Draele

Definitely. I had always seen Affliction and Destruction thematically as very contrasting specs that play very differently and have little in common. Demonology being the generalist of sorts- Obviously having more emphasis on the demons, but functioning and scaling as more of an overall stat booster while using both Affliction and Destruction spells extensively, IE putting more muscle behind they spells they do have, rather than necessarily adding to their repertoire as much as the other two.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

Anedris

A channeled filler that acts more or less as a DoT... mind flay, in other words. (And warning: it will have horrible coefficient.)

I don't disagree with the proposal, but it's more or less been talked to death elsewhere.

 

Lhivera

Perhaps a channeled spell that, while maintained, increases the damage dealt by magic-based DOT effects currently on the target? By affecting all DOTs, it could be tuned with a relatively low percentage increase, thus not overpowering it for PvP, but with the cumulative effect of DOTs from a raid group amplified, it could be a valid raid DPS ability.

 

Phonebooth

Ignore Post

 

glowacks

Affliction desperately needs a via "affliction" filler - either some sort of channeled spell similar to drains, a staskable or extremely short term DoT, or a spammable DD that relates to affliction somehow. A suggestion for each of these as the Affliction 51 point talent and thus only usable by deep Affliction:

1) A channeled Life Drain that only heals for 10% of the life but does quite a bit more damage. Have it affected by Soul Siphon and Fel Concentration (even if no one takes the latter) and out damage Shadow Bolt by a decent margin.

2) A stacking DoT with a 3 second cast time and shortish cooldown (6-15 seconds) that does very minimal damage per application, but can stack up to whatever the limit is technologically. This ability seems very in flavor with the whole affliction ideology of slowly killing things off, and is sorta a partner to Curse of Agony. Without the cooldown it would probably just be spammed as fast as possible to get it to ramp up at the expense of other DoTs; with the cooldown you'll cast far, far fewer Shadow Bolts.

3)"Deathbloom" - similar to above, but only stacking a set number of times and basically mimicking Lifebloom. I much prefer the above option, as this seems far too derivative and would likely lead to plenty of Shadow Bolting as well.

4)A spammable DD that does damage based on the number of affliction effects on the target. The scaling must encourage the warlock to keep all of his DoTs up: scaling linearly with a 0 intercept (unlike Soul Siphon) would be an option, but to get it to do decent damage with just one warlock's effects it might be better raid DPS for even Destro Warlocks to put up DoTs. It could scale similarly to Soul Siphon but that may make the spell better DPS when just ignoring DoTs. Perhaps the best option there would just be to have it only scale based on the Warlock's own effects.

So there's quite a few things Blizzard could do just as a 51 point talent to not have the spec rely on Shadowbolt for a large amount of its damage and there's also a possibility that stuff could be done to improve Drain Life or Soul themselves so that they'd be able to fill the necessary role.

 

Draele

If we're looking for a filler spell they could just remove the Shadowbolt/Shadowburn portion of Death's Embrace and add: Increases the damage of your Drain Life by 33/66/100% while at full health. Essentially converting the overheal into damage.

That being said we may want to move this discussion over to the Warlock thread before we annoy the non Warlocks =P

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

ShadowBinder

A shadow version of Arcane Missles with some tie in to the number of DoTs on the target (either boosting the channeled spell or boosting the DoTs on the target) would get my vote.

The spell would be pretty blah without DoTs, but a better option than SB with.

And since it would be affected by crit it would scale also.

 

Anaram

This is getting quite off-topic but here's a suggestion:

Shadow version of arcane missiles. Critical strike damage bonus increased by 40% for each of your affliction effects on the target. With corruption, CoA, UA, Siphon Life and Shadow Embrace that would come to 200% critical strike damage bonus, resulting in crits doing 250% normal damage - should be enough to make crit rating much better for the spec.

 

Anedris

Are shadow missiles really thematically affliction though? The initial impetus was to let affliction get by without casting destro spells (shadowbolts), and shadow missiles seems rather similar to shadowbolt spam.

I really like this idea. Alternatively it could affect only the warlock's own DoTs but do so to a much greater degree. Because it would be channelled it shouldn't be too powerful in PvP, since it would scream "lockout my shadow school now!" to any nearby interrupter.

 

Valerys

Would there be any negatives to just giving ALL paladins a Str-spell dmg conversion as a base class ability?

Holydins would be able to wear melee plate (tank or dps) and have their heals scale from it.
Protadins would be able to wear tank plate and have their threat scale from the str on it.
Retadins would still wear melee dps plate and have their secondary damage abilities and to some extent heals scale from it.

The only possible problem I see is that retadin heals might become too good, but that could be solved by making the base scale be fairly low, and giving the Holy tree an additional talent to scale the healing higher than normal.

 

Unity

I don't think Ret getting better healing from it's DPS gear is a bad thing (whether that DPS gear is physical, caster or any combination). All Priests and some Druids and Shaman gain healing power from their damage gear already.

 

• Chicken

Actually with the change to spell power instead of the separated +healing and +damage/healing stats all Priests and Shamans will definitely be getting fairly good healing power from their gear. For Enhancement Shamans [Mental Quickness] would provide a larger amount of increase to heals than now, while for Priests and the other Shaman specs the way they get it is pretty obvious. Druids technically have as well, though unlike Shamans I don't believe [Nurturing Instinct] is a normal talent to take. Both those talents are definitely going to be enhanced by the change to spell power though, as I believe Blizzard's plan was to increase healing spell coefficients.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Celebrimor

The ultimate affliction filler would be a top tier talent:

Destructive drain (1/5)
Drain life deals 12% (60%) more damage if you are at full health.

 

Phonebooth

Corrupting Shadows

Links the target to your shadow corrupting it for XXX damage every second, damage increased by XX% per affliction dot afflicting the target

Shadow damage

Same Channeling time as Drain life

Affected by fel concentration

Talent near the bottom of the tree that if it lasts its full duration it explodes the targets shadow doing XXX instant damage

 

Vagabond

Heh, and here's where we Afflict locks start to squabble :P.

Personally, Drain life is already a solid spell, I would rather monkey with our other, weaker Drain. Drain soul ranks 2 and above are worthless and this just isn't right.

They could make talent and/or update the spell so that at max rank one or more of these:

-Drain soul has a shorter channel but same dot ticks. (Warlock Mindflay)
-Drain soul gets XXX% damage boost per affliction spell on target.
-Drain soul deals current damage, but boosts all your other Dot ticks by XXX% damage.

Any of these would turn this into our filler. They would also flood us with shards, which isn't actually a bad thing. A few UI'less folks would complain about no bag space; but just like almost all of us run DoT timers of some sort, Shard counter/mover/deleter UI bits are also pretty standard tool.

 

Douglas

Actually, what might be neat is some way to tie those increased shards into the spell rotation. I'm thinking like some sort of spell that does something useful related to debuffs but which costs a shard. Interleaving one spell that produces a shard with a second spell that consumes a shard might be fun, a sort of afflictionesque Shadowburn.

Hm... how about... how about a spell that increases the duration of all your debuffs and DOTs on the target at the cost of a shard? Hm, yes, and have it add to the tail end of their durations, so that Curse of Agony spends more time ticking at full strength... and tune things so that an Amplified Curse of Agony combined with sustained ticking at full strength was more appealing than Curse of Doom in many situations. Or... hm, maybe the spell also causes Doom and Seed to trigger early?

 

Wednesday

Not feasible for boss rotations as the mob actually has to die for any spell which returns a shard to do so.

Best idea I've seen here (imo obviously) is the channeled 'affliction arcane missiles' type spell. Add an effect which serves as an improved SB for dots only and you give dots scaling with crit without altering dot mechanics in any way. Since it would be channeled it would also improve Affliction scaling with haste gear as well.

 

Denogran

I think more shard usage is definitely a bad thing. Take a boss like Brutallus with very little trash in front of it. Even bringing in 3 bags of trash, 4 hours of wiping will empty a warlock's shards rather quickly, with just soulstones, healthstones and pets. Add in constant shard use for an affliction lock and you're going to be empty fast.

Unless you made some way of getting shards without the actual death of mobs, which I don't think makes a lot of logical sense (you get the shard from the soul of the creature you killed).

 

◊ Regen

Can easily design a spell / talents that are either "When this spell finishes casting (or any flavour of conditions you want) you get x soul shard(s)" or "Curse of Agony periodic damage has a 20% chance to give you a soul shard". Don't limit yourself to the mechanics of one spell (Drain Soul).

EDIT: The main problem with this is the fact bosses would have to more than one soul, perhaps a soul shard is literally only a fraction of a soul which would counter this argument.

 

◊ zirky

I would be content if they just did away with the whole notion of Soul Shards. They serve zero purpose any more. I wasn't really playing my warlock much when they mattered, but from a raiding and pvp perspective, they are a pain in the ass to manage. I just don't see the point. I feel the same about ranged ammo.

 

• Chicken

Don't forget weapon skills while you're at it.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

rayijin

Pre-TBC, when shards were a huge, glaring issue as opposed to a mere annoyance, there were many, many solutions presented, including the "lore" problem.

The bottom line is, shards have never served a purpose and never will.

If warlocks are balanced as if they have shards, then they will be weak without them. If they are balanced around not having shards, then they are overpowered with them. However, the former has always been the truth.

They are the only type of reagent critical to a class that cannot be replenished at a vendor. In addition, the fact that they are used in arena (as of the last time I played a warlock in arena - 2.3) means warlocks are the only class that has to onerously go out and farm mobs between matches (in other words, a warlock cannot farm for a few hours and then have enough shards to last him months of arena matches - as all other classes are able to do with gold).

Pre-TBC, more specifically when MC/BWL were cutting edge, it was easily possible for a warlock to go through sixty shards in an hour or two of attempts on a new boss just through healhstones, not to mention summons (no meeting stones back then, 40 man raids, hard-to-reach zones). This was a half hour of farming a day in addition to consumables.

Not surprisingly, warlocks were the least played class.

While soulwells, pets ressing in BGs and shard costs being removed in the *preparation only* area of arenas are all nice improvements that lower the tedium/hassle of shards, the fact that it is still necessary to go out of one's way to farm them DAILY for even one aspect of the game (arena) is utter bullshit. The fact that a warlock can run out of shards on a raid, leading to a holdup of the entire raid is utter bullshit. Shards are utter bullshit.

I hope Blizzard takes another look at this "solved" issue and finally removes this unfun and unnecessarily punishing mechanic from the game.

 

Nezralix

They like these sorts of things because they add small elements of flavor/distinction to a class; something that makes a hunter feel like a hunter and not a ranged rogue, or a warlock seem different than a mage. It's a subtle effect, but I think it does actually influence that effect.

The trick just making it be sensible level of effort, and not an annoying burden.

On the other hand, leveling weapon skill is just plain old annoying. If they don't get rid of it altogether, they must realize that it needs to be *much, much* faster.

 

Katria

I find these two comments really amusing...one could apply your "flavor" reasoning to weapon skills...it makes a bow hunter seem different from a gun hunter, they even use different ammo. Sure you could level up the skills to use all different ranged weapons, but that's the difference between a hunter who has earned his versatility vs. one who sticks to one weapon type.

For the record, I think both weapon skill and bags of soul shards are unnecessary pains for players, it just seems to be difficult to justify one pain being "flavorful" and the other not.

Edit: besides, it looks like farming for shards is something locks spend a lot of time doing on a regular basis. Leveling weapon skill is painful, but it isn't *that* slow (in my experience), and I'm sure takes up less time in a character's life than farming shards on a lock.

I wonder if inscriptions will mostly solve the soul shard problem...one of the proposed minor inscriptions would remove the reagent cost of a spell. Slapping that on a couple spells that use soul shards would cut the problem down dramatically. And from what I understand, the minor inscriptions are intended to be pretty cosmetic, so you won't be losing out on more valuable inscriptions, raid-wise.

 

◊ zirky

When I am dpsing a boss in a raid, I could care less about flavor. I'm watching my curse timer (dots if I am affliction) and trying to stay awake in between while spamming shadow bolt. In pvp, I'm concerning myself with dotting everything that moves and generally (in arena) running for my life from rogues and warriors. The only spell that in the heat of the moment uses shards is Shadow Burn, maybe a Fel Dom of my currently dead pet.

I guess the point that I am trying to make is that during the actual play of the class, shards matter for shit. In the down time they are just annoying as all hell. If I want flavor or zazz in my down time, I have noncombat pets.

Also, Chicken, you are so correct. I remeber when I got the 1h mace to tank with off of Razorgore way back when just starting BWL and realized on the very next pull that I apparently had trained the skill, but never actually used a 1h mace before.

Edit: The point I was originally trying to make is, let's not get all crazy and make soul shards that much more annoying to have to deal with.