Scoop! Leaked notes at least partially accurate!

[bonemage]

I've heard mixed reports of this.  Can someone say definatively yes or no whether it already had diminishing returns?  The only experience I've had with Seduce has been with Tahapenes, and it wasn't enough to say either way as I wasn't controlling the 'lock.  I can say that whenever we needed it, it was there.
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Right now it doesn't have diminishing returns in my experience. vor_lord might remember all the time spent oggling the succubus in our duels to confirm this. It is a skill that can be counted on. The idea of repeatedly nerfing fear and seduce is so warlocks can't solo elites as easily as they could earlier by fear kiting/seducing. I would rather have a cooldown of a few seconds rather than the diminishing returns/mana increase nerfs they have received. At least then you can count on the skills when you can cast them. The side effect of these nerfs are felt most in PvP.

My best summary of warlock's complaints:

We do far less damage than mages so we can't out DPS opponents as they can. We can't heal ourselves as priests can but take as much damage as non-shadow speced priests do, so we can't outlast them. A majority of our spells are channeled or have casting times, making them difficult to use in heavy combat, and the instant cast DoTs are useless in 1v1 and are easily dispelled. What IS good for a warlock is shadowburn (takes 11 talents, but most builds include this) and deathcoil. Shadowburn requires a soul shard (one of the reasons that this issue is such a hot topic) and has a 15 second cooldown. Best skill in PvP, but it requires your entire inventory to use in PvP. Deathcoil is a super awesome spell, but with a 10 min cooldown, very limited in PvP. A cooldown is needed for a spell this powerful, but perhaps a shorter cooldown so you can use it in every fight would help. More than once in a fight is way overpowered. The shard issue is the biggest for raids and PvP.

Pets offer some help, but in PvP the pet required is usually not out. A voidwalker to sacrifice for going up vs. rogues and warriors, a felhunter when going against other casters. If seduce is nerfed, then those are your two options. Righ now seduce helps quite a bit as all players are humanoid. However, undead's WotF will now break that as well even when not triggered prior to seducing The imp, a popular pet will increase your dps some, and allow you to take a hit or two more with the added stamina buff, but isn't too much help.

What we did have the helped us was fear and seduce. Those have been nerfed with each patch since retail if memory serves. Now we are looking at another nerf if these leaked notes are real (and the evidence seems to indicate that they are).

Summary: we take more damage and do less damage than most classes as a general rule, with ever decreasing ways to address that fact.

A warlock is a capable dueler in my limited experience, but dueling is NOT PvP. I did a little dueling in Tanaris (I'm on a PvE server) and did well in 3 duels, ran out of shards and stopped dueling I lost to a mage on our second duel, mistakenly thinking that seduce would be useful (lesson learned, blink breaks it). Sacrificing the voidwalker worked much better. I squeaked out victories on my other duels, using my healthstones and sacrificing my voidwalker in all victories. The rogue I fought never knocked me down, and AutoPotion drank a pot (I don't duel much so I didn't think to turn it off) and that was part of why I won. I also used deathcoil in that fight. I burned over a bag (14) of soul shards and then some in those 3 duels, and that is why I think comparisons of a hunter's ammo usage to a warlocks shard usage as laughable when fighting other players. There are some comparisions for PvE, but PvE is not why the warlocks are complaining. This is probably the biggest complaint of any. Just allowing shards in PvP for honorable kills in insufficient IMO, as drain soul in a PvP setting is suicide. A channeled, low damage DoT in PvP? Joke. Shards in PvP will only slightly slow the rapid burning of shards as killing with shadowburn won't COST you a shard, but you won't get any either.

In PvE, the warlock is a fine choice, a solid soloer, and a blast to play. I can pull out victories with unexpected adds that no non-healing class could win in. High end pets are useless toys. The very high risk comes with rewards marginally better than a regular pet, for a few minutes at most. This is another huge complaint. The high end pets with all the danger are used for entertainment, as they aren't good for much else. However, in PvE solo scenarios, the warlock is very strong, and that is part of why Blizzard keeps nerfing them. The nerfs to PvE haven't broken PvE, we can still do that well enough, but have really hurt PvP.

A final complaint, is that the warlock CM (Eyonix) doesn't play a warlock much, doesn't understand what's broken (or hasn't acknowledge it) and doesn't bring much info to the table. He's likely overworked with other duties and as a non-warlock, doesn't get it. As patches come and go, we don't see improvement with patches, only more nerfs. That is why the warlock forums are so negative. That is why I choose to avoid them so much (read a lot yesterday). As a PvE warlock, I can ignore most of these issues and go have a lot of fun with my warlock. But PvP warlocks can't ignore these issues. They are faced with them every day, and the fact that each patch has meant more nerfs for them, and proven they haven't been heard. The fact that the warrior CM, Kalgan, makes a HUGE post with lots of information and explanation puts salt in the warlock's wounds as it's clear he has heard and understands the warrior's complaints and the warrior class. The warlocks don't feel they have been heard or understood.

There is a lot of venom in there. A lot of it is pointless moaning, but there are good posts with evidence, comparisions, examples, and well though out possible solutions. The other 90% of it are "Why does Blizz hate us?" and "STFU, you must not know how to play" posts.

This turned into a much longer post than I originally wanted, but it has turned into my best summary of what I can glean that is wrong with warlocks. Hopefully its a useful summary for some. The shard issue in PvP is a LONG standing issue, it likely goes back to Closed Beta. High end pets are in the same class.

(Things that are broken aren't being fixed) + (What we have in PvP is being taken away) = VERY ANGRY WARLOCKS

Edit: Changed appropriate poster in my link, Tyren posted, but the content was from Kalgan.