Starting from here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 1679&sid=1

I originally was disappointed when I started reading this thread. At first I was like "Thank you for making us mages with green fire. Awesome." Fel Flame they describe as being similar to Frostfire and Dark Intent is just like Focus Magic. I like the Demon Soul thing, as warlocks definitely need a nice personal cooldown like that, and it's nifty in regard to our class. But it's not like its a new concept.

But the more I get into this, the more I like it. The soul shards are a no-brainer-- frickin carrying around that stupid bag full of crap that is totally useless. They could at least make the damn things STACK. And the way they buff other spells all sound groovy to me, and especially seem cool for Arena. I wonder if Soul Burn will have a cooldown, because in arena especially not having a cool down would mean some serious face rolling.
They said they will not be used outside combat, but they didnt mention how they will be used in combat. For instance, will soul shatter still cost a shard? If so, that's going to make a warlocks have to choose between threat and damage on fights that are DPS races. And what about soul fire, etc?

Demon Bolt is neat, basically giving Demo a big nuke and extra buff for their pet. I see the succubus knockback getting...weird. If you are going to replace soothing kiss which is such a staple of PvP, this is a good thing to go with.

Oh yeah and imps being the new lava totem? NEAT!

Hellfire will be a really cool AoE to have, especially in terms of graphics. Oh man. Cant you just see running into the whelps and going off? On the other hand, the only times I use hellfire right now are to kill myself during wipes without taking a durability loss so BOOOOO.

This thread seemed all about Destruction to me, which is weird, because it is the least "warlock-y" of the three specs. This also might be because it's my favorite spec, and the spec I'm most familiar with, but I kept thinking about how these changes are going to affect Destro. Right now Destro is pretty simple: Curse, Immolate, Conflag, Chaos, Spam Incinerate, Refresh Immolate, Repeat. But the changes are going to make it more involved with a wider variety of spells. You will actually use your curses like tongues and exhaustion, which will make you more valuable to raids. Then you still get your damage booster Bane of CoA or CoD. I'm interested to see if the change that makes haste affect ticks will put CoA as a winner over CoD. CoD, of course, one of its benefits is that it has such a high damage per cast time. But if CoA puts out significantly more damage...well too, Impending Doom might lower the cooldown and make them equal. I definitely think that the haste-tick change will make corruption worth the damage again. Immolate and Incinerate and conflag and chaos bolt stay the same. It will be interesting to see the language of Fel Flame when It finally comes out . It sounds like they are trying to ADD more spells to your roster, so I dont think it will have enough damage to outdo incinerate or shadow bolt. I think it really will just be a "refresher" for Immolate here. BUT, will it just refresh Immolate or will it also hit with Immolates initial damage? If it doesnt hit with Immolate's direct damage, it will probably be just an "on the move" type spell and not part of your rotation at all, kind of like corruption is right now.
The shadowburn is what seems to me is getting overlooked. I have never seen a warlock take this spell in PvE, but the damage buff at 25% looks like they are trying to give Destruction an "Execute" just like Affliction and Demonology have. (although the long cooldown is kind of..ehhh.) All I have to say is AWESOME. Now I can feel less guilty for liking Destruction so much.

In regards to affliction, the pandemic making Drain Soul refresh UA and CoA is interesting. This will mean that you will only have to break Drain Soul for Haunt to keep everything up, which will increase your damage a lot since you wont have to spend 6 seconds refreshing everything. And at god, how much a tick now?

Basically it seems to me like they are going wide and shallow instead of deep. Everything is becoming more and more idiot proof. There are more spells with interesting effects, which I think will be really fun. (I'm not really sure how they are going to make it so that you dont "clip" when you refresh early. They describe it as similar to Everlasting Affliction, which doesnt make sense because everlasting affliction is a buff and doesnt tick. Corruption and CoA still have to be ticks, so if you refresh in the middle of two, you will definitely miss the second one. And if you dont miss the second one, it will make sense to ALWAYS clip in the middle of those last two clips because you will get double damage. /edit okay maybe its going to be like when you refresh you wont start a new timer for ticks, but the last tick will go at the same time, but just be the first tick? Hmm. ) Anyway, I think thats weird and unnecessary. The ability to keep a good uptime without clipping is one of the things that divide good players from bad, and you can REALLY see it in the DPS. So we'll see how this works.

I forsee a lot of people being unhappy with the way Cataclysm is "dumbing down" WoW. A friend of mine described it as Hello Kitty Island. I dont think its going to be quite that bad. I think it will just mean you can trust your instincts and math you do in your head instead of having to bring an excel spreadsheet with spell coefficients to be a good raider. I'm fine with not giving myself a headache. I dont think that these changes will mean we suddenly see +20 haste gemmed locks with the equivalent of a Kingslayer title. ie it's still going to require effort to be good.

Anyway, these are just my first thoughts. I cant bring myself to go through the 80 pages of responses on the forums, but I'm really looking forward to reading EJ in the next couple days.

I have to say that the warlock's new spells are more or less fillers to me that the class didn't have....don't see much special, kinda disappointed after seeing the priests getting lifegrip and shamans raining on us hoes.

I'll definitely agree with that. The new spells lack the pinache of the new Shaman and Priest spells (I hope Priests start dragging us to their stupid lightwells lol). None of the new warlock spells are going to inherently change the class playstyle or even utility. Just make it more fun, and I think make us use a wider variety than we currently do.


Although I do wonder....the merging with the demon, and the effect changes depending on the demon.....if we merged with a voidwalker....could we tank?

I love the lock changes, might have to start playing Crazedd again

I'm sorry you wont be doing much hellfiring cuz the priests will be life gripping you out for no particular reason other than boredom and no enemy..im not responsible for your positioning...lazy warriors

The good shamans can already make it rain.

I'm pretty sure everyone thinks the other classes got cooler stuff than they did. It's going to be forever before any of these changes can be viewed in a Cataclysm context, anyway. Right now, it's hard to process.

Remember the discussion of previewed abilities for Wrath? Aaah, the QQ.

But I think the shaman changes are da best!

At least they gave spriests a frostfire spell, too But then they gave them cooler soul shards / floating shadow orbs that orbit them

I'm concerned about Hellfire; if it doesn't have a VERY low threat coefficient, we're automatically going to pull aggro with it - see what happens when I use Immolation Aura already. Or we could just get some good tanks for once.

I like the change to CoA/CoD, but Bane of Doom sounds freaking stupid. It sounds like exactly the opposite of what it is. Bane of Doom = bad for doom; whereas the spell is, itself, Doom. Meh, linguistic quibble.

I'm curious about Fel Flame's cooldown; if it's too high, it will only be usable in movement; if it's too low, you'll never cast UA as affliction. I share your questions regarding it's effect on Immolate.

I'm assuming they will lower the cooldown on Shadowburn to something like 6 seconds, to make it a viable execute ability.

I don't like the change to pandemic all that much. Also, don't forget casting SB every 30 seconds to keep up ISB I still miss having to cast siphon life and immolate as affliction, I'm not thrilled about the rotation being simpler below 25%. I will admit to some pleasure in not having to break drain soul too often.

I think the "no clipping" thing means that you apply a new duration, but maintain the tick timer. I like that, but, depending on your haste, you may still lose a tick; it's almost impossible to say.

Curse of Doom has the exact same linguistic problems as Bane of Doom, though. It's most obvious literal meaning is "the curse hindering someone or something called Doom*."

Admittedly, "Bane" is a silly word, but I can't think of any more appropriate substitutes. "Hex" would be fine if we hadn't nabbed it already.

*DAMN YOU, REED RICHAAAAAAAARDS!