With the focus being mainly on the spec trees themselves, I’d like to take a moment to clarify the issues that remain, largely centered in the general class tree and the hero talents.
For example, talents such as hellcaller’s illhoof’s design, which were never picked due to their mechanics being too negative, trading 10% hp for a bit more max shield which is often irrelevant during fights, the trade off is too unfavorful, the hp loss impacts all warlock defensives besides wall which end up being a net loss defensively. This was highlighted many times in TWW beta but completely ignored and even resurfaced in midnight as is. It is one thing to have a niche talent but choice nodes are meant to be choices between two relatively equal options.
Zevrim’s resilience might be the weakest defensive option due to shield longevity tied to encounter difficulty, the more trivial the encounter the less hps we need but the harder the fight the less likely the shield will last which truly makes this talent counter productive and poorly designed.
Yet there is no other choice, for illhoof’s design is a net negative talent, choosing it weakens your character, can you imagine a talent trap that nerfs your character’s survivability mascarading as an option for survival? This needs to be looked at and is unprofessional of the devs to keep in its current state for an entire expansion.
This can be extended to other hero talents though their contrasts is less obvious. Most of the other options truly have only one choice, with things such as automatic soulburns on port/healthstones being largely weaker than their alternatives.
There has to be better options for choices to be on equal footing.
In the general tree we can see many talents that have no real purpose remain.
- TotBH as a capstone? No one ever picks this, it is just a filler slot meant to show the tree has “things” in it.
- dark accord is still a 45s wall reduction even though the talent to reduce its cd upon damage was removed. Perhaps make the innate cdr on dark accord 60s or 90? Honestly a 25% wall having a 2.25mins cd is laughable. Please make the choices equally appealing.
- death coil range still at 20y , we’re almost in 2026 and still have to contend with these outdated limitations, what’s the purpose behind such a short range? At the very least 30y would be acceptable, its bad enough locks have to contend with movement and having to add more movement to coil if out of range is simply punishing. Is the design goal to make the player suffer or the enemy? I sometimes think it’s the prior.
- What’s the point of soul link being 5%? Might as well remove it and buff our other soul leech effects at this point.
- curses: the wording leans towards “replacing” as in overriding curse of weakness on your bars completely. If that is the case then what about wanting to curse different opponents? Tongues on casters, weakness or slow on melee. Curses are situational and i hope we aren’t locked into one curse type per combat encounter.
- curses are too weak for the intended one type per fight, if they were stronger it might be warranted.
- blights and curses: we can see that blight of weakness is a stronger aoe type of curse/cd, is this going to change based on chosen curse? Do we get blight of tongues and exhaustion? Are they also stronger versions of their original selves? What about hellcaller’s curse of the satyr, do we get a blight of the satyr as an empowered version of both tongues and weakess? How does satyr interact with overriden curse choices in the general tree? Can i take exhaustion and satyr and have all 3 or does satyr become exhaustion only? What about aura of enfeeblement? Potential issues with cross talent choices should be considered.
- shadowfury’s improved talent option should reduce its cast time. If instant cast is off the table (not sure why not for a 1min cd) then at least reducing the cast time by 1sec makes it the historical sfury cast time it had back in its inception. Long casts on a cc with a cd is Punishing not rewarding.
- Drain life, what is its purpose? Even with the talents it does not fill its intended role. Flavorful spells are good, but taking talent tree spots from potentially better alternatives is bad design. It simply shows the tree has filler talents because the devs have no clue what to replace them with.
I have a lot more to say about pvp talents, and more but will stop here for now.
In my opinion, the general tree can fix its filler issues by leaning into the curse fantasy. Curses are unique to locks, adding more utility options and customizations for curses would be an ideal general tree flavor which can justify their group utilities without going down the generic route of buffing groups. It would be thematically ideal that locks bring debuffs to the party’s enemies rather than buffing the group directly. Current curses do not fulfil this role and are more filler than not. Utility for curses can be an entire tree with heavy fantasy customizations and choice nodes seen in many other blizzard franchises such as diablo etc.