Warlock Preview in Cataclysm

Billÿ · **Posted:** Thu Apr 08, 2010 2:32 pm

Zarhym (Blizzard CM) wrote:

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, warlocks will receive changes to their class talents and abilities. Outlined below are some of these changes. Keep in mind that this is an early preview and that these modifications are still under development, so you may see further adjustments to the listed changes as we get closer to launch. That said, here is a first look at these new warlock spells and abilities!

New Warlock Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

Soul Shard Overhaul

This major change regarding Soul Shards was previously announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Shards will not be required outside of combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells. Soul Burn has no mana or health costs and is off the global cooldown. Planned secondary effects are outlined here.

* Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.
* Drain Life + Soul Burn = Reduces cast speed by 60%.
* Demonic Circle + Soul Burn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.
* Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect.
* Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant cast.
* Healthstone + Soul Burn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds.
* Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds.

Next you will find a list of some of the warlock spell and talent changes for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

* All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.
* Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.
* Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock.
* Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.
* The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.
* Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

New Talents and Talent Changes

* Pandemic will now cause Drain Soul to refresh Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony on targets below 25% health.
* The ability Fel Domination will be removed (because Soul Burn accomplishes the same effect).
* Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, Demon Bolt. Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target.
* We plan to add a new talent, Impending Doom, which will give certain spells a chance to reduce the cooldown on Metamorphosis and Bane of Doom.
* Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock's own spells.
* Shadowburn will now do additional damage to targets below 25% health.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Affliction

* Spell Damage
* Spell Crit
* Shadow DoTs

Shadow DoTs: The damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells is increased.

Demonology

* Spell Damage
* Spell Haste
* Demon Damage

Demon Damage: The damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis is increased.

Destruction

* Spell Damage
* Spell Critical Damage
* Fire Direct Damage

Fire Direct Damage: The damage caused by Fire direct damage spells is increased.

Well that concludes this Cataclysm preview for the warlock class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.

[...]

Here are a few points of clarification on some of the popular questions or concerns we're seeing.

* On regenerating shards in combat, we will add a mechanic to regen shards if we find that we need to in order to handle variable combat length. We haven’t added one yet because we really want to emphasize locks using shards at the right time and not as fast as they can with then an Evocation-like spell to bring them back again. These are supposed to be special moments in a fight -- think Bloodlust perhaps -- and not used every 20 seconds on cooldown (or whatever the cooldown ends up being).
* Demon lovers, we haven’t ruled out adding a new demon, but we want to be very careful here. We’ve had a hard enough time finding niches for some of the current ones. So we first want to make sure existing demons are cool before we’re faced with Q&A several months from now asking why the new demon either isn’t cool enough, or why warlocks no longer use, say, their felhunter because of the new demon.
* The intent for Hellfire is for it to be a specialty of Demonology warlocks. Affliction would use Seed of Corruption and Destruction would use Rain of Fire.

I'm sure our locks will be happy to read that they won't need to spend shards to summon people any more and that they get a new mechanic to boost their DPS instead. More crits = bigger numbers = happy Warlocks. The curse or "bane" changes will mean that we get CoE on all bosses regardless of having an unholy DK or a Moonkin in the group. Most of the changes seem to boost demonology and the demon *can imagine the cry of warlocks that lose their pets to incidental damage during raids*.

Source

Chris · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 12:24 am

The sad truth is I've just not really enjoyed playing my 'lock since the patch 3.0 changes changed the style of the demonology tree.

Not overly sold on the changes so far. Two of the new moves provide burst DPS on a cooldown, and I've always hated that way of playing

The changes to soul-shards sounds interesting, but having to collect soul-shards was never a deal breaker for me in the first place.

I'm trying to pick a class to be my "main" in Cataclysm, so far I don't think it will be my lock...

Billÿ · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 2:49 am

Chris wrote:

The changes to soul-shards sounds interesting, but having to collect soul-shards was never a deal breaker for me in the first place.

When you are the go-to-guy to put up summoning stones / healthstones and even summon pets collecting shards before a raid is a pain in the ass so I think these locks will be happy.

Chris wrote:

Two of the new moves provide burst DPS on a cooldown, and I've always hated that way of playing

Affliction warlock at heart then, right?

Guess we won't be seeing you on the mage forums if burst damage is not your thing then...

Chris · **Posted:** Fri Apr 09, 2010 2:05 pm

Billÿ wrote:

Chris wrote:

The changes to soul-shards sounds interesting, but having to collect soul-shards was never a deal breaker for me in the first place.

When you are the go-to-guy to put up summoning stones / healthstones and even summon pets collecting shards before a raid is a pain in the ass so I think these locks will be happy.

Yes, but they don't re-roll their chars over it, which was my point.

Billÿ wrote:

Chris wrote:

Two of the new moves provide burst DPS on a cooldown, and I've always hated that way of playing

Affliction warlock at heart then, right?

Guess we won't be seeing you on the mage forums if burst damage is not your thing then...

Who knows? Maybe one day I'll finally learn how to use a spell on my Mage other than Fireball? ^_^;;

Ell · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:36 am

I quite like the warlock changes, in fact I'm considering levelling it first in Cataclysm. The way blizzard is going hybrid's won't be able to compete in dps with pure classes of equal gear and skill so I'm stuck with a pure class if I want to bring the highest dps I possibly can.
Not that that principle is living up to much now mind... but still.

Anyway, as for the changes, lets get my 2 major dissapointments out of the way first:
1 - Mastery bonuses are bloody boring, ele shammys get a cool lightning overload, shadow priests get floating orbs, moonkins get that awesome eclipse thing, even bloody mages get mana adept which looks interesting, what do we get, woo more shadow damage, or woo more pet damage, or woo more fire damage, boring :<
2 - No demonic flight form, honestly i never expected it, but we can all dream can't we, is it so hard to transform the mechanic we get when we get levitate cast on us in meta to a fully blown flight form. Or even to just give the dreadsteed wings...

I do have some positive thoughts though, some of these changes are just what were needed. Saying that warlocks are a pretty awesome class for judging how good you are... as affli or demo anyway, can't really get destro wrong. The same geared affli lock can do vastly different dps depending on how good they are, which is what I love about the class. If an affli lock does things like dot clip (which will be gone in cata actually so ignore that) and doesn't crit roll on corr then his dps will be laughable compared to the lock that does things right... Anyway, changes:
1 - Green fire spell! What else do i need to say, just awesome
2 - bb soul shards, i don't care I can farm 32 of you in 2-3 minutes on a target dummy, your still annoying
3 - Soul burn, none of the changes particularly great for pve so far but hopefully we'll get better ones as cata rolls around.
4 - Demon Soul + Meta, can some1 say burst dps...
5 -

Quote:

* Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

Now this may have slipped a lot of people by unnoticed, but personally I'm very excited about it, ofc it depends on how good they make it, but I like to solo things, and anything that improves that experience I love. A lot of people won't care in the slightest about this change, I'm not one of them, and with the vastly improved health and armor levels in Cata who knows whats going to be possible.

Ell/Néph

Warlock Preview in Cataclysm

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