Warlocks, the New Villians of WOW

I don’t think I’ve seen as much class hate as the current player base holds for Warlocks.  If you put the word “warlock” in a forum post title, you can be assured it’s going to reach “buzz” status and max out the allowed number of response pages.  I’m sorry to say, that this is classic Blizzard changing stances on an issue in a way that swings from one side all the way to the other, which causes a large amount of player angst.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there are many statistical modeling tools that allow you to work through various scenarios in order to optimize outcomes.  I’m starting to think that the players need to take up a fund and send a copy of Crystal Ball over to Blizzard.

The History
I’ve heard tales that Warlocks were over powered during the WOW Beta.  I wasn’t fortunate enough to play Beta so I can’t comment.  What I do know is that when I selected it as my first toon’s class, it was anything but over powered.  She could hold her own against mobs and the flexibility of matching curses to the mob, class and situation was a fun challenge.  Once you had more than one pet, doing the same thing – matching pet to situation was an interesting dynamic that kept the leveling fun and fresh.

I avoided in world PVP as much as I could because we sucked at it.  In cloth with average health and no escape mechanism other than a long cast timer on Fear, death was lurking around every encounter.  We were such a joke that players 3-5 levels below me would take me on without a second thought.  The basic opinion of the average player at the time was that a Warlock was a free honor kill.  In a crowd they’d still rush to take you out first because you went down easy and it removed any opportunity for you to cast Fear.

I distinctly remember playing around with my son’s Paladin when he was in his low 50s one day, I had been 60 for a while by then.  It really struck me how people didn’t dismount to try and gank me.  Even if two horde players saw me some where alone, they didn’t just assume they could kick my ass and rush in to gank.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  Horde usually went in the opposite direction.  Not because the Paladin was known for damage but because they knew it would be a long fight, and someone of my own faction might happen to mosey on by before they could kill him and be on their way.  It was a very eye-opening experience to have players higher than his toon just ride on by when they saw the class.  That was definitely not how life worked for me as a Warlock.

The first real improvement for Warlocks came when Death Coil was introduced as our escape mechanism.  Instant cast fear with a damage component.  I would say player hate started building in small degrees with this spell.  It’s on a timer so you can’t cast it at will.  However, many Warlocks started using this as an opening move.  Doing so, allowed them to get you away from them while they DOT or cast the real Fear and then DOT you up.  It’s a rather low-blow or EZ-mode PVP strategy, one that I didn’t personally use.  I continued to use Fear as I think it was intended – escape mechanism.  It was long enough for me to start to run in the opposite direction while casting any instant DOTs I had available.  This was usually enough to dissuade the attacker who’d go about their business and try to mitigate the DOT damage, while I kept running.

The other way to use it, and this I did often was as a finishing move.  If my opponent was low on health I could DC them away from me and then Shadow Bolt, Searing Pain or drain the remaining health.  Either way, the DC gave me just enough breathing room to finish them off.  So as nice as the introduction of DC was, it wasn’t enough of a boost where I felt secure in PVP against most of the other classes.

Some time after, I’m old and the dates are fuzzy, Soul Link was buffed to mitigate more damage.  SL is only available to Demonology Warlocks who weren’t very popular at the time.  But if you went Demo now, you had DC, SL and Fear.  1v1 this is what made demonology shine and it gained in popularity.  Prior to this, players ignored your pet so unless you had the Succi out, they just pummeled you into the ground.  Now they had to respect the pet, because as long as it lived, it absorbed 60% of my damage.  Yes, it was first released at 60%!!  I was and always had been, Demo spec’d and it was as if I became uber over night.

I stopped running.  If you ganked me I would DOT you, DC you, Bolt you and if you were still stupid enough to pursue me, I’d Fear you and commence to nuking in earnest.  My play-style and my PVP experience changed overnight.  Before I knew it, I could take on 2v1 and win, regardless of which pet I had out.  Prior to that, if I didn’t have the right pet out for the class who was attacking me, I was dead.  Now it didn’t matter, any pet was of use to me for the damage mitigation.  Even the Imp, with its low health, could save me just enough health to outlast my opponent.  Demonology spec’d Warlocks became 1v1 and 2v1 gods.  The level of player hate increased at this juncture.  But having survived a year or more of abuse, I laughed my ass off and killed with reckless abandon.

Today
Everyone hates Warlocks unless their in your group and working toward the same objectives.  And even, then some people just flat-out hate the class now, and screams for nerfs and laments of how over powered they are, flood the forums on a daily basis.  Chief complaints are DOTs, 2 instant cast Fears, burst damage, high HP and pets.  The problem is that when people complain about Warlocks they consider all of the talents together as though every Warlock as them, which isn’t the case. 

Affliction Warlocks have the improved DOTs, improved drains, Siphon Life and 2nd instant cast fear.  Demonology Warlocks have the highest amount of survivability are probably the more balanced spec.  With their spare points, they had the option of getting a little burst damage from the Destruction tree or some improved DOTs from Affliction.   Destruction is for the nuke minded player.  They can bring the pain quickly but are very squishy.  If you get the jump on one and they don’t have the appropriate pet out, they’re problem going to be toast.  For this reason, I’ve never stayed Destruction for long.  In my early raiding days, I tried Destruction for the damage output but farming and grinding honor on a highly contested PVP server sucked hard.  With three or more Warlocks on every raid, I didn’t feel it necessary to take the personal hit by keeping a spec that I didn’t like, and went back to Demo.

So over time, Warlocks went from being Kibble to dominating people in PVP.  It seems like it happened over night but it didn’t.  It seems like every Warlock has all the tricks up his sleeve but they don’t.  They have some depending on their spec, and I’ll grant you that you can’t really have a fucked up spec being a Warlock.  Why?  Because they are one of the few classes, maybe the only class, where all three trees are synergistic.  Unless someone splits evenly across all the trees and fails to take anything of consequence, you’re guaranteed a pretty good spec.  Is this a bad thing?  No, it’s how it should be in the first place.  Each of the class trees should have a particular focus or playing style.  However, you should be able to specialize in one while picking up useful and complimentary talents from one of the others.

Because the trees are so good now, the only way they can tone down Warlocks is to nerf their base damage but I don’t think Blizzard wants to gut the class.  They’re trying to pick at it from the corners – resilience affecting DOTs, reduce durations on fears, etc.  To be fair, Warlocks have been nerfed several times over the past few months, and still the cries of “ZOMG, NERF WARLOCKS,” continue to draw crowds.  We already have some really broken classes/specs when it comes to PVP.   I don’t think gimping another class is the right direction.  We know that Blizzard does feel it’s often easier to nerf something than buff what’s really broken – hell, they’ve said as much on the forums.  That’s really too bad and annoying for the broken classes/specs.  I’m sure that many of the people who flooded to the Warlock class were members of the broken.  I’ve seen Priests and Paladins say they gave up on whatever spec they were hoping to see fixed and instead took refuge in the most dominate class, Warlock.

The Future
Can you imagine the number of pissed off players they’d have on their hands if they gutted another class?  Remember that nerfing any class does nothing but make raiding harder.  Frankly, I’m sick of them trying to balance classes around PVP – especially arenas.  What about those of us who don’t play arenas or give a flying fart about what is or isn’t broken in there??  If they really want competitive PVP they need to mimic GuildWars and be done with it.  Pre-made level 70s, in standard gear with a certain set of talents/specs to choose from for PVP, would end all of this non-sense.  At that point PVP would be all about skill and strategy, and it could reduce if not eliminate, all this balancing around something that wasn’t a core mechanic of the game in the first place.  But I digress…

Rolling a toon from 1 to 60 got old a long time ago.  Rolling 1 to 70 is rather obscene.  I would worry about people completely becoming outraged and abandoning the game if they nerf Warlocks to the point that the refugees now feel that effort was pointless, and are once again playing a broken class.  However much time and effort it would take, is what Blizzard owes its players and paying customers toward fixing the other classes and making them as viable as Warlocks.  If they buffed/fixed the other classes, Warlocks who are just drunk on power would be unhappy but their character would still function they way they’re used and it would be really hard to be too outraged.  The other classes would be happy and the mature Warlocks would just realize that the free ride is over and it’s time to step up their game the same way they did when Warlocks sucked.  Others might actually elect to go back to other classes which would diversify the playing field a bit more, and that could only be good for the game as well.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the course of the next few months.  I’m sitting in an “I can’t lose” position.  I have a Warlock.  If they decide to fix Priests I have one of those.  If they fix Retribution, it might be fun to try that, since it’s the one spec combination I never touched on the Paladin.  In case you missed it one of my comments, I’ve also been leveling a Druid when I just want to revisit the best parts of the game – pre TBC human zone leveling.  Whatever they do, my family has been playing so long that we have most bets covered.

For now I’m just watching the show – reading forums, doing the occasional Kara, dorking around with a Druid and praying for Beta invites. 

Comments

[Dajay]

Really clear and interesting.

Otherwise, the today outcome of the "Warlock case" should been focused by Blizzard. Just look at the very top 2vs2 PvP teams engaged in arena : almost most of them have warlock and the only non-warlocked-type-teams implies people with high RO. Sounds bad isn't it ?

I don't know Guild Wars at all, but your whole point concerning balancing by giving specific PvP could be real efficient only if it's correctly implemented. Which could be real pain for developers.

[Saylah]

Hi Dajay...Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Warlocks are the undisputed caster class for 1v1 and 2v2 encounters. I'm not sure that's such a bad thing. Someone has to be King. :-) However, they really do decline in group PVP as the numbers grow. That's not to say that they can't pwn, but the dominance isn't as assured. Blizzard owes its players fixed classes - all of them. They built the game, mechanics and encounters. It's on them to make it work and feel whole for everyone.

GW has a very successful competitive PVP system with world wide competitions like WOW has now. WOW is the new kid on the block where that's concerned. GW's system works because it is skill based. AND if you're only PVP minded, you don't have to bother rolling a character from 1 to max level. You can get one dressed in minimum gear with minimum skills. Afterward, you're free to go off and perform class quests to unlock your higher end skills. WOW players complain that if someone doesn't level the class they can't play it as well. So what? That means you'll WTF pwn them right? They will learn over time or die alot. Again, no one's loss but their own. However, the benefit is that if you want to try another class or only wanted PVP in the first place, you can go off and do that and not be forced to do PVE. It's worked out well for them.

Their PVE game is a bit lack luster compared to WOW. It's all instanced for the most part and not so MMO. They are going to put GW to rest some time next year and release GW2. Brand new game and people will have to start over since the characters won't be ported. It will be more WOW-like for the PVE but retain their current system of PVP. I will be purchasing and playing GW2. If they're able to bridge that PVE gap, it will be a really great game.

I see you've just started your blog, so I'll link you hear and maybe you'll get some more traffic. Take care and have fun preping your Shaman to raid.

[HunterMan72]

Another excellent post!! You have no idea how much I enjoy hearing your thoughts about WoW and other MMO's. I have a question, and it may seem stupid but I must ask because I value your opinion. My hunter is lvl 67 now and I am seeing the end approaching for him. Yes, I could attempt to join raids and perhaps after 100 of them I could get one piece of epic gear. On a side note, I have noticed that in BC, a lot of the drops are geared towards clothies and plate wearers, mail armor seems to be lacking as does most useful items for a high level hunter. Am I skewed, or just missing something? But that is not my question. My question is what toon should I level up next? I will of course still play the hunter at lvl 70, but without raiding we all know options are limited. I have a rogue (lvl 11), druid (lvl 20), and shaman (lvl 7). None of them are very high yet, so I have not really invested the time into them. I like my druid but they are so common that it doesn't seem like I am working towards anything special. I like my rogue but he is also a rather common class. As stated in an earlier post, my shaman has been nerfed so much that I am not sure I even want to play him anymore (Enhancement was the road I was going to travel). If I want a healer I could level up my druid as resto, so why bother with the shammy, right? I am not a big fan of the priest class or mages. I have tried every class except priest at some point. I have been considering going back and trying a warlock again, or maybe even a pally. But you have stated in the past that pally's have been nerfed as well. I am afraid that by the time I level up a warlock they will be nerfed too. What to do? Sorry to ramble on about this but you are the WoW expert here, and I am still a relative noob. I just want a class that is fun and that I can do a little PvP with and not repeat all the same quests in PvE. I am already cringing with the thought of questing in Stranglethorn again....*sigh*

[Kanthalos]

I had a level 60 lock when I played (played my rogue after BC) and PvP was really fun. I was never very good with her, but I definitely understood their potential. Would be a shame if they did a major nerf though.

[Brinstar]

I think Blizzard could learn a lot about PvP from ArenaNet. GW has held international PvP tournaments for a couple of years now, and they recently implemented an automated tournament system. I don't know the details, since I'm not really into PvP, but it seems like a good concept. PvP in WoW has always struck me as very chaotic and unbalanced, since competition seems to be based on how good your gear is, making it a little more difficult for those new to PvP to learn. Whereas in GW, everyone has the same gear, but skills differ depending on how much you've unlocked in PvE. It made it a little more interesting to start with, but of course favoured builds and team strategies have emerged once people learned the meta-game.

That's not to say that PvP in GW is without problems. The Paragon's Skills got quote a lot of nerfs due to their domination in PvP, leaving us PvE Paragons a little bitter about all the changes. The Profession is still viable in PvE, but it's just not as good. I get the feeling from players that they consider Paragons to be a superfluous Profession, and would rather have different Profession in their party.

[Saylah]

@Hunterman...10-man raiding on a Hunter might take some work or a very good guild. My own experiences see very few of them invited to Kara, but that could be a fluke. You could PVP on your hunter to upgrade your gear. They are really good in general PVP and can own even Warlocks. I'm not sure how they fair in Arenas though. Lowbie to 70 is a very long way so roll whatever you'll have fun playing. I don't think you can second guess what Blizzard will do next so who knows what will be hot by the time you hit 70. Of course there are core rolls needed for anything group setting - tanks, healer, DPS. If you want something that will secure a raid roll try a pure class and not hybrid. I'm finding Druid fun for the moment. They can tank or heal, just like Paladins. However, they also have to farm for multiple gear sets to suit their various roles. That can be a lot of work.

I have no real advice other than, roll what you think will be fun because it's a loooooooooong road ahead.

[Yobbo]

Because the trees are so good now, the only way they can tone down Warlocks is to nerf their base damage but I don’t think Blizzard wants to gut the class.

That's not the only way at all.

They could remove fear. They could make dots disappear on Warlock's death. The could nerf any number of abilities into the ground.

Nerfing Warlocks wouldn't make raiding "harder". All it would do is see that a few other classes got a gig instead.

And I disagree that Buffing is better than Nerfing.

If you buff all the classes, PvP becomes even sillier than it is already. PvP should last longer than 3 seconds. Make every class stronger and it lasts a shorter time.

If you nerf ALL classes, then PvP becomes a game that lasts minutes rather than seconds, which is more fun, I believe.

But anyway, to answer your question, there are 3 main reasons why Warlocks are hated.

1. Fear, obviously. Nobody likes to be killed while not being able to do anything.

2. DoTs killing players even after they "win".

3. Warlocks are the only class that doesn't have to respec to dominate in any facet of the game. Affliction locks are great in raids, great in Arena, great grinders, great in BGs, great in World PvP, etc etc etc. They have no weaknesses AT ALL.

No other class can do everything without respeccing. Some classes have to respec to even be able to farm gold. (Prot warriors, any healing class etc).

BM Hunters are the only class that comes close, but they are completely useless in Arena, whereas Warlocks aren't.

Basically, Warlocks are far too powerful compared to every other class in the game.

[Gustov]

Most, if not all, of the players complaining that another class needs nerfing, are just poor players. I don't complain when I get stun locked and killed in a BG. I try to figure out how to win the next time. The good players have figured out how to use their own classes talents, and are busy enjoying the game instead of complaining on forums. But of course, the squeaky wheels...

Saylah is saying it, and it's true; if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Locks are not broken, they work, and it IS what Blizzard should be striving for in all classes.

Remove fear? That's fair, then remove melee damage. DoTs disappear upon death? Sure, then remove mana costs for DoTs. These are bitter words from an unskilled PvP player, plain and simple. Do you complain when a Paladin bubbles? When a priest fears? When a hunter uses Aimed Shot? When a rogue stuns? When a druid instantly changes forms to dispel? When a mage Blinks? Every class has spells and tricks, you have to learn how to use them. There's only about 100 ways to get out of fear. There's trinkets, wards, and totems available to every player. Learn to play in a group, it's why you lose every time in PvP. I play in a group, and I don't find Locks to be all that difficult to take down, it's Paladins that are still standing at the end of encounters, even if they've lost. But, thats how Paladins work, I'm not complaining =P

[Jesse]

I couldn't agree more with Gustov.

Every class has it pro's and cons, and every class has ways to succeed in a BG in some aspec. If you only see PVP as playing 1V1, then Lock may seem pretty tough.

[Asher]

"But anyway, to answer your question, there are 3 main reasons why Warlocks are hated.

1. Fear, obviously. Nobody likes to be killed while not being able to do anything.

2. DoTs killing players even after they "win".

3. Warlocks are the only class that doesn't have to respec to dominate in any facet of the game. Affliction locks are great in raids, great in Arena, great grinders, great in BGs, great in World PvP, etc etc etc. They have no weaknesses AT ALL.

No other class can do everything without respeccing. Some classes have to respec to even be able to farm gold. (Prot warriors, any healing class etc)."

1. Rogues can stunlock you to death. I guess it makes it easier to die while stationary?

2. Fine. Then when the lock dies, the DoT releases it's remaining ticks all at one time. I'm unaware of getting HPs back if I kill an opponent that inflicts burst damage to me. The DoT is on you...it has nothing to do with the Warlock once it leaves his/her hand.

3. Sounds like a problem with other classes. Your solution to the 'problem' is to destroy some of the only talent trees that work. How does that make any sense at all? Perhaps they should unsuck other classes instead of ruining one that is fairly complete?

[Leiandra]

I disagree with your comment of "Someone has to be King". I'll be honest that I don't PVP much, but it doesn't really seem to be fair that, in certain situations, one class always dominates. All gear being equal, shouldn't each class have the same chance to beat somebody of another class? I even disagree with the rock-paper-scissors theory that I've seen so many times. Even if Blizzard did something like GuildWars, would that make the World of Warcraft classes equal? Wouldn't the warlock still be king over the 1vs1 or 2vs2? Life's not fair, but it seems to me that games should be.

I'm not saying that warlocks should be nerfed. Heck, I think I'd just be happy if somewhere, I saw that Blizzard admitted that there is a problem. You know... the first step is admitting you have a warlock addiction. ;)

[Saylah]

All great comments. Sorry I've been absent in responding but I'm out of town on business. I think they need to fix all the classes, in which case then it does become more equitable. Nerfing as a mass fix is the easy, lazy and short-sighted solution. ALL CLASSES SHOULD HAVE THREE STRONGLY SYNERGISTIC AND VIABLE TREES! If you make all the other classes strong, the Warlock is no longer the king.

[Relmstein]

The only nerf going in on the Warlock is resilence reducing the base damage on DOTs. Since this stat is mostly found on PvP gear most people aren't going to have enough of it to make a difference.

It will however make most PvP centric players more able to survive the culminative effect of having 4 DoTs on them. With fear and unstable affliction being tactics which basically prevented DoT removal it was only a matter of time before something was put into the game to counterbalance.

[Requiem/Hanes]

I found this thing while browsing google for a cool pic for my next D&D campaign, go figure :-)

Anyway, I loved your post mate. It's been a while since I read something on warlocks from somebody who apparently has played a warlock as long as I have! Your analysis is rather spot on in my humble opinion, as usual a clear and specific analysis of the warlock class calls for at least one post stating warlocks need a nerf...

I must say that surprises me, I had hoped that those whiners stayed on the Blizzard forums.
So you want to:
1) remove fear?
No prob, remove stun, rooting, blink, silence, purge, shieldbash, kick, gouge and any other movement or casting impairing effect from the game OR give warlocks another decent escape from anything that does damage.
2) make dots dissapear after death?
No prob, as someone else, and wiser then me, said before: have them deliver all their damage immediately upon the warlock's death. You forget that (Affliction) warlocks have ALWAYS relied on surviving long enough for their dots to deliver the damage. In the earlier days (before TBC) warlocks had more health then 99% of the other players, which ensured the fact that they could actually stay alive that long. This has dissapeared in TBC.
3) AFFLICTION Warlocks have no weaknesses. (yes, you NEED to add affliction as you described an affliction warlock)
Well, I must honestly say you have a point there. Affliction warlocks have very nice dps, very nice mana/damage ratio and rather good survivability both in PVE and PVP. On the other hand, I don't hear many rogues complain, nor do I hear shamans complain or mages. Heck, the ONLY classes that complain are the dedicated healer or tank classes. I don't think there is a problem with the other classes, the thing is either Blizzard needs to incorporate (repeatable) quests dedicated towards those healer/tanks OR 99% of the WOW population needs to realize that they only have their precious epics because there are some weirdo's actually going through the pain of levelling a healer or a tank and playing it, grinding mats, gathering gold...

Last thing... (Whine alert and NOT to be taken seriously)
Resilience affecting Dots:
The reasoning was that dps from all classes was affected by resilience except that of shadowpriests and warlocks.
Well let's reason this through... the original reasoning behind resilience was to avoid 10k crits and instakilling in PVP. When was this ever a problem with dots?
Anyway, I can understand how people find themselves unfairly treated when they no longer see there 10k mortal strikes or 8k fireballs etc, but start to notice that, hey that COA does 3k damage? WTF?

Meh, so now resilience affects dots. Sooo, let's say I got 600 resilience (don't get me on numbers people, go whine on elitistjerks about numbers). 600 resilience means complete immunity to crits AND to dots (ah yes, resilience affects dots now). So what happens now?
This mage can still HIT with his fireball for 3k. The warrior can still MS me for 4k (non crit) but, what the hell? That warlock's UA, COA, CORR, SL does absolutely NOTHING? Woooohooow, another free kill! Perhaps here's the weakness to the Affliction lock mentioned earlier?

I know, it's a whine :-)

anyway, resilience affecting dots? let dots crit. Problem solved imo. :-)

Just noticed this has become a rather long post. Sorry to clog your blog mate.

[Saylah]

No problem about the length and thanks for taking the time to post. Yeah, I find most of the rants on the forums rather funny, albeit tiresome. I think Warlocks have such high survivability that they could remove fear to shut people up and it wont make that much of a difference. However, that fact that I can get stun locked to death with a poison ticking away my health doesn't seem to raise the same level of outrage among WOW players. Personally, that pisses me off!

My thought was that if Fear is in deed an escape mechanism, then damage should break it - excluding existing DOTs. You shouldn't be able to stand there and drop direct damage nukes on a feared target. That aside, if they other classes were better aka sucked less, Warlocks wouldn't seem so OP. But to gut them in lieu of fixing other classes' issues just seems wrong.

[DarkTerror]

Excellent post. I have a level 70 Warlock that hit 60 months before BC. HOURS were spent on the BG when I wasn't raiding because, frankly, there was no where else to go. Yeah I could usually kill anyone 1v1 (shaman and undead shadow priests being tougher than most for me) and even sometimes 1v2 and once 1v3 (I wasn't that good - they really sucked). All that said. There were PLENTY of times when I'd try to rez only to be camped by a damned rogue on the graveyard. Sometimes two of them. They simply stun me and crit me to death before I ever half healed - SNICK SNICK SNICK go the daggers. If my pet was dead...forget any chance to call him up. I didn't cry about it. I simply called to my team-mates to help me break free. Go rogues! Play to your strength! Ambush is the they do best and my hat was off to them for being there racking up kills. At the same time I was occupying his/their time and keeping all that damage off of my team-mates. Nothing personal to me or him/them. At the same time Warlocks are ROUTINELY passed over for raids in favor of more "pure" classes like mages. So much so that Blizz incorporated fights designed to almost require warlocks in order to get them into raids. (Like tying a porkchop around the neck of an ugly kid to get the dog to play with him.) It's been a mix of fun and rejection and ganking for 70 levels. Warlocking is complex as hell when its done right. Whatever else anyone can say about it. Playing the game on the Easy Setting is not being a Warlock.

[john doe]

great post. to these people who hate locks, i agree with everyone here, you just havn't seen the potential of the other classes yet. i seem to remember before bc, 2 lvl 40 rogues could easily kill a 60 warrior by alternating stun locks to the point the warrior couldn't move till he was dead, and you call locks OP'ed? how about pally's, step back and bubble themselves an inch from death and forces you to re-dot and start them from scratch with maybe half your mana? how about shadow priests, they mind flay u (dps+50% loss of speed) till ur to them, then fear you off. now warriors also get that spell deflect thinger, meaning my slow casting nuke that makes me take half my health away while im casting it can shoot it right back at me.

the point of that speach is that EVERY class has a area in which it anoyes you, any class, played well, will have the noobs yelling "OP'ed"

p.s. i believe his 'someone has to be king' saying was more directed 2 the fact that if a holy priest was tops then noobs would be yelling, 'nerf the holy priest', even if it was extremely underpowered for pvp and just skillful played, the forums would be filling with, 'nerf the holy priest' posts

[Saylah]

@ John Doe...yes, i meant that there has to be a best. I don't think a game can every be 100% balanced. Now, you don't want one class owning the PVP landscape either. But I would hope that Blizzard fixes more of the other classes versus continuing to nuke wasn't not broken.

[Kralous]

nice post, inspiring. the way i see it, why can't the game just be about the game? who would be the most power hungry class, in my opinion it would be a warlock, hence my choice in rolling one as my main. much the same as the paladin being able to call upon the light near death, and bring themselves back to life. don't forget WoW isn't only PvP and PvE, it is a game, with a story. Blizzard must cater for the roleplayers as well. Balance is important, so keep a lock on your team :P

[Shadi]

Dear players , Im a rank 14 warlock , and i've read alot of ur comment abouts an overpowerd class situation ,and to be honest , the big issue i noticed that people still wana play like " Quake arena " 1vs1 situation i want to have an equal chance to win over "x" class.

Thats a huge mistake . and i tell u somthing u might dont know , i noticed there is a lot of ill sick people who feel good about them selves when they kill somthing alone.

wow hired psychiatrists for such situationt to ensure such type of players always seek this feeling and taste . hence u see all the OP posts about how the warlock Countered those "sick" type of players .

The game is evolved around Group play B4 TBC , and that means warlock dots can be dispelld , fear can be dispelled , pet can be cced , banished , by any group composition.

the issue there is few who understand what the other class has to offer in a group pvp Enviornment and everybudy wana be Rambo and say i dont need help i can own Bg's alone.

About Arena , in my Honest opinion it was the hugest mistake blizzard made becuase it defined that there is classes who can't be countered in a small pvp Enviormment like 2vs2 bracket due to certain Cc mechanics . where it only functionionted in a 10man BG b4 TBC ONLY.or more.

and that leads us to the important question . the classes are not OP in a certain bracket .

playing arena in a situation there it is paper sizors stone. is bullshit to the max.

because there is no definition how skilled u r playing ur class . its only a roll of a dice decide ur wining or not . where is balanced team play then ? where is the skill?

typical Arena will never be balanced in any bracket possible , and as much they buff/nerf a certain class in some bracket , he will be so overpowerd in a diffrent bracket.

which leads to the conclusion that Arena project is a Failure in all what that word says . cause u can't represent all classess in a balanced enviorment.

the Other funny thing I noticed .. that Blizzard Company tellling u this :

Listen Budy u wana win in arena ?? ur friend must be a discpline priest , or a Resto druid . okayy????

we dont give a flying fuck if ur friend is shammie or somthing else..

since when guys MMO decide who is my friend ? and which class im supposed to play with ?

thats the Balance and i mean no balance Blizzard Achieved....