree here. I wanna look at my damage at the end of the fight and have every single DoT I have as an Affliction Warlock be all of the damage abilities, with the exception of a drain being like…right after the DoTs. That’s how it should be, how it should always be.
I agree completely. I think healers being able to dispel multiple DoTs in one gcd means they should be hit for 50% of their max hp, maybe even more plus the 4 seconds of silence if they dispel UA. Aff having rampup is a thing, so killing 50% of their hp or more is a small amount to the “HAHAHA INSTA DISPEL” thing.
I also want Rapture gone or reworked because it just doesn’t fit the theme. I posted all of my changes up there in post like 198 or something like that. They’re good changes that would make the spec more systematically themed and feel better, imo.

Mope-wyrmrest-accord · April 16, 2020, 4:58pm

It doesn’t and I don’t like it but I don’t think we’re getting something new so it might as well be a bit more useful. Just being realistic here.

Cheezedot-zuljin · April 16, 2020, 4:59pm

i would have to disgree with this specific point.

warlocks were taken and are taken for nearly every raid boss this expansion, the only one i can think of you didnt care if one existed was shadhar. destro is a top spec for PVE and is tied for the best spec in the game on nzoth. pretty sure there were multiple warlock games at blizzcon AWC this past year as well.