Flamingcloud

With 36% of your +spirit = spellpower(seems imp spirit got nerfed), 30% passive regen, 15% of it being stamina, and spirit being a huge part of the lifetap formula, it is quite possible that the only stat that will be better than spirit is +hit, and we will be gemming +spirit. Really imposible to know unless we get a confirmation on level 80 spirit regen formula remaining the same. If we end up gemming it I don't think 1000 spirit is far fetched at all.

This would be even more so if they didn't take that destruction spirit talent out.

We have seen some level 77 gear on mmo, it isn't as good as current gear unless spirit really is critical even in non-raiding pre-80 leveling. Thought there is a 74dmg 38crit trinket from a dragonblight quest, which would only be worst than guldan.

 

PsyBomb

All of a sudden, some of the badge gear looks to become WAY more valuable for warlocks, simply because it has a lot of the spirit most of our gear lacks. [Boots of Incantations] and [Item not found!] are the specific ones.

As it stands I have 205 spirit total, with the only bonus from gear coming off those boots I mentioned plus a 6 to all stats enchant. If the data is to be believed, this will end up putting my lifetaps in the 1400 range (I normally hit 1600). It won't be hard to take a sideways step and get a little bit of spirit onto my gear to make up the difference now (it'll only take about 40-ish), and it works out as a straight buff to our spellpower via fel Armor. Is there any word on whether Dark Pact will be getting a similar treatment?

I do agree that we'll be replacing gear marginally faster than most, but ours is by far not the worst case. Bad would be what the Enhancement shamans are going to go through, due to AP conversion changes on their class.

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.

 

Burberri

Spirit is a level 80 stat. Pushing the DPS envelop doesn't really matter in 5-mans, and the encounters aren't long enough to make the mana regen worth the effort. in solo play you have drain life.

Really though your spirit doesn't bring that much to the table. 10 spi = 3 spell power, ~3mp5 while casting, +30 more damage on your LT conversion. The only socket I could see geming it in would putting a purified [purple gem] in a blue socket. Which when you math it out might actually make the YYB, or the YB sockets worth gemming in color.

I don't know what it is in the expansion but in TBC, it take 4mp5 to = 1 spell damage. So that makes the LT conversion worth about 8 spell power, I doubt it will be.

 

Waylin

I was hoping that I could get a little clarification regarding Life Tap in the Expansion. Is Life Tap increased by both Spirit and +Damage, or just by Spirit?

 

Bibdy

Just spirit. 710 base plus 3x your Spirit.

My LT went from about 1750-1800 (710 plus 80% of 1400on Live to about 1200 in Beta. I only need 200 Spirit to bring it back up to the 1750-1800 range again. That's only about 4 greens worth of spirit.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Drundia

New Demonic Embrace is weak. That low conversion with Stamina being cheaper stat than Spell Power, and PVP tanking armor has no support for Spirit whatsoever. It looks like survivability nerf in survivability-needing situations.

Oh how nice, 1 minute to kill non-elite mob and happy impunity. Each class always killed some mobs with impunity.

 

TheDrDroppedMe

Just spirit. Scaling works as follows:

Live = (Spell Damage)0.8 + Base
Beta = (Spirit)3 + Base

However, in addition to increasing the amount of mana returned, Spirit reduces the amount of necessary Life Taps. Which, when accompanied with level 80 gear means a ton more DPS time rather than Life Tapping. On the other hand, because PvP will require Demon Armor and Spirit may not be as heavily budgeted for PvP gear, Life Tap will be very weak. It all depends on the itemization for the new PvP gear. As for PvE, the change when accompanied with the new Fel Armor makes little difference. In fact, it may be a massive buff.

What I've been extrapolating from some of the changes (Fel Armor, Demonic Sacrifice intent post, ISb nerf, DoT scaling, etc...) is that their intent is for Fel Armor to increase our +damage far enough to reduce the dependance on percentage modifiers. In the same token it gives locks using Fel Armor a significantly higher Spell Power than other casters, which may also exist to alleviate the poor scaling of DoT spells. In addition, it's added AP for pets which was sorely needed; which ties into their posted intent to make our minions a central component of our class rather than the expendable buffs they are now (Imp for Stam/Fire damage Sac, Succubus for Shadow damage sac, leaving only Felhunter and Felguard as viable pets). This is reinforced by the shaman totem changes to effect pet attacks/spells.

Only time will tell if my speculation is true or not, but it seems to be heading in that direction.

 

Cpt. Hammer

Blizzard has their own beta talent calculator up and there's a few differences. The main one is Haunt, which now has both a dd and a dot component which is increased by the number of dots on the target instead of increasing their damage.

Other than that, backdraft adds crit again rather than haste after conflag and Chaos Bolt specifically mentions piercing immunities.

 

Sydane

Napkin math says 400 haste for 15 seconds is better dps than a mana pot now. Anyone done the actual calculations? Could we finally have a potion worth using?

Of course, the big problem is the new potion is only 500 haste but early indicators are that it will take nearly double the haste rating for 1%, making the level 80 potion substantially worse (roughly 15% vs 25%). The other problem is that rating points will be worth so little that it will be foolish to ever gem or enchant anything other than spell power, even hit rating.

 

Bruscha

This version of haunt seems much less useful. The previous version gave dots some much needed scaling. The blizzard talent version scales a small dd and short dot.

 

ggyourlife

This is a little late, but didn't see anyone else address it.

Direct from Patch Notes:
New Talent: Eradication (Affliction) - Your Corruption, Siphon Life and Curse of Agony ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to increase your spell haste by 20% for 8 sec. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.

[Edit]
Misread it, sorry.

 

Bruscha

Unless I misunderstand it, uptime doesn't matter anymore because it doesn't increase dot damage. DOT's on the target now increase haunt's damage.

Immolate, UA, Siphon life, and corruption means the dd/dot components of haunt will get 20% more damage than if no dots were on target.

 

Seldric

Also Death's Embrace no longer mentions Haunt, it's back to Shadow Burn unfortunately.

 

Deathwing

That's the old version.

 

Ellerain

I'll quote from Enhancement Shaman WotLK thread, as the topic of Blizzard Talent Calculator was raised there:

In other words, we probably will be better off limiting our discussion to what is seen in Beta.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

Maels

Does anyone's Felhunter have "Expel Magic" yet?
What the hell does it do?

With all these new pet abilities (sometimes some on auto cast, like shadowbite), you think it'd be too much to ask for Spell Lock to be taken off the Felhunter's GCD?

 

TheDrDroppedMe

New Haunt duration reduced to 6 seconds as well, CD increased to 15 seconds.

Higher initial damage now - 709-850, and also has a DoT component of 709/6 seconds.

Severely nerfed.

 

Deathwing

In the total damage scheme of things, it's actually not a nerf. And depending on your gear, it's actually a buff. BTW, please read a few posts up.

 

Latas

Changes noted on the Blizz calc.

Destruction:
Aftermath - Dropped from 10% to 4% chance to daze.
Backdraft - Reverted to just crit increase instead of haste.
Chaos Bolt - Dropped to an 8 sec CD from 12 and now states it pierces through defensive immunities.

Demonology:
Soul Link is no longer attached to Unholy Power

Affliction:
Death's Embrace - Changed to effect shadowburn instead of Haunt.
Haunt - Changed to 15 second cooldown from 10 sec, has a dot effect after the DD and instead of increasing dot damage the number of your dots increase its damage by 5% per dot.

Those are all that i noticed, if i missed anything please let me know.

 

Burberri

The old talent read that dots would get a +15% increase to their damage. If dots account for 50% of your damage thats +7.5% increase in total damage.

Under this new model if dots continue to do 50% of your total damage, haunt would need to do 37.5% of your damage in order to break even. This is unlikely when its on a 15 second GCD. Now granted with felhunter attacking dots will probably be doing less, maybe 30%, but even at that level haunt needs to be putting out 22.5% of your total damage, which again seems unlikely.

While haunt itself may have gotten a damage bump, its a dps loss for the spec.

 

tadrinth

Here's my current speculation and suggestions:

I would expect Expel Magic to remove 1 magic debuff from you and your felhunter, but to no longer dispel magic from anyone else.

I can't see any way for them to make attacking imps viable in raids. They'd have to buff imp HP to match the other pets, which would be a large PVP buff. They could make Soul Leech give your pet health, possibly with at a much higher percentage.

I'm hoping Shadow Bite makes Fel Hunters act as damaging mana batteries. If they made Haunt and Soul Leech also heal pets, that would give every tree a way to unique way to heal their pet. On the other hand, it would be far simpler to just put Fel Synergy as a first tier Demo talent if they want everyone to use pets.

I was very impressed with the version of Haunt that boosted your DOT damage by 15%. That directly addresses the biggest problem I see with Affliction scaling, which is that they scale incredibly in a multi-target DOT situation compared to a single target. Haunt boosts DPS on a single target, reducing the disparity between the two situations. I know we virtually never see the former situation in real raids, but I do think Blizz balances around it. Haunt would be even better if it boosted dots based on crit chance to allow better scaling.

It looks like healer cloth is going to be very heavy on dmg, spirit, and haste, judging from the rewards from this quest: Hellscream's Champion - Quest - World of Warcraft
I know that for shadow priests, 1 haste is worth about 1 spell damage when geared. Even though it doesn't accelerate dots, it does let you spend less time refreshing them and more time casting your main nuke. How good is haste for Affliction? Assuming healer gear is mostly of this type, would this help solve the affliction gear issue?

I haven't seen the blue posts on pet scaling, but I would love to see ratings affect pets. With the merger of melee and ranged ratings, this seems especially straightforward for Blizz to implement. It would be a huge deal for Demonolgy and for Demonic Pact uptime, but all locks, hunters, and frost mages would benefit.

Giving the Succubus interrupt resistance on her Seduce is pretty nice, but its an awkwardly placed talent. Only Demo can easily get it, and I would much prefer to use a Felguard as deep demonology.

Affliction *clearly* needs a talent that looks like the Rogue Deadly Brew talent. Deadly Brew gives a chance for their Instant Poison to apply Deadly Poison. What affliction needs is a talent that makes all non-damaging curses ALSO apply Curse of Agony. You'd just reapply CoE every 24 seconds to refresh COA.

 

Flamingcloud

You have to keep in mind the old version of haunt was essentially like putting shadowburn into your dps rotation (in actuality most likely even weaker than shadow burn) which is a severe dps loss, its not like haunt was a passive you deal 15% more damage with dots, most likely it would have been a 4.5-6% overall dps gain. It definitely does not need to be 37.5% of your dmg to be better(though I still think this version is weaker overall in pve).

Fairly certain blizzard has no intention to fix dot scaling.

Well if you had imp fel armor, and imp spirit from a priest you are looking at 10 spirit = 4.5 spell power, and 39% passive regen(which you really can't associate a mp5 value to since the spirit formula changes with more level and intellect, but at level 70 with 500 int it would be 4mp5, at 650 int 4.6mp5) 1.5 stamina.

According to current spreadsheet values for me 10 spirit(which becomes 11 with kings, and 12.1 with human racial) directly converted into +dmg in a raid situation would be equal to about +6.5dmg not counting the stamina and lifetap portion, and not count additional gain when outside of the 5 second rule. By my calculation(which is extremely crude) on a long fight 10 spirit would give you about 3dps from the lifetap portion which is around +2.5dmg but that could end up higher or lower depending on portion of time spent lifetapping, which is admittedly not very high in the current setup aside from on aoe fights. So a human raid buffed might be looking at 10 spirit = 9ish dmg, certainly blows int away and is up there with crit.

 

doogless

I can't believe my stupid Human Spirit racial is finally going to be beneficial for my Warlock. I guess that racial makes Human Warlocks give Orcs a run for their money in terms of preferential PvE race, although Orcs might still have the advantage because of pet damage depending how useful they become.

 

Roywyn

400 haste = 25.4%. For 15 secs, that buys you (.254*15) = 3.8 seconds cast time pre-haste (or more if you have a cast start at 0.1s remaing).
A mana pot buys you 2.4k mana. Assuming a low 1.2k mana per LT (only base spirit, no gear, no buffs), that's 2 GCD cast time saved pre-haste, 3 seconds.
With raid buffs (GotW, iDS, BoK), that's 1.5k LTs, and 2.4s saved.

So, for 70 raids (if they happen between 3.0 and Wrath), Haste pots are ~50% better than Mana Pots.

Keep in mind that the cast time gain from Mana Pots scales backwards: The better your gear, the bigger your Life Taps, and you save less time from a man