6.1 Warlock Suggestions

[ZakAtack]

Removal of Life Tap, or at least making it not necessary so much for Demo would be nice. Just feel like we have to do it way too much, especially if you're taking Demonbolt.

For Destro, just one more on the move option besides Conflag or RoF would be nice.

For Aff, I dunno. Supposedly its DPS is competitive but it just feels clunky as f**k.

Edit: Also snapshotting is not coming back. I'm fine with that, it skewed things way too much. In some ways it showed skill but it created too huge a gap in DPS between those with procs and those without.

And one more escape for PVP. Getting trained by melee these days in PVP is just hell.

[IdTheDemon]

Affliction: Buff dot damage to compensate for snapshot removal. Also get rid of the Soul Swap soul shard cost. At this point we mainly save shards for Empowered Haunt which is rightfully 2 shards.

Destro: MAke Rain of Fire generate embers when hitting 3 targets or more.

Demo: Revert the various SoO nerfs that happened due to mainly the Lei Shen trinket being OP. Wild Imp's damage, the number of imps went from 5 to 4. The trinket was OP as fuck back then but with the removal of snapshotting, it's time to buff up the Wild Imp damage.

And why is that still a glyph at this point?

[Roujeaux]

Here's a few:

General:

Return Fel Flame
Return Health Funnel and Drain Life to Destro
Healthstones no longer share cooldown with Tonics
Glyph of Soulshatter (Minor Glyph) - Increases the range of Soulshatter by 100%
Edit the Eye of Kilrogg tooltip to show that it has Detect Invisibility
Make Blood Pact available earlier in the leveling process like Fel Armour used to be
REMOVE DEMONIC GATEWAY
Remove Soulwell (give First Aid a Tonic Cauldron)
Rename Demonic Circle:Summon to Demonic Circle, Demonic Circle:Teleport to Demonic Teleport with a base 25 sec cd
Allow Demonic Circle to be ground targeted via Glyph of Demonic Circle
Allow Dark Intent to provide Mastery instead of Multistrike
Glyph of Drain Life now changes Drain Life into a 1.7 sec cast time direct damage spell that has close to 25% of its current cost, damage, and healing
Versatility is now a DPS only stat that only appears on weapons and accessories like Spirit for healers and Bonus Armor for tanks.

TALENTS:

Make Ember Tap the Right Level 15 talent for Destro (Shard Tap for Aff, Fury Tap for Demo). No longer benefits from Mastery. Replaces Healthstone.
Return baseline Howl of Terror, remove Demo/Destro spec snare effects, & make Curse of Exhaustion the Left Level 30 talent.
Make Sac Pact's absorb shield amount a flat % of your max health, reduce cooldown to 45 sec, duration to 15 sec
Make Blood Horror the new Soulburn: Fear effect for Aff, make Demo's Demonic Leap the new Left Level 60 talent, give Unbound Will an additional, modest passive movement speed buff effect
Observer's Optical Blast is now a damaging, 3 sec Silence only effect
Grimoire of Sacrifice is now the Middle Level 75 talent for Aff and Destro, Grimoire of Synergy is now the Right Level 75 talent for all specs
Archimonde's Darkness now also passively increases your spell damage by 3%. Kil'jaeden's Cunning redesigned, and now increases your spell damage and haste/aff, mastery/demo, crit/destro by 15% for 20 sec. 2 min cd, Replaces Dark Soul. Mannoroth's Fury now passively increases the radius of your aoe damage spells by 200%, and increases Seed of Corruption, Hellfire, Immolation Aura, and Rain of Fire damage by 100% while Dark Soul is active
Chaotic Resources redesigned, and now increases your current and maximum Shard/Fury/Ember amount by 25%, which is lost after 20 sec. 2 min cd. Cataclysm is now enemy targeted, has a 2.75 sec cast time (doesn't need to be too fast), and generates 1 Ember/Fury/Shard on 4 or more enemies. Demonic Servitude now only reduces the cd of summoning Doomguards/Terrorguards and Infernals/Abyssals by 50% and gives resource consuming spells a chance to refund their cost.

Affliction:

Allow current out of combat Shard regeneration to continue in combat, reduced by Haste. Balance accordingly.
Soul Swap now only copies and pastes your dots at a 1 Shard cost
Soulburn: Seed of Corruption's Corruption spreading effect is now a separate spell called Atrocity. Instant cast, same effect, same 1 Shard cost, no cd
The Soulburn effect now applies to most, but only your non damaging Warlock spells
Seed of Corruption cast time reduced to 1.5 sec, detonation threshold lowered

Demonology:

Prune the demo burst aoe cd stacking
Remove Corruption, allow Doom to be used by caster and Meta form
Hellfire/Immolation Aura now requires either a self target or enemy target, and deals bonus damage to 4 or more targets. 1 target limit for Immolation Aura.
Replace Chaos Wave name/graphic with Carrion Swarm's.
Shadowbolt now has a 2.25 sec cast time, Soul Fire a 3 sec cast time. Molten Core now reduces Soul Fire cost & cast time by 33%.
Fel Flame becomes Chaos Lance in Meta, dealing moderate instant aoe Chaos damage split between all enemies within 8 yards of an enemy target
Life Tap restores a small amount of Fury in Meta

Destruction:

Possibly a baseline Crit value to address ember starvation at undergeared levels
Rain of Fire now gains bonus damage/generates embers on 4 or more targets
Conflagrate now has a 10 sec recharge time
Return Shadowburn's mana regen effect
Reduce Havoc and Fire and Brimstone damage such that Destro's single target damage always has maximum potency

[scrappybristol]

Remove Life Tap in favor for what destruction has done but different.

For demonology, going into meta will passively give you chaotic energy restoring your mana to full by the time you're out of meta.

For affliction, using drain soul on a target that has unstable affliction will restore your mana by 625% while channeled.

Molten Core should allow Soul Fire to be castes while moving to make up for that ridiculous mana cost.

[Uzkin]

(Copied from my similar rant on the official forums...)

DESTRUCTION (and general) :

Issue: Non-existent mobility. Lack of instant-cast DD abilities. Various game-play issues resulting from these two facts.
Solution: Make Immolate instant, and let the initial DD part also generate emberbits. (no need to bring back Fel Flame; this is a simpler fix)

Issue: AoE not sustainable without Charred Remains until a VERY large amount of mobs are present. Rain of Fire is almost useless after the nerfs (it has negligible output, and no interaction with other abilities) ; it is a broken remnant of a poorly thought-out "fix" and only serves to make the spec feel more unfinished and poorly designed.
Solution: Have RoF generate embers when it hits multiple targets (2 or more). Its damage may stay negligible the way it is now.

Issue: Mannoroth's Fury is a broken talent with the extreme RoF damage nerf. This, again, contributes to the spec feeling unfinished and poorly designed.
Solution: MF should also remove the ember cost from Fire and Brimstone for its duration. This way, destro could start its AoE rotation (CD permitting) without the need to collect a couple of embers first, and the talent would thus become at least situationally useful.

Issue: Kil'jaeden's Cunning is a non-flexible, situational talent.
Solution: Let it have 2-3 charges (perhaps with a reduced duration).

Issue: Healthstones are useless in higher level raiding and pvp due to the nerf and shared CD. This, again, contributes to the spec feeling unfinished and poorly designed.
Solution: ??? Maybe have healthstones act like a mini Last Stand instead of healing, without sharing the CD with health pots? If used by the warlock him/herself, the healing effect could perhaps remains as a bonus.

Issue: Ember Tap is pretty much a useless skill without Charred Remains and the glyph (because it was tuned for CR in mind).
Solution: Have it restore twice or three times as much health when Charred Remains is not talented.

Issue: Shadowburn is a dps loss or dps neutral in single target fights.
Solution: Bring back its mana returns.

[Tya]

Issue: Ember Tap is pretty much a useless skill without Charred Remains and the glyph (because it was tuned for CR in mind).

Don't forget the talent that increases Ember Tap output by a total of +200% (50% more healing and able to cast twice as many).

Seriously. Who thought that talent would ever be a good idea? Especially when they just halved Ember Tap's effectiveness to fit the talent in.

[Deleted]

Just remove our freaking soul shards or remove the shard cost of haunt and add a cooldown just like it was in Cataclysm! Am I the only one that believes that our shard system is really f*cking stupid? And give our Fel Flame back or even better give us a Felflame-like spell, different for each spec (so it can suit with each's spec concept).

[MycantrumX]

Am I the only one that believes that our shard system is really f*cking stupid?

Most likely, yes. The secondary resource system of embers/fury/shards is a significantly better design than a proc based class or the like. Allows us to pick and choose where to put our damage rather than "oh look a proc, better use it now!" Embers and Fury are very good examples of this if you are playing the class correctly.

Affliction simply does not have enough shards/shard regen currently to support the design as it is intended. The only things that needs to change for affliction are the removal of the shard cost for Soul Swap and a buff to our shard regeneration mechanics.

[Deleted]

Most likely, yes. The secondary resource system of embers/fury/shards is a significantly better design than a proc based class or the like. Allows us to pick and choose where to put our damage rather than "oh look a proc, better use it now!" Embers and Fury are very good examples of this if you are playing the class correctly.

Affliction simply does not have enough shards/shard regen currently to support the design as it is intended. The only things that needs to change for affliction are the removal of the shard cost for Soul Swap and a buff to our shard regeneration mechanics.

I didn't talk about embers or fury, which I find pretty enjoyable. I only talked about shards. You can't compare shards with embers or fury, cause shards are proc-based and the other resources are not. What I am saying is that if they don't buff our shard regeneration or change it from being proc-based, I would rather see shards gone. Cause they not fun at all the way they work now.

[Orloth]

I didn't talk about embers or fury, which I find pretty enjoyable. I only talked about shards. You can't compare shards with embers or fury, cause shards are proc-based and the other resources are not. What I am saying is that if they don't buff our shard regeneration or change it from being proc-based, I would rather see shards gone. Cause they not fun at all the way they work now.

What if shards were to generate in a more consistent fashion, similar to Embers? Say, for instance: Every tenth time corruption deals damage it generates a Shard (subject to tuning of course), or using a Shard bit system.

[Pockitt]

-RoF to generate Embers again

-Fel Flame

-Soul Shard cost of Soul Swap removed

-More damage to Affliction DoTs and less from Drain Soul

-Some significant damage buffs to Affliction and Demo single target

-KJC either reworked or taken out of the level 90 talent tier

-A legitimate way to kite melee outside of a slow so I don't get bent over by every single ret paladin and feral druid in pvp that can freedom out of my conflagarate/curse of enfeeblement.

-Ember Tap buffed. It's not even worth the ember without Dark Regen up and it's bad enough that Warlocks get trained into the ground by melee because we have the least mobility out of any caster in PVP. On top of that, our ember generation is atrocious without RoF so literally all our embers go towards burst.

[Friendlyimmolation]

Oh I would kill for searing pain back op.

[MycantrumX]

I didn't talk about embers or fury, which I find pretty enjoyable. I only talked about shards. You can't compare shards with embers or fury, cause shards are proc-based and the other resources are not. What I am saying is that if they don't buff our shard regeneration or change it from being proc-based, I would rather see shards gone. Cause they not fun at all the way they work now.

You can compare them because the thought process is the same. Same as with embers/fury, the concept is to spend shards during periods of increased damage. The problem that we have currently is that a) we don't have enough shards to use or any reliable/efficient way to get them (aka they are rng proc based as you said) and b) shards are required for basic QoL/utility spells like Soul Swap which doesn't exist to the same extent in our other specs (destro - ember tap but no one uses it, demo - demonic leap but its not 25% of our resource).

Removing shards would make no sense when you relate it to our other specs and imo the class should have some resemblance across the 3 specs. As they are now, each spec is unique but they all have the similar theme of pooling resources until periods of high damage (procs/cds/boss debuffs) which I think is a great design. Affliction is the only spec that is unable to effectively/reliably do this each pull due to poor secondary resource regen. The CD-based Haunt would suck since it just turns into another dot to manage. I agree with you that the proc/rng aspect sucks, and it would be nice to have a way to manually regen shards through our rotation (both destro and demo manually build their secondaries). With affliction however I don't think thats necessary. I think the best option would be to return to 5.0 shard mechanics (nightfall off all corruptions, drain soul execute tics give shards, drain soul refunds 4 shards on mob death - could be reduced to 2-3 though - 1 is too few).

[Schirmy]

It would be interesting to see Searing Pain return castable while moving with low damage; akin to Scorch but it might be more feasible as a solution to mobile DPS rather than Fel Flame.

[Deleted]

You can compare them because the thought process is the same. Same as with embers/fury, the concept is to spend shards during periods of increased damage. The problem that we have currently is that a) we don't have enough shards to use or any reliable/efficient way to get them (aka they are rng proc based as you said) and b) shards are required for basic QoL/utility spells like Soul Swap which doesn't exist to the same extent in our other specs (destro - ember tap but no one uses it, demo - demonic leap but its not 25% of our resource).

Removing shards would make no sense when you relate it to our other specs and imo the class should have some resemblance across the 3 specs. As they are now, each spec is unique but they all have the similar theme of pooling resources until periods of high damage (procs/cds/boss debuffs) which I think is a great design. Affliction is the only spec that is unable to effectively/reliably do this each pull due to poor secondary resource regen. The CD-based Haunt would suck since it just turns into another dot to manage. I agree with you that the proc/rng aspect sucks, and it would be nice to have a way to manually regen shards through our rotation (both destro and demo manually build their secondaries). With affliction however I don't think thats necessary. I think the best option would be to return to 5.0 shard mechanics (nightfall off all corruptions, drain soul execute tics give shards, drain soul refunds 4 shards on mob death - could be reduced to 2-3 though - 1 is too few).

You have right about the "resemblance across the 3 specs" part, and I totally agree with the return to 5.0 shard mechanics as an alternative.

[Enclave]

one simple fix would do tbh

remove KJC and instead put Searing pain, 1.5 sec castable on the move spell

thats it

[Zaithor]

Kil'jaeden's Cunning
- Passive -
Every 30 seconds you will gain 4 stacks (maximum) of Cunning. Each stack allows you to cast or channel 1 spell while moving. These stacks do not generate over time, but in batches.

[Roujeaux]

RNG shard generation was a faulty concept from the beginning in my opinion. Embers work for destro because they are similar to rogue combo points. Fury works for demo because it is similar to warrior rage. Shards would work far better for affliction if they were made more similar to dk runes, starting with an in combat regeneration effect.

[Drakile]

You know what I would like to see for 6.1, but doubt will ever happen. Blizzard electing 11 representatives, one for each class, who would sit down and release which classes they felt were having current issues, or where they intend to make tweaks. At least in that world it would not feel like suggestions, and 'cries for help', in some cases, would not fall upon deaf ears like it seems to now, also it would make the changes we see in patches less of a surprise, I would just like to see how they make their decisions frankly, the more knowledge we have on that the less confused we are to why certain spells get nerfed into the ground or completely taken away, besides the general 'Spell Bloat Trim'. I miss the old Warlock Dev, (not assuming there is only one dev per class, I am sure there is a whole team) who used to be on the forums here and sometimes would grant alittle insight into what is going on with our class. Granted I understand everything posted here is more of a fantasy wishlist, and I also understand this is not an official forum, that Blizzard does not read these threads.

[The Kao]

You... uhm... can't suggest to Blizzard on these forums. Sorry.