Warlocks and Patch 3.3

Hey all, its rumored that patch 3.3 will be dropping this Tuesday if all the bugs are fixed, and considering all the other blogs have been doing some nice 3.3 updates, I thought I jump on the bandwagon. There are a lot of changes to consider, some adding more than others, however most of the lock changes this patch are pretty much “meh” and really just filler for Cataclysm at this point. Below is the latest patch notes regarding Warlocks, after the notes Ill give my thoughts as well as wrap up pretty much ANY helpful linsk regarding out changes, including blog posts and the like. Now for the changes.

• Create Soulstone: The cooldown on this spell and duration of its buff have been lowered from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Affliction
  • Improved Felhunter: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the felhunter’s Shadow Bite ability by 2/4 seconds.
  • Pandemic: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of the felhunter’s Shadow Bite spell by 100%.
  • Shadow Mastery: This talent now also increases the damage done by the felhunter’s Shadow Bite ability by 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Demonology
  • Decimation: Redesigned. When Shadow Bolt, Incinerate or Soul Fire hit a target that is at or below 35% health, the cast time of Soul Fire is reduced by 20/40% for 8 seconds. Soul Fires cast under the effect of Decimation cost no shards.
  • Demonic Pact: This talent now also increases the warlock’s spell damage by 1/2/3/4/5%.
  • Molten Core: Redesigned. This talent now increases the duration of Immolate by 3/6/9 seconds and provides a 4/8/12% chance to gain the Molten Core effect when Corruption deals damage. The Molten Core effect empowers the next 3 Incinerate or Soul Fire spells cast within 15 seconds (Incinerate: increases damage done by 6/12/18% and reduces cast time by 10/20/30%; Soul Fire: increases damage done by 6/12/18% and increases critical strike chance by 5/10/15%). Molten Core now has a new spell effect.
• Destruction
  • Conflagrate: Redesigned. This talent now consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 9 seconds of Immolate or 8 seconds of Shadowflame, and causes additional damage over 3 seconds equal to 3 seconds of Immolate or 2 seconds of Shadowflame. In addition, the periodic damage of Conflagrate is capable of critically striking the afflicted target.
  • Ruin: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of the imp’s Firebolt spell by 100%.
• Pets
  • Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
  • Doomguard/Infernal: These pets now innately have Avoidance like all other warlock pets.
  • Inferno: The cooldown on this summoning spell has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
  • Shadow Bite: This pet ability now provides 15% increased damage for each of the warlock’s damage-over-time effects on the target.
  • Summon Imp: This ability is now available from the trainer for level 1 warlocks and no longer requires a quest to learn.
• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Life Tap: The effect of this glyph now has a chance of activating when Dark Pact is used.
  • Glyph of Quick Decay: This glyph allows for the warlock’s haste to reduce the time between periodic damage effects of Corruption.
• Bug Fixes
  • Curse of the Elements: Rank 4 has been increased to 11%, up from 10%.
  • Drain Soul: This spell now deals 4 times the normal damage for all ranks. Previously it was only ranks 6 and above.
  • Glyph of Conflagrate: Now updates the tooltip of Conflagrate to remove reference to Conflagrate removing an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target.
  • Glyph of Siphon Life: This glyph will now modify the tooltip on Siphon Life correctly.
  • Glyph of Unending Breath: Now updates the tooltip on Unending Breath to indicate it increases swim speed.
  • Hellfire: Dealing damage to another player with this ability will now put the Warlock in combat.
  • Improved Shadow Bolt: This talent no longer causes a bug that removes all resilience from pets.
  • Suffering (Voidwalker): Ranks 5-8 had the incorrect taunt radius of 5 yards and have all been adjusted to a 10-yard radius.

Most notable changes are, Affliction will top the raid dps meters, followed by Destro and then Demonology

<sup>Affliction

A1: 55/00/16
A2: 53/00/18 using a Doomguard
A3: 53/00/18 without the Doomguard

Destruction</sup>

<sup>D1: 00/13/58
D2: 03/13/55

Demonology</sup>

^{d1: 00/56/15 with 3 points in Molten Core
d2: 00/56/15 with Demonic Empowerment
d3: 03/52/16}

^Hybrid

^{H1: 00/40/31
H2: 00/41/30}

Conflag is receiving a slight nerf, reducing our burst a little, not something I worry too much about. Just macro a Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket with your conflag and gg, all fixed.
Decimation in the Demonology tree will make using soulfire soo much easier, and again no more weaving!
Glyph of Quick decay gonna be nice for most affliction locks, allowing them to get more out of haste. I personally don’t know what the big deal is about this, but apparently its pretty good?

Being a BGer myself, and playing mostly with my Girlfriend, I’m pretty happy for the soulstone change, that means less gf aggro when she dies!

Ghostcrawler also made a short statement why we dont get stacking shards for 3.3

Why can’t warlocks have stackable shards?
Technically we have trouble altering inventory space in existing characters, and that would especially be true for the shard bag. We can do it, but it’s a pretty high risk change when you consider all of the things that can go wrong. For that reason, we’d prefer to do it during an expansion when we have plenty of time to solve any unforeseen problems that arise.

On the design side, we’d prefer to unveil new mechanics that all work well together rather than make changes now that we’d just turn around and undo. What I mean is that we don’t want to sideline soul shards even more for the next few months to the point where locks, especially newer ones, sort of forget about them only to bring them back in a big way for Cataclysm.

Like I said, I am really waiting for Cataclysm, that’s where we are gonna get what we need for both PvE and PvP, this patch is just something to keep our attention as we wait for the good stuff. Keep on eye on my blog as I have plans to make a post on making gold in 3.3 including a super useful tool , and once the loot tables for all the instances has been confirmed, Ill make a quick warlock guide to Icecrown Citadel, including the loot that would be useful for us, and what our strategy should use when confronting the bosses.

Bellow are the most recent 3.3 guides I have found regarding Warlocks.

WoW.com’s Guides:

• Blood Pact: Patch 3.3 raid build roundup
• Fine threads and feisty pets for warlocks
• Patch 3.3 PTR: More warlock changes
• Warlock pets bite back
• The complete guide to 3.3

WoWHead’s Guide to 3.3

• Patch 3.3 Guide

Elitist Jerks

• Simulationcraft for Warlocks in 3.3

MMOChampion

• Loot for Icecrown Citadel

Other Blogs Regarding Warlocks and 3.3:

• Warlock Therapy -Destructive Invitation – No Newbies Allowed!
• Downfall Guild – Moar affliction locks in 3.3

Hope you guys enjoyed the post, and can get good info from all the links listed, some people did some good work on these posts. Stay tuned for moar updates!
Peace
~Aphroditi