Blood Pact: Looking at new warlock talents
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you.
Welcome back, warlocks! I know that this is technically the second post-BlizzCon article that you'll be reading, but with how scheduling has to be done, for me at least, it's actually the first. I know that it can get a little aggravating to have to wait this long for your roundup of new information, but let me assure you that it is well worth the wait.
Unlike the rest of the writers around this place, I'm not suffering from an incurable plague ... guess it's just a warlock thing. Shadow priest writer Fox Van Allen might joke that he's getting 15% of the damage done by the BlizzCon Flu back as health, but clearly I'm just sitting there channeling Drain Life with no one to care about interrupting me. Speaking of Drain Life, the talents for the next expansion seem extremely promising. Why don't we take a look at them? (You like that leap of topics, don't you?)
The new talent system
In case you've been the victim of a horrible banshee's curse for the past week that prevented you from accessing a computer, then I would assume by now that you know the WoW talent system is, once again, getting completely revamped. Instead of getting talents every two levels, players will now get talents every 15 levels. That's right, every 15 levels, and with a new level 90 cap, this means that you'll get a grand total of six talents. Whoooo! While it may not seem as exciting, each talent tier has three choices all that according to Blizzard are going to be powerful options that offer a strong measure of choice to players.
True or not on the latter part, the new talent system is actually interesting, and for warlocks, it does seem as though it will pan out rather well. While several of the other classes seemingly have pre-alpha talents that the development team just sloshed together to have something to say, warlock talents look as though they really are the ones that you should expect to see in beta, if not hitting live. Not everything is perfect, mind you -- some things should be changed -- but nothing is ever perfect at a BlizzCon preview.
The first two tiers
The first tier of talents is focused exclusively on self-healing, a hallmark of the warlock class. I personally find the positioning of this tier to be excellent; warlocks should have strong self-healing right off the bat, and they shouldn't have to rely upon Drain Life in order to get that. Your options on this tier are Dark Regeneration, Soul Leech, and Harvest Life.
The first choice, Dark Regeneration, is fairly poorly balanced against the other two choices on this tier. It offers 50% of your health over 25 seconds, but on a 3-minute cooldown. Alas, this talent hits the issue that many talents for all the classes do; cooldowns have a very hard time competing with passive abilities.
In this case, Dark Regeneration is put to shame by the other two choices in the tier. Soul Leech is exactly what you should expect it to be, a complete replica of the current Soul Leech. The new Soul Leech refunds 25% of the damage done by Shadowbolt, Incinerate, and Malefic Grasp as health. What's Malefic Grasp? Beats the hell out of me, but given that Shadowbolt (which totally upsets me that's listed as one word in the preview, when it's actually two words) and Incinerate are the primary nukes for affliction and destruction, respectively. That rather leads to Malefic Grasp's being a new primary nuke for demonology. Can I get an awesome!?
Soul Leech beats the pants off Dark Regeneration, but then there's that small matter of Harvest Life. Harvest Life is an upgrade of Drain Life, effectively just making it an AOE akin to Mind Sear from shadow priests. As Drain Life refunds 1% health every time it deals damage; Harvest Life does too, only it does it from every target that it hits. On rough AOE encounters, Harvest Life is probably going to be a life-saver. (Get it?) That amount of health return is pretty crazy when you're healing around 10% of your health every second or less.
The second tier is all about offering up some of that signature warlock control, offering up the two classics of Howl of Terror and Shadowfury as well as the new Mortal Coil. Howl of Terror goes without an explanation, and it is instant, so there's no need to worry about that. What is worth worrying about, however, is how the ability shells up against the others. HoT has twice the cooldown of Shadowfury, which you might think is balanced because the fear lasts for 8 seconds instead of only 3. The problem with that, however, is the diminishing return off CC effects. Fear is pretty common (especially when dealing with a warlock!), so it's not likely to last the full 8 seconds on every target.
That's just me, though. I really don't see why you might want Howl of Terror over Shadowfury, but if you do, then you do and that's your choice. Mortal Coil, however, is the really interesting one. Mortal Coil is an upgraded form of Death Coil; how it's upgraded, we don't actually know. The current Death Coil has a 2-minute cooldown, while Mortal Coil only has a 45-second cooldown. It could potentially restore additional health as well; we don't know. Despite being only a single-target effect, Mortal Coil is still a pretty good choice in comparison to Shadowfury. Another self-heal, and healing 25% of your health at that, on a 45-second cooldown is pretty amazing for our drain tanking setup. On the PVE side, if you don't need the control of Shadowfury, having the ability to heal yourself for 25% every 45 seconds is beyond words amazing.
The middle two tiers
Third tier is about damage reduction, because we need to be more durable after the other two tiers, right? On this tier, you've got the traditional Soul Link taking up a slot. One interesting thing about Soul Link is that it's worded differently from the current version entirely. It merely says "all damage and healing the warlock takes is shared with her active demon. That damage cannot be prevented." Currently, Soul Link specifically states 20% damage transference. Does this mean we're going up to 50%? Also, that additional healing transfer is pretty wicked-awesome, as it'll be a key means in making sure the demon actually stays alive.
Your other options are kind of new kids on the block. First there's Hour of Twilight, which reduces all damage taken by 50% if you fall below 20% health, with an ICD of 90 seconds. It's not a bad talent, actually pretty useful in an PVP setting in blocking many bursty attacks. The problem with this talent is potentially the ability to leap-frog it. If you're at 21% health and suddenly get hit by some massive burst ability that drops you dead right there, then the talent didn't exactly help you. Hopefully, Blizzard has the tech to prevent such issues. The second talent is Sacrificial Pact, which is a replica of the current Sacrifice from the Voidwalker -- and whether the pet is losing this ability or not, we don't know. It's a great ability, essentially being the same as a paladin bubble, but it does have that nasty 5-minute cooldown. Powerful, potentially worth it, but hard to make a case for against Soul Link.
