Feedback: Warlock Updates

[Kaivax]

In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Warlocks in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Thank You

Before we continue testing The War Within, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the Hero Talent previews we posted over the last few months.

Looking to the Alpha

In this first Alpha build, every single class has at least one new Hero Talent tree available for testing, with the rest coming in the following weeks. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:

• There are UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
• Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI)
• New spell visuals and audio for several new Hero Talent trees are still a work in progress. Many trees are using placeholder assets for now that will be updated over the course of Alpha.
• There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus right now that we are prioritizing over other concerns such as tuning or generic class updates/maintenance:

• Finish building the remainder of the Hero Talent trees that are not yet available.
• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

With the Alpha build being playable and all of the discussion that will occur around the flood of data, we wanted to reiterate that the responses to our blog previews were highly valuable. The feedback we received allowed us to make some early improvements or revisions while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. It allowed us to take some big early swings on certain trees, and then react to early feedback quickly.

Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Hero Talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state.

Working from Feedback

Several Hero Talent trees have received changes after reading feedback to the blog posts. Some of these were tuning changes to ensure that the Hero Talent tree felt competitive, while others were significant design changes. The feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Going into Alpha, we feel good about the shape of the Hero Talent tree designs. Keeping a consistent number of utility and defensives nodes across all trees, having parity between number of choice nodes, and the overall structure of the trees are things we’re confident in.

We’re also working on tweaking some core class designs as well. In some cases, it was necessary to make adjustments to the class or specialization talent trees before significant work was done on a Hero Talent tree. In other cases, we did work seeking to improve base class talent tree designs.

Alpha Feedback

Now that we’re in Alpha, we’re looking for feedback on how it feels to playtest these trees. We’re specifically curious about:

• Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.
• Hero Talents that create frustrating or unsatisfying gameplay or rotations for your spec.
• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

Throughput comparisons of Hero Talent trees are helpful, but we’re more interested in gameplay, feel, and choice feedback at this stage. Also, when possible, we appreciate it when you focus posts or articles on a single spec and Hero Talent tree, rather than combining feedback about multiple issues.

Again, Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback on Hero Talent trees and are very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

[Kaivax]

Greetings Warlocks,

We’ve been very excited to see the community’s reactions to the Warlock Hero Talents, and we appreciate all of your feedback.

In the coming weeks, you’ll see multiple changes to the Warlock class and specialization trees, and we’d like to provide some context for these changes here.

Core Goals

• Ensure each capstone is interesting and exciting.
• Reduce the amount of throughput talents, to free up utility choices.
• Reduce the number of ranks for talents that don’t warrant multiple ranks.

Affliction
The Affliction specialization tree forces a choice between a single-target or multi-target profile rather than providing a viable build that is adaptable in both situations. We want to redesign, introduce, and remove talents, as well as address the tuning of Malefic Rapture to help reduce this friction.

Demonology
For Demonology, we want to address the number of long cooldowns available as well as reduce the amount of resource flooding. We’ll also look at underused talents such as Doom. The feedback provided during Season 3 was instrumental in helping illuminate a path forward for Doom, and you should expect a redesign of it in a future build.

Destruction
For Destruction, we have plans to reduce the fluctuation in power based on target count. We also want to take another look at how Destruction plays in multi-target situations and look for ways to improve underused talents such as Cataclysm and Soulfire.

More to come
As always, we’re reading feedback and discussing other changes. We’re still monitoring discussions about Hero Talents, and will make adjustments as needed.

Thank you for your thoughts thus far. We look forward to hearing more as development progresses!

[Norml-emerald-dream]

This post will contain feedback on Diabolist talents as well as how they interact with the current state of warlock talent trees as a PvE player. I mainly mythic raid and play Mythic+ as a source of gear for raiding so that’s the perspective I’ll be coming from.

General Diabolist

• Currently I can only have 1 Diabolic Ritual up at a time. The first part of Cruelty of Kerxan is useless if I can’t have 2 Rituals up at once and in it’s current state I would never choose it over Infernal Machine.
• Currently I can proc a Demonic Art with Soulburn which is the only off-GCD soul shard spender. There’s a world where that’s the optimal way of doing it, which would be weird gameplay and very unsatisfying.
• Currently I can proc a Demonic Art by casting a shard spender that starts before Diabolic Ritual ends and completes once the Demonic Art is available. I like this interaction but the cast speed reduction part of Touch of Rancora is nullified. It feels bad to lose out on this by minmaxing my Diabolic Ritual uptime.
• Touch of Rancora has no buff or way of tracking it other than seeing my Demonic Art is up.
• If there are any pauses in gameplay (long runs between packs in Mythic+, boss flying away or hold DPS phases), my Demonic Art can fade and I would miss out on it’s benefits. That would be very frustrating.
• I won’t reject Flames of Xoroth as it’s more damage, but I find it very uninspiring. Considering it’s position on the tree, it’s also unsatisfying.
• As a PvE player Annihilan’s Bellow has minimal value for me outside of niche scenarios as a last resort for AoE CC. Other classes have better options that don’t sacrifice a decent personal heal in Mortal Coil. I would take Soul-Etched Circles in 99% of cases, and even then it would feel extremely minor since I am taking Soulburn in all scenarios.
• Both Infernal Vitality and Infernal Bulwark are unsatisfying to me. Warlocks are especially near-unkillable while Unending Resolve is up, and the additional defensive power on top of it is nice but not too useful.
  • I would rather see a node like Mage’s “Merely a Setback” that activates outside of Warlock’s defensives so I can spread my tankiness out.

Diabolist Demonology

• Abyssal Dominion is great, but it’s confusing to me why it’s on the hero tree rather than in the Demonology spec tree (or even baked into Grimoire: Felguard, as I’ll almost never pass up more or longer GFGs).
• Gloom of Nathreza also feels a bit out of place on the tree. I think it and Malefic Impact on the spec tree feel like two parts of one talent. I’d like to see another node that interacts with Rituals or Arts so it fits in the theme of the rest of Diabolist.
• Touch of Rancora says it buffs my “next Soul Shard spending ability”. Currently it doesn’t seem to include Dreadstalkers, Vilefiend, Grimoire: Felguard, or Nether Portal. Not sure if this is intended.
  • If not, this talent can just read “increases the damage of your next Hand of Gul’dan…”
  • If intended, my Tyrant setup now needs to be timed with the end of a Demonic Ritual so that one of my Tyrant extended demons benefit from Touch of Rancora (which one dependent on tuning). Unsure if this is the intended effect.

Diabolist Destruction

• Abyssal Dominion requires Cataclysm to be picked on the Destruction spec tree. Also, the Overfiend’s Chaos Bolts do not benefit from my mastery or apply Eradication so it’s really just a throughput node with no interaction.
  • Although Overfiend’s effect is solely single target, it is especially frustrating to talent Cataclysm in single target scenarios. The position of this talent currently requires me to path through 2 talents that are useless on single target,
  • It blocks me from speccing into Inferno, a large part of Destruction’s shard economy in AoE.
• Gloom of Nathreza has some value in single target with Cry Havoc depending on tuning, but it’s always felt bad to cast Havoc in single target scenarios as I want to keep building and spending shards.

[Norml-emerald-dream]

This post will contain feedback on Hellcaller talents as well as how they interact with the current state of warlock talent trees as a PvE player. I mainly mythic raid and play Mythic+ as a source of gear for raiding so that’s the perspective I’ll be coming from.

General Hellcaller

• This tree has 2 passive damage nodes in Xalan’s Ferocity and Xalan’s Cruelty. These are boring and unsastisfying.
• Blackened Soul adds flavour to Wither, but in the end it’s just more damage and not much to be played around
  • I want my Withers to be acute as much as possible, and because it can become acute randomly when gaining stacks I can’t build up a large Wither either).
  • With 2 major mechanics of the Hellcaller tree, there isn’t much to be frustrated or unsatisfied about, but also not much to be hyped about.
• Malevolence on the GCD feels bad, even if it does a bit of damage. Apart from that, I’m happy both specs are getting a short cd haste steroid.
• Curse of the Satyr is nice in that it’s 2 minutes over baseline 1 minute curses. It’s alternative Aura of Enfeeblement is extremely underwhelming, wanting me to trade 1 of my 2 personals for 8 seconds of AoE curses which sounds never worth it.
• Zevrim’s Resilience is very unsatisfying and it’s purpose is confusing. Aside from tuning, I feel near invincible with dark pact up.
  • Like Infernal Vitality/Infernal Bulwark in the Diabolist tree, I would much rather see something that spreads out my tankiness outside my defensives like Mage’s “Merely a Setback”.
• Illhoof’s Design sounds like almost always the better choice, stacking with Demon Skin for a potential 30% max hp Soul Leech. Only situations where I wouldn’t consider taking this is on a fight with a lot of rot damage (where I wouldn’t be able to stack Soul Leech) along with big hits (where I want a bigger Dark Pact).

Hellcaller Destruction

• Wither doesn’t currently interact with Internal Combustion. Assuming it will, there could be an interaction here with Hatefury Rituals allowing me to generate more Wither stacks through Seeds of Their Demise, but without testing it sounds like I may not have enough GCDs constantly refreshing Wither and having to still generate and spend shards as my priority.
• Wither doesn’t interact with Channel Demonfire, rendering this talent and Raging Demonfire unusable. I assume everything that interacts with Immolate will eventually work with Wither as well.
• In Malevolence, the extra stack of wither only interacts with Chaos Bolt which feels limiting. I’d like to see Shadowburn be added at least.

Hellcaller Affliction

• I don’t have much feedback here as Wither is just a Corruption that does more damage. There are a few bugs with Seed of Corruption/Sow the Seeds, so I’ll save feedback until those are sorted and we see what’s in store for Affliction with the talent updates.
• Malevolence on the GCD feels worse for Affliction than Destruction, as my baseline Darkglare window is also 20s long, same as Malevolence.

[Norml-emerald-dream]

This post will contain feedback on Soul Harvester talents as well as how they interact with the current state of warlock talent trees as a PvE player. I mainly mythic raid and play Mythic+ as a source of gear for raiding so that’s the perspective I’ll be coming from.

General Soul Harvester

• Currently the Succulent Soul buff can stack but spending shards consumes both stacks. I’m unsure what the intended result here is supposed to be (not meant to stack? spending shards only consumes 1 stack? spending X shards consumes X stacks?).
• Affliction and Demonology’s shard generation is vastly different. I hope the proc rate of Succulent Souls will account for this (as well as Feast of Souls through Quietus).
• The current proc rate of Feast of Souls through Quietus seems extremely low. It feels very unsatisfying to get 1 soul shard every few minutes from 2 hero talents in single target, especially for Affliction.
• When proccing Soul Anathema while it’s up, I lose the remainder of the original effect and get a fresh 10s Soul Anathema. It feels bad to lose value on the damage when I play my rotation properly. It’s especially noticeable during Shadow of Death windows.
• Spirited Away offers increased movement speed in exchange for a 1 minute cd. There may be niche cases where this could be picked but in 99% of scenarios, baseline 50% movement speed is enough and no cd burning rush is way more preferable. If anything 1 minute cd feels too long for the benefit.
• Like Soul-Etched Circles, Gorebound Fortitude feels not very valuable as I always have Soulburn talented. It does have more value for Affliction than Demonology considering shard economy.

Soul Harvester Affliction

• Succulent Soul and Tormented Crescendo mechanics partially overlap in that both give free Malefic Raptures although worded differently. If both are up both get consumed by 1 Rapture. I’m unsure what the intended result is supposed to be.
• Succulent Soul and Shadow of Death increases the value of Malefic Rapture in AoE by a huge amount. This will split Affliction’s AoE between Rapture and Seed of Corruption which doesn’t feel intuitive.
  • Perhaps this will change with the upcoming talent updates, but with the amount of bugs Sow the Seeds currently has and has had, I’d prefer Sow get deleted and Seed of Corruption only used for spreading Corruption (with Rapture as the spender for single target and AoE).
• Soul Anathema and Shared Fate are technically “damage over time/periodic effects”, but do not work with Malefic Rapture or any of the periodic damage amps on the Affliction tree. It’s not made clear to me that these are not “real DoTs” (although expected)
• Nightfall is a required talent node if I want to play Soul Harvester. Luckily it’s high up enough in the tree that it’s always picked.
• Haunt is another required pick for Mantle of the Harvester.
• With Shadow of Death, Soul Rot is mandatory to take, and Soul-Eater’s Gluttony feels mandatory. Considering Soul Rot’s position on the tree as a “capstone ability”, it severely limits my other capstone options.

Soul Harvester Demonology

• Mantle of the Harvester offers Nightfall for Aff, Wild Imp damage for Demonology single target and extra cores for Demonology multitarget. While all 3 are good benefits, it feels a bit bad that Demonology doesn’t gain any resources in single target.
• The second part of Necrolyte Teachings is confusing. Through testing using Power Siphon grants your next 2 Demonbolts additional damage, but the wording is unclear.

[Felplagued-bleeding-hollow]

I will mostly be providing feedback for base demonolgy warlock, and for Diabolist, as those are the two I have most experience with. First will be my opinion, then my proposed fix, and then a “TLDR” afterwards, best way I can make sure stuff has full explanations, while also having a short and to the point option.

Warlock Base
It feels odd having Demonic circle be the starting talent for demonology, when fel domination is right there, a talent copied from the original Demonology tree.
I really feel Destro should start with burning rush, demonic circle affliction, fel dom demonolgy.
Make Fel dom default for demo, Demonic circle aff, and Burning rush destro

Implosion, Implosion is such a monster when it comes to using it, the skill ceiling is so extremly high when it comes to knowing when to and when not to use it.

• My Fix- Make it a choice node, one is implosion, the other a passive version of implosion. When your imps run out they will implode themselves. I think it is a fair trade off, the loss of the burst damage of implosion, for the gain of the implosion damage itself. As knowing I can never truly be fully efficient with my implosions does not feel great, nor does running imp gang boss without implosion, as the talent is just kinda massivly weaker without using it.

Add a passive choice node of implosion that makes it just happen to imps at end of life

Demon bolt is only ever hard-cast for pre-pull, otherwise casting it normally is pointless, and I think demon bolt should be altered slightly to just make it better to use overall. It really is annoying constantly accidentally starting cast on this ability for one reason or another. And with how super quick our spec has become with high haste values, and now with this 50% cast time reduction on hero talents, it gets way too much.

• My Fix- Make demonic cores charges, have it just right out not be able to be cast unless you have demonic cores, it will also make it easier to see how many demonic cores you have, instead of having to keep an eye on a buff.

Make demon bolt a charge based spell, remove the hardcast ability of it entirely

Less RNG please, Random soulshards from soul strike, random soulshards from Soul conduit, and the RNG behind demonic cores.
So much RNG, it makes Demonolgy TOO MUCH of what I can best describe as a whack a mole spec. it just feels awful when you finish casting a hand of guldan and quickly go to demonbolt, but uh oh you got lucky and now suddenly have wasted soul shards. It just does not feel good when it happens, and we feel encouraged to stop dps to make sure we don’t over-shard.

• My Fix- If anything make soul strike have a chance to trigger soul coundit, and make soul conduit when it triggers make your next cast cost 1 less shard, this way you know ahead of time and can pre-plan, instead of it being retroactive, make it pro-active.
  Or another option? Soul conduit shards can go over 5. So if you gain soul conduit shards, they are additional, they do not fill your normal 5 shard cap, instead they are “floating” and will be used on your next cast that does not “normally” have enough shards. (have 2 normal, and 1 floating? cast hand of guldan all 3 are used) This way these abilities feel additions, instead of retroactive removals.
  Really I would prefer something entirely different then these random soul shards, but if we must stick with it, atleast reducing the RNG would be nice. As the highs and lows are too much. Times you get no procs and then the procs you do are wasted, or you get CONSTANT procs and suddenly blast.

Make soul conduit + soulstrike less punishing by adding “Floating shards” or making your next spell cost less, instead of refunding. Or just right out replace

Make Demonic Tyrant good again. People have been running “Naked tyrant” where we take none of the talents for them, cause it is just so bad. As the main themed DPS cooldown for the spec, it is so obscene it is just, useless. You only take it to boost the duration of your felguard.

• My Fix- Soulbound tyrant should be built in, and the final talents just need some work.

Make Tyrant strong again, it is our main DPS cooldown afterall.

Doom and it’s follow up just need rework or removal. If anything make it work like it did in legion where doom is just applied by hand of guldan, as is it has never been used in all of dragonflight.

Make doom good or replace it

Ok now onto
Diabolist Feedback
Ok so first off these hero talents feel amazing, but I feel there is a few spots it is lacking, and really needs some work.

Overall- This is the “demon spec” as both destro and demo still have heavy influence with demons, and because of this I quite enjoy how the spec summons these huge demons. But a few things do not make sense and could really be altered, and super easily too, simply by changing “+damage to basic ability” to “Basic ability does this demon thingy” Examples later
Another issue is the spec just seems to play more into demonolgies two major issues with the spec. The whack a mole playstyle, which is good in small amounts, but has become more and more the ENTIRE playstyle. And the aspect that we are demonologists, we should be summoning more, and stronger demons, and yet some things here just feel like typical “buff X ability” when it should be “Buff Y demon”

Nothing here buffs our wrathguard, and too many abilities that have no effect on our demons

Animations for the overlord and ruination take too long, especially bad since they are aoe, but focus on 1 specific target. The issue comes when that target dies before this loooong animation finishes, causing the abilities to just wiff.

Too long animations on overfiend and ruination

Soul-Etched Circles. While cool it just makes demonic circle better, it does not change anything, it just means you do not need to soulburn it. This feels a bit lame, and I think I would prefer if instead it had the effect of Soul Burning Demonic Gateway.

• My Fix- Diabolist is all about opening portals and summoning giant demons, and the major focus on both destro and demo’s summoning aspect, I think being able to instantly open a demonic gateway is much more interesting, fun, and thematic.
  As a M+ player, I really find little use of demonic gateway, as it requires settup, and only really in raid and arenas is this viable to do frequently. I really feel that having this spec just make demonic gateway instant would be so much better. Especially as it would be quite interesting to see it used in more tight scenarios.

Soul etched circles should give demonic gateway soulburn instead of circle.

Annihilan’s Bellow is just an issue of so few people if anyone takes howl of terror, especially since it competes with mortal coil. It feels weird having hero talents that not only require you to take a specific talent elsewhere, but also a specific talent that is a choice node. If you wish to keep it as is, also give it a buff for mortal coil. Maybe longer range and some damage, or more healing, or heck even a cooldown reduction.
Needs to effect mortal coil as well, or be replaced

Cruelty of Kerxan just does not seem useful, not only do you always have diabolic ritual up pretty much, making the first half of this effect pointless, but 3 second shorter duration is basically nothing as we already reduce its duration extremely quickly, especially since the other talent infernal machine far outpreforms it. But really both of these talents being about reducing its cooldown. I think it would be more interesting to have them be different style. Or make it so cruelty of kerxan lets you have 2 rituals up at once, or I guess 3.

• My Fix- I think if anything it right out should just always decrease the countdown by a couple seconds. This way you can pick a more “overall passive reduction” or a “bursty reduction based around our major dps cooldown” Or let Cruelty of Kerxan give you multiple rituals.

Not good at all, needs rework/replace

Touch of Rancora is cool, but the whiplash of casting at a normal speed, and then BOOM 50% castspeed bonus, and suddenly a spell is done WAY faster then you expect, feels almost more of a debuff then a buff. Right now it is not too much of an issue, but I have done testing with the most amount of haste I could get, and during bloodlust, and it just gets way too fast, and while fast specs are fun, demonolgy is an edge case because of it’s whack a mole nature.

• My Fix- Make touch of rancora more unique, Instead buff its damage by 100%, and give it a +50% bonus. Multistrike was great, and seeing it back in a talent like this would be great, so make the ability proc CB/RoF/DS/HoG cast a second time at 50% power. As is because of how it works it makes it just feel awkward at times, especially since it reduces the cast time by 50%, but there is a fair few soulshard costing spells that consume this, that don’t have a cast time.

The bonus cast speed makes the spec feel clunky

Ruination is amazing, but as is it has no cap. This makes ruination in a bit of a nerve wracking place. as just a MASSIVE aoe damage, this will encourage us to use it on bigger and bigger and bigger pulls. I was kind of suprised to see this without a damage cap, and while I normally do not like those, I do really like what has been done with a lot of abilities/trinkets/etc in dragonflight. “X damage split between all hit enemies, but more enemies hit buffs the damage” this means it is good for both single target, and aoe.

• My Fix- Ruination is literally a fel meteor, and with meteors being a common soak mechanic, I really think the ability could do with a large damage buff, at the cost of “splits damage between all targets hit, but increases damage slightly per target hit” as this ability is INSANE for large aoe, but when used on a single target is just “good” and as this big cooldown part of our rotation, it does feel it could use some help.

• I want a fel version of the beacon to the beyond is what I am saying lol.
  Oh also, ruination is this BIG fel meteor, and yet it just summons 3 wild imps, making it basically a silly strong hand of guldan. I feel it would be cooler if it just right out summoned imp gang bosses, even without the talent. Just to give it that more OOMPF

Ruination should be damage split among targets but deal more per target hit, and also should summon more then just 3 imps.

Now while this would normally be under base Warlock, I put it here cause it is effected even more by diabolist.
Nether portal, not fun, I do not like, nor do many people, it is a cool theme but how it works, how it plays, it is just so awkward. I feel like this ability should work like how grand warlock design tyrant used to work. Now that tyrant lost its old version, give it to nether portal. Nether portal should just summon a set amount of demons, including a pitlord at the end. No soulshard spam during it, as it just means a cooldown you pump EVERYTHING into, however you can cheese to do so.

• My Fix- I think it should be the opposite, we should be using our soulshards after nether portal, in order to reduce its cooldown. Where it summons a few imps, then stronger and stronger demons, ending with the pitlord! and then you spend shards to refill your energy so you can summon the portal again. Make it more of a frequent burst, then a long cooldown MEGA BURST. as it is now.

• Now what does this have to do with diabolist? well both cruelty of kerxan and infernal machine proc off it. Which is odd as destro only gets infernal, but demonolgy gets both nether portal and demonic tyrant? This makes diabolist players sorta encouraged if not forced to go nether portal and tyrant. Which just is not fun, the amount of talents here that force players into specific talent choices in the tree is just too much. Yes the demon focused spec buffing grimoire felguard for demo makes sense, and that is high enough up the tree it is fine. But when we are at the bottom with our limited points, forcing us into nether portal and tyrant sorta brute forces demo locks out of the right side, which I really like, I love the “big strong wrathguard” builds, always have, even in SoD I have been working to make demon focused builds and can’t wait for the black book eventual drop.

Nether portal should lose the soulshard to summon more demons mechanic, and instead use soulshard consumption to reduce it’s cooldown, or should be replaced, maybe with metamorphasis? But also it should be removed from the diabolist talents

But the lack of demon synergy in this spec is just bizzare, and I love what you have done overall here, the overfiend, the mother, the pitlord, super amazing play and theme, but the things around them are odd at times. The fact that the ONLY talent in diabolist that actually effects our demonic pet is flames of xoroth, 2% increased demon damage. Is just confusing. I was really hoping for more. Heck even a second pet, 2 imps for destro, 2 wrathguards for demo. Would be insanely cool.

[Meelow-stormrage]

WAR WITHIN ALPHA FEEDBACK

WARLOCK

“MEELOH”

Hello, I am Meeloh. I have been playing the game since late TBC. Started maining Warlock since WOTLK and have also played Rogue last couple of expansions. My favorite spec is Affliction but can play all specs at a high level. In this document, I will give you my feedback regarding the Warlock class (especially Affliction). I apologize in advance if it turns out to be a long read.

1. AFFLICTION

2. Make DOTs matter again. It has been a long time since DOTs have really been the bulk of our damage. I understand Malefic Rapture does work with the amount of DOTs applied to a target but at the end of the day, it is the bursty direct damage ability doing all the work. It makes our class feel like a bursty spec instead of a sustained DPS the way it used to be.

3. UA on multiple targets. I don’t understand why Unstable Affliction can only be casted on 1 target. It makes for good gameplay and a difference in skill cap juggling DOTs on multiple targets. Seed spam is good and all but we want to feel our class fantasy of draining the enemies life slowly. Sure it would be pointless when mobs die too quickly but for that scenario we would have “seed spam” as an alternative.

4. Shard generation. Affliction soul shard generation is abysmal (especially in ST). The current state of tier set and forced talents (Soul Rot) makes it so we HAVE to spend 3 soul shards every 30 seconds in order to dish out our damage. I know it’s your job to come up with solutions but here are a couple of suggestions anyway. A) Make it so refreshing DoTs during Pandemic window has a high chance go generate 1 soul shard. B) UA ticks also have a chance to generate Soul Shard. C) Darkglare significantly increases soul shard generation while it’s active.

5. Baseline Soul Swap. Current Soul Swap is so bad that we are forced to take it just to reach other talents and it is hardly ever pressed at all. Make it cost no shard and copy/paste DoTs to a different target. Also, make it interact with Soulburn so that pressing SB:SS immediately puts up Agony, Corruption and Siphon Life on our target for the cost of 1 soul shard. (Like back in MoP)

6. Darkglare? Darkglare is one of the lowest impact 2 minute CDs in the game. The damage is so low that sometimes it gets outdamaged by random procs like Inquisitor’s Gaze. Make it so it does way more damage or while it’s active it makes our DoTs do double damage or tick faster or it gives the Warlock haste or something like that

7. Dread Touch vs Doom Blossoms. This capstone talent is mandatory for all content since it provides over 10% increased damage to either ST or AoE respectively. It feels terrible having to choose between these 2 options since we sacrifice so much damage. Combine them into 1 single capstone or move Doom Blossoms elsewhere.

8. Siphon Life. Siphon Life currently feels very underwhelming to press. Its only reason to exist is for it to benefit Malefic Rapture’s burst. Increase its damage significantly AND make it so whenever casting Vile Taint or Phantom Singularity it makes our next Siphon Life apply to 5 targets. This way it contributes to aoe/dungeon content as well as ST.

9. Shadow’s Embrace. I think the whole stacking 3x only from Shadow Bolt or Drain Soul ticks takes forever. It makes our opener rotation in dungeons especially feel clunky and very unrewarding. Most other specs can do double or triple or even more damage while we are still applying DoTs and stacking SE. I vote to remove it entirely or make another spell apply it and make it only 1 stack = 10% increased damage.

10. Malefic Grasp - I would really like to see this ability return in some form. It used to be a spell that while channeling our DoT’s would do more damage (I think it used to be 20%). Maybe it could have a CD or could cost like 3 shards or something like that so it wouldn’t be overpowered or force us to stay standing all fight like a turret.

11. Forced Talents. Haunted Soul feels great to play if our DoTs would actually do damage. Hopefully, this capstone will not require us to waste 2 points on the prior node “Seized Vitality”. Inevitable Demise is so undertuned AND it requires 2 whole points to get AND it helps unlock other very important talents. Please remove it or buff it or move it somewhere else. Maybe make it work with Drain Soul instead. That way there’s more benefit spending those points there.

I did not come up with all these ideas on my own. This is a list that I put together after analyzing my favorite spec in the game and listening and talking to people that are way better at the game than me. This is it for now but I will write more feedback once we can properly test all the new Hero Talents for a while and see how they feel.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read.

-Meeloh

[Kaivax]

Greetings Warlocks,

Today, we have various Core and Affliction tree changes hitting the Alpha. We want to take a moment to go a bit more in depth as to what certain changes were made and why. As a refresher, here are the goals for our Core and Afflictions that we posted last week along with some additional goals that we can dig into here.

Class

• Ensure each capstone is interesting and exciting.
• Reduce the amount of throughput talents, to free up utility choices.
• Reduce the number of ranks for talents that don’t warrant multiple ranks.

Affliction

• Address the tuning of Malefic Rapture in single-target and multi-target situations.
• Reduce complexity and the amount of active buttons that contribute to it.
• Erase the need to choose between a single-target or multi-target profile by adding more adaptability and flexibility.

While we cannot go over every change here, we’d like to get a bit more detailed than last week’s update and explain some of the bigger changes coming in this build.

Class Tree Throughput
We’re removing a lot of throughput talents from the class tree to allow warlocks to pick up more utility without feeling forced to take mandatory talents to be competitive. These talents aren’t compelling options when placed against utility as they will always be the right answer to have. This allows us to move that power into the specialization trees and tailor throughput-centric talents to be specific to that specialization’s gameplay.

Malefic Rapture
In addition to becoming baseline for Affliction, we are introducing new talents that will help Malefic Rapture become the go-to spender for both single-target and multi-target situations. This should also shift Seed of Corruption to being a means to apply Corruption to multiple targets rather than what you spam in dungeons. In addition, we are redesigning Siphon Life to be friendlier to Affliction’s rotation and expect that its new design will make it easier to optimize Malefic Rapture.

Affliction’s Adaptability
While we do want Affliction warlocks to have a preferred talent setup for single- versus multi-target situations, we don’t want it to feel like they are powerless if they are in the opposite situation. By focusing on Malefic Rapture being Affliction’s main spender and removing talents that are only valuable in multi-target situations (Soul Flame, Soul Swap, Doom Blossom, etc.), we’re hoping that the Affliction tree feels less punishing to fill out.

Is This It?
Not at all. We expect to make changes based on feedback and our own playtesting. We want to get the ball rolling on changes we knew we want to make, so we could start the discussion early on and make adjustments before The War Within launches.

Thank you all for the continued discussions and we look forward to your feedback!

[Felplagued-bleeding-hollow]

The capstones supposed to mean something, but soul conduit has been nerfed and is not that exciting of a capstone.
Soul burn is still soul burn, so good it is pretty much required.

Pact of gluttony is cool, but still feels like it needs a bit more umph. Like maybe no charges, just for you it becomes an ability, no bag usage, no charges. Still can share with everyone else using soul well, but conjure health stone is now a passive that grants demonic health stone.
Even with it being “you can use healthstone multiple times per combat” it definitely feels like it could still use something else that makes it better then a normal healthstone mechanically, like more healing, an absorb shield, or a slight speedboost.

Otherwise new tree changes are good, I do miss inquisitors eye and jailer though (Ok they were interesting, but really could use a rework if brought back), I do feel like bringing them back would be good, especially as we don’t get ANY dps abilities on our tree now, all of them are utility, defensive, mobility.

Our only output talents in our class tree now are.
Demon attack speed 5%
Demon damage 5%
Wildimp/Immolate/Agony damage 20%(16%)
Shadowbolt/drainsoul/incinerate damage 16%(10%)
You/demon crit 5%
Soulshard 5% chance to refund

It all just feels rather lame compared to stuff like Death Knight, which gets.
Soul reaper, Empower rune weapon, Abomination Limb, Unholy Bond, Rune Mastery, Icy Talons, Unholy Ground, Runic Attenuation, Might of Thassarian, Merciless Strikes, Brittle, Sacrifical Pact, Cleaving Strikes, Raise dead.
Those are just the DK’s throughput talents in their tree.

I think the warlock tree invests a bit too much into “Unlock a ton of utility” and lacks interesting throughput talents. I agree a tree having too many can be bad, but I think before these changes it coulda done with even more throughput really.

Swift Arttiface feels like it should instead just be a big buff for soulstone, as you really only cast that in combat anyways, so having it just be 50% cast speed on it, and maybe when they revive give them a big shield or something?

Curses being required to unlock the 10% stamina is odd too, as even if you have no want for those curses (especially as curses have become impossible to tell what they do/do not work on) you still take it anyways, cause 2 points for +10% stamina is huge when you can easily get every single throughput talent in your tree.

Like with death knights, like with many other classes, I should kinda have to choose if I want to take this throughput talent, or that one, I can’t take all of them. But with our current tree there is so few you take all of them, then from there just decide what utility/defensives you want.
Just testing with the tree, I can have all of the throughput talents as early as 24/31 of our points. Meaning I can grab every throughput talent, and still have 7 points leftover to do with what I wish.
With DK, I am able to get all of the above listed throughput, minus only 2 of those talents. Spending all 31 of my talents to get as many throughput as I can, but because there are so many of them, I can’t even get them all.

Just to go through all of the ones I have issue with.
Howl of Terror is only useful in PVP, which is fine, but the fact is gets a talent in Diabolist but Mortal coil does not, is odd.
Abyss walker, 4% less damage for 10 seconds after teleporting? That could be 10% easily and it would still see lack of use.
Curses of enfeeblement Really should not be a talent at all, these should be baseline. Or move it to where amplify curse is, and just bake in teachings of the satyr.
Resolute barrier Still just way too niche, such a short cooldown reduction with such a long cooldown while also requiring a pretty decent chunk of damage taken.
Demonic resilience This should be way higher in the tree, heck put it where curses is now, cause this thing competes with all the capstone talents, and yet all it does is reduce your chance to be crit by 4%, and increases your demons damage resist by 16%.
Pretty good, but 2 talent points? idk if it is worth for example giving up 20% wild imp damage.

Overall I like the changes you have made so far, but still see some problem spots that really need polishing, and some of the new stuff just seems odd.

[Kaivax]

Greetings Warlocks.

You’re going to see some Demonology changes in the War Within Alpha build today, alongside some additional changes to Affliction, Hellcaller, and Soul Harvester.

Destruction Warlocks – we’re working on changes for you that will become available for testing in a future build.

Here’s some context for the Demonology changes you’ll find in this build. As a refresher, here are the goals we previously stated for Demonology:

• Reduce the amount of resources Demonology generates.
• Redesign Doom to be an attractive talent choice.
• Reduce the amount of major cooldowns Demonology has access to.

Demonic Cores
Over the course of Dragonflight, we’ve wanted to and tried to reduce the number of Demonic Cores available to Demonology warlocks to rein in their mobility, resource generation, and reduce the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt only. In addition, we want Demonbolt to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button.

With these goals in mind, we are removing Demonic Knowledge to reduce the frequency of Demonic Cores and will make further adjustments down the road if the rate of Demonic Cores remains too high. Over the course of alpha and beta we will be tuning Demonology to compensate for this change.

Doom
This is our first iteration of Doom going into The War Within and will be iterating based off feedback we receive. We wanted to try bringing back a castable version of Doom, rather than a proc, while avoiding making it required to cast Doom multiple times before being able to perform your rotation. At the same time though, we want you to think about how you use Doom and when it is cast rather than bring back an effect like Hand of Doom that makes it largely passive.

Nether Portal
In this alpha build of The War Within, you’ll see that Nether Portal has been removed. While we love the fantasy that Nether Portal provides and that it created a moment that felt different rotationally, its gameplay and performance proved difficult to optimize. Too many major cooldowns can increase the number of peaks and valleys Demonology’s output can experience and how much effect the duration of an encounter can have on its performance.

We’d like to spend some time workshopping a new design for Nether Portal and have it return as a healthier addition to Demonology’s toolkit in the future.

What’s Next?
We’ll continue to read through feedback and the discussions happening across the community. As mentioned last week, these changes are by no means final, and we plan to iterate based off your thoughts and our own playtesting. Thank you for the discussions thus far and we’ll have more updates to share soon!

[Norml-emerald-dream]

Posting this feedback on behalf of Malacath, demo aficionado https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/u/malykith-azralon/summary

Redesigned Doom

• It’s a breath of fresh air to see development time spent towards a redesign of Doom, as far as Warlock Spells, Doom have been abandoned for quite some time.
• During Dragonflight we saw a wonderful iteration of it in the Seasson 3 Demonology Tierset with Doombrand, and I believe most warlocks would prefer to have that as a talent for the future.
• But I also believe this current new, redesigned version of Doom can also be good, as long as pivoted towards the right direction.

Positive Points

• It summons a pet, giving it a good demonology identity.
• While its one additional active button, due to its cooldown you won’t overly delay your rotation by multi-dotting it.
• Having its power concentrated in a single instance of the debuff might lead to it feeling more impactful.
• Having a Cooldown stops you from multi-dotting on a spec who don’t want to spread dots (at least, manually).

Negative Points

• Duration and Cooldown are out of sync.
• Due to its fixed Cooldown, Neither Doom or Doomguard scale with Haste, and as Doom is player damage it does not scale with Mastery.
• The period where Doom exploded and you are waiting its CD feels weird.

I believe this spell would feel best as the start and end of rotational cycles the spec, you start by applying Doom, execute your rotation with the objective of reducing it’s the duration of Doom towards 0, and once it explodes you apply it again.

This currently isn’t possible, as the Cooldown of the spell(30s) is longer than the Duration (who is 20s reduced by 3s per Demonic Core spent).

This also introduces an issue in regards to how the spell scales towards Haste, as it will always be a fixed amount of damage every 30s as Doomguard always cast only 5 Doombolts and Doom always deal X damage every 30s no matter how fast you can reduce its duration.

About the Duration Reduction

• Truth be told, given the cooldown is fixed, you do not care about the Cooldown reduction of the spell as long as things are not dying before it ticks.
• The Damage will always be X every 30s, even if it Doom expires at 6s, 9s or 12s or 20s.
• Introducing a cooldown reduction alongside the Duration reduction or making it so that only 1 Doom can be active at any given time would solve this issue, but be warned the later could be abused to apply Dooms in sequence on enemies that are dying.

About On Death Trigger

• Doombrand had this rly cool effect where killing a target affected by Doombrand would instantly trigger it, dealing its damage to the targets around it and with the chance of pricing Doomfiend.
• I hope it stays as is on Doom, as it helps in M+ a lot, as long as Doom have a cooldown it shouldn’t be abusable either.

About Doomguard

• Oh boy, I love doomguards, and have missed them greatly, but I will also miss the random demons of Nether Portal, specialy the better ones.
• I ask, could it be possible to create a new “Random Demon List” with Doomguard, Malcheezar, Shivarra, Wrathguard, Felguard and have them doing equal damage, but summoned randomly as Doom Triggers?
  • You could preserve the “Identity of Nether Portal” while its completely gone.

[Norml-emerald-dream]

This post will include feedback on the Warlock class tree changes from April 25. I mainly mythic raid and play Mythic+ as a source of gear for raiding so that’s the perspective I’ll be coming from.

Before these changes class tree points were mostly locked in, with 1 or 2 points being able to be moved around depending on situation. I found this slightly restrictive but workable, as the tradeoffs of less valuable nodes for situational nodes felt acceptable. However with the changes, I feel even more restricted on what I “should be taking” vs situational nodes.

https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/warlock/demonology/diabolist/DAOBKFRRQERQoEKFQBQAAAA This shows all the points I feel like are basically “required” for the content I do. Realistically, I’d always want to take these talents as well:

• Fiendish Stride, as Burning Rush is my main movement ability outside of a planned Demonic Circle.
• Fel Domination, as having to cast for 6 seconds and spending a shard to summon my pet is something that no one enjoys. Probably the most frustrating thing about dying is having to resummon your pet but Fel Domination is on cooldown.
• Ichor of Devils/Frequent Donor makes Dark Pact an even better defensive. Considering Dark Pact is one of Warlock’s 2 active defensive personals, this choice node is basically mandatory.

With the new class tree if I take the above 3 talents, I am now locked in with 31/31 points. I have no additional points to take utility talents like Amplify Curse, Shadowfury, Banish, or Swift Artifice. I feel forced to sacrifice a throughput or survival node that I REALLY do not want to be losing, which is frustrating.

Ensure each capstone is interesting and exciting

• Soulburn has been a great capstone. It’s flexibility and quality of life have been mostly great to have.
• Soul Conduit moving to a capstone and being reduced to 1 rank feels acceptable, but very boring. At 10% I concede that the talent has lost a bit of it’s “moment of delight” when it procs, but I wish there was something more exciting in it’s place.
• The new capstone Pact of Gluttony is interesting compared to it’s predecessor in that position. I won’t argue with more defensive capability, although to maximize it’s usage I’d want to be crafting healthstones (or dropping a Soulwell) mid combat to get a new one once I’ve used 3 charges (as it stands I’d want to be pressing this on cd as soon as I can get good value out of it which means past 3 or 4 minutes I’m looking to make a new healthstone). This is just not enjoyable gameplay. Also, at the moment I just don’t feel like I have enough points to justify taking Sweet Artifice.

Reduce the amount of throughput talents, to free up utility choices

I am excited about this goal because it would allow me to make meaningful choices on which utility nodes to pick. To me, this means I’m able to freely swap around 1 or 2 situational utility nodes without feeling like I’m missing out, rather feeling like I made a good/acceptable tradeoff. That said, I believe there are still some glaring pain points on the tree that are blocking us from achieving this goal.

• Socrethar’s Guile and Sargerei Technique are both 2 point passive throughput nodes that feel very out of place on the tree and with the goal. Maybe removing all throughput nodes is taking it too far, but spending 4 points on these mandatory nodes is quite frustrating considering other nodes I want to be taking.
• I’ve talked above about how “locked in” the new tree feels, so I don’t believe the changes have achieved the goal of “freeing up utility choices”.

Reduce the number of ranks for talents that don’t warrant multiple ranks

• Fiendish Stride has gotten an interesting change. Burning rush is my main movement ability outside of a planned Demonic Circle, and having the damage reduced by 50% made it so I could use it more freely, maybe a bit too freely. I’m sad to see the damage reduction be nerfed so heavily.
  • The tradeoff of getting 10% more movement speed is a bit confusing, as I’ve never felt the need for even more movement speed while baseline Burning Rush was active. It’s nice I guess.
  • That said, these changes are understandable to make turning Burning Rush on feel more rewarding but also have it be more of a conscious choice rather than having 50% uptime (it will be missed).
• Again, Socrethar’s Guile and Sargerei Technique fall in the category of “nodes that I don’t believe meet the goal”. These being reduced to 1 point each and their power being redistributed to the baseline specs would be a very welcome change (or their removal and replacement with new 1 point nodes).

Summary

Overall I think there are some nice ideas introduced with these changes like Swift Artifice and Pact of Gluttony. However, I do not feel like the tree achieves all the goals set out by team, especially goals about freeing up choice in the tree. I feel more restricted than ever with my points, and am considering trading off personal survivability/utility for situational group utility, which feels terrible. Removing the point each from Socrethar’s Guile and Sargerei Technique would let me have most of the “personal points” I really want, and also my choice of 1 or 2 situational utility nodes that can be swapped around freely.

[Norml-emerald-dream]

This post will include feedback on the Demonology spec tree changes. I mainly mythic raid and play Mythic+ as a source of gear for raiding so that’s the perspective I’ll be coming from.

Doom

I’m glad Doom is getting a rework, and it’s following in the footsteps of the current Doom Brand (a very well-liked tier set that adds some variation in gameplay). I wouldn’t have minded Doom Brand in it’s current form plopped into the tree but I’m excited to see where we head with this version.

• Doom and Pact of Ered’ruin offers damage but no significant impact with how I play. If we’re reducing the number of Cores I have, I’ll most likely always spend them as I generate them. It feels a bit boring for a capstone (but I guess we have Immutable Hatred so it’s not out of the ordinary).
• Doom has a static 30 second cooldown that doesn’t scale with haste and a base 20 second duration. It feels a bit awkward that there’s no synergy between the 2, that I’m essentially pressing it on cooldown with not much thought about it. The only decision I have here is applying it to a low hp target so I get my damage out quicker (although if the pull lasts longer than lets say 20 seconds, it wouldn’t even matter which target I choose as I would get the full value of 1 Doom and it’s Doomguard).
• As Pact of Ered’ruin isn’t summoning the Doomguard right now I’m unsure if it’s cast is single target or multitarget like the current Doom Bolt Volley. That would play a big part in determining whether or not it’s viable in different scenarios.
  • I’ll also assume this Doomfiend will behave similarly to the current Doomfiend in that it will be summoned if my target dies with Doom, and it will stay active out of combat if it’s 5 casts haven’t completed.

To be honest this version of Doom is much less interesting than current Doom Brand to me. I press a 30 second cooldown on cooldown and forget about it, compared to Doom Brand which was completely integrated into the flow of Demonology’s play. It felt fluid and natural to play around Doom Brand, and had good skill expression with spreading them. That said, I’m eager to see the evolution of this version of Doom.

The state of passive talents

Generally speaking, I’m not a huge fan of passive talents that do not interact with my play whatsoever. They are usually very boring and don’t bring anything interesting to the table or enhance my gameplay other than “oh look a DPS increase”, but feel decent as travel nodes if they are 1 pointers (“a few” 2 pointers wouldn’t break me, I guess). I acknowledge that there must be some passive nodes, but it seems that this build introduced a few too many of them to the spec tree.

• Shadowcaster replaces a well-liked talent in Demonic Knowledge that I covered above. It also has no synergy with Demonology’s Mastery which only increases my demons’ damage, not my player’s damage (Hand of Gul’dan, Shadowbolt, Demonbolt).
• Fiendish Prowess is another completely passive talent that only gives me a bigger number. It has no impact on my gameplay. There’s no point in tracking this or even caring about it, frankly.
• Rune of Shadows is a slightly confusing talent as it has 2 unrelated parts to it. That aside, the reduced cast time of Shadow Bolt is extremely welcome if we are going to continue in this direction of more Shadow Bolts. No matter how the tree ends up I hope the 25% reduced cast time on Shadow Bolt stays in the tree.
• Although Improved Demonic Tactics and Demonic Brutality have synergy with each other, I find them absolutely uninspiring but I guess more damage = more damage. My main frustration with these 2 nodes is placement. They sit completely central in the tree and yet they offer no interactivity with my gameplay.
• Umbral Blaze and Cavitation are 2 current talents that are completely passive and cost 2 points each. The saving grace is that they are both on the outskirts of the tree and not required for pathing (yet).
• Ferocity of F’harg is at least a bit interesting as a passive talent. It has synergy with Carnivorous Stalkers higher up in the tree, but otherwise still is just some % DPS increase with not much conscious acknowledgement.

Talent tree pathing

I’ll preface this section with the disclaimer that without extensive testing or simulations I do not know optimal builds for different scenarios.

I’m concerned about what we’ll need to give up in other parts of the tree to reach Wicked Maw/Mark of Shatug, which look like 2 great talents that I’d always want to take. Getting to these will require 2 points in Umbral Blaze or Imp Gang Boss, neither of which are attractive choices in the current tree. It’s frustrating that I need to choose the lesser of two evils to reach the bottom left of the tree, perhaps a connection between Inner Demons and Wicked Maw would help that.

The middle of the tree is also problematic right now. It’s frustrating that the smack center of the tree has 5 points worth of completely passive effects (Malefic Impact, Imp-erator, down to Demonic Brutality). These nodes also do not offer much value in traveling downwards in the tree, as I’m always looking to talent into Grimoire: Felguard -> Demonic Calling on the right and Power Siphon -> Inner Demons on the left. On the right, Dread Calling has been permanently included in Dragonflight builds so that side of the tree is easily accessed (with current tuning), and also grants access to Sacrificed Souls, allowing me to bypass the middle 5 points entirely.

The tree also has so many talent points in it (see row 7 that has 10 points worth of passive talents) that I’m frustrated and hard pressed to find any talent combination where I’m able to take all the synergistic points I want. With this tree I’m finding myself thinking that it’s more sensible to wait for simulations to determine best builds instead of testing myself since there are so many passive nodes and pathing issues. I’d like to see some more iteration on talent placement and node connections in future builds.

Middle capstone path

With the goals of reducing Demonology’s peaks and valleys, Demonic Tyrant and it’s following talents were neutered. On live, it’s never worth taking Soulbound Tyrant or the capstone choice node. However, Soulbound Tyrant was great quality of life going into cooldowns and if the numbers allowed, most players would opt into taking it. It’s confusing that it would be removed completely instead of, for example, being integrated into Tyrant.

Sacrificed Souls being a prerequisite to Tyrant is a bit confusing after being a single target specific talent for so long. It has minimal value in any cleave or multi target scenario, and feels out of place where it is, gating our “main cooldown”.

Lastly, Tyrant’s position in the tree is frustrating. Demonic Tyrant is required for both hero trees to fully function (Shadow of Death in Soul Harvester and Cruelty of Kerxan/Infernal Machine in Diabolist). I am forced to take Tyrant whose position is basically a capstone currently.

Being Demonology’s “main iconic” cooldown, it would feel infinitely better if Demonic Tyrant was placed where Improved Demonic Tactics or Demonic Brutality is, similar to Shadow Priest’s Voidform, Fire Mage’s Combustion, Evoker’s Dragonrage, Beast Mastery’s Bestial Wrath… the list goes on and on. There’s much more flexibility in that position for an ability that we “want” to always take.

Demonic Cores and resource generation

I’m assuming there is no going back on this issue so I’m leaving this feedback just to have it. The team working on Demonology Warlock have stated for the past few iterations in Dragonflight that there is a goal to “reduce the amount of resources Demonology generates.” I believe the community has expressed their overwhelming opposition against this goal enough for me to not go too deep into this. Other than to say a Demonology Warlock that casts more Shadow Bolts and less instant Demonbolts is just that much less interesting and that much more boring. The “ping pong” between Shadowbolt and Demonbolt was quite enjoyable, and if the goal was to “rein in our mobility”, why not do something like change Demonic Cores to make Demonbolts a very short cast instead of instant, instead of trying to minimize our core economy? By reducing the amount of Cores we gain, we are also essentially forced into talenting into Rune of Shadows to give us more Shadow Bolts.

reduce the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt only

Realistically this situation doesn’t happen that often anymore after the removal of the 3rd Dreadstalker and the Core changes made with that patch. To the player regardless of the justification, it can be boiled down to “we want you to cast Shadowbolt more often”. Which again is just confusing and frustrating given how “modern” Demonology has played in the past.

we want Demonbolt to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button.

The tuning of Demonbolt is so weak with the current state of Core economy that this goal is wholly confusing. The “moment” of hitting an instant Demonbolt will always just feel worse than it did before these changes. Even with a huge damage buff to Demonic Core Demonbolts I’m afraid it’ll still feel vastly inferior to how it felt before these changes.

we are removing Demonic Knowledge

Another cut to our Demonic Core economy. Frustrating.

Overall these changes to Cores are extremely confusing, the community and I will continue to give negative feedback on this. The current Demonology Warlock does not have Core overflow and is essentially a stationary caster with Dreadstalkers, Hand of Gul’dan, Shadowbolt, and Demonic Tyrant. At the moment the spec feels fluid to play in single target and multi target. Whatever issues your teams are seeing with the state of our Resource Generation, I am not seeing it, nor being convinced of the points you’ve stated in your blue posts. As it has been this same talk patch after patch, I will accept it for what it is and move on from the early Dragonflight/late Shadowlands version of Demonology Warlock.

All this isn’t to say these changes coupled with the Shadow Bolt cast time reduction talent won’t make for “decent caster gameplay” (in a vacuum, not compared with previous Demo gameplay), emphasizing the importance of stutter stepping.