Warlock Changes

[Zloya]

Next, I'll just describe what I think would be worth changing. Also offer your ideas.

Skills.
FirestoneFirestone: Remove the useless 2% critical chance of fire spells and increase the chance of fire damage (preferably to 100%). The fire damage caused by a stone is an interesting mechanic that would be worth improving, since it's of little use right now.
Wrathstone: allows the player to study it at earlier levels, from about the 32nd, just when the player will be able to develop an improved talent "STONES". Firestone training can be transferred to the 22nd level.
Transfer of life [Health Funnel] and mana [Mana Funnel]: Allows a warlock to transfer his mana and health not only to his demon, but also to a friendly target (a member of the group). In the game, people supported this idea as an interesting mechanic that would expand the warlock's gaming capabilities. With the right changes, this could turn the demonologist warlock into a kind of support character who could heal an ally with his health or support the healer by transferring some of his mana. It's probably better to do this with a talent for demonology.
Spend mana on [Drain Life] and [Dark Harvest] as well as on [Drain Soul], one mana per beat.
Remove the reloading of melee and remote control weapons caused by curses. Well, that's purely my wish as a melee mage.
Use the player's resistance to defend against the damage caused by his [Hellfire].
Allow me to put the [Curse of Recklessness] on myself. This will allow the mage to strengthen his attack by losing his armor. Increase your strength with the improved talent "Curse of Weakness". Yes, a melee sorcerer.

Talents.
SOUL ENTRAPMENT and DEMONIC SACRIFICE: Should be doubled. The presence of a demon provides more support and damage than these talents.
UNLEASHED POTENTIAL: Activate this talent with more spells such as curses (maybe with some chance), as well as [Drain Life] and [Suck out the soul], and with firestone attacks and other effects. So that a player who plays exclusively on curses and rays will not be able to receive this bonus.
SOUL LINK: Removes the damage received by the demon increased by 5% (and possibly reduces the damage transferred to the demon from 20% to 15%). By choosing this talent, the demon becomes permanently vulnerable to damage, because there is no way to turn it off and on again. Here's how it will solve the problem. Besides, it seems silly to me to increase the damage received in order to transfer it to the demon later. Although the damage transfer mechanic is good in itself, it allows the warlock to be a tank (weak).
BANE: Increase the BANE Talent Bonus to reduce the usage time of [Shadow bolt], [Searing Pain], and [Immolate] to 0.25 seconds for each invested point, and [Soul Fire] to 1 second. Reduce the maximum possible number of points invested to 2. It is too expensive to spend 5 talent points for 0.5 seconds. This will also allow you to balance the second line in the talent tree.
Affliction Talent Branch: I can't say for sure, but there are clearly weaknesses in this branch. Perhaps one of the users will be able to say more.
Create a talent that reduces the total recovery time of all curses. You can do this instead of "Resilience Shadow" or "Improved Curse of Agony", or create a new one.
Increase the improved talent [Curse of Weakness] by at least 5% for each invested point. So that the spell gives a total of 25%.
Change the bonuses and the name "Enhanced Curse of Weakness", which displays the overall increase in strength of [Curse of Weakness] and [Curse of Recklessness]. I can suggest the name "Forces Manipulation".

The demons.
Succubus: Increase strength and reduce the cooldown of [Soothing Kiss] to 15 seconds.
Voidwalker: Reduce the [Suffering] recovery time by four times.
Allow to buff the demons. I don't understand why they forbade buffing demons, but it's ridiculous.

Various.
Add options to equipment items that make it possible not to waste soul Stone when casting spells that require a soul stone. Similar to how it's done in [Small Soul Pouch] and the like.
Add additional items of equipment with the ability to increase pet damage. At the moment, there's only one item that can only be obtained after level 58 that can strengthen a demon, and that's very sad.
Increases the damage from magic wands depending on the strength of the spell. Applies to all classes using magic wands.
Provides the ability to parry. Applies to all classes capable of holding weapons.

I'm not saying that everything should be as described above. I offer ideas that you can build on and what you should pay attention to.

[Slaydy1]

I like your suggestions and hope it gets a look over by devs. Bump

[Outed]

I appreciate seeing another Warlock player thinking about the class, and I don't have anything against you personally. However, I disagree with the majority of these suggestions. A lot of them seem to look at one ability in isolation without considering how it interacts with the rest of the Warlock toolkit, PvP, raid balance, hybrid specs, resource economy, etc.

When suggesting class changes, especially for a class that is already very strong, you really need to explain what problem the change solves, what the downside is, and what consequences it has outside your preferred playstyle.

-Firestone:
I don't really understand the problem here.

Firestone is already useful for Fire Warlock builds and for Demonology Warlocks depending on the setup. The proc chance is already high enough to matter; making it 100% would just turn the proc into guaranteed additional damage rather than a proc mechanic.
Also, the suggestion to move Firestone to level 22 is outdated: on current Octo it already requires level 22.

I don't see a reason to remove the 2% Fire crit either. Improved Stones already explicitly improves Firestone's crit component along with the other stones. And as stated above, firestone is used by Demonology Warlocks in raids and by Fire Warlocks in raids too (Also in leveling)

-Wrathstone:

Moving Wrathstone from 42 to roughly 32 also seems arbitrary.
Wrathstone is very clearly designed around Warlock tanking: currently it gives 40% increased threat from Fire spells and reduces your own Hellfire damage by 30%.

Deep Demo real tanking package comes around level 40 when Soul Link becomes available, so level 42 for the dedicated tanking stone makes reasonable progression sense. You can obviously tank some lower-level content before Soul Link, but that is very different from the actual Demo tank toolkit being established.

What problem does moving it ten levels earlier solve?

-Health Funnel / Mana Funnel on friendly players:

This is probably the suggestion I disagree with the most.
You cannot simply take abilities designed around your demon and allow them to target raid members without completely redesigning the numbers.

Soul Funnel (Talent) currently improves Health Funnel and Mana Funnel based around the missing resources, while Mana Funnel itself is specifically designed as the mana equivalent of Health Funnel for your pet.
Apply that kind of scaling to players and you immediately open ridiculous interactions:

- Imagine a raid healer running low on mana. The Priest spends mana healing the Warlock, the Warlock converts health into mana with Life Tap, and then funnels that mana back into the Priest.
You have now created a resource loop where the Warlock can potentially function as a near permanent healer mana battery.
Health is even more problematic. A percentage-based or missing-health-based funnel balanced around a demon suddenly gets used on a raid tank with 10–12k+ HP. Two ticks could restore an absurd amount of health depending on the scaling...
Simply saying:

- Let Health Funnel and Mana Funnel target playersis absolutely not balanced.
It would require separate abilities, separate coefficients, probably cooldowns and heavy penalties. At that point you're asking the developers to build a new support specialization, not make a small talent adjustment.

-Drain Life / Dark Harvest mana per tick:

Again, why?
Changing an upfront mana cost into a per-tick cost is not neutral.
If I begin Drain Life and someone interrupts me after one second, I've now spent only a fraction of the normal mana. That is a very real PvP buff, particularly for Warlocks without strong interruption protection.

Drain Soul having a particular resource model doesn't automatically mean every drain should use it.
There needs to be an actual balance reason beyond "Drain Soul does this."

-Hellfire and Fire Resistance:

This one is largely unnecessary.
Fire Resistance already helps you deal with Hellfire self-damage through partial resistance on Octo, and if you're actually building around Hellfire tanking, Wrathstone already reduces Hellfire damage taken by another 30%.
You also have Felstone-style sustain options depending on the situation.
So there are already mechanics allowing you to build around Hellfire's self-damage. The self-damage is supposed to be part of Hellfire's cost.

-Curse of Recklessness on yourself:

This is a good example of why every PvE idea needs to be examined in PvP.
Curse of Recklessness doesn't merely increase melee attack power and reduce armor.
It also makes the affected target ignore Fear and Horror effects. Octo's own spell description says exactly that.

So I duel another Warlock:
I put Curse of Recklessness on myself.
Congratulations, I just voluntarily gave myself immunity to Fear.
That alone should explain why allowing Warlocks to self-cast Recklessness is a terrible idea.
It's a cute melee-Warlock concept, but you cannot ignore the other effects attached to the spell.

-Talents:
Soul Entrapment + Demonic Sacrifice — double them?

Why?
This is exactly the type of suggestion that needs numbers and justification.
Soul Entrapment already increases your damage while no demon is controlled, specifically creating a petless playstyle, while Demonic Sacrifice provides another reward for sacrificing the demon.

You're proposing doubling two mechanics that synergize with each other.
That isn't a small buff.
You would enormously increase the damage of petless Warlock builds while also strengthening those builds in PvP, where an Affliction Warlock can already fight from long range while maintaining DoTs, curses, drains and Fear pressure.
If petless Demo/Affliction is underperforming somewhere, show logs, comparisons and numbers.

"Having a demon feels stronger, therefore double these talents" isn't balance reasoning.

-Unleashed Potential:

Strongly disagree.

The current version already makes Unleashed Potential substantially easier to maintain than the older version that relied much more heavily on direct critical hits.

Expanding it further so that:

curses trigger it,
Drain Life triggers it,
Drain Soul triggers it,
Firestone triggers it,
other passive effects trigger it...

...eventually turns Unleashed Potential into something that is practically always active simply for playing your character.

Where is the gameplay?

In my opinion, the older direct-crit requirement was more interesting, not less. It rewarded preparing crit, choosing when to summon Greater Demons, managing Unleashed Potential uptime and actively thinking about how you generated the buff.
The current official design is already that UP exists to let your demon benefit from your Fire and Shadow spell power.
Making everything imaginable activate it just lowers the skill requirement further.
Demo does not need another passive "you did something, therefore your pet is buffed" mechanic.

-Soul Link:

I genuinely don't understand this suggestion.
Soul Link has already gone historically from 30% → 25% → 20%. That progression is also documented in current Octo Warlock-tank discussion.
And now you're suggesting 15%?
Why?

Soul Link is the defining deep Demonology defensive talent. It is one of the major reasons Demo can survive melee pressure and one of the fundamental mechanics that makes niche Warlock tanking possible.
Reducing it from 20% to 15% because the demon receives damage makes no sense to me. The demon receiving transferred damage is the trade-off. You gain mitigation, but now you have another health pool that must be managed.

That's gameplay.

If anything, I would rather see Soul Link remain at 20% or eventually be reconsidered toward its previous 25% value than be nerfed yet again.

-Bane:

No.
What you're proposing is not merely making Bane "cheaper."
Traditional Bane spends five talent points to reach the full cast-time reduction. Octo also expanded Bane so that it affects Searing Pain.
If you compress the same maximum benefit into two points, you have effectively just handed Destruction Warlocks three free talent points.
Those three points then go somewhere else.

That affects:

pure Destruction,
Demo/Destro hybrids,
Affliction/Destro hybrids,
PvE,
PvP.

Talent-point cost is part of talent balance.

"Five points feels expensive" is not an argument for turning a five-point throughput talent into a two-point throughput talent while keeping the same maximum effect.

-Affliction:

Saying:

"there are clearly weaknesses in this branch"

without actually identifying them isn't enough.

Current Octo Affliction already has significant additions: Malediction, Soul Siphon, Rapid Deterioration, the consolidated Improved Drains, cheaper Fel Concentration, expanded Nightfall and revised Curse talents.

Affliction has damage, sustain, pressure, utility and excellent PvP tools.
Maybe individual talents deserve adjustment. Improved Curse of Weakness is one that I agree could be looked at.
But "Affliction has weaknesses, someone else figure them out" isn't a basis for changing the tree.

-Reduced GCD on all curses:

Again, what problem are we solving? Utility Curses already have their GDC reduced to just 1.0 second from 1.5 seconds. This was a 1.18 change.

Also, curses are already instant-cast utility spells. Reducing their global cooldown increases how quickly a Warlock can stack utility and pressure, especially in PvP.

That means faster:

Recklessness,
Tongues,
Elements,
Shadow,
Weakness,
Exhaustion,
depending on the situation.

If you want a new curse talent, explain why Warlocks currently need faster curse application and what PvP cost that should carry.

-Improved Curse of Weakness:

This is one point where I partly agree.

Curse of Weakness could probably receive some attention.
But I wouldn't automatically say:
make it 25% stronger.
I'd rather see the developers examine what role the talent is supposed to fill -

Maybe it improves attack-speed reduction further. Maybe it adds a small attack-power reduction. Maybe it modifies both Weakness and Recklessness in an interesting way....
There are plenty of possibilities.

The important thing is to start from the problem, not from "add 25%."

-Demons:
Succubus:
-Why does Succubus need more Strength?
What comparison shows that her damage is too low?
Demo Warlocks who know how to use Succubus already get very respectable damage from her when Greater Demons are unavailable.

If you think Succubus is underperforming, show:

her DPS,
Imp DPS,
Felhunter DPS,
Greater Demon DPS,
gear scaling.

Then we can discuss it.

Reducing Soothing Kiss cooldown to 15 seconds is also something that needs a reason. Is Succubus regularly threat-capped? Is Soothing Kiss failing at its intended role?
Don't buff an ability just because it can be buffed.

-Voidwalker Suffering:

Reducing its cooldown by four times is massive.
Suffering is already considerably more useful than vanilla.
If developers wanted to help leveling or tanking Warlocks, a modest reduction or increased threat generation could make sense.

But cutting a major AoE threat ability's cooldown to one quarter of its current value is again just:
-ability good → make ability available four times as often.

Also, a Demo Warlock can already use Sacrifice and resummon another Voidwalker with Fel Domination when necessary, resetting the tactical situation rather than expecting Suffering to be available every pull.

-Allow demons to receive every raid buff:

I understand why this sounds fun.
Obviously I would enjoy my Doomguard/Infernal/Succubus doing even more damage.

Its not an automatically good design choice.
For serious Demo PvE it creates another layer of annoying preparation:

summon pet → buff pet,
pet dies → rebuff pet,
swap demon → rebuff demon,
Greater Demon comes out → raid buffs the Greater Demon,
Greater Demon expires → rebuff replacement pet.

Now your parse depends not only on you playing correctly but on whether multiple other classes rebuffed your temporary demon correctly.
Greater Demons are already extremely powerful when played properly.

Removing that raid-buff dependency makes Demo cleaner to play and easier to balance.
That's not "ridiculous." There are reasonable gameplay and balance arguments for it.

-Various:
More Soul Shard preservation gear:
This mechanic already exists as a core Warlock bag mechanic.

Octo currently gives:

5% from Small Soul Pouch,
10% from Box of Souls,
15% from Soul Pouch,
20% from Felcloth Bag,
25% from Core Felcloth Bag

Why do we need to start stacking the same mechanic across normal equipment as well?
Soul Shards are part of Warlock resource management and class identity.
Removing more and more of the inconvenience eventually means there is no reason for Soul Shards to exist.

-More pet-damage items"

This is at least a reasonable type of request, but the statement that basically no pet-damage gear exists is outdated. There are more then 1...

Octo's August 16 patch explicitly fixed multiple Hunter/Warlock percentage pet-damage effects so that they stack instead of overwriting each other.

I'm completely fine with more interesting Demo-oriented itemization over time.
But again, there is a difference between:
"I'd like to see more pet-oriented gear progression"

and:

"there is basically only one pet item."
The latter isn't a good description of the direction Octo is currently taking.

-Wand damage scaling with Spell Power:
Absolutely not without major redesign.
Wands are zero-mana ranged auto-attacks.
Giving them normal spell-power scaling suddenly means casters have scaling, infinite-resource ranged damage whenever they want to conserve mana.

That changes:

leveling balance,
PvP,
mana management,
Priests,
Mages,
Warlocks.

Wands being weapons with their own DPS rather than another spell-power coefficient is intentional.
You can't simply bolt spell scaling onto them and call it an improvement.


-Parry for every caster that can equip a weapon:

Weapon proficiency and the ability to parry are not the same thing.

If Warlocks, Priests and Mages suddenly gain Parry because they're holding a dagger or sword, you're giving cloth casters an additional avoidance layer in melee combat.

Again: why?
What class problem does this solve?
How much parry would they get?
How does it affect PvP?
How does it interact with Warlock tanking?
"Can hold weapon → should parry" is not enough justification.

I genuinely like seeing people propose Warlock changes. I've made plenty of Warlock suggestions myself, including Demo and tanking ideas.

But there is a very important difference between designing a change and simply asking for buffs.
For every proposed change, I think you should ask:

What problem does this solve?
How large is the buff mathematically?
What does it do in PvE?
What does it do in PvP?
What other specs can exploit it?
What is the downside or trade-off?
Does another existing mechanic already solve the problem?

Warlock on Octo is already a very capable class, and Octo has already changed it significantly: demons scale from gear, Demo received Greater Demon support, Soul Funnel, Improved Stones, Soul Entrapment, Unleashed Potential, Power Overwhelming, Malediction, Dark Harvest and many other mechanics.

That means further changes need to be made carefully, not by making Firestone proc 100%, doubling two damage talents, giving Warlocks Fear immunity through self-Recklessness, turning them into healer mana batteries, reducing a five-point talent to two points, quadrupling Suffering availability and giving free Spell Power scaling to wands all at once.

Some of the ideas have interesting concepts behind them.
But most of them need considerably more thought about the consequences before they would be healthy changes.


-Outed-