Fixing warlock raid dps. (on extended boss fights)

[ZProtoss]

It's really as simple as one change:

Remove the global cooldown on lifetap
Add a 3 second reuse cooldown to compensate.

Why? Because on fights where you have extended periods of focusing on one mob, the amount of dps time lost to life tap's global cooldown is immense. This change would actually make locks competitive again on most of the fight the game is introducing now.

ps: a good measure of the effectiveness of a change like this, would be comparing mage/lock dps on patchwerk vs grob. good mages should oblierate a warlock on dps on patch, wheras since grob has built in moving time where you have to stop dps (life tap time), the damage output is far more competitive.

[dak]

I endorse this idea. But make it six seconds instead of three so it wont be up every time you shadowbolt.

Then make Dark Pact a trainable talent since lifetap will blow it away now. Then add a final tier 1 point value affliction talent that reduces the recast on your lifetap by one second and decreases your hate by 1/3 the amount of life drained by your lifetap (Rank 6 Lifetap would be 140 hate reduction).

thx. chop chop

[Quineloe]

what what what?

Can we have some type of superdot as a 31 talent instead of this bullshit? you know, something not 50% of a shadowpriests SWP ?

[Chips]

I was messing around on my hunter twink today in ashenvale and killing some ancient withered guys near felwood zone for a quest when one of them cursed my pet with a spell called "curse of thorns" which was a 50% chance to apply a dmg of 35-59 dmg per hit to my pet. This spell tore my pet up.

It made me sad to think that they have a lot of cool spells and curses in the game already and for the curse talent tree for warlocks, they get dark pact as the 31 point talent which has nothing to do with curses(it should be in the pet tree) and it is completly worthless to drain 250 mana every 1.5 seconds from your pet when you can just spec demonic sacrfice and sacrfice a felhunter for much better results and you dont even have to click a button 500 times and lose casting time.

Warlocks got a horrible class review. Some warlocks in my guild say they didnt even recieve a proper review but more of a glance over to fix a useless talent tree.

[dak]

Can we have some type of superdot as a 31 talent instead of this bullshit? you know, something not 50% of a shadowpriests SWP ?

A better DoT should be lower in the affliction tree if they did decide to add one. You don't want people having to give up DS or Ruin for it. Then you would have two 31 point dps talents that jew utility.

[Quineloe]

Uhm yes, you should have to decide between a 31 talent in 1 tree or a 21 talent in another
That's the whole point of talents, making choices

besides what would you need ruin for when you can keep DoTs running?

[dak]

Yeah, you are right. I'm pretty high. It's just I'm such a DS fiend, I can't stick with a build without it. And without threat reduction from another tree in a upcoming warlock review the same goes for MD.

Would hafta be a pretty nice DoT though.

But I must admit, I don't think Blizzard likes the idea of being able to dot up anything other then a warrior running by mounted and killing them

[Kirun]

Fuck lifetap. I'm tired of having to be maintenance for all the healers. I want to be able to use the other half of my class. You know the one, the one where I'm not just a mage with shadow damage? Warlock DPS would be fine if our DoTs didn't fall off in 0.2 seconds.

[Quineloe]

How about 120 dmg per 2 seconds for 10 seconds at 60, +20% from spell dmg per tick

[Dyscord]

Wtf, I like warlocks tapping. 1.5 seconds for a 2k rejuv that I KNOW I'll get full healing credit for. Drives my numbers up.

Personally though I'd rather them look at the mana efficency numbers on nukes. Mages shouldn't be the only ones who can nuke reliably.

Shamans, warlocks, and druids all need the mana cost on their nukes knocked down. They're waaaaay to expensive mana wise. Shamans in particular since they're supposed to be the 'offensive' hybrid.

[Cybsled]

Extended boss fights arent so much the issue. It's the "OMFG BURN! BURN YOU FUCKERS!!!" boss fights where our dps takes a dump. Your typical raid warlock will be almost completely OOM within 50seconds or less on a mob like Patchwerk.

Your solution works well for shadowbolts, but it would cripple us in other areas, such as fights where we have to AE and are likely to eat some interupts. It takes roughly 3 lifetaps to get enough mana back to replenish what is spent for a hellfire or rof. It would also cripple us in fights where mobs manaburn frequently, since it would be hard for us to generate enough buffer mana to allow us to nuke.

In essence, it would fix shadowbolt nuke spam, but it would be a hard nerf to our other requirements for the spell.

Blizzard just needs to make the spell scale with improvements in gear and the current form of fights today. They either need to make some raider versions of the spell, take another look at our mana efficiency (Shadowbolt and Immolate takes close to 400 mana a cast...lifetap without talent only gives back 420 mana or so)., or review the global on it. I honestly never saw the big balance issue with cooldownless lifetap...they had it in early beta. If anything, it's riskier. With slow lifetap, you can be healed easily. If you spam it too much, you might not get a heal in time and end up dying. Sounds like a fair tradeoff to me.

[Dyscord]

they won't remove the global cooldown on anything instant thats spamable. They won't even take it off of buffs (which is really fucking annoying when you're casting single target buffs). They're to afraid one day it will be 'sploitable in some way.

[Quineloe]

then make it 0.5 seconds global CD

[Tuco]

I would really like to see the warlock use more of an EQ necromancer style approach to dps. IE: dots.

They need to make it so that players can debuff mobs without concern of it getting knocked off. I have a feeling it will be fixed in TBC, but I have no indiciation of that.

[Dyscord]

heres some nukes for comparison purposes.

name                 dmg          avg dmg    mana    dmg/mana
Frostbolt 11    515-555         535       290       1.844
Fireball 11     596-760+76      754       410       1.839
Starfire 7      496-584         540       340       1.588
Shadowbolt 10   482-538         510       380        1.342
Lightningbolt10 419-467         443       265         1.671

Mages of course, are the best mana to damage ratio. Every point of mana becomse 1.84 damage, not including +dmg gear. Warlocks on the other hand, obviously have the worst ratio by FAR.

edit: thank you!