Warlock
Dark Pact’s (Talent) additional absorb shield has been increased by 316% (was 216%).
Affliction
Corruption damage increased by 15%.
Seed of Corruption damage increased by 25%.
Dark Caller is no longer a talent and is now learned baseline at level 58.
Shadow Embrace is no longer learned at level 58 and is now a talent option on the level 45 row.
New Conduit: Withering Bolt – Shadow Bolt (or Drain Soul) deals 33% more damage per damage-over-time effect active on your target.
Cold Embrace (Conduit) has been removed.
What you all think.
2 Likes
Looks like a good direction. Not a fan of the Withering Bolt conduit though as it looks like it will further cement the difference between the covenant abilities that are DoTs and the Necrolord one. I’m hoping they’d exclude covenant DoTs from both scaling modifiers, so swapping between specs wouldn’t be quite as punishing.
2 Likes
i always have issues with wowhead to find informations on ptr, i can only find the first build as of now, can someone help share the link?
edit: found it somehow!! for someone who needs : https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-9-1-ptr-patch-note-for-april-29th-class-tuning-torghast-rework-322106
ill read it all before commenting
For PvE it looks like it is going to be just like Legion affliction. Dot, Drain and insted of 5 UAs you throw in MRs. It looks like single target damage will stay the same but with MR nerfs and no meaningful damage boost to AOE you wont be getting invites in M+ as a warlock anyways. So nothing changes for affliction. But that is only my opinion.
For PvP affliction still going to be bottom spec. If we cant burst like mages, boomies or ele shamans we need our dot damage to be increased.
3 Likes
ok so for each change:
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flat better anti-burst def cd buff:
will see if its enough in arenas vs the meta coming in 9.1. but with changes comiung up with now feral and fury getting healing red, having a def cd not based on self healing is good.
also its always handy in pve to soak or deal with targeted mechanics on you. nothing bad about it per se, but will see how it carries over
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seed and corruption change:
maybe seed talent in dungeons and combined with corruption increase will get more front loaded aoe dps. combined with the agony 20% earlier buffs, writhe in agony + seed spam could be a decent build. depends the scaling and maybe some covenant leggos
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dark caller changes:
will now synergize with ds if talented. honestly, will make the class feel smoother if u go for ds. depending the seed and corr evolution, and some affixes/dungeons layout, soul conduit could actually become better but its still a flat cd red i welcome
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new conduit:
makes up for the mr and UA potency conduit nerf more than anything. basically instead of having mr do roughly 50% of ur dmg, it will now be less baked into that one spell and it will be spread accross the board between now 2 spells, your filler and MR. As a result, dots will become more prevalent, since u wont have the feeling ur dps is all MR based. i guess its a way to tackle the problem
on a side note, Desurawr sayin some covenants are on dots and necro on the filler is actually maybe why they’re doing it that way: so that u either get an extra dot for more dmg through the dot, or you get the dmg coming from the necro empowerement that might make up for the dots los. but we need to know the covenant leggo to know how those 2 principles weight against each other
i think wether or not someone could consider those changes sufficient, honestly, they tell me blizzard knows the spec is totally trash and garbage and have decided to soft rework it (again). but i’d rather have them try once more than letting it rot until next xpac.
i’ll still hold my breath, but this is encouraging to say the least.
It seems they have no clue what to do with SE, now reverting it back to a talent competing with Haunt. It’s funny really cause this ability doesn’t fit in today’s affliction toolkit and was only added to please the nostalgia crowd.
Shadow Embrace is useless in PvP, I’m glad it will become a talent.
1 Like
After dismantling Legion affliction (with prejudice no doubt) they have no clue no skill and no care in making it playable, much less satisfying.
they have to rework covenant abilities.
Venthyr IC for example could’ve spread Agony for affliction, and ofc has AOE cap.
Necrolord DB for affliction increases dmg of next 3 UA or Agony, instead of useless 700 dmg shadowbolt.
1 Like
For PvE wise, in the PTR, i can easily say the spec now feels awesome. SoC is something we get to cast again, its actually in our rotation for AoE, DoTs are still underwhelming but they are decent. Shadow Bolt feels like it has a purpose now, Nightfall is actually a decent talent now.
There WILL be nerfs to the new conduit because spamming 10k SBs is prob. abit OP.
Issue is though, our lack of utility or rather other classes’ tools, still make the Warlock a meh choice for M+. Not because we lack damage but because we lack almost everything else besides it.
Overall, i believe spec is going to feel alot better now but I expect no change in terms of LFG que times.
PvP wise; no baseline demon skin + sacrolash slow nerf = Aff Lock is dead. May they rest in peace.
1 Like
Now they need to change inferno to 2 mins.
2 Likes
This is more like it. I expect the conduit will be nerfed a bit but the actual core changes are good. Reduce the cast time of SoC slightly and my faith in Blizz will be fully restored, for now.
necrolords is by far the most dps in ptr , 25K non crit shadowbolts are happening all the time
Good changes overall definantly more of a pve buff but will help a bit in pvp, doesn’t fix affliction’s problems in pvp but its something. If they free up a pvp talent like with destro I think afflic could be pretty juicy in pvp.
The class needs more survivability, just demon armor and demon skin baseline.
I’ve watched people testing Dark Pact and the shield is pretty impactful almost OP, especially if you use it at low health. It’s at least something.
But we need demon skin in pvp, we need better options and not just one. Even if they buff Dark Pact, then we are missing demon skin
Affliction does need more defensive tweaks in pvp but I don’t think blizzard wants them to have that. Think they are trying to make Affliction the mobile Warlock but still not really working in pvp.
They are plain stupid, if they think warlock should be mobile. Warlock is all about taking dmg and control the fight