Greetings Warlocks,Today, we have various Core and Affliction tree changes hitting the Alpha. We want to take a moment to go a bit more in depth as to what certain changes were made and why. As a refresher, here are the goals for our Core and Afflictions that we posted last week along with some additional goals that we can dig into here.
Class- Ensure each capstone is interesting and exciting.
- Reduce the amount of throughput talents, to free up utility choices.
- Reduce the number of ranks for talents that don’t warrant multiple ranks.
Affliction- Address the tuning of Malefic Rapture in single-target and multi-target situations.
- Reduce complexity and the amount of active buttons that contribute to it.
- Erase the need to choose between a single-target or multi-target profile by adding more adaptability and flexibility.
While we cannot go over every change here, we’d like to get a bit more detailed than last week’s update and explain some of the bigger changes coming in this build.
Class Tree ThroughputWe’re removing a lot of throughput talents from the class tree to allow warlocks to pick up more utility without feeling forced to take mandatory talents to be competitive. These talents aren’t compelling options when placed against utility as they will always be the right answer to have. This allows us to move that power into the specialization trees and tailor throughput-centric talents to be specific to that specialization’s gameplay.
Malefic RaptureIn addition to becoming baseline for Affliction, we are introducing new talents that will help Malefic Rapture become the go-to spender for both single-target and multi-target situations. This should also shift Seed of Corruption to being a means to apply Corruption to multiple targets rather than what you spam in dungeons. In addition, we are redesigning Siphon Life to be friendlier to Affliction’s rotation and expect that its new design will make it easier to optimize Malefic Rapture.
Affliction’s AdaptabilityWhile we do want Affliction warlocks to have a preferred talent setup for single- versus multi-target situations, we don’t want it to feel like they are powerless if they are in the opposite situation. By focusing on Malefic Rapture being Affliction’s main spender and removing talents that are only valuable in multi-target situations (Soul Flame, Soul Swap, Doom Blossom, etc.), we’re hoping that the Affliction tree feels less punishing to fill out.
Is This It?Not at all. We expect to make changes based on feedback and our own playtesting. We want to get the ball rolling on changes we knew we want to make, so we could start the discussion early on and make adjustments before The War Within launches.Thank you all for the continued discussions and we look forward to your feedback!
