Blizzard
Hello!In this build of the Shadowlands Alpha, we've made some changes to Affliction Warlocks, based on your feedback. We want to address concerns with pet summoning,
Curse of Doom, and Affliction's single target rotation, among other things.Thank you for all your posts!
Warlock- Fel Domination is now a baseline ability, learned at level 34, with a 3 minute cooldown. Fel Domination reduces summoning cast time by 5.5 seconds.
Summoning your pet shouldn't be always easy, but sometimes you need a new pet in a pinch.
Curse of
Curse of Doom removed for Affliction and Destruction.
Curse of Exhaustion is learned at level 58 for all three specializations.
Curse of Exhaustion slows the target by 50% for 8 seconds.
- Developers' notes: We love Curse of Doom, but it wasn't working out well at a 60-second period. Also, we feel that Curse of Exhaustion will provide interesting choices when deciding which Curse to use.
Affliction- Shadow Embrace is now baseline as a part of Shadow Bolt (Rank 2), learned at level 52 for Affliction.
Developers' notes: Shadow Bolt for Affliction was falling by the wayside in the rotation. This should encourage Warlocks to use it more often, and provide more gameplay while fighting a single target.
Unstable Affliction no longer has a limit of 1, and no longer amplifies damage on your target.
Unstable Affliction's damage backlash on dispel increased substantially.
At level 56,
Unstable Affliction is ranked up to gain an additional 5 seconds of duration.
- Developers' notes: This is a more of an experimental change than the rest, but we feel that Unstable Affliction is not meeting player expectations at a limit of 1. This change allows Affliction to focus more on spreading dots to many targets at once.
Corruption now ranks up at level 54 to gain an initial period, dealing .12 coefficient damage instantly.
Talents- Writhe in Agony now also causes Agony to start at 4 stacks, in addition to increasing its maximum stacks to 18.
- New Talent: Inevitable Demise. Damaging an enemy with Agony increases the damage of your next Drain Life by 5%. This effect stacks up to 50 times.
- Nightfall now activates slightly more often as Corruption spreads to more targets.
Developers' notes: Previously, Nightfall was not occurring more often as you spread Corruption to multiple targets. This felt counter-intuitive, so we added functionality to increase its rate with multiple Corruptions. Similar to Agony, its increase is not linear, but you will see more Nightfalls multi-target.
Deathbolt is now a PvP talent.
- Developers' notes: With Unstable Affliction stacking gone, the instant burst single target damage from this felt more appropriate as a PvP talent, to act as a finisher.
Tongue Tied Removed. Replaced with–
Howl of Terror: Fears 5 targets within 10 yards for 20 seconds. Has a 1.5 second cast time and 40 second cooldown.
New talent: Dark Caller (in place of
Shadow Embrace). Reduces the cooldown of
Summon Darkglare by 1 minute.
- Developers' notes: This talent should allow Warlocks to specialize further into keeping lots of dots on many targets at once, and give them more room to use Malefic Rapture in that window.
PvP Talents- removes all active Corruptions, dealing 10% of their maximum HP and grants 10% Haste, stacking 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds, and is magic dispellable.
Developers' notes: This talent was very under-utilized due to the heavy cost of removing all dots, so it now removes Corruption instead, and no longer generates soul shards.
Deathbolt now deals 60% damage equal to remaining duration of your dots, has a 0.5 second cast time, and a 45 second cooldown.
Deathbolt missile is slower and more apparent.
Amplify Curse now affects
Curse of Exhaustion, causing it to slow the target by 70%.
DemonologyTalents