8.0 Warlock changes from Beta

[bio347]

So, very minor feedback point: Immolate still has a 50% chance to generate an extra shardbit on critical tick... but we're losing Burning Hunger and its insane boots to Immo's crit chance. If parity is to be maintained, that chance should probably be boosted to 75-100% to account for the massive loss in crit.

[Baconeggcheese]

So, very minor feedback point: Immolate still has a 50% chance to generate an extra shardbit on critical tick... but we're losing Burning Hunger and its insane boots to Immo's crit chance. If parity is to be maintained, that chance should probably be boosted to 75-100% to account for the massive loss in crit.

Or preferably, they leave it alone and roll the difference into spender damage.

Because shard generation is still too high for destro and spender damage per cast too low.

[Gaidax]

I'm not a big fan of slow shard generation as Destruction, we had it back in Highmaul and it was terrible. Spamming Incinerate is simply not interesting in any shape and form.

I think right now, considering we're in top gear, the generation is just fine. Hopefully it will be in the same ballpark in BfA and Chaos Bolt, as well as other spells will get back the power spent on portals and pets. Sacrifice going back to +% damage boost is a good step forward for that already.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Gaidax The same can be said for spamming CB's.

Filling the gap between CB's with more CB's is about as fun and interesting as spending that time on incinerates. Imo its even less fun than spamming incinerates when the CB's are tuned to be weak to compensate for the volume. The spec could use a little more mechanics / abilities than it had in mop / wod, imo legion had it about right there to some degree (sans removing a lot of the old mechanics that gave the spec depth). It was just the design and how damage was allocated that left it falling short.

I mean even now as things are CB is doing 25+% of our dmg(35%+ with SC), its just spread out. CB doesn't need to be doing 40-50% of our overall dmg to be meaningful, it can simply be that hard hitting spell that we bank and spend during important moments while also having more to our kit than predominately 4 spells.

[Deleted]

patch 7.1
[Unstable Affliction] now afflicts a target with up to 5 Unstable Afflictions at once.
[Compounding Horror] trait redesigned: its buff causes your next Unstable Affliction to deal (32% Spell Power) Shadow damage instantly, stacking up to 5 times.
[Soul Effigy] is now immune to AOE damage.
[Agony] damage increased by 5%.
Unstable Affliction damage increased by 5%.
[Siphon Life] damage increased by 5%.
[Drain Life] damage increased by 5%.
[Drain Soul] damage increased.
[Phantom Singularity] damage increased by 5%.
[Corruption] damage increased by 10%.

patch 7.15
[Drain Soul] is now learned at level 13.
New Affliction talent at level 15: [Malefic Grasp].
While channeling Drain Soul, your damage-over-time spells deal 80% increased damage to the target.
[Contagion] bonus is now 18% (was 12%).
New talent at level 30, replacing [Mana Tap]: [Empowered Life Tap]
[Life Tap] increases your damage dealt by 10% for 20 seconds.
[Haunt] cooldown is now 30 seconds (was 15 seconds) and Haunt now also increases damage by 30%.
[Seed of Corruption] damage is now 215% (was 138%).
Seed of Corruption now costs 1 Soul Shard (was 4.5% mana).
[Sow the Seeds] adds 2 targets (was 4) and no longer adds a Soul Shard cost.

patch 7.2
[Sacrolash's Dark Strike]: Now also increases [Corruption]'s damage by 15%

patch 7.25 (shifted around power, added deaths embrace which is insanely strong instead of soul effigy and made siphon life actually good)
All spells and pets' damage increased by 20%.
[Contagion] damage bonus reduced to 15% (was 18%).
[Death's Embrace] is a new talent replacing [Soul Effigy].
[Agony], [Corruption], [Unstable Affliction], [Phantom Singularity], and [Drain Soul] deal up to 50% increased damage to enemies below 35% health.
[Soul Effigy] removed.
[Haunt] cooldown reduced to 25 seconds (was 30 seconds), and damage bonus reduced to 20% (was 30%).
[Malefic Grasp] damage bonus reduced to 25% (was 70%).
[Phantom Singularity] moved to level 60 (was level 100).
Phantom Singularity cooldown reduced to 40 seconds (was 60 seconds), damage increased by 5%, healing reduced to 20% of damage done (was 30%), and radius reduced to 15 yards (was 25 yards). Now taps targets immediately.
[Seed of Corruption] damage reduced by 20%.
[Siphon Life] moved to level 100 (was level 60).
Siphon Life damage increased by 30%, and healing reduced to 60% of damage done (was 100%).
[Soul Flame] damage reduced by 20%.
[Wrath of Consumption] (Artifact trait) damage per stack reduced to 1% (was 2%)

Yeah man, affliction totally never got buffed. Just some QOL fixes xDD hehe.



You cannot actually be this stupid. You actually can't. You're actually trolling or you're so blind to the game you've been playing for the past 2 years that I'm convinced you're not actually a human but a potato trying to cosplay as a human.

Cenarius, EN. High target switching. High movement. High cleave
rank 10 out of 24 DPS specs, rank 2 out of 3 warlock specs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10/#boss=1877

Botanist, NH, Maximum AOE, High movement
rank 2 out of 24 dps specs, rank 2 out of 3 warlock specs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11#boss=1886

Elisande, NH, High target switching. High movement
rank 8 out of 24 dps specs, rank 2 out of 3 warlock specs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11#boss=1872

Mistress, ToS, Maximum AoE, moderate movement
rank 2 out of 24 dps specs, rank 1 out of 3 warlock specs
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13#boss=2037

Just to name a few. Sadly I'm not the one talking out my ass bud.

The change to five unstable afflictions wasn't a buff at all; it just changed them from being a single stacked DOT that could give a big number when Compounding Horror procced to five separate dots that run individually, which did not give a big number when Compouding horror procced. The change to Compounding Horror was actually a nerf, it's absolute garbage that barely registers.

Aff got some minor buffs post-EN and pre-NH, and it needed them. Aff performed pretty badly in EN, particularly on single target fights like Nythendra. They buffed all pet damage to stop people using Sacrifice builds.

Some of your quotes are even from PTR which never made it live. Malefic Grasp, for example, is not and never has been 80% on live. The Seed of Corrption buff? err, no, it was actually because they reduced the effect of Sow the Seeds, in order to smooth out the gap between ordinary Seed of Corruption and when you used the Sow the Seeds talent. They also made baseline cost a shard, so it was an effective nerf, not a buff. The change to Haunt doubled it's cooldown time but marginally increased it's damage bonus, that's a nerf - and why no one ever used it.

Death's Embrace isn;t as good as it looks, you do know the way it works, right? The way that you only get the 50% damage buff when the boss gets to 1% health? You don;t get 50% the whole time it's under 35% lol

By far the biggest reason that affliction got "buffed" for Nighthold was that they made it work like it always should have, in other words, the artifact traits consistently worked on every add in every fight. Since many NH fights had tons of adds, consistently, afflocks could have very high uptimes of artifact trait selfbuffs

[Gaidax]

@Gaidax The same can be said for spamming CB's.

Filling the gap between CB's with more CB's is about as fun and interesting as spending that time on incinerates. Imo its even less fun than spamming incinerates when the CB's are tuned to be weak to compensate for the volume. The spec could use a little more mechanics / abilities than it had in mop / wod, imo legion had it about right there to some degree (sans removing a lot of the old mechanics that gave the spec depth). It was just the design and how damage was allocated that left it falling short.

I mean even now as things are CB is doing 25+% of our dmg(35%+ with SC), its just spread out. CB doesn't need to be doing 40-50% of our overall dmg to be meaningful, it can simply be that hard hitting spell that we bank and spend during important moments while also having more to our kit than predominately 4 spells.

Right now when I look at logs I cast about 2 Incinerates per Chaos Bolt with Soul Conduit and naturally there are other spells too. Overall it is 35% of damage in ST, healthy percentage and healthy spell mix - you don't spam incinerate forever and you don't really spam Chaos Bolt either.

I think this is ideal situation really and spell power of Chaos Bolt is simply being sapped by all the bullshit sources of damage like pets and guardians. As a whole the spell still hits reasonably hard for a spender and removing pets penalty with Sac should really be all that is needed.

Now considering we're last tier of content and our stats are at prime, which increases shard generation and speeds up everything, I see this exact balance as very good and trying to somehow slow it down will result in same old Highmaul slog again for a good chunk of next expansion.

Not interested changing that, really. There is no need to fix what is broken and I certainly hope they won't be changing Destruction much aside from Sacrifice and Life Tap, because IMO it is very fine now overall.

[Baconeggcheese]

Right now when I look at logs I cast about 2 Incinerates per Chaos Bolt with Soul Conduit and naturally there are other spells too. Overall it is 35% of damage in ST, healthy percentage and healthy spell mix - you don't spam incinerate forever and you don't really spam Chaos Bolt either.

I think this is ideal situation really and spell power of Chaos Bolt is simply being sapped by all the bullshit sources of damage like pets and guardians. As a whole the spell still hits reasonably hard for a spender and removing pets penalty with Sac should really be all that is needed.

Now considering we're last tier of content and our stats are at prime, which increases shard generation and speeds up everything, I see this exact balance as very good and trying to somehow slow it down will result in same old Highmaul slog again for a good chunk of next expansion.

So... the thing with sac is its damage increase is spread out across multiple spells. The current tuning on the datamined notes matches what gosac's % was for the last 2 xpacs at 15%, which will bring the CB average from 4 mil to 4.6 mil in current numbers. That is absolutely NOT enough to get the spell to where it should be.

Casting 1 spender for every 2 filler / builder is untenable. I have no idea how to even humor that as being reasonable outside of turning the combat into something diablo-esque where you mostly just spam your strongest spells and barely use filler. Which is absolutely not where I think an MMORPG should be.

The last tier of content argument doesn't work at all in this xpac since as you know they front loaded secondary scaling so that you rapidly get up to that "feel good" amount and then it tapers off. Which is to say the speed has not significantly changed vs the beginning of the xpac to the degree that it did in prior xpacs. We've been casting around 1 CB for every 2 incinerates ever since they lowered the gen. The effect of "end of xpac" is almost non-existent, and if they keep it as is the beginning of the next xpac won't see that large of a difference outside of maybe the first couple weeks.

And on the pets / guardians front we're talking about a total of around 25+% of our dmg. Gosac will move 12-14% (pet + goserv) spread out into all of our ST spells. The rest if allocated specifically to CB would start pushing CB into the realm of 50%~ish of our dmg which again is not where the spec should be. That's going back towards charred remains levels of damage allocation which was absolutely horrendous class design. That talent should have died, not become baked in. (for the record I want the pets / guardians gone, I just think that damage can be allocated to new more interesting abilities or mechanics instead of just baked into the smaller kit where you just spam more of the same spells in the most uninteresting of manner).

The damage allocation is absolutely fine as it is now between 25-35%, especially with the additional spells in the kit that break up the incinerate / CB spam. The issue is a quantity vs quality one, not a not having enough damage allocated to CB one.

Not interested changing that, really. There is no need to fix what is broken and I certainly hope they won't be changing Destruction much aside from Sacrifice and Life Tap, because IMO it is very fine now overall.

I mean, we just enjoy two different specs then at the end of the day.

For me personally this is the least fun I've had with the class / spec since I picked it up. Destruction absolutely doesn't embody what it did for the prior two xpacs. In the past even when aff dominated destro as it does now you still had a reason to bring a destro lock to your raid. As of right now even if aff didn't exist there's still really not that reason. You'd still be better off just bringing other classes, and that's not a tuning issue as the specs damage is mostly fine, it just doesn't bring anything to the raid or dungeon as this pseudo burst spec that's really a mediocre sustained spec with its current design.

I mean, the class just doesn't need 3 sustained specs.

I'm with these people: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...with_everyone/

[Gaidax]

As of right now even if aff didn't exist there's still really not that reason. You'd still be better off just bringing other classes, and that's not a tuning issue as the specs damage is mostly fine, it just doesn't bring anything to the raid or dungeon as this pseudo burst spec that's really a mediocre sustained spec with its current design.

This is just not serious really. Why bring Destruction? Because Coven and Aggramar exist, in Coven Destruction is only matched by Shadow and Balance (which in turn are quite a bit worse in just about everything else, with Balance being literally terrible) and on Aggramar you have to kill 2 adds during intermission ASAP and Destruction is by far best there with Havoc and burst thanks to entering phase with full shards.

Even M.Argus - you can't afford to really DPS Reorigination Modules full-time on mythic, but Destruction can. Then you have Felhounds as well, where Destruction can only be matched by Shadow.

There is more than plenty reasons for Destruction and it is thanks to Havoc and ability to preset burst, which in fact is a thing, I have no idea why you think Destruction can't gather shards and then blow them all up on Havoc to do 4x DPS sustained during that window.

That's why I find current Destruction to be among the best iterations since MoP 5.4, because unlike previous cases where we had subpar sustain and had to somehow game Shadowburn and Havoc to be mediocre in hopes for that one encounter to shine, right now Destruction has good sustain as is and still has its Cleave and Burst moments that are not that widespread as you think.

- - - Updated - - -

Casting 1 spender for every 2 filler / builder is untenable.

The ratio with Soul Conduit and Feretory of Souls is 1 Chaos Bolt per 3.33 generators, which includes Conflagrate, Incinerate, Immolate and Portals.

That is more than fine, especially considering I talent and equip legendaries that boost generation AND we're talking about end of expansion gear with jacked up stats. The spells I cast are varied - I am not stuck casting one spell and gameplay feels smooth and nice. Remove Soul Conduit and Feretory and that's 1 Chaos Bolt per 4.7 generators. That is already starting to be slow, IMO.

Pray tell, what kind of ratio you envision? 1 to 10? So that we are again in that situations where we have to spam a bunch of spells that do not matter, just to cast one spell that actually does something? Not convinced it is exactly good.

Again, the point is not to be fixing what does not need fixing. You want more Chaos Bolt bang? It's coming with Sac and nonsense like portals being returned back to base spells damage. The damage is reasonable, spellcasting is nicely varied and damage % is where it should be. Sac and all will change that, but gear reset will beat it back for good with reduced generation.


We had this whole problem because someone started fixing stuff that did not need to be fixed.

[Orwell7]

So are you guys agreeing that Warlock was the most fun when it had the most spells, interesting/obscure rotations etc?

I kinda feel that by "dumbing down" all specs for the sake of simplicity actually ruined the fun, and not the mistakes in design. I mean, Warlocks always had pretty interesting interactions with items, spells, set bonuses, but now it's just.. do these 3 things and you'll be fine. It's not fun.

[Baconeggcheese]

This is just not serious really. Why bring Destruction? Because Coven and Aggramar exist, in Coven Destruction is only matched by Shadow and Balance (which in turn are quite a bit worse in just about everything else, with Balance being literally terrible) and on Aggramar you have to kill 2 adds during intermission ASAP and Destruction is by far best there with Havoc and burst thanks to entering phase with full shards.

Even M.Argus - you can't afford to really DPS Reorigination Modules full-time on mythic, but Destruction can. Then you have Felhounds as well, where Destruction can only be matched by Shadow.

Hounds is a throwaway fight that doesn't matter... people 1shot it.

Destruction doesn't bring anything special to the adds on coven, which is all that matters. It does good damage to the first two healing adds of each set and then does average or worse damage to everything else. Its strength on that fight is boss damage, which isn't that important on that fight as long as you're handling everything else properly. Though that's just how the fights designed, even mop destro would have been worse off than just playing mop aff with all the adds.

Aggramar you just need to allocate players for the 2 intermission adds, its not that tight / difficult a check.

Argus is the same, the modules aren't especially difficult and the DPS check is more about not having deaths than actually being a tight check. Especially this late into the raid with extra gear, you can kill the fight with people dead.

There is more than plenty reasons for Destruction and it is thanks to Havoc and ability to preset burst, which in fact is a thing, I have no idea why you think Destruction can't gather shards and then blow them all up on Havoc to do 4x DPS sustained during that window.

I mean, do you genuinely believe that destruction can bank and burst at the same level it did the last 2 xpacs? Because I think it fairly safe to say its not even remotely comparable. Far too much of its damage has been spread out and flattened for that.

That's why I find current Destruction to be among the best iterations since MoP 5.4, because unlike previous cases where we had subpar sustain and had to somehow game Shadowburn and Havoc to be mediocre in hopes for that one encounter to shine, right now Destruction has good sustain as is and still has its Cleave and Burst moments that are not that widespread as you think.

So I'm confused, you liked 5.4? Because 5.4 is in the vein of what I've been rooting to get back though it was the epitome of incinerate spam. it was actually pretty much identical to Highmaul as well except IIRC we used supremacy in highmaul and didn't have KJC but otherwise same spec.

- - - Updated - - -

So are you guys agreeing that Warlock was the most fun when it had the most spells, interesting/obscure rotations etc?

I kinda feel that by "dumbing down" all specs for the sake of simplicity actually ruined the fun, and not the mistakes in design. I mean, Warlocks always had pretty interesting interactions with items, spells, set bonuses, but now it's just.. do these 3 things and you'll be fine. It's not fun.

When it had more depth yes, not necessarily more spells.

Destruction has more spells now than it had the last 2 xpacs, but its far less fun for me (and it seems many others). They almost systematically removed all the specs depth and what's left is pretty damned dull.

[crimsonhead]

Hounds is a throwaway fight that doesn't matter... people 1shot it.

Destruction doesn't bring anything special to the adds on coven, which is all that matters. It does good damage to the first two healing adds of each set and then does average or worse damage to everything else. Its strength on that fight is boss damage, which isn't that important on that fight as long as you're handling everything else properly. Though that's just how the fights designed, even mop destro would have been worse off than just playing mop aff with all the adds.

Aggramar you just need to allocate players for the 2 intermission adds, its not that tight / difficult a check.

Argus is the same, the modules aren't especially difficult and the DPS check is more about not having deaths than actually being a tight check. Especially this late into the raid with extra gear, you can kill the fight with people dead.

I mean, do you genuinely believe that destruction can bank and burst at the same level it did the last 2 xpacs? Because I think it fairly safe to say its not even remotely comparable. Far too much of its damage has been spread out and flattened for that.

So I'm confused, you liked 5.4? Because 5.4 is in the vein of what I've been rooting to get back though it was the epitome of incinerate spam. it was actually pretty much identical to Highmaul as well except IIRC we used supremacy in highmaul and didn't have KJC but otherwise same spec.

- - - Updated - - -



When it had more depth yes, not necessarily more spells.

Destruction has more spells now than it had the last 2 xpacs, but its far less fun for me (and it seems many others). They almost systematically removed all the specs depth and what's left is pretty damned dull.

I suppose to each their own. I could go through each of your points and provide empirical examples from my experience to contradict you, but I feel your experiences may be too nuanced as well? I mean what kind of threshold are you measuring against? Mythics? Heroics? I am the only other lock in my 25 man raid group (the other is Aff) and while the aff beats me more often than not I am most of the time top 5 which really is all I can ask for. On fight's like coven if you have the right legendaries / talent choices and mindful use of cds (i.e. pairing SH with Havoc and Lessons and Life Tap and Sindorai for 55% increased dmg on two targets - if you have full shards that's massive damage) anyone can be competitive.

I don't know how long you have been destroing but I have been since BC and you just learn the ins and outs of what it takes to not just be a good but great destruction warlock. I am not saying I am the best or am some god like dest. lock - I do know my class very well though and pull better numbers than popular belief / sims / general consensus would have you believe.

I will admit / acknowledge that the overall skill and abilities of your raid group matter. I am of but a handful that carry our raid so I know that makes a difference, if I was raided with equally geared / skilled players I bet my numbers and outlook would be different.

[Lucrece]

*shrug* I like the portals and rain of infernals; I just think the implementation sucks. One is rng when it should be like the druid moon cycle. The other should have been a separate button and a 5 min cd.

I really don’t want a destro where what we’re casting 99% of the time is incinerate, immo, and cb. I want to feel like Gul’dan and Kil’jaeden and have a variety of fel and shadow spells to chain and combo.

Opening rifts from the twisting nether where a barrage of spells flew into the opponent was cool. I just need control over it. Rain of fire should not be a shard spender. FnB or cataclysm should be baseline.

[Baconeggcheese]

@crimsonhead Mythic raiding predominately. That whole conversation is in the context of mythic.


@Lucrece I don't enjoy spamming a very limited number of spells either, I think legion had it about right with the # of spells. My problem is how the damage is allocated and the mechanics of those spells. Imo Mop destro was an amazing baseline from which to add things, it had room to add spells to the rotation because a lot of it was filler but where the spells were relative to each other was spot on. What it needed was breaking up those incinerate casts with extra spells / mechanics, what it didn't need was filling that space up with watered down CB's.

The idea behind the infernals is fun, the way its implemented is horrendous for the spec. Having any significant chunk of your damage tied to a 10 minute cd is bad in the first place, worse yet is that it was guardians which is horrendous.

The portals.... I'll forever not understand why the scepter wasn't given to demo since the lore of the scepter is that it ripped portals open that demons came flooding through. It would have been such a better mechanic for demo to have random demons popping out of portals ripped open by the staff than whatever energy we're supposedly summoning with them.

They do look cool though, I'll give them that. Making them cycle doesn't really fix their problem though. Destro doesn't need extra dots like that, we have 2 DoT specs we don't need destro's CD's between infernals and portals to also just be dots.

[Lucrece]

@crimsonhead Mythic raiding predominately. That whole conversation is in the context of mythic.


@Lucrece I don't enjoy spamming a very limited number of spells either, I think legion had it about right with the # of spells. My problem is how the damage is allocated and the mechanics of those spells. Imo Mop destro was an amazing baseline from which to add things, it had room to add spells to the rotation because a lot of it was filler but where the spells were relative to each other was spot on. What it needed was breaking up those incinerate casts with extra spells / mechanics, what it didn't need was filling that space up with watered down CB's.

The idea behind the infernals is fun, the way its implemented is horrendous for the spec. Having any significant chunk of your damage tied to a 10 minute cd is bad in the first place, worse yet is that it was guardians which is horrendous.

The portals.... I'll forever not understand why the scepter wasn't given to demo since the lore of the scepter is that it ripped portals open that demons came flooding through. It would have been such a better mechanic for demo to have random demons popping out of portals ripped open by the staff than whatever energy we're supposedly summoning with them.

They do look cool though, I'll give them that. Making them cycle doesn't really fix their problem though. Destro doesn't need extra dots like that, we have 2 DoT specs we don't need destro's CD's between infernals and portals to also just be dots.

Yup, a 10 min cd with a huge damage component sunk to it sucks so much, and they already had similar feedback from DK's with army of the undead prior to introducing such a shit implementation.

What's worse, it was such an awful implementation because unlike Sindragosa's Fury, it isn't its own button for some retarded reason. So we were directly excluded from gaining a spell interrupt via grimoire of supremacy, and we couldn't use the infernal stun liberally as it was tied to proccing the damn thing.

Making it a 3-5 min cd removes such a huge amount of investment into it while still making for a strong cd that can not only apply to a single target (unlike the doomguard, which is why I hate the doomguard as a cd to begin with), but cleaves well enough to also satisfy a cd that scales to multiple targets. Hell, if they wanted to keep the doomguard, why not make it an 8 second guardian that hits like a truck and in the presence of multiple targets does a chaos wave attack, voila, our capacity to burst multiple targets doesn't suck ass. The pet command should be redirecting guardians as well, but whatever.

My rationale for the moon cycle for the portals is so I know what portal I'm going to get, so I can judge what's the best time to use it, i.e. don't get a damn flame portal on an elite add that only lives for 10 seconds. Flame portal looks cool, but making it such a long dot is just the epitome of dumb.

I'd settle for a cycle between an instant cast chaos bolt (emergency mobile burst), a 6 sec shadowfel bolt barrage for strong ST, and a flame rift that does a channel demonfire style cleave/aoe spell. It would be a 25-30 sec cd per charge and would basically give some form of damage complement. Or anything cool visually, I'm open to any redesign so long as we get interesting additional spells with visual flair.

I'm just annoyed that I look at the m+ from method on BRH world record, and even with the "OMG OP AFF" there is a fire mage in there doing monstrous burst damage, beating the afflock on all bosses, and doing more aoe than the afflock on half the dungeon. Same goes for the marksmanship hunter.

Destro warlock should be a high octane burst machine, but compared to a fire mage I don't feel like I have that moment of destructive outburst. I think fire mage should retain its aoe king status, while destro should still be king of burst cd's alongside marksmanship hunters and shamans.

[Baconeggcheese]

Making it a 3-5 min cd

3 minute CD's tend to line up horrendously with fights. The CD is simply too long for it be up when mechanics tend to happen (which is usually more in the 45s - 2 minute range) they're also guardians, which again is freaking terrible. Personally I don't want guardians to have anything to do with my damage.

The idea of the infernals is neat, just honestly have no interest in seeing it be part of the spec. If I had to have it, I'd probably want it to replace rain of fire either baseline or as a talent. It'd allow it to basically be the same kind of aoe except it'd follow the targets around which would solve the issue with RoF. Could make it summon an infernal per shard spent and you can dump all 5 at once, and hopefully with lower generation, so then we'd not have to worry about overlapping the things. (And or they could make a like "reinforce" mechanic where when they're out instead of summoning more instead it just powered up what was there by rolling in the new damage and increasing the duration)

My rationale for the moon cycle for the portals is so I know what portal I'm going to get, so I can judge what's the best time to use it, i.e. don't get a damn flame portal on an elite add that only lives for 10 seconds. Flame portal looks cool, but making it such a long dot is just the epitome of dumb.

I get the idea, its been floated around a ton.

The issue isn't the unpredictability though, its the mechanic entirely. If you had the cycle what would happen is you'd be forced to either sit on the portal until the opportune moment which is a damage loss if it caps or toss them out sub-optimally. Neither helps the issue, its just a bad mechanic for the spec frankly.

It'd make sense on a dot spec like demo / aff, and it would have been super fitting for demo spawning random demons. It'd still have the issue, but at least on a dot spec you're already expecting that.

Destro warlock should be a high octane burst machine

I agree, but mechanics like the infernals and portals are contradictory to that goal, because they are dots.

Unless they shortened the max time they take to do damage drastically, they're always going to take away from your burst and turn it into sustained damage.

[Lucrece]

I can agree with all those points. I'm more married to the visuals than I am to the current design. If those can be morphed to suit a burst playstyle, I'm fine with it. I'll let people far better than me deal with the details of skill design and coherence. For me, class and spec choice has always been a matter of aesthetics first.

It's quite honestly why I've still preferred to main destro even with its current issues to swapping over to affliction. Besides the artifact itself, affliction looks and plays like ass. Whereas a similar dot spec like shadow priest feels like a blast thanks to void form, void torrent, auspicious spirits, and the spell animation updates alongside the tentacle and sphere of insanity visual procs.

I do mythics, but never in the cutting edge, so even when I'm pressured by raidmates I've never felt the need to play anything that I don't like aesthetically. I'd rather they kick me and I find something else where I can play what pleases me, which is ultimately the point of a game for me.

I still think its important to not divorce my destro warlock from demons or shadow magics entirely (shadowfury originated with us, after all, as did shadowburn). I don't want to visually just be a green fire mage. I have to legitimately feel as a lord of demons with corrupted fel fire. Summoning feels so core to the whole idea of warlock, as does soul magics, curses, fel flames, etc.

Hopefully with the visual revamp and some kit revisions in BfA they'll better nail down the theme of the warlock as a class with some spec accents instead of the idea that each spec is an entirely separate class imo.

[Nazmina]

3 minute CD's tend to line up horrendously with fights. The CD is simply too long for it be up when mechanics tend to happen (which is usually more in the 45s - 2 minute range) they're also guardians, which again is freaking terrible. Personally I don't want guardians to have anything to do with my damage.

The idea of the infernals is neat, just honestly have no interest in seeing it be part of the spec. If I had to have it, I'd probably want it to replace rain of fire either baseline or as a talent. It'd allow it to basically be the same kind of aoe except it'd follow the targets around which would solve the issue with RoF. Could make it summon an infernal per shard spent and you can dump all 5 at once, and hopefully with lower generation, so then we'd not have to worry about overlapping the things. (And or they could make a like "reinforce" mechanic where when they're out instead of summoning more instead it just powered up what was there by rolling in the new damage and increasing the duration)

I think replacing rain of fire with infernals would be a little much, it'd reduce the impact of summoning them thematically. I think they would work best as a AOE cd, 2-3min. Maybe steal the idea from cataclysm have them continuously apply immolate to all targets while they are alive. Only have them last like 6-10 seconds max depending on tuning. They also seriosuly need a visual update for both their impact, pulsating dmg (which currently has no visual) and probably a good explosion death animation followed by disintegrating their corpses so they don't clutter up the boss.

I get the idea, its been floated around a ton.

The issue isn't the unpredictability though, its the mechanic entirely. If you had the cycle what would happen is you'd be forced to either sit on the portal until the opportune moment which is a damage loss if it caps or toss them out sub-optimally. Neither helps the issue, its just a bad mechanic for the spec frankly.

It'd make sense on a dot spec like demo / aff, and it would have been super fitting for demo spawning random demons. It'd still have the issue, but at least on a dot spec you're already expecting that.

Yeah, if the portals opened up and a demon came out and cast the spell the rift would have, it would have been a perfect fit for demo. I think instead the destro shoulder effect should have been the baseline function with rifts. Empowering us instead of doing dmg. But the randomness of them would have to go. I think back to how awesome double darksoul was in MoP and WoD, being able to plan out your shards and wait for the perfect moment during trinkets or boss weakness phases to blow everything without letting a cd go to waste. I think rifts should have captured that sort of gameplay, having some ability with multiple charges that buffs our dmg or interacts with our other spells somehow that we can save for the right moment.

In general for destro I'm not happy with all the rng they put into the spec for legion. Its not as bad as on release but we still have a lot of random soul shard procs. Our mastery is still dumb, high mastery hits feel like how hard our spells should normally hit and low to mid procs feel weak. A lot of the random shards are tied to legendaries and our artifact which is going away, but it remains to be seen if they will bake those random shards in. I much prefered MoP destro where we had complete control over our dmg and its application.

- - - Updated - - -

I still think its important to not divorce my destro warlock from demons or shadow magics entirely (shadowfury originated with us, after all, as did shadowburn). I don't want to visually just be a green fire mage. I have to legitimately feel as a lord of demons with corrupted fel fire. Summoning feels so core to the whole idea of warlock, as does soul magics, curses, fel flames, etc.

I like the idea of demon minions and summoning as a warlock, but our demons in general need an overhaul. They generally suffer from 4 problems.

1. All our main demons are little more than fire and forget dots, even for demo there is almost no interaction except empowerment and felstorm.

2. Pet AI is still terrible and for warlocks it's made worse by the pitiful mobility of our pets compared to mages (casting while moving elemental) or dk/hunter(charge/jump with speed buff)

3. No choice and weak customization, with legion blizzard revived the cata era rules of 1 specific pet for each spec which reduces our utility and ability to choose. And while I don't expect them to give us the hunter treatment, the least they could do is give us the ability to use different colors of the same demon which already exist.

4. Mediocre utility, imp has self dispel, felhunter has int and off dispel, succubus has CC, and void walker has tanking. But all of these things are pretty weak considering we can only have one a time. Several classes and specs have both an interrupt and offensive dispel where as our off dispel has a fairly long CD. Succubus CC is godawful with cast time, channel, breaks on dmg, and cd equal to its duration AND only works on humanoids. VW is incredibly weak as a tank to the point he feels useless.

[Challenge]

I like the idea of demon minions and summoning as a warlock, but our demons in general need an overhaul. They generally suffer from 4 problems.

1. All our main demons are little more than fire and forget dots, even for demo there is almost no interaction except empowerment and felstorm.

2. Pet AI is still terrible and for warlocks it's made worse by the pitiful mobility of our pets compared to mages (casting while moving elemental) or dk/hunter(charge/jump with speed buff)

3. No choice and weak customization, with legion blizzard revived the cata era rules of 1 specific pet for each spec which reduces our utility and ability to choose. And while I don't expect them to give us the hunter treatment, the least they could do is give us the ability to use different colors of the same demon which already exist.

4. Mediocre utility, imp has self dispel, felhunter has int and off dispel, succubus has CC, and void walker has tanking. But all of these things are pretty weak considering we can only have one a time. Several classes and specs have both an interrupt and offensive dispel where as our off dispel has a fairly long CD. Succubus CC is godawful with cast time, channel, breaks on dmg, and cd equal to its duration AND only works on humanoids. VW is incredibly weak as a tank to the point he feels useless.

I agree with all except 2. Nothing is wrong with PET AI but I would still increase their passive movement speed by something like 10%.

1. All our main demons are little more than fire and forget dots, even for demo there is almost no interaction except empowerment and felstorm.

'

Do you want something like that old destro talent that caused the imps basic firebolts to sometimes make your soulfire instant? They could do that but they would need to streamline all 4 of the main pets offence capabilities such as attack speed. Or would you rather more stuff like the felguards felstorm, active abilities?

3. No choice and weak customization, with legion blizzard revived the cata era rules of 1 specific pet for each spec which reduces our utility and ability to choose. And while I don't expect them to give us the hunter treatment, the least they could do is give us the ability to use different colors of the same demon which already exist.

Yeah, at this point in the game its dumb to be hardlocked to a specific demon. DPS wise, the imp, the succubus, and the felhunter should all deal literally equal DPS. And they should increase the utility they provide to make choosing one either a complete choice or encounter specific.



Imp- Anti CC pet
Ranged
Magical cleanse for itself and the warlock master
CC and snare break for itself and the warlock master

Sucubus- Anti Melee pet
Knockback
Make the seduction also not hard CC the casting succubus so its actually useful
Add a passive mini movement slow to its auto attacks, say 25%or make it stack overtime to a maximum of 50%

Felhunter- Anti caster pet
Offensive purge
Interupt
Mortal Wounds debuff


Voidwalker- Tanky pet
Taunt
A self heal for itself and the warlock master

Felguard- Demo pet
Disarm
Stun


A shift in power
Buff the imp to basically be a second (or only in pve) trinket for the warlock.
Give the imp mini heal to the voidwalker.
Give the felguard mortal wounds debuff to the felhunter.
Give the old voidwalker disarm to the felguard
Just add a new snare to the succubus

As long as the 3 main pets deal equal damage and are equally as sturdy, that would make them all equally viable in both dungeons and pvp content and for raids it would be an encounter specific based on the needs of the fight. A disarm for demo only would also be some unique spec specific utility

[valcrist]

Please keep in mind guys it’s still super early and also... big star squish is coming with this expansion so what might seem like a nerf is really just damage adjustments due to the stat squishes

[Nazmina]

Do you want something like that old destro talent that caused the imps basic firebolts to sometimes make your soulfire instant? They could do that but they would need to streamline all 4 of the main pets offence capabilities such as attack speed. Or would you rather more stuff like the felguards felstorm, active abilities?

It'd be difficult to think of a way to make pets feel useful for our dps without just providing a passive buff to us in some way. I was just thinking now about giving each pet a situational ability that boosts our dmg.

Like for example, the felhunter grants him self or us, or both, a damage boost when he interrupts or dispel something. Like sephuz or the old rude interrupt ability warrior's had, but baseline. Would make him an even more ideal pet against caster enemies and encounters.

Succubus could have her seduce and knockback apply a debuff to successfully cced targets causing them to take increase dmg from our next one spell (snapshots for dots) making her ideal for any enemy that can be cced, such as boss encounters with adds you need to knock back. (also they should make her knock back directional like typhoon since point knockbacks are garbage, blizzard is over due for new types of ground targeting indicators anyway).

Imp is one I have an interesting but difficult to balance idea for. Drawing on the idea of imps as a sort of classical fantasy familiar let him have the ability to cast one of our spells independently of us. Say for destro he could cast immolate at the same power and duration as our immolate but on a cooldown; it doesn't stack but he could cast it to refresh while we are casting something else, or apply to another target while we apply to primary.

Or going even further, give him the ability to copy our next spell cast and store it to use later, sorta based on the old DK simulacrum ability but on your self. Say again using destro as an example: you could use his ability then cast your chaos bolt, now the next time you use his ability he casts chaos bolt. However it would still use your shards at the time he casts it, so its not a free spell but would let you double up for when you need burst or get more casts under cds or during increased boss dmg taken. His copy ability would have a cooldown of course (and seperate pvp balancing). You can extend the idea to the rest of the specs, being able to duplicate a spell cast to get more burst or spread dots faster. Any spell he casts would have same limitations as you do, so if he copied fear you could still only have 1 target feared at a time.

Granted something like that would be complex and need a lot of balancing so imp doesn't become overpowered or the default pet pick, but since its not free spells it shouldn't be too large of a dps increase.

Voidwalker is difficult to think of for a dmg benefit that fits his archetype. Maybe give him a moderate to long cooldown that lets him take all dmg you would take for a short time but he takes 100% additional dmg, if he dies he explodes doing significant aoe dmg around him. Turns him into a sort of bomb you can detonate by soaking mechanics. Of course that seems like it would be too exploitable and might encourage warlocks to take soak unnecessary dmg or pet twist during VW cds. It might also make the warlock too tanky, maybe having his ablitiy also consume your soul leech shield or add a short cooldown to your defensive's each time you use it.

All of these ideas are just my first thoughts and might be too complex or difficult to balance; but the general idea is to have pets give situational dmg boosts so you use them like tools depending on the encounter, strat, and/or playstyle. They would actually feel desirable when you can make use of their abilities without just having them give us passive buffs like the old soulfire proc and stuff like that.