"Your Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life and Seed of Corruption spells also cause the Shadow Embrace effect, which reduces physical damage caused by 5%."

Ok, so is this 5% straight off the mob's attacks, or does armor reduce that further? I've heard both, and I'm not sure if I should take this talent. I would lose 5/5 Fel Concentration to get 5/5 of this, I don't really use FC that much in raids but I do alot in farming, but if 5/5 SE is worth it, it's worth it. I can see it especially being useful on things like Phase 2 Prince, and we wanna start Gruul soon, and it seems like all his damage is physical...

Just curious 1.) How this works and 2.) What people's experiences with it have been. Thanks.

It's generally worth having 1 warlock with it, it's not an insignificant difference. I cannot answer your primar question (Before or after armor) although I'm inclined to believe it's before, just based on how I'd sequence that kind of calcuation. Fel concentration is a mediocre raiding talent at best, and unless you're farming fear immunes or in caves is 100% unecessary for an affliction lock (Hearty PvP'rs excepted).

I don't think it matters if it is before or after armor, since both the talent and armor are % based. Meaning whichever way you calculate it, the damage is the same.

If it's 5% which seems pretty good, why do alot of the top guilds I don't see have it on one of the Warlocks? How come there isn't more chatter about this talent?

Assume a 1000 hit, 65% armor mitigation (no def stance).
5% before armor:
1000x.95=950
950x.35=333

5% after armor:
1000x.35=350
350x.95=333

So no matter which way its applied, its the same effect in the end. This thread is over now for deciding which way it applies.

Ok. Should I start a new thread asking for opinions of this 5 point talent, or should we continue on this one, or is it not appropriate for this forum and should be closed?

Just speculation, but I would think it works similar to the character version of % damage effects.

You get your damage range from weapons plus AP, then it's multiplied by the % increase / reduction to give a final effect.

I think it's nice talent to have, since every bit of damage reduction helps, but really far from necessary - occasions where a tank would've survived if there was a 5% reduction in the killing blow is pretty rare.

And "the reduction in damage adds up" argument really doesn't apply unless your main tank NEVER gets overhealed (which is obviously impossible) - whether the tank is down 5K health or 4.75K health doesn't matter much when he/she will be back to full in the next second or two either way. Yes, it does give healers a bit of leeway, but not so much that you can count on it to make a difference.

As for how it works, already been posted - whether it's calculated pre-AC or post-AC reduction, it's the same.

Every damage reduction does help, and help a lot, even if it wouldn't have made a difference on the "killing blow". Otherwise, there'd be more arguments like "Well going from 12000 armor to 13000 armor wasn't a big deal, I still would've got 2 hit there by the crushing blows" or something silly, which just isn't the case.

However I don't think we have it either, and the best guess as to why would be it gimps the warlock's damage in some way, or takes up a debuff slot that is better used elsewhere. We're already hitting the debuff cap pretty often, and the warlocks can't use Siphon life most of the time.

Decreased healing requirements mean that healers can downrank heals, increasing longevity, or they are able to spend more time outside FSR, increasing mana regen, and thus longevity.

It also means that in some situations you may be able to drop 1 healer and pick up another DPS, ending the encounter quicker.

In many cases you're right that it won't prevent a wipe, but it does enable to min-max better, which is ultimately what these forums specialise in.

Speaking of Shadow Embrace I've noticed one odd thing. Sometimes if I get mind controlled and dot one of my groupmates when I revert to normal sometimes the shadow embrace debuff will stay on the person I dotted permanently. Anyone know what causes this exactly, or is it some serverside script getting confused?

I'll be picking 5/5 up next patch in a slightly off the wall 47/14/0 spec.

Off-topic de-rail, but why the 1 point in Corruption instead of 0/21/40?

1.6 second cast is .1 second slower than global.

To add to the other comments on this so far...

WoW raiding literally hinges on small decisions like this. Did your tank socket 9stam gems instead of 12stam gems? Meh, it's only a couple hundred hp difference tops, when you're talking 19k+ health that probably won't matter. Do you have somebody specced for Improved Demo Shout/CoW? Meh, only a hundred or so AP difference, no big deal. Applying Scorpid Sting/Insect Swarm? Meh, only a few more misses over the course of the fight, not going to make or break things.

Individually each of those choices is probably not going make or break your raid. But the cumulative result (along with many others - Ironshields vs. Stoneshields, keeping Improved TClap/Thunderfury proc on consistently, etc) is absolutely staggering. Yeah, you can probably fudge one or two of them, but fudge too many and it DOES matter.

So if you expect Shadow Embrace to reduce Prince to the DPS of a level 52 nonelite, you need to reign your imagination in somewhat. But it's another feather in your cap or whatever, and if in your judgment you're not losing too much, it's probably worth it.

I believe its because the extra debuff it puts on the target affects the talent "Soul Siphon" so that it increases the effectiveness of Drain Life

Personally I think you're murdering your raid and personal dps without taking 10 in destruction, but
I've been known to be a tad militant about that .


As said: because reducing corruption's cast by 0.4 seconds is more dps than closing out S&F.


Not really. Pick up only one of the two and you have tons of points to spare. I spent the last few months as that spec and the only thing I "gave up" was fel conc (and male.) I could even fit iHoT in with 42 points.

If you're doing Malediction, have another high-playtime lock pick up SE. Done and done.

(of course I abandoned my affliction ways, to help keep ISB up more, and now we only have a 70% raiding lock doing SE for us, but we'll see how things go.)

Another way to look at it:

A warlock not taking shadow embrace is like the tank not taking vitality.

Something I posted on the official forums.

Pretty sure the maths was right, I was coffee/sleep deprived when I did it. I didn't include the way it scales with armour, and didn't include things like Defensive Stance etc. It's still vaguely relevant as a back-of-the-envelope calculation though.

Wasn't it determined pre-TBC that there was a cap on the amount of damage you could reduce a raid boss's damage outupt? IIRC, it was something like 30%, meaning anything more than that was simply ignored in the calculation and was "wasted." However, I believe this was tied to the mob's AP reduction; it was based on the way raid bosses had their physical damage calculated as a multiple of a reduced AP, rather than as them having a straight 10k AP. This is why you never had 5 hunters bringing pets that spammed Screech (the debuff stacks) or had warlocks put up Curse of Weakness, because one warrior with Improved Demoralizing Shout singlehandedly hit the physical damage reduction cap.

Of course, my memory could be off.

And yet many many guilds who are at the top edge of TBC raiding don't have Shadow Embrace. SO umm..

It is useful, but seeing how many guilds don't have warlocks with it then don't assume you need it. Unless you have a warlock who has a spec that can afford it then I wouldn't worry too much.

Assuming it stacks with everything else (and I would assume it does) 5% less damage taken is 5% less damage taken. On an encounter without magic damage that's equivalent to 5% more health on the tank (except better because it reduces the healing required). If your tank has 20k hit points it's another 1k hit points.

If a lot of high progression raiding guilds lack a warlock specced to it I would guess it either doesn't stack for some reason or is simply overlooked. The effect against a pure physical damage boss with a flasked and raid-buffed tank is another 2/3 of a flask if it works as the text seems to indicate though.