On demonology, I strongly suggest the Doomguard return back (can nerf doom a lot instead ). Infernal bolt should be cast while moving. Vilefiend (Marks of shatug and Marks of Fharg as well ) should be instant.
2 Likes
There are better ways to nerf Doomguard than what you’ve done. Increase Doom’s duration so it takes longer to detonate. Make Doomguard cast 4 Doom Bolt Volleys instead of 5. Just please don’t make Doomguard an RNG spawn, and don’t limit its attack to single target only.
New Destro is awesome but please make Dimensional Rift cleave and add Flame Rift to the pool of portals.
5 Likes
Again
Affliction is given a wonderful spell called SOUL SWAP to help with multi target dotting and benefits our toolkit… Just to have it taken away. Time and time again Affliction gets wonderful tools just to have them ripped away by incompetence. It feels like Affliction is constantly under siege by it’s own developers that can’t seem to bring forth a median to it’s playstyle…
Please bring back SOUL SWAP.
1 Like
Couldn’t agree more. We need these talents reverted back to flat 5% or 10% crit strike increase. Or the % contribution from all source needs to be significantly increased.
2% increase from a talent or 2 talent points = DoA talent.
1 Like
Also one of the most important changes is missing - BANISH should work on Meta Form Demon Hunters & Tree form Druids. Manifesting this into Reality!!!
Hello Warlocks.
This beta build contains several changes that have been implemented based off feedback we received over the past few weeks. Before we dive into those though, we wanted to thank you for the bug reports that have been sent in. We are continually working through those reports so expect fixes in this build and future builds.
Without further ado, let’s get into some of the changes you’ll see for Warlock in this beta build.
Demonology
We’ve redesigned Doom to be passive, like the seasons 3 and 4 tier set bonus in Dragonflight. The primary reason for this change is to reduce the increased number of actions per minute we observed during playtesting. Additionally, Demonology has a lot of plates to spin as it is, and it felt that adding an additional cooldown to watch was a bit much.
It is also because of this reasoning that we’ve removed the cooldown reduction for Power Siphon from Blood Invocation. Further, Blood Invocation caused a desync with most Demonology’s cooldowns.
Destruction
Summon Infernal has returned to the center of the Destruction tree to serve as a powerful cooldown for players to look forward to unlocking while leveling. We’ve returned Dimensional Rift to the third section as well with a new talent that adds cleave functionality to your rifts.
To retain accessible pathing through the center section of the Destruction tree, we’ve had to remove Infernal Brand and condense Crashing Chaos and Rain of Chaos into a choice node.
Thank you for the feedback and we will continue to keep an eye out for any further feedback and discussions.
9 Likes
Is this what communication and using feedback from players is like?
14 Likes
Praise be, and for max level players its still WAY better feeling to path down the tree this way.
Thank you for listening to the feedback, not all classes get such good responses (or any responses) to comments given, but warlock is shaping up very very nicely, and I am liking the updates.
5 Likes
the newest changes for destro seem pretty good. But as has been mentioned a lot, just give us flame rifts back. Having the cleave talent is nice, but the chaos bolt tear is still terrible and i think removing it and replacing it with flame rift, or simply adding flame rift as a 4th option would be nice.
Also having Seeds of Their Demise no longer proc ritual of ruin kind of sucks but i get that in AoE it probably procced way too much and made hellcaller insane compared to diabolist. Would just rather see changes to make it less effective in multi-target, or buffs to make diabolist feel comparable in those situations.
1 Like
Props on the changes this week, very well done. I think the only major painpoint for warlock remaining after the slate of changes in beta, is it’s relative place among all ranged specs in regard to mobility (bugs and tuning with class and spells notwithstanding in both the spec trees and hero talents). If anything moves the needle in this regard, in my mind it will be one of the most successful class overhauls in a long, long time.
The post I made a couple days a go outlines adding Kil’jaeden’s cunning as a replacement for soul conduit as something that’s really cool for warlocks to look forward to in their class tree (fillers castable on the move). At the moment, there isn’t anything that’s “cool” or something to look forward to within the general tree, it’s mostly just “meh” including soul conduit which also contributes to resource flooding (which you guys have explicitly stated you want to tone down). If it’s a problem for pvp, there must be some way to tune it separately.
I’m still in shock that the feedback was taken and not only implemented how a warlock player would like (as in it feels good, and isn’t tuned around other class designs) but that the class feels phenomenal to play once again – something I haven’t felt since the class rework in Mists of Pandaria.
10 Likes
Why does Blizzard not have any middle ground when it comes to tuning? Its either nothing, or nuke it completely. They cry when they have to tune something that’s RNG because RNG is generally hard to tune, and then go and voluntarily make more things RNG…
They took something cool, getting a lot of overfiends and doomguards, and nuked them. Yay, now we get 4% haste instead of an awesome flaming demon that shoots chaos bolts, great trade off.
And as far as doom goes, does anyone actually enjoy tab targeting and essentially multi dotting dooms? Especially when the proc chance is so low.
In the blue post they mentioned doing it to “reduce the increased number of actions per minute we observed during playtesting” which is dumb, because on Beta the only playtesting we’ve had is in Normal and Heroic dungeons, where everything dies after 5-10 seconds. They didn’t even nerf any numbers before nuking the ability, so the data they were basing their decision off of was the overtuned and buggy data. What kind of brain dead developer makes huge sweeping changes based on pre-tuned data??
So bottom line, if the mobs weren’t dying in 5-10 seconds, there wouldn’t be an excessive amount of actions per minute. It would be literally one extra button every 10ish seconds, until the end of the fight when everything is dying, and then you’ll press Doom maybe 3-5 extra times. We can handle that.
But I don’t want my post to be 100% me crying without offering anything constructive or positive.
-Demonology-
-One idea is to have a choice node for Implosion to let the imps firebolts cleave, even if its only like 25%-50% damage, instead of imploding them. I think Implosion is a hilarious ability, but that’s one of the most disappointing things I do in AoE, get rid of all my cool demons. I want an army! Also it would help us not need a third party Weakaura to keep track of how many imps we have and how many shots they have left to know when to optimally Implode.
-Another idea is instead of Reign of Tyranny letting us extend up to 15 imps, why couldn’t it summon imps instead? All our cooldowns require set up and syncing other abilities, it would be nice for Tyrant to just give us something without requiring a bunch of set up. All they would have to do is remove the imp extensions and it would be easy to balance, and less chance of having our cooldowns ruined by being targeted by a mechanic at the wrong time, or feeling like we NEED more haste/PI/Bloodlust to be optimal.
-This is a super tiny one, but having our Grimoire: Felguard summon something other than a Felguard would be cool. It summons a copy of the pet we permanently have out, it doesn’t feel like much of a “moment” for our biggest cooldown.
-Hero Talents-
-I also really liked the hero talent that got taken out that basically gave us the Twin Moon effect that boomkins have, so we could apply our DoTs to 2 enemies per spell cast. That would be HUGE for the people that dont want to use Cataclysm, and make Affliction feel slightly less annoying in multi dotting scenarios.
-And the hero talent that would’ve let us have AoE Curse of Tongues, I honestly think that warlocks would get taken into some keys solely for being able to Curse of Tongues a group of casters, and I was sad when they changed that.
-Affliction-
-There is no reason Seed should cost a Soul Shard if its just a way to spread Corruption. Other classes don’t have a cost for their ability to spread DoTs, like sunfire, void crash, etc. but we have a soul shard cost on Seed AND Vile Taint.
-I love having a way to even slightly extend our DoTs, especially during our burst window, but instead of having it work off Soul Rot, why not either Vile Taint or Phantom Singularity? It wouldn’t be overpowered to have it happen more often, and nicer to have it tied to something that’s more general.
-Destruction-
-Ground based spells are already frustrating when there is so much movement required in dungeons, let alone when said ground based ability does it’s damage over a period of 8 seconds (even with haste its still around 6 or so). Can Rain of Fire deal it’s damage all at once, or quicker, or maybe follow the enemies? Or give us an option to have our damage come from something else that is a targeted ability instead of ground based?
-They could make Havoc a toggled ability, but make our spenders cost 50% more soul shards or something, or have the copied cast deal way less damage. For a spec thats based around hard hitting but long cast time abilties, having a 15 second window for Havoc can sometimes be frustrating.
4 Likes
Let’s talk about Dooms, Doombrands and Doomguards.
About Doom.
I believe the TWW version of Doom as an active button press was an interesting idea, and i do admit it had an significant increase in gcd usage due to its reseting nature but at the same time, with it generating a shard on cast, it quite simply semi-filled the spaces of shadowbolts.
This new version of a Brandified Doom is also not a bad idea, in fact, its something that feedback from all corners have pushed for, in essence, it is Doombrand but it does have a few issues i would like to show some consideration.
Doomguard Summoning
Doombrand Tierset effect worked its mechanic towards Summoning a Doomguard not as a true % proc, but as a hidden cumulator, and once understood properly it added a sense of control and expectation towards when Doomguards would come.
I believe this new version currently lacks this mechanic, and if the team is truly commited towards making Doom in Doombrand this is an aspect it should have.
Furthermore, i believe this information of “when a doomguard” will spawn should be clear and transparent, a buff the players can actually see being cumulated would be ideal.
About Demonic Cores
Truth be told, Demonic Cores in TWW are much, much more rarer than in DF, as such some consideration towards the tunning of this new passive version of Doombrand should account that.
The values of cumulator Doombrand had (0.25 per Doombrand with a complex DR mechanic based on Doombrands in range of each other) might not be enough in a world where Demonic Cores are rarer, in fact, maybe its not even necessary to have a Diminishin return even.
Furthermore, now that Doom gets applied by Demonic Cores the fact Demonic Cores also reduce its duration is weird, this too was an concept in early doombrand ptr version, but it got changed based on feedback at the time.
Given this change towards Doom is in essence a Doombrandified Doom, i would believe fully comitting to the transformation would be sensible, making it so that Demonic Cores apply it, but Soul Shards reduce its duration just like the Tierset version of Doombrand.
Think of it like this, if both the applicator and duration reduction are tied towards the same mechanic you introduce some weird gameplay considerations who might not be very fun.
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In AOE, the optimal way to play the tierset becomes to accumulate as many demonic cores as possible and spend them in sequence, securing maximum duration reduction of as many brands as possible breaking some of the natural uses of Demonic Core Demonbolt and its strategical uses.
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In Single Target you have the opposite problem, because a new Doom value is so much higher than -4s of the current Doom you are heavily punished to spending Demonic Cores to reduce duration of Doom unless you have them in excess (not a thing in TWW as we discussed above) but also punishes you to use Demonic Cores in a more natural and fluid way.
As such, if the objective is to truly make Doom in more of a Doombrand i would say, fully embrace the idea, make what is effective the DF tierset as a talent.
10 Likes
Honestly some great changes!
Even with demonology changes losing mobility it looks good.
Loving the new demons from demonology too.
Pretty torn between the hero talent choices honestly.
Summon infernal being more accessible will be awesome too.
Hatefury rituals is good but I don’t think it’s as fun as blackheart tactics.
Also, I love not having to hard cast immolate anymore using wither.
Malevolence is actually a really great cooldown, and it’s fun stacking it up in fights.
Although, the giant pit lords that machine guns chaos bolts are awesome too.
Nether portal will be awesome to have back in the future when they’re done with it too!
Soul conduit still does kinda feel like it should be a regular talent and not a capstone tho
<3
2 Likes
Let me elaborate on my thoughts about Doom more.
Having a talent that gave a soul shard when Doom expired was got a bit hectic, so I’m glad they changed it to just give an imp, in fact that stays in line with what I want more of out of the Demonology talents.
I wish they would have kept Doom how it was until mythic+ testing was out, or even raid testing, because in Normal and Heroic dungeons mobs started dying so fast. Especially with some classes being SUPER overtuned in the first beta build.
For example, if 10 seconds into the pull mobs were dying, and you’re casting 5 Dooms on low health mobs, that’s crazy. It felt like every other button I pressed was Doom. But on dummies Doom was lasting about 10~ seconds, getting roughly 2 Demon core procs over the course of those 10 seconds which reduced the duration by 5 seconds each. Over the course of a pull that lasts for 50 seconds, you’re only getting about 4 Doomguards for the first 40 seconds, and then let’s say you get 5 over the last 10 seconds because of Doom sniping. That’s still only 9 Doom casts.
TL;DR, it only feels like a lot more spell casts because on Beta things die too fast.
I’m all for passives, but I also like to have some semblance of control. Being able to know for sure when you’re going to pop out a Doomguard would be nice both from a thematic point of view, and rotation point of view.
If it’s a question of theme, I root for anything that lets us summon more demons. For a spec that’s all about us being a “master summoner” we don’t really summon much, either in volume or variety. Honestly I would even prefer if Doom stayed passive but had a 100% to summon a doomguard, but no longer did any damage upon expiration. And obviously having the doomguard do AoE damage again.
If it’s a question of APM, make it so when a mob dies it doesn’t completely reset the cooldown, just takes like 15-20 seconds off it. So if you put Doom on something that dies 2 seconds later, you still have to wait 8-13 seconds before you can put another one down.
If it’s a question of damage, just nerf the damage that comes from the actual Doom explosion. The damage should be focused more on the doomguard and less on the Doom explosion anyway, in my opinion.
Sure, you could say its just a filler spell that you hit on cooldown between shadow bolts, but isn’t that how every ability is? You could say that almost every other spell in our kit that has a cooldown, other than some common sense nuance like not ripping cooldowns when a mob pack is almost dead or something.
If the Doom changes stick and it stays as a passive that gets applied via using demon cores, then I hope they revert the dog changes so they have a 100% chance to generate cores again. We need to have something to rely on so all our cores aren’t RNG, either from imps or from dogs.
1 Like
Today’s changes had ups and downs.
The wins:
-Death’s Embrace buffed, still far off from its original version in Legion.
-Malediction change reverted, back to standard crit chance
-Doom becomes passive and works like the 2/4 set again.
-Unstable Rifts comes back
-Chaos Incarnate gets fixed/buffed?
-RDF gets buffed
The Ls:
-PVP changes were just lacking. No new exciting talents. Fel Lord buff is decent, but very situational.
-An L in my book but a W for the forums for Infernal Bolt getting a higher cast time.
-Seeds of their demise got nuked from orbit, it was probably too powerful, but just the fast chaos bolt piece of this talent made destruction feel really good without needing to to go Diabolist for another fast bolt talent. Flashpoint is a hollow shell of its former glory and 2 stacks of Flashpoint is a whopping 4% haste, or 2% in pvp (please fix, and by fix I mean massively buff).
-Zevrim’s Resilience gets a buff instead of a rework. Please try to understand how this talent works against itself. You lose this healing as soon as your dark pact is gone and there are few times when it ever lasts the full 20 second in any content. Additionally, it heals for next to nothing. Passive troll regen is probably more impactful. Finally, the correct way to use Dark Pact is at high HP for a bigger shield, which means any healing (even if buffed by 10000%, is quickly negated). Please just remove or rework this talent. It is counterintuitive to the talent it complements and is grossly undertuned. Recommendation: Dark Pact now applies to 3 other nearby allies at 50% effectiveness.
-Gorefiend’s Resolve replacing spirited away…okay I know a lot of people asked for instant soulstone and these passive “better brez” talents are situationally heplful, but you took out an exciting and flavorful talent for this. Spirited Away looked like a fun way to finally get Burning Rush in PVP or save some points in the class tree.
-Dimension Ripper still works on incinerate, and barely procs with how little we are casting incinerate in multi target scenarios. Consider moving this to immolate like the current tierset and buffing baseline rift or adding a talent for flame rift.
2 Likes
Regarding talent placement for Destruction, I’m a big fan of the current position of Summon Infernal (middle of the tree) and Dimensional Rift (bottom portion of the tree.) I have two primary criticisms regarding the changes:
I personally don’t like a choice node between Crashing Chaos and Rain of Chaos, while also removing Infernal Brand. This overall means Infernal will be less powerful than its already so-so power level. I would say the easiest solution is move Eradication left one column, above Devastation, put Crashing Chaos in its place, then have Rain of Chaos be a choice node with Infernal Brand. This levels a diminished power level than having all of the nodes together, while also allowing class fantasy with Rain of Chaos, and cooldown power with Crashing Chaos.
The other criticism is for Dimensional Rift, namely the loss of talents associated with it. I agree 5 was likely too many options, however I feel Dimension Ripper was among the more viable options to be cut rather than the others. My suggestion is make Unstable Rifts baseline functionality into Dimensional Rift and combine Flame Rift with Lessons of Space Time. Combining Flame Rift and Space Time could be an interesting class fantasy option by moving from the “Flame Rift” visual effect to the Cosmic Rift visual effect from the first boss of the recently tested raid. This way, you have a powerful capstone node that functions with Dimensional Rift, rift has a place in AOE situations, and it builds into an interesting class fantasy. Dimension Ripper could be cut, or returned to its original functionality from the DF S3 tierset of proccing off Immolate rather than Incinerate.
Of the two, I find Dimensional Rift changes could be far more interesting, I love Infernal and would love to see it be a powerful option, but its place will not change regardless, while I feel having more Rift options allows more diversity within the tree. Currently I am concerned you will not play Rift in most any situation, Soul Fire for optimal single-target, and likely a combination of talents that does not include Soul Fire or Dimensional Rift for AOE, mostly just passive damage increases or QOL buffs to abilities.
Overall, I am very happy with the changes that have been put forward, and I think slight changes could bring an extremely interesting class fantasy that has strong build diversity.
5 Likes
IDK if it’s been reported yet or if anyone is aware, but the Demo talents Foul Mouth (the damage portion), Shadowtouched, and The Houndmaster’s Gambit are all completely nonfunctional. They do not modify damage at all.
5 Likes
Great job!
In general people take these for granted as they are paying a sub to play this game. **
This post is a shout out, just to appreciate the folks collecting our feedback, passing it along, those acting on it, reiterating and making meaningful/fun changes to warlock talent trees.
**
3 Likes
CDF is still broken. there are times where the spell breaks and is not castable even tho immolates/withers are present. recasting a new immolate/wither will then allow cdf to be casted again. this is a bug that has been present in retail since atleast df s2. Almost like cdf forgets that there are still immolates active. Rift still appears to be incredibly weak, the proc rate for rift refunds seems to be incredibly low to where its not even worth taking dimensional ripper and takes too many other necessary points to try and force rift play at all. The same with trying to get that 3rd point into demonfire mastery. Just feels like we need additional talent points to get what we need, or there are just too many nodes in cdf/rift to make it worth taking 1 ability over more beneficial/necessary talent nodes. In s3 rift was good because of the tier set alone and it was mainly due to the flame rift and cleaving aspect of it as well as it only being 1 talent node vs 3 points in beta. the only downside it had in retail with the tier set was being forced to pick it over chaos incarnate
4 Likes
Please change the Soul Harvester Demon Soul proc to a Soulkeeper instead!
A random shadow fiend feels bad, you pruned one of the coolest Legion demons from the class tree, and a Soul Keeper is more thematic to Soul Harvesting than some shadow fiend.
Please return Life Drain back to Affliction if you won’t update the drain soul visuals from Vanilla. It’s not like Life Drain heals for anything anymore.
Affliction is a very visually muted spec, especially since the dot VFX don’t show on larger hitboxes like bosses and Malefic Rapture is a placeholder Implosion copypaste animation.
3 Likes