The new alpha build is here with some Warlock changes.
Looks like Agony got a slight buff, UA got increased damage (200% spell power instead of 72.5%) and increased duration. (16 sec from 8 sec)
There is something going on with “Control Demon” my guess would be they are working on a way to instantly summon pets.
Doom received a heavy damage buff. (72.5%–>200% SP) But they still didn’t address the Doomguard summoning issue, at this point I think that part of the spell is more like flavour than anything… The other Curses got their mana cost changed.
Tongue Tied now seems to scale with SP, it still remains to be seen how useful it is as a Talent. Does anyone know how frequent “healer” mobs are in the new (available) dungeons?
And finally the range of the Venthyr Class ability is increased to 40 yards (was 30).
Overall this feels more like tuning than work being done on our class, I wonder what the big announcement is on the 9th, because if it’s the start of Beta, we might not see big changes for a very good while.
Overall, I really prefer Blizzard to not mess with Warlocks too much. What we got now works well and there are only various specific gaps and wishes to address.
Off top of my head - I’d like Destruction get some consideration in a way Fire Mage gets - both specs will lose a huge amount of power and it would be nice to get some bridging there. I totally think they could just bite the bullet and drop Infernal to 2 min CD and that would probably be enough for everything Destruction might want.
Then I think it would not kill them to drop Unending Resolve to 90 second CD like in Legion either. Being sturdy should be our thing and it’s not like we got cheat death or anything dramatic like that. Soul Leech is big, sure, but I thing 3 min CD on our DR ability is just too long.
I think we have a really boring class at the minute, something is missing.
I will probably still main lock, but shadowlands looks pretty dull outside of some covenant abilities. I’d love a new pet system/changes to the bases of the specs to change up gameplay myself.
The thing is, it is not easy to design distinct gameplay for 36 specs, only 3 of which belong to the Warlocks.
Overall the biggest issue I see with the class as a whole are the Talents. Some have been dead for an entire expansion(s), others (looks at Affliction) has been changed mid expac to shift the meta.
And there is no easy way to fix this, because for example take GoSup. The high point it provides is undeniably fun, but the other competing Talents are not just numerically inferior, but also boring. If you just try to buff them you may very well end up with a situation like late WoD, when all Destro locks ran GoSac, which some might argue “breaks the fantasy”. That’s why GoSac got heavily gutted in Legion and stayed that way since then.
So u think demo lock doesn’t need a change or a rework? I think wl needs a change or at least demo needs big changes and destro some small changes and affli doesn’t seem to be too bad in my opinion… (destro needs to be nerfed in Pvp)
I think Demonology is a polarising spec. Those who picked it up in MoP/WoD or maybe earlier would like to see that version back, while those who started Demo more recently are advocating for improvements. These two crowds seem to pretty well even out, not like the opinions on UA stacking for Affliction.
Doom is still in the horrific state. Right now in BFA doom deals 160% of spell power after 30 seconds. In SL it will deal 200% of spell power after 1 minute!
Just quick and rouhg comparison without concideration of stat squishing. Right now for my warlock doom will deal 31k damage after 30 seconds. In SL it will deal 38k damage after a minute.
I started playing Warlock in BFA. I’m advocating for reverting demon to a pre legion state. I do a lot of abstraction so :
-An offensive CD that has a cast time ??? Nein
-Being a master of summoning demons but not being able to use 2 pets like a BM would do is meh.
-I don’t like those stupid imps. I’d rather do damages myself instead.
-If demon couldn’t keep meta, then Bloodlust should have been removed from Shamans. Oh, I just pointed out that 2 spells that do the same things from 2 different classes could perfectly exist on the same time.
But really…why imps. Demo in legion felt extremely underdesigned from visual standpoint.
We had our main imp, and our main source of damage apart from our main demon was wild imps, who had exact same model.
We had a observer as glyph for fel hunter, observer as PvP talent and Darkglare as talent in the last row…Three demons with same visual idea.
We had felhunter and then we could summon dreadstalkers, who practicaly a felhunter without tentacles.
Demo is severely limited in visuals. Instead of imps we could summon some other lesser demons. Bilescourges as and example. Instead of darkglare we could summon an inquisitors. Instead of PvP observer some other heavily mage based demon…but no, demo is felt over repedative. And in BFA they removed some interesting talents like “improved dreadstalkers” when dreadstalkers was rided by wild imps. This was pretty useful talent…but no, blizz removed it because #frackwarlocks#nofunforWarlocks.
It’s likely that at the start it will be the best spec, but the others will get stronger when all the borrowed power and extra stats are going to flow in.
The reason I hated Shadhar is because I was being asked to play Demon.
At early Shadowlands, I’d rather play a weaker Affliction than a strong Demon. And if I’m being benched for that (Which won’t happen) then I’d rather being benched than playing that spec. I accepted to make an effort for 1 boss, but I do say nein regarding MM+. And I’ll say NEIN if it’s somehow became dominating spec.
That is your choice mate, I’m glad that you voice your feedback, after all that is the purpose of the Forums.
This might be interesting to you. It’s also curious how big the disagreement is between the two Demo crowds are, and honestly I don’t know if there is a version of the spec that’d satisfy both.
