wow Warlock Changes and Explanations in War Within Alpha: May 2nd

[Staff 1,464]

Blizzard have detailed the changes that arrived for Warlocks in this week's Alpha build, with Demonology being the main focus, with Affliction and two Hero trees getting some changes as well. 

Warlock (Source)

Greetings Warlocks.

You’re going to see some Demonology changes in the War Within Alpha build today, alongside some additional changes to Affliction, Hellcaller, and Soul Harvester.

Destruction Warlocks – we’re working on changes for you that will become available for testing in a future build.

Here’s some context for the Demonology changes you’ll find in this build. As a refresher, here are the goals we previously stated for Demonology:

• Reduce the amount of resources Demonology generates.
• Redesign Doom to be an attractive talent choice.
• Reduce the amount of major cooldowns Demonology has access to.

Demonic Cores
Over the course of Dragonflight, we’ve wanted to and tried to reduce the number of Demonic Cores available to Demonology warlocks to rein in their mobility, resource generation, and reduce the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt only. In addition, we want Demonbolt to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button.

In lieu of these goals, we are removing Demonic Knowledge to reduce the frequency of Demonic Cores and will make further adjustments down the road if the rate of Demonic Cores remains too high. Over the course of alpha and beta we will be tuning Demonology to compensate for this change.

Doom
This is our first iteration of Doom going into The War Within and will be iterating based off feedback we receive. We wanted to try bringing back a castable version of Doom, rather than a proc, while avoiding making it required to cast Doom multiple times before being able to perform your rotation. At the same time though, we want you to think about how you use Doom and when it is cast rather than bring back an effect like Hand of Doom that makes it largely passive.

Nether Portal
In this alpha build of The War Within, you’ll see that Nether Portal has been removed. While we love the fantasy that Nether Portal provides and that it created a moment that felt different rotationally, its gameplay and performance proved difficult to optimize. Too many major cooldowns can increase the number of peaks and valleys Demonology’s output can experience and how much effect the duration of an encounter can have on its performance.

We’d like to spend some time workshopping a new design for Nether Portal and have it return as a healthier addition to Demonology’s toolkit in the future.

What’s Next?
We’ll continue to read through feedback and the discussions happening across the community. As mentioned last week, these changes are by no means final, and we plan to iterate based off your thoughts and our own playtesting. Thank you for the discussions thus far and we’ll have more updates to share soon!

And here are the full changes from the development notes:

(Source)

• WARLOCK
  • Diabolist
    • Soulburn can no longer trigger Demonic Art or Diabolic Ritual.
    • Demonic Art now lasts 60 seconds for each greater demon (was 20 seconds).
  • Hellcaller
    • Mark of Xavius has been redesigned – Agony/Wither damage increased by 20%/25% and the cooldown of Vile Taint/Cataclysm is reduced by 5 seconds.
    • Channel Demonfire and Internal Combustion now function with Wither.
  • Soul Harvester
    • Eternal Servitude now reduces the cooldown of Fel Domination by 90 seconds (was 120 seconds).
    • When Soul Anathema is reapplied, any remaining damage will be added to the new Soul Anathema.
    • Shared Fate now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
  • Affliction
    * Malefic Rapture now deals Shadowflame damage.
    • Inevitable Demise has been removed.
    • New Talent: Improved Malefic Rapture – Reduces the cast time of Malefic Rapture by 10/20% and increases its damage by 5/10%.
    • Relinquished now causes Agony to have 1.10 times the chance to generate a Soul Shard (was 1.25 times).
    • Volatile Agony now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
    • Cull the Weak has been redesigned – Malefic Rapture damage is increased by 8% for each enemy it hits, up to 5 enemies.
  • Demonology
    • New Talent: Shadowcaster – Increases the damage of Hand of Gul’dan by 20% and Demonbolt by 10%.
    • New Talent: Pact of the Ered’ruin – When Doom is removed, you summon a Doomguard that casts 5 Doom Bolts before departing. Each Doom Bolt deals Shadow damage.
    • New Talent: Mark of Shatug – Wicked Maw causes the target to take 20% additional Shadow damage from your demons.
    • New Talent: Ferocity of F’harg – Increases the attack speed of your Dreadstalkers by 10/20% and their critical strike chance by 15/30%.
    • New Talent: Rune of Shadows – Increases all damage done by your pet by 4%. Reduces the cast time of Shadow Bolt by 25% and increases its damage by 40%.
    • New Talent: Demonic Brutality – Critical strikes from your spells and your demons deal 4% increased damage.
    • New Talent: Fiendish Prowess – Increases the attack speed of your primary demon by 25%.
    • New Talent: Improved Demonic Tactics – Increases your primary Felguard’s critical strike chance equal to 30% of your critical strike chance.
    • Doom has been redesigned – Inflicts impending doom upon the target, dealing Shadow damage and an additional Shadow damage to enemies within 10 yards after 20 seconds. Consuming a Demonic Core reduces the duration of Doom by 3 seconds. 30 seconds cooldown.
    • The following talents have been removed:
      • Demonic Knowledge
      • Nether Portal
      • Ner’zhul’s Volition
      • Gul’dan’s Ambition
      • Stolen Power
      • Heavy-Handed
    • Sacrificed Souls and Houndmaster’s Stratagem have been moved to row 8.
    • Houndmaster’s Stratagem has been renamed to Wicked Maw and its icon has been updated.
    • Doom and Summon Demonic Tyrant have been moved to row 9.
    • Dread Calling and Grimoire: Felguard icons have been updated.

[Q 196]

41 minutes ago, Staff said:

Redesign Doom to be an attractive talent choice.

Doom will NEVER be an attractive talent, nobody wants an ability that you just apply to a target and then wait 20 seconds for it to do something. If it worked like the current tier set bonus, Hand of Gul'dan reducing the timer by a second per soul shard spend, then it MIGHT be worth using but as it is I don't think it'll ever be worth using let alone fun.

[Q 196]

2 hours ago, Staff said:

Demonic Cores
Over the course of Dragonflight, we’ve wanted to and tried to reduce the number of Demonic Cores available to Demonology warlocks to rein in their mobility, resource generation, and reduce the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt only. In addition, we want Demonbolt to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button.

In lieu of these goals, we are removing Demonic Knowledge to reduce the frequency of Demonic Cores and will make further adjustments down the road if the rate of Demonic Cores remains too high. Over the course of alpha and beta we will be tuning Demonology to compensate for this change.

I hate this change. Affliction has a ton of mobility on account of being a DoT spec, destro has conflagrate and dimensional rift should they talent into it, which would leave demo as a stationary caster with next to no mobility outside of implosion but the much fewer demonic core procs we'd get after this change.

Edited May 3 by Q

[Perak 25]

Personaly, i know what ot do with Doom, they can stick it in to place that Sun doesnt shine. Demonology is not about dots in the first place, its about demons. How many ears will teke them to finaly realize that na remove it? And demo being too mobile? Did they take a look on other raget clases? Like ele shaman, frost mage, balance etc.......? Demo was realy funny and easy to play with rework they did in BFA that it become my main for some time (expansions), but all that make him fun and predictable they starting to remove -.-....soon it will be RNG *filtered* where there will be major diference between times where you got proc and when you dont -.-

Realy...if they want to make him more stationary, then they should start with beast master first!

[Perak 25]

5 hours ago, Q said:

I hate this change. Affliction has a ton of mobility on account of being a DoT spec, destro has conflagrate and dimensional rift should they talent into it, which would leave demo as a stationary caster with next to no mobility outside of implosion but the much fewer demonic core procs we'd get after this change.

Exactly, not to mention, that the actual demonology set bonuses have ideal form of doom, passive aply by proc abillities, with time reducion by spenders. They should make it like that or remove it....or make it pvp talent. For a character which fantasy is building army of demos, casting any kind of DoT is just plain stupid, even senile shimpazee would see that 🙂

[Prophet001 587]

12 hours ago, Q said:

Doom will NEVER be an attractive talent, nobody wants an ability that you just apply to a target and then wait 20 seconds for it to do something. If it worked like the current tier set bonus, Hand of Gul'dan reducing the timer by a second per soul shard spend, then it MIGHT be worth using but as it is I don't think it'll ever be worth using let alone fun.

I kinda like Doom. It has this feeling of... well... Doom.

Maybe they could give it some big animation like Execution Sentence for ret.

Feels... DOOMY :D iuno just my 0.02 :)

 

Edit:

This MR stuff on the other hand is a hard F

Edited May 3 by Prophet001

[Q 196]

7 minutes ago, Prophet001 said:

I kinda like Doom. It has this feeling of... well... Doom.

Maybe they could give it some big animation like Execution Sentence for ret.

Feels... DOOMY 😄 iuno just my 0.02 🙂

 

Edit:

This MR stuff on the other hand is a hard F

The ability itself is just boring, it's just another DoT except it doesn't do anything until it expires. I don't think a flashy animation will change that.

I don't play affliction, not after BfA ruined it and especially not that they have another DoT to manage in soul rot since SL.

[MiNiGiANT 26]

Add tank spec to warlocks!!!