[Warlock] An Argument to updating the class Tree

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
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Since the implemntation of the Talent Trees back in Dragonflight the talent trees have been in constant flux and evolution, the specialization trees for warlocks received substantial changes in the TWW Beta, but the same can’t be said about the Class Tree.

2 Point Nodes of nothing

I am not someone who is against 2 point nodes, as long as they are worth or they offer good pathing towards something.

But quite honestly, there are 2 point nodes in the class tree who i question its existence.

Take Resolute Barrier and Demonic Resilience, both are talents in the penultimate row, competing with Soul Link and Fel Synergy.

But while Fel Synergy and Soul Link offer acess to 2 capstone each, and can be path’d by a “must pick talent” in the form of Demonic Tactics you have Resolute Barrier and Demonic Resilience and a considerable disadvantage.

Resolute Barrier and Demonic Resilience only give acess to one single capstone, they are only acessible by investing 1 additional talent in a non ‘must pick’ and in some cases are extremely niche.

The only reason i could see someone picking Demonic Resilience is for solo gameplay in order to have Felguard being a better tank.

Resolute Barrier is a bit better, but its still on the nichier side, specially given it’s currently bugged and don’t proc very reliably? (i think it only procs from physical damage, not magical damage).

The same thing can be said about Lifeblood and Accrued Vitality, only gives acess to one single talent, while competing wiht Sweet Souls and Demonic Gateway who exists in more “premium positions” give acess to more talents.

Overly niche talents who you basically never use

Alongside this, you will have talents like Teachings of the Satyr, Teachings of the Black Harvest, Demonic Resilience, Banish who as far as talents go are absurdly niche in their existence.

Teachings of the Black Harvest basically does nothing of relevant while having one of the cooler names in the game, when, at first i had hopes of it being something inspired to Classic/BC/Wrath Talent Master Demonologist.

Banish sees 2 or 3 uses per expansion in specific fights or dungeons, and in some ways it can be more of a problem than not.

Teaching of the Satyrs is an extremely minimal improvement on a Niche but userfull effect (Amplify curse) in a world where we warlocks BEG for the ability to apply curses in aoe or the ability to extend/maintain the curses in a similar way to how other classes can do it without spending GCDS/passively.

All this can be very frustrating when in a distant past Banish was baseline, Teachings of the Black Harvest-like spells existed in a much more creative and userfull form and in the past we had ways to apply curses in aoe (Jinx, Cursed Auras, Soulburn, Impending catastrophe).

Must Have Pick Talents who does not have competition

As a damage dealer your job is to deal damage, as much damage as possible in fact.

This means in a talent tree who have utilty, defensives and damage, you will always invest in more damage if possible because Its your role and you Damage are balanced around the existence of your damage talents.

Talents like Demonic Inspiration, Wrathful Minion, Socrethar’s Guile, Sargerei’s Teaching, Demonic Tactics and Soul Conduit are absolutely must picks.

Thats frustrating because you get denied the ability to pick utility, quality of life or defensive ones you want to have but you don’t have enough points because you are sinking 25%(8 out of 31) of your talent points in damage nodes in the class tree.

Fel Synergy is very very weak

Like, no joke, Fel Synergy is so incredibly weak, that in a a spec with 7 million HP, it heals you for 3k-4k hps or 0.00042857142% of your hp per second.

To Compare, Demon Skin increases your armor, your max shield and generates 0.2% of your max hp per second to you and your pet, thats orders of magnitude more HPS on a talent in the 2nd row of talents.

The only reason you pick Fel Synergy is because its a cheaper way to acess Demonic Healthstones.

Pet Utility concerns

Honestly, i have defended the advantages of having an interrupt on your pet, and its true, its good, you have higher range to interrupt,don’t require line of sight…its pretty good in that way.

But also, there is an uglier side to part of the utility of warlock being locked behind pets, as a Demolock i can’t magic dispell because summoning a Imps is a gigantic dps loss, i also can’t purge and my interrupt also stuns the target in place meaning i can’t use it to maneouver casters enemies.

Its also on a longer 30s CD where rangeds have a 24s CD.

If by charity and fortune we would have a better version of Teachings of the Black Harvest this issue would be only worse, but i have kept quited because “of the fantasy of the class”.

But as 11.1 hit, and i saw the amazing changes you guys are considering for MM Hunter, i start to wonder, should we still have our utility locked on pets? Couldn’t it be possible to have alternatives as talents? maybe Call Felhunter (the old pvp talent) as a pve talent…or something like Grimoire of Service but fully utility based?

The utility of the class

I am sure people will say “warlocks have incredible utility”, thats true…we have incredible utility in raids.

But as far as you leave the raid enviroment and you go to M+, our utility isn’t rly that amazing, the ability to apply a curse in AOE or to maintain its effect is something classes with similar effects can do already and they also have like Raid buffs or Lust, or both.

Meanwhile Warlock is manually applying Curses, picking a talents in the class tree who basically do nothing only to gain acess to something who will do something.

Healthstones are insane in raid because its 19 more of them, but in dungeon its only 4 more, in a dungeon Healthstones is much worse than effects other classes have.

And for as much as warlocks can apply curses, you very limited usage magic dispell is still locked on a fricking pet you can’t use if you are Demonology.

Conclusion

Warlock Class Tree needs some attention, there is so much space either as utility or quality of life who can be approached as talents for class tree warlock instead of some of the things i pointed above.

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I fully agree with everything Mala has said here and want to add the following:

During the beta Feedback cycle it was stated that a goal with the tree was to have exciting capstones. Now Soul Conduit is as exciting as watching paint dry. It’s a must take damage increase but at the same time refunds so little shards that you barely ever feel it. I would love to see a more exciting and maybe even visually impacting capstone here.

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Fully agree with this. There are some nodes in the class tree that are just occupying space.

Some of which like banish and gate which should have been baseline much to what they did with to several other classes from the introduction to Dragonflight and hence forth.

To this day I’m unsure as to why our dev that is working on warlock hasn’t done this. Or adjusted the talent that becomes filler talents like the one that interact with drain life.

I’m still baffled when I see the talents players love to pick changed or just outright removed but then the dead talents that see close to 0 play left in the tree w.o so much of even an adjustment.

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As someone that PVPs with Locks, I’m desperate to see Burning Rush being improved into an actual reliable movement tool and not a death penalty in PVP. Maybe they could just burn mana instead.

I have no idea why spells like Banish, Control Undead, Hibernate, Shackle Undead all need to be talent picks and not baseline. They are the niche of the niche… I’d love to see metrics on who actually choose them up, because they all seem like dead talents.

Even in PVP, where they could see more consistent use, there are often stronger options to pick, and all of those having cast times just makes them even more undesirable.

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I am glad to see your post. It is something desperately needed, obviously. I would like to draw attention to my thread Warlock Class Tree & Doomguard, here in the same forum, about improving the class tree. I think together they would greatly improve the tree.

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I had read your post, and i actually disagree with your post due to a number of factors.

1º - I don’t think having damage nodes are a good idea in the class tree because you will always pick them instead of utility, quality of life or defensive ones.

In part, this relates with how i rather have spec-specific damage talents who interact and relate to each spec toolkits than a damage talent who is essentially the “same” for all 3 specs.

“Look we have this 10% overall damage class talent on all 3 specs who is the same”…that X% budget could be more interestingly invested on being X% on some destro-like effect for destro tree, X% on a demo-like effect on demo, and X% on an aff-like effect on aff.

Your Damge is always 100% of a total, if you add more damage sources…you take damage from elsewhere.

2º - We already have warlocks who feels like how each spec having a main demon CD is out of place because Pet Damage/doing damage with demons isn’t part of that spec fantasy.

And this is Darkglare a spell who does actively plays with the damage-over time effects of the spec.

3º - I Don’t think the specs need yet another cooldown to add specially Demo and Affliction who have quite a few of those in multiple different timings and their particular way of using them.

I recognize you want Doomguard as a pet for the class again, and nothing i say will convince you of otherwise, its why i have opted to not reply my disagreement in your thread when i originally read it.

I think you have fully the right of manifesting that opinion, and attempt to convince Blizzard of the case, and it falls up to them to be the sole judge of “yeah we should add doomguard back to all 3 specs” vs “we shouldn’t”.

But, like i said, i disagree that we should have Doomguard as a talent tree in the class tree for all 3 specs.

I don’t think they will ever remove the health cost of Burning Rush, its ability to be kept turned on is too strong to be solely limited towards mana-cost.

but i do think they can limit it, like they have done in Dragonflight even if it turned to be too strong (with people keeping it on for entire raid fights).

Personally, i would suggest the idea of having a talent who introduces a grace period, making it so that it don’t burn health for the first 4~6s of its duration, but in turn it introduces a small (8s~10s) long CD.

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That would do good for me. My main concern is that Locks are already very mobility gimped, and the few ones they have, both require setting up. 6s of a grace period (with maybe a short internal cooldown) would fill up the needs in PVP, because as it is, you’re just asking to unlive - a class that already is considered a good target for melee.

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My biggest ask is a dark apotheosis transformation for a tank spec for warlock.

However I realize thats not super likely, so short term my preference is Kiljaeden’s cunning of some sort as a capstone talent and a return of Impending Catastrophe for AoE curses. If Ardenweald wasn’t absurdly better for warlocks (and if I wanted to deal with the tea parties…) I would have gone venthyr for that ability alone.

Still feel like curses could use…some sort of ‘buff’. Or at least some adaptation so they’re boss relevant and useable.

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I disagree. There is always going to be some sort of dps nodes in the class tree. People are always going to take those nodes. The point is to give them quality nodes instead of garbage ones. Additionally, the class tree is already riddled with excessive defensive and utility nodes that are unnecessary. Quality offensive is better than garbage defensive.

I understand your point and that is something blizz could implement into each spec tree. However, bc i am focused on the class tree, doomguard needs to meet the criteria for all specs.

I understand the dilemma. Darkglare has always been a terrible demon for aff. In fact, i remember when they chose it over the other cd that i thought was a better choice.
However, the implementation of doomguard does not mean we have to keep darkglare. It does not prevent further changes. What it does, actually, is standardize a primary dps cd for all specs so each spec can have a unique spec cd that is up every pull without worrying about having it be thee cd. Essentially, it opens up the opportunity for changing the cds underneath it, which is literally what we need right now.

I understand the concern for excessive cds. I agree that, especially demo, has too many, yet, like i said above, having one primary cd gives the class a foundation to allow blizz to streamline the specs without loosing alot of the power we have in our cds. This is bc most of our cds are of 2min variety in some sense and therefore having doomguard would only replace them and allow for MORE power and burst via smaller spec cds as long as blizz does their job and streamlines the specs.
I am all for the streamlining of specs, the removal of excessively taxed spells, and increasing mobility. Doomguard helps with these.

No, no it wont. But it is not due to stubbornness or vileness, rather, bc i want to see the warlock class succeed. I enjoy doomguard and its theme. I think doomguard as a casting demon fits the class wayyyyyyyy better than melee demons. I think blizz has certainly been subpar in its work on the warlock class tree, especially its capstone talents. I think doomguard is the quintessential demon for warlocks and needs to be identified as such. I also think there are so many good ideas for warlocks and blizz never uses any of them. This is a good idea that would really benefit the warlock class.
Not everyone is going to agree, and thats okay as well.

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Not to mention a lot of these talents dont function properly… ive been told by many players not to take resolute barrier as it only sometimes works. Same with sweet souls

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Give us Grimoire’s of service. Multiple that we can path through. Make conduit baseline already and replace it with something of actual substance. There’s so much they can do in the class tree that would go a long way in fixing the class’ glaring shortcomings, but they’re sitting on any obviously healthy changes for some reason. I wish I could see their development process for class changes. Feels like they spin a wheel and whatever it lands on becomes the core focus at the expense of other classes.

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I rly wish our capstones were changed and tweaked, bringing back Manoroth’s fury, Kil’jaden’ cunning and Archimonde’s Darkness, even if they dont work exactly the same, those were such cool and thematic options for us, like, they sound so cool

I loved how kil’jaden fury improved our mobility, even as just casting incinerate or shadowbolt was already good… Maybe it could work as “you can cast incinerate and shadowbolt while movie, you active for a few seconds to cast other spells whole moving as well”

I would also add that reign of tyranny could make demonic tyrant an instant summon, since they are so hellbent in not giving that in for free.

And that’s just me, but i still think Vilefiend should replace call dreadstalkers, making stronger and powerful overall

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Temp mobility isnt worth capstone tbh. Warlocks suffer from having nearly zero throughput capstone talents and we need to focus on that. Mobility should be added at the beginning of the tree.

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2-point nodes shouldn’t exist anywhere for any reason on any class or spec tree. Their existence encourages lazy talent design.

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Neither should excess defensive nodes, mobility talents that should be baseline, nor absolutely horrible, subpar capstone talents.

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It won’t work because for it to properly work the warlock and the ones who use the stones need to be in the same server, maybe one day they fix it.

I know it does not work on Nexus princess ,but i haven’t been able to pinpoint if its something like not procing on magic damage or some other special factor.

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Agree on all of this pretty much. There seem to be a lot of points spent that are just because we don’t have a choice and they don’t provide a whole lot of value. Along with talents that seem really dated and in need of some modernization.

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