Class Wishlists for Midnight
Death Knight Wishlist
Druid Wishlist
Hunter Wishlist
Mage Wishlist
Monk Wishlist
Shaman Wishlist
Warrior Wishlist
For a brief breakdown of the changes coming to each specialization in Midnight, check out our Midnight Class Survival Guide.
Midnight Class Survival Guide
Warlock Wishlists for Midnight
Our Warlock Writers, Kalamazi (Affliction), Not (Demonology), and Loozy (Destruction), discuss the most significant issues plaguing their specs as well as the must-have changes they'd like to see prior to Midnight's launch in just a few short months.
Affliction Warlock Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Return DOT Extension
2.
DOT Tracking on Boss Frames
3.
Making Shared Agony "Smart"
4.
Buffs/Bug Fixes to Certain Talents
5.
Wanting to move away from Resource pooling
Return DOT Extension
Recently, there were changes made to both Summon Darkglare and Dark Harvest, removing their ability to extend active DOTs when cast. With Affliction shifting to being based around Unstable Affliction spender in Midnight, one could argue that DOT extensions are more important than ever. With the Darkglare restructuring, Blizzard has made it so that Darkglare now increases the damage your DOTs do by 20% while Darkglare is active, promoting a playstyle that casts Unstable Affliction AFTER Darkglare, no longer before. With this change, it greatly alters how we approach our Darkglare window every 2 minutes. This in conjunction with Malefic Grasp being a talent that is active only during our Darkglare has made things incredibly awkward. Malefic Grasp promotes a strategy based around DOT extension, but that was removed a couple weeks ago. With Malefic Grasp also being triggered upon Darkglare cast, one would assume that its likely better to cast Unstable Afflictions before Darkglare, for max Malefic Grasp value, but that is not the case.
You then enter this odd window of wanting to stand still and channel Malefic Grasp when Darkglare is active, but your DOTs are no longer extended by Darkglare or Dark Harvest, so when you finish casing your final Unstable Affliction and want to begin channeling Malefic Grasp, your Agony,Corruption and Haunt are all falling, which you are required to refresh. When you are done with that, you then can begin channeling Malefic Grasp, but all the Unstable Affliction effects you just applied have ticked for nearly half their duration already, GREATLY reducing the value of Malefic Grasp.
The issue here is that we pretty much have an oil and water scenario, they just don't mix. With Malefic Grasp being tied to Darkglare and Darkglare having its DOT extension removed, you struggle to find identity with either ability, and are fighting against one another. There's basically two design ideologies at work here and while they both would likely work if each was build around individually, they don't work together in their current forms. Reintroducing Darkglare DOT extension fixes this issue and I feel is something that should highly be considered before launch. This greatly improves Affliction's QOL as well as general cooldown play. If they stay how they are, I fear for Affliction's Cooldown window in Midnight.
DOT Tracking on Boss Frames
Having the ability to track your DOTs on boss frames is exceptionally important for DOT classes. Over the course of WoW's history, addons (such as Shadowed Unit Frames) have been used to do just that, making DOT tracking much easier and efficient in cleave based settings. Sadly, the current Blizzard boss frames have no functionality of that sort at all, not even a cast bar. The boss frames that the default UI uses are quite outdated and if not updated for Midnight, puts DOT class players (that won't use addons) at a large disadvantage in certain settings.
Making Shared Agony "Smart"
Shared Agony is Afflictions new way of spreading Agony in 2+ Target settings. This comes with the removal of Vile Taint in Midnight and while it is a welcome one, the ability sadly is not "smart" at the moment. For example, let's say you are in a 5 Target scenario with varying durations remaining on your Agony effects. By refreshing Agony, you would expect it to refresh on your target and another mob near the target, with the lowest remaining duration on Agony. That sadly however, is not the case. In its current form, doing so will often refresh the highest remaining duration Agony on a nearby mob and possibly refresh that same one multiple times, if Agony is cast more than once. This make DOT maintenance MUCH more demanding and quite frustrating, knowing that a small functionality change would greatly increase QOL. Hopefully this is something that is planned to be implemented in the next few weeks, or at least before Midnights release.
Buffs/Bug Fixes to Certain Talents
Currently, both Fatal Echoes and Malefic Grasp are functioning in an odd manner. Fatal Echoes reads that "When Unstable Affliction expires, it has a 10% chance to reapply itself." This however, only works for the FINAL copy of Unstable Affliction that is active, meaning that if you have 2 or more stacks of Unstable Affliction on a target, the additional stacks do not have a chance to reapply themselves, it is only if you let additional stacks fall, and then the last remaining copy has a 1/10 chance to reapply. Malefic Grasp is also only benefitting one Unstable Affliction when it is cast, even if there are multiple stacks of Unstable Affliction active. I am assuming that these are both bugs and will be fixed, but if they are not, these talents provide exceptionally little value and likely need to be reworked.
Wanting to move away from Resource pooling
Its been mentioned that Blizzard wants to try and move away from "Resource pooling" for Affliction, and while I do understand their reasoning, it feels like trying to do so has led to a less exciting version of Affliction. With the return of Unstable Affliction as our spender in Midnight, people are quite excited to give Affliction a shot. Legion Affliction is heralded as one of the more exciting specs in the games history, and with good reason. The spec has changed since then, but does still retain a good bit of the Legion identity in Midnight. The effort to shift Affliction away from resource pooling however, I feel has made things a bit lackluster.
With our current cooldowns in Summon Darkglare and Malefic Grasp, our rotation is still build around pooling for these damage windows, which affects both Hero Talents. Malevolence in its current form also promotes a pooling strategy to do optimal damage. It also feels exciting having a damage profile where "Cooldowns Matter" and pooling around them further amplifies that feel. Knowing that you are going to do a large bit of damage in 20 seconds gets players excited to hit their buttons, flat profiles don't. It feels subpar when you hit all of your cooldowns and barely see your DPS increase at all, the playstyle feels unrewarding.
It also feels quite hard shifting Affliction away from a pooling playstyle based on how its built in Midnight. Its possible that the Darkglare duration extension change was made in an attempt to do so, but it has sadly left Afflictions Major CDs in a state of confusion. I feel that pooling resources is ok, its fun honestly and the current version of Affliction is built to do just that. Trying to change that feels a bit awkward.
Affliction Warlock Guide
Demonology Warlock Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Reduced AoE Cooldown
2.
Basline Felguard
3.
Talent Tree pathing
4.
Debuff tracking on Boss Frames
5.
Bug fixes!
AoE Toolkit
Many of Demonology's AoE toolkit is passive and just happens when you do your normal rotation; Implosion adds additional AoE to our toolkit but the cooldown still does not feel that good. It's okay to feel like you have a defined period of AoE but having no access to on demand AoE after pressing Implosion is not a great feeling for gameplay. Having the option of talenting To Hell and Back now to recoup imploded Wild Imps into Imp Gang Boss(es) is a nice way of getting back to a higher Wild Imp count but doesn't solve our lack of more always available AoE vs burst AoE.
Talent Pathing
Many talents in the tree are not impactful or aren't impactful enough for you to be able to make an easy decision for you to do anything other than sim all options and just take whatever has the biggest output. Talents like: Dominant Hand, Practiced Rituals, Demonic Brutality, Improved Demonic Tactics as examples could be combined into one talent and reduce bloat or improve pathing. Certain capstone talents are also gated by very mediocre or borderline unnecessary talents, the biggest one being Summon Doomguard which is gated by taking Spiteful Reconstitution and two points in Demonic Knowledge when Demonic Core economy feels good even without it. Requiring Demonology to spend a talent to get the pet the spec is known for in Summon Felguard feels strange but is...fine; it would be nice to see us having Felguard baseline again and this talent be something more akin to buffing the pet itself into the old Wrathguard model with an improved Felstorm or turn it into a ranged pet throwing swords and tossing their weapons Guillotine style as the Felstorm replacement. Demonology has already had a lot of thematic changes and with pre-patch looming something like this is unlikely but is a fun though experiment.
UI limitations
While Blizzard has come a long way from the original implementation of the new UI, there are still a lot of ways that it can be improved on. Most notably for Demonology is showing Doom on boss frames. While nameplates do work and can be used it's not always the best place to find that information especially when you want to look at boss frames a number of times throughout encounters to see casts (also not available currently on boss frames), easily swap targets, etc. It's a natural place for that information to be available.
Demonology Warlock Guide
Destruction Warlock Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Extra look on the talent tree
2.
Shadowburn being an equally viable spender
3.
More exciting AoE rotation.
4.
Reduce amount of secondary stat talents
5.
For Grimoire of Sacrifice to be a viable option.
Talent Tree issues
I get that there has to be a mix of talents that are awesome and talents that are maybe more boring but practical. The problem is that when I look at the Destruction Warlock talent tree going into Midnight, I struggle to find anything that actually feels awesome at all. Outside of the spec’s standard cooldowns such as Summon Infernal, Havoc, and Cataclysm. The tree feels strangely flat, and this especially really hurts at the capstone level. These bottom row talents are supposed to be the talents that make you excited to reach the bottom of the tree, but instead they mostly feel like minor extensions of what Destruction already does, rather than big, defining effects you really feel when you're playing. Right now, the tree feels functional, but it doesn’t feel inspiring, and that’s a problem for a spec that’s supposed to thrive on spectacle and raw destruction.
Currently in the tree, we have a substantial amount of flat stat effects or buffs available for talent points. These function as fillers that you feel obligated to put talent points into, in order to advance further down to pick up slightly more powerful passive effects. Talents like Practiced Chaos that literally just states 2% mastery feel so meh, and honestly gives me a feeling of having run out of ideas for talents.
FInally, as my #5 on my wishlist I put Grimoire of Sacrifice being more viable, and that one is really more of a personal wish. Having played MoP Classic Destruction, Grimoire of Sacrifice is just so much more fun than having to play with a pet. As Destruction, you really feel like you're where the damage is coming from, and being able to transfer the damage your pet would have dealt onto you, that just fits the theme of Destruction all the way in my opinion. Having Grimoire of Sacrifice be a strong option would be something I would be looking forward to.
Shadowburn as a Soul Shard spender
Shadowburn is currently falling way behind as a viable soul-shard spender, especially for Diabolist Destruction. The fact that Embers of Nihilam only mentions Chaos Bolt and Rain of Fire, but not Shadowburn puts Shadowburn at a huge disadvantage. Currently, especially in cleave situations, the Destruction Apex talents in Midnight deal an absurd portion of your damage. This means, in order for Shadowburn to be the best soul shard spender right now, the target would have to die before you could get your Chaos Bolt cast off, otherwise you're always going to prefer casting a Chaos Bolt. A possible solution for this is either just including Shadowburn in the apex talents, or maybe buffing either Shadowburn itself, or some of the supporting talents such as Conflagration of Chaos or Fiendish Cruelty. I feel like there is room within these talents, to either give more incentive to casting Shadowburn through damage effects, or maybe even have a slight redesign of these talents to accomodate the want to cast Shadowburn as Destruction.
Boring AoE rotation
This last one is probably a big ask, and it's probably a little late for it now. The Destruction AoE rotation can in some situations consist of quite literally spam casting Rain of Fire, only really interrupted by the occasional Conflagrate or reapplication of Immolate with Cataclysm. After that, you go straight back to spamming Rain of Fire. The AoE rotations for both Affliction and Demonology have undergone multiple tweaks and changes over the past few expansions, and all that Destruction has really gotten in that regard, is the removal of the talent that allowed us to keep spamming Rain of Fire. We didn't get anything cool in exchange, only that the choice node of Inferno/Cataclysm ended up just being Cataclysm only.
Diabolist Destruction does actually make you want to spend your soul shards with Chaos Bolt, but even then, you literally just swap out Rain of Fire for Chaos Bolt, and then you're back to the same problem as before. I would like to see a change that would introduce some sort of depth to your AoE rotation.
Destruction Warlock Guide
