Class Advancement in Cataclysm: Warlock

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm we will be making many changes and additions of talents and abilities for each class. In this preview, you will have the opportunity to learn about some of the changes we have planned for the sorcerer; In addition, we will provide you with an overview of some of the new spells, abilities, talents, and an overview of the new Mastery System and how it will work with the different talent specs.

New spells of the warlock

Fel Flame (Available at Level 81): An instant spell that deals fire and shadow damage (shadowfire); This will be similar to the magician's Frostfire spell, that is, the resistance to which his target is most vulnerable (in this case shadow and fire) will be used to calculate the damage. Additionally, Fel Flame will reset the counter for Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal with Fel Flame is to provide a useful and mobile ability that can be used by Warlocks of Destruction and Demonology; It is worth mentioning that this ability will use a green flame and will be an instant spell.

Dark Intent (Level 83): Increases the chance for your target to critically strike with damage or periodic healing spells by 3%; When his target deals a critical hit, the Warlock will receive a buff that will increase his damage for 10 seconds; this effect stacks up to 3 times.

Demon Soul (level 85): Merge the soul of the sorcerer with that of his demon; Demon Soul will give the Warlock a buff that will significantly increase their damage for a short period of time. The specific effects received through this ability will depend on the demon they have chosen. The duration of 'Demon Soul will depend on the demon they use and will be based on a limited number of charges or until it expires (approximately 20 seconds); In addition, it will have a cooldown of 2 minutes.

Soul Shard System Review

The change to Soul Shards was announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory-housed items, but will instead become a new resource mechanic that will become part of the user interface. Warlocks will have access to three Soul Shards that can be used during combat and will not be needed if they are not in combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource; therefore, it will allow them to use secondary effects of certain spells. Soul Burn has no health or mana cost, nor does it have a cooldown associated with it. Here is a list of the side effects that we plan to incorporate.

Summon Demon + Soul Burn = Instantly Summons a Demon.
Drain Life + Soul Burn = Decreases the casting time of spells by 60%.
Demon Circle + Soul Burn = Increase movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.
Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Deals instant damage equal to 30% of its effect.
Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant Cast.
Health Stone + Soul Burn = Temporarily increases 20% of your health for 8 seconds.
Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the chance to critically strike with Searing Pain increased to 100%; additionally increases the chance to critically hit by 50% with subsequent applications of Searing Pain for 6 seconds.

Changes to mechanics and abilities

All of the Warlock's periodic damage spells will benefit from the Critical Strike and Haste stats passively; Haste will no longer reduce the duration of the spell but will add additional tics; When they re-apply another periodic damage spell, they will no longer be able to “cut” the last tick, but will increase the duration of the spell, similar to how Eternal Affliction works.
Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will become Terror of Agony and Terror of Doom; Terror spells will be considered as magic and not as curses; that is, they can cast a Terror spell (eg "Terror of Agony") and a Curse spell (eg Curse of the Elements) on the same target.
Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the Warlock.
The imp will no longer have the Fire Shield ability, however, it will receive a new Burning Ember call, which will be a periodic damage spell.
We will increase the Succubus' melee range; He will no longer have the Calming Kiss ability, but will have a new Whiplash ability, which will knock back enemies 8 meters or less away.
We are increasing the damage of the Abyssal Torment ability and it will generate a lot of threat in the area of effect. Suffering will become a single target taunt ability.

New talents and talent changes

Pandemic will now cause Drain Soul to reset the counter for Unstable Affliction and Terror of Agony on targets below 25% health.
The Fel Domination ability will be removed from the game as Soul Burn will work the same way.
Demonology will receive a new spell that deals direct damage called Demon Bolt, which will apply an effect to the target and will improve the damage that your demon causes on it.
We plan to add a new talent called Impending Doom, which will reduce the cooldown of certain spells like Metamorphosis and Terror of Doom.
Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to crowd control abilities. Additionally, we are modifying the abilities that are only available in Metamorphosis to focus more on the Warlock's abilities.
Shadow Burn will deal increased damage to targets below 25% health.

Passive Mastery bonuses for talent trees

Affliction
Spell damage
Critical Hit with spells
Shadow periodic damage

Demonology
Spell damage
Spell Haste
Demon damage

Destruction
Spell damage
Damage dealt by spell critical hits
Direct damage with fire spells

Periodic Shadow Damage: Increases the damage done by periodic Shadow damage spells.

Demon Damage: Increases damage done by demons and in Metamorphosis.

Direct damage with fire spells: Increases the damage done by direct fire spells.

We hope you enjoyed this preview and we look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions on it. Please note that this information is subject to change as Cataclysm development continues.

Edition: More information is added from here.

Here are a few clarification points on some of the popular questions or complaints that we are seeing.

Regarding the regeneration of Fragments in combat, we will add a mechanic to regenerate fragments if we think it is necessary to manage variable combat durations. We haven't added any yet because we really want to emphasize the fact that Warlocks use the shards at the right time and not as soon as they can with an Evocation-like spell that makes them appear again. These are supposed to be special moments in combat - think Heroism / Bloodlust perhaps - and not used every 20 seconds on its cooldown (or whatever cooldown it ends up on).
For Demonology lovers, we haven't added a new demon yet but we want to be very careful here. It has been hard to find niches for some of the current ones. So first we wanted to make sure the current ones are cool before we came across the Q&A from several months ago wondering why the new demon isn't attractive enough or why warlocks don't use, say, their felhunter. because of the new demon.
Infernal Flames is intended to be a specialty for Demonology Warlocks. Affliction should use Seed of Corruption and Destruction Rain of Fire.
We wanted to cover the Hells and Apocalyptic Guards but they didn't go into the trailer. Our plan is that you can summon an Apocalyptic Guard or an Infernal as a cooldown-based pet, much like the shaman's elementals, without having to give yourself a permanent demon. If we add a new demon it will be one of those that are based on cooldowns and not a permanent pet such as the Imp, Abyss, Succubus, Felhunter or Fel Guard. We are not convinced that there is a niche for a new and permanent demon (and perhaps not a temporary one either).
Flying mounts and Female Metamorphosis are great ideas and something we've had on our wish list for a long time. We can only create a certain number of creatures during a single expansion and having something like this could mean fewer new creatures in the outside world or in the dungeons. It's just a trade and sometimes you have to make tough decisions. However, we will keep them on the list.
We like the idea of allowing warlocks to change the appearance of their demons and have been talking about possible ways to implement it. I have no concrete information on this yet.
When it comes to naming demons, this has always been one of those sacred cows, while the hunter may name his pet because he loves his pet bear, but the sorcerer considers the demon to be something to dispose of - a tool.
The Demon Discharge effect will only affect the Warlock's Demon, not other Demons. We wanted to do a special Demons attack that would show that the pet was part of the damage.
Regarding the soul shard bags we will probably do something like remove all the shards, reduce the size of the bags (a little bit) and turn it into a normal bag. This should be a one-time conversion. We'll probably be done with the recipes since we don't want other classes to go after Shard Bags just to get a free bag.

Succubus details

Whiplash works similarly to Freeze on the Wizard's Water Elemental. You need a target reticle. It's not just a melee ability that the succubus uses at will.

As a clarification, we are going to remove the Succubus Soothing Kiss, not the Seduction. Soothing Kiss increased the chance that the target could attack anything else. Seduction is the crowd control most commonly associated with the Succubus and is going nowhere.

Source: WoW-Europe and American forums

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