Broken Warlock Talents?

[oldmandennis]

I've got a mid 20's warlock into Destruction so far. Browsing this forum I've heard that Pyroclasm is broken. Are any other warlock talents that are broken/useless?

[Bun-Bun]

I've got a mid 20's warlock into Destruction so far.  Browsing this forum I've heard that Pyroclasm is broken.  Are any other warlock talents that are broken/useless?
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Improved Drain Soul apparently only works if it does the killing damage, rendering it almost completely useless. It's sucking up two valuable points until my next respec.

[playingtokrush]

I've got a mid 20's warlock into Destruction so far.  Browsing this forum I've heard that Pyroclasm is broken.  Are any other warlock talents that are broken/useless?
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Nightfall isn't useless, and it's not completely broken, but it's still bugged. If the shadow trance state procs while in the middle of casting a Shadow Bolt, it will be wasted when your Shadow Bolt finishes casting. This is reported to be fixed in the next patch.

[Malakar]

Improved Drain Soul apparently only works if it does the killing damage, rendering it almost completely useless. It's sucking up two valuable points until my next respec.
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Upon checking my combat log a few times, it seems that this bug is not triggered by the skill not dealing the killing damage. Sometimes when the bug happened, the last damage reported was by drain soul, and sometimes when it worked, drain soul was not the last damage source.

Regardless, this bug is quite common and very annoying. Especially since you still have to deal with the full inventory of soul shards crap if you wish to capitalize on the mana regeneration effect.

Another thing about this is that the mana regeneration effect actually starts with a duration of ~8 seconds, not 10 like the tooltip says. During this time, you're often still in combat due to time delayed updates for up to 3 seconds or so. So that's often times only 5 seconds you can drink for double regen, instead of 10, if it works.

Even if the skill weren't buggy, the only non-annoying way of using it would be with shadowburn, but that restricts your talent point allocation. Maybe if they implement the soulshard bag, and fix the bugs associated with the talent, it'll be a good talent.

[Concillian]

Improved Drain Soul apparently only works if it does the killing damage, rendering it almost completely useless. It's sucking up two valuable points until my next respec.
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It's of questionable use anyway, as you HAVE to be casting when you kill with it, and so invoke the 5 second rule. If it worked properly it would give a free 7.5 seconds worth of mana regen, which is hardly worth 2 talent points, especially considering how few warlocks put ANY effort into spirit. Imp. Life Tap and and Improved Drain Life are both of more use and on the same tier. I just can't see sinking 2 points into a talent that saves you 7.5 seconds of regen IF you use drain soul, which is only like uh, 20% of mobs or so? Yay.

Given the situationality of it I would expect it to give a larger bonus than the priest equivalent, but it doesn't.

[Zarathustra]

Shadowburn will often cost a soul shard to cast without reimbursing the caster. I've checked the combat log multiple times to verify that it is indeed the spell that killed the enemy. No soul shard returned.

[Alram]

Shadowburn will often cost a soul  shard to cast without reimbursing the caster.  I've checked the combat log multiple times to verify that it is indeed the spell that killed the enemy.  No soul shard returned.
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Apparently this is a well known bug, and there is also a well known workaround this bug. The following quote was taken from this thread:
http://www.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=...89&page=1&pp=10

"if you have no empty slots in your main backpack, and all your shards are in other bags, it will return a shard every time."

I haven't tested this, but others report it to be reliable.

[Alram]

I've got a mid 20's warlock into Destruction so far.  Browsing this forum I've heard that Pyroclasm is broken.  Are any other warlock talents that are broken/useless?
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I don't know from personal experience as of yet. I read a couple of posts about the issue at:

http://www.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=...light=pyroclasm

post #1
Pyroclasim works... its awesome. I use it to full advanted in Blackrock Dephs when doing General Angerforge or the Lyceum. With hellfire I tend to eventually stun everything, which is nice when you get a patrol of 15 reservists joining into the fray.

post #2
Pyroclasm = It was changed coming to RETAIL. They found it too powerful to stun on intervals so on RoF and Hellfire, so now its on first wave to chance stun. If YOU ARE claiming it works on all the intervals either they recently changed it back to beta or everyone else is wrong so do tell.

[Malakar]

It's of questionable use anyway, as you HAVE to be casting when you kill with it, and so invoke the 5 second rule.

Wasn't sure about this so I tested it out. It does invoke the 5 second rule, but only at the beginning of your cast, with an additional restriction of no regen allowed while channeling. But if you start it at least 5 seconds before the mob dies, you'll start regening immediately.

If it worked properly it would give a free 7.5 seconds worth of mana regen, which is hardly worth 2 talent points, especially considering how few warlocks put ANY effort into spirit.

True, most warlocks don't go for spirit. But I'm pretty sure it doubles the regen you get from drinking water as well.

If it weren't for the other bugs/annoyances associated with this talent, I'd say it'd be two points well spent.

[Raelynn]

I've got a mid 20's warlock into Destruction so far.  Browsing this forum I've heard that Pyroclasm is broken.  Are any other warlock talents that are broken/useless?
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As far as I've heard, the 4th point into Shadow Mastery is broken. I saved up points to skip the broken part, but apparently it completely gets rid of the bonus to shadow damage instead of adding the additional 2%.