Fixing Fire warlocks

[Balake]

Fire warlock is not a viable spec, it's like arcane mages who got buffs so it deserves some fixes too.
Issue 1: No main spell. Searing pain has extra threat, and that can't be removed because its used for other things. Soulfire is a good ability that's a lot like pyroblast but for some reason it has a shard cost and 1 minute cooldown. If you remove it you can basically unlock fire warlock as a dungeon and raiding spec, but there are still more things that can be fixed!

Issue 2: Talent bloat
-First talents that can be changed is Improved Firebolt and Improved Lash of Pain. both talents that buff the warlock's main dps pets but it costs 4 points to take both. This contradicts the ideology of Blizzard and warlock class design: You use the best pet for specific scenarios. This forces you to use only one talent and only one pet instead of swapping them around according to fight. Merging the two talents into one (2 points talent, "Improved Demons") fixes the problem.

-Second is Cataclysm. The 5 points talent that reduces mana cost by 5%, this is honestly useless and shadow warlocks never take it. It's simply too weak especially since frost mages have a 3 point talent to reduce by 15%. Fire warlocks suffer from mana issues much more than shadow warlocks because they can't get improved life tap, and also because life tap doesn't scale with fire spellpower. This is why I propose changing the talent to: Decrease the Mana cost of your Fire spells by 3/6/9/12/15%

Issue 3: Horrible AOE for a supposed AOE class
At low gear, mages and warlocks are almost equal at aoe. Mage aoe is still better because of its safety and mobility, warlocks have to stand and channel in melee range taking heavy damage.
As they gain more and more gear, the gap becomes huge because of the difference in scaling. Arcane explosion gets 14% coefficient, flamestrike gets 17%. Hellfire gets 2% per tick, 2% every 1 second while arcane explosion gets 10% every 1 second AND can crit. Even warriors start to become better at aoe than warlocks simply become warlock aoe does not scale at all.

Proposed change to hellfire then, Increasing scaling to 4% per tick (still much worse than mages but its fine), make it able to crit, and channeled while moving. Hellfire is already a big risky move to do in a raid, having to stand still for it, especially considering its 15 secs long and has the mana cost of a 15 sec ability no matter how long you channel it. The warlock must be allowed to move during it to allow for more smart playing and increase the skill ceiling of the class.

TLDR:
-Remove CD and shard cost from Soul Fire
-Merge Improved Firebolt and Improved Lash of Pain into one talent
-Change Cataclysme to reduce mana cost of FIRE spells by 3/6/9/12/15%
-Make hellfire casted while moving and can crit.

[Spriggit]

I like these ideas. I always thought it was strange there wasn't a spammable (non-uber aggro) fire nuke for warlocks. I do think making hellfire a movable channeled effect might be too OP. It should, however, scale as well as arcane blast.

[Kairion]

I dont like the aspect of being able to move with hellfire active. It doesn't really fit with classic and the warlock is all about this risky tradeoff of killing the enemies before he dies. Being able to kite with active hellfire goes against that imho.

I'd keep it stationary but improve its scaling to a bit more. with about 8% its comparable in scaling with arcane explo. and i'd say thats good enough. the tradeoff is better basedamage for lower mobility.

The other aspects i like and would love to see experimented with

[Darkgestalt]

I may not play Warlock that much, but reading about these issues it does make one think.

First of all, great post that is well written and also proposes good solutions to the problems. I hope more people come in and share their thoughts.

I cant check right now because the server is down, but is Improved searing pain still a 5pt talent? In that case, I think that should shrink to 3 at most.

I kinda like the fact that some spells use soulshards and would prefer warlocks having more ways to generate and spend them. So instead of removing the shard cost of Soul fire, might it not be cooler to give destruction a talent called 'Soul Breaker', that gives you a smallish chance to generate a shard when you crit with a destruction spell?
This way during a fight you can spend some on Soul fire/Shadowburn (should that not also do fire damage since its called shadowBURN?) and replenish them beyond pressing Drain Soul at the last second.

[Albiak]

Hello guys! Awesome ideas!
I played a lot as 0 21 30 fire/shadow hybrid and here is my opinion.
- more mana cost reduction -> good
- hellfire while moving + better scaling-> OP, warlocks will become like mages (or smite priests ^.^)
- pls no additional shards! Shard system is ok already
- spamable fire spell -> make conflagrate a normal spell and change last talent in destro to "firebolt" (shadowbolt does now fire damage). So we can be pve firegods with our imps and without demonic sacrifice :)

[Ashstache]

As a fire mage I support my warlock brethren in this endeavor. Would having Shadow Bolt benefit from all your Destro talents in some manner fix the issue of a "main" spell? Maybe add the bonus damage from talents as Fire damage to it? Converting it to Firebolt seems all right, too.

I would consider looking at what was done to improve the spec in TBC, where Incinerate was implemented as a spell.

[Trymv1]

Fire Lock in PvE (ignoring the obvious fire immunities) is mostly held back by Immolate needing the DoT to tick between casts and needing a peer Fire Mage to get Improved Scorch rolling; unless you're stacking Fire Mages for Ignites they're less common than the singular Priest who can apply Shadow Weaving without even being a DPS setup.

Because of this: debuff slots are their enemies. Otherwise the mana cost of Immolate is high and the idea to change the talent to decrease Fire Spells specifically is a nice idea.

Fire Locks are middling AoE but not everyone should be some AoE master anyway. I dont think buffing Hellfire somehow makes them 'viable' in that regard.

Which, tbh, they're viable as is, just not remotely optimal.

So the short of it is: remove the debuff limit first, witness some fire bois in non-MC/Ony, then revisit which classes are lacking.

[Balake]

Hellfire kiting mobs is not a concern for warlocks. We don't have slows to kite them around like mages (Curse of exhaustion still leaves mobs faster than you unless you put 5 points in the talent).
But if too much mobility is a problem, they can make hellfire slow the player during its channel to avoid it becoming an issue. a 30% slow would be good.

My biggest reason to suggest this change in the first place is because it costs a looot of mana but lasts a long time. In most scenarios you don't use it for the full time anyway, cancelling it to move after just 5 seconds because the tank moved the mob out of its range. This is a big waste of mana, so being able to move even if a bit slower is a savior to our and our healer's mana bar.


About shard management, it's possible to make soulfire require shards and add more abilities to generate shards in combat, but as I said in the beginning I wanted to keep the changes simple and fitting with the vanilla spirit. This playstyle of generating and spending shards in combat is too similar to the design of mists of pandaria and expansions after it.

[Kairion]

Hellfire kiting mobs is not a concern for warlocks. We don't have slows to kite them around like mages (Curse of exhaustion still leaves mobs faster than you unless you put 5 points in the talent).
But if too much mobility is a problem, they can make hellfire slow the player during its channel to avoid it becoming an issue. a 30% slow would be good.

My biggest reason to suggest this change in the first place is because it costs a looot of mana but lasts a long time. In most scenarios you don't use it for the full time anyway, cancelling it to move after just 5 seconds because the tank moved the mob out of its range. This is a big waste of mana, so being able to move even if a bit slower is a savior to our and our healer's mana bar.


About shard management, it's possible to make soulfire require shards and add more abilities to generate shards in combat, but as I said in the beginning I wanted to keep the changes simple and fitting with the vanilla spirit. This playstyle of generating and spending shards in combat is too similar to the design of mists of pandaria and expansions after it.

Its not only a concern for soloplay - with a supporting Blizzard mage its quite reliable to kite raidmobs - Due to the high basedamage of Hellfire you can pretty much guarantee that the first hellfire caster will have the threat. Castable while moving isn't really necessary for anything but cheesing fights and therefore it shouldn't be added.

The tank moving out of the area is annoying for sure, but that happens to many classes and to be frank, you don't have cd on hellfire so you can just cast it again and yell at the tank for kiting out of the radius while channeling the new instance ;)

Moving while casting is distinctly unclassic

[Darkgestalt]

Fair enough on the soulshards management.

I agree with people that moving while casting is unclassic. It also solves a problem that is skill/player based with tanks needing to keep this in mind.

Removing the CD on Soul Fire seems pretty fair in general.

If the 2 pet talents get merged like Balake suggested, there is a free slot for a new talent that might be used to fix a issue. Anyone got a suggestion for a lowtier 2 pt talent? This would be something that demo and affli also have access to so we gotta be careful here.

Maybe a talent that allows Soul Fire to be cast without a shard if a certain condition is met? Meeting halfway with Balake's idea.

[Kairion]

There are several optionas on how to solve the soulstone issue. I'd just simply add it to "Bane" to not only reduce casttime but also give a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to refund the soulshard on hit. I like it as refund because this means the soulshard is still mechanically a piece of the spell.

This makes sense roleplay wise but might become a little bit of an issue for badly geared raid warlocks. If you miss 17% of your soulfires you won't get refunds.

Wich brings me to the open talent slot from mergeing Firebolt & lash of pain. How about a talent reducing enemy fire resistence & increasing hit chance with fire spells? Just to ensure we aren't introducing any pvp relevant changes?

[Albiak]

But arcane explosion is casting while moving :'(
So maybe add a 'fire explosion' and let hellfire unchanged? :)

[Kairion]

But arcane explosion is casting while moving :'(
So maybe add a 'fire explosion' and let hellfire unchanged? :)

And hurricane has a minute cd...
Its good that different classes have different strenghts and weaknesses. Arcane explosions main useage of walking while casting is usually wasted in running and jumping in circles while bombing anyway

Hellfire has the higher base damage of the two and you can even skill that you occasionally slow enemies with it. Thats a bit much to be all castable without cd while moving as a class that does not have mana issues in the traditional sense

[Bedsidetable]

I like everything about this post.

When i started turtle wow i told myself this was my chance to no longer be a meta slave... it was fire lock all the way!

But there are crippling limitations with it.

There is no fire spell dps dump unless you want to aggro the main target in the group.

If any turtle devs see this post please consider giving us a fire dps dump. We are already a pretty crappy fire mage... but this will really help.

Either modify soulfire or give us a searing pain variant without the aggro.

Merry Christmas you filthy animals.

[Kazgrim]

A talent that gives your immolate a chance to make pyroblast instant.

[Feomatar]

A talent that gives your immolate a chance to make pyroblast instant.

Are you kidding?

[Darkgestalt]

A talent that gives your immolate a chance to make pyroblast instant.

Are you kidding?

Problably not as overpowered as one might think. Seeing as its a mage ability, so warlocks can't cast it anyway.

New Talent: Burning Effigy (row 3)
Immolate has a 10/20% chance to turn the Warlock into a Burning Effigy. As a Burning Effigy the casting time of the next Pyroblast is reduced by 100%, it's manacost is reduced by 50% and it's chance to critical hit is increased by 30%. Does not grant the ability to cast Pyroblast.

[Kairion]

How about talents that are useful in pve and not complete memefests for pvp burst?

Seduce, soulfire, immolate, conflagrate is already quite potent 20% chance to follow up with another instant soulfire with bonus crit on top of it?

[Balake]

Bumping this cause patch 1.16.6 is close and it would be nice to have some fire warlock support, some other things I thought about later:
-Making the corruption bonus in t3 work on immolate as well.
-Remove bonus threat from searing pain, add a self-casted buff "Burning fury: Increases the threat generated by your Fire attacks by 100%. Lasts 30 mins."

[Grubi450]

Warlocks just need a new spammable spell that scales better with spell damage like in TBC, searing pain scaling is too weak.

[Heine]

Hello guys! Awesome ideas!
I played a lot as 0 21 30 fire/shadow hybrid and here is my opinion.
- more mana cost reduction -> good
- hellfire while moving + better scaling-> OP, warlocks will become like mages (or smite priests ^.^)
- pls no additional shards! Shard system is ok already
- spamable fire spell -> make conflagrate a normal spell and change last talent in destro to "firebolt" (shadowbolt does now fire damage). So we can be pve firegods with our imps and without demonic sacrifice :)

Conflagrate as a normal spell gonna make warlocks too op in pvp.
You have no clue what you are talking about as 90% of this topic aka "pls make me op ty".

A talent that gives your immolate a chance to make pyroblast instant.

Not sure if trolling.

[Balake]

I didn't ask for any of that stuff you're saying will break pvp. What I said is:
-Make the extra threat from searing pain optional, if you want it you buff yourself with Burning Fury just like paladins use Righteous Fury when they want to tank.
-Increase the coefficient of hellfire because it's almost like an oversight right now, 2% scaling per tick while Blizzard which ticks at the same speed is 4% scaling per tick.
-Make the t3 set bonus that buffs corruption also buff immolate, pvp warlocks prefer the pvp set anyway.