Some corrections:
120 stam buff. The +20% healthstone talent only applies for the warlock, not for his buddies.
Not while doing all the other crap. While mages/rogues, etc are focusing on damage or healing, warlocks are cursing/CC'ing etc. I've interrupted my own shadowboltsfe drain to refresh curse of shadows or charm. Mages can fire and forget poly most of the time, refreshing twice or three times at most. I refresh an ungodly number of dots, curses, and charms dozens of times during one pull. That takes time away from direct damage.
And detect magic/counterspell. Detect gets useful against casters, far more useful than mages alone have been thinking about. Sure, detect is useless to a mage alone because he can't do anything but see it.. but his party members finally know exactly when to dispel or purge enemy buffs. I encourage my mages to use it more.
In a limited fashion yes, but warlocks pay heavily to do so.
My solution was to make the mage class clearly better at its specialization, AoE damage. The fact that there's reasonable debate on the topic now suggests that it's not clearly better enough.
Asking Warlocks to go destruction spec would be stupid. I myself, and very many other warlocks are a lot happier with other builds. You present a rather niche issue, as non-destruc builds hold equal or greater attraction than destruc spec. . . and there are a LOT more mages than warlocks.
In addition, your aoe speciality arguement is centered around the 'with proper positioning' detail. That's simply not the case. Positioning is a luxury. Savaughn, myself and others have already provided multiple examples where mobility rules, and preperation is not available.
I think you've been spoiled with the lurkers, and playing with not one but two destruction locks on a PvE server.
If you ever saw me play in instances, I'd be all over the place completely ignoring single target, multi and direct aoe dps playing support roles, setting up doom, dots for later, refilling my life and mana bars with life drain/tap, keeping pets alive with health funnel, soul draining (rank 1) enemies about to die, and then finally finishing up bosses or elite enemies. Dps is low priority.
Being a mage who can fire and forget, and move onto dps. You fail to see when a warlock is doing anything "on top of that", the warlock is not doing dps. You don't see the menagerie of necessary micro-management involved in a well played warlock that takes away from damage.
Heck, I was confused at first when I saw a mage counterspell melee enemies, but then realized those melee mobs have silence-able skills too. My spell lock only works if I catch them while casting. Yours doesn't always even require that.
The grass is greener, but you haven't seen our utility bills.
Edit: Oh. One more thing! Shamans replace the need for warlocks with their reincarnate ability. Play some more horde man. The balance is completely different when you don't need a warlock for wipe recovery. Instead of hundreds of dumb pallies with very limited wipe recovery in pickup groups, we have hordes of shamans who can reincarnate at will from any number of death locations.
You may need a warlock far more on alliance for wipe recovery (than a mage), but that demand is marginalized with the presence of shamans on the horde side.
Skandranon,May 6 2005, 10:51 PM Wrote:healthstones which are virtually a 140 point stamina buff to the party[right][snapback]76526[/snapback][/right]
120 stam buff. The +20% healthstone talent only applies for the warlock, not for his buddies.
Quote:better single-target damage
Not while doing all the other crap. While mages/rogues, etc are focusing on damage or healing, warlocks are cursing/CC'ing etc. I've interrupted my own shadowboltsfe drain to refresh curse of shadows or charm. Mages can fire and forget poly most of the time, refreshing twice or three times at most. I refresh an ungodly number of dots, curses, and charms dozens of times during one pull. That takes time away from direct damage.
Quote: and a pick between even more stamina, a beefy offtank, more damage or the power to dispel magic like a priest. Mages can remove curses.
And detect magic/counterspell. Detect gets useful against casters, far more useful than mages alone have been thinking about. Sure, detect is useless to a mage alone because he can't do anything but see it.. but his party members finally know exactly when to dispel or purge enemy buffs. I encourage my mages to use it more.
Quote:The problem is that the Warlock reproduces all three of those capabilities and then adds more on top of it.
In a limited fashion yes, but warlocks pay heavily to do so.
My solution was to make the mage class clearly better at its specialization, AoE damage. The fact that there's reasonable debate on the topic now suggests that it's not clearly better enough.
Quote:However, in the current state, especially in 5-man parties, it's hard to see a particularly compelling reason to fill the slot with a mage if a Destruction spec warlock's around.
Asking Warlocks to go destruction spec would be stupid. I myself, and very many other warlocks are a lot happier with other builds. You present a rather niche issue, as non-destruc builds hold equal or greater attraction than destruc spec. . . and there are a LOT more mages than warlocks.
In addition, your aoe speciality arguement is centered around the 'with proper positioning' detail. That's simply not the case. Positioning is a luxury. Savaughn, myself and others have already provided multiple examples where mobility rules, and preperation is not available.
I think you've been spoiled with the lurkers, and playing with not one but two destruction locks on a PvE server.
If you ever saw me play in instances, I'd be all over the place completely ignoring single target, multi and direct aoe dps playing support roles, setting up doom, dots for later, refilling my life and mana bars with life drain/tap, keeping pets alive with health funnel, soul draining (rank 1) enemies about to die, and then finally finishing up bosses or elite enemies. Dps is low priority.
Being a mage who can fire and forget, and move onto dps. You fail to see when a warlock is doing anything "on top of that", the warlock is not doing dps. You don't see the menagerie of necessary micro-management involved in a well played warlock that takes away from damage.
Heck, I was confused at first when I saw a mage counterspell melee enemies, but then realized those melee mobs have silence-able skills too. My spell lock only works if I catch them while casting. Yours doesn't always even require that.
The grass is greener, but you haven't seen our utility bills.
Edit: Oh. One more thing! Shamans replace the need for warlocks with their reincarnate ability. Play some more horde man. The balance is completely different when you don't need a warlock for wipe recovery. Instead of hundreds of dumb pallies with very limited wipe recovery in pickup groups, we have hordes of shamans who can reincarnate at will from any number of death locations.
You may need a warlock far more on alliance for wipe recovery (than a mage), but that demand is marginalized with the presence of shamans on the horde side.