Patch 3.1 Notes - Warlock
The good, the bad and the ugly, patch 3.1 notes are up! The very patch we’ve been waiting for the past several months is about to bring a few changes to our beloved class. As always, it’s prone to change and I wish I could say we’ll be here to tell you all about it, but more on that later.
Patch 3.1 Warlock changes:
- Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) - Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
- Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
- Curse of Weakness - Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
- Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
- Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
- Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
- Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
AFFLICTION
- Eradication re-designed: Eradication: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
- Haunt: Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
- Malediction: No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
- Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
- Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
- Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
- Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
DEMONOLOGY
- Demonic Empathy has been removed.
- Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
- Demonic Sacrifice:This talent has been removed.
- Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
- Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
- Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%.
- New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
- New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
- New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
DESTRUCTION
- Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
- Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
- Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
- Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
- Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
- Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
- Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
- Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
- Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology.
- Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
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There’s quite a few buffs in there, most of them PvE-related but many should help us in PvP as well, so I’m hoping there’s a bright future in store for warlocks. If you’re looking for insider commentary on these changes you’ll have to look elsewhere, cause as many of you noticed we stopped caring lately.
Anyway, this excuse of a post is a short explanation as to why we’re not updating this site anymore. Since reading Phaelia’s goodbye post yesterday and a few comments left here and there lately, I figured we should tell you what’s up. Both Smatter and I are engaged in other things and don’t really have the time or patience to run this thing, plus as many, many other warlocks have, we got tired of WoW altogether. We’ve been waiting for a reason to play for ages and even if it finally has arrived with this patch, we won’t be there to see it.
It’s not a matter of principle or being lazy to reroll, it’s a great number of things which led us to this point and it just ain’t that fun anymore. Anyway, compared to Phae we’re totally a small-time blog with only half of her traffic, and I don’t doubt you’ll find useful warlock content elsewhere, but we just wanted to say thanks for sticking with us for the past year and a half.
We tried making up for the lack of posts lately with guest bloggers and hiring additional writers, but it didn’t turn out so well, however there’s someone interested in maintaining this site from now on so don’t go unsubscribe just yet. In that case I might get involved again but it’s unlikely I’ll be writing steadily. We’ll see how and if it works out, and if there’s anyone else interested in writing, even if only a one-time post just send it my way — if it’s really good I’ll be happy to publish it. Do note, whatever happens I have no intention of shutting down the site and those few posts that were worth something (mostly Smatter’s, mind you) will certainly stay up.
My thanks to all the staff here, especially Smatter for his great contributions, to all bloggers who linked to us in the past, mages who were our steady supply of soul shards during BC and lastly to you dear readers who managed to put up with my poor writing.
Thank you for all what you have done on Locksucks.com.
Your love for the Warlock class and your often excellent writing, humor and general contributions were always a delight and often a solace to me in times of nerf despair.
But I stopped playing WoW, too. I just got bored of the game, and … there is more broken than class X or Y at the moment. I think we just need a new kind of MMO, not another EQ copy like WoW. Till then, I will play tons of cheap single player games that “still give me the thrill”.
Some of my friends started again on a new server in another faction, but I do not want to do it all again and see no point looking forward to the now easy as cake max level raiding and heroic instances. It has all been dumbed down beyond belief. It has become a game where time is now even more important than skill, which has been totally abandoned for the lowest common denominator difficulty. But at least a little challenge was part of the fun.
There will be other games for evil witchwork. I wish you the best for your future, and both of us good games to look foward to.
Sad day. Really loved this blog, good luck to all of you and thanks for some great reads!
Bummer - I just found this site a while ago - thanks for your work though, I too am getting sick of WoW.
It is a pity to see this blog go down as well… I have l2pvp by using the guides here, and I always liked the style of your posts. Blizzard has murdered Warlocks. I do not know wether or not I will continue WoW… I just hope Diablo 3 is released soon and I will switch there when it is ;P
Anyway, good luck and goodbye.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DON’T LEAVE MEEEEEEEE.
:[ Good luck Horns!
Awwwww ;_;
i will sorely miss this place even though i only knew about it for ~5 months.
and to blizz . . . why? Our pets are pathetic compared to a hunter, so obviously we are not a hunter. Our DD spells are no where near the simple fun of a mage (why do we need shards to cast combat spells?). Even Spriests and Boomkins are totally different in that they can bring more raid utility (if not single target damage).
So if we are not these classes even though we are similar, we DON’T want to be. some of us actually enjoy the warlock concept as it is, a dot,dot,dot,tab rinse-repeat on 20 mobs while grinding. while raiding i admit, at times, i wish i had a second set of hands, it is frantic and fun at the same time.
in plain english: I want to play an affliction warlock because while leveling i had fun with my friends. in some way i am reminiscing about those times while doing higher level content. we all remember the first time we hit 40 and got dark pact, right? we would run around for 2 hours non-stop with our measly 1k hp 2k mana and yet somehow we scrimped and scrounged to get 200 shadow damage. we were happy, we had fun, and if we died, we had our Soul Stone. this whole doing DPS at the expense of everything was what i fell in love with. If i never had to cast that hellish 3 second shadow bolt again i could not be any happier.
in summary i liked its very simple concept. lots of instant cast, 0 down time, keymashing on every single mob in sight, and never having see a cast bar unless its on a boss of some sort.
p.s. the original reason i rolled a lock way back when i had alt-itis, was that it was the only class i could play aside from a hunter when my ping time was over 500ms.
to Horns, Thank you for all the fun tips you have given me and may you come to the realization that your writing does NOT suck XD
Though I never posted you have given a great site for locks all around to converge and discus. I feel your pain but I keep playing my lock no matter what, been thru alot with her and until I see my Duelist title (Im a formar FFXI player so its awesome to have both red mage sets mentioned together on one character) im not stopping…or Azshara’s head havent decided.
I’m hoping there’s a bright future in store for warlocks too!, it’s time for blizzard to take care of our unrated calss!
/salute
Horns, know that tommorow there will be a few fresh mage souls in my soulbag in your honour.
… I might have to get a DK to do the actual killing for me, but oh yes, their souls will be mine!
yeah, by my opinion best warlock and WoW blog ever, but nothing last forever so GL at anything you are doing now guys. Every thread and pictures are awesome, had a lot of fun reading and find some things i didnt even know about so thanks for all of that, Seru - ud80 Drak’thul EU
I’m sad to see you and Smatter go, but given the state of Warlocks in WoW, I can’t say that I’m all that surprised. But truth be told, the entire game seems like it is coming apart at the seams. Everyone I know that played WoW has quit the game because it’s degenerated into a bloody, unbalanced mess. And between the complete disregard for suggestions and data presented by experienced, knowledgeable players (especially during the Warlock Beta) and the lack of any coherent, discernible strategy on the part of the designers for fixing the game, we really don’t have much confidence in their ability to undo the damage they have done. And I don’t have much confidence that their upcoming games are going to better.
At least WoW will probably be around long enough to keep the 12 and 13 year olds entertained when my friends and I sign up for the Star Wars and Star Trek MMORPGs. Go ahead and buff the Fantastic Four all you want - that will keep them out of my hair for at least a few years, I hope.
Thank you very much for all the awesome postst you’ve written, I really have enjoyed reading them <3.
Upcoming changes looks promising, even tho not really fixing anything related to our weakest point: PvP. In PvE we’re doing ok atm imo.
We’ll see how it turns out.
“mages who were our steady supply of soul shards during BC”
lmfffaaooooooo!!!
sorry to hear that guys…even if this was the first time i reaD IT…
Ladies and Gentlemen, Warlocks of the World of Warcraft, the passing of Titans.
(Respectful Pause)
Thank you for all your help with this amazing blog, your efforts have on more occasions than one given me a chance to seek advice and have a go at Blizzard for doing what they do best. Everything from a quiet chuckle in the middle of a boring ICT lesson to seeking desperate advice and having a general rant have been made possible by your efforts.
So on behalf of the warlocks of Draenor, and of Great Britain, I thank you and wish you every opportunity in the future.
Bartimaus
Time is an illusion, the time it takes me to DOT your arse into oblivion can be made to seem like a lifetime.