Rebalance the Warlock

[kandrathe]

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So how would you balance the warlock?
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I'll qualify first by saying my Warlock is only level 40, and my other experience has been by observing others. A long time ago I had reviewed the available talents and had laid out a potential specification for a Destruction based warlock that tried to maximize every possible ounce of damage. But, as Lissa pointed out, with the current way that COE and COS work this would work fantastic for PvP, but potentially deadly for PVE. I'm already finding that in group play I need to dabble in curses and afflictions for awhile until the MOB is in the "locked down" state, then I can pour on the damage. But, my best source of damage is a 3 sec cast shadow bolt, so not really very spammable.

The reason that you hear so much screaming is that PvP people love repeated huge crits of 4800-6000, while PvE folks don't enjoy randomly pulling the Core Hound off the tank and have half a raid wipe due to a series of untimely crits. As I understand it now they are leaving Ruin alone, and are implementing a change to lower bound of resistance. So, as a consequence some things might be harder that relied on -resists to enable/extend things like Fear, Banishes, Infernals, etc. And on the positive, other things, like -FR curses in MC on players causing one Core Hound breath attack wiping half the raid.

The other *nerf* I don't know much about has to do with Soul Link which was instant cast, took 30% of base mana for 30 seconds of 50% damage transfer with your summon. With demonology one could tank with a VW and soul link, once the VW was very low on health you could sacrifice it, and while bubbled summon a new VW, rinse repeat. If managed correctly would be the equivelent of giving the Warlock an effective 12000-15000 HP. They are dropping the shared health from 50% to 30%. The mechanics of soul link as I understand it is that if you had 4000hp and sustained a 1000HP blow currently you would take the full hit, and then be healed for 500HP. So if you were at 800/4000HP and sustained a 1000HP blow you would die. This change seems directly related to how people were using the survivability of Soul Link in PvP play.

To me; it looks like the developers are looking at the extreme aspects that unbalance the Warlock for PVE and PVP, and are bringing them more in line. However, I still think after these latest changes, with increases to DPS on DOT spells that Warlocks will have more available mana with Life Tap, more available HP, more armor, and still provide more DPS than mages, just in a more predictable way while still enjoying the flexibilities of being a pet class.

Anyway, I hope I get a another free respec to play around with Yet Another Warlock Build. :-)