Changed topic, might aswell make the thread useful..... the first page's discussion is mainly about a theory wich turned out to be wrong, so if you are confused, just ignore it.

Anyways, SW:P & corruption now scales 6/5 = 120% Wich is a rather good impact on warlocks & shadow priests.

Also there might be a possibility that cast times wich exceed 3.5 still get bonus, but halved only for the time after 3.5 or gets a flat % value added each 0.5 secs. Such as it seems with the DOT testing results.

It would also mean mindflay receives no penalty for it's slowing effect.

I have no idea how Blizzard came up with the new figure tbh, I'm leaning increasingly towards the idea that every spell is individually tuned. Just pleased with the change really.

If what they write in the post is right, the length of a DoT/HoT required for full effect is still 15 s but now Pain is allowed to get more than 100% (18/15=120%).

What you write about Mind Flay doesn't seem right. It looks more like a construction made to fit in with the values. I don't think Blizzard would take cast time into account 2 times for a spell, first for number of ticks and then the length of the channel.

More likely is that Mind Flay is just an exception following no rules, with a scaling such as Blizzard thinks is balanced.

Mechanics may be changed for the burning crusade you know. Blizzard isn't known for telling how mechanics works very quickly :)

People testing have gotten results of 110% scaling on Vampiric Touch. That does not fit with the 5 tick model at all.

All test results i have seen so far ended up as ca 64.28 % scaling.

I really doubt they would make something scale flat with a number wich has a huge amount of decimals.

Can anyone test this with other spells? One could then see wether there is a pattern or not and be able to see if the hypothesis is wrong or right.

Probably not, but they may have decided that Mind Flay receives a scaling penalty of 25% compared to other spells.

I will try Vampiric Touch myself when I get home today. Can try Starshards also and see if something is changed there.

So... I'm no theorycrafter here and I'm not 100% sure of what the current mechanics for Mind Flay are, but can anyone tell me what impact, if any, this would have on the Warlock's Drain Life spell?

It's a 5 second channelled spell with 5 ticks (1/sec), that currently applies 50% of +dmg gear (1/2 for the +damage and 1/2 for the health gained). Does the longer than 3.5 second cast time have any effect?

If you can test it and supply the damage values, your +dmg aswell and dmg % modifiers we could find out wether it got changed or not from what it was before. And if it did get changed we can try to figure out how it got changed.

If each second after 3.5 counts as 20% scale then Arcane Missiles would look like this in the model.


(4 / 4 + 1 * 0.1 ) * ( 1.5 * 0.2 + 3.5 / 3.5 )= 1.43 scale.


It would certainly make sense to change the system this way. Spells longer than 3.5 seconds suffered alot from the 3.5 sec scale benefit cap.

It would help Pyroblast scale enough to still be bigger hitting than fireball with enough + damage and the empowered talent. Assuming such a change for things longer than 3.5 seconds applies to cast time spells as well as channeled spels and dots over 15 seconds.

Warlocks have so many things affected by this.

Drain Life - 5 ticks over 5 seconds channeled, drain spell (50% penalty as a drain)
Siphon Life - 10 ticks over 30 seconds dot, drain spell (50% penalty as a drain)
Drain Soul (5 ticks, 5 seconds)
Corruption (6 ticks, 18 seconds, Dot)
Curse of Agony (12 ticks, 24 seconds, base damage split first 4 ticks at 1/24 damage, next 4 at 1/12, and last 4 at 1/8)
Rain of Fire (4 ticks, 8 seconds, AoE, channeled)
Hellfire (16 ticks, 16 seconds, AoE, channeled)

Hellfire gets a rediculously small bonus in the current game. +800 to spell damage increases it from roughly 210 per tick to ... 226 per tick. 800 / 16 /3.

With the changes in TBC, assuming it is based on a 4 tick channel plus 10% extra per tick and a 20% factor for extra time over 3.5 seconds we have..

(4/4 + 12*0.1 ) * (12.5*0.2 + 3.5/3.5) = 2.2 + 3.5 = 5.7 scale pre AoE factor. Divide by 3 for that... 1.9 scale. Divided by 16 ticks -- 0.11875 per tick extra per + damage. for 800 + damage that is 95 extra per tick. A sizeable increase to hellfire (about a 30% bonus to its damage). This seems almost too good.

If we don't factor in the double scaling and the 20% extra time bit, we are left with a simple 2.2 scale, leading to 36 extra damage per tick on hellfire. This seems too small.

Wouldn't it be (4/4 + 11 * 0.1 ) * (11.5*0.2 + 3.5/3.5) = 2.1 * 3.3 = 6.93 pre AoE factor?

And then 6.93 / 3 = 2.31 with AE scale factor.


2.31 / 15 = 15.4% scale per sec.


Can you test if this is correct?

Cheers, seems to fit. And the VT numbers indicate no change has been made with over time spell scaling.

I got som other results from another person on VT with these numbers.

624 +shadow Misery, Shadow waving 5/5, shadowform & darkness wich got 393 dmg each tick wich came out to result in 110% scaling. The SW:P ticks where 120%.

Spelldmg on gear & SW:P
http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=swpcc2.jpg

VT
http://img132.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vtnd4.jpg

But from your numbers i guess Mind Flay must be a loner again then =\ Scaling different from everything else without having any rules wich would result in such penalty.

Thankfully they buffed it a bit though. And a further buff would probably be too good when looking at shadowpriest single target damage capabilities.

Thank you very much for testing it ;)

So what happens if someone puts two points into Improved SW_Pain? That's now 24 seconds, does it get 24/15 = 160% +dmg?

It'll probably remain working like it does now. As in, add two extra ticks that tick for normal expected damage. Which is in fact the exact same effect as what you're asking damage wise.

That is I assume the new rank of Shadow Word: Pain and the talent here's both versions with +500 damage from gear:

(1002+(500*1.2))/6*8 = 2136
(1002/6*8)+(500*1.6) = 2136

It doesn't matter when I add the two extra ticks, they'll add up the same way as long as I adjust the coefficient if I add the ticks before the +damage. Of course it could be the two extra ticks are added first and the coefficient remains unchanged, but that goes against the usual design (Since you'd effectively be reducing the scaling of a spell by taking it). TBC's design also applies all talents after gear that I know, so that makes the first formula most likely the 'real' one used.

Note that I'm using dividing by the amount of standard ticks times the amount of ticks with talent on purpose for more accurate numbers, even if it makes the formula look a bit odd.

Could you find a druid and have them cast Regrowth?
Currently gets 2/3.5*50%(initial) + 5/5*50% (HoT) = 78.57%
I would expect it to goto 2/3.5*50%(initial) + 21/15*50%(HoT) = 98.57%

Would be a nice boost to the current red headed stepchild of healing spells.

Boevis, the true readheaded stepchild here is tranquility- how does it now scale? It could be worth it if the scalings right ^_^

Reading this, Tranquility would be:
(4/4 + (1 * .1)) * (3.5/3.5 + (6.5 * .2)) = 1.1 * 2.3 = 2.53 pre AoE factor
2.53/3 = .843* after AoE reduction

So 84.3% of my +Healing gets added to Tranquility, or 16.87% per tic.
with my (oddly) +1k healing that's +168.7 a tic bringing me to 492 a tic.

If Drain Soul becomes a viable damage spell I'll probably crap my pants.

I don't remember exactly but isn't it possible that the PvP buff in that VT screenshot gives 10% extra damage? I can post a screenshot later that shows that VT only got 100% for me.

I have Improved SW:Pain and it's still 120%.

Corruption has been confirmed to be 120%. Shadowbolt is doing testing, so we should get more info by the end of the day. Thank you, holyman, for giving me something to hype the hell up.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1

edit: curse of agony gets 160%!

Ok, screw the whole theory then. The dot thing was apparently bullshit.

Can prolly let the thread die now =P

Im still wondering where those -25% comes from though =\