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June 11, 2009, 11:32 AM
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#1 (permalink) |
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Warlock Threat
On both these forums and the regular wow forums, I have seen a lot of talk about this lately. I thought about making this a blog post, but felt it would be more beneficial here. To start, there is far too much of people jumping onto the bandwagon, and that crowd mentality seems to take over, to the point where it's literally just "RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE". Warlocks have 10% threat reduction available via talents. Many people like to quickly jump out and say that warlocks are the only ones like this, however, that's not true. Mages (who for all intents and purposes are the class we are compared with the most), also only have 10% threat reduction available via talents. Meanwhile there are some classes that have far more threat reduction and/or aggro dumps. Rogues get several abilities for this, hunters have feign death, etc, meanwhile boomkins and elemental shaman get 30% threat reduction from talents, while spriests get 25%. However, rogues should be doing the most dps so they should have a few more tricks. With all of that said, in my opinion, warlock threat is just fine as it is. And to be honest, I think there are other classes that should have their threat reduction nerfed to be brought inline with Mages and Locks. If you have a good tank, threat will only be an issue you need to contend with occasionally. If you're constantly having threat issues then you have a bad or undergeared tank. Some argue that people who PUG shouldn't have to worry so much about threat, or they argue that threat shouldn't be an issue just because you don't have a good tank. But the issue with that is that would utterly trivialize threat for anyone who has halfway decent tanks. I mean if we're going to go that far, then blizz just might as well remove threat entirely. Threat is going to be an issue for people in those situations, as that's simply the nature of having a mediocre or bad or undergeared tank. So really, warlocks don't need changes to our threat reduction. There are just some other classes that really need to be brought inline with us. Also, please show your support for this thread! World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums - Balacing threat talents and abilities Last edited by Fallenman; June 12, 2009 at 02:19 PM.. |
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June 11, 2009, 11:36 AM
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#2 (permalink) |
Status: Darkbinder
Character Info
Aily 80 Human Warlock Doomhammer US PvE Guild: Arisen Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 53/1/17 |
Re: Warlock Threat
Depends on the mage spec. But invis is still better than shatter. I was thinking about it too, that maybe lock threat is fine, and it's everyone else that's OP. The thing with tanks is if it was such a bad tank, the warlock shouldn't be the only one having an issue. I shouldn't stand next to a DK out dpsing me with half the threat I have. So yeah I dunno, if it's really that serious, they'll do something about it. |
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June 11, 2009, 11:38 AM
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#3 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Luxury 80 Blood Elf Warlock Deathwing US PvP Guild: Addiction Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 54/0/17 |
Re: Warlock Threat
Speaking from a less 'what should be' and a more 'what is Blizzard doing?!' point of view, my understanding is that Blizzard wants to make threat something that tanks worry about, and not so much DPS. They don't seem to want DPS to be threat capped for extended periods of time. So in line with that, they made several changes. Now what we see is that Warlocks (and to some extent, Mages) are suddenly the only class who are actively dealing with threat. In some cases, exceptional warlocks are being threat capped by this. Now, I have no problem with dealing with threat the way I have. It hasn't effected my DPS too much as our warrior tank is very mindful of his threat. If he sees me riding threat cap too much, he'll always ask if threat was an issue for the fight. However, from Blizzard's philosophy, should Warlocks be the only class dealing with threat the way we are? Is this apart of what they feel the class should be about? Or is this a mistake on their part, whether it be we should be lower on threat or other classes should be higher?
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June 11, 2009, 11:41 AM
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#4 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Elechi 80 Human Warlock Arathor Euro PvE Guild: Warriors of the Heart Profile: Blizzard Armory |
Re: Warlock Threat
I agree, other classes threat reduction needs to be looked at not the locks threat reduction abilities The fact that I still need to keep an eye on my threat makes playing my lock more interesting. Recently I only got aggro once on Thaddius because of a string of 'unlucky' crits. Soulshatter was on cooldown because of a shatter early in the fight due to a tank death so it was splat the warlock  .
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June 11, 2009, 12:23 PM
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#5 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Kiralyn 80 Human Warlock Mal'Ganis US PvP Guild: Self Titled Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0.13.58 |
Re: Warlock Threat
I think the issue is not that our threat situation is a poor one, but that it isn't inline with everyone else. My only other complaint continues to be the shatter cooldown. In current design, fights are turning into muti-stage battles, with various effects coming and going throughout. What this turns into for warlocks is that while our threat may be balanced around the assumption of having a shatter to use, that isn't always the case. The best example that comes to mind is Thorim. Going in the hallway in phase 1 is a full burn situation. I've had to shatter during that time to keep myself alive. What happens when we get to thorim and I'm threat capped? However, lowering the cooldown to 2 minutes would trivialize threat on other encounters. And yes, 'burn the correct target', 'watch your threat', 'get better tanks' all work here, but none help the conversation. My other concern is scaling. In the past, damage deal classes have scaled up much faster than threat generation for tanks. I get the idea that this is actually what we are seeing. While warlocks are pushing out huge amounts of damage, tank threat hasn't scaled up in the same fashion or at the same rate. When you consider that hit and expertise are the 'threat stats' for tanks, and both of those cap, we see a problem. I'm not deep enough into Ulduar to really say if this is a problem or not, nor does my guild have enough gear for an accurate representation. I'm sure casual has a much better feel for current scaling, and I'd be interested to know what you guys are noticing with gear upgrades.
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Hell, it's about time. -Tychus Findlaw |
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June 11, 2009, 01:06 PM
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#6 (permalink) |
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Re: Warlock Threat
I disagree that usual mage invis is better then shatter, assuming same old mechanics it takes a full 2 seconds before invis surpasses shatter ( 100% / 3seconds = ~33%, the old was 100% / 5 seconds ) there really isn't that many fights where there are predicable non periodic AOE damage. arcane is diff since they can get instant invis ( if I recall correctly will have to double check mine ) that said I agree that SS CD is way too long and i don't really understand why hybrids have better threat reductions ( it's not like we have the matching dps anyway ) |
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June 11, 2009, 01:12 PM
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#7 (permalink) | |
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Re: Warlock Threat
Quote:
Also, invis is NOT better than soulshatter. Soulshatter is instant and reduces your threat 50%. Invis requires 3 seconds of "ramp up" time, and in that 3 seconds if you take damage or cast a spell, it cancels the invis and you've just wasted your aggro dump. Last edited by Fallenman; June 11, 2009 at 01:14 PM.. |
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June 11, 2009, 01:15 PM
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#8 (permalink) | |
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Character Info
Fizzik 80 Blood Elf Warlock Dunemaul US PvP Guild: Ghosts of Damnation Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58 |
Re: Warlock Threat
Quote:
The argument that 'threat is a problem' isn't 'locks generate too much threat' it's 'compared with other classes locks generate threat disproportionate to our dps and have dearer/poorer talents/spells to manage it'. Mages (although they still have it better than locks) may make a similar arguement - that doesn't invalidate ours. Ideally there should be a trade off : greater dps capability = greater threat problems. In the same way a tank can gear/spec to maximize threat or survivability, so should dps classes. Now the balance is (example): high rogue/hunter dps = good threat management talents/spells, high lock dps = poor threat management skills/spells. Maybe other dps classes should be like us (although from my experience, that might really make tanking a pain) or maybe there's a middle ground. As it is now, locks have the worst of it. |
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June 11, 2009, 01:40 PM
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#9 (permalink) |
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Re: Warlock Threat
Three seconds isn't that hard to work with, but that's not really the problem as far as I can see. The problem is with destruction, improved drain soul only affects damage from affliction, there is no threat reduction to destruction spells at all. To the best of my knowledge we're the only class which has a major school of damage with no means of passively reducing threat, not even by taking sub par talents. Stick a 10% destro spell threat reduction onto cataclysm and we'd probably be good. It's not a fantastic talent so you'd still have to make decisions, but we'd have threat reduction options. That's probably really the only thing they need at this point, a lot of the primary dps specs are destruction and they have zero threat reduction. Yeah I'd like a quicker cooldown on soulshatter(even if they brought the health cost back) for soloing elites, but a destruction threat reduction talent would do me. |
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June 11, 2009, 01:45 PM
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#10 (permalink) |
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Re: Warlock Threat
erm have you actually raided? maybe as a mage as well? 3 seconds is a life time, and it's not just 3 second, it's 3 seconds of doing nothing and being hit by nothing which is alot to ask for in a raid and you have a warlock yet you never realized there's a talent called Destructive Reach - Spell - World of Warcraft |
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