Main point: Class balances have once again come and gone, without Warlocks getting any love, in particular when it comes to our "Class Defining" ability: Focused Casting. As it currently stands right now, I have been capped on CB when in raid for the past 6 months or so, rendering the CB portion of FC effectively useless. Up to this point I decided to keep my mouth shut and hope for the best when the new class balances came out, however, I am afraid that just wasn't the case. FC has always been that one ability that allowed up to get in those super nice spikes, even if it didnt always line up with our big increment bursts, however, i have found myself trying to line up those big bursts with Spellbind instead of FC, as Spellbind is literally several times more powerful. Something else to note is that even if you are somehow beneath the CB cap, clicking spellbind with most certainly get you there. Looking at the armor and jewelry dropping in KA, I'm guessing that people will run face first into the CB ceiling within the first week. This is fine at most classes as they dont have "class defining" abilities that are supposed to increase CB. Having said all of that, can the devs please consider making a change to how FC works to either temporarily allow us to spike above the 4k CB limit, or to remove the CB conversion in favor of additional AB mod? Im trying to think of some alternatives that wouldnt be game breaking, but would still remain useful to the class. To sum it up, i dont think the class is in a bad position right now. Am I a little salty that the other Sorc class got an increase to damage? Maybe, but honestly they probably needed it, and they still probably need to have their class defining ability looked at as well. Am I a little salty that BLs and Conjys without the hammer, and Illys with the cloak are killing me on the parse irregardless of the encounter type (ST, liked, and even AE trash pulls sometimes), yes, yes I am, but i honestly dont care about it as i know we cant all be at the top, and i'm perfectly fine with letting some of the other classes enjoy their time in the spotlight. Lastly, i'd like to start a list of other things that I would like to see fixed, or updated for the main class that I play: 1. 180 increments to unleash out big nuke should be lowered (Wiz should be lowered as well by a proportional amount). 2. Duration that our stacks last should be increased to 5mins. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have clicky charms and all of the other garbage that we can only use pre pull, and then to not have our biggest nukes or insta cast spells available to us. The 2 classes I mentioned above are able to get some pretty large spikes in in the first 15-20 seconds of combat while they have all of their temps running, while here I am, sitting on my warlock, patiently waiting until my counter hits 180 at like 30-35 seconds into the fight and the mob is almost dead. I'd like to think that my class is useful on the raid encounters that actually matter and not just for clearing trash in the zones. 3. This will never happen, but can both sides of our AA Prestige tree be made viable? I dont know a single person that goes down the left side... Maybe rethink it so that right side is AoE and Large linked encounter based and left side if ST focused? 4. I guess dont understand why scouts get a rune that procs 100% fervor while mages get an unpredictable, untimeable doublecast rune. If you thought the classes were balanced without Ethereals, then this would surely skew the balance in favor of scouts right? 5. Doublecast: can we do something to drastically reduce the amount so that this stat becomes relevant again, or maybe develop a conversion so that when its over 100% a spell could triple cast? Obviously not saying this should be on a linear scale, but maybe something with diminishing returns would be nice? For example if i have 120% DC, i would have an additional 5% chance for a spell to cast a third time? 6. There is so much more... i will add when i have time....
Ok well im not sure why you all arent taking it seriously, but the biggest buff the ability provides is 50% CB of base CB..... we are seeing NONE of that right now, nor will we in the near future.... its pointless.... 100 Crit chance? big woop 700 potency? thats alright... i mean its not great... its not even good... but its allright.... I mean seriously, if this is out trump card that makes the class great, why cant it be updated to keep up with the times?
It should be changed. Towards the end of AoM, a few of the top warlocks absolutely destroyed everyone on the parse. This happened with the original ethereal weapons. CB spikes were in excess of the current 3k cap while potency was a fraction of where it is today. Enter ToT. Solution to one class owning the parse: Cap CB and change FC. What this did was put many warlocks at the ceiling almost immediately. The only growth the warlock class had during ToT was the same growth everyone else had with the Potency explosion. I get by ok in raids these days. But there is only 1 reason I do: Myth Hammer. If you take that hammer away I would be maybe top 5 and in some guilds, might not even make top 10. The hammer's 2nd reset (outside of the reset rune) and the 100 feror proc is a game changer. So here we are in KA. Scout conversions will allow them to catch up. Wizards will pass warlocks. Conjy's and necros will be very good. BLs, Assassins, and some Rangers will pass us easily. I am not sure how I will compete in KA. And do not say accession classes. We are not talking about a re-work of our AAs. Just change FC. It has changed twice so it can change again. Here is my FC idea: A controlled Fervor proc in that 10 second window. You can even lower it to 8 like scouts. At least this way my FC would be a spike like it is meant to be.
I actually really like this idea.... not sure why i didnt think of it... +1 for changing FC to give an 8 second, 100% Fervor boost. To speak to your other points, i believe that is exactly why i made this topic, and wasnt super vocal about it up until now. No one in my raid has the hammer, so i've been able to put put my way along being satisfied as the #4 or 5 on the parse behind a conj, BL, and and Illy with the cloak. All 3 of them are great players. I guess im just looking at what the future of the class looks like now, and its rather discouraging. I know people think all is fine now, but i grantee you that once KA hits, you will not bee seeing this class perform up to its potential.
I'd like to see some sort of temp buff that puts us at max increments that can only be used out of combat. Its near impossible to catch a summoner on that initial spike when they use the charm and we have no stacks.
Love both suggestions so far, Especially since they address probably 2 of my biggest pet peeves with the class. 1 Fix FC by making it a straight 100 Fervor boost for 6-8 seconds. As the duration is shortened, a shorter reuse would also be welcome. 2. Give us a way to start with full stacks, or atleast not start with 0 when raids have to take time between encounters to do loot and junk. Can we maybe always be at 90 (Warlocks) if we are out of combat, and then obviously restart at 0 if we blow our stacks in combat?
Are you serious? You effectively have 2 ravaging procs and 2 reset procs (because of your hammer) that go off every 30 seconds, and you're gonna come here and tell me we cant have 1 ravaging like proc once every 2 mins?
Changing fc to a static value that does not scale is a terrible idea. I've already stated what I think fc should be changed to, so I'm not going to go into it again as I've already wasted tons of posts on it.
Fair enough that you dont have hammer, but class balance isnt decided by 1 item. Warlocks with hammer are real close to other class's with hammer if not higher in situations. Scouts need to have the first ravage rune to keep up with the mages. If you are getting wrekt by non hammer scouts thats a problem outside of class balance. Ofcoarse hammer wielders are gonna destroy non hammer class's (well they should anyway). Thats an itemization problem fyi that the devs should be clearly aware of since we have several posts on here with ideas of how to curb it in KA.
Honestly this isnt a dig on you, but the only scout i ever get wrecked by is BL (Buutuu being one of them )... none of the BLs that top me have a hammer unfortunately. And by no means do I think that BLS need a nerf, im just asking for a warlock ability that was originally the centerpiece of the class to be made whole again, because FC giving us a ton of CB, is absolute nonsense at this point.... While I do agree that some scouts need the ravaging proc to keep up with mages, the changes that are coming down the pipe (pot>cb conversions for all) will put us at a fairly severe disadvantage again. This really is a warlock only problem, because we are the only ones with this stupid useless ability. Again, it might not be obvious now, but scouts are gonna be running the parses in the coming xpac.
Just to maybe look at this from a different angle, i know that 100 Fervor looks like a large number, but when you stop to consider the fact that it can only be triggered once every min and half or so, for 6-8 seconds... that wouldn't break the parse... i mean realistically we'd be looking at maybe a 5-10% increase over a 5 min fight? I dont know if you can recall, but when scouts got the ravaging eth back in the day, their parses didnt double overnight... They went up like 30%, and that was with a run that procced 3-4 times as often.
Idk maybe, I just feel like something like that combined with the hammer would be OP. But like i said in other post cant balance around the hammer, I hate the damn thing and love the hell out of it all at the same time lol.
Change FC so it become a shortcut to max increments. We have all been there were you have max increments and it all goes away because some random delay before a pull.
