Warlocks don't have a true niche in World of Warcraft. (We're not alone in this.) Like in virtually any RPG that has been influenced by D&D, there are four core classes. Warriors take the hits; Rogues sneak & deal damage up close; Mages deal damage and nasty effects from afar; Priests heal. Like most RPGs, WoW also has its share of hybrid classes. Paladins fit between a Priest and a Warrior. A Druid fits somewhere between a Warrior, Rogue, and Priest. A Shaman fits somewhere between a Warrior, Mage, and Priest. A Hunter fits in somewhere between a Mage and Warrior. Naturally, the Paladin, Druid, Shaman, and Hunter can't fill the niche of their "base" classes as well as the base classes themselves. Paladins don't have the combat prowess of Warriors or the healing capability of Priests; they are good in these roles, but not best. The same applies to the Druid, Shaman, and Hunter and the classes they fit between. To make up for this, they have their novelties and tricks to make them unique; Paladins have the best buffs, Shamans have the best AoE buffs and debuffs in the form of totems, Hunters have the best support in the form of pets, Druids have the novelty of Shapeshifting. Warlocks are a bit of an odd breed, since we don't cleanly fit between any of the four "base" classes. Instead, we're sort of between a Hunter and a Mage, with a bit of a Priest in there as well. Our pets aren't as good as a Hunter's, and we don't hit as hard as a mage. We certainly don't heal as well as Priests. Our "unique trick" is debuffs and DoTs, which is by no means a bad trick. But here's where the trouble begins. We're worse at surviving than a hunter and worse at nuking than a mage. This is fine, because a Hunter doesn't hit as hard as a mage or survive as well as a warrior; a Shaman or Druid don't tank, deal damage, or heal as well as their base classes; a Paladin doesn't fight as well as a Warrior or heal as well as a Priest. HOWEVER, the four other hybrid classes don't have Soul Shards, either. They are sub-par in the roles they imitate. Warlocks are sub-par in many of the roles they imitate, but they also have the annoyance of Soul Shards. Soul Shards are present for "balance" reasons. I would understand this if Soul Shards made the abilities that required them about as good as the abilities from other classes that they imitate. This is not always the case. On a spell-by-spell basis: Soulstone: What it tries to imitate: Rebirth, Reincarnation, Ancestral Spirit, Resurrection, Redemption. Drawbacks: It has a long cooldown, it must be prepared ahead of time and therefore can't be applied to a dead target. Advantages: It can be activated in combat, which is shared only by Reincarnation (which has a longer cooldown) and Rebirth (which has the same cooldown). It heals for more than any other resurrection spell, except for Rebirth. Only it and Reincarnation are useful for preventing party wipes. Only it and Reincarnation are good for soloing. Conclusion: It's a hybrid of Reincarnation (usable on self, usable in combat, wipe prevention) and Rebirth (usable in combat for a large healing upon resurrection). These spells both have cooldowns as long (or longer than) Soulstones, and both require reagents. Thus, the Soul Shard cost may be justified. Demons: What it tries to imitate: Hunter Pets. Drawbacks: Not nearly as powerful as hunter pets. Not as customizable as hunter pets. Summoned slower than hunter pets. Advantages: More diverse and situationally more powerful than hunter pets (what pets counter spells, remove magic, help stealth detection, seduce humanoids, can be sacrificed into a shield, or provide a stamina buff for the whole party?) Don't need to be kept happy, the skill management is simpler than a Hunter's, you don't have to worry about stabling different creatures, leveling the demons is simpler, reviving demons is no worse than reviving pets. Conclusion: The raw power of Hunter pets is much better than the raw power of Demons. Demons have some cool tricks of their own, however. Demons require a reagent, but don't require food to be kept happy and you save a lot of money Thus, the shard cost may be acceptable. Ritual of Summoning: What it tries to imitate: Portals. Drawbacks: Requires the help of friends. Advantages: Can bring someone anywhere in the world. Conclusion: It's different than Portals. Portaling someone to Ironforge isn't useful when you're trying to get a group together for BWL. Likewise, summoning someone to BWL isn't useful when you want training, buying/selling, or the auction house. While different, they can perhaps be seen as "equivalent" in utility. Note that Portals do require reagents; thus, it makes sense perhaps that Ritual of Summoning requires a Soul Shard. However, portals don't require two friends. It seems to me that the two friends should take the place of a reagent, or vice versa.
Healthstone: What it tries to imitate: Conjure Mana Stone, various healing spells, health potions. Drawbacks: It costs more mana and heals for less health than any "main" healing spell. It has a 3 minute cooldown, compared to Conjure Mana Stone's 2 minute cooldown and a Healing Potion's 2 minute cooldown. In order to heal someone else, you have to prepare and trade ahead of time. Advantages: It can be shared, unlike a Mana Stone. The (mana cost/health healed) ratio is better than the Mana Stone's (mana cost/mana healed) ratio. Once it's created and traded, it can be used instantly by the possessor and without screaming for a priest. Conclusion: The three minute cooldown is pretty limiting. While it has advantages over Mana Stones, its longer cooldown helps balance it out. (As an aside, Mana Stones may be a bit underpowered.) Healing spells have an advantage in every way except for the "be prepared ahead of time" aspect. Why a Soul Shard? Are the other limitations not severe enough? Spellstone: What it tries to imitate: Power Word Shield, status fixers. Drawbacks: Removes beneficial buffs, only absorbs spell damage, sizeable cooldown. Advantages: A dispel and a shield combined in one, gives a small advantage when trying to crit. Conclusion: It must be equipped in the offhand, but there are much better things to carry in your offhand than a 1% critical chance increase. It dispels negative and positive buffs, making it rather frustrating. It absorbs less spell damage than a Priest's Power Word:Shield absorbs total damage, and Power Word:Shield has a much shorter cooldown and no reagent. Since it absorbs your buffs, you're left more defenseless against physical attacks. One would think the cooldown is enough for a mediocre ability such as this. Enslave Demon: What it tries to imitate: Mind Control. Drawbacks: Diminishing returns, reduces attack/cast speed by 30%, can't be used on players, Demons aren't as prevalent as humanoids. Advantages: Demons are powerful compared to many humanoids, lasts longer than Mind Control. Conclusion: Other than the fact that Demons can be more powerful than some Humanoids, this spell is pretty terrible. Its random-break nature makes the Soul Shard cost painful. If it didn't randomly break and/or have diminishing returns, the Shard cost might be more reasonable. Right now, it is not. Shadowburn: What it tries to imitate: Fire Blast, other instant nukes. Drawbacks: Virtually every instant blast in the game is better in some way, be it more power or added debuffs. Shadowburn requires a talent investment. Advantages: Warlocks don't have an instant blast spell, other than Death Coil. Conclusion: The shard cost should really be removed. The cooldown, the weakness of the spell and the eleven-point talent investment really eliminates the need for the shard cost. Soul Fire: What it tries to imitate: Any non-instant DD, especially aimed shot or Pyroblast. Drawbacks: It's the power of one and a half Shadow Bolts for the price of one, with double the cast time of a Shadow Bolt, and a one -minute cooldown. Advantages: Pretty mana-efficient. And it doesn't require a talent investment, unlike Aimed Shot or Pyroblast. Conclusion: Aimed Shot has a significantly smaller cooldown. Pyroblast requires a talent investment, but has no reagent, deals more damage, and has the same cooldown. (That being said, Pyroblast is almost certainly underpowered.) The one minute cooldown and the enormous cast time seems to be enough of a drawback to make it also require a soul shard. Firestone: What it tries to imitate: Various Shaman weapon enhancements, I guess. Drawbacks: There's a hell of a lot better things to put in your offhand than something that increases your melee damage and gives your fire spells a slight boost. It's very mediocre. Advantages: Hard to say. At the highest level, you should almost certainly have something better for the offhand than something that gives you 21 extra fire damage and a melee bonus. And why are you even fighting with a melee weapon? Conclusion: Garbage. What's the real point of the spell, much less the shard requirement? Final Thoughts Note that not a single Affliction spell requires a Soul Shard. This reinforces the fact that we are supposed to excel at DoTs and Debuffs. Anyway, in the present form, I think the reagent for the Soulstone is justified and the reagent for Demons and Ritual of Summoning is somewhat justified. Every other spell that requires a soul shard has plenty of limitations or weaknesses compared to corresponding spells IN ADDITION TO the shard requirement. If Soul Shards applied only to Soulstones and Demons, I'd be happy. Furthermore, it'd make sense that you need to give an offering of a soul in order to summon a demon, and it makes some sense that you need to absorb someone's soul in order to store your own. Ritual of Summoning should require either a shard or party members; the shard doesn't make a whole lot of sense, although the party members somewhat do. Eliminating the Shard requirement for everything but those one to three spells would make more sense, bring more balance to the Warlock class, and eliminate a ton of whining.
being a lock myself... uh 1 thing.. free mount.. yeah it's 72-90g that's saved in your pocket for later that you don't need to use to get a mount and for epic mount you need to spend smth like 300-700g which is about 150-200g less than the others(pala excluded) and IMO the only thing unbalanced about the shard system is the damn thing that the shards don't stack!... it's pissy going in an instance when you need to carry alot of shards for teh just in case occasion and then needing to delete them when you get loot and in the end you have no shards, only loot and then you need to cast smth that requires a shard.. i mean the shard-spells like shadowburn may not be as good as mage's spells, but combined with Coil of death, Curse of Agony and Corruption the dam add's up quite well.. and because shadowburn is insta-dam it has to have some drawback like the shard req. since otherwise it'd be like the coil of death that has 3min cooldown.. that's just the way it is.. it's hard to balance classes since there's so many variables involved, especially with locks.. AFAIK the most powerful class is the shaman.. they are ridiculously strong.. i mean travel-form, hard hitter, aoe, totem's, healing, mail-wearing.. hard to beat that no? EDITh yeah, and we get pets which gives us advantage on mages since they're alone, we get spells which hunters don't get and although i've only once defeated a hunter in pvp lock is one of the best pvp classes if played well.. only undead shadow priests kick everyone's ass..
Good post, and fair comments. I played up to 60 as a lock. Sneaky putting the world of warcraft gold site deep in there. I deleted the link, don't do it again. Welcome aboard.
Do you think it's possible to go through the game without using any soul shards at all? I started an undead warlock and once I got to the point where you need a soulshard to summon your first voidwalker I stopped and picked up a tauren shaman. I plan on soloing as much as possible, so do you think it's doable, and if so what talent build would be good?
No, I don't think you could use a warlock effectively without soulshards. They are critical to your summons, which are required if you are to solo. Most party situations demand soul shared pets, sometimes different ones during a long instance. Plus, soul stone, health stones etc need soul shards to make, and they are always welcome in your party.
Soulshards in PvE is hardly a problem at all. I normally run with around 10+ spare stones constantly on my Warlock, and if using one for soulstone, summon pet, summon player etc - I just make sure to use Drain Soul as the mob dies (if an XP giving mob) The only PvE issue would be (large) raids (MC, BWL, Dragons) where a huge amount of shards are needed, and thus some farming up front might be requiered.
well now that the soulpouches have been added to the game it's nice that you have one 24slotter that can only have soulshards.. that way atleast i always have almost full reserves of shards.. (30ish) i may use 10 for summoning and 5for healthstones and few for soulshards while in MC but you can get shards back so fast in MC that it's not really a problem unless you wipe alot in domo.. that's what drains locks from shards fast..
a few comments if i may for the original poster well thought out arguments and suggestions and thoughts good job, for a second i was like hmmm why is this guy upset about warlock damage then i saw this post was made after the warlock upgrades so i can understand that forgot what the problems of the warlocks were before the patch to upgrade them. next for the sould shard problem as stated in another post thats been solved but ive been takeing a break from wow since before that went into affect so is the pouches good and do they fit inside a main bag or do they take up a bag space like a rune cloth bag? next while i only played a lock up to level 15 i have played with them and talked and read the offical warlock forums on wow to learn about them and all i can say is post warlock upgrade patch they are much improved and super easy to solo also they can outdamage a mage easy but unlike a mage who damages right away the warlock does it over time while this may not suit some peoples play styles they can if speced right out damage a mage or out tank a hunter or even a warrior ive seen it happen its not pretty in the higher levels though in a pinch if the main tank dies a void walker can tank if kept alive though personally id rather have a pally or feral druid as a back up tank in the off chance theres only one warrior in a high level party now dont get my wrong a demon lock can do just as goid with voidwalker im just stateing personal prefrence just to let you know all the thoughts here are good and its good to see a forum thread with out flameing, and after the warlock patch id group with any warlock that knows what they are doing no matter what spec they are
Good God... , . ! ? are on the keyboard, too, please use them, they will make your text much easier to read. As for Soul Pouches, they take up a bag slot (just like Hunter's ammo pouch). There are 20 slots shard bags, recipe drops in MC as far as I know, can be crafted by tailors.
i know this may sound rude but its not intended to be, but i dont like to use proper grammar or punctuation. partly due to laziness partly due to im tired and have been up for almost 24 hours. sorry bout that didnt mean to be rude. also if you think that was bad dont read the other place i posted youll just cry. remember i did warn you in both posts. goes and hides from the death that will great him
Think it is 28 slot recipies that drop in MC. We got one someday and all the warlocks cheered, but I didn't pay attention to it because what do priests need soulbags for
It's been a few weeks since I posted on this thread, but last night I picked up the Warlock again. I decided I'm gonna see how far I can make it with my trusty imp and no soulshards at all. I liken it to playing through the original Tomb Raider using only pistols. I'm level 14 and in Sepulcher now and so far quests are borderline easy. I can handle two opponents at a time almost without fail, which is more than I can say for some other classes. There's one drawback, and I'm not sure the root of this problem, but this seems to be the most strapped for cash character I have (out of 6). I'll be sure to report back with any progress.
