Calixtus

Pandemic looks very interesting, especially how it'll interact with haunt for even more damage. I wonder how it'll hold up for PvP balance though, but with the buff change SP synergy is toned down and they're reducing the bonus from Everlasting Affliction so it might actually pass.

Shadow Embrace also seems very interesting, but in terms of it's damage increase and the HoT reduction. Quite nice for PvP, and not entirely without it's uses for PvE as well (Malacrass, the trash around Gruul to name, well, the only two I could think of).

I did not understand what exactly Everlasting Affliction now does though, "each time they inflict damage"? Am I just not getting the tooltip, or is it something more than just a flat 5% of your spellpower bonus?
Class stacking is everything but unheard of as is now, without gear homogenization. Your first kill of BadAss Dragon Nr 05 is no longer going to reward you with Moonkin gear when you don't have a Moonkin, you will end sharding less gear than ever before. The badge system will be integrated from Day 1. Non-raid instances are only being made for completion in less than an hour. There's a stated intention for PvP generating PvE gear.

Gearing people is not going to be harder in this expansion than in the last. The 3 warlocks will be competing for all suitable gear that drops, the druids will only be competing for the token gear (well, resto/boomkin will probably still be competing). I can stack 4 druids, and the only two who will be competing amongst eachother for the non-token drops are the two healers, and if I drop below two druid healers, there's a fair chance one of the other hybrid classes is going to get bumped up to 3 healers. If you wanted to get really gritty about it, you'd have to take into account the fact that a Moonkin has potential use of all spellpower items - whether they're cloth or leather - where as the leather drops are absolutely useless for a warlock. Or the fact that if we have four druids, we may very well be not taking someone on the same token as the druids. Or the fact that if you've got enough DPS to make a DPS sit out, but not enough healers, the respecced hybrid can gear for his "main" occupation.

Unless they changed the token system significantly while I wasn't looking (since I havn't looked at all, they very well migh thave) "gearing difficulties" are not going to be significant enough to warrant the kind of restruction of the raid we're talking about here - and that's with "all else being equal". 4 druids or 4 paladins are a much more likely a configuration than 4 warlocks or rogues, if balance is perfect.


(And again, because I'm starting to feel like I'm whining; I still think the overall effect of the buff changes will improve the game.)

 

Zed

Everlasting Affliction (Tier 10) changed to: Your Corruption, Siphon Life and Unstable Affliction spells gain an additional 1/2/3/4/5% of your bonus spell damage effects each time they inflict damage, and your Drain Life and Shadow Bolt spells have a 20% chance to reset the duration of your Corruption spell on the target.

Isn't this going to mean that we get an ever increasing Corruption tick like with the set bonus? Seems fairly broken.

Overall the changes are very welcome and do feel warlocky. Even PvP-ers can't complain as they don't get perma-enraged warriors while the PvE guys get some crit scaling.

 

Shai

Hard to tell, since Everlasting Affliction doesn't seem to do anything currently. At least my dot ticks stay the same no matter how long the spell runs. The effect could possibly be maxed out at 6 ticks and then either start from zero or keep that max value for the rest of its duration.

The idea itself, though, is interesting if they balance it properly. The backloaded damage makes dots potentially less powerful in PvP where players are often dispelled or die to burst within seconds, while getting full benefit of the talent on boss encounters where dots will run full duration.

 

PSGarak

I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work at all. The way I'm reading it, "each time they inflict damage" simply means "on each tick," meaning it's still an Empowerment buff exactly like it used to be, but with 5% per tick rather than 20% over the whole duration. Go put talent points into it one at a time and see if the damage gets buffed.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Smurrf

Since I haven't really seen any breakdown between old and new forms of these, here's mine.


Corruption has 6 ticks (Rank 3 & beyond, anyway), Siphon Life has 10 ticks, and UA has 6 ticks. Corruption and UA therefore receive a boost of additional spell damage from 3.33% per tick to 5% at max rank of EA, and Siphon Life gets a more than double boost, from 2% per tick to 5%. Huge gains all around.

It also appears by looking up EA in WoWHead's database (Source) that the text of the various sites that are showing the change have actually missed the second portion of the talent still gets 20% per point, up to 100% for max. If anyone has access to a stable character on Beta, can they test whether this actually does extend the duration of Corr every time at max rank, or is there a chance that Corr can fall off even with use of SB/DL?



Interesting...probably most because the only time you're using DL or SB is when you have a full complement of DoT's up. Also interesting is the fact that for the first time, at least by the way this reads, Immolate ticks get affected by an Affliction talent. All in all, I'd say this is a nice change, unless I'm missing something.



Pandemic has been covered somewhat, but the change to EA only serves to increase the value of Pandemic. It would have been nice to see DL or SL ticks added in, and one really wonders why CoA ticks weren't, but it's a start. The functionality of this is somewhat odd, though. What I'm thinking is that it's intended to interact in a balanced way with Resilience, but what does seem shady is that having the extra damage be procs puts our 'crits' on a double roll, instead of a single. Had each tick had a chance to crit, then a flat portion of our ticks would miss, a flat portion would crit, and a flat portion would hit but not crit. Now, each portion has a chance to hit, a chance to miss, and a chance to proc...IF it procs, then once again, it has a chance to hit and a chance to miss. It makes capping spell hit even that much more of a priority.

What makes me curious, however, is this: Do the procs of Corr and UA have a chance to proc additional damage on their own? If this is the case, then that would explain why only those two spells were affected. A high enough crit chance could very well see multiple hits of damage stemming from a single procced tick.

In case I wasn't clear enough, this is what I'm wondering can happen.

T=0.0sec Cast Corr
T=3.0sec Corr ticks (A) for XYZ damage
T=3.1sec Corr tick (A) procs (B) for XYZ damage
T=3.2sec Corr proc (B) procs (C) for XYZ damage

So, potentially, triple damage from a single tick. (I don't know how the timing of the procs works, again, if someone with a stable character could investigate?)

If this is indeed the case, then it makes for a very interesting damage cycle for deep Affliction locks. An evil one, and I like it for that if that's the case.

 

Calixtus

I'd say the CoA ticks are left out of it because tying affliction scaling to CoA would make the cost of Malediction too steep because they'd have to balance our DPS around what happends if we can use CoA. Better then to treat it as "nicety" rather than "required for planned and balanced for affliction scaling".

And while I havn't tested it, I doubt we'll be seeing double-proccs based on the way the screenshot on the last page listed the Pandemic damage bonus as damage dealt by the Pandemic ability. Makes sense and is probably the easiest one to code, and definitely ensures that double-proccing is impossible; The Pandemic effect is not, in it's mechanism, treated as an extra DoT tick, but as an extra damage source.

 

PSGarak

From the combat log that Surgie posted, the extra damage is listed as from Pandemic, not from Corruption, which would mean that EA would not apply again. As far as what you're talking about with double-rolls and whatnot... unless they've greivously changed something, there is no hit roll on ticks for a DoT. There's a single hit roll for application. Ticks can be partially resisted (dunno if by resistances or level or both, I think both), but they cannot miss. Having partial resists is fine and fair and necessary, so long as it either partially resists from the full damage, or mirrors the resisted damage, but not if it mirrors a partial resist and rolls again for partial resist. Pandemic may be able to miss depending on how it's coded, but I suspect even if it could that would be removed before release, like how Improved Shadowbolt used to be able to miss separately but no longer can. The main issue is that it probably bypasses resilience... actually I take that back, lowering Pestilence proc rate on DoTs would be double-dipping on damage reduction.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Smurrf

Ah, completely missed that screenshot. Well, there goes that option. So...in the end, Pandemic increases our gains from crit from just SB/Haunt/Immo (initial) to those +Corr & UA. Still means that there's nothing crit related for CoA, SL, DL, Immo (ticks) or DS. Getting closer, but as it stands right now, over the long run, we're still behind the power curve as far as gains from Crit as a single stat.

As far as DoT ticks go, I was mistaken then. I guess seeing 'Resist' flash on the screen sometimes when dotting up targets will do that. My mistake.

Edit: Hmm. Can Pandemic itself crit?

 

dcpwns

Any warlock disappointed in not having a cool down useable move still in this expansion. Just seems off imo that we are becoming one of the few classes without a cool down involving move. I mean all three mage's tree have a CD move in their tree. Anyone feel this is off, or more so how we are made to not have any?

 

Bogeywoman

Pandemic is a good start, but I hope that's not everything for the affliction tree -- everyone else is still scaling by three factors (damage, haste, crit), and this only scales affliction by damage and, for about half our dots, crit. Unless something is done to include the third factor, or somehow itemize better in the endgame, affliction will once again be the redheaded stepchild spec. For those of us who kinda enjoy running around spreading disaster and debuffs, this expansion's again looking like not the answer.

 

Bonestorm

I dunno if anyone noticed but UA seems to have been nerfed down to 5 ticks/15 seconds. Cast time hasn't changed.

Was:Is now:

 

Smurrf

That does mitigate some of the effect from Everlasting Affliction then. Still an increase, but less of one. Also, base damage per tick remains the same, so overall damage from UA has been nerfed by 16.67% (unless the coefficient changed.) Not only that, but more time spent casting UA means less time able to cast other spells, whether they be Shadow Bolt, Haunt, Dark Pact/Life Tap, or whatever, during a fight. That seems to be a pretty heavy nerf to our damage overall, when you dig deeper into it...especially the longer a fight actually goes.

 

Surgie

Trying to do a bit of testing when the world server isn't down, it's a small sample size but at 27% crit I havn't seen a single pandemic crit after a few dozen hits of it in the combat log. I wandered the same thing myself after seeing the Pandemic damage listed as 'hits' the target.

It also does not proc a charge of the crusade card either.

edit - It also shoots off a small shadow bolt when it goes off, missed it at first cause I had my eyes glued to the combat log.

 

PSGarak

The impact of lowering the UA duration is pretty minimal on our DPS. While it's up, it's still the exact same spell, and I'm reasonably certain that just by virtue of being a DoT, at 41 points into affliction it will have good enough DPCT to be worthwhile. What it does to our theoretical damage output is take away 1.5 seconds of filler DPS every 90 seconds. Realistically the bigger impact on our DPS is going to be DoT collision from having staggered durations, although the fact that it lines up with immolate will lessen the effect of that for rotations that still include immolate.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Sebalot

It would be interesting to see someone in beta with Sunwell quality gear (ie, decent amount of haste and crit) check how a 50/0/21 build would stack up against a 51/0/20 build. It would seem at some critical mass of haste/crit just shadowbolting would provide more benefits. Then again, the tree seems quite bloated that you might not be able to get away with 50-51 points to get everything we want.

It does with these changes seem like Blizzard have decided on Shadow Bolt/Haunt as filler spells and not some changed version of Drain Soul/Drain Life.

 

Smurrf

While it's up, sure. But the problem is that not only are you doing 5/6th the damage that an 18 sec timer would have, but the aggregate number of increased casts is going to hurt a lot over time. For one, unless they changed the cost proportionally, then you're spending more mana to keep it up, meaning less DPM. For another, in a given 8 minute fight (which I think is a fair average for boss fights), UA uptime of 100% at 18 secs per is 26.67 casts, with the assumption that you can hit every cast perfectly. (Yes, that's theoretical, not actual.) Compare that with 32 casts for the same amount of uptime, gain, with the assumption that you can hit every cast perfectly. That's a little over 5 casts, which means 7.5 secs additional time spent casting a single dot. Is it much? No, not really...but it is 3 Shadow Bolts, or 5 LT/DP's. Those do make a difference. Add that in to the reduced damage just because of the loss of a tick, plus the additional mana spent on refreshing it (5-6 extra casts), and it will be a noticeable loss.

Making it gain from Pandemic does help, don't get me wrong, but it's only a half-fix overall. Thing to remember is that the major Blizz pass at Warlocks hasn't happened yet...I'll be waiting to see what happens next.

 

PSGarak

There is no reduced damage due to the loss of a tick. That's my point. Under ideal circumstances the *only* effect is that it cuts out a bit of your filler, to the tune of one shadowbolt per two and a half minutes. The increased mana cost accrues at the same rate, one cast's worth per 90 seconds, minus the cost of the shadowbolt it's displacing. You're not doing 5/6th the damage in any sense that really matters. DPCT is only useful in evaluating whether a spell is worth casting above a filler, and I'm taking it for granted that at 41 points in (new) affliction, much less 51, it's still worth casting. I agree it's a nerf. It's just a really small one. DoT-collision I think is a much bigger issue than the actual time increase in time needed to cast it.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Smurrf

It took me a minute to see what you meant about not having a loss of damage due to the loss of a tick. Let me rephrase, then. At base, 1380/6 = 230 damage. 1150/5 = 230. The amount of damage done per tick is the same, but the overall amount of damage per cast of UA is less. If all UA's could be cast perfectly, then you're right, there would be no loss of damage done, at least as far as UA alone is concerned. The actual DPM still goes down, however, and the effects of having to recast more often will still be felt.

It still makes it a sticky situation, and you're right...it does shift the balance to the cast collision.

 

PsyBomb

Ok, I'm going to go through and see what a warlock in theoretical raid gear will actually be wearing. For this purpose, I will do the following (please yell at me now if you want me to change a parameter):

1) Affliction is what I know best. Itemization I aim for will be based on http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

2) All gear slots will be selected from Naxx10 as much as possible, non-raid epics in slots I can't fill, and then the highest level decent blue I can find for slots that are still empty. I'll update with Naxx25 gear later

3) My gem priority will be as follows: Meta will be Ember Skyflare Diamond, Red will be Runed Scarlet Ruby, Blue will be Purified Twilight Opal, Yellow will be Reckless Monarch Topaz. This WILL activate the meta, so I won't go out of my way to do so.

4) Enchants will emphasize spellpower above all, Int/Spirit when I can't do that, and +hit and -threat as the priority otherwise.

5) Once I do all of that, I reserve the right to go back and change out gems and enchants to get to 17% hit (446 +hit). I will also check to see if 14% (368) saves an unreasonable amount of itemization points and I'll just drop pushback resistance for +hit on affliction in the spec.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Eph

Are you going for the 9% cap at first? Calculating expected raid buffs in to this?

 

Rustik

You can actually manage 100% uptime of all the dots without collision, but there end up being gaps where your filler either gets in the way or you have to pause for .5-1 second.

That is assuming corruption is simply kept up all the time with Everlasting Affliction, which seems to be in question.

 

PsyBomb

Yeah, on thought, I'll go for gearing based on full buffs/debuffs. How much are we looking at, all I can think of off the top of my head is the 3% bonus from either Misery or IFF (since they no longer stack /sadpanda).

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Drundia

Spell Haste buff belongs to Shamans. Bloodlust/Heroism belongs to the same Shamans as well. You may want to bring as many Shamans as you need to cover Bloodlust/Heroism with its limiting debuff.
Stat bonus belongs to Druids and can be improved by talents. If you need it you bring specifically specced Druid.
Stat multiplier belongs to Paladins and requires talent to begin with.
Stamina buff belongs to Priests, and once again can be improved talents, so again, if you need it at its best you bring specifically specced Druid.

And of course the winner is spell critical strike debuff which requires a Fire or Frost Mage.