WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 85

Jheherrin · 08/21/08, 6:23 AM

I think my biggest issue with using SB as the affliction filler is not the 21 points needed for Ruin, but the 17 points needed to get Destructive Reach.

Destro specs dont need Grim Reach as they rarely use affliction dots as fillers.
Affliction specs however need Destructive Reach if they are expected to use SB as a filler in order to maintain range.
Mind you, if you dont take Destructive Reach, there is little point taking Grim Reach, thus freeing up 2 more points in Affliction tree, but you do so at the cost of casting range and probably surviveability.

Whatever filler we use for our cast cycles should benefit from Grim reach rather than Destructive reach, i.e. as many above have said, the filler should be Affliction based.

Edit: another thought that occurs is this: Why is the Affliction threat reduction talent only tier 2 (improved Drain Soul), but the Destro one is tier 4 (Destructive Reach)?
Again, this is something that needs balancing. The threat reduction talents need to be equally accessible (or equally unaccessible) for Affliction specs and Destro specs, especially if Affliction are expected to use Destro spells as fillers

PyroTEK85 · 08/21/08, 9:56 AM

Their reasoning on the differing tiers for the threat reduction talents is probably something like 'DD generates threat more quickly(higher dps) than DOTs'. Though if that's the case, I would have thought it would be more important to have access to Destructive Reach sooner, especially when all specs are intended to use bolt spam as a filler.

awakened · 08/21/08, 10:22 AM

Originally Posted by Jheherrin

I think my biggest issue with using SB as the affliction filler is not the 21 points needed for Ruin, but the 17 points needed to get Destructive Reach.

Destro specs dont need Grim Reach as they rarely use affliction dots as fillers.
Affliction specs however need Destructive Reach if they are expected to use SB as a filler in order to maintain range.
Mind you, if you dont take Destructive Reach, there is little point taking Grim Reach, thus freeing up 2 more points in Affliction tree, but you do so at the cost of casting range and probably surviveability.

Whatever filler we use for our cast cycles should benefit from Grim reach rather than Destructive reach, i.e. as many above have said, the filler should be Affliction based.

Edit: another thought that occurs is this: Why is the Affliction threat reduction talent only tier 2 (improved Drain Soul), but the Destro one is tier 4 (Destructive Reach)?
Again, this is something that needs balancing. The threat reduction talents need to be equally accessible (or equally unaccessible) for Affliction specs and Destro specs, especially if Affliction are expected to use Destro spells as fillers

Affliction doesn't need the threat reduction nearly as much as the Destruction locks do, thus if anything, it's more of a filler talent being taken to get them to some other talent that they truely want/need. Destruction on the other hand needs all the threat reduction that they can get, so it's not a filler talent to them, it's a basic necessity. It's deeper in the Destruction tree because they want to make it a sacrifice for other builds to spec for it, but easy to acquire for the build that needs it the most, Destruction.

awakened · 08/21/08, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by PyroTEK85

Their reasoning on the differing tiers for the threat reduction talents is probably something like 'DD generates threat more quickly(higher dps) than DOTs'. Though if that's the case, I would have thought it would be more important to have access to Destructive Reach sooner, especially when all specs are intended to use bolt spam as a filler.

Even if you only cast SBs non-stop as Affliction, you're not going to out DPS/threat generate a Destruction lock. They get a lot of their crit/damage boost from the Demonlogy tree, which Affliction locks aren't even spec'd all that much into.

Voidbringer · 08/21/08, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by Vagabond

I also like different "drain soul as filler" ideas. Drain life sees acceptable use and has good enough utility.

As it stands now, with having to use shadowbolts, current drain soul could be 1 sec long and deal no damage, it wouldn't effect me; since my latency is good enough to simply cast as the killing bolt is in the air. That's about as completely marginalized as possible while still actually being on a button bar.

I agree, I don't think drain life is ever going to be a viable filler. No matter what you do to it you're never going to get around the coefficient tax imposed by the drain component, and that will make it the worst scaling regularly used dps spell in the game. There have been ideas bandied around about dealing additional damage IFF it doesn't actually healyou, but meh, it's a niche spell, and it does have its uses in emergency situations.

Hearteater · 08/21/08, 1:20 PM

I think the best approach to take for warlocks is for them to be designed with the expectation that all warlocks, no matter the spec, will be using both Destruction and Affliction spells combined with a pet that is dealing damage. More talents similar to Molten Fury would be very helpful. Things like ISB going to Affliction and affecting peroid damage (possibly ONLY peroidic damage), Grim Reach affecting all Shadow spells, and such.

Darian_TruBlade · 08/21/08, 2:22 PM

It seems that Affliction needs a filler that isn't either Shadow Bolt or one of the Drain spells (to avoid Shadow Priest-like play) but is also an Affliction spell to avoid necessitating Destruction talents.

Given those assumptions, the obvious options are to A) make Haunt a viable filler or B) make an entirely new baseline spell/talent for the task. I personally don't like B very much, but only because I can't think of a baseline spell that isn't worthless for any other spec of Warlock. So let's look at some options for A.

1) Rolling Haunts. Remove the cooldown, increased DoT damage and healing. Casting Haunt will immediately remove all of your DoTs from the target, and place a Haunt DoT on the target equal to the remaining total damage for the DoTs. Haunt being a DoT itself means it will automatically be factored into new applications of Haunt. This would allow some scaling with haste as quicker application of DoTs would mean more damage. There'd even be some interesting applications for CoD->Haunt->CoE.

Potential issues with this idea are the loss of PvP usefulness, and the fact that it still doesn't address Affliction Crit scaling issues.

2) Spammable Haunt. Remove the cooldown and healing, replace the DoT damage increase with a stackable effect that increases DoT/Haunt damage by 4-5% per stack up to 20%. Increase base cast time to 2.5 seconds with a .5-1.0 second cast time reduction rolled into one of the current talents (Imp Corruption is one option). Everlasting Corruption would use Haunt instead of Shadowbolt.

Potential issues include the continued lack of crit scaling.

Those are just a couple of options, but I think Haunt remains the best option for making a viable affliction filler. Although eventually when we're level 120 or some such we may simply have so many DoTs that it doesn't matter anymore (although the debuff limit would really become our enemy at that point).

blarnie · 08/21/08, 2:57 PM

Always enjoy reading these threads, and there are some great ideas so far to address the lack of affliction scaling and overall issues with the tree.

I'll bring one to the table: What if the UA was included in Everlasting Affliction as far as refreshing the duration? This would obviously increase the amount of time spent casting our filler spell, Shadowbolt - due to not having to recast UA or corruption. The more shadowbolts cast in our cycle, the more we benefit from haste/crit gear, etc.

Doesn't directly address the lack of scaling with DOT's, but I just don't see that happening judging by Blizzards track record. At least this way we get some more benefit with high end gear by means of our filler spell scaling proportionately with other destro specs and doing a higher percentage of our total DPS.

Possible downsides are the obvious potential to be overpowered in PvP as the two most powerful DOTs we have would indefinitely be on a target.

Other than that, I really like the idea of changing imp SP to increase dot damage by a certain % as others suggested. Although, depending on how it was implemented, it could cause a nightmare of managing/refreshing dots that were just applied just to get the benefit.

Drundia · 08/21/08, 3:04 PM

Originally Posted by Bibdy

Another intergalactic space-flaw with the trees is Ruin.

Its like we're a DPS class stuck in a hybrid-class' talent tree. Where are our several-minute long cooldowns? Where's our fun buttons like an auto-crit? An instant-cast? An AOE bomb? You know, something where the other guy goes "Aww, if he didn't blow X on me, I would have won". Nobody has said that about Warlocks since the days Deathcoil was changed. Now its kind of expected for a Warlock to use Death Coil in a fight.

And now we're getting Haunt, Chaos Bolt, Demonic Circle and Shadowflame, all of which are short-cooldowns which turns them into regular combat abilities. Metamorphosis is the first really significant cooldown we've EVER been given since the Death Coil change.

And for the record: I was really looking forward to Decimate.

Ruin wouldn't be that bad if Demonology wasn't so crit-filled now, or if Affliction wouldn't spam Shadow Bolts. Even if casters had higher base crits, Ruin would have to be slightly weaker and less important.

Yes, I wonder why we have hybrid kind of trees. Separate hit talents, separate threat reduction talents, separate range talents, even hybrids are having stuff merged for some basic cross-tree builds.

Really significant cooldown is something we really need. I'm looking at Warriors having all their 30 minute cooldowns turned into 5 minute cooldowns, so they can use it on every wipe try and in arenas, we are however stuck with just Death Coil, which also has too long cooldown that isn't really justified any more.

Decimate was interesting, but mostly just a POM. I think some trainable cooldowns are needed too, like mentioned Decimate, only somewhat revised.

Originally Posted by Nehrak

- Ruin is buried in deep Destruction (Tier 7/9?), and is set to 50/75%.
- ISB becomes an effect that increases YOUR crit damage by, say, 25% (applies to all Destruction spells?). In other words, it's kind of the "Tactical Mastery" talent because it boosts every spec (say what you will about Affliction), but not by a gross amount. Only deep Destruction gets the full benefit, but (I hope) the numbers won't be in "crazy land" as Blizzard calls it. Reigns in Destruction somewhat while allowing others to catch up some in the damage department.

I think ISB replacement at 5/5 should be like: "Increases critical strike damage of all your and your pet's spells and attacks by 15% and increases all your periodic damage by an amount equal to 75% of your critical strike chance percentage.". It brings magic crits from 150% to 172.5%, and physical crits from 200% to 230%, also it simulates 175% crits for DOTs. Since pets crit physically and DOT effect is powerful it's pretty good for other trees, but not so good for its own tree on itself. Here comes Ruin, considering the way "increased critical strike damage" and "increased critical strike damage bonus" stack with each other, that talent would be greatly amplified by Ruin, that would be slightly reduced (to 75% perhaps) and buried deeper in a tree as you suggest. This way Ruin on its own will make 187.5% damage crits, but together with new ISB it will be 226.875%.

Originally Posted by Dekkar

That strikes me as a silly design. In what situation would a healing clothie like a priest NOT want stamina when a mage and warlock both do? If there's going to be any differences at all in healer and DPS caster gear, those differences will most likely manifest themselves in the form of hit rating.

I think healers may be more mana limited, so where DPS caster would enjoy Stamina, a healer would prefer some Spirit or MP5.

PSGarak · 08/21/08, 3:40 PM

Destro needs more threat reduction right now because it does more DPS. If/when they fix affliction to be raid-viable DPS, affliction will have threat issues commensurate with that DPS. Destro's biggest difference is the need for an absolute barrier below the agro threshold of a few thousand to account for ruin, but difference vanishes assymptotically with fight length.

Warlocks do rather stand out to me as the cooldown-less class. I always would have liked our burst to be shard-limited rather than hard-cooldown-limited because it would have given shards some relevance to our class, but that would require some reworking of shards to make them matter more than bag space.

tetracycloide · 08/21/08, 3:49 PM

Proposed solution to crit sacaling in affliction.

Change Improved Shadow Bolt to the following:
Your shadow bolt and haunt critical strikes increase all damage done by your damage-over-time effects on the target by 100% for 3 secs. Does not affect curses.

Scoring a crit would apply the debuff, scoring a scrit with the debuff already up would add 3 secs to the debuffs duration NOT reset the timer. Removing the '# of charges' nature of the current ISB would remove the inverse scaling with crit currently 'enjoyed' by affliction locks and the complete lack of scaling with haste. This would, roughly, increase the damage from DoTs by 100% * the crit rate on shadow bolt and haunt as long as the caster is spaming shadowbolt and haunt. Affliction locks do not spend all of their time casting shadow bolts so this would be strictly less than 100% * crit rate so it would still not scale with crit as well as ruin but it would make up a lot of the difference. Since overlapping procs add to the duration this would also scale with haste.

Darian_TruBlade · 08/21/08, 4:32 PM

Originally Posted by Drundia

Decimate was interesting, but mostly just a POM. I think some trainable cooldowns are needed too, like mentioned Decimate, only somewhat revised.

I don't see Decimate as resurfacing. The school locking functionality, while interesting, doesn't play well with how any of the specs have turned out thus far. Also, new PoM functionality would only serve to fuel more Warlock/Mage rivalry.

I do recall there being some discussion of DoTs and similar effects taking current buffs into account more dynamically, (i.e. hitting a hypothetical +X% cooldown after casting DoTs will still increase their damage for its duration). That would, at least, allow a simple bandaid ability to function even if it wouldn't be particularly interesting or unique.

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Destro needs more threat reduction right now because it does more DPS. If/when they fix affliction to be raid-viable DPS, affliction will have threat issues commensurate with that DPS. Destro's biggest difference is the need for an absolute barrier below the agro threshold of a few thousand to account for ruin, but difference vanishes assymptotically with fight length.

Warlocks do rather stand out to me as the cooldown-less class. I always would have liked our burst to be shard-limited rather than hard-cooldown-limited because it would have given shards some relevance to our class, but that would require some reworking of shards to make them matter more than bag space.

Judging from current theory it seems as though a fair amount of Destruction and Affliction Warlocks' damage will be coming from their pets, which splits threat and alleviates the problem somewhat. That might simply be where our additional damage will be coming from this expansion, but it still helps to mitigate the threat issue.

I definitely agree that limiting burst through shards would be a far more interesting design than cooldowns, but it seems like it would be a nightmare to balance.

Shards would have to be limited somehow beyond bag space, otherwise the implications would be both overpowered and excessively frustrating for Warlocks at the same time. Having to have the maximum bagspace possible is not a requirement we want for Warlocks, nor do we want teams of 5 Warlocks to be able to squish any other team by filling their bags with shards before each match.

Drundia · 08/21/08, 5:16 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Destro needs more threat reduction right now because it does more DPS. If/when they fix affliction to be raid-viable DPS, affliction will have threat issues commensurate with that DPS.

Warlocks do rather stand out to me as the cooldown-less class. I always would have liked our burst to be shard-limited rather than hard-cooldown-limited because it would have given shards some relevance to our class, but that would require some reworking of shards to make them matter more than bag space.

Now Affliction DPS includes DPS-ing pet, which Affliction couldn't use before, so Affliction DPS goes up. Destruction doesn't get similar DPS boost because DPS-ing Imp replaces powerful DS, however Destruction off-loads some of threat to pet. But overall as for threat reduction, if they think we need that extra 10% reduction they should just give us free 10% threat reduction, like some other classes already have.

Being cooldown-less is a bad design considering that everyone else gets more and better cooldowns. Also our so called burst "Shadowburn" and "Conflagrate" for ages favored end of fight, and not early or even middle. Rogues have always been PVP problem because their burst is so front-loaded (Premeditation, starting at full energy), which doesn't have a proper counter on our side. When they use cooldowns they have that edge over us, but when they don't we are usually better, the problem is that it favors model of them being hunters and us being prey.

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade

I don't see Decimate as resurfacing. The school locking functionality, while interesting, doesn't play well with how any of the specs have turned out thus far. Also, new PoM functionality would only serve to fuel more Warlock/Mage rivalry.

Well, the only thing which was going to stay out of Decimate after my revision was its name.

Medu · 08/21/08, 7:08 PM

Originally Posted by Drundia

Now Affliction DPS includes DPS-ing pet, which Affliction couldn't use before, so Affliction DPS goes up. Destruction doesn't get similar DPS boost because DPS-ing Imp replaces powerful DS, however Destruction off-loads some of threat to pet. But overall as for threat reduction, if they think we need that extra 10% reduction they should just give us free 10% threat reduction, like some other classes already have.

Being cooldown-less is a bad design considering that everyone else gets more and better cooldowns. Also our so called burst "Shadowburn" and "Conflagrate" for ages favored end of fight, and not early or even middle. Rogues have always been PVP problem because their burst is so front-loaded (Premeditation, starting at full energy), which doesn't have a proper counter on our side. When they use cooldowns they have that edge over us, but when they don't we are usually better, the problem is that it favors model of them being hunters and us being prey.

Well, the only thing which was going to stay out of Decimate after my revision was its name.

I doubt the felhunter is doing more than 200dps raid buffed, while an imp is doing ~500dps. On top of that the imp is increasing the warlocks dps by a large amount as the imps crit rating is been passed to the warlock through empowered imp. Raid buffed, with a moonkin that could be 15-20% extra crit for the imp/warlock which would make it one of the most overpowered talents in the game.

edit: To be fair to blizzard solving affliction scaling problems isn't as trival as other class specs. I wouldn't get too worked up about affliction scaling until closer to release when we get a better idea of the other 2 trees as well as other classes.

turturin · 08/21/08, 7:34 PM

Originally Posted by Medu

edit: To be fair to blizzard solving affliction scaling problems isn't as trival as other class specs. I wouldn't get too worked up about affliction scaling until closer to release when we get a better idea of the other 2 trees as well as other classes.

The problem seems to be a basic lack of recognition of the factors that inherently affect scaling and how they relate (or in this case don't apply) to affliction dps. Blizzard has demonstrated through its public postings that they don't really understand the fundemental issue. That is precisely why people get "worked up". There is no reason to believe at this point that these fundamental issues will be addressed.

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging you have one, and Blizz hasn't done that yet.

Latas · 08/21/08, 7:41 PM

Their lack of understanding is frustrating to say the least. which makes me wonder if we have been going about explaining it to them the wrong way. Maybe we should compare it to if say a DKs AP didnt modify for spells. "Hey you are still using physical attacks for most of your damage."

SageoftheTimes · 08/21/08, 7:50 PM

Some really nice ideas towards Affliction scaling. I'm liking the 100% increase to shadow damage, 3 second duration idea extremely, tetracycloide. I think Affliction is going to have to get used to having Shadow Bolt (Beast Masters subbing into Marks is a great example), although some things still seem like they need work. If Grim reach, Improved Drain Soul (threat reduction only), and Fel Concentration could effect Shadow Bolt, but not stack with the Destro side, it could free up a ton of points for Affliction, while still allowing a decent dip into Destro (15 points for Imp. Shadow Bolt, Bane, and Devestation possibly, or 5 point Ruin). The hit talents could also use a bit of work, in that we use multiple trees regularly (other classes don't have this problem, and most mages will have enough hit gear to ignore Polymorph), so while I understand that the Devs are trying to make Suppression and Cataclysm viable for Afflic, I think that Suppression might need to include Shadow Bolt, or even all Shadow spells as well.

Medu · 08/21/08, 8:52 PM

Originally Posted by turturin

The problem seems to be a basic lack of recognition of the factors that inherently affect scaling and how they relate (or in this case don't apply) to affliction dps. Blizzard has demonstrated through its public postings that they don't really understand the fundemental issue. That is precisely why people get "worked up". There is no reason to believe at this point that these fundamental issues will be addressed.

The first step to solving a problem is acknowledging you have one, and Blizz hasn't done that yet.

Yes, the whole "but SB scales with crit/haste" wasn't the smartest post. One possible solution could be that sockets will become more powerful where the gear can be tailored to suit the spec.

turturin · 08/21/08, 8:58 PM

Originally Posted by Medu

Yes, the whole "but SB scales with crit/haste" wasn't the smartest post. One possible solution could be that sockets will become more powerful where the gear can be tailored to suit the spec.

I don't think I understand. Wouldn't that power then be available to all classes/specs, leaving the relative scaling disparity the same?

PyroTEK85 · 08/21/08, 9:00 PM

Perhaps, but sockets/glyphs shouldn't be necessary to fix something that is broken.

Nehrak · 08/21/08, 9:32 PM

What would be a better "bandaid" -- because at this point that's what it would be -- for Affliction: talent changes, or spell(s) that boost it? For myself, I'm thinking it's a combination of both; I really don't see how they're going to address the issue without all-but-revamping Affliction, based on what I've read here.

Also, to those proposing the "move Shadow to Affliction, make Destruction Fire": that doesn't exactly work out, for the simple reason that Destruction as it stands has the fewest abilities attached to it out of all three of our skill pools. You would be very hard-pressed, I'll wager, to create abilities and passive talents to boost things. In addition, what would happen with Shadowburn when you try to integrate that alongside Curse of Exhaustion, Siphon Life, etc.? So my point is: it's going to have to pretty much stay as Affliction vs. Destruction vs. Demonology, for the simple reason that adjusting our skillset to Shadow/Fire/Demonology would cause a bit of upset in baby's tummy in the Shadow side. I don't know about you, but I hate cleaning up after baby's messes.

PSGarak · 08/21/08, 10:37 PM

Speaking for myself: I'm not suggesting that shadowbolt becomes a full-on affliction spell. I'm suggesting it becomes the warlock Frostfire Bolt--belonging to one tree nominally, but supported enough by both that it's viable with a minimal (read: less than 21, preferably less than 17) investment in it's 'home' tree.
I'm also not saying shadow should be marginalized in deep destro, just shadowbolt. Besides, Shadowburn sounds to me like a prime candidate for shadowflame damage.