In which Ghostcrawler is responded to

This is just a collection of responses to blue posts, pretty much all by Ghostcrawler, on warlock damage (specifically demonology, and yes, this is leading into a shared topic post about my new spec). I don’t want this to be interpreted as QQ, but I can’t help but feel that some of what is said and what is done – or maybe what is intended and what actually happens – has a fundamental disconnect that leaves me tentative about continuing to play my warlock. Anyway, on we go.

We compared this talent to other talents, such as Bestial Wrath which is not on the GCD, and decided to remove Demonic Empowerment from the GCD. The potential damage loss should no longer be an issue. (Source)

This is good. As I stated in BA Chat, I am pleased that I will no longer have to blow a GCD to get the BRFG. I really do notice a fairly significant boost in his DPS when it’s used, and it’s fairly necessary for me because in a raid situation (which, let’s be honest, is probably 60%-70% of my play these days) most of his fun abilities are off – Intercept messes with positioning, Cleave can break CC, and I sure don’t want him Anguish-taunting off the tank. So anything that ups his white damage (orange damage?) is good for me.

Glyph of Souls – Could you explain the reasoning for changing to this to -70% mana cost. I dont like using hyperbole, but I can’t think of any circumstance where this would be beneficial or useful. Unless you are changing Ritual of Souls?
We felt like it was a band-aid to the actual problem, which is that shards have changed from something to power certain powerful warlock spells to a generic resource. Rather than give you a couple of places here and there to opt out of them, we’d prefer to change the whole system. Bigger changes unfortunately take more time, but it’s something we are talking about right now. (Source)

This is a change I’m still smarting over. I’m just glad it happened before I bought one. As it stands, I’m popping Ritual of Souls probably every other fight, if not every fight. To use Ghostcrawler’s own analogy: if your choice was to put a band-aid on a wound, or to let it bleed copiously until you could get to the hospital two towns over, would you take the bleeding over the band-aid?

We have finished a fairly comprehensive look at the dps of various classes and specs and are concerned that warlock dps isn’t quite where it should be. It’s not abysmal by any means, but we think it should be a little higher.

To give warlocks a little extra nudge in PvP, we increased Soul Link up to 20% from 15%. You may already have this change.

In PvE, overall, we just think a lot of classes benefitted from getting the warlock buffs a little more than the locks benefited from getting everyone else’s buffs. So we decided to just buff lock damage across the board (which will also help in PvP somewhat). Rather than change damage and coefficients of a lot of different ranks of spells, we just inflated talents that we were almost certain you’d already have. Shadow Mastery, Demonic Tactics and Emberstorm were all increased by 1% per rank for 5% total.

Let us know how that feels. The changes should go live before Nov 13. (Source)

I’m not sure if anyone at Blizzard is aware of this, but Soul Link doesn’t do anything in PvP because your demon is going to be dead before you unless it’s an imp, and you probably don’t want the imp sucking down damage. I also wish it was a passive buff, even if doing so made it less powerful, because frankly I keep forgetting to cast it — but that’s just me. I am rather pleased with the boost to Demonic Tactics – I’m seeing a pretty large amount of crit right off the bat, and if I’m reading GC correctly, then that’ll be going up to 10% at rank 5. An extra 5% on top of what I already have is going to be some ludicrous damage… I hope.

Last but not least is the one post I really have a problem with. Let’s have at it, shall we?

Warlock single-target dps should be competitive with mages, hunters and rouges. We try not to balance classes around their AE ability since that is situational (but often very useful).

In our internal tests, warlocks are close to mages and below hunters, which as I’ve already suggested (or was that in another thread?) is a problem. I often regret posting what we’re seeing at the moment, because it just leads to other questions. I offer it only to say that we do not reach the conclusion that warlock dps is sub-par. Hunters may be OP however.

Affliction and Destro are pretty close. Affliction probably continues to be a trickier rotation to pull off, even with the recent (and previously announced) change to Haunt. We’re not convinced yet that Affliction is the black diamond slope for experts only, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

Demonology may be lower, but we’re also not sure it would be fair for Demo to get the extra survivability and do the same dps. However, we do think it is much less the case now that Demo = PvP only and Destro = PvE only. (Source)

This is where what I was saying about the disconnect between what Blizzard says, and what Blizzard does, comes into play. I do agree with most of this – I played deep affliction for a week and it is a lot more complex now, especially with spells refreshing spells, new spells to cast, and the spell refresh mechanism actually preventing you from overwriting your own DOTs. No more one-button castsequence macro for afflocks!

Their tests also match what I was seeing in ZA and Kara; however, what’s not stated is the degree to which we’re close to mages or behind hunters. I am regularly within 100 dps of a mage, usually coming in just above or below them on damage by a matter of a few thousand. However, hunters – and I’m talking comparatively geared hunters, of any spec (in this case BM and Survival), not uber-geared hunters – are coming in 600-800 dps above the nearest competitor. This seems just a touch excessive. “May be OP?” Hah.

I am not, however, seeing this extra survivability in Demonology that GC is. Soul Link now requires an 11-point investment – a talent I seem to recall Blizzard pushing to an earlier tier in the tree so that more specs could take it, then nerfing it as a result. Demonic Embrace? Fel Vitality? Those’re even earlier than Soul Link (tiers 1 and 2, respectively). The only other ’survivability’ talents then come at tier 6 (Demonic Resilience), 7 (Fel Synergy), and 11 (Metamorphosis – more on this later).

We don’t have any notable survivability tools that merit the lower damage rate of speccing Demonology. Therefore, this is my primary bone of contention. Almost no one is playing Demonology because it’s “survivable.” In fact, I wouldn’t hesitate a bit to say Affliction is more survivable because of the sheer number of ways to get life back from that tree – I remember ending every fight (not just trash, not just solo – everything… trash, bosses, instance fights, you name it) with full health and full mana because while I was doing damage, I was constantly topping myself off. As Demonology, I have to lifetap a lot more, because the viable methods of getting health or mana back are all in other trees.

I would wager that most people are playing Demonology because it, like Affliction, is a unique and fun tree that gives the class its own flavor. I’m glad my guild is permissive with allowing people to try out new specs, etc., because otherwise I’m sure I’d be stuck in Affliction or Destruction instead of playing my one true love. And, granted, I’m not exactly doing disappointing (to me) damage, but then again, I don’t know what kind of damage I should be doing, either.

Apparently, neither does Blizzard.