Just remember to never let them live this quote down.
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 .
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/23310980/shadowlands-class-updates#item11
This is the first time I’m posting in this forum after 10 years playing WoW. I started playing a Warlock back in MoP and never looked back since. The aesthetics, the class fantasy and the overall fell of destruction specially appeal to me so much that I felt compelled to at least make an attempt to help further the discussion on the topic.
The changes to AoE might suggest that we will not get Fire and Brimstone (FAB) back as baseline. I understand that Destruction is meant to be more of a cleave damaging spec than an AoE. So I expect Havoc to be reverted back to dealing full damage again and maybe lasting a 15s too. Maybe make Bane of Havoc a talent (replacing Cataclysm, which would be baseline) and keep the 40% reduction. The way it is now, we either Immolate a lot of targets at once with Cata every 30s, or Incinerate lots of targets with FAB. With BoH, we would be able to do both every 45s and open the possibility of talenting into Inferno for a change.
I find myself with no resources to cast RoF again and again, Havoc on CD, no Soul Shards, and Cata on CD. I miss Rain of Fire costing mana instead of shards, but with the changes to FAB I doubt that will happen.
From what I’ve found datamined on Wowhead, Chaos Bolt will continue to deal (2 * 120% spell power) of damage. In BFA we had the azerite traits that massively increased the damage of our CBs, how will we increase it’s damage in Shadowlands? Chaos Bolts’s high hitting damage is the staple of the spec.
The changes to Unending Resolve would make casting Chaos Bolt nearly impossible in PvP. If two people are attacking you, it’s already nearly certain that you’d be put into a semi-permanent silence, I’d like to know the reasons behind this change.
I agree with all issued addressed by other players in the forum but specially these two:
It really seems like we’re being pushed to play Affliction in Shadowlands. Demonology got reworked so many times, why can’t Destro get more attention?
Overall, I just hope Destro gets more attention and care than we’ve seen so far.
Of all the times to not rework Demo they pick the worst iteration (imo. ofc)
Unstable Affliction So this is super out of place and doesn’t make sense anymore. Its limited now to 1 target, not one per target. With an increased duration there is nothing about this spell that screams UNSTABLE. On top of that instead of spreading it to multiple targets and getting a benefit from its 20% damage increase, its not only for one target which is a nerf. This also nerfs Dark Glares extension properties a nerf.
Proposed fix?? Increase its damage buff from 20% to at 30-40% and have it explode at the end of its duration or have Darkglare explode it causing min aoe damage and resetting the duration of all other dots on the surrounding enemies.
Forgot to include in my last post, the reason I’m so salty about Demo’s interrupt is that Unholy’s pet has an interrupt as well as a stun. When they use dark transformation, Leap has an interrupt attached to it. People don’t usually know it even exists, as leap has a 5-30 yard range requirement and is set to autocast. And their pet has a stun too. Never really bothered about tanks having multiple interrupts, Prot paladin has been our enabler in m+, but another dps having such similar amounts of utility as demo, but 2 interrupts is just frustrating to me.
Adding Kalamazi’s feedback video
If anyone gets wind of another “compiled warlock video” by someone post it here to add to the first post, sometimes youtube algorithm doesn’t tell me went folks post even with the bell
CC Kalamazi, just saw he posted in the alpha thread, will incorporate his takes into the first post over the course of the day (during breaks from class/studying)
What about dispel protection in PVP??? not being able to target multiple targets with UA makes it unplayable, as you cant apply pressure anymore…
We haven’t had dispel protection since tbc, UA packed quite a punch and silenced the target. Wish we could have that back for affliction but there must be some kind of vendetta against the warlock class for them not give give us anything note worthy back or work on our class in general.
i have no comment on PVP as i am not experienced in the topic beyond like 1700cr, which is nowhere near enough for me to think my opinion carries weight in that field.
Sadly not a lot of actual good warlock PvP:ers left playing.
Most have either quit or moved on to better or more reliable classes.
To be fair, they just started making class changes.
To also be fair, they specifically called out demo and destro in the class changes blog post as “feeling fine and not in need of major changes”.
…I’m not optimistic. This is starting to feel like the Wrath of the Lich King beta all over again (you know, when our entire class got sidelined in order to add holy power to paladins).
I think the problem is that even ten years later, there still isn’t a single person on the dev team responsible for class anything who has significant time on a warlock.
Actually, there are a few classes that can probably make that claim.
But hey, I could be totally wrong and they could just not have gotten around to giving 'locks more than a quick glance yet.
My feedback…
I’m not in the alpha, so this is based 100% on data posted to wowhead and nothing else.
Affliction:
This spec is going to have major problems with ramp-up times and is going to be extremely anemic in dungeons. The faster mobs die, the worse aff is going to perform as is usual for any class with significant ramping. On the bright side, if you enjoy ramping damage the move away from burst windowing towards ramped sustain should be a very welcome one. However, if all you care about is “which build simms the best” you are definitely going to hate it.
Demonology:
I can see why the devs might be satisfied with demo, but it could still use a lot of love. There are a LOT of dead talents in that spec, and after what I’ve seen happen to prot warriors there is a lot of room for improvement for demo.
I mean…Dreadlash, Improved Curse of Doom, Power Siphon, From the Shadows, Tongue Tied, Inner Demons, and Nether Portal. All DoA as currently written.
…and ICoD and Tongue Tied are both new and I would already classify them as DoA. ICoD because doom is never going to proc much less spawn a doomguard (it’s proc chance is historically, hilariously non-existent) and, as mentioned by someone above, Tongue Tied is clearly a PvP talent that somehow made it onto our PvE talents page.
Destruction:
Personally, I’m not sure how any dev could call Destro “fine the way it is”. The spec is a bit of a nightmare with way too much reliance on static casting and no real focus to give it anything approaching an identity. It’s basically the mage’s fire spec, but worse and with an Imp. Frost does what destro does but is better in every single way.
Covenant Abilities:
What the hell is going on here? These abilities are terrible.
Decimating Bolt is going to be the top simming ability hands down, and taken because of its impact on execute phases (which are kind of important for anyone pushing hard content).
Scouring Tithe is probably the only ability I like because it seems custom built to work with the new affliction provided, of course, that it works with Malefic Rapture and we don’t get punked.
Impending Catastrophe just doesn’t have the umph necessary to ever compete with the other two. It can possibly do good cleave damage depending on your positioning, and has a nasty dot, but the CD just neuters the whole ability.
…and soul rot is just garbage.*
None of these abilities have any appreciative synergy with any of our talents or base mechanics. None of them do anything interesting. They’re just more damage.
* Soul Rot deals up to 400% spell power + a flat amount equal to your drain life times the number of targets with a 1 minute cooldown. If drain life is ‘d’ and 1-4 targets is ‘t’ then you can represent this as [(100/60 + d) * t] spellpower per second damage. Assuming maximum targets and 0 damage from drain life (to create a requirement) you get 0.6 * 4 or effectively 2.4% spell power damage per second + however much drain life deals.
Compare that to Scouring Tithe which does 144% spell power over 18 seconds, and which can be refreshed as soon as it falls off if the target doesn’t die.
So, because you have to wait for the CD to refresh you can add a 1 second grace period on top of the 2 second cast time (you cannot pre-cast a refresh) for an effective 21 second duration and divide 144% by 21 for ~6.9% spell power without any cleave/aoe requirements.
…and Decimating Bolt will effectively be better due to its effectiveness during a particularly vital execute phase.
Hell…even Impending Catastrophe is better than soul rot with a base damage vs. a single target of 4.35% spell power assuming the target doesn’t also take the 100% sp damage from the projectile and that there are no targets between the 'lock and the target.
Drain Life had better wreck face for soul rot to be worth taking.
My problem with soul rot is that it’s a tanking ability with significant built-in healing. My problem with that is that…warlocks are a DPS class. If we’re taking a crap-ton of damage we’re doing it wrong. On top of which it’s added sustain to a class that already has a metric ton of sustain, with no constructive outlet for excess sustain.
Soul Rot is nothing more than an extra emergency heal in a fancy Sow the Seeds package.
I would like to see quite a few changes. I do not have alpha so I do not think I can post in the alpha section but:
Affliction: This is the spec I play and some of these have been discussed, some have not been.
Talents:
Level 15 tier:
Nightfall: I would like to see this gone from Affliction. Shadowbolt itself should be gone from Affliction’s toolkit imo since it doesn’t fit the theme of a rot or drain. It fits more with Demo or Destro, so this talent should go over to their trees instead.
Deathbolt: This is the same problem as Nightfall…it just actually doesn’t fit with the theme of a rot or drain and should also just be removed from the spec.
Proposition: Drain soul should be baseline and should be the filler. I think, then, that all three talents in the level 15 tier can be a modifier of some sort to your drain.
Level 25 talent row: Cool row
WiA: I think they should make it so Agony also starts at 5 stacks or something like the trait, especially if it goes to 18 stacks.
Absolute Corruption: I love this talent to death, but, doesn’t this talent break the game mechanics or make it much harder for you guys to design encounters? The perma dot feature can be removed and make it buff corruption stronger and a longer duration in PvP for sure.
Siphon Life: I love this talent, too. One of my favorites since it heals. I think the healing component should be increased, at least in PvP since we get trainwrecked so hard and bad by melee this talent just can’t keep up even on 10+ targets.
Level 30 talent tier:
Demon Skin: Love this talent but i think this talent should go to 20% of max hp. That bubble goes down very quickly, especially in PvP.
Burning Rush: This talent should go baseline to all Warlocks so we have some kind of movement ability that doesn’t require full planning ahead. It’s very difficult to set up gateways and demonic circles well ahead of time in random bgs and not being able to get away from people, not to mention not even being nearly as tanky, isn’t fun. If we have no mobility then we should have full tankiness or vice versa.
Dark Pact: Good the way it is.
Suggestions for this tier: I suggest Burning Rush going baseline and instead bringing back the Soul Link talent everyone misses or Fel Armor that actually reduces the damage you take. Could even put an Unending Resolve talent in where it makes our defensive permanently up while reducing it down to like 15% damage reduction or something like it was before. I think Soul Link would be the best one to fit here, though, that way it’s three damage absorbtions that happen in different ways.
Level 35 tier : I actually like this tier the way it is.
Level 40 tier: This row is ehh.
Darkfury: I like that you did something more to it, but that’s not really enough. Instead of increasing it’s yards by 2, why not make it where it reduces cast time by 100% so Shadowfury becomes instant, or give a damage component to it. Two yards really isn’t anything special and feels very underwhelming for a talent, especially one later on in the tree.
Mortal Coil: I don’t mind this talent being here, but a lot of times that 3 seconds is just trinketed in PvP and fear breaks almost instantly when you have a lot of DoTs up so survivability is very low. Maybe give it a bigger healing component, say 30% of max health.
Tongue Tied: I feel this is more of a PvP talent over a PvE talent and should be removed from the tree and put into the PvP talents section.
Suggestions: Something else that is a CC type like Howl of Terror was said, but also make it where if it was Howl of Terror, the targets stand in place instead of run all over the place. We could also have something like “Fear takes more damage before it breaks and the target stays in place, trembling(or cowering.)” Something like that would do nicely, too. Could even use that for leveling so you can potentially pull more mobs.
Level 45 tier: This one’s ehh.
Shadow Embrace: I like the idea of it but it just, I don’t quite know how to explain the feeling from this one. It’s very Affliction-y but it feels weird to use…like not enough time between all of the DoT management and stuff on groups. Though maybe that’s the skill cap and stuff.
Haunt: This seriously feels a bit out of place to me. It’s nice, but, it’s a nuke that debuffs and increases the damage dealth to the target. I like the increased duration, too, but it gets dispelled in PvP so easily and so commonly. In PvE it’s a nice damage debuff.
Grimoire of Sacrifice: This is my personal favorite of this tier. I love the idea of this proc, but, it’s so lackluster compared to the amount of damage your minion deals it’s just numerically not worth taking.
Suggestions: I would like to see GoSac make a comeback, like one of the other expansions where it increased the damage you dealt by 10 or 15% while also giving you the Command Pet ability. If it’s going to stay in the state it’s in, then I would like to see either the damage buffed significantly, or the proc rate increased. I do not know how much RPPM it has, but it feels like it procs less than 10% of the time for me using it. Maybe make it where the more targets you have the higher the chance it procs.
Level 50 tier:
Soul Conduit: I straight up do not like this talent and think it should be removed and replaced with another talent.
Creeping Death: This talent is, by far, my favorite talent in the entire tree. I love the idea of faster DoTs and managing them more since it increases things to do. I kinda wish this would be more than 15% though, and if I remember correctly…I think this talent was set back in Legion to where it doesn’t generate as much soul shards?
Dark Soul: Misery: This is, by far, the most used talent and will continue to stay so probably. Affliction’s GCDs are capped already enough as it is between the DoTs and stuff that people take this so they have better GCD management, especially for multi target. This can stay where it is, or be baseline.
I think Affliction should get back the ramping execute talent we had before in Legion. That was very nice and wonderful, especially for progression. I really miss it. It started off at 1% increased damage at 35% enemy hp and ramped up to 50% as the target went down to 1% hp.
Spec feeling: I like that Shadow Land’s philosophy is Aff should focus more on DoT management and drains. I agree, but I do not agree with the Rapture spell that’s currently on the alpha. Right now it is a ST and AoE nuke based on DoTs being up. I feel that Affliction should have Soulburn back as a spell, and that should be the Soul Shard spender. I think that when you use Soulburn: Your next Agony applies to all targets within say, 3 yards or 5 yards of the target. Your next Siphon Life should be able to do the same thing as Agony. With the drain filler it would make it hit X number of enemies around the target. It can even interact with pet summons to make them instantly be summoned instead of a 6 second cast time. With Demonic Circle it increases movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds like it did before. You can interact with it on nearly every spell and occasion. With Unstable Affliction it could do something like make it tick twice as fast.
The spec itself is getting so much better on Alpha, but it’s not quite there. I think Affliction should not have an offensive CD and should be just straight up sustained damage and sustained spread/multi target damage. Affliction should get Inevitable Demise back and let that be it’s burst via Drain Soul or Drain Life based from Agony like it is right now. That would give it some burst in situations absolutely needed, while also just buffing it to the point that most of it’s damage actually is all or mostly all DoTs with some drains. This gives synergy with the Mastery it has that buffs DoT damage. At the end of a fight, when I look at my logs, I would like to see my top damage spells being all of my DoTs first: Agony, Corruption, SL, UA, all of them being top and especially Agony and Corruption.
Soul Harvest coming back as the base CD would be alright, too, and just get rid of DS:M. Shorter CD and a shorter amount of haste for a slightly longer duration, that is shorter on ST, is a good tradeoff I guess if we need a CD.
I never minded in Legion, before the nighthold fix to the artifact weapon, where my damage was slow/low at the start and then ramped up and kept going as the fight lasted longer. I think Affliction should go back to this route and stay at this route at its core. I understand that this kind of profile doesn’t fit well with shorter mythic+ keys and whatnot, but, that’s where talents like Sow the seeds could come in. I also would like to see Affliction get a PvP talent like the Death Knight has where their DoTs damage is reduced but their DoTs are undispellable. It infuriates me going against any healer where I just cannot do anything because they remove every single DoT with one GCD that took me 3-5 GCDs to put up. If UA’s dispel damage was like…50% of the target’s maximum HP, then that would be fine since our damage is neutered in those for PvP while we get it back up, but yeah… I would just prefer to have undispellable DoTs like Unholy does.
Afflction doesn’t need Darkglare. I would like Unstable Affliction to be a regular DoT that you can throw on multiple targets, like it was before in WoD. You could only have one UA on each target, but, you juggled all of the DoTs and it was a 1.5 second cast time with a 12 second duration. I’m ok with the 16 seconds or so it is on Alpha, just would like to be able to hit more than 1 target with it at a time. You can even remove the 10% damage buff component of it and keep the silence component for dispels.
Editing this post at this moment since I also found another thing I would like. I remember the artifact weapon giving you the ability to see the spirits of the targets you killed. I loved this idea and really wish we could have a glyph or something for aff to be able to see those ghosts again. It was very fun and very cool to be thinking of yourself as like a grim reaper.
Also on the list:
Soul Swap as a talent to transfer DoTs or put DoTs up. With Drain Soul baseline, give Sow the Seeds back as baseline baked into SoC, then in it’s place put a SoulBurn: MG talent where it makes your Drain Soul/Malefic Grasp hit multiple targets at once. Under the effects of Malefic Grasp this would make your drain force your DoTs to tick on multiple targets, thereby making them the star, costing a soul shard to use each time so you cannot use it all the time. This would also make Mastery way more valueable as well as Haste while keeping in line with the fantasy and also reducing Agony ramp time as well. It accomplishes a few things all at once, plus the effect/animation would look really cool!
I did like the Soul Effigy talent that turned ST fights into 2T fights and 2T into council. The main issue with Effigy when it was there in Legion was that it was clunky because you had to use your focus target and set it to the effigy. If this could be fixed where it was a boss frame or something to make it easier to see/target, then having this back would be very nice as well in my opinion.
PvP I would like drain mana to come back so I can drain healer’s mana like I was able to before a long time ago, but if not, then oh well.
Some people also have said about Soul Flame. I loved this so much! I wish this would return, even as a talent and we can just have that for mythic+ and AoE instead of anything else. I’d be perfectly fine with Soul Flame from the Artifact Weapon coming back baseline or as a talent.
That’s all of the edited ones I could think of for now, will edit more as I think of more.
A change I would be ok with is: Rapture does a little bit of damage, just enough to explode your SoC on the targets or it gets an increased cost in Soul Shards to compensate. The reasoning for this would be so the DoTs can play a more important role in your damage and this would be a quick burst to get them up there. It would also keep people from wanting to shy away from our Mastery stat, as that increases DoT damage but not Rapture damage, like with the essences do on BFA.
I think they should also edit our Mastery stat to also include drains in it as well.
My main concept here is: Affliction’s damage should mainly be from its DoTs and drains in every circumstance/situation. Other things have a place, but they should not be at the top 5 damage spots of your spells list, unless you didn’t use at least 5 spells. I want Mastery to be either the best or second best stat this spec should be focusing on, even for ST situations and less reliant around all CDs.
If you’ve read this entire thing, thanks! These are my thoughts on the matter of the spec.
It were the PvPers for the VAST majority who cried about UAs being stackable (as stackable UAs proved working in PvE Legion with Malefic Grasp). Be careful what you wish for.
6 second pet cast needs to go. My only complaint.
Aff; Sudden Onset and most certainly Inevitable Demise. ID would be Aff’s burst, SO to keep WiA and stuff from requiring 25+ seconds to stack all the way.
yeah when i initially read about soul rot i was like “thats an AOE drain life, with ID stacked thats gonna be insane damage i love it”. then remembered ID wont exist anymore from what we know, and now i am sad.
I haven’t mained my warlock since the start of WoD. I’d love to play her full-time again, but for me, there are a few changes that would need to happen first.
Most people here have been talking about spells and abilities, and since I don’t really play my warlock a whole lot in high level content, I don’t feel like I can offer many suggestions there.
My biggest issues are mobility, or rather, the lack of it. Especially having on-demand mobility versus pre-placed. Out in the open world, whether pvp or fighting harder mobs, we don’t have much mobility.
Edit to clarify- I’m not referring to lack of mobility while casting… I’m referring to lack of mobility in terms of gap closers, and ways of moving quickly if we need to get somewhere fast. I’d never use burning rush in pvp; why would I give my opponent that advantage, and in PvE if I might take a big hit and need to break LoS or get out of a big aoe, again I wouldn’t use burning rush and risk dying, or add extra work for my healer. In its current form, burning rush is ok, but I’d like a movement speed increase that doesn’t tick 4% health every second, and something that doesn’t require pre-placement and a guaranteed safe spot to land.
My suggestions:
-Leave Demonic Circle as a talent, and make Gateway baseline in its current form. Add a talent so that we can instead use it as a solo ability, and have it function similar to Heroic Leap.
-Make Burning Rush baseline in its current form, and add a talent to alter its functionality. A short burst of speed with 2 charges, and a 30 sec recharge on each, and remove the ticking health component.
Put both talents on the same row so that we can’t double dip on movement buffs, you can only have one or the other.
I’d also love to have Glyph of Fear back, so we can use it in dungeons to help with CC, especially if an extra pack is pulled or whatever. I haven’t run dungeons on my lock in ages, so as far as I can remember, fear still causes the mob to run everywhere. While that’s fun in pvp, not so much in pve.
And please… take the interrupt off the felhunter and let us have it baseline, just like every other class has an interrupt. Out in the open world, I generally have my voidwalker out, especially for new content that I don’t outgear. Not having an interrupt sucks. Sure I can use Mortal Coil, or try to time Shadowfury as an interrupt, but I’d rather just have an actual interrupt.
Edit- another ability I’d like to see changed is Grimoire of Sacrifice. I get that it can’t be a permanent buff because each of our demons gives us access to different utility, but having it last one hour is silly. Let it last until we summon a new demon or we die. And give the spell damage buff a flat % increase as opposed to a proc. I’d love to use this talent since pet pathing can be really annoying (more so in dungeons), but in its current form it’s not worthwhile to use.
Demonic Circle baseline frees up a space for potentially other options. Tongue Tied seems underwhelming though for the other choices in the row it replaced Demonic Circle. Howl of Terror replacing it would be a much better choice for both PvE and PvP over what seems to be just PvP Tongue Tied would be picked for (if even).
I think Burning Rush is fine in it’s current row. There is some choice there but I’ve found myself always picking Burning Rush much more than Demon Skin and hardly ever Dark Pact. But this isn’t to say the row doesn’t offer good choices its all very niche on how you handle a situation.
When it comes down to it I think having a filler spell (like Fel Flame!) would go a long way to help ease the mobility and hard-stuck casting problem Destruction has. Any downtime of movement, much like Demo has felt like since Legion, can be like playing catch up every time it happens. Hell, lets see a form of Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning return. Maybe only applied to Incinerate?
Demonology getting nothing new while losing baleful invocation and explosive potential azerite traits feels really, really bad. Like how many classes felt at the start of bfa all over again, losing artifact traits and nothing taking their place. Its hard not to look at demo in alpha right now and see it as “exactly the same, but much slower.” Am genuinely upset about this. The spec needs something to speed it up, increase soul shard generation, make more spells instant cast, or something. Demonic tyrant generating 5 soul shards baseline would be really nice. Honestly I just really want to keep explosive potential but I can’t see it happening, maybe as a legendary option?
It’s not acceptable for a spec to just be made worse in the next expansion. And if demonology doesn’t get something, that’s what this is. We are only losing things. Hard-casted Corruption and a covenant ability with no synergy with the rest of our abilities do not make up for this. We are just going to be less than what we were. This feels awful.
Trust me, it’s not fun it PvP either if you’re fearing someone to get casts off and they end up running around a corner.