Burning Crusade Preview - Warlocks

Up until now I've expressed interest mostly in things pertaining to the Druid class. While I love the Druid class and think it is incredibly rewarding to be a healer, I also play a Warlock. My Warlock was my first Horde character as well as my first max-level Horde character. Since Blizzard has not yet released the Druid preview for TBC but has released the Warlock talents and spells I'd like to take some time to look at these.

First I'd like to look at the new and the improved spells in the Warlock's arsenal; In general, I think the Warlock changes are directly related to this and the implications it has..

I will say this, for expansion the debuff limit is being increased from 16 to 40, combined with the focus on smaller raid dungeons, Warlock players will have more freedom and opportunity to use their debuffing abilities with less limitation. Beyond this, all classes will have new spells, talents and abilities that they will bring to the table by the time level 70 is achieved.

I hate quoting the above without a source, but I'm positive it was a blue post on the World of Warcraft Official Forums which have recently undergone a revamp destroying all the old posts.

The increase in debuff slots and the decrease in raid size could mean extremely competitive dps (damage per second) from Warlocks. Currently in large scale raids Warlock dps suffers considerably if they are not permitted to use their debuffs; debuffs are also the most efficient dpm (damage per mana) spells available to Warlocks.

The extremely restrictive factor for Warlock dps is threat, or rather their inability to reduce threat without dying. This concern is directly addressed by..

Soulshatter - Rank 1
Requires Level 66
193 Health
Instant cast            5 min cooldown
Reagents: Soul Shard
Reduces threat by 50% for all enemies.

I like this spell because to me it still requires the Warlock to toe the aggro line in order to get maximum benefit; the Warlock lives on a precarious line.

Another new spell, Incinerate, introduces an interesting mechanic. Incinerate gains bonus damage for having an active Immolate spell. It also looks to be the direct damage fire nuke which Warlocks have been asking for since heavy Destruction builds became more popular (Conflagrate.. yummy!).

Incinerate - Rank 2
Requires Level 70
300 Mana            30 yd range
2.5 sec cast
Deals 429 to 497 Fire damage to your target and
an additional 107 to 125 Fire damage if the target
is affected by an Immolate spell.

I particularly like this because it doesn't have any extra aggro generation attached to it like Searing Pain does which makes it spammable.

Another thing Blizzard has implemented, in a way, which players have been clamoring for is a shadow based AoE spell. I say Blizzard has done this 'in a way' because they introduced two ways to do AoE shadow damage, the first is an effect of Seed of Corruption.

Seed of Corruption - Rank 1
Requires Level 70
882 Mana            30 yd range
2 sec cast
Imbeds a demon seed in the enemy target, causing
1044 Shadow damage over 18 sec. When the target
takes 1044 total damage, the seed will inflict
1110 to 1290 Shadow damage to all enemies within
15 yards of the target. Only one Corruption spell
per Warlock can be active on any one target.

The second shadow based AoE is the new 41 point talent in the Destruction tree.

All three of the Warlock talent trees have seen a much needed revamp for the expansion. The changes to the early (first seven) tiers of Destruction and Demonology got mostly tweaking; unsurprisingly the Affliction tree saw significant changes. Affliction has been a staple part of raiding builds for a long time, but it was largely agreed by the community there were far to many filler talents.

In Affliction..

• Improved Drain Health and Improved Drain Mana got consolidated and revamped. Instead of a flat increase they increase according to the number of Affliction debuffs the target has


• Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx) has been changed from a 1 point talent with an additional 4 talent points required for fully improved CoEx to a single point talent for full effect.


• Empowered Corruption has been added in place of Improved Drain Mana, making Corruption an even more powerful DoT.


• Shadow Embrace has been added, presumably replacing Improved CoEx, adding additional reason to keep Affliction debuffs on targets being tanked.
  

Additionally, the new top (seventh, eigth and ninth) tier talents are quite good. Lasting Afflictions seems the Warlock equivalent of Improved Shadow Word:Pain except for multiple spells; Contagion further increases the Warlock's damage from debuffs; Malediction will increase magic raid dps by three percent (assuming both Curse of Shadows {CoS} and Curse of Elements {CoE}); Unstable Affliction is a nasty little PvP surprise. I think Blizzard did an excellent job of cleaning up the Affliction tree (particularly if they make Improved Curse of Agony {CoA} affect spell damage).

I also like whats been done in Demonology. Demonology continues to have the only flat aggro reduction available to Warlocks, the problem was Demonology Warlocks (in my experience) rarely did enough damage without sacrificing their pet (making the aggro reducer impossible) to need the aggro reduction. It appears Blizzard is attempting to correct this for TBC by adding talents such as Demonic Aegis which will increase the spell damage bonus received from the new Fel Armor spell and Demonic Tactics which will increase total damage from the Warlock by five percent. However, even with Demonic tactics I believe a Warlock would still need to sacrifice their Succubus in order to deal respectable damage (compared to the Affliction or Destruction Warlocks). Due to this I believe (unless the summonable Fel Guard is amazing) the Demonology tree will remain more of a PvP tree as opposed to a PvE tree.

Lastly I want to look at the changes made to the Destruction tree. In the first five tiers the only change Blizzard made to Destruction was to reduce Improved Searing Pain to a three point investment (formerly five points). In tiers six and seven Blizzard has added two 'defensive' talents; Nether Protection has a chance to grant 4 seconds of immunity to damage from the fire and shadow schools after being damaged by either; Soul Leech has a chance to return some of the damage dealt by direct damage spells to the Warlock as health. Shadow and Flame in tier eight allows the Warlock to gain an even greater contribution from their +damage gear. Finally Shadofury in tier nine gives the Warlock an AoE shadow spell on a cooldown.

I really like all the changes to the trees as I believe they are in the spirit of the design of the different trees. Heavy Destruction builds remain glass cannons, heavy Affliction builds will have considerably stronger debuffs across the board, and I imagine a Warlock Soul Linked to his summoned Fel Guard would be quite the irritation to kill.

In light of whats been released for the Warlock class I'm not only excited to play my Warlock in TBC, but I'm filled with anticipation to see what they decide to do with the Druid class.