Feedback: Hellcaller Warlock

Classes Warlock
41

Since some nodes have different effects based on whether you are playing as affliction or destruction, could this be done for the base Wither effect? That might require too much balancing, but I have an idea.

Affliction can keep the current ramping Wither DoT but we could change it for destruction. If instead of a ramping DoT, the stacks could store up damage that are detonated and deal damage when hit with something like Chaos Bolt or a shard spender.

If you were fighting a group of enemies, you’d be building up your stacks of Wither on the targets and then detonate them with Chaos Bolt. Use Havoc to hit several enemies at once and now you’re setting off a chain reaction of explosions.

To me that feels more in line with the theme of destruction while still keeping the Wither mechanic as a whole.

3 Likes
42

Was kinda excited until the capstone when I saw the words “Malefic Rupture”. I have no idea how this awful, widely disliked ability is surviving another expansion.

And really, its simple how to fix it. Make Wither, which actually sounds cool, replace Rupture instead of Corruption. The very few locks who like Rupture can just use the other tree.

2 Likes
43

I’m not really moved by much on that tree. Nothing new and imaginative. More of the same stuff that is really kind of lackluster.

The exception is “Aura of Enfeeblement”, I like talent.

3 Likes
44

I do like the overall idea of the tree. I do feel the lack of theme for Destro, which Diabolist also doesn’t provide, but instant cast wither replacing immolate yet used for the same purpose (and benefiting from immolate talents) is a win.

1 Like
45

Pretty disappointing.

  1. Didn’t mind having a Demo/Destro choice - Diabolist - that aesthetically favors Demo, as opposed to something like Frostfire that visually merges the specs, but both Destro choices having very little to no Destro flavor seems like a substantial design oversight.

  2. Even putting the first criticism aside, this tree looks >SUPER< boring. Maybe I’m just biased against Affliction but what are we actually getting to play with? Replacing an existing DoT with a DoT that occasionally procs another DoT? That’s it? That’s what a “Hellcaller” does?

11 Likes
46

both trees now make cataclysm even more important, will there be a change to the position of this talent or are we finally getting this baseline?

6 Likes
47

There is no reason to believe Wither damage ramps up with stacks. The stacks seem to be solely intended for blackened souls, which already does… pretty much exactly what you just suggested. Wither is a ticking time bomb with dot damage glued on.

I do have a few questions about Blackened Souls, though.

  1. What damage adds stacks? Do periodic ticks add them, or just direct casts?

  2. Will rain of fire add stacks, or is destro expected to take fire and brimstone for aoe stacking?

  3. Does every seed detonation add a stack if using sow the seeds?

  4. Can you continue to add stacks while wither is acute and counting down?

  5. Does wither go acute just once at 20% health or is it constant sub-20%?

  6. Does blackened soul damage count as periodic for the purposes of things like haunted soul or wrath of consumption?

3 Likes
48

Let’s hope Soul Harvester is the saving grace for Affliction… :crossed_fingers:t4:

2 Likes
49

Ok, Wither being a instant makes the tree way more interesting for Destro, i’ll take it.

1 Like
50

Hellcaller Tree:

This post is coming from an affliction warlock perspective. I think this tree has amazing potential for affliction. However, the mechanics of how it would work are a bit unclear. I’ll go through the different talents and discuss how they influence the spec.

WITHER – This replacing corruption is interesting. The presumption is that wither will benefit from everything the existing tree that buffs corruption, i.e. seed of corruption would mass apply this, sacrolash’s dark strike would increase its damage by 15%, tics could still proc nightfall, etc. From a baseline perspective, this is a duration increase to corruption, which is a 12s dot. This ability replacement is fine. I’ll be interested to see the animation as affliction animations are often understated.

BLACKENED SOUL – This talent is basically the most important talent in the entire hero tree and how it is implemented will drastically impact how this hero tree functions. I have several question about how this talent even works.

  1. What does increase stack count mean? Is this like agony in that more stacks means more damage done? Or does this stack count only interplay with the next part of the talent (going into the acute phase).
  2. What does going into an acute phase mean? Is this a separate, enhanced damage event. During the acute phase, can you still gain stacks of wither so you can extend the acute damage phase, like rolling the buff?
  3. Is the acute phase always active below 20% or does it just proc at 20% automatically such that you’ll gain added damage on all enemies below 20% for one cycle? I presume the former, but some clarification would be nice.
  4. Does the decay during the acute phase scale with haste? This would really matter if you were able to roll the decay by continually extending with malefic rapture, pandemic refresh or hard casting the ability.
  5. What will actually proc stacks? The cast on the target, a dot tic, a seed explosion, etc. I presume any application of a debuff or any direct damage event. But this could use some clarification.

XALAN’s FEROCITY/XALAN’s CRUELTY – Static buffs, boring but fine.

Choice Node: MARK OF THE LEGASHI/AURA OF ENFEEBLEMENT – In a PVE context, the mark ability seems like it is pretty low impact. It reduced button bloat in the sense that if you talent this, you have one curse you have to apply in most contexts. Under current design, vile taint continues to pose an issue for curses. As is, vile taint will replace manually applied curses with exhaustion. The mark ability could be quite powerful in a PVE setting for affliction if VT instead of applying exhaustion applied tongues or weakness so that this talent applies them both on up to 8 targets. The aura ability is good except that warlock is a ranged class. This seems like it would have more of an impact in a PVP setting.

Choice Node:

  • HATEFURY RITUALS - I can see this ability being extremely good in ST for affliction if we continue to have the dot extension from the 4p tier set that we currently have. In aoe, this is also just a really good ability because we are consistently refreshing corruption with seed anyway. Weaving in raptures in a mass aoe setting, particularly if the damage stacks when wither stacks likely will be quite potent and abilities that increase corruption damage like sacrolash’s dark strike and haunted soul will be much more valuable in this setting. Without dot extension, a 9s dot won’t be particularly enjoyable to maintain, particularly if other maintenance buffs remain like shadow’s embrace, haunt and dread touch.
  • BLEAKHEART TACTICS – This talent likely will be more relevant in a ST setting if affliction continues to have SE, dread touch and haunt as debuffs to maintain.

Choice Node:

  • ZEVRIM’S RESILIENCE – This is a fine talent, passive defensive gain. Combined with soulburn healthstone, basically this talent would full health plus give a 10% shield. So, pretty good defensive.
  • ILLHOOF’S DESIGN – I am not certain how this works. Is this just a static loss of 10% health for up to a 25% soul leach shield based on damage done? Or is this an active ability. So if constantly doing damage, this results in an effective health increase of less than 5%? Seems like this isn’t particularly strong and the amount of heal sacrificed is too high for the shield soul leach gain.

MARK OF XAVIUS: I don’t really know the purpose of this talent or how it interacts. If vile taint stays as it is, this would provide a bit easier refresh of agony between vile taint CDs to keep agony stacked. But, beyond that, it would see little usage as long as VT continues to apply agony. This could be impactful with changes to the affliction toolkit but it is hard to know at this time. This appears to be more impactful for non-cataclysm builds for destruction than affliction.

CULL THE WEAK: The talent is fine but the tuning of an acute wither will dictate game play. If tuned too high, direct application in single target to proc the acute phase might be part of the rotation to maximize a dps window which wouldn’t be enjoyable game play. Rewarding pandemic reapplication is good though. EDIT: Another question… Does initial application of wither give 3 and any manual reapplication or is it just the initial application and refresh during pandemic that gives 3 while a reapplication our of pandemic would award only 1 stack?

MARK OF PEROTH’ARN: The increased damage done from blackened soul per stack is nice. It still invokes the question of does each stack by itself increase wither damage and is this just an additional 5% per stack? Or is the blackened soul damage just based on the acute phase of wither? As far as the hasted agony, there should be a clarification if this increases dot tic rate or reduced dot duration. Before dragonflight, creeping death was phrased similarly and it reduced the duration of the dot. This isn’t an attractive option because it requires more gcds for upkeep. If it just increases the dot frequency without impacting dot duration, this is a fine bonus.

MALEVOLENCE: This is a nice ability. Having another 1min CD with haste and a bonus to dot damage is good. The same questions apply as above. During persistently active acute phase of wither, are you actively stacking and decaying wither stacks. Particularly as the Mark of Peroth’arn talent interacts with stack count, the mechanics of a constantly decaying wither are still fairly unclear to me.

Again, from an affliction perspective, this is quite an attractive tree given current design. How BLACKENED SOUL works in practice will make or break the tree.

7 Likes
51

Honestly, I’m just really confused as to how satyrs were chosen as an iconic warlock thing. Like, you could’ve called the spec “Defiler” and the ability “Doomfire” and it would’ve instantly been more appealing.

2 Likes
52

By ramping, I meant the stacks that extend the acute portion of the DoT. Wither gains stacks, when it gains stacks, it may turn acute. When it turns acute, a bonus effect deals damage more quickly and reduces stacks until it reaches 1.

Having a DoT that periodically becomes a super DoT is not particularly on brand for destruction. That’s why I was suggesting having the stacks do something else instead that is more on brand for destruction like explosions.

1 Like
53

Fire DoT as a midpoint between the specs is thematically fine, but watered down in trying to make things ‘the same’ for the two. Stop that and instead lean into letting the specs share a central mechanic that then deviates in how it interacts with their playstyles. Let each type of Hellcaller ‘burn’ things in different ways - Aff over time, Destro via weighty spells.

Currently you press spells to buff the DoT. That’s a a fine Aff approach, but misses hard for Destro in trying to force them into the Aff pigeonhole.

For Destro, the DoT should exist for the sake of making you explode things better. Keep the Wither stack addition from chaos bolts, but reward the player for interacting with the DoT and its stack system by giving buffs to impactful spells (or giga buff spells like Incinerate I guess).

An example reward (to illustrate - obv doesnt help single target) would be a Fire and Brimstone-esque mass Chaos Bolt. Immediate serotonin/pyromaniac feedback for the player where big DoT stacks translates into very noticably burning things.

3 Likes
54

Destruction is one of the main specs I have played since Vanilla. I feel I need to clearly state the following…

There is currently no hero talent options that feel as though they are designed for destruction. This MUST be amended before release.

First things first, whoever wrote the lore description should be praised for it, because it is absolutely spot on what a Hellcaller should be and goes beyond what I anticipated. It’s just a shame that the actual concept for the tree doesn’t match up with the lore at all.

The TLDR is this; If you are a Hellcaller you are not ‘Following in the footsteps’ of Satyrs, you are just the same warlock you have always been, but now you don’t have immolate and your chaos bolt hits 10% harder.

My first impression of Hellcaller is that it was designed by someone who actually does not play warlock at all. Corruption and immolate are iconic abilities. If you remove them then you do not add to the class fantasy, you deduct from it. You are literally removing 20 year old abilities, and that feels like whoever designed this does not care or understand. Why can’t casting immolate or corruption also debuff with Wither?

Cosmetically, immolate can also be changed to green flames. The hero spec is called Hellcaller - it literally mentions fel in the descriptive text. Yet you are suggesting that immolate be removed and replaced by something generic that also fits in with Affliction. Removing any fel customisation for Destruction should be an absolute red line that should NOT be crossed at all. Destruction should NOT be losing options in this, we should be gaining options. Hero talents should NOT make things worse.

As far as the actual tree goes, the feedback can’t be as specific as Diabloist. Why? Because Hellcaller is generic and boring. The vast majority of options bestow percentage increases, so where is the choice? Where is the flavour?

If most of the tree is percentage increases then why bother with a hero class, because all of that can be done by tuning.

Mark of the Legashi stands out as the most ‘interesting’ option, and that should be changed to also include Curse of Exhaustion so it has some use for PvP - either that or both options on the node need reworking so that they are less PvE specific.

The other interesting option is the Zervrim’s Resilience node. Illhoof’s Design sacrificing 10% hp is an interesting one, but again, what is it with nothing being actually designed and just straight up percentages? It all just feels rushed, or like someone didn’t have a clue. Regardless, it just seems like Zervrim’s Resilience is the ‘always take’ node.

And thats it. Thats all that can be really said, because everything else is just generic percentages that basically mean nothing and could be done in tuning.

The implimentation of Wither aside, it does not look like a fun button to press. Even if it were a debuff from Corruption and Immolate, it does not look fun. The main payoff is that it adds additional DoT pressure and ups your haste with Malevolence. This is just so boring, and it just won’t change how anyone plays.

The way that the tree is currently setup FORCES people to play exactly as they do now, receiving only percentage buffs. There is nothing heroic about what has been designed here.

Hellcaller should be completely scrapped and re-written to focus on spells such as Chaos Bolt and Rain of Fire for Destruction, shaking up the mechanics as opposed to just adding flat percentage tweaks.

9 Likes
55

after so many years of blizz PR being like this, don’t you ever worry about the underlying premise eventually becoming obvious?

like how many times do you have to call your audience confused, instead of admitting not enough information was released to start with in order for people to begin having reasonable discussions? none of us asked for the new trees to be released with such gaps in informational details, and none of us with plenty of brain cells ever has.

at some doesn’t this official response become unnecessarily condescending? i could accept it better if it was worded like “we’ve seen some confusion, and that’s our fault, because we didn’t make so many things clear to begin with.” as for my other feedbacks, i just put hearts on posts i agree with. but generally speaking i’m seeing a lot of mixed feedback to these new trees, which i feel its possible to interpret this as much more negative feedback than it appears.

because we have to remember the copium effect of deranged fans who invariably try to argue something is “actually good” when it probably isn’t, so if there is this much uncertainty over the trees even in the face of the typical copium phenomenon, my question is about the competency of the company now that so many of the “toxic” ones have been let go. great work environment now, but nobody can make a game?

remember that old meme, “at what cost?” is blizzard ‘better’ now? hmm, but at what cost indeed…

3 Likes
56

I agree with this. Have wither interact meaningfully with destro’s kit so it fits thematically more by modifying or buffing chaos bolt or rain of fire/etc… I understand destro players being upset with how this doesn’t fit thematically for their spec, but I don’t think throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the answer.

In the worst case we could end up in the opposite situation where the spec feels too destro and alienates affliction players.

57

This tree does have a few obvious boring filler nodes at the top, and definitely feels like a more affliction focused tree, which would be fine, but this means destro has access to an affliction focused tree and a demo focused tree, and has no destro focused tree.

This tree really should be reworked basically completely to give something more destro flavored for aff and destro. Especially since this’ll mean that aff will have two affliction focused trees, unless it’s other tree is demo focused, in which case demo will have two demo focused trees. However, if the remaining tree is actually destro focused and not available to destro, I’ll give you that one as sufficiently random for destro flavor lol.

Tangential feedback since I see it in the tree: Please for the love of god rework affliction a little bit to remove Rapture, it’s not a fun ability with it’s aoe nature making it compete with seed in unintuitive ways, and it even looks bad with basically no graphics. Please just go back to Unstable Affliction as the shard spender and let it stack or something.

7 Likes
58

AOE curse application absolutely needs to be baseline or in the class tree. A lesser/lazier option is if it is also in the aff/demo tree so it is available to all specs. The design of hero talents was supposedly to make none of them feel forced for certain content and this absolutely does.

3 Likes
59

Echoing what others have said, it feels as if you designed these specifically with either Demonology or Affliction in mind, and destruction was tacked on at the last minute.

This is gross, because it feels like we’re the throwaway spec. Fix this.

5 Likes
60

you are totally right if only aff could have another hero tree that could be used then the problem its solved, OH WAIT IT DOES! BOTH destro trees are not even close to the Destro theme that’s the real issue here destro has no option but to play affdestro or demodestro

I’m pretty sure aff could suck it off with a tree being more destro tan aff and getting soulflayer one being more aff than demo because diabolist its all demo

2 Likes