6.1 Warlock Suggestions

[Deleted]

With 6.1 possibly coming in the next couple of months i wanted to make a constructive thread and ask you all to feedback and input some none overpowered changes that you want to happen for Warlocks in the patch. My main point of interest for this thread is PvP but i don't want to have the idea's have a negetive impact on the PvE side, and I don't have any experience with demonology this expansion so il only be mentioning affli/destro in my post. Here are a couple of my small suggestions, look forward to reading everyone else's

Searing Pain
1.4 sec cast (before haste). Inflict searing pain on the enemy target, causing X (70% of incinerate damage?) spell damage and generating 1 emberbits (2 on crit)
I feel as though destruction PvP could use an extra 'fast cast' spell since backdraft charges are mostly used for Chaos Bolt (in PvP) and can be dispelled, and the PvE rotation seems a tad boring. It could be added to the PvE rotation to be used instead of incinerate when there are no backdraft charges. Affliction could do with it for Something to cast when shadow locked in PvP but i dont know how this would fit into PvE.

Shadowflame/Demonic Breath
15-20 second cooldown. Sends a cone of dark energy before you, reducing the movement speed by 50% (70%?) of all enemy targets within 10 yards for 6 sec.
My main problem with affliction in PvP is that we lack any decent way of kiting melee or slowing them down, and i feel this would help get a bit of breathing room (even if only for a second or two). Destruction has conflagrate glyph but could do with this extra tool because it has to cast more, and because it does no damage it wont effect PvE dps.

[Novx]

Fel Flame back please, that is all I want to Christmahanakwanzika.

[Gaidax]

Not sure if necessary, but I would have a kick if some of those would be in.


Destruction:

1. While Rain of Fire is active, F&B Incinerate will refund 3 Ember Bits per cast.
2. Charred Remains: will now also passively increase Chaos Bolt and Shadowburn damage by 10%, F&B Chaos Bolt will now deal 20% less damage.
4. In addition to the current effect Grimoire of Sacrifice also increases your critical strike chance by 5%


Demonology:

1. Successful Demonbolt casts will recover 7% of your total mana,
2. Demonic Servitude (Demonology) will now reduce your Summon Doomguard and Summon Terroguard cooldown to 2 minutes and make them last for 30 seconds instead of permanently summoning a greater demon.
4. Grimoire of Synergy effect increased to 20%.

Affliction:

1. Soulburn: Haunt - also causes your Haunt spell to deal additional 50% damage and automatically crit.
3. In addition to it's current effect Grimoire of Sacrifice also increases your haste by 10%.


All specializations:
1. Kil'jaeden's Cunning now has 3 charges and passively allows you to cast or channel any warlock spell on the move at a cost of one charge. A charge of KJC is restored every 10 seconds.
2. Mannoroth's Fury affects Cataclysm.
3. Archimonde's Darkness increases the effect of Dark Soul spell by 5% (i.e. from 30% to 35%).

[Deleted]

Swap Kil'Jaedens Cunning with one of the movement buffs, perhaps the pvp focussed unbound will?

We lose a significant amount of dps on Hero@open/prepot due to the fact that we often have 1 burning ember when a boss gets pulled since we likely lose out on the prepot trinket proc. Not sure how to fix this without breaking us in PvP (i.e. filling up to 4 embers outside of combat), but most classes that are doing well on the meters get full value out of that initial pull.

[Nadiru]

I'd like Life Tap to provide an offensive benefit to offset its GCD cost, or I'd like for it to go away. Right now it's a mechanic that restricts Warlock DPS for the sake of flavor, something which has gone the way of the Dodo for pretty much every other class.

If it were to stay, there would have to be some sort of reason; not going OOM isn't really a valid answer anymore because no other DPS classes go OOM to my knowledge, to the point where some specs that use Mana to DPS were actually given passives that obviate the need to manage mana (I'm looking at you, Enhancement and Retribution) and the one spec for whom mana management is critical (Arcane) is given myriad damage buffs for managing that mana, to the point where the damage buffs, not the mana, are the main driver for Arcane's rotation as-is.

Meanwhile, Warlocks have to watch their mana bar, take damage in order to restore it wasting valuable time and an important raid resource. All this just so Warlocks can do their rotation at all, not with increased damage or anything, but so Warlocks can maintain their mediocre DPS numbers.

[Arothorn]

I wish.

I know this is basically a wish-list thread, but in all reality I think the only change warlocks will see is maybe a fix to rain of fire, and a fix to the nightfall bug come 6.1.

[Fanatik]

Fix glyph of fear in HM/BRF.

[Monkeyy4]

Demonology, night fall like it was back in the day, modified to instant shadow bolt, no mana cost
can stack soul fire takes 3 charges.

[demonicus]

return snapshotting
revert soulswap shard cost
make demonbolt always crit
make lifetap not a thing anymore, no other class has to waste gcds for mana

[Karigg]

Charred Remains tweaked to make the AoE rotation not so clunky to play. Maybe add an ember cap of 5 or 6 to the talent. Read this http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15700041181

[Jack Burton]

return snapshotting
revert soulswap shard cost
make demonbolt always crit
make lifetap not a thing anymore, no other class has to waste gcds for mana

Snapshotting was good in some ways, bad in others. I can live without it.

Removing the soul shard cost of Soul Swap is huge, that was a big mistake. Soul Swap was one thing that made Affliction fun, because dotting things over and over is tedious as hell, and our AOE damage is weak without it. If I had one change to make, that would be it. Make Soul Swap free. It wouldn't be OP either because no more snapshot and dots really don't do a lot of damage without popping all your CDs and combining it with Haunt and Drain Soul.

[fakaroonie]

They said they won't change anything gameplay wise mid expansion so...yeah.

They should reconsider it though, because the only spec that is half fun atm is Demo, but it could be even better.

Affliction: Give shadowbolt filler back, Drain Soul executer... nerf haunt, but make it reapply corruption, and boost soul shard regen.
Destro: Obviously fix rain of fire for aoe, make it channeling again, but boost the damage and ember regen.
Demo: No idea, make it cooler. I want to spend more time in Demon Form.

[Fanatik]

I'll be honest, this isn't a well thought out list. Just spitballing ideas that I've joked around with other locks in my guild/on my server.

All specs
1. Cataclysm applies Shadowflame instead of a spec specific DoT. Shadowflame is a DoT that does shadowflame damage and also regenerates your secondary resource.
2. DG/Infernal cooldown time should be reduced to 2 or 3 minutes baseline.
3. Mannoroth's fury applies to all forms of area spells, whether from class talents, specialization talents, or pets.
4. Demonic servitude rework. Treat it similarly to grimoire of service combined with imp swarm. Summon 4 or 5 specific demon types for 15 seconds every 2 minutes. These pets are specifically used for resource regeneration, not so much utility. Frenzied Imp swarm that barrage areas with fireballs, coalescing void walkers that explode and duplicate on hit (only once though), rabid fel hunters and lashing succubi (no idea how they can be improved, but w/e, it'll never happen). Demonology gains access to whirling felguards, and summon infernal/terrorguard is replaced by Barraging Infernals and Terrorguard Firing Squads.
5. Blood horror replaced with something... some sort of knockback-related disengage utility?
6. Address the penalties on our level 60 talents.
7. Soul link is an active ability that can be applied to players (both friendly and enemy).

Affliction: Damage should be in the DoTs, not the channel.
1. Soul swap shard tax removed. Inhaled DoTs continue to tick on the caster until exhaled. Soul swapped dot duration reduced by 50%.
2. Soulburn: Haunt should either be baseline or an "empowered" ability.
3. Seed of corruption ticks that do not explode on a target should offer a significant chance at returning a shard.
4. Multistrike haunt should benefit from pandemic, extending haunt from 10s to 13s (empowered from 12s to 16s).
5. When a target dies with haunt, haunt will jump to the closest non-afflicted target in combat and apply for the base duration.
6a. Bring back Shadowbolt and Shadow trance proc'd shadow bolts. Shadow trance can only be consumed while moving. Stores upto 3 charges.
6b. Create a level 100 talent to allow shadow trance shadow bolts to volley and allow the caster to spend a soul shard to actually cast a volley. Increased shard cap.

Demonology: Bring back the focus on the demons.
1a. Empowered drain life baselined and its empowered spell replaced by Empowered soul fire, which is a rebalanced version of demonbolt.
1b. Empowered soulfire splits damage amongst all targets within 10 yards of a target and increases the chance to crit by x% per target hit upto y% for z seconds.
2. Replace Demonbolt level 100 talent with a talent that reduces the cooldown of all pet summoning spells (imp swarm, goserv, dg/inf) by x seconds for every successful critical hit done by the player or pet. Critical hits also returns secondary resource (replenishing fury in caster form, mana in meta form).

Destruction: Less passive aggression, more actual aggression.
1. Charred remains reworked. Single target penalty removed. 200% regen removed. Chaos Bolt component remains unchanged. Increased ember cap.
2. Backdraft casted spells can be cast while moving.
3. Backlash.
4. Rain of fire damage returned, does not affect ember regen.
5. Multistrike Ember tap (maybe this is a bug or I have just never seen it).
6. Ember regen increased by 100% baseline.
7. Reduction in pet damage to compensate for the excessive chaos bolting that would develop.

After rereading this, we should probably just remove the grimoire tier and KJC... Also, we're more in line for a 6.2 rework.

[Tya]

1. Free class change.
2. Allow gladiator/pvp mounts to be account-wide.
3. Allow pvp titles to be account-wide.

That's my 6.1 wishlist. First point might be a push. Class is a complete disaster and even if it pushed competitive dps it'd still be a hollow shell of warlocks from the last 3 expansions!

[Drakile]

I know this is random but, this does involve the class exclusively but, a new Ashran grimoire, because our current one is garbage. It would be interesting if the book summoned a Pitlord and then was used up, though I feel that may be viewed as a bit broken. That or change our current book to be able to affect Captains so that it is actually useful, we could corrupt a captain and actually affect the flow of battle, or at least feel like it, as opposed to summoning a useless Void Demon that we cannot control, Does no damage, and dies near instantly.

As far as class changes go I would like to see Soulfire just turn into Demonbolt while in Meta if you have that talent, currently it is an inactive button for 90% of our rotation and frankly I feel it would fit behind SF, because if you take the talent you are saving your fury for DB anyway. That being said I would not be against scrapping DB entirely, I am tired of feeling like a WotLK Arcane mage with DoTs and a pet, ideally something that would make Demo DPS more Sustained instead of High amounts of Damage every 45-90 seconds of combat.

I would be pretty happy with an interrupt that wasn't pet based as well.

[Orloth]

Affliction:
- move some damage from Drain Soul to Dots. Doesn't need to be a lot, just enough to boost multi-dotting and AOE a bit.
- Replace Soulburn:Haunt with Malefic Bolt (Shadowbolt with Malefic Dot trigger) for those that want Shadowbolt Affliction back.
- Remove Soul Swap. I don't like what it's done to the spec. Affliction should be about DoTs and multidotting at the expense of burst and ramp up.

Demonology:
- Lower the mana cost of Soulfire.
- Give Demonbolt a set Fury Cost and Damage. I like having a huge nuke fury dump. I don't like being tied to a cooldown.
- DServ (Demonology) Upgrades Infernal and Doomguard into Pitlord and Eredar Sorceress
---Felguard/Wrathguard already offers more damage then standard demons, making DServ obsolete.
---Pitlord and Eredar Sorceress could have AOE damage cooldowns similar to Wrathstorm, so they'd mechanically match Demo.
---Easier to balance Demo's demons separately as they have a different Demon/Caster Damage ratio
- Give Greenfire versions of Glyph of Metamorphosis and Demonbolt

Destruction:
- Fix Rain of Fire to grant Embers at 3+ targets
- Change Charred Remains to a short cooldown Ember Generator similar to Chi Brew.
- It needs something else in it's single target rotation
---A DoT that costs Embers?
---A nuke to cast without Backdraft?
---A proc that makes Shadowburn castable and grant an Ember?

Talents:
- Make Soul Link Passive
- Move Dark Regeneration into Tier 3
- Scrap Tier 1 entirely.
- Replace with Mana and/or Resource management Tier
- Replace Howl of Terror with Carrion Swarm (knock-back cone, no damage)

Totally non-realistic Fantasy land:
- Tanklock.

[Tya]

Destruction:
- It needs something else in it's single target rotation
---A DoT that costs Embers?
---A nuke to cast without Backdraft?
---A proc that makes Shadowburn castable and grant an Ember?

Nice points but I strongly disagree with this. Destro was fun for all of MoP without these things. The last one also heavily goes against the "zero RNG" nature of the spec, something that makes it very unique.

[Orloth]

Nice points but I strongly disagree with this. Destro was fun for all of MoP without these things. The last one also heavily goes against the "zero RNG" nature of the spec, something that makes it very unique.

It's probably just that I'm bored with Destruction as is. Even if it turns out to be the best spec by a fair margin, I doubt I'd play it. 12 months of SoO as Destro, I'm kinda burned out (pun intended).

[Mekkle]

Only 3 things:

-remove life tap

-Remove Life Tap

-REMOVE. LIFE TAP.

I hate life tap, always have, always will.

Oh yea, and the soul shard cost on soul swap is really dumb and needs to go. Now.

[ComputerNerd]

return snapshotting
revert soulswap shard cost
make demonbolt always crit
make lifetap not a thing anymore, no other class has to waste gcds for mana

Snapshotting was a mechanic largely trivialised by addons, and nothing blizzard can do will change that without gutting hundreds of other addons.
Decisions should be around the mechanics, not timers or random procs.
I understand the original desire, but it hasn't played out that way.