Feedback: Hellcaller Warlock

Classes Warlock
21

My thoughts are primarily from an affliction point of view, in part because most of this thread is how it does not suit destro, which is definitely true, but it would be disingenuous if that was the only feedback coming in for Hellcaller.

Like those above me there’s some clarification issues that need addressing:

Will any ability/talent that interacts with corruption also interact with wither in the same ways (Or augmented for tuning purposes)? Specifically Seed of Corruption for aoe applications of wither and Absolute Corruption for a permanent wither dot (specifically how this might work with hatefury Rituals).

With Mark of Xavius combo’ing to apply affliction to an additional target, is there a concern we’re losing vile taint and/or it’s ability to spread agony in AoE? If so this is a tremendous step backwards, if anything we need a way to maintain agony on a group in aoe since the duration for agony and cd of Taint do not line up. Tab targeting refreshing the dot that is our only way to generate resources in an aoe group feels pretty awful in-between vile taint casts to not lose stacks. If vile taint aoe application remains this combo feels kinda superfluous but might be nice in a council style encounter I guess?

Malevolence wording is a bit murky on Rapture applying an additional stack to targets with Unstable affliction, is multiple targets with UA a thing coming back, or is this just murky wording?

I do like the addition of Malevolence in general, having a nice actual CD for affliction (since aside from dot extensions Darkglare is kind of awful with the current state of affliction) would be wonderful, and this is kinda like getting Dark Soul plus a major Wither window. My concern is that affliction has a fair bit of bloat as is, I see this cd as a solid addition, but it would be nice to trim some of the fat (seeing Siphon life on the chopping block or turned back into a passive and dots retuned for the loss of siphon’s rapture value would be lovely).

All in all, I am fond of the tree, just a lot of clarifications that need to be sorted out, and it’s difficult to say how good or bad this might be until we have an idea of what changes we can expect to affliction with 11.0. A fair few were probably expecting a large affliction rework going into WWI, and based on these talents that doesn’t seem to be the case, but certainly some minor reworks will be coming as they always do inbetween expansions, and could impact how this hero tree feels.

Finally, I can understand Destro players dislike for this hero tree based on the class fantasy with the key thing revolving around dot (even if it is simply replacing the dot they already have), and I hope something can be done there to resolve this for them, but hopefully not at the cost of sacrificing what looks like it could be a lot of fun for affliction. These are early days and feedback is here for this reason, so hopefully we can see some stuff retooled for destro to fit the spec identity better. Maybe instead of revolving around wither stacking and flaring up have it interact with Chaos Bolt and Rain of Fire in some way for them.

6 Likes
22

This is a very, very boring talent tree.

There are almost zero interactions with the rest of the spec as a whole. Nearly the entire tree is either defensives, ignorable utility or ways to increase the damage output of renamed agony/immolate.

And the bottom left ‘combo’ talent is a sad joke when the talent to the literal right of it is for recasting renamed agony/immolate during the pandemic window. Why does it even exist?

12 Likes
23

Honestly, that’s not a bad idea. If Wither stored up damage, perhaps Chaos Bolt or some shard spender could detonate it with a large explosion and deal damage based on how many stacks there were. That or some interaction that makes it more than just a DoT for destruction.

3 Likes
24

Hi,

Could we please get rid of malefic rapture and add stacking UA’s like in legion as our shard spender? It felt really good back then.

13 Likes
25

My guess is that the the talent was included so that you could stack the dot more easily on multiple targets at the start of the fight. There is tab target dotting of course, but I can see this as a small QoL. You could also potentially refresh the dot to gain bonus stacks on multiple targets by doing something similar without having to tab target around.

1 Like
26

This feels like they are trying to turn destro into aff but with fire damage. Wither should be a standalone mechanic:

Debuff: Stacks on your primary target then explodes at 8 stack and then applies a dot to it and all things in 8-10yrds.

or

Buff: As stacks grow higher you deal bonus damage as shadowflame and then at 8 you shoot out a spell that explodes or it modifies Chaos Bolt/ Rapture to aoe around the primary target.

These talents seem to be forcing you into Channel demonfire as well since you want as many hits as possible to proc blackened soul. Hatefury Rituals is a dead talent since it would make it only last 12s even when specc’d into bonus duration, further incentivizing taking Channel demonfire. Now imagine you took Internal Combustion (not that you ever would), you’re talking about a dot that would last 2 CBs at most, you now are casting immo a ludicrously increased amount of times. In addition the dot would NEVER reach 8 stacks on your primary target, ever. Almost forgot about cull the weak, your new rotation would become: Wither-> conflag-> CB ->Repeat

Lastly Malevolence only granting Chaos Bolt 1 additional stack per cast is laughable, should be 2 at a bare minimum. Even with all the haste procs available it still costs 2 shards to Rapture’s 1.

So much for being the “Destro” themed talents.

6 Likes
27

Having an entire talent node for the tiniest of QoL improvements is a joke, honestly. This could have been a great place to add in some spec flavor, such as casting chaos bolt on a wither target has a chance to make the chaos bolt explode, or casting rapture has a chance to make unstable affliction explode.

7 Likes
28

Yeah I was kind of looking forward to this I only play Destro. Doesn’t look super fun. I am not a fan of applying immolate quickly to all the mobs but I had to learn to do it fast.

Just do what everyone wants, make Cataclysm baseline or combine it with pyrogenics and this might just work if I can put this “Wither” dot on all the mobs I want.

Diabolist gives makes our chaosbolt a nuke every so often right? That tree is more appealing to me at the moment.

7 Likes
29

That’s true. It’s a damage boost and QoL, but ideally it would be more than just that. It does feel like this spec has more flat damage boosts than interesting interactions when compared to Diabolist.

1 Like
30

Supposedly this actually has happened a couple of times over Dragonflight, but I think if they were going to do it with Hero talents it already would have been the move with Oracle given PI’s infamous unpopularity is something they’ve acknowledged multiple times (though, granted, it’s been acknowledged in a “too bad” kind of way).

Obviously Destruction is in a weird spot in that it it pretty badly needs a rework beyond what a few QoL buffs or hero talents can provide. And given how disparate both the fantasies and mechanics are of Destruction and Affliction, making something that bridges the gap is a tough ask. However I’d have figured they’d do something a little more agnostic instead of something so directly affliction based.

Just in something extremely brief as an example: Shadow Bolt and Incinerate replaced with Hellbolt which deals shadowflame damage, benefits with all modifiers to both. Central mechanic could literally be called “Unleash Hell” which procs from soulshard generators (as Diabolist is the spender tree, make Hellcaller the generator tree). Give it a couple of interactions with each spec, and a capstone to summon a rain of shadowflame. Perhaps in that rain, DoT damage is increased to even it out between affliction and Destruction.

The ideas and possibilities are there, but as people above have stated: I’m not sure how the current iteration can be salvaged from a Destro PoV.

8 Likes
31

The name Hellcaller implies that this tree would be the destruction primary tree and it does not feel like destruction at all. This tree is riddled with boring passive talents and does not fit thematically with the name. Very disappointed.

8 Likes
32

this talent tree is way too strong it has a straight steroid on everything its insane the dmgs we can pull off if this goes live would be insane but again, WHERES MY DESTRO FANTASY? re-name it to dot-caller my god plz it wouldn’t piss me off this hard

33

Yeah, I think we can tell that you’re upset given the crazy rants. I don’t think this really fits the title Hellcaller either, but there are some things that could be redesigned to help that out.

As for performance, we don’t actually know how well this spec will do when it goes live because we don’t know how much damage Wither does baseline and a vast majority of the tree is based around that damage.

2 Likes
34

Hello!

We’ve seen some confusion regarding some of the Hellcaller talents. Please know that:

  • Cataclysm and Seed of Corruption will apply Wither.
  • Wither is instant cast for Destruction and Affliction.

Thank you for the thoughts so far!

8 Likes
35

there are stuff that are for sure :

  1. Destro is a spec that it gets out of control pretty fast when it receives steroids from anything,

  2. tree is plagued with it like 10% crit dmgs 100% increase dmgs on wither and the talent that makes your CB consume immolate dmgs, the insane amount of haste that you get from malevolence, and the flat 10% crit buff you get by clicking the node

  3. cataclysms apply whiter

knowing this you know that this talent tree will be able to make destro a top teir spec or beyond broken depending on the tunning.

but thematically it’s horrendous for the spec there’s no way to fix this they need to rework the tree, and there’s nothing that can be saved from here, I guess the capstone is fine but it resolves around wither too much and if you re-do the tree don’t know how it gonna end up but for sure it needs to burn in fire and never be mentioned again

1 Like
36

This is some good news. Having another instant cast spell for destruction could help a lot with mobility.

4 Likes
37

This does make it feel ever so slightly better for Destruction, as it adds an instant cast we did not previously have. Does not alleviate the concerns I’ve initially raised, though.

2 Likes
38

I do know how destruction damage ramps up with lots of targets because of uncapped AoE. However, this hero tree doesn’t necessarily mean it will be absolutely broken. Especially since that all depends on how other classes are doing. This hero spec could boost our dps to 5 million, but that means nothing if the other specs are doing 6 million on average. We can’t say that this spec will be busted until we get actual testing.

But yes, I agree that this is lacking thematically for destruction. Since some nodes behave differently for affliction and destruction, they could change how the baseline effects of wither works for each spec.

1 Like
39

As someone who used to love Destro on my warlock alt I am very disappointed by Hellcaller.

I would like to add my voice to all those saying that Destro really has the short end of the stick both thematically and gameplay wise in both Hero talents.

In fact looking at all the talents released so far I have reached that point where I feel that Blizzard really needs to bite the bullet and change hero talents to single spec as the few cross spec wins like frostfire mage seem badly outnumbered by thematic mismatches and forced blandness because of being for both specs. The fact that so many of the talents in all the trees read Spec A has spell X modified; spec B has spell Y modified shows that they are already 1/2 way there in practice.

8 Likes
40

thx for the clarification!, now if you could clarify or point out where the destruction part of the tree is in it would make my whole day thx alot!

3 Likes