Destruction Warlock into Shadowlands - Discussion

[Kelin-argent-dawn]

Hello Warlock forum. I don’t post here a lot, but since Blizzard has said that they are listening to our feedback regarding the upcoming Shadowlands expansion, I figured I’d take a moment to give them my feedback regarding the “changes” for Destruction going into Shadowlands.

I’ll be honest: I think Blizzard hasn’t done nearly enough to make the spec feel better to play, from what I can see from the Alpha. The spec currently feels very boring, and feels like any other “build, spend, build, spend” spec. Destruction has never been the most complex spec in the game, but it used to have a certain depth to it that I would like to see return in some ways.

Here follow a couple of suggestions:

• A change they could make to destruction warlock is to make chaos bolt cost one soul shard instead of two, so you can save them up more, just like back in MoP. This would break up the “generate, spend, generate, spend” tedium and give warlocks more agency and control over when they want to unleash their big damage. Destruction warlock has always been about priority damage, so it would fit the theme. It would also add to the depth of the spec and the amount of skill expression possible, without overly complicating a traditionally relatively easy spec.
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• Chaos Bolt should deal more damage than an instant cast ability, like a Balance Druid’s Starsurge for example. Chaos Bolt has always had the reputation for being a hard hitting spell, but the damage it deals compared to other specs’ abilities in BFA has made it lose what made it special. The amount of damage it currently deals does not warrant it costing a whopping two soul shards (40% of your total resource capacity), nor that it has a 3 second baseline cast time (reduced by haste). If buffing the damage would break the spec, it could be balanced by reducing shard generation or increasing the cast time. This wouldn’t necessarily lead to Chaos Bolt becoming a bigger piece of the destruction warlock’s damage pie, it would just reduce the amount of Chaos Bolts cast and make each Chaos Bolt feel beefier and more special.

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• The two suggestions above would result in a much more interesting and engaging second-to-second gameplay loop. You’ll spend longer building up your shards, then making use of opportune moments to unleash the damage. When it is currently not the time to unleash the burst, a warlock could decide to sit at 4 shards and spend one on a chaos bolt whenever they’re about to hit 5. Saving those shards until some burst is required or you get a damage buff from a trinket or a boss mechanic makes the spec feel much more active and involved when compared to the current “build, spend, build, spend” tedium.

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What I described above is how I played back in MoP and it was really fun compared to what we have now.

• Cataclysm could/should be baseline at this point. The buffs to what Fire and Brimstone currently is don’t weigh up against Cataclysm as a spell. It is simply too versatile, and most of all, fun. Cataclysm feels like it is core to the destruction specialisation. The fact that there hasn’t been a reason to choose any other talent for over an entire expansion now adds to that feeling.
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• I would like to add a section about mana relevancy and the age old warlock spell: Life Tap. I’d love to see it return, but I know that the relevancy of mana impacts more classes and specs than just the destruction warlock, so I’ll just leave this here.

Then perhaps one of my more far-fetched ideas:

• I’d like the old Fire and Brimstone back from Mists of Pandaria. It was way more entertaining and engaging than what the talent currently is. For those who don’t remember: Fire and Brimstone used to be an ability that you could toggle on or off at will. At the cost of soul shards (back then, burning embers) you were able to apply your immolates and incinerate targets in an AoE around your target for (iirc) 40% of their effectiveness. It required you to actively decide when there were enough targets for this to be viable, and required some amount of skill or knowledge to know when to disable it without completely draining yourself of resources if you wanted to continue dealing more single target damage (for instance, continuing to deal damage to a boss after a big add pack has been cleaved down)

I hope to have gotten my feelings across regarding the destruction spec. Please keep in mind, these are just ideas from someone who has played and most of the time mained a Destruction warlock ever since Wrath of the Lich King. By no means do I pretend to know more about the game and how to design it than the developers themselves. I just feel saddened that my spec feels very shallow and boring at the moment, and that no real changes appear to be coming that will change this feeling. I hope the developers can still manage to make some improvements to the spec, considering the fact that “player agency” is a prime goal for them in the upcoming expansion.

If you’ve made it this far - thank you for reading my post and I look forward to discussing the spec with fellow warlock enthusiasts.

Edit: I’ve been going through some other posts, and it seems a lot of other people are complaining as well about the fact that there hasn’t been enough unpruned. Some more spells I would love to see unpruned are:

• Dark Intent
• Summon Doomguard
• Soulburn
• Searing Pain

Spells that should become baseline in my opinion:

• Shadowburn
• Demon Armor (PvP Talent)

I’m happy to discuss this.

[Darkfactory-silvermoon]

Shadowfury instant and less cd w/o selected talent
Corruption instant, why not… then actually will be really useful?
Remove mortal coil from talent row… give it to all specs

[Xanatas-nemesis (Xanatas)]

My suggestion for destruction

-give back burning ember instead of soul shard
-change mastery: no more reduction damage
-give back ember tap to compensate lost reduction damage
-shadowburn baseline, 2 charge, give moderate damage above 20% health, deal double/triple damage under 20% health. Or give back fel flame, 2 charge, with cd AND shadowburn finisher
-grimoire of sacrifice MOP’s style, give command demon ability, flat +15% damage (not chaos bolt), health regeneration
-flashover baseline
-darkfury reduce CD and make shadowfury istant (you can choose mortal coil OR shadowfury istant)
-no corruption 2 sec cast for destruction
-backlash back
-more conflagrate and incinerate damage
-conflagrate no more root the target but slow for 5 sec by 50%, baseline
-infernal with 2 min CD
-grimoire of supremacy gone
-channel demonfire change in a beam like “Essence of the Focusing Iris”

for all spec i hope in
-reduce Unending Resolve CD
-burning rush: use 5-10% health to have a sprint for X sec.
-demon armor baseline
-soul conduit baseline
-merge curse of tongue and curse of weakness in one curse

[Kelin-argent-dawn]

I personally don’t think having instant shadowfury is something that will make the core mechanics of the spec feel better. The problems with Destruction warlock right now are mostly in the fact that the core gameplay in terms of dealing damage is really dumbed down and boring. Having shadowfury be instant cast does not change any of this. Besides, the cast time for shadowfury is pretty low, I think it’s pretty enjoyable to cast it instead of having it be instant. The only time this can be a little annoying is in PvP, but a class needs to have weaknesses.

Now I don’t know why they decided to give us corruption on a 2 second cast timer. It doesn’t generate shards and seems like it’s just going to be useless. If they wanted the class to have abilities that went across all the specs, there are plenty more options to choose from. Even Curse of Doom would have been better than corruption.

Changing Soul Shards back into Burning Embers wouldn’t really do anything for the class. Blizzard is trying to bridge the gaps between the specs, and giving Destruction a different resource would only set them apart more. On the other hand, Destruction’s soul shards function differently than the other two specs’ soul shards, so having burning embers instead would be a better indication that they function differently.

I don’t like the idea of removing part of our mastery and reintroducing Ember Tap. One of the problems in MoP was that every class had almost every utility, and Ember Tap feels like one of those utilities that is just unnecessary and overpowered. We already have healthstones, we don’t need another instant cast heal.

I agree Shadowburn should be baseline. I remember it feeling like it was core to the Destruction spec, looking to snipe for Soul Shard refunds on low health mobs…

Grimoire of Sacrifice used to be my go-to option. Having the choice to play without a pet was always really fun to me, both from a gameplay and a class fantasy perspective. It’s like your warlock’s sick of having to deal with your demon’s stupidity and absorbs their essence to take matters into their own hands. I don’t know what gave them the idea to make Grimoire of Sacrifice deal AoE shadow damage. It makes little sense. Having Grimoire of Sacrifice increase your stamina, damage done and giving you the demon’s ability feels like a much fairer compensation for sacrificing it instead of a stupid RNG AoE shadow damage proc that is pretty lacklustre.

I totally forgot about this, but yes, Flashover should definitely be baseline, just like before. I don’t know why they decided to move it into the talents. It’s been the default choice for a long time, and managing Backdraft stacks has always been one of the few mechanics making second-to-second Destruction gameplay more interesting.

I already commented on instant shadowfury above, I don’t think it’s necessary.

The conflagrate slow is something I forgot about completely, but that used to be a good thing yeah. Honestly, they should give conflagrate its slow back, I agree. It makes it less OP in PvP and makes PvE a little more comfortable. It’s also something to make the spell a little special, because what else is setting Conflagrate apart from a Fire Mage’s Fire Blast?

Grimoire of Supremacy doesn’t need to go, but it could definitely use a change. Right now, it makes it so that all of our damage is concentrated into our infernal burst window, making the rest of the destruction warlock’s rotation feel like we’re hitting like a wet noodle.

I think Channel Demonfire is fine as it is, I don’t think Unending Resolve needs a buff. Soul Conduit baseline would be too much RNG for my liking. Having the choice between Curse of Tongues and Curse of Weakness is more fun than having one button for all purposes.

Denon Armor should definitely be reintroduced as baseline, together with Searing Pain. Warlock off-tanks?

Burning Rush would definitely feel better to use if it was an on-use spell instead of a toggle. Toggling it off after using it is pretty annoying. But it’s also what makes it good, being able to use it for as long as you want, especially if you have heals. It being a toggle is also what makes it special and differentiates it from other classes’ movement abilities.

[Taurenial-pyrewood-village]

If I understood u correctly, do u want Chaos Bolt to hit harder and be cheaper at same time? That would be really misbalancing change.

[Kelin-argent-dawn]

@Taurenial-pyrewood-village

If I understood u correctly, do u want Chaos Bolt to hit harder and be cheaper at same time? That would be really misbalancing change.

Yes. We cast way too many chaos bolts nowadays. It hits like a wet noodle outside of our Grimoire of Supremacy Infernal window (which is another huge gameplay issue). It needs to deal more damage and cost only one soul shard so we can save them up and have more agency over when to spend them. This can be counterbalanced by:

• increasing the cast time
• reducing overall shard generation

[Xanatas-nemesis (Xanatas)]

Since shadowfury have cast time and increased CD i have great issue in pvp side. I don’t understand why a mage fire can cast dragon breathe istant, a warrior can cast fear aoe and shockwave istant, thunderbolt istant, a paladin can stun istant, a rogue can stun multiple time without cast time and only warlock can have cast time for defensive/offensive abilities. Weakness? But warlock have great weakness, for example, can’t escape. If a player decide to engage a warlock, warlock or win or die. Another class can escape, invisibility, run etc. Always talking about weakness, i don’t see any weakness in -for example- monk dps or demon hunter. Very fast, unkitable, great damage aoe, great single target damage, all istant.

You says is “a little annoyings” in pvp, for me and not only for me shadowfury with cast time is very very very hard to land versus melee for defense. Is possibile to do the “aggressive-combo” after a fear o mortal coil (mortal coil>fear>chaos bolt>shadowfury>chaos bolt>cataclysm), but the question is “why all classe have istant cast for stun and warlock not?”. I repeat, the classe have weakness also with shadofury istant.

Without shadowfury istant i need to stop in the middle of a map and try to target a melee, then cast fear or another spell etc. Counter is higly likely. With shadowfury istant you can stun the target and use safe fear.

Have you played warlock in TBC? At first iteration, shadowfury had 0.5 sec cast time. WHen blizzard change the cast time in istant cast, the spec become MORE playable and fun. The problem with the spec it’s not “only” the shadowfury with cast time, as you correctly say.

The change of soul shard in burning ember is only thematic and cosmetic. But i don’t understand why an conflagrate and an incinerate can charge a soul shard fragment, or why a landing infernal must recharge fast this pool of shard. Don’t fit, for me and other warlock. Thematically ember is more appropriate, you gain burning emeber hitting a target with your fire and shadowy spell.

I don’t want ember tap exactly like MOP, in this iteration with great mastery ember tap was spammable and provided insane healing. For me need a CD and lower the amount of healing. Warlock has the choose: do damage with chaos bolt o gain a little health cauterizing his wounds.

Grimoire of sacrifice for affliction is “good” to do random shadow damage proc., with affliction is a good portion of damage. But dont’ fit and it’s not funny for destruction.

Conflagrate snare is “better” in pvp, nevertheless i prefer a version nerfed with a simply slow 50% for 5 sec. It’s fit very well with the spell, why a fiery explosion can lock in place a target?

Channel demonfire have too low damage and graphically outdated for me, every warlock take dark soul instability for powerful chaos bolt. In shadowlands AOE will be capped also… Soul conduit is RNG, right. But demonology for example is playable and “smooth” with this and essence… without the spec is very very slow.

Unending resolve for me need a nerf in % and a buff in CD, 3 min is too long. Others classes have damage reduction every 1 min. Maybe 20% protection and 2 min will be “perfect”. Or 3 min CD and reduction Cd by 1 sec every hit strikes the warlock.

Instead of searing pain i prefer fel flame back, we have most spell with large cast time. Fel flame can be spammable, ok, then give a CD and 2 charge (like “old” shadowflame for demonology).

[Kelin-argent-dawn]

Ok let me try to reply to your post in sections haha.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Weakness? But warlock have great weakness, for example, can’t escape.

This is not entirely correct. Especially with Demonic Circle becoming baseline in Shadowlands, you have multiple ways of escaping. You place a Demonic Circle at the start of an arena battle and cast a Demonic Gateway. If a melee comes to train you, you use the gateway to get away and continue casting. If they follow, you can go back to your Demonic Circle. All this time they spend chasing you, you’ll definitely have the time to cast a fear or shadowfury, saving mortal coil as a last resort.

@Xanatas-nemesis

but the question is “why all classe have istant cast for stun and warlock not?”

Because not every class should have the same toolkit. Also, not every class besides warlock has instant AoE stuns, so what you’re saying is not correct.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Have you played warlock in TBC? At first iteration, shadowfury had 0.5 sec cast time. WHen blizzard change the cast time in istant cast, the spec become MORE playable and fun.

Having Shadowfury be instant cast being more fun for you is subjective. I kind of like casting shadowfury, and it feels better to pull it off knowing you’re taking a risk rather than there being no counterplay at all. I feel like pushing hard for an instant cast Shadowfury is wasted effort trying to get the attention of the developers when there are so many more glaring issues with the core gameplay of the spec.

@Xanatas-nemesis

The change of soul shard in burning ember is only thematic and cosmetic. But i don’t understand why an conflagrate and an incinerate can charge a soul shard fragment, or why a landing infernal must recharge fast this pool of shard. Don’t fit, for me and other warlock. Thematically ember is more appropriate, you gain burning emeber hitting a target with your fire and shadowy spell.

You’re completely right in this regard. Blizzard has been trying to homogenize the resources of the specs for the different classes, I assume because they think people will get confused if they change specialisation and suddenly have a different resource than what they’re used to. It’s a stupid reason in my opinion, I feel like they underestimate the adaptability of their playerbase, dumbing things down way too much for the sake of accessibility.

@Xanatas-nemesis

I don’t want ember tap exactly like MOP, in this iteration with great mastery ember tap was spammable and provided insane healing. For me need a CD and lower the amount of healing. Warlock has the choose: do damage with chaos bolt o gain a little health cauterizing his wounds.

Ember Tap feels like one of those abilities, like instant cast Shadowfury, that is just too much waste of energy to try and get the devs to unprune, when there are so many other glaring issues with the core gameplay of the spec. Ember Tap seems and feels unnecessary because we have Healthstones. I feel like Drain Life completely suffices in its role to provide us with extra selfhealing while sacrificing damage output.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Grimoire of sacrifice for affliction is “good” to do random shadow damage proc., with affliction is a good portion of damage. But dont’ fit and it’s not funny for destruction.

We just need MoP Grimoire of Sacrifice back tbh. But then they need to balance it well enough for it to be an OPTION, not to be mandatory or underpowered.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Conflagrate snare is “better” in pvp, nevertheless i prefer a version nerfed with a simply slow 50% for 5 sec. It’s fit very well with the spell, why a fiery explosion can lock in place a target?

Agreed.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Channel demonfire have too low damage and graphically outdated for me

I actually think Channel Demonfire is one of the coolest looking abilities we have, I use it a lot in M+. I just wish its colour would change alongside the rest of our toolkit with the Codex of Xerrath.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Unending resolve for me need a nerf in % and a buff in CD, 3 min is too long. Others classes have damage reduction every 1 min. Maybe 20% protection and 2 min will be “perfect”. Or 3 min CD and reduction Cd by 1 sec every hit strikes the warlock.

20% damage reduction is kind of weak. I don’t dislike the idea of having its cooldown be reduced with every melee hit striking the warlock, though. Don’t forget part of the spell’s power is also the fact that it makes you uninterruptible. There is a PvP talent that allows you to separate these two effects into two different abilities, though, but it’s never felt worth taking over any of the other PvP talents.

@Xanatas-nemesis

Instead of searing pain i prefer fel flame back, we have most spell with large cast time. Fel flame can be spammable, ok, then give a CD and 2 charge (like “old” shadowflame for demonology).

I mostly want Searing Flame back alongside Demon Armor so I can live my dream of being a Warlock off-tank again just like back in the days.

Edited: typo

[Razziks-emerald-dream]

just give back mop destro playstyle. It was so much fun , flowing spec. With lots of untilities (ember tap, FnB toggle with the mini chaos bolts , …

And bring back that under 20% we used shadowburn instead of chaos bolts , was nice for raids but gods gift in openworld

for peeps that wasnt in mop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rqiQpc1wgU

like totaly forgot mannoroth’s fury etc

[Ahtromalius-ravencrest]

@Xanatas-nemesis

why a fiery explosion can lock in place a target?

Confarglate does not root. Its honor talent called Entrenched in Flame. I mean ENTRENCHED that word is explanation.

Please understand that part of warlock ,mobility, is to be able to root enemies and don’t let them hit you 24h.

Do you remember destro’s Unending Resolve during Legion ? CD was under 2 min thanks to artifact. Duration and % is fine cd should be lower.

Burning embers for Destro
Soul Shards for Affli
Demonic Fury for Demon

Ember Tap would be amazing thing to have back. Ofc its healing must be changed but I like this idea of self healing.

[Schala-defias-brotherhood (Schala)]

What I would really love for Destro is to make Cataclysm and Channel Demonfire baseline, these two spells synergize so well and are satisfying to cast. Making Cataclysm baseline would also free up the aoe talent row, this would greatly improve Destro locks flexibility. Personally I would love if they removed Grimoire of Supremacy, being 3 minute burst bots with almost no damage outside the burst window is not fun. To compensate for the loss of damage it would be great if they increased the Incinerate and Chaos Bolt damage. The last of the big issues of Destro is their lack of mobility. Adding another instant cast like Dimentional RIft baseline or as a talent would go a long way to help alleviate that issue.

Dps-rankings isn’t a big deal, but having the tools necessary to deal with how the game works is. And in BFA Destro is severely lacking in that area. This is, in my opinion easy fixes that would make Destruction Warlock a far more enjoyable and functional spec.

[Nosinna-argent-dawn]

destro needs fel flame and execute shadowburn back. remove the ridiculous infernal cd, grimoire of supremacy, make chaos bolt hit a lot harder baseline. flashpoint is going away in sl so fast cast bolts will not be a problem anymore.

and bring back toggable fire and brimstone as a talent. this new f&b is just a joke. destro’s aoe is gonna be so baaaad with the removal of essences.

[Søssky-kazzak (Søssky)]

Should just go back to MoP playstyle. The 3minute infernal playstyle is hot garbage and the exact thing blizz tried to move away from when they initially decided to put restrictions on on-use buffs and on-use trinkets. The whole spec is literally an on-use trinket right now which is stupid and a big mistake that they’re bringing it into shadowlands.

Being tanky and immobile was a cool concept in MoP when the spec had an entirely separate healing part attached to it but now it makes less sense since we’re just a bullet sponge that can’t get away. Demonic circle baseline will help of course but other classes aren’t short on gap closers so outside of flag carrying in WSG it’ll have limited use as a defensive cooldown.

Since SL seems to be set in stone as far as drastic changes go the least they could do is make F&B baseline again and rain of fire should cost mana instead of shards. There is no reason why it should cost shards when it’s not even worth using to begin with and you need to spec into it to get the shards you spent back.

I want to see our resource system be an offensive or defensive choice again so some kind of defensive flipside to spamming chaos bolts. For example, a shield that consumes 2-4 shards, a heal/dot that consumes 2-4shards, some kind of SL variation where you split the damage between 2-3-4-of your reaped souls decreasing damage taken by X for some amount of time/damage. It’d be so easy to do and it’d make the whole spec way more dynamic if they got rid of the 3 minute infernal playstyle on top and made chaos bolt hit hard as heck again.

Also Fel flame should come back, shadowburn should be baseline, shadowfury should be instant and blood horror should replace darkfury as a talent.

[Razziks-emerald-dream]

duno, how hard can it be to revert to mop style , with toggle F&B , soul swap , ember tap , …

o wait there eggo :’(

[Hamukar-draenor]

I’d like to see Channel Demonfire and Cataclysm baseline in destro spec, also rework the corruption. It feels redundant and it does not fit in destro nor in demo specs at all IMO.
Channel demonfire and Shadowburn are both amazing spells never being picked since they are in talent rows with options that outshine them by fire. And cataclysm is just too good to not be picked ever. I don’t know when was the last time I saw someone using Channel demonfire. 101% of locks pick Dark Soul every time. Gief baseline plx

[Momspaghettî-magtheridon]

Iknow this is for Destro

But destro isn’t that bad imop, i agree whit the things you said, but i’am honestly more concerned about affliction, we affliction warlcoks have all been forced to switch to destro in BFA due to it being a hotrible spec (besides doing single target damage in pve) and i’am afraid it will be the same in shadowlands the way its looking atm.

[Kinjal-defias-brotherhood]

Shadowfury was designed as an instant cast spell, they need to unprune it.

Death coil baseline for all specs.

Take away some damage from Chaos Bolt, bake it into Incinerate/Immolate/Shadowburn. I’d love Shadowburn to be another spender, obviously less dmg than Chaosbolt but an instant is an instant. Make some interesting talents to go with it.

Shadow burn baseline for Destro btw.

Where are Curses of Elements/Shadow?

I literally have some ideas coming to my head while writing this post, I’ dunno why Blizz doesn’t wanna improve the game by redesigning classes, letting it linger in this broing state for years.

2 of my favourite classes, rogue and warlock, are looking trash for SL, sux.

[Razziks-emerald-dream]

i would love that incinerate have more dmg en compensate with a slower ember build to use a high hitting chaosbolt.

tldr a more sustain spec with burst not like we have now with our 3min warlock

[Хёнтай-fordragon]

I want to see a normal way to perform AOE, wtf is “3 shards\tiny dmg” rain is? Bring that split chaobolt aoe mechanic back jeez …