That Warlock Thing

Seems Blizzard is doing some minor change involving warlocks.

Seems warlocks are unhappy about it.

Seems that you have to be over level 60 to even notice this – since my own warlock just dinged 58, my reaction was immediately “Uh, OK“, since like every other caster pre-60, my itemization involved high levels of INT, resulting in a larger mana than health pool. This changes radically post-60. Hi, expansion!

Seems Blizzard admitted through a community rep that the high-end itemization and gameplay style of a class thoughout the entire game was being clubbed like a baby seal thanks to “PvP issues“.

Seems thanks to those PvP issues that most of the reaction from PvPers not warlocks can be briefly encapsulated thusly: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA (breathe) HAHHAHAHAHAH”

Seems that yet again, reationary far-reaching gameplay changes are being driven through a knee-jerk response to PvP imbalances, which tend to be the hard crucible of gameplay competitive min-maxing.

Seems that there’s probably not a lot that can be done about this, since part of what makes MMO PvP compelling is its existence within a larger world, which includes much of a larger gameworld that has – and wants – little to do with PvP.

Seems like the effects of this are going to be fairly far-reaching, and either Blizzard will have to dial back the planned adjustment, or redesign the class entirely. Which you generally do not want to do when the vehicle is in motion.  Or perhaps embrace community proposals from a now-panicked class which is staring down the barrel of a virtual gun.

Seems Blizzard is pretty commited to battleground-style PvP, so this probably won’t be the last time something like this happens.

Seems like this has happened before.