Hear me out:
We wanted more mobility:
They gave us 2 charges of Gateway
We can get get Howl of Terror and Mortal Coil
We didn’t like the Spenders and they made them proc instant cast like Nightfall.
While we have to see how this all plays out, I think its a move in the right direction.
THoughts?
I’m very interested to see what they do with Maelefic Grasp in the next warlock alpha update. If they change it then I’ll be very confident that they’re actually listening to feedback right now. Because theoretically it’s fun but mechanically it’s clunky and a lot of people have talked about how it either needs to be its own bind, moveable while channeling, something like that.
Howl of Terror + MC is good too however that would mean we have 3 fear CCs. Isn’t full DR now going to be after 2?
So if we MC + Howl then we can’t actually use fear or some combination of the three. Fear + Howl, can’t MC, lol
Instead of Howl moved they should just make Shadowfury instant.
MC is Horrify, its on a different DR
Yeah that’s what I was thinking too.
Ah ok. I was actually just double checking that myself lol
Well then it’s a good change. (But I’d still like instant Shadowfury)
There’s a lot of waiting for another round of updates happening. The Demo changes are not being received well. Destro’s bottom half of the tree is rough. While I’m excited for the move away from Rapture for Aff, UA has its own set of problems that haven’t been addressed and was the reason they made Rapture in the first place.
Not much is changing for me with the class tree CC. Shadowfury/Coil is probably still gonna be the combo most of the time. I’m just hoping the curse/blight changes are actually interesting and the capstones become… not a meme lol.
There’s a lot in the air and I’m not sure I wanna give them too much credit yet. I will say Nightfall SoC looks really fun though.
Shadow Bolt needs to go. Its not aesthetically pleasing and is so out of place for the spec. Needs to be more drain-centric for flavor.
I can think all the way back to BC, when I started playing, thinking that Drain Life made more sense as a filler for Affliction. With Drain Soul being an execute button or a talented upgrade path. Nightfall could maintain it’s appeal by shooting off Shadowbolts on the next cast of Drain Life/Soul.
Never happened that way and maybe I’m wrong in thinking it but it always made more sense to me. Could have even gone a step further, since we’re supposed to be the drain specialization, by letting us cast other spells while channeling like Mistweavers could/do? I haven’t played a Monk in forever so I have no clue if they still do lmao
This will be good in pvp (I think it was a pvp talent / old legendary before), but I’m dubious it will be useful in pve.
Gateway is somewhat niche as-is in pve, and I can rarely think of a time where the new 2 uses clause will be used. It will entirely depend on raid mechanics.
Also, what is the point of the cast time reduction when Soul burn already makes it instant cast?
I wish I could grab Shadowfury AND Howl of Terror, but at least I can see situations where I want HoT over Shadowfury.
There are a couple of things I like about the new tree, like removing the filler throughput talents, but this iteration is very rough around the edges.
After playing around with the talent calculator, the tree is incredibly sparse building for pve. You basically grab everything above the 20 point gate. The middle has be immensely pruned and many of the new talents at the bottom of the tree are pvp oriented or for drain life . . . a spell nobody ever wants to cast in pve.
And the reworked curses seem like they were designed to be a choice node. If both curse talents replace Curse of weakness then what happen when you talent into both Tongues and Exhaustion?
TL;DR - Class tree needs to cook for a lot longer . . . hopefully this time they actually listen to our feedback (they didn’t in TWW beta . . .)
The two charge gate thing is actually decent. You could definitely use it as effectively a leap. It’s definitely not coded like blink. For your own personal use in say five man’s.
If it’s a swirly and not the poo ones you could gate place a circle gate back and min max your space usage.
Your other points I agree with, I’d like a world where circle doesn’t have a cast time and/or (both would be great) the teleport not being on gcd. This would help with our mobility issues and still be “unique” in that we need to be more proactive versus reactive. Burning rush needs some sort of amendment. Maybe not DF level where you could set it and almost ignore it but right now it absolutely crushes yourself.
Not a big fan of soulburn. We shouldn’t need to burn a shard to empower the abilities.
Exactly my thoughts as well. Drain spells (including the now gone Drain Mana) feels much more aligned with Affliction’s DoT and Rot theme, not to mention some of the best synergy/interaction with our DoTs are done with Drain Spells. Malefic Grasp was such a great feel to use and visually pleasing, a rare thing for Affliction.
As early as Burning Crusade, Drain Soul was made into a pseudo-execute option for Affliction with talents in their respective tree. So we can indeed say that Drain Soul has been a staple part of Affliction’s toolkit long ago.
They did tried to make Drain Life as the default filler for Affliction in Legion. But sadly due to the chaotic last minute changes in PTR and hastily pushed to live status, the launch state for Affliction in Legion was disastrous. Apart from so, so many other warlock issues, they never properly work out the ‘correct’ dps numbers that Drain Life as a filler should be, end up gutting our dps.
What should have been a great realignment for Affliction spec fantasy in Legion ends up falling flat, and somehow we got shadowbolt being shoved down our throats again, with all its issues and the aging ‘more ramp time’ Shadow Embrace.
I’m fine with Soulburn adding utility/empowerment to our spells, as long as the base spell is potent enough by itself. If anything, i like to see some of the old Soulburn utility brought back, like Soulburn Unending Breath for water walking etc.
The real issue, in my opinion, is how Soul Shard is still treated like a precious commodity, and we are effectively penalized for staying out of combat too long.
I’ve said this before, and i’ll say it again - Soul Shard should generate to full 5 shards by default. This is my opinion, and i’m sticking to it.
The problem I remember them running into with Drain Life is they, for whatever reason, couldn’t figure out how to make it a filler without being too strong at self healing… which is dumb because that’s part of the identity of Affliction Warlocks anyways. Well… used to be the identity.
I never understood why they didn’t just divorce the healing number from the damage number. The spell could easily have a reasonable amount it deals to the target and the heal could be a static 1% HP heal per tick or something. Siphon Life was that way back in Cata and it was great.
The crazier thing is that Classic has been running alongside the modern game now for a while… I was hoping that would serve as a reminder to the devs some of the great ideas of the past. Not looking like it though lmao
Exactly what’s the reason we don’t have full soulshard generation by now.
That would make drain life alot better. If damage wasn’t linked to heal.
It’s honestly Drain Life’s whole issue right now. Having a talent making Drain Life heal for 700% of the damage dealt is… so terrible to see. Especially with them harping on how they want the game to feel intuitive for new players. How is 700% extra healing intuitive? If they just made the spell heal for 2.5% max HP per tick and doubled it to 5% per tick with a talent it’d be much easier to understand and the damage could be whatever they wanted.
I also don’t understand not having full 5 shards. Didn’t we have a passive ability in MoP or something that let us self heal and generate shards to max out of combat?
I just want them to lower the casting time on Shadowfury.
Two charges of gateway seem a bit overpowered. I would rather increase the range between the gates and have you be immune to any cc effect for at least 3 seconds after teleporting. Especially that annoying DK’s Deathgrip.
No one knows.
Back in legion they tried having us start with 0 shards and it almost aggravating playing any of the lock specs. They learned we need to have soulshards in the tank before starting a fight.
It says in the notes they removed shadow fury from yesterday I think. Maybe a typo though but I did see on the notes that it was removed.
Whoa…
Well in that case then heck yeah im in favor of 2 charge gateway, lol.
Me either. Seems like for whatever reason unknown to us, they are ‘unable’ to separate Drain Life as a dps filler, and Drain Life as a self-heal utility.
Kinda drives one insane knowing that they are able to do it in some different spell/older version of the game, yet somehow unable to do so in live retail. What’s going on behind the scenes…
One of the perks of wow being such a long, tenured game - is that we have tried multiple ideas/concepts/designs across the years, and true indeed: some ideas are worth revisiting.
I would only add this: while revisiting/bringing back old ideas, please also look at the community feedback/comments back in the day, or on the PTR. We, some of the players, were also there back then when these old ideas are live, and we experienced them first hand - with all its glory and horror. Bringing back old ideas but never improve/fixing their initial issues are just simply, in my opinion, shows laziness and lack of effort to do great work. (Not to brag, but i was proven right when they brought back Shadow Embrace with Shadowbolt)
Oh my… where should i start?
It all started with Legion, with the great class fantasy re-alignment.
In Legion, 2 class-based changes are implemented across all warlock specs:
1, All warlocks will be using Soul Shard as their secondary resource, removing Demonic Fury/Burning Embers for Demo/Destro. and
2, Here’s the kicker - All Soul Shards will generate to 1 - ONE - shard by default.
Needless to say, this change also leads to the compounding effect of a disastrous launch experience for all warlocks in Legion.
It wasn’t until near the end of first tier of raid that they ‘casually’ put out a blue post, saying they’ll bump the default count to 3, and then ending with ‘let us know how you feel’.
As you guessed it - ‘we’ certainly let them know how we feel, and they certainly never followed up.