I fail to understand this. There are multiple talents on at least two of the three Warlock specs that are either not working or bugged in some way. The one that drives me nuts is Doom and its other associated talents. How do you mess this up? It was last tier’s set bonus and worked perfectly fine then, but now it just doesn’t? Doom only applies if you have 2 or more stacks of Demonic Core and even then, sometimes doesn’t.
Rain of Fire does more single target damage than Chaos Bolt… That alone is a goof of insane proportions. How did that even get through testing? But some Destruction talents are also not working properly, some giving the full 2-point value before the pre-patch changes that made them 1-point talents.
Uneless of course the test feedback was warped by the fact that most of the the people who were unwilling to admit the the game was anything other than perfect got in. In other words, limiting test spots to those who paid for the most expensive edition of the pre-order does NOT make for good feedback and bug testing. It does, however, make it easier for the devs to pat themselves on the back and say they did a good job when in reality, there are major issues to address.
I can’t say for sure how bad Affliction is, I refuse to play it until Malefic Rapture is removed and Malefic Grasp makes a return. Which will never happen. But I know for a fact that Destruction and Demonology are both bugged and poorly balanced. I have made at least two bug reports about warlocks since the Pre-patch went live and have yet to see Blizzard so much as acknowledge that Warlock isn’t working properly.
I can’t even run the talent build I want to because the Doom talents are just not working. I was so hyped to see Doom coming back in the state it’s supposed to be in, but now I have to wonder if my class will even work when the expansion goes live.
I wouldn’t mind it as much if Blizzard would at least acknowledge the fact that it isn’t working properly and that it’s being worked on. But it’s like they don’t even want to admit they messed something up. Well, I the player can see that they did. And the situational context leads me to believe they are in no rush to fix what they broke, that they shouldn’t have broken.
I fully realize that servers are now going down for extended maintenance. If they fix some of the issues with Warlocks, I’ll happily put my foot in my mouth and take down this post. But realistically, this issue shouldn’t exist. We have test phases and test servers specifically to prevent things like this. It’s not supposed to be “buggy early access”, it’s supposed to be testing and troubleshooting and fixing bugs.
Also, while I’m at it, why does Demonbolt not benefit from the Codex of Xerrath passive? It’s supposed to turn your Warlock Fire spells into Fel fire, but Demonbolt doesn’t get that, even though Demonbolt clearly has some fire in its particle effects… Kinda sucks that I used to be able to enjoy the fruits of doing that quest chain in both specs, but now only Destruction gets it.