Hello everyone, I hope i can give some constructive Feedback on the general Warlock Talent Tree in Dragonflight. Feel free to comment and add on my thoughts.
Quick Disclaimer: I play Warlock in PvE content (from casual to semi-hardcore, transitioning more into casual with time ongoing), and haven’t played PvP seriuosly about for 5 or 6 years, maybe longer. I will put in my thoughts if i think a talent has impact on PvP or cannot be buffed in PvE for PvP reasons, but i am not an expert on PvP and mainly focus on the PvE side of things.
I will for now only give Feedback on the general class tree, not he spec trees for now. I do not know if i will do the same for the the spec trees, since it took me already a lot of effort to do this and there are a lot of other persons giving Feedback on them anyways.
General Tree - overall summery:
Overall the tree looks quite good. I really like the talents in the first 7 rows, but i’m not a big fan of some of the talents in the last 2 rows, mainly because of the big shift in design philosophy behind the talents.
The upper part of the tree is filled with mostly utility talents and a few minor throughput nodes.
The last 2 rows however suddenly feature quite strong DPS talents, that you are propably required to take, so you cannot spent any more points on the upper talent rows, even though there are still some nice utility nodes you may want to pick.
I addition to that, the final talents dont seem very interesting and fun, at least from reading. I will go a little more into that in the later section, when i share my thoughts about these talents.
First Row: Fel Domination - Curses of Enfeeblement - Burning Rush
Those 3 are some nice Utility/Quality-of-Life talents to choose from.
Fel Domination for those nice instant Pet summons after the pet (or player) dies.
Curses are an important Warlock Utility that will propably needed in most competetive group content. In AoE Situations though they may not see as much usage because of a missing AoE application (sadly no Impending Catastrophe in the tree).
It is not clear whether Curse of Weakness is part of the Curses of Enfeeblement or if it is baseline. It is the most important curse in a Raiding environment.
Burning Rush adds some nice Movement speed at the cost of Health Points - a very long known Warlock ability.
Second Row: Quick Fiends - Demon Skin - Fel Armor - Imp Step
Improvements on the first row abilites and defensive options. The defensive options will definitely be taken in a competetive group environment and worth it for their 2 Talent points, the same cannot be said about the outer 2 nodes.
Quick Fiends reduces the cooldown of Fel Domination by 30/60 seconds. It is nice to reduce it’s cooldown (especially in Dungeons and propably in PvP, if no Grimoire of Sacrafice is used), but i do not hink it is worth the 2 points most of the time. If this were a 1-point choice it would be much more attractive.
Demon Skin increases the effectiveness of Soul Leech, which makes it an even better defensive tool.
Fel Armor Improves Soul Leech in a staggering-like way and reduces all damage taken by 1,.5/3%. Especially the damage-reduction effect will be usefull in competetive group content and adds to Warlock survivability. It is the damage reduction part of this Talent that is really interesting.
Imp Step improves Burning Rush for 5/10% more Movementspeed and 25/50% less Health sacrafice. This seems a little weak for 2 points, compared to Demon Skin and Fel Armor. A 1-point choice would seem more reasonable or a bigger increase of effect (giving 10/20% additional movement speed instead). Overall it is more of an outdor content or solo-play Quality-of-Live Talent Choice, rather than a choice in group content.
Third Row: Spell Lock - Accrued Vitality - Howl of Terror/Mortal Coil
Spell Lock: Our interrupt is no longer pet-bound, which leaves us more freedome in pet-choice, unless we are a Demonology Warlock, who has to run the Felguard for DPS-reasons. Not needing a specific Pet for interrupt is one of the best things Warlock could have asked for in Dungeon-orientated content. Spell Lock leads to a major defensive talent node (Demonic Embrace) and might be picked only to get there, even though we might not need the interrupt for some specific fights.
Accrued Vitality: Drain Life heals 15/30% of the amount drained over 10 seconds. This may only prove strong in combination with Inevitable Demise from the Affliction Warlock tree, otherwise the Drain Life healing is just not that strong. It may be a good choice in outdoor content or solo-play. It feels very odd, that this talent point is needed for Demonic Circle and is the only way to reach it.
Howl of Terror/Mortal Coil: Howling Terror is more of a PvP ability, that saw no real use in PvE content. I can’t speak for PvP, but if in PvE Mortal Coil always was the better choice in the past, maybe a lower cooldown on Howl of Terror would make it more attractive. Mortal Coil will be the go-to for this talent in PvE content for the additional “interrupt” effect in Dungeon-content and the self-heal.
This talent blocks the way to Demonic Fortitude, which may be wanted for additional survivability, especionally for Demonology Warlock for whom more Health leads to more Demonic Tyrant (Demonic Consumption) damage.
Fourth Row: Amplify Curse - Demonic Embrace - Demonic Inspiration - Demonic Circle - Wrathful Minion - Demonic Fortitude - Banish
There are a lot of talents here, I’ll go into the specififcs on each of the talents.
Amplify Curse improves the effect of our next curse on a 30 seconds Cooldown, which means it can be used on any curse (re-)applyment, as long as we curse only 1 target (and if it’s not Curse of Exhaustion - it’s duration is shorter than Amplify Curse’s Cooldown). I assume this ability will be off GCD, since we already have to use a GCD for the curse itself. The improvements of Curse of Exhaustion and Curse of Tongues look very nice, the improvement of Curse of Weakness looks more like a PvP-component, since in PvE NPC-spells cannot crit and Auto-attacks usually hit tanks, who are immune to crits (that’s at least my latest knowledge, tell me if i’m wrong about the crits).
Demonic Embrace: Our passive 10% more Health is now a talent in Dragonflight and is a very strong defensive pick. We propably will skill Spell Lock for this talent, even when we do not need an interrupt. That seems rather weird. Maybe their postitions should be changed/swapped.
Demonic Inspiration: Our pet gains a small Haste buff when we generate a soul shard. Our first throughput talent. The DPS gain is rather small, but it looks like it will have a high uptime. Does not have any effect if skilled Grimoire of Sacrafice as Affliction or Destruction Warlock. Since it only effects the primary pet, there will be no interactions with Demonology’s Dreadleash/From the Shadows build. If it really turns out to be a weak dmg increase, i play with the thought of taking more utility talents instead of this talent node, which is propably a good thing.
Demonic Circle: One of the most iconic and best known Warlock talents as a very unique mobility talent. It feels very odd that we have to pick Accrued Vitality in order to reach this node. It’s position should propably be swapped.
Wrathful Minion: This is exactly the same Talent than Demonic Inspiration, except it gives 5% damage instead of 5% Haste. Why are there 2 different talents that are nearly identical? This seems odd. But same as for Demonic Inspiration, if it turns out to be a very minor dmg gain, i can take some more utility spells instead of this talent, which may end up to be a good thing.
Demonic Fortitude increases both our and our Pets Health by 6%. This wording is odd, because usually if we get more HP, our Pet gains the same amount of % HP. Unless this has been changed or the Pet benefits from these 6% twice, this seems like a weaker version of Demonic Embrace from the same talent row. If both talents are picked, Warlocks will have a 16% increased Health total, which will be nice from a defensive standpoint. The Health inrease also effects the Demonic Consumption talent in the Demonolgy tree, which would make both of these defensive talents into small DPS gains for Demonology Warlocks.
Banish is a talent now, that needs you to skill into Howl of Terror/Mortal Coil - a CC-ability that leads into another CC-ability. Nothing obviously wrong with that. Banish is propably the best CC in the entire game, but very restricted on what targets it can be used on and therefore was not that useful in Shadowlands and BFA. With the new Expansion being Dragon themed and there being a lot of Elementals involved, Warlock may gain some usage out of this talent.
Fifth Row: Foul Mouth - Desperate Power - Sweet Souls - Lifeblood - Demonic Gateway - Nightmare - Greater Banish
Again a lot of talents. None of them seem to be that useful except for Demonic Gateway which is a major utility in a Raid environment.
Foul Mouth reduces Amplify Curse’s Cooldown by 10 seconds. I dont think this talent will ever be picked. It is not like we have to use Amplify Curse on Cooldown and as much as possible. A shorter cooldown won’t have much of a benefit. In PvP it will prove to be a strong slow every 2nd slow-application instead every 3rd, but if this is worth the pick i cannot say.
Desperate Power improves our Drain Life healing (not damage!) if we are below 50% Health. It increases its effect, when it is needed most, but Drain Life dmg/healing overall is not that great to begin with, except for Affliction Warlocks with Inevetable Demise. Also 2 points are a lot for a talent that improves only the healing and not the damage of this spell. How a combination of all Drain Life increasing effects may end up, can only be speculated right now, but i don’t think it will be too impactful in PVE, in PvP on the otherhand survivability of Warlock might get out of hand.
Sweet Souls: We had this ability as a Conduit in Shadowlands, except that it heals us now even if the used Healthstones are from another Warlock. This change is quite nice and may give Warlock some nice Healing in a raiding environment.
Demonic Gateway can be reached from skilling Demonic Circle and one other talent. Not much to say about it. It is a very important and unique Raid utility, that will be skilled if needed. If Demonic Circle should be moved around, i think this talent should be moved too, so that it can always be reached from Demonic Circle.
Nightmare: This looks like a PvP or outdor content talent choice. Though a 15/30% slow for 4 seconds seems very weak (especially for a 2-point talent) and will not be worth the point for anyone. It will only be impactful if it stacks with other slow effects, but that still feels like a lot investment of trying to make this work. If it also interacts with Howl of Terror it may be a little better, but still rather bad.
Sixth Row: Dark Pact - Strenght of Will/Demonic Durability - Shadowfury
This row features our main defensive Cooldown abilities and our AoE stun Shadowfury. I think Dark Pact and one of the improvements of Unending Resolve have to be picked for any (group) content. In addition they lead to the most important talents of the next row. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, those are important abilities Warlock does not want to miss.
Dark Pact has become one of Warlocks signature defensive abilites and is a very powerful defensive tool with short cooldown. Scaling with Warlocks HP, smart and frequent uses of this ability can prove to be very strong.
Strenght of Will/Demonic Durability: Unending Resolve is a baseline defensive Cooldown that will either be improved to its former strength or it’s Cooldown will be reduced by 45 sec. We will go for the increased damage-reduction effect most of the time, unless there are specific fights, that require a more frequent usage of defensive Cooldowns at those specific intervalls we can reach by choosing the Cooldown reduction. It seems very strange that the 3 min Cooldown will be reduced to a 2,25 min cooldwon instead of a 2 min Cooldown. It looks like an unreasonable stinginess to not give it a whole 1 min Cooldown reduction.
Shadowfury: Our AoE stun for outdoor, solo and Dungeon content. Only stunning for 3 seconds and having a cast time makes this stun weaker compared to all other classes AoE stuns, but better having an AoE stun than not having one. At first glance i found it rather hard to find a point i can take away elsewhere to skill into Shadowfury (i like a lot of the defenive choices of the tree), but after taking some time with the talent tree, i think that problem can be easily resolved and Shadowfury will be an important and strong pick for Dungeon content. It’s only 1 Point after all.
Seventh Row: Ichor of Devils/Frequent Donor - Claw of Endereth - Grimoire of Synergy - Darkfury/Shadowflame
A row of very strong talents, featuring 2 Shadowland Legendaries with Claw of Endereth and Grimoire of Synergy. Grimoire of Synergy is the only throughput talent and it will most likely be a must-pick in PvE content.
Ichor of Devils/Frequent Donor: I very much like the reduction of HP sacrifice of Ichor of Devils. I don’t know if this will see much play in competetive content, but in outdoor and solo content this is a nice Quality-of-Live pick. The Cooldown reduction pick looks not that attractive. If certain Raidfights require a 45 second Defensive Cooldown or have some high constant damage-income, this may will see play though.
Claw of Endereth increases Drain Life’s cast/channel time by a huge amount. Gameplaywise it feels very satisfying to have such a fast Drain Life effect. The question is: how strong is Drain Life, especially compared to other healing talents? In PvE using Drain Life is a damage loss, if dying can be prevented otherwise, therefore it’s usage is questionable. In PvP this migth actually make Warlock pretty hard to kill.
Grimoire of Synergy is a 2-point pick for one of Shadowlands Legendaries. This is a passive damage increase that jumps between your primary pet and yourself. A very strong damage increase that will be required for throughput.
Darkfury/Shadowflame: I don’t think there is any situation where Warlocks have skilled Darkfury in the past to improve Shadowfury, so i dont think this will change here. If this talent would remove the cast-time, increase the stun duration or would reduce the Cooldwon by a larger amount (30 seconds) it would be much more attractive. Shadowflame is a nice returning ability that will have to prove if this strong slow is worth to talent into. It for sure has potential, especially in PvP.
Eighth Row: Teachings of the Black Harvest - Soul Link - Soul Burn
Here start the last 3 rows of Warlock, that require 20 talent points spent. Soul Link and Soulburn look quite nice, Teachings of the Black Harvest needs some work.
Teachings of the Black Harvest: This Talent looks really odd. The idea of improving pets is good, but those improvements look very useless. I can’t think of a single player who wants any of those improvements and would spend a talent point on them.
Imp gives a 4% dmg reduction for 5 sec after it dispells the effect. A 4% Damage reduction on a on-use ability is terribly bad and usually you dispell in order to prevent the debuff to do damage. So you get rid of the damage debuff and don’t take damage anymore, but get a dmg-reduction? That sounds very counter-synergystic. I would rather prefer the imp to being able to also dispell curses. It is a little odd that Warlocks - master of curses - cannot cure curses anyways.
Voidwalker is mainly used in solo content and most people dont even know what Shadow Bulwark is. In addition to that a 30 second Cooldown reduction on a 2 min Pet ability is not that great. I guess it is okay, but a permanent 5 or 10% dmg-reduction for the Voidwalker would be “simpler” for outdoor content and do the same.
Felhunters Cooldown reduction on magic purge is not very useful. It should either be changed, so that Felhunter can also soothe enrage effects or also purge nearby enemies from magic effects. If these would be too powerful, it could be changed to give the Felhunter and/or his master a short haste or damage buff after sucessfully dispelling a magic effect, just like other classes can skill into buffs for sucessfully interrupting an enemy.
Sayaad is mostly used in PvP only, if it is even used at all. I have no clue how this effect has any impact on any content. If this has no usage, i have a suggestion: In the past the Succubus/Incubus had a a weak knockback ability. Why not bring this ability back via this talent? It has some niche usages, in knocking some people down from hills in PvP and help getting some mobs out of Sanguine ichors in M+ content.
Felguard Pursuit Cooldown and range also does not sound that interesting. Sometimes this effect may be needed - It defenitely happens that i see the Felguard moving towards mobs, because it’s Pursuit is on Cooldown. If this is worth the point though is questionable.
Soul Link was previous a Demeonology-only passive that works as a 20% damage reduction. The strongest defensive option in the entire talent tree and for sure a must-take.
SoulBurn: I really love to see Soulburn coming back and it’s effects are solid. I dont think there has to be changed anything about this.
Ninth Row: Pact of the Imp Mother - Soul Conduit - Pact of Annihilan - Inquisitor’s Gaze - Pact of the Eredar
Lets have a look at the penultimate talent row. From this point onward all talents give now DPS improvements and no more utility. So from a DPS standpoint we have to pick as much on those last two rows as possible, else we would lose a lot of damge. I’m not too much of a fan of this idea.
Pact of the Imp Mother gives our primary Pet a small damge buff, that stacks up and resets once it reached it’s maximum stacks and continues from beginning. A set-it-and-forget-it passive damage increase for our Pet. Just like a passive dmg increase. If this can compete with the other talents of this row is questionable, but it is an afk-Dmg bonus, that does not need you to press any buttons at all. Great if you’re having to go afk a lot in casual content or have your attention elsewhere (this is not meant ironically).
Soul Conduit has a chance to refund our Soul Shards when spent, giving us more Soul Shard generation to work with. For Affliction and Destruction this is a great choice, Demonolgy still has to deal with the fact, that when he uses Hand of Gul’dan with full 5 Soul Shards and gets all 3 Soul Shards refunded, he already spellqueued into Shadowbolt and therefore would overcap a Soul Shard. Affliction and Destruction do not have this problem, because they have enough Soul Shards in order to spam at least 2 of their Soul Shard spenders in a row, so if they would get all Shards refunded on a full Soul Shard cap, they would spam another Chaosbolt, Malefic Rupture, Seed of Corruption, etc anyways and thereby avoid overcapping. Demonology cannot go Hand of Guld’dan into Hand of Gul’dan on full shards without a damage loss if no Soul Conduit proccs. This is a mechanical problem, that exists for a while now.
Pact of Annihilan is a way to increase the Warlocks AoE damage if the targets are effected with the Spec’s DoT, which should be up most of the time anyways.
Inquisitor’s Gaze summons an additional Pet that attacks our enemies. There is no further information on this. This sounds rather lame. Just press this button once an hour or after a wipe and it attacks your enemies. No interaction with any of your playstyle, but one preperation button more to press in addition to Summon Soulwell, Summon [Pet], setting a Demonic Gateway (in Raid Environment), giving someone Soul Stone and eating bufffood. There wasn’t enough to do already.
I personally would not pick this talent unless it is a significant damage increase, that connot be ignored. But we don’t know anything about it’s damage output from the tooltip yet anyways.
Pact of the Eredar is a single-target version an Pact of Annihilan, increasing the DoT’s damge on enemies, after we have cast our single-target Soul Shard spender. Right now it is the only way to reach the capstone talent Dimensional Rift, which seems pretty strange, because any of the other capstone talents have at least two nodes, that are connected to them.
10th Row: Summon Jailer - Decimating Bolt - Dimensional Rift
Our final talent row, featuring 3 abilities, that are used like damage Cooldowns. It is possible to get all three of these talents right now, if no further point is spent in the upper talent tree. This looks a little strange. It is also hard to say if some of these capstones may not be useful in both AoE and Single target - if that were the case, then there would be a little more flexibilty in how to pick talents.
If they are a damage gain for all scenarios (for example if Summon Jailor is not only good for AoE but for single target as well), then there will be not much choice, but a simple “pick all three capstones and the penultimates that lead to them”.
Summon Jailer: Summons a Jailer that damages our opponents, doing cleave damage. We don’t know how long this Jailer lasts. We don’t know how long it’s Cooldown is (maybe it has no Cooldown, but needs the Tormented Souls, mentioned in the tooltip, to activate). From the Tooltip we get Tormented Souls from killed enemies and “occasionally escaped souls you previously collected” - whatever this exactly means. I have no idea. Also, do we get the Tormented Souls in a single target boss fight as well, or is this a pure AoE Talent? Does this count as a Demon for Demonolgy’s Mastery and other Demon interactions? There are so many questions about this talent, and in the end it will propably just work like an additional Cooldown, that will be pressed once every few minutes for damage, without thinking about it. I’m not a big fan. But as mentioned, we’re missing a lot of Information on this talent.
Decimating Bolt returns from the Necrolord covenant. We already know this ability and some have played it in Shadowlands already. I personally was never that big of a fan of this ability, but i am not mad that it returns. It is mostly interesting because of it’s worked-in execute damage, but not exciting for anything else. It is mainly a single-target ability with no real AoE implementation.
I personally hoped to see Impending Catastrophe (Venthyr covenant ability) to return, and i think it would be nice, if we could choose at this node between Decimating Bolt (single-target) and Impending Catastrophe (AoE).
In Shadowlands Impending Catastrophe was terribly undertuned damage-wise and in addition to that the Venthyr Soulbinds were the worst Soulbinds damage-wise among all the covenants. That was the main reason, this ability saw close to no play in Shadowlands. Thematically i think Impending Catastrophe would have fit the Warlock theme the most, and actually I would want this ability for it’s utility alone, even if it would not do any damage at all. If we were expected to curse our enemies in M+, cursing more than a single dangerous mob and waisting like 5 or more GCD’s on cursing mobs, when you could spend that time doing damage sounds horrible (and therefore we will propably not be expected to curse more than 1 or 2 mobs at a time). Impending Catastrophe would solve that problem via an AoE Curse implementation and increase Warlocks Dungeon utility. Warlocks utility in Raids was tremendous in the past and will propably remain in Dragon Flight, but in Dungeons they don’t bring anything outstanding, except their strong survivability and a Battle-Res in form of Soul Stone. (Season 1 and 2 none of the 3 Warlock Specs saw much represantion in M+, only at Season 3 and 4, at which point it’s damage-output became just unreachably high. Warlock was taken for it’s damage, utility-wise it does not bring much to dungeons.)
Dimensional Rift returns from Legion for all 3 Warlock specs now. But the tooltip is only giving us information on the Soul Shard generation for Destruction, not for Affliction and Demonoly. We’re missing information here as well. Since this talent impacts our Ressource generation it is the most interesting of the 3 capstone talents and could fix some slow Soul Shard generation issues, especially at the start of an expansion where our stats are much lower.