Warlock in Forever

Warlock has the highest turnover of the nine classes. 17 Classic Warlock talents have no counterpart in the Forever trees, more than any other class and five more than the next worst, and 19 talents in the Forever trees are not in the Classic ones. Destruction alone replaced six of its sixteen. On top of that, a third of the curse book was renamed.

Game data from build 1.60.1.69913 against Era 1.15.9.69722. The trees are in the Warlock calculator.

The distinction is mechanical, not cosmetic: a Bane and a Curse are limited separately. Bane of Agony’s own text now says “only one Bane per Warlock can be active on any one target” where Era’s said Curse, and Bane of Havoc says the same of itself. Mage’s Remove Lesser Curse was rewritten in the same build to remove “1 Curse or Bane”.

Two curses that stayed also changed: Curse of Recklessness lost the +20 melee attack power it used to give its victim and now only strips armour, 175 instead of 140; and Curse of Weakness reduces Physical damage specifically, by 4 instead of 3.

Six of Destruction’s sixteen talents are new to the tree, and four of them are the same idea: give the tree something to press.

• Conflagrate is the 16-point talent and a new ability at 25 with a second rank at 32. It ignites a target already burning from your Immolate for 84 to 106 Fire damage and consumes the Immolate.
• Fire and Brimstone (3 ranks, requires Conflagrate) adds 8% to 25% critical strike chance to it.
• Shadow and Flame (5 ranks) makes Conflagrate feed your Shadow damage and Shadowburn feed your Fire damage, each by up to 10% for 20 sec, and at five points Conflagrate stops consuming Immolate and Shadowburn always refunds its Soul Shard.
• Incinerate is the 31-point talent and a new ability at 40 with ranks at 50 and 60: 90 to 104 Fire damage, 25% more against a target with Immolate on it.

The other two are Molten Skin (5 ranks, 2% to 10% less damage taken) and Bane of Havoc at 21 points, which mirrors 15% of the damage you deal elsewhere onto one marked target for 5 min.

Destruction paid for all of that: Improved Firebolt, Improved Lash of Pain, Devastation, Apocalypse, Improved Immolate and Emberstorm are all gone. Ruin still ends at +100% critical damage bonus but now costs five points instead of one, 20% at a time, and no longer needs Devastation first.

Wrack is the new 31-point Affliction talent and an ability at 40: 36 Shadow damage a second for 6 sec, and while it runs the target takes 10% more from your other Shadow damage over time. It is named in five other Affliction talents, which is how you can tell it was designed into the tree rather than bolted on.

Two talents traded names, which is the one thing in this build most likely to catch a returning player out:

The rest of what is new in the tree: Malediction (5 ranks, 1% to 5% on all periodic damage), Malevolence (5 ranks, Shadow critical chance), Pandemic (3 ranks, up to +100% critical damage bonus on the whole damage-over-time book), Soul Harvesting (2 ranks, mana regeneration after a Drain Soul kill) and Improved Drains.

Demonic Pact is the 31-point Demonology talent: your Demonic Sacrifice effect is no longer cancelled by summoning a different demon, only by resummoning the one you sacrificed. Demonic Sacrifice itself moved up from the 21-point row to the 11-point row to make that reachable.

New alongside it: Decimation (2 ranks, up to 90% off the Soul Fire cooldown and a free, faster Soul Fire after hitting a target below 35% health), Demonic Knowledge (3 ranks, spell damage for you and your pet scaling with your level), Demonic Brand (3 ranks, Searing Pain generates up to 50% less threat and brands the target for your pet), Improved Felhunter (3 ranks on the Felhunter’s whole kit), Demonic Energies (2 ranks: your spell damage heals your pet, and Life Tap feeds it mana) and Demonic Aegis (2 ranks on Demon Skin and Demon Armor).

Gone: Improved Healthstone, Fel Stamina, Improved Subjugate Demon, Improved Firestone and Improved Spellstone.

Affliction’s 16-point talent came down from the 21-point row; Demonology’s came up from the 11-point row. Fel Domination and Master Summoner also swapped prerequisites along the way: in Era, Master Summoner required Fel Domination; in Forever it is the other way round.

23 Warlock abilities read differently. The behaviour changes:

• Create Firestone is not an off-hand item any more. It enchants your weapon, adding 1% spell critical strike chance and up to 10 Fire spell damage, where Era’s Lesser Firestone sat in the off-hand slot and added a chance of 25 to 35 Fire damage per attack.
• Drain Soul now has a chance to grant a Soul Shard from damage alone, not only from the kill, and deals 85 damage over 15 sec at rank 1 against Era’s 55.
• Shadowburn is weaker at rank 1 (62 to 70 against 87 to 99) but its shard window went from 5 sec to 8, and the “yields experience or honor” clause became “non-trivial target”.
• Health Funnel generates reduced threat.
• Create Healthstone makes a 120-health Minor Healthstone against Era’s 100.

Damage went down across the book: Corruption rank 2 deals 65 over 15 sec against Era’s 90, and Searing Pain rank 1 deals 21 to 25 against 34 to 42.

Two entries in Blizzard’s Known Issues thread for September 17 are Warlock-specific (Blizzard Forums: Beta Known Issues – September 17): ranks 3 and 4 of Create Firestone are missing their tooltip, and warlock pets display resource and scaling values incorrectly: mana, health from stamina, hit, expertise and movement speed. Given that the Firestone was rebuilt in this build, the missing tooltips are probably the same work in progress.

The beta cap is 20, rising to 30 later (Blizzard: Beta Now Live). Curse of the Elements at 20 is reachable; Conflagrate at 25, Wrack and Incinerate at 40 are not.

Troll Warlock is one of the six new race and class combinations (Blizzard: Deep Dive Panel Recap).

Coming soon The damage figures on Demonic Brand. The talent’s text describes the pet’s branded attacks without filling in the damage range in this build.

Coming soon What replaces Curse of Shadow and Curse of Idiocy. Both are absent from the Warlock’s ability list in this build and nothing in the data names a successor; Curse of the Elements arriving twelve levels earlier with an extra rank is the closest thing to one.

That these trees are the ones a Forever character spends points in is our reading of the beta build, not something we have confirmed in game. The reasoning is in Forever talent trees.