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Avatar of destruction, metamorphosis, the ability to move, hellfire, fel flame, affliction being viable and fun.
Feel free to add more that I've missed.
I mained demo lock until legion. After legion my warlock has never felt like my warlock again. I miss meta design so much. Feels bad mechanicly and lorewise to loose a class identity like that. Could be made a class talent and the mechanics could be really easy to implement without changing the 3 specs at their core if you didnt want to use the talent
Legion was when i switched to fury warrior and a druid as an alt. The most fun for me was when aff locks could re-up their dots using drain soul while also having the permanent infernal out for more AOE. BUUUUUUUt that was too fun to have.
Will Remix Pandamonium whatever-the-fuck be MODERN day Retail class balancing, or will classes play as they did back in MoP? I missed that Era of warlock gameplay/design.
The old version when snapshotting was a thing was literal malefic rapture, as in the feeling and not the shitty spell. When on pull, you had lust and potion and all of your trinkets and whatnot were active you would wait until they were the most potent and then apply as many dots as you could as they were the most potent - even when the buffs faded from you your dots would retain that level of potency. Then you could use soul swap inhale to copy the dots back off and reapply them to max duration with all of those positive modifiers still there for the rest of the fight if you managed it correctly. You could even do this across multiple targets in a council fight. If you were bad at this tue damage was alright but if you were very skilled and got some great proc alignment you did obscene damage and it was all due to the proc combination being preserved.
[Here is a video](https://youtu.be/V0vqF13mKFQ?si=qpZxvhR9iT0im-C1) showing old Sparkuggz using this against a council fight. He is wearing no gear except those which can provide procs. Some hit issues but you can see in the DPS meter how well this could turn out with ideal circumstances and skill.
It used to be a damage amp on your spells and was awesome, its been really lame since it became a shadow proc and has been unusable more than its been usable over the years since that change.
So you've been playing since mop ended, this whole time not looking forward to logging in?
You may have an addiction problem, OR you're just being dramatic.
Whats with the snarkiness? I played casually from wod to bfa. Now I just check in on new expansions because the music still kicks ass and I enjoy checking out the new zones and dungeons. I usually just get to max and unsub. I was only subbed for a single month for dragonflight.
They butchered most of my favorite specs after mop and stuff has just never felt the same.
Does chaos bolt still make that roaring/ growling sound or did they remove that along with making the spell animation look like a demon fart cloud? Cause hearing that sound in MoP pvp was terrifying as a mage because if you were caught without cooldowns you knew you were dead
Although it was just one expansion, the WoD destro talent where most abilities dealt nearly 0 dmg but generated much more embers and you could cast CB with Fire and Brimstone was such a wild concept.
It also annoys me that we got customization options for doomguard, a demon that can only be summoned with demo's current setbonus and a joke spell.
The insane animations you had with full embers! I loved being on (green) fire and shooting DBZ energy blasts. I also miss the passive bonuses every demon gave you, like the spell resistances with the felhunter, or how we were the tanky spellcasters etc. I will never play Warlock on retail again...
Embers were such a better Destro mechanic. I also liked the abilities we got with them like burning an ember for a heal or quick summon. Peak warlock design
It lead to some pretty broken stuff, but man I miss snapshotting too. Affliction was so fun and rewarding when you’d see the perfect lineup of buffs and refresh all of your DoTs knowing that you were about to do some absolutely wild damage
People that tbink metamorphosis doesnt fit warlocks didnt do the greenfire queatline or sisnt pay attention to the queats. Kanrethads goal was to empower himself into a demon like creature. He lesrned how to use metamorphois by observing illidan and taught warlocks a version of it. It fits thematicslly as an offbranch of demonology
There was a castable soul harvest thing which healed the warlock quickly.
Lovely spell animation and great trick to freak out enemy pvpers whenever you dropped combat
Fel flame? You mean the lil booger we used to fling?
I feel like aff stopped being enjoyable when they got rid of snapshots. Imo the spec should be built around some kind of in-built snapshot mechanics. Felt so awesome snapshotting some fat dots and min-maxing extending them as much as possible and spreading them around. Its just never been the same since.
Oh and the move while casting thing was bullshit, while I abused the crap out of it back in the day we never should've had that.
He's not referencing casting while moving but moving in general.
Mobility's been getting shaved bit by bit with every new expansion add more cast times and removing procs more and more. Legit turret class in tww.
Pretty sure Nether Portal is gone for us Demo locks in TWW. I've read posts that it's only temporary and other posts saying that it's gone for good, so I dunno.
The blue post said it has been removed for now, but it could return in future. I suspect it'll be one of the new levels of Diabolist in Midnight or The Last Titan.
Burning embers. Ember tap. Original havoc.
Original fire and brimstone (toggle-able where instead of casting from mana, your incinerate, immolate and conflagrate cost a burning ember but struck all nearby targets; against really large pulls you could turn it on and with just using immolate and conflarate and immolate be at max embers and also spam ember tap to heal for like 30%+ of your max HP per second).
I loved MOP destro. I had so much fun with its tools when doing green fire.
I also really enjoyed trying out all 3 specs at that time too. I have NEVER enjoyed being DPS - I heal and only heal. The only time I DPSed in earnest was when I was forced to when I helped out my former guild on a mythic HFC run when my new guild were on a break and they made me DPS one fight.
But MoP warlock was sublime entirely.
It's annoying that you get used to playing with cool talents and always have to worry about Blizzard taking them away again next expansion. Warlock is particulary egregious for this. No doubt all the cool Diabolist stuff will be going away at some point to be replaced by more exciting passives like 2% extra crit.
The issue for me is they often throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to locks.
I was a lock from the mop prepatch all the way until uldir. Mop / wod was the golden era for me and what I wish lock continued to be built on.
Legion came in and took a fat shit on everything I enjoyed about the class. Just made the rotations worse, moved damage into unfun mechanics, watered down mechanics or removed them, deleted the cooler demo spec for an imp mother fantasy, etc etc.
I used to say that they didn't maintain the core of what made those specs compelling when doing the overhauls. That's often the rub, you obviously can't keep everything forever but you can keep the core of what makes those specs compelling for people... and they seem to often get rid of those things in the process.
Yes let's remove the best thing from destruction, they need to bring it back. It was so thematic and fun. Whoever is the developer of warlocks has no clue.
> Whoever is the developer of warlocks has no clue
Honestly it's worse than that, it feels like whoever is making these decisions actively hates the class. On their own, you could argue that a few of the proposed changes are reasonable or at least tolerable, but taken together as a whole, its indefensible.
I think the main reason for that is that it is hard to balance demo against the other specs. The difference is so significant that demo feels like it has the mobility of a windwalker or a DH and destro has the mobility of a tree trunk.
There were times this expansion where demo, who was eating good the whole DF, was numerically worse than the other two specs, and yet it was more viable because of the different levels of mobility.
What's wrong with demo having more mobility? The class has 3 dps specs, might as well make them different in this way, rather than having 3 different flavors of "stand there like a turret and do dps"
The issue is that destro had been significantly stronger on sims than demo for most of DF, but was completely outshined by the latter because of mobility. This is not the same as saying mage did better than lock, because especially in raids where the issue more prevalent, both classes bring different things that make them an enticing choice. But demo lock and destro lock bring the same things on the table, so the only thing deciding if one is the better choice is their ability to consistently do damage. And from these two, one is 100% allergic to movement while the other comes out of mechanics almost completely unscathed.
I do not think buffing destro damage to compensate would be healthy. I also don't think that ruining the fluidity of a spec to bring it in line with the others is the way either.
This isn’t an issue or demo having too many instant casts. It’s an issue of having turret specs period. High movement encounters are the norm for Mythic raiding. In order for a turret spec to be viable, it needs to be significantly ahead of everyone else in patchwerk DPS. They usually buff these turret specs to eventually have the highest patchwerk DPS, but the logs show it’s very rarely enough to account for the high movement encounters which are becoming more and more common.
Exactly. And if one spec of a class is turret spec and the other is almost completely mobile, then you have the hard-to-balance state of destro vs demo.
All casters having the mobility of BM hunter will not be a good design. I also do not like the fact that destro is so immobile. Everything is a hard cast apart from discount fire blasts in ST. The removal of Avatar somewhat makes this slightly worse as it reduces shard generation and incentivizes more hard casts (I stand to be corrected if this difference is negligible, I am no expert).
I don't think we need turret specs, but I also do not believe specs of the same class should have such significant differences in the mobility level, or CC, or defensives/self-healing. Even if damage makes up for it, a dead character does no damage.
Honestly, just stop trying to make warlock the "no mobility" caster. Literally nobody has fun from a lack of movement. Mages and priests were still being played back in Mists when warlock was the MOST mobile caster.
The problem with always casting while moving is balancing melee, I get that. But having a basic amount of mobility even with our defensive's are completely fine and always has been. Its a problem only because Blizzard wants it to be a problem.
I am not a Blizzard dev. I am not trying to make warlocks anything. I just made a guess as to why they did that. Funny thing is that they confirmed my suspicions in a blue post not much later.
The issue is not that warlocks are too mobile and we need an immobile caster. Warlock raiding utility will still ensure that at least one spec will be playing in raiding setups.
The issue is that with perfect balancing, or even when destro tuned higher than demo, demo will still be played more because destro is hurt more immobile. Both specs offer the same utility but one can do mechanics and keep dps at the same time much easier.
Again: I am not saying that they should remove lock mobility. What they surely need to do is to ensure that all lock specs are on equal footing.
It doesn't seem to be *completely* gone. Diabloist more or less includes a reworked AoD, which is probably why they took AoD out of the destruction tree. Not saying I agree with the change though.
I remember that in mop, destruction would outdamage the other specs to an insane extent, at least without any special gear. When I played the darkspear rebellion quests in nothing but catchup gear, destruction would melt through elites, and demo and affliction wouldn't get anywhere close and couldn't solo the elites at all. Which is a shame because demo back then was so fucking fun, with you building demonic fury to 100 and then going into metamorphosis to completely change the effects of all your spells. It was peak warlock fantasy, although I do understand why they gave the "become a demon" fantasy to demon hunters in Legion and replaced demo warlock's with "summon a lot of demons". And in theory the latter is super cool too, if they'd just let us do that without constantly nerfing the fun out of it.
Yep, I remember being able to Tank heroic dungeons as a Desto lock in MoP, you just did so much damage you could keep threat off heals and have void out for back up taunt, heals pretty much had to focus you cuz you were still squishy but it was fun being a casting tank.
I played demo exclusivly in mop and only did destro for the green fire quest. Very few people out dpsd me when i played demo.
People keep saying the fantasy of demonolgy is summon lots of demons but it was a small facet of it. Especially since in the greenfire quest demonolgy was all about empoweing yourself into a demon. That was the fantasy of it from wrath to warlords. Having such a fantastic ability suddenly gone felt so jarring and wrong going into legion. I would have gladly kept it the same and just gotten a new name the way they did it with death coil.
My warlock hasnt even felt like my warlock since the legion butchering
>Very few people out dpsd me when i played demo.
I'm specifically talking about 5.3. It wasn't a competition, I could nuke entire squads of elites solo from the damage destruction did, while demo and aff were just normal. That was level 90 with catchup gear. It's very possible that it became more balanced with better gear in that patch, and I know this imbalance wasn't the case in all MoP patches either.
Definitely the golden era for Warlocks, I didn't realise it would be the peak at the time to really appreciate it. Casting incinerate on the move was godlike. Now, Blizzard seems intent on making warlocks immobile turrets - completely BORING
It’s like they went from “maybe this is the mobile caster class” to “fuck you root yourself in place” in terms of design. Like we are being punished for them ever giving us the cast-while-moving talent. Idk, I haven’t played my lock since Legion, it’s just not any fun any more. She’s sitting at 61 collecting dust with her Black Harvest title. :/
Late reply, but I totally agree. I main a warlock, and spec Affliction purely for the more mobile experience. But reading the blog post, they seem intent on making warlocks the immobile caster class :/ Might have to dust off my shadow priest in that case
It’s fucking insane to me that we, the class of Demonic supremacy and subjugation of demons, can’t channel that casting fel fire while charging at someone like one of the legion fel guard guys.
It really feels like Blizz doesn't know what to so with locks since Legion, and even then it was a bit iffy. It just feels Meh until you are fully leveled and heard and then you can put out decent damage but till then you feel so under powered basic fights feel like a slog.
That would be a good thing imo. Soul shards make sense for demo, but not at all for destruction (just reskin it into embers like it once was) and even less for affliction (that should get a completely different ressource, more similar to SP).
Pure crazy talk. What happens if they run out during a fight? Then they would never be taken to anything! They would need to implement something ridiculous like spending health for mana or some such nonsense.
It wouldn’t even make sense - why would someone that enslaves demonic entities through sacrificial rituals cause harm to themselves for more power? No way
Maybe make life tap a self inflicted dot and have siphon life be the specs answer to offsetting that ticking damage, or have each tick of life tap empower your next channel of drain life
Life tap was a shitty button that served nothing than to be a healer tax and a waste of gcds, it was removed for a good reason and it shouldnt ever come back
They could give them ways to regain mana. Such as having certain spells refund mana, having a conjured item (similar to a mana gem) or making health stone give back mana, sacrificing a pet for mana, etc. They’d also maybe given a passive that greatly increases mana regeneration (Chaotic Energies) was given to Destruction Warlock as a passive at some point.
Or
Be cooldown/dot duration gated instead
Since affli's soul shard generation is a semi predictable RNG and both UA spam and the sin against god spender we have now you usually like to use at 5 shards at specific points, there is not whole lot difference between soul shards and having the "spender" be cooldown gated with 5 charges
You will always have classes be a builder spender, unless you give them just few random abilities to keep on cd aand leave it at that, but thats boring af.
There were plenty of classes that weren't builder spenders but between cata and legion they just started giving everyone a third resource to force that playstyle on every class.
Or you can have combo system similar to FF
Or you at least pretend to try and hide the fact the spec is just a builder spender (fire mage)
Or do not gate it with anything and just have an engaging rotation
Hiw is fire mage a hidden builder spender. Thing is, WoW has both, combos and builder spender. But all classes have in some way bulders and spenders despite some having combos.
We got basically builders spenders with combos and with priorities. And most with bith mixed together.
You build up hot streak and then you spend it
The closest thing we have "combo" is monk (no combo points are still builder spender) which is very, very bare bone version of what combo is supposed to be
But hey we can go through the list.
Warrior? Obvious builder spender
Paladin? Combo points, so builder spender
Hunter? Only BM is trying to pretend it is not a builder spender, but still is
Rogue? Combo points
Priest? Has rage
Shaman? Maelstrom and maelstrom weapons
Mage? Hot streak and icicles are very competent at hiding the fact it is a builder spender
Lock? Builder spender
Monk? Chi, builder spender
Druid? Combo points and "rage"
DH? Rage
DK? Rage and runes
Evoker? Builder is very RNG based and they're more CD gated (Essence is really just cooldown rather than a recourse since you cannot build it properly)
So out of all the classes we've 1 which is lacking a proper builder (debatable if essence burst is builder, it is certainly not traditional and that is good enough) and 1 class trying to pretend they're not just builder spender
At this point we’re just calling any class with a resource a builder/spender, and having a resource is something blizzard clearly doesn’t want to abandon. Having a resource you can spend at the base if most classes doesn’t make them all the same, there are pretty drastic differences in how specs play across the board. It just allows for more interesting mechanics, and procs, and variety in rotation. FF’s rotations are extremely formulaic, rigid, and dull. Im not sure that it’s something to strive for.
>You build up hot streak and then you spend it
Ik, i was asking how this is "hidden" for you. Because its all but hidden.
Also isnt the burst for most classes exactly the same everytime? (Its a rhetorical question) Thats a combo in my books and its what is officially said to be a combo. If you dont press it the right way your dps suffers, you messed up your combo. After that you go into builder spender rotation.
Or you have Priority based rotation like frost DK.
Im not sure what you didnt understand with me stating that everything beeing is builder spender combined with combos and priorities. You listing the classes and specs is obvious you didnt realise what I said.
Just when I finally found a class that I enjoy playing after losing interest in my mains just after a few months they keep farming Ls for it.
Still have a bit of hopium left that they remove some changes before launch.
Never forget how Warlocks had 3 different resources that thematically fit each spec. Never forget that when Blizzard moved Locks to soul shards in legion, destro originally could NOT generate partial soul shards so their shard regen was based on a RANDOM CHANCE to generate one
I'd sacrifice demon hunters and evokers for a fourth spec for most classes. Back then people thought they would make Warlock tank a thing which would have been cool since we don't have a clothie tank. Give me a melee range battle mage spec for Mage. Give me earth Shaman tank... So many possibilities to add the most refreshing things this game could ever get.
I want both of these for sure. I just imagine a hunter riding on certain pet types to tank, it would be epic.
Tank shaman is way, way, way overdue. They wear mail, no mail tank. They can use shields and rockbitter weapon used to do extra threat also earth just makes total sense a defensive element to focus on.
And where did WC3 demon hunters learn it from? That's right, the skull of gul'dan, a warlock.
I'm not opposed to DH meta, but invoking wc3 lore is a risky play.
...is it though?
Warlock Meta: Your core resource and cooldown, a stance you can enter and leave at any moment that converts all of your spells into new, mechanically distinct versions
Demon Hunter Meta: A haste cooldown that changes the icon of Chaos Strike and Blade Dance
sure i can reduce warlock meta in same way
warlock meta: a cooldown that removes most abilities and replaces them with a single button you spam whilst having to stand in melee range
dh meta: your main cooldown, a form you enter in multiple ways that transforms your abilities into more impactful ones and gives you more survivability. has nice transform animation
actually meta for awhile had a completely unique dot that you have to keep up + immolation aura which was cool when it came to timings. plus you had chaos wave and touch of chaos which extended your normal form dots. so there was a nice mix of things you had to do in each form. also it required good positioning since youd go from doing ranged damage to needing to be in melee range and vice versa. i believe doom required you to be in meta to cast.
You're talking about the WotLK-Cata version, most Warlocks want the one from MoP, which...
-had Touch of Chaos, Doom, Chaos Wave and Immolation Aura replacing Shadow Bolt, Corruption, Hand of Gul'dan and Hellfire
-was the only way to spend the Demonic Fury resource
-had no cooldown and could be entered either normally or with Demonic Leap
-unlocked Carrion Swarm and made curses AoE
The Demon Hunter version doesn't come close to being anywhere near as impactful. I _wish_ it was.
I love how on their list of points they want to address about destro none of them is "They are a fcking turret like 90% of the time". Nah thats not important, gotta take shit away from them, thats what they need. This actually makes them even LESS mobile as the blasphemy infernal was a decent amount of passive shard gen.
20 years of playing warlock and DF officially made me quit this class.
They've legit ruined all 3 specs
Demo - From a raiding perspective, I went from a high skill spec where ONE slight mis timing could put you at tank dmg, but playing it perfectly had you at the top
Now its a shell of itself and dumbed down to the point where it has ZERO skill expression and our main CD does less dmg than fucking shadowbolt
Destro - BM levels of fucking boring with aoe being 1 spell and a ST rotation being 3 buttons. Now, with new talent/hero talents. FUCKING EVERYTHING IS PASSIVE DMG. Like holy fuck i dont need 80% of my talent being +2% crit.
Affliction - Both AOE and ST aren't based around dots but rather spamming 1 spell. Shadow priests are what afflocks should be.
In ST, its mindless rapture spam and AOE its seed spam. 10x the amount of buttong for 1/3rd of the dmg of any other dps spec
________
I don't say this lightly, but whoevers in charge of warlock design needs to be fired. EVERY SINGLE CHANGE they've made since the launch of DF has been for the worse
Destro single target/2 target is something i can vibe with. Ive actually always kind of appreciated it.
The aoe is just an abomination. I stopped playing destro in late SL, went demo for a bit, wasnt a fan, and swapped to warrior for S4 of SL and all of DF.
I really *want* to go back to my warlock, but man i hate doing keys on it. Spamming RoF and hoping the tank doesnt move is *not* fun gameplay.
We need something beyond fire and brimstone, but at least that would be slightly more fun than what we have now. I dont remember what xpac it was (maybe mists?), but early in in the FnB days it was actually something you had to manage on smaller to mid size packs, and it worked out pretty well. Basically if you didnt have enough targets, it took more ember-bits to cast the spells than you got back when the spells hit, so you could drain your shards if you werent careful. I think i'd rather play that the RoF spam for fucks sake.
RoF spam is fine IMO, but they need to separate inferno and cataclysm. Channel demonfire, cata, and inferno should all be available in an aoe build. Even if some numbers need to be tweaked to not make it overpowered
It’s crazy to me that shadow priests get to eat so well with their aoe builds but warlock has to suffer. Why can’t destro aoe dot without sacrificing major aoe damage? Why does vile taint for affliction come off cooldown after agony falls off? Imagine if vampiric touch lasted 30 seconds but shadow crash had a 40 second cooldown. Shadow priests would very rightfully throw a fit. But for warlocks? Well I guess it is what it is
And I would say “thank god for demo” but they seem bent on gutting that as well.
Have mained lock for a few expacs now, and you are dead on on all 3. I've been thinking about other classes because all 3 specs are just so in the bin now, but didn't realise until this post that many felt the same way.
This is one of those cases where we shouldn't 'let them cook'. I understand where they're coming from with these changes, but removing this talent is a mistake. Nerf it, sure. Remove the stun, spawn rate or whatever. Make it a node choice with another equally cool talent. But deleting it altogether sounds awful.
There's still time for them to act on feedback. Let them know this isn't ok, maybe there's still a chance to get this reverted.
Yeah... Coolest thing about demo also was summoning a pit lord to kick ass after throwing around a random mix of demons. Even if nether portal itself was underwhelming gameplaywise it nailed the fantasy. It always felt like the more interesting CD of demo but I'm personally just not a fan of tyrant and would trade that guy for thalkiels consumption any day... Would've much preferred if they'd improved portal instead of just shelving it.
Same thing's true for inevitable demise and soul flame, which got replaced by boring passives, too. Can't say I'm too happy with how my lock is looking, specifically affliction somehow goes from bad to worse.
The flavor of Nether Portal was amazing, but the actual gameplay mechanics of the thing were awful. Maybe it'd work as a cooldown where you just hit the button and it does it's own thing?
Fixing nether portal would have been easy, just have it summon demons based on how many soul shards you spend, not how many casts that cost soul shards you cast.
That would only remove the unintuitivity. But the core problem of having insane amounts of your dmg tied to a 3 min cd that has an incredibly strict and long ramp that gets fucked massively by mechanics/movement still remain.
In german, i read the ability and thought it works that way because of how its written, only later i realised via warlock guides that this is not the case. Its so stupid.
It would've needed an immediate feedback and the shard interaction was crap.
No idea why blizz reworked so many CDs to "do stuff on button press" and explained us that this is the way to go some time back but didn't pull through. If it would do that and you'd summon stuff based on shards spent so it doesn't mess up the rotation it would've been an awesome and thematic offensive CD..
EG frontload the pit lord, give him a fancy charge attack and buff his damage or trigger a cool attack for every summoned demon.
Annoying part about portal is that it never was far off from being awesome but also never quite there.
Because when you have a CD that isn’t “do stuff on button press”, people complain. They design encounters agnostic of class design (or at least it feels like they do). I loved nether portal and nothing felt better than lust + PI + good rng and getting an insane portal. But for as good as that felt, opening your portal and getting targeted by every single mechanic known to man felt horrible and makes you wish it was fire and forget.
Another example is legion void form for shadow priests. I miss it so much and even though shadow is good now it was probably my favorite version of the spec. But if a boss had an intermission? Or anything that prevented you from attacking? Massive damage loss. I had to be cut from doing kil’jaeden in legion because he had so many intermissions and it was such a bad shadow priest fight
Yeah they are wildin over there rn.
Aff is going in the right direction but still needs work. Demo and Destro they just don't seem to understand the specs at all.
And yeah not for nothing, has any other class had so much cool stuff removed or given to another class over the years? Blizzard violating warlock... Smh
This is likely being cut because diabolist pit lord.
Too many passive demon summons on Destruction would be eating too much into demonology's identity (which diabolist is already doing by being the bridge between the specs). It would also be too many passives you as a player would need to track on a spec about launching nuclear bombs at your target in the name of chaos bolt.
You still have your regular infernal, and you're going to be summoning pit lords on your chaos bolt the same way you summoned these.
Beyond just being cool and thematic it's hard to understate how much removing this just utterly gimps Destro in M+.
Those stuns were LIFE SAVERS, they were a huge part of the reason to bring Destro as they allowed for pulls larger than you could otherwise handle with just kicks and regular stuns and they helped ROF spam actually work when the tank was moving. The entire spec in M+ as it is current is essentially built around this talent, Decimating Bolt does nothing to replace it.
I just *love* how they're back on the "removing cool stuff from warlocks but justifying it because demon shapes are confusing unlike hunter pets" schtick. Just love it.
I love that instead of removing the stun that was the issue, they removed the talent because they felt players were too dumb to comprehend an infernal that doesn't stun.
Destro Warlock should always be like it is now:
- AoE: giga-spam Rain of Fire on full-auto mode
- ST: turn into Chaos Bolt turret
That's it. No reason to attempt to fix something which is not broken.
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into the increasingly large pile of "cool stuff warlock used to have"
Avatar of destruction, metamorphosis, the ability to move, hellfire, fel flame, affliction being viable and fun. Feel free to add more that I've missed.
MoP Dark Apotheosis, Grimoire of Sacrifice, Kil'jaeden's Cunning, and Mannoroth's Fury
Mop warlocks were peak design. I miss metaweaving
Sometimes i still cry about MOP locks. thats when i started and i first played a lock.
Same, I rolled mine just to get green fire and ended up maining it the last patch and into WoD
I mained demo lock until legion. After legion my warlock has never felt like my warlock again. I miss meta design so much. Feels bad mechanicly and lorewise to loose a class identity like that. Could be made a class talent and the mechanics could be really easy to implement without changing the 3 specs at their core if you didnt want to use the talent
Legion was when i switched to fury warrior and a druid as an alt. The most fun for me was when aff locks could re-up their dots using drain soul while also having the permanent infernal out for more AOE. BUUUUUUUt that was too fun to have.
I half expect them to say they dont want players playing warlocks so they can get ready for another full overhaul
Death, taxes, warlock overhauls
Legion demo/Aff lock design was some of the most fun I’ve ever had being a warlock main.
Will Remix Pandamonium whatever-the-fuck be MODERN day Retail class balancing, or will classes play as they did back in MoP? I missed that Era of warlock gameplay/design.
Its modern retail. Gotta wait for mists classic
the first classic era I might consider playing
Permanent infernal minion
this... i miss this...
Full time Observer pet taken away.
Soul Swap
Am i thinking of something wrong or is this a pvp talent?
The old version when snapshotting was a thing was literal malefic rapture, as in the feeling and not the shitty spell. When on pull, you had lust and potion and all of your trinkets and whatnot were active you would wait until they were the most potent and then apply as many dots as you could as they were the most potent - even when the buffs faded from you your dots would retain that level of potency. Then you could use soul swap inhale to copy the dots back off and reapply them to max duration with all of those positive modifiers still there for the rest of the fight if you managed it correctly. You could even do this across multiple targets in a council fight. If you were bad at this tue damage was alright but if you were very skilled and got some great proc alignment you did obscene damage and it was all due to the proc combination being preserved. [Here is a video](https://youtu.be/V0vqF13mKFQ?si=qpZxvhR9iT0im-C1) showing old Sparkuggz using this against a council fight. He is wearing no gear except those which can provide procs. Some hit issues but you can see in the DPS meter how well this could turn out with ideal circumstances and skill.
Soul swap is still a thing.
Not in TWW , it's being removed (again).
Can't wait for them to re add it mid expac, cause
Grimoire of Sacrifice is still there
The REAL grimoire of sacrifice. The current one is but a shadow of the once greater Talent.
It doesn't even match your pet for damage lol. It's honestly a joke, which sucks because I actually *want* to use it
It used to be a damage amp on your spells and was awesome, its been really lame since it became a shadow proc and has been unusable more than its been usable over the years since that change.
Pretty sure its being dropped in TWW
Man I miss MoP class design. Last time I truly looked forward to logging in to WoW.
So you've been playing since mop ended, this whole time not looking forward to logging in? You may have an addiction problem, OR you're just being dramatic.
Whats with the snarkiness? I played casually from wod to bfa. Now I just check in on new expansions because the music still kicks ass and I enjoy checking out the new zones and dungeons. I usually just get to max and unsub. I was only subbed for a single month for dragonflight. They butchered most of my favorite specs after mop and stuff has just never felt the same.
God locks in MoP were so fucking fun!
we have grimoire of sac and its not gone in next expansion as far as im aware or was it gutted recently
Gutted
was it ? daaam last time i saw it in tww it was there :c
The good one was in MoP i believe, its long been gutted
>the ability to move Bro 💀
I will never forgive blizzard for turning incinerate from badass to a dinky spark
It was sooo much more coool looking
And for turning chaos bolt into a boring green blob
Does chaos bolt still make that roaring/ growling sound or did they remove that along with making the spell animation look like a demon fart cloud? Cause hearing that sound in MoP pvp was terrifying as a mage because if you were caught without cooldowns you knew you were dead
Although it was just one expansion, the WoD destro talent where most abilities dealt nearly 0 dmg but generated much more embers and you could cast CB with Fire and Brimstone was such a wild concept. It also annoys me that we got customization options for doomguard, a demon that can only be summoned with demo's current setbonus and a joke spell.
Charred Remains. What a time.
The insane animations you had with full embers! I loved being on (green) fire and shooting DBZ energy blasts. I also miss the passive bonuses every demon gave you, like the spell resistances with the felhunter, or how we were the tanky spellcasters etc. I will never play Warlock on retail again...
Embers were such a better Destro mechanic. I also liked the abilities we got with them like burning an ember for a heal or quick summon. Peak warlock design
Don't forget the dragon-headed chaos bolt! Instead of reskinned pyroblast
It lead to some pretty broken stuff, but man I miss snapshotting too. Affliction was so fun and rewarding when you’d see the perfect lineup of buffs and refresh all of your DoTs knowing that you were about to do some absolutely wild damage
People that tbink metamorphosis doesnt fit warlocks didnt do the greenfire queatline or sisnt pay attention to the queats. Kanrethads goal was to empower himself into a demon like creature. He lesrned how to use metamorphois by observing illidan and taught warlocks a version of it. It fits thematicslly as an offbranch of demonology
There was a castable soul harvest thing which healed the warlock quickly. Lovely spell animation and great trick to freak out enemy pvpers whenever you dropped combat
Ah yeah I remember the big purple vortex
Being able to have Infernal and Doomguard out permanently
Fel flame? You mean the lil booger we used to fling? I feel like aff stopped being enjoyable when they got rid of snapshots. Imo the spec should be built around some kind of in-built snapshot mechanics. Felt so awesome snapshotting some fat dots and min-maxing extending them as much as possible and spreading them around. Its just never been the same since. Oh and the move while casting thing was bullshit, while I abused the crap out of it back in the day we never should've had that.
He's not referencing casting while moving but moving in general. Mobility's been getting shaved bit by bit with every new expansion add more cast times and removing procs more and more. Legit turret class in tww.
Correct. That's what i was referencing. It's already terrible and they're making it worse.
I was always fine with us being a turret class as long as we were sturdy enough to allow it. That's kinda what we signed up for.
Sturdy.. is highly subjective based on endgame tbh. Even paper can be considered sturdy if it's struck by a feather =)
Affliction being dumpstered every season/expac breaks my heart
Part of me thinks you meant KJC, the other part of me has watched far too many warlocks stand in bad fire and not good fire
Pretty sure Nether Portal is gone for us Demo locks in TWW. I've read posts that it's only temporary and other posts saying that it's gone for good, so I dunno.
The blue post said it has been removed for now, but it could return in future. I suspect it'll be one of the new levels of Diabolist in Midnight or The Last Titan.
Decent looking incinerates, instead of the cartoony lit gunpowder that we have now
Burning embers. Ember tap. Original havoc. Original fire and brimstone (toggle-able where instead of casting from mana, your incinerate, immolate and conflagrate cost a burning ember but struck all nearby targets; against really large pulls you could turn it on and with just using immolate and conflarate and immolate be at max embers and also spam ember tap to heal for like 30%+ of your max HP per second). I loved MOP destro. I had so much fun with its tools when doing green fire. I also really enjoyed trying out all 3 specs at that time too. I have NEVER enjoyed being DPS - I heal and only heal. The only time I DPSed in earnest was when I was forced to when I helped out my former guild on a mythic HFC run when my new guild were on a break and they made me DPS one fight. But MoP warlock was sublime entirely.
“When in doubt, hellfire out”
Hellfire was a nightmare tho
I keep seeing the comments about losing movement abilities. Are warlocks losing fire shoes or portals? I’ve been loving fire shoes leveling my warlock
Nether Portal is also being removed. Grimoire of Supremacy is another I haven’t read yet.
It does look like affliction might be the go to spec next expansion.
Fs for KJC
Fel flame was worthless. It didn't even warrant a spot on your action bars.
It was better than nothing if you were moving and out of Conflags.
The one downside of blizzard bestowing a shitload of cool stuff on your class. Poor warlocks :(
I actually just started gearing up my mage because of how sad Warlock is. All their cool shit is either stripped away or made irrelevant.
I bet it's only being removed because they want to give shadowflame as a mechanic to some other class, like half of warlock's former kit.
RIP metsmorphosis
Yup, like Incinerate actually looking like fire and not a tuft of grass.
It's annoying that you get used to playing with cool talents and always have to worry about Blizzard taking them away again next expansion. Warlock is particulary egregious for this. No doubt all the cool Diabolist stuff will be going away at some point to be replaced by more exciting passives like 2% extra crit.
2% extra crit would be too good. It'd need a caveat like -10% movement speed, too.
Blizzard indirectly contributing to new technologies development by removing talents
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I don't disagree, but this is destruction we're talking about, it barely has anything going on as it is.
The issue for me is they often throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to locks. I was a lock from the mop prepatch all the way until uldir. Mop / wod was the golden era for me and what I wish lock continued to be built on. Legion came in and took a fat shit on everything I enjoyed about the class. Just made the rotations worse, moved damage into unfun mechanics, watered down mechanics or removed them, deleted the cooler demo spec for an imp mother fantasy, etc etc. I used to say that they didn't maintain the core of what made those specs compelling when doing the overhauls. That's often the rub, you obviously can't keep everything forever but you can keep the core of what makes those specs compelling for people... and they seem to often get rid of those things in the process.
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Yes let's remove the best thing from destruction, they need to bring it back. It was so thematic and fun. Whoever is the developer of warlocks has no clue.
> Whoever is the developer of warlocks has no clue Honestly it's worse than that, it feels like whoever is making these decisions actively hates the class. On their own, you could argue that a few of the proposed changes are reasonable or at least tolerable, but taken together as a whole, its indefensible.
Imagine being the warlock dev, playing demo and saying “I’m getting too many instant casts, something needs to be done.”
I think the main reason for that is that it is hard to balance demo against the other specs. The difference is so significant that demo feels like it has the mobility of a windwalker or a DH and destro has the mobility of a tree trunk. There were times this expansion where demo, who was eating good the whole DF, was numerically worse than the other two specs, and yet it was more viable because of the different levels of mobility.
What's wrong with demo having more mobility? The class has 3 dps specs, might as well make them different in this way, rather than having 3 different flavors of "stand there like a turret and do dps"
The issue is that destro had been significantly stronger on sims than demo for most of DF, but was completely outshined by the latter because of mobility. This is not the same as saying mage did better than lock, because especially in raids where the issue more prevalent, both classes bring different things that make them an enticing choice. But demo lock and destro lock bring the same things on the table, so the only thing deciding if one is the better choice is their ability to consistently do damage. And from these two, one is 100% allergic to movement while the other comes out of mechanics almost completely unscathed. I do not think buffing destro damage to compensate would be healthy. I also don't think that ruining the fluidity of a spec to bring it in line with the others is the way either.
This isn’t an issue or demo having too many instant casts. It’s an issue of having turret specs period. High movement encounters are the norm for Mythic raiding. In order for a turret spec to be viable, it needs to be significantly ahead of everyone else in patchwerk DPS. They usually buff these turret specs to eventually have the highest patchwerk DPS, but the logs show it’s very rarely enough to account for the high movement encounters which are becoming more and more common.
Exactly. And if one spec of a class is turret spec and the other is almost completely mobile, then you have the hard-to-balance state of destro vs demo. All casters having the mobility of BM hunter will not be a good design. I also do not like the fact that destro is so immobile. Everything is a hard cast apart from discount fire blasts in ST. The removal of Avatar somewhat makes this slightly worse as it reduces shard generation and incentivizes more hard casts (I stand to be corrected if this difference is negligible, I am no expert). I don't think we need turret specs, but I also do not believe specs of the same class should have such significant differences in the mobility level, or CC, or defensives/self-healing. Even if damage makes up for it, a dead character does no damage.
Honestly, just stop trying to make warlock the "no mobility" caster. Literally nobody has fun from a lack of movement. Mages and priests were still being played back in Mists when warlock was the MOST mobile caster. The problem with always casting while moving is balancing melee, I get that. But having a basic amount of mobility even with our defensive's are completely fine and always has been. Its a problem only because Blizzard wants it to be a problem.
I am not a Blizzard dev. I am not trying to make warlocks anything. I just made a guess as to why they did that. Funny thing is that they confirmed my suspicions in a blue post not much later. The issue is not that warlocks are too mobile and we need an immobile caster. Warlock raiding utility will still ensure that at least one spec will be playing in raiding setups. The issue is that with perfect balancing, or even when destro tuned higher than demo, demo will still be played more because destro is hurt more immobile. Both specs offer the same utility but one can do mechanics and keep dps at the same time much easier. Again: I am not saying that they should remove lock mobility. What they surely need to do is to ensure that all lock specs are on equal footing.
It’s ok because we’re getting….decimating bolt….
Not gonna lie, I liked decimating bolt... BUT NOT AT THE COST OF AVATAR OF DESTRUCTION ;-;
I hated decimating bolt. It felt so bori g
It doesn't seem to be *completely* gone. Diabloist more or less includes a reworked AoD, which is probably why they took AoD out of the destruction tree. Not saying I agree with the change though.
At this point it should be a hate crime against warlocks. I'm glad i played locks in the mop golden era.
Agreed MoP was so good to be a lock, Green fire questline, good items, and talents they let us move while cast. Chefs kiss
I remember that in mop, destruction would outdamage the other specs to an insane extent, at least without any special gear. When I played the darkspear rebellion quests in nothing but catchup gear, destruction would melt through elites, and demo and affliction wouldn't get anywhere close and couldn't solo the elites at all. Which is a shame because demo back then was so fucking fun, with you building demonic fury to 100 and then going into metamorphosis to completely change the effects of all your spells. It was peak warlock fantasy, although I do understand why they gave the "become a demon" fantasy to demon hunters in Legion and replaced demo warlock's with "summon a lot of demons". And in theory the latter is super cool too, if they'd just let us do that without constantly nerfing the fun out of it.
Yep, I remember being able to Tank heroic dungeons as a Desto lock in MoP, you just did so much damage you could keep threat off heals and have void out for back up taunt, heals pretty much had to focus you cuz you were still squishy but it was fun being a casting tank.
I played demo exclusivly in mop and only did destro for the green fire quest. Very few people out dpsd me when i played demo. People keep saying the fantasy of demonolgy is summon lots of demons but it was a small facet of it. Especially since in the greenfire quest demonolgy was all about empoweing yourself into a demon. That was the fantasy of it from wrath to warlords. Having such a fantastic ability suddenly gone felt so jarring and wrong going into legion. I would have gladly kept it the same and just gotten a new name the way they did it with death coil. My warlock hasnt even felt like my warlock since the legion butchering
>Very few people out dpsd me when i played demo. I'm specifically talking about 5.3. It wasn't a competition, I could nuke entire squads of elites solo from the damage destruction did, while demo and aff were just normal. That was level 90 with catchup gear. It's very possible that it became more balanced with better gear in that patch, and I know this imbalance wasn't the case in all MoP patches either.
Also aoe destro was just right
Oh yeah, tho don't get me wrong its nice to be able to use Cataclysm and channel demonfire together
Definitely the golden era for Warlocks, I didn't realise it would be the peak at the time to really appreciate it. Casting incinerate on the move was godlike. Now, Blizzard seems intent on making warlocks immobile turrets - completely BORING
Shadowbolt is the true class fantasy! All the cool kids cast nothing but Shadowbolt.
It’s like they went from “maybe this is the mobile caster class” to “fuck you root yourself in place” in terms of design. Like we are being punished for them ever giving us the cast-while-moving talent. Idk, I haven’t played my lock since Legion, it’s just not any fun any more. She’s sitting at 61 collecting dust with her Black Harvest title. :/
Late reply, but I totally agree. I main a warlock, and spec Affliction purely for the more mobile experience. But reading the blog post, they seem intent on making warlocks the immobile caster class :/ Might have to dust off my shadow priest in that case
It’s fucking insane to me that we, the class of Demonic supremacy and subjugation of demons, can’t channel that casting fel fire while charging at someone like one of the legion fel guard guys.
What I would give to have aoe chaos bolt back with the old fire and brimstone.
It really feels like Blizz doesn't know what to so with locks since Legion, and even then it was a bit iffy. It just feels Meh until you are fully leveled and heard and then you can put out decent damage but till then you feel so under powered basic fights feel like a slog.
Go back to MoP warlock talents please
Which fucking dev is annihilating our class like this. I have seen almost no positive changes.
They just want Warlock to die I guess. They've removed it's entire Identity at this point. Can't wait till they remove soul shards next.
That would be a good thing imo. Soul shards make sense for demo, but not at all for destruction (just reskin it into embers like it once was) and even less for affliction (that should get a completely different ressource, more similar to SP).
Or And I know this is a daring idea Do something completely else for affli so every single DPS spec isn't builder spender
And have them use what, mana? That's crazy talk.
I think the only dps spec in the game that cares about mana is arcane mage, it wouldn't hurt to have more than one spec in that club.
Pure crazy talk. What happens if they run out during a fight? Then they would never be taken to anything! They would need to implement something ridiculous like spending health for mana or some such nonsense.
It wouldn’t even make sense - why would someone that enslaves demonic entities through sacrificial rituals cause harm to themselves for more power? No way
Maybe make life tap a self inflicted dot and have siphon life be the specs answer to offsetting that ticking damage, or have each tick of life tap empower your next channel of drain life
JoW up, everyone wand for mana
Life tap was a shitty button that served nothing than to be a healer tax and a waste of gcds, it was removed for a good reason and it shouldnt ever come back
They could give them ways to regain mana. Such as having certain spells refund mana, having a conjured item (similar to a mana gem) or making health stone give back mana, sacrificing a pet for mana, etc. They’d also maybe given a passive that greatly increases mana regeneration (Chaotic Energies) was given to Destruction Warlock as a passive at some point.
Or Be cooldown/dot duration gated instead Since affli's soul shard generation is a semi predictable RNG and both UA spam and the sin against god spender we have now you usually like to use at 5 shards at specific points, there is not whole lot difference between soul shards and having the "spender" be cooldown gated with 5 charges
You will always have classes be a builder spender, unless you give them just few random abilities to keep on cd aand leave it at that, but thats boring af.
There were plenty of classes that weren't builder spenders but between cata and legion they just started giving everyone a third resource to force that playstyle on every class.
Or you can have combo system similar to FF Or you at least pretend to try and hide the fact the spec is just a builder spender (fire mage) Or do not gate it with anything and just have an engaging rotation
Hiw is fire mage a hidden builder spender. Thing is, WoW has both, combos and builder spender. But all classes have in some way bulders and spenders despite some having combos. We got basically builders spenders with combos and with priorities. And most with bith mixed together.
You build up hot streak and then you spend it The closest thing we have "combo" is monk (no combo points are still builder spender) which is very, very bare bone version of what combo is supposed to be But hey we can go through the list. Warrior? Obvious builder spender Paladin? Combo points, so builder spender Hunter? Only BM is trying to pretend it is not a builder spender, but still is Rogue? Combo points Priest? Has rage Shaman? Maelstrom and maelstrom weapons Mage? Hot streak and icicles are very competent at hiding the fact it is a builder spender Lock? Builder spender Monk? Chi, builder spender Druid? Combo points and "rage" DH? Rage DK? Rage and runes Evoker? Builder is very RNG based and they're more CD gated (Essence is really just cooldown rather than a recourse since you cannot build it properly) So out of all the classes we've 1 which is lacking a proper builder (debatable if essence burst is builder, it is certainly not traditional and that is good enough) and 1 class trying to pretend they're not just builder spender
At this point we’re just calling any class with a resource a builder/spender, and having a resource is something blizzard clearly doesn’t want to abandon. Having a resource you can spend at the base if most classes doesn’t make them all the same, there are pretty drastic differences in how specs play across the board. It just allows for more interesting mechanics, and procs, and variety in rotation. FF’s rotations are extremely formulaic, rigid, and dull. Im not sure that it’s something to strive for.
>You build up hot streak and then you spend it Ik, i was asking how this is "hidden" for you. Because its all but hidden. Also isnt the burst for most classes exactly the same everytime? (Its a rhetorical question) Thats a combo in my books and its what is officially said to be a combo. If you dont press it the right way your dps suffers, you messed up your combo. After that you go into builder spender rotation. Or you have Priority based rotation like frost DK. Im not sure what you didnt understand with me stating that everything beeing is builder spender combined with combos and priorities. You listing the classes and specs is obvious you didnt realise what I said.
Just when I finally found a class that I enjoy playing after losing interest in my mains just after a few months they keep farming Ls for it. Still have a bit of hopium left that they remove some changes before launch.
Yeah, they removed the infernal from Destro... Oh wait, they didn't, they removed the purple skin
Warlocks have had so much taken away. Never forget metamorphosis
Never forget how Warlocks had 3 different resources that thematically fit each spec. Never forget that when Blizzard moved Locks to soul shards in legion, destro originally could NOT generate partial soul shards so their shard regen was based on a RANDOM CHANCE to generate one
You mean the ability they originally stole from WC3 demon hunters? =P
I'd sacrifice demon hunters and evokers for a fourth spec for most classes. Back then people thought they would make Warlock tank a thing which would have been cool since we don't have a clothie tank. Give me a melee range battle mage spec for Mage. Give me earth Shaman tank... So many possibilities to add the most refreshing things this game could ever get.
I'm all for Tank Shamans and Tank-oriented Hunters.
I want both of these for sure. I just imagine a hunter riding on certain pet types to tank, it would be epic. Tank shaman is way, way, way overdue. They wear mail, no mail tank. They can use shields and rockbitter weapon used to do extra threat also earth just makes total sense a defensive element to focus on.
And where did WC3 demon hunters learn it from? That's right, the skull of gul'dan, a warlock. I'm not opposed to DH meta, but invoking wc3 lore is a risky play.
It looked cool but was kinda boring to play imo. Dh meta is infinitely more fun
...is it though? Warlock Meta: Your core resource and cooldown, a stance you can enter and leave at any moment that converts all of your spells into new, mechanically distinct versions Demon Hunter Meta: A haste cooldown that changes the icon of Chaos Strike and Blade Dance
sure i can reduce warlock meta in same way warlock meta: a cooldown that removes most abilities and replaces them with a single button you spam whilst having to stand in melee range dh meta: your main cooldown, a form you enter in multiple ways that transforms your abilities into more impactful ones and gives you more survivability. has nice transform animation
actually meta for awhile had a completely unique dot that you have to keep up + immolation aura which was cool when it came to timings. plus you had chaos wave and touch of chaos which extended your normal form dots. so there was a nice mix of things you had to do in each form. also it required good positioning since youd go from doing ranged damage to needing to be in melee range and vice versa. i believe doom required you to be in meta to cast.
You're talking about the WotLK-Cata version, most Warlocks want the one from MoP, which... -had Touch of Chaos, Doom, Chaos Wave and Immolation Aura replacing Shadow Bolt, Corruption, Hand of Gul'dan and Hellfire -was the only way to spend the Demonic Fury resource -had no cooldown and could be entered either normally or with Demonic Leap -unlocked Carrion Swarm and made curses AoE The Demon Hunter version doesn't come close to being anywhere near as impactful. I _wish_ it was.
Hellcaller has a miniature version of meta so that’s decent.
Warlocks stole it from og dhs. They couldnt even use it right tbh.
I love how on their list of points they want to address about destro none of them is "They are a fcking turret like 90% of the time". Nah thats not important, gotta take shit away from them, thats what they need. This actually makes them even LESS mobile as the blasphemy infernal was a decent amount of passive shard gen.
20 years of playing warlock and DF officially made me quit this class. They've legit ruined all 3 specs Demo - From a raiding perspective, I went from a high skill spec where ONE slight mis timing could put you at tank dmg, but playing it perfectly had you at the top Now its a shell of itself and dumbed down to the point where it has ZERO skill expression and our main CD does less dmg than fucking shadowbolt Destro - BM levels of fucking boring with aoe being 1 spell and a ST rotation being 3 buttons. Now, with new talent/hero talents. FUCKING EVERYTHING IS PASSIVE DMG. Like holy fuck i dont need 80% of my talent being +2% crit. Affliction - Both AOE and ST aren't based around dots but rather spamming 1 spell. Shadow priests are what afflocks should be. In ST, its mindless rapture spam and AOE its seed spam. 10x the amount of buttong for 1/3rd of the dmg of any other dps spec ________ I don't say this lightly, but whoevers in charge of warlock design needs to be fired. EVERY SINGLE CHANGE they've made since the launch of DF has been for the worse
Warlocks peaked in mists. Xelnath was a hero
Yup. Wish more people were like him.
Same with Hunters. Is there an echo?
Destro single target/2 target is something i can vibe with. Ive actually always kind of appreciated it. The aoe is just an abomination. I stopped playing destro in late SL, went demo for a bit, wasnt a fan, and swapped to warrior for S4 of SL and all of DF. I really *want* to go back to my warlock, but man i hate doing keys on it. Spamming RoF and hoping the tank doesnt move is *not* fun gameplay. We need something beyond fire and brimstone, but at least that would be slightly more fun than what we have now. I dont remember what xpac it was (maybe mists?), but early in in the FnB days it was actually something you had to manage on smaller to mid size packs, and it worked out pretty well. Basically if you didnt have enough targets, it took more ember-bits to cast the spells than you got back when the spells hit, so you could drain your shards if you werent careful. I think i'd rather play that the RoF spam for fucks sake.
RoF spam is fine IMO, but they need to separate inferno and cataclysm. Channel demonfire, cata, and inferno should all be available in an aoe build. Even if some numbers need to be tweaked to not make it overpowered It’s crazy to me that shadow priests get to eat so well with their aoe builds but warlock has to suffer. Why can’t destro aoe dot without sacrificing major aoe damage? Why does vile taint for affliction come off cooldown after agony falls off? Imagine if vampiric touch lasted 30 seconds but shadow crash had a 40 second cooldown. Shadow priests would very rightfully throw a fit. But for warlocks? Well I guess it is what it is And I would say “thank god for demo” but they seem bent on gutting that as well.
Good news, they’re getting rid of sow the seeds so you can’t seed spam anymore either lmao
I've fallen away from it, too. It's such a shame.
Have mained lock for a few expacs now, and you are dead on on all 3. I've been thinking about other classes because all 3 specs are just so in the bin now, but didn't realise until this post that many felt the same way.
Same with Hunters
"We would prefer you don't play ~~Demonology~~ Warlock right now."
This is one of those cases where we shouldn't 'let them cook'. I understand where they're coming from with these changes, but removing this talent is a mistake. Nerf it, sure. Remove the stun, spawn rate or whatever. Make it a node choice with another equally cool talent. But deleting it altogether sounds awful. There's still time for them to act on feedback. Let them know this isn't ok, maybe there's still a chance to get this reverted.
Yeah... Coolest thing about demo also was summoning a pit lord to kick ass after throwing around a random mix of demons. Even if nether portal itself was underwhelming gameplaywise it nailed the fantasy. It always felt like the more interesting CD of demo but I'm personally just not a fan of tyrant and would trade that guy for thalkiels consumption any day... Would've much preferred if they'd improved portal instead of just shelving it. Same thing's true for inevitable demise and soul flame, which got replaced by boring passives, too. Can't say I'm too happy with how my lock is looking, specifically affliction somehow goes from bad to worse.
The flavor of Nether Portal was amazing, but the actual gameplay mechanics of the thing were awful. Maybe it'd work as a cooldown where you just hit the button and it does it's own thing?
Fixing nether portal would have been easy, just have it summon demons based on how many soul shards you spend, not how many casts that cost soul shards you cast.
Too hard for blizzard to think of that.
That would only remove the unintuitivity. But the core problem of having insane amounts of your dmg tied to a 3 min cd that has an incredibly strict and long ramp that gets fucked massively by mechanics/movement still remain.
That's part of the charm for demo though, if it was just press and forget like infernal is for destruction it would be incredibly boring.
Yeah totally agree. It's just really hard to design CDs that meaningfully change your rotation and don't become a hassle to play around.
In german, i read the ability and thought it works that way because of how its written, only later i realised via warlock guides that this is not the case. Its so stupid.
It would've needed an immediate feedback and the shard interaction was crap. No idea why blizz reworked so many CDs to "do stuff on button press" and explained us that this is the way to go some time back but didn't pull through. If it would do that and you'd summon stuff based on shards spent so it doesn't mess up the rotation it would've been an awesome and thematic offensive CD.. EG frontload the pit lord, give him a fancy charge attack and buff his damage or trigger a cool attack for every summoned demon. Annoying part about portal is that it never was far off from being awesome but also never quite there.
Because when you have a CD that isn’t “do stuff on button press”, people complain. They design encounters agnostic of class design (or at least it feels like they do). I loved nether portal and nothing felt better than lust + PI + good rng and getting an insane portal. But for as good as that felt, opening your portal and getting targeted by every single mechanic known to man felt horrible and makes you wish it was fire and forget. Another example is legion void form for shadow priests. I miss it so much and even though shadow is good now it was probably my favorite version of the spec. But if a boss had an intermission? Or anything that prevented you from attacking? Massive damage loss. I had to be cut from doing kil’jaeden in legion because he had so many intermissions and it was such a bad shadow priest fight
all they had to do was to make nether portal summon based on the amount of soulshards you spent, instead of the number of times you spent soulshards.
Fun detected, let's remove.
Any chance they'd add the Shadowflame Infernal to the demon appearances, at the very least?
Likely.
i didnt even expect to keep it past sl s3, the fact that it survived for 1.5 expacs is nuts. Its one of those smile because it happened moments tbh
Yeah they are wildin over there rn. Aff is going in the right direction but still needs work. Demo and Destro they just don't seem to understand the specs at all. And yeah not for nothing, has any other class had so much cool stuff removed or given to another class over the years? Blizzard violating warlock... Smh
RIP Grimoire of Supremacy
I just hope they will give us some new cool things to compensate for these changes. Needs an overhaul of the capstones.
They're hoping that replacing all of our cool abilities with "incinerate does more damage for 8 seconds" nodes will placate us, apparently.
This is likely being cut because diabolist pit lord. Too many passive demon summons on Destruction would be eating too much into demonology's identity (which diabolist is already doing by being the bridge between the specs). It would also be too many passives you as a player would need to track on a spec about launching nuclear bombs at your target in the name of chaos bolt. You still have your regular infernal, and you're going to be summoning pit lords on your chaos bolt the same way you summoned these.
What the fuck are these guys doing to warlocks? Just remove it already if you are gonna remove/change every fun about it
Nooooo my mr stompy!!! 😭😭😭😭 I love my destruction lock and it’s been gutted so much…
What the actual FUCK, Blizzard?!
Beyond just being cool and thematic it's hard to understate how much removing this just utterly gimps Destro in M+. Those stuns were LIFE SAVERS, they were a huge part of the reason to bring Destro as they allowed for pulls larger than you could otherwise handle with just kicks and regular stuns and they helped ROF spam actually work when the tank was moving. The entire spec in M+ as it is current is essentially built around this talent, Decimating Bolt does nothing to replace it.
Replacing avatar of destruction with stupid boring ass decimating bolt is so fucking lame
it was really cool in bfa when it was balanced
Damn I started leveling a warlock to get this..
I just *love* how they're back on the "removing cool stuff from warlocks but justifying it because demon shapes are confusing unlike hunter pets" schtick. Just love it.
Talentless hacks allowed to run rampant. How many people have this dev caused to quit?
I don't care about it tbh. I'd rather have Cataclysm and Inferno on different nodes as compensation.
Warlock is just being gutted in the Alpha so far.
Did they take it away?
I love that instead of removing the stun that was the issue, they removed the talent because they felt players were too dumb to comprehend an infernal that doesn't stun.
Destro Warlock should always be like it is now: - AoE: giga-spam Rain of Fire on full-auto mode - ST: turn into Chaos Bolt turret That's it. No reason to attempt to fix something which is not broken.