Blizzard Entertainment

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Warlocks bend forbidden powers to their will, turning every resource—from lingering afflictions to bound demons—into another means of defeating their enemies. These updates broaden how they manage those powers and create new connections among their spells, pets, and specialized tools.

Baseline Abilities

 

• Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom are now Banes. Only one Bane can be active per Warlock on a single target. All effects that interacted with Curses now also interact with Banes.
• Curse of the Elements now applies to all magic damage.
• Curse of Shadows removed.
• Firestone and Spellstone now apply Weapon Imbues, that can be stacked with other temporary enchantments like Wizard Oil. Firestone grants increased Fire damage and critical strike chance. Spellstone grants increased Shadow damage and spell haste.
• Life Tap now scales with Spirit, and the amount of Mana from Spirit is correctly stated in its tooltip.
• Drain Soul now has a progressive chance per tick to grant a Soul Shard (chance increases each time it doesn’t happen, until guaranteed).
• Pets now scale from their summoner’s stats.

Talents

Affliction

• Improved Life Tap: Moved from row 2 up to row 1.
• Suppression:  (Redesigned) Improves your chance to hit by up to 5% and decreases your threat by up to 20%
• Improved Corruption: Now also increases Corruption’s damage to a maximum of 10%.
• Malediction: (New row 2 talent.) Increases all periodic damage done by your Warlock spells to a maximum of 5%.
• Improved Drain Soul renamed to Soul Harvest.
• Improved Drains: (New row 2 talent.) Increases Health drained or damage done by your Drain Life, Drain Soul, and Wrack spells by up to 20%.
• Improved Bane of Agony): (Previously Improved Curse of Agony) Damage increased and now is 2 points instead of 3.
• Fel Concentration: 3-point talent instead of 5-point and now also applies to Wrack.
• Pandemic: (New row 3 talent) Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Corruption, Bane of Agony, Bane of Doom, Drain Soul, Drain Life, Siphon Life and Wrack spells by up to 100%.
• Nightfall: Row 4 talent. Now also triggered by Drain Soul and Wrack spells.
• Curse of Exhaustion: Moved from row 5 up to row 4. Now the 16-point gold medal talent and reduces movement speed by 30%.
• Malevolence: (New row 4 talent.) Increases the critical effect chance of your Shadow spells by up to 5%.
• Soul Siphon: (New row 5 talent) Increases the damage done or Health drained by your Drain Life, Drain Soul, and Wrack spells by up to 12% per each of your other Affliction spells on the target, up to a maximum increase of 36%.
• Shadow Mastery: Damage bonus reduced.
• Wrack: (New 31-point gold medal talent.) Tears the target apart from within, inflicting Shadow damage every second and increasing the damage they take from your other Shadow damage-over- time (DoT) effects by 10% for 6 seconds. This spell grants the Affliction Warlock a powerful drain-style spell to use as their primary spell when not re-casting damage-over- time spells or instant Shadow Bolts from Nightfall.

Removed talents: Improved Curse of Weakness, Improved Drain Life, Improved Drain Mana, Improved Curse of Exhaustion, Grim Reach, Dark Pact.

Demonology

• Improved Imp: No longer effects its Blood Pact spell.
• Demonic Embrace: No longer reduces your Spirit.
• Unholy Power: Moved from row 4 up to row 1 and damage bonus to pets decreased.
• Improved Health Funnel: Moved from row 2 up to row 1. Health transfer bonus increased and now also reduces the threat your Health Funnel generates by up to 100%. Also allows Health Funnel to be used regardless of your demon's health.
• Demonic Aegis: (New row 2 talent.) Increases the effectiveness of your Demon Skin and Demon Armor spells by up to 30%.
• Fel Vitality: (New row 2 talent.) Increases the maximum health and Mana of your Imp, Voidwalker, Succubus, Incubus, and Felhunter by up to 15% and increases your maximum Mana by up to 15%.
• Demonic Energies: (New row 2 talent.) You heal your pet for up to 15% of all spell damage you deal. When you gain Mana from Life Tap, your summoned demon gains up to 100% of the mana you gain.
• Fel Domination: Now the 16-point gold medal talent and requires Master Summoner as a pre-requisite.
• Master Summoner moved from row 4 up to row 3.
• Demonic Sacrifice: (Redesigned) Now the 11-point gold medal talent. Sacrifice effects last 2 hours and effects from each sacrifice have shifted around: Imp increases Shadow damage, Voidwalker restores mana, Succubus/Incubus increase fire damage and Felhunter restores Health.
• Decimation: (New row 4 talent.) Reduces the cooldown of your Soul Fire spell by up to 90%. When you cast Shadow Bolt or Searing Pain on an enemy below 35% health, they deal increased damage and your Soul Fire spell for the next 10 seconds has its cast time reduced by up to 40% and costs no Soul Shards.
• Demonic Brand: (New row 4 talent.) Your Searing Pain generates less threat and brands the target, causing your pet’s next 2 attacks to deal Fire or Shadow damage depending on the pet. If using Shadow damage, it is high threat.
  We made a recent change to the threat component, so a non-tanking pet like the Warlock’s Imp does not gain extra threat, but a tanking-oriented pet like the Voidwalker does.
• Soul Link moved from row 7 up to row 5.
• Improved Felhunter: (New row 5 talent. Increase the Attack Power reduction of your Felhunter’s Tainted Blood, the healing of its Devour Magic, and the detection level of its Paranoia by 10% and reduce the cooldown of its Spell Lock by 2 seconds.
• Soul Link: Now the 21-point gold medal talent instead of the 31-point.
• Demonic Knowledge: (New row 5 talent. Increases your spell damage and your Demon pet’s spell damage by up to 33% of your level while you have a summoned Demon pet active.
• Master Demonologist redesigned: Bonuses provided by each pet changed. Imp increases Fire damage done, Voidwalker reduces Physical damage taken, Succubus/Incubus Increases Shadow damage done and Felhunter reduces Magic damage taken.
• Demonic Pact: New 31-point gold medal talent. Requires Soul Link. Your Demonic Sacrifice effect is no longer cancelled by summoning a different pet. Resummoning the sacrificed pet will still cancel the effect.
  This exciting new talent allows Warlocks for the first time to benefit from Demonic Sacrifice and Master Demonologist at the same time. How a Demonologist Warlock decides to stack these two effects will have a large impact on their combat abilities.

Removed talents: Improved Healthstone, Fel Intellect, Fel Stamina, Improved Subjugate Demon, Improved Firestone, Improved Spellstone.

Destruction

• Destructive Reach: Moved from row 4 up to row 1. Now applies to all damaging spells, not just Destruction spells. This talent now benefits every Warlock specialization and is in easy reach of them all in the first row.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now only applies to your own Shadow damage but no longer has charges that can be consumed.
• Bane: Moved from row 2 to row 1. Now also applies to Incinerate.
• Cataclysm: Moved from row 1 down to row 2 and now reduces mana cost of your Destruction spells by up to 10%.
• Molten Skin: (New row 2 talent) Reduces all damage taken by up to 10%.
• Aftermath: (Redesigned) Increases the initial damage of your Immolate spell by up to 50% and your Conflagrate spell has up to 100% chance to Daze the target, reducing the target’s movement speed by 50% for 5 seconds.
• Ruin moved from row 5 up to row 3 and is now a 5-point talent for the same effect. This makes it more accessible for Demonology and hybrid builds that would benefit.
• Agonizing Flames: (Formerly Improved Searing Pain) Now only 3 talent points. Increases the damage of all of your Destruction spells in addition to increasing the critical strike chance of your Searing Pain.
• Conflagrate: Moved from row 7 up to row 4. Now the 16-point gold medal talent.
• Intensity: Now a 3-point talent instead of 2 and gives resistance to cast time loss from taking damage to all Destruction spells, not just Rain of Fire, Hellfire, and Soulfire.
• Pyroclasm: Wording improved to make effect more clear.
• Fire and Brimstone: (New row 5 talent) Requires Conflagrate. Increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate.
• Bane of Havoc: (New 21-point gold medal talent) Afflicts the target for 5 minutes causing 15% of all damage done by the Warlock to other targets to also be dealt to the cursed target. Limited to 1 target and only one Bane per Warlock can be active on any one target.
• Shadow and Flame: New row 6 talent.) Hitting an enemy with Conflagrate increases all Shadow damage you deal for 20 seconds and hitting an enemy with Shadowburn increases all Fire damage you deal for 20 seconds. In addition, Conflagrate has up to 100% chance to not consume Immolate and Shadowburn has up to 100% chance to instantly refund a Soul Shard.
• Incinerate: (New 31-point gold medal talent.) Requires Bane of Havoc. Deals Fire damage to your target and an additional 25% damage if the target is afflicted by Immolate. 2.5 seconds cast, 30-yard range.

Removed talents:  Improved Firebolt, Improved Lash of Pain, Devastation, Improved Immolate, Emberstorm.

Warlocks are gaining new exciting combat options for WoW: Forever. With Affliction, they can concentrate on damage-over-time and draining effects, now with full viability from dealing critical strikes and competitive damage, and with the ability to sustain their own health via powerful health draining effects. With Demonology, they can specialize in empowering themselves and their pet in all new ways with Demonic Brand, Demonic Knowledge, and Demonic Pact, keeping foes focused on their pet while they decimate the enemy with Soul Fire. And with Destruction, they can now mix powerful Shadowburns and Conflagrates with the new Incinerate spell, and the new Bane of Havoc allowing them to continue damage on a primary target while dealing with lesser foes. Warlocks are still physically weak themselves, depending on their demon pets for protection, but they now do damage to compete with any other spellcaster, with three completely different styles to conduct that competition.


Source: worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24310968