Currently Removed
Curse of elements - gone
Curse of Exhaustion - gone
Flames of Xoroth - gone (really confused about this one)
Demonic Rebirth - gone same as above
Fel Flame - gone (oh goody!)
Twilight Ward - gone
Kil'Jaeden's cunning - Worthless now: Kil´jaeden´s Cunning (8 sec duration instead of 15 sec) and (60 sec cooldown instead of 2 minutes)
Soul Swap - worthless aswell considering the 1 shard penalty
Severe nerf to Fear for PvP - saw that coming
Maelific Grasp - gone but merged with drain soul which simplifies affliction.
Warlock Portal - halved the range of it for less utility
Healthstones - can only use one per fight, essentially a free health potion
Howl of Terror - no longer baseline
Void Lord - no longer has disarm
Observer - no longer silences, only interupts
*NEW*
Ember tap - now heals your pet as destro with an improved perk
Demonolgy mastery got nerfed to not encompass level 100 talents
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Interesting changes
DemonBolt - Looking pretty solid so far, still has a lot of iteration to go through
Charred Remains - Probably one of the most over powered new talents in the game at the moment. Rotation gets extremely simplified and gains a HUGE benefit from our mastery.
Soulburn: Haunt - clearly ment for multidotting which they so happened to nerf to the ground. Will have to wait and see
*New*
Grimoire of Synergy - when you deal damage your pet gains 15% more damage done, and when your pet deals damage, you gain 15% damage done. This is now the go to talent for demonology
Grimoire of Sacrifice - With current changes to movement and Kil'jaedens cunning, this looks to be no longer viable for destro since the pet looks to be a massive part of our damage.
Charred Remains - Is now nerfed, which brings with it the case that none of the 100 talents are a dps boost to destro.
Item – Warlock T17 Demonology 2P Bonus: Hand of Gul’dan now has 1 additional maximum charge, and Corruption has a 10% chance to generate 1 charge of Hand of Gul’dan when dealing damage.
Item – Warlock T17 Destruction 2P Bonus: When Immolate deals damage it has a 15% chance to generate a full Burning Ember.
Item – Warlock T17 Destruction 4P When a Burning Ember is filled up, you have a 25% chance to get a Chaotic Infusion. Chaotic Infusion reduces the cast time of Chaos Bolt by 50% and causes Chaos Bolt to consume no Burning Embers when cast.
Set bonuses for destruction are completely over powered and are no way going to make it to live in the current state. It would make our already completely over powered destruction aoe with charred remains even more over powered which isn't plausible.
Affliction
Most of the changes affect Affliction the most as it looks (and currently plays) like a horrible spec. Oversimplified single target, no snapshotting which pretty much ran the spec. Multi Target is still worth it, but setting it up feels really slow.
Destruction
If the set bonuses go live will be the most halariously over powered spec. Also if Charred Remains talent goes live we will still be a halariously overpowered spec, and we will absolutely dominate all other classes when it comes to aoe by a huge margin.
Demonology
Seems quite strong leading into the expansion so far. Nothing's been changed much. Demonbolt brings a unique playstyle to the spec that is still being theorycrafted. Movement hasn't changed for demonolgy, and its looking like the most reliable spec heading into warlords.
*NEW*
Raid utility
Healthstones - After a long chain of events on twitter (celestalon bring up a BS arguement) Healthstone just got nerfed to the ground. Healing tonics, which are now available by leveling first aid, will heal close to 50% more than healtstones. They also removed the perk of healthstones being able to crit. With these changes, it looks like healthstones will now be only used for people too lazy to bother getting health tonics.
Gateway - Also after a long chain of events prior to beta, gateway is now nerfed so they no longer need to be stacked since one can be used by the entire raid, and have half the total ranged they had in MoP. At this point they nerfed a VERY niche raid utility to become even more niche. Seems really akward to use. Unless they're god on a certain fight, I'll be surprised if they are used.
Battle Rez - Even though this doesn't count as raid utility, we now have the only casted battle rez, and with the new changes, will most likely be off my keybinds on my bar because other people can rez after a specific time, since they have no CD on it.
At this point (please be aware this is before the amount of rage on mmo champ and twitter, and the *hopeful* changes that will come) we have close to 0 utility, other than providing lazy raiders quicker ways to stand out of fire, and half ass healthstones that will also be for the lazy raiders not capable of buying their own health pots.
Was wondering what all you locks think about the changes that are planned in the coming expansion (KJC, no fel flame, less movement, no snapshotting etc)
