Good remark,
on a 1:30 min timer, you just auto-lose to warriors when they drop their second spear
unless you know how to read the future
2 Likes
If I had to make some short recommendations for affliction, here are 4 of them:
dot execute instead of pand invo
dot gcd reduction instead of xavian teaching, which should be baseline
soul swap give 3 stacks of Malefic afflictions to the target, for target swap
remove SE and give contagion from legion back
Just my 13âŹ
Warlock Class Tree Feedback:
First Row:
Overall good choices, Spell lock baseline is equally good as Curses.
Second Row:
Change the position of demon skin to the position of Accured Vitality.
The other talents are fine.
Third Row:
It is nearly the same row since the start, except we have now the curses instead of Spell lock. Both are good in either position.
Fourth Row:
I would rather have banish baseline and not in the talents, we can summon pets without Talents so we should be able to banish them without talents. Then combine Wrathful Minion and Demonic Inspiration into one Talent. Also combine Demonic Embrace and Demonic Fortitude into one Talent.
Fifth Row:
Remove Gorefiendâs Resolve and Nightmare, then the Row will be good.
Sixth Row:
Shadowfury is a choice Talent now with Shadowflame. And Darkfury is now baseline.
Seventh Row:
Instead of Darkfury/Shadowflame we now have Dark Regeneration. 25% heal increase for 6 seconds and we Regenerate 20% health.
Eighth Row:
I donât like the splitting of Soul link, but it is OK how they did it.
Still I want to undone the change and instead of Fel Synergy, which will be again together with Soul Link, we get 1 point Soul Conduit there.
Ninth Row:
Soul Armor is back in Soul link. Claw of Endereth as 2 point with 20% pet point.
Tenth Row:
Instead of CoE we have the Soulkeeper on the left.
Summon Inquisitorâs Eye with a little change instead of Summon one, we Summon 5 of them. They increase our mastery by 1% for every hit for 5 seconds. After another 5 seconds the effect expires. Cannot occur more then every 60 seconds.
Soul Burn Baseline ability, instead we get Grimoire of Supremacy we Summon stronger demons they deal 15% more dmg and have other abilities.
Like Imp â Malicious Imp singe magic changes to curse magic. Every harmful Spell against you or your Teammate applies a second random course on the target.
Sayaad changes to Jailer Demon, the Jailor throws a Cage on the ground pulling every enemy to it in a 8 yard range.
Felhunter changes into Inquisitor attacking every enemy in range and instead of purge he curses our enemies randomly with Empowered version cd 12 seconds, can only curse one target with one cd.
Void Reaver changes into Void Terror works as a dps/tank. Has a aoe dot ubstadt of aoe taunt.
Felguard changes into Fel Lord. Pursit changes into âCome Hereâ the Fel Lord Hurls his axe to grapple his target to him.
Summon Darkglare changes into summon Observer, the Observer weakens the targets for Shadowflame dmg, increasing the dmg by 3%.
Summon Infernal changes into summon Abysall, the Abysall has a charge with a 6 second cd.
Summon Observer changes into summon beholder, attacks the closest target for 10% hp instead of all for 5%.
Summon Fel Lord turns into Summon Fel Reaver, which Hammerfist the area and deal chaos dmg to all targets in the area. Knocking the enemies up in the air. Cc immunity.
Summon Tyrant turns into summon Overfiend, which charges into melee range and cleaves upv to five targets. Chaos dmg no dmg increase from the Overfiend instead gives a haste and movement buff.(10% haste and 5% movement)
Summon dreadstalker turns into Summon Fel Hounds (green and purple skin model of the raid boss from Antorus), one deals fire dmg the other one shadow dmg. Also a dot on the target stacks up to five times the fire dot increases Shadowflame dmg by 0,5% power stack and the shadow dot increase the Shadowfrost dmg by 0,5% per stack.
Summon Vilefiend turns into Spiderdemon, plants eggs into the target after 3 seconds with no attack the eggs explodes dealing Felfire dmg 1% of spell power per stack, 10 stacks possible.
HoG imps turning into a Imp Mother which explodes 1 seconds after spawning and summons 6 Fel imps, which deals chaos dmg but only casts 3 Fel bolts.
Inner demons and nether Portal no changes to those demons.
Iâm not sure why the nerf to soul link happened when it mainly affects pvp, pvp tuning isnât supposed to happen until all classes are tuned and tested properly , not at the start of alpha.
We donât know which class will end up strong or not, might seem like locks are op but when we look at each class and see they all have insane gains ( well most of them) and damage is through the roof for pretty much every dps spec, makes me think even pre-nerfed soul link might not be enough.
Impulse nerfing is the reason we spend an entire year being unplayable , i rly hope for all our sakes that locks donât end up being as squishy as SL s1.
Drain life is like a massive chain dragging the class down, the only time anyone remotely presses drain life is when youâre an affliction lock with 50 stacks of ID trying to cleave with soul rot, which is to say, an extremely niche situation outside of pvp.
So why is drain life being shoved down our throats? i wish they would rework inevitable demise and soul rot to work with shadowbolt instead of drain life , then we completely remove all of the drain talents and claw and just straight up buff baseline drain life by like 200% and call it a day.
Drain life is meant to help sustain when needed, donât need to have a billion talents just to make it functional, not that we want to press it anyway.
Now letâs talk about some more important things, like key talents being gatekept by talents not everyone needs or wants.
We all want gateway and sweet souls and the stamina talents but we have no choice but to take the pet dps talents right next to them to path down , those talents are only good for demo and also makes GoSac redundant, if we could gain said benefits from Gosac itâd be great ( also soul link granting HP when sacced) but as it stands now GoSac is dead.
Additionally, general tree bloat due to weird pathing and forced 2 point gatekeeping is severely limiting our options to branch into any of the side utility talents ( amp curse and banish ) and lets not even mention their follow up points.
Also please remove lifeblood, no one wants it or ever will. As it stands now weâre being either forced to pick it to branch into both of the bottom rows without having to go through the Sfury route , being forced to take bad/useless talents just for the sake of filling the tree is just extremely disappointing.
And we might as well talk about teachings of the black harvest, looks good on paper but actually is useless, none of the bonuses are actually useful realistically speaking.
I wish weâd get more useful bonuses cause as it stands now iâd rather path through soul conduit to reach soulburn then ever having to throw a point down the bin on teachings of the black harvest, which is a shame cause i really want to pick up demonic resilience but canât afford to.
To conclude, Iâd like to mention a few things for the spec trees , specifically talents that are good on paper but too cost heavy, soul swap costing a shard + 30 sec cd is too much, it should either be no cd or no shard cost. itâs not like we have infinite shards to spam, if we wanna spend whatever we have getting dots on many targets then its called player choice which is supposed to be encouraged.
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And still things like nether portal being bugged since its inception and not getting fixed and still having a cast time to get the portal out is just sad, plz fix this.
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Pit lord should be the choice node melee alternative to tyrant which is instant cast and does hard melee attacks instead.
Overall QoL changes to lock:
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Grimoire felguard, 1.5 mins cd plz let it line with the other cds plz ! iâd trade the 25% damage increase for the cds to line, thatâs how much we need this.
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vilefiend still triple cost ( shard,cast time , cd ) for some reason, itâs the only cd in the game with triple cost not sure why, removing one would make it much more functional.
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For the love of all that is holy, please make healthstone behave likes cds instead of potions in instanced pvp, locks dont have the leisure to reset combat whenever they want and most of the time we can go on an entire match with only 1 HS , even though HS is considered part of the lock defensive toolkit when balancing occurs !
2 Likes
The soul link nerf is a dealbreaker for me
I wonât buy this
3 Likes
It indeed shows their quick-trigger attitude in regards to random nerfs without considering the consequences it would have on the big picture ( the meta).
If anything since the loss of soulshape and the increase in melee mobility (yet again!) every expansion we are constantly chasing tankiness to meet the bare minimum of our functionality, if our design is turret base and we cannot kite, then we have no choice but to be tanks.
Sadly blizz doesnât seem to care about the pvp side of things and will probably notice these things a couple of months ,if not a year , into the expansion.
2 Likes
what nerf are u guys talkin about
Basically theyâve nerfed the soul link talent, and divided its power into 3 nodes worth 4 points.
In the first version of the tree, soul link was exactly as it is on live for Demonology, so 20% damage reduction + passive heal, and it cost only 1 point.
Now, the damage reduction is down to 10%. The healing component is on another node. And if you want to go to 20% damage reduction you have to spend 2 points, and that extra DR only happens below 35% HP.
Itâs a nerf. But the thing is, warlocks will still be unkillable. Weâll have 13% DR all the time. Dark Pact on a 45s CD AND demon skin passive shield regen. Unending Resolve on something like a 1m30s CD. 16% bonus stamina. Healthstones used by others also heal us. With Soulburn you can turn your healthstone into a massive defensive. Affliction warlock will be able to turn their drain life into a massive shield, etc.
Besides tanks, we are by far the most resistant class in the game. The nerf seems legitimate to me. The same thing happened to shamans, their defensive capabilities were tuned down from the first iterations of their tree.
There are realy still a lot of issues with the Affliction tree.
Xavian Teachings, this should be removed and made baseline. Drainsoul should be moved up here instead.
Agonizing Corruption, I donât see why anyone would put more than one point in this, I donât think itâs even worth anything at all. I understand the idea behind it, but frankly a talent here that reduces the cast time of seed of corruption instead would be much better and help with the ramp up quite a lot more.
Shadow Embrace Just remove this, and put Contagion back instead. The target with UA takes 4.5/9% more damages. Shadow Embrace just adds useless additional ramp up.
Pandemic Invocation This talent is badly designed. I wish it was removed, itâs too hard and restrictive to play around when you take into account everything else the spec has to managed. If itâs to stay, then you should get the benefit when thereâs maybe 10 s left on the DoT, not 5. This would make it playable. To replace it, you could bring back wracking brilliance, which gives you primary stat when agony generates shards.
Sacrolashâs Dark Strike This talent being the only path toward Soul Rot is an issue. We will always want to pick Soul Rot, but Sacrolash is much more situational and there are a lot of situations where youâd like not to have to pick it.
Thereâs a design problem in the middle of the tree
The last row of that middle section has only very situational talents, that you donât always want, they block access to the last part of the tree that has the good stuff. Pandemic Invocation, Withering Bolt and Sacrolash Dark Strike.
I wish Deliberate Malice was brought back into that section, to give us some more choice and more powerful options. For ST builds we end up picking stuff like Sacrolash and Harvester of Souls up the tree, but those are just bad ST talents, but thereâs just nothing else to pick.
I also wish Calamitous Crescendo was moved up into the middle section. Itâs too weak to be where it is at the bottom of the tree. And you canât actually pick it when you do a ST build, even though thatâs when youâd like to take it, because we just donât have enough points.
Other talents could be added to the middle section. A talent that adds more duration to our âcore dotsâ, so agony, corruption, siphon life and unstable affliction, for example.
This + Deliberate Malice + Calamitous Crescendo moved up into the middle section of the tree would make it all much better and add some more options that we sorely lack in that section of the tree. Another talent that could be added is one that reduces the GCD on our instat DoTs, so for agony/siphon/corruption.
Please bring back Deliberate Malice, itâs an incredibly fun mechanic that gives the spec so much space and breathing room.
Soul Swap should not be in the middle of the tree. If youâre not willing to put darkglare or something like that in the middle, donât put anything there. This sends the message that this talent is a must have, but it really isnât. This is very situational. It also should apply siphon life if talented into it.
Now for the bottom part of the tree
Seized Vitality This is ridiculous. This counts barely as a QoL talent. The damage amp is ridiculous. This is so expensive for something that is not even noticeable. I understand wanting to make us pay more points to get to haunted soul, but this needs to change or get a massive buff. Iâm talking 100/200% damage amp to haunt, to be able to justify the cost.
Calamitous Crescendo Iâve already mentioned this. This needs to be moved up the tree. We canât pick it because we donât have enough points. Since we always want to pick Creeping Death, Haunt, Darkglare and Soul Rot in any non AoE situations. And then we always want to go down the branches. So not enough points. Itâs also weak for its position in the tree but itâs a cool talent. I wish the free rapture could be cast while channeling drain soul, as not to have to chose between finishing a nightfall buffed drainsoul or risk wasting a proc of a free rapture. Or we should be able to stack 2 procs.
Soul-Eaterâs gluttony this is a good idea. But two points is too expensive for what it is. And Decaying Soul Satchel is not that good either. This branch is too expensive and too weak. Gluttony needs to also extend the duration of Soul Rot or something to make it better. I also wish that we didnât have to spend points on Gluttony to get to Soul Satchel. I may want one but not the other in some situations. There should be two independant branches from Soul Rot, each one going to either of those talents.
Overall I think the bottom part of the tree has some really cool/powerful stuff, but those two points nodes are very expensive and very weak, those feel very bad. I wish those two points nodes were reduced to one, to allow for more build diversity. This might need to add something more to the bottom part of the tree, maybe Deliberate Malice or other stuff. Like passive execute baked into our DoTs, the old Legion talent Deathâs Embrace.
Iâd like to clarify something though since you mentioned stamina talents, currently in shadowlands we have 10% baseline stamina and an extra 10% stamina in pvp combat.
From a pve pov lock would be gaining defensives but in pvp weâre losing 4% stamina. Given the logic behind the old effective HP argument, 4% stamina can be interpreted as about 4% damage reduction if not more simply due to the interaction of stamina with our other defensives ( around 5% total), this negates the added defensives gained from the new passive 3% soul leech talent.
From a broader pov and without bias , the unending resolve talents are not an improvement really, since baseline UR is 25% , in pvp if cds are still strong ( which they very much appear to be) then 25% is not enough which will force us to spec into 40% aka nothing changes for UR.
Furthermore, the dark pact talents are nice and probably the biggest impact to our survivability here outside of pre-nerf soul link.
Then we must look at all 3 specs, destro having lost their mastery damage reduction ( somewhere between 4-8% reduction) and demo having lost their 20% soul link to a 10% means that only affliction is the winning spec with these talents.
The drain life talents only apply to affliction anyway and also gains the most out of these new defensive options compared to SL.
Whereas Destro having lost some DR and gained 10% from soul link balances out a bit, and demo having lost a lot transitioning into DF while gaining some in return means the following :
- Affliction went from 2/5 to 4/5 defensive power.
- Destro went from 3/5 to 4/5.
- Demo was and still is at 4/5.
Overall Aff has the most to gain moving into DF while demo is exactly the same , but the problem doesnât end here, for we did not apply the conversion of damage increase to defense ratio.
As all classes have gotten incredible gains to their dps output with their new trees , a lot of classes can straight up 1 shot or have incredibly high sustain damage output.
So far the biggest worry we have in pvp is that said damage output is at a 5/5 while lock defensive power is at a 4/5 resulting in us being squishy yet again.
I know this might seem absurd but we must always look towards the bigger picture for context instead of judging based on the individual tree.
A quick example of this is people assuming locks to be unkillable machines while to me mages will be unkillable in DF simply due to them having access to 5 blinks ( temporal resetting blink) and a knockback and 2 -3 roots based on what is talented, and new invis 60% damage reduction this is while retaining their shield and blink heals.
Meaning in a situation where a melee has unhealable damage mage can avoid and kite said cds while locks who dont have soul shape anymore have no choice but to face tank.
Which is the reason we are worried tbh.
1 Like
Ok I see what you mean.
Just to be sure, Demonology doesnât get that extra 10% stamina in PvP on live right ? So for Demonology this should result in potentially more stamina than what they already have. Iâm not an avid PvP player, so iâm not 100% sure.
Iâd also add that in DF weâll get both Dark Pact AND Demon Skin at the same time. Which we donât have currently. So thatâs a passive shield that weâll get that we didnât have before, and youâll start arena matches with a shield worth 15%of your HP.
Healthstones are weak in PvP because you canât really get out of combat easily, but with soulburn, if you get to talent into it, youâll have another strong defensive. A one-off, but still a strong one. Instant gateway is not bad either.
So yes theyâre balancing things around the 3 specs, to get them all roughly at the same level of tankiness, and maybe demonology is not getting much. But all 3 specs are getting additional stuff that we didnât have before. Which I think make up for the tuning of Soul Link and Unending Resolve. But sure, weâll have to wait and see. Tuning is still a long way off.
Oh and thereâs also the new talent at the bottom of the general tree. Demonic resilience.
It does now, it was changed mid season 3 when they removed demon armor from destro/aff and added 10% baseline extra stam to all 3 specs ( aka demo gaining it too).
The initial shield is never considered as that will break relatively quickly, the passive shield gain is very good ofc but as stated above the loss of stamina + the loss of passive damage reduction for destro and demo means it balances out , only affli gains much from these changes, which is at least a good thing for aff.
sweetsouls + soulburn combo is great, the downside is that HS donât reset in combat in pvp and itâs usually never the case where u can reset mid fight as a lock, so more often than not u only get 1 HS per game which sux. If they could make HS function like a cd in instanced pvp it would help quite a lot, sadly they still balance locks as if HS is a cd.
Overall though, the general tree is a bit convoluted with the way pathing works, weâre forced to spend more points in the upper/middle portion of the tree on filler things just to move down and those fillers are basically gatekeeping the good talents which we need , thus we dont have a choice but to path down the same way everytime.
If you want to pick up amplify curse or banish you simply donât have the points to do so due to the way the new tree pathing was made.
1 Like
Nope
People kill your pet, or random healers wonât pay attention to it as it dies to the transferred damage.
Then people will Banish, Mind control or Cyclone it so you will lose the soul link buff. This is all but permanent.
Thatâs why committing 3+ points into it for the menial value it provides is absolutely unfair in the current build.
I mean, the wrath of the lich king values for soul link are higher and they are stacked on 1 talent point. Then the healing from fel synergy used to be a separate 2 pointer independent from soul link.
Also, the armor values that warlocks can get on retail are much lower than back then⊠and on top of it the devs gradually nerf armor values as each expansion progresses in pvp. So warlock donât get tankier with item level progress, except for stamina.
I can tell you âIt doesnât look goodâ when it does not look good. 
1 Like
If you commit 2 points into demon skinâŠ
can you get a full PvP tree with banish, improved dark pact as well as 2 cap stone talents ( endereth + soulburn ) ?
Probably not
You will have to give things up⊠and thatâs the catch of the whole thing.
Warriors donât need to drop anything you see. Some other classes get it all.
1 Like
OK ok, thanks for the PvP insights. Iâm genuinely curious what kind of PvP tree I can make, Iâm gonna check things out.
Edit* Now that I think about it, especially for destro and affliction, you can still play grimoire of sacrifice and not pick the Soul Link talent.
You lose 10% DR, but then you can pretty much get everything else. Amplify curse, demon skin, demon armor, CDR on UR, banish, improved UR and improved Dark Pact, 16% stamina, gateway, stun, improved stun/slow cone.
Idk if itâs worth losing 10% DR, but you remove the liability of a pet and making sure it survives.
Soul burn - health funnel + the Demonic Resilience talent should also give us more power to save our pets, if Soul link is too good to pass up in those two specs. And itâll be really useful for demo no matter what.
Yhea I checked it out too, because of your comments 
Much appreciated, but I am crying inside. I will try to get a hold of myselfâŠ
Letâs see :
Suggested Aff PvP Tree no soul link :
Dragonflight Talent Calculator - 10.0.0 Beta (wowhead.com)
Ideal Aff PvP Tree if blizzard did whatâs necessary :
Dragonflight Talent Calculator - 10.0.0 Beta (wowhead.com)
So hereâs my quick analysis :
The first tree above, is simply a nerfed version of Shadolands Aff with the addition of soulburn.
The second tree is something more historic, it plays like Wrath/cata Aff but simplier and a bit weaker.
From a game deisgn perspective, I donât understand why Soul Link (tier 3) is made weaker than Improved Darkpact (tier 2 talent) ??? Why are these two interchangeable also ? That does not make much sense in my humble opinion.
The current general warlock tree is just full of those quirks.
1 Like
Ok then ⊠Claw of Endereth and Soul Burn are general tree cap stones. We like them I mean we are warlocks so. I personnaly do like them. Thatâs nice and all.
Ho but actually, can you balance them against capstones like :
- Stampede, Death Chakram, Barrage
- Avatar, Memory of Tormented Warlord
- Find weakness, Shadow dance, Thitsle Tea
I can go on and on with original DPS specsâŠ
That should make it obvious.
1 Like
Malefic Rapture
Donât mind keeping this ability as shard spender, but with Deliberate Malice being removed, the ability will be again underpowered compared to Seed of Corruption. In this case, idea would be to bring Seed of Corruption to the similar damage level as Malefic Rapture but compensate a both ability damage loses with an Agony, Corruption and Unstable Affliction buff.
Additionally, the Damage-over-Time extending effect from Deliberate Malice could be moved into an Affliction as baseline, and work with shard spending and hard-cast abilities like Malefic Rapture/Seed of Corruption.
This effect did very well for Affliction when it came during Shadowlands season 3. I understand that in the current form it can move away little too much Affliction from necessity of refreshing dots. To reduce impact of it, the 2 second value can be reworked and extend DoTâs timer base on of which shard spending ability was casted; 1.5 second in case of Malefic Rapture and 2.5 second in case of Seed of Corruption both scaled with haste. The key result which would be welcome is to being able to spend shards without worries that DoTs will expire while doing it but not move away Affliction from refreshing his DoTâs.
Unstable Affliction
At the current state an Unstable Affliction is doing barely same damage as Agony with Writhe in Agony, which is weird feeling as the Unstable Affliction is limited to one target and should be one of our Single Target core abilities. Later in the tree it can be buffed it with Malefic Affliction, which is nice, but require casting Malefic Rapture and does not work with Seed of Corruption.
Propose solution would be to make Unstable Affliction damage buffed but cost of 1 Soul Shard, unlimited by number of targets but not stackable, a bit similar like it was in Legion in BFA.
In this case Affliction will gain additional shard spender outside of Malefic Rapture for people who prefer such playstyle, especially in PvP. In PvE, with this change Unstable Affliction will become something more than just another point on the rotation checklist.
In case of AoE in could create more interesting choice, if you what to spend shard to cast Seed of Corruption for more stack-cleave, Malefic Rapture for more spread-cleave or Unstable Affliction for priority target.
With a Soul Shard cost a little more power can be gained behind it.
Seed of Corruption
Cast time of 2.5 second is a little too long, with helping Affliction to ramp up faster it could be reduced by 0.5 - 1.0 second as a baseline or with a talent, like Agonizing Corruption.
Nightfall
With a current talent location and necessity of going away from buffing Affliction filler spells like Shadowbolt and Drain Soul, this talent would work way better with Unstable Affliction, buffing priority damage little further.
Xavian Teachings
Corruption must be instant baseline for Affliction. It would be good spot for Drain Soul as it is now in a weird location and both Single Target and AoE build might what to have easy access to it.
Sow of Seed
No remarks.
Shadow Embrace
With currently Affliction ramp-up time this talent gives even more delay to iy. Great to see another Unstable Affliction talent like Contagion .
Harvest of Souls
Nice talent, but itâs location should be more optional and not locking from going further in the build.
Writhe in Agony
To be honest it is âmust pickâ for both Single Target and AoE builds which makes it not real choice talent. Solution would be to make Agony stack up to 18 as baseline and remove âstarting at 4 stacksâ component of it as we have access to Agonizing Corruption right now. In Single Target, faster Agony stacking is not as important as in AoE.
With current location in the tree (AoE side) it would be good to see an Agony duration extend talent, same as conduit from Shadowlands.
Agonizing Corruption
New Affliction talent which will help with specialization ramp up time. Two-point investment feel little too much in the current form, as it brings no value after Agony reach 18 stacks. Reasonable solution would be to make it also reduce Seed of Corruption cast time by 0.25/0.5 or 0.5/1.0 seconds.
Drain Soul
As there are Shadowbolt and Drain Soul lovers itâs logical solution to keep a filler as a choice for Affliction. In the current form itâs too high in the talent tree, it would be good to move it into a second row and make Corruption instant as baseline.
Siphon Life / Absolute Corruption
Personally, Iâm not a fan of Siphon Life since it came back. I donât agree that a complexity of the Affliction and its rotation should be locked behind increasing number or damage-over-time effects and things to maintain.
It could be choice talent for Harvest of Souls / Absolute Corruption or Sacrolashâs Dark Strike/Absolute Corruption when tuned correctly. With Sow of Seeds being a thing and easily accessible, it can be no big benefit to invest one point into Absolute Corruption outside of itâs pure Corruption damage increase**.**
Phantom Singularity / Vile Taint
As long as both Single Target and AoE build want to have access to one of those talents, it should be good to move it more into middle, might be in the place of Withering Bolt.
For Vile Taint being count by Malefic Rapture, I donât like cooldown extension up to 30 second.
In the end, you would like to cast it in M+ at 30% of pack HP to deal more damage but you know the cooldown will not refresh uniting next pack. Adding an Agony and curse spreading into this spell was good step but need to keep it mind this itâs still one of our main damage ability with the current stage of Malefic Rapture.
If Affliction is going to be more sustain damage dealer with would be good to make it back 20 second cooldown or removed it applying additional damage over time effect and keep only Agony and curse. In such case a shard cost could be also removed. With doing that, Phantom Singularity could be little more for AoE build to Vile Taint if someone prefer to put Agony manually.
Soul Tap
I donât feel this talent yet. Can be good to refill shards just before combat. Maybe instead we could gain: Sacrifice 5% of your Soul Leech to make you next Malefic Rapture, Unstable Affliction, Seed of Corruption an instant spell.
Inevitable Demise
Nice talent, but itâs location should be more optional and not locking from going further in the build. More like optional talent, at the current stage Affliction need to invest into many of 2-point talents, so we are running out of point for such Quality-of-Life talent.
Soul Swap
Soul Shard cost and cooldown is too much, in the current stage one must be removed. If there is need to swap target fast it can be a good choice.
More like optional talent, at the current stage Affliction need to invest into many of 2-point talents, so we are running out of point for such Quality-of-Life talent.
Soul Flame
Current not working to test out. But no additional remarks, talent will help Affliction a lot in case of low-HP targets.
Grimoire of Sacrifice
Unsynergetic with many talents in class tree.
Pandemic Invocation
5 second window look too short, especially when I come to refresh Agony applied with Vile Taint, so far damage value and shard generation chance is low.
RNG component in this talent feels bad. Would be better to make it more predictable, like: when damage over time is refreshed you gain one stack of buff, after stacking up to 5 or any number, it will grant you Soul Shard.
Withering Bolt
No remarks. Good with Drain Soul as it increases our execute damage.
Sacrolashâs Dark Strike
Good talent which could be a choice note with Absolute Corruption when Siphon Life removed.
Creeping Death
Nice to see talent finally fixed. Probably must pick for both Single Target and AoE.
Malefic Affliction
Interesting. Huge disappointing it does not work with Seed of Corruption as our other shard spender, if is it would open possibility of new AoE builds.
Doom Blossom/Dread Touch
Interesting talents if Doom Blossom damage will be tuned correctly. Now it can not compare to others. RNG component is bad, it would be better to scale damage with Malefic Affliction stacks instead of its chance to proc.
Calamitous Crescendo
Not a fan of it. As o damage over time manager, I think you would like to be more predictable of your rotation and go away from random procs which forcing you a spell to press. It would be much better if it would just generate a shard instead of making Malefic Rapture free cost.
Haunt / Seized Vitality / Haunted Soul
Nice to see Haunt have more value in AoE builds. Seized Vitality feels less interesting right now as its number is very low. Healing of it will be also mostly random, with Haunt on 15 cooldown it cannot be pressed on demand. Could work little better if it would also reduce Haunt cooldown but keep it limited to one target.
Summon Darkglare / Antoran Plating / Wilfred / Grim Reach
Nice to see some changes to our core offensive cooldown. Will see how itâs end up.
Wrath of Consumption
Not a fan of it as it is completely death in Single Target. I understand that this is in AoE talents area but making last tier talent which totally 0% value in any scenario is not ok. Should be reworked.
Soul Rot / Soul-Eaterâs Gluttony / Decaying Soul Satchel
Well, not fan of it. Without conduit radius extension it can be pain to playout if targets will not be very closely stacked. Also think that Decaying Soul Satchel and Soul-Eaterâs Gluttony should be swapped in place and amount of spending points. Decaying Soul Satchel ground buff effect is also sometimes very painful and unforgettable, as others buffs in that row it should be bound to a target/player not being a ground effect.
I donât think itâs very meaningful to compare general trees like that. I understand the idea/intent behind it, but all general trees are not designed the same way when it comes to utility/throughput talents. This is really a case of comparing apples and oranges in my opinion.
Every class tree is its own ecosytem, designed with a spec tree in mind. The purpose of those two trees is to create a complete toolkit for every class and spec with their utility and throughput combined across both trees. For some classes/specs, for historical reasons, itâs easier to fill the class tree with mostly only utility (for example shamans, druids, warlocks), whereas for some others itâs easier to do something more 50/50. This creates issues for every individual class/spec.
Yes, a few classes have a lot more throughput talents at the end of their class trees, but warlocks is one of the few (I think evokers maybe can), if not the only class that can actually get its 3 general tree capstones if it wishes to do so, and thatâs probably because in some aspects those capstones are weaker than some of other classes. It really is a matter of difference in design, because of the class itself, and because of the people actually responsible for designing each specific tree.
Unrelated, but I just thought about the fact that with the interrupt going baseline, you can play grimoire of sacrifice - voidwalker, and get a 30% max HP buff for 20 s every 90 s
Yhea, but thatâs not very material in the end.
Warlock has never been about surviving with cooldowns, ever. Itâs about being resilient as a front line battle mage, but you donât need to rely on immunities and big defensive cooldowns. Itâs not a glass cannon type of thing at all.
Also if you look back in the history of the game, you will see immediately what I am talking about : defensive on use spells with long/medium cooldowns have never been that important for warlocks. But strong passive resistances and damage reductions have been instrumental in the viability and competitiveness of the class systematically.
Letâs look into it like this :
BC - Soul link 20% â class is competitive
Wrath - Soul link 20% â class is competitive
Cata - Soul link 20% â class is competitive
Mop s12 â no passive damage reductions â 2/3 specs are not viable in 3v3
Mop s14 â Soul link 20% â class is competitive
Mop s15 â Soul link 20% but MC pet bug gets discovered â only destruction and demo are competitive because they could play without soul link. Affliction won Blizzcon as L$DÂČ because warlocks were never the kill target of the final rounds.
Wod â Soul link 20% â class is viable, destruction is very competitive later on with scaling
Legion and forever after â soul link is demo spec only â Aff is not viable most of the time, never has been competitive since then. Destruction has been viable to competitive.
Demonology fluctuates but itâs doing good overall.
Shadowlands â Soul link is demo spec only â guess nothing changes. People have tried to make it work this season : the warlock player population was cranked up to 10-9% on day one as people tried it, and it quickly fel when decent players realized how squishy warlocks were. Affliction has been affected the most : at max level, some comps only take 1 or 2 globals to kill warlocks through all their activable defensives.
It is the passive damage taken that matters. When warlocks donât have armors and soul link, this is some of the highest damage taken in the game. It is the tunnel vision damage from rogues, melees and hunters that is so detrimental to the warlock class overall. The moment you alleviate this stuff, the warlock class becomes viable and we can talk about min maxing things out.
Thatâs why we need 20% soul link as a 1 point talent node. Anything less is capitulation.
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