Spell Power + Ice Shards is additive, not muliplicative. => (1+(0.5*(1[base]+1[IS]+0.5[SP]))) = 1+0.5*2.5 = 2.25

EO increases "critical strike damage", not "critical strike damage bonus". Which could be a flat 1.06 multiplier at the end.
It could also be just the bonus and poor wording, who knows. Doing both calculations with the CSD meta on top:

Worst case EO: (1+(0.545*(1+1+0.5+0.06)))*1.4 = 335.328%
Best case EO: (1+(0.545*(1+1+0.5)))*1.06*1.4 = 350.595%

Ah, right. Cheers for the correction.

So how does crit rating compare on a 51/10/10 build with EO + CSD then?

"A bit" is 15%, since no new dps talents were added. Demonic sac was what propped up the destruction tree.

I expect it'll all work out though and there's a lot of changes still to go. Removing the talent allows for actual build variation for the first time in a while.

Mages should be happy: a destruction warlock *with* CoD is now something like 5% behind frost in dps :p.

I'll agree if and only if frostfirebolt takes all the multipliers from both fire and frost school and that winter's grasp is a debuff working on a boss in addition to work across mages.

Thats a lot of requirements.

I'm happy that warlocks might actually have some freedom in specs now. Being pigeon-holed into 1 tree really isn't fun for anyone. As far as balance goes, all we can agree on is we need to see how it plays out.

All the information I can gather from datamined sites is that it appears to be dealing Frost+fire damage, in spite of the tooltip. Although admitedly we don't really know how that plays out with tallents.

What I'm interested in is that its 40yards base range, potentially 46 with tallents. God I wish I was on the beta : /

I know you were joking, but we really shouldn't be happy that warlocks are being nerfed. It's nice that DS is being nerfed to bring back it back in line with other warlock specs, but if what I'm thinking is right then mages aren't really getting better in the expansion, we're just having warlocks brought down to our level while hunters, rogues, warriors, and enhancement shamans laugh all the way to the bank.

Also, 40 yard base range on FFB (46 with flame throwing) seems pretty... strange. I wonder if they're not giving it a 40 yard base range because it *isn't* affected by flame throwing, thus the longer base makes up for the lack of a reach talent. Though... to be frank that seems really crappy because it's a bit of a slap to fireball and frostbolt who have roughly the same or worse TALENTED ranges...

Though it's also possible that they want to give mages a sort of super-range nuke...

Well, hunters are an extremely good dps class, but highly underrated. A well played hunter can expect to auto-#1... problem is it's really difficult to play a hunter well, and in the expansion not only are hunters getting some unbelievably sexy dps buffs in new talents and abilities, but casted shots will no longer clip auto shot, which is absolutely AMAZING.

In regards to fury warriors and enhancement shamans, not only are both classes getting very nice dps boosting options and streamlining to make the specs more efficient, but both classes will continue to benefit from the bad mechanic of innate weapon dps. Add in the probable availability of arena weapons and the biggest boon for melee classes will be readily available at level 80, whereas casters will continue needing to gear up piece by piece without gaining such a huge boost from one item slot. The increase on spellpower on weapons in TBC was nice, but the amount of power you'd have to put on a 1h or staff to equal the amount of damage a melee class gains from purely innate weapon dps is staggering.

See melee has always outscaled casters, but the problem was that it took great weapons for it to happen, so you didn't see it till late in the game. What the arena has done is gift wrapped great weapons and really eliminated the gap that melee classes had to cover to make their better scaling really shine.

Also, I'm not saying that they don't balance their game, I think they balance it where they want to, and I don't think they want to see mages or warlocks topping damagemeters anymore... and everything I've seen regarding WoLK makes me feel like they're pushing warriors, DKs, enh shamans, hunters, rogues, and even kitties to do better damage earlier in progression.

Unfortunately, we have to take the "wait and see" approach to arcane and frostfire builds because we have no idea how good spirit regen will be, nor do we know if WG will make it to live without any major penalties.

Yup. Spamming a macro is HARD. Seriously. If hunters actually had to manually weave shots without their cast sequence macros then you would have an argument. But as it is right now they are no more difficult to play than a mage. In fact i think they are pretty much the same as a mage with a pet added in. Spam macro(bolts for us), stack cooldowns. Really not remotely difficult.

Yoinking Jynxx since she's lurking around:
The new "Improved Soul Leech" (35+ destro) causes your average destro nukes to regain 30%*30% = 9% of the damage as mana.

Am I missing something, or would that make Inci/SBolt roughly mana free in a high-end raid setting at 70?
And/or is that considered to be nerfed soon (like Winter's Grasp)?

Average SB for a well geared warlock in a raid setting can be north of 4k. 9% of 4k = 360. Average SB cost is 400+ w/o cataclysm, or 5% less with it. So currently it comes close, but not quite. Add in BoW, then yeah, it would. SB cost in the expansion is jumping to 720, a 70% increase. I doubt we will see a 70% increase in damage, at least not until T8-9. But we are expected to use Life Tap. It probably will need to be nerfed.

I really get the feeling they just threw a bunch of ideas at warlock trees with the intention to revisit it. There were hardly any changes in the mage trees. I suspect they were busy fleshing out hunters and paladins and mages and warlocks are going to get revisited down the line.

You also have to add in the talent cost of getting it. You give up 8% shadowbolt coefficient or 4% shadow damage in order to reduce the number of times you are lifetapping during an encounter. In fire specs, it will be easier to get, but fire lost the +15% fire damage from DS, which would be roughly returned by improved damage from their imp, assuming it is possible to use one, and the fact that lifetap time would be reduced. From what I can tell, warlock damage is balanced around losing 16% damage to lifetap. When you reduce the number of lifetaps, you gain damage. I feel things will be okay for warlocks, though they can't expect to maintain their current DPS advantage.

That one surprised me, since wand spec is (as far as I understand it from my reading of Priest leveling guides to attempt to make mine less painful) one of the principle leveling talents for Priests until you pick up enough spirit/int to grind using the T1 Shadow mana restoration on kill effect.

Is there any word from players in Beta if World in Flames negates the AoE damage cap?

Oh I always lurk here. Readying my new mage main for WotLK, gotta keep up on the news .


Dexia covered it. I think the idea of all the talents right now is "does the general idea 'work'" rather than specific coefficients. Certainly it's nice to see something like dark pact showing up in the destruction tree: the health loss from lifetap really actually is an issue on progression raids. M'uru is a good example where we needed to actually plan higher healing support on the warlock side while the mages could go with little support beyond their own group.

Last I heard (last talent iteration, which included demonic sac) locks were seeing an ~8% dps increase from the new destro talents. If you handwavingly assume that stays, then there's no way that returning ~390 mana/nuke will make up for consuming over 700/nuke.


My concern about the removal of demonic sac is actually the soloing experience: destruction relies on sac'ing a succy or felhunter in order to deal with our tremendous mana/second drain -- mages have to drink too, yes, but it's not vendor food and water. The spell costs alone had me concerned, and having to do it without any mana regen will be painful.

That might be fine if we only solo'd for cash, but the need to get 50-60 shards for each raid night.... heh.

I don't know if soul leech will make up for the loss of a VW/FH sac or not, it'll be interesting to see. (that's what I'd be testing if I had a beta account right now, since I doubt that sort of thing is at the top of most players' minds, even though it's a good part of our WoW 'life'.)

Outside of that, the talent was horrid and I'm *very* glad they got rid of it. It's really revitalized the warlock class. Now about those damn soulshards, Blizzard...


(edit) My comment about locks even with CoD losing to frost mages (not to mention elementalist) was mostly an aside to Manly. (p.s.: demonic sac + infernal *still* isn't a bug.)

Though US invites being sent out, people posting exact numbers from the current beta are still kind of missing.
Nevertheless, a post from the US beta forums says that some polishing is on its way:

"We've been very busy trying to get everything working for other classes. We'll be doing a polish pass of the Mage very soon." - Koraa/Class Designer

There's light at the end of the tunnel from slight underwhelming first looks (especially the glimpses at the fire tree). And we finally have Class Designers Blizzard refrained from having for such a long time?

On a side note: I'd love the idea of more insight of what's going on in the dev's heads, perhaps we eventually get some at last.

WoW Forums -> 51 point mage talents.... again?

Unknown whether he actually tested it or not so take it with a grain of salt.

Hello Manly,

Just to be sure, where did you see the +30% on all tanks ?
Def stance is now +45% but they removed Defiance.

I do not have access to the beta but I see no indication about the tank threat improvement (except more dps maybe ?)

my 2 cents: Move arcane focus up in the talent tree and move some other talent down to tier 1. It's annoying to spend 3 points there when I'm not intending to use any arcane spells to nuke.

Only demo locks will pick up Demonic Aegis -- that deep in demo means giving up empowered corruption which you can't afford to do, now that we're losing demonic sac and have to lean on Molten Core. All non-demo locks will be a mix of affliction and destruction talents unless they substantially change the percentages on the new talents again.


You won't go into demo. So no healthstone, no aegis, no spirit-into-stamina. and definitely no imp imp if you're actually spending 13 into demo. If you're picking up imp HS you don't get imp imp, those points go into fel vitality rather than a talent you're only going to use while soloing.


The imp will help, depends on his mana situation: while shard farming you actually nuke very little, since you have to get a drain soul off before things die which generally means opening with one nuke and then killing via dots and drain life, finishing off with a drain soul.

So nuke-based mana return talents aren't as good as they might look if you've never shardfarmed for an hour. As I said it was a concern -- I didn't say OH NOES THE SKY IS FALLING MY CLASS IS DOOMED THERE'S NO HOPE. This is EJ, not the WoW general forums.

If I get a beta key, I'll actually be able to test. Until then, I'll just post things that others with beta keys should really go test :p.



But I'm really off topic and Manly is going to come hit me now....

Most of our utility spells are arcane. Sheep, spellsteal, counterspell, etc.

Arcane focus is fine where it is.

Besides the usual "it's beta, anything could change" disclaimer, there's now a Blue post in the beta forums saying mages are getting a second design pass soon. Hopefully this will resolve some of the community's concerns.

WoW Forums -> 51 point mage talents.... again?

Sorry if this is old news but somebody in the beta forums mentioned that World in Flames does *NOT* allow you to pass the aoe caps, so if you're aoe'ing enough targets do hit the cap, World in Flames doesn't give you any extra damage.