Blood Pact: Looking back at Locks
by V'Ming Chew 
Jan 2nd 2008 at 5:00PM
Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman.What? It's the new year already? Obviously so ... judging by the sheer barrage of weight-loss ads on TV. They make reaching for my next fistful of buttered popcorn a journey in guilt, even though I'm considered somewhat undernourished in my household.
Here we are in the first week of 2008 - an opportune time to look back on the past year, when memories of being fear-dotted to death are still vivid. If warlocks owned 2006 since skillcoil, then 2007 was the year that warlocks became just so OP with every nerf.
The Dark Portal opens
The Burning Crusade launch on January, 16 of 2007 brought many new useful toys to our class. Warlocks are no longer just shadow bolt spammers, they can spam fire now in the form of Incinerate, complete with a nifty flaming animation that should really be Green.
Warlocks also got an active aggro shedding mechanism in Soulshatter, in addition to passive talents. This truly paved the way for warlocks to consistently share the top of the DPS charts with mages and rogues.
Ritual of Souls worked so well that mages got their own version recently. Making 10 healthstones out of a single soul shard is a sweet deal, and can be seen as Blizzard's effort to address the perennial soul shard 'problem'.
With BC, warlocks also got a nasty new way to deal AoE damage in Seed of Corruption, as explosions rocked through walls (fixed in 2.3, thankfully), dungeons, battlegrounds and the world in general.
Already the king of soloing, hitting 70 is really just a rite of passage for warlocks with these powerful toys - setting the stage for heroics, raids and Arena PvP.
"Warlocks are OP"
The introduction of a horror effect with death coil back in October 2006 truly changed the Warlock's PvP game. From being arguably free HKs, they became the class to beat in duels and other small scale PvP encounters.
Many players balked, unaccustomed to their Warlock targets fighting back and - horrors! - winning. Warriors, rogues and some others shrugged, "What's the problem? They're not that bad." Mileage may vary, but the whines continued to flowed freely, despite nerfs and fixes peppering the class in 2007.
Both the damage and control potential of warlocks have been systematically reduced through the year:
Jan 9 - Felguard's melee damage reduced; damage mitigation component of Soul Link reduced; the bonus that the spells "Corruption" and "Curse of Agony" receive from bonus spell damage effects decreased by approximately 10%.
Feb 2 - Spell damage coefficient for imp removed totally. Reinstated later but at an "obviously lower" level.
Feb 13 - Seed of Corruption can't proc off explosions from other seeds. Talent Improved Firebolt changed from 0.5 second to 0.25 second reduction per point.
May 22 - All targets over level 60 have slightly larger chance to break out of crowd-controlling effects when they take damage. Death Coil subjected to diminishing returns in the Horror category. Durations of curses of tongues, elements and shadows reduced in PvP. The felhunter's Spell Lock duration reduced to 6 seconds.
Sep 25 - Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear duration against PvP targets reduced to 10 seconds. Resilience also reduces the damage dealt by DoTs.
Nov 13 - The healing effects of Drain Life, Siphon Life and Death Coil now affected by healing reducing effects like Mortal Strike. Hellfire does not add casting time to affected casters, nor reduce channeling time, nor prevent flag captures in battlegrounds. Damage bonus of talent Soul Siphon reduced and it no longer affects Drain Mana. Fear Ward made available to all Priests at level 20.
Being a Warlock myself, I'm not whining, but trying to de-mystify the power of warlocks. For those who have yet to overcome the psychological barrier, warlocks CAN be beaten. Just ask the warriors and rogues! ;)
BlizzCon and Wrath
Unfortunately in August 2007, BlizzCon confirmed many of our worst Fears (pun intended). Amidst much boos (and applause), Mr Kevin Jordan confirmed that warlocks are the best dueling class.
"But WoW isn't a dueling game," the class designer continued. "The stigma actually carries over ... into the various (PvP) formats."
This "stigma" is alive and well in the Arenas, evident in the strong representation by warlocks in smaller brackets.
Will this mean more nerfs in the future? How will it affect the development of the class's new abilities in the expansion? Will the developers be more inclined to give warlocks less cool abilities?
The announcement of the Death Knight hero class at BlizzCon brings another "dark magic" class into the fold. While the Death Knight is obviously melee and wears plate, the class' flavor is not unlike that of warlocks and shadowpriests.
How will Blizzard truly differentiate these three "death and decay" classes? Will we see more fear-like effects from death knights? Horrifying thought: Will they be like warlocks in plate??
Here's to looking forward to the brand new year and all that it brings - nerfs or buffs - cheers!
Filed under: Warlock, Analysis / Opinion, (Warlock) Blood Pact
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
BlankBlix Jan 2nd 2008 5:21PM
Sigh, I remember when I used to look forward to patches (pre BC) days. Now I cringe and wonder what is getting nerfed this time . . . .
warlock Jan 2nd 2008 5:29PM
dont nerf warlocks pleaseeeeeeeeeee
Astheri Jan 2nd 2008 5:34PM
You forgot to add in the buffs to other classes against Warlocks. Not only do I fear being nerfed further in each patch, it's the buffs other classes are getting on top of it. Debuffing effect from Arcane Shot... bye bye Soul Link and Fel Armor. Cloak of Shadows, as if rogues needed another way to beat us. More ways to break fear... etc.
I'm quite sick of being called OP'd.
Lucas Jan 3rd 2008 1:42AM
Ye know shamans have had purge which has no CD and takes off two buffs for less mana...
Sergio Jan 3rd 2008 11:46AM
@Lucas
The difference is that shaman, and every other class with a dispelling ability needs to choose to use a cooldown in order to use their dispelling ability. Hunters just need to go about their business weaving their shot rotation as normal to benefit from the new dispelling and healing-reduction abilities. Give hunters a dispel shot and an MS shot and force them to choose whether or not to use a cooldown/cast time to use them and there wouldn't be as much griping (except from hunters).
Rich Jan 2nd 2008 5:49PM
The only ones calling Warlock's OP'd are people who really haven't played against a warlock in the last year and are still stuck in the 2006 mode. Its funny when people bring up reasons that 'locks are OP'd and it was nerfed 2 patches ago.
Everyone is crying nerf locks, while other classes are buffed to the point of being OP'd. Oh well.
Nati Jan 2nd 2008 5:51PM
Having just recently gotten a warlock to 70, I can safely say that compared to my other 70's - priest, paladin and shaman - it is a very difficult class to be bad at (but probably takes a bit of training to be GOOD at). The warlock has such an amazing variety of spells at their disposal, most of which are useful most of the time. I think that's the greatest challenge too when it comes to playing a lock, figuring out when to use what (and fitting it all into keybindings that make sense).
I'm undecided if I'd call warlocks overpowered, though. They certainly have their weaknesses... Fear is probably the only -really- broken part of the class though. It is just soooo good against everything but undead, really.
Verit Jan 2nd 2008 5:55PM
Its actually pretty hard for my warlock to burst kill anything in bg or arena lately (being affliction specced) - sometimes I get lucky though :). The best thing I can do I found is generate agro. I'm kinda hard to kill with 12k hp, and in bg I can annoy enough targets (with my fearing, and dots) to make it so others can complete objectives more easily.
What I don't get is I keep getting feared by warriors and priests and it always without fail lasts the full duration (with dots and everything). I can't do that to save my life :(.
willferal Jan 2nd 2008 6:12PM
Sep 25 - Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear duration against PvP targets reduced to 10 seconds. Resilience also reduces the damage dealt by DoTs.
Not a warlock-specific nerf, just to let you know. All Crowd Control in PvP was reduced, from Blind to Polymorph.
Slayblaze Jan 2nd 2008 6:21PM
There has definitely been a slow erosion of the Warlock's effectiveness...nothing to break the class, as it still has the most balanced within the 3 talent trees imo, but very noticeable for those of us longtime players. However I really see it as a slow game of 'catch-up' for the other classes that was probably not a bad idea really. Unfortunately it does seem like our counter-classes just keep getting more and more ammunition to use against us, while we keep getting less and less to fight back with.
I just keep telling myself to look forward to some good things with the new level 71-80 spells and abilities (and new demons! please blizz!)
mark Jan 3rd 2008 12:06AM
If Blizzard cannot be bothered to get off of their pile of money to fix obvious bugs (like mis-matched tooltips) then they sure wouldn't invest the development time to give us another demon unless there was some utility.
We already have a tank (or two with Felguard), a DPS imp, a CC succubus, and a situational Felhunter.
The only one left is healer. Considering that I wait LFG for hours while "all ready to go, just need a healer" messages keep flashing by - I would love to see a Nurse Betty uniform slapped on succubus, give her some HOT, and calling it good.
ruleofthumb Jan 2nd 2008 8:33PM
Ugh...the last thing we need is more Shadow and Fear classes. I really hope they don't make Death Knights like "Warlocks-in-plate". SL/SL-Drain Tank Locks might as well be in plate for crying out loud! (AKA: QQ nerf SL/SL)
2k7 brought about many nerfs to the Warlock class and some were needed. I play a Hunter and there are some nerfs that happened to us that sucked...hardcore. And there were some nerfs that were just totally out there, for example: Flare. Seriously...they nerfed Flare? And Apparently Silencing Shot was too good for a 41-point talent and nerfed the damage from 75% to 50%.
There are some needed Warlock buffs that I will have to agree with. Better aggro dumps and an instant Corruption just name a couple. I realize how crappy it is for every Warlock to be forced to spec 5/5 Imp Corr, just to be efficient. Mages are getting Ice Block, Warlocks should get an instant Corr, and Hunters should get Scatter Shot.
Iosef Jan 2nd 2008 9:59PM
dot dot dot fear..... dot dot dot fear.......yikes ! lolcoil !
we need a bigger nerf bat
WE ARE OP
Necrous Jan 2nd 2008 10:38PM
You had me at "dot dot dot", but you lost me at "fear". Thats the link in the classic OP lock combo that fails just about everytime at this point in the game. There are so many counters to "dot dot fear dot dot fear" that any decent lock has already found other strategies to win in pvp combat.
daniel.roy Jan 2nd 2008 11:36PM
Playing a Warlock level 70 both in raid situations and PvP, I'd say we're pretty OP, yeah. :)
There's some classes that give me a run for my money... Rogues get me almost every time if they have the jump on me, and Warriors with the proper spec and who know how to play their classes can give me a run for my money. But if I see a Pally, a Shaman or a Druid, I laugh. These guys must hate my guts every time the only thing they have to do is die slowly as they run around feared and dotted up.
Yeah, there's tricks to get out of Fears... But if you have skillcoil and iHoT up, you can just send them running into walls again.
theRaptor Jan 2nd 2008 11:52PM
Locks are OP. They have the same damage potential as mages and rogues, yet have fear and a variety of decent pets. How can you seriously argue that fear isn't better then sheep+frost nova, or that CoE isn't better then icebolt snares?
Locks should not have the same damage output as mages in raids, especially when they bring debuffs and other raid utility. The only reason to bring mages is for gimmicks and CC.
Mages supposedly the top ranged damage class. Now the primary crowd control class. GG Blizzard.
Taenwyn Jan 3rd 2008 3:35PM
Top AoE damage class, rather. Pretty sure the mage tools beat out the warlock ones.
rahvii Jan 4th 2008 5:06PM
Priest are supposed to be top healing class :).
Thepitt Jan 3rd 2008 12:03AM
jUST TAKE AWAY FEAR ALL TOGETHER AND I'LL BE HAPPY.
Freeze me in place in terror for 10 seconds, but quit sending me running like a scared little girl. It's just damn annoying.
SaintStryfe Jan 3rd 2008 1:24AM
As a Shaman, fear is the most annoying thing. I'm forced running while several thousand HP are ticked in seconds, with no recourse. My only defense is Tremor Totem, assuming we're fighting in a small radius of course. If I stop to heal, I get Dotted and feared. If I approach, dotted and feared. And then the pet snapping at me the whole time.
Gah, horrible. Bigger Nerfbat to Fear, and give resiliance even more stopping power against DoTs. Oh, and since they can kill my totems in one hit, how about I kill their pets?