Cataclysm Changes: Warlock

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.

I like whiplash knockback, thats about it. Dont know if I like these changes at all for the lock. The shard system we already knew about, pom soulfire looks ok. Being able to put agony and togues or curse at the same time will be cool.

I haven't had much of a chance to Multibox with a 'lock yet, but not having to worry about clipping DOTs make me all warm and fuzzy.

My main from launch was warlock so I've been through "pet class, but not as good as hunters" phase, the "Fear Bombing" phase, the "faceroll shadowbolt" phase. WotLK had lots of good ideas, but the rotation was generally a PITA.

If there's no internal cooldown on Soul Burn... Warlocks might just be an amazing boxing team. Imagine a world where you have all the CC that Warlocks bring and your first three spells are all instant Soul Fires.

Just let that settle in a little bit.

I have an issue with the inability to replenish during combat. Maybe give them a timer so they replenish instantly after combat, or after 30 seconds/5 minutes/whatever.

There can be some long fights ...

They haven't said how fast shards will replenish out of combat.

Thinking of arenas here, if I get out of combat for a split second, will I instantly have all 3 of my soul shards back for more PoM soulfire goodness?

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Originally Posted by Ghallo

I have an issue with the inability to replenish during combat. Maybe give them a timer so they replenish instantly after combat, or after 30 seconds/5 minutes/whatever.

There can be some long fights ...

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I think the point is so you use them sparingly and at critical moments. If w/e you are doing doesn't work then i guess... ooh well.

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Originally Posted by Mosg2

If there's no internal cooldown on Soul Burn... Warlocks might just be an amazing boxing team. Imagine a world where you have all the CC that Warlocks bring and your first three spells are all instant Soul Fires.

Just let that settle in a little bit.

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It settled. I had to change pants.



Seems like this could be some pretty insane burst, but you're SOL if you get stuck in combat without an ability to recharge/power/get more soul shards. I was really hoping the shards were going to be like DK Runes.

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Originally Posted by Mosg2

If there's no internal cooldown on Soul Burn... Warlocks might just be an amazing boxing team. Imagine a world where you have all the CC that Warlocks bring and your first three spells are all instant Soul Fires.

Just let that settle in a little bit.

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Meeeeh.... :confused:

The mechanics are changing so much, that I can say that this is an instance where I cannot make judgment until I try it. Looks like there is a lot of promise, shadowfire looks cool, one of the things I hated in a raid is the only thing I could cast while moving was a cone AOE and maybe a dot if it needed to be refreshed, so the instant cast is a welcome addition.

The soul shard mechanic may be awesome, there isn't enough information on it, and speculation will only give me a boner or a broken heart at this point...

Imps get a DoT? LOLWUT... Thats pretty cool, fire sheild was useless.

The greatest thing I see is the change to DoT mechanics. Not being able to clip is great in my book. You will see hard core enthusiast claim that they are making the class faceroll, but most highend allictionlocks, myself included, hated that you lost so much DPS by clipping. There will still be a retard zone, so cast a DoT every 4 seconds will still bad. Now, the longer a fight goes on, the chance for us to screw ourselves on the dps will be a lot lower... unless they put in some other crazy mechanic.

I would like to see a new demon summon, that would be great, but I do not see it happening. Flight form is another thing on my list of wants.

Lookin good.

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Originally Posted by Selz

Meeeeh.... :confused:

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They said that they were going to stretch out health pools so that everyone had at least another GCD or two before they die compared to now--So, Warlocks should be much more relatively survivable. With stacked haste, can you imagine 12 Soulfires in 3 seconds?

Yes, it's just speculation. Yes, we're probably 6-9 months from anything resembling the release version...

But the idea still makes my pants tight :)

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Originally Posted by Mosg2

They said that they were going to stretch out health pools so that everyone had at least another GCD or two before they die compared to now--So, Warlocks should be much more relatively survivable. With stacked haste, can you imagine 12 Soulfires in 3 seconds?

Yes, it's just speculation. Yes, we're probably 6-9 months from anything resembling the release version...

But the idea still makes my pants tight :)

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My only 80 team is a paladin, priest and 3 destro locks. I was thinking 12 Soulfires. I don't think I'm panicing over warlock changes.

The ONLY thing I'm concerned about is Curses to Magic, every healer gets a magic dispel.

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Originally Posted by Velassra

My only 80 team is a paladin, priest and 3 destro locks. I was thinking 12 Soulfires. I don't think I'm panicing over warlock changes.

The ONLY thing I'm concerned about is Curses to Magic, every healer gets a magic dispel.

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I foresee you ripping aggro off your tank :)

They have stated since this cam out that they currently have no way to regen the shards, but that they can easily implement it if they found it is needed. They are expecting it to be a burst thing like bloodlust though. Once a combat but quite a big boost.

It does seem that it could make warlocks the ultimate wizard cleave team though, if you burn through all 3 of your shards right off the bat I imagine the damage is going to be pretty insane. But if the other team survives it your prob screwed :D

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Originally Posted by Gormand

I foresee you ripping aggro off your tank :)

They have stated since this cam out that they currently have no way to regen the shards, but that they can easily implement it if they found it is needed. They are expecting it to be a burst thing like bloodlust though. Once a combat but quite a big boost.

It does seem that it could make warlocks the ultimate wizard cleave team though, if you burn through all 3 of your shards right off the bat I imagine the damage is going to be pretty insane. But if the other team survives it your prob screwed :D

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Not once a combat like BL, but very situational and gamechanging. I think I read they are thinking of making a 20sec cooldown to start of with during testing

At least hellfire will be usable now .....

I liked Hellfire as a suicide mechanism.

When the raid was going to wipe, you could do so without the repair bill.
Also, when part of the team was killed, or all of your healers, you had an option to regroup quickly.

I wonder. With the proposed changes to DoT clipping, will it make writing click/castsequence macros easier? I'm going to suspect the answer is yes, depending on your setup.

My affliction click macro was pretty close; it didn't clip dots, but was sometimes 1-2 seconds late in applying the next dot.
This was for a single warlock on a mixed team, so I was happy with that.
The warlock has since moved to my main team, respec'd to Destro and then again to Demo.

My 4x Warlock / 1x Priest team will eventually end up Affliction.
I'd think removing commas a little, so dots recast shortly before they expire...
Will be the best approach, as you cannot clip the dots, which means worst case scenario the mob dies before the dots finish and you wasted a bit of mana.

umm.. to those getting 3 in a row PoM Pyro boners.. get real lol, there's a cooldown on soul shard uses, and it will be at least 20s as far as we know :P yes, the first one will be nice, and a 4x chaos bolt 4x PoM pyro will probably kill someone, but you cant do it 3x in a row :P will take 60 seconds for them all to come out :P

still nice, but 20s can feel like a long time with bladestorming warriors and ret paladins on your team :P

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Originally Posted by Mokoi

umm.. to those getting 3 in a row PoM Pyro boners.. get real lol, there's a cooldown on soul shard uses, and it will be at least 20s as far as we know :P yes, the first one will be nice, and a 4x chaos bolt 4x PoM pyro will probably kill someone, but you cant do it 3x in a row :P will take 60 seconds for them all to come out :P

still nice, but 20s can feel like a long time with bladestorming warriors and ret paladins on your team :P

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I pve, I think I'd easily get 2each/boss fight.

I haven't seen any quotes indicating cooldowns on shard usage. I'm not saying that there won't be--Just that so far things look good.

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Originally Posted by Velassra

I pve, I think I'd easily get 2each/boss fight.

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will not be able to gain additional shards during combat

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I think not lol.

Also, there would have to be a cooldown, come on, they still balance PvP, and 3 instant soulfires at will would pretty much negate all 2v2 combat lol. 2 warlocks would simply take a target each and win :P I read somewhere ( I think a blue tracker on wowhead or mmo-champion, but I'm at work and cant look them up right now) that at LEAST a 20s cooldown would be implemented. This makes sense, as a good boss fight lasts longer than 60seconds, and you would have to pick and choose when to use them.