FEEDBACK: Warlock Class Changes
In this thread, we’re discussing Warlock class changes coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.
Read more about initial class changes in the World of Warcraft blog.
This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this class as they are made.
Thank you for your testing and feedback!
FuenteHello!
In this build of the Shadowlands Alpha, we’ve made some changes to Affliction Warlocks, based on your feedback. We want to address concerns with pet summoning, Curse of Doom, and Affliction’s single target rotation, among other things.
Thank you for all your posts!
Warlock
- Fel Domination is now a baseline ability, learned at level 34, with a 3 minute cooldown. Fel Domination reduces summoning cast time by 5.5 seconds.
- Summoning your pet shouldn’t be always easy, but sometimes you need a new pet in a pinch.
- Curse of Doom removed for Affliction and Destruction.
- Curse of Exhaustion is learned at level 58 for all three specializations.
- Curse of Exhaustion slows the target by 50% for 8 seconds.
- Developers’ notes: We love Curse of Doom, but it wasn’t working out well at a 60-second period. Also, we feel that Curse of Exhaustion will provide interesting choices when deciding which Curse to use.
Affliction
- Shadow Embrace is now baseline as a part of Shadow Bolt (Rank 2), learned at level 52 for Affliction.
- Developers’ notes: Shadow Bolt for Affliction was falling by the wayside in the rotation. This should encourage Warlocks to use it more often, and provide more gameplay while fighting a single target.
- Unstable Affliction no longer has a limit of 1, and no longer amplifies damage on your target.
- Unstable Affliction’s damage backlash on dispel increased substantially.
- At level 56, Unstable Affliction is ranked up to gain an additional 5 seconds of duration.
- Developers’ notes: This is a more of an experimental change than the rest, but we feel that Unstable Affliction is not meeting player expectations at a limit of 1. This change allows Affliction to focus more on spreading dots to many targets at once.
- Corruption now ranks up at level 54 to gain an initial period, dealing .12 coefficient damage instantly.
Talents
- Writhe in Agony now also causes Agony to start at 4 stacks, in addition to increasing its maximum stacks to 18.
- New Talent: Inevitable Demise. Damaging an enemy with Agony increases the damage of your next Drain Life by 5%. This effect stacks up to 50 times.
- Nightfall now activates slightly more often as Corruption spreads to more targets.
- Developers’ notes: Previously, Nightfall was not occurring more often as you spread Corruption to multiple targets. This felt counter-intuitive, so we added functionality to increase its rate with multiple Corruptions. Similar to Agony, its increase is not linear, but you will see more Nightfalls multi-target.
- Deathbolt is now a PvP talent.
- Developers’ notes: With Unstable Affliction stacking gone, the instant burst single target damage from this felt more appropriate as a PvP talent, to act as a finisher.
- Tongue Tied Removed. Replaced with–
- Howl of Terror: Fears 5 targets within 10 yards for 20 seconds. Has a 1.5 second cast time and 40 second cooldown.
- New talent: Dark Caller (in place of Shadow Embrace). Reduces the cooldown of Summon Darkglare by 1 minute.
- Developers’ notes: This talent should allow Warlocks to specialize further into keeping lots of dots on many targets at once, and give them more room to use Malefic Rapture in that window.
PvP Talents
- Soulshatter removes all active Corruptions, dealing 10% of their maximum HP and grants 10% Haste, stacking 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds, and is magic dispellable.
- Developers’ notes: This talent was very under-utilized due to the heavy cost of removing all dots, so it now removes Corruption instead, and no longer generates soul shards.
- Deathbolt now deals 60% damage equal to remaining duration of your dots, has a 0.5 second cast time, and a 45 second cooldown. Deathbolt missile is slower and more apparent.
- Amplify Curse now affects Curse of Exhaustion, causing it to slow the target by 70%.
Demonology
Talents
- Curse of Doom reverted to Doom, with damage increased.
Fuente
Thanks for all of the detailed feedback! While there are still some planned changes coming for Warlock, we’ve made a few recently that you should be seeing in the Alpha:
Affliction
- Agony base damage increased by 12%.
- Inevitable Demise increases Drain Life’s damage by 12% per stack (was 5%).
Demonology
- Axe Toss now interrupts stun immune targets, such as dungeon or raid bosses. This does not affect PvP combat.
Destruction
- Soulfire damage increased by 40%.
- Infernals summoned from Rain of Chaos no longer trigger Infernal Awakening.
- Rain of Chaos Infernals now have some bad luck protection built in. Chance also increased to 20% (was 15%).
In the next build, we’ve made a few Destruction Warlock talent adjustments to address concerns with how the new talents are fitting into the rotation. While we’re not yet focused on making broad class tuning adjustments, we want to make sure these new talents are in a reasonable place for Beta.
Destruction
Talents
- Soul Fire cooldown is now 45 seconds (was 1 minute) and now applies Immolate (was an instant Incinerate).
- Internal Combustion reverted to consuming 5 seconds of Immolate (was 7 seconds).
- Shadowburn reverted to 2 charges (was 1) and its cooldown is now also reduced by Haste.
- Shadowburn Spell Power coefficient increased to 141% (was 130%).
- Roaring Blaze lasts 8 seconds (was 6 seconds).
- Rain of Chaos Infernals now always spawn where your first Infernal landed.
PvP Talents
- Focused Chaos damage increase is now 40% (down from 65%).
In this week’s Beta build, we’ve made some changes to Warlock’s baseline abilities to make sure Warlocks have new spells and rank-ups available for most of their levels. Along the way, we made a few changes that affect Warlocks at max level.
Ritual of Doom
- Learned at level 37. Begins a ritual that sacrifices a random participant to summon a Doomguard. Requires the caster and 4 additional party members to complete the ritual. 1 hour cooldown.
- This summons a hostile Doomguard that soon becomes automatically subjugated as an additional guardian pet for the Warlock. Currently, the Doomguard lasts up to 15 minutes, but has a small chance to break free from the subjugation at any time and attack your group. We’re still working on the details of this ability, but we’d love to hear your feedback about it.
Fear (Rank 2)
- Learned at level 52. You no longer suffer spell pushback when casting Fear.
- This functionality has existed in the past but was never explicitly tool-tipped anywhere. We removed the pushback resistance at first, but decided to bake it in as a rank-up instead.
Curse of Recklessness
- This spell has been removed.
- While we liked Warlocks being able to stop enemies from fleeing, we didn’t feel the physical damage increase was working out. Warlocks gave feedback that they felt required to use Curse of Recklessness on as many creatures as possible for the damage gain, and weren’t having fun with the ability. Warlocks still have access to Tongues, Weakness, and Exhaustion in their repertoire of Curses.
Eye of Kilrogg
- Eye of Kilrogg is once again attackable by enemy players, and is usable in rated PvP.
- This was partly in support of using the new conduit Kilrogg’s Cunning, but also to provide more uses for Eye of Kilrogg in all areas of the game.
This week, Soul Rot has had its health cost removed, while retaining a minor mana cost. Additionally, the primary target of your Soul Rot will now take increased damage compared to the secondary targets.
Decimating Bolt has been tweaked to help balance out some talent choices that could greatly swing the value of this ability. For Affliction Warlocks with Drain Soul talented, Decimating Bolt will now only affect your next Drain Soul (was previously your next three). Destruction Warlocks with Fire and Brimstone chosen will have the bonus damage value reduced. For Demonology Warlocks, the buff has been altered to affect your next Shadow Bolt or Demonbolt (rather than just Shadow Bolt).
In an upcoming build, the buff will only interact with Demonbolt for Demonology Warlocks.
FuenteSome tuning adjustments are in flight for Warlocks in Shadowlands. These should be hitting the Beta soon (and of course the live game that will mirror the Beta in 6 hours).
- Scouring Tithe damage reduced by 10% (Kyrian ability).
- Impending Catastrophe damage increased by 15% (Venthyr ability).
- Decimating Bolt damage increased by 15% (Necrolord ability).
It cannot be said enough – thank you all for your testing and your thoughtful feedback.
Fuente