Talent trees are just a facade and an illusion of choice often times, especially when the design isn’t good.
Having the design be focused on survivability just means no weird surprises with our damage tuning. Lowkey why warlock is consistently one of the top dps classes expansion after expansion–when we underperform the damage buffs to get us back to where we need to be end up being relatively straightforward to make. And it also allows for each spec to be super unique.
Knowing blizz if the tree was focused on damage we’d have to deal with some dumb pathing, like making destro have to spec into a dead talent like corruption to get to some obscure talent that does x shadowflame damage or some uninspired rubbish.
I’d love a fourth spec added for tanking thrown on utilizing something meta-esque. Though would prefer something more voidlord/voidwraith like in appearance.
Otherwise my wishlist is pretty standard. Improved curses, Impending catastrophe for aoe cursing. Maybe bake a stun into soulburned weakness and a kick into soulburned tongues.
Kil jaeden’s cunning as a capstone. Especially with the outright obsession not with a lot of movement in raid fights, but the almost literal constant movement during fights.
Something to make drain life not useless.
Wouldn’t mind if, in the hypothetical world warlock got a raid buff, it was 1% crit and Norgannon’s sagacity to round out movement casts. At the least give people the last like second of their cast while they move out of the way of ground swirly #490
Maybe an alternative choice node on demonic teleport, so instead of cast on current spot it lets you select a location in range. On cast sends you there, but leaves the circle where you were so you can use the teleport part of the spell to get back
Maybe a utility summon of a small imp, that is just simply a repair stone
It would be nice to see the demon-less option put back into the class tree over being a neverpick choice in the spec tree.
And yes, that also includes throwing a bone to demo who obviously can’t use it. Maybe bring back the ‘damage done by you or your demon has a chance to increase the others damage by X for 10 seconds’ talent.
Oh, its not just rogues. Have you seen the mage class tree? Hell, even druids have more throughput nodes than we do. Add pallies even to that list.
This whole “survivability” argument regarding the class tree is just… well, frankly, stupid. Contextually, warlocks have never really had an issue with survivability. So to say we need a full class tree dedicated to it just screams disconnect to class needs imo. That, or a catering to a specific group of warlocks with a overwhelming amount of influence.
With how backwards blizz is to warlock design, especially with mobility, spec design and approach, and lack of creativity, blizz needs to focus on more dps nodes in the class tree. For example:
If the spell can be found across ALL three specs, it should be buffed (i.e. nightfall), at least to some extent in the class tree.
Doomguard should be a cornerstone talent in the class tree with various nodes for different playstyles.
Pets should have a much larger space in the tree with different dps options.
To make space, bake in and remove the +health, leech, and excess defensive nodes. Make gate/other mobility talents baseline. Make curses optional.
I mean, really, it is NOT hard to make the class tree 1000000x better with just a few minutes of focused thought.
Thank you! I mean, from a gameplay and mechanics perspective, that’s what separated our DPS style from Mages - Mages are burst and Warlocks are periodic damage (I always felt that destro, while bursty, was supposed to be mixed play style of burst AND dots, but when they shifted ALL class fantasy to spec only, destro became “fire with a demonic twist”)
Now for my wishlist ideas:
Class Tree … so do we want throughput talents or not? Seriously, what is the plan here?
Either remove EVERY throughput node altogether, or replace them with something that has ACTUAL fantasy to it (+4% is NOT class fantasy, it is not spec fantasy, it is boring and unimaginative)
Drain Life: make it useful.
Too many Warlocks (no matter the spec), love this ability for (from based on what I’ve seen and read in forums) many different reasons, so I don’t know if the devs are trying slowly scale it out of the game, but if they are, they are making a rather large mistake.
I’ve since this posted already in the forums, so this isn’t my idea, but I thought it was great idea:
Doomguard as a class-wide cooldown, maybe 5 minute cooldown, maybe sacrifice your main demon for the duration (unless your demonology).
It just sucks the we were all once able to permanently command one of these, to what we have now …is there a lore reason as to how we lost so much of our power? New expansions should add to feeling of our “growing power”, and that one did the exact opposite.
Also, can we cut back on the 2 point nodes, I mean, with all the excess (and boring) 2 point nodes, Im starting to wonder if there is some passive aggression going on in the dev team or something.
Anyway, that came out a bit more ranty that I thought, so I will say, I definitely love warlocks this expansion more than ever (like since wrath), so it’s just work in progress? I think
One of my wishes would be the removal of the wall of two-point talents at the bottom of the Warlock class tree!
I like Demonic Resilience (15% damage reduction to main Pet), but not at the expense of the three talent points you need to get it.
Overall, to just sum up the last like 4 posts, the class tree needs rebuilt. It needs new cornerstone talents to include doomguard as a classwide dps cd. No more 2point gating garbo. More throughput nodes. More baseline/baking in defenses/mobility. Add more pet offensive/defensive abilities. Remove curses as a requirement to move up the tree.
I mean, its pretty freaking simple.
Oh and a new freaking shadow bolt visual for the love of god
i only want affliction and destro to not be garbage when other classes decide to press their “CD” spells and obliterate everything on sight while aff is still busy setting up AOE and destro is spamming RoF but none of the RoF gets their shards values because it does literally 2 damages compare to other classes on mythic brood especially
That’s why I don’t bother with RoF. I just use cataclysm and then spam chaos bolts with havoc. Less depressing to just accept that I’m priority damage and not AOE.
I like to see the removal of most of our 2 point nodes clogging up the tree
Demonic Gateway should be baseline, not in the class tree, and we need some talents to augment Gateway, like reduced cooldown or longer range as a choice node
Soul conduit does not feel like a cap stone, neither does Soul Burn tbh, I’d like to see some meaningful capstones
Howl of Terror should not be a choice node with Mortal Coil, there is never a situation where I want Howl over MC, split them up
As a capstone, I’d like to Grimoire of Supremacy return as a choice node to choose between a Doomguard or Infernal as a 2nd pet.
For Demo:
Vilefiend/ the Sagaras Hounds would be an instant cast
I think Grimoire Felguard should be removed to make room for a more impactful 2 minute cd. G:FG falls flat visually
Move Immutable Hatred/Guillotine to replace G:FG in the middle right of the tree
rework the entire bottom right of the tree to support a new 2 minute cd, like a reworked Nether Portal that doesn’t feel horrible to play around, or a new demon like an Inquisitor
Retune the Doomguard capstone on the bottom left to cast Doombolt volleys like it did back in DF and solidify the left wing of the tree for AoE/M+