8.0 Warlock changes from Beta

[Baconeggcheese]

What Demo Soul Fire is? Any description? Is it auto-crit, what is the coefficient, what is the relation to Soul Fire talent for Destruction (placeholder maybe)?

It doesn't auto-crit, it does around 1400 dmg on a hit at 111. Its purely for the extra shard gen (generates 2 shards)

No relation to destro talent at the moment, I'd honestly be surprised if the destro talent sticks around. It really serves no purpose in destruction's kit, it just saves you 1 shard every 45 seconds and does a little more damage than a chaosbolt. With demo getting soulfire again (and talents to go with it) it'd be strange to leave it in destro's kit.

[Deleted]

It doesn't auto-crit, it does around 1400 dmg on a hit at 111. Its purely for the extra shard gen (generates 2 shards)

No relation to destro talent at the moment, I'd honestly be surprised if the destro talent sticks around. It really serves no purpose in destruction's kit, it just saves you 1 shard every 45 seconds and does a little more damage than a chaosbolt. With demo getting soulfire again (and talents to go with it) it'd be strange to leave it in destro's kit.

Thats only your opinion. Not everyone likes to do damage as destruction with Chaos Bolt alone. You might not find a purpose for Soulfire, others might. Not to mention, it is a big burst dmg you can use right of the bat and quite a bit easier, not as Chaos Bolt, where you have to build up more Soul Shards. In PvP, other people also have to think if they want to kick Chaos Bolt or Soulfire. They cannot just kick any Chaos Bolt to screw Destruction dmg over. And you also don't have to choose this talent, if it doesn't fit your preferred playstyle. I fucking hate these kind of demands. "Oh, i think its useless, so i demand that it is removed, because my opinion is correct of course. If i don't see a way to use it well, no one will or can."

[FelPlague]

BTW i dont know if its been said here but power siphon with instant cast molten literally means you can just have a rotation of hand of guldan, power siphon, soul fire soul fire, hand of guldan, soul fire sou lfire, hand of guldan, power siphon, soul fire soul fire, and of guldan, soul fire, soul fire, hand of guldan power siphon


so on so forth, literally you never need to use anything but that ,cause power siphon changes 4 soul shards into 8.
allowing you to at one more cost get your imps back, but you get 4 things of soul fire for pretty much free.

[mkultra55]

Is Demonic Empowerment still there in the Alpha?

[Gaidax]

Thats only your opinion. Not everyone likes to do damage as destruction with Chaos Bolt alone. You might not find a purpose for Soulfire, others might. Not to mention, it is a big burst dmg you can use right of the bat and quite a bit easier, not as Chaos Bolt, where you have to build up more Soul Shards. In PvP, other people also have to think if they want to kick Chaos Bolt or Soulfire. They cannot just kick any Chaos Bolt to screw Destruction dmg over. And you also don't have to choose this talent, if it doesn't fit your preferred playstyle. I fucking hate these kind of demands. "Oh, i think its useless, so i demand that it is removed, because my opinion is correct of course. If i don't see a way to use it well, no one will or can."

We have already been in this when Chaos Bolt was a talent, basically a slightly more powerful Incinerate on CD that could pierce shields ooOoOoOOOooo...

Soul Fire as it looks in Destruction talent tree is almost surely a placeholder, otherwise it's really lame. Might as well just give Chaos Bolt +x% damage there and it would be same shit and one place on bars saved.

If they really want to give us another nuke there, they should at least make it different and not virtually copy paste of Chaos Bolt, just slightly more powerful and on CD. CDF is a good example where it is different enough from Chaos Bolt to be worth of being a spell on its own.

I bet it's placeholder.

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As a side note, I am completely chill about Destruction being all about big huge Chaos Bolts, it is cool IMO, having this fat, costly spell that hurts shit bad and being all around overclocking it to high heaven.

I think Destruction was too watered down in Legion with pets and shit, so I'm cool with it being a bit more on nuking side of things instead of a soup of stuff.

[Orwell7]

Thats only your opinion. Not everyone likes to do damage as destruction with Chaos Bolt alone. You might not find a purpose for Soulfire, others might. Not to mention, it is a big burst dmg you can use right of the bat and quite a bit easier, not as Chaos Bolt, where you have to build up more Soul Shards. In PvP, other people also have to think if they want to kick Chaos Bolt or Soulfire. They cannot just kick any Chaos Bolt to screw Destruction dmg over. And you also don't have to choose this talent, if it doesn't fit your preferred playstyle. I fucking hate these kind of demands. "Oh, i think its useless, so i demand that it is removed, because my opinion is correct of course. If i don't see a way to use it well, no one will or can."

Just look at the slightly bigger picture- the other options are Eradication and Flashover.
Erad gives 10% dmg for 7 sec after a CB, Flashover gives Conflag a 2nd charge.

Soulfire is what, a 4 second cast? ..

[Deleted]

Well the other thought process is that the coefficient is a placeholder, which to me is certainly logical since its a 4s cast on a 45s cooldown. If it was sat at 1200% sp then it could compete with the damage the other two talents will bring during that 45s cooldown and it saves you a shard. Kinda similar to the deep freeze when they had it doing damage to stun immune targets.

Personally i am hoping for a much more nuke focused destro as well, as i also feel that the spec has too many damage sources in legion thus watering it down a lot!! So i want those super hard hitting CB's with shitty filler damage al'a MoP, throw in a insane nuke on a 45s cooldown and i'll take that as well thanks!!

[Baconeggcheese]

BTW i dont know if its been said here but power siphon with instant cast molten literally means you can just have a rotation of hand of guldan, power siphon, soul fire soul fire, hand of guldan, soul fire sou lfire, hand of guldan, power siphon, soul fire soul fire, and of guldan, soul fire, soul fire, hand of guldan power siphon


so on so forth, literally you never need to use anything but that ,cause power siphon changes 4 soul shards into 8.
allowing you to at one more cost get your imps back, but you get 4 things of soul fire for pretty much free.

youre not taking the opportunity cost into account. Remember that youd be casting other spells in the space where youre going to now cast soulfires. It doesnt amount to 8 shards, itd be more like 3 - 5 depending on how long everything takesnto cast vs what you would have been casting.

Ill try it out after work though for science.

Thats only your opinion. Not everyone likes to do damage as destruction with Chaos Bolt alone. You might not find a purpose for Soulfire, others might. Not to mention, it is a big burst dmg you can use right of the bat and quite a bit easier, not as Chaos Bolt, where you have to build up more Soul Shards. In PvP, other people also have to think if they want to kick Chaos Bolt or Soulfire. They cannot just kick any Chaos Bolt to screw Destruction dmg over. And you also don't have to choose this talent, if it doesn't fit your preferred playstyle. I fucking hate these kind of demands. "Oh, i think its useless, so i demand that it is removed, because my opinion is correct of course. If i don't see a way to use it well, no one will or can."

What?

Youve addressed nothing I said and instead put words in my mouth.

If they really want to give us
another nuke there, they should at least make it different and not virtually copy paste of Chaos Bolt, just slightly more powerful and on CD. CDF is a good example where it is different enough from Chaos Bolt to be worth of being a spell on its own.

Yeah it feels really awkward to use with cdf for that reason, the spell is just redundant.

As a side note, I am completely chill about Destruction being all about big huge Chaos Bolts, it is cool IMO, having this fat, costly spell that hurts shit bad and being all around overclocking it to high heaven.

I think Destruction was too watered down in Legion with pets and shit, so I'm cool with it being a bit more on nuking side of things instead of a soup of stuff.

Heres hoping, as of right now nothing has really changed. Hellfire attempts to address the issue with rof and movement but feels awkward to use and you have no aoe generation to sustain it. Beyond that nothing else really addresses anything or shifts damage around in a meaningful way.

[Gaidax]

Yeah it feels really awkward to use with cdf for that reason, the spell is just redundant.

OK, I am in your boat with that, I am also not a fan of that one, but at least there is an attempt at making it different and it is different enough from CB to make it.

Personally - that spell can burn in fire, I certainly won't complain if Chaos Bolt remains our one and only ultimate big ass nuke and whole Destruction would revolve around it.

[Baconeggcheese]

Well the other thought process is that the coefficient is a placeholder, which to me is certainly logical since its a 4s cast on a 45s cooldown. If it was sat at 1200% sp then it could compete with the damage the other two talents will bring during that 45s cooldown and it saves you a shard. Kinda similar to the deep freeze when they had it doing damage to stun immune targets.

Personally i am hoping for a much more nuke focused destro as well, as i also feel that the spec has too many damage sources in legion thus watering it down a lot!! So i want those super hard hitting CB's with shitty filler damage al'a MoP, throw in a insane nuke on a 45s cooldown and i'll take that as well thanks!!

My issue is I feel that nuke should be chaosbolt. I feel like having a second spell taking over that role of CB being thee nuke waters CB down and makes it feel worse to cast. Itd make that fancy new animation feel like its falling flat.

Id rather see a talent that brings that kind of damage to Cb instead.

[FelPlague]

youre not taking the opportunity cost into account. Remember that youd be casting other spells in the space where youre going to now cast soulfires. It doesnt amount to 8 shards, itd be more like 3 - 5 depending on how long everything takesnto cast vs what you would have been casting.

yes but it would still allow you a rotation of.
(soulshards, molten fury, imps)
Enter fight shadowbolt 4-0-0
guldan0-0-4
siphon 0-4-0
soulfire 2-3-0
soulfire 4-2-0
guldan 0-2-4
soulfire 2-1-4
soulfire 4-0-4
guldan 0-0-8
siphon 0-4-4
soulfire 2-3-4
soulfire 4-2-4
guldan 0-2-8
soulfire 2-1-8
soulfire 4-0-8
guldan 0-0-12

then rinse and repeat, and i think you could possibly be allways at 12 or 16 imps as remember that soulfire is instant cast (with that talent) and so is siphon, so guldan would be your only cast.
but with those 2 talents you could literally do that rotation, simply nothing but hand of guldan and dreadstalker, and if you really wanted you could replace a HoG every so often with other soul shard costing spells like yoru commander or your dreadstalkers.

but who knows this sillyness of non stop molten core procs could lead to simply skipping out on atleast dreadstalkers, andj ust non stop soulfire.

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Is Demonic Empowerment still there in the Alpha?

no. no it is not, its replacement is an Aoe spell that has a cooldown of (cant remember but atleast 1.5 minute) and increases current demons duration by 15 seconds.
so you will still try to get as many demons as possible into this, but it wont be every few seconds, just once in awhile.

[Warning]

My issue is I feel that nuke should be chaosbolt. I feel like having a second spell taking over that role of CB being thee nuke waters CB down and makes it feel worse to cast. Itd make that fancy new animation feel like its falling flat.

Id rather see a talent that brings that kind of damage to Cb instead.

I agree, the current soulfire graphic doesn't justify it being a bigger nuke than chaosbolt at all. I mainly hope that the baseline chaosbolt+conflag combo is sufficiently scary so destro PVP can be viable, purely CD based damage would suck.

[Lucrece]

Soulfire's graphics is obviously going to be updated, it's using the ancient animation from cata just like hellfire ffs.

Anyways destro should not be watered down with more nukes. Work channel demonfire appropriately with some update to its projectile size and destro will have a nice range of spells to use.

Maybe they could make channel demonfire castable on the move to help with destro's mobile casting issues as well.

Alternatively backdraft should be reworked so that it either reduces the cast time of chaosbolt or makes the next incinerate instant cast (2 instant incinerates with the talent).

[Baconeggcheese]

OK, I am in your boat with that, I am also not a fan of that one, but at least there is an attempt at making it different and it is different enough from CB to make it.

Personally - that spell can burn in fire, I certainly won't complain if Chaos Bolt remains our one and only ultimate big ass nuke and whole Destruction would revolve around it.

Yeah i kinda like cdf's animation but id do something completely different with it mechanically. I have no love for it in its current form, just having a spell like that that needs to be kept on cd isnt super engaging.

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Soulfire's graphics is obviously going to be updated, it's using the ancient animation from cata just like hellfire ffs.

Its already updated on demo, destros still uses the old animation. Just more things that make it seem like something they tried but arent following through on.

[Deleted]

Me too, this is going to just result in sitting on shards waiting for procs and doing massive burst by re-dotting 4xUA>DB, build shards back during DB cd and rinse repeat.

That's how destruction should be playing, not affliction, especially going by what they said in their watercooler.

So what that affliction has never been good at priority adds or short term burst, it has still remained one of the top tier raiding builds for every expansion regardless as it strengths lie elsewhere.

Anyone who has half a brain can see how much this talent will be broken scaling wise for affliction as the more gear you will get.

A spec isn't attractive if it's only strong in raids. The majority of the playerbase do not raid or only go into LFR - and the next expansion is placing even more emphasis on dungeons as progression (this makes sense since they are concentrating their efforts on most played content)

Raids might represent he "end game" in wow, or the pinnacle of content, or whatever, but many many players do not play it.

Affliction needs to be strong in dungeons and given that dungeons place a heavy emphasis on burst damage, AOE and single target, aff needs to be good at those.

For a consierable time it was hard to get into any LFG as affliction, because it performed so badly in normal/heroic/low key dungeons compared to dps classes that has on-demand burst backed with big cooldowns and which had strong pure single target damage

[Baconeggcheese]

remember that soulfire is instant cast (with that talent) and so is siphon, so guldan would be your only cast.

And dogs or any cds, youd also be trading dmg for mobility by making sf instant which wont always be what you want to do.

It could be interesting, ill def give it a go (though its hard since everything dies so fast. Need to get a char to org)

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A spec isn't attractive if it's only strong in raids. The majority of the playerbase do not raid or only go into LFR - and the next expansion is placing even more emphasis on dungeons as progression (this makes sense since they are concentrating their efforts on most played content)

Raids might represent he "end game" in wow, or the pinnacle of content, or whatever, but many many players do not play it.

Affliction needs to be strong in dungeons and given that dungeons place a heavy emphasis on burst damage, AOE and single target, aff needs to be good at those.

For a consierable time it was hard to get into any LFG as affliction, because it performed so badly in normal/heroic/low key dungeons compared to dps classes that has on-demand burst backed with big cooldowns and which had strong pure single target damage

Db doesnt really give aff that, it takes you 7 casts of setup + the db cast before it does damage. All it really does is make your shard spending very strict and scripted.

[FelPlague]

And dogs or any cds, youd also be trading dmg for mobility by making sf instant which wont always be what you want to do.

It could be interesting, ill def give it a go (though its hard since everything dies so fast. Need to get a char to org)

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Db doesnt really give aff that, it takes you 7 casts of setup + the db cast before it does damage. All it really does is make your shard spending very strict and scripted.

neither of the two talents work on the alpha btw so you cant test it, but the concept is there
also why would you be trading dmg for mobility? the whole reason you want soulfire instant is so you can get as many imops out as possible also to get rid of your cast time as you will be getting NON STOP molten core from this, siphon and the ones that die out.

[therealbowser]

It doesn't really matter if Lone Wolf style talents are better or worse. They just need to be close enough that they can be chosen or not chosen without feeling like they'd gain/lose a ton of damage for doing so. Most people don't need a 0.1% damage increase to progress, but when these talents start pushing into noticeable numbers people feel forced to take them so that they can be competitive.

I love talents that try to balance well enough that you can deviate for the sake of flavor or personal choices without feeling like you're gimping yourself. Lone Wolf, as far as I can tell right now, transcends into that area, while the talent for frost is only slightly better, making it viable to use the elemental if you prefer to do so.

[Baconeggcheese]

neither of the two talents work on the alpha btw so you cant test it, but the concept is there
also why would you be trading dmg for mobility? the whole reason you want soulfire instant is so you can get as many imops out as possible also to get rid of your cast time as you will be getting NON STOP molten core from this, siphon and the ones that die out.

Because all making it instant does is let you cast it while moving and you trade a different talent on the row for that.

[FelPlague]

Because all making it instant does is let you cast it while moving and you trade a different talent on the row for that.

uhh it also makes it instant, meaning you can get them out much faster then if you were having to cast it...
at instant you are only waiting on the gcd now instead of 1.X it has