Blood Pact: Patch 6.2 Warlock first thoughts

Welcome to Blood Pact, Blizzard Watch’s regular column for Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction Warlocks. This week, your hostess Megan O’Neill (@_poneria) groans and does patch notes.

You know, I was going to do a cutesy post about Warlock battle pets, so you can go to that one daily spot in Shadowmoon Valley to stack voidwalkers: You get transformed into a voidwalker, while you have a voidwalker and a Grimoire of Service voidwalker and a Lesser Voidcaller battle pet out.

But then patch 6.2 hit the PTR. At first it looked like all I had to write about for the patch 6.2 warlock changes was that Demonology was nerfed pretty hard, but then I found some things like next tier’s set bonuses and new demon models. So let’s get to it. Mind you, the caveat about the PTR changing is always there, moreso now when we’re at the beginning of the PTR.

The Dark Soul note is new as of April 15. I’m in a mood of “finally” about that. It was annoying to see other classes get a CD reset on boss fights, but since ours wasn’t a “long” CD, as in, it wasn’t 3-min or more, we’d have to just make do with an early wipe caused by a butt pull and no class cooldown to start with the everybody’s-trinkets-are-up pull of awesome damage done. The situation got better — sort of — with Archimonde’s Darkness charges, but then, you wouldn’t have both charges up, would you?

So yes, thanks for finally getting around to that, Blizzard, we Warlocks appreciate it.

Affliction’s major DoTs get a buff. OK. Now we just have to wait for the first dual-target fight that Affliction wrecks to see the DoTs get nerfed again. Never mind fixing it so the spec isn’t just press Drain Soul every few seconds, just cycle the DoTs through buffs and nerfs. (Am I still bitter about the ability prune gutting the soul of the spec I played since Wrath? Maybe.)

Demonology got nerfed hard.

I’m skeptical that these are the final numbers for Demonology’s nerf. Yes, Demonology was performing well within the warlock class, dominating every fight, but within the scope of all ranged DPS, we dominate just Operator Thogar. We’re performing well but we’re not that good to be deserving of a quarter less damage across the board. Hopefully, these numbers are just like the Monk numbers. Monks got the same kind of huge nerf in the beginning: a 30% number got reduced to 5% within days. Maybe we’ll see an adjust in the coming builds to something more reasonable.

Patch 6.2 – Datamined Warlock Tier Sets

Mmmm. I like purple in my Warlock threads, but pastel demonic just doesn’t jive with me. But that’s what transmog is for, right?

Affliction set bonuses:

• 2-piece: Damage done by your Drain Soul has a 30% chance to extend the duration of your Dark Soul: Misery by 5 sec.
• 4-piece: While Dark Soul Misery is active, your Drain Soul damage also refreshes the duration of your Haunt effect on the target.

The goal of these two bonuses is obviously to get us to Drain Soul more during Dark Soul. On the one hand, seeing things get extended is cool, but on the other hand, watching myself channel during my most powerful class cooldown is…not fun, I think.

Also, anything that involves “cast more Drain Soul” just makes me incredibly wary of having to move. Sure, we have the better Kil’jaeden’s Cunning with a 35-second cooldown, but we won’t have the amazing Aspect of the Fox from our raids’ bazillion hunters anymore.

Demonology set bonuses:

• 2-piece: Your Soul Fire increases the damage done by your Demons by 5000% for until cancelled.
• 4-piece: When Molten Core occurs, you have a 30% chance to summon a Demon from the void to assist you in battle.

“Until cancelled.” I don’t know what this means — does it mean until you cast Soul Fire again? With the way Molten Core stacks up, what would be the point of that? Also, why would you cancel that bonus, like, EVER? To stop damage, you just put your pet on passive, you don’t need to cancel a fellin’ amazing pet damage bonus. Maybe the cancellation refers to summoning another pet?

This is one where I’d like to acquire the set bonus on the PTR and see what it’s about.

The 4-piece sounds a bit bland. It’s like our current tier 17 2-piece that summons your Inner Demon. It’s a passive thing that does nothing to your actual rotation beyond the desire to proc Molten Core even more. This sounds more like a 2-piece kind of bonus than a 4-piece.

Destruction set bonuses:

• 2-piece: Reduces the cast time of your Chaos Bolt by 2.5 sec.
• 4-piece: Your Chaos Bolt has a 1% chance to not consume an Ember.

My question to test on the PTR would be whether or not that reduction is before or after haste applies. Let’s take my guildmate’s Destruction Warlock with his 10% haste gear (900 rating).

• After haste applies: Base Chaos Bolt cast time is 3 seconds, 10% haste means it’s 2.72 seconds, 2-piece makes it 0.22 seconds.
• Before haste applies: Base Chaos Bolt cast time is 3 seconds, 2-piece makes it 0.5 sec, 10% haste means it’s 0.45 seconds.

It still sounds so ridiculous that I fear PVP will interfere before you can get one of these amazingly short Chaos Bolt casts off.

The 4-piece bonus feels lackluster. 1 of every 100 Chaos Bolts doesn’t consume an Ember? So, even in a long fight like Iron Maidens, maybe 1 Chaos Bolt won’t consume an Ember. Big whup.

New Warlock Pet Models

My felguard is still my old felguard on the PTR, and my imps are still my imps, but my Doomguard is indeed updated!

I tested out the various Doomguards to see which had the new model:

• Regular cooldown Doomguard
• Demonic Servitude perma-pet Doomguard
• Grimoire of Service (with Demonic Servitude) temporary Doomguard

Unfortunately, the Grimoire of Supremacy Terrorguard still looks the same, which now looks dated next to the improved model.

Summary

The new Doomguard model is the highlight of Patch 6.2 for me so far. The Demonology nerfs do not make me happy, and the 4-piece set bonuses just sound pretty unexciting or as if they possibly switched the 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses. Combine that with Yrel following me around yelling about “Warlocks and their foul magic” — well, I’m just not feeling very welcome in Patch 6.2 as a Warlock.

What were your first impressions of the Patch 6.2 notes for Warlocks?