That was the most peculiar thing about the Diabolist tree. It basically gives Destro access to Hand of Gul’dan which is weird. It would be like if this one gave Affliction Chaos Bolt.
Aside from that it doesn’t bother me except that I can’t stand imps. They’re too whimsical and kinda immersion breaking for me. They really should redesign the Ruination capstone to be its own thing, not just a Hand of Gul’dan copypasta. I really hope the text is a placeholder and/or will change.
The Hellcaller tree is not great, not terrible to me.
The entire tree is built around Wither and its Blackened Souls stacks, with a tiny bit of synergy with Agony for Affliction. This would be fine if Wither stacks weren’t entirely ignorable: they get stacks as we cast our normal rotations, and then proc for damage either randomly or once reaching the cap of 8. This is way too passive for my liking and would like to see more interaction with each specialization’s spells/talents.
The biggest pros I see are:
Aura of Enfeeblement is pretty cool utility despite it causing us to become melee casters to use it.
Instant cast dot with some benefit for using it before pandemic (Mostly benefits Destruction).
Hatefury Ritual’s drawback can be completely ignored in AoE or with Absolute Corruption (Affliction)
Mark of Xavius makes spreading Wither a lot easier for Inferno builds (Destruction)
The biggest cons that I definitely want to see changes for:
Pretty bland “number% go up” talents. Warlocks have so many of these talents in the base trees (Demo included) that I’d like to see more talents that influence our play or interact with abilities.
Malevolence only affects our single target shard spenders, meaning its just a haste buff during AoE encounters.
Zevrim’s Resilience and Illhoof’s Design aren’t good for raiding.
The biggest talking point about this Hero talent tree is the disconnect from Destruction’s theme. I don’t think very many people were thinking about Hellcaller Satyrs, rather than calamitous fireballs that would leave severe burns on its victims.
I’m fine with the tree being based around Shadowflame damage since it’s shared with Affliction, but outside of converting our Fire Dot into a Shadowflame DoT and Malevolence shooting Shadowflame at Wither targets, it doesn’t have enough for that theming. I think a good direction for better fitting Destro’s theme is to enhance their currently existing Shadowflame abilities (Shadowburn and Cataclysm).
For Affliction, I would like to see Seed of Corruption upgraded since Corruption is transformed into Wither; it would be cool to see Affliction detonating Shadowflame Seeds.
In conclusion, the Hellcaller tree is too passive and needs to provide more toward changing the gameplay loops of both Affliction and Destruction. Hellcaller doesn’t fit the theme of Destruction’s more direct damage because it focuses too heavily into Wither as a DoT.
Shadowflame hasn’t been a Destruction thing for the longest time. If anything it’s more of a Demonology thing with Demonbolt being Shadowflame.
thats a big reach
Hatefury Rituals isn’t great for Destruction either, since Internal Combustion exists. A 9 sec Wither would mean that every other cast of Chaos Bolt you’ve gotta cast Wither, or rather, you have to make sure a fresh Wither is active every time you want to cast Chaos Bolt, even a small delay might mean not getting the full benefit out of Internal Combustion, but even in PvE where its much easier to set that situation up, it becomes casting Wither every 3-4 globals, which seems… tedious, we’re actively casting big flashy spells less to ensure we’re managing a dot properly.
Granted, Internal Combustion isn’t usually meta, due to sharing a node with Reverse Entropy… I dunno, I don’t like Internal Combustion, NOW, if it worked off Conflagrate or something, I’d enjoy it more tbh.
I wrote up a lengthy summery of Hellcaller in context of WoW’s earlier days, from both the World of Warcraft RPG and the existing Hellcaller NPCs. This is the link, Hellcaller Origin.
In short, Hellcaller’s sacrifice their ability to summon demonic servants, subjugate demons, and weaken what demons they do summon (or sacrifice that ability altogether) in order to ‘summon’ entropic flame and empower it.
The vast majority of Satyr Hellcaller NPCs similarly only use Fire Spells, with a few exceptions as I discuss in the Hellcaller Origin thread (and even some of those exceptions weren’t true in Classic).
well if this thing goes live like it is, pretty sure it will because Blizz does not care about destro/aff, so we gonna suck this tree for the whole expa, assuming that it’s our fate, IC gonna get HUGE value for that talent, it creates the problem that u are locked into IC for the rest of your life playing this tree, but hey those CBS gonna hurt, also whiter its instant I see no problem dropping 2 CBS then whiter again also help you up to reach the pandemic timer faster, I see that as a win-win
I choose to hope it won’t be our fate to be stuck with this, I don’t even mind a weaker hero talent tree if it means being more thematic to the core concept of Destruction… huge flashy spells, but I don’t disagree. Wither is a huge mechanical win for Destruction, and ain’t bad either for Affliction.
I’d probably have to choose the other hero spec if just running Internal Combustion forever was the only proper way to play this talent spec, the fun part of Destro is casting Chaos Bolt!
Very much this, I 100% want an insta cast like that instead of Immolate (hate managing that stupid debuff) - but as you said, this isnt on its own destructiony theme wise for the rest of the tree
are you new to lock? specially destro? destro is the bastard child of Locks blizz does not care about you and does not know what to do with you, devs want you to be more like your demo brother and they think that you are like your aff brother but with a worse personality and they hope at some point you get tired of complaining and being a rebel and follow the steps of your big bro demo guy, so in 3 years the spec has gotten worse and worse, we only get tunning numbers and I see this not changing anything soon because the fixed that the talent tree for Destro needs is easy to be done but they refuse to it, they rather rework demo 3 times in a single expa.
the fixes for this tree are kinda of easy, the wither thing was accure 100% was a nice and obvious move to make a dot it is what connects the 2 specs, makes it buff our spenders, or turns our spells via wither even with those acute stacks when we reach certain stacks our spells are turned into something different that does destro things, that’s all not hard I would like to see it re-done even if they need to change the name from “hellcaller” to “whatever big demon with fel magic” to fit the theme I take it but knowing how the devs interact with this spec I doubt it, they waited almost 4 years to give us baseline/accessible cataclysms so no u are getting your aff/destro or demo/destro and you gonna like it
Been maining Destro since Cataclysm personally. Chaos Bolt has always just been the most fun spell to cast for me, and it always felt like the theme, casting fire spells. Wasn’t super big on content for most of those expansions, beyond PvP, and even then I didn’t enjoy rated PvP as a Destro lock much either.
But a dwarf can dream! It’ll always be my favorite spec, even when its bad, I can’t help but keep an enthusiastic outlook. 
I think if your going to give us a bunch of “Shadowflame” talents as our fantasy, then Warlocks should be channeling magic from actual users of the stuff. You know, like Fyrakk? Deathwing? Nefarian? Now those three evoke the meaning of Destruction perfectly.
Massive amounts of overwhelming fire and burning. Massive miss on this spec unfortunately.
No one takes Satyrs seriously, given 95% of them are B. Level Trash Mobs aside from Peroth’arn (what was he… A Cata Dungeon Boss …I think…?) and Xavius who frankly, didn’t look like a Satyr so much as an angry mutant Possum; with a grudge against the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The others?
…Never even heard of them in a meaningful fashion aside from a “Kill X of this” quest maybe. I’ve played this class since Classic and I’ve never thought once to myself “Oh wow. Those Hellcallers really can kick some butt!” I mean, I ‘might’ of thought… “Can these guys respawn and die again already?” though the last time was 19 years ago so…
Probably the biggest shock to me however, is the fact that I was not aware that despite making a life choice to be a Warlock, I was apparently suffering from a form of mistaken identity. Apparently, I actually was always an Evil Druid who uses Nightmare magic, which… is kinda like what Satyr do usually?
Now that I wrack my mind… weren’t the Blackfathom Satyr also like big into Old God stuff? Wasn’t Xavius also working for N’zoth rather than the Legion? That’s what it sounded like from the Emerald Nightmare Raid Dialogue. So… I am so lost now. Am I a Priest, or a Druid or < insert some random thing >? Because none of this is reminding me of Gul’dan, Cho’gall, or Zalazane.
I mean, you guys flat out refuse to give Warlocks Orangish Colored Chaos Bolt / Channel Demonfire Glyphs, and downplay our abilities when it deals with any sort of blood / sacrificial magic themed spells because Death Knights exist, (though like with Demon Hunters, we just get robbed; or have abilities renamed or outright stolen simply for their sake), yet now after all of these years, suddenly Destruction Warlocks are the unquestioned masters of Shadowflame instead of Fel-Magic?
Why do I feel like this is a prelude to giving an excuse for deleting Green-Fire from Warlocks?
If the concept wasn’t such ‘bad comedy’ I might take it all a smidge more seriously. But I can’t. But I will say that it’s pretty shabby that you give Destro a “Night Elf Warlock” fantasy when Demon Hunters already fulfill that role. Please do yourselves (and us) a favor and remake this spec with more Fyrakk and Deathwing, and less Satyr. Discounting that, every bit of in-game lore states Satyr tie more into the Druid fantasy.
Either change directions or please flip Soul-Harvester and Diabolist on the wheel. That way when you release that one that probably makes Affliction more “Destruction” themed, you guys can at least save face. It will just make everyone’s life easier, and this whole thing easier to digest; as we head toward the beta. Let’s be honest. We all know from past expansions, that the odds are that the Devs will ignore the feedback and double down.
…I was going to end it there but… seriously. Satyrs?
Based off… the Hellcallers from Ashenvale?
Yep those guys really scare me. Honest. I am just petrified of Ashenvale and those Satyr that have been sitting in their little temple area doing nothing. Yet I suppose this is a wonderous day regardless! After all, after 20 years, I have finally become the master of Warlock Destruction magic such that in terms of power-level, I am now on par with the first NPC that a Night Elf runs into outside of their starter zone, Shadowglen.
Don’t get me wrong, mechanically the spec is sound. Thematically it needs to be rethought.
I would love more Lord Victor Nefarius fantasy in my Warlock. Lord Xavius? Oof. Hard pass. He was an evil Tree, and while I get that he moonlighted as a Night Elf Warlock, he was also one that got his butt kicked by Malfurion and swapped to Team Old God.
Not a big reach at all - The only Shadowflame stuff we recently had in years (if not a literal decade) for Destruction was the Aberrus tier set, and I’m sure that was less Destruction and more Aberrus being a Shadowflame-themed raid.
All the Shadowflame-esque spells we’ve had for years were more associated with Demonology - Both Demonbolt and Hand of Gul’dan are actual Shadowflame damage and spells of the past like well, Shadowflame back in Cataclysm, were also Demonology spells.
Destruction has always been full-on Fel-Fire themed, from Chaos Bolt, Fel Flame (we miss you) to green fire.
I am willing to concede that having an instant-cast Immolate is a mechanical win for Destruction, but I still think making a tree 100% centered around Immolate is lazy and would like to see some more focus on the other portions of the kit. The Affliction side has a few talents that affect Agony. It’s not an impossible task.
(But if Wither doesn’t get green fire’d, I will riot)
They could always like give us that and maybe some glyphs for Chaos Bolt / Channel Demonfire. I mean they did give Demon Hunters that sort of variant, you know… Because. What a world it would be, if I could be hurling a Shadowflame themed Chaos Bolt, or Channeling Demon-fire with those slick Aberrus Shadow-Flame effects that did not clash with the rest of the ‘Regular’ Non-Green Fire spells.
Juuust saying a little equity would be nice.
It’s kind of like how Shadow Priests have a fair gripe in becoming a fart cloud for a 10% Spell Power increase. Shadowform worked great in Classic, but it should be a toy or aesthetic ability that is entirely optional at this point.
They have Destro-fire and Aff-shadow is why they chose a shadowflame ability. It makes sense the ability in this tree would be both fire and shadow. There isn’t a great way to connect affliction to this tree without making it dot related and that’s probably why destruction got immolate changed. It’s not a bad tree mechanically.
As far as theme. Hellcaller satyrs are far more connected to warlocks and demons then Fyrakk or Deathwing, neither of whom are warlocks or connected to the Legion. Xavius was the first satyr who was created by Sargeras and most satyrs still follow the Legion’s goals of chaos. I will say it’s an odd choice but it does fit for both destro and aff as satyrs whole thing is shadowflame.
While I do agree that Fyrakk, Deathwing, or Nefarian are less connected to Warlocks for the most part (though I believe Nefarian arguably dabbled at the least), I think Sulek makes an extremely valid point about the relative weakness and meaninglessness of “Satyr Hellcaller” as a theme for Hero Talents.
I mean, compare superficially to other ones. Mountain Thane is arguably the most iconic type of warrior in lore between official and unofficial examples (Vrykul, Muradin, the original hero class in the RTS). The Shado-Pan are the classic example of the elite of the elite for monks. Rider of the Apocalypse is self-explanatorily epic. In contrast, referencing a random group of Satyr trash mobs as the inspiration is… a choice. I tend to consider myself fairly versed on WoW lore and I had not imagined at all Satyr Hellcallers were going to be the sourcing for the thematics. I had suspected Shadowflame obviously, given the new gorgeous purple/orange shadowflame animations made in this expansion. However, even if they do stick with the relatively meek thematic I’d hope there’s more to it than a corruption/immolate replacement alone.
Edit: It is worth noting, though, that taking power from sources outside of the Legion proper isn’t unheard of for warlocks. I believe in the green fire quest for example one of the council members specifically mentions seeking to infuse their own power with powers from Ragnaros and Deathwing. I don’t think it’d be unreasonable for Hellcaller to have similar inspiration. Honestly, Hellcaller being for Shadowflame what the green fire quest was for fel flame feels like a solid starting point for a thematic that’d appeal to both Affliction and Destruction.
I concede on that fantasy, it does sound super sick! Too bad the chances of that not happening are… pretty high 
Does Blizzard plan to have separate versions of Wither for Corruption and Immolate?
Reading the proposed tooltip, Wither appears to have an 18 second duration. Affliction doesn’t rely on Corruption for resources (that’s Agony’s job), but Destruction generates additional shards/embers at an average of 1 + (0.5*crit rate) every 3 seconds through Immolate.
How will Wither impact the role of Immolate in a Destruction warlock’s resource economy?
Will Wither be 2 or 3 seconds for both Affliction and Destruction, or will they observe different frequencies?
Can the warlock devs for once focus on any other spec than Demo? So frustrating playing this class nowadays.
Frankly given what happened to Locks after our best Developer left; I almost consider any focus for Destro that deviates from overarching concept of overwhelming and explosive magic, a pretext to remove Green Fire down the road “Because it’s a Demon Hunter thing.” or “It’s not fair to other classes that you have a spell tint.” or some nonsense, because we have to ‘always’ seem to play second fiddle to Mage, Death Knight and Demon Hunter.
Honestly, I forget the last time they even heeded feedback. I feel like we’ll ‘maybe’ see 1-2 more posts by Kaivax, and then this thread will become an echo chamber where it’s all thunderously silent save hopeful players shouting into the darkness for answers. Mage by contrast will get frequent communication. How it always is.
I mean, sure the Devs claim to want it and I’ll deal in good faith; but realistically the inner voice in my head says that after 20 some odd years; I still feel like we’re an after thought to Mages, and this ‘theme’ is set in stone no matter what we say, because it’s some Dev’s baby.
Maybe Blizzard will prove me wrong. Maybe Gul’dan was just a well intentioned old Orc who wanted to promote Mountain Dew also. I mean even if nothing changes, I’ll most likely just ignore the talents / written text / fantasy and replace it with my own. Its just what we roleplayers do, and have done since Shadowlands anyways. 