BLIZZERD EHATS WAROLKS

Ever since the first fear nerf (which couldn't really be called a fear nerf, as it limited duration on all forms of CC in PVP), the favored cry of the bad has been "Blizzard hates Warlocks," sometimes accompanied by such favorites as, "They should just delete the class and give everyone a level 80 (class)," or, "The class serves no purpose anymore," or my personal favorite, "Things were so much better in [vanilla/BC/3.0]."

I've got a lot of opinions on this, but to sum them all up, warlocks right now are in a good place. Overall in Wrath of the Lich King, we've been in the best place we've been for PVE ever, though it's been a rough ride for PVPers.

BUT VANILLA WAS BETTER!


Ok, I'll bite, let's talk about how things used to be...

Strong Imp not so strong after all

So, 18/53 got some noise early on in 3.3 as being the destruction spec of choice. Then all of a sudden it wasn't on the EJ compendium anymore. What happened? This happened:

 

Doesn't look put up such a good showing, does it? What happened? 18/53 joined 40/31 and 41/30 (though not so quickly) in the communal grave I call buried by scaling. Imp scaling is awful, buffing the imp in this way is only a temporary thing. The logic that 4 piece tier 10 would magically make so much more difference for 18/53 also didn't hold up for long - had anyone stopped to think about it, they would have seen the same fact without tests needing to bear it out.

18/53 outperformed 13/58 in the old ToC gear profiles, but not ICC ones. However, it's rise to attention wasn't even so warranted then. Why? It outperformed in the EJ 300 second 5 minute benchmark, but just like 3/13/55 before it, it didn't hold up in, say, a 360 second test (6 minutes). In my gear going into 3.3, 315 seconds was enough to put 13/58 back up on top.

Issue at hand is how simcraft handles life taps. It doesn't distribute them evenly for destruction, it life taps to maintain the buff, and then when it bottoms out, life taps for mana as needed. Now, this is where ISL comes in: It can sustain itself for a long time this way in TOC gear profiles, it'll end a 300 second benchmark around 40% mana. 3/13/55 and 18/53, though, hit this after less than three minutes, meaning their high DPS starts to wane after that point. 5 minutes is a short average for fight lengths, few fights in ICC resolve themselves that quickly, and fewer still are likely to in heroic. 13/58 also has substantial flexibility in stats. You can see where imp and immo glyphs line up with LT in the ICC BIS profile. Don't go running to the auction house just yet, if you're coming from a typical TOC gear setup, LT is still the best, nothing's changed there. However, things start to change when you drop under 400 spirit, which you're going to if you're gearing for personal DPS in ICC. Demonology has to do some unpleasant things to itself to keep spirit up for demonic pact purposes.

ZOMG NEW PET IN CATALYZM

Q. With the new skins for druid forms, what is the chance that warlocks might see race/faction specific demon skins or maybe a new one?
A. When you look around, there are a lot of say imp or voidwalkers we could use. It's something we talk about quite a bit. As for new demons, I hear warlocks are going to be getting some new spells for the next expansion...

Ok, so this has spawned more than a few OMG threads... I want you to take exactly what was said in the context it was said:

As for new demons, I hear warlocks are going to be getting some new spells for the next expansion...

Literally nothing. Literally. In fact taken in the context of the question it implies more that we're NOT getting a new demon, just new spells. Taken on it's own, it says absolutely nothing. Here's waiting for beta to start and the nondiscolusre act to be broken.

Blue weighs in on Conflag DOT and Empowered Imp

According to the official word, the conflag DOT cannot consume empowered imp. My own testing was as much on the PTR and live, honestly, so nothing in this comes as news to me. The math given in the thread isn't that surprising, as the conflag DOT crits with the same rate as the conflag nuke, and with a sample size three times as large, there's less influence from unlucky chains, the conflag DOT is one of our two most critting abilities, regardless. Additionally, because of how DOTs inherit buffs from the caster at cast time and not tick time, there should be no interaction between the effects.

There may yet be an issue with empowered imp, but my suspicion is that if there is, it's tied closer to the disappearing soulstone issue, not conflag. As some people have probably encountered, soulstone buffs have a habit of magically vanishing right now.

Meanwhile, a few people have encountered glyph of conflag malfunctions - they have the glyph, but don't receive the benefit. Relogging sometimes fixes it, switching specs, but the silver bullet seems to be overwriting the glyph with something else and then replacing it. At least one person has noticed this happening on glyph of quick decay, as well, and I suspect the issue may extend to all glyphs, though many would be very easy to overlook.

ZOMG CASTAR LEGENDARIE!? ...No.

The new Quel'Delar lore info has a lot of people excited, and it really should, it's exciting news.

For any class that is unable to wield it, however, the Sunreaver blood elves and the Silver Covenant high elves will gladly take this relic of their history in exchange for a usable weapon.

But this bit has a lot of people are a bit TOO excited about it.