Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Warlock Idea:

I posted this on the forums here.

Demon armor: Now also reduces the duration of physical effects on the caster by 30%.

What does this include? Here's a short list:

Cheap shot
Kidney shot
Intercept stun
Pounce
Bash
Maim
Gouge
Blind
Sap
Deadly throw snare
Hamstring
Wing clip
Mortal Strike
Aimed shot
Garrote (both the silence and the dot)
Rupture
Expose armor
Sunder armor
Piercing howl


I'm not too worried about diseases, dots, and rogue poisons, simply because it's possible to cleanse or remove them in some form or fashion. They have counters. The abilities above, however, do not. Most classes can deal with the abilities listed above for various reasons. Warlocks, on the other hand, seem to be designed around the fact that they are best dealt with by having melee sit on top of them the whole fight.

Making fel armor and demon armor undispelable was a good start, but it might be necessary going forward to give demon armor even more passive defense against effects that they really have no other way of getting rid of.

If you're going to design warlock abilities based on the assumption that they are meant to "tank" melee in pvp, then you will probably find that they will need a buff to core abilities and mechanics to help them fulfill this role. This would also make demonic aegis a lot more attractive.


In addition:

I'd really like to see Demon Armor's armor value scale off of another stat, such as spell power. I.e. static number + 20% of spell power or something along those lines.

I don't think it would be a good idea to scale the armor value off of another defensive stat, such as resilience or stamina. I'd hate to see encouraging locks to be competitive by simply stacking a bunch of defensive stats. It's ultimately less fun in the long run, and fun is what the game is all about.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the consensus is that Warlocks will still "tank" melee, then this will defo help. If Blizz still wants to move away from the whole melee tanking idea then this won'e solve it.

I honestly vote for this idea though, it's simple and wouldn't require too many changes.

I think somewhere around 20% if pets are given real survivability tools, otherwise it should be ~35%.

Sam said...

I think this idea was well received, so long as melee continue to poop all over warlocks at 80.

We'll see what happens.

Anonymous said...

nvm my previous post, I thought it was reducing physdmg, now I read that it's physical duration. Problem is; this won't solve the rogue issue.

Anonymous said...

Ok now I feel like a total retard, probably you meant stuns too. So yeah, 50% would be the el pro!

Sam said...

Correct :)

Anonymous said...

Yes it will solve the rogue issue. Besides stunns, arrote, sunder armor, rupture these are all melee affects.

Anonymous said...

typo: garrote

Anonymous said...

But I guess this won't be something that will happen anytime soon. If it will happen only after an arena season or two @ 80, then this may be too late tbh.

I don't see why they wouldn't implement this with the release of LK along with all the new abilities, I would think that it's too obvious that the Warlock class is still very vulnerable to melee.

Anonymous said...

If bleeds and all melee slowing effects (except for crippling poison) count as physical effects than yes! It will defenetly help , together with the demonic cirle a skilled warlock just might become a logistic nightmare for any melee class :)

50% might be too much if you count in all the stuns , but 30% sounds fair .

By the way , is there any cooldown on the demonic circle ? Both creating it and the teleport component .

-- Sithril

Alexander Rinn said...

I think with the removal of aggro management in pvp, soul shatter could be retuned. Example:

Soul Shatter
20% base mana, 1minute cooldown. Removes all physical effects from the caster, and makes all physical attacks or abilities against the caster have a 90% chance to miss for the next 5 seconds.

Essentially, a melee version of CloS. 1000 mana keeps it relatively expensive, so it's not just a free use every minute, but no soul shard cost so it's not crippling in arenas when you're using it all the time.

Also, adding in the ability to remove all stuns, snares, and movement impairing effects on the warlock when teleporting to your circle would make the ability much more useful.

Also, I think shadowflame being a damage spell is still a bad idea. 20 yard range, cone knockback with a 6 second daze. To keep the synergy with conflag, the daze could even be a magical effect that counts as an immolate debuff.

i'd still like to see stuns break on damage equivilent to fear's %, and suffer from diminishing returns. I think that's too much to hope for though.

Unknown said...

Would be great to receive a melee version of Mage Armor, especially since when Mages start crying, we can pull the "lol only afffects 3 or 4 competitive classes" card.

Unfortunately I'm at the point where I've stopped wishing for things but instead looking at what the hell I'm going to do when WotLK comes out. There's already a masochist in my circle of friends who wants to go Warlock, so I guess I won't be leveling mine to 80 first.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good idea to me, although 50% sounds a bit strong, I think something closer to 30% would be ideal.

Anonymous said...

Hey jayde! 3 days!

Sek said...

The only conflict I see with reducing stun durations by 50% is stacking with Hardiness. Other then that, I'd be psyched if Demon Armor was supplemented with this.

Anonymous said...

I like it, very good way to avoid the rogue locking of doom. I'd probably make it a talent instead of base though, its not really needed by everyone just those who want to pvp.

P.S : I'd stab a baby for an unholy pvp video, or any video really. The beta forums are nice but actually seeing DKs in action is always a treat.

Love the blog btw (even if you are slacking these days :D)

Anonymous said...

The Stun duration affects are multiplicative. So Hardiness doesn't add onto other stun reduction effects, so for example...

1x0.3 = 0.3 (from talents)
and then Hardiness works out like...
0.3x0.15 = 0.045

0.3 + 0.045 = 0.345

So basically Hardiness with 30% stun reduction from talents (e.g. Orc Warrior) will have a total of 34.5% time reduction on stuns.

So no, Stun reduction mechanics aren't really very stackable.

And yes, the Orc racial does now suck, only really is effective for a class like Warlock that doesn't have Stun reduction talents.

Anonymous said...

I am glad you also post about Warlocks once in a while :)

Well, melee will still be a huge problem and this change to demon armor would help, but not solve so many issues they have right now.
Personally i love playing as destruction in pvp, because that tree was the reason i leveld my toon in vanilla (and SL/SL was the reason i almost quit him in TBC).

Blizzard is speaking about making all specs viable in arena: but why is there still no dispell protection in the destruction tree when alot of other talents are focused around one easily dispelled spell: Immolate.
What good does "backdraft" and "fire and brimstone" do when this spell won't last for half of it's duration.
Hopefully, if we finally get a dispellprotection it won't just be lousy 30% to resist, because applied to one spell it wouldn't solve anything.
Instead i'd love to see some variaton of the unstable affliction effect so it would give us a passive dispell protection to other spells too.

Overall there are alot of things i still don't like about the destro tree.
Shadowburns shoulshard requirement is one thing i really hate about that spell because i almost use it every time when i need a burst or a melee is beating on me and i desperately need to get a spell off.
Since blizz won't remove the SS requirement they should atleast decrease it's mana cost to make up for the additional ressource.

Also i'd love to see aftermath proccing when the warlock gets hit.
I know some of you might not even know this talent but there were times where it really allowed me to get away from a melee :)

And to adress the manaproblems i have in arenas i'd love to see backlash acting as a pvp clearcast - therefore it should also reduce the manacost of the sb/incinerate cast while the effect is active.

However chances are high i'll simply reroll a DK because I want to enjoy Wrath as much as possible ... and atm i don't think i'd be able to enjoy this game as a warlock (i know QQ but thats the way i feel right now).

Draele said...

I think it most certainly would help, although I'm less worried about melee now than I am Mages for one reason alone: Mage Armor. This single ability has turned Mages from being moderately countered by Warlocks, to completely raping Affliction due to the -50% magical debuff duration. Much of the Affliction tree flies out the window as half of our DoTs/debuffs aren't even worth casting. UA ticks *twice*. Drain Life ticks twice. Haunt lasts only 6 seconds (maybe worth it for the meager heal, but for the DoT boost? meh) The only thing that's really worth it will be Siphon Life and maybe Corruption, and they will take a huge hit from Dampen Magic even.

I'm highly looking foward to seeing Mage Armor either reduces drastically in effect, or changed to something like -10% magic damage recieved which is less focused and downright crippling to Afflocks/Shadowpriests...

Anonymous said...

I'm sure the devs probably read your blog already, but it might not be a bad idea to throw this up on the forums. This is a superb idea and adds enough value to Demon Armor that I may actually use it beyond the first season at 80.

Sam said...

That won't really be necessary. :)

Anonymous said...

How are locks doing versus other casters and hunters at 80?

Anonymous said...

alexander mentioned daze on shadowflame...

it would be cool if, say, they changed aftermath to give you up to 100% chance to proc daze but only with, let's say shadowflame and chaos bolt.
then they changed pyroclasm to, aside from it's original function, automatically proc if a daze effect is on the target.

you'd be able to use immo->chaos bolt->conflag and still have time to cast another 1.5 or alternatively, if you're in melee range, you can shadowflame+conflag to either port or run (assuming you're not snared in some way)

Anonymous said...

just to append, the pyroclasm auto-proc would only be from your own dazes, not, say warrior's piercing howl.

Anonymous said...

i've had the idea that "banish" should actually banish you somewhere in pvp. not out of the physical realm as it does currently in pve and pvp, but rather it slings you off somewhere.

not just a knock back but the ultimate anti death grip if you will. not sure how the targeting would work but i think it's something that would add a new element to the constant stream of fear spaming and drain tanking that is warlock pvp.

my two coppaz

Anonymous said...

Reducing the duration of Deep Wounds as well would be awesome, now that I think about it.

Anonymous said...

Hello Jayde,
I have been reading your blog and the beta forums religiously for months and I finally had a chance to try out the DK's the other day on a friends account. There are a few awesome small tweaks that I think would really complete the frost tree, and I wanted to know your thoughts and if you would post them.

1. Tundra stalker, drop IT from it and add Frost Strike, the goal here is to make FS good enough that you will always want to use it when you can instead of constantly popping rune abilities. This will make the frost tree unique by making it the RP tree, fun and different.

2. Buff HB's base dmg so that on a mob with 2 diseases, HB would do more than Oblit on a non crit. Why you ask would anyone want to do that? HB then really feels worth the 2 runes and would be great for tanking as well as increasing frost tanking's dps some. If your thinking well if they did that no frost spec DK would ever use Oblit, the difference is that Oblit has a ton of talents that increase it's chance to crit, so on a single target oblit would win out in the end.

With those 2 changes I think the Frost tree would be complete and very viable. If you like them feel free to pass it onto the beta forums, i would do it myself but i can't post >.<

Discounting some of the issue's of frost immune bosses and mitigation.

Anonymous said...

Making Tundra Stalker affect HB, Oblit, and FS that is. Yes i know the tooltip isn't updated i meant in addition to HB and Oblit have it affect FS instead of IT.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand how Blizz is so out of touch with their own game. GC said when asked about warlocks that they gave locks new ways to bring/summon their pets out when needed. Fel dom is about the only thing that does that, and it's been there since WoW vanilla.

Anonymous said...

Mani, chances are the dev team is out of touch with what is on live or the PTR in many cases. Ghostcrawler and Tigole have said as much themselves. The internal build is different then what is currently available for players, and the devs sometimes forget which build has gone to the PTR.