How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

I don’t know either, but let’s talk about Demonology instead. It’s been noted that the spec has issues, some of them stemming from Demonic Empowerment and the slow ramp-up of the spec in general. “This is a large problem that requires iteration, not just a numbers fix” says Ion Hazzithingymajig back in December last year, so how can we improve the spec?

Here’s my idea. Note that this is more of a revamp, not a “WoD Survival Hunter to Legion Survival Hunter” complete overhaul. I love the idea of being a summoner, and I’d like to… refine it? Help improve it? Well, we’ll see.

Soul Shards

Gone. No more. The core of my idea is moving to a more cooldown-centric style of play, as opposed to “filler to make shards, spend, filler again” like we do now. A few spells would change as a result, so let’s look at the core rotational abilities, namely Shadow Bolt, Doom, Summon Dreadstalkers, Hand of Gul’dan, and Demonic Empowerment.

Doom

It’s rarely worth casting this on any add as it only ticks the once, and by the time you’ve Doomed a number of things, they’ve started to die, unless you drop a Hand of Gul’dan on them with the Hand of Doom talent. Your Darkglare would have nothing to shoot its lasers at! My fix? Ehh, make it tick twice over the duration? Once halfway through, once at the end.

Hand of Gul’dan

With my proposed binning of Soul Shards, Hand of Gul’dan would become a combination of the version of the spell we have now, and the version from Mists. Basically, make it instant cast and have 2 charges, with a 10 second recharge time. The meteor drops, enemy is hit, 4 imps are summoned. These imps last 30 seconds. Why so long? Because of a new ability I would add that I will detail later on.

Summon Dreadstalkers

Eh, frankly this ability is alright as it is. Don’t take my feldoggies away! Maybe make them last longer but with a longer cooldown (15 seconds duration/20 second cooldown?).

Shadow Bolt

The filler, the ability you cast when there’s nothing to do. Give it a 10% chance to generate a charge of Hand of Gul’dan.

Demonic Empowerment

Currently, this buffs all your active demons’ haste and health by 50% and 20% respectively, and through your mastery also slaps on a damage boost to them. In my version of Demonology, the damage boost via mastery is a passive, at-all-times damage boost, and Demonic Empowerment becomes a 2 minute cooldown that buffs your the haste and health of your demons, and DOUBLES the effect of your mastery for x amount of time. This is a spell you’ll have active on your demons at all times anyway, so the damage boost might as well become a passive and the spell itself be used as a major DPS cooldown.

Life Tap

I know you’d like me to say “GET RID OF IT!” but in my Demonology vision, it becomes even more integral due to a BRAND NEW SPELL I would add:

Demonic Sacrifice

Remember I said I’d extend the duration a group of imps stays summoned for from 12 seconds to 30? Well, here’s why. This spell, on a 90 second cooldown, costs all your remaining mana and all of your imps, and from their/your energy, a powerful new demon is summoned.

• 4 imps, or one Hand of Gul’dan-worth, nets you one of those fancy Demonic Jailers. You know, with the cage on their back?
• 8 imps? An Inquisitor is yours!
• 12 imps? Gosh, here’s a Fel Lord!
• 16 imps? I dunno, a dreadlord?
• Did you get lucky with your Shadow Bolt procs and have 20 or more imps? Well here’s the PIT LORD you always wanted!

The fact this summoning drains all your mana to use as well as eats up all your imps necessitates the usage of Life Tap. Combine this with Demonic Empowerment for a hugely powerful demon! It’d naturally have to be worth the cost of the spell, so have each of the demons do a similar amount of damage as the equivalent number of imps used to summon it, +4. While I’m at it, making new spells, how about we bring an old one back?

Imp Swarm

Back in Mists/Warlords, you could use Glyph of Imp Swarm to give you the ability to summon 4 imps instantly, on a 2 minute cooldown. Seeing as my Demonology vision bins the Soul Shards, make Imp Swarm a level 100 talent that replaces Soul Conduit. It contributes to burst, especially when opening, and would help you get a Fel Lord out through Demonic Sacrifice relatively quickly (2 Hands, Imp Swarm, Demonic Sacrifice, Life Tap, resume normal rotation).

Conclusion

This is just an idea. We may not even get a revamp for Battle for Azeroth, but it’d certainly be nice for some of the issues that have been addressed by Blizzard themselves to be sorted out. Maybe my idea would create MORE issues, I don’t know, I’m no designer. Just an enthusiastic Warlock who’s stuck with Demonology through thick and thin this expansion.

I love the spec, but it can be improved. Here’s to hoping.

Don’t go thal’kiel, I’ll miss you! 😦

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Sliding Away

For the last six years, I’ve been playing my Warlock. I’ve raided on her, I’ve farmed transmog on her, soloed bosses I couldn’t on other characters, devoted a lot of time and attention to her and her development. I’ve summoned, I’ve given glowy green cookies, I’ve thrown bolts of pure chaos at my foes and summoned legions of demons to do my bidding.

But now?

Sure I’m still playing as Shokei, the Warlock formerly known as Raenah. She’s still my main, ostensibly. She’s the character I raid on, with my highest /played and the best, shinest gear, but…

Recently Yopaat has taken over more of my time. For all I said I was going to just level the Warlock, Rogue and Monk, and here I am with a Warlock I don’t have fun on any more, a Warrior I barely log into, and a Shaman that’s simply enlightening to play, whether Elemental OR Enhancement.

There’s issues afoot with the Warlock class. They’ve been acknowledged as such by Ol’ Mister Hazzithingybob, but due to a lack of ideas and ways to implement changes, we’re just gonna have to suffer with them until 7.2 at the EARLIEST, and who knows when that will be? Given that it’s going to be a major patch with a raid in the Tomb of Sargeras, and I doubt they’d want to make the Nighthold a short-lived raid, then we’re looking at five to six months where there’s a class that just feels busted to play. How so?

Affliction

Affliction’s problem is, on the face of it, relatively simple. It’s one of the worst specs for single target, but arguably the best for mass AoE. You can’t buff the DoTs too much or they make the AoE and cleave utterly eclipse any other spec in the game. Soul Effigy is a concept that Mages bitched about for the entirety of Warlords of Draenor (Prismatic Crystal) and almost universally approved its removal in Legion, so why not give that awful talent to Warlocks instead? And make it so that it’s the only way Affliction can do respectable single target DPS, and utterly frustrating on fights where enemies move around a lot (Cenarius, Ursoc).

Not only that, but you get the feeling that two of Ulthalesh’s golden traits are just out of place. Back in the beta, your weapon would occasionally release souls that you can kill that would end up triggering your golden traits (the first makes a powerful explosion around enemies you kill, the second increases DoT damage by 2% for 20 seconds, stacking 5 times). These two golden traits are utterly useless on fights where you have no adds to damage (Nythendra, Ursoc) or fights where adds die too quickly for you to even fire off a DoT at them (Elerethe, sometimes Dragons, depending on which ones you get and raid setup). Not only that, the Reap Souls ability on single target stacks up terribly slowly, roughly 3-4 per minute (givng you 15-20 seconds of buff time), whereas when you have adds to kill (Il’gynoth, Dragons, Cenarius, Xavius, Elerethe if your team doesn’t AoE the spiders down immediately) they stack REALLY quickly, and on certain fights (Ilgy and Cenarius), it’s possible to have the Reap Souls buff up the entire fight.

Demonology

The spec I’ve been using most, the one I’m least disillusioned with.

You don’t feel like a mighty conjurer of demons when all you’re doing is throwing small amounts of imps and demon dogs at a target. Demonic Empowerment feels annoying to have to use after EVERY summon; make it a maintenance buff on YOU that makes every demon you summon/have summoned have the usual DE effect, have it give you an aura of power that empowers your demons or whatever you need to do to explain it.

Utterly crippled by movement, Demonology can pump out some ridiculous numbers but the second you have to move? You’re not generating shards, you’re not summoning demons, you’re not empowering them, you’re losing all the DPS forever and you’re not catching back up. Demonwrath tickles, especially on one target, and Doom, once applied, doesn’t need to be recast for, like, EVER. You may be generating shards with Demonwrath, but if you’re moving, you sure as shit can’t spend them.

Destruction

Admittedly I’ve left Destruction twisting in the wind this expansion, so maybe I’m not best placed to comment on it, but hang on? I spent nearly 5 years as Destruction, from the last patch of Cataclysm up to the first of Legion, so what went wrong? What made me drop the spec I loved, stuck with through the Great Pandarian Revamp and loved even more?

Soul Shards.

Burning Embers were the perfect resource. It just made the spec flow properly. They generated at, seemingly, the perfect speed, and you spent them at the perfect speed too. The shift to Shards made the spec, ugh, clunky at best. Chaos Bolt, that fantastic nuke we all knew and loved, doesn’t feel like it hits very hard at all anymore, especially for the cast time it has. Another spec crippled by the slightest movement, but whereas Demonology shines in single target and has passable cleave/AoE, Destruction shines in cleave. Trouble is, if you can’t cleave, Destruction’s a waste of time, thanks to its single target numbers being so damn low.

There was going to be a moan about the current talent setup where you have to choose between doing passable single target or passable AoE and nothing in-between when other classes/specs don’t HAVE to make that decision and can do both and MORE! with just a cookie cutter build, but thanks to a rejiggling of the talents, that’s not as much of a problem in 7.1.5 anymore. Huzzah.

I think my main issue though was that it just doesn’t feel FUN any more, but I can’t put my finger on specifically WHY and that really annoys me. It’s not purely the numbers, as I was still using it when it was the worst Warlock spec (pre-SoO days!) and enjoying myself. There’s just something missing from it and my inability to specify what is a frustration.

General Warlock Stuff

• Healthstones feel junky compared to potions
• While having specific demons be better for specific specs is great for class fantasy!!! it makes for a boring time. I don’t do PvP so my Succubus sees absolutely no sunlight any more, and while I could just summon her regardless, I feel bad that I am gimping my numbers just to satisfy her wanting to see some scenery.
• Make Mortal Coil trigger the healing again, even if the target isn’t affected by the horror. It’d make for a nice “oh shit!” cooldown and provide an actual CHOICE on that talent tier, otherwise everyone’s just gonna take Circle forever.
• Speaking of that talent row, Shadowfury having a cast time kinda sucks. Things move!
• I want my Wrathguard back.
• That’s probably it.

It was light outside when I started writing this and now I’m sitting in the dark. Here’s Yopaat. Bye.

Omnia Mutantur

The next couple of weeks promises to be one of many changes. An exciting time, to be sure.

The boyfriend and I are moving out of our current place, after our landlord decided to hike our rent by 20%. We spent last week looking at places, we found somewhere we like, we paid the bond and we’re waiting to sign the contract. We start moving our stuff next week.

The place we’re moving to is mostly unfurnished (there’s kitchen appliances and that’s about it), which means we’re gonna spend the next few months living on a tiny budget, while the rest of our pay goes on furniture. I’m cool with this though; I can get enough food to last me over week for about £10-£12, because I shop dirt cheap. This DOES mean though that my plan of buying a nice mic to do a possible podcast with will have to be put on hold, at least for now. Sad face.

Still, this means we can accumulate ACTUAL FURNITURE. Furniture that is ours, and we don’t have to leave when we move out! The beginnings of the rest of our lives.

I’ve sold a number of my books too, in the name of downsizing. Stuff I haven’t read in years, and don’t plan on doing again. I expected to get less than £20, I ended up getting over £65! Flabbergasted, I was.

Other changes? Altogether more frivolous.

Lunchi has changed her transmog temporarily, to keep things fresh and interesting. Amusingly, her item level (from 2 normal runs of 9 bosses, and one round of Mythic dungeons) is now higher than that of my Heroic-raiding Warlock. What?

Shokei the Warlock will still be my main going into Legion, but like I’ve stated before, I want my Monk to keep up with her, artifact/item level-wise. Monk is, in short, the most fun melee DPS in the game to me, and I want to continue playing her. Brewmasters make powerful and deadly tanks for soloing too, so that adds an extra dimension of fun to her. I can solo things with Lunchi that I can barely even attempt on Shokei.

Street Fighter V comes out next month, and while I am very excited at the thought of playing as R. Mika and Zangief, one character has ended up growing on me. When he was first announced, Necalli didn’t interest me very much, but the more I’ve seen of him (usually through YouTube replays, I don’t have the beta!), the more I’ve wanted to play as him as well. His two “forms” seem to play rather differently from one-another; they have the same moves, but the moves themselves have slightly different properties, so mastering Necalli means mastering two characters! Kinda reminds me of Gen, one of my favourite Street Fighter IV characters!

Anyway, that’s all from me. Keep feelin’ fascination!

Panda Steve’s Current Transmogs

I haven’t done a transmog post in such a long time
To have left it this long truly feels like a crime
Maybe I’ll have cheesecake. The flavour? Key Lime.
But the restaurant is closing, will I get there in time?

Okay okay enough of that. THE TRANSMOGS, IF YOU PLEASE.

Shokei the Warlock

This transmog actually came from an outside source! I wanted to use the Replica Shado-Pan Helmet, saw this site, and thought “that looks BOSS, mate.”

It’s not a complete lift; I did use different gloves and a different weapon. It might not fit in terms of colour, but it’s a weapon I think is pretty cool. Flashing lights and moving parts.

• Head: Replica Shado-Pan Helmet (Shado-Pan Quartermaster)
• Shoulder: Consortium Mantle (world drop, try Magisters’ Terrace)
• Chest: Vestments of Thundering Skies (Golden Lotus Quartermaster)
• Hands: Ceremonial Gloves of Karabor (Hand of the Prophet Quartermaster)
• Waist: Durable Belt (world drop, try Gnomeregan)
• Feet: Cindercloth Boots (Tailoring)
• Weapon: Lever of the Megantholithic Apparatus (Mythic Siegecrafter Blackfuse, Siege of Orgimmar)

Fujikomine the Rogue

She’s all about the purple. Even has matching highlights in her hair.

Fujikomine lost her eye in a terrible inscription accident involving a quill, and a mistimed sneeze.

(in truth I appear to have an obsession with eyepatches, and will use them at any given opportunity)

• Head: Ragefury Eyepatch (Hurley Blackbreath, Blackrock Depths)
• Shoulders: Shoulderpads of the Forgotten Gate (Heroic Baleroc, Firelands)
• Chest: Incendic Chestguard (Heroic Rhyolith, Firelands)
• Hands: Muckdweller Gloves (quest reward)
• Waist: Nimble Climber’s Belt (Auriaya 10, Ulduar)
• Legs: Firecat Leggings (Heroic Staghelm, Firelands)
• Feet: Treads of Sordid Screams (Heroic Ultraxion, Dragon Soul)
• Weapons: Firethorn Mindslicer (Heroic Firelands, drops from all bosses except Ragnaros)

Lillorigga the Warrior

With the removal of Gladiator Stance in Legion, Lillorigga’s taking her anger out on the world by going back to Fury.

Pink plate is best plate, you know.

• Shoulder: Pauldrons of Roaring Flame (Ragnaros, Firelands Normal)
• Chest: Bloodscale Breastplate (world drop, try Slave Pens/Blood Furnace)
• Hands: Bloodscale Gauntlets (world drop, try Slave Pens/Blood Furnace)
• Waist: Bloodscale Belt (world drop, try Slave Pens/Blood Furnace)
• Legs: Bloodscale Legguards (world drop, try Slave Pens/Blood Furnace)
• Feet: Bloodscale Sabatons (world drop, try Slave Pens/Blood Furnace)
• Weapons: Armageddon (Gluth 25, Naxxramas)

Hey Lillorigga, you happy about the Gladiator Stance removal? Take that as a no then.

Disgleirio the Paladin

It’s the Welsh word for “shining,” is Disgleirio. Or something like that. It’s fittingly Paladin-y. They’re all about shining lights at people to make them healthy/die.

Hey that’s Lillorigga’s weapon STOP THIEF

It’s not a Draenei pose picture if they’re not using /flex.

• Head: Fel-Proof Goggles (Tanaan Jungle, Fel-Drenched Satchel in The Fel Forge)
• Shoulder: Rethban Pauldrons (world drop, Throne of the Tides)
• Chest: Fel Iron Breastplate (Blacksmithing)
• Hands: Fel Iron Plate Gloves (Blacksmithing)
• Waist: Fel Iron Plate Belt (Blacksmithing)
• Legs: Fel Iron Plate Pants (Blacksmithing)
• Feet: Fel Iron Plate Boots (Blacksmithing)
• Weapon: Armageddon (Gluth 25, Naxxramas)

Lunchi the Monk

Yeah, she’s based on Chun Li.

Monks don’t really have a lot of emphasis on their weapons (especially mine! She has a polearm equipped but I’m using the Glyph of Jab) but Lunchi’s looks pretty cool.

Decorative and little else.

• Shoulder: Spaulders of the Ring (quest)
• Chest: Lo’ap’s Tunic of Muck Diving (quest)
• Hands: Caustic Feelers (quest (A) quest (H))
• Waist: Stalk-Skin Belt (Heigan 25 or Gluth 25, Naxxramas)
• Legs: Leggings of Telhamat (quest)
• Feet: Mud Encrusted Boots (quest)
• Weapon: Banner Slicer (world drop, try Violet Hold/Drak’Tharon Keep)

Last, but not least:

Lixiu the Hunter

Okay so the bow string clips through her pandaboob slightly but she still looks killer.

• Shoulder: Grunt’s Pauldrons (world drop, Blackfathom Deeps)
• Chest: Outrunner’s Chestguard (world drop, Blackfathom Deeps)
• Hands: Outrunner’s Gloves (world drop, Wailing Caverns)
• Waist: Outrunner’s Cord (world drop, Wailing Caverns)
• Legs: Outrunner’s Legguards (world drop, Blackfathom Deeps/Wailing Caverns)
• Feet: Outrunner’s Slippers (world drop, Wailing Caverns)
• Weapon: Crypt Fiend Slayer (Halls of Reflection Normal, Lich King event)

I’m working on transmogs for my 2nd Monk, my Priest and my Mage at the moment, not that I have many ideas for them just yet. When I do, though, I will probably do another of these posts to show them off!

Legion: Affliction Overview

Suffer. Wither. Die.

Third and final spec overview! Told you I’d get around to it.

Usual disclaimer applies: This is all based on Alpha/Beta stuff, and naturally subject to change at a moment’s notice. If/when things change, I will update this post to reflect it!

General

• Probably the most unchanged spec once again, if you’ve played Affliction in the past, you’ll know what to do here.
• Has better AoE options than before!
• YOU GET A SCYTHE
• You still have Soul Shards, but now you have 5. You only start a fight with 1, however. Have fun with that.

Artifact

ULTHALESH, THE DEADWIND HARVESTER. Such a badass name. Such a badass scythe. Now you’ve become a reaper of souls!

Here’s the layout of your weapon’s traits:

As before, you start at the node with the solid gold frame and work your way around, picking the traits you want/need. Blizzard speculate it’ll take 1-3 months to fill it all out, rather than over the course of the entire expansion. Possible future patch upgrades then?

Start Point

• Reap Soul: Deals x Shadow damage every 5 sec for 42 sec. Each time Reap Soul deals damage, it increases in damage frequency by 6.66%.

A new ability! It’s on a 45 second cooldown, and gives you a new DoT to manage/track. It ticks after 5 seconds, then each successive time ticks a little bit faster. I imagine the base damage will be relatively low (closer to Corruption than Agony or Unstable Affliction) due to the fact the speed of ticks ramps the hell up.

Nice touch with the 6.66% too. Well done.

Major Traits

From left to right, these are the three traits with the fancy draconic borders.

• Soul Flame: When you kill a target, its soul bursts into flames, dealing Shadowflame damage to everything around it.
• Wrath of Consumption: Killing an enemy causes your damage over time effects to deal x% more damage. This ability stacks up to 5 times.
• Harvester of Souls: Your Drain spells have a chance to trigger on all targets afflicted by your Corruption for 3 sec.

So these traits seem to have multiple target fights in mind. Short-lived adds? Soul Flame comes in handy. Kill one, damage the rest. Wrath of Consumption helps too as when you kill something, your DoTs tick harder. Harvester of Souls potentially targets everything with Corruption on it, and yay it brings back the old Harvest Life effect! You’ll look like a fel maypole again.

Minor Traits

From left to right, these traits have no fancy border. Sob.

• Shadowy Incantations: Increases your Shadow damage dealt by x%.
• Hideous Corruption: Increases the damage of your Corruption by x%
• Long Dark Night of the Soul: Increases the healing of your Drain spells by x%.
• Compound Interest: Each Agony and Corruption you cast increases the damage of your next Unstable Affliction by 10%.
• Sweet Souls: Your Healthstone fully heals you. Any party member using a Healthstone also heals you for the amount they were healed.
• Perdition: Increases the critical damage of your Agony, Corruption, Drain, and Unstable Affliction by x%.
• Inherently Unstable: Increases the critical strike chance of your Unstable Affliction by 0%.
• Seeds of Doom: Increases the detonation damage of your Seed of Corruption by 0%.
• Drained to a Husk: Increases the damage of your Drains by x%.
• Fatal Echoes: When your Unstable Affliction expires, it has a 25% chance to reapply itself.
• Inimitable Agony: Increases the damage of your Agony by x%.
• Mere Flesh: Reduces damage you take by x%.

Mostly +damage% buffs to your regular abilities. Standout abilities here to me are Compound Interest, which buffs Unstable Affliction for each Agony and Corruption you cast, Sweet Souls, which makes Healthstones useful again, and Fatal Echoes, which can potentially save you Soul Shards over the course of a fight!

The weapon also has an equip effect:

So the more of those passive damage boost traits you have unlocked, the more that add killing benefits you over the course of a fight. From my understanding, the Tormented Souls that appear that you need to kill actually proc this 10% shadow damage/passive effect double boost too, so you don’t suffer on single target fights/fights with no adds to kill! Proper job.

Talents

As before your basic rotation is simplified, and you can leave it like that and pick passive talents, or make things more complex by adding active abilities. I would ASSUME that taking active abilities over passive ones would provide higher DPS over the course of a fight (more complexity = more reward, surely?) but this all remains to be seen of course.

Haunt is no longer a spell that buffs your DoTs, but a sledgehammer of a spell on a 15 second cooldown. Probably your add-killing spell, due to the fact it a) does a crapload of damage, and b) has the cooldown reset if the target it hits dies. Could also act as a cooldown-based filler. Have DoTs up, cast Haunt, then Drain Life until you need to refresh your DoTs/recause Haunt.

Writhe in Agony either doubles the damage per stack of Agony, or doubles the maximum stacks of Agony. I’m not 100% sure either way. The former would be slightly preferable, as it’d reach maximum damage output a bit quicker.

Drain Soul replaces Drain Life. It hits a LOT harder (600% of spell power vs the 150% of Drain Life (though it can increase to 300% for reasons you’ll see below)), and replenishes a shard if the target you’re draining dies during the channel. It appears to lose the “+50% damage for each of your DoT effects” bonus (hence why Drain Life can hit 300% of spell power), but it still hits twice as hard as that through base spell power regardless.

Contagion sounds simple. Adds a secondary effect to Unstable Affliction that increases all damage you deal to the target, including through Unstable Affliction itself I’d assume. Nice passive damage boost.

Absolute Corruption sounds AMAZING. By making it a one-time-cast ability, it makes you spend less time/global cooldowns refreshing DoTs, and considering Affliction has potentially 5 (Agony Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Reap Soul from the artifact, and Siphon Life from the talents below), it simplifies things a tad.

I still don’t like Mana Tap because, although the damage boost is nice, it can put you in danger. It would still make you Life Tap more, and that’s still potentially dangerous.

Soul Leech is something you take when you want to smooth out damage over the course of a fight a bit. General boss AoE pulses will probably eat it all up in one go, but you’ll generally take less damage than anyone else because of it. Always handy.

Mortal Coil, as I have said before, would probably only be useful if the heal works regardless of whether or not the target succumbs to the Horror.

Howl of Terror just screams “PVP TALENT” to me, which confuses me as there’s a separate PvP talent tier now. Unless adds or bosses (ha) are susceptible now? I doubt it.

Siphon Life gives you a new DoT to make a weakaura for, and thus adds complexity to the spec. We all like complexity, right? Remains to be seen how useful the heal will be, whether it’s a flat percentage based on your maximum health, or based on damage it deals, so much up in the air with this one.

Sow the Seeds makes Seed of Corruption less goddamn useless, making it consume 1 Soul Shard to apply to 5 enemies, provided they’re close together. Anything that makes that spell worth casting is a plus in my book.

Soul Harvest is something you can press when RNG hates you and Agony isn’t giving you shards.

Situational talents for situational uses. Need to move quickly out of voidzones that aren’t in predetermined locations? Burning Rush! Need to move from place to place in a predictable manner? Demonic Circle! (you can probably combine it with Demonic Gateway usage too, to easily move back and forth) Need to flatten out/negate large damage spikes? Dark Pact!

Supremacy and Service, in terms of a single-target fight, come down to personal preference (at least at this point in time, when there’s a LONG way before number tuning). Sacrifice is most likely most viable in an AoE fight, due to it hitting an 8 yard area.

That being said, I don’t like how it’s reworked in theory. In practice, it might be amazing, but I lament the loss of the passive heal and flat, non RNG-based damage boost.

Of note, the Grimoire of Supremacy demons we have now will be in the forms of glyphs to the Summon Whateverdemon abilities.

Yep! The alternate demon pets will be available via Minor Glyphs. https://t.co/WzCpx9MqCT

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) December 3, 2015

Huzzah!

Soul Effigy allows you to tailor a single target fight to your strengths, i.e. make it a multidot encounter! It will double the potential generation of Soul Shards (due to having two Agony spells running constantly), which is a nice bonus. The magnitude of damage transferral is unknown at this point, but it’s still good just for the Shard boost. Potentially drops in usefulness with 3+ permanent targets (e.g. various Council fights) as you’ll spend all your time just refreshing DoTs and doing bugger all else.

Phantom Singularity is an AoE that is centered on a target (unlike Rain of Fire, which you target yourself), that hits 8 times (for damage totalling 200% of spell power) and heals you for a nice wedge of that damage. I think the AoE applications of this ability are of more use than the heal, considering the only other AoE ability you get is Seed of Corruption.

Demonic Servitude is your passive option for the tier, and I’d imagine would be tuned SLIGHTLY lower than Soul Effigy for this reason. Still nice to have a Doomguard running around though!

Abilities

Here are your core abilities! They’re a skeleton, which you flesh out with talents and artifact traits.

• Agony is one of your three main DoTs, and functions much as it does now. Each time it deals damage, it adds a stack. The more stacks, the more damage it does, and refreshing the DoT maintains the stack level. It also has a chance to regenerate a Soul Shard each time it deals damage (the old Nightfall passive that used to affect Corruption), and this is NOT capped at “your most recent Agony application” anymore.
• Corruption is same old same old, with less Nightfall.
• Unstable Affliction is your sole Shard spender (unless you take the Haunt and/or Sow the Seeds talents), and deals a LOT of damage over 8 seconds. If a target dies when this DoT is running, the cost is refunded, and if it’s dispelled, the dispeller takes a heavy hit of damage and is silenced. Nice!
• Drain Life is your new filler! It’s a channeled spell over 6 seconds, and each tick deals Shadow damage and restores 3% health. The damage it does depends on how many of your baseline DoTs you have on the target; each one confers a 50% damage boost.
• Seed of Corruption functions mostly the same as now. Plants an evil seed in a target that explodes after 18 seconds, or when they take a certain amount of damage, or when they’re hit with another seeded target’s explosion. The talent Sow the Seeds makes this spell put seeds in 4 extra nearby targets, meaning easy explosions! The explosions deal a lot of damage to enemies near them, and applies Corruption to everyone hit.
• Life Tap eats 10% of your health and restores 30% of your mana. Nom.
• Mastery: Potent Afflictions increases the damage of Corruption, Agony and Unstable Affliction by a flat percentage based on your Mastery stat. Simple damage boost.

Glyphs

They still haven’t been dug out (or even implemented?) yet. The tweet I put in the Grimoire of Whatever talent section is the only glyph info we have so far.

(#WoW #Warlock #Legion)

Legion: Destruction Overview

EMBRACE CHAOS!

The second spec overview of three, Destruction doesn’t see too many drastic changes thankfully. If you played it in Warlords or Mists, you’ll know what you’re doing in Legion.

Mostly.

General

• Burning Embers are replaced with Soul Shards, of which you can have a maximum of 5. Soul Shards mainly fuel your usage of Chaos Bolt. You start a fight with 1 shard, and need to build them up, much like Burning Embers.
• Mainly unchanged, thanks to some changes to Havoc it looks to be amazing at 2 target cleave fights, and with the right talent setup, looks to excel at AoE too. You can’t do both at the same time though. It’s either brilliant cleave or brilliant AoE.
• Single target looks to be the same as now; competitive.
• New Mastery is a bit random. By design!

Artifact

The Scepter of Sargeras! Supposedly the weapon that destroyed the real Draenor, when Nerzhul opened a shitload of portals. If Demonology has the most unique artifact, Destruction has hands-down the plain best-looking one!

Here’s your “talent tree” for the weapon. You start at a fixed point (the node with the solid gold circle), and work your way around. The traits with fancy borders are major traits, the rest minor.

Start Point

• Dimensional Rift: Rips a hole in time and space, opening a portal that damages your target. (3 charges, 1.5 second cast, 45 second recharge)

There are 3 potential portals this ability can open, each with an equal chance of appearing, and each benefitting from your Crit rating. Chaos Tear fires a single Chaos Bolt at your opponent. Similar to your Chaos Bolt, it will always crit. Its damage scales with your critical strike chance, as yours does, but NOT from your Mastery or Chaos Bolt-modifying artifact traits.

The second portal is the Chaos Portal. This casts the spell Chaos Barrage, throwing out a projectile every 0.25 seconds for 5.5 seconds, totalling 22 bolts! Its cast rate will increase with haste, as will the next portal, Shadow Tear. This third portal will fire Shadow Bolts every 2 seconds for 14 seconds, for a total of 7 projectiles.

Major Traits

From left to right!

• Dimension Ripper: Incinerate has a 6% chance to grant a charge of Dimensional Rift.
• Conflagration of Chaos: Conflagrate has a chance to guarantee your next Conflagrate critically strikes, and to increase its damage by your critical strike chance.
• Lord of Flames: Once every 10 minutes, Rain of Fire summons 6 Infernals to serve you for 8 seconds.

So more uses of your artifact ability? Excellent! A chance to turn Conflagrate into a mini Chaos Bolt? Awesome! Raining Infernals from the skies! AMAZING.

Once every 10 minutes? Ehhh.

Minor Traits

From left to right again!

• Chaotic Instability: Increases the critical strike damage of Chaos Bolt by 5%/10%/15%
• Fire and the Flames: Reduces cast time of Incinerate by 5%/6%/10%.
• Planeswalker: Transporting through your Demonic Gateway heals you for 50% of your maximum health.
• Soulsnatcher: Chaos Bolt has a 5%/10%/15% chance to refund 1 Soul Shard.
• Demonic Durability: Reduces cooldown of Unending Resolve by 30 seconds.
• Master of Disaster: Increases damage dealt by Incinerate by 5%/10%/15%.
• Devourer of Life: Drain Life has a 15%/30%/45% chance to increase its damage and healing by 15%/30%/45% for 15 seconds.
• Fire From the Sky: Increases damage dealt by Rain of Fire by 5%/10%/15%.
• Flames of the Pit: Increases Fire damage you deal by 4%.
• Residual Flames: Increases damage dealt by Immolate by 10%/20%/30%.
• Impish Incineration: Increases damage dealt by your Imp’s Firebolt by 15%. (Grimoire of Supremacy: Increases damage dealt by your Doomguard’s Doom Bolt by 18%) (Grimoire of Sacrifice: Increases damage by 3%)
• Eternal Struggle: After casting Life Tap, you take 10%/20%/30% less damage for 6 seconds.
• Burning Hunger: Increases the critical strike chance of Immolate by 10%/20%/30%.

 

Mostly we’re seeing passive increases to your rotational abilities. Impish Incineration changes what it does based on which Grimoire talent you choose, which is nice. Eternal Struggle seems to turn Life Tap into potentially a risky damage reduction cooldown? High risk, high reward, we all love that.

Talents

Talent choices in Legion seem to be more meaningful this time around, most of them having some sort of impact upon your rotation. Your basic rotation itself is simplified, and you add complexity through your talent choices!

Row 1

• Backdraft: Casting Conflagrate reduces the cast time of Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 30% for 5 seconds.
• Roaring Blaze: Conflagrate increases your remaining Immolate damage on the target by 50% until Immolate expires or is refreshed.
• Shadowburn: Blasts a target for (340% of Spell Power) damage. Generates 2 Soul Shards if the target dies within 5 seconds. (1 Soul Shard cost)

Destro gets the instant cast spell it’s always wanted but could never have! Costs a shard though. Shadowburn is now usable at any health level, not just in execute range, but it’s still best to kill off a target with it for the shard regeneration. The Backdraft effect is now a talent, but doesn’t operate on a charge system, it just makes your filler and nuke both cast faster for a flat 5 seconds. Roaring Blaze, if you take it, will make you want to bank a charge of Conflagrate for whenever you need to cast Immolate on a target, and I’d assume is best used on a single target fight, otherwise you won’t have enough charges to go around!

Row 2

• Reverse Entropy: Reduces the cast time of Chaos Bolt and Rain of Fire by 0.5 seconds and they restore 35% of your maximum mana.
• Fire and Brimstone: Incinerate now hits all enemies near your target.
• Mana Tap: Consumes 40% of your current mana to increase your damage by 10% for 20 seconds.

Fire and Brimstone also receives the “changed and shunted to a talent” treatment, now it makes Incinerate always AoE. Great for fights when you need that sort of thing, which if this expansion is anything to go by, will be every fight.

Faster Chaos Bolts and less need to cast Life Tap? Reverse Entropy looks to be a powerful choice! Mana Tap does almost the opposite; it’ll cause you to cast Life Tap MORE often, but you get a nice 10% damage buff to compensate. Probably best not to take this on fights where you’re expected to take a lot of damage, or on healer-intensive fights, as the less you’re Life Tapping lost mana, the more they can focus on everyone else.

Row 3

• Demon Skin: Your Soul Leech absorption now passively recharges at a rate of 1% of maximum health every 1 second, and may now absorb up to 20% of maximum health.
• Mortal Coil: Horrifies an enemy target into fleeing, incapacitating for 3 seconds and healing you for 11% of maximum health. (45 second cooldown)
• Shadowfury: Stuns all enemies within 8 yards for 3 seconds. (1.5 second cast, 30 second cooldown)

If the healing of Mortal Coil still only procs when it actually horrifies the target, it’ll be useless on bosses and therefore can be skipped. Might be useful for regular questing though. Demon Skin improves the (now baseline) Soul Leech, and makes it a passive constantly regenerating shield, instead of a temporary shield from damage dealt, and may well prove to be the default talent for this tier, especially if the absorb reduces Life Tap damage. Shadowfury controversially has a cast time now, and is not useful in fights with no adds, for obvious reasons.

Row 4

• Eradication: Chaos Bolt increases the damage you deal to the target by 12% for 6 seconds.
• Cataclysm: Conjures a cataclysm at the target location, dealing (700% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage to all enemies within 8 yards and afflicting them with Immolate.
• Soul Harvest: Immediately generate 5 Soul Shards. (2 second cast, 2 minute cooldown)

Cataclysm hits like a TRUCK. Almost twice the Spell Power modifier of Chaos Bolt! Great for fights where AoE/cleave is needed, as you can do a serious chunk of damage with this. Eradication best saved for fights where you’re focusing on one target, so you can take full advantage of the 6 seconds of extra damage. Soul Harvest seems pretty underwhelming compared to these two, though if you have cause to spam as many Chaos Bolts as you possibly can (Feast of Souls phase on Gorefiend, perhaps?), then this may see some use. Even better if you take Shadowburn in tandem with Soul Harvest, you can throw out a serious number of high-damaging spells consecutively, though whether you end up doing more damage with this than with Chaos Bolt depends on whether you get lucky with your critical hits.

Row 5

• Demonic Circle: Summons a Demonic Circle for 6 minutes, allowing you to cast it again to teleport to its location and remove all movement slowing effects. Limit 1. (0.5 second cast)
• Burning Rush: Increases your movement speed by 50%, but also damages you for 4% of your maximum health every 1 second. Movement-impairing effects may not reduce you below 100% of normal movement speed. Lasts until cancelled.
• Dark Pact: Sacrifices 20% of your demon’s current health to shield you for 400% of the sacrificed health for 20 seconds. If you have no demon, your health is sacrificed instead. Usable while suffering from control-impairing effects. (1 minute cooldown)

Need massive damage reduction to survive a particular fight mechanic? Need speed boosts? Need to move to a particular, predictable spot every so often? This tier has it all!

But you can only choose one.

Row 6

• Grimoire of Supremacy: You are able to maintain control over even greater demons indefintely, allowing you to summon a Doomguard or Infernal as a permanent pet.
• Grimoire of Service: Summons a second demon to fight for you for 25 seconds and deals 100% increased damage. The demon will immediately use one of its special abilities when summoned (Imp cleanses 1 harmful Magic effect from you, Voidwalker taunts. Succubus seduces, Felhunter interrupts). (2 minute cooldown)
• Grimoire of Sacrifice: Sacrifice your demon to gain Demonic Power, causing your spells to sometimes also deal (100% of Spell Power) Shadow damage to the target and other enemies within 8 yards. Lasts 1 hour or until you summon a demon. (30 second cooldown)

Grimoire of Sacrifice goes from a “definite flat damage increase” talent to a “sometimes AoE damage” talent, though an artifact trait will ALSO flatly increase all your damage by 3% if you take this. Will apparently proc around 20 times per minute, increasing with Haste.

This tier comes down to “do you want big demons, normal demons, or no demons?” Supremacy will be good if you need to move a lot, as the Doomguard will do a respectable portion of your damage while you reposition. Similarly with Service, when you need to move, spit out your extra pet. On Patchwerk fights, or fights with a lot of AoE, you might wanna take Sacrifice.

Row 7

• Wreak Havoc: Havoc now lasts 20 seconds, and has no cooldown.
• Channel Demonfire: Launches 15 bolts of felfire over 3 seconds at random targets afflictied by your Immolate within 40 yards. Each bolt deals (50% of Spell Power) Fire damage. (3 second channel, 15 second cooldown)
• Soul Conduit: Every Soul Shard you spend has a 20% chance to be refunded.

Wreak Havoc sounds AMAZING for permacleave fights (think Twin Ogron, or Hellfire High Council) , as it makes Havoc essentially last forever, almost doubling damage output! Channel Demonfire will be great on AoE fights, especially if you take Cataclysm as well. Cataclysm mass-inflicts Immolate, Channel Demonfire then has a chance to hit ALL the enemies! Soul Conduit will therefore be the single target talent of choice, as the other two talents won’t really have much (if any) benefit.

 

Abilities

Your core spec abilities are a skeleton, to which you can take talents to flesh out. Here’s Destruction’s baseline abilities!

• Immolate is your DoT, and you want maximum uptime on it. Each tick has a 15% chance to regenerate a Soul Shard, 30% on crits..
• Conflagrate has 2 charges on a 12 second cooldown, is instant cast, and generates 1 Soul Shard when used.
• Incinerate is your main filler, and there’s nothing particularly of note to say about it.
• Chaos Bolt costs 2 Soul Shards, and is your primary nuke spell. It always critically strikes, and your Critical Strike rating increases the damage it deals. If your Crit rating is 25%, then Chaos Bolt will deal 1.25x its normal damage.
• Life Tap makes a return for Destruction! Restores a flat 30% of your mana, at a cost of 10% of your health.
• Havoc, as mentioned above, works slightly differently in Legion, in that it debuffs an enemy for 8 seconds, and copies all spells cast on another target to it for the entire duration of the buff, as opposed to working on a charge-based system. You can only have 1 Havoc spell active at a time.
• Rain of Fire makes a comeback, though it never really went away, just… went useless for a while. Not instant anymore, it now has a 2 second cast time, and hits an 8 yard radius of your choosing with fiery rain for 8 seconds at a cost of 3 Soul Shards! Deals VERY respectable damage now, and obviously rains Infernals down with the appropriate artifact ability, so seems worth the cost in an AoE-fest.
• Mastery: Chaotic Energies is a strange one. It increases the damage your spells do by x% (where x is your mastery rating) RANDOMLY. If your Mastery is 50%, then your spells can hit 50% harder, but they’re just as likely to hit 1% harder, or 25% harder, or 15.34% harder. It apparently smooths out over the course of a fight, but I kinda dislike that I can perform flawlessly on a fight, but RNG dictates that my damage is rubbish anyway. It also reduces damage you take by a random amount, up to x%.

Glyphs

Glyphs are working differently in Legion. Major glyphs are apparently gone, and now you apply the glyph directly to the spell, meaning you can have one per (eligible) ability, I guess?

• Glyph of Crimson Banish: Your Banish spell is now red.
• Glyph of Soulwell: Your Soulwell glows with an eerie light.
• Glyph of the Abyssal: Transforms your Infernal into an Abyssal.
• Glyph of the Demon Eye: Transforms your eye of Kilrogg into a demonic floating eye.
• Glyph of the Fel Imp: Transforms your Imp into a Flame Imp.
• Glyph of the Inquisitor’s Eye: Transforms your Eye of Kilrogg into an Inquisitor’s Eye.
• Glyph of the Observer: Transforms your Felhunter into an Observer.
• Glyph of the Shivarra: Transforms your Succubus into a Shivarra.
• Glyph of the Terrorguard: Transforms your Doomguard into a Terrorguard.
• Glyph of the Voidlord: Transforms your Voidwalker into a Voidlord.

Legion: Demonology Overview

We are many; you are but one.

I’ve decided to say “fuck the alphabet” and make the first spec overview not Affliction, but Demonology! It’s the most changed, and therefore the most interesting. Let’s begin, kids.

(disclaimer: this is all information obtained from the beta, and is thus not set in stone. Things can and will change, and I will update this post as and when in order to reflect them)

General

• Demonic Fury is gone, replaced by Soul Shards, of which you can have a maximum of 5. Some abilities will generate shards, some will cost them.
• Spec focus is changed! No longer is it about becoming a demon, but about summoning them.
• Has probably the most unique artifact weapon: Skull of the Man’ari!

Artifact

Unless it ends up changing in future, this is our artifact; a big ol’ demon skull! Currently it’s a main hand/off-hand weapon, with the skull floating around as the off-hand, and his spine being the main hand weapon, a dagger.

Here is the artifact talent screen, and it’s also shaped like a skull! Gonna have to make myself a skull-themed transmog set to go with this weapon, huh?

Major Traits

• Thal’kiel’s Consumption: Thal’kiel drains 10% of the life from your demon servants and unleashes a blast of Shadow damage at your current target equal to the life he stole. (2 sec cast, 45 sec cooldown)
• Stolen Power: When your Wild Imps cast Firebolt, you gain an application of Stolen Power. After you reach 100 applications, your next Shadowbolt deals 100% increased damage.
• Thal’kiel’s Discord: Shadowbolt/Demonbolt sometimes enrages Thal’kiel, causing him to teleport to an enemy and scream for (4*(100% of Spell Power)) Shadow damage to all nearby enemies over 6 sec, and fear lesser undead and demons.
• The Expendables: When your Wild Imps expire or die, your other demons are inspired and gain 1% additional damage, stacking up to 15 times.

One active ability and 3 passives, and I can’t wait to see Thal’kiel running around screaming at enemies, I gotta be honest.

Minor Traits

• Breath of Thal’kiel: Increases Fire and Shadow damage dealt by 5%.
• Summoner’s Prowess: Increases the haste and health provided by Demonic Empowerment by 2%/4%/6%.
• Sharpened Dreadfangs: Increases the critical strike chance of Dreadstalkers by 5%/10%/15%.
• Imp-erator: Increases the critical strike chance of your imp’s Fel Firebolt by 35%.
• The Doom of Azeroth: Increases damage dealt by Doom by 10%/20%/30%
• Fel Skin: When your health drops below 35%, Soul Link increases to split 40% of all damage you take with your demon pet.
• Open Link: Increases healing done by Soul Link by 10%/20%/30%.
• Firm Resolve: Reduces the cooldown of Unending Resolve by 10/20/30 seconds.
• Maw of Shadows: Increases the critical strike chance of Shadow Bolt by 5%/10%/15%.
• Legionwrath: Increases damage dealth by Demonwrath by 10%/20%/30%.
• Infernal Furnace: Increases damage dealth by your Wild Imp’s Firebolt by 10%/20%/30%.
• Doom, Doubled: Doom has a chance to deal double damage.
• Dirty Hands: Increases damage dealt by Hand of Gul’dan by 5%/10%/15%.
• Thal’kiel’s Lingering Power: Thal’kiel succumbs to your will, further increasing your power. Increases all damage dealt by 0.5%. (20 ranks!)

All these are basic “do more damage” abilities, and are not as interesting as the major traits.

Talents

Row 1

• Shadowy Inspiration: Demonic Empowerment also causes your next Shadow Bolt to be instant.
• Shadowflame: Lob a ball of Shadowflame at the target, dealing (100% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage immediately, and another (140% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage over 8 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. (2 charges, 14 second recharge)
• Demonic Calling: Shadow Bolt has a 20% chance to make your next Call Dreadstalkers cost no Soul Shards.

Shadowflame, being the instant cast spell Destro has always wanted and isn’t apparently getting, will probably be useful in fights with movement, whereas the other two may well be more useful when you can turret. Until numbers are more concrete though, we just don’t know!

Row 2

• Impending Doom: Doom also summons 1 Wild Imp when it deals damage.
• Improved Dreadstalkers: Call Dreadstalkers now also summons 2 Wild Imps.
• Implosion: Demonic forces suck all your Wild Imps towards the target, and then cause them to violently explode, dealing (350% of Spell Power) Shadowflame damage to all enemies within 8 yards.

Lots of short-lived adds? Implosion. Impending Doom looks best when you have more than one target that lives a long time (council fights, for instance). Improved Dreadstalkers then may well be best for single target, and yes, the imps are riding the dogs. AWESOME.

Row 3

• Demon Skin: Your Soul Leech absorption now passively recharges at a rate of 1% maximum health every 1 second, and may now absorb up to 20% of maximum health.
• Mortal Coil: Horrifies an enemy target into fleeing, incapacitating for 3 seconds and healing you for 11% of maximum health. (45 second cooldown)
• Shadowfury: Stuns all enemies within 8 yards for 3 seconds. (1.5 second cast, 30 second cooldown)

If the healing of Mortal Coil still only procs when it actually horrifies the target, it’ll be useless on bosses and therefore can be skipped. Might be useful for regular questing though. Demon Skin improves the (now baseline) Soul Leech, and makes it a passive constantly regenerating shield, instead of a temporary shield from damage dealt, and may well prove to be the default talent for this tier. Shadowfury controversially has a cast time now, and is not useful in fights with no adds, for obvious reasons.

Row 4

• Hand of Doom: Hand of Gul’dan now applies Doom to all enemies it hits.
• Power Trip: Demonic Empowerment has a 50% chance to generate a Soul Shard when used in combat.
• Soul Harvest: Immediately generate 5 Soul Shards. (2 second cast, 2 minute cooldown)

Hand of Doom will be good for those add-heavy fights, though if that Doom doesn’t get a chance to tick? May therefore be useful for council fights… unless the bosses aren’t stacked. Maybe just stick with Power Trip? Soul Harvest seems underwhelming, really.

Row 5

• Demonic Circle: Summons a Demonic Circle for 6 minutes, allowing you to cast it again to teleport to its location and remove all movement slowing effects. Limit 1. (0.5 second cast)
• Burning Rush: Increases your movement speed by 50%, but also damages you for 4% of your maximum health every 1 second. Movement-impairing effects may not reduce you below 100% of normal movement speed. Lasts until cancelled.
• Dark Pact: Sacrifices 20% of your demon’s current health to shield you for 400% of the sacrificed health for 20 seconds. If you have no demon, your health is sacrificed instead. Usable while suffering from control-impairing effects. (1 minute cooldown)

Need massive damage reduction to survive a particular fight mechanic? Need speed boosts? Need to move to a particular, predictable spot every so often? This tier has it all!

But you can only choose one.

Row 6

• Grimoire of Supremacy: You are able to maintain control over even greater demons indefintely, allowing you to summon a Doomguard or Infernal as a permanent pet.
• Grimoire of Service: Summons a second demon to fight for you for 25 seconds and deals 100% increased damage. The demon will immediately use one of its special abilities when summoned (Imp cleanses 1 harmful Magic effect from you, Voidwalker taunts. Succubus seduces, Felhunter interrupts, Felguard stuns). (2 minute cooldown)
• Grimoire of Synergy: Damage done by you or your demon has a 100% chance to grant the other one 30% increased damage for 30 seconds. (approx 2 procs per minute)

Demonic Servitude is now Grimoire of Supremacy, but FRET NOT, the current Grimoire of Supremacy demon models are still available to you via glyphs. Again, not much can be said at the moment until numbers are tuned properly, but I’d wager Supremacy will be good if you need to move a lot, as the Doomguard does NOT need to move, and deals rather heavy damage.

Row 7

• Summon Darkglare: Summons a Darkglare for 12 seconds that launches Eye Lasers at all targets afflicted by your Doom. (1 Soul Shard, 24 second cooldown)
• Demonbolt: Draws energy from your demons and launches a ball of demonic energy at the target, dealing (80% of Spell Power) Chaos damage. Damage increased 20% for each demon you have active. (2 second cast time, generates 1 Soul Shard)
• Soul Conduit: Every Soul Shard you spend has a 20% chance to be refunded.

A Darkglare? What the frig is that?!

OH MY GOD AWESOME. Anyway, Summon Darkglare will be VERY nice when you can inflict lots of targets with Doom, which the above talent Hand of Doom can help nicely with. Otherwise, Demonbolt looks to be best in single target, and the more demons you can spit out, the more damage it does!

 

Abilities

Here’s the basic rotational abilities for our shiny new Demonology spec. Remember that you use the above talents to add in complexity, either through modifying the existing abilities, or adding new ones!

• Doom is your DoT, and you want to maintain as high an uptime as possible on it. Doom’s duration is 20 seconds, and it deals a large hit of damage (600% of SP!) ONCE, at the end of its duration. I’m not fully sure of what it does if you cast it a second time before this expires, whether it resets this timer or just applies a second Doom on the target, with a maximum of two of these applications.
• Hand of Gul’dan no longer applies a DoT, nor does it have charges or a cooldown. It costs up to 4 of your Soul Shards to cast, deals damage to a target and anything 8 yards around it, and summons a number imps based on how many shards you spent to cast it. 4 shards? 4 imps.
• Shadow Bolt is your filler, and generates a Soul Shard on hit.
• Call Dreadstalkers costs 2 Soul Shards, and summons 2 Dreadstalkers, which attack your foes. They last 12 seconds, and the ability has a 15 second cooldown.
• Demonic Empowerment strengthens all of your currently active demons, granting 50% increased health and haste, and boosting their damage based on your Mastery, thanks to Mastery: Master Demonologist. This effect lasts 12 seconds.
• Demonwrath is your baseline AoE ability. It requires you to channel for 3 seconds, and deals damage every 1 second if an enemy is within 10 yards of any of your demons. The more demons you have? The fewer safe areas! I assume, based on the wording of the tooltip, that it only deals damage to an enemy once per tick (i.e. if an enemy is near 3 demons, it doesn’t take 3 lots of damage per tick, but just the 1). Each time it deals damage, you have a 15% chance of generating a Soul Shard, and you can move around while casting it.
• Summon Felguard is pretty self-explanatory. It summons a Felguard, the Demonology-specific demon. He has an axe, and likes to hit enemies with it.
• Soul Link is not a talent any more, but a Demonology-specific baseline ability! 20% of all damage you take is split with your demon, and you both get healed for 3% of damage you deal. So, as it works on live then.

 

Glyphs

Glyphs are working differently in Legion. Major glyphs are apparently gone, and now you apply the glyph directly to the spell, meaning you can have one per (eligible) ability, I guess?

• Glyph of Crimson Banish: Your Banish spell is now red.
• Glyph of Soulwell: Your Soulwell glows with an eerie light.
• Glyph of the Abyssal: Transforms your Infernal into an Abyssal.
• Glyph of the Demon Eye: Transforms your eye of Kilrogg into a demonic floating eye.
• Glyph of the Fel Imp: Transforms your Imp into a Flame Imp.
• Glyph of the Inquisitor’s Eye: Transforms your Eye of Kilrogg into an Inquisitor’s Eye.
• Glyph of the Observer: Transforms your Felhunter into an Observer.
• Glyph of the Shivarra: Transforms your Succubus into a Shivarra.
• Glyph of the Terrorguard: Transforms your Doomguard into a Terrorguard.
• Glyph of the Voidlord: Transforms your Voidwalker into a Voidlord.

Warlocks in Legion: Class Preview Blog

INFORMATION! We have some at last! Here’s my take on it all.

General

To this end, we’re going to once again standardize Warlocks on their most class-defining resources: Mana and Soul Shards

This means that all three Warlock specs will be using Soul Shards. Not only that, but all three specs will also be using Life Tap. Currently, Destruction has a passive ability called Chaotic Energy that replaces Life Tap, which increases mana regeneration by a huge amount (further increased by haste); presumably, this is going away so we become more mana-dependent again.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I know they want to get closer to the class fantasy of trading one’s soul for power, and I’m all for that, but… I did like how Chaotic Energy worked. You still were capable of running out of mana, which is why you used Chaos Bolt to effectively “recover” it; thanks to its long cast time, you took advantage of your 625% increased mana regen.

But yes. All specs use Soul Shards now. 5 is apparently the maximum.

We want to re-incentivize demon variety, strengthening the various utilities that each demon supplies, and causing some demons to be favored based on the Warlock’s spec.

According to a tweet from the developers, Affliction will favour the use of Felhunters, Demonology the use of Felguards, and Destruction will see best success with Imps. I like this idea! I’m sick of seeing observers all the damn time, cool as they are.

Affliction

Affliction is staying mostly the same, except Haunt is apparently being relegated to a talent and is being reworked. Drain Life becomes your filler ability, which I quite like the idea of. It’s still regenerating your health, and for each DoT present on your foe, it increases the damage of Drain Life by 50% (so up to 150% increase!). I like how in keeping this is with the Warlock fantasy; curses to empower your spells, your opponent’s life to replenish yours.

Agony and Corruption are mostly the same. The Nightfall effect gets baked not into Corruption, but AGONY now, and isn’t capped at one target, so the more targets you throw Agony on, the more chance you have of generating a Soul Shard.

Your spender of shards is apparently Unstable Affliction now, so I’d imagine it will see a boost in power to compensate for the potential inability to cast it (shards being bound by the RNG of Nightfall, of course), so potentially like a Shadow Priest’s Devouring Plague spell. There’s also a talent that makes Seed of Corruption cost a Soul Shard, but makes the application of the spell an AoE (currently the only AoE part of it is the explosion, so this is a marked improvement over the current spell!).

In conclusion, Affliction is going back to being all about those DoTs, less about the filler. Single target fights will probably not be your strongest type of battle, but add a target or two more into the mix? Affliction will be the KING.

Demonology

I suppose I won’t be able to use that picture to symbolise Demonology anymore, will I?

Demonology is going to be all about the demon summoning, and the empowering of those demons. I’ll go through abilities a bit more specifically here.

• Shadow Bolt: This is your main filler, and regenerates a Soul Shard. Same old, same old. Well, apart from the Soul Shard bit.
• Call Dreadstalkers: A new ability! This costs 2 shards, and summons 2 Dreadstalkers for 12 seconds, on a 15 second cooldown.
• Hand of Gul’dan: For the cost of 1 to 5 Soul Shards, a meteor full of Wild Imps smacks your target on the head. Hits everyone in 8 yards of the target, and depending on how many shards you used to cast it, you get that number of imps to bombard your foe.
• Doom: Plonks a 20 second DoT on your foe. At the end, your enemy takes massive damage, and you regen a shard.
• Demonwrath: A channeled spell that has no maximum duration! Every second, your demons crackle and inflict damage to every enemy within 10 yards of them, and each time it deals damage, you have a 15% chance to regen a shard.
• Demonic Empowerment: This empowers 3 of your your demons with 50% increased Haste and health for 12 seconds. More haste means they attack quicker, which means more DPS! It favours your stronger demons, so probably your Felguard and Dreadstalkers before your Wild Imps. Has 3 charges on a 12 second recharge time.

And for the preview talent:

• Implosion: Pulls all your summoned Wild Imps to a target. They then explode, dealing damage to every enemy nearby.
• Power Trip: Mentioned in a tweet, this talent apparently makes your Demonic Empowerment power up ALL your active demons, not just 3 of them.

So Demonology is all about summoning and empowering a demonic army to assault your foes! I’m REALLY excited about playing this, I’ve gotta say. The current Demonology is a bit clunky, this new hotness looks really fun to play. Can we have it now?

Destruction

Destruction, like Affliction, is not seeing any overwhelmingly drastic changes, though as I mentioned above, Burning Embers are being replaced with Soul Shards. Immolate is the DoT you want on your enemy at all times (still), Incinerate is your filler (still), Conflagrate provides Backdraft and has 2 charges on an 8 second recharge (still) but also replenishes a Soul Shard. Chaos Bolt functions the same as now, but costs 2 shards. Havoc seems to have changed a bit; rather than affecting the next 3 spells cast (or 1 Chaos Bolt), it places an 8 second debuff on an enemy and copies ALL spells to that enemy for the duration, so you can Havoc-cleave multiple Chaos Bolts! This makes me happy.

The preview talent, Channel Demonfire, throws fireballs at all enemies with Immolate on them over 3 seconds, but this isn’t the only AoE talent. Fire and Brimstone is now also a talent, which passively makes Incinerate into an AoE, but no word on whether it reduces the damage of it, like current Fire and Brimstone does. Also, for those of us concerned at Conflagrate being our only shard generator, according to @WarcraftDevs, “there are several talents that deal with Soul Shards,” so fret not!

Shadowburn returns as a talent too, with “improved usability,” but no word on what that actually is, so wait and see I guess?

The final thing to note is our mastery. Chaotic Energies makes your spells deal up to x% additional damage randomly. So with a (for example) 50% mastery rating, if your Chaos Bolt does 100,000 damage normally, then with this new mastery, it can do anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 damage, based on luck I suppose.

I… actually kinda like that. It fits with the Destruction fantasy of using chaotic, destructive energies to deal damage. If our very damage has to be chaotic to fulfill that, then I am more than happy to oblige.

So! In conclusion, on the face of it, Warlocks look to be going into a good place come Legion, and I definitely want to carry on playing as one. Phew! Affliction still looks rather boring, but to me it always did compared to Demonology and Destruction, and those two specs looks fantastic! I can’t wait to try them out!

Legion Wishlist 1: Demon Customization

We all have things we’d like to see in Legion, and rather than keep them in our heads, why not write them down for all to see? Here’s my pie-in-the-sky Legion Wishlist number 1, where I detail how I’d like to see Enslave Demon get revamped!

“TA DAAAAAH”

It’s not a spell we use very often, as the demons we enslave aren’t really brilliant compared to the demons we summon ourselves, outside of the Pit Lord from the green fire questline. I’d like to see it keep the same functionality in the field (control an enemy demon for 5 minutes), but also have a second effect.

If we enslave a demon that is a counterpart to the ones we can summon ourselves (different colours/skins, but same model), then the look gets “saved”, and by visiting an NPC in our class hall (which I assume is still Planet Awesome?), we can swap out the way the demons we can summon look. Maybe expand it to bosses too! So instead of summoning a normal Shivarra:

“Really? YOU summon ME?!”

Have us be able to enslave, and thus use, the skin of Mother Shahraz!

“So, business… or pleasure?”

Maybe if they’re a unique model (as above), they can use their different soundbites too!

Maybe we can enslave Durumu, and he can be a replacement for our Observer demon? Seeing as he’s an Aberration, perhaps Blizzard can add an item to his loot table that works like the Vial of Fel Cleansing that drops from Fel Rangari Anaara. We beat him one week, we get an item that turns him from an Aberration to a Demon, then the following week we can use it, enslave him, and use that AWESOME skin of his.

“Do you see what I did there?”

This way, we can have different coloured Imps, Succubi, Felhunters, the lot! Add a special Incubus demon that acts like the Molten Front hunter tames, in that we have to beat it to half health before we tame it, then we can finally get a male Succubus! Something that I think gets requested quite a bit, in terms of cosmetic Warlock stuff. Add it, but make us work for it. We all like having to earn our happy ending!

So there we go. Let us enslave things, and swap out how they look, but keep the “imp/succubus/voidy/feldog/felguard” thing going. We’re not Hunters who have 5 hydras about their person, we’re Warlocks with a balanced set of demons! Just let us choose what they look like.

(yes my Hunter collects hydras, they’re awesome)

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Demonology?

“Or the Tale of How Demon Hunters Stole Our Shit”

Before 6.2 landed, Ion Hazzikostas was quoted as saying Demonology would get a bit of an overhaul in the new expansion, and in the meantime here’s nerfs to discourage you from using it in its current state! This was going to be a post where I speculate on what Demonology would become, but what’s this?

Icy Veins did an interview with Tom Chilton and Ion Hazzikostas which you can read here. There’s a lot of details in there, but juicy juicy gossip for Demonology Warlocks among us!

Demonology Warlocks will be masters of summoning and controlling demons. Metamorphosis sort-of came to dominate the class, but the devs are refocusing the spec on demons. Affliction will continue to be about ‘decay’, and Destruction about ‘bursts of fel fire’.

BYEBYE META FORM

This was the direction I was going to go with this. Demonology becoming a summoner of demons, rather than becoming demons themselves. What do I think we’ll see?

• Metamorphosis cut: This is the obvious one, seeing as Metamorphosis is going to be the primary ability of Demon Hunters. This means we’ll be staying in caster form forever and ever.
• Corruption cut, Doom stays, usable in caster form: Doom already ties into the whole summoner philosophy, as critical strikes summon imps. I believe this will stay, and function as normal, and replace Corruption. Possibly make it tick a bit faster.
• Hellfire/Immolation Aura cut: These are an annoying part of Demonology AoE, as to use them you have to be in melee range of your target. Unfortunately, you still count as ranged, meaning you expose the melee classes to ranged mechanics (think Garrosh’s Desecrated Weapons, or Kilrogg’s Death Throes). I foresee these being cut, OR Hellfire staying, but rather than AoE centered on you, have it set a target on fire and pulse AoE damage.
• Cut Shadow Bolt, Soul Fire becomes filler, no more Molten Core: Bake Molten Core into the ability itself. Give it a chance to summon an imp on hit. Shadow Bolt gone because frankly it has a cast time comparable to Chaos Bolt, with damage comparable to 0.2 Chaos Bolts.
• Cut Chaos Wave, have Hand of Gul’dan on a 8 second cooldown with no charge system: That’s pretty self explanatory there.
• 2 permanent demons: They want us to be the masters of controlling demons? Then give us the ability to control 2 demons at once. Have a second splash menu, make you unable to summon two of the same demons. You can run around with a Voidlord AND a Fel Imp!
• Cut Grimoire of Service: At least for Demonology. Replace it with Grimoire of Something Else, and make it a cooldown that buffs all your demon damage by x% for 20 seconds. Like Dark Soul, but for your demons!
• Add Demon Summoning abilities: Have a new 10 minute cooldown IF you take Demonic Servitude where you can summon a Pit Lord or something as powerful. Have an ability on a 30 second cooldown that summons 2 random demons for 15 seconds. Those Felstalkers we saw in 6.2 would be cool. Maybe other demon models we can’t usually control too!

• Some form of AoE demon summoning ability: Have infernals rain from the sky briefly, or allow us to summon 3 Felguards/Wrathguards that do their bladestorm-like ability, then vanish.

Do bear in mind these are rough ideas. I’m no developer or theorycrafter, I have no idea how feasible these ideas are, but food for thought, eh? It’s merely one guy’s opinion, and I’d like to hear yours!