Warlock Talent Trees Now Available in Dragonflight Calculator

Posted 2022/08/09 at 5:22 PM by perculia

To learn about the best PvE talent builds in Dragonflight for this class, and export these builds into the game, please check out our Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction Warlock class guides:
Affliction Warlock Talent BuildsDemonology Warlock Talent BuildsDestruction Warlock Talent BuildsWarlock Dragonflight Alpha Class Tree

View on Dragonflight Talent Tree

Affliction Warlock Dragonflight Alpha Class Tree

View on Dragonflight Talent Tree

Demonology Warlock Dragonflight Alpha Class Tree

View on Dragonflight Talent Tree

Destruction Warlock Dragonflight Alpha Class Tree

View on Dragonflight Talent Tree

Warlock

Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, we are unveiling the talent trees of our favorite curse slinging, shadow bolt hurling, demon summoning class: the Warlock. These trees were built to emphasize the strong thematic and rotational gameplay that is already present with each specialization.
That said, we are making a few changes to address the pain points we’ve experienced while playing and concerns that have been brought up by the community. You can read more about these changes down below and our thoughts regarding why the change was made.

Core Changes

Spell Lock in the talent tree

With Dragonflight, we’ve removed Spell Lock from Felhunters and Spell Lock is now available for Warlocks to learn themselves. With this change, we are aiming to allow for more pet diversity in content where Felhunters feel required like dungeons and PvP.

Dark Soul is not in the talent tree for Dragonflight intentionally. There are a few reasons for this:

All Warlock specs have access to a powerful summon cooldown that interacts with the rest of their spells where Dark Soul increases a stat by a large amount. We prefer to keep the interactive spell.
With cooldown stacking, a high percentage of overall damage is boiled down to the cooldown window. While this can be useful for bursting, but damage output outside of this window tends to be lackluster.
Across the classes there are new active spells which we are both excited about and equally cautious of causing keybinding issues by adding. Finding times to pull back on active spells is something we’re on the lookout for.

Shadow Bolt and Incinerate base damage has been increased

We’ve increased the damage of Shadow Bolt and Incinerate significantly and lowered modifiers from various talents. Our goal is for these spells to feel more powerful without having to ramp to see benefits from casting it.

Shadowflame

Shadowflame is returning; however, we don’t want a short-ranged cone spell to be a rotational for a caster, so we’ve removed the damage from the ability.

Affliction

Vile Taint revamp

Vile Taint has been reworked – Unleashes a vile explosion at the target location, dealing X Shadow damage over 10 seconds to 8 enemies within 10 yards and applies Agony and Curse of Exhaustion to them.
With this change, we aim to allow Affliction to ramp up faster in dungeon gameplay especially in combination with talents like Agonizing Corruption and Sow the Seeds.

Deathbolt is now a base talent

Through Deathbolt and its modifying talents we aim to give Affliction an interesting alternative to Malefic Rapture when the situation calls for single target damage.

Destruction

An Alternative to Havoc

We are exploring an alternative to Havoc called Mayhem. It’s a passive that gives your single target spells a chance to deal 60% of its damage to a random nearby target. The goal with this talent is to give a more passive two-target option for players who would like to opt out of Havoc gameplay. For tuning, we intend for active Havoc gameplay to be rewarded over playing with Mayhem.

Along with these changes you’ll see both new spells and some old friends returning. Soul Rot and Decimating Bolt will be coming with us from the Shadowlands, Dimensional Rift returns from Legion, and many more.
While the core rotations of each specialization will remain familiar, these talents offer new options that will allow you to modify your gameplay and choose what’s important to you.
Welcome back to Azeroth, Warlocks. We look forward to hearing tales of the chaos you’ll rain down across the Dragon Isles. Be sure to let us know your thoughts, our Eye of Kilrogg will be actively watching your discussions.

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Comment by warlocktankyesssss! warlock supremacy!Comment by wiegrafzerolok"Affliction Warrior" lolComment by ShadrazaarUnholy $%^&, that Destro tree is insane. Can't wait to play it!Comment by Rick1605Legion Destro Weapon Ability is back :OComment by Lionheart343Having to take 2 ranks of Accrued Vitality to get Demonic circle feels so bad.Comment by ShandaleroThey dont work.Comment by Wahoo123gaALL REALMS WILL DROWN IN BLOOD

Seriously though I'm pretty excited by some of the things here. We're keeping blasphemies which is great, even if they won't keep rain of chaos for, perhaps understandable, reasons. New thingies to summon like eyes and jailers could be great fun.

Dimensional rift is really exciting too, since we now get another bursty option. My main gripe with destro is there can be points where you're just going immolate - incinerate - conflagurate - chaos bolt and so on, so some extra buttons to try and time in is great to see.

I think decimating bolt was perhaps the wrong call. Of all the covenant abilities it was the least interesting. I would rather see Impending Catastrophy to be honest. AOE curse application is really neat and I love doing that when I can. Since the damage is so pitiful (especially without the legendary) they could have just made it a curse applicator and I'd be happy.

No clue why I'm typing my thoughts out like people care, but you just read it, so sucks to be you.Comment by confedestro tree has such an obscene potential its insaneComment by GilneanRavenGul'dan's Ambition finally lets us summon a PIT LORD!Comment by XehagusAmazing treesComment by DegnoThose talent tree look really really freaking good. Warlocks are looking almost unkillable again with soul link made available to all 3 specs, which is so cool.
Some talents here and there are a bit meh or don't seem to really fit where they are, but overall it looks super promising with a lot of really fun and cool stuff.
Summoning a pit lord and making your felguard a monster for demo. Some amazing DoT spreading abilities for affliction, that new vile taint looks incredible, exactly what the spec needed. Destruction that can have some insane burst windows with their infernos.
I'm super excited !Comment by wondra2I am wondering, how do they imagine class without a DPS cooldown? They specifically stated they wanted warlocks to have no other DPS cooldowns and all 'basic' cooldowns are deep on one side of the tree.
That means either you have no DPS cooldown at all (only class designed like that) or your are forced into specific side of the tree, making the other half dead/unreachable. Moreover, it seems that it requires 4+ points to make it as powerful as it is on live completely locking all other choices from the capstones, am I missing something?Comment by DaymolockHoly mother of pit lord, the warlock talenttree is disgustingly insane.
Warlock is finally tanky again and drain life gets usefull for every spec. Also utility feels nicely placed + new ones from prior pvptalents. EVERY spectree looks gorgeous because it allows multiple ways to play every spec and provides way more playstyles and with that a bunch of fun builds overall. For example destro can make a rain of fire, chaosbolt, shadowburn, incinerate build, thats huge.
Its insane how many tsets, legendarys, conduits, conduitabilities and even from the legion artifact found their way into the specific trees.
In my opinion the trees keep the good parts of the specs which made them fun and improved them furthermore to get rid of bad parts with new additions.
WELL DONE BLIZZARD THIS IS WHAT WE WANTEDComment by AusteresEXTREMELY excited for this, all specs are looking really interesting, particulary happy about the legion afflic explosion being back and very interested to see that Pit Lord summoning in action from the demon tree, even if nether portal maybe end up not being the best choice I really want to play around with that, being waiting for something like this since the Kanrethad boss fight.Comment by McNastyestThat destro tree though. Why does Shadowfury STILL have a cast time?Comment by ShadhunDestro looks really interesting, but I don't really care for destro sadly
Affliction seems insanely bad or I am missing something. I was really hoping for way more DoT damage abilities and it feels like they just pumped every legendary from Shadowlands into the tree, because they didn't know what to do with affliction.
That's what I thought the whole time, they just don't know @#$% what to do with affliction and avoid DoT based skills, because they can't handle its balancing, which is just sad.Comment by SatyrosDestruction is going to deal more damage with incinerate than with chaos bolt.. Is that really the direction the class should go towards? Spamming noodle CBs just to summon infernals?
Also, the grimoire talents.. comeon blizzard. You have had this feedback for years.. Having anti-synergistic talents doing random damage insignificant enough that you can't even notice it without logs is just not fun! How can this be in the game for a fourth expansion in a row?Comment by KerathrasA bit disappointed because I really wanted to see Felguard added to the Class tree so that all specs have access to it. Visually, it is the only demon I like and I personally just can't stand looking at the Blueberry when I need a tank pet in open world. Being able to summon a Pit Lord is insanely cool so it looks like I will continue to be jelly of my Demonologist collogues even as I smite everything with fel fire as Destro.

I only play Destruction so I am beyond thrilled that there is an alternative to Havoc in the new Mayhem as I really did not enjoy that playstyle. A passive cleave option is so much better in my view especially on boss fights where the RNG element doesn't really come into play because there are usually only 2 bosses anyway. But I have absolutely no problem with the Havoc playstyle being more rewarding and optimal as it is more work, it's a perfectly fair trade off. I just wish they would come up with something like this that would allow mages to opt out of Rune of Power without totally gimping their DPS. I've always mained an Arcane Mage but so too has a Destruction Warlock always been my main alt and as things stand right now I am more tempted than ever before to swap.Comment by jpm2621
I think decimating bolt was perhaps the wrong call. Of all the covenant abilities it was the least interesting.
Comment by Feelroi can't understand why blizzard don't like demonology

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