Hey all!
With pre-patch upon us, I just wanted to pop into the Warlock forum to create a mirror topic of the one from the Beta forums. The goal of the post is to provide an overview and summary of some of the highlights of the feedback thread given by blizzard on class and spec changes, as well as what’s going on in that forum section, while also giving an opportunity to people who don’t have access to post things here instead. I’m hoping that this will be an interesting thread to also keep for posterity, just so that if anybody needs the information in the future, they can come back and point to some of the feedback Warlocks have received and have given that has either been overlooked or not picked up on.
In case anyone is interested in asking questions, I’ve been playing high-level pve warlock for years at Hall of Fame and above level. I plan on playing my warlock in TWW, so feel free to ask what/if any of the specs look particularly appealing or strong (MAJOR WARNING THAT TUNING IS ONGOING) moving into the expansion.
Disclaimer
I’m abridging some of the wording in the posts, but they are mostly copied from the Alpha and Beta feedback threads.
Original Design Goals From Alpha
Greetings Warlocks,
We’ve been very excited to see the community’s reactions to the Warlock Hero Talents, and we appreciate all of your feedback.
In the coming weeks, you’ll see multiple changes to the Warlock class and specialization trees, and we’d like to provide some context for these changes here.
Core Goals
- Ensure each capstone is interesting and exciting.
- Reduce the amount of throughput talents, to free up utility choices.
- Reduce the number of ranks for talents that don’t warrant multiple ranks.
Affliction
The Affliction specialization tree forces a choice between a single-target or multi-target profile rather than providing a viable build that is adaptable in both situations. We want to redesign, introduce, and remove talents, as well as address the tuning of Malefic Rapture to help reduce this friction.Demonology
For Demonology, we want to address the number of long cooldowns available as well as reduce the amount of resource flooding. We’ll also look at underused talents such as Doom. The feedback provided during Season 3 was instrumental in helping illuminate a path forward for Doom, and you should expect a redesign of it in a future build.Destruction
For Destruction, we have plans to reduce the fluctuation in power based on target count. We also want to take another look at how Destruction plays in multi-target situations and look for ways to improve underused talents such as Cataclysm and Soulfire.More to come
As always, we’re reading feedback and discussing other changes. We’re still monitoring discussions about Hero Talents, and will make adjustments as needed.Thank you for your thoughts thus far. We look forward to hearing more as development progresses!
Affliction
First Alpha Round
Affliction
- Address the tuning of Malefic Rapture in single-target and multi-target situations.
- Reduce complexity and the amount of active buttons that contribute to it.
- Erase the need to choose between a single-target or multi-target profile by adding more adaptability and flexibility.
While we cannot go over every change here, we’d like to get a bit more detailed than last week’s update and explain some of the bigger changes coming in this build.
Class Tree Throughput
We’re removing a lot of throughput talents from the class tree to allow warlocks to pick up more utility without feeling forced to take mandatory talents to be competitive. These talents aren’t compelling options when placed against utility as they will always be the right answer to have. This allows us to move that power into the specialization trees and tailor throughput-centric talents to be specific to that specialization’s gameplay.
Malefic Rapture
In addition to becoming baseline for Affliction, we are introducing new talents that will help Malefic Rapture become the go-to spender for both single-target and multi-target situations. This should also shift Seed of Corruption to being a means to apply Corruption to multiple targets rather than what you spam in dungeons. In addition, we are redesigning Siphon Life to be friendlier to Affliction’s rotation and expect that its new design will make it easier to optimize Malefic Rapture.
Affliction’s Adaptability
While we do want Affliction warlocks to have a preferred talent setup for single- versus multi-target situations, we don’t want it to feel like they are powerless if they are in the opposite situation. By focusing on Malefic Rapture being Affliction’s main spender and removing talents that are only valuable in multi-target situations (Soul Flame, Soul Swap, Doom Blossom, etc.), we’re hoping that the Affliction tree feels less punishing to fill out.
Second Alpha Round
Affliction
We’ve moved Darkglare upwards in the tree to make it much easier to get. We’ve shifted talents to the third section and added new talents to increase how many options are available. We’re evaluating how many two-point nodes are available and are looking to revise in a future build.
We’ve also looked at Haunt and increased the amount of damage it does baseline to make it feel more impactful upon cast. We’ve introduced Improved Haunt as well, which is a new talent that further expands upon Haunt. Lastly, we’ve moved Haunt to the second section of the tree to make it easier to pick given how much it adds to Affliction’s single-target toolkit.
Demonology
First Alpha Round
- Reduce the amount of resources Demonology generates.
- Redesign Doom to be an attractive talent choice.
- Reduce the amount of major cooldowns Demonology has access to.
Demonic Cores
Over the course of Dragonflight, we’ve wanted to and tried to reduce the number of Demonic Cores available to Demonology warlocks to rein in their mobility, resource generation, and reduce the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt only. In addition, we want Demonbolt to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button.
With these goals in mind, we are removing Demonic Knowledge to reduce the frequency of Demonic Cores and will make further adjustments down the road if the rate of Demonic Cores remains too high. Over the course of alpha and beta we will be tuning Demonology to compensate for this change.
Doom
This is our first iteration of Doom going into The War Within and will be iterating based off feedback we receive. We wanted to try bringing back a castable version of Doom, rather than a proc, while avoiding making it required to cast Doom multiple times before being able to perform your rotation. At the same time though, we want you to think about how you use Doom and when it is cast rather than bring back an effect like Hand of Doom that makes it largely passive.
Nether Portal
In this alpha build of The War Within, you’ll see that Nether Portal has been removed. While we love the fantasy that Nether Portal provides and that it created a moment that felt different rotationally, its gameplay and performance proved difficult to optimize. Too many major cooldowns can increase the number of peaks and valleys Demonology’s output can experience and how much effect the duration of an encounter can have on its performance.
We’d like to spend some time workshopping a new design for Nether Portal and have it return as a healthier addition to Demonology’s toolkit in the future.
What’s Next?
We’ll continue to read through feedback and the discussions happening across the community. As mentioned last week, these changes are by no means final, and we plan to iterate based off your thoughts and our own playtesting. Thank you for the discussions thus far and we’ll have more updates to share soon!
Second Alpha Round
Cooldown Alignment
We are removing all talents that reduce the cooldown of Demonology’s summon abilities and baking in those decreases baseline so that they align in a way that makes sense. These talents, along with the varying cooldowns, made playing Demonology more convoluted and difficult, especially for new players. This should free up some talent points and require less problem solving when it comes to trying to ensure your cooldowns align.
Demonic Tyrant
We are moving Summon Demonic Tyrant to the center of the Demonology tree to make it much easier to access. When we first set out to design the new talent trees, there was an idea that we could make Summon Demonic Tyrant an option against abilities such as Nether Portal. However, Summon Demonic Tyrant is so woven into the identity of Demonology and synergizes so well with other options on the tree – it’s difficult to have anything else compete.
Doom and Vilefiend
We are expanding upon Doom and Vilefiend by offering new talents to customize and upgrade these abilities. We want to ensure that these are competitive options with one another in both single- and multi-target situations so please provide feedback if one or the other isn’t quite hitting the mark. In terms of Immutable Hatred and the “Felguard portion” of the tree, we want to retain that as the passive damage opt-in for players who prefer that kind of damage profile.
Demonic Cores
Our goal with reining in the Demonic Core economy is to bring Demonology closer to Affliction and Destruction in terms of mobility. Warlocks provide powerful utility and have access to incredible survivability and mobility has usually been their weakness in exchange for those strengths. However, we are watching discussions happening across the community and thinking through feedback as it comes in.
Beta Changes
Demonology
We’ve redesigned Doom to be passive, like the seasons 3 and 4 tier set bonus in Dragonflight. The primary reason for this change is to reduce the increased number of actions per minute we observed during playtesting. Additionally, Demonology has a lot of plates to spin as it is, and it felt that adding an additional cooldown to watch was a bit much.
It is also because of this reasoning that we’ve removed the cooldown reduction for Power Siphon from Blood Invocation. Further, Blood Invocation caused a desync with most Demonology’s cooldowns.
Destruction
First Alpha Round
Destruction Update
Here are our stated goals, with the addition of a new goal, for Destruction moving into the War Within:
- Reduce the fluctuation in throughput in relation to the number of targets in combat.
- Improve underused talents such as Soulfire and Cataclysm.
- Condense the number of talents and talent ranks available.
Beginning with our general changes, we are moving Chaos Bolt to be baseline. This is mainly to provide a Soul Shard spender once your specialization is chosen. We are also removing Chaosbringer but plan to provide additional tuning to Chaos Bolt, Rain of Fire, and Shadowburn baseline to ensure their power remains relatively the same.
Avatar of Destruction
We are removing Avatar of Destruction for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, we want to highlight Summon Infernal as a powerful moment and Avatar of Destruction lessens that by increasing the cadence in which an Infernal is present.
Secondly, Avatar of Destruction provides Destruction warlocks with a powerful, multi-target stun on a frequent basis. We could remove the stun, but we want to stay in line with our philosophy that when a player sees a demon there’s an understanding of what function that demon provides.
To replace Avatar of Destruction, we want to try bringing back Decimating Bolt as it fits the fantasy of a Destruction warlock well and provides more power to your rotational spells. We plan to iterate on this decision based on feedback we see from the community.
Inferno
We have redesigned Inferno to reduce how much throughput fluctuates based on the number of enemies present during an encounter. This will allow us to tune Destruction in all situations, regardless of the number of targets available. Additionally, this allows us to tune this talent to be a competitive option against Cataclysm rather than have it remain the correct choice.
Soulfire, Shadowburn, Channel Demonfire
We want to make each of these spells more appealing. In this build, you’ll see a redesign of Decimation as an experiment to accomplish this for Soulfire however we plan to expand more on this as well as Shadowburn and Channel Demonfire with the restructuring of the Destruction tree, mentioned earlier in this post. Stay tuned for future updates as we work to address this goal.
Second Alpha Round
Soul Fire, Channel Demonfire, and Shadowburn
We’re pivoting away from Soul Fire becoming another execute spell as Shadowburn already fills this purpose. Instead, it will serve as a reward for high critical strike chance and will naturally become more available when Shadowburn benefits from a low health target.
Both Channel Demonfire and Shadowburn spells are retaining their current uses and identities; however, we are introducing new talents that should increase how valuable these spells are in Destruction’s toolkit. We look forward to hearing your feedback regarding the direction of each of these spells.
Summon Infernal
We’ve moved Summon Infernal to a more central location in the Destruction tree to provide an interesting and powerful spell to look forward to while leveling. Additionally, it’s an incredibly iconic spell for Destruction and by making it easier to get we can ensure that regardless of your build you have a longer cooldown to look forward to.
Tree Structure
In this alpha build you’ll see new pathing and a reduction of available talents and ranks to reduce the bloating the previous tree had. We’re interested in hearing feedback regarding if it’s too easy to get across the tree, too difficult, if a talent’s placement doesn’t make sense, or if a talent can be taken and it won’t provide any benefit unless another talent is taken.
As mentioned last week, we will have an update for Affliction in a future build and will be focusing on hero talents and polish after. We appreciate the discussions and look forward to further feedback.
We’re trying something new and moving Dimensional Rift, a powerful tool that gives Destruction warlocks a bit more mobility, to the center of the tree and returning Infernal to the bottom section. Infernal serves as a powerful cooldown that leveling warlocks can look forward to unlocking, but during playtesting it felt that Dimensional Rift served as a much more impactful tool.
We’ve trimmed the number of talents available and moved around so that the second and third sections feel a bit closer in terms of the number of talents available.
Beta Changes
Destruction
Summon Infernal has returned to the center of the Destruction tree to serve as a powerful cooldown for players to look forward to unlocking while leveling. We’ve returned Dimensional Rift to the third section as well with a new talent that adds cleave functionality to your rifts.
To retain accessible pathing through the center section of the Destruction tree, we’ve had to remove Infernal Brand and condense Crashing Chaos and Rain of Chaos into a choice node.
Latest Debates
Defensiveness vs Mobility
- Warlock has lost defensive options over the last two expansions while simultaneously losing mobility. In general, it seems as though we’re in conflict with the design goals of being a “tanky and slow caster.” Moreover, as combat and encounter design continues to push into mechanics that force players to move, this can be extremely frustrating at times, but is more prevalent the higher up in content difficulty you play. The outlier in this regard has become destruction, as it has been for the past two expansions. Blizzard’s goal of “reining in demonology’s mobility” to be in line with affliction and destruction has backfired, as affliction has now leapfrogged demonology by a large margin, mostly due to hellcaller in combination with absolute corruption providing a large portion of your damage as a single global. Ultimately, all three specs are among the least mobile ranged specs, and will continue to suffer from yo-yo-like tuning as tuning for both movement, aoe, and stand-still single target is difficult.
Class Tree
- The Class Tree is particularly weak going into the pre-patch with several areas that need improving. More importantly, the design goals outlined by Blizzard in their original post were not met. We have lost more points in the class tree than we have gained. Some pain points include any 2-point throughput nodes in the tree that are preventing us from choosing more utility options that are higher up in the tree. Moving soul conduit to the capstone was rather uninspiring and surprisingly counters Blizzard’s goal of reducing resource flooding. Destruction suffers from massive resource flooding that feels particularly bad when you can’t spend shards fast enough – it feels wasteful.
Warlock utility and Defensive options in the Hero Trees
- Hero talent utility and defensive options are weak as of the writing of this post. Hellcaller and Diabolist have both exceptionally weak defensive and utility nodes that are going to be even worse after the recent round of healing changes that will hit both our passive regeneration of soul leech as well as our max capacity. Soul leech is a large part of the defensive design for our hero talents, and with the most recent nerf, is looking to impact the tuning significantly.
General Warlock Utility and Mythic + Utility
- Like the previous point, mythic + utility isn’t lacking, but the ease of use of our mythic + utility is lacking. Curses are strong, but the opportunity cost of using globals setting up curses is onerous, especially when other classes have passive utility options like raid buffs or CC. Even worse, is that some optional utility like howl of terror is arbitrarily target capped. Healthstones are a decent form of utility, but unfortunately, they do not provide damage throughput or passive damage reduction to put Warlock on an even playing field with some of the other stronger ranged utility options in dungeons. Other utility options such as gateway are useful, but mostly in cases where terrain is exploitable to gain a large advantage. Not only is this not accessible to the general community, but it’s also difficult to set up (think mists gating after the first trash pack).
note: Warlock utility in raid is in a good spot currently, it doesn’t seem likely that this will change anytime soon.
Warlock Animations
- Warlock animations and spell effects could use another pass. Some of our abilities, particularly Rapture, Incinerate, Shadowbolt, and Soulfire, which are part of the base kit and are unappealing or difficult to see. Some people have brought up potentially giving us more flavour options to have our spells look like Shadowflame, as a lot of our spells have become Shadowflame in this coming expansion (see Rapture). Hero talent-wise, hellcaller is lagging behind both Soul harvester and Diabolist. The capstone talent, “malevolence,” has a cool glow effect but feels a bit unimpactful (personal wish of mine is to bring back metamorphasis as the effect!). Wither also lacks a great spell animation, but it’s difficult to find ways to make it more noticeable.