Warlocks - simple changes, that can help us.

[Norzaki]

Since it was made clear that we will not see big mechanical/playstyle changes to warlocks in 7.1.5, I wanted to put up a thread where we can give a list of 2-3 simple changes, that doesn't touch removal of existing skill/introduction of new skill, but can help us with our current problems.

The goal is to provide some kind of community brain-storming that could be useful for blizzard developers/game designers.

When sending your post to this thread, please try to:
- put only suggestions for your main spec (ex. if you play demo/destro, put suggestion for the spec that you play most)
- suggestions shold not introduce a new skill or significant redesign of existing skill
- suggestions should be short (at most 20 words)
- it should be at most 3 suggestions per post;
- If you want to add your explanation to why you think that suggestion will help us with our current problems, add it after the list.


- - - My suggestions for affliction - - -

Affliction:
1. add out off-combat generation of reap stacks;
2. increase rate of in-combat generation of reap stack;
---
Explanation:
I believe that the biggest problem with single target affliction damage now is that we are starved for reap stacks and shards on long single target fights. While as shard generation is increased with 4-pieces of warlocks set by 25%, reap stacks are and will be remaining to be significant bottleneck to our DPS and our ability to use ultimate trait of our artifact.

Starting progression boss with 0 reap stack is not fun!
Looking at reap stacks decay while raid is preparing to pull the boss - is not fun at all!
Some times I get feeling I want to either rage or cry while as I see my reap stacks fall down from 12 to 3 while as raid leader sets markers and (re)arrange the groups.




- - - Short summary of suggestions so far: - - -
I will be updating the list below with most common simple suggestions per warlock spec.

Affliction:
- add out off-combat generation of reap stacks and increase rate of in-combat generation of reap stack;
- reduce number of agony stacks, but keep current damage / clipping stacks by recasting agony has chance to add stacks;
- Siphon Life baseline;
- resolve/improve out-of-range problems with Soul Effigy (if possible) / double dots duration on Soul Effigy;

Demonology:
- Summon Dreadstalkers instant cast;
- improve Demonic Empowerment (instant cast / convert to warlock buff that affects all demons while active);
- Hand of Doom/Demonbolt baseline;
- Thal'kiel's Consumption castable while moving;

Destruction:
- reduce Chaos Bolt cast time;
- reduce Havoc damage transfer but buff all spells to compensate;
- Backdraft / Reverse Entropy baseline;
- reduce Lord of Flames CD;
- chance for dimensional rift to refresh immolate;

Multiple specs:
- Burning rush baseline (all);
- Command Demon for GoSac / increase GoSac damage ( Affliction | Destruction );


Note: '/' is used for 'or'; '|' is used for 'and';

[Gaidax]

Destruction:

1. Chaos Bolt baseline cast time is too slow and makes spec feel sluggish baseline, reduce Chaos Bolt base cast time by 0.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds cast.
2. It is difficult to keep up with other players in dungeons and having no movement speed enhancers makes warlock feel slow. Add 15% movement speed increase passive.
3. Over many years and expansions, it was viable to use warlock without a pet, changes to Sacrifice reduced this viability significantly, improve situation by changing GoSac to its MoP iteration, but do not introduce sacrificed pet skill to the player to allow to opt out of the pet at least performance-wise, but give pet an edge with utility.

[Drakoes]

Demonology

1. Make Summon Dreadstalkers instant cast. Remove the soul shard cost from Summon Infernal, Doomguard and Grimoire of Service.
2. Make Demonic Empowerment less cubersome and clunky to use. Perhaps a 20% chance to also increase all damage done by the warlock by an amount equal to the bonus damage and haste granted by the buff too.
3. Hand of Doom and Demonbolt baseline as this is a no brainer. Still yet to have some popular talents baked-in for Demo to improve our QoL.

[Gratlim]

Domonology:
- Make Dreadstalkers instant
- Make Demonic Empowerment a passive buff you get after casting Shadowbolt / Demonbolt.
- Make Mastery affect the warlock
- Make Imps spawn around the warlock and not the target

[Deftinwolf]

Demonology

1. Make empowerment a buff on your character that affects all current and summoned pets, also allow demon bolt casts to increase duration by 1 sec.

...that's pretty much it

[Deleted]

Destruction:
-Remove life tap
-Make Incinerate generate a Soul Shard on hit

Affliction
-Remove Soul Effigy

Demonology
- Make Demonic Empowerment instant
- Reduce the mana cost of abilities or make Life Tap give more mana

All speccs:
-Hire a dev that actually plays warlock and is not a complete mute when it comes to communication with playerbase

[Deleted]

All specs :

-Burning rush baseline
-Remove having to have the right pet as destru/affli.

Destru :

-Shorter CB cast
-Havoc transfer only 80% damages
-All spells do 20% more damages.


Affli :

-Make Soul effigy follow the player.
-Make soul effigy baseline.
-Base agony 5 stacks, 10 with writh while keeping the current damages.
-Siphon life baseline.


Demo :

-DE or Dogs instant or castable on the move.
-(Not sure how strong that one would be in dungeons) Make imps last for a number of attacks (based on haste like now) instead of time.
-Hand of doom baseline.

[Brightamethyst]

Agreed on the affliction ones. Reap Souls definitely needs to generate stacks faster on single target. Letting it regen to 6 out of combat would be nice too.

Make Siphon Life and Burning Rush baseline. Seriously, why aren't those baseline?

Really though, affliction needs at least a partial redesign. They messed up right from the start making it so reliant on "on death" procs. When two out of three gold traits do literally NOTHING on single target, something is pretty wrong.

[Deleted]

All specs:

1. Burning rush baseline or demon skin

Affli:

- Add out off-combat generation of reap stacks,
- Increase rate of in-combat generation of reap stack

Destro:
- Give us back demons ability when we sacraficed them
- Backdraft baseline

Demo:
- Demonic empowerment instant
- Hand of Doom baseline

[marashz]

Demonology

- Thal'kiel's Consumption insta cast or castable while moving
- Demonic Empowerement:
a) have chance to proc empowerment for next 5 pets
b) 15s aura which buffs all pets
c) dreadstalkers have chance to proc DE
d) DE empowers dreadstalkers by soaking imps into them and increasing their duration by 1s/imp (more DE soaked imps, more dmg do dreadstalkers)
- Demonbolt baseline
- Shadowbolt castable while moving
- Demonwrath do damage per different type of your pet (from imps DW do 100% current dmg, from dreadstalkers another 50% and maybe doomguard another 50/100%)
- Demonic Circle or Burning Rush baseline

[Rockerjompa]

Destruction:
1: Make Backdraft, Reverse Entropy and Soul Harvest baseline

2: Remove Wreak Havoc so we're not balanced around cleave

3: LoF 3min debuff instead of 10 minutes

4: Less RNG on shard regen (It's annoying when RL yells 'hard nuke on these adds' and you're out of shards. Or when you're generatoring so many shards you're overcapping cuz you can't cast CB fast enough :/)

[Deleted]

Affliction
- Increase Reap Soul generation for low to no add fights.

- Either make soul effigy follow us or increase the range significantly. Maybe make SE room wide for boss encounters. Ridiculous you have to run out of safe spots trying to get within range so you can keep dots up or having to re-cast it and build your stacks again.

- Faster cast time for Seed of Corruption. Sometimes mobs are nearly dead before you get your cast off.

[cmil1212]

Affliction:

1. Effigy. I don't care. I won't use it no matter what they do to it.
2. Buff Soul Conduit. Allow it to increase Reap Soul as well. Buff shard generation too.
3. Siphon Life and Sow the seeds should not be on same talents line. Like some have said, make siphon life baseline
4. Baseline interrupt. My legendary feels next to useless. At least tie it in with Grimoire of Sacrifice
5. Make Rot and Decay PVE. This could replace Effigy and fix a lot of things.

[Brudros]

All specs:
- Demonic Circle baseline (Mortal Coil, Shadowfury, Howl of Terror level 30 tree all specs)
- Mortal Coil always heals, regardless of immunity to horrify (did previously)
- Shadowfury instant cast (did previously)

Demonology:
- Demonic Empowerment instant cast and cost less mana (or bake this into the summoned demons already)
- Hand of Gul'dan instant cast (did previously)
or
- Call Dreadstalkers instant cast (could add DE here as added effect, bolstering the lesser imps and such)
- Shadow Bolt with Demonbolt +damage effects (I miss Shadow Bolt graphic.)
- Thal'kiel's Consumption instant cast (timing with full imps out is tight)
- Shadowflame cooldown affected by haste
- Demonic Calling also resets Call Dreadstalkers cooldown
- Hand of Doom baseline

Destruction:
- Chaos Bolt lower base cast time to 2.5 seconds
- Havoc strikes for 75% on second target. Single target spells buffed 25% (125%)
- Backdraft baseline
- Shadowburn separate from Conflagrate, extra damage below 20% target health
- Grimoire of Sacrifice gives Command Demon ability (did previously)
- Channel Demonfire castable while moving, damage buffed 100% (200%)

Affliction:
- Seed of Corruption lower base cast time to 2.0 seconds
- Increase reap stack generation
- Soul Effigy - ???

[sd2400533]

Just one change will be great: Let dimensional rift refresh immolate, that is one way for our artifact ablity to interact with our rotation. Right now Destro's artifact weapon is the only one that has NOTHING to do with the spec's core rotation, this is just stupid as fuck.

[Deleted]

Affliction

1) A general small buff to our single target which is pretty dismal especially if there no adds around, preferably without making our multi target too crazy.
2) Improve the generation rate of souls and/or let us start fights with a certain amount say 3, also would be nice for boss adds to actually be consistent about whether they give souls or not. I feel like they should but only a very select few do atm.
3) Making some talents baseline, siphon life definitely should be, effigy as much as I hate it probably needs to be too since its pretty much compulsory for good single target damage, I feel like a complete liability on any mythic + boss if I run the optimal trash build.
4) Since it seems like effigy is here to stay, its need some major usability improvements. Making it easier to target and less painful on moving bosses would be a start.

[Rogalicus]

Destro: half of the mastery as a guaranteed damage increase, i.e. instead of up to 60% it should add 30% plus up to 30% more. Incinerate deals 40% more damage and CB deals 15% more damage if they are directly cast on target with active Havoc.
Demo: mana cost cut in half, HoG goes baseline, the talent gives your demonwrath ticks a chance to immediately cause Doom deal it's full damage and fall off the target, demonic empowerment should be castable on move.
Affli: no idea, spec is really fucked up and needs another rework.

[Bullettime]

Mostly an Affliction player.

15% increased baseline movement speed for all specs. Dots placed on the Soul Effigy have double duration and the Effigy stays within 15 yards of you. Soul Flame can trigger off X consecutive Drain Soul ticks.

[Medicine Man]

The biggest problem with Demonology is how intolerant the basic damage rotation is to interference. Both building and (properly) spending resources requires long chains of hard casts, and any interruption causes damage output to plummet. A major part of the problem is, of course, demonic empowerment, but also how demonic empowerment interacts with Thakiel's Consumption. The demonology damage system needs to be loosened up a bit and made more applicable in practical situations. I would also like to see the spec get a little help with target swapping; there is no reason a primarily single-target spec should be so bad at turning and burning priority targets.

Demonology:
* Convert current effects of Demonic Empowerment to a passive Mastery on the warlock. This should aid in re-balancing stat weights and also pulls DE out of our basic rotation.
* Change Demonic Empowerment into a one minute cooldown, instant cast, with a 10 second duration that increases the effect of mastery (damage/haste, but *not* health) on our summoned demons. Change the Power Trip talent to provide 3 soul shards when DE is triggered. Change Shadowy Inspiration to trigger off Hand of Gul'Dan.

Basically, I don't think usage of Demonic Empowerment should be a pre-condition for optimal use of Thakiel's Consumption, but instead an additional CD used to leverage our demons to stack damage in target windows.

[Qac]

Destruction

Reverse entropy baseline. Backdraft moved to where reverse entropy is. New talent making pet spellcasting 15-20% faster lvl 15 talent to replace where backdraft was.
Lord of flames cd always up for every infernal cd.
Fire n brimstone baseline or use SS to make next 2-3 incinerates work off FnB/ y can pally just switch between 2 abilities to be god tier at aoe and ST and something new for the FnB talent spot not sure.
Move doomguard to be the GoServ Cd mayb tweek damage a little bit.
Burning rush baseline
CB damage increased to 150% of your crit damage or 200% and made non-havocable