Our current defense design feels odd when compared to most defenses in the game.
Our Defenses
Dark Pact
This only works well if used BEFORE damage happens. This is fine before a fight starts, however once your health is below 100%, your defensive cooldown becomes weaker, and continues to grow weaker the closer you get to death.
Even in PvE if you’re in a boss fight and get low, you can’t even pop this to save yourself because it won’t do anything at low health. Now yes, most PvE damage is predictable, but there are instances where you can be damaged unexpectedly, and this defense is rendered near useless.
Unending Resolve
Resolve for some reason has a 3 min CD. This desyncs it from most dps/burst cd cycles. In PvP your enemy WILL catch you without wall if their cds are 2 minutes. You will end up in a situation where you don’t have wall, and possibly not even Dark Pact because again, it scales with health percentage and is not a static value defensive.
Healthstone
Demonic Healthstone is just about our only decent reliable cd, with one major exception. It only restores 35% health unless you use a soul shard to boost its healing.
This isn’t a huge problem but it does leave the CD in a similar situation to Dark Pact. You may be caught in moments where you don’t have a soul shard (such as right after a burn cycle) and your defense is essentially ~45% less effective.
Another issue with Healthstone is it has charges. It has finite uses. In long fights (both PvE and PvP) you can actually run out of charges on one of your strongest defenses. This leaves you in a spot where you have to stop and conjure another stone. If this happens in PvP, no enemy with any awareness will let you conjure another one.
Possible Solutions
Unending Resolve
I think Unending Resolve needs to be uncoupled from interrupt immunity. This would allow it to have a 2 min CD without feeling overpowered. (Although even 2 min with immunity isn’t that bad when you consider evokers having immunity as often as they do.)
Perhaps bring back Casting Circle as a separate ability. This would add more depth and allow you to pick and choose which utility you need (Damage Reduction or Interrupt protection) rather than being forced into using both in order to get one.
Healthstone
For Healthstone I would suggest making Demonic Healthstone permanent. Maybe something like:
Demonic Bloodstone
Conjure a Demonic Blood stone with the life force of a demon trapped inside. You may periodically siphon power from the stone to heal for X, however the stone will be drained of energy after use and must recharge over 60 seconds. Once every 2-3 minutes the Bloodstone will become overcharged with demonic life force and heal as if a soul shard were used.
Obviously this would be for the warlock only and allies would still have regular health stones.
Dark Pact
Perhaps change Ichor of Devils to something like:
Ichor of Devils
Dark Pact sacrifices only 5% of your current health for the same shield value. In addition, your Dark Pact always provides a shield as if you were at least at 80% health. If you are at a higher percentage when Dark Pact is cast, the shield will be greater.
This would let use choose a shield with a shorter cooldown, or a shield that is stronger on average. This could also be a PvP talent, although we’re kind of limited on those.
Conclusion
Overall warlock defenses are odd, and seem to be outliers in their design. It puts warlocks in a position where the best way to counter our defenses is to just keep dpsing us. Just tunnel vision and smash buttons harder.
Eventually the warlock will use wall guaranteeing you will catch them without it next dps cycle.
They will eventually run out of Healthstone charges, leaving them without a heal.
And Dark Pact will lose value the more and more you damage them, so keep tunneling.
I don’t know why our defenses are designed this way. They fit the theme of warlock I will admit, preparing a Healthstone before a battle and sacrificing health for a shield. However the implementation doesn’t work as well as other defenses. I don’t know of another spec that can “run out” of their big defensive heals.
Anyway those are my suggestions
Happy soul harvesting my fellow warlocks