Feedback: Diabolist Warlock in The War Within

Please give this a look:

And let us know your thoughts here!

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A clarification:

Diabolic Ritual is cyclical, starting with Overlord and ending with Pit Lord. So, when you summon a demon it will always be in the order of: Overlord, then Mother of Chaos, then Pit Lord, and then Diabolic Ritual will cycle back to Overlord.

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Let me be the first to say, THANK YOU!!

That being said, my very first initial feedback is that you probably need to speed up how often Destruction gets a Diabolic Ritual going - Demonology generates and uses shards a lot faster than Destruction, by the time Destruction summons its first Overlord Demonology will have gone through an entire demon rotation.

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Are the class or spec tress getting reworked? Wondering because of the wording on some of the talents.

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Heya,

So first impression I’ll come straight out and say it; This tree was built for Demonology, and its absolutely awesome for it.

But I think it is clear to see no thoughts were given for Destruction locks at all.

The ritual will go so fast for Demonology I expect it to feel great, but by the time Destro is able to get one ritual off, Demo will likely be on its second or third. This is DOA for destruction lock, and overall one of the worst hero talent tree released (again: only for Destruction)

I reiterate; GREAT for Demo, abysmal for Destro

Edit; with the additional info from Kaivax, the above initial impression, which I still feel I was on point when typing it, is also a bit outdated. So make sure you read on past the next blue post and keep giving feedback to iterate it into a good place

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Looks to be a destro pvp tree

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any chance we have a visual for Overlord and Mother of Chaos? :face_with_monocle:

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Looks pretty dope so far, but I’m holding hype until we get some clarity on the spec and class trees. Warlock is in dire need of a rework across the board, so I’m wondering if/when that’s happening.

Like, are these pets going to get buffed from Tyrant or be blacklisted like NP demons are? Is NP going into the xpac in the state that it’s in now, with the weird 1 shard hog rotation and turreting issues? Do you get stacks of the buff from both Tyrant and Portal, encouraging us to take both again?

What about how much faster demo is going to chrun through shards than destro? How are the demons scaling for destro? Matter of fact, how do these demons scale in the first place?

Again, I’m not mad at this at all. It’s pretty cool on paper, thematically, but the class is not in a great place design-wise right now and nothing here is addressing that (nor could it).

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The core mechanic seems fun and i’m excited about it! Even as Destruction and see the tree lean a bit more demonology, the thematics fit and seem visually exciting.

Feedback: The choice nodes and passive talents seemed a bit boring comparatively to other specs. “Get something you already get, all the time” in the case of Demonic circle which is really nice but not “new”. For the middle one, hard to imagine a case where you don’t spend enough shards to beat the 3s from the other node. The UR one seems like it has some different use cases. None tie back to the core mechanic or side mechanics like Frostfire or Sanlayn. 2% damage buff, 5% damage buff. I think theres room for a bit of flavor here. Even the demon specific talents seem like they could be in the capstone.

Other thoughts:

  • If we’re forcing cataclysm, please make it baseline. Would be a HUGE QOL that Destro has been asking for.
  • Please make Demonfire Barrage castable while moving, destro already loses a lot if we have to move and has long cast times. No need to be rooted in place again.
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Hello team, first this tree seems quite fun, well done! Just a couple of questions:
-Would Nether Portal count as an ability that benefits from Touch of Rancora? i.e. would demons coming out of the portal have 30% increased damage since Nether Portal costs a shard to cast?
-Will warlocks benefit from multiple instances of Diabolic Ritual at once when popping cooldowns? i.e. in a typical demonology opener you would cast Nether Portal into Tyrant consecutively–would we get 2 or even 3 Diabolic Rituals running at the same time in this case?

Thanks!

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I play with a wizard in a very casual way. but this talent tree has incredible concepts, as a demonology all I want is to have more demons, especially BIG DEMONS, looking forward to testing it out better and seeing how everything plays out, but it’s an incredible tree.

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Not TOO complex, very cool theme, overall, this seems MUCH MUCH better than the Rogue tree for example which is abysmal. I would also wonder how much better this will be for Demo.

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Regarding [Soul-Etched Circles / Annihilan’s bellow]

These two options should be class tree.

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Coming from a Destruction Warlock who only participates in all forms of PvP, this tree absolutely sounds top notch for Demonology! For Destruction however, I’m not feeling quite as excited for it.

Destruction may even be due for a rework. Some clean up could really be needed with Rain of Fire and Cataclysm. Hasn’t felt great to actually spend talent points to pick those abilities up.

But overall, great job on this theme!

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Came here to ask about this.

Well… love this hero tree, finally we’ll summoning big demons and I like that the summoning has an order.
Serious, i’m very hyped to test it :smiley:

Abyssal Dominion(on demonology side):
The cooldown reduction is really good, BUT could demon get an extra talent nod here?
If we get this talent the Felguard will have same CD as Tyrant without any talent or if Reign of Tiranny was chosen,but if we get Grand Warlock Design, it’ll misaligning both CDs. A extra option would make it perfect to combine between final talents. Assuming we’ll still have Grand warlock design as a talent.

Abyssal dominion(on destruction side):
I like that interacts with Cataclysm, but will it become baseline or become more acessible in the tree?
Right now this talent is in a bad position to have a talent about it.

Annihilan’s bellow - I don’t know if I’d get this talent outside of pvp, maybe in a very specific situation.

Doubts:
Can we have more than one Diabolic ritual up?

Diabolic ritual have some extra effect while its up? Have any internal CD to be applied again?

Gloom of Nathreza - Its expected to work as a single target buff? Like the old legendary Odr

Outside of the buff that the big 3 demons will give to us, all of them will make a devastating attack, but each of these attacks will have a different function? Single target, cleave, aoe??

Warlock will have any changes for spec talents? Destruction needs a lot and Netherportal needs some changes too.

Whishes:
Eager to see the animations for this spec, hope they’re all cool.
Demonfire barrage, Ruination(this spell replaces hand of guldan and chaos bolt, so it needs to be EPIC!) and specially for the Devastanting attack of our new summons :slight_smile:

Love this new options <3

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Bring back Class Halls!

I am not mad at Hero Talents, but what’s the point of adding and adding modifiers to weave into a spec of choice. I would rather have Tier be my “Hero Talent” to make gameplay more fun. This adds more tuning and complications for other specs to compete against each other. I love the idea of Hero Talents and I think it would’ve been the best opportunity to revamp Class Halls in a new way for you to learn more about your Class. I would love if Blizzard revamped class halls into a cosmetic social hub again. For example, I been a Warlock main for a while now and I haven’t felt like a real Warlock since Legion. I would love if they added new animations, transmogs, mounts, and theme for each Hero specialization of choice. I don’t mind the idea of borrowed power but I feel Hero Talents are bringing bloat to modifiers in the game to track to min/max. I would love more flavor and lore of the “Hero Talent” idea and make it more fun for new and returning players to brag about their class.

Thanks for your time!

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BARE IN MIND IM A MYTHIC+ PVE SCRUB, DO NOT REGARD ANYTHING I SAY TOWARDS PVP AS I HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF IT.

LOVE the flavor on this and it gets me so amped for Hellcaller, buuuut this gives me real unease for the direction of destro. Again, I cannot emphasis how much I like this non-intrusive tree, it feels like it really doesn’t step on your toes for trying to play either spec and adds fun flavor to both.

The warrior tree has a dev note saying that shockwave will be made easier to get which is great for warrior, but this tree doesn’t have such a note so I will be operating under the assumption we are getting no such changes.

This leads me to believe that destro HAS to take Infernal (which is really mid talent since the GWD nerf) AND Cataclysm (shares node with Inferno which has infinitely better synergy with the soul shard spending gimmick) or else you are effectively down 2 talents. Every demo lock is damn near guaranteed to have Nether Portal OR Tyrant, that’s implying they don’t have both. Grimoire: Felguard may not be in the most ideal spot but it’s easy enough to slot in and also not a choice node like Cata/Inferno which pretty much define your AoE profile.

I really really really hope that either the hero tree is changed to not outright force talents for either spec or that the spec trees themselves are being changed in some way. I do have some smaller notes below but above was my big concern.

Left node - This is just kinda meh? Circle one will be nice for mobility I guess but I think it’ll be picked just because the other affects a talent no one uses. I’d use howl IF the talent that made feared creature stand still affected it, which it does not. Coil too good. Seems like a fake choice node to me.

Middle node - See above, I beg of you to have some big change that will make these talent-exclusive nodes make sense.

Right node - Good enough node, I’ll have to see which I like more in game which I think is a sign of good design.

Demonfire Barrage - Does this work with havoc? Will this affect multiple targets with Fire and Brimstone? Will Roaring Blaze increase it’s damage? Does it generate shards or fragments?

Gloom of Nathreza - This is one of the most obvious examples of “better for demo than destro” in the whole tree, demo will be doing 45% more damage with one of their main spell while destro gets a very mild dps bonus on a cleave ability that’s not always up.

Obligatory “warlock players want to be OP” but throughout most of DF warlocks have been shunned communication wise imo, the last changes destro got being a tier that a lot of the community wasn’t a super big fan of (It’s strong now since they buffed like all the portals by 40% before release lololol) which basically forces Cata so no Inferno, doesn’t let you take Chaos Incarnite, heavily incentivizes CDF which much of the community hates especially after season 2 tier (I quite like CDF so I don’t mind but I’d prefer people be able to choose what they want to run instead), removed Madness, (WTF??), and obliterated the 1 minute CD Inferno which was some of the most fun I had in DF.

Overall: I hope these issues are addressed at least, if warlock team can express why it is the way it is and whether or not they’ll correct it (and what they do correct if they choose to) that will make me feel much better about this.

AND- I really hope whoever reads this has a good day :slight_smile:

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As demonology my major concern is how can we keep viable in m+ without our current tierset? And the problem is the same for Destruction (AoE Ramp)

  • In Diabolic Ritual, is the “Devasting Attack” AoE?
  • How can we improve the ramp damage if Diabolic Ritual is bound on our spenders? Can we have something more in line with Demonology current tierset? (maybe If a target dies, we spawn a Diabolic Ritual?)
  • Abyssal Dominion CDR may be problematic if no talent tree is changed (Cooldowns not aligning)
  • Netherportal in it’s current state won’t work with Diabolic Ritual (we spend HoG with 1 shard)
  • Annihillan Bellow: Will Howl of Terror become baseline? or it’ll work with Coil?

Just echoing in this thread that for a while in dragonflight now definitely in tww with these hero talents, destro really needs to have its talent tree re-balanced or reconfigured

it’s not terrible, it doesn’t need a massive overhaul. there’s just so many points to spend and way too many spells to get, and a good chunk of the spells are just nested

with one of these hero talents being focused on cataclysm, we’re going to have that obligation to take cataclysm. that would mean for the most part, the first 20 of our talent points are spoken for and we can’t get channel demonfire, soulfire, shadowburn, or even rolling havoc without sacrificing a bit. this isn’t something most of us aren’t used to at this point - we’ve had ~3-ish points to spare depending on our tier set, but now? we’ll have to sacrifice synergy elsewhere or a core component of our tree in order to pick up any of the spells I said we can’t get and their following nested talents in the tree. we’ll hemorrhage dps, it’ll feel a lot more bad than good to get those spells, and one of the biggest concerns for this is what our new tier sets will look like. imagine if we had one tailored around soulfire or channel demonfire again?

Maybe we can trim some of the 2-point talents and make them 1 point talents, or get rid of some of the redundant nested spells?

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I will add a few thoughts about Destruction locks and this tree;

Forcing Cataclysm into the build at all times is questionable at best. Fire Damage amp would not affect Chaos Bolt. The Mother demon proc would cast Shadowbolts instead of Incinerates, which nothing in the destruction kit supports (and would not benefit from the fire damage amp either). Using Havoc in single target at all time will not feel great at all.

Like no matter what, its not just the Ritual completion rate which is completely lopsided in Demo’s favor, rightfully so, but how is this supposed to flow for Destruction?

Love everything about it for Demo, but none of it for Destro.

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