Warlock Cataclysm Preview Discussion - READ THE FIRST POST
 

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Those suggestions should provide a good baseline for appropriate discussion of the changes in development. However, I understand warlock psychology and the needs of the warlock population. You crave answers, quantification of penalties, and certainty in what is and is not acceptable. To that end, I am providing the following supplementary rules:

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Thank you. And now, on with the show!

The changes with Hellfire, it does however suck that we are no longer given a free out of durability. Also the succubus is being given a knockback? I forsee a lot of funny hi-jinks with that. Another huge thing that they changed is the Bane of agony and Bane of Doom. No we no longer have to lose dps for keeping up elements.

Agreed, PvP hijinks with succubus can ensue, as well as some rather interesting PvP mechanics, Instant Soul Fire, Teleport w/ Increased Speed for 8 secs and 20% more total health. Warlock PvP has become rather interesting to me again.

Metamorph no longer affected by Demon CC.

Loads of interesting spell rotations going off in my head, as well, like Conflag then 3x Soul Fires ( no shard cost anymore ) followed by Fel Fire to reset duration of immolate, then Soul Fire spamming again.

Can't wait to continue reading other ppls ideas here.

My favorite change has to be the fact that dots can no longer be clipped, instead they just add duration.

EDIT: I read the information slightly wrong, but this still strikes me as an interesting change by lessening the negative effect of clipping dots.

This is not how I understand it to be, they said it will work just as everlasting affliction works, meaning it will still have its max duration (added with haste as implied) but you cant continuously stack more duration by spamming a dot.

I am really interested in how the statement, "Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks." will work. Is there going to be certain haste cut-off points that will need to be acquired before you benefit from an additional tick of damage (ie. At 99 haste we receive no bonus but at 100 haste we get an additional tick) ?

The Demon Soul Synergy dealy looks pretty rad to me. Different buffs for different pets? Might that mean if you merged with a voidwalker, you could tank? Hmm...

A question I have is will the UA-SB combo deal damage equal to the entire effect or the effect of the spell until that point? In other words, would it be more beneficial to UA-SB while UA is near the end of its duration, or can it be done at the beginning?

A second question, is will the imp overtake the fel hunter as the number 1 pet for affliction? I did not see anything relating to a fel hound change, but an additional stacking DoT could be fairly interesting.

Edit: A third question: Forgive this one but the language for me is not entirely clear. Does the Drain Life-SB combo reduce ALL casting time by 60%, or just the channeling time of Drain Life? If it is the former, then all I really have to say is wow.

Soul Shards not being acquired in combat has some interesting ramifications. Won't that mean that longer fights will significantly reduce a warlock's DPS? Perhaps it is their intention to greatly increase burst capability? If there are no cooldowns on activating them, 3 instant Soul Fires sounds awfully deadly.

You're overthinking it. As long as the spell doesn't fall off the mob, the spell will tick at the hasted rate, eventually creating what is essentially an extra tick. All this does is stop the problem some of us have of haste effects making Corruption impossible to refresh with Haunt because the duration drops below Haunt's cooldown plus travel time.

- Impending Doom is strange. The benefit to reduced CD on Metamorphosis is obvious, but it doesn't seem too hot for reducing the CD on Bane of Doom. If you are using BoD as part of your rotation it will already be on the boss. If Impending Doom procs the spell will be ready sooner, but you won't want to apply it over the old one. In its current form it only seems useful for boss encounters where there are two bosses (Twins, Four Horsemen, etc) and boss adds die too quickly. Perhaps they need to reduce both the CD *and* the duration of existing applications?

- Will the Imp's Burning Ember be subject to the Warlock's crit and haste values? Will Blizzard be nice enough to have it count towards our Drain Soul bonus?

- Will Torment's range be increased so a Voidwalker could be used to bunch up or (very) temporarily control adds (eg: Freya+3)? Current range is 10 yards.

- Would Searing Pain + Soul Burn be viable as a bit of burst for Destro PvE due to the massive crit boost and Searing Pain's short cast time?

- Who will be our primary targets for Dark Intent? I'm guessing Shadow Priests (DoT based DPS) and Holy Paladins (Flash Heal). If neither exist in the raid / party, who would be our secondary targets?

- The change to Shadowburn coupled with it's 15 second CD seems to be a PvP finisher rather than a PvE "Execute" style spell for Destro. Do you think that is their intent, or will they want it to be both?

- Besides suicide, when do people actually use Hellfire? I only use it to save durability damage but do people AoE farm with it or something?

My suspicion is you'll trigger Soul Burn just before you cast the spell, and it will apply the effects immediately. Hence, you'll do 30% of a full-duration UA when the spell is applied with Soul Burn.

The Drain Life thing is not at all clear to me either. Hopefully they'll explain it further.

It says it reduces casting speed not casting time. To me, this means it's a debuff on the target's casting while you drain, not a buff to the speed of your drain.

Yes, you will. BoD will benefit from haste, meaning it will fire in less than 60 seconds. Impending Doom will lower the cooldown such that you can cast it more often than the default cooldown (currently 60 seconds).

They do not mention a duration for the reduction. Between that and bart's suspicion (which is extremely probable), you can assume the reduction is specifically to Drain Life. The point seems to be a quick self-heal without killing DPS, which makes it very powerful for soloing or any situation where combat is sporadic.

It has nothing to do with decreasing the casting speed of an enemy. Who would honestly blow a shard on that when Warlocks already have a spammable curse that can't be interrupted?

This doesn't fit your description of the change to DoTs ticking faster, rather than having a shorter duration. Even if haste pushes it to tick once every 40 seconds, you'll only refresh it every 59.