Next patch changes

[Rocknlock]

[blizzard]Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)We have finished a fairly comprehensive look at the dps of various classes and specs and are concerned that warlock dps isn't quite where it should be. It's not abysmal by any means, but we think it should be a little higher.

To give warlocks a little extra nudge in PvP, we increased Soul Link up to 20% from 15%. You may already have this change.

In PvE, overall, we just think a lot of classes benefitted from getting the warlock buffs a little more than the locks benefited from getting everyone else's buffs. So we decided to just buff lock damage across the board (which will also help in PvP somewhat). Rather than change damage and coefficients of a lot of different ranks of spells, we just inflated talents that we were almost certain you'd already have. Shadow Mastery, Demonic Tactics and Emberstorm were all increased by 1% per rank for 5% total.

Let us know how that feels. The changes should go live before Nov 13.
[/blizzard]

[blizzard]Warlock's trees balance and DPS
Warlock single-target dps should be competitive with mages, hunters and rouges. We try not to balance classes around their AE ability since that is situational (but often very useful).

In our internal tests, warlocks are close to mages and below hunters, which as I've already suggested (or was that in another thread?) is a problem. I often regret posting what we're seeing at the moment, because it just leads to other questions. I offer it only to say that we do not reach the conclusion that warlock dps is sub-par. Hunters may be OP however.

Affliction and Destro are pretty close. Affliction probably continues to be a trickier rotation to pull off, even with the recent (and previously announced) change to Haunt. We're not convinced yet that Affliction is the black diamond slope for experts only, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Demonology may be lower, but we're also not sure it would be fair for Demo to get the extra survivability and do the same dps. However, we do think it is much less the case now that Demo = PvP only and Destro = PvE only[/blizzard]

Hooray for lock buffs!

[Air]

[blizzard]Hunters may be OP however. [/blizzard]

[Grendeel]

Ah i thought something was going to happen here and it wasnt just because of all the locks complaining on all the boards i read.  You know there is a significant problem when you see the warriors and hunters and other classes posting on the lock forums, offering sympathy, and saying the same thing.

One thing a blue post said is that they dont really take the complaining on each class forums too seriously because if they did then all classes would be considered underpowered, specd or whatever.  What they do consider important and serious is when other classes are agreeing with  a certain class being shafted.   That is the case here and hopefully this addresses it.

That said, gone are the braindead days of casting a curse an then shadowbolting til the fight is over.   They have forced locks into creating a rotation to maximize damage.  Some fights we will be good on....others not so much.  The blue poster is correct in saying aff and destro are fairly close in dps (according to EJ).  However the thought of Aff becoming the "black diamond"  is more true then what he believes.  From a dps perspective, if you have lag lots of times (not even a lot)  this spec is almost impossible to pull off (and make it better than destro spec).  Its going to require exact timing even if you have perfect latency.   Its a complicated rotation, but if you can pull it off, it will be the best dps spec we have.

Nice to see that locks may be relevent again

[Belandand]

Blizzard Blue Post spelled rogue wrong..