Warlock Buff Specifics (Maybe)

Affliction: While some warlocks will no doubt disagree, we think the damage output of Affliction in PvP is pretty good. Therefore, we want a buff that will increase sustained damage after a ramp-up period. The specific change we have in mind is to allow Shadow Embrace to stack up to 3 times for a total of a 15% damage bonus. The current healing debuff would change to 10% per stack.

Demonology: We want to double the damage bonus of Demonic Pact granted the warlock. To avoid making this an all-around buff to raid damage, however, the damage bonus provided to other players would remain unchanged.

Destruction: We want to double the damage bonus provided by Empowered Imp.

As a further buff to both Demonology and Affliction, we’re testing out the effects of doubling the damage bonus of Improved Shadow Bolt in the Destruction tree.

So, there you have the preliminary offering. Consideration and details in the break.

So, looking at destruction first, the clarification is that the imp damage increase would be upped from 15% to 30% on the top rank. This buff is pretty damn small, amounting to about a 1.5% increase in damage (strong imp gets a whole 1.515%). Destruction is already behind affliction in DPS, and will be behind demonology if the full extent of the discussed buffs go forward, and is also offered less than a third the buff of the other specs.

Affliction's offering is a 5% increase to all periodic damage (most notably drain soul execute) and a possible additional 5% increase to shadowbolt. This is pretty much a 5% increase in overall damage, as only haunt misses out on the 5%. This will add about 2 seconds of ramp up time, though, eating a bit of the DPS back up.


Demonology getting demonic pact bumped from 5% to 10% (only the selfish half of the talent, spellpower portion remains the same) is not only big but another good boon to the spec's weak scaling. Tack on 5% to shadow bolt and you've got a fairly hefty buff to the spec.

So, demo got the best out of the bunch, to be honest. Affliction fared well. Destruction... Well, it had a good run, but if this is all it gets, it's going to have it's work cut out keeping up with demo, let alone other classes.