Shadowlands Beta/PTR Compiled Feedback Thread

Classes Warlock
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AFFLICTION WARLOCKS
In regards to Affliction, i feel like blizzard can’t decide what kind of DPS they want us to be, It is torn between a single target burst spec and a cleave multi dot spec but falling short at both. At its core Affliction is a steady damage Rot/Cleave spec and i feel like the dev’s have lost sight of this.

Unstabel Affliction
Though i think the change from UA being our spender is a very good change, the choice to make it 1 target only seem very poor to me and it is all based around the Affliction Play-style being a constant pressure rot spec at its core.

Drainsoul vs Shadowbolt
The argument of Drainsoul vs Shadowbolt only came about after legion because the class has devolved from the maintenance spec if wants to be. Shadowbolt cannot fit into such a high APM class design were as a slower maintenance spec would suit it a lot better.

Malefic Rapture & Haunt
Malefic Rapture is a very good concept for a Soulshard spender but i feel like Affliction already had the making of the perfect spender in Haunt. i feel it would be awesome if the two spells were combined to be the spender spell. if haunt gave the same effect as Rapture but put the debuff on the primary target.

Dark Glare
The Popular opinion by most warlocks is that Dark Glare is a very lackluster cool down. I see the appeal of making our DPS cooldown a summoned demon from an aesthetics point of view but by the same argument we are not demonology warlocks our source of power is supposed to be derived from curses and spells we ourselves cast on our foes. If swapping Dark Glare and Dark Soul around is such a bad idea i think i would prefer having no baseline DPS cooldown and just tuning our damage up a bit to compensate.

RNG/Balancing
Understanding that the numbers will constantly be changed through alpha and beta even past launch I dont want to focus on the numbers but more about the ease of balancing without devaluing the spec. The way that malefic Raputer works with soul shards is a slippery slope not because of the ability itself but more on the way soul shards are generated. It can very easily lead to alot of feast or famine scenarios in fights with a warlock doing ridiculous damage because he gets alot of shard procs on doing no damage because he gets only afew.

so much value being placed on soul shards in affliction does not seem like a positive to me, it should be used as something to get the spec more flavour and diversity not be its core mechanic, it may work very well for Destruction (which is a bursty builder spender spec) that does not mean it is right for Affliction (which is a slower, more methodical spec).

Conclusion TL;DR
Cataclysm for me was maybe the best iteration of Affliction that the developers have made, it was the true class fantasy. Yes those were different times but learning from the past isn’t always learning from mistakes we can also learn from the good choices we make.

throughout Wow warlock has always been played by a certain type of person because of its playstyle and the way that it drifts from its class identity into a shadow of what it could be alot of people are losing the spec we love and the challenges we were face with that not many other people even new existed in the class.

  • The return of some of the warlock cursed was a welcome change
  • Nobody likes Dark Glare
  • Unstable Affliction should be multi target
  • Malefic Rapture might be to unstable with RNG
  • To much APM in the spec for shadowbolt
  • Take notes from the Cataclysm playstyle
3 Likes
164

We have some bad talents for demo:
Nether Portal is a cool idea but need a rework, It’s too clunky.

Sacrificed Souls, Soul conduit and From the Shadows are very boring, we could have more interesting passive talents, like Grimoire of Supremacy and with new demons like fel lord and dread lord.

I like DS and Soul strike but I don’t like our dependency of felguard, It could be used with every pet maybe? A change of Demonic strenght to a immolation aura effect or demonwrath could be good.

What do you guys think about Demonic Tyrant and Vilefiend cast time? I’d love that two being instant cast, Tyrant having a cast time looks very wrong to me.

For doom, if I’m right during Pandaria and WOD Doom ticked every 8-10 seconds and with a crit it summoned a imp. Now my suggestion:
Make a doom that ticks every 15 seconds(to all specs) and a talent for Demon that change it to tick every 8 seconds again mergin it with half Inner demon talent, every time it ticks have a chance to summon a random demon. Sounds more fun, at least I wouldn’t mind get it as talent.

And Inner demons could focus in generate more Imps, guess 5 imps up all the time. It would help with ramp time, we’d have more imps to sacrifice for power shiphon, implosion or demonic consumption(maybe too strong?). And we would get a little more sinergy between talents.

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The only azerite trait and or essence that I do actually enjoy as a destruction warlock is Crashing Chaos and Vision of Perfection. while Crashing Chaos and Vision of perfection do combo nice together despite when you activate summon Infernal and Crashing Chaos procs over it removing most of the added damage of the chaos bolt does because of the stacks. I felt that it is inline with with class fantasy summoning a bunch of infernals kinda like how we summoned a bunch of infernals due to the artifact weapon in legion.

If something like this were to carry over but without conflicting with one another it’d be nice.

Another thing is maybe we should honestly be pushing for changes for the next expansion after shadowlands because with the way I see it, we are not going to see significant class changes. What I’ve noticed over the years is that the developers; once they do something it usually means that it is set in stone and nothing we do or say will change their minds because they are moving onto another part of the game to complete. That has always been in the back of my mind and it was kinda confirmed with the BFA alpha/beta. I was lucky enough to get invited into the alpha and virtually nothing changed from alpha to beta to live release. The only thing that happened was the poor conception of azerite gear and bug fixes.

I will remain hopeful and pray that our feed back and changes will not fall on deaf ears but I also want to see that we are having an effect on the development going into shadowlands in the coming months

1 Like
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UA stacking and UA shard spending is gone and needs to stay gone, but that was literally the mechanic that made darkglare relevant at its current state. darkglare, in concordance with stacking UAs, is what gave affliction nutty single target burst every 3 minutes

but with UA stacking gone, darkglare is substantially less powerful. it either needs to be scrapped or lowered in its cooldown, because right now all it does is extend your dots. it gains a lot of value in AoE multidot scenarios, but it will never be as strong as it was in BFA because you can’t extend a chain of UAs for stupid amounts of damage.

malefic rapture is a cool ability, but scaling off of pure spellpower and not dot damage itself is not an idea i’m a fan of.

the old malefic grasp either made your dots tick harder (in legion) or just made them instantly tick for a smaller percentage of what they would normally do (before legion). this actually made dots feel impactful because you were seeing your dots do damage, not rapture, which scales off of how many dots you have out but not the dots themselves.

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EU player here that made an US account just to be able to post after reading, and strongly, disagreeing with the other pinned feedback thread, since the posts mostly say that Z and X feels bad without going into much detail as to why those things feel bad.

To start of; I don’t care the slightest about cosmetic stuff and I think those should be left out of a feedback thread when it comes to something as major as a new expansion where we have the potential to influense and improve our class beyond cosmetics and vanity.

I’m mostly into the Destruction spec so I won’t try to come with suggestions for other specs since I’ve rarely ever played them.

Dream case scenario;

  • Revert destruction to the way it was in MoP

Probably has close to zero chance of ever happening but it always feels like it’s worth mentioning. As to why, there’s plenty of older threads explaining why it was one of the most fun versions of to Warlock to play.
Albeit it was a bit overtuned most likely, but numbers are more easily fixed than core designs.

More likely wishes;

  • The current itteration of Warlock with less reliance on your major cooldowns.

Destruction currently has two major damage cooldowns, that being “Summon Infernal” and “Dark Soul: Instability”.
Infernal isn’t as much a damage cooldown as it is a cooldown to increase your resources generated to deal damage. I.e. gain soul shards to spend on Chaos Bolt.
Problem, Imo, is that the Grimoire of Supremacy is way too good to pass up on. You can EASILY get 10+ stacks of it during any fight, essentially doubling the damage of your Chaos Bolts. No other talent on that row comes even close to having that amount of potential impact.
So within those 30 seconds (more realistically 15 sec due to the ramp-up) you feel like an actual god with an insanely hard hitting ability. You get way up to the top of your damage meter in PvE and in PvP everyone runs away from you in fear;
And because of that, Chaos Bolt can’t hit too hard outside of that cooldown. Since it would get amplified to even crazier amounts during Infernal if it did.

So for the remaining 2 ½ minutes your damage goes back to being extremely mediocore, you get to watch everyone else surpass you on damage meters in PvE and in PvP you are nowhere near as much of a threat.

Imo this is really a really, not necessarily bad design, but it ends up being extremely boring on both ends.

PvP example;

  • You pop Infernal and then you get to play ring around the rosie with your opponents, since everyone should know that when you see Infernal pop you GTFO and run around the pillar so the Warlock can’t get any casts off on you.

It’s a really bad feeling for the Warlock who doesn’t have the mobility to keep up with everyone elses mobility and I would assume that it’s super boring for the opponents to do nothing but run around a pillar/los:sing for 30 seconds until they can go back in.

PvE example;

  • During some encounters you are only able to get out one or maybe two infernals, just short of being able to get out your third one before the fight is over

So your damage and as such, impact. Is below what it could potentially be had you been able to get in another Infernal.
I’m not a huge PvE player but I can’t be alone in thinking that it really sucks when the fight length doesn’t match up with your insane cooldown window.
Alternatively you could also get targeted by some mechanic where you’re not able to DPS, something where you have to get away from your raid to drop of a damaging puddle or somesuch, and it just so happens to be right after you pop cooldowns.

Solution?
Take all that stupidly high damage you gain from Grim:Supremacy, spread it around into all your other spells and then remove Grim:Supremacy entirely.
It must be such a massive pain to balance a spec around that talent that it can’t be worth keeping.
Also revert Havoc into the old version where it duplicated X amount of spells on a second target of your choosing. That way the new increased damage on all of your spells won’t make Havoc completely busted.

Rambling aside.
I think the core design of Destruction is fine at the moment albeit extremely simplistic with a very low skill ceiling.
From my perspective, relying less on your cooldowns to deal damage would at least make what we currently have more enjoyable.

With that said tho, I would vastly prefer ANY version of Warlock (mainly destruction) from anything pre-Legion.

3 Likes
168

Well, if shamans got WOD version back I think destro could get back to Pandaria, it’s basically the same spec but very pruned. I like Grim:Supremacy but it’s highly overtuned, It should be balance as burst talent that we’d pick only in very specific cases and Havoc is a problematic spell =/

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Affliction Feedback

I think these changes would be a huge step in the right direction.

  1. Remove dark glare or at the very least, swap it with dark soul. I do not enjoy long cool downs as affliction, esp this one as it does not fit affliction’s theme and takes away from the rot fantasy.

  2. Remove shadowbolt and give drain soul a fixed rate of building shards in addition to agony RNG shard generation to help mitigate the RNG. Drains just fit thematically so much better on affliction.

  3. Allow UA to be on multiple targets. Right now on alpha, watching affliction’s performance in dungeons, UA accounts for a much smaller part of the specs damage which somewhat feels off. This spell, given its cast time should feel more powerful, at the very least, it should be on par with the other dots in a spread/ cleave scenario. Duration of UA should be increased as well.

  4. Please please cut seed of corruption cast time by at least half. Consider it adding adding agony in addition to corruption and reduce explosion damage to compensate.

  5. Malefic rapture is a good implementation as long as it does not become too RNG heavy. Drain soul giving some baseline shard generation could help with this.

  6. Summoned demons need to be tougher in shadowlands esp given the new 6 sec cast time. They already felt too weak in BFA.

  7. I would love to see the return of soul link for affliction even if at a lower % mitigation.

  8. Im happy curses are back but please make them better utility wise. Where is curse of exhaustion? Curse of doom still seems worthless. Could be made more interesting like some kind of execute mechanic.

  9. Drain life and siphon life should feel more impactful healing wise.

  10. Id also like to see vile taint and phantom singularity removed or reworked so they interact with/ empower the dots we already have for AOE scenarios. I want this spec to be more about the dots and have less outlying spells like PS, VT, and dark glare.

Thanks

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EDIT:

Torghast abilities were datamined and I’ve added them to the first post. It appears to me that they’re moving a lot of the cool Artifact Traits and Azerite Traits into the Forged Torghast Legendary system, thereby once again balancing our class on the assumption of certain of those abilities. Could be wrong!

Didn’t realize this/somehow missed it, adding

The problem is MR is baseline whereas Haunt remains a talent. Do you want this MR-Haunt to be baseline or a talent?

Adding

Adding

Yeah but what do we do/we suggest for those talents? Baseline or scrap, in your opinion?

Adding

Already there!

Adding

The problem is to the contrary we’re back to MoP/Legion Malefic Grasp and a smaller mini version of Darkglare in a sense, where the end damage is dependent on us lining up/refreshing right before we cast it

Cosmetic stuff is always easiest to change given that it’s generally internal to a class and doesn’t depend on the entire balance of the whole game and negotiations/arguments with other Lead Class Developers (as Xelnath explained happened after he got fired). Warlocks are one of the least played classes and I believe the least represented class in any competitive scenario at the moment, and a lot of folks are “loyal” warlocks in that this has been our main independent of nerf bats or extreme changes over the past almost two decades (one decade for me, in October). The cosmetic stuff make’s one feel happy, especially if they were to add a Demon Enslaving Grimoire system like Hunter Tame/Stable, where we could all go to old content and enslave rares for our roster, as we have developed and suggested.

adding!

Adding!

1 Like
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My main issues with warlock are:

  1. Talents are trash. Some are old baseline abilities/passives, others are boring “pick this talent to increase damage” passives. There’s one talent (grimoire of sacrifice) that actually decreases dps because the rng is still out performed by imps. I’d like better choices that add variation and some that create different play styles
  2. Destro has been the same for 8 years. Might have gone through resource system changes, but its still build embers/shards with wet noodles to lob chaos bolts for huge damage.
4 Likes
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I am with you 100%

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I just feel like Demo is too weak compared to the other Specs. The Ramp time and slowness of the spec is what kills it. Personal opinion on this one but i believe Summon Vilefiend and Grimoire: Felguard should be baseline, our main gameplay as this spec is to summon an army of demons and keeping them up for as long as possible (Unless you play demonic consumption and soul conduit). Making Dreadstalkers, Demonic Tyrant, and Vilefiend instant cast would also help with the ramp up time. I also feel like Enslave Demon should be a Tame rather than what it is now. It’s a cool flavor spell for Locks but was never used in BFA and barely even in Legion. A variety of Demons to call forth as our main would be a welcome change. Besides that, a basic boost to our damage is probably what we could need simply, our spells and summons have no impact compared to the other specs. But then again, the other specs aren’t in a great state either.

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Anyone else concerned when they say stuff like this RIGHT at the start of Alpha launching?

Spec-wise, we’re making relatively minimal changes to Demonology and Destruction, as we feel their core rotations and talent options fit well with our goals for Shadowlands .

Source: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/world-of-warcraft/23310980/shadowlands-class-updates

I mean, come on. This is not what we should be hearing this early on when I’m sure there is a lot of people who play those specs (especially me in regards to Destruction) who would disagree completely.

3 Likes
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They always say the same thing so not even phased.

Edit/update:

Apparently Corruption is Instant in Affliction, cast time demo/destro

1 Like
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I said this in another thread before I realized this one was the place to go. Maybe true(?), I hope.

2 Likes
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That doesn’t make any sense to give corruption to destro/demo and not have it instant, honestly I don’t understand why.

  • Dev 1 - We need an ability to bring back to destro/demo without spending further development time on it

  • Dev 2 - Give the other 2 specs corruption that already exists in the game and add a cast time?

  • Dev 1 - Your a genius and we don’t have to waste any time or money on it.

Edit:

There is no problem using old assets and currently used assets, its like that for all businesses but stuff like this is just mind boggling.

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To be honest i’d rather it just not exist at all(for demo/destro)*. The game would be fine without curses returning let alone another spell to clutter the Warlock bars that isn’t gameplay changing. I’d rather see some talents like Fire and Brimestone/Cata on my bars baseline or Darksoul. You know, stuff that I actually want to press all the time and see their effect on my gameplay.

2 Likes
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in MoP and Cata, if I recall correctly, Corruption was the starter DoT and became Immolate for Destro and would become Doom for Demo in Meta.

I do miss a DoT for Demo.

Personally I think Corruption should be Aff only, Immolate for Destro, and Doom should be Demo only, and make the Doomguard % chance on tick with the tick being every 20ish seconds, or remove the Doomguard bit entirely and maybe give Demo a longer DPS cooldown via ye olde Summon Doomguard

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Yeah but what do we do/we suggest for those talents? Baseline or scrap, in your opinion?

Scrap for Soul Conduit and From the shadows, I dislike Sacrificed Souls, but some players like a little more damage for the warlock so I don’t know xD

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I do! It was such a fun cast. I quit and come back so much over the past 15 years that I get confused but that era was my favorite time as Lock(maybe Wrath?).

Between Soul Swap and dots just being more powerful?- I would much rather dots just be powerful enough to desire maintaining without the need for a swap or swap-over spell.

Ideally, dots should be balanced to were they are doing reasonable damage without gimmick(damage equal to or a bit less than any other classes basic rotation) and should really sting when we use Malefic Grasp/Rupture/Rapture/we it’s called this time.

Maintaining dots and then applying a “burn” like Malefic should be comparable to any other burst phase, since we can only effect one target at a time this way.

I understand that dots ticking with no “pressure spell” should likely do slightly less damage but they should ideally still be dangerous on their own merit. I think there are maybe 2-3 times I feel like this was the case with Affliction dots and those times where all pre-Cata.

2 Likes
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I actually really like the idea of using Corruption for Destro.
Destro is really lacking in abilities the rotation is too basic. Not that an extra dot really adds anything in difficulty but an extra damage button can make the rotation a little less dull, as long as it has a reason for us to use. Which is why it really just needs to generate shards (and hopefully they give it a little bit of a damage buff) and then we’ll be pumping out CB’s like Charred Remains Destro.

1 Like