Dragonflight Warlock Class Talent Tree Feedback

Classes Warlock
21

Yeah, it’s a nerf because we’ll have to spend the GCD, it’s true. It’s a trade off I think, and whether someone thinks it’s a good one is purely personnal. I remember Mythrax in Uldir where having my pet at the other side of the room and being able to interrupt was very good and important.

I like the trade off because it means I can now interrupt and friendly dispell with the imp in keys if need be. Or play with the voidwalker in keys to get more passive aoe/cleave damage and still be able to interrupt. Or in raids, I can play the imp or the sayaad for optimal dps (though I admit the dps difference between pets is super super small) and still be able to interrupt. I also like it because there are tons of situations in solo/outside content where I’d love to have a kick, but I have my voidwalker out to tank, and I can’t prevent a heal or something, unless super quickly swapping with fel dom.

And yeah sometimes, it’ll mess up one of my casts and it’ll enrage me x). I like that it gives us more options, more opportunities to play with our other pets.

Maybe the solution is, if you pick the talent and have your felhunter out, the pet does the interrupting. But if you don’t have the felhunter out, you are the one interrupting. We get to keep the cake and eat it.

22

Interrupts aren’t on a GCD

23

haha well then, I think it’s an even less bigger deal that we’ll be doing the interrupting and not the pet.

Maybe there will be situations in Dragonflight where you’d really love to be able to position the felhunter 60 yards away from you to kick an add at a specific moment in a fight. But again, for now at least, just thinking about it and not playing with it, I like the trade-off.

There are also situations where your pet is somewhere and you want to interrupt on the other side of the room and you can’t interrupt in time because the pet needs to move. It would get rid of those situations.

24

As a warlock you take it for granted. It’s the casual players that don’t care about these optimisations that have been incessantly crying for this, If the pets keep their abilities without taking this talent, it will be OK.

25

I agree, personally I think each pet should be even stronger in its own niche and have more flavour. I don’t want pets to be glorified cosmetics.

Seems blizz is moving in the opposite direction though.

26

And this is bad because this talent is dead for at least 2 expansions if i’m not mistaken…Same for Creeping Death. And returning old effect of GoSAC(WoD version) is not a option to…

27

GoSac is played in pvp. Creeping Death was never good, they should bring back Death’s Embrace. Would be better for us.

28

Yeah gosac is not meant for PvE, they’ve stated numerous times that they want us to play with a pet. The many talents buffing them + soul link in the general tree is another confirmation.

Which is why I’m so surprised they put gosac right in the middle of the afflcition tree. I guess it was to have a symmetrical tree ? But it’s a big mistake, it’s super misleading, it should never be picked in PvE scenarios.

29

They can change it with rapid Contagion. So this will be then a PvE Talent and GoSac a pvp

30

Yeah…This will be cool and we will have some choice for PvE. And what is your opinion eventualy Haunt row and Soul Rot row switching places, Siphon Life need to be backed maybe in Corruption through Xavian Teachings like old Siphon Life in WOTLK. For Creeping Death i agree 100% with you…Need to be replaced with Death Embrace.

31

I like that row, soul Rot into Creeping Death isn’t the best option. They should do the first Talent after haunt into the spell itself. Then the dmg increase is a 2 point Talent and third will be Death’s Embrace.

Soul Rot is getting a talent that it also effects Shadowbolt or Drain Soul.

There is already a talent for that. Just remove it and exchange it with Chaotic Corruption, there is a 15% chance that Corruption deals additional chaos dmg.

32

I don’t think trees should be made with PvP in mind at all. We already have pvp talents for that exact purpose.

33

That’s why i said GoSac can be a PvP Talent, i think PvE players would be more happy with Rapid Contagion than GoSac.

34

This is going to be a long one but here it goes!

I like the class and spec trees but there’s a few things that I feel need changing to work better with the class.

Class Tree

Firstly, Soulburn. its return is truly appreciated but personally I feel like it should empower other meaningful warlock spells like it did in the past with some additioins. for example:

  • Seed of corruption and soul fire (instant)
  • Summon demon (instant, 1 min cd)
    (Additions - Soul stone - instant, revives target with 100% health. Rain of fire - wider range and longer duration. Shadow fury, instant.)

Seed of corruptions cast time is annoying but nowhere near as frustrating as soul fires cast time of 4secs. in pve/pvp this is way to long and barely sees any gameplay when considering other meaningful choices. This change would help affli spread dots much quicker and finally offer destruction warlocks an alternative playstyle outside of chaos bolt spams.

Personally, I dislike fel domination being a 3min cd and having to use 2 talent points to reduce the cd by 1min. When previously you could re-summon pet with soul burn or flames of xeroth on a 1min cd.

With this change, Fel domination could then be redesigned to summon more powerful demons indefinitely like how grimoire of supremacy worked in legion. and possibly allow warlocks to summon demons outside of the usual 5 demons which warlocks have wanted for a VERY long time.

The return of fel Armor and demon skin(demon armor) is very underwhelming when you consider the previous versions of these spells. Currently, most warlocks spec into Demonic pact since soul leech was nerfed a while back. I guess in DF warlocks will be able to spec both so maybe using both might be good, but at face value id rather the older versions of these Armor’s and not the up coming versions.

Spell lock The main concern for a lot of warlocks is not being able to interrupt when they lose control of their character (which I believe only warlocks can do). I do like the idea of being able to silence while using a different pet like demonology currently does with the pvp talent, but i believe it should be an optional choice node that allows the warlock to cast the ability or remain to have the pet cast it.

Demonic gateway 's debuff should be 1min not 1:30 for the lack of mobility warlocks have.

Teachings of the black Harvest seems like it could of been really good but it sucks currently. here i suggest the following:

Imp: increased health and firebolt has a chance to reduce the cast time of the next 2 warlocks fire spells.

Fel hunter: reduced magical damage taken, reduces cd of devour magic by 5secs

Succubus/incubus: damage taken has a chance to reduces cast time next 2 warlock shadow spells. seduction now becomes sleep and the target can take damage while sleeping.

Void walker: reduced physical damage taken and increased healing and absorption effects received.

Fel guard: Increased movement speed, attacks and auto attacks burn the target over 6secs with shadow flame dmg

Pact of the Eredar casting chaos bolt to buff immolate or casting malefic rapture to increase agony for 6secs seems weird and annoying to maximise uptime. if agony/immolate buffed malefic rapture/chaos bolt i could see this being used. however, currently it seems like warlocks are being forced to spend 2 points in order to spec into dimensional rift.

Im assuming Inquisitors gaze is something like arcane familiar for arcane mages, but who knows till its implemented. for now though, I feel this talent should offer a path to dimensional rift so warlocks arn’t forced to play with Pact of the eredar.

Ill save my thoughts for the spec trees another time, but if there’s one thing I would like a clarification on is the grimoire of sacrifice talent for affliction and destruction warlocks.

currently there are multiple talents such as wrathful minion, demonic inspiration, grimoire of synergy and Soul link, that are focused on having an active pet. it would be a total waste and shame if the warlock sacrificed the pet and only got the major ability and a small dps increase ( like we have currently)

previously when you used soul link then sacrificed the pet, warlocks got a health increase. would this be the same in DF? Would the warlock finally benefit from grimoire of synergy without an active pet? and would the other abilities mentioned work without an active pet as well?

Thoughts guys?

35

Concerning Affliction, there are two things that are super important in my opinion, one is good and one is I feel very bad.

Malefic Wrath This talent being removed, and decimating bolt being removed as well is amazing. This talent was an absolute pain to play with, the spec ST tuning being balanced around that was terrible. This will allow the tuning of affliction ST to be balanced around a gameplay that you can actually play in ST scenarios, so big thumbs up from me.

Deliberate Malice Now this is the bad thing. I’m extremely upset that they’ve removed the bonus from the 2 pieces set bonus where Malefic Rapture extends the duration of our “core” dots (I don’t care about the damage incrase to rapture, that’s a tuning thing). The fact that they’ve kept Pandemic Invocation, which works counter to Deliberate Malice and removed the latter worries me. Pandemic Invocation, for many reasons i’ve already explained is a badly designed talent. It creates a very restrictive gameplay, it forces us to refresh DoTs not optimally in relation to the real pandemic windows and mechanics of the game. It’s also weak and has to remain weak because you cannot balance Affliction ST damage around a talent which conditions to get benefit from are so strict and narrow.

I really really hope they reconsider and remove Pandemic Invocation, and more importantly bring back Deliberate Malice. Deliberate Malice is super fun, it gives the spec so much more breathing room, allows for even more multi-dotting on more targets for a longer duration, it allows us to get every possible last benefit from our DoTs and with a combination of luck and skill it can allow you not to have to refresh your DoTs on packs of mobs in M+. With Vile Taint becoming a 30s CD, and no talent to give us additional duration on agony, it means that mid-pack we will have to refresh our agonies one by one without something like deliberate Malice. And in any case, on every single fight, Deliberate Malice has made the spec so much better to play. It’s one of the best thing affliction has ever had in my opinion, removing it is a big mistake.

So please Blizzard, bring back Deliberate Malice. It would make a lot of sense to bring it back in the 7th row, just before the last section of the tree. Sacrolash’s dark strike and grimoire of sacrifice being the only path toward Soul Rot is an issue. We will always want Soul Rot, but having to pick what are essentially pvp talents to get to it is an issue. Putting Deliberate Malice here brings back an amazing if not essential tool for affliction, and a better path to the last portion of the tree.

Now for the rest of the affliction tree :

Xavian teachings Again this talent should be removed and made baseline. This is extremely weak, this is QoL, we should not have to pay a point for this. Put Drain Soul here instead.

Deliberate crescendo This is not a bad talent, but a weak one. This was added because something had to be done to make Malefic Wrath somehow playable. This is not good enough to be where it is in the tree. It should be moved up in a node following Drain soul.

Soul Swap being in the middle is still an issue in my opinion. This is a very situational talent and shouldn’t be in the center. It’s a design issue, the symmetry of the tree cannot come before good design. Also this talent follows the AC/Siphon Life node, and it still doesn’t apply Siphon Life if talented into it, it should.

Seized Vitality This is so extremely weak. This should not cost 2 points. The damage increase is negligible. The damage amp to haunt should be 100/200% to make spending those points worth it. And it wouldn’t make haunt an OP ability even then.

Shadow’s embrace Again I think this should be removed, it’s just an additional thing to maintain, that adds additional ramp up which affliction already has plenty of. It should be removed. Bring back the old Contagion instead, where we do more damages to the target with UA on it, or something.

Soul eater’s gluttony I’m curious about that talent, it offers some interesting possibilities. However, it should not be the only path towards Decaying Soul Satchel. Those two talents improving Soul Rot should be accessible independently once you picked Soul Rot, so two lines going from Soul Rot, one to Gluttony, the other to Satchel, and you’re able to pick one but not always the other.

Grim Reach I think this is something a lot of affliction warlocks have wanted for a long time. Very interested to see how this plays out.

Creeping Death Good change, this talent should be a must pick now, 15% haste on all our DoTs is huge.

Malefic affliction/Dread touch/Doom blossom Interesting stuff, we’ll have to see how it plays out.

36

In the class tree, i think accured Vitality should switch position with GoSinergy and Lifeblood with Soul Conduit. Both are on a strange position because you need to pic one for Soul link. But not all 3 specs can use them properly Lifeblood could also be removed for Dark Regeneration or GoSupremacy with two points. GoSup first point increase the dmg of our pets, second improves their abilities. Dark Regeneration first point heal increases that you received by 15% seconds point adds the 20% health back effect.

Then demonic Inspiration and Wrathful Minion good be one Talent instead of two. But both need other position, being forced to get Wrathful Minion to get Gateway feels bad for destruction and Affliction

Am I the only seeing the skull of the man’ari in the demo tree?

1 Like
37

In the general class tree there are 2 talents which buff Healthstones, 2 for demon summoning and 3 for Drain Life. However, there is nothing which buffs curses, if you decide to take them though they are usually a must especially in PvP/M+, aside from Amplify Curse. I would like to see a talent where it reduces the GCD cost of your curses. Perhaps make the talent Curses of Enfeeblement available to all warlock specs and swap it with a one that reduces the GCD cost.
Lastly, I really don’t understand why we got to pick talents which were baseline - Gateway, Banish, Demonic Circle etc. Why can’t they be replaced with things such as Dark Intent (perhaps some utility to the party or like the Cata version), Dark Bargain from MOP, NEW Curses such as Curse of Elements to replace dhs or even the weapon enchantments we used to have in WOTLK.

1 Like
38

In general, I am disappointed with the whole Drain Life focus in the class tree.

Drain Life is fine for the Affliction specialization; however, it is functionally and thematically irrelevant for Destruction and Demonology.

Functionally this is problematic because Drain Life is currently modified by abilities in the Affliction tree such as Inevitable Demise and Soul Rot which is fine, but this means this ability will never have any power of its own because of these modifiers.

My hope is that the Drain Life focused talents in the general tree get replaced with something that is universally applicable across all three specializations. As it stands these talents will not be selected as Destruction or Demonology.

I really hope Decimating Bolt makes a return in the general tree and if not at least for Destruction. This has great synergy with Roaring Blaze and gives Destruction the option to be threatening outside of Chaos Bolt which is very refreshing.

Also, I would like to see the talent Flashover make a return in the Destruction tree. The extra damage on conflagrate is not needed as it’s already covered by a new talent but the extra stack of backdraft really goes a long way and smoothens out the flow of the specialization.

3 Likes
39

I 100% agree! Drain Life is at its core an affliction spell, and I honestly don’t feel it has any place in the general tree at all.

The general class tree should be about stuff thats shared by all the specs: Demons, healthstones, fear/cc/other utility and perhaps baseline cooldowns like Dark Soul and defensives like Unending Resolve.

I still have no idea why they put demonic sacrifice in spec trees when thats the perfect candidate for the general tree. The general tree should have a path for sacrificing your demon, one for empowering your favourite and one for upgrading your main demon to a stronger one. (Sound familiar?)

I really liked the 3 different final tier pacts we could choose from back in MoP, they were all pretty fun and exciting; and more importantly very thematically fitting for the class.

40

Don’t forget our grear capstone talents in the class tree, they are like “power overwhelming” can’t imagine having better one’s