Feedback: Warlocks

In Development The War Within Beta Test
41

The redesign is so much worse gameplay wise.
Its a good idea to bring back Doom like current Doom Brand. Doom brand works and is very liked.
But our core economy is absolutely horrible on Beta.
Getting 2 Doom’s out is a miracle.

Also the whole left tree is bugged out.

  • Doom: If you cast demonbolt, apply doom on 1 target, then cast demonbolt on a second target, that demonbolt won’t even apply doom. You need to wait 3s after applying your first doom for it work properly on a second target…
  • Impending Doom: doesn’t summon a wild imp when doom expires.
  • Pact of the Ered’ruin: The Doomguard is a watered down version of the doomguard on live with S3/4 tier set. It literally doesn’t do any aoe so its completely worthless.
2 Likes
42

I have always been an affliction witcher, in my opinion one of the last expansions in which we were best was legion, since those we have not lost our heads, and even less so in mythical+ where we have always been rejected by our spec… I hoped that in this expansion Blizzard would listen and return us to the first line, but I have been testing the afli in the beta and I found it disappointing for several reasons:

1- The disappearance of the seeds, it is like our sign of identity that they have eliminated it makes no sense, this already happened in BFA, SHADOWLANDS and it was recovered, and now they eliminate it again… blizzard does not stop lurching from one side to the other with this ability without any criteria or reason.

2- Large periods of time without fragment regeneration… I don’t feel that this happens to the other specs, but there are many times in which I am forced to spend long periods of time draining all the time due to not having fragments.

3- Boring rotation, right now we use malefic for everything, ST/AOE… I find the build tedious.

4- The hero talents compared to Destro are visually a mockery, the icons have changed, yes but nothing more, the hellcaller build is visually a horror.

5- Ridiculous end nodes: embrace of death, 5% more damage with 20% less health? what joke is this? Malefic touch damage is ridiculously low, and let’s not pretend cunning cruelty isn’t working with drain.

I don’t know what opinion all of this deserves for you.

1 Like
43

I really disagree, the gameplay was smooth, no problems with generating shards… It gave an “execution” side when the pack was at the end of its life.
The only thing to do was to reduce the damage, but not much when you see most of the other DPS
I don’t know, they manage to release something really fun and destroy everything in 1 update…

44

Speaking from a purely PvP point of view.

Just hit a few solo shuffles (former 2900 Destro main in Dragonflight), and Destro damage is beyond abysmal in PvP.

Folks have 8+ million health.
Chaos bolts are hitting for 400-600ks.
Soulfires hit for 500-900ks.

It feels as though the Overfiend damage and cast speeds were nerfed (and rightly so), but now that Destro is relying on its own damage to get things done, it’s all tickle damage :grin:

In addition, I’d love to play more with Diabolist, but the screen clutter with Rifts/Overfiends/pets is already a bit much. Adding giant Pitlords into the mix is a leap too far for me.

Also return to us cast while moving, please! Melees have 99% uptime on us anyway, but at least we’d get to have fun while being dunked.

Besides all this, actually quite liking the actual gameplay!

2 Likes
45

Demo is a mess of bugs on current beta. You really can’t get a real picture of how the class plays since most of the talents are bugged in some way:

  • Doom: Sometimes doesn’t apply.
  • Impending Doom: Doesn’t spawn an imp when it expires
  • Pact of the Ered’ruin: i do not know if its normal that doomguard is just a fully watered down version of current S3/S4 doomguard from the tier set but it just blast single target on the target you were attacking when it was summoned and literally doesn’t swap.
  • Shadowtouched: Straight up doesn’t work
  • The Houndmaster’s Gambit: Straight up doesn’t work
  • Fiendish Oblation: Doesn’t give a shard when Grimore: Felguard expires.
  • Empowered Legion Strike: Still doesn’t buff the felguard legion strike.
2 Likes
46

I’d like to offer some decidedly feel-y feedback concerning the damage breakdown created by the new Hero Talents, focussing on Affliction. As it stands, Wither for Hellcaller and Shadowbolt for Soulharvester significantly dwarf the other damage sources, making them appear or feel less impactful as they are.
(Note that I do not think that this is necessarily a tuning issue, as the other abilities are rotationally necessary to make the large damage sources shine.)

A relatively simple change would be to split each main damage source into two:

For Soul Harvester, that could mean listing Shadowbolts from Nightfall procs as a separate spell. Call it something like Soul Bolt or something fancier (and give it a special animation), so we can directly “feel” the impact of the amount of procs we created by using other spells.

For Hellcaller, it could mean splitting Wither and Acute Wither into separate damage events. The reasoning is the same: it would filter out the portion of the spell’s damage that we actively influenced in our rotation (and again, give it a special animation).

1 Like
47

Wither and “Acute Wither” are already two different spells. The “Acute Wither” is called Blackened Soul.

my 2 cents regarding aff feedback: capstones still feel largely undertuned and underwhelming, top and middle section has too many 2 point nodes, pathing is awkward and we pretty much always play the same stuff, too few choices

1 Like
48

My feedback for Warlock at the moment is just that Voidwalker needs to be better at holding aggro. It is useless right now, especially in the content where you actually need him (outdoor/delves).

I don’t understand why Warlocks seem to not have a consistently proper tank pet when this does not seem a problem for Hunters. Just makes it feel like there’s a section of the Dev team that still wants to go back to the dark days where the voidwalker was never used beyond level 20, because it held threat for like 2 seconds. All the Warlock pets have their niche, but Voidwalker seems to be the only one who still regularly gets made useless in what it is supposed to be good at, especially early in expansions, which is exactly when you need him most.

I’m not even asking for Voidwalker to have perfect threat when I decide to dump all my cooldowns at once, just that it can hold aggro when I take care to not rip it off him, and slowly build up into dropping my cooldowns. Cause right now that is definitely not the case.

1 Like
49

Applying corruption via seed is silly without (3x).
-make SoC baseline and choice talent 3x
SR being in a 1min cd is rly wack and odd.
-make another talent choice to reduce cd to 30sec
Haunt talent choice should be baked into one zalent including improved haunt.
-feels weird ever since you removed the buff mid season…
So to me with new talents and set , affliction walrock plays the same just take out siphon life and you have more rng from 4set which you cannot control.
To me personally feels like a downgrade compared to retail.

50

I have to second this.
Also the crashing when entering a dungeon, the dogs sometimes not being able to fly on stairs and just landing somewhere completely different not doing any damage.
There are a lot of very buggy issues going on right now.

51

WARLOCK CLASS TREE

A) Give us back some flex points

With the addition of Demonic Tactics and with Soul Link and Fel Synergy now costing 2 points warlocks have lost A LOT of flex points for utility in the class tree.

If we want to retain the utility we have in DF we need to unpick throughput talents, probably Sargerei’s Technique, which just feels bad.

We need to get 2 points back.
Fel Synergy doesn’t deserve to cost 2 points, neither does Fel Armor (and symmetry is not a good enough argument to justify the cost).

If Pact of Gluttonny wasn’t stuck behind Fel Synergy we would not pick Fel Synergy. Pact of Gluttony is fantastic and super powerful, Fel Synergy is very weak and cost 2 points which again, it shouldn’t.

I think the easiest way would be to reduce Sargerei’s Technique and Socrethar’s Guile cost to just 1 point. If it requires a slight nerf, so be it, just balance it out in the spec trees.

B) Useless/Expensive/Unreachable talents

  1. Lifeblood and Accrued Vitality are super weak talents that we never pick (and should never pick). They cost 2 points each which is absurd.
  1. Swift Artifice is very very niche, frankly it just acts as a tax to pay to get to Resolute Barrier. With the loss of flex points in the class tree Resolute Barrier has become unreachable.
  1. Soul Conduit being at 5% is very very weak. I wouldn’t be surprised if the DPS gain from it is within the margins of error for Simcrafts. I understand why it has been nerfed to 5%, but I fear it has rendered it very underwhelming. Demonic Tactics is much more powerful.
  1. Resolute Barrier should also cost just 1 point. The second point adds next to nothing. It’s nearly umpossible to pick this talent, we have to sacrifice Demonic Circle and Demonic Gateway to get it. It just feels bad, because it’s a decent talent, the first point at least.
  1. Teachings of the Black Harvest does nothing if you sacrifice your Felhunter with Grimoire of Sacrifice.

C) Bug

  1. Soulburn with Demonic Circle: Teleport only grants a 4s speed and root/snare immunity instead of 6s.

AFFLICTION

I don’t think we’re gonna get many more significant changes. So I’ll stick to what I think are the most glaring issues.

A) Bugs

  1. Drain Soul with Nightfall is heavily bugged, it randomly recasts itself if you cast it initially with a Nightfall proc, wasting the proc in the process.
  1. Drain Soul doesn’t trigger Cunning Cruelty.
  1. Vile Taint keeps overwriting manually applied curses of Tongues/Weakness/Satyrs, even amplified ones.
    It needs to stop.
    → This prevents Affliction warlocks from using curses because doing our rotation removes them.
  1. Improved Haunt makes Haunt apply Shadow Embrace even if you haven’t talented into Shadow Embrace.
    This is going to create issues.
    It disadvantage Drain Soul a lot over Improved Shadow Bolt and leads to cheesy gameplay with casting a Haunt at max range then a second one in melee to keep Shadow Embrace stacked without picking the talent.
    → Picking Shadow Embrace is what should make Haunt apply/refresh it.
  1. Infirmity isn’t properly applied and maintained on targets around the one with Phantom Singularity. The debuff vanishes faster than the next tick of Phantom Singularity that’s supposed to refresh it.

B) Underwhelming talents

  1. Dark Virtuosity is too weak and too expensive. We will never pick it. Our 8 points in the top section of the tree are always the same.
  1. Infirmity needs to do something different for Vile Taint or not affect it at all. Right now it’s just a trap to go pick Infirmity for Vile Taint.
    → Make it reduce Vile Taint CD, give it an extra charge, make it apply Infirmity too, and/or increase its damage. Something.
  1. Xavius’ Gambit is too weak. It makes getting to Oblivion near impossible.
  1. Perpetual Unstability is still too weak after its 1000% buff.
    → Merge it with Xavius’ Gambit, increase the damage amp to Unstable Affliction to +30/35% damage and then we have a decent competitive talent.
  1. Improved Malefic Rapture is too weak and is just a tax to get to Malefic Touch. Cast time reduction should be 20% and the damage amp 10%.
    → Destruction has the same talent for Chaos Bolt that’s twice as powerful and only at the cost of 1 point.
  1. Death’s Embrace is better. The buff is welcome and maybe on certain fights where the last phase is the most important it will be competitive.
    The healing buff to Drain Life is meaningless though.
  1. Ravenous Affliction is just very underwhelming.

→ Middle of the tree is just much more powerful than the bottom of the tree, it’s very weird.

C) Tuning/Design issues

  1. Siphon Life is just too weak compared to Absolute Corruption to justify picking it.
    Absolute Corruption removes most of the DoT management aspect of the spec, frees up an incredible number of GCDs that more than make up for the -5% damage to Corruption.
    I don’t know if that’s intended or not? It does make the spec massively simpler, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
  1. Cunning Cruelty is way too powerful in Single Target. It’s meant as a cleave/AOE talent, but it’s just a beast in Single Target because we’re spamming our fillers a lot.
    → It would probably be better if casting Malefic Rapture is what would trigger it instead of Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul.
  1. Vile Taint needs to stop removing/replacing/overwriting manually applied curses of tongues/weakness/satyr.
    I BEG OF YOU.
  1. What is Oblivion for? It’s stuck behind a weak UA talent. Why does it have a 45s CD when you’d want to use it during Phantom Singularity with Infirmity to maximize damage. Why not a 60s CD?
    However when we use Phantom Singularity (with Soul Rot) we want to cast Malefic Rapture for Malign Omen and many of our Hero tree talents.
    Maybe I’m being too pessimistic when it comes to Oblivion. It could be cool though.
  1. Shadow Embrace should only have 2 stacks to apply/maintain for Drain Soul as well. It would remove the awkward part of the set up.

DEMONOLOGY

A) The Dreadstalkers problem

There are 8 different talents (including Summon Dreadstalkers itself) directly related to the throughput of those dogs.

Its too many talents, and for 8 points our Dreadstalkers end up being quite weak overall, especially in AOE.

I think many talents could be merged, at the very least Carnivorous Stalkers and Dreadlash.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the best way to use them is to hold them for our Vilefiend to benefit from Houndmaster’s Gambit (which doesn’t work). Which would be bad, but at the same time why not? They don’t generate Demonic Cores reliably anymore.

Make them give us 1 Demonic Core proc guaranteed, maybe on summon instead, no need for the RNG there. We need reliable Demonic Core procs for our Tyrant set up.

B) Demonic Tyrant

Setting up the Tyrant will be “hard” again. Demonology is getting a lot more complex because of it.

For that reason I really think Summon Demonic Tyrant should become an intant cast, to guarantee that the set up is not completely wasted if you’re forced to move at the last moment or for whatever reason.

Summon Demonic Tyrant should also grant 5 shards on summon, like it used too. It just feels bad to spam Shadow Bolt 3/4 times after it. This is especially frustrating for Soul Harvester.

It’s near impossible to get 15 imps active for Reign of Tyranny, unless you get lucky with Pact of the Imp Mother or are under Bloodlust/Heroism and Power infusion.

C) Underwhelming talents

Blood Invocation is now just plain weak.

Fiendish’ Oblation is weak. Maybe if it was 1 Demonic Core on summon and one when the Felguard expires it would be a tiny bit better and help for setting up our Demonic Tyrant?

Improved Demonic Tactics is very weak, especially early on in the expansion. It could use an additional +5% crit chance to the felguard on top.

Demonic Brutality is very weak.

D) Mark of Shatug/F’harg

You can pick this talent node without talenting into Summon Vilefiend, which is a minor issue, but it is one.

E) Pact of the Ered’Ruin

The Doomguard needs to do AOE again.

F) Pathing and talents positions

  1. Imp Gang Boss is a more versatile/general talent compared to Spiteful Reconstitution.
    → They should swap places to make getting to Soul Strike easier.
    Same thing for Carnivorous Stalkers and Dreadlash.
    Right now we’re forced to pick either Dreadlash or Spiteful Reconstitution to get to Soul Strike even in non-AOE builds, which feels bad.
  1. Pact of the Imp Mother is stuck behind Umbral Blaze, a very underwhelming talent. This feels bad because Pact of the imp Mother is your only real chance to get to 15 imps for your Demonic Tyrant set up.
  1. Immutable Hatred/Guillotine is stuck behind 2 underwhelming talents. It feels very expensive to get to them.

G) Visuals

  1. Can we get green fire for Demonbolt please?
  1. Can we prevent our Felguard from equipping profession tools as a weapon?
    My Felguard keeps using my extra tailoring scissors instead of the super cool blade I farmed for him. It doesn’t look as fearsome as I’d like.

H) Bugs

  1. Tier set doen’t work.
  1. Houndmaster’s Gambit doesn’t work.
  1. I think Shadowtouched doesn’t work either?

DESTRUCTION

A) Top of the tree pathing is not ideal

Picking Havoc, one of the most iconic spell of the spec is actually quite hard.

The reason is we really want to get to Scalding Flamees, in all scenarios, and to get to it we have to spend 2 points in AOE talents : Rain of Fire + Pyrogenics or Cataclysm/Inferno.
We also pretty much always want the 4 talents in the top left.

Spending 1 mandatory point to get my AOE spender is fine. Having to spend 2 even for pure ST builds feels bad.

For AOE builds we can end up spending 11 points in the top section of the tree. It’s a lot, probably too much.

→ Adding a direct path between Havoc/Mayhem and Scalding Flames would fix those issues.

B) Shadowburn

Talent just doesn’t fit for the spec in PVE.

Its execute threshold is at 20% HP yet the 2 talents that buff it are triggered when the target is at 30% HP? It just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

C) Missing AOE tool

I find the AOE rotation of Destruction underwhelming. I’m not asking for a return to just spamming Rain of Fire but it just doesn’t flow well and “single target” talents like Soul Fire and Avatar of Destruction kind of steal the show even in AOE?

I really think Cataclysm and Inferno should be separated and that we should be able to pick both.

It would be “easily” accomplished by moving either talent in the bottom right section of the tree (I think inferno is the best option) to replace one of the many “underwhelming talents” there.

I think Inferno should take the spot of either Ruin, Burn to Ashes, Power Overwhelming, or Diabolic Rituals.

D) Underwhelming talents

  1. Burn to Ashes is a badly designed talents. It’s a buff with stacks but it could also just be “Incinerate deals +15% damage” and it would be the same result.
    A talent that involves a buff with stacks should make us care about those buffs and those stacks, but we don’t.
  1. It should also swap places with another underwhelming talent, Power Overwhelming.
    The Bottom left section is about our Mastery and spenders. The bottom right section about Incinerate.
    Thematically it would make more sensee.
  1. Power Overhwelming has the same issue than Burn to Ashes, there’s just no play around it. It could just be “Increases your mastery by 3%” and it would be the same result.
  1. Ruin is just very weak and just acts as a tax to get to Diabolic Ritual.
    → I wouldn’t mind if Inferno took Ruin’s spot in the tree.

E) Dimensional Rift

First I’m glad it swapped places again with Infernal in the tree. It makes a lot more sense.

Dimension Ripper doesn’t work if you haven’t picked Dimensional Rift.

If you have it talented, it works, but the proc rate is etremely low. It should be increased.

This talent is technically better if you don’t pick Dimensional Rift, because you just get free procs without spending a GCD, it’s not good.
→ Dimension Ripper should both gives you a charge AND trigger a free rift if talented into Dimensional Rift.

Or Dimension Ripper needs to be only accessible via Dimensional Rift.

F) Backdraft and Decimation

I don’t see a world where we play Soul Fire but not Decimation given how fantastic it is.

So it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Backdraft to reduce Soul Fire cast time when we will always cast it with a 80% cast time reduction with Decimation. Decimation and Backdraft stack at the moment, which really isn’t necessary.

HELLCALLER

Very bad utility/survival talents unfortunately. Especially compared to the other 2 hero trees.

  1. Wither

Wither can still bug out in Destruction when it reaches a too high stack count. Then your Channel Demonfire no longer detects that Wither is on your target and you can’t cast Channel Demonfire until you let Wither expire.

  1. Aura of Enfeeblement

Just a very weak and poorly designed talent. Noone should nor will ever pick this.

I don’t understand why AOE curses got removed, ESPECIALLY for Affliction that has to suffer with Vile Taint removing our useful curses.

  1. Zevrim’s Resilience

This talent is extremely weak and poorly designed as well.

At max level and with good gear we’ll have 7 millions HP. This thing if it lasts 20s (which if it does then you should not have used Dark Pact) heals us for 200k HP, so around 2/3% of our total HP? It’s meaningless.

It also has a counter-synergy with Ichor of Devils.

Maybe if the healing was multiplied by 10 (not joking), it would become just okay-ish.

But we’re foced to pick this talent either way because the other option is a straight up nerf.

  1. Illhoof’s Design

This talent is a survivability nerf in disguise.

Until this talent comes with a significant Soul Leech shield generation buff (at least double it, both the passive AND active generation), we should not pick it.

  1. Malevolence

Should be off the GCD. Not the biggest of deal, but it would be nice and won’t break the game.

SOUL HARVESTER

Probably the hero tree with the most issues still.

I also think this tree really hasn’t accomplished the fantasy it sets out to be. There isn’t much soul harvesting going on. Not in the mechanics, nor in the visuals.

  1. Demonic Soul/Succulent Soul

For Affliction the main issue is that Succulent Soul and Tormented Crescendo procs are both consumed simultaneously by a single Malefic Rapture.
Which leads to so many wasted procs and DPS loss.
We can’t really see the power of Soul Harvester for Affliction because of it.

For Demonology, Succulent Soul allows you to cast Hand of Gul’dan with 0 shard, which is normal. The issue is is that in those circumstances you can also immediatly queue another hand of gul’dan behind it despite still having 0 shard, and that cast then gets cancelled automatically mid-cast.

  1. Gorebound’s Fortitude/Friends in Dark Places

2 solid survival talents.

Friends in Dark Places still doesn’t work.

  1. Eternal Servitude/Gorefiend’s Resolve

Very underwhelming and niche talents. But I don’t expect them to change at this stage.

  1. Feast of Souls

Again, Affliction can’t fully benefit from this because Succulent Soul and Tormented Crescendo procs consume each others.

  1. Sataiel’s Ambition + Quietus

Both talents don’t work for Affliction at the moment. I imagine we’re still fixing the bugs with Nightfall and Drain Soul before getting to this.

  1. Shadow of Death

Very underwhelming for Demonology, since we have 0 shards once we finish summoning our Tyrant.

We end up alternating casting Shadow Bolt and 1 shard Hand of Gul’dan. It’s very tedious and feels bad.

Summon Demonic Tyrant needs to grant 5 shards on summon again, maybe Shadow of Death does it, or Reign of Tyranny in the spec tree, but it really should happen.

DIABOLIST

Most issues have been fixed.

  1. Diabolic Ritual/Demonic Art

For Demonology, the 50% reduced cast time on Hand of Gul’dan makes it cast time go below the Global Cooldown, which creates a hitch and you can’t really queue up the next spell. It just feels bad and breaks the flow of the rotation, when it’s meant to make it feel more fluid.

I don’t know how to solve this to keep the benefit of a faster cast Hand of Gul’dan, but yeah it doesn’t feel good.

Destruction doesn’t have that issue because Chaos Bolt has a long cast time.

  1. Soul-Etched Circles

The buff duration after casting Demonic Circle: Teleport is only 4s instead of the 6s described in the tooltip.

  1. Annihilan’s Bellow

If this would uncap the number of targets feared by Howl of Terror, it could become a pretty cool talent in M+/PVP.

  1. Cruelty of Kerxan/Infernal Machine

Both talents are very weak and underwhelming and barely noticeable. Especially Cruelty of Kerxan.

  1. Gloom of Nathreza

Talent is poorly worded for Destruction. It reads as if applying Havoc/Mayhem to your target increases by 5% the damage you deal to it.
It actually makes spells duplicated by Havoc deal +5% extra damage to the target marked by Havoc.

  1. Ruination

The sound effect is pretty underwhelming.

For Demonology I wish the animation of the meteor falling down was faster to get the imps summoned faster.

For Destruction I really think we could get rid of the Diabolic Imp, it just doesn’t fit and doesn’t make sense. The Imp’s damage is negligible.

2 Likes
52

Affliction warlock again useless in dungeons. Vile Taint is useless because way too long cd. Can dot 1st pack, but next 2 packs in dung is just useless. can just sit and wait cd’s. Because melees just kill everything before you dotted all. Had high hopes for rework, but it sure looks like blizzard cares only destro and demo…

2 Likes
53

I’m currently level 78, doing a delve. Drain life feels like picking up your arm that has just been torn of, and putting a band-aid on it and giving it a little kiss. It does not reattach the arm and you are still rapidly bleeding to death.
Also Fel Guard is horrible at holding aggro and feels like a “We have Fel Guard at home” kind of thing.

1 Like
54

Concerning Shadow Bolt versus Drain Soul for Affliction

Implementing both of these as a choice as been a “dead choice”, at least in PvE, for three full expansions now. With the role of our fillers gaining importance, at least for Soul Harvester, it might be time to retire or at least rethink this approach.

I have a preference here, as almost everyone seems to have. But in the end, what I really want is a version of the spec that commits to whatever it ends up being.

If the designers are absolutely committed to keeping both filler spells, you could make a choice node with a stronger Shadow Bolt (as is) versus Drain Soul as an additional spell for execute and shard sniping (rather than a replacement).
Nightfall Procs could then be either tied to Shadow Bolts and tuned accordingly, or affect either of the next filler casted.

55

Let DS be filler,and sb instant cast with nightcall
Edit: nightcall as in DS becomes SB for that said proc

1 Like
57

This post is written from a PVE perspective, primarily with Mythic Raiding and High Keys in mind.

Since the suggestions for the Hero and Spec talent trees have already been submitted, only suggestions for the Class talent tree follow here.

Class Tree
Interrupt – A hot point of contention. There are good arguments for and against this in many forms of content. Here’s the solution: Choice Node. Choice 1 is Spell Lock as a Warlock interrupt. Choice 2 is to give the Felhunter the interrupt. This can go right where Demonic Cirlce is (and circle can go back to being baseline). The choice node here gives people options. For example, in Mythic+, many players enjoy having their pet interrupt for them while they continue casting. In PVP, warlocks wish to have the choice of using other pets for their utility as well as sacrificing them for additional benefits. The choice node would make everyone happy and bring another level of utility to the warlock class.

  • There are still a TON of two point nodes which frankly should be 1 point nodes or be more impactful for a second rank. (Demon Skin, Fel Armor, etc. basically every 2 point node). Nodes that get reduced to 1 point should retain their 2 node point value due to how weak they already are.
  • Soulburn is probably the only really impactful and interactive node in the entire tree. The rest are entirely passives that enhance base effects or provide talents we’re used to having.
  • There is a feeling of lacking party utility in M+ and PVP. Soulstone is a good brez that has party wipe utility and Healthstone is also valuable, but usable only once per fight for non-warlocks. Gateway has very niche uses in certain keystones and frankly lags SIGNIFICANTLY behind in the mobility arms race in pvp with a long cooldown that often makes using your gateway ineffectual without meticulous understanding and tracking of enemy movement cooldowns. The only real utility people found useful in M+ was the avatar of destruction infernal stun, which has now been removed. In PVP, your do have good control abilities, but no real “play of the game” utility to use outside of patches where our damage is broken. You’re here to press fear, stun, coil, and parse while other classes truly shine in the utility department.

Last but not least….pet summon times. 6 second summons and Fel Domination make getting your pet back out in some content untenable. In PVP, you can often divebomb the warlock’s pet twice after he uses Fel Domination and then enjoy interrupting his every cast trying to get his pet back until you win the match. In a Raid or M+ environment, if you used Fel Dom and then died, good luck every getting your pet back while also keeping up with the party/raid and avoiding mechanics. Losing your pet SHOULD be impactful, but it shouldn’t mean you auto lose the match or at a significant detriment for the next 3 minutes while Fel Domination comes back off cooldown. Pet Summoning needs to be reduced period.

Here are some other suggestions that are definitely worthy of consideration.:

  • Mobility: the original argument a few expansions ago that Mages should be mobile and squishy and Warlocks should be tanky and immobile no longer applies in today’s Mythic Raiding and M+ environment. Warlocks are the casters with the lowest mobility. Suggestion: Introduction of KJC (1 min CD, 8 sec duration) or Felflame (instant, low to moderate damage, low chance to generate shards).
  • Curses: the effect of curses (except for slowing) is applied passively by other classes through the normal dmg rotation - on all targets. Curses should be applied passively through the normal dmg rotation and affect all targets. This would also help to reduce the many keybinds.
  • Demon Skin – A must have talent, but needs to be trimmed to 1 point at 2 point value.
  • Fel Armor - Incredibly weak/undertuned 2 point node. Many other classes have stronger damage reductions for only one point. I’d rather have this be a simple 3% reduction with no absorb component for one point.
  • Fiendish Stride - Consider reverting the change and making it 2 points for the original values or 1 point. This was such an amazing change for Burning Rush without making it entirely overpowered.
  • Mortal Coil/Howl of Terror - Might be too OP for warlocks to get both of these talents, but there are some classes who get ALL their CC and some who have to choose. Of course I’m biased towards getting both. This is an especially unfortunate choice because of how good Annihilan’s Bellow is in the Diabolist tree.
  • Banish: this ability should be baseline.
  • Abyss Walker - This probably should be buffed in some way or changed. The idea behind port and gate are to allow for movement/repositioning and to avoid damage entirely. The damage reduction on this talent is nice, but I’d rather have talents like Impish Instincts or Gateway Mastery for shorter/better port/gateways.
    *Horrify: this ability should be a glyph.
  • Lifeblood, Sweet Souls, Pact of Gluttony - Place these together, lifeblood might actually be a decent pick if it were a 1 point node considering Pact of Gluttony will scale the usability of Lifeblood.
  • Accrued Vitality / Drain Life - Drain Life needs a major buff or rework. The loss of Seized Vitality and Inevitable Demise make non-buffed Drain Life an awful self heal. An amazing class fantasy of Affliction was literally draining the life of your enemies and restoring your own. Without talents to buff it, Drain Life will probably never be used again. Consider baking in some of these core talents so that all specs can utilize Drain Life. I’m sad to see AOE Drain Life go away for affliction especially in PVP as it did damage, healed you, shielded you with soul burn, and extended your dots with Rot and Decay. Please consider reworking Drain Life to a usable state. If not, just remove accrued vitality.
  • Unending Resolve / Strength of Will, Dark Accord, Resolute Barrier - Old UR in past expansions was a really solid defensive albeit on a long cooldown. Many other specs have seen talents added to reduce long defensives or baked in baseline. The talent point investment to get UR at max value and lowest cooldown is too much. I would consider making UR 40% baseline and adding a talent to simply reduce it down to 2 minutes or buffing Resolute Barrier by get it down below 2 minutes the way conduits worked in Shadowlands.
  • Shadowfury - Just make this instant cast. It is already a minute long cooldown.
  • Darkfury / Shadowflame - If I can’t have shadowfury instant baseline, just make darkfury do it here. I do like the larger area of effect and reduced cooldown of Darkfury though. Shadowflame is almost never taken, but it could be if it were more accessible or baseline. It is a neat effect for an aoe slow, but is overshadowed by curse of exhaustion for single target.
  • Demonic Tactics - Stat buffs are fine when they interact with the spec in an interesting way. Destro is the only spec that gets any real value out of this as immolate and incinerate can generate more shards when then crit. I’m fine with keeping it, but it isn’t a very interesting throughput node.
  • Teachings of the Black Harvest - Needs a significant buff or rework to ever take it. I’m a fan of simply making this change your demon into something stronger that does more damage and has better spell effects. This is only ever taken as demo in pvp to access Demonic Resilience.
  • Demonic Resilience - a pay the price node that is never taken outside PVP. Likely should be a 1 point node or removed/reworked.
  • Swift Artifice - Just bake this effect into soul burn for soulstone. The reduction on healthstone is still really cool, but it just seems so obvious to bake the soulstone piece as an instant cast version into soul burn.
  • Fel Synergy/Soul Link - I’d really like to see these two nodes merged as a 2 point node. Fel Syn is really never worth taking for 2 point investment. The loss of Profane Bargain also hurts a bit since it interacted further with Grimoire of Sacrifice. I’d like to see Profane Bargain come back again but maybe rework the damage reduction to apply at all times while your pet is out and not just below 35%.
  • Soul Conduit - Needs to be 10% baseline. Not worth taking at 5%.
  • Pact of Gluttony - Mentioning this again because I LOVE THIS TALENT. Works in every form of content. To incentivize inviting warlocks into groups, since your utility is currently non-existent, this ability could affect the group (not the entire raid). Please never remove this talent.

Thank you for your consideration.

3 Likes
58

I hope you fix the talents from demonology before raid testing starts.
As of this moment, demo is just straight unplayable:

  • The Houndmaster’s Gambit
  • Shadowtouched
  • Doom
  • Fiendish Oblation
  • Impending Doom
  • Tier set (Empowered Legion Strike)
  • Demonic Brutality

This is a lit of talents that straight up do not work or have major bugs (like doom not applying at times).
Not even including hero talents.

1 Like
59

Despite demo 4-piece bonus not working at the moment on beta, it is also heavily undertuned.

In a 5 minutes single target fight you get around 10 proccs while casting 40 shadowbolts, which accounts for a procc-chance of 25% (tested with multiple warlocks).
In the end this means, its a 2-2,5% dmg increase, which is way too low for a 4-piece bonus historically.

Furthermore the value of this bonus drastically decreases with more movement and multiple targets, cause you cast less shadowbolts than in a patchwerk fight.

I would suggest to either increase the %dmg, the procc-chance or add also demonbolt as the trigger.

60

After spending some days/hours in beta on this week, here is what I think about current state of demonology.

  • Class tree updates are decent but there is one big issue that we are out of talent points for any kind of flexibility because of having too many locked talents & not having enough talent points to spare around for any personal preference.
  • Demonic core regeneration being tied to rng does hurt the flow of the rotation, especially the tryant setups (even with the help of diabolist talents). I know it was pointed out before that, you guys wanted demonbolt to be a " moment" rather than a spammable rotational button but I don’t think it is possible to do that without hurting the flow of the spec -which matters most when it comes to healhty/fun gameplay.
  • Although I am more than happy with the talent tree rework, the right side of capstone section is so full of passive/outdated nods compared to other ones. I pray they won’t ever gonna be strong/viable choices and that is a problem I think.
  • I don’t know if it is intended or not but Diabolist demon-sequence doesn’t reset after combat and It may cause some serious issues when it comes to raiding. I wouldn’t want to ask my raid leader to reset bosses twice to get the pitlord on pulls.
  • Please swap the positions between Umbral Blaze and Imp Mother talents. Very easy fix with a great gain.

Thanks for listening to our feedbacks and your effort so far. Please keep the good work going <3.

61

Multi Gladiator Destruction warlock main.
Feedback is 100% on Destruction in PvP:

Feeling wise Hellcaller especially feels good to play.
But i will give my concern on the Damage breakdown early because its so wrong , it needs to be looked at. Also the amount of Shard overflow happening in PvP.

I played around 10+ shuffles on the beta, and every game what i realized is that none of my buttons do anything beside Chaos bolt (and even that would be an overstate that its strong.)

Right now what it feels like is that we came back to the BFA place, where im pressing my buttons but realisticly all that matters is how much chaos bolt i get off.

PvP as a whole feels much slower, and i like that. but Destro DMG numbers need to be looked at because pressing a Shadowburn for 120k-300k when we have 7mill+ hp , is just not what people are looking for, its demoralizing.

And this is true to most of our spells. everytime i look at details after a game i see that 70% of my damage is Chaosbolt - Wither - Blackened soul.

Although i like a rot playstlye destro (Hence why i LOVE hellcaller its really good design)

We need our spells to feel like we pressing something, especially shard spenders.

Dragonflight was a really good example of how to make destro spells feel powerful. I hope we gonna continue this trend and dont fall back to the place where only Chaos bolt matters. (this will lead to the problem of the gameplay being about getting a precog.)

(All this can be related to the amount of self healing present in PvP right now aswell.)

Overflow of shards:
This problem is already there in Dragonflight.When there are more than 1 dispells , Shards actually feel hard to get, and challenging sometimes, but i never feel like its too little amount.

But when there is only one dispell, the amount of shard we getting with triple immolate up is insane, its safe to say that even with Soul Rip in the game, we cant spend our shard fast enough while getting trained.

In TWW with the introduction of Wither, this problem is permanent. a good Destru will keep immolate on most of the targets (Im not counting cataclysm on demonology/uh dk pets) which lead to the problem that even with dispells we’re so full of shards there are no globals where we dont wanna cast chaos bolt.
On top of all this unlike in Dragonflight where Blasphemy was not worth talenting, PvPers now have access to Overfiend which gives us even more shards.

Im not excatly sure how to fix the shard problem in PvP (and im not sure if it affects PvE i guess not) but it would be nice to either give us a PvP talent that we can spend more shard on. or just reduce the amount of Shard gen in PvP and make spells feel more powerful.

The biggest problem is the Shard gen, if that’s not getting looked at, i can already see the destruction meta consisting of Rain of fire being a “throw ur shards out quick” spell so we can get our overfiend faster.