Patch 3.3 Warlock Changes

And here we go!

Create Soulstone: The cooldown on this spell and duration of its buff have been lowered from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Nothing major here, but having a Soulstone available in half the time originally can't be argued with.

Talents

Affliction (I don't play Affliction but will comment anyways!)

Improved Drain Soul: This talent now reduces threat by 10%/20%, up from 5%/10%.

I guess any reduced threat is good, that is if you guys use this spell a lot??

Improved Felhunter: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 2/4 seconds.

Felpuppy bites moar = good??

Shadow Mastery: This talent now also increases the damage done by the felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 3/6/9/12/15%.

Felpuppy bites moar and harder = good?? Is it to force you to use it more? Is it because it was said the Felpuppy had been weak? I dunno....ok skip this!

Demonology

Decimation: Redesigned. When Shadowbolt, Incinerate or Soul Fire hit a target that is at or below 35% health, the cast time of Soul Fire is reduced by 20/40% for 8 seconds. Soul Fires cast under the effect of Decimation cost no shards.

The major difference here is that Soul Fire itself can proc Decimation, which means that we no longer need to weave Shadowbolts and have to worry about standing at a particular distance. All we need to pay attention to is to have our first Shadow Bolt or Incinerate hit the target at 35% or below and spam Soul Fire until it is dead, very nice. Should be a nice increase in DPS for Demonologists.

Demonic Pact: This talent now also increases the warlock's spell damage by 1/2/3/4/5%.

5% extra spell damage does not mean 5% extra spellpower. In this case it would be 1.05 times whatever the spellpower co-efficient for each spell is. Though 5% spell damage is still a juicy deal since we lose nothing here. Definitey a buff to Demonologists, if my Soul Fires crit for 14k, they now do 14,700!

Molten Core: Redesigned. This talent now increases the duration of Immolate by 3/6/9 seconds and provides a 4/8/12% chance to gain the Molten Core effect when Corruption deals damage. The Molten Core effect empowers the next 3 Incinerate or Soul Fire spells cast within 15 seconds (Incinerate: increases damage done by 6/12/18% and reduces cast time by 10/20/30%; Soul Fire: increases damage done by 6/12/18% and increases critical strike chance by 5/10/15%). Molten Core now has a new spell effect.

The old Molten Core ability had our shadow spells giving us a 15% chance to increase our fire damage by 10% for 12 seconds at max level. Now that it also gives us a buff to Immolate I have a feeling we will be playing this class much like a destruction warlock, by using Incinerate as our major spam. I can see it now, Corruption, spam Shadowbolt until you see Molten Core, THEN spam Incinerate as essentially now it would have the "backdraft" effect in the Destruction tree, and when Soul Fire can be Decimate-executed, then spam Soul Fire. Very interesting! And remember, you are doing all this with your Felguard out! Wow yay buff to my favourite spec!

Destruction

Conflagrate: Redesigned. This talent now consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 9 seconds of Immolate or 8 seconds of Shadowflame, and causes additional damage over 3 seconds equal to 3 seconds of Immolate or 2 seconds of Shadowflame. In addition, the periodic damage of Conflagrate is capable of critically striking the afflicted target.

Another interesting change. Essentially Conflagrate will be doing a bit less up front critting since we tend to Conflagrate our Immolates and this was based on 12 seconds now reduced to 9 seconds. However, the lost three seconds is made up for after the Conflagrate effect as a short three second dot (probably feels like a hunter's Explosive Shot) that can Crit so technically this is a dps increase! NICE! DOT>CONFLAG>*Pain*>Leave a Crittable Dot> Nerf Warlocks.

Though I think change should have been: Conflagrate damage has been increased by 500%. Done. Easy.

Destructive Reach: This talent now reduces threat by 10%/20%, up from 5%/10%.

GOOD!

Ruin: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of the imp's Firebolt spell by 100%.

KTHX!

Pets
Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Right...

Doomguard/Infernal: These pets now innately have Avoidance like all other warlock pets.

Alright then...

Inferno: The cooldown on this summoning spell has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Yay we don't care!

Shadow Bite: This pet ability now does 15% increased damage for each of the warlock's damage-over-time effects on the target.

Ok we get it: Affliction locks, use your goddamn Felpuppy!

Summon Imp: This ability is now available from the trainer for level 1 warlocks and no longer requires a quest to learn.

Good I can level EVEN faster right from the ground up!

So Overall: Very nice!

Truny the Warlock