One of the biggest changes to warlocks int he upcoming Cataclysm expansion is the soul shard overhaul. Mages think that they have it bad being vending machines, but their pain is nothing compared to the warlock. Pre BC i can understand, cause they had to individually make enough food for an entire 40 man raid. But now all they need is a reagent and bam, we got food for everyone. I think its time we get our bag space back.Warlocks caught a slight break with having to only use one soul shard for a summoning portal and soul well as opposed to needing one per back in the day. But it is still mandatory for us to waste bag space on them because of the amount of spells and ability's that need them, not to mention some warlocks get a soul bag and that wastes a whole bag by itself. With the new overhaul to soul shards, warlocks will not have this problem any more. We will have three shards to use in a fight and they are a UI item instead of a bag slot item. Their will be no use for them outside of combat, but instead will be used with the soul burn ability to grant other ability's different effects. The following are the different combination's:
- Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.
- Drain Life + Soul Burn = Reduces cast speed by 60%.
- Demonic Circle + Soul Burn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.
- Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect.
- Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant cast.
- Healthstone + Soul Burn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds.
- Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds.
Personally i don't feel like any of these effects will be useful for me, but who knows how much they are gonna change our mechanics. The best 2 in my opinion are the instant summon demon and the increased run speed after teleporting. Nothing else would fit into my current spell rotation. Of course, there are other specs that will benefit from these a little more. Not to mention, raid strategies may depend on these in the future. I'm just happy i wont have to worry about coming to raids without any soul shards and having someone ask for a healthstone just for me to turn them down. All in all, the future of playing a warlock is looking very bright.
I Think they would fix all the problems if they let peoples shards stack up in stacks of like 20.
ReplyDeleteHey, welcome to the WoW blogging community! I think these changes make sense. I mean it'd only be fair since hunter ammo is going away, so I'm glad they're reducing the wasted bag space for the two ammo/shard classes. Honestly I think they got a pretty good mix of spells in the Soul Burn effects list. It seems to me that while they look like mostly PvP effects, one could find plenty of ways to use a lot of this stuff in PvE as well if they got creative :)
ReplyDeleteMy main was a warlock once upon a time and when I first heard about the removal of soul shards I was so happy. Can you imagine all of the free bag space you'll suddenly have?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the Soul Burn abilities don't all look that interesting, but maybe once Cataclysm is here we'll find a lot more use for them :)