Official World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King Thread

Yoshiyuki Blade · Nov 22, 2008

Superfly3176 said:
I played a shadowpriest in arena and I can tell you it's far far worse then a mage ever will be. You run OOM the fastest out of any class (if you aren't chain stunned). Psychic Scream was (and probably still is) dreadful. Silence has a 45 second CD and costs 3 talent points to get to.

Shadowpriests had no escapability in pvp, or next to none. Melee does scale to hard in this game I agree. However, to say that a mage has it bad shadowpriest was far far worse.

In PvE (I did up to Brutallus), my mana drained the fastest of any caster. I did the least amount of damage and 5k SW's tend to hurt really bad in some fights.

Oh ya, certainly. Spriests had it bad for PvP. I recall a someone from Blizz implying it. Something like "we'll make general pvp somewhat enjoyable for all specs, including prot specs and shadow priests" By enjoyable, I don't mean serious, arena-competition-worthy. Just something that's not literally useless. Comparing Spriest pvp is like comparing a pre-3.0.2 arcane mage in pvp.

Daggah · Nov 22, 2008

xSnowmaNx said:
1. Mages are the only class (I believe this is the case today) that have a HARD limit.
2. Mages have far too inadequate sources of MOBILE burst.
3. Mage mana regen is pitiful, despite what other people may claim.
4. Mages don't scale well (This isn't a mage exclusive problem.)

#1 and #3 - have you ever, even once, considered the possibility that this is INTENDED? The mage archetype is that of a glass cannon. You're not supposed to be able to survive for long once your resources run out. The mage is not an endurance fighting class.

#2 - compared to who? Elemental shamans? No. Moonkin druids? No. Warlocks? No. Shockadins? No. Shadow priests? No. Any other class of priest? No. You're better in this regard than any other caster class/spec in the game.

#4 - at least mages scale with haste. But yeah, melee (except for shamans) does scale ridiculously well. You think it's bad now, wait until 80 arena when death knights start lolgripping you around when your blink is already on cooldown.

next-Jin · Nov 22, 2008

Yoshiyuki Blade said:
Oh ya, certainly. Spriests had it bad for PvP. I recall a someone from Blizz implying it. Something like "we'll make general pvp somewhat enjoyable for all specs, including prot specs and shadow priests" By enjoyable, I don't mean serious, arena-competition-worthy. Just something that's not literally useless. Comparing Spriest pvp is like comparing a pre-3.0.2 arcane mage in pvp.

Cant vouch for Arena's as Prot has only been viable since 3.02. A Prot warrior with a mix of SBV and DPS gear will crush any class including Ret Paladins. You will just hardly ever see it because its hard as hell to play, no one wants to gem dps stats in thier prot gear, and everyone laughs as Prot in PvP.

Imagine for a second.

18,000 Armor
13.5k Health
2200 Attack Power
Conc Blow (stun), Shockwave (stun), Revenge (possible stun). Sunder Armor (-2500 Armor), Hamstring, Shied Bash (6 sec Silence), Disarm (10% more dmg), Charging in Combat (12 secs), and Spell Reflect (12 secs)

And finally our version of Execute being Shield Slam

/cast Shield Block
/use Gnomergan Auto-Blocker 6000
/cast Shield Slam

I have shield slammed a hunter in full S2/S3 for 7k, sundererd x5, disarmed, maco'ed, dead hunter. Took about 10 seconds. I have one shot non PvP geared 70's on the Isle before with a Shield Slam that crit. 1000 SBV base with the trinket will do that

And thats a 70, I swear to god after seeing what talents we could work with at 80 and the gear thats possible I'd say 2 Prot Warriors Geared right could break 2's. They would lose to 2 Affliction locks though. Death Knights also could pose a problem I really have no idea right now.

1 vs 1
Rogues = lmao
Warriors = lulz
Mages = You better be good and time spell reflect for something other than Ice Lance
Druids = Go Go bear form lol
Priests = Long ass win
Shamans = win
Warlocks = win (unless they are speced Demo)
Hunters = THAT PET GIVES ME RAGE SON (win)
Paladin = Win (unless they blow every cooldown they have, and your Shield Wall is down)

BTW I did this leading up to the expansion and it's basically god mode. The problem is to do it right you have to raid and raid the latest in endgame, to do that you need the best gems, so it would cost upwards of 2500g a week to keep regeming.

xSnowmaNx · Nov 22, 2008

Daggah said:
#1 and #3 - have you ever, even once, considered the possibility that this is INTENDED? The mage archetype is that of a glass cannon. You're not supposed to be able to survive for long once your resources run out. The mage is not an endurance fighting class.

I would like to point out this out first before continuing: Mages are the only class that can readily run out of resources in the game today. Why? Because of this silly notion of the "mage archetype"? I'm sorry, but regardless of whether or not it is intended, it is just outrageous. If what you're saying is true, then we should be doing MORE burst than anyone else to compensate for it. The problem is, the burst we do now isn't enough to make up for it (and giving more burst to mages is NOT the right answer. You'd simply destroy what balance

exists in the game). This is the entire reason why WLD is such a hard counter to RMP. No matter how hard you try, you're never going to get enough burst onto anyone to really be able to kill anyone against that comp unless the other team completely screws up. That's the problem. If you're going to make mages so easily shut down (via training or simply outlasting the mana pool and then autowin because of zero mana) then you BETTER give the mage outrageous damage to make up for it. The way it was before 3.0, you honestly could stick a hunter/warlock pet on the mage and if the mage wasn't smart you could potentially reduce their damage output in half if not more.

I would also like to point out that you're talking about surviving. I'm talking about simply doing what the mage is supposed to be doing, which is damage. You're implying that the mage shouldn't be able to live long and tank damage like warlocks can, and I'm not implying anywhere that we should. What I am saying is that its far too easy to simply win a game vs a mage because the mage blows mana so quickly and has absolutely no way to get it back. This isn't even about survivability. This is about USABILITY. What good is the mage when the mage runs out of mana and hasn't even done enough damage to help his/her teammates knock an opponent to 0? I'm not wanting to see mages be able to last in an arena game forever, like warlocks could in arenas. What I DO want to see is more mana regen given to mages to open up different strategic options for mages.

I hope I'm getting my point across here. Increasing mana regen does not change the "mage archetype" at all unless the mana regen is so insane that the only factor to mage success is health. The way it is now, mana is the critical factor in a mage's team success. It should be a factor, but not the factor.

#2 - compared to who? Elemental shamans? No. Moonkin druids? No. Warlocks? No. Shockadins? No. Shadow priests? No. Any other class of priest? No. You're better in this regard than any other caster class/spec in the game.

I'm not sure you even understand why I brought up mobile burst in the first place. I'm not saying we have mobile burst that is worse than everyone else (although really, its worse than all the melee if you want to get really technical). What I'm saying is that our damage plummets when the strategy vs all mage teams deteriorate into: TRAIN THE MAGE! When this demonry is going on, you're NEVER going to be able to cast. EVER. So then you're pigeonholed into using your instant casts. Now your damage is reduced to doing only cone of cold and fireblast which are 10 and 8 second cooldowns. Both are mana inefficient and don't scale. When mages get trained, we do less damage than virtually every other class in the game. Warlocks, they can STILL dot. For all the melee classes, this is a non issue. Elemental shamans, I'll give you that one. Moonkin druids, rofl... I don't even know what to say; they can do so much damage so quickly now, but yes, pre 3.0 they were pretty terrible. Shadow priests are in a similar (not identical) position of warlocks where you can get dots and still have damage output.

For mages, you really don't have any damage output until you get random procs and even then, you have to capitalize on those procs. Maybe I should have generalized the point into saying mobile damage instead? The mage training situation was getting so bad that when 5v5 was the main competition bracket, many teams were dumping mages for warlocks simply because they knew if the warlock got trained, the warlock's damage output was virtually unchanged, while if they had a mage, they'd have to redirect massive support to the mage to give the mage some breathing room to be able to recover their damage output.

#4 - at least mages scale with haste. But yeah, melee (except for shamans) does scale ridiculously well. You think it's bad now, wait until 80 arena when death knights start lolgripping you around when your blink is already on cooldown.

Sorry, but unless I'm getting trained by a warrior and a rogue as well as the deathknight, there will never be a time where I'll have blink on cooldown and their deathgrip up. It simply won't happen.

Yoshiyuki Blade · Nov 22, 2008

next-Jin said:
Cant vouch for Arena's as Prot has only been viable since 3.02. A Prot warrior with a mix of SBV and DPS gear will crush any class including Ret Paladins. You will just hardly ever see it because its hard as hell to play, no one wants to gem dps stats in thier prot gear, and everyone laughs as Prot in PvP.

Imagine for a second.

18,000 Armor
13.5k Health
2200 Attack Power
Conc Blow (stun), Shockwave (stun), Revenge (possible stun). Sunder Armor (-2500 Armor), Hamstring, Shied Bash (6 sec Silence), Disarm (10% more dmg), Charging in Combat (12 secs), and Spell Reflect (12 secs)

And finally our version of Execute being Shield Slam

/cast Shield Block
/use Gnomergan Auto-Blocker 6000
/cast Shield Slam

I have shield slammed a hunter in full S2/S3 for 7k, sundererd x5, disarmed, maco'ed, dead hunter. Took about 10 seconds. I have one shot non PvP geared 70's on the Isle before with a Shield Slam that crit. 1000 SBV base with the trinket will do that

And thats a 70, I swear to god after seeing what talents we could work with at 80 and the gear thats possible I'd say 2 Prot Warriors Geared right could break 2's. They would lose to 2 Affliction locks though. Death Knights also could pose a problem I really have no idea right now.

1 vs 1
Rogues = lmao
Warriors = lulz
Mages = You better be good and time spell reflect for something other than Ice Lance
Druids = Go Go bear form lol
Priests = Long ass win
Shamans = win
Warlocks = win (unless they are speced Demo)
Hunters = THAT PET GIVES ME RAGE SON (win)
Paladin = Win (unless they blow every cooldown they have, and your Shield Wall is down)

BTW I did this leading up to the expansion and it's basically god mode. The problem is to do it right you have to raid and raid the latest in endgame, to do that you need the best gems, so it would cost upwards of 2500g a week to keep regeming.

Wow, that sounds very interesting. I'd like to see how it pans out at lvl 80.

Mages are the only class that can readily run out of resources in the game today. Why? Because of this silly notion of the "mage archetype"? I'm sorry, but regardless of whether or not it is intended, it is just outrageous.

Ya, pretty much. The moment resilience and stamina emphasis was introduced in PvP gear, that "glass cannon" notion simply evaporated. The fact that a double AP PoM-Pyro mage team gets you nowhere proves it. Not that I missed the old days of 3-minute mages anyway. Resilience was a fairly good choice from a design perspective. Not only did matches last a little longer and prevent gimmicky insta-kill tactics like PoM-Pyro, it also kept PvE raiders from totally dominating the PvP realm like they did in Classic. Mage play styles in PvP evolved greatly ever since, but the glaring flaws (mana, and mobile damage) continue simply as remnants from an archaic design idea. People have to remember that burst was never a goal of a Frost spec.

In fact, our original "glass cannon" design doesn't really have a place in PvE either. Our all-out dps builds is only comparable to any other spellcasting dps, including hybrid classes. Not not ahead by any significant margin at all. And it's far behind the likes of true, all-out dps rogues. As far as I can tell, the "glass cannon" idea is extinct.

Daggah · Nov 22, 2008

xSnowmaNx said:
I would like to point out this out first before continuing: Mages are the only class that can readily run out of resources in the game today.

That is not true. Paladins. Shamans. Druids. Priests. Warlocks have to sacrifice their own health to get their mana back but I won't include them. Pretty much every other caster in the game is just as dependent if not more so on their little blue bar as you are.

Why? Because of this silly notion of the "mage archetype"? I'm sorry, but regardless of whether or not it is intended, it is just outrageous. If what you're saying is true, then we should be doing MORE burst than anyone else to compensate for it. The problem is, the burst we do now isn't enough to make up for it (and giving more burst to mages is NOT the right answer. You'd simply destroy what balance exists in the game). This is the entire reason why WLD is such a hard counter to RMP. No matter how hard you try, you're never going to get enough burst onto anyone to really be able to kill anyone against that comp unless the other team completely screws up. That's the problem.

OK, so learn to manage your resources better.

If you're going to make mages so easily shut down (via training or simply outlasting the mana pool and then autowin because of zero mana) then you BETTER give the mage outrageous damage to make up for it.

Play a shaman and/or a paladin and then come back and tell me you have a valid complaint about shutting down mages.

The way it was before 3.0, you honestly could stick a hunter/warlock pet on the mage and if the mage wasn't smart you could potentially reduce their damage output in half if not more.

Again, the same is true for just about every other caster class in the game. My warlock can barely get a spell off with a pet on me too.

I would also like to point out that you're talking about surviving. I'm talking about simply doing what the mage is supposed to be doing, which is damage. You're implying that the mage shouldn't be able to live long and tank damage like warlocks can, and I'm not implying anywhere that we should. What I am saying is that its far too easy to simply win a game vs a mage because the mage blows mana so quickly and has absolutely no way to get it back.

You DO have ways to get it back. It doesn't help your case when you're basically making completely untrue statements about the mage skillset. You DO have ways to get mana back. Again it sounds like you just need to learn to manage your resources better.

This isn't even about survivability. This is about USABILITY. What good is the mage when the mage runs out of mana and hasn't even done enough damage to help his/her teammates knock an opponent to 0? I'm not wanting to see mages be able to last in an arena game forever, like warlocks could in arenas. What I DO want to see is more mana regen given to mages to open up different strategic options for mages.

I'm fine with them getting more mana regen by the way, but I am just not seeing this as being a "QQ mages are teh broken!" issue.

I'm not sure you even understand why I brought up mobile burst in the first place. I'm not saying we have mobile burst that is worse than everyone else (although really, its worse than all the melee if you want to get really technical). What I'm saying is that our damage plummets when the strategy vs all mage teams deteriorate into: TRAIN THE MAGE! When this demonry is going on, you're NEVER going to be able to cast. EVER.

And what do you think happens to warlocks or elemental shamans?

So then you're pigeonholed into using your instant casts. Now your damage is reduced to doing only cone of cold and fireblast which are 10 and 8 second cooldowns. Both are mana inefficient and don't scale. When mages get trained, we do less damage than virtually every other class in the game.

Those aren't your only instant cast spells....

Warlocks, they can STILL dot.

DoTs are relatively easy to overcome. They're easily dispelled, have no upfront damage, and the damage they do is predictable.

Moonkin druids, rofl... I don't even know what to say; they can do so much damage so quickly now, but yes, pre 3.0 they were pretty terrible.

But they have to stop and cast to do it.

Shadow priests are in a similar (not identical) position of warlocks where you can get dots and still have damage output.

And the DoTs have the same problems that the warlock dots do.

For mages, you really don't have any damage output until you get random procs and even then, you have to capitalize on those procs. Maybe I should have generalized the point into saying mobile damage instead? The mage training situation was getting so bad that when 5v5 was the main competition bracket, many teams were dumping mages for warlocks simply because they knew if the warlock got trained, the warlock's damage output was virtually unchanged, while if they had a mage, they'd have to redirect massive support to the mage to give the mage some breathing room to be able to recover their damage output.

Warlock damage output is not identical when getting trained, sorry.

"You can't do that while stunned."
"You can't do that while stunned."
"You can't do that while stunned."

Now which class is it that has a tool in their toolbox usable against stuns again?

More importantly, a warlock getting trained loses his ability to control the fight - a warlock's DPS on a single target just with DoTs is NOT that impressive. That's NOT why they're useful in PvP.

Sorry, but unless I'm getting trained by a warrior and a rogue as well as the deathknight, there will never be a time where I'll have blink on cooldown and their deathgrip up. It simply won't happen.

And I wasn't talking about 1vs1 against a death knight.

diogo · Nov 22, 2008

wow, I guess the stereotype of mage QQ is true.

I would love to learn about a caster class with a mobile nuke, or a caster class that doesnt have to worry about mana, etc.

But instead of continuing the theorycraft of suckiness, the best recourse is to always check the data.

According to arena junkies:

88 of the top 100 5v5 teams in the world have a mage.

More specifically at the end of season 4 there were 107 5v5 teams world wide with a rating of 2500 or higher. Of those, there are 94 teams that have a mage in it.
In comparison, only 48 teams with druids over 2500, 47 with shamans, 21 with hunters, 50 with paladins, 90 with priests, 67 with rogues, 55 with warlocks, 46 with warriors.

In 3v3, there is a reason that "PMR" is the best know acronym. Not only have PMR teams won most of the 3v3 tournaments, but random healer/mage/rogue make up 6 of the top 20 teams. Heck, in the US 4 of the top 5 teams have mages in it.

In 2v2, mages lag behind, but so do all other non healer casters. As virtually all top 2v2 teams are healer+warrior.

However statistic you use, however you breakdown the season 4 data, mages are over represented at the top in 3v3 and 5v5. I honestly have not seen any changes that lead me to think it will be different at 80.

leezard · Nov 22, 2008

jesus if ya'll want to argue PVP start your own thread

Ragenrok · Nov 22, 2008

why? this is a WoW discussion thread, the title says nothing about PvE only. Deal with it.

leezard · Nov 22, 2008

Ragenrok said:
why? this is a WoW discussion thread, the title says nothing about PvE only. Deal with it.

no, its a wotlk thread that has turned into a "my class sucks" or "this is why pvp sicks" or "class x is OP'd in pvp" thread.

Draax · Nov 22, 2008

Ragenrok said:
why? this is a WoW discussion thread, the title says nothing about PvE only. Deal with it.

Do you really need to ask why? This thread has turned into an argument. Great attitude though.
The WoW forums are for bickering about classes and PvP this thread was supposed to be about WoTLK

SouLXIV · Nov 22, 2008

nerf droods

xSnowmaNx · Nov 22, 2008

Daggah said:
That is not true. Paladins. Shamans. Druids. Priests. Warlocks have to sacrifice their own health to get their mana back but I won't include them. Pretty much every other caster in the game is just as dependent if not more so on their little blue bar as you are.

Sorry, Paladins have divine plea. Shamans, I'll concede that point. Druids have innervate, and while this is a long cooldown spell and can be dispelled, its miles ahead of what mages have. Priests have shadowfiend and every time I've seen a priest use one, the mana gains are always significant. In my experience, it is not easy to kill one either. Maybe I'm incorrect about this?

Daggah said:
OK, so learn to manage your resources better.

The problem is, you're implying that there's any managing to be done in the first place. I can't manage something that I simply can't get back effectively in the first place. Evocation is not (and dare I say, never was) an effective means to get mana back. The only direction the mage mana pool goes is down. Only in select cases does it ever go up and in PvP, it rarely ever goes up if at all. The only current management that can be done by mages in both PvP and PvE is to stop casting altogether. I'm sorry, but this is not management. It's bad design. When you have such a bad mana recovery mechanic as evocate, it isn't unfathomable that a mage is FORCED into this sort of a situation. For example, if I evocate in a raid setting, and I get hit with any amount of damage at all, I've already lost half of my evocate. Now I've got to wait 5 minutes before my next chance. Chances are, if you needed to evocate in the first place, you're already close to being OOM. If you want to play the mana management game at this point, you can either keep casting and hope that your mana gems/potions can keep you up (and in many cases, they simply don't anymore, especially with the pot chugging being eliminated) or you can just start casting less/wanding.

Maybe I should bring the mana regen issue to a more concise point. The POTENTIAL mage mana regen is just fine in my opinion. What is not fine is how delicate the mana regen is. You give me a long cooldown mana regen spell, fine. What isn't fine is how trivial it is to COMPLETELY DESTROY its usefulness. It doesn't take anything to completely destroy my potential mana gains with evocate. Every time I use evocate, I feel like I'm playing russian roulette. Every time I get a full evocate off in PvP (which is a very, very rare happening) I praise the World of Warcraft gods as if Jesus were resurrected.

Early on in the beta, I was REALLY excited for the Improved Water Elemental talent which I believe was something like this:

Improved Water Elemental (3 points)
Increases duration of Water Elemental by 5/10/15 seconds. Regenerates mana for the player and his/her raid for 1/2/3% every 5 seconds.

Now this is an effective mana regeneration tool. Shit, I would have been happy if they got rid of evocate altogether and just gave me that. Yeah, the water elemental is really easy to kill in PvP and could net me nothing like evocate, but the difference is that it doesn't force me to completely stop what I'm doing and hope to the gods I don't get hit. But now, the Improved Water Elemental talent is completely useless in terms of mana regen.

Daggah said:
Play a shaman and/or a paladin and then come back and tell me you have a valid complaint about shutting down mages.

I'm going to assume you're talking about resto and holy? I do play a paladin, and I have to tell you, its not even close to the same ballpark. Holy paladins pre 3.0 after S1 were just dying. The only things paladins had going for them in S1 were 100% mana returns on illumination and CC immunity via blessing of sacrifice. But then they changed that. Now paladins have become less mana efficient and they can be CC'd very easily and are completely vulnerable without divine shield. But "lockdownability" of holy paladins vs mages aren't the same. There are two reasons for this. One reason is because paladins can still cast when someone is attacking them with no penalty. Mages cannot say the same thing. Although they have changed the spell push back mechanics, it really isn't that much better now than it was before. Second reason is that paladins are ROBUST. I can afford to take hits on my paladin so I can sit there and tank the damage while I fake cast or line of sight, and then when everything is all clear, I can heal myself again.

I mean, yes, paladins are very easy to lock down and it is very devastating if you got counterspelled on a heal (since everything a paladin has is holy and the entire school is locked out for something like 6 seconds with Stoicism), but I personally think that wasn't how easy paladins could be locked down was the problem. It was the fact that paladins didn't have any effective mobile healing that killed them.

Mages on the other hand can't tank damage and faking casts are rarely done because it simply isn't worth trying. You make more progress by running around and kiting than even bothering to fake cast.

Let's be frank here, getting trained/locked down is almost completely a caster vs melee debate. I KNOW that mages have it off better than other casters simply because of blink. I'm not saying that we need it because we have it off the worst. To the contrary, I'm simply saying that getting trained sucks and with mages, it's often more devastating to effectiveness than other casters. When I'm trained, I simply get relegated to running around.

Daggah said:
Again, the same is true for just about every other caster class in the game. My warlock can barely get a spell off with a pet on me too.

Umm... what? Are we even playing the same game here? What spells are you trying to cast? Whenever I played warlock/paladin and I couldn't give Blessing of Protection to my warlock, he could STILL do outrageous damage because he could keep on casting those INSTANT cast dots while moving. The only times he really needed spell pushback protection was when a rogue was on him and he desperately needed to cast fear. But a pet? Sorry, pets simply don't disturb warlock damage output nearly as much as you claim. Unless all you do in PvP is shadowbolt, in which case you weren't even PvP'ing (sorry, destruction isn't for PvP unless you're going for the lols in which case you go in there knowing full well that you're going to get killed fast but, in exchange, much lols).

Daggah said:
You DO have ways to get it back. It doesn't help your case when you're basically making completely untrue statements about the mage skillset. You DO have ways to get mana back. Again it sounds like you just need to learn to manage your resources better.

Basically explained this in my opening response. We do have ways to get mana back, except they are terrible ways to get them back. As far as managing resources better, refer back to top ^^.

Daggah said:
I'm fine with them getting more mana regen by the way, but I am just not seeing this as being a "QQ mages are teh broken!" issue.

Nowhere did I ever say mages were broken. But there are many glaring issues that force mages into unenviable positions that many classes simply don't have to deal with.

Daggah said:
And what do you think happens to warlocks or elemental shamans?

I can give you elemental shamans, but not warlocks. Refer above ^^.

Daggah said:
Those aren't your only instant cast spells....

Ok... then what are my other instant cast spells? Arcane explosion? Ok. At level 70, using max rank arcane explosion, it costs me 430 mana to cast it. With my mage at 840+ spell damage, my arcane explosion hits for ~575. This is TERRIBLE mana efficiency which in turn doesn't help the mage situation at all with mana. The only reason mages ever used arcane explosion in PvP was to pull out stealthers with rank 1 (I'm surprised I forgot about the downranking nerf. I should have included it in my list of points. But lets reserve this for another discussion, shall we?). But now that downranking was completely nerfed, it almost isn't even worth using even the max rank to pull them out (but I do it anyways because I said it is almost not worth it. I'd rather pull a rogue out before the opener and use more mana than to let him get the opener and thus give him a much more significant advantage with slightly more mana to spare).

Daggah said:
DoTs are relatively easy to overcome. They're easily dispelled, have no upfront damage, and the damage they do is predictable.

I don't agree. Putting dots on players is a trivial task and just by sheer numbers, you can overcome dispelling. But lets be honest, warlocks in small group PvP simply aren't as desirable as mages in terms of quick damage/quick kill strategy. But this isn't why warlocks are brought in the first place. You bring a warlock because you can fight on forever and you can tank damage like nobody's business if you have a healer (any warlock arena team will have a healer). You bring mages because they can be quick and devastating. The problem is, eventually people figured out that you can completely nullify this aspect of the mage by simply sicking one of your melee teammates onto the mage. Warriors do ok, but rogues are just a completely "f**k me up the ass" where you can never even attempt to do a shatter combo because you're always at risk of deadly throw. By the time you've faked the shatter and baited the deadly throw, your nova has already broken and your opportunity for a shatter is gone.

And your claim that the damage dots do is predictable I would say is a positive thing. Because its predictable, people like warlocks. You can always count on the warlock to be doing consistent, predictable damage. With a mage, you're completely tied back by how aggressively the other team attacks your mage and how defensively your teammates play to give the mage breathing room.

Daggah said:
But they have to stop and cast to do it.

This is true, but the main difference is that they have dot components to some of their spells so you can oftentimes not even avoid their damage and their mobility makes them very difficult to touch unless you're melee with support.

Daggah said:
Warlock damage output is not identical when getting trained, sorry.

"You can't do that while stunned."
"You can't do that while stunned."
"You can't do that while stunned."

Now which class is it that has a tool in their toolbox usable against stuns again?

More importantly, a warlock getting trained loses his ability to control the fight - a warlock's DPS on a single target just with DoTs is NOT that impressive. That's NOT why they're useful in PvP.

Warlock damage output is so much higher than a mage when getting trained, you can't even compare them. And yes, getting stunned as a warlock is more devastating than a mage simply because of the fact that warlocks can't get out of it outside of a trinket, but everyone deals with stuns. Just because you can get out of it doesn't mean you have it off any better. Half the time on my mage, I blink out of a stun only to get intercepted or come out of the stun still hamstringed/crippled. If I blink and try to cast something against a rogue, any good rogue will deadly throw right as the mage turns around because it's a sure sign of a cast coming around. So I fake and bait the deadly throw. Then I start casting what I really want to cast and hope he doesn't vanish or cloak. If he vanishes, I have to play the entire "get away from the rogue" game AGAIN, except this time my blink is on cooldown and now I have to think about using more drastic measures like trinket or ice block. Or I can blink out of the stun and keep running while making a futile attempt to damage with fire blast and cone of cold while trying to kite with the snare component on cone of cold. The lengths I have to go through to simply do damage back is painstaking compared to a warlock.

In regards to the last portion of the quote where you say warlocks DPS on single targets are not impressive, this is true. But in PvP, DPS doesn't matter. In PvP, there are 2 prevailing strategies: Outburst or outlast. Outlasting is something warlocks to exceedingly well. When you're in a situation where warlocks are doing single target damage, you're in the 2v2 arena, in which case you shouldn't be winning because of your damage output anyways. You win because you outlast everyone else. In larger brackets like 3v3 and 5v5, damage actually becomes very significant because you can do damage to ALL players simultaneously. In these brackets, you win because of both damage and outlasting, but not by outbursting. WLD is much more of an attrition based team because of the warlock. The warlock dots will ideally be on all 3 opposing players, which by itself is hard to keep up with. Then you add in the warrior mortal strike and things get hairy very quickly. Then you put in the warlock's high health pool with the SL/SL spec pre 3.0, you had a tank in cloth gear. There was just no hope of bursting anyone down with that, and to top it off, you had the druid who was UNTOUCHABLE and could negate all damage with one swift stroke (no pun intended).

Daggah said:
And I wasn't talking about 1vs1 against a death knight.

I wasn't either.

Look, I have no problems discussing these issues and I don't have a problem with changing my mind. But the thing is, I'm not even sure you're understanding what I'm saying. You seem to look at this as "mage QQ" and mages want more because they have it worse off than everyone else. This is NOT what it's about (firstly because mages don't have it off worse than everyone else, and secondly because of what I'm about to say...). These mage issues are completely independent of other classes. What I mean by this is that this isn't about XYZ class can do it, so I should, too. It's about the fact that all the things that make a mage, a mage, are completely destroyed by the prevailing strategies used against mages in the PvP environment and by the class design behind them. Other classes have similar problems and other classes have different problems. Some classes are in a state that are far worse than mages. But this doesn't change the fact that there are issues with mages that need to be addressed.

Maybe your argument would then be "Why should Blizzard address mages first or put greater importance on mages?" Well, they shouldn't. But Blizzard should at LEAST let the mage community know what they think of these issues. I kept up on the live mage forums and the beta mage forums. These issues were discussed left and right for weeks, and I saw maybe ONE response to these discussions, and it wasn't even in response to the most heavily discussed topic (mana regeneration). People don't like it when there is no communication. Many of the top PvE and PvP mages simply stop posting because they feel that there is no hope for mages to be improved (I feel like I'm going to regret saying this. "You shouldn't be improved" incoming... I feel it

).

L1ght · Nov 22, 2008

haha, mage QQ. gotta love it.

Im not sure if anyone has noticed, but every class thinks they are "underpowered" and "broken." So.. before you play 3-4 different classes in end game pvp, you'd best keep the complaining to yourself.

xSnowmaNx · Nov 22, 2008

L1ght said:
haha, mage QQ. gotta love it.

Im not sure if anyone has noticed, but every class thinks they are "underpowered" and "broken." So.. before you play 3-4 different classes in end game pvp, you'd best keep the complaining to yourself.

I'm not sure if you've noticed what's been said, but this has nothing to do with being under/overpowered or being broken. Mages, especially, are not underpowered nor are they broken, but that doesn't mean that some of the designs behind them suck. Because of some of these bad design choices, mages are pigeonholed into a singular strategy while other classes (namely warriors and rogues) enjoy much more versatility in their strategies.

Yoshiyuki Blade · Nov 23, 2008

I hit 80 just before everyone got the achievement for logging on during WoW's 4th anniversary. Everyone got a pet!

SAW · Nov 23, 2008

If I was a terrorist....I would bomb the WoW servers......

hehe

Daggah · Nov 23, 2008

xSnowmaNx said:
Sorry, Paladins have divine plea. Shamans, I'll concede that point. Druids have innervate, and while this is a long cooldown spell and can be dispelled, its miles ahead of what mages have. Priests have shadowfiend and every time I've seen a priest use one, the mana gains are always significant. In my experience, it is not easy to kill one either. Maybe I'm incorrect about this?

You're still trying to lie about the abilities you have. What happened to mana gems? How can they be dispelled? Oh that's right...they can't.

The problem is, you're implying that there's any managing to be done in the first place. I can't manage something that I simply can't get back effectively in the first place. Evocation is not (and dare I say, never was) an effective means to get mana back. The only direction the mage mana pool goes is down. Only in select cases does it ever go up and in PvP, it rarely ever goes up if at all. The only current management that can be done by mages in both PvP and PvE is to stop casting altogether. I'm sorry, but this is not management. It's bad design. When you have such a bad mana recovery mechanic as evocate, it isn't unfathomable that a mage is FORCED into this sort of a situation. For example, if I evocate in a raid setting, and I get hit with any amount of damage at all, I've already lost half of my evocate. Now I've got to wait 5 minutes before my next chance. Chances are, if you needed to evocate in the first place, you're already close to being OOM. If you want to play the mana management game at this point, you can either keep casting and hope that your mana gems/potions can keep you up (and in many cases, they simply don't anymore, especially with the pot chugging being eliminated) or you can just start casting less/wanding.

How about mana management as in DON'T BLOW YOUR LOAD WHEN THE HEALER CAN HEAL THROUGH IT?

Maybe I should bring the mana regen issue to a more concise point. The POTENTIAL mage mana regen is just fine in my opinion. What is not fine is how delicate the mana regen is. You give me a long cooldown mana regen spell, fine. What isn't fine is how trivial it is to COMPLETELY DESTROY its usefulness. It doesn't take anything to completely destroy my potential mana gains with evocate. Every time I use evocate, I feel like I'm playing russian roulette. Every time I get a full evocate off in PvP (which is a very, very rare happening) I praise the World of Warcraft gods as if Jesus were resurrected.

And how do you think I feel on my resto shaman dropping down mana tide and hoping no one notices the "KILL THIS TOTEM!" animation?

I'm going to assume you're talking about resto and holy? I do play a paladin, and I have to tell you, its not even close to the same ballpark. Holy paladins pre 3.0 after S1 were just dying. The only things paladins had going for them in S1 were 100% mana returns on illumination and CC immunity via blessing of sacrifice. But then they changed that. Now paladins have become less mana efficient and they can be CC'd very easily and are completely vulnerable without divine shield. But "lockdownability" of holy paladins vs mages aren't the same. There are two reasons for this. One reason is because paladins can still cast when someone is attacking them with no penalty. Mages cannot say the same thing. Although they have changed the spell push back mechanics, it really isn't that much better now than it was before. Second reason is that paladins are ROBUST. I can afford to take hits on my paladin so I can sit there and tank the damage while I fake cast or line of sight, and then when everything is all clear, I can heal myself again.

I was talking about spell lockout. It hurts shamans and paladins waaaaaay more than it does mages.

I mean, yes, paladins are very easy to lock down and it is very devastating if you got counterspelled on a heal (since everything a paladin has is holy and the entire school is locked out for something like 6 seconds with Stoicism), but I personally think that wasn't how easy paladins could be locked down was the problem. It was the fact that paladins didn't have any effective mobile healing that killed them.

And school lockout was a part of that.

Mages on the other hand can't tank damage and faking casts are rarely done because it simply isn't worth trying. You make more progress by running around and kiting than even bothering to fake cast.

But you have so many tools to allow you to kite and improve your mobility. USE THEM.

Umm... what? Are we even playing the same game here? What spells are you trying to cast? Whenever I played warlock/paladin and I couldn't give Blessing of Protection to my warlock, he could STILL do outrageous damage because he could keep on casting those INSTANT cast dots while moving. The only times he really needed spell pushback protection was when a rogue was on him and he desperately needed to cast fear. But a pet? Sorry, pets simply don't disturb warlock damage output nearly as much as you claim. Unless all you do in PvP is shadowbolt, in which case you weren't even PvP'ing (sorry, destruction isn't for PvP unless you're going for the lols in which case you go in there knowing full well that you're going to get killed fast but, in exchange, much lols).

AGAIN: Warlock DoTs are predictable and dispellable. THE ONLY tool that warlocks have to keep their DoTs from being dispelled is Unstable Affliction. Guess what? It has a cast time. My DPS as a warlock on a single target just from DoTs is not that high. There's a reason why the playstyle is meant to be an endurance one where one outlasts their opponent, and therein lies the problem: the warlock's tools for survival are in a pathetic state right now.

Nowhere did I ever say mages were broken. But there are many glaring issues that force mages into unenviable positions that many classes simply don't have to deal with.

Except for the ones that, you know, do have to deal? As has been pointed out, mages are NOT hurting in arena representation.

Ok... then what are my other instant cast spells? Arcane explosion? Ok. At level 70, using max rank arcane explosion, it costs me 430 mana to cast it. With my mage at 840+ spell damage, my arcane explosion hits for ~575. This is TERRIBLE mana efficiency which in turn doesn't help the mage situation at all with mana. The only reason mages ever used arcane explosion in PvP was to pull out stealthers with rank 1 (I'm surprised I forgot about the downranking nerf. I should have included it in my list of points. But lets reserve this for another discussion, shall we?). But now that downranking was completely nerfed, it almost isn't even worth using even the max rank to pull them out (but I do it anyways because I said it is almost not worth it. I'd rather pull a rogue out before the opener and use more mana than to let him get the opener and thus give him a much more significant advantage with slightly more mana to spare).

Don't go bitching about downranking, it hurt healers far more than it hurt you. And the arcane tree, perhaps you've heard of it?

I don't agree. Putting dots on players is a trivial task and just by sheer numbers, you can overcome dispelling. But lets be honest, warlocks in small group PvP simply aren't as desirable as mages in terms of quick damage/quick kill strategy. But this isn't why warlocks are brought in the first place.

Overcoming those DoTs is also a trivial task.

You bring a warlock because you can fight on forever and you can tank damage like nobody's business if you have a healer (any warlock arena team will have a healer).

This might've been true a year ago but it's no longer.

You bring mages because they can be quick and devastating. The problem is, eventually people figured out that you can completely nullify this aspect of the mage by simply sicking one of your melee teammates onto the mage. Warriors do ok, but rogues are just a completely "f**k me up the ass" where you can never even attempt to do a shatter combo because you're always at risk of deadly throw. By the time you've faked the shatter and baited the deadly throw, your nova has already broken and your opportunity for a shatter is gone.

And apparently you're a terribad mage who can't handle melee which is one of the situations your class is best at. A good frost mage should not have problems with a rogue.

And your claim that the damage dots do is predictable I would say is a positive thing. Because its predictable, people like warlocks. You can always count on the warlock to be doing consistent, predictable damage.

Consistent, predictable dispellable LOW damage, you mean.

With a mage, you're completely tied back by how aggressively the other team attacks your mage and how defensively your teammates play to give the mage breathing room.

So you have to play with at least a little bit of strategy? Oh no, that's just awful!

This is true, but the main difference is that they have dot components to some of their spells so you can oftentimes not even avoid their damage and their mobility makes them very difficult to touch unless you're melee with support.

Warlocks don't have a single spell to enhance their mobility at level 70. At level 80 they get lolteleport that advertises their destination to the enemy team. That's useful.

Oh sure I can run around doing easily controllable damage on the move but as soon as the melee pain train catches up to me that's pretty much over.

Warlock damage output is so much higher than a mage when getting trained, you can't even compare them. And yes, getting stunned as a warlock is more devastating than a mage simply because of the fact that warlocks can't get out of it outside of a trinket, but everyone deals with stuns. Just because you can get out of it doesn't mean you have it off any better. Half the time on my mage, I blink out of a stun only to get intercepted or come out of the stun still hamstringed/crippled. If I blink and try to cast something against a rogue, any good rogue will deadly throw right as the mage turns around because it's a sure sign of a cast coming around. So I fake and bait the deadly throw. Then I start casting what I really want to cast and hope he doesn't vanish or cloak. If he vanishes, I have to play the entire "get away from the rogue" game AGAIN, except this time my blink is on cooldown and now I have to think about using more drastic measures like trinket or ice block. Or I can blink out of the stun and keep running while making a futile attempt to damage with fire blast and cone of cold while trying to kite with the snare component on cone of cold. The lengths I have to go through to simply do damage back is painstaking compared to a warlock.

Try playing a warlock in pvp then. Maybe getting massacred before your DoTs have ticked more than 3 times will make you appreciate the resourcefulness of your class.

]quote]In regards to the last portion of the quote where you say warlocks DPS on single targets are not impressive, this is true. But in PvP, DPS doesn't matter. In PvP, there are 2 prevailing strategies: Outburst or outlast. Outlasting is something warlocks to exceedingly well.[/quote]

And again this is where you're wrong. Warlock survivability has plummeted in the last year. They're no longer good at outlasting.

In larger brackets like 3v3 and 5v5, damage actually becomes very significant because you can do damage to ALL players simultaneously. In these brackets, you win because of both damage and outlasting, but not by outbursting. WLD is much more of an attrition based team because of the warlock. The warlock dots will ideally be on all 3 opposing players, which by itself is hard to keep up with. Then you add in the warrior mortal strike and things get hairy very quickly. Then you put in the warlock's high health pool with the SL/SL spec pre 3.0, you had a tank in cloth gear. There was just no hope of bursting anyone down with that, and to top it off, you had the druid who was UNTOUCHABLE and could negate all damage with one swift stroke (no pun intended).

And here comes the predictable incoming whining about a viable response to the RMP gayness.

Look, I have no problems discussing these issues and I don't have a problem with changing my mind. But the thing is, I'm not even sure you're understanding what I'm saying. You seem to look at this as "mage QQ" and mages want more because they have it worse off than everyone else. This is NOT what it's about (firstly because mages don't have it off worse than everyone else, and secondly because of what I'm about to say...). These mage issues are completely independent of other classes. What I mean by this is that this isn't about XYZ class can do it, so I should, too. It's about the fact that all the things that make a mage, a mage, are completely destroyed by the prevailing strategies used against mages in the PvP environment and by the class design behind them. Other classes have similar problems and other classes have different problems. Some classes are in a state that are far worse than mages. But this doesn't change the fact that there are issues with mages that need to be addressed.

The issues with mages that need to be addressed is the retarded overpoweredness of arcane spec mages at the moment. Other than that, the issue is with you being terrible more than anything else I think.

Maybe your argument would then be "Why should Blizzard address mages first or put greater importance on mages?" Well, they shouldn't. But Blizzard should at LEAST let the mage community know what they think of these issues. I kept up on the live mage forums and the beta mage forums. These issues were discussed left and right for weeks, and I saw maybe ONE response to these discussions, and it wasn't even in response to the most heavily discussed topic (mana regeneration). People don't like it when there is no communication. Many of the top PvE and PvP mages simply stop posting because they feel that there is no hope for mages to be improved (I feel like I'm going to regret saying this. "You shouldn't be improved" incoming... I feel it ).

Maybe Blizzard thinks mages are fine? Then again, you're wasting your breath worrying about what Blizzard thinks. Blizzard thinks elemental shaman DPS is fine. (It's not.) Blizzard thinks enhancement shaman PvP is fine. (It's not.) Blizzard apparently doesn't play their own game, I think.

Spoonmaster · Nov 23, 2008

So I'm an elemental shaman. Buff scaling and survivability, everything else seems decent enough.

Hit 74 last night and logged after getting my cute polar bear pet. I must say, I am enjoying this expansion very much, I haven't enjoyed WoW this much in a looooong time.

xSnowmaNx · Nov 23, 2008

Daggah, I'm not even going to continue this "discussion" if you won't listen to the voice of reason and simply pout and say things to the effect of you're bad, overpowered, or other useless quips. You need to tell me why mages don't need the changes I've pointed out. Also, you continue to look at this as if I'm talking about Blizzard needs to drop what they're doing and fix mages and no one else. That's not what I'm saying. Everyone has their problems that need to be addressed, I'm simply pointing out the top issues mages currently have since that's one of the classes I know well.

I have many things to say about your last response, but I don't know if I want to even bother spending the time to think and respond if I don't even know you're going to tell me why I'm wrong. Simply telling me I'm wrong doesn't tell me anything.

kadozer · Nov 23, 2008

/cast defensive stance
/cast shield wall
Wall of text crits you for 18k
you die.

Daggah · Nov 24, 2008

Spoonmaster said:
So I'm an elemental shaman. Buff scaling and survivability, everything else seems decent enough.

Hit 74 last night and logged after getting my cute polar bear pet. I must say, I am enjoying this expansion very much, I haven't enjoyed WoW this much in a looooong time.

I can't wait until they implement dual specs. Once I ding 75 and get Lava Blast I plan on switching from enhancement to elemental...and at 80 I'll probably dual spec between elemental and resto.

Jake · Nov 24, 2008

The guild I'm in got enough 80s to try out Naxx 10. Trash is pretty easy in the Arachnid Quarter, but it took us several trys to get the dance down on Anub'Rekhan and Grand Widow. We ran out of time on Maexxna.

Hunters still rock, I was schooling everyone including a 5/8 T6 'lock. From what I've seen locks need to be looked at. Their single target dps does not seem to be up where it should be.

Draax · Nov 24, 2008

woops/

novadude · Nov 24, 2008

Jake said:
The guild I'm in got enough 80s to try out Naxx 10. Trash is pretty easy in the Arachnid Quarter, but it took us several trys to get the dance down on Anub'Rekhan and Grand Widow. We ran out of time on Maexxna.

Hunters still rock, I was schooling everyone including a 5/8 T6 'lock. From what I've seen locks need to be looked at. Their single target dps does not seem to be up where it should be.

Warlocks in raids will always be suffer from changes made to nerf them in PVP. Cloth gear scaled very rapidly for affliction at the beginning of BC (lots of +damage/+stam) and as a result the whole affliction tree got nerfed by ~30% for raid geared warlocks. Broad sweeping changes that have an affect on all aspects of the game FTL.
Oh well, not like I've played for over a year anyways.

Rofl-Mic-Lofl · Nov 24, 2008

novadude said:
Warlocks in raids will always be suffer from changes made to nerf them in PVP. Cloth gear scaled very rapidly for affliction at the beginning of BC (lots of +damage/+stam) and as a result the whole affliction tree got nerfed by ~30% for raid geared warlocks. Broad sweeping changes that have an affect on all aspects of the game FTL.
Oh well, not like I've played for over a year anyways.

Or what is really awesome is when warlocks are doing too much raid damage so they nerf Shadow Priest's talents.

novadude · Nov 24, 2008

Rofl-Mic-Lofl said:
Or what is really awesome is when warlocks are doing too much raid damage so they nerf Shadow Priest's talents.

Ha, yeah, I'd forgotten about that one.

GOD'SlittleSERVANT · Nov 24, 2008

xSnowmaNx said:
Sorry, Paladins have divine plea. Shamans, I'll concede that point. Druids have innervate, and while this is a long cooldown spell and can be dispelled, its miles ahead of what mages have. Priests have shadowfiend and every time I've seen a priest use one, the mana gains are always significant. In my experience, it is not easy to kill one either. Maybe I'm incorrect about this?

The problem is, you're implying that there's any managing to be done in the first place. I can't manage something that I simply can't get back effectively in the first place. Evocation is not (and dare I say, never was) an effective means to get mana back. The only direction the mage mana pool goes is down. Only in select cases does it ever go up and in PvP, it rarely ever goes up if at all. The only current management that can be done by mages in both PvP and PvE is to stop casting altogether. I'm sorry, but this is not management. It's bad design. When you have such a bad mana recovery mechanic as evocate, it isn't unfathomable that a mage is FORCED into this sort of a situation. For example, if I evocate in a raid setting, and I get hit with any amount of damage at all, I've already lost half of my evocate. Now I've got to wait 5 minutes before my next chance. Chances are, if you needed to evocate in the first place, you're already close to being OOM. If you want to play the mana management game at this point, you can either keep casting and hope that your mana gems/potions can keep you up (and in many cases, they simply don't anymore, especially with the pot chugging being eliminated) or you can just start casting less/wanding.

Maybe I should bring the mana regen issue to a more concise point. The POTENTIAL mage mana regen is just fine in my opinion. What is not fine is how delicate the mana regen is. You give me a long cooldown mana regen spell, fine. What isn't fine is how trivial it is to COMPLETELY DESTROY its usefulness. It doesn't take anything to completely destroy my potential mana gains with evocate. Every time I use evocate, I feel like I'm playing russian roulette. Every time I get a full evocate off in PvP (which is a very, very rare happening) I praise the World of Warcraft gods as if Jesus were resurrected.

Early on in the beta, I was REALLY excited for the Improved Water Elemental talent which I believe was something like this:

Now this is an effective mana regeneration tool. Shit, I would have been happy if they got rid of evocate altogether and just gave me that. Yeah, the water elemental is really easy to kill in PvP and could net me nothing like evocate, but the difference is that it doesn't force me to completely stop what I'm doing and hope to the gods I don't get hit. But now, the Improved Water Elemental talent is completely useless in terms of mana regen.

I'm going to assume you're talking about resto and holy? I do play a paladin, and I have to tell you, its not even close to the same ballpark. Holy paladins pre 3.0 after S1 were just dying. The only things paladins had going for them in S1 were 100% mana returns on illumination and CC immunity via blessing of sacrifice. But then they changed that. Now paladins have become less mana efficient and they can be CC'd very easily and are completely vulnerable without divine shield. But "lockdownability" of holy paladins vs mages aren't the same. There are two reasons for this. One reason is because paladins can still cast when someone is attacking them with no penalty. Mages cannot say the same thing. Although they have changed the spell push back mechanics, it really isn't that much better now than it was before. Second reason is that paladins are ROBUST. I can afford to take hits on my paladin so I can sit there and tank the damage while I fake cast or line of sight, and then when everything is all clear, I can heal myself again.

I mean, yes, paladins are very easy to lock down and it is very devastating if you got counterspelled on a heal (since everything a paladin has is holy and the entire school is locked out for something like 6 seconds with Stoicism), but I personally think that wasn't how easy paladins could be locked down was the problem. It was the fact that paladins didn't have any effective mobile healing that killed them.

Mages on the other hand can't tank damage and faking casts are rarely done because it simply isn't worth trying. You make more progress by running around and kiting than even bothering to fake cast.

Let's be frank here, getting trained/locked down is almost completely a caster vs melee debate. I KNOW that mages have it off better than other casters simply because of blink. I'm not saying that we need it because we have it off the worst. To the contrary, I'm simply saying that getting trained sucks and with mages, it's often more devastating to effectiveness than other casters. When I'm trained, I simply get relegated to running around.

Umm... what? Are we even playing the same game here? What spells are you trying to cast? Whenever I played warlock/paladin and I couldn't give Blessing of Protection to my warlock, he could STILL do outrageous damage because he could keep on casting those INSTANT cast dots while moving. The only times he really needed spell pushback protection was when a rogue was on him and he desperately needed to cast fear. But a pet? Sorry, pets simply don't disturb warlock damage output nearly as much as you claim. Unless all you do in PvP is shadowbolt, in which case you weren't even PvP'ing (sorry, destruction isn't for PvP unless you're going for the lols in which case you go in there knowing full well that you're going to get killed fast but, in exchange, much lols).

Basically explained this in my opening response. We do have ways to get mana back, except they are terrible ways to get them back. As far as managing resources better, refer back to top ^^.

Nowhere did I ever say mages were broken. But there are many glaring issues that force mages into unenviable positions that many classes simply don't have to deal with.

I can give you elemental shamans, but not warlocks. Refer above ^^.

Ok... then what are my other instant cast spells? Arcane explosion? Ok. At level 70, using max rank arcane explosion, it costs me 430 mana to cast it. With my mage at 840+ spell damage, my arcane explosion hits for ~575. This is TERRIBLE mana efficiency which in turn doesn't help the mage situation at all with mana. The only reason mages ever used arcane explosion in PvP was to pull out stealthers with rank 1 (I'm surprised I forgot about the downranking nerf. I should have included it in my list of points. But lets reserve this for another discussion, shall we?). But now that downranking was completely nerfed, it almost isn't even worth using even the max rank to pull them out (but I do it anyways because I said it is almost not worth it. I'd rather pull a rogue out before the opener and use more mana than to let him get the opener and thus give him a much more significant advantage with slightly more mana to spare).

I don't agree. Putting dots on players is a trivial task and just by sheer numbers, you can overcome dispelling. But lets be honest, warlocks in small group PvP simply aren't as desirable as mages in terms of quick damage/quick kill strategy. But this isn't why warlocks are brought in the first place. You bring a warlock because you can fight on forever and you can tank damage like nobody's business if you have a healer (any warlock arena team will have a healer). You bring mages because they can be quick and devastating. The problem is, eventually people figured out that you can completely nullify this aspect of the mage by simply sicking one of your melee teammates onto the mage. Warriors do ok, but rogues are just a completely "f**k me up the ass" where you can never even attempt to do a shatter combo because you're always at risk of deadly throw. By the time you've faked the shatter and baited the deadly throw, your nova has already broken and your opportunity for a shatter is gone.

And your claim that the damage dots do is predictable I would say is a positive thing. Because its predictable, people like warlocks. You can always count on the warlock to be doing consistent, predictable damage. With a mage, you're completely tied back by how aggressively the other team attacks your mage and how defensively your teammates play to give the mage breathing room.

This is true, but the main difference is that they have dot components to some of their spells so you can oftentimes not even avoid their damage and their mobility makes them very difficult to touch unless you're melee with support.

Warlock damage output is so much higher than a mage when getting trained, you can't even compare them. And yes, getting stunned as a warlock is more devastating than a mage simply because of the fact that warlocks can't get out of it outside of a trinket, but everyone deals with stuns. Just because you can get out of it doesn't mean you have it off any better. Half the time on my mage, I blink out of a stun only to get intercepted or come out of the stun still hamstringed/crippled. If I blink and try to cast something against a rogue, any good rogue will deadly throw right as the mage turns around because it's a sure sign of a cast coming around. So I fake and bait the deadly throw. Then I start casting what I really want to cast and hope he doesn't vanish or cloak. If he vanishes, I have to play the entire "get away from the rogue" game AGAIN, except this time my blink is on cooldown and now I have to think about using more drastic measures like trinket or ice block. Or I can blink out of the stun and keep running while making a futile attempt to damage with fire blast and cone of cold while trying to kite with the snare component on cone of cold. The lengths I have to go through to simply do damage back is painstaking compared to a warlock.

In regards to the last portion of the quote where you say warlocks DPS on single targets are not impressive, this is true. But in PvP, DPS doesn't matter. In PvP, there are 2 prevailing strategies: Outburst or outlast. Outlasting is something warlocks to exceedingly well. When you're in a situation where warlocks are doing single target damage, you're in the 2v2 arena, in which case you shouldn't be winning because of your damage output anyways. You win because you outlast everyone else. In larger brackets like 3v3 and 5v5, damage actually becomes very significant because you can do damage to ALL players simultaneously. In these brackets, you win because of both damage and outlasting, but not by outbursting. WLD is much more of an attrition based team because of the warlock. The warlock dots will ideally be on all 3 opposing players, which by itself is hard to keep up with. Then you add in the warrior mortal strike and things get hairy very quickly. Then you put in the warlock's high health pool with the SL/SL spec pre 3.0, you had a tank in cloth gear. There was just no hope of bursting anyone down with that, and to top it off, you had the druid who was UNTOUCHABLE and could negate all damage with one swift stroke (no pun intended).

I wasn't either.

Look, I have no problems discussing these issues and I don't have a problem with changing my mind. But the thing is, I'm not even sure you're understanding what I'm saying. You seem to look at this as "mage QQ" and mages want more because they have it worse off than everyone else. This is NOT what it's about (firstly because mages don't have it off worse than everyone else, and secondly because of what I'm about to say...). These mage issues are completely independent of other classes. What I mean by this is that this isn't about XYZ class can do it, so I should, too. It's about the fact that all the things that make a mage, a mage, are completely destroyed by the prevailing strategies used against mages in the PvP environment and by the class design behind them. Other classes have similar problems and other classes have different problems. Some classes are in a state that are far worse than mages. But this doesn't change the fact that there are issues with mages that need to be addressed.

Maybe your argument would then be "Why should Blizzard address mages first or put greater importance on mages?" Well, they shouldn't. But Blizzard should at LEAST let the mage community know what they think of these issues. I kept up on the live mage forums and the beta mage forums. These issues were discussed left and right for weeks, and I saw maybe ONE response to these discussions, and it wasn't even in response to the most heavily discussed topic (mana regeneration). People don't like it when there is no communication. Many of the top PvE and PvP mages simply stop posting because they feel that there is no hope for mages to be improved (I feel like I'm going to regret saying this. "You shouldn't be improved" incoming... I feel it ).

lmao fuck man...

Daggah · Nov 25, 2008

novadude said:
Warlocks in raids will always be suffer from changes made to nerf them in PVP. Cloth gear scaled very rapidly for affliction at the beginning of BC (lots of +damage/+stam) and as a result the whole affliction tree got nerfed by ~30% for raid geared warlocks. Broad sweeping changes that have an affect on all aspects of the game FTL.
Oh well, not like I've played for over a year anyways.

It was pretty much single-handedly due to Frozen Shadoweave and the Spellstrike tailoring items. The itemization for warlocks just getting into Karazhan was just about perfect for affliction. But affliction doesn't scale well with crit/haste so once you started getting into the higher level content affliction couldn't keep up. I never made it that far (the most challenging boss my lock saw was Gruul) and I'm glad - 0/21/40 shadow bolt spam is not appealing to me at all. It would be nice if they found a way to make affliction scale better in WotLK - making haste affect DoTs would probably go a long way. The micromanagement of DoTs is challenging and a lot more fun than spamming the shadowbolt button.

Hooligan · Nov 25, 2008

Daggah said:
(the most challenging boss my lock saw was Gruul) and I'm glad - 0/21/40 shadow bolt spam is not appealing to me at all. It would be nice if they found a way to make affliction scale better in WotLK - making haste affect DoTs would probably go a long way. The micromanagement of DoTs is challenging and a lot more fun than spamming the shadowbolt button.

a) gruul is srs bznss

b) in BC, all classes had a rotation. and some of the higher DPS classes had no more than 2 or 3 abilities to spam.

- enhance shaman - drop totems and SS-shock spam
- elemental shaman - drop totems and LB spam
- warlock - CoS and SB spam
- hunter - mark, steadyshot macro spam
- mage - scorch, scorch scorch, fireball spam

catch my drift?

sure, you can micromanage your dots and use different spells, but you will gimp your DPS. you can thank the glowball cooldown for that one.

Daggah · Nov 25, 2008

Hooligan said:
a) gruul is srs bznss

b) in BC, all classes had a rotation. and some of the higher DPS classes had no more than 2 or 3 abilities to spam.

- enhance shaman - drop totems and SS-shock spam
- elemental shaman - drop totems and LB spam
- warlock - CoS and SB spam
- hunter - mark, steadyshot macro spam
- mage - scorch, scorch scorch, fireball spam

catch my drift?

sure, you can micromanage your dots and use different spells, but you will gimp your DPS. you can thank the glowball cooldown for that one.

Right, but that's why I liked the affliction playstyle. It was more complicated than just making sure Curse of Shadows was up and spamming the shadowbolt button. Now it's a rotation between haunt, immolate, UA, CoA, corruption, siphon life, and shadowbolting when none of the DoTs/effects need to be refreshed. It can be tricky to ensure close to 100% uptime on all of those spells while still shadowbolting and managing GCDs. And this is all assuming the boss fight is a tank and spank where I don't need to be moving around. It's far more interesting than the destruction playstyle. I guess destruction will be more interesting at 80 because 80 destruction will be more about fire than about shadow...

TBH I've never really played destruction anyway. I always geared for affliction so I never had the crit for it. My 70 warlock has about 10% crit untalented.

And by the way I mentioned Gruul specifically to point out that I didn't get very far with raiding.

Hooligan · Nov 25, 2008

thats my point... you can play any way you have more fun... but if you want to be the most effective you can be, then you have to go with what WORKS.

ive seen tons of enhance shamans running around with daggers and fast weapons with windfury on them, making them retardedly bad at DPS, but they say thats how they like it... so... ok you like to be bad at the game? go for it as long as you're having fun.

Daggah · Nov 25, 2008

Hooligan said:
thats my point... you can play any way you have more fun... but if you want to be the most effective you can be, then you have to go with what WORKS.

ive seen tons of enhance shamans running around with daggers and fast weapons with windfury on them, making them retardedly bad at DPS, but they say thats how they like it... so... ok you like to be bad at the game? go for it as long as you're having fun.

If you want to do decent DPS as affliction, you're going to have to micromanage your DoTs. If you spec deep affliction and then try to play as if you were destruction spec with shadowbolt spam, your DPS will be terrible.

Hooligan · Nov 25, 2008

affliction is doing sub-par DPS... even while being a pro at micromanaging dots
at least in BC...

too early in WOTLK to tell how affliction vs. destro is imo

AthlonXP · Nov 25, 2008

I just started a DK last week and so far I am loving it.

Fiyaballz · Nov 25, 2008

dont hate on the BEs!

Bambi · Nov 25, 2008

Afflic locks are lacking in dps still in WOTLK because its taking almost 3-4 seconds from the time you place your first dot to kick in. When it comes to pvping with an afflic lock, it has come down to fear management, pets attacking, you running away most of the time only hitting with instant SB, and timing the perfect death coil.

I love my lock

Space_Coyote · Nov 25, 2008

Maybe some of the more seasoned Warlocks can help me since Im relatively new. I rushed to 70, and was only there for less than 3 weeks before Wrath hit.

I did like UA for leveling (briefly tried Metamorphosis too), but when it came to raids or dungeons it was lacking. The most basic reason was that the mob (except bosses of course) would be dead before I even had a chance to apply all my dots.

So I turned to destruction, and my DPS jumped about 150 points. I fell in love with all those big crits, but I think Im missing something in my technique or spec.

My rotation is to apply immolate first, then CoA and corruption. I spam incinerate over shadow bolt, because of the boost when immol is active, and the decreased cast time of it. When the immol is nearing the end, I hit conflagurate (25% more crit chance with < 5 secs left) and use the decreased cast time (talent name?) for Chaos Bolt and 2 Incinerates. Reapply Immol and refresh CoA, corruption as needed. Repeat.

What should I switch up?

Im at work, but you can check out Plenty on Sargeras for armory info.

S3th13 · Nov 25, 2008

Lol... you know your addicted when you spend more time explaining the game on an online forum that most people spend actually playing the game.

gamz247 · Nov 25, 2008

Space_Coyote said:
So I turned to destruction, and my DPS jumped about 150 points. I fell in love with all those big crits, but I think Im missing something in my technique or spec.

My rotation is to apply immolate first, then CoA and corruption. I spam incinerate over shadow bolt, because of the boost when immol is active, and the decreased cast time of it. When the immol is nearing the end, I hit conflagurate (25% more crit chance with < 5 secs left) and use the decreased cast time (talent name?) for Chaos Bolt and 2 Incinerates. Reapply Immol and refresh CoA, corruption as needed. Repeat.

Just to say, I have a Warlock alt, but he's basically the lowest on my character totem pole right now, so most of my experience with Warlocks comes from raiding with them.

The premise behind Destruction is doing the most damage you possibly can. I can understand throwing up CoA and Corruption to get Molten Core to proc, but really what you're doing is wasting 3 seconds of global cooldown to throw up DoTs that are really only a small part of your overall DPS.

I think the highest overall Destruction DPS spec will be similar to that of the BC raiding Destruction spec, which will be 0/21/50. The 10% damage increase for your fire spells from using Demonic Sacrifice on your Imp will be much more than what your Imp can do, even with Demonic Power and Empowered Imp. Chaos Bolt has such a ridiculously long cooldown, and a terrible spell power coefficient being a 1.5 second cast, that I don't think it'll be worth speccing into.

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