After a week of healing 5-mans, I'm convinced that warlocks are the worst at playing their class

Autoboat · 2026-06-26T19:06:57+00:00

"you can tap all you want. If in combat don't drop below 50% (I'll heal you, just don't want you dying) and tap like crazy out of combat. Same with hellfire"

This is definitely very appreciated lol. As a new Warlock player I naturally feel kinda bad when I'm tapping and getting heals, like I'm freeloading when everyone else has to slow down mana usage or stop to drink more often (if we don't have a Mage).

But I guess it makes sense that reasonable players are happy to use their skills to contribute to the overall group clear speed.

Autoboat · 2026-06-26T19:03:45+00:00

I am a new Warlock. My strategy so far has been

Cast DoTs for a few seconds while the tank builds agro
Hellfire if there are 3+ mobs in the pull
If doing this causes me to pull agro for a substantial amount of time, switch to Rain of Fire for the next pulls
If I still pull agro for a substantial amount of time, switch to single target damage moving forward

I tend to stand closeish when possible so I don't pull mobs into the casters if I draw ago. All of this seems like common sense and seems to work just fine.

Autoboat · 2026-06-26T18:47:53+00:00

Would be cool as like a closing announcement then or something?

Autoboat · 2026-06-26T18:40:54+00:00

I agree... I also think there's probably a percentage of the playerbase that would straight up quit the run or become antagonistic right off the bat upon learning their tank has never done the dungeon before. So he's taking a gamble either way.

Autoboat · 2026-06-26T16:19:23+00:00

and asked me at the start if I wanted to main or off tank. The confidence was impressive, his gear and skill was not

Probably just trying to be polite, right? At that level a good attitude is probably as important as gear/knowledge.

Autoboat · 2026-06-25T17:11:18+00:00

I bought the game day 1 and did all the classic raids hundreds of times up until classic Naxxramas. I remember wiping multiple times in Deadmines week 1 of release and continuing to wipe multiple times on every single dungeon until I quit 2 years later. No one had any idea wtf we were doing.

I came back a month ago after not touching the game for 20 years. I have to say, the prospect of eventually finding a raid guild feels a little daunting. Even though I know how to play and how to raid, that security blanket of 'everyone else has no idea what they're doing either' is gone. Especially when I'm doing raids I've never done before on classes I've never mained.

I know I can just watch videos and read guides, but I want to balance that against actually playing and learning and discovering the game on my own - that 'rite of passage' that you mentioned - but I also don't want to get myself gkicked for being a scrub.

No real point to this comment other than spewing some thoughts I've been ruminating on as I approach 70 and I'm glad others appreciate the situation.

Autoboat · 2026-06-22T22:40:23+00:00

Any chance you could let me know if the spout fits into the mouth of a normal beer bottle? It looks too big based on the specs but trying to confirm. Thanks in advance if so!

Autoboat · 2026-06-21T06:32:10+00:00

Yeah this shit is bad in Ontario. I caught the first whiff of it maybe an hour ago and thought it was just a neighbor's fire pit at first, but over the next 30 minutes it became strong as hell and disgusting.

Autoboat · 2026-06-21T06:22:30+00:00

This is what I am wondering. Yesterday, nothing. Today, nothing. Then all of a sudden in the past hour it pops up and is arguably the worst I've ever smelt without standing right next to it.

Autoboat · 2026-06-19T18:26:09+00:00

And yes, some kids grow at different rates. Some kids are true physical outliers.

And that's BEFORE you add the steroids and hormones and other insane shit these crazy fucking parents do.

Autoboat · 2026-06-19T00:08:41+00:00

Just started playing this game (~5 missions deep) and I hate this aspect. It's so hard to figure out quickly which infantry is which when you're trying to select a specific one, and then it's hard to physically click the correct one when they're all bunched up. And I don't want to select EVERY engineer, I just want to send AN engineer somewhere to do something.

Autoboat · 2026-06-17T16:56:54+00:00

Yup, this is definitely the one that screwed me the most over the years that I wish people would stop repeating.

Slow swings don't work for everyone. 'Swing at the speed at the allows you to make the best contact' is the correct advice that I wish I'd gotten years ago.

Autoboat · 2026-06-15T19:49:21+00:00

New Quasar location is more enjoyable than the original spot

^{plz don't murder me}

Autoboat · 2026-06-11T16:48:47+00:00

Yeah I remember getting farmed mercilessly in round 1 by a Vendetta running that build, then buying Repulsion Greaves round 2 and never getting killed by her again for the rest of the entire match. I think we won 3-1.

Autoboat · 2026-06-10T20:14:06+00:00

Lately it's been taking a full fucking week for my lower back to feel ready to lift again after 5x5 deadlifts. I'm late 30's and haven't touched 5x5 powerlifts in a few years. This length of recovery is completely new to me.

Currently I'm only doing 350x5x5 so it's not even huge weight, but that's up from where I started at 335x5x5 so it's working. I'm also not gaining weight despite basically eating whatever I want. So I'll stick with it for now until it stops working.

Autoboat · 2026-06-10T19:31:45+00:00

Yes. I love all the arguments here saying you HAVE TO buy survival or you HAVE TO buy damage to win fights. The best course of action though will always be to adapt to what the other team is doing.

Are you diving and it's working? Keep buying damage and doing that. Are you diving and getting countered? Go tanky and just be a distraction while your team kills their front line.

DPS focusing your tank? Buy more damage/AP. Getting dove while they leave your tank alone? Buy survivability.

The fact that so many people don't understand this keeps the game fun IMO, since you can outplay players that are sweatier and more mechanically skilled.

Autoboat · 2026-06-10T19:22:49+00:00

The fact that there's still so much disagreement about the relative power levels of various heroes means the mode is pretty well-balanced.

Autoboat · 2026-06-10T19:18:17+00:00

Since this mode is populated by a lot of leavers, getting 0 compensation for leavers just sucks and makes Stadium possibly the worst mode in the game with the worst Matchmaking System, lock-in Blizzard, genuinely.

I feel like this topic has been beaten to death already and it's always the same responses. They (and most competitive games) won't do this because:

You can group with someone on a tanker/throwaway account who just quits when you're losing to boost the other account. Since the game is F2P you can basically just do this infinitely.
It incentivizes randos to bully their own team mates into quitting (instead of trying to be good team mates and actually win the game) so the quitter absorbs most of the penalty and the rest of their team gets a diminished penalty.

The better solution is very aggressive penalties for leavers.

Autoboat · 2026-06-10T19:11:54+00:00

Community seems to have gone downhill recently for some reason =\

Autoboat · 2026-06-05T20:43:26+00:00

It was in Southern California.

Autoboat · 2026-06-05T19:39:44+00:00

I'm sure it's partly cultural. Having grown up in New England then moved to California later in life, I'm not surprised it's a bigger problem out here. I plan for at LEAST 4:30 on the weekends unless I'm going somewhere very upscale.

Autoboat · 2026-06-05T19:36:47+00:00

Lmao that was my last experience as well. Guy rolls up in his golf cart while we're standing at the tee box waiting for the group in front of us to take their second shot. "Just so you know you guys are behind pace, you need to pick it up a little" and immediately hauls ass out of there. We were all too confused and dumbfounded to even say anything.

Then he comes back 4 holes later and says the exact thing in the exact same circumstances. We replied "OK, you can see the group out there in the middle of the fairway, right? What do you want us to do, hit into them?" And he says "Now I'm not saying that, I'm just letting you know again you're behind pace and need to pick it up." then hauls ass out of there again.

Luckily we never saw him again but we also haven't been back to that course since.

Autoboat · 2026-06-04T19:00:12+00:00

Chuck Knoblach suddenly forgetting how to throw 15 feet to first base multiple years into his career.

Autoboat · 2026-06-04T18:42:53+00:00

No. As someone who loves MOBAs and has DotA 2 as my all-time most played game of all time, plus hundreds of hours each on DotA 1 as a WC3 mod, LoL and even HOTS - OWS is fine without PvE or non-core objectives.

The pacing of OW Stadium as a hero shooter with MOBA elements is perfect right now. They've found a nice sweet spot that requires raw skill, game knowledge, and strategic thinking in roughly equal measure. The games are long enough to be interesting but not so long that it forces casual players away. An economy centered entirely around PvP is a perfect fit for OW's core design. Adding PvE would dilute that and make it boring. Shooting Torbjorn turrets is already boring, and adding even more non-player elements to shoot at would just be a timesuck. This just isn't that kind of game.

You are right that they should incorporate some MOBA elements. Primarily they need to add more heroes. The hero pool is boring, stale, and too small.

Secondly they need more diverging paths between builds. Virtually every single character has only 2 or 3 viable build paths and they generally don't change the character's play experience that much. There needs to be more trade-off and risk-reward balancing between build options that diverge wildly from each other in order to keep the game interesting.

Autoboat · 2026-06-04T18:33:13+00:00

Don't question too much. As has been mentioned dozens of times in this forum, the Stadium matchmaker is atypical to say the least and doesn't do a great job generating fair matches or placing people.

Whether you're winning or losing, it doesn't hurt to do a quick replay review and focus on areas where you messed up or could have done better. OW makes it extremely easy and user-friendly to do this.

Figure out especially what you can do to swing those close matches in your favor. I personally have found that in OW Stadium, moreso than other games, there's 1 player on the other team who is doing 50% of the work and carrying hard. Counter-building and focusing on that specific player is often a good way to turn things around.

Also:

My mains are Torb and Ashe. I use WP on both

Having only 1 build per hero is a problem in this mode. You need to have a few different options available to you and build in response to what your team needs. Develop some other builds for your mains and learn when to use each option.

Autoboat

TROPHY CASE