The DoT nerf and levelling

Severed · 01/14/07, 9:13 AM

I currently play a warlock and with the recent nerf to DoT's affliction seems to be significantly less appealing a tree to level with. I don't care about the nerf to damage (I have a little over 600 shadowpower) so much as the new resist rate. With all the resists I am getting, plus the increased casting time due to being beat on by mobs who are aggroed but not dotted due to resists, I would estimate my grinding speed has been increased about 1/3.

As I see it given the current state of affliction there are 2 choices for levelling at the moment. First is to drop the affliction build entirely and grind levels with a felguard. The second is to invest points into malediction and always throw up a cos before bothering with any of the other dots and hope this deals with the resistances. Up to this point I had levelled in Beta with an affliction build and built a decent set of affliction gear, clearly keeping all my eggs i on basket was a flawed strategy. With only a day or 2 before TBC hits I thought I would ask for some build advice rather than just wing it.

Vodrin · 01/14/07, 9:20 AM

i've not noticed any increased resistances on dots oO.
infact i still had a lot more resist% on drain life raiding yesterday. so its not hugely noticeable to me (heh thats +3lvl too).

still imo, its a vastly superior grinding build. zero downtime and able to take out multiple targets at once.
i did take leggings of polarity just in case though =x

i kinda agree with kalgan though that dots were OP. i mean its about 1800dps if you have a new target/cast. obviously thats not all the time but thats a lot of dps/casttime. think of it as if the dot was all frontloaded.. and had a cooldown of the duration of the dot. in pve this wouldn't make a difference and you would see how crazy it was at +160%/120% with stacked shadow damage.

affliction is still a good tree.. brought down to the level of the other tress. (well at 70 it will probably be lagging behind in raid dps.. but i would have expected that due to mana efficiency / self preservation).

i'm sad to see the nerf, but can't say i feel hard done by it.

Fugazor · 01/14/07, 9:27 AM

Isn't demonology best for leveling? Seems like pure level/grind tree like hunter's BM. Send felguard and spam shadowbolt and/or lifedrain = infinite hp/mana.

Lumi · 01/14/07, 9:30 AM

The beginning of affliction is much stronger for leveling than demonology. Demonology requries a very healthy investment before you get any sort of return.

Vodrin · 01/14/07, 9:39 AM

you're also limited to one target at once. the target you send your pet on. as affliction you can pretty much put 3 dots on any mob your own level.. cycle through the mobs.. and howl/drain.
and dark pact being pretty infinite.. summoning the imp he comes at 50%.. you can dark pact that 50% then the imp gets full hp/mana due to the way they fixed pets summoning with non full hp... giving your 3 full dark pacts per 10sec if you wanted to refill up and were mega dotting.

Mordekhuul · 01/14/07, 9:40 AM

I don't usually go reading the official boards, but I did, and saw some fairly detailed posts on warlocks testing DoT resists - doesn't look too good.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...64960987&sid=1 is one example.

Here are some highlights (jumping to the math, for this board):

Set Up:

1000 Dots cast... (500 agony 500 corruption) no +hit gear and no supression. Did this cycle three time and 4-6% miss rate against lvl 60 players with zero resist.

1000 Dots cast.. (500 agony 500 corruption) with maxed supression. Did this cycle twice, and the results were a 4-7% miss rate against lvl 60 players with zero resist. ( I am gonna run this one again)

1000 Dots Cast (500 agony 500 corruption), with maxed supression. Did this cycle three times, and the results were 11% -13% miss rate against lvl 60 players with 10 shadow resist.

1000 Dots Cast (500 agony, 500 corruption) with maxed supression. Did this cycle three times, and the results were 17% - 21% miss rate against lvl 60 players with 30 shadow resist.

I did one round of 250 agony cast and 250 corruption cast with maxed supression against a lvl 60 with 60 shadow resist gear, and the miss rate was at almost 40%.

I then redid it twice with +40 spell penetration and the resist rate went down to 17% - 19% miss rate.

The biggest problem was resist per tick. Out of three test of 1000 dot cast, against a player with 30 shadow resist, the resist rate per tick was around 22% chance that the dot would suffer loss of damage due to resist.

Anyone care to refute or confirm the numbers and conclusions he draws (see his thread)? I'm also wondering if Blizz has made any public statements on this that I missed.

[edit]

Found an answer after some more searching. Kalgan (blizz) posted the following in this thread:

Previously, dots in general were 1/10th as likely to be resisted as normal spells. That has been fixed, they're now as likely to be resisted as other spells. Please let us know whether there's any reason to believe they aren't working this way.

Kaubel · 01/14/07, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by Severed

With only a day or 2 before TBC hits I thought I would ask for some build advice rather than just wing it.

Or you could read the 60+ page warlock thread thread, or ask in the patch notes thread, or read the 123612384 threads on the subject I'm guessing you'd find on the Blizzard forums.