A proposed change to soul shards, Multiple solutions!

Anyone who plays a warlock vanilla through lich king knows very well that shard farming can become a chore. Often warlocks have to go out of their way just to get shards because we NEED them. Especially in pvp. I as well as many others fail to see why we need something so tedious for mandatory spells. Playing without them is just not viable so one way or another your going to waste your hearth and/or time to go shard farming.

The only thing soul shards do is limit the amount of soulfires that can be used before your decimation talent procs if your demo. No pve warlocks take shadowburn seriously and warlocks will spam this spell anyways even if they have to farm more shards. Pets are mandatory for pvp and if we don't have shards we are just sitting ducks waiting to be gimped because of soul link. Its just an extreme inconvenience for something that we must have for pvp.

Remember when blind used to cost a reagent? It was removed because it was just an inconvenience. This is something that a lot of people feel needs to happen for warlocks to improve the class altogether.

It is an outdated mechanic that serves no real purpose other then for maybe lore.

I propose a change to ease the strain of constantly having to farm soul shards.

Change 1: Remove soul shards all together as a reagent.

Change 2: Soul shard is now one item that does not stack but now has unlimited charges for X amount of time. Warlocks can only have 1 soul shard at a time.

Change 3: A donation of X amount of coins will now give you unlimited soul shards.

Change 4: Remove soul shard cost from shadowburn and pets.

Change 5: Drain soul now gives soul shards every time it does damage regardless of targets level and regardless of if that target grants honor or xp. Soul shards now have 20 charges each. Soul shards remain at a 32 count limit.

Change 6: Drain soul now gives a soul shard every time it does damage. This is a higher xp rate realm anyway so all your really doing is increasing the drop rate of shards. This would be the least dramatic change.

If you have any other suggestions they are greatly appreciated and all reply are welcome. Please leave a comment on how yal feel about this. Lets improve warlock game play because no one wants fun to feel like a chore!

What you want is out of question since the second you do one of these changes, blizzlike will be custom. For PvE I would understhand but for PvP its ridicilious what you want. Regen is a big part of arena and if you cant do with your capped shards you d prolly cant win anyway, just your healer is really good or their cc es are bad.

There is nothing ridiculous about warlocks not wanting to farm shards every time we want to do pvp. This is not a skill related post so calling people good or bad is irrelevant and derails this thread.

Ask just about any warlock what the most boring part of playing is and most of them will say shard farming. Its tedious, outdated, and a waste time when we log on to play not to farm shards from a dummy which takes far to long. Or go all the way out to Northrend just to farm shards so we can be viable.

I suggest you look at change 6 I proposed. It fits well with the design of the server.

This is a change that will not effect game play in arena either because just about every arena you will never use 32 shards so farming them into between matches means you will never run out. This is not a change to make warlocks more over or under powered. This is a change to make the warlock an enjoyable class and the only class in the game that has to go completely out of their way just to be viable.

do 1 rdf hc every day for those frosts and a bit of gold. just like almost everyone does. and just cast drain soul when the target is about to die (also works in bg's), and voila infinite shards. the only problem with shards is that it takes up so much bagspace and it's annoying af, so yeah i wouldn't mind having stacks instead of 1by1 shards in bag, but oh well - 20 less bagspaces is the only downfall of having a warlock. last time i farmed shards on dummy was because i was just testing dps while waiting in bg queue and realised i'm not on 32 shards

Just make soul shards able to stack and then it should be fine

Make it where hunters can carry more ammo then. Make all classes have infinite inventory. Make tailoring and specialty bags useless.
Everything in this game was designed to have balance to a degree. Reagents are needed for certain things to balance out gold. You tweak the coul shard and you remove the need to use oul drain if you run out of shards in a battle. You remove the need for the abyssal bag, thus reducing the profitability of a tailor.

You then open the door for other classes to have a convenience change added. Like hunters wanting a tweak to their ammo. Rogues not wanting to spend gold on poisons. Etc etc. unblizzlike changes to spells just start a slippery slope and before you know it someone is calling out favoritism, pvp becomes unbalanced, and someone comes up with the idea of enabling extra talent points.

Buy an abyssal bag (32 slots), and voilà you got your 32 shards.

This is an issue as old as time and was never addressed by blizzard in retail no matter how much we griped about it. Doubt you'll see much here, either.