Kalamazi Midnight Alpha Feedback
Now that we are in the later stages of Alpha testing, I wanted to make a post on the state of Warlock. Will likely follow up on it once Beta begins or with more Warlock changes. I want to touch mainly on general gameplay and talent choices/pathing today. Will likely elaborate more on niche topics/addons and nameplates when beta begins and we can test in competitive settings.
The return of UA spender affliction is something that I am quite excited about. In its current alpha form, it is a bit difficult to test with certain things being a bit buggy such as Darkglare not extending UA, certain Hero Talent changes not yet implemented, but I am sure that will come in a future build. The affliction spec tree does feel like it could potentially use a few changes that I want to highlight here.
Affliction Talent Tree Pathing
Gate 1 of the spec tree requires us to essentially spend 9 talent points to gain access to Drain Soul/SB, Summonerâs Embrace and SL/AC. While there IS the option to skip one of these talent nodes, they are all essentially required talents. Finding a way to reduce the ârequiredâ talent points in the first gate to 8 would go a long way in helping afflictions pathing in gate 2 and 3 of the spec tree. Potentially moving the Summonerâs Embrace talent node to gate 2/somewhere else of relevance.
Gate two feels a tad bloated, but also restrictive. In its current form, the aff spec tree requires you to invest what feels like an excessive amount of talent points into AOE/M+ builds that use Seed of Corruption and Sow the Seeds. Talents such as Xaviusâs Gambit and Seeds of Corruption could potentially be made 1 point talents (down from 2), which would free up additional points being spent in the middle section of the spec tree. Potentially something along the lines of combining Haunt/Improved Haunt and Dark Harvest/Cull the Weak into one talent would also give a bit of flexibility when it comes to acquiring additional talent points in this section. In its current form, it feels like we are unable to select talents that we want access to in a variety of settings due to talent point availability or talents that seem a bit âbloatedâ, like the Haunt talents, Dark Harvest/cull and Gambit/Seeds of Corruption being 2 point investments.
Gate three also feels a bit limited when it comes to building AOE/M+ builds, due to the fact that you are essentially required to spend 7-8 points in required abilities, being Relinquished, Patient Zero, Sow the Seeds, Nocturnal Yield, Shared Instability and Creeping Death. This leaves very little room for points being spent in more single target/prio damage based abilities such as Fatal Echoes, Cloying Power, Ravenous Afflictions and Cascading Calamity/Soul Miser. Itâs understandable that we should not be able to acquire all of our capstone talents, but it feels quite limited at the moment once we select the "required M+/Seedâ talents. Potentially condensing/combining talent points into one another, such as Malevolent Visionary and Darkglare or Sow the Seeds and Patient Zero, could go a long way in offering a bit of freedom to Affliction when choosing capstone talent in varying settings. There is also a world where Relinquished and Fatal Echoes could become 1 point talent nodes, which also frees up points to be spent in other areas.
Cloying Power is also an interesting talent that has relevance in APE based settings, but is nearly unreachable in builds that are made for AOE, due to it being gated behind spending 2 talent points in Fatal Echoes to reach Cloying Power. Cloying does universal relevancy, so shifting it to a more central location could be an option.
I am a bit worried in its current form that Affliction will suffer in single target/prio damage when it comes to M+ or AOE scenarios due to how few points are remaining after our mandatory talents are chosen.
Shared Agony and Agony Refreshes
As our new way of spreading and maintaining Agony, this ability needs to be âsmartâ, prioritizing refreshes on mobs with a lower remaining duration in Agony. Currently, it refreshes randomly, often on the same mobs over and over. It would also be nice if there was some kind of functionality baked into potentially seed of corruption OR whenever we spend a soul shard, that our active Agonyâs have their duration increased by potentially 1-1.5 seconds or so. The new functionality of Shared Agony is nice in many ways, but will also result in us applying/reapplying agony more than we did with Vile Taint existing.
The implementation of the 9 imp âcapâ to Demonology in Midnight has brought with it many changes to the spec, but at the same time, its core gameplay still remains similar to where it was in TWW. We still have Vilefiend, Dreadstalkers, Imps, Tyrand and a few new demons thanks to our Apex talents. I do like the changes made to Vilefiend, where it is not summoned by casting Call Dreadstalkers, and itâs also nice to see Doomguard back with his Shadowbolt Volleys. Thematically, having armor plated Tyrants and other new demon effects is exciting, but it feels like something is missing.
It feels that when playing Demo in Midnight, that I am just a bystander in a sense. I am no longer able to continuously summon an army of imps with every Hand of Guldan cast and then build that army of imps to 20+ active units with my Demonic Tyrant, I am limited to 9.
That plus the removal of Grimoire: Felguard and Demonic Strength/Bilescourge Bombers has left Demo feeling a tad bit empty. I feel as if I am simply casting Shadowbolt/Demonbolt and then Eye of Gulâdan for 50 seconds out of every 1-minute CD window and the demons that are being summoned arenât being summoned by me, their essentially just passively spawning in while I cast Shadowbolt, the bystander effect. You do cast Dreadstalkers every 20 seconds, but this leaves Demoâs rotation feeling quite empty, to the point of it feeling nearly too simplified.
I understand the reasoning behind the 9 imp âcapâ, but do feel that we could elaborate upon other Demo abilities to make the spec a bit more exciting to play, while also breaking up the simple builder/spender rotation that currently exists in Midnight.
Axe Toss and Doomguard Bracers
Finding a way to separate the stun aspect of Axe Toss from the interrupt would go a long way for Demoâs functionality in M+. Having this ability be both is quite limiting in scenarios where you want to kick a spell, but not stun the mob. Demo locks cannot kick mobs in from range with it in its current form either, further limiting the toolkit. At this point, having the option to summon a Felhunter to kick once every 30 seconds (via a new spell) would be welcome. Axe toss could then return to being just a stun, while also giving Demonology the ability to kick.
Antoran Armaments certainly is thematic, but sadly will rarely (if ever) be used in PVE. If we want to retain the 5% damage amp portion of the talent, reintroducing some kind of ability that causes your Felguard to do additional damage (Demonic Strength or something of the sort) could be swapped into that talent position. This would also help further drive home the issue of wanting to make it clear that your Felguard is Demoâs main pet, which is something that was mentioned in an earlier alpha build.
Antoran Armaments
An armor plated, cleaving Demonic Tyrant is VERY cool, but sadly does very little damage. The ability likely needs significant buffs for it to be chosen in relevant settings. With the imp cap also being introduced, I think there is a case that can be made for a Demonic Consumption/Reign of Tyranny level damage increase to be baked into Antoran. Tyrant setup now is excessively simple, getting max value out of your Tyrant is no longer much of a concern with pet min-maxxing. Bringing back that 1-minute âburstâ damage profile that Demonology was known for would be quite exciting and make it feel like your cooldowns matter once again.
Eye of Gulâdan
Thematically, Eye of Guldan is an exciting ability. Sadly when it comes to actual gameplay, it feels a bit lacking. Shifting from having no limit on the number of imps you can control in TWW, to a max of 9 in Midnight is quite jarring initially. It feels as if Eye of Guldan should honestly âfeelâ more rewarding than it does. Visually, itâs a simple, green laser that shoots quickly and then disappears, and this is our main filler spell that we cast for essentially 50 seconds out of every minute. Having Eye of Guldan potentially summon literal Eyes of Guldan (like we used to have with Nether Portal) that shoot red death beams every Eye cast would honestly make the ability feel much more exciting, even if itâs just a visual effect. It would in a sense fill a similar role to what old, uncapped Hand of Guldan did, but instead Eye of Guldan would summon 3 Eyeballs that have no interactions with Implosion or other abilities. There would also not need to be a cap on said effect like there are imps, so you could essentially have 6-9 (or even more) Eyes of Guldan active at once. You could even change the âEvil Eyeâ capstone talent into one that has a chance of summoning twice the amount of eyes of guldan possibly, which makes things even more visually rewarding.
There is also the issue of Eye of Guldan not cleaving in cleave based settings like Hand of Guldan does. While this CAN be fixed with tuning of other abilities in our cleave toolkit, having Eye of Guldan (or Eyes of Guldan, if the above suggestion is taken into account) hit multiple targets would help with our damage profile and be visually quite appealing.
I really do feel this would go a long way in adding some âsummoner identityâ back to Demonology in Midnight, while not fighting against the imp cap or any other changes made to the spec. Being able to still âsummonâ an army of demons (or in this case, eyeballs) would feel quite rewarding IMO and would not require massive changes to what has already been built in Midnight.
Ancient Imps
Ancient Imps currently have an internal timer which is checked every 15 seconds, which causes them to spawn or respawn if they have died by any means. This means that it is quite beneficial to have a way to track the internal cycling of the, but we simply donât have a way to do so. The ability itself might need some kind of changes or overhaul to simplify this issue, but I am not sure what it looks like exactly.
Sac Souls
Just a quick mention but in its current form will likely not ever be played with a cap of 9 imps max. Needs significant buffs or hopefully, it changed to a different ability.
Destruction I feel has received a good bit of quality changes. Havoc extension and some QOL via Roaring Blaze and Improved Conflagrate feel good to play with. I feel that most of Destructions issues lie within Gate 3 aka, its capstones. Destruction also has a total of 44 spec tree talent point options (not including Apex talents), which is actually two more than it has on retail (42). This leads to the spec feeling a bit limited on overall talent point options, but makes it a candidate for talent point reduction of some abilities such as Conflagration of Chaos, Ruin, Destructive Rapidity, Backlash and Ashen Remains.
Improved Havoc and Mayhem
Having Havoc last 20 total seconds via Improved Havoc feels amazing! With IH being a node thatâs directly connected to Mayhem as well, it does feel like Mayhem should benefit in some additional form when it comes to duration extension. I believe in its current form, Mayhem is only benefitting from the damage increase that IH brings. Adding a 1-2 second Mayhem duration extension feels like itâs possible, but may depend on the proc chance of Mayhem itself.
Mayhem also can proc on your main target, which is quite annoying and should likely be changed. Having to change targets before casting/mid cast feels awkward when you donât notice it instantly and leads to clunky gameplay at times.
Roaring Blaze
As our new way of spreading and maintaining Immolate/Wither outside of Cata, this ability needs to be âsmartâ, prioritizing refreshes on mobs with a lower remaining duration in Immo/Wither. Currently, it refreshes randomly, often on the same mobs over and over.
Lake of Fire
I quite enjoy Lake of Fire, but also know that mobs will often be pulled out of the effect in M+, an issue that plagues every ground-placed effect in WoW. I do think that making the visual for Lake of Fire more defined would help tanks/other players a good but when it comes to keeping mobs in the effect. I have been visualizing something along the lines of a Death Knights Defile effect, but a red color, essentially a true Lake of Fire.
Emberstorm and Fire and Brimstone
These talents should likely swap places, as Emberstorm is universally relevant, but F&B is not. Having to path through either Flashpoint or F&B to get Emberstorm feels a bit odd, especially in single target settings.
Avatar of Destruction
The changes to Avatar (gating it behind Soul Fire and D Rift) make the ability feel less exciting to me in Midnight. Having it remain in its current TWW form is a more exciting effect, knowing that he will spawn in every so often and provide a bit of extra damage/throughput.
Soul Fire
The new version of Soul Fire sadly, feels like a step backwards from where it is in TWW. Soul Fire is in a state in TWW where it finally feels rewarding and exciting to hit, when you receive Decimation procs. The removal of Decimation has made the spell feel worse to press as a whole, even with the recent cast time reduction change. Soul Fire and Decimation is a combo that I feel should stay in Midnight. It is always exciting seeing a random proc come in, a button glow and pressing it, knowing that you are doing something impactful. Soul Fire in its new form does not feel that way, even if it summons an Overfiend.
Dimensional Rift
D Rift feels like it has so much potential. Older abilities like Flame Rift, Lessons of Space Time, Immolate Charge resets and other effects have made it a very exciting button to press in the past, but sadly they donât exist in Midnight. Having Overfiend as a ârewardâ for hitting a Chaos Rift feels a bit lackluster, as if Overfiend can stand on his own, like in TWW. Having a capstone section of the spec tree that builds upon D Rift however, would give the opportunity to bring back/tweak other Rift based effects (mentioned above) that made Rift feel exciting and rewarding to play with.
The cleaving aspect of Dimensional Embers being baked passively into D Rift would be cool as well. It would add a bit of stacked cleave/M+ relevance to the ability, which itâs currently lacking.
Mark of Ruvaraad
Feels a bit like a placeholder talent. Could be removed to offer additional capstone talent flexibility if changes are made to other talents.
DFI/CDF and DFM
The removal of Immolate/Wither extensions from the CDF talent row is unfortunate and the ability itself does not really feel capstone worthy. In its TWW form, its mainly played in M+ due to the Immolate extension effect. While Roaring Blaze does help fill this gap in Midnight, it has left CDF and its counterparts quite lacking in both damage and honestly, excitement. Potentially making this a spell that we can cast/channel on the move, while also buffing the damage considerably, would make the effect feel much more worthy of being a capstone. In its current form however, I struggle to see a world where it will be selected over other capstone options or in general.
Conflagration of Chaos, Ruin, Destructive Rapidity, Backlash and Ashen Remains
It feels as if a handful of these spells could be made into (or back into) 1-point talents. Destructionâs talent tree has actually gained a raw number of potential talent points (44 in Midnight, up from 43 in TWW) which has made some talent feel hard to take/access and pathing a bit odd overall.
I donât want to spend too much time on the class tree at the moment. While some abilities do feel a tad bit awkward place pathing wise, you can essentially acquire whatever talent you want to the points we have available. I do want to touch on a few talents though specifically.
Fiendish Stride
The movement speed increase is nice, but Burning Rush simply hurts too much in TWW. Dragonflight saw a different version of Fiendish Stride that reduced our damage taken from Burning Rush by a much larger amount. Increasing Fiendish Strides damage reduction to maybe 30% or 40% would go a long way in helping Warlock mobility. The damage we take from BR simply feels a bit too high, especially if we are talented into fiendish, which is supposed to make it a bit more bearable.
Horrify and Howl of Terror
Making it that Horrify causes mobs feared by Howl of Terror to tremble in place would be a MASSIVE QoL increase for Warlock in PVE scenarios. Howl of Terror is rarely ever chosen in PVE due to the fact that fearing 5 mobs pretty much always means they are going to pull some surrounding pack, based on the way they flee. Having the ability to fear mobs in place as a form of AOE CC would go a very long way in helping improve Warlocks PVE M+ utility and honestly, feels like it should work that way in general based on how the ability tooltips read.
Fortified Soul
This talent was nerfed from granting 15% to 8% Soul Leech in a recent Alpha build. Soul Leech grants 10% as a baseline ability, so this talent essentially grants us nothing. If it were to grant an additional 8% Soul Leech, that would work, but in its current form, does not grant any effect.
Teachings of the Black Harvest
Black Harvest has so much potential to be a really cool ability. Potentially allowing us to summon greater versions of our current demons, or reskinning them. Granting additional damage abilities or even just a second pet once every couple of minutes would be really cool. Sadly, the effects that it grants are quite lacking. An overhaul that adds some Warlock-esque flavor to the ability would be really cool!
Frequent Traveler
There have been times where I am spamming Gateway and I am essentially âdouble debuffedâ from taking the gate once. I assume tis is from spamming the Gateway, but makes me sorry this may end up being the case with Gateway control shards. It also feels like there should be two different colored debuffs you get when talented into Frequent Traveler, to quickly recognize if I can gate a second time, without having to hover over the debuff itself. Maybe a Yellow debuff for 1 charge remaining and a Red debuff for 0 charges.
Blight of X and Pacts
Exciting ability, but feels a bit overcomplicated with the recent changes to curses and âpactsâ. To simplify the ability (while also having some nostalgia), Impending Catastrophe âsmartâ cursing could be added to the effect, where it casts either Weakness or Tongues on the mob, based on what kind of mob it is, caster vs melee.
There is also a world where hitting the effect simply empowers curses that you already have active on mobs, sort of like a mass Amplify Curse for active effects. This would retain Weakness and Tongues effects, but also let you mass Amplify Exhaustion, which can be quite strong.
Pacts themselves feel a bit overcomplicated versus just having 3 buttons for Curses. I would assume the pact change was made partially to condense Curse keybinds as well as for Blight of X applications, but it feels a bit much. I think there is a world where we can have curses back, while also maintaining curse choice with Blight.
Thanks for reading my novel!
Kalamazi