So, ugh...

[Merusk]

Locks have ruled for a while, and continue to rule in beta for various reasons.   Fear keeps getting nerfed, but never enough that a Lock can't be guaranteed to get a good amount of kills due to fear+pet+dots and their incredibly huge +sta.

Hunters are currently uber because nobody has any resilliance, so they can't resist crits.  With the agi changes, and good talent spec you can hit 40-50% crit-chance on multishot.  Combined with a slow bow that has a small damage variance, and Giantstalker 8-piece (+15% dam to multi)  or the PVP damage bonus (+4% to multi) you put some MAJOR hurt on people.   And that's before you include the armor-ignoring arcane shot and buffed pets.   Things appear to even-out a bit in beta due to resilience, and lack of uber itemization for hunters, (The T4 & T5 pieces aren't that big of an upgrade for +Ap over current items)  but we'll see.

[Morat20]

Also, pets get normalized to 2.0 attack speed -- no more 1.0 pets that hit at .5 (serpent's swiftness + perma-frezny). On the other hand, pet scaling will be adjusted more once they're normalized. (I don't use a 1.0 pet, but I hate it when I'm on the recieving end of one).

The new Viper trap is a PvP trap, pure and simple. (I can't fucking wait to drop that one on people). Steady shot will give hunters a replacement for aimed (I have no idea what type of damage it does) in a rotation, so that's actually more damage -- arcane is six seconds cooldown, multi-shot is 9, so we'll be able to fit a steady shot in there in addition to the two or three autoshots we'll get off in a ten-second period.

From what I can tell, once TBC talents and gear shakes out facing Hunters in PvP will either be steady and hard damage -- but not insane burst DPS, unless you totally lack crit gear. TBC stuff has more +stamina too, IIRC. So I think hunters will end up where they're supposed to be -- steady and hard damage, but not as much front-end burst as properly specced mages.

It's just that the changes, right now, leave most people a little fucked facing us. On the other hand, their gear will get steadily better and ours really won't -- other than +stamina and some ability to modify it via gems.

[Chenghiz]

I've just stopped pvping at 60. The balance is just way too fucked for me to have fun. However my 38 mage is lots of fun. :P

[lamaros]

I ruled pvp before the patch too, though. So even if we get a (due) nerf then we'll still be fine.

[Venkman]

It really is pretty comical, particularly in AB. Lots of groups I'm facing have been predominantly 'locks and Hunters. It's getting so we are all laughing about it.

One and one there's really nothing I can do as an Arc/Fire Mage against a Hunter who's timers are up. I may be able to get them down to 75% or so, if my timers are up and I can keep the pet away from me. So I just avoid 1 on 1. I tried Frost/Arc for a bit after 2.0 hit, but the survivability really only translated to another 3-4 seconds at most. My gear is sorta sucky, so I need all the extra damage Talents can give.

I like Mages in general. It's just that I really feel the rock>paper>scissors thing here. Hunters>Mages>Warriors. I'm sure those Wars are as frustrated when fighting Mages as I am against Hunters. Which is really very stupid. I know I know, always travel in groups and never notice the system, but that's just unrealistic. It's like stuns in PvP. They just universally piss people off.

[Morat20]

It really is pretty comical, particularly in AB. Lots of groups I'm facing have been predominantly 'locks and Hunters. It's getting so we are all laughing about it.

One and one there's really nothing I can do as an Arc/Fire Mage against a Hunter who's timers are up. I may be able to get them down to 75% or so, if my timers are up and I can keep the pet away from me. So I just avoid 1 on 1. I tried Frost/Arc for a bit after 2.0 hit, but the survivability really only translated to another 3-4 seconds at most. My gear is sorta sucky, so I need all the extra damage Talents can give.

I like Mages in general. It's just that I really feel the rock>paper>scissors thing here. Hunters>Mages>Warriors. I'm sure those Wars are as frustrated when fighting Mages as I am against Hunters. Which is really very stupid. I know I know, always travel in groups and never notice the system, but that's just unrealistic. It's like stuns in PvP. They just universally piss people off.

As a mage, you'll do better against Hunters once pets are normalized. You'll do a lot better if you move into resiliance gear, but that's going to be the standard damage/protection tradeoff.

You'll still be WTFPwned versus most BM specced hunters. I actually feel your pain against the Marks specced hunters (I'm beast specced). It's a bit of a pisser to face 1100 point auto-crits and who fucking knows multi-shot crits, and I'm at least mitigating more of the damage than you. If it makes you feel better, I've still gotten two-shotted by mages in PvP, and I loathe warlocks will all the hate in my soul.

Hunters are just surfing the current lack of resiliance gear. We don't need a nerf, simply because TBC gear progression is going to nerf our asses just fine -- unless steady shot is a lot more powerful than I've been told.

Warlocks, on the other hand -- don't know what the fuck's going to slow their asses down. Maybe every piece of TBC comes with a free 30 points of Shadow protection?

[Zetor]

Those 6k hp worth of dots now won't be as painful at 70 when everyone is running around with 10-15k hp.


-- Z.

[lamaros]

Those 6k hp worth of dots now won't be as painful at 70 when everyone is running around with 10-15k hp.


-- Z.

Also not as painful when you've managed to lose touch with reality and get stuck in a realm of hyperbole.

[Morat20]

Those 6k hp worth of dots now won't be as painful at 70 when everyone is running around with 10-15k hp.


-- Z.

I expect gear and spell scaling will make 6k dots 10 or 12k dots by 70. Crit resistance simply doesn't exist in the game right now, and as best I can tell from the T4 and T5 hunter gear, hunters crit percentage isn't going to rise much by 70. Their damage will, but the real issue the crits. Everyone should have some resiliance gear.

And the better fucking be a resiliance talent for pets. I'm sick of my pet dying from AoE cleaves. On the other hand, I did find my raid pet (specced heavy FR) can happily tank virtually anything in UBRS as long as the healer's paying attention. Also was really useful in MC -- I didn't use him on Rags, but I had him out the entire rest of the time. Only times he died were when I forgot to turn growl off and he yanked a Molten Destroyer off the tank. (Growl's still bugged, by the way). I had no healing for my pet beyond me, so he went down pretty quick.

As a BM-specced hunter, I was trading places with the two marks-specced hunters -- both of whom outgear me -- the entire raid. It's nice to see BM as raid-viable. Admittedly, I went all-out (including using traps) to see if the spec was viable, and I doubt the other two hunters focused as much except on boss fights.

[Azaroth]

Holy crap, I thought I'd come into this thread and have some kind of monopoly on giving good Warlock advice.

You'd think 'Locks have been overpowered for the last year and everyone has rolled one... or something.

[Zetor]

Those 6k hp worth of dots now won't be as painful at 70 when everyone is running around with 10-15k hp.


-- Z.

Also not as painful when you've managed to lose touch with reality and get stuck in a realm of hyperbole.

... was that aimed at me, or what?

My theorycraft-fu is weak (ie. I can't be arsed to spend hours researching this stuff), but the currently known high-end (epic) lv70 damage gear only has about +1000 shadow damage on it if you specifically min-max for +damage. You can get up to +800 right now with Naxx gear.
The DOTs themselves are gaining a boost, but it's not that significant - rank 8 corruption does 900 damage compared to rank 7's (currently trainable) 832; rank 7 agony is 1356 damage compared to rank 6's 1044; rank 9 immolate is 327+615 compared to rank 8 279+510. Even with the new scaling and damage bonuses from talents, you are NOT going to gank people by just putting your 3-4 dots on them and doing /dance, like you can now (I have around +500 shadow damage; if I burn my TOEP and amplify curse, I can pretty much take down everything with dots only. Yeah, it's broken... at level 60.). With a very rough estimate, you'll do about 8k damage with dots tops, if you're affliction specced, loaded up with damage gear, and willing to blow your cooldowns. And that's over 24 seconds, which is plenty of time for getting healed / eating / etc.

High HP IS a lot more prevalent in BC. Since stamina ilevel costs were cut in half, pretty much everything has a truckload of extra sta on it. When I fooled around in beta a few weeks ago, the 4th mob I killed dropped green level 58 legplates "Of Stamina" -- it had a +57 stam modifier. People are reporting 10+k hitpoints at level 70 in greens (again, too lazy to find links). Netherweave bandages heal for 425 damage per second. Level 70 health pots heal for 1500-2500 hp. Etc etc.

To sum up, DOTs are powerful right now (almost brokenly so, I'd say), but they'll decline at level 70, and certainly won't be able to kill anything by themselves. IMO anyway, but then again I'm delusional or something. :P


-- Z.

[Dren]

I've had a 60 warlock for quite some time so my advice on leveling might be outdated.  I specced demonology while "growing up" and found it to be the easiest solo experience by far.  My voidwalker could tank anything and even if it couldn't my sacrifice would finish them off or allow me to run, no problem.  I probably died 3 times ever and gained exp very very quickly.

I respecced to affliction for more grouping at 60 and it works the best.  I tried destruction to see how it felt, but I was gaining waaaay too much agro and dieing quite often due to it.  The best route is overall DPS of DOTs without the spike damage.  I avoid attention quite well with that.

I can still solo for farming with my voidwalker too.  He just isn't quite as affective of a tank is all.  With my added dps though, things rarely survive the run to me after they figure out where all the damage is really coming from.

[Venkman]

There's NAXX/Tier12 gear and then there's normal gear out there. As it applies to PvP, most people are going to be in some amount of Raid gear of course. But the average player is not decked out in the uberest of uber because the average player does not play so much to dominant both PvP and Raiding, nor even enough to fulltime raid Naxx, nor enough to have even geared up for Naxx. And yet they still enter BGs and can do ok once they learn.

Gear is additive to the foundation of design, and that is spells, talents and choices. I feel that's where Warlocks and Hunters seem to be shining most, with Gear helping. Theorycraft certainly matters, but it's also very situational. And one of those big situational gates is for many players to be able to even achieve that gear in the first place.

You'll still be WTFPwned versus most BM specced hunters. I actually feel your pain against the Marks specced hunters (I'm beast specced). It's a bit of a pisser to face 1100 point auto-crits and who fucking knows multi-shot crits, and I'm at least mitigating more of the damage than you. If it makes you feel better, I've still gotten two-shotted by mages in PvP, and I loathe warlocks will all the hate in my soul.

On rare occasions I've been able to win against Hunters when the timers are up. More often than not though if I do win, it's with my own dying blow. There's actually something poetic about that, so I don't mind :) It's all decided in the first 6 seconds tho. Better gear would help, but the only way I can upgrade before BC is through Honor Point purchases since I've got no time to raid. So I takes my hits and like it.

I do wish Mages had more ways to customize their situational effectiveness beyond the strict talent choices they made. I appreciate what they tried to do with the 41-point talents and adjusted trees, and the boosts to Arcane that have compelled so many more to go deep there. I just look at the Hunter and Warlock pets, the Shadow Priests, and the Shaman and see classes with a lot more options and few of the usual tradeoffs that come from making hybrid-like choices. But that's totally from the outside looking in. I haven't played any of those enough to know if they have their own version of the "3 minute Mage" thing.

[Morat20]

Darniaq: The thing you're overlooking is that while gear is going to scale, there's a new type of stat -- resliance -- that no one has now, but that's in the TBC gear. It reduces your opponents chance it crit.

The reason Hunters are WTFPWNing you is partially because you're the scissors to their rock -- but a lot of it is hunters in full PvP gear with crit percentages up in the high 40s. Auto-crit + arcane crit + multi-crit means dead mage. From what I've seen of the TBC gear, it's not likely hunters will push their crit chances much higher than they are -- but everyone else will be gaining resliance

That plus improved stamina (which is going to outpace Hunter's damage increases through leveling -- unless, as I said, steady shot is fucking top of hte line) is going to scale hunters back against everyone.

We get some new nice things -- like I said, Viper trap is going to keep me endlessly amused in PvP, and Aspect of the Viper (plus the higher int and improved regen on TBC gear) means I'll be able to keep pumping out damage a lot longer than I can now -- but TBC gear really is going to scale hunters back in PvP.

Unlesss, of course, you chose to load up on +damage gear with no resiliance -- the usual tradeoffs apply.

[Phred]

The reason Hunters are WTFPWNing you is partially because you're the scissors to their rock -- but a lot of it is hunters in full PvP gear with crit percentages up in the high 40s. Auto-crit + arcane crit + multi-crit means dead mage. From what I've seen of the TBC gear, it's not likely hunters will push their crit chances much higher than they are -- but everyone else will be gaining resliance

With the reduction in crit chance as you level I doubt many hunters will be able to keep their current crit chance at 70.

[Venkman]

Yea. if I read what he wrote earlier, I think that's what he meant.

@Morat20: I think you explained it pretty well in the earlier thread :) I'm sorta unequipped to have this discussion because I haven't followed stuff very well. But to me (which means I seek clarity), it's still just another stat, available as a tradeoff to all classes, at the same time we get socketed items and gems to fill them with. Theorycrafters everywhere imploding their heads. Fun times ahead.

While I think Mages are fairly one dimensional, I do love playing mine. I do wonder if that's because I don't feel I have a vast array of options. I would rather keep up with my guild and explore BC than take the time I'd need to level up my 'lock. Most of my current ramblings are specifically based on PvP, something I don't think I'll be doing much after BC until I hit 70 again. And by them who knows what the landscape will look like :)

[caladein]

@Morat20: I think you explained it pretty well in the earlier thread :) I'm sorta unequipped to have this discussion because I haven't followed stuff very well. But to me (which means I seek clarity), it's still just another stat, available as a tradeoff to all classes, at the same time we get socketed items and gems to fill them with. Theorycrafters everywhere imploding their heads. Fun times ahead.

From looking over the Gladiator and T4/5 sets, it isn't just a stat, it's the stat for PvP. For example, here are the Priest DPS sets: Gladiator and Tier 5.

(First, note the item levels, "comparable" my ass, the Gladiator pieces are already 5-10 iLvls behind T5.) Sure, I would be doing more damage with T5, but the resilience on the Glad set gives a bit under 4% Crit Reduction and 8% Crit Damage Reduction (with set bonuses). Also, T5 has under half the Stam that the Gladiator set has. Now, this is pretty obvious sounding, Survivability on a Priest PvP set, who'd have thought?

But if you take a look at Rogue's current Warlord set, it offers 4% crit (in raw Crit Rating) at 60 while the Gladiator set offers only ~2.5% of Crit Rating at 70 (the one piece missing isn't going to make up for that). So when Phred says:

With the reduction in crit chance as you level I doubt many hunters will be able to keep their current crit chance at 70.

he's pretty close to correct. Nothing is going to supply the same amount of Crit it is now (the Hunter T5 set gives a bit over a percent of crit :P) at least for a while. Also, in the Rogue set comparison, you'll see the Agility numbers are pretty equal so you'll probably see a slight reduction in Crit from Agility as well.

Now, the one thing I've ignored thus far is gems and they lean in the favor of Crit and not Resilience. Both Crit Ratings have the same itemization cost as Resilience (so does Defense). (An example of this are the three Epic Dawnstone gems, they all have +10 to one of those stats and are all Epic item level 60s.) But, it takes ~1.8x the Resillience Rating to cancel out the same Crit Rating and it isn't wise to theorycraft the math for the Crit Damage Reduction with the information I have.

We'll be seeing not only an overall decline in DPS classes' Crit, but Resillience will also provide a nice chunk of Crit Damage Reduction that has not real applicable counter (except for the Feral talent Predatory Instincts which is acting like the inverse of Resilience's Crit Damage Reduction and a lot of people seem to think is broken).

[Ironwood]

Hmmm.

But we can't still play the game without caring about the numbers, right ?

[Venkman]

Thanks for clarifying caladein. And thanks for showing me that WoWhead has all of the item sets too :)

Ironwood: Yes, you can. It's just that the numbers as dictated by those who know them will drive the impressions many others have of how things work.

[Righ]

It's not possible with any of the talent specs and gear currently in the game for a hunter to get crit percentages in the high 40s as far as I can tell. The highest critical rate you can get is by using all crit+agility mismatched armor and using a deep survival talent build. People will laugh at your ranged attack power, and you'll hardly even be able to pull aggro off a tank that forgets to sunder. Using high attack power armor (the hunter sets essentially) and a marksman build (which is what's carving up the battlefields and silencing all those mages) base crit rates will be around 25% and multis will run at around 40%.

[Morat20]

It's not possible with any of the talent specs and gear currently in the game for a hunter to get crit percentages in the high 40s as far as I can tell. The highest critical rate you can get is by using all crit+agility mismatched armor and using a deep survival talent build. People will laugh at your ranged attack power, and you'll hardly even be able to pull aggro off a tank that forgets to sunder. Using high attack power armor (the hunter sets essentially) and a marksman build (which is what's carving up the battlefields and silencing all those mages) base crit rates will be around 25% and multis will run at around 40%.

I was thinking multi crit rates. I'm BM specced, in 5/8 of GS gear and have a crit of about 21%. I do fine enough in PvP, but would do a lot better if my pet would rez with me.

Or when he does rez with me, if he'd rez at full health instead of 400hp with four Warlock DoTs ticking on him. I'm considering respeccing Marks and just leaving the pet in the stables until that's fixed.

[Megrim]

Rawr!

Ok, having returned to my Warlock antics, this is the build i intend to use as i level up:

(In order from top to bottom...)

Demonic Embrace 5
Improved Shadow Bolt 5
Cataclysm 5
Devastation 5
Shadowburn 1
Intensity 2
Destructive Reach 2
Imp. Searing Pain 3
Imp. Immolate 5
Ruin 1
Emberstorm 5
Backlash 3
Conflagrate 1
Soul Leech 3
Shadow & Flame 5

[caladein]

Well, most people would tell you avoid Cataclysm like the plague, but if you intend to level going Destruction, it's a good choice I guess. You'll want Bane in there somewhere as well, along with Imp Corruption and Imp Life Tap. Another thing to consider is that, well... Improved Shadow Bolt isn't going to proc a whole lot when you're leveling and (if you want to level as Destruction) swap the points from there to Bane.

You wind up with something like this build roughly putting your points from Affliction, then Demonology, and then working your way down Destruction. The one other change I made there is not getting Imp Searing Pain, while it's a decent talent, it's really not worth the points versus some of the other Destruction talents.

Finally, one talent you included that I felt was worth avoiding while leveling: Shadow and Flame. It's an amazing talent if you have decent gear, but while I was leveling to 60, I really didn't have enough +Spell Damage to justify five points into it (versus Backlash/Soul Leech). You'll want it for Shadowfury, but you'll probably want re-examine your build at some point before getting it.