I wish there was a dev that understood warlock

Classes Warlock
42

Dear sir, i think maybe due to the long paragraph i typed, you didnt read through my suggestion/thoughts.

But to put matters in context, here’s the part where you might left out

I honestly think it was an oversight on the designer’s part.

I recently decided to start a fresh lock just to see how Exile Reach works, which serves as the new player welcoming/guiding experience.

It is a great refresher, but also here’s the thing: in the new player experience, they do teach new warlock the spells and skill on how they work, with the basic shadowbolt and corruption being the bread and butter.

There is a specific quest that teaches how to use Corruption, and emphasizes this:
A warlock can do devastating damage with proper use of corruption

Not Affliction, not Demonology or even Destruction. A warlock, in general sense, regardless of spec.

I think that should be a great basis for the core warlock class identity: while each of our spec bring different specialty/flavor to match our preference/choices, there’s always an iconic and fundamental DoT spell that runs our engine.

Like i said, each spec bring different flavor/specialty to their place - so i’m sure we can work out Corruption to fit into Demonology without being too much upkeeping task, like what i suggested with Umbral Blaze changes.

If you are going to teach new-to-the-game warlocks on how important Corruption is for warlocks - doesn’t it make sense to have some aspect of that shared across all specs?

3 Likes
43

I think the idea is ok, its just the implementation is bad, yeah, perhaps is an oversight on the designer part, most of it is anyway.

I think this is how it should go:

Destro: Corruption → Immolation
Demo: Corruption → Doom
Afflic: Corruption → Stronger Corruption

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I think the new player experience is a much larger issue in general, especially when you have a talent system that is vague and has no way for interested players to look at proc or total damage values. Other classes suffer the same issue as this such as hunter and warrior.

In the past demo used corruption but it was largely phased out because it became an unnecessary global and an extra dot that ate up potential talent slots.

You would think this, but this also accomplishes the same thinking as having corruption be a part of the exile’s reach leveling experience for new players; if corruption is added to a talent like umbral blaze the assumption for many new players is that even without using umbral blaze (if it added corruption) it’s a worthwhile global because it’s a talent! Even if it is only a part of one specific talent it gives the impression that even without the talent it would be useful to press.

If you look at affliction the incentive for newer players is that corruption is incredibly strong because of the multiple talents that enable its damage. As destruction it gets replaced with another casted dot that also has multiple talents associated with its damage. As demonology throwing it into one talent would just serve as more confusion in my opinion.

Maybe I’m overestimating the ability of newer players to parse through information in a viable way (which is extremely poor in the base game at the current moment), but I still believe that having corruption be irrelevant for demonology is the best path forward.

This is a good summary that I would also agree with for sure (although doom would also have to be a spellbook dot which they tried and didn’t like – although I think it wasn’t too bad when I gave feedback during alpha).

1 Like
45

HoG applying Corruption through Umbral Blaze sounds amazingly thematic. But honestly, it would still be a turbo-trash tier talent. Corruption doesn’t roll, and Demo does not have a way to amp up Corruption’s damage outside of… Felsunder?

In fact, it works out to be about 8% weaker than current Umbral Blaze on single target. But obviously better in AoE.

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I mean when it comes to single target umbral braze shouldn’t even be in the trees at all at its current power level or proc rate.

It’s a really bad talent in general. The saving grace that they made it as a gatekeeping talent to pact of the imp mother just to probably have on their graphs “see players are picking it” and not that the only reason we are picking it is due to them deliberately holding pack of the imp mother hostage.

Otherwise no warlock players in the community would pick umbral braze if it was on a lone talent node. 0 uses for this talent and it’s practically useless for single target so no idea why it’s on the tree.

1 Like
47

At least bring back Inevitable Demise for affliction warlocks so questing is back to being fun again.

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I think doom as instant cast dot is fine, each tick of damage have a change to summon a doomguard or another random demon to fight

Sounds kinda neat right? similar to hunter black arrow dot damage could summon the hound

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49

I didn’t mind it, but they tried it during the beta and it was super apm intensive in an already gcd locked spec. They decided to shift it back to the demonbolt model of applying doom which is less interactive, but also significantly less to think about.

Doom was also an instant cast dot for the previous 6 years and it still really sucked. The gcd was always worth less than a shadowbolt to press, unless you were specifically playing pvp.

At the time I was originally giving feedback that having doom be a hasted dot instead of flat duration was also incredibly frustrating (but it was needed to make it on par with shadowbolt at the time).

The old doom of 1 minute with hasted tick rates in between would work in raid, but would be tough to balance in m+ unless they made it a choice node that made it explode after 20s or something, idk.

I’m not sure that they have a ton of room to iterate on doom aside from the procs (like doomguard and an imp spawning from doom). I’m also not sure where they’re going to fit in the reworked netherportal unless they completely overhaul the passive side of the capstone section and remove immutable hatred / guillotine.

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Devs dont think of “cool,” they think of “how easy to tune.”
Doom could do alot of things but like most things, gets chopped off at the knees and now its a rather boring spell.
I am not saying it needs to be an active spell, but it could do something other than what it does.

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Allow me to refresh our memories:

* Call Felhunter

* 40 yd range
* 1% of base mana
* 1 min cooldown
* Instant
* Invoke the power of Felhunter from the nether to instantly Spell Lock the enemy target. 
* Call Felhunter cannot be used if your current pet is a Felhunter.*

this. i dont pvp but i had the same idea but i was thinking of summoning the eye pet and when u use the interrupt it shoots a beam at the add spell locking it

2 Likes
52

excellent post. 100% agreed

It feels like every other class has been ‘modernized’ and made more convenient except for warlocks. So much micromanagement is required to get the most of the little utility we have…

Regarding players forgetting to use healthstones, maybe it could trigger automatically if the player drops below 20% HP (they can still activate it on-use if they choose). Or would that be too strong? Feels like every class has so many get-out-of-jail-free cards, so why not locks. This would also benefit everyone’s PvP experience while playing with a lock (mainly Blitz and RBGs)

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53

The core thing that Affliction needs is a Talent like Shadow Priest’s “Misery”.

A reliable way to drop your DoTs and get to fighting. Malefic Rapture should also be a passive, and not a spell. DoTs flare up and do the effect when it procs. Shadow Bolt / Drain Souls should be our main ability, and we should spend Soul Shards on curses and abilities that ramp up our DoT damage IMHO.

They took the Warlocks penchant for using the darkest of magic away, and gave it to Priests. That needs to change. While I feel that Priests should of always been using Holy magic from a range to attack, we have to be realistic; the ship’s sailed as Shadow’s been in the game a long time now.

So how to address this issue? How to recapture Affliction’s “Affliction” feel? Well there’s one angle still not tapped. I think what Affliction needs, is to dive into the offensive aspects of Blood Magic. Blood Death Knights tend to use it largely for defense and sustaining themselves. But what would a caster using such magic conjure as a fantasy?

I think Affliction becoming a “Hakkar / Soul Flaying” sort of spec that employed rot, blood poisoning and taint, being characterized by black and red magic would make Affliction visually distinct from Shadow Priests (which right now seem to almost be the better Dark Magic user). I’d play Priest if not for my loathing of Shadowform and how it destroys transmogs.

Some good examples of how this would work would be to look at Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and make Warlocks able to use a visual equivalency to the “Gloom” effects. They sap and weaken the enemy with afflictions, heavy blood theme like the Blood Trolls; and essentially following what Death Knights do (as lets face it the two classes have some cross over due to the first Gen. being Warlocks), but from afar.

Having Glyphs that turned demons into undead or aberrations like say Vectus would be another big win as well.

7 Likes
54

It should absolutely be an active spell. The alpha change was lame and lazy imo

55

Metal af. I want to try that.

56

Great ideas.

57

I respectfully disagree, as I firmly belief that DoTs should be a relevant part of every warlock’s toolkit, as we are the intended premier DoT class in this game.

But i think the solution to the ‘uselessness’ of Corruption for Demonology is fairly straight forward - give Corruption a useful bonus for Demonology at baseline, with talents to empower/enhance it.

Like the example i given earlier: make Corruption instant cast at baseline, with each tick has a chance to spawn wild imps. Talents like Umbral Blaze can be retuned to spread Corruption, we can even bring in others like Nightfall or Cunning Cruelty.

I still don’t get what is the purpose of slapping a cast time on Corruption/Immolate - as if our rotational spells wasn’t enough to keep us grounded as it is.

But yes, i’m happy to see all the ideas and feedback being posted.

2 Likes
58

I think it’s a really multi-faceted issue that has a couple of things that we’re still unsure of overall.

I’ll try and keep this short, although I could write a lot about this stuff.

I’m not entirely sure where you’re getting this from unless it’s legacy from previous expansions. Since legion, we’ve pivoted away from dot fantasy for the class to all three specs having unique niches and gameplay fantasy. Only affliction retains the dot fantasy at all (they’ve pivoted away from class fantasy to spec fantasy long ago when it comes to damage profiles).

Just to try and flesh out my response a bit more, here’s how the game defines lock at the character creation menu at the moment: Warlock’s cast Fire and Shadow magic to damage, drain, or curse their enemy. They summon demons as servants.

The one universal thing that ties the class together is demon summoning (both standard pet + cd pets) and a slow, tanky, casting playstyle. You’d have to go back nearly 10 years for us to even have corruption as part of the demo toolkit (warlords)

On the other hand, I definitely do agree that there needs to be more identity carved out in this direction though, and that there aren’t enough “cool” factors in the demo tree that interact with our kit outside of visual flare.

This is an extremely tough question to answer though. The only way you can make corruption in anyway useful to demonology is these three ways:

  1. Completely rework the spec to add corruption as a main dps rotational button that is useful in aoe and single target and doesn’t detract from other rotational buttons, while not becoming complicated in aoe (doesn’t seem particularly likely).
  2. Find a way to make corruption unusable in aoe to lower our ramp up time. This could be through specific talent options, but would further dilute our pet fantasy by taking away talent points in that area
  3. Make corruption auto apply using rotational buttons already like what you mentioned here:

The problem with this last point is: why? Why try and insert a new button, ruin the niche that doom has created, and have another dot you’ll have to shoehorn into talents. If it’s based on class fantasy, they could make doom have more interaction. If it’s based on gameplay, they’ve tried this type of dot gameplay for the better part of a decade through doom as a talent, and it was incredibly unpopular to nearly dead talent status (hence the rework).

Out of each of those ways to add corruption to our rotation, the most likely is making corruption auto apply through something like umbral blaze like you mention, but at that point just go back to hand of doom like it was in legion (which also spawns an imp when doom expires).

Lock already has extremely long dps setups and adding an extra gcd would just compound our issues for demo – just imagine having to ramp for tyrant and then you have to reapply corruption mid tyrant ramp just because you don’t have umbral blaze and it doesn’t apply automatically. It sounds like a nightmare to me. I’d rather they find ways to make us spawn more demons, or unique demons (looking at the HFC tier set for example) to increase our flavour that way for demonology.

2 Likes
59

Yeah, this is something I’ve been saying for a while as well.

I’m not entirely sold on the passive aspect of rapture like you mention here, but I am sold on our spender actually affecting our dots instead of our dots affecting our spender.

If you were to take an overall look at our class design philosophy, the spec mentions drains and damage over time effects as the most important factor of our fantasy. It doesn’t make much sense for our primary, and now nearly only, major spender to reverse this fantasy and make our dots actually lose the spotlight to direct damage.

I understand what they were going for in creating a satisfying mass aoe approach to dots that emphasizes a skill gap by maintaining dots on multiple targets, but that’s largely failed on multiple fronts. I think the design needs to take a new approach to whether dots should be center-stage, or if they require gameplay friction to make them important. I’m nearly 100% sure that giving dots friction (for example setup) is just the single worst option you could do at the moment, especially for aoe scenarios – nobody likes having to single target agony mobs instead of spending resources on something that feels worthwhile.

In the past I’ve advocated for leaning into a spender that increases dot tick rates which should synergize with talents that have your dots proc things for the player. Ideally in 2024, the procs would mean some form of instant cast, or a stacking “cumulator” buff that ends up with a large power boost at the end (think tempest for shamans atm).

I’m actually not sure why they’ve shied away from increasing dot tick rate in general, unless they’ve deliberately play-tested with this form of spenders and decided that it was too difficult or not “flashy” enough for current class design; ironically enough, rapture is definitely the worst visual spender in the game for any caster, and it’s not close either.

At this point, it’s so bleak for affliction that I’d just settle on making rapture instant. Throw us a bone blizzard.

1 Like
60

Quick reply but I just really want Aff to be about DoTs and DoT damage again. Rapture is a low budget Chaos Bolt and I agree that our spender should affect our DoT damage and not the other way around. I do miss having Shadowbolt and Drain Soul for execute but that isn’t as big an issue. Overall I do still enjoy all 3 specs but OP’s Demonology issue breakdown is pretty spot on in most cases.

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I’ve been saying for years now that Rapture should just cause our DoTs to flare up, rather than being its own thing. If only for flavor.

Currently Rapture does X damage per DoT on the target. Let’s say 30k for the sake of the argument. I believe it would be more thematic if Rapture caused each DoT to instantly tick for 30k instead. There would be 1-5 or whatever seperate damage events rather than just 1, but the end result would not be different

Although… maybe this would fry the servers in big AoE pulls. :rofl:

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