Where’s that been stated?
DIABOLIST KEYSTONE
Diabolic Ritual
I like it. It reads similar to Doom Brand but a personal buff instead. The interaction with Cruelty of Kerxan is not really clear at this point but the concept is great here, in my opinion.
Cloven Souls
This sounds to be the most potent effect from the demons that are being summoned. Regardless, I would rather it be a spell enhancement like we are getting from Mother of Chaos and Pit Lord. In particular, a cleave effect and buffed Demonbolt or Incinerate with boosted shard generation would be interesting.
Touch of Rancora
Questions still need to be answered on this talent so I don’t have much to add right now. I like the effect, if limited to certain spells.
Secrets of the Coven/Demonfire Barrage
This seems cool for both specs. Shadow Bolt has been long neglected in the Demo tree and hurling 5 bolts or incinerates in a short timeframe will be interesting. I would like to see it also generate a Soul Shard for each bolt and this be castable while moving.
Choice Node: Soul-Etched Circles and Annihilan’s Bellow
Soul-Etched Circles is awesome. Do more of this in the other trees. Annihilan’s below is uninspiring for an ability that has very limited use cases. Converting it to an in-place incapacitate would be a more interesting direction. A choice of functionality is better than cdr in the case of Howl of Terror, when competing with the power of Mortal Coil.
Cruelty of Kerxan/Infernal Machine
Both of these offer meaningful synergy with our big demons, but please do something with Nether Portal if you are going to tie it to this hero. At current tuning, this wouldn’t push Nether Portal in to usage, but the ability needs some significant changes to make it feel better in rotation.
Infernal Vitality and Infernal Bulwark
I like Infernal Bulwark. I’m not big on the heal over time effect and would prefer another option unrelated to UR on this choice node.
Flames of Xoroth
Not very cool. We have tons of boring passive nodes already in our class and spec trees. This one offers no interest in rotation and will have no cool visual to boot.
Abyssal Dominion
Very cool, just make sure Cata is placed in an easier spot to pick up for destro or baseline it.
Gloom of Nathreza
Uninspiring Hand of Gul’dan buff. I don’t see most players wanting to press Havoc in single target either, but this looks like a way to enforce that, depending on tuning.
DIABOLIST CAPSTONE
Ruination
Hand of Gul’dan with Chaos effect? I feel we need more info on this ability to provide feedback.
I agree there’s some things that need addressing.
Like the whole thing about one getting spec more valued over another or if you dont choose this talent you lose out on some hero tree talents.
The end capstone ruinatiin is weird is this just an empower hand of guldan that just does the same currrent hand of guldan, shouldnt this end capstone ability have some differenr mechanic than what hand of guldan already does.
Are the imps (chaos imps idk) empowered as well, or am i seeing that this chaos empowered hand of guldan is just going to summon the same imps we get from current hand of guldan.
In addition to this. This node i dont understand Choice Node: Soul-Etched Circles and Annihilan’s Bellow
We already get this effect through soulburn which allows to do this. And i dont see much worth while in the class tree to skip it. Put this in the hero tree when we currenly have this.
I’m not even sure if most destros or demo even use how of terror.
Lovely , as a priest i understand everything 
Loved ur methodology !
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Summoning Demons is a Demonology thing.
Green Fire is the Destruction thing.
Not for one moment does summoning a Demon come forefront to my mind for Destruction. Was really hoping for a great green fire moment/spell.
If I could trade the infernal out for something else having to do with green fire, I wouldnt even blink.
I just feel like the Destruction fantasy is being completely ignored in lieu of being just a regular warlock. There is no theme for it.
I 100% feel each specs identity for warlock currently on live. But this Hero Talent tree will make me think that all destros are now being merged into Demonology.
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What do you think the demonfire barrage is? Warlocks are still tied to demons, they derive their magic from pacts with them and control of fel magics.
The real problem is these new warlock spells just like Demonbolt and Tyrant’s bolt don’t get green fire integrated and they’re left with orange fire with no way to customize.
You also have to realize that destruction’s problem of being oversimplified after the Legion rework culling all of MoP/WoD shouldn’t be fixed by a hero tree, it requires a real spec revamp with a kit expansion. And the tools are there. Soulburn, Soulfire, and Conflagrate could be reevaluated and made core to the kit to elaborate the destruction rotation while Backdraft should give a stack of cast on move and cataclysm could be baselined.
Diabolist is one of the best trees alongside Frostfire and Scalecommander, don’t make your distaste for pets blind you to the superior design compared to a bunch of boring passive hero trees that don’t even have new spell effects and just have nodes with 5% damage increase passive to one spell or a 3% DR like the garbage druid tree.
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Also it seems like the diabolist ritual will only summon said demon for 1 attack which they then dissapear after said attack.
Literally when they announced hero talents. So this isn’t an issue.
Loving this. I think this is spot on for the Warlock class. I’m not really understanding the “its tailored for Demonology, not Destruction” feedback. It’s a hybrid between the two classes, thematically. Warlock from day one has been about demons, regardless of the spec you chose. This is a nonsense criticism. I do agree that the shard spending will definitely be slower on the Destruction side of it compared to the Demonology rotation. Shard building just takes longer on Destruction than it does Demonology, so something surely needs to be addressed in that aspect.
Demonfire Barrage should be able to be channeled while moving. There is already enough “feet” mechanics that stop casting all around. Destruction, a heavily casting-based spec as it is, will suffer even more from this. Having to stop casting is one the least fun things to do in this game because of mechanics.
I never understand the “increased % damage” nodes on any class. They are always mandatory to take. Why not just bake these into the class or spec as baseline? Surely there has to be something more inspiring that could be used instead.
Destruction: Abyssal Dominion: this requires that Warlocks take Cataclysm for this to not be a dead node. Am I missing something? Is Cataclysm moving to a baseline ability like we have been begging for?
Destruction: Gloom of Nathreza: Also requires Destruction to take Havoc. What happens if we take Mayhem? Demonology’s main spender is buffed, while Destruction’s niche cleave ability that requires a talent point is buffed. This is not the same.
Ruination: Sign me the f&*^ up!! This sounds really cool! Hopefully the visual and artwork is just as cool!
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The fact that it’s an alpha build of what the concept of the tree will look like I think is lost on some people. The idea of demon summons is great for one of the 3 warlock Hero trees, and I think they just want feedback on the concept. Will there need to be tuning and interaction changes? Of course there will.
As far as a concept for one Hero tree this works for me. Hellcaller will probably have to do with a big boom chaos damage spell and Soul Harvester will have something to do with soul shard interaction or a way to get some shards quick if I had to guess.
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Ah. don’t recall reading that we get all of them.
You straight up explain our criticism regarding Destro right after telling us we are all giving “nonsense criticism”
Yes the tree idea and theme sounds good, and its amazing for Demo. But it is indeed a terrible design for Destro, as you explained yourself. Keep in mind that mechanically speaking is what I’m talking about it, not thematically.
Quick note, they havn’t said anything but so far the moond and feedback they gave around Warriors indicate that they want to move talents impacted by hero talents in accessible positions on the tree (no indication about making some baseline or not, we don’t know that yet)
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So basically, in open world content you will probably never get to use this as destruction. After spending the first soul shard, it is 20 seconds before the proc activates, reduced by 1 second per shard spent. Am I missing anything?
I’d just like to point out that green fire is available for every spec but that it simply does more visually for destruction simply because it has more fire. However, it does affect every spec and I wouldn’t say that the “destruction’s thing” is green fire.
As for summoning a demon as destruction, this hero tree does kind of borrow the Ritual of Ruin mechanic where you summon a demon if you spend enough shards. In mythic plus and AoE, I get to summon a Blasphemy for free all the time. There’s also Rain of Chaos that allows us to summon more Infernals during our Infernal cooldown. Summoning demons simply by spending soul shards on other spells is a common mechanic for destruction.
But yes, this hero class does seem more focused on demonology. Given the name, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t say that all destruction warlocks are being merged into demonology though. After all, the other hero class involving destruction is called Hellcaller. That seems more destruction focused than affliction I would say. And affliction has one called Soul Harvester with demonology that definitely sounds like it would be leaning more towards affliction.
We will have to wait and see of course, but destruction is more than just green fire and green fire isn’t just a destruction thing.
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Yeah they mentioned I believe either Blizzcon or the following up interview, we will get every node by max level (we complete the whole tree) so really the only decision to be making is what choice nodes you’d prefer.
We’ve noticed some points that could benefit from additional clarification.
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Demonfire Barrage will cast Incinerate for Destruction rather than Shadow Bolt. This is missing from our blog post and will be added.
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Diabolic Ritual will be tuned on a per specialization basis. This means that final numbers may be different for each specialization to achieve a similar cadence between the two, however, the overall mechanic will remain the same.
Thank you for the thoughts and discussion so far!
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Thank you for the clarifications, much needed.
First thing first does Demonfire barrage generate shards?
Secondly, when we say tuned differently, it means Destruction will speed up the ritual WAY faster per shard than Demo?
One concern with Demonfire barrage for example; Shadow Bolts for Demo generate 4 soul shards that can immediately be used on the next ritual. For Destro, 4 incinerates would be great damage if impacted by talents, but it would generate what… a shard at best maybe?
Thats a good start, other part of the trees have issues but I’ll deep dive on those later.
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Thanks for the clarifications Kaivax.
Would it be possible for some additional clarification in regards to Ruination as well? would it be the same spell for both specs or just like Demonfire Barrage it will be a Destro and Demo version who do different things?
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I feel there may be problems trying to balance the cadence for Destro in particular. People have pointed out that Demo spends shards way faster than Destro, and that’s true… in ST. In AoE, Demo’s shard expenditure stays the same, and Destro’s goes through the roof. It was seen with Destro’s Shadowlands S3 tier set how absolutely insane Destro’s shard expenditure gets in AoE. Obviously the damage of the demons can be balanced between Demo and Destro, but what about balancing it between Destro ST and Destro AoE? I suppose there are other tuning nobs for Destro’s AoE, but then that will become potentially problematic for Hellcaller Destruction. Obviously everything is still in flux and we haven’t even seen Hellcaller (or Soul Harvester), but I still feel it’s worth bearing in mind as things go forward.
At any rate, really appreciate the communication. There are 2 big things I’d like clarified at this point.
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Does Demonfire Barrage generate shards? I assume it will generate at least as many shards as the normal Shadow Bolt/Incinerate that it’s replacing. But will it generate 4 Shadow Bolts/Incinerates worth of shards if fully channeled?
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Can we get more information on Ruination? As it stands right now, it sounds like it’s just a hard hitting HoG for Demo, and an AoE Chaos Bolt for Destro. Is that all it is? In general, does it follow the same rules (cast time, damage, shard cost, auto-crit?) for both specs? I’ve been speculating that it might be shard-free, but that’s just speculation. Any clarifications you can give us would be greatly appreciated
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With the clarifications in mind, which alleviates some concerns; here are a few points I’d like to bring up;
Gloom of Nathreza
Having to use Havoc for ST is not a fun idea. I dont know about a good alternative but its not on par at all with its Demo counterpart
Ruination
Would it be possible to have something more thematic for Destro vs Demo? Wild Imps for Demo is great, but for Destro how about something different? Some fel beasts that breath fire or something?
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