Feedback on the Class Tree/Warlock Baseline

Classes Warlock
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WARLOCKS BASELINE CHANGES:

Buff to Filler Spells:

Filler spells shouldn’t be very strong, they are the kind of spells you want to cast when you don’t have other spells or cooldowns, so i don’t completely agree with the buff blizzard did for DFight on some of the Filler Spells, but among those chances i found the following as big issues:

  • Drain Soul and Shadowbolt did not get buffed by the same amount, Spell power for Drain Soul increased by around 25% (140% to 175%) while Shadowbolt went for almost 80% gain (from 39% to 70%), this might make Drain Soul a dps loss outside of execute when compared to Shadowbolt, yet, Drain Soul is a talent.

  • Shadowbolt and Demonbolt on Demonology are now very similar spellpower values, personally i do not care for Shadowbolt hitting harder on Demonology, be it baseline or from effects like Sacrificed Souls or Stolen Power, increasing damage always feels cooler on spells like Hand of Guldan or Demonbolt than on Shadowbolt (think of the decimating bolt change on SL alpha/beta who for demo went from shadow bolt only to demonbolt only)

  • Incinerate is the one i have no criticism against, in part because part of the spec identity is having beefier casts.

Removal of Dark Souls and the existence of Demons as the big cds of each spec:

Affliction might end up suffering with the lack of Dark Souls associated with the low-power Darkglare have when compared to Infernal or Tyrant, in fact, i wouldn’t be surprised if affliction don’t even pick Darkglare as a talent in single target due to its position in the lower-end of the tree.

Destruction is fine as Infernals not only exist as a source of damage/aoe damage but generate soul shards across its duration resulting in more chaos bolts casts.

Demonology has been like this for eons and it’s fine, but that is a great part because Tyrant acts very much like its own “Dark Souls” extending pets duration and increasing the damage dealt by them by 15%.

Darkglare on the other hand only exists as a source of low Damage and a moderate effect who extends dots by 8s, an effect which players have historically struggled to perceive and notice its strength.

WARLOCK CLASS TREE:

Overall, the first interaction of the class tree for Warlocks is pleasing to the eyes, but I have some feedback, rambling, praises and criticism directed towards it.

Pacts:

  • Pacts could be named in homage to famed Demon Lords in the game, Kiljaeden; Archimonde;Mannoroth; Varimathras: this could lead to some more flavor, similar to the Old Gods Idols for Shadow Priests Tree.
  • Pacts the Imp Mother should have spec-specific effects similar to Pact of Anihillan and Pact of Eredar, right now only Demonology would have a interest in picking it.
  • Pact of Annihilan and Pact of the Eredar have pratically the same effect for Demonology.
  • All 3 Pacts could benefit of having more creative effects, even if that require them costing more or being moved to become Capstones.

Covenant Abilities in the class tree:

  • The Shadowland covenants spells are all very weak in terms of Class Identity, Affliction have better ties to Soul Rot, Impending Catastrophe and Scouring Tithe as they have dot interactions; i don’t desire more covenant abilities in Dragonflight.
  • Decimation bolt isn’t a spell who many warlocks feel attached towards, in particular not everyone is a fan of buffing Filler spells.
  • Decimating bolt as a capstone is a little of a letdown, specially when all capstones are active abilities and warlocks seem to be very shockfull of them in Dragonflight.

Grimoire of Synergy

  • It’s position in Tier 7 means a damage increase talent is competing against Defensive/Utility/Healing Talents, making it feel like a forced pick.
  • It’s damage budget would be better directed towards improving Tier 9 Talents /Tier 10 Capstones
  • Due to the above, you should always pick Grimoire of Synergy, favoring the middle-right side of the following Talents in detriment to the Left Side[Teachings; Pact of Imp-Mother]
  • The power of Grimoire of synergy also looks more like a Tier 10/Capstone talent.

Teachings of the Black Harvest:

  • Very Cool idea, improving the utility of your primary Demons is a cool idea.
  • Sadly, the current effects are underwhelming and very minor compared to Soul-Link or Soulburn who are the talents Teachings of the Black Harvest Directly Competes.
  • As a tier 8 Talent, where it competes against other tier 8/9 and 10 talents for a limited amount of 11 talent points it should provide better effects.
  • Better forms of utility for Teaching of the Black Harvest could provide a better fighting chance for this talent versus Soul-Link and Soulburn.

Soulburn

  • While Soulburn is better than Teachings of the Black Harvest, it’s still not as desirable as Soul Link.
  • Improving it’s utility with other forms of Soulburn could be greatly appreciated, Soulburn: Curse( https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Soulburn:_Curse) as a form of applying AOE curses would be great utility in M+ scenarios.
  • Soulburn Healthstone currently could be used as a Damage dealing cooldown on Demonology due to the existence of Demonic Consumption Talent.
  • in the Past, Soulburn: Summon Demon filled a similar role to Fel Domination.

Dimensional Rift:

  • Dimensional Rift don’t feel like a Warlock Ability, but a Destruction ability as it provides help in what Destro currently suffer [Gcds for movement].
  • Demonology nor Affliction can actually see the Soul Shard Fragments, as they only normally generates or spend full Soulshards, its confusing.
  • Soul Shards bits can eventually generate 1 Full Soulshard on Affliction or Demonology, but that gameplay is unintuitive and risk creation of Overflow of Soulshards without the warlock even being able to perceive it.

Demonic Inspiration and Wrathfull Minions:

  • Demonology can easily trigger this spell with a simple filler cast of 2s; Destruction Requires a few casts of Incinerates/Immolates; Affliction requires a Proc who usually happens only once every 10 seconds.
  • The effect benefits more Demonology who have higher primary pet damage, while being pretty bad for Destruction or Affliction.
  • They are Damage talents surrounded by Utility/Defensive talents, this creates a bad feeling while picking talents in that zone of the talent tree.
  • Would prefer to see this spells removed as they do not contribute to anything.

Accrued Vitality

  • The 2 point cost is too high for an effect like this, while having a very niche use on Destruction and Demonology.
  • The use for Affliction while more ample, is still limited to Inevitable Demise Builds.
  • The position of this talent would better synergize with the Left-side of the Tier 3 Talents and its traits, while Spell Lock would fit more in the Middle of the Tier 3 talents.

CLASS TREE STRUCTURE

While the Class Tree have a much better structure than of many other specs, i believe the structure at the final of the talent tree could be improved, allowing for a more diverse range of choices.

In other situations i would refrain from providing a direct solution as i understand its frowned upon, but i wished to share some of my rational while considering some of the observations i made in a more visual exemple.

10 Likes
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Things that we previosly had that could fill the empty or reduced spots:

  • Curse GCD Reduction
  • Spellstone/Firestone (yes they would be passive dmg increases, but the fact they would save you from buying oils feels nice)
  • Gateway Mastery
  • Improved SS (Cast time, full health res)
  • Perma Doomguard for a stronger pet (Capstone)

Also, I don’t think Soul Conduit should connect to Summon Jailer, makes it no cost to pick in all builds and add yet another button (All specs, but Affliction is particular have way too many already).

Desperate Power also feels too weak for a 2 pointer.

Spell Lock feels like it should be a choice to keep on pet, there is a huge loss of utility in having it on us rather than pet (los kick, cc, etc). Feels like we are losing power in the name of demon diverity, which I haven’t heard any complaints about, and that honestly already pretty good right now (Sayaad for pure damage, Imp for dispel and range, felhunter for kick and purge, Voidwalker for solo), it’s fixing something that isn’t broken.

6 Likes
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Dimensional rift makes more sense for demo because Demo summons portals.

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It stems from the Scepter of Sargeras in Legion. Absolutely fits destruction more than any other spec, honestly.

5 Likes
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All specs summon portals, that’s what the demon summons, Demonic Gateway and Ritual of Summoning are.

The problem’s more mechanical than anything, since it does nothing but do damage and generate shard bits, a Destro only resource.

3 Likes
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There are two things I’m particularly not really a fan of and those are Demonic Circle is locked behind Accrued Vitality and Felhunters are about to lose Spell Lock and be replaced with something else.

The former has already been addressed and I like the fact that you’re making it just before Demonic Circle for increased accessibility.

I do wish the latter was a choice node between the Warlock interrupting a cast or the Felhunter interrupting a cast. You get to choose which one get to interrupt if the Felhunter were to lose Spell Lock. An option for them to keep that would be nice so it’s either you do the kicking and use a different demon or command your felhunter to do the kicking while you’re casting something else.

As for the rest, if I were to choose between Deci Bolt and GoSyn, I’ll prob stick to GoSyn. I have nothing against Deci Bolt. It’s just that I don’t think it’s good anymore on my Demo Lock. As for covvy abilities, I think they should at least be an option to take rather than yeeting them out of existance baked in covvy leggoes with different bonuses to choose from?

Anyway, nitpick gripes aside, the tree is still solid.

3 Likes
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Spell lock is easily solved by having the talent teach any pet Spell Lock instead of sticking it on the warlock. Grim Sac would give it to the lock like it already does. Easy fix.

1 Like
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I’m not remotely pleased by demo staying a turret imp mother spec with awful target swap, split damage, and immense ramp up.

Demonology only became serviceable in later shadowlands because of the tier set, plus the soulbind mini-heroism to set up during every tyrant window, plus being able to combine consumption with Wilfred’s.

Now that those are gone, Implosion will always be a terrible aoe spell that guts our single target with immense opportunity cost for none of the aoe superiority.

Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt themselves hit like piss as does the felguard because so much damage is tied to the damned dogs and imps.

And even worse, so much damage is tied to Tyrant windows. The spec can have 10+ imps and hit like a wet noodle outside tyrant windows. It doesn’t feel good.

We now have the degenerate Nether Portal and Doom spells back, deeply flawed spells. Doom has ever been an unserviceable dot, completely impractical. Nether Portal encourages spamming 1 shard hand of guldans, completely counter to the very design of the hand of guldan spell.

It doesn’t feel good that the way you get more available demons is not via the demonology tree, but through the class tree while the spec tree gives no new demons whatsoever.

Also, who will ever choose Bilescourge Bombers over the alternative? No one.

Demonology needs its Jailers, Nathrezim, Urzhuls, Bombers, Fel Lords, Doom Lords back.

Cut down the stupid imp swarm already. Make the spells and important demons hit hard.

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Anyone remember when Hand of Gul’dan applied that DoT? I miss that.

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To be more specific, affliction and demonology “have” shard bits, because all soulshard systems is a resource that goes from 0 to 50.

The issue is that affliction and demonology can’t see the shards that are not multiples of 10, and they generate multiple of 10, this mean, if you have shard 46 shards[4 soulshards and 6 bits] and cast a shadowbolt as demonology, you go to 50, overflowing the rest of the shard generated.

If Dimensional Rift did specific things for Demonology and Specific Things for Affliction i think it could better fit for those specs yeah.

1 Like
11

Some more feedback after looking at the tree a bit:

-Pandemic Invocation is not the best option of azerite traits to bring back. With Deliberate Malice extending timers, VT and Seed applying dots, and Darkglare(+Deathbolt potentially) extending timers, the goal of the spec is to keep dots going as long as possible without actually pressing Corruption or Agony themselves. Some version of Wracking Brilliance here would be more fitting for how the spec works currently.

-Xavian Teachings, instant corruption, is very weak. There’s no reason to take this in any situation where you’ll take absolute corruption, and it may not even be worth it on pure ST if we can get enough shards to extend it for a meaningful amount of time. This point needs some more weight to it or it’s going to be an easy skip in pve.

-Siphon Life is bad. It has no interaction with our other tools like agony and corruption have. It just exists as a chore to contribute more to withering bolt and rapture.

4 Likes
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Completely, 100% disagree. This has led to the current cd based gameplay which ultimately feels very flat the majority of the time. Bulking up “filler” spells will lead to higher consistent damage, and could lead to greater gameplay variety within specs.

5 Likes
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tying ourselves to one or the other is silly imo. there is how many classes now? with ~3 specs each. we have the design space to have some class/specs play with hard heavy fillers and be a more consistent gameplay and others play deep into cooldown and cooldown management.

1 Like
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Funny saying burst profiles are flat, while wishing for flat profiles.

If you want your flat profile you can have it in ways less annoying than having your filler becomes your main priority, increasing shard spenditure[casting more chaos bolts], increasing dots budget, pushing more wild imp damage, removing burst cooldowns [like how they did with Dark Souls], lowering the strenght of Cooldowns [2min Infernals for 20s instead of 3min for 30s is an exemple].

all can flatten profiles without making a shadowbolt your main source of damage, specially when situations like this tend to suffer more under fights who push your uptime lower.

I kid you not, the simulations of affliction single target dps is a lot higher than it performs because in sims you have no movement, but in actual encounters the overreliance of constant channeling drain soul rly pushs your performance down.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/794376626632785935/1003001464492396584/unknown.png?width=1920&height=510

50% of your uptime is drain soul, and that is generally uptime that happens after applying of dots, maintenance of malefic wrath etc… meaning its even more likely to be screwed by movement.

Want to have a filler build? fine, do it on talents, but flat out increasing shadowbolt damage by 80% will just shove this to everyone else.

Demonology build does it well with sacrificed souls, stolen power, balespider and all the demonbolt generation; affliction does the same.

but let people have the option of going for that or not, instead of just flat out buffing a filler.

1 Like
15

This is the dorkiest thing i’ve ever seen

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couldn’t resist making a flat joke.

1 Like
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Siphon life should either merge with corruption or turned into a 30 sec dot, ticks every 3 seconds.

1 Like
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I haven’t touched Affliction feedback, not sure if i will either, but i think, considering the overall distaste people have for Siphon Life as another extra dot to manage.

Making it becoming a “Leeching Corruption” would make sense both in the node it is, meaning you can choose between Stronger+Healing Corruption or Infinite, GCD efficient corruption.

One issue is the amount of healing it could end up providing in AOE with Seed of Corruption.

you could also tie to UA, but then Siphon Life becomes purely single target and not as flexible on low target-count aoe/spreadcleave.

1 Like
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In wrath classic talent trees, SL was merged with corruption but seed of corruption back then didnt drop corruption dot on targets it hit. I remember soulburn: seed did that.

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Made a post on another similar topic with an idea to slightly re-structure the Class tree.