Warlock News

Since The Burning Crusade, destruction warlocks have enjoyed an ironic kind of calm. Where affliction and demonology have depth in their spell rotations, destruction is relatively simple, utilizing only a few spells per encounter. Today, it remains the most user-friendly and explosive of the three talent trees and, not surprisingly, is the most popular. But that doesn't mean it is immune from change.

Much like the trees we have covered before it, destruction has been taken under the knife, given a significant talent tuck, and has received a couple of interesting implants as well. Do you want to have a look at the results? Of course you do.

Fel Flame With an instant cast and no cooldown, Fel Flame is the first direct damage ability of its kind in the warlock spell book. And the green fire? Sure, that's nice and will make a lot of warlocks happy. But not all is perfect in Felville.

Fel Flame is the Glass Joe of direct damage spells, with an average base damage of 300 when first trainable at level 81. Its spell power coefficient is about 34.30 percent, so for every additional 1,000 bonus spellpower, the ability gains 343 damage. For a warlock with 4,000 bonus spellpower, Fel Flame will produce less than 1,700 overall damage. Double the bonus to 8,000 and it is barely hitting above 3,000. That is hardly super or macho, man. And, sad to say, things get a little more underwhelming from there.

In order for Fel Flame to reset Immolate and Unstable Affliction to their maximum durations, three consecutive casts would be required when the DoTS are about to expire. Alternatively, if the DoTS were reapplied directly and the remaining two GCDs produced more damage than two Fel Flames are capable of (very easy to do at this point), it would result in a DPS gain. In other words, Fel Flame will not be in destruction's standard DPS (or DPCT priority) rotation.

Of course, being the beta and all, details can change as quickly as Justin Beiber's perceived gender, so it is difficult to come to an absolute conclusion about Fel Flame. However, I think it is safe to say that the spell will serve well as a simple, spammable PvP ability (a great totem killer or offensive kiting spell) while offering a bit of mobile convenience in PvE environments, buying warlocks a bit of time while on the move.

Removed talents

Improved Shadow Bolt After Incinerate was introduced in The Burning Crusade, the Improved Shadow Bolt talent has always felt a little out of place, buffing a spell that is no longer associated with the tree. Come Cataclysm, that weirdness will be replaced with a redesigned Shadow and Flame. More on that in a flicker of green fire.

Molten Skin Damage reduction in PvP is the Samuel Adams of itemization: always a good decision. Personally, I didn't like Molten Skin because it gave our class passive survivability instead of actively seeing to PvP stresses. With developers refining the interaction between classes for Cataclysm, however, I am hoping for much more of the "b" word and fewer bandage talents like this one.

Cataclysm In The Wrath of the Lich King, the Cataclysm talent was useful because it reduced the number of required Life Tap casts in an encounter, increasing the number of GCDs that could be used for damage. But with the extremely sexy Soul Leech talent on the horizon (more on that down below), this talent becomes all but irrelevant.

Demonic Power The gooey imp innards that made Demonic Power important to destruction warlocks have been absorbed by the new Dark Arts talent in the demonology tree. As for the succubus, I hear that her cool whip no longer needs a talent to bring victims to their knees.

Devastation There seems to be an effort to reduce the average critical strike percentage in Cataclysm, at least for warlocks. Many in the beta are complaining of a significantly lower number of critical strikes, on the order of about 10 percent. This may be an expected after effect of the removal of passive talents like Devastation, but the impact is still considerable and noteworthy.

Pyroclasm I really enjoyed Pyroclasm and the tiny bit of variability that it brought to the tree. But with critical strike bonuses disappearing from talents, it is no surprise to see this one axed.

Improved Soul Leech Replenishment and mana regen effects have been rolled into the Soul Leech talent, so no loss there. The mana regen component for our minions, however, was not. But with Mana Feed in the second tier of the demonology tree, we have the maintenance of our pets mana pools close at hand.

The remaining "removed talents" have had their effects standardized, so technically, they aren't really missing at all -- just hiding amidst Cataclysm's inner goo. They include:

• Ruin Ruin increased the spell critical strike bonus from 150 percent to 200 percent, now standard.

• Intensity Intensity reduced spell casting pushback by 70 percent, which is now passive via Suppression.

• Destructive Reach Destructive Reach increased casting range of spells, now increased...