Warlock Cataclysm Preview
Written by Gazrella.
The warlock changes have been announced so here is the post below straight from the blues mouth!
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.
24 Comments so far
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eh, Warlocks suck in BG….. if i hate em then i will kill every last one of them!
Warlocks Rock! What are you smoking!
Blizzard should really make a new pet for warlocks if they had one that has alot of agro,but a little weak,and AoE damage, that would be cool for a warlock
Thanks
More damage output and thats all,
Warlock’s rock and of course is my main. Just to be clean warlocks need more burst damage and harder hitting spells. Do this by keeping same spells just make them do more damage before buffs.
s
Leave soul shards alone, but if u want to make it so they are not considered invintory that would be great, i could use the extra bag space, but dont changed anything else.
cause if u do u are changing something that is not broke and ur developers can all be fired cause changing this is the worst idea i every heard
What is going to happen to Fel Amor? Is it going to scale to intellect or stamina?
Soulshards:
Maybe they should provide a smaller, but long duration buff for raid fights too. Like + 5% Spelldamage/Haste/Crit for 1 minute. There would be no need for more than three shards as you could place it to the right time like heroism.
just remove locks completely from the game. please.
yes leave soulshards alone and make them non inventory use , but if you are gonna remove them and make only 3 available let us locks get more still with drain soul whenever we want and not with some cooldown timer rubbish as you have nerfed locks too much all ready.
plus how about a warlock only flying mount like the dradsteed but with wings or somthing along them lines seen as we have a groundmount secial to lock class
and reguarding a new demon how about making the infernal or doomguard a pet to keep or just let us like the hunter use inslave demon to become our own for good unless we dismiss it, and it can level with us, plenty of demonds to choose from in outland and desolace, would be cool
Cuppycake, If I ever see you in a bg, you better count your blessings, especially if you are a gnome or human. ;D
@Amria lol
hmm .. I actually don’t really care about the changes right now .. I’m just gonna let them suprise me .. I mean .. why get pissed up now -.- it’s not worth it .. ohh and I am a Human Warlock .. AND I’M FUCKN PROUD OF IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =P
hate yourself -.-
hmm .. I don’t get it -.- why are you guys getting so pissed now? you haven’t even tried it … ich don’t care about that stuff now .. I’m just gonna let it suprise me ^^
oh and Amria: I am a Human Warlock -.- Problem?!?!?! … well I’m proud of it =P I can beat your ass anyway =P
hmm .. why are you guys getting so pissed now? you haven’t even tried it … ich don’t care about that stuff now .. I’m just gonna let it suprise me ^^
oh and Amria: I am a Human Warlock -.- Problem?!?!?! … well I’m proud of it =P I can beat your ass anyway =P
^^
why won’t you guys just wait until it’s released? .. ich mein .. let it suprise you^^
and amria… i am a human warlock .. probelms?!?!?! ..i can beat your ass anyway! =P
^^
human warlocks are ugly imo, boring to look, same with the human mages. anyways, that wasn’t my point,
i wanted to say whats happening with soul fire and shadow burn. i personally am a pretty deviant warlock, screw crit being stacked to insane high lengths, i like hitting with spells that do certain damage, and cost VERY low mana. soul fire is my most fave lock move, made me switch from a mage to warlock so i could do 6-12 quick 1.5-2.5 sec casts of it on a boss fight and refresh all my combat cooldowns. if i can only do 1-3 soulfires im quitting warlocks for sure lol. you’d think they would atleast consider releasing info on spells that REQUIRE soul shards while talking about replacing them with some power source similar to death knight runes…
@Kitescha
making an argument about being a better player without any background evidence to support yourself just makes you look like a noob. this is further proved by spamming submit lol
Well they keep screwing the class up the soulshards thing is a dumb idea wat they need to do is give us another pet i mean com on blizzard havent had a new pets since wow started
Well they keep nerfing the class up the soulshards thing is a dumb idea wat they need to do is give us another pet i mean com on blizzard havent had a new pets since wow started for once listen cause you are killing the class
Indeed Bryan..
Well, I also feel like qq ing about shards. Seems Blizz is going to turn Locks into DK’s, (just not kill us pre-creation). IDK what blizz’s prob is. Locks need more mobility spells and dmg. They don’t need to be slaved to some BS mechanic that you can’t even get a shard if needed. Maybe Blizz should come play in a bg where you lose your demon too much and hmmm, being demon spec I am constantly in battle. How the (eff) are you supposed to get out when you are mobbed? Jeez, make it work. Don’t eff it up.
HEY buff the Demon locks better! give us a longer demon form time!!! its way to short!!! I love being an off tank dont mess with it!
Hey at least we aren’t rogues pretty much the most useless class there is. Never quite 1st place those shadow dwelling miscarriages. LOCKS RULE and I would invite any challenger to take me and rip my name from the leader boards xD.
As if you didn’t approve of my message about rogues being miscarriages lol you must have wasted your time leveling one too lol so what’s the word bird fuck yourself peace trolley whore
The new spells are needed…especially any and all instant casts since it seems that is the only thing blizz is interested in developing for PvP combat. But the most important thing Warlocks need…and blizz seems to still be ignoring is SURVIVABILITY. When you can get stunned and c/c to withing 10-15% of your total life without being able to move is stupid. Give us better armor or a spell that actually WORKS at giving us a chance to survive multiple stuns..c/c, and i will be happy. (AND REMOVE SOME OF THE DIMINISHING RETURN ON FEAR..NOT ALL…BUT SHORTEN IT..AND MAKE DEMONIC CIRCLE INVISIBLE….LOL) demonic wait and gank me more like it…(oh and for the love of god..make it instant cast!!)