Upcoming Warlock Changes on the Dragonflight Alpha: August 22nd

Greetings Warlocks,

Our Eye of Kilrogg has been watching the community discussions unfold over the past two weeks and we have several changes that we’re summoning into this week’s Alpha update, based on the feedback we’ve observed. There’s a lot to cover with Core and each Specialization tree receiving significant changes, so grab your Healthstones and let’s dive into our grimoire of updates:

Core Tree

We took another look at the Core tree and came to the same consensus that a lot of the community shared: while it was cool to get access to buttons previously unavailable or completely new, it created a lot of button bloat and added some additional mechanical complexity to each rotation. In lieu of this, we’ve cut out a lot of the throughput centric talents (Devastating Bolt, each of the Pacts, etc.) and introduced (or re-introduced) some utility talents in their place. Here are some examples of spells you can expect to see:

Soul Armor – When your health drops below 35%, the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link is increased by an additional 5%.

Demonic Resilience – Reduces the chance you will be critically struck by 4%. All damage your primary demon takes is reduced by 15%.

Abyss Walker – Using Demonic Circle: Teleport or your Demonic Gateway reduces all damage you take by 4% for 10 sec.

Fel Synergy – Soul Leech also heals you for 25% and your pet for 50% of the absorption it grants.

Soul Link has been divided into two parts: Fel Synergy and itself (the damage reduction portion). The reason for this change is Soul Link offers too much value for a single talent node. That said, Fel Synergy and Soul Link are very close to one another, and neither are multi-rank.

Additionally, the following abilities are now implemented and testable:

Summon Soulkeeper (was Summon Jailer) – You gain Tormented Souls periodically and as you slay enemies. Consume all Tormented Souls to summon a Soulkeeper that periodically blasts nearby enemies. The Soulkeeper’s lasts 2 seconds per Tormented Soul consumed.

Inquisitor’s Gaze – Summons an Inquisitor’s Eye that periodically blasts your enemies.

We’ve also rearranged some talents, such as moving Accrued Vitality and making Demonic Circle much more accessible.

By removing excess throughput from the Core tree, we have more freedom to funnel it into the specialization trees and focus on amplifying each specialization’s rotation.

Affliction Tree

Our primary goals with this pass of Affliction are to remove a lot of the button bloat introduced during the first pass, remove excess rotational maintenance, and focus on Affliction’s single target toolkit. With these goals in mind, we’ve removed: Deathbolt, Death Dealer, Pact of the Nathrezim, and Malefic Wrath.

With space being a bit freed up, we have some new talents and changes that we’re excited to get feedback on:

Creeping Death no longer decreases the duration of your damage over time effects.

Malefic Affliction – Malefic Rapture causes your active Unstable Affliction to deal 5/10% additional damage, up to 15/30%, for the rest of its duration.

Doom Blossom (a choice against Dread Touch) – If Corruption damages a target affected by your Unstable Affliction, it has a 10% chance per stack of Malefic Affliction to deal Shadow damage to nearby enemies.

Dread Touch (a choice against Doom Blossom) – If Malefic Affliction exceeds 3 stacks, the target instead takes 20% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 6 seconds.

Soul-Eater’s Gluttony – Whenever Unstable Affliction deals damage, the cooldown of Soul Rot is reduced by 0.5/1.0 second.

Grim Reach (a choice against Wilfred’s Sigil of Superior Summoning) – When Darkglare deals damage, it deals 50% of that damage to all enemies affected by your damage over time effects.

We’ve also rearranged several talents on the left side of the tree. We will continue to watch for feedback and will be tuning as we continue to test.

Demonology Tree

Overall, we’re happy with the community’s reception of the Demonology tree but have some changes and iterations we’d like to make.

Demonic Consumption has been removed and replaced with Reign of Tyranny.

Reign of Tyranny – Active Wild Imps grant 1 stack of Demonic Servitude. Active greater demons grant 2 stacks of Demonic Servitude. Demonic Tyrant deals 3% additional damage for each stack of Demonic Servitude active at the time of his summon.

Demonic Consumption was largely invisible in terms of how much power your Tyrant was getting and encouraged utilizing defensive cooldowns offensively for maximum throughput. With Reign of Tyranny, we’re trying something that is more visible to players and with better, controllable scaling.

Guillotine (was Hold This For Me) is now playable and available for testing.

Your Felguard hurls his axe towards the target location, erupting when it lands and dealing Shadowflame damage every 1 second for 8 seconds to nearby enemies. While unarmed, your Felguard’s basic attacks deal damage to all nearby enemies and attacks 50% faster.

Ner’zhul’s Volition has been updated.

When Nether Portal summons a demon, it has a 2/4% chance per Soul Shard spent to summon an additional demon.

Destruction Tree

Like Demonology, we’re happy with how the Destruction tree has been received. We’ve implemented many tuning changes for Destruction, and a few changes to spells based on feedback:

Backdraft now affects Soul Fire.

Dimensional Rift is now in the Destruction tree as a choice against Chaos Incarnate.

Combusting Engine has been removed and replaced with Explosive Potential.

Explosive Potential – Reduces the cooldown of Conflagrate by 2 seconds.

Chaos Shards has been removed and replaced with Scalding Flames.

Scalding Flames – Increases the damage of Immolate by 13/25%.

We’re removing Chaos Shards to ensure that Destruction’s Soul Shard generation is at a healthy cadence rather than overflowing.

That’s it for now! Thank you for all the feedback and discussions. We’ll Demonic Circle: Teleport back here when we have further updates to share.