Warning: curl_close(): 39 is not a valid cURL handle resource in /includes/class_vurl.php on line 425 Haste & DoTs/HoTs, Scaling Mechanisms, etc - Elitist Jerks
Ultimately the issue of Haste effecting DoT/HoT tick speed was brought up as even with the GCD change Haste is still more attractive to nuker classes and DoT/HoT specs get minimal benefit. An issue since Affliction, Resto, and Shadow essentially stack the hell out of +DMG, with items exclusively stacking these stats being rare, and the itemization formula penalizing items for doing so. Haste appears to be more attractive than before on already best-in-slot items but really does not present itself to be a stack one would actively look for and doesn't "break open" itemization on these specs that are quite challenged in the endgame scaling department.
Some notable quotes from the other thread:
Originally Posted by Essarhaddon
Blizzard can't realistically reduce the duration of DoTs as it will make Affliction warlocks very powerful in PvE at least (and probably PvP as well).
Against a raid target an affliction warlocks Corruption is effectively an instant cast nuke with about 10 damage per mana that does 3.5k damage and can't crit, Unstable is slightly less effecicent. These are far and away the most powerful mana-efficient damage sources in the game. If the duration of the DoT were lessened it would let warlocks spend more of their casting time casting these spells. So not only would affliction warlock DPS go up, as the DoTs have huge damage per casting time, but their damage per mana would also go up. This is in essence a double bonus for haste for an affliction warlock. For a nuking mage DPS goes up, but DPM stays the same as they don't havea mix of spells to cast (or the mix isn't changed by haste really).
I would love this (as an affliction warlock myself) but it would probably be too powerful. The current solution is not one I expected but is one that works reasonably well. An affliction warlock still gets about 40% of their DPS from shadowbolts so haste is directly beneficial for that and now their is some bonus on everythign else as well. Haste still won't be as good as +spell power but it won't be quite so far off.
Originally Posted by Draele
vs. a Mage or Destrolock 1% Haste directly corresponds to 1% more damage(of course with 1% more mana usage)
Affliction Locks in fact will gain less benefit from Haste than Destruction even with the GCD change. Sure, it might open up 1 more Shadowbolt in the rotation, but shadowbolt is *not* the strong suite, nor the purpose of Affliction. 1% Haste needs to speed up DoT ticking speed by 1%.
Ultimately one of four things need to occur to fix Affliction endgame itemization:
1) Haste effects instant spells more than it does cast-time spells. 3% GCD reduction per 1% haste.
2) 1% Haste effects the tick speed of DoTs/HoTs by 1%. This is by far the most logical solution.
3) Crit effects DoTs in some manner. Just another option, not necessarily fond of this one.
4) The penalty for "stacking one stat" in the ilevel formula is removed. More items that *do* stack +DMG are made available and those that do are not penalized for sticking to just 1 stat. We continue to look for the same gear we look for now but can find it more easily and they will be slightly better with the change to the formula.
Originally Posted by Kyth
The itemization model seems to be largely designed around classes who benefit from multiple stats. Take a look at melee, they actually get something out of more than one stat. And mages (seemingly the class used in all caster design/balancing) also can make use of more than one stat.
From that perspective, it's a "good" thing to encourage people to develop multiple areas of their characters. "When Game Design Goes Wrong" happens when you don't carry that philosophy through and find different ways for every class/spec to work within your design (druid, spriest, affliction lock.)
I was initially wondering if this was Blizzard trying to create more variety in the caster stats, so we're more like the melee where some prefer crit/dmg, some prefer dmg/haste. But that really doesn't work since mages benefit from everything, and warlocks (even destruction ones) are dmg/haste, so there's not a clear itemization separation.
I think Blizzard is moving in the right direction since I doubt they will change how item budgets work, but that means serious thinking about how lifetap scales (and what that does within the itemization context) and how dots and channeled spells both work.
Especially when, based on the talents, the clear push from Blizzard is towards affliction as our raiding tree, yet the game doesn't support it.
(semi in reference to another thread with a post by a mage asking, essentially, who cares if warlocks can't have two trees)
While few outside of the warlock ranks mourn the position that affliction is in right now, it's very frustrating to have rolled a dotting class and be a shadow mage yet again due to itemization, class design, and the debuff limit. (not to mention that affliction lags more behind destruction than frost lags behind fire.)
Shadow priests are in the same boat.
No class should be consigned to zero gear progression no matter how "overpowered" anyone feels they are in pve (or, god help us, pvp.) If the class is truly overpowered, then nerf the base class (or avoid doing stupid shit like frozen shadoweave in the first place.) It's unfun to raid for 12 months and gain essentially 100-150 +dmg while everyone else is getting significant power gains. Character growth is fun, and gear is the only way it's done in the game.
I went destruction when we were regularly hitting 40 debuffs and I got a look at the end-game gear sets and realized that, no matter how annoyed I was at not being able to play a "warlock", I was more annoyed at debuff limits and lack of character progression.
Originally Posted by seminarca
Fully agree with that point, and although you mentioned Druids from a Resto POV, Ferals have similar issues. Our #1 DPS stat is Agility, followed by Strength and AP. Crit Rating (almost the same % ratio as agility assuming Kings, and no bonus AP) / Haste Rating (our white damage comprises relatively much less of our total dps, no dual wield) / APen (Rip, a bleed effect, is a decent portion of our dps and ignores armor) / Hit Rating (it's trivial to cap the 9% for single wield) aren't "optimum" stats for us. But due to the way itemization formulas work, stacking singular stats has severe diminishing returns from a budget perspective. It was only in S3 that Blizzard starting breaking "traditional" itemization rules, which resulted in stuff like [Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers] (Agility and Crit Rating on the same item) which are actually very good for us. Even though Crit Rating itself isn't as good as Agility, stacking more Agility on that item would yield a lower amount of added stats over the current two different ones.
In contrast, dual wield classes benefit from Hit Rating well beyond the 9% specials cap, they also benefit greatly from Haste Rating because of dual wield and lots of proc stuff. APen is equally far more valuable (less for Enh Shamans I guess, due to shocks).
Anyway, this isn't meant to sound like a whine, just that due to how itemization in this game works, benefitting from multiple stats is to one's benefit. The S3+ breaking of itemization taboos is a Good Thing. But I'm not sure how this could be adapted for Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests without further boosting Destruction (the one thing that came to mind was generic Spell Damage and Shadow Damage on the same item). Or else we're dealing with major-ish mechanic changes.
Originally Posted by Kyth
Naw. You can fix spriests and destruction warlocks easily by giving them deep talents to convert crit to +dmg (sort of like how locks already have a talent to remove spirit and gain stamina.)
Adding shadow onto gear with +dmg on it already would overpower destruction warlocks, which is very much not something that needs to happen, that spec is more than fine.
I'm not sure if the "right" solution is what an earlier poster suggested, changing the budget, or if it's better by continuing to massage specific classes. Even though the budgeting change seems a more correct general change, my gut says they're better off continuing to do things like feral AP, bonus AC, talents to switch crit to dmg, adding +dmg to heal gear, etc., and just expand that to other problem areas.
Some casters get more out of +dmg because they have more multipliers in their trees, but some get a free 10% +sphit which means they can be a lot freer with their gear choices. Variety is good, even if it doesn't produce the 100% exact same power in every class as players sometimes think they want.
For 99% of the guilds out there, the variance in meters is skill, not class choice/power. Look at some of the top WWS parses of the top guilds and you see classes doing pretty similar dps (with the exception of the dotters) when you take a variety of fights into your sample.
I don't think any of the classes are designed for balance, more, say, "massaged" into balance via itemization and talent manipulations.
This has the advantage of making the classes more differentiated (which is good), and also allows different classes more prominence in different tiers of content (not necessarily good or bad, but it does happen since they scale differently.) What they need to avoid is extremely unidimensional classes like affllock/spriest.
I'm curious if 2.4 will bring even more melee prominence (as I believe rogues are gaining dps faster than any other class) via gear upgrades.
Originally Posted by Jebraltar
Removing diminishing returns from items would make for fascinating tanking itemization. Exactly enough defense to hit uncrittable with nothing besides Stamina stacked on items? Think about what Solid Stars of Elune do for itemization, except on a bigger scale.
The problem isn't that the system punishes you for stacking one stat exclusively, the problem is how gems interact with that and the fact that some specs just don't scale properly with more than one or two stats.
Regarding spell haste and Shadow Priests:
Preliminary theorycrafting suggests that the spell haste change even for a relatively DoT-heavy class turns spell haste gear into best-in-slot in comparison to every similar ilevel item, and even makes items of significantly lower ilevel comparable to their high end counterparts. The new badge gear is clocking in at just under T6 level, and ZA gear is best in slot where T6 failed to provide a meaningful upgrade (Primarily neck slot).
If said calculations are correct, spell haste is definitely not underperforming for shadow priests after the change.
Affliction locks are obviously more DoT-dependant than shadow priests, but the GCD change is huge none the less.
(Details regarding the theorycrafting can be found at shadowpriest.com)
That said, it appears mathematically obvious that any class relying on DoTs will have less use of haste than others. So if spell haste seems slightly overpowered (theoretically) for shadow priests after the change, does that mean it is even more overpowered for those classes that can take full effect? Or is it simply a result of shadow priests finally getting a second stat that actually does something, thus allowing us to take advantage of more of ilevel itemization points? I'm leaning towards the second, but the first might be true as well.
That said, it appears mathematically obvious that any class relying on DoTs will have less use of haste than others. So if spell haste seems slightly overpowered (theoretically) for shadow priests after the change, does that mean it is even more overpowered for those classes that can take full effect? Or is it simply a result of shadow priests finally getting a second stat that actually does something, thus allowing us to take advantage of more of ilevel itemization points? I'm leaning towards the second, but the first might be true as well.
Could be. Ultimately we'll have to wait for the spreadsheets to come out before we can make any hard item vs item comparisons. Hey, maybe it will work out just right and instants will get slightly more than 1% boost off 15.7 Haste and bring it right up to the same effectiveness as a straight nuker might find it.
Based on my understanding of the shadow priest theorycraft, haste rating is now simply equal in value to spelldamage, which makes gear featuring haste superior to straight spelldamage gear due to the itemization formula. If the stacking penalty was gone, haste would probably get dropped again as spelldamage improves DPS and DPM, while haste improves only DPS.
If the patch goes live, Spellhaste will have its impact on DoT-Classes.
Mek is pretty right that, with the current math made for 2.4, Spellhaste will equal Spelldamage in terms of DPS for shadowpriests and warlocks.
Spellhaste:
- boosts channeling casts ie Mindflay, Drain Life.
- boosts Fillerspells for Affliction-warlocks ie Shadowbolt.
- reduces the impact of pushback mechanics.
- will lower the gcd of instants and 1,5s casts in Patch 2.4, giving you simply more time to dps with fillers and nukes.
Most DoT-Casters have to resort their equipment as ZA-gear and gear from badges will play a major role in endgame itemisation.
Get your Spellhaste gear as soon as possible, its not that expensive - dkp-wise - nowadays.
Basically, it explains why dots should be affected by haste and crit. And I agree with his point. Although, sadly, it does point out how dot scaling would need to be totally redone to make this work. And yes, it is a long read. You might find something worthwhile to quote in it.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Interesting posts, although the mage making them is assuming warlocks regen mana without the use of lifetap, working more on a purely passive model of mana regen like mages, leading to statements that melee have to pause dps to regen energy but casters all have passive regen via mp5 so haste is better for us.
All the +dmg I get increases my equivalent of the energy tick rate, but my haste decreases it.
Without the existance of shadow priests to provide passive mana regen (not only because we can't provide our 10% shadoweaving while mages have their own 15% scorch), I don't think there would be as much angst over warlock dps, and more of us would probably be affliction for survivability.
Melee used to argue pre-tbc that they should have higher dps because they were a bigger heal burden, but the last time I looked, I required as much or more healing than the melee did on all the fights we were doing at the time (early/mid T6 I think.)
I do agree with his posts that haste should affect dot/hot tick speedups as well. Just, as I said in the other thread, my random guess is they were concerned about pvp implications.
DoTs already have deliberately nerfed scalings due to the pvp outcries between 2.0 and TBC launch, which feeds into part of affliction's scaling issues.
I also think that if his suggestions were taken 100%, the game would be far more boring.
Setting pvp aside for a moment, the strength and interest of a game is in part having complex mechanics where A is better for class X and B is better for class Y, and certain talents rise and fall in prominence as gear, fights, and spells/abilities change.
I don't ever see it mentioned but how does Dark Pact tie into a Aff lock mana regen? I know a few of our Aff locks on our first few Council kills had something stupid like 25k+ mana returned from Dark Pact.
But for the most part I do agree, one of the biggest changes would be to somehow tie Crit into Dots, but like Manly mentioned it would require a total rework of the Dot (and Hots). Someone else had mentioned having a 'crit' Dot do the same damage in 75% of the time or something, but I imagine that would be a total pain in the ass to keep track of with 2-4 dots going at once.
Originally Posted by Sebudai
Addons aren't a crutch, they're tools to be abused by skilled players to increase performance. Like a carpenter using a hammer, a fisherman using a lure, or Xi using curse words.
I don't ever see it mentioned but how does Dark Pact tie into a Aff lock mana regen? I know a few of our Aff locks on our first few Council kills had something stupid like 25k+ mana returned from Dark Pact.
But for the most part I do agree, one of the biggest changes would be to somehow tie Crit into Dots, but like Manly mentioned it would require a total rework of the Dot (and Hots)
1% crit = .5% increase to DoT damage.
Readjust(lower) coefficients to keep same overall DoT damage in ~t5 level gear.
There, DoTs aren't as OP in kara gear and not as weak in t6.
I don't ever see it mentioned but how does Dark Pact tie into a Aff lock mana regen? I know a few of our Aff locks on our first few Council kills had something stupid like 25k+ mana returned from Dark Pact.
This is gonna get me shot on this board for not posting he exact coefficients, but: think of it as the same as lifetap, but you don't lose health and you gain threat equal to half the mana returned.
It doesn't affect their sustainability versus other specs.
Improved lifetap, however, does (7 points into affliction), since you get back 20% more mana on each tap.
I can't imagine a time when more than 3 or possibly 4 rolling stacks of lifebloom would be necessary, or even efficient, given that you rarely have that many (easily accessible) targets taking constant damage, and requiring that much constant throughput. In addition, the theory that at 1.0 GCD you could roll 6 stacks seems correct, but the druid would require significant mana support for that, considering he/she would be 1) casting probably near twice as many spells as currently, and 2) rarely does spell haste gear include any significant source of regen. It just doesn't make any sense in today's raid game.
That said, haste could have an interesting effect on the viability of tree druids and raid healing on spread-out fights. A single lifebloom is ludicrously efficient, healing upwards of 4k damage or more in full T6 gear, for the piddly cost of 170ish? mana. That is just disgustingly efficient. Spread-out fights with significant raid-wide damage (Naj'entus for instance, disregarding its already trivial nature) is the one thing that limits the effectiveness of chain heal and circle of healing, the two kings of raid healing. I'd like to see what a tree druid could do in this scenario given spell haste, and mana support (spriest, innervates, whatever).
1% crit = .5% increase to DoT damage.
Readjust(lower) coefficients to keep same overall DoT damage in ~t5 level gear.
There, DoTs aren't as OP in kara gear and not as weak in t6.
I don't think lowering the coefficient for our DoTs is the way to go. We are still the only class I think that suffers lower coefficients to DoTs than what others get. I'd prefer the crit rating adding to our spell damage. Something along the lines of a talent that would increase our spell dmg for our crit_rating*coefficient. Coefficient being about 50% so 100 crit rating would give you an extra 50 spell dmg.
For haste though, I would like it to affect DoT duration rather than the GCD.
I don't think lowering the coefficient for our DoTs is the way to go. We are still the only class I think that suffers lower coefficients to DoTs than what others get. I'd prefer the crit rating adding to our spell damage. Something along the lines of a talent that would increase our spell dmg for our crit_rating*coefficient. Coefficient being about 50% so 100 crit rating would give you an extra 50 spell dmg.
For haste though, I would like it to affect DoT duration rather than the GCD.
If it doesn't affect both then it will cause some problems with cycles being weird, since dot durations are not going to be an integer multiple of the dot cast time. If everything is time shrinked by the same % then cycles will be unaffected; they will be only faster.
Adding crit rating to spell damage seems awfully inelegant and hard to balance... Unless you remove the crit-as-crit, you make that talent potentially superpowered for nuker locks, but if you remove it as crit that means that you have to put it at an even higher conversion ratio to make crit comparably valuable for people... and I don't know that Locks with over 2k +damage are what Blizzard wants...
People are all talking about how you'd like haste to effect dot duration, what about allowing crit to do it? That is, allow dots to crit, and allow critical dots to tick out their full damage in 50% to 75% of the time of a normal dot.
Everything doesn't have to scale equally well, but the Affliction warlock problem now is that there is nothing that scales for Afflction warlocks better than it does Destruction.
Spellpower = about the same, destruction getting 106% on shadow bolts balances out the DoTs getting 100-130ish%
Crit and Haste = scale great for Destruction and poorly for Affliction.
So even making Haste better for affliction probably won't really turn things around from a pure DPS point of view. The 4pc T6 set bonus is just icing on the cake as again it scales much better for destruction than affliction. Not sure what the solution is actually, part of the problem is the Demonic Sacrafice is more +shadow than Shadow Mastery. Really warlocks need 2 or 3 different gear sets with different set bonuses.
The fixes are tricky as you risk upsetting PvP balance and early non-endgame warlock balance when Affliction is solid to very good. The big solution may have to wait for WotLK, which probably involves adding some new spells. Hopefully they can do a better job than Incinerate which was supposed to make Fire a viable damage source for warlocks I imagine...
Just as Essarhaddon stated, changes such as these, while very welcome at end-game levels, could potentially cause severe imbalances in lower end content.
It strikes me, for these changes to be added, that steps would definitely be required to balance lower end content, but that could again under-power high-end, and it would all "overpower" Afflocks from a PvP aspect.
Sadly, Blizzard focuses greatly on PvP along with PvE, and especially with the Season 3 gear, high end content comes into play with both.
It really reminds me of the issues with Hemo shortly after the initial buffing in 2.2. Where Hemo, with no talents to boost it, was averaging more damage per hit, and more damage per energy, than Sinister Strike with four talents (Improved Sinister Strike, Aggression, Surprise Attacks, and Lethality.)
What strikes me as odd, however, is that in PvP, there are two sets of warlock arena/battlegrounds gear. One tailored to heavy Destro, the other to a DoT build. While in PvE, there's only one set.
Changing it so there are two sets of warlock PvE set gear would be a very quick fix to this.
While playing my warlock that I recently hit 70 with, I did try out Affliction, and while being harder than pure shadowbolt spam, it is just that much more fun to play.
It really does sadden me that such an integral part of the warlock (and subsequently Spriest and Resto druid)
As a tree druid, this is somewhat encouraging....I suppose. A few post up someone theorized keeping a larger number of LB stacks up with the GCD reduction achieved through haste but even then, its hard to imagine a situation where you will have 5-6 targets taking sustained damage. It would in theory allow you to cast more spells and drop rejuvs on more players before renewing a stack here or there but even so, I still don't see a compelling reason to stack it. At most, there may be sweet spots where you can fit one more cast in but it won't be absolute because in general, you're bound to the LB timer and keeping up stacks is an absurdly efficient way to heal.
Its a little dissapointing to see alot of haste healing gear that represents a decent upgrade in one dimension but the haste is just not attractive enough to drop something else. Mainly thinking of ZA drops here like the neck that drops from the Eagle. I really have not reviewed T6 level drops much as I am not there yet, but I would expect healing leather to stay away from haste. The few Dreamstaters out there can pick it up via trinkets, rings, necks, etc.
Regarding warlocks, let's keep in mind that there are two problems: inter-class/inter-spec damage scaling, and intra-spec gear scaling.
Regarding inter-spec scaling, the problem lies not just in affliction, but also with destruction's multipliers, which are out of line with the other ranged casting classes. I'm not sure why one would even consider balancing affliction against a spec that is arguably overtuned right now, doesn't provide malediction, shadow embrace, blood pact, and requires more raid maintenance due to a lack of dark pact.
Regarding gear scaling, I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for a particular spec (especially one with a different play style from the alternative) to offer distorted and often non-existent gear upgrade potential. Personally, I would be happy to see improved shadow bolt made into an affliction talent, removing or altering the charge aspect of it. This would make crit a very valuable stat for affliction locks while tempering the urge to prod all but one lock into respeccing destro.
Page 8 goes into more detail including a list of items to help attain the 242 haste needed assuming 100 ms latency. Excerpts from the discussion:
Originally Posted by giansm
The implications of 5 GCDs per cycle goes beyond lifeblooming 5 targets. It also lets you lifebloom four while rejuvenating two (Council), or keep up lifebloom+rejuv on three (Bloodboil, Shahraz).
Assuming haste reduces the GCD using the same formula as it does for regular casts, the GCD would be:
GCD with haste = 2355 / ( H + 1570 ),
where H is your haste rating. This works out to a 1.5s GCD with zero haste and a 1s GCD with 785 haste. I'm not exactly sure how latency affects instant casts, but assuming it adds a single-latency delay between each one, then the GCD required to get off five casts is:
GCD needed = (7 - L*5)/5 = 7/5 - L = 1.4 - L,
where L is your latency in seconds. This means to achieve five casts per cycle with no lag requires 113 haste rating. With 100 ms, you need 242 haste rating. With 150 ms, 314 haste rating. With 200 ms, 393 haste rating.
There aren't that many haste items available to druids. The list, from best to worst (in terms of the haste vs heal tradeoff) is basically:
[Dark Blessing] which replaces any of various weapon choices
If the assumption about latency is correct, it's difficult to get to even the 242 haste required for a 5-GCD 100ms latency cycle (you would need weapon + 2x ring + gloves + neck + cloak + bracers + belt). If you managed to do this, the loss in +healing would be minimal, somewhere around 30 or 40 +healing depending on how you gemmed things. This is mostly due to the high +healing on the haste gloves, rings, and neck. There would be a substantial loss of both mp5 and spirit, somewhere around 80-100 spirit and 40-50 mp5. If you could amass the gear it would probably be worth it on fights with 3 or more tanks, and definitely be worth it on fights with 4-5 tanks, assuming you could overcome the mana problem.
I don't ever see it mentioned but how does Dark Pact tie into a Aff lock mana regen? I know a few of our Aff locks on our first few Council kills had something stupid like 25k+ mana returned from Dark Pact.
But for the most part I do agree, one of the biggest changes would be to somehow tie Crit into Dots, but like Manly mentioned it would require a total rework of the Dot (and Hots). Someone else had mentioned having a 'crit' Dot do the same damage in 75% of the time or something, but I imagine that would be a total pain in the ass to keep track of with 2-4 dots going at once.
Sadly, it doesn't, except for the fact you don't lose health (useful on Council). I would like to see a change to Dark Pact to make it better than Lifetap.
Regarding warlocks, let's keep in mind that there are two problems: inter-class/inter-spec damage scaling, and intra-spec gear scaling.
Regarding inter-spec scaling, the problem lies not just in affliction, but also with destruction's multipliers, which are out of line with the other ranged casting classes. I'm not sure why one would even consider balancing affliction against a spec that is arguably overtuned right now, doesn't provide malediction, shadow embrace, blood pact, and requires more raid maintenance due to a lack of dark pact.
Regarding gear scaling, I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for a particular spec (especially one with a different play style from the alternative) to offer distorted and often non-existent gear upgrade potential. Personally, I would be happy to see improved shadow bolt made into an affliction talent, removing or altering the charge aspect of it. This would make crit a very valuable stat for affliction locks while tempering the urge to prod all but one lock into respeccing destro.
Is there any truly competitive warlock DPS spec at the high end other than 21/40 now? The danger with just nerfing 21/40 is that you wind up with no truly competitive warlock DPS specs. You can get all the warlock utility you need from one affliction spec...
Part of the issue is Demonic Sacrafice actually, if that wasn't there and Destruction had slightly better internal scaling, by making Incinerate better for instance, it might removes some of the issues. You would then have to find a way to give a bit more damage to high affliction as well (making Contagion 10-15% instead of 5% maybe) and fix some set bonuses.
A really radical change might switch Demonic Sacrafice and Dark Pact. Affliction gets a power boost (via a sacraficed Succubus) and everyone else gets more mana via Dark Pact. Affliction might be able to handle the loss of Dark Pact as it is reasonably mana efficient anyway and has better health regen. Still makes 21/40 the best Destruction build which is a bit odd, destruction really needs a better reason to go 41+ into than exists now. Other problem is very powerful interactions between Mana Feed and Dark Pact but that can be patched around in some way if necessary I would think.
Given the trends towards more mana regen everywhere (which is still passing locks by...) you could make Dark Pact an 11 point Affliction or Demonology talent which combined with some judicious nerfs to 21/40 might open up a lot of builds.
If they were to apply spell haste to HoTs how would it work? If you reduce the time between ticks then you end up with a shorter duration and more lifebloom stacks would be impossible as you'd have less time to refresh them in. If you reduce the time between ticks and keep the duration then you'd be looking at only getting benefit for every x amount of haste where x is the necessary amount to gain one more tick in the duration.
I don't have any mathematical proof to back up my assumptions, but as a shadow priest who runs with a large amount of haste I'm eagerly anticapating this change. Missing several "easy" items (as in if they'd drop) I'm at 235 haste and 1136 shadow damage. I already feel haste has improved my damage a fair amount since it allows for quicker mind flays. The GCD improvements will probably let me cram another flay in fairly frequently, since the cooldown time from SW:P/VE/VT will be shortened. With a little more haste I should be able to get it down to the 1 second, which means I'll end up gaining a second every rotation of SW:P and VT alone. Throw in the cooldowns from MB and SW, and that's probably another 1-2seconds per SW:P duration. Added all up, that should work out to be at least a mind flay.
If they were to apply spell haste to HoTs how would it work? If you reduce the time between ticks then you end up with a shorter duration and more lifebloom stacks would be impossible as you'd have less time to refresh them in. If you reduce the time between ticks and keep the duration then you'd be looking at only getting benefit for every x amount of haste where x is the necessary amount to gain one more tick in the duration.
Your GCD will be reduced as well. 10% haste will make your lifebloom bloom at 6.3 secs and your GCD will be down to 1.35 secs. So you can cast (ignoring latency) 4 lifeblooms with 0.9 seconds left for the first to bloom. Today you can cast 4 with 1 second left for the first to bloom.
02/03/08, 11:31 PM
, and that's probably another 1-2seconds per SW:P duration. Added all up, that should work out to be at least a mind flay.
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