New Warlock Covenant Legendaries in Patch 9.1 PTR Build 38627 - Warlock Guide Writers Review Effects

Posted 2021/05/16 at 7:00 AM by Jaydaa

New Covenant-Specific Class Legendariesbuild 38627 of the 9.1 PTR

Our Guide Writers and Experts have given their thoughts on the Patch 9.1 PTR Class Changes and new Legendaries for Build 38627. Check out all of our released opinion articles for the build below.

Class Tuning Opinions Build 38627

Holy Paladin - Guide Writer Thoughts

Covenant Legendary Opinions Build 38627

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Paladin Covenant Legendaries Revisited - Guide Writer Thoughts

Warlock Legendaries in Patch 9.1

NEW (Necrolord) Decimating Bolt also increases the critical strike chance and critical strike damage of Demonbolt / Incinerate / Shadow Bolt by 15%.
NEW (Night Fae) Each target affected by Soul Rot increases your Haste and Critical strike chance by 50% for until canceled.
NEW (Venthyr) Impending Catastrophe's final explosion damage is increased by 50% plus 10% for each enemy target hit on the way to its final target.
NEW (Kyrian) When Scouring Tithe generates Soul Shards, gain 100% increased movement speed and 100% increased critical strike chance for 8 sec.

Writer Opinions & FeedbackAffliction Warlock Writer Opinion & FeedbackXyronictwitchIn the most recent PTR update for 9.1, new covenant specific warlock legendaries were datamined. In this article, we'll be briefly going over the different legendaries, how they work, and what their viability is based on the current meta.

Necrolord

Shard of Annihilation (Necrolord) - Decimating Bolt also increases the critical strike chance and critical strike damage of Demonbolt / Incinerate / Shadow Bolt by 15%.Withering BoltShadow BoltMalefic WraththisDecimating Bolt

Decaying Soul Satchel (Night Fae) - Each target affected by Soul Rot increases your Haste and Critical strike chance by 50% for until canceled.

Soul RotMalefic RaptureMalefic RaptureShadow BoltMalefic RaptureMalefic WrathMalefic Rapture

Contained Perpetual Explosion (Venthyr) - Impending Catastrophe's final explosion damage is increased by 50% plus 10% for each enemy target hit on the way to its final target.

Sow the Seeds

Languishing Soul Detritus (Kyrian) - When Scouring Tithe generates Soul Shards, gain 100% increased movement speed and 100% increased critical strike chance for 8 sec.

Scouring TitheDemonology Warlock Writer Opinion & FeedbackThe current iteration of Covenant legendaries are somewhat lackluster in most aspects, except the Night Fae one which is either data mined incorrectly or is in no way staying in its current form. None of the four legendaries has any impact on playstyle or really any scenario in particular that it could find itself shining on.

In terms of power, Necrolord's Shard of Annihilation is a minor power gain to our rotational abilities but only 3 casts every minute which is not a terribly high number. You will see their damage increase, especially on the high end of crits, but you won't notice it overall. For Night Fae, Contained Perpetual Explosion is very overtuned and you should not expect to see this remain as it currently is. 50% crit chance and haste for each target affected by Soul Rot is an insane amount of haste especially and will simply lead to going out of mana, similar to how Explosive Potential was leaning towards with full haste corruptions back in BFA. Contained Perpetual Explosion for Venthyr is never going to be worn as the actual impact damage of Impending Catastrophe is abysmally low, on the very few logs where a Warlock is Venthyr the impact damage accounts for less than 0.5% of their total damage. Increasing that damage by each target hit on the way to the final target is going to make no difference. As for the Kyrian Languishing Soul Detritus it could be an interesting option in M+ where you can force the ability onto low health enemies to gain advantage of the proc, in particular movement speed can be very beneficial.

Overall, given the fact that the large majority of Warlocks are playing Night Fae and with current information the Night Fae legendary is by far the strongest you won't see any changes to the preferred Covenants. Even if they were to change Contained Perpetual Explosion to be 5% haste and crit for each affected enemy the power of this legendary is very very strong. As for the other three Covenants, it's likely that the Necrolord legendary is the best bang for your buck compared to Kyrian and especially Venthyr.
Destruction Warlock Writer Opinion & Feedback

This guide is written and maintained by Loozy who plays a Warlock in the guild FatSharkYes on Kazzak EU. I began playing Warlock during Siege of Orgrimmar and have been raiding actively ever since. I became involved in guide writing during Legion where I took part in starting the website Lock One Stop Shop a website by Warlocks for Warlocks.

Necrolord

Shard of Annihilation - Very straight forward legendary. A slight buff to Incinerate after the use of Decimating Bolt. This legendary is not super interesting, and shouldn't be able to compete with the current existing legendaries. This will also not change what covenant you choose as Destruction.

Night Fae

Decaying Soul Satchel - A much more interesting legendary bonus. A large buff to haste and crit after casting Soul Rot can potentially be huge. This can be paired with large damage windows such as Havoc cleave, and on only a 1 minute cooldown has huge potential. It's going to be interesting to see how strong this legendary is once it goes live. Currently, Night Fae is the preferred covenant for Destruction, and by the looks of it nothing here changes.

Venthyr

Contained Perpetual Explosion - Is a very different bonus than the other covenants legendaries. In order to play around this to gain the most damage, you will have to position accordingly, and cast on a specific mob. To begin with, the damage of Impending Catastrophe isn't great. This is a nice bonus to its damage, but it's hard to see how this bonus would be able to compete with the current existing legendaries. This doesn't change what covenant you choose to play as Destruction.

Kyrian

Languishing Soul Detritus - Is a bonus that really motivates the playstyle of generating Soul Shards through Scouring Tithe. Critical strike is a stat our Chaos Bolt scaled very well with. This can potentially be paired up with Soul Tithe to make your Chaos Bolt hit extremely hard during a short period of time after something has died while affected by your Scouring Tithe. Some things worth mentioning here; while this has the potential to be very strong, if you're unable to benefit from this, this legendary bonus is essentially dead. This can either be on a boss fight without adds, or if every mob in a pack dies at the same time, and you don't have anything to cast on. The conclusion is, it's an interesting bonus, but unlikely to change what legendary and
covenant we play.

Comment by KoBurK:DComment by TigerusI strongly believe numbers in those legendaries are from Random.orgComment by J00tiiLock One Stop Shop is up to date :DComment by TaftvalueLock One Stop Shop is up to date :DComment by MORFOS1910100% crit... + pvp chaos volt ...:3Comment by AerisotDemonology is about to reign supreme.Comment by jpurebalanceWhat is with this whole unknown about the kyrian proc. It's the same thing from Torghast much like some other legendaries between all classes. Warlock has a legendary that already exists in Torghast. The Kyrian one is just another copy of it so why are you saying "we don't know" when the proc has been around.Comment by Mardux11I strongly believe numbers in those legendaries are from Random.orgComment by ZabsterYeah these are all Torghast anima powers which you can find in Torghast now on live, pretty lazy...Comment by PrimalcruxI strongly believe numbers in those legendaries are from Random.orgComment by warlocktankdemonologists rejoice and prepare!Comment by thecullerBalespider's Burning Core is a 60% boost to demonbolt damage and while it isn't super far behind other legendaries for single target it's still not the best. How in the world is a 15% crit chance and severity boost to the next 3 demonbolts supposed to stack up against +60% raw damage to all demonbolts? Pretty sure the necrolord legendary could be a 100% crit chance boost with a 100% critical severity boost and still not be worth using.Comment by Ginny48I would love for the Demo writer to explain how the Necro legendary is good "bang for your buck" over Balespiders. It's total garbage, and can't even be fixed with numbers tuning.