Hey!
This article is the continuation of the shaman one:
viewtopic.php?p=97125#p97125
As usual, none of the below is a suggestion. Framework is the same, will use the same talent tree concept as for the shamans.
The rules from the earlier article:
For the first three rows, the warlock has the classic options to choose talents from affli, demo or destro. However, rows 4-7 mean a certain specialization. You can only jump into any of the below specializations from row 3 of a related talent tree.
Let's say that you start taking talents in the demo tree. Rules are the usual, you can only start picking talents from the first row, later rows require a certain amount of learned talents in the tree. As you level up, you reach row 3 and you have the option to specialize. You either choose to be a tank and go downwards, or you choose a CC-based DPS build and go into the affli-demo mixed specialization or you want to blow up your demon and go into the demo+destro mixed specialization.
Specializations are mutually exclusive, having a talent in one means that no other specialization's talent can be learnt even if you are at row 3 of the related tree.
The base trees would give you the basics of the related spec. For example DOT support at affli, destruction spell support at destro. Specializations would give the talents bigger bonuses, like allowing to cast two curse on the same target.
This will be long, as always.
Warlocks have 4 base pets. I want to regard them as utility which enables and supports a certain type of gameplay (it also means changing the base warlock pet abilities). Each build would receive a base pet which supports their playstyle, except for the spec built around DS which sacrifices one of those 4 for bonuses.
The last one of the base pets can be aquired at level 30. It is a but unfair towards the different builds but since before level 30 no build is really sketched out, I think it is acceptable. I'm also fine by changing the level requirement for warlock pets to make them more accessible early on. Both works.
The builds and the associated demons
Affliction (doggo) - focused on DoTs, curse-based utilities and channeling spells
Demonology (voidie) - tank spec
Destruction (imp) - destruction damage-based caster DPS
Affliction+Demonology (succubus) - CC and fear-based spec
Demonology+Destruction (demonic sacrifice) - caster DPS built around the sacrifice bonuses and enslave demon
As earlier, each base tree contains 28 talent points and each specialization contains 18 more.
Improved lifetap and instant-cast corruption talents are oppressive in the game, they are a must have for everyone. To tackle this, will give improved lifetap at baseline (it will be 'the' lifetap) while hiding corruption behind affliction tree (a bit deep) altogether.
The abilities of the 4 base demons:
Imp (destro support):
* Firebolt (same as now)
* Burning pact (increases party members' spell crit chance by 0,5-2,5% based on the talent level).
* Fire shield (casted on an enemy target, serves as a low-damage fire DoT, low CD)
* Phase shift (casted only on you, reduces your threat on the target you are attacking, on a medium CD).
Voidie (demo support):
* Sacrifice (saccing the voidie to give you 10% damage reduction from all sources for 10 sec, 15 min CD).
* Consume shadows (passive ability, increasing voidie threat and stamina by n for 5 sec after a mob he's attacking is killed).
* Torment (same as now).
* Suffering (same as now).
Succubus (affli+demo support):
* Seduction (same as now).
* Lash of pain (same as now, but every hit has n% chance to reduce the target's movement speed for n sec).
* Soothing kiss (applies a debuff to the target which amplifies the effect of your channeled or casted shadow damage on it by 10%).
* Lesser invisibility (passive on the succubus, but can give you the same effect for up to 5 sec on a medium CD).
Doggo (affli support):
* Devour magic (same but with a 4 sec CD - Purging also buffs your next curse within a minute by 20%).
* Spell lock (same as now - Silencing also buffs your next curse within a minute by 25%).
* Tainted blood (a debuff doggo can apply from melee range, it makes your DOTs 10% stronger on the target).
* Paranoia (besides stealth detection, it gives a damage penalty to each stealthed opponents within it's radius).
There will be some baseline warlock abilities which are now locked behind certain specs. These are death coil and the main curses (COR, COE, COS) besides corruption.
Affliction base (doggo, succubus)
This base tree will give some buffs to DOTs, reduces the target's chance to resist a DOT and buffs channeling spells which are designed as the affliction warlock's main non-DOT damage. Besides that, the build focuses on some buffs on doggos and succubi.
1st row
5tp - The target's chance to resist your curses, shadow DOTs and channeling spells is decreased by 10%.
1tp - Drain soul recharges 10% of your mana if the target died while you were using drain soul on it.
3tp - Increases the crit chance of the succubus' lash of pain by n% and the doggo's chance to apply the tainted blood effect when attacking by n%.
2nd row
5tp - Gives 70% to avoid spell interruption when channeling.
2tp - Increases the health drained from drain life by 10% and 30% of the drained mana via drain mana damages the opponent.
1tp - Teaches Syphon Life.
3tp - Improves curse of weakness by 20% and curse of agony by 6%.
3rd row
2tp - Increases the range of your shadow DOTs and channeling spells by 20%.
1tp - Teaches Amplify Curse, CoR, CoE and CoS.
5tp - Increases the damage dealt by channeling spells via 20%.
Demonology base (succubus, voidie)
The point of this tree is to make you and your pet bulkier and harder to kill. For the voidie specialisation it helps with tanking, for the succubus spec it creates a more PVP-oriented version of the CC-based lock build.
1st row
5tp - Increases stamina by 15% and decreases spirit by 5%.
2tp - Healthstone gets a 20% bonus while spellstone gets a 30% bonus (no firestone buff).
5tp - Increases armor and stamina of voidie and succubus by 20%.
2nd row
5tp - Demon skin and demon armor get 50% more effective.
5pt - Increases the damage and threat done by your voidie or succubus - it scales up by n% of your stamina.
3rd row
1pt - Turns your health funnel and mana funnel into medium CD buffs which apply a HoT or mana recharge on your pet when casted. Instant cast, no channeling needed.
5pt - Your shadow bolts have 15% more damage against targets which are being attacked by your voidie or succubus.
Sidenote here: Unlike the current shadow bolt-spam PVE meta, I want to give the warlocks a wider array of weapons based on the build they use. Affli would use channeling spells, Affli/Demo would use channeling or shadow bolt based on the base tree which was taken, Demo would use searing pain and hellfire for threat, Demo/Destro would use a spell based on the demonic sacrifice he made and Destro would mostly rely on a combination of fire spells and shadow bolt.
Destruction base (imp)
While affli base tree is all about slowly but surely killing your opponent and demo focuses on survival, destro base tree will focus on dealing as much damage as fast as possible.
1st row
5tp - Reduces the added threat of searing pain by 100% and increases its crit chance by 5%.
5tp - Your searing pain crits increase the shadow damage on the target by 20% for 12 sec or until 4 shadow damage hits the target.
2nd row
5tp - Reduces the casting time of shadow bolt by 0,5 sec and soul fire by 3 sec (no immolate here).
5tp - Increases destruction spell crit chance by 5%.
3rd row
2tp - Your imp's fireball crits have a 100% chance to apply the shadow damage debuff on the target (same as the one searing pain does).
2tp - Increases the crit chance of your imp's firebolt by n% and reduces its casting time by 1 sec.
2tp - Increases the range of your destruction spells by 20%
2tp - Gives a 70% to resist spell interruption while casting a destruction spell as long as your HP is below 50%.
That's all for the base trees.
For the specializations:
Deep affliction tree (doggo)
4th row
5tp - Decreases the CD of devour magic by 100% and spell lock by 50%. Means spammable purge-effect and good counterspell for deep affliction.
1tp - Gives an instant-cast corruption.
5th row
2tp - Reduces the mana cost of your channeling spells and shadow DOTs by 8%.
3tp - Gives your curses and DOTs a 60% resistence from being cleansed from the target.
3tp - Merges your drain soul, drain mana and drain life spells (the new channeling spell retains their effect, including the ones learnt by talents) and gives your new channeling spell a n% chance that it jumps to a second, nearby target, whenever casted.
6th row
1tp - Doggo's tainted blood becomes a party-wide buff.
1tp - Gives Curse of Exhaustion (which here decreases the target's haste by 2%).
7th row
1tp - Gives the warlock a medium CD, instant-cast AOE which applies corruption on each enemy within the circle of effect. All of these corruptions are affected by the doggo's purge and silence buffs.
1tp - Allows the warlock to use 2 curses on the same target at the same time.
This tree would bring the usual raid utility but would use channeling spells instead of shadow bolt. Their curse-utility has become bigger and they have received an affliction-based AOE. They can also greatly help with interrupts and purges.
Affli-demo tree (succubus)
4th row
2tp - Decreases the chance that your target breaks out of fear by n%. Only activates for one fear effect every 20 seconds.
5tp - Decreases lash of pain CD by 10 seconds.
1tp - Teaches the warlock death coil (same as the one we know but on a 1 min CD).
5th row
1tp - Every melee or spell hit taken has n% chance to make the opponent flee in terror for 2 seconds.
1tp - Turns spellstone into a consumable on a medium CD which applies its effect if consumed (lasts 20 sec). If this talent is learnt, the warlock can distribute spellstones as consumables to his allies.
3tp - Increases your succubus' damage on the target by n% for each debuff which you have put on the target.
6th row
1tp - Allows the warlock to create a soulwell for spellstones.
7th row
1tp - Soothing kiss becomes a party-wide buff.
1tp - Targets which are immune to fear receive a debuff instead if a fear effect was used on them by the warlock, which gives them -1% hit chance and -1% crit chance for 10 seconds.
This is an interesting build. The core is based around PVP, spamming fear, using CCs via the succubus and hoping that you getting hit also fears the opponent. Also, getting invisible for 5 seconds and running away if really needed. They deal sustained damage either via shadow bolt or via channeling spells, based on the base tree (besides the damage done by the succubus). The spec which is mostly based on demonology is the bulky, 'real PVP spec' while the other one uses his unique utilities to support the raid (fear turning into a debuff for bosses, soothing kiss, consumable spellstones).
Pure demonology, the tank build (voidie)
4th row
3tp - Decreases the damage but increases the threat generated by your destruction spells by 50%.
1tp - Killing any enemies with hellfire or searing pain gives you a soul shard. (You won't cast soul syphon too frequently, it's mostly a quality of life talent).
3tp - Gives you and your voidie an armor buff which scales by n% of your stamina.
5th row
2tp - Decreases the casting time of searing pain by 100% but gives it a 3 second CD.
3tp - Gives a 75% resist against silence and prevents you from being locked out from any school of magic.
1tp - Decreases the damage you receive by hellfire by 100%.
1tp - Increases the damage reduction of sacrifice to 30%.
1tp - Gives you and your voidie dodge chance based on n% of your intellect (you both know in advance when to move away).
6th row
1tp - Makes torment and suffering a guaranteed taunt.
7th row
1tp - Your fire spells cannot be resisted, unless the target is fully immune to fire magic.
1tp - Gives Soul Link.
This build would be a fully functional tank which mostly focuses on stamina, intellect and spell power. Stamina increases voidie's damage and threat and also buffs your and the voidie's armor. Intellect gives dodge chance as you foresee the attack. Voidie's taunts are totally serviceable now. You keep AOE threat via hellfire and can increase threat on single target via the instant cast searing pain (which has a CD now). Preventing you from being locked out from a school of magic ensures that you can keep casting your threat-generating spells which work on nearly all mobs now. This tank wouldn't be able to tank BWL but that's the only limitation which comes to my mind. Silence can hurt it since it's a spell-based tank but you have the option to tank silencing targets further away via voidie. If silence happens anyway, you have good chances to resist it. Voidie's sacrifice feels like a shield wall now. Unlike other tanks you can also AOE range pull with rain of fire.
Demo-destro tree (demonic sacrifice)
Disclaimer: I chose DS to be a mixture of demo and destro because you take your beloved pet (demo) and kill it the most grotesque way possible (destro) for buffs.
4th row
1tp - Teaches you demonic sacrifice, however, the effects are different here for doggo.
* Imp: increases fire damage by 15%.
* Voidie: restores 3% of your total health every 4 sec.
* Succubus: increases shadow damage by 15%.
* Doggo: decreases your threat by 20%.
3tp - You are allowed to enslave a demon without breaking demonic sacrifice. Reduces the damage and haste penalties of the enslaved demon by 100%.
5tp - Makes all of your spells 10% cheaper if you have no pet summoned or enslaved.
5th row
3tp - Your shadow and fire spells get n% crit chance and your opponent has n% less chance to resist your fire or shadow spells if you have no pet summoned or enslaved.
1tp - Gives you an ability which lets you blow up an enslaved demon, causing AOE damage (medium CD).
2tp - Teaches you fel domination which lets you cast your next demon 100% faster, for no mana cost, on a 5 min CD.
6th row
1tp - You can have 2 demonic sacrifice bonuses up at the same time but if a second one is applied, both bonus get reduces by 50% (you can for example give yourself 10% threat reduction and 7,5% fire damage increase if you want to).
7th row
1tp - Your demonic sacrifice-bonus is now party-wide.
1tp - Gives you an ability which lets you sacrifice yourself to double the bonus provided by demonic sacrifice on your party members for 20 seconds. This death doesn't cause repair cost and has a high CD.
This is a very interesting spec. If approached from demonology, it is mostly a PVP one while if approached from destro, it's a unique caster-support which can help the raid a lot. At first the warlock sacrifices a demon of his choice and if he wants to split up the buff, he also sacrifices a second one. Then the warlock has the choice to stay without a demon for added buffs besides DS or to enslave a demon, for example an infernal. If he chooses to enslave a demon, he has the option to use an additional AOE any time he sees fit for the damage and to turn on the additional 'demonless' boni. For the party the warlock can provide the DS buff and can also double it in case of emergency by sacrificing himself.
Deep destro tree (imp)
4th row
1tp - Turns firestone into a consumable (medium CD, 20 seconds of effect). You can't share it with others, only works for you.
3tp - Your destruction spell crits deal 100% more damage against targets within a fire shield made by your imp.
5tp - Increases the damage of your destruction spells by 10%.
5th row
3tp - Decreases the cast time of immolate by 100%.
1tp - Each tick of immolate has a 10% chance to crit.
2tp - The imp's burning pact gives +1% more spell crit chance party buff.
6th row
1tp - Immolate ticks have a 100% chance to apply the shadow damage debuff on the target.
7th row
1tp - Gives the warlock an ability which increases spell damage, spell haste and threat by n% on a medium CD. Can't be phase-shifted when this ability is active.
1tp - Shadow bolts casted against a target with the shadow damage debuff are being casted instantly (on GCD).
This build has many ways to apply the shadow damage debuff (imp, immolate, searing pain). Which they use to squeeze in free shadow bolts. Extremely high damage ceiling but has serious problems with threat. Imp's phase shift can somewhat mitigate it but not fully. Just be cautious, not to pull aggro from the tank!
PVE-wise why would people bring these builds to raid?
* Deep affli: best with the required curses, provides an additional utility curse, too, also interrupts and purges.
* Affli-demo: spellstones, fear-debuffs and soothing kiss buff.
* Demo: they need a tank.
* Demo-destro: demonic sacrifice buff (very flexible), also the double buff in case of emergency.
* Destro: imp buff, shadow damage debuff consistency.