Hello. I’m not lucky enough to have had an alpha access, but I’ve been spending some time looking over the new warlock trees and overall I think it looks very very promising, very cool, very fun. There are some talents here and there that I think are either misplaced within its tree or I think should not be there at all and maybe replaced by something else.
I’ll start with the General tree and the things I like about it (the vast majority of the tree)
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First, warlocks are looking unkillable. I’m very happy that all 3 specs are getting soul link. If you pick the various stamina buff, passive healing, damage reduction, dark pact etc. you should never die.
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I like the interrupt going baseline for warlocks. I think it’ll make playing other pets in dungeons/raids easier. It will also make solo content easier. I don’t know if the felguard is keeping their interrupt.
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We can get basically all the utility that we had before. The demonic gateway, demonic circle, aoe stun, etc. We can get fel rush very easily now, so the loss of soulshape won’t be noticed that much.
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We’re getting some new utility stuff, an aoe slow, improved curse is moved from pvp talents to here, and we’re getting soulburn back.
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I’m very happy with soulburn returning, allowing us if we need it to spend a shard to save ourselves, or quickly place down a gateway.
With Soul Conduit going baseline, and both destruction and affliction getting talents generating additional shards, spending a shard for utility here and there won’t feel bad. It allows to transform our healthstone into a big survival CD, and even turn a drainlife into a shield. A lot of good stuff if need be. -
There are a lot of good choices. We can if we want get all 3 capstones even though I don’t feel like we’ll have to take all 3 all the time. Summon Jailer looks really cool but it looks more AoE/M+ focus. Dimmensional Rift, we’ll have to see how many shards it gives you. But for a spec like demonology or affliction I don’t think you’ll need it.
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Inquisitor gaze is a nice kind of flavor I suppose ? I do worry that it’s an extra button that warlocks have to press before every single pull : Summoning a demon, putting down circle/gate, making healthstone, applying soulstone, etc. and now the eye ? I suppose we’ll be able to macro it.
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A good mix of throughput and utility in the general tree. Throughput looks to favor Demonology a bit, the spec really wants to take them all. Whereas destruction and affliction I feel have more leeway if they want to lose a really small amount of damages for additional utility. Still it never feels good to choose utility over throughput. Synergy and Soul Conduit baseline is pretty cool.
Now a few of things I don’t like about the General tree :
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The most obvious thing that should change is the position of Accrued Vitality and Demonic Circle in the first part of the tree. Those two talents should be swapped. It’s too expensive to get the circle. Accrued vitality is a very weak talent. Swapping those two talents solves a lot of issues and allows us to spend a couple more points to get stuff we want, like reduced CD on Fel Domination, or grabbing shadowfury/gateway easily, etc.
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I think the two banish talents should be merged into one. I don’t know if we’ll see a lot of undead mobs in dungeons, I suppose it’s more for PvP but even then, it’s very expensive for what it is.
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Teachings of the black harvest. This talent is a complete miss. Either it’s entirely useless (imp dispell and Felguard charge) or a nerf (Seduction). I can’t even call this talent niche, except maybe reduced CD on devour magic. And it’s a point you have to spend if you want Pact of the Imp Mother, which is a throughput talent. This needs to disappear or change.
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Desperate Power is very very weak. Even if you take Accrued Vitality and Claw of Endereth. Lifeblood is also very very weak, I don’t see anybody using this, even with Sweet Souls,which is a very cool talent from the Affliction Weapon in Legion. With our other defensive/healing options I don’t see why anyone would ever pick those talents in any situations.
Overall I’m very happy with the general tree, there are fan favourites, what we had before + new stuff. There are some weak talents and accrued vitality should be switched with demonic circle, but those are easy fixes I think.
Now for the Affliction tree (my favourite spec).
I love malefic rapture, so if you don’t like the spell, you might have a very different opinion on the tree. I’m also overall very happy with the affliction tree, for aoe/m+ we’re getting a ton of new stuff (or old stuff back) that I can’t wait to be able to try. We’re keeping basically everything that we have now plus new stuff or new combos, so I think the tree is doing its job.
First the things I really like (most of it) :
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Inevitable Demise, Writhe in agony, drainsoul, nightfall, all those things are becoming a core part of the kit, we don’t have to chose between them anymore and it’ll make the spec just way better.
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The new vile taint talent looks INCREDIBLE. I wished that we would get a “seed of agony” or something for Dragonflight and we are getting it. No more spamming tab and agony one mob one at a time. This is amazing. We’re also getting SOULFLAME back, we keep wrath of consumption, etc. amazing stuff !
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Soul Tap, really like to see that spell coming back in that form, it’ll make pooling shard before a boss easy, makes getting a shard on demand super easy. I hope it’ll be off the GCD.
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Soul Swap, I loved that spell so much, I like the new form it has. I hope if talented it will apply siphon life, it should in my opinion. I like that it’s applying Unstable Affliction, because this spell is for target swapping (or pexing), and killing the target with the UA will refund you the shard, making the spell basically free + Soul Tap will synergize well with it.
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Sacrolash baseline, with vile taint applying curse of exhaustion, great stuff for Mythic plus/ pvp / solo content if need be.
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Super happy to see that we’re keeping our tier set bonuses from sepulcher. The Dot extension from Malefic Rapture has made the spec feel so good to play. I still hope that the dot extension will apply to siphon life if talented into it.
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The new deathbolt talents looks interesting, new stuff is good, but I don’t yet see how it will fit within the spec. Not a criticisim, just a lack of imagination on my part.
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We’re keeping soulrot and the legendary effect. This is a really cool spell for affliction. I either wanted Soul Rot or Impending catastrophe to follow us into dragonflight. And since playing inevitable demise will be so much easier, it’s even more value for the spell. Some really cool synergies that we couldn’t really leverage before.
Now the things I don’t like, talents I think are misplaced or should be changed :
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Xavian Teachings. I understand the first part of the tree is learning the basic things of the spec. But this is very weak and weird, I think it should be just baseline, you learn it when you switch to affliction. Spending a point for this feels bad. I think drain soul should be moved here.
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Pandemic Invocation. Old Azerite Trait. I understand wanting to reward players for refreshing their dots in the pandemic window BUT. This talent, to benefit from it requires a lot of attention. Pandemic window is usually earlier than 5 s, around 7/8 s remaining depending on the Dot. It’s a punishing and hard talent to play with. On top of that it’s rather weak and it has serious anti-synergy with dot extension effects. In Single Target, we already have so many things to track. A lot of time we refresh our Dots early for a variety of reasons, even in ST scenarios, so there again we don’t benefit from it.
Either the time remaining needs to be much more generous, 10 seconds remaining instead of 5 to get the benefit from it.
But I think it should be replaced. You could replace it with the other old azerite trait, wracking brillance, which gave us an intelligence proc when agony would generate shards. It could also be a talent to give us additional duration on our DoTs, for agony, UA etc. I don’t know if UA is keeping its 21 s duration, and we’re loosing the agony duration conduit. -
Agonizing corruption. In principle I like the idea, shortening the ramp up time but I think two points is very expensive for what it is. I can’t imagine someone spending more than one point in this, and there are generally better things to spend our points on.
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It’s minor, but I think grimoire of sactifice being right in the middle is very misleading. This talent is meant to be a dps loss or only used in PvP, and it’s right in the center, begging to be picked. It should be moved ton the side of the tree. Summon Darkglare should be moved there I think.
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I don’t like that we’re getting back to haunt + shadow’s embrace. It adds unecessary ramp up on pulls. i’ll have to see how it feels to play with it. I hope haunt will keep adding a stack/refreshing shadow’s embrace.
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I have an issue with the accessibility of Darkglare. It’s our main CD. I think it should be moved where Grimoire of Sacrifice. But if it’s to stay here; Sacrolash and Soul Swap shouldn’t be the only pathways to it. You don’t really want soul swap nor Sacrolash in single target encounters, yet you will most likely want Darkglare.
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Antoran Plating is too weak. For this talent to be really worth it, it should make that Darkgalre is also doing aoe/cleave damage on your targets with Dots (maybe two Dots at a minimum). Additional duration on the demon itself itself doesn’t matter. Or maybe the talent could also increase a little bit the dot extension from darkglare. Each point could add 1 or 2 seconds. This would be potentially really strong. And it would make Wilfred more desirable.
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Seized Vitality. I understand why it’s there, to limit us in the number of capstones we can get, and the talent below it, Haunted Soul, is extremely strong. However, Seized Vitaly damage buff to Haunt should be much bigger, instead of 10/20%, it should be 50/100% increase damage (and reduce the healing of course). Haunt doesn’t hit hard, a 100% buff won’t make it a nuke.
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Creeping Death, this talent, a bit like Pandemic Invocation, has a lot of anti synergies with how affliction works. It’s a dead talent.
A new talent in its place instead, further improving Soul Rot, its duration and or additional targets would be much better.
Or, a new version of the old Legion talent, Death’s embrace, the passive execute baked into our DoTs could replace it, but it wouldn’t make much sense there, it would have to be moved elsewhere. -
Malefic Wrath. This talent has been a pain to play with. It’s really hard to play with that legendary. Unfortunately, affliction single target damage since 9.1 has been tuned around it and it’s bad. It’s unplayable on 99% of the encounters, even the ST ones. I’m happy to see it’s a nerfed version. However, I think this talent requires too much attention, the buff is too short, and is too expensive in shards. I would really prefer if this talent power was reduced even more, to make the loss of the buff less punishing, and have its duration greatly increased, to 15 s, if not 20 s.
We’re losing dark soul (our 2 min CD haste buff), early in an expansion we are not generating a lot of shards. Sometimes you will just lose that buff because you don’t generate a shard every 8 seconds. This talent is too hard to play with in its current state. This talent also feels mandatory in ST because of Decimating Bolt. The synergy is just too strong to ignore. So Malefic Wrath should be made easier to play with, so that we can actually play it in single target encounters where there’s movement, things to do. We couldn’t play that legendary at all on bosses like the Jailor for example because maintaining the buff and just draining in general was impossible. Yet it’s a ST encounter.
Overall I really like the tree, the ideas. I love that we’re keeping the rapture playstyle. We’re getting a lot of new stuff. I’m super excited to continue playing warlock in Dragonflight.