Warlock is not good, a few ideas on how to improve it

Classes Warlock
1

Warlock is not good, and the changes they made over the expansion, especially after aberrus have been very disappointing so i will make a list of what i think they should do:

Warlock:
1: Revert the awful change done to grand warlock design, static cdr… Might as well just make it baseline then, if it’s just a static cd decrease there really isn’t a point in this being a talent, bring back cdr on soul shard spend, especially important for destro
2: Gwd in the class tree
3: main demon cds summons baseline

Destro:
1: channel demonfire should generate 1 soul shard fragment per bolt, and be castable while moving
2: remove pyrogenics, put cataclysm in it’s place.
3: Change crashing chaos. The damage buff is boring, make it like this instead, when you have infernal up and you use rain of fire or chaos bolt, it makes you next rain of fire or chaos bolt deal 30% more damage, and have it’s cost reduced by one soul shard.
4: Bring back madness, with a longer duration, chaosbringer is TRASH.
5: soul fire insta cast, immolate ticks have a chance to reset it’s cd, chance is reduced the more enemies you have immolate on, so you don’t just get procs 24/7, this is something they already do anyway for things like agony.

Demonology:
1: revert all the awful changes done after aberrus, the 3rd dog removal, the reduced demonic core procs etc… All of it, reverted, those were awful changes and should have never seen the light of day.
2: portal changed to a more sustain profile, if gwd is in the class tree, the changes are reverted and you can take tyranny, that’s enough burst already, no need to increase it even further since it’s gonna get nerfed anyway.
3: Hand of doom is better than doom. No one is gonna use that talent as it is.
4: Pact of the imp mother should work as if you spend double the resources, so it should interact with talents that scale off soul shard consumption, and things like dread calling.
5: bring back the vault tier set as a talent. Instant hand of doom is quite cool.
6: tyrant should generate 1 soul shard at the start, then 1 every 2 seconds, and one when it’s over, instead of just being 5 at the start.

Affliction:
1: Bring back the shadowlands tier set.
2: Dread touch and doom blossom are too polarized.
3: haunt should be integrated into unstable affliction, haunt is currently the de facto example of a bloat ability.
4: soul flame removed and seed buffed to compensate
5: Darkglare should have a soul shard generation component.
6: remove siphon life

And that’s about all i can think of. When everything is done simply rebalance.

The list is quite long as warlock is frankly quite awful and has been getting progressively worse over the course of the expansion.

2 Likes
2

I do agree that warlocks could use a large rework. It’s clear that we are in need of it instead of a few balance tweaks.

That being said, a number of these suggested changes are incredibly unbalanced. Also some of them don’t really address the current problems that the different specs face.

3 Likes
3

Balance is just a matter of tuning.

Here i am talking about what i would personally find fun to play, and things that would solve problems that the specs currently have. If you have an issue that would not be resolved with this, explain.

4

just because you dont like the spec doesnt mean its bad its currently one of the highest performing classes in all forms of content what you seem to be suggesting with these changes is you want it to ascend to godhood and be completely unstoppable and capable of soloing everything.

2 Likes
5

Ngl these destro suggestions alone made me throw up in my mouth :nauseated_face:

3 Likes
6

i mean honestly when im tired of feeling weak i just pop onto my warlock smash out a couple of 20s feel way to powerful and go back to my underperforming melee classes because it feels good when you hit higher numbers versus barely having to try and just suddenly doing 500k+ all the time.

7

For context, I have been pushing keys almost exclusively as a demo lock since S3 of shadowlands, with an average rating of ~2800-3000 each season (all 20s timed plus some reach into 21-23s). I’m not the best, but I’ve played this enough to offer a well-informed perspective on your requested changes/reversions.

Yes, I’ll agree the core generation has diminished some. There are lulls in the rotation where you have to cast a couple of shadowbolts. But honestly, it’s not bad, and requires a little bit more thought than the monotony of "Hand of Guldan, Demon bolt, HoG, Db ad infinitum). I miss third dog in theory, but in practice, there were a lot of those third core procs that were lost due to overcapping. The changes to demonic core are not nearly as egregious as you’re making it out to be.

The problem with portal is it is just not fun to play in keys at all. I used it on some higher tyrannical keys during S2 DF–too many times it was interrupted by required movement to avoid a 1-shot, thus significantly decreasing portal’s output. I will agree that portal in its current state was a massive overcorrection from S2, where the tier set and reign of tyranny worked in conjunction to add more value and damage to portal. With the change of the tier set, the removal of the tyrant/portal damage boost synergy, and other changes dropped portal’s power to only a small fraction of its former self.

GWD baseline is not a horrible idea, but I think you’re missing the point. The major demons cooldowns simply do not align with each other. Currently, we are running the “Naked Tyrant” build which is a 2-minute build (waiting on Grimoire: Felguard to be available for every Tyrant). There is 30 seconds of lapsed time between the cd of tyrant and GF. Also, vilefiend (which hasn’t been popular in keys except for a brief time at the beginning of S3 DF) is 45 seconds, which lines up with non GWD Tyrant, but you need to wait 15 seconds for GWD Tyrant. Dogs is on a 20s cd which only lines up with GWD Tyrant if you play perfectly.

Agree.

I don’t think this would work like you think.

Redundant

The current problem with tyrant is not the shard generation. No one takes tyrant’s shard generation currently, and demo is consistently performing extremely well. The problem with tyrant is largely that its damage is infinitesimal. Of course, its power lies in extending and boosting the active demons, which is why we try to build up our demon army before casting tyrant.

Is demo in a bad place for damage or play style? I would argue strongly that this is the best demo has felt and performed in multiple avenues for quite some time. Once you have a decent level of gear, demo just pumps assuming you’re playing it correctly. This is especially in keys where only a couple of spells into the rotation, I am frequently seeing myself rise to the top of the meters in small and large pulls.

Some of your suggestions have merit, while others are not quite ready for the live game.

2 Likes
8

But I like the soul flame WHOOOSH you get when a lot of mobs die. One of the better visuals from the legion days, only thing missing is the soul echo things we say with the legendary effect.

1 Like
9

Warcraft logs determined that was a lie.

10

The Warlock forums in a nutshell. Some people really do have horrible ideas on what they want this class to be.

1 Like
11

The CDR was nice but really volatile. The change hurt our throughput but they gave us buffs anyways and now it’s a healthier gameplay pattern.
#2 can’t really exist without #3 which is likely why these are both just in the class trees instead. Original intent on the split may have been ease of tuning, but hard to say. I’d prefer if it was in the class tree but I’m not too broken up about it tbh.

The soul shard fragment is entirely not needed. We really don’t suffer with shard gen right now anyways. The movement change is good but the shard gen reads like something somebody who doesn’t really play or understand the spec would say.

I’m down with this for a QoL standpoint for sure, but it would likely result in heavy RoF nerfs (which would be entirely justified). I imagine they could have Cataclysm and Inferno existing together if they removed Inferno’s shard gen entirely. If Inferno was an RoF damage amp + a 25-30% slow too, that’d be cool.

Crashing Chaos is fine since they changed it semi-recently. Quality talent that complements our CD windows nicely. Chaosbringer is better than Madness. I miss the CD cast time reduction from Madness but they could find a way to put that somewhere else in the tree. Soul fire instant cast with RNG CD resets sounds like a pile of flaming hair and dog puke. Also, you don’t have to reference Agony to get an example of reduced CD reset per target for an ability on dots. It already exists for the DRift tier, so this reads like someone who doesn’t play the spec (or is really bad at it) [like above].

1 Like
12

The game doesn’t revolve around keys.

1 Like
13

I’d like to see warlocks get Dark Soul: Misery back, maybe a choice node w/ WGD and DSM

1 Like
14

Do you realize why channel demonfire is worse than literally some crit and immolate damage? Or why it’s generally disliked? Sure they could just 'increase the damage" But that’s boring as hell.

Chaosbringer better than madness? What? Since when? Because all the feedback iv’e seen on forums or discord said that this is basically an inferior version of madness, and madness just needed a longer duration.

Also yea, if gwd is just a static cd decrease, it might as well not exist, and infernal, might as well be just a 2 min cd, there is no point to a static cd decrease talent, and the cdr was actually a nice gameplay component. Not everything is just about performance, and especially on destro, dynamic cdr was better anyway.

Warlock for me is one of the specs that really suffered in gameplay over the course of the expansion, especially after aberrus, id be hard pressed to find a single change i liked since aberrus dropped.

Warlock is TERRIBLE. Affliction is a mess of juggling dots, they removed most synergy and dynamist from destro, demo is a strictly inferior version to how it was at the start of this expansion, it’s just hilarious. Warlock is hilarious.

On a side note, nerfing rof for the sake of having cata/inferno as an option is totally fine with me.

Balance is just numbers, gameplay is what ultimately matters. And having cata/inferno is a pretty significant powerup. Not just damage, but qol, and faster setup for aoe, so basically reduced ramp up time, which is pretty much always a good thing.

15

I find CDF pretty boring in general. With Aberrus tier it did solid enough damage but I hated the impact it had on our ramp timings, having to stand still so often to channel it, and I feel like it’s the antithesis of a chaos bolt (CDF is peppering enemies with tiny little bolts vs CB being this cool visually pleasing nuke).

Chaosbringer is better because it’s damage without having to micromanage a super short duration maintenance buff. Madness’ cast time reduction was nice but I enjoy being able to move for mechanics without feeling doubly punished: Losing Madness + not having anything to press on the move. By introducing DRift back with the current tier and turning Madness into Chaosbringer, they really addressed two of the biggest pain points that players of the spec had.

Static GWD is completely fine. A nerf? Yes, but the variance it brought about could get really frustrating to deal with (although it definitely had some highs). It also introduced a feedback loop that was insanely strong and would only continue to scale out of control each tier as our stats increased. I’m ok with a static change as I appreciate the consistency. If anything, I’d say just tune the CDs to be stronger/weaker as needed and keep it static.

I would say destruction gameplay specifically improved dramatically over the xpac:

  • DRift hits hard, gives us something to press on the move [mobility].
  • Madness is gone and we got the % damage increase without the annoying buff [mobility/consistency].
  • Crashing Chaos is much much better than it’s older iteration (more dmg vs lowered shard cost) [talent was comically bad before and often resulted in overcapping]
  • We can use Cataclysm now (major thx to current tier set again) which makes the spec play smoother and cuts our ramp time substantially. Also reduces dependence on RoF death balls. [less punishing for mob movement & smoother, more consistent gameplay]

I think Destro has a lot of good synergies and systems going, but the talent tree could use some changes (especially the middle). RoF should be baseline. Decoupling of Cata/Inferno would be cool. Soul Fire, CDF, and Shadowburn are all pretty garbage from a PvE gameplay perspective, so it’d be cool if those were changed dramatically or even move DRift up to that section instead. I think the Havoc transfer % of 60 is underwhelming and we never received any additional options to buff that after the potency conduit from SL was gone. Cry Havoc is pretty swamp butt. That infernal melee talent is giga dead. Rain of Chaos is cheesy in it’s current spot and only warrants play in a 3 min Infernal build where you’re getting PI (which doesn’t even sync your Infernal and the PI lol). FnB could use changes (maybe bake a weaker version of Cry Havoc into FnB automatically and dial up the Incin dmg a tiny bit more?).

3 Likes
16

Why are we even channeling it?, we are Warlocks, Channel Demonfire should spawn an imp/demon that channels it for us…

Let it be targeted by players for PvP counter plays, be kicked/stunned, but for PvE it be insanely better. The added mobility isn’t going to be ground breaking just QoL.

17

Some of your suggestions aren’t necessarily bad, but god, some of those i disagree on a fundamental sense.

Not to speak of the ones who are power-creep for power-creep sake or just feelycrafty.

18

Power creep is irrelevant. Especially if everything is scaled up to the new level, or they can simply re balance stuff.

19

Not all feedback is created equal.

Some people in general don’t know what they are doing.

20

Right back at you.

Because the people saying that chaos is worse than madness and madness just needed longer duration are not even your run at the mill warlocks.