NEW Alpha Build Notes for Warlocks

[chrisdux 0]

I think that the lvl90 talent tier for warlock needs serious rethinking.

The current state (aplha patch notes) can be summed up by one word: BORING

 

Before the changes made to KJC in aplha WoD, you had some interresting choices to make there: do I want to be more mobile, do more single-target dps or do some burst AOE?

 

With the KJC change, I can't imagine ANYONE taking KJC, unless the bossfights are designed so that you need to move only once in 2 minutes. Exactly once every 2 minutes, not more, not less. Which is unlikely, meaning that the only choice in the tier is AD, default talent you always take.

I've heard that at least in the new WoD 5-man instances, you need to move quite a lot, so 2 minute cooldown to move for a few seconds is of little help.

 

Personally, I think that the previous choice we had - increased mobility and lower dps or lower mobility and higher dps - made a lot of sense and had quite some impact gameplay-wise. Furthermore, having choices is fun and having something to do while you need to move is fun. Having to run around knowing there's nothing you can do (and if the things stay as they are in the patch notes right now ,it could happen easily that you wouldn't be able to do anything) sounds frustrating as hell.

 

What are your thoughts on that?

[Liquidsteel 279]

Lazy people will take KJC and macro it to Dark Soul. I can also see situations for you to use it when you get a nice trinket proc during a phase where getting off back to back chaos bolts would be impossible.

 

Depends how powerful our 2 minute burn phase is in WoD tbh.

 

I doubt there'll be a 2 minute ICD trinket to stack with it, so likely saving it for either trinket or dark soul will be quite common, unless like you said, a particular boss transition calls for it.

 

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a poor talent (and bad design to remove fel flame), but we may as well start looking at ways to use it.

[Kazistrasz 216]

In the current live build, there's hardly a choice to take.

 

If you're destro, you take KJC for everything, because an extra Dark Soul is really lackluster and MF is pointless.

 

If you're Aff, you take AD for everything, because MF is laughable and KJC is pointless compared to the extra Dark Soul.

 

If you're Demo, you take AD so you can react to trinket procs. KJC is pointless for such a naturally mobile spec, the only fights where MF is even worth considering is Sha (if and only if you have slow kill times where you see lots of reflections) and Spoils.

 

Things won't be that much different in WoD. With mobility being reduced across the board, they're going to be designing fights with less demand for mobility. You can't say KJC is going to be terrible when we have no idea how much movement we'll actually need from such a talent.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I think Mannoroth's is worth using on more fights than just Sha of Spoils. It's good when you have 3+ targets up that live through the full duration of immolation aura. Zinnin from blood legion talked a bit about it over on MMO-C with an explanation as to how it was good on 3+ targets (if my memory serves me right). Shinafae also seems to use it on damn near every single figh from when I stalked her logs.

 

Fight's that are good for Mannoroths

 

Immerseus

Protectors

Norushen (send like 6+ people in at a time on 25 man, or 4 on 10 man and you get a shit ton of stuff to AoE)

Sha

Galakras

Spoils

Garrosh 

 

I did consider KJC on Garrosh but found Mannoroth's to be really awesome for padding on adds in p1, but also super strong in first intermission, and again in second intermission. Also nice to break out empowered mind controls after second intermission.

 

If we get to the point where we skip second intermission, I'd probably go AD for an extra Dark Soul in p3, cuz PBI usually comes off cooldown during or just before his roleplay going into p4, so the extra charge would allow more DPS here whilst still syncing it with PBI later on.

[chrisdux 0]

I've read a very nice suggestion for redesign at MMO champion about how to change the 90lvl tier to make it interessting again. It's based on the idea that every talent in the tier has both a passive and an active part. Casting your filler spell gives you a stacking buff, doing certain action removes a stack of the buff. Consuming all charges of the buff at once can be used once in a while as a cooldown.

 

I'm not sure about the numbers in the suggestion below, I'd consider them to be placeholders and changed when balancing is done. Nevertheless, the basic talent design is quite original and should work well.

 

Kil'jaeden's Cunning
Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Kil'jaeden's Cunning, allowing you to cast your next [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate] while moving. Maximum 5 charges.
Active: Consume 5 charges of Kil'jaeden's Cunning to conjure a Fiendish Illusion, which continues to cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate] on your target for 20 sec. 2 min cooldown.

Archimonde's Darkness
Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Archimonde's Darkness, increasing your Spellpower by 1%. Maximum of 5 charges.
Active: Consume 5 charges of Archimonde's Darkness to conjure a Dark Effigy of your target which persists for 15 sec. All damage dealt to the Dark Effigy is increased by 5% and redirected to the original target. 3 min cooldown

Mannoroth's Fury
Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Mannoroth's Fury, increasing the radius of your next [seed of Corruption / Hellfire / Rain of Fire] by 100%. Maximum 5 charges.
Active: Consume 5 charges of Mannoroth's Fury to conjures a Cataclysm at the target location, dealing 500% of Spellpower as Shadowflame damage to all enemies within 50 yards, and applying [Corruption / Immolate]. 60 sec cooldown

 

P.S. Thank you Kathranis for this great ideas!

 

I really hope this idea reaches Blizzard, because it sounds both fun and viable, at least to me.

With proper balancing, this implementation shouldn't be either too strong or too laughable.

[Zagam 1,982]

Allow me to play devil's advocate...

 

Kil'jaeden's Cunning
Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Kil'jaeden's Cunning, allowing you to cast your next [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate] while moving. Maximum 5 charges.
Active: Consume 5 charges of Kil'jaeden's Cunning to conjure a Fiendish Illusion, which continues to cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate] on your target for 20 sec. 2 min cooldown.

Passive - overpowered.  Very rarely do you move and cast 5 consecutive spells.  If anything, model this more closely to Ice Floes, the T1 Mage trinket with 3 charges on a relatively short CD. 

 

Active - would have to be relatively weak given that one of our specs increases pet damage and would outscale for Demonology than the other two.  This returns the issue of being either good for Demo and bad for Destro & Aff, bad for them all, or good for Destro & Aff and overpowered for Demo.

 

There also needs to be a penalty when you activate the talent such as stopping the passive. 

 

 

Archimonde's Darkness
Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Archimonde's Darkness, increasing your Spellpower by 1%. Maximum of 5 charges.
Active: Consume 5 charges of Archimonde's Darkness to conjure a Dark Effigy of your target which persists for 15 sec. All damage dealt to the Dark Effigy is increased by 5% and redirected to the original target. 3 min cooldown

Passive - overpowered.  Would be better rebalanced in saying something like reducing the CD of Dark Soul by 0.5 seconds per cast.  5% Spell Power is nearly equivalent to 5% DPS gain, so there's no way this would go live. 

 

Active - Could get behind this.  Seems balanced.  Same deal with KJC - gotta disable the passive if you use the active.

 

 

Mannoroth's Fury
Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Mannoroth's Fury, increasing the radius of your next [seed of Corruption / Hellfire / Rain of Fire] by 100%. Maximum 5 charges.
Active: Consume 5 charges of Mannoroth's Fury to conjures a Cataclysm at the target location, dealing 500% of Spellpower as Shadowflame damage to all enemies within 50 yards, and applying [Corruption / Immolate]. 60 sec cooldown

Passive - Radius of SoC/HF/RoF does almost nothing.  Typically, anything you want to AoE is already in ranged of your normal range of HF/SoC/RoF.  If you were to say, increase the damage by 20% stacking 5 times, I could get behind it.  No way I'm ever using a talent that only increases the size.

 

Active - rolling the new T7 Talent into a T6 Talent?  INCREDIBLY overpowered.  FIFTY YARDS?  Holy crap...all enemies WITHIN 50 yards is a HUGE circle - that's a diameter of 100 yards and an area of over 7500 square yards.  Casting range is 40 yards...this isn't even close to being able to be discussed.  60 second CD?  No way.

[chrisdux 0]

As I said, the numbers should be considered placeholders that would change after balancing. But the ideas sound great to me, much more fun than what we are dealing with at the moment.

[Zagam 1,982]

I just wouldn't get my hopes up for a talent revamp.  We basically got flavor of the expansion with Mists of Pandaria.  Our changes will be relatively bland while other classes such as Balance Druids get the revamp attention. 

 

A lot of good ideas are coming out, much like the one you linked.  I just have to keep the unpopular mindset of preparing for the worst and not getting our hopes up for a drastic change like that one.

[chrisdux 0]

I just wouldn't get my hopes up for a talent revamp.  We basically got flavor of the expansion with Mists of Pandaria.  Our changes will be relatively bland while other classes such as Balance Druids get the revamp attention. 

 

A lot of good ideas are coming out, much like the one you linked.  I just have to keep the unpopular mindset of preparing for the worst and not getting our hopes up for a drastic change like that one.

 

I just hope we will be surprised. Though I fear you might be right as per usual...

[Lockybalboa 618]

Kil'jaeden's Cunning

Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Kil'jaeden's Cunning, allowing you to cast your next [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate] while moving. Maximum 5 charges.

Active: Consume 5 charges of Kil'jaeden's Cunning to conjure a Fiendish Illusion, which continues to cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate] on your target for 20 sec. 2 min cooldown.

Archimonde's Darkness

Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Archimonde's Darkness, increasing your Spellpower by 1%. Maximum of 5 charges.

Active: Consume 5 charges of Archimonde's Darkness to conjure a Dark Effigy of your target which persists for 15 sec. All damage dealt to the Dark Effigy is increased by 5% and redirected to the original target. 3 min cooldown

Mannoroth's Fury

Passive: Each time you cast [Malefic Grasp / Shadow Bolt / Incinerate], gain a charge of Mannoroth's Fury, increasing the radius of your next [seed of Corruption / Hellfire / Rain of Fire] by 100%. Maximum 5 charges.

Active: Consume 5 charges of Mannoroth's Fury to conjures a Cataclysm at the target location, dealing 500% of Spellpower as Shadowflame damage to all enemies within 50 yards, and applying [Corruption / Immolate]. 60 sec cooldown

 

 

 

Unimaginative and boring, sounds perfect for Blizzard!

 

KJC would become kind of annoying to track and kind of pointless. There is rarely a time that you would NEED to move for 5 spells in a row, it would also be unbalenced within itself. MG has a really long channel time, SB and Incinerate not so much. So it would be more useful to the MG then it would be to the others imo, kind of silly. The active sounds cool, but remember that this is blizz doing the programming. Assume they use the same AI for this as they use for the Shaman Flame totem or the Doomguard. I'd rather not have a talent at all then have one where I get to watch yet one more thing of mine stand there doing nothing. 

 

AD 5% SP sounds OP as balls and would become unbalanced at late Xpack level. Think MoP numbers for a moment, at the start of the Xpack I was happy when I hit 25k SP, this talent would give 1250 SP. Now my warlock has a little over 52k SP, the talent would give 2600 SP. Start of the Xpack it's a little over one free flask, at the end of the Xpack it's almost three. Talents shouldn't scale like that imo, they should do something helpful or rotation changing, not start off meh and become OP a year later. They would either have to drop the amount of SP (making it even worse at the start and only meh at the end) or they would have to change it as the Xpack goes on, 6.0 would be 5%, 6.1 changed to 4%, 6.2 changed to 3.5%, etc. This would make the community sad to see it always nerfed (even though it isn't really) and the Devs sad to have to deal with the fallout every patch and having to rerun the numbers every time. It becomes another GoSac situation. 

 

MF gives me more radius...woo...please...I can't stop the excitement...

MF now kind of sucks, it has a small place in the game with demo spec but not much. It's just a really dull talent. And baking in my T7 talent? A) OP as OP can be and makes both talents boring and lame.

 

 

I would welcome a remake of the T6 talents, but I don't think it will happen in any way. What we have now is fine and likely to not be moved around to much. With the amount of shit Blizz needs to get done before the xpack, I would rather see the time spent on useful things that really need changing rather then rehashing stuff that doesn't really need it.

[Djargo 4]

• Item - Warlock T17 Demonology 2P Bonus Increases the damage of Shadow Bolt and Touch of Chaos by 10%. Shadowbolt has a 50% chance empower your inner demon, temporarily bringing your Metamorphosis form out even while you are not transformed.

 

Now that sounds awesome. 

[Janglybits 1]

 

• Item - Warlock T17 Demonology 2P Bonus Increases the damage of Shadow Bolt and Touch of Chaos by 10%. Shadowbolt has a 50% chance empower your inner demon, temporarily bringing your Metamorphosis form out even while you are not transformed.

 

Now that sounds awesome. 

 

If that puts us in Meta, but nothing costs any fury during the proc, that could be a lot of fun.

[Soulzar 42]

Demos auto shift seems very interesting, however odd. 50% is a super high proc chance. What does this do for Soul Fire in our rotation? 

 

Is there an ICD? I would assume so. What is the duration of proc and ICD? Does the Proc Meta consume fury or simply give us the Dmg bonus of Meta and cast normal caster spells? I will assume caster spells. So with those questions in mind... Would we want to save Soul fire for Tier procs? Get the dmg of a Meta soul fire, but the better Fury per cast time generation of Soul fire? or will there be no ICD and we will want to spam Shadow bolt to vistory for as much as 100% up time as we can? 

 

Can we cast Demon Bolt in this Meta proc? I am def very interested ins seeing how this tier bonus really works.

The 10% chance to proc HoG is a nice bonus, especially on council type fights.

Edited June 23, 2014 by Soulzar

[Zagam 1,982]

Remember, in 5.4 Beta, Amplification was a proc that gave 88% Amplification.  Numbers at this point should mean very little while concepts should be more heavily analyzed.

 

In order for this to work, the buff would have to have some mimic type Meta form that didn't trigger the 10 second CD or even consume Demonic Fury.  Having a set bonus stance dance for us when stance dancing is required to optimize DPS would be detrimental to the Demonology design.  Not entirely optimistic something like that stays live - feels very clunky.

[JvChequer 43]

Remember, in 5.4 Beta, Amplification was a proc that gave 88% Amplification.  Numbers at this point should mean very little while concepts should be more heavily analyzed.

 

 

That was pretty awesome, best PTR ever.

[Kazistrasz 216]

A couple pieces of information now that 100 premades are on the Alpha:

 

Demonbolt gives you a buff for 30 seconds when cast that tells you how much fury you will be given when you next go under 40. This is useful, because it is something we can make a Weak Aura string for.

 

However, when you go under 40, the test for breaking out of Meta happens before the test for restoring DF in the current build. It's kind of obnoxious to work that way. If I've got 300 fury saved up, I'd like to go up to 335 or whatever I'd be at before breaking out of Meta rather than having to re-enter Meta to continue my rampage.

 

I'll play with more stuff tomorrow after work.

 

Oh, Twilight Ward has that awesome glyph to make it work for all schools, but the spell is completely absent from my spell book, glyphed or unglyphed, for all three specs. So is Command Demon, actually.

 

Final Edit of the night:

 

Obviously, final tuning means nothing. But, a few numbers to give an idea of where they are with balancing right now regarding Cataclysm:

 

My current stats in 660 epics (WoD Season 1 PvP Gear) are 14.08% crit, 5.29% haste, 16.33% mastery, 13.94% Multistrike, and 212 Versatility (22% damage/healing buff, 42% damage taken reduction).

 

Corruption ticks for about 1.1k, or 1.3k if I'm in Meta.

 

Soulfire crits for about 8.4k out of Meta, and about 9.7-10.3k in Meta (it functions like a weak Chaos Bolt now - always crits and increased by crit chance - did we know that and I just forgot? IDK I'm tired as hell).

 

Infernal awakening hits for 6k.

 

Cataclysm hits for 23.5k, or 30k in Meta. It crits for 47k, or 60k in Meta.

 

Chaos Bolt hits for 35-40k when I switch to Destro.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Aff still feels like aff.

 

OMFG DESTRO WITH 500x THE NUMBER OF HUGE GREEN DRAGON HEADS FLYING EVERYWHERE IS SO SUPER FREAKING COOL AND ITS JUST LIKE BOOM HEADSHOT WOOOOO

 

 

Didnt try demo yet.