Well I do hope our class tree gets some update in points usage.
I think that’s probably the one thing that one thing that needs some of the biggest fixed like some of the 2 pointer nodes. It just feels like the general tree needs at least 2 or 1 point to have some flexibility in use.
I also feel like demonic gate should be baseline already.
The only real change I can think of that I would like to see for the class tree specifically is turning gateway’s node into a choice between gateway, and a second charge of demonic portal, but I’m just biased against gateway and have hated it ever since the day it was added to warlock so I just want a way to get a little extra pseudo-mobility without having to take it.
There’s a lot wrong with the new class tree. It’s not much of an improvement from the previous iteration
I’ll maybe edit later to add more points but at a minimum
Demonic tactics addition makes zero sense. We haven’t actively pursued crit since like what, Cata or wrath? Haste and mastery are our usual stats. It just feels awkward and forced.
If Demonic Tactics won’t be removed, they need to move it’s location. We are practically forced to pick it up. There is no much flexibility in choice at the bottom of the tree. A lot of different ways to approach this, but I’d like to see Soul Link at the bottom center again.
No one talks enough about how we effectively lost a point in the tree when they removed Demonic Teleport from being auto-learned. Absolutely zero rhyme or reason as to why it was replaced with Soul Leech…a function that was already baseline.
Still waiting for 11.0 wishlist.
Agree about the 2-point nodes. Several of them near the bottom of the class tree need to be adjusted or pruned due to how unimpactful or useless they feel given the point investment.
Fel Synergy- 2 points for essentially 0.45% Leech (and healing 0.03% of max HP every second from Demon Skin) when other classes typically get at least 2% Leech per point seems incredibly weak given its location in the tree.
Demonic Resilience- Useless outside of PVP or solo content. Considering its location deep in the tree, it should be replaced with something universally useful.
Soul Conduit- One of the weakest capstones in terms of impact. As Destruction, 5% proc rate is equivalent to about 3 extra Soul Shards over a 5 minute fight or one extra Chaos Bolt. Since they feel warlock Soul Shard generation is high enough already (Destruction at least), I would change this talent to something that actually has a meaningful impact in combat.
My only qualm is that we’re are pretty much forced to take it. They are really dumb for baking so much of our healing utility into hero talents.
I think the throughput budget is there to just flatout buff this node. Same issue with my above point, they frontload the impact elsewhere and it results in defunct talents or spells that exist just for completion’s sake.
Edit: but no, instead of actually fixing our foundation they’ll just throw another 50% buff to shadowbolt and call it a day.
Yeah that is one that really strange and it makes 0 sense. FYI that talent use to buff demons crit but they took it out for who knows why.
That’s why sometimes I think some of the devs ideas are pretty oblivious when I see a talent like that. To increase crit from crit sources for warlock ??!!! 
I wish Amplify Curse and Gateway were both baseline. Amplify curse could make Warlocks very useful in more contents (specially M+) and Gate it’s too iconic to warlocks to be a talent, then they could just rework the tree a little bit around em.
Also, not for the whole Warlock tree but, I’d like a lot if they made Grimoire of Sacrifice pulse AoE damage again, my pets keep dyin in delves and random M+. Also they could bring Soul Flame back into Aff lock tree, it’s iconic and it was so satisfying…
The general’s main issue is that it’s forced down the center with a big chokepoint around the middle which makes it impossible to pick up utility without sacrificing throughput or survivability, something which no player will ever do.
Furthermore, many of the utility talents are low effort remnant fillers meant only for visual appeal.
For example:
Improved amp curse. It is abysmal, serves almost no purpose and no one will ever put a point in it even if they could.
The same logic applies to banish, all of the drain life talents ( rip drain), the 2 pointer healthstone leech, fear’s extra 60% damage threshold ( which is nerfed to 20% in pvp lol), improved feldom?, improved shadowfury/shadowflame.
There should be no improved version of anything other than something that greatly alters the talent’s functionality, a small cd decrease should just be baked baseline. An example of what an improved talent could be:
Improved shadowfury: your shadowfury is now instant cast ( or 0.5s) , now that might appeal to some people ( especially pvpers), whereas now no one bothers taking it.
Shadowflame 70% snare is a joke these days, we’re not in classic anymore, snares mean nothing at all unless they’re 90% or roots. I don’t see how this talent will ever be picked in its current state.
Demonic resilience /teachingsotbharvest: the pet damage reduction has merit, sadly no one wants teachings and to path that way is to skip other important aspects of the tree.
Resolute barrier: every other class got their talents shifted away from rng reductions, heck even demo’s old tyrant rng was changed to a flat reduction, why is this talent still in its current state? Flat cdr is bis.
Dark accord: the cdr is too negligible for a defensive, 25% dr on a 2.25m cd is so strange when practically every other class’ 20-30% dr is 45s-1min. Why is lock’s wall such a long cd?
Mortal coil’s range is still 20y when many classes have 45+ range now, even melee classes have longer range on their cc, plz.
General pet issues: 6s cast times on pet remain the default when this qol happened in mop/wod then removed again, can we maybe have some qol back plz? Every other pet class has better tools to maintain/revive pets but warlocks are so attached to a 3min long cd that many in pvp opt to straight up sacrifice their pet to avoid the hassle.
Personally, if i could add something to the general tree it would be a heavier focus on curses.
This class has such a unique theme that is often neglected in favor of the fast-food streamlined design the class has went with over the years.
Bring us more curses, with more utilities. Instead of having 3 drain life talents that do nothing, imagine if those were 3 brand new curses instead.
Also feels like the current standard curses are too bland, for example:
Curse of exhaustion, instead of a flat 50%, exhausts the target slowing them by 10% and another 10% every second. Upon reaching 100% or after 10s the target is rooted for 3seconds. This process resets to 10% afterwards. Amp curse effect: instantly root the target.
(Makes more sense since exhaustion increases overtime).
Curse of weakness: reduces the target’s physical damage by 10% ( does not affect mobs immune to cc). Amp curse effect: disarm the target.
(Fits more with “weakness” than slower attack speed)
Tongues’s amp curse changed to 3s silence instead of double duration cast reduction ( silence emphasizes skill over standard frustration of longer cast times).
New* curse of mortality: reduces the target’s healing received by 25% ( does not stack with similar effects). Amp curse: healing prevented is transfered to the warlock instead.
New* curse of the iron maiden: enemies that damage you take %n spell power shadow damage in return. Amp curse: reflect 50% of all damage taken for 3secs , up to a maximum of 50% of your max hp.
New* curse of horror: enemies that strike you have a 5% chance of being horrified for 3s, fleeing from you. Amp curse: horrify the target for 3s.
New* curse of the mind: cause enemies to forget things, every ability used has a 20% chance (10s icd) to cause a random magical buff on the character to fall off. Amp curse: force the character to forget all their magical buffs, dispelling them.
These are just a few off the top ideas that would certainly be more flavorful than a “reduce your amp curse cd by 15s”.
I have to agree with this assesment. Our class tree is riddled with junk.
I remember early in TWW Alpha they commented about wanting to make the Warlock class tree fun and give it fun capstone nodes.
So we got… a 5% SS refund, stronger HS’s but they’re super buggy, and Soulburn.
Soulburn is great but we already had that…?
The Lock tree is definitely my least favorite class tree of my characters. The only thing I ever change is maybe in PVP I’ll drop Burning Rush for like 5% more HP. Woo exciting.
Idk about all that in the first half of the paragraph, but 2nd half has some neat ideas for curses. Nice
Curse of the Iron Maiden and Curse of Horror could make excellent defensive CDs or raid/party buffs, with proper tuning ofc.
Getting locked down by a warrior or pally, or a frost DK on a horse now, there’s not a lot of defense against a melee who’s determined to murder us when we have no one to peel. CoIM and CoT would be excellent detterents to buy a reprieve. Make it a talent choice node, maybe.
Or instead of a, say, 20sec duration CD on a 2minute cooldown, keep it a choice node but make it a raid buff. Our main buff spell is underwater breathing, whoop-de-doo. I haven’t cast that seriously since, oh, Cata?
The curse idea is cool, but I think the problem with them is the same problem as the curses we already have. You can only have 1 on a target so you just end up having the one curse that’s applicable to the situation, and the rest as dead buttons taking up space 90% of the time.
I think adding more curses could be fun, but to make it work I think all of our curses would have to go the way of paladin blessings where they are given the ability to have more than 1 on a target and made significantly stronger if need be in exchange for cooldowns, and shorter durations, changing their function from semi-permanent passive debuffs to active offensive/defensive utlity.
Yeah I like the idea more into curses. Utility wise, especially us being warlocks and all.
Banish should already be made baseline.
There’s barely anything to use it for. Hopefully one of content creators goes over this for the next patch but I think they already mentioned so many times how the class tree needs some more versatility towards point usage and seems like the devs ignored it.
Only hope they fixed points usage so it feels like we can at least have like 2 points to go around. Get rid of that crit talent and change it back to what it was, give soul conduit a 2nd conditional effect because as it stand that talent is a row 2 talent not capstone.
Some of those other ones like black harvest (still do not understand why this isn’t grimorie of supremacy) instead of its useless current version and that one for the snare should just be removed.
Frankly the class tree seems to be pretty dated and has like 8 or so talents that are practically useless which we just take because… Aside from like less cast time for healthstone/soulshard (damn hilarious these aren’t baseline and they’re like here you go a talent for this but not allow points to use else where) what’s next … add our useless ability ritual of doom in the class tree that just and then require 5 people for just flavor 
Yes, curses being situational is the best usage out of utility.
You pick the one that’s best for any given situation, this breeds skill and a thought-process that goes beyond a standard rotation you memorize.
Aff: I like the choice between Vile Taint & Phantom Singularity, as both are very good for very different fights… however, we absolutely rely on VT to do decent AoE damage in almost any dungeon or add fight in Raid.
Vile Taint should be instant cast, though incorporating a delay as long as its cast time would be fair (if you don’t want it to just be point and click)… however, it would feel better if you can “cast” it on the move.
Vile Taint should be a 20s cooldown, or have 2 charges, so that it can be used more reliably in the event your group is rushing through content. So many other classes can just keep bursting AOE damage on command, whereas our ramp up is excruciating if Soul Rot + Vile Taint are on cooldown.
I love the Soulburn Mechanic. I would love to see this expanded on - allow soul burn to interact with more things as you need it and be flexible. Maybe you can Soulburn, and if you push an ability that’s on cooldown, it’s cooldown reduces by 10 or more seconds. Or if you Soulburn and cast Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul, it automatically hits everything in 10 yards of your original target as well for reduced damage. Or if you Soulburn, you can cast/channel your next spell while moving. Stuff like this would rock.
To build upon the curse conversation I would like to see Impending Catastrophe return. AoE curse application would be a good QoL improvement in my mind.
Also to add to this conversation.
How is demo one of the spec that has to cast so much in this expansion, have the worst terrible proc rates for almost all of our demo talents Pact of Eredun, Umbral Blaze, Pact of the Imp mother, and Demonic Calling - this needs an up with how fast youre designing your game. I’ve trying to track how often these things go off and its pretty bad for a spec having to set up and cast as often as we do.
To add to this these talents don’t even add much to the way of dps or fluidity we just take them sometimes in the hope or feels of the fantasy.
Why is it that umbral blaze is stuck in the path to pact of the imp mother, no idea, why is that umbral blaze only procs of hand of the guldan when it should additional be proccing of either shadow bolt/demon bolt with how bad that proc rate is??? Jeez put some thought into these ??
I don’t understand how as a dev you design something that requires plenty of resources/casting and create those talent with some pretty bad proc rates when I compare them to other specs that are doing things on the go where it seems like specs with instants or fast high burst are rewarded with also a high proc rate??
To add to this Diabolist temp pets are screwed. You created a hero tree behind ai pets and decided to not put any forethought or better script into how that ai functions.
Devs do something about the shoddy ai already.
If you keep design this game, to include the overall spec to be this weird spammy and cd usage guess what your’e going to have to apply the same to all the specs, otherwise your going to start seeing designs failing or you will have to put a heavy amount of designing into how to fit those dynamics into where you want the game moving forward because you can clearly tell flaws in the specs.
That or higher a separate team for caster design because idk but some of the caster are starting to blend. Keep going like this and i think every spec is doom to become some spammy mess of abilities.
I’d like Fiendish Stride to reduce damage by 30 to 40 per cent. As it stands now, Burning Rush hurts too much to use outside of group content.
I also like the idea of more curses too.