The problem with lowering the Doomguard cooldown to ~10 min is there is a reasonable chance Affliction would just use the Doomguard all the time.

We want the temporary warlock demons to useful but not actually replace the core demons.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
GC, What was the devs vision into lowering this cooldown for. Do they know we don't use it? My opinion is they lowered it cause of the army's cd. What I don't understand is the logic behind it. Do the developent team understand the warlock class?

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If you read the patch notes, you'll see that we lowered the cooldown on almost every long cooldown ability. The ones we did not lower (like the Doomguard) we didn't lower for specific reasons. This was not an attempt to buff Inferno and make it something all warlocks use. It was a pass at all of the long cooldowns still in the game.

You might also consider that if you guys responded with fewer "Finally replied to a warlock issue" and "Do they even understand warlocks?" garbage posts that we might respond more often.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
Really, the Infernal and Doomguard would be awesome if they were Guardians but are Guardians controllable? If the Infernal and Doomguard weren't controllable (IE: they became like Shaman Elementals, Mage Mirrors or Army Ghouls) we'd lose a LOT of their strength and interest. I just don't know if Blizz's interface can handle two controllable pets at once. I'm thinking that no, it probably can't because it wouldn't have a way to distinguish your pet-commands between Pet A and Pet B in a situation where you want your Imp DPSing an add, but your Infernal on the boss.

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The way the current technology works is you can have one pet or many guardians. Pets have a pet bar and guardians do not. We get around the first limitation on group pets like the shaman wolves by having them both use the same pet bar.

It wouldn't be too hard to make a guardian Doomguard or Infernal pop out without replacing the Imp or Felhound etc. but then you'd lose the ability to give it specific commands. Having a second pet bar pop out or having one pet bar give different commands to different pets is something we currently can't do.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
GC can choose to ignore or post as he pleases, but its not very encouraging to see him make mutipule posts about the Ret QQ, and warlocks still get no word about anything. I mean the DP and TOW issue alone should be an easy problem to address, yet we have not heard anything.

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Do not do this.

There are 10 classes in WoW and every one of them has what players perceive as problems, sometimes sky-is-falling problems. If I can't make them all happy with where I post, then you're certainly not going to do it telling me where to post.

If you QQ about where I post or try to dictate which issues I am allowed to respond to, then someone at Blizzard is eventually going to conclude that my posting here causes more problems than it solves. And then it will stop.

If you have issues, please post them. Don't demand answers. Don't bump for answers. Don't give me static if I answer someone else's post instead. For my part, I will try and make posts when I can.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

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Q u o t e:
________________________________________
Q u o t e:
"Let me point you to Affliction being gutted because it was "TOO HARD, OMG, WAAAAAAAH, I CAN'T ONE BUTTON SPAM, WAAAAAH."
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the best part about the entire affliction gutting is how Feral Druids now get to use the old "it requires tons of skill" to justify their ABSURD hybrid dps.

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Let me debunk two of your myths here.

We didn't like the way Affliction played. There were players who liked having so many dots and players who didn't. It certainly wasn't the case that whoever QQ'd the most won (and I suspect it was the pro dot crowd who QQ'd the most). We wanted to make Affliction more about the Shadow spells and Destruction more about the Fire spells. We wanted each to have a core group of spells upon which they focused. That is happening now and I believe both specs are fun to play.

The John Madden thing for Feral is not an excuse to let their dps be high. The actual point is that there is a wide margin between theoretical Feral dps as told by a simulator and actual Feral dps. We balance around the real numbers, not the theoretical maxima. Feral druids do great on bosses that don't require any movement or re-targeting. There are plenty of bad druids too, just as there are plenty of bad warlocks.

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Q u o t e:

The double standards seen in this game is somewhat fun to watch.

WoW Vanilla intro. movie shows an Infernal with an undead warlock. Then you see "MULTIPLE" Infernals later in the video. Come to find out, when you summoned the Infernal "back then" you didn't even control the damn thing and it would try to kill you! OMFG! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION HELP!!!! What a complete misconception of what I "thought" it was supposed to be.

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Fair enough, but we're more likely to patch the cinematic than we are to change a class just because the cinematic promised you a pony^H^H^H^H demon.

We thought "difficult to control" would be a good cost to pay for "very powerful demon." We also thought it fit the kit of the warlock having to struggle to harness the demon's power. Guess what? We were wrong. It wasn't a fun implementation. We could easily change the spell to summon an army of Infernals, but they would all be individually weak. That's how numbers work.

I think there is some promise to the idea that warlocks might have permanent pets and guardians, with the Doomguard and Infernal as dps-timers in the second category, much like Force of Nature or Mirror Image. But we're going to have to think through that design and analyze the technical and balance implications. Maybe it will work and maybe it won't, but it isn't going to happen for 3.3. If you'd like, we can bump the Inferno cooldown back up if it bothers you so much. :)

I am pretty certain you guys are driving crazy the warlocks who actually want to discuss pets in this thread. Why don’t you let them instead of trying to use it as your moment in the spotlight to air all your grievances?

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

Sorry. Going to lock this. Despite some useful posts on warlock pets from players attempting to be constructive, too much of the last few pages are just "Woe is us. Blizzard hates warlocks and never listens to us." Find somewhere else for your pity party where our forum readers won't have to read it.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer