5.4 to 6.0 Warlock Class Overview

[Woz]

With 6.0 around the corner let’s take a peek at some of the changes coming to a Warlock near you. What’s going to be covered you ask?

• Everyday Warlock
• Affliction
• Demonology
• Destruction

Let’s jump in with some of the changes to your everyday Warlock, shall we?

• Hit and Expertise is no longer! This doesn’t only apply to Warlocks, but for everyone however it is an important change since any pieces you have with Hit or Expertise are going to be converted to either Haste, Mastery or Crit. For example Untainted Guardian's Chain in it's current state has Hit and Mastery. Once 6.0 rolls around Untainted Guardian's Chain turns into Crit and Mastery. Most if not all the items that are Hit + Mastery/Haste is going to turn into Crit + Mastery/Haste. The interesting thing about this change is that Spirit cloth items are actually turning into an interesting gear choice for Warlocks since they are turning into Mastery (in place of Spirit) + Crit/Haste, for example Robes of the Riven Dreams on live compared to Robes of the Riven Dreams in 6.0.
• DoT snapshotting has been completely removed from the game! Instead all periodic effects (that would be DoTs for us) calculate their effects dynamically on every tick, this includes all damage multipliers; critical chance, haste, mastery, everything. Think back to how you used your DoTs in Cataclysm and you're on the right track to thinking of how to think about your spell casts. But don't forget about Pandemic, it too was removed however in its place all classes get a modified version of the spell which simply gives you the same effect Pandemic did except instead of up to 50% duration it is up to 30% duration (ie: instead of refreshing a 10s total duration DoT at 5 or less seconds and not lose that other 5 seconds; you have a refresh window at 3 or less seconds).
• A number of spells have been removed and you'll need to find new homes for keybinds since you'll inevitably have some holes on your bars. Curse of Exhaustion, Curse of the Elements, Curse of Enfeeblement, Twilight Ward and Fel Flame have been removed for all Warlocks and a number of spec only abilities have been either removed or replaced, but we'll get into those a bit later on. Fel Armor's full effect has been merged into the effects of Blood Pact and Healthstones have been drastically changed to recover a static amount of health instead of % based and can no longer be a critical effect. But don't worry, Demonic Gateway has been changed so you can use it once every 90 seconds instead of every 60 seconds. Some other changes include the removal (again) of Demonic Breath and the act of putting Howl of Terror back on the talent tree in place of it (again) instead of having it baseline.

Many pet abilities have either been removed or changed;

• Succubus: Seduction and Shivarra: Mesmerize now have a 30-second cooldown.
• Voidwalker/Voidlord got its Disarm removed.
• Sear Magic’s cooldown has been increased to 30 seconds (up from 20 seconds).
• Observer: Optic Blast now only deals damage and interrupts spell casting. The ability no longer Silences the enemy. And Felhunter got the same treatment with Spell Lock.
• Terrorguard no longer casts Terrifying Roar when it dies.

And some other talents were slightly modified;

• Unbound Will’s cooldown has been increased to 2 minutes (up from 1 minute).
• Mortal Coil now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
• Blood Horror’s cooldown has been increased to 60 seconds (up from 30 seconds) and now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
• Kil’jaeden’s Cunning has been redesigned. Kil'jaeden's Cunning calls upon the cunning of Kil'jaeden to permit movement while casting Warlock spells. This spell may be cast while casting other spells and lasts 8 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown. Essentially giving us Spiritwalker's Grace, another spell that was changed back to it's original iteration.

If we go a bit more in depth for each spec there are some other changes that you can look forward to. Let's take a stab at Affliction first.

• You're in for quite a change in the Affliction department. The most impactful of these changes is the loss of DoT snapshotting which is where Affliction gets most of it's gusto. This not only changes how you play multitarget but also changes how you play in a single target scenario. This in depth look at the "Soul Swap Technique" ceases to be a thing not only because of the removal of snapshotting but also the changes to Soul Swap in general. Currently in a live setting Soul Swap has no cost outside of the addition of Soulburn where it costs 1 Soul Shard. When 6.0 launches Soul Swap itself has a cost of 1 Soul Shard effectively killing how you were able to spread your DoTs as we know it. You're going back to Cataclysm style dotting where hardcasting them is a thing of the future and Soul Swap will be for fast target swaps.
• Malefic Grasp is no longer and Drain Soul takes it's place as the filler full time, there's no more execute-esque spell for Affliction instead you just Drain Soul all the time. For 6.0 there won't be any additional effect sub 20% but come WoD you'll be happy to hear you will have the perk that provides that little buffer sub 20% back so in the end you'll still have it. Another thing with Drain Soul is that you'll see a buffer from Malefic Grasp in respect to the secondary effect you get "Every 1 sec, when Malefic Grasp deals damage, it causes all of your other periodic Affliction damage effects to instantly deal 30% of their normal periodic damage." which changes to 40% with Drain Soul.
• Haunt's effect has been reduced from 35% to 30%.
• As far as rotation goes nothing is going to drastically change for you here when we see 6.0 launch aside from how you are applying your DoTs. On a pull for example you'll be manually applying your DoT's (unless your guild is really nice to you and gives you a 22s pull timer for the "5th shard" on your opener) vs using SB:SS since your total cost on an opening pull would be 3 shards (one for prepull Haunt, 2 for SB:SS and then another Haunt very soon afterwards leaving you with 0 shards).
• Soulburn also has lost some of it's extra spells that it can affect as well including Drain Life, Health Funnel and Unending Breath.
• A slight change for Seed of Corruption as well;
• Seed of Corruption and Soulburn: Seed of Corruption can no longer both apply to the same target.
• And we lose the ability to cast Rain of Fire (who did anyway) and instead only have Seed of Corruption as our AoE ability.
• In terms of stat priorities you'll want to use Haste = Mastery > Crit and since there's no such a thing as a breakpoint (as we knew them as) now feel free to use as much Haste as you can get!
• Lastly just for being Affliction you'll see a natural 5% increase to Haste.

Leaving the realm of dotting and entering the realm of fire and Destruction we see some additional changes here.

• First off instead of Harvest Life as a talent we get something new to further buff Ember Tap called Searing Flames, essentially giving your more healing for less shards (50% more healing per cast for half of an Ember)
• Shadowburn spam is a thing of the past since it no longer generates mana back when used.
• Rain of Fire as of right now is doing quite a bit of damage again, even at 90 for 6.0 release. Look out for changes to this spell but as of writing this you're set to put it into your rotation again.
• Just for being Destruction you'll get a nice little boost to your Crit stat of 5%.
• Otherwise Destruction will remain the same in both rotation (aside from the addition of Rain of Fire again) and stat priorities so not much to worry about here if you're a Destruction aficionado. As a general rule you'll continue to see Crit = Mastery >> Haste for Destruction until WoD launches.

And last but most certainly not least Demonology. A spec that has been ever changing since MoP will continue to change but not nearly as much as we saw going into MoP.

• Hand of Gul’dan no longer snares the enemy.
• Chaos Wave now reduces enemy movement speed by 50% by default.
• Grimoire of Supremacy pets now generates 20% more Demonic Fury.
• All your pets will deal 20% more damage, shifting even more damage into them.
• The Demonology Mastery, Demonologist, was slightly changed. It now passively increases all damage by 6% regardless of form. While in Metamorphosis, it further increases the damage of Touch of Chaos, Chaos Wave , Doom, Immolation Aura, and Soul Fire while by 12%.
• We get a different Grimoire to replace Grimoire of Sacrifice called Grimoire of Synergy;
• When the Warlock or their demon deals damage, there is a chance to trigger Demonic Synergy, granting the other one 15% increased damage for 15 seconds.
• Hand of Gul’dan weaving is no longer needed with the removal of snapshotting however you still want to stack your Hand of Gul’dan charges/debuffs you just no longer need to stance dance into Metamorphosis before the second Hand of Gul’dan connects with the target to gain the Mastery from Metamorphosis.
• For being Demonology you will gain a passive 5% extra Mastery.
• As far as your rotation goes nothing much will change for you aside from the already mentioned Hand of Gul’dan weaving.
• And lastly in terms of stat priorities for Demonology you'll see a shift towards Multistrike (only inflated because we have none) > Mastery >> Haste = Crit for 6.0 at 90.

That about sums everything up in terms of what you need to know for your pre-WoD patch that's coming up in just a couple of short weeks. Keep in mind the changes listed here could potentially change at any time depending on how Blizzard feels. If you have any questions or if there's any need for clarity or if I even left something out (hey, we're all human) don't hesitate to drop some replies!

[Darkoblivien]

This is exactly what I was looking for, cheers for the update

[Deleted]

What are the best specs until WOD launches? Demo and Destru?
I have read many opinions but still not sure what i have to spec.

[xskarma]

What are the best specs until WOD launches? Demo and Destru?
I have read many opinions but still not sure what i have to spec.

Last sims had the specs mostly equal, but then Affliction got 10% nerfs to UA and Agony, so it's highly likely that unless a fight is really focused on multidotting that you will not get the best results out of Affliction.

Personally I'm going with Demo/Destro.

[Santoisms]

Last sims had the specs mostly equal, but then Affliction got 10% nerfs to UA and Agony, so it's highly likely that unless a fight is really focused on multidotting that you will not get the best results out of Affliction.

Personally I'm going with Demo/Destro.

Also keep in mind that simcraft is not 100% accurate and for single target Patchwerk style fights, Xskarma is just giving you an idea is all.

[Woz]

Im sticking with Demo/Destro as well, heavy mastery.

[Ant Man]

Thanks for doing this. Will see how bad this affects me, I do wish they would have updated our pets looks too. Did they even touch druid forms?

[Santoisms]

Thanks for doing this. Will see how bad this affects me, I do wish they would have updated our pets looks too. Did they even touch druid forms?

Druid forms are on the list they said, they still need a new Meta form + a female Meta form is a highly requested cosmetic feature.

[xuros]

So with the way things stand on live atm with the Demo nerfs today. Is destro the new king of the hill for us locks or is Demo still worth rolling with?

[Santoisms]

So with the way things stand on live atm with the Demo nerfs today. Is destro the new king of the hill for us locks or is Demo still worth rolling with?

I'm testing Demo in some Heroic SoO, but of course the pool I'm doing it with is a bit undergeared / underskilled. I'll have to see tonight when we do Mythic.

[xuros]

Wow ok im hating the changes. Last week i was competing for tops on all fights, tonight we had palys top, hunter all after them, then the warriors, then the locks. sigh fuck you blizzard!

[xskarma]

Wow ok im hating the changes. Last week i was competing for tops on all fights, tonight we had palys top, hunter all after them, then the warriors, then the locks. sigh fuck you blizzard!

3 weeks of balancing opportunitites left, and then probably the first week of it being live as well, when they find out how things work at level 100 in dungeons. Don't even for a minute think balancing for the tier is complete.

[Santoisms]

3 weeks of balancing opportunitites left, and then probably the first week of it being live as well, when they find out how things work at level 100 in dungeons. Don't even for a minute think balancing for the tier is complete.

Celestalon tweeted today it was only for 6.0, he would make changes if he sees fit. So he knows he broke Warlocks. Okie.

[xuros]

3 weeks of balancing opportunitites left, and then probably the first week of it being live as well, when they find out how things work at level 100 in dungeons. Don't even for a minute think balancing for the tier is complete.

Yeah i know, just fucking frustrates me to go from being a top producer to middle and lower in my raid. all of the locks fell. SUcks ass. Hope that child does something right for a change.

[Wardley]

Just a slightly random question, the warlocks in our guild are saying that can't use soulstones anymore as a battle rez.

I've not seen anything about any changes to soulstones though - are they mistaken? Maybe they just kept trying to use a soulstone in a raid after the maximum battle rez's for the raid had already been consumed?

[Woz]

Just a slightly random question, the warlocks in our guild are saying that can't use soulstones anymore as a battle rez.

I've not seen anything about any changes to soulstones though - are they mistaken? Maybe they just kept trying to use a soulstone in a raid after the maximum battle rez's for the raid had already been consumed?

It's the exact same as all the other battle rez's. The same thing changed for us as it did for everyone else.

[Junichi]

I think with the buffs today Destro is solid in regards to single target and Demo will be our go to aoe.

[Gihelle]

I think with the buffs today Destro is solid in regards to single target and Demo will be our go to aoe.

Destruction definitely is not an option for ST, we're losing a lot of ember regen without rain of fire even on single target and unless you can start every fight at 4 embers, it's generally not gonna be good.

[Alarinth]

Will be unsticking this thread in a few weeks, as it has served it's purpose.

[Drakile]

I thought I would read over the changes for fun, even though we have been living them for the past few months, I don't think I have been this sad in a while. Gonna go lifetap a bit call me when 6.1 gets here