Hello, this is continuation of topic started after new expansion launch, due to the changes to Warlock and other classes, most part of the feedback had to be changed as it was no longer valid.
Warlock Class tree feedback
Warlock as the class was brought with Shadowlands into confusing state which none of the Warlock players can figure out so far. We been digging books, passing endless fields, diving into deepest caves, summoning powerful demons in hope we will find a clue. But terrifying questions still scratching out our souls…
Corruption as common Warlock spell
There is huge misleading because Corruption is available for Demonology and Destruction. It’s not part of any rotation, it’s brings flat damage only, it’s requiring cast time and it’s can sometime confuse new players when learning the class.
Even if it must be there due to the leveling from 1 to 10 it could be simply swapped into Immolate and Doom after specialization selection, including clear description to players, that it’s changing from Corruption. I understand Doom is currently talent for Demonology, but still never taken by players in nowadays form. It could be good opportunity to make it finally work. Possible that Doom should explode with AoE damage if its timer does not expire before killing blow, cause 20 seconds baseline timer is very long and unpredictable for leveling or general use.
Inability to use Curses for multiple targets
With Shadowlands expansion we received back our most iconic Curses in same form as they were by time they were removed. But the game is no longer same as before, also we cannot forget about Mythic Plus as the endgame content. In current form it is impossible to use curses within high enemy count combats and bring them as value into the team… idea of cursing each with single global is out of this world. Same as Paladins can easily bring their Auras, Warlock should have possibility to easily bring core class utility. In easiest to image way, the best would be to have them as AoE, short cast-time spells, same as Mind Soothe is for Priests.
Worth considers making it talent point, most likely as choice note against Amplify Curse. In such case due to the M+ environment it would be favored to bring Curse of Weakness and Curse of Tongues as one spell with “smart-curse” mechanic within, but due to the PvP it would be unwelcomed change.
There might be two ways it can be approached:
- New Curse AoE spell as opposite choice to Amplify Curse which works as smart-curse and combines both Curse of Tongues and Curse of Weakness and it’s dedicated for PvE.
- New Curse spell which is combining both Curse of Tongues and Curse of Weakness effects into one spell. New node as opposite choice to Amplify Curse which makes it AoE.
Would like to thank US-Jukethisxo for his comments on PvP implications of previous idea 
Double tax for Quality-of-Life improvement of not playing with pet
As everyone understand demons are main theme for Warlocks, but it does happen that you want to rip them out. For Warlocks pets are mainly source of powerful utilities like Spell Lock and Singe Magic, but when they die you are no longer able to use them. That’s why mostly in PvP players are willing to sacrifice class identity to improve their Quality-of-Life. In Mythic Plus it’s randomly happening that pets are dying unpredictably, for example on start of the pull when tank have low threat and gathering mobs or during some boss encounters. Fel Domination spell is sometimes not helpful as it also happening that pet die twice in the row during its cooldown. Those are the times when everyone hates 6 seconds summoning time. Taking it into consideration this feel very weird that you need to pay a double tax for such critical Quality-of-Life improvement, as we already losing possibility to use demon abilities off global cooldown and no longer able to use second pet’s utility which is sometimes critical (Purge - Storm boss in TNO).
Most welcome would be to see Grimoire of Sacrifice as baseline spell for Affliction and Destruction.
Warlock Class feedback
Class tree chaos and disorder
The current version the Warlock class tree is mix of everything and provides lack of identity with Affliction / Demonology / Destruction theme in ordered way. When we open Mage tree, we can clearly see: left side is the frost part, arcane in middle and fire to the right. When we open Priest tree, we can clearly see: Holy is left, Discipline (utilities) middle and shadow to the right. Druid… same.
When we are opening Warlock, it’s like theme brainwash. I do understand that this is first iteration of the system and things like this might happening, but I do want to point out my personal feeling about class changes in the future.
In mine understanding the tree should be themed (more or less) like in table on the bottom:
| TIER | AFFLICTION | DEMONOLOGY | DESTRUCTION |
|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | CURSES | DEMONS | MOBILITY |
| MID | HEALING | DEFENSIVE | CONTROL |
| TOP | SOUL | POWER | CHAOS |
Low part of the tree
- Affliction – Avoid damage by weakening enemies with power curses (Curses).
- Demonology – Avoid damage by overhunt enemies with demons.
- Destruction – Avoid damage by escaping enemy’s grasp (Demonic Circle, Burning Rush).
Middle part of tree
- Affliction – Damage taken healed by drains on enemy health (Drain Life, Grim Feast).
- Demonology – Damage taken partly transferred into demons (Soul Link, Profane Bargain).
- Destruction – Damage taken reduced with control of enemy (Shadowfury, Mortal Coil).
Top part of tree
- Affliction – Deal damage with mastering souls’ aspect (Soul Conduit, 6th shard).
- Demonology – Deal damage with mastering synergy with summoned demons (Grimoire of Synergy).
- Destruction – Deal damage with mastering fel magic.
In the end the main goal would be to give to the player different tools to achieve same results.
Dead or confusing talents
On the start I do not understand why Warlock specializations does start with common free talent, each of specialization have their uniqueness which can be brought back with little more creativity.
Fel Pact – Never taken and 2 points investment is too much. If dying pet is a problem, then probably playing with Grimoire of Sacrifice anyway.
Demonic Circle – When you open Mage, Priest, Druid, Warrior etc… they are receiving iconic free talent. We got Demonic Circle which in the past was one of our talents and not even been always selected. Perfect spot for Demon Skin / Fel Armor.
Demon Skin / Fel Armor – Could be a choice node then both can be buffed to light up their strengths… in current version you just taking both which looks bland.
Curses of Enfeeblement – Sounds like Affliction starting point.
Abyss Walker – Interesting talent but 4% damage reduction looks too low to spend point into it.
Demonic Inspiration / Wrathful Minion – Would not be ever picked if not Sweet Souls and Demonic Gateway locked behind them. Dead and boring talents.
Shadowflame – for sure iconic talent but barely ever taken. I think Shadowfury and Shadowflame should be choice node based on slow effect with additional talent option for stun effect. Slow starts timing when stun ends, Shadowfury as casted range AoE and Shadowflame as instant frontal AoE.
Resolute Barrier / Teaching of Black Harvest / Demonic Resilience – taken only in PvP or at all.
I don’t want to touch on capstones as there was already clear feedback from community about them.
Affliction Warlock M+ feedback
Affliction is a mix of many new good ideas and old stuff which in the end not working in one cup. Typically, when we look at Balance or Shadow design, it’s hard to avoid feeling that we are their test grounds and, in the end, all good ideas are going to them. Playstyle of Affliction feels still very clunky in M+ scenarios and current 10.0.7 changes did not solve it.
Personally, in my opinion the Affliction strengths should be:
- mobile soul master who bases mostly on instant and quick cast spells, including those on which he is spending his soul shards,
- calmful strategist of the battlefield, who spend most of the time of looking out of opportunities to deal most damage to its enemies with his powerful spells,
- spending period between casting deadly spells during combat to refresh his damage over time effects and gather soul shard to prepare to another harmful combo upon enemies,
- most dangerous when enemy is weakening and close to death, using it as opportunity to deal finishing damage.
Soul Shards spending vs Agony refreshing playstyle
Since Shadowlands Affliction have counterintuitive execution of the gameplay in multitarget scenarios. On the one hand, you must keep Agony rolling on as many targets as possible, on the other, the main source of damage is to spend Soul Shards into Seed of Corruption. Current tips for playing Affliction in Mythic Plus are to keep up only 4x Agony, let others drop and keep going on with spamming Seed of Corruption until Vile Taint will be back off cooldown. When reading such tips I’m thinking that it is design disaster, especially when we take into consideration that this is specialization which should be focused at keeping damage over time effects up and benefits from it.
In multi target situations our main shard spender is Seed of Corruption. Comparing to the Shadow Priest or Balance Druid they can spend their class power with instant spells, which takes 2-3 globals to dry out accumulated power. Affliction on another hand needs 5x2.5=12.5 seconds for Seed of Corruption to spend all his soul shards. Due to this it’s very hard (impossible) to find time to refresh Agony on multiply target. Due to the Vile Taint there are in worst case scenario 8x Agony to refresh at same time. To been able to do that you need 8x1.5=12 seconds to refresh all of them (+ human mistake factor). With Agony lasting 18 seconds it means 2/3 of the time you should spend to refresh Agony cause Darkglare is not always available to extend its duration. By doing that you are not spending Shards and very often sit overcapped with 5 of them, unable to spend them efficiently.
Malefic Rapture seems to be reasonable middle ground, Shadowlands spell (which I personally don’t hate) with shorter casting time than Seed of Corruption is. Unfortunately comparing Malefic Rapture and Seed of Corruption damage shows that it cannot be competitive. It mostly suffering from low dot-count which are constantly available on the targets. To make it do same damage per soul shard as Seed of Corruption is, it’s necessary to consider that 4 DOTs are constantly rolling on target, which currently cannot happen very often.
Expected direction would be to make Malefic Rapture doing more or similar damage as Seed of Corruption, only difference between those spells would be that you want to use Seed of Corruption when there is not enough time to spread dot’s before targets will die. Reaching this might be hard, need to take under consider that there is inconsistent amount of damage over time effects in multi target:
- Constant: (1) Agony, (2) Corruption,
- On-Cooldown: (3) Vile Taint, (4) Soul Rot (if talented)
- Unstable Affliction does not count as Multi Target.
This cause almost 50% difference when we are watching at sustain or cooldown DOT count. The reasonable way to buff Malefic Rapture and not making it overpowerful in Single Target would be to cap DOT amount from which it can be affected. Possible cap number could be 3, same as it is for Withering Bolt talent.
Damage over time does not extending while spending Soul Shards
One reason of it is losing Deliberate Malice, this effect did very well for Affliction when it came during Shadowlands season 3, but I understand that in the past two seconds extension and level of available haste could move away Affliction little too much from necessity of refreshing dots. In comparison Shadow have (had ) talent which extends his DoTs duration when spending his Insanity for AoE or cast filler spell. In 10.1 Shadow is receiving possibility to constantly keep DOTs up with Shadow Clash. Balance Druid have their option to select talent which increase DOTs duration when spending accumulated power in AoE. Affliction as only one of DOT-range specializations have no possibility to easily keep DOTs, which can be core reason why it’s not popular in M+.
Some of community ideas was to bring back Deliberate Malice or make Agonizing Corruption talent extending Agony duration. As I understand with months into expansion passing by, this is not direction preferred by Warlock developer, as there were already two opportunities to do it. Challenge to overcome would be to find unique way, which is only Affliction kind, but doing same thing: improving gameplay quality around Agony without making it brainless.
One of solution worth consisted, which might help also with “Vile Taint 8 Agony refresh problem” mentioned above, would be to make casting Agony extends other Agonies duration by two seconds. With such mechanic player is not relieved from having to refresh the Agony at multiple targets manually, but doing it feels less pressured as you are able to refresh all your Agonies just if you are willing to do it. With 2 seconds extension it would require casting 7 times Agony to pass Vile Taint cooldown so it would not become too much powerful.
Single Target opener and damage delay
To not stretch this issue too far it’s enough to look at current duties during opener and maintenance with 0 haste:
| Count | Action | Timer [s] |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Precast and maintain Haunt | 1,5 |
| 2 | Precast and maintain Unstable Affliction | 3,0 |
| 3 | Cast and maintain Agony | 4,5 |
| 4 | Cast and maintain Corruption | 6,0 |
| 5 | Cast and maintain Siphon Life | 7,5 |
| 6 | Cast Shadowbolt or Drain Soul tick for second Shadow Embrace stack | 9,5 |
| 7 | Cast Shadowbolt or Drain Soul tick for third Shadow Embrace stack | 11,5 |
| 8 | Cast Phantom Singularity | 13,0 |
| 9 | Cast Soul Rot | 14,5 |
| 10 | Cast Summon Darkglare | 16,0 |
| 11 | Recast Haunt | 17,5 |
| 12 | Recast Unstable Affliction | 19,0 |
| 13 | Recast Agony | 20,5 |
| 14 | Recast Corruption | 22,0 |
| 15 | Recast Siphon Life | 23,5 |
| 16 | Cast Malefic Rapture for Malefic Affliction stack 1 | 25,0 |
| 17 | Cast Malefic Rapture for Malefic Affliction stack 2 | 26,5 |
| 18 | Cast Malefic Rapture for Malefic Affliction stack 3 | 28,0 |
| 19 | Cast Malefic Rapture for Dread Touch | 29,5 |
| 20 | Start your normal maintenance gameplay | - |
It very not likely that anyone will play with 0 haste value, the more haste is available the more it’s possible to fit Malefic Affliction cast before first refresh, but even 20 seconds is very long as it is already half of Bloodlust duration.
According to all of it, could be worth considering of removing “stacks gameplay” from Shadow Embrace and Malefic Affliction as they cause significant amount of delay.
Way too much mandatory talents
Current version of Affliction due to the changes in 10.0.5 and 10.0.7 like: Focused Malignancy and Darkglare rework, have impactful and mandatory picks which need to be included when tailoring your own tree. Those talents mostly overshadow other talents in the tree and even in same row. This have huge negative impact on builds diversity and might be a reason of Affliction tuning problems. With Dragonflight we came into version of Affliction when spending 3 talent points are responsible for 19% damage increase in Single Target, with Shadow Embrace and Haunt.
Shadow Embrace – One of many 2-point talent in its row, increasing all single target damage and Darkglare ST/AoE by raw 9% number. There is no world in which this talent is balanced correctly against 10% Drain Soul damage increase from Dark Virtuosity which is placed in same row.
Haunt - Increasing single target damage and Darkglare ST/AoE by raw 10% number.
Siphon Life - With current Malefic Rapture and Darkglare ST/AoE dot-amount-scaling it’s overshadowing pick against Absolute Corruption. On top of that not selecting this talent brings three times punishment, first loss of pure DOT value, second loss additional dot-count for Malefic Rapture, lastly loss additional dot-count for Darkglare. Personally, I’m not a fan of Siphon Life since it came back. I don’t think that a complexity of the Affliction should be locked behind 4 damage-over-time juggling during basic rotation.
Random Soul Shard generation
Across all of three Warlock specializations (and probably also most of the classes) the Affliction is only one which generate their class power by random during the combat. Unstable Affliction and Drain Soul makes their count only when targets are dying, outside of that only Agony can provide Soul Shards during the combat. Random effects reduce the possibilities of player to control the gameplay and put the output damage more to the value of luck.
Dead or confusing talents
Dark Virtuosity, Kindled Malice – ok fix for 10.0.7 and good placeholder for more interesting talents in the future.
Agonizing Corruption - Two-point investment feel little too much in the current form, as it brings no value after Agony reach 18 stacks.
Pandemic Invocation - Basic UI does not show DoT timers. In current form this talent does not make any sense as it requires additions addons or Weakauras.
Sacrolash’s Dark Strike - Death talent after nerfs. If the problem is PvP balance, then it should reduce curse extension duration just there.
Wrath of Consumption - Completely death in Single Target. I understand that this is in AoE talents area but making last tier talent which has totally 0% value in pure Single Target is confusing.
Doom Blossom - In the current version of Malefic Affliction the talent is strongly underplayed as it requires to recast 3x Malefic Rapture each time Unstable Affliction swap targets. Other way is to make it does direct AoE damage when Malefic Rapture hits target affected with Unstable Affliction. Damage reduced above 5 targets (to make its damage easier to tune). This way it would enhance Malefic Rapture gameplay in multi target as opposite to Seed of Corruption spam.
Possible future improvements
Vile Taint - As Affliction is going to be more sustain damage dealer it would be good to remove applying additional damage over time effect (Vile Taint dot) and replace it with Corruption and keeping Agony and Curse as it is. Then it would be possible to tune Malefic Rapture damage around smaller number of available damages over time effects. This would also open accessibility to play pure Malefic Rapture build without going into Seed of Corruption in M+ when combined with Absolute Corruption , which would bring back value into this talent.
Soul Swap - Current problem with this spell is that you will lose Malefic Affliction stacks if swapped target dies before next Soul Swap is ready to swap it back into main target. In case of M+ this is huge disadvantage. What would make it work in PvE and solve losing Malefic Affliction stacks is to make it apply also 35-40 second debuff, if targets die during this time the Unstable Affliction is coming back to previous target. It would be also worth considering extending exhale timer up from 10 into 20 or 30 seconds, cooldown should not start before DOTs are exhaled. It could open some possibilities to use this talent in M+ as Malefic Affliction holder when going into new pack as part of player skill and gameplay flow improvement.
Tormented Crescendo - Would better to make it more predictable in rotation and go away from random procs which forcing you to press a spell for Affliction. Shards generating based on direct value instead of chance to proc, in this case casting 3 Shadowbolt or 5 ticks of Drain Soul would give you one Soul Shard and charge of Malefic Rapture instant cast. This way it is possible to decide if use Shard for Malefic Rapture in its instant or use it for Seed of Corruption.
Malefic Affliction - Main problem which current implementation of this talent is poor priority target swapping. Malefic Affliction stacks mostly lock you on the target on which it was previously casted cause catching it up again will take long time. Let’s be honest, Soul Swap in the current form solves nothing. The best would be to make Malefic Affliction flat damage buff into Unstable Affliction … or reduce its stacks… or change how Soul Swap works with Unstable Affliction after being exhaled. First would be probably easiest and most welcome fix which would help Affliction in their M+ gameplay flow.
Dread Touch - With losing Soul Tap we are no longer able to pre-tap up to 5 Soul Shards, with lead to another delay in Affliction gameplay as you need 4 Soul Shards to make this talent work.
