Thoughts on Warlock Talent Trees

Classes Warlock
21

It seems like the trees are mostly divided into two paths, like destruction having all those talents for the infernal on the left side vs chaos bolt talents on the right. Assuming they are balanced I think this is good, and allows us to play specs differently, I for one hated Destro revolving around the infernal cd. I think the trees are a good start, but some things I am not a huge fan of.

Malefic Rupture and Afflic: MR being forced on afflic locks is disappointing. Imo it should be moved to the mid/bottom of the tree and made optional/balanced with other mid/bottom tree options. This spell alone is why I don’t play afflic anymore lol. Other than Malefic Rupture the afflic tree looks awesome imo.

Demonology: I think there is a missed opportunity here. The left side of the tree seems to focus more on summoning a lot of demons, and the right side is focused on beefing up the felguard. I think that is so awesome, but even if you go full felguard you still have to summon the dogs, I kinda wish the right side of the tree was just full focus on having a single powerful pet. The left side is all about buffing all the smaller demons you summon, but the coolest sounding talent in the tree (Gul’dan’s Ambition) is locked under the lamest talent in the tree (Nether Portal), hopefully it feels better and worth it to use bc of Pit Lord. Also Doom in it’s current state is bad and unfun. Decon is clunky and also unfun. The missed opportunity here is that there are some old talents that were very very popular and cool that could easily be re-added at the end of the demo tree but are absent. Metamorphosis, Dark Apotheosis, Permanent Infernal/Doomguard pet, these spells are just pure fun and a lot of us miss them dearly. With this style of left and right paths in these talent trees, it would be so easy to add old play styles people really enjoyed while letting people who like the new demo keep playing it the way it is now.

Destruction: Like I mentioned before, I like that I no longer have to play around the infernal CD. I am a fan of the classic destro gameplay where you just sling fat shadowbolts and all the talents beefing up chaos bolt look like it will help me fulfil those fat giant crit desires I have.

Base Warlock Talents: For every class’s base talent tree, there are abilities in the tree that should just be baseline, and warlock is no exception. Banish should not be a talent, it should be baseline like it always has been since vanilla. Same goes for Demonic Circle and Gateway. Not to be rude, but I think taking away baseline abilities like that and throwing it on the talent tree is kind of lazy design.

Grimoire of Sacrifice: This talent is probably going to be garbage like in it’s current state in SL, it needs to just become a %+ damage increase like it used to be imo, or combine it’s current effect with a %+ damage increase. Needs a buff assuming it is same as SL’s.

tl;dr: Dump Malefic Rupture plz

8 Likes
22

I’m gonna laugh so hard if the beefy felguard build where you have borderline nothing to do while he goes ham is the strongest build.

3 Likes
23

i think you dip into grim inquis there and just focus on build/spend continually to keep up the 2 general tree traits, and vinnie just smacks things and then you drop juiced up dogs and get resets

1 Like
24

General Tree

  • They need to swap Demonic Circle and Accrued Vitality.
    Demonic Circle is almost one of those must have talents, while accrued vitality is very niche.
    Having only one path to demonic circle sucks.

  • Grimoire Sacrifice needs to go or rework other talents in general tree as it causes a lot of them to be deadish/undervalued.
    This wouldn’t be so much of an issue but there is 3 out of 7 talents blocking the pathway down into the general tree on the bottom of the first tier (Demonic Inspiration/Wrathful Minion/Demonic Fortitude).

  • Swap the choice node of Ichor of Devils/Frequent Donor with the Claw of Endereth, this is just a small QoL that let’s the capstone open up more as it would centralize a popular defensive and putting more of a utility on the outside of the tree.

Affliction Tree

  • Pandemic Invocation needs to be on the outside of the tree; while nice, if you take absolute corruption over siphon life you are only getting value out of refreshing agony. Don’t really have a solution as to where to put it.

  • Nightfall and Drain Soul should swap node placements; Drain should should be offered as an option pretty early in the tree (Drain Soul should be baseline but alas here we are), and nightfall is nice but not imperative to the playstyle as much as Drain Soul is.

  • Soul Swap while nice, I just don’t see it being taken. It is on the aoe centric side of the tree while it is more cleave or single target focused.
    Suggestion would be removing the shard cost, it is already on a 30 second cd. Also swap it with the node Soul Flame, this will allow single target focused builds potentially getting it after the choice node Siphon Life / Absolute corruption or Writhe in Agony.

Demonology Tree

I do not really have anything at this time on demonology.

Destruction

  • Mayhem and its subsequent choices need a rework. It’s a great idea but poorly executed.

  • Conflagrate and Rain of Fire nodes need to connect to choice node Reverse Entropy/Internal Combustion. This will just allow Mayhem/Havoc to be a choice, in a purely single target fight the Mayhem/Havoc node is useless.

  • Fire and Brimstone, does it generate shards off all enemies hit? If not then it’s a poor 2 point talent for 15% of a pretty weak hitting ability.

  • Power Overwhelming and Madness of the Azj’Aqir need to swap places. Power overwhelming is the spend more gain more playstyle and fits more (IMO) with the tier bonus capstone side.

  • Inferno/Cataclysm choice node is a bit funky, single target you will always go Cata and aoe you will always go Inferno. I don’t think there is anything we can do to Inferno to make it more viable in single target than Cata, but maybe reduce Cata cd down to 25. This could make a synergized build with Channel Demonfire offering an alternate way to aoe as Destruction.

25

Don’t forget to include Spell Lock should be a choice between a Warlock Casting it or the Felhunter Casting it.

3 Likes
26

Looking it over, sad Metamorph isn’t back, but the felguard build looks fun. The trees in general look a little spread out and might need some pruning or more abilities set to be baseline abilities.
I have always liked demonology and the first impression is the demon-zoo build will be likely only used for raids due to all the hardcast requirements.
The warlock class-tree has too many PVP abilities locked the tree, you can’t even get to last tier without picking up all the required talents.

We’ll see a lot of shifting, but it seems like drainlife is going to be a common ability among all Warlock specs this time around for PvP.

PvE looks solid for the most part, points spent to get back baseline abilities feel like a bummer across all classes, but its just a thing I guess. No major complaints.

27

main issue i have with demo is that the tree seems unique in not a great way
most trees are split up into different playstyles. broadly speaking it ends up being ST/Raid and AoE/M+ sides of the tree with stuff in the middle for most specs. boring sure but it works

demo seems split not between playstyles but themes. one side is Felguard, me and my best friend Dan. with plenty going for it in raid and m+situations.
the other theme is Imp Mother/Zoo lock. with plenty going for it in raid and m+situations.
and a third theoretical in Big Dogs lock in a sort of scattershot spec that again has no focus outside of theming.

1 Like
28

It lasts 15 seconds baseline and can be extended to 25 seconds with the talent below it.

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They look solid at least better than some class. But im not a pro Warlock so I get what I want im and chill that way.

I was wondering for Affli tough. Does Agonizing Corruption Cast At 2stack if they dont have agony or does it just proc if the targets already has Agony. Cause it would be cool to have an AoE agony option

1 Like
30

Part-time lock player here and not a great one besides, but some general feedback:

Class tree – One of the best class trees they’ve released so far. Very powerful, with some real trade-offs. Not perfect but no tree is and that’s OK.

Affliction – I hope the rot spec is as viable as it looks. Love the buffs to dot spreading and damage of said dots. Not crazy about everything running through MR but that’s likely a nod to M+ and I at least understand it if so. Affliction needs more help than any spec right now from a viability standpoint and I appreciate that they’re trying to make a rot build that works. The only complaint I have is the capstone talent row on the spec side isn’t immediately clear to me for the purpose of comparing. A couple of them read as weak but probably aren’t. Testing will be key.

Demo – While Affliction is my favorite, I have the most experience here. I’m on the fence about what I see. Implosion stuck behind a talent that buffs Demonbolt makes no sense to me, and it’s the only path that can be taken to get it. Easy to move left/right across the tree as needed, which is good. I would have liked to have seen an even “better” build if you wanted to sort of ignore the Felguard and play around imps/dogs/implosions. A couple of the capstone talents don’t excite me. Would love for Nether Portal to be viable, we’ll have to see.

Destro – My least favorite spec of the three typically, and also just so happens to be my least favorite of the three trees (although it isn’t bad). Tree feels too vertical without as much nuance as the other two. Right side of the tree feels more Fire mage-y to me than I think it should, can’t really explain it better than that.

Ultimately I think the positives in all three spec trees far outnumber the negatives.

General comment: If Wilfred’s is a talent in all three spec trees, it probably should have been a capstone choice on the class tree.

2 Likes
31

First impression; there’s too much emphasis on Drain Life and not enough on Health Funnel in the class tree.
Also, I’d like to know if Spell Lock shares a cooldown with Felguard’s interrupt.
I also think Lifeblood and Demonic Gateway should swap places.
Not sure why Banish isn’t baseline.

As for Demo tree; Doom and Implosion should swap places (there’s no way Doom should be a central talent) and swap Kazaak’s Final Curse with Bloodbound Imps.
Not sure about Wilfrid’s and Demonic Consumption being a choice node.
The Nether Portal branch looks …intriguing.
Also curious about Hold This for Me.

3 Likes
32

General Tree -

  1. I feel like I’m ready to tank the jailer with the amount of health, damage reduction and just pure bulk we’re getting. I love it
  2. I love some of the concepts at the end like the inquisitors eye
  3. I like the choices I feel like I have with it, I rarely need banish but it’s there when I do!
  4. Something I would have liked that I didn’t see was something to make fear have the target stand still(I remember this being a thing somewhere in the past)
  5. With all the extra health I’d love a form of life tap that was like, 30 sec CD, off the GCD and sacrificed 10% health for 1 soul shard.

Demonology Tree-

  1. No Meta, sadness lol
  2. WE CAN SUMMON A PIT LORD?!?
  3. I kind of like that my Felguard can become a monster of a demon and the main source of my damage, even if 9/10 times I wanna play nether portal style more.
  4. Only thing I think I’m unsure of is what will be better for what. With Death Knight I can instantly tell where I’m going for AoE vs Single Target. I do like the variety in the gameplay, I just think some trees feel much less messy.
  5. I think I’m one of the few who doesn’t exactly love demonic tyrant lol. Like it feels good to get a phat stack of demons, putting him out there and watching it go wild. Just not my favorite part of current demo lock lol

Overall - a genuine S tier General Tree and an A tier Spec Tree for Demo. It feels like we’re in such a great spot, I’m beyond pumped to see the future iterations!

3 Likes
33

Shadowflame as nothing more than a 12yd range 70% slow is bad because you already have a 50% ranged slow with curse of exhaustion. Give shadowflame a knockback or root.

Darkfury should reduce the cast time of shadowfury or make it instant, in addition to its current effects or not. That would be an upgrade to shadowfury actually worth considering.

Drain life talents kinda suck because affliction is the only spec where casting in drain life won’t neuter your damage. You can’t really pick them up if you want to maximize your damage anyways. Like some other class trees the only utility you’re picking up are the ones that you need to get to throughput. The shaman tree is how it should be, almost all utility.

Soulburn is of unequal strength between specs. Demo constantly gets shards, they can always use soulburn. Roughly the same story with affliction. Destro, however, has much slower shard generation and has to be very careful if they want to use soulburn when they need it.

No big complaints with the destro tree, just wish I had two more points to spend. Maybe increase the damage of conflag. With all the new modifiers + base damage increase to incinerate it will fall far behind.

1 Like
34

For a first draft all 4 trees are all very well designed. There are some issues of course but that was to be expected.

  • Accrued Vitality being a point dump in order to get Demonic Circle. Just swap the placement of Circle and AV.

  • Banish shouldn’t be a talent but the upgraded version should remain. The idea that they’re adding an upgrade that affects Undead probably means we’ll have to take it at some point in this expansion (hello Galakrond!) and spending 2 points just for that dungeon/raid will probably feel bad.

  • I’d prefer the Darkfury talent make Shadowfury have an instant cast/ 0.5 cast time instead of slightly increasing its range.

  • Mayhem is also just poor design, period. They want it to be an option for those who think havoc windows are too difficult but Destro is also a braindead easy spec. Havoc is the one challenging thing and even then I wouldn’t call it very difficult. I don’t think adding mayhem actually helps anyone and is just a waste of devtime. Does it matter to most players? No. But that’s kind of the issue.

  • Cataclysm is currently competing with Inferno like it does in Shadowlands which is fine since we can take Cataclysm for single target. However in Dragonflight we’ll have to take 2 aoe talents to get to Cataclysm which is most likely not worth the point wastage. This means Cataclysm has to offer more for AoE or be taken with Channel Demonfire which is on the opposite side of the tree. Channel Demonfire is more of a AoE spell than Cataclysm since it only works on Immolated targets and cleaves. Wouldn’t it make more sense to swap Cataclysm to the left side for single target and make us choose between Inferno and Channel Demonfire for aoe?

  • Soulfire needs some sort of cast time reduction to make it worth casting in PvE. In PvP it can be setup for but still a risky spell to cast. Soulfire’s upgrade talent Decimation makes our Incinerates and Conflagrates against targets below 50% hp reduce the cooldown of Soulfire by 5 seconds. Making backdraft affect Soulfire would probably be the best way to do this since it requires us to spend our buff on Soulfire instead of Chaos Bolt. To account for a lower cast time you should either increase the base cd of Soulfire or nerf the cd reduction from Decimation.

P.S. To those of you who laughed at me for saying the Warlock tree was going to be good, suck on eggs :^)

2 Likes
35

Hello, haven’t played warlock as a main in a long time, since legion, and haven’t liked really any of the specs in a while. I am definitely an Affliction fanboy, and I used to primarily raid as warlock. Currently I’ve been much more interested in m+ As DH or rogue.

My feedback can be taken or left to rot, honestly I’m just interested in saying a couple things that I think will make affliction fun to play again (not a single thought on tuning.)

Malefic Rapture isn’t fun to play with currently. Now I really don’t have any grand ideas as to how I’d replace the spell, so I’ll just suggest making it instant cast, and single target only. I think it’s okay as a shard dump and some of the new DF talents have great synergy with the spell.

Phantom Singularity needs to be deleted. Just remove it! Put the new soul swap in its place on the choice node. Between PS and Soul Rot it feels like Aff is more of a one minute nuke class and not a mastery of shadowy dots. It’s really a shame. I would say remove Soul Rot too, but I think it’s fine to have at least one CD dot but not two. Perhaps make them a choice node? Though Soul Rot has way better synergy talents.

Swap Grimoire and Dark Glare. Remove the talents below Dark Glare and add talents that buff Grimoire. Like maybe have a talent that makes it’s damage do aoe. I think choosing to not use a pet should have pros and not just be a con. Would also diversify builds pending tuning.

I also want Dark Glare to swap with Grimoire because I think that if these demons are supposed to be the BIG CDs for all 3 specs, they should higher up in the tree and more centralized.

Last change would be to make Deathbolt count 30 seconds of Corruptions damage if talented into Absolute Corruption. 14 seconds seems to be an obvious down grade to Siphon Life if you take Deathbolt. You also lose out on the passive healing. The double negative feels bad. Another option would be to make Absolute Corruption a choice node with something else. Still would have a negative synergy though…

Also, for the general warlock tree, the capstone talents feel weird. I gotta manage dots, shard count, various damage amps on drain soul, Deathbolt, haunt, shadows embrace, AND potentially a 3 stack of destro portals or the summon jailer and/or Deathbolt? Kinda heavy on the keybinds if you ask me. Also would require an add on to help you track everything.

Everything else I really like! I like the new spells, I like the buffed banish talent. I like the new Vile Taint rework! Even most of the positions of the aff talents are great!

Great job overall.

1 Like
36

Gargoyle was fun when it was baseline but has suffered from pathing issues since it’s inception. As far as I know it can still sometimes be summoned and will just float around doing nothing.

In addition to pathing, it sits on the row with Apocalypse which is just a non-starter.

  • Apocalypse CD can be reduced via your normal rotation.
  • It hits hard AND refunds shards.
  • It summons a mini version of AotD every minute that is buffed via other talents.

Nothing on that row is going to reliably compete with an ability that potent and it makes tuning a nightmare.

37

In a similar boat to Tysight before me, used to absolutely love destro but ever since Grimoire of Meme-premacy and Rain of Meme reducing it to a “deals damage every 3 minutes” put it aside.

Genuinely a little surprised about the overall positive response to the Destro tree; my immediate reaction was “That’s it?” Knee jerk reaction is it ends up building to a worse version of what we have now. Looking at it a little more critically, I think my feedback would focus on 3 primary aspects.

Too pet focused. Destro has long been tied thematically to Gul’dan and getting the least out of (or getting rid of entirely) summoned demons, so it certainly is weird to be so gated behind the infernal the last couple of expansions. On the class tree side of things, it seems a very substantial amount of utility is tied into pet with all of the “when your pet does X you gain Y”, though the interrupt being a free talent to take is a nice boon. Makes me concerned Grimoire of Sacrifice is dead on arrival unless all those pet powers go to the warlock? But that might swing in the other direction of being too strong. As for infernal specifically, two of the major three capstones interact with a pet in some way between the infernal branch and the blasphemy branch. If it were me, I’d do something like choose between the infernal CD or the blasphemy summons and tweak appropriately.

Secondly, too… disorganized. As some other posters have mentioned, the tree seems very random. Obviously a first draft and should be revised, but still. Cataclysm’s node with Inferno seems strange; it feels as if taking cataclysm would necessitate taking Channel Demonfire but that is on the entire opposite side of the tree in an area without a lot of other synergy. The insert conduit into the talent tree here generally feels awkward in every tree, but at least Charred Remains and Infernal Brand fit thematically better than most. Soulfire sticks out, too, with one or two supporting nodes but otherwise not terribly interactive. Very cool animation and thematic, but even if it were applied to backdraft being forced between roaring blaze and a second conflagrate feels like a death knell. On the class side, though Dimensional Rift’s return is very exciting the lack of any direct synergy is disappointing to say the least.

Thirdly, nothing new? This is a criticism that goes for probably half or more of the new specs, but Mayhem seems to be the only genuinely new thing in the tree and calling that new is a bit of a stretch. Destro has seemed ripe for a rework and this seemed the perfect time to introduce a little more excitement than the builder spender playstyle. All of the fanfare before the warlock reveal to just be mostly the same is perhaps a bit disheartening.

All in all, not the worst of the spec trees I suppose, certainly better off than the mages and poor ret paladin. I’d definitely have liked to see havoc removed or retuned rather than have destro’s single target capabilities shackled to the oppressive power of spread cleave, so seeing them double down with Mayhem was a surprise. Take all these opinions with a grain or two of salt.

Edit: For a positive note, I do really like the random synergies the tree introduces. Damage of X goes up when you cast Y and interactions like that. Interactions beyond build and spend are what make gameplay interesting, at least for me. I’d argue that’s what has everyone so excited about Evoker and Destro could definitely use more of it.

2 Likes
38

Not a pro by any measure, mostly run my lock through random bgs and LFR, occasionally going to normal if our lock cannot make it. I do well enough that my dps isn’t a detriment. 5 or below on mythic+

Destro.

Again I’m not super qualified to make any determinations, but it feels like their are a ton of choices and defensives. Super excited to see Dimensional Rift back, loved the spell in Legion, and was sad to see it go away. Class tree, not thrilled that Infernal is a talent, but again I’ll let the pros argue that.

I have seen the value of keeping Spell Lock on the Fel Hunter particularly on Sylvanas where the long range interrupt can save a wipe. Having it as a talent option would be nice, and I can see the value of making people wonder if the Felhunter or the lock has the interrupt in PvP. Overall having Spell Lock on the caster 99% of the time seems preferable.

Again their are people better qualified to speak for things then me, I just play it as a fun alt.

39

wish demo had more summon options. interesting choice with pitlord. happy about it. sad its not enough tho.

3 Likes
40

Maybe an Imp Mother instead of the Imp Boss. Like she spawn few Imp for Xsec while she’s there