so the question becomes drop lava burst glyph or lightning bolt glyph. I think lightning bolt glyph would lose out unless the extra damage from the glyph on five bolts beats the bonus glyph damage of a LVB. Don't know how the multipliers stack so can't say for sure. Also have to consider if they change the LVB set bonus on tier 8 armor.

Additionaly, out of left field, would it be possible with talent spec of increasing flame shock initial damage and decreasing it's cooldown that the flameshock glyph might lose out?

Regardless of flame shock's cooldown, the glyph's purpose is to keep the dot up there, saving you a gcd from refreshing it.

No, it doesn't, which you'd know if you understood multipliers, or had looked at SEIC.

Lava:
With: 11154 crit.
Without: 10331 crit.
Difference: 823 (2799 spellpower)
Per rotation that is 1646 extra damage from the glyph (2 LvB casts).
Divide by rotation time, 18.58, and we get 88.6 dps.

Lightning Bolt
Average damage with: 6984
Average damage without: 6715
Difference: 269
Per rotation that is 2152 extra damage (8 Lb casts)
Divide by rotation time, 18.58, and we get 115.8

Rather simplified, but that's what it comes down to (and I'm ignoring the CC damage bonus here too). We also don't know anything about Ulduar itemisation, so we can't comment on that yet.

As for the Flame Shock glyph, no, just no. The gain is from the time saved from not casting a second flame shock.

The LB glyph is even stronger with the 5LB rotation, which in 3.1 everyone will have the haste for. (since full 25 man gear is the expected entry level for gear in Ulduar)

The Glyph of Lava is very similar to out 4pc set bonus which has been estimated at an almost trivial dps gain (although it must scale with SP by the very definition of the buff, instead of a static number that seems to be thrown around)

My hunch for the ToW glyph is that it will follow the same lines as all of the other raid buffs.

The talents that have been skipped by hunters / shammies pre 3.08 / mages to an extent when one raid member was already spec'd into it.

Hunting Party / Tow EO / Scorch WC

They have added (or are adding) a personal buff to these to make them more "appealing". I will be real pissed however if they make us blow a glyph to match the classes that have just had the talents "re-adjusted"

*pretty certain there are more examples, just a few off the top of my head*

Glyph of Lava is not similar to the 4pc set bonus.
Glyph adds 10% to the spells co-efficient.
Set bonus adds a 10% crit bonus modifier (effectively being a 5.45% damage bonus).
Numbers wise, the Glyph is about 3 times the damage of the set bonus.

The thing with those other talents that are getting self-bonuses is that it gives people more incentive to take those talents if someone else in the raid can provide the same effect. This means that a hunter with hunting party gets a bonus from taking that talent even if there are other replenishment providers in the raid. Totem of Wrath is not really comparable, as it's unlikely that Demonology locks can replace the spellpower bonus of ToW, nor are you likely to have multiple elemental shaman in a raid.

I should note that a demo lock with full 25 man gear will easily have more than 3k spellpower

A lock in my guild who picked up every best in slot caster item the one time they each dropped has something like 3300 spellpower with demo spec

Unfortunately, I gather that demonology isn't really competitive with Affliction, so not many high end locks want to go that route

Demonology is competitive now, especially in high-end guilds with better DPS, because encounters in the current raid environment are so short (higher relative Metamorphosis uptime). I don't expect that to be the case in Ulduar and AFAIK Demonology isn't getting serious PvE buffs when 3.1 drops so we should be safe.

I don't have the exact amount of spellpower I was getting, but I did verify that dropping a totem of wrath/getting rid of it didn't change my spellpower when Demonic Pact was up, for what it's worth

The locks in the demo thread are saying that they get less than 100% uptime on DP, although I haven't noticed it falling off in raids

I guess that it's kind of a non-issue, since most hardcore locks will prefer to optimize their own spot on the meters, so even if it's about the same raid DPS to have a high end lock go Demonology, they'll probably stick with Affliction

DP uptime is very high in a tank-and-spank sort of environment (meaning one where the Warlock's pet is free to attack and doesn't have to be yanked around and won't get killed). Figure about 90%. I still drop ToW even when one of our Warlocks is Demo just because I figure the raid benefit for that 10% outweighs my personal DPS increase from Searing Totem. I have no math to back that up

The problem was the spellpower from spirit on fel armor not being added. This is being fixed in 3.1. Currently Demonology locks are already surpassing ToW. With the Fel Armor fix it will be much more. Trinket procs also increase Deomonic Pact for the duration they are up so a Demonic lock will easily be adding 50-100 spellpower with demonic pact when fully ulduar geared which would trivialize and DPS loss by having a less optimal spec.

Other than the Fel armor fix there are no buffs I've seen either.

Most of the locks are currently experiencing 91-92% uptime with Demonic pact. Is 22-25 spellpower to the raid worth the DPS searing totem brings? Depends on the fight I guess.

World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> [Updated] 3.1.0 PTR Patch Notes

Glyph of Totem of Wrath: When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 min.

At first glance I'd say Glyph of Lava is the most suitable to be replaced.

Depends on raid comp I'd say.

84 spell damage != Glyph of Lava + Searing Totem, but would be better than Glyph of Lava Alone.

I don't see any requirement that totem of wrath needs to stay active to keep the buff.. it just says that when you cast totem of wrath you get 30% of the spellpower for 5 minutes. If we take the glyph as it reads then in situations where totem of wrath is useless you drop totem of wrath before the fight to get the 5 min buff, then you drop searing totem once the fight starts. Refresh it after 5 mins if you get to that point. Given this..

searing totem + 84 spell power > searing totem + lava glyph (at current gear levels)

Seems to me if they wanted to give a spell power buff while the totem is active, the glyph would read something like, "you gain an additional 30% of the spellpower bonus of totem of wrath while your totem of wrath is active".

To me this feels like another attempt to make a duplicate raid buff still an attractive talent. Unfortunately they did it in the form of a glyph instead of just tacking it onto the talent like they're doing for many other specs.

As I'm sure many of you did, I and several guildies went and played around with the Iron Council, to see if we could figure out the fight on our own.

While most of it entirely unimportant to this thread, one thing I noticed seemed far our of place.

My Laveburst on live ranged from 9k-14.5k, depending on how buffed and lucky I get. I'm 90% positive I've never hit over a 15k lavaburst on live, outside of situational buffs.

However, I noticed MANY lavabursts hitting for 15k+ tonight, one even going to 16.4k damage. I have no way to prove it, as running addons on a crappy computer in a buggy ptr didn't seem like a good idea, but I'm positive that my lavaburst was hitting harder then normal.

I'm not sure if its because of lavaburst getting some change made, or if the blue-circle thingy that the midget council-member spawns was buggy. I did notice several of the lavabursts (but not all) that were higher then I expected taking place when I stood in the rune power buff, but since none of them demonstrated a 50% damage increase on the large sized mob or the medium sized mob (Our strategy focused on killing the big dude first, then the medium dude), I took a guildy at his word that he WAS gaining a 50% damage increase, but only against the small dude.

Am I missing something to explain a 2k damage increase?

(Gear on the PTR is the same as on live The World of Warcraft Armory, and I use the same glyphs as well (Lava, FS, LB) ).

Did you have the shirt of uber equipped?

Edit: Thought you were making a joke, as I had no clue what you were referencing.

No, I didn't talk to any of the McWeaksauces this patch.


Edited again:

Think I figured out what was going on. We didn't have a unholy dk/moonkin/lock in our group, which meant no 13% sd increase. That combined with a lack of a flask meant that my spells were signicantly weaker, perhaps enough that a 50% damage boost felt so small.

Teach me to forget to flask at my awe at how awesome Ulduar looks.

It's 13% core now. Malediction no longer affects CoE.

Hey guys, sorry to get a little off topic, but what McWeaksauces are you talking about? I've searched the EJ general forums and WoWhead, but couldn't find anything about the new ones (just the ones from last year)

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Who is Jillian McWeaksauce?

"We'll also bring Ursula McWeaksauce out when we want to test specific hard modes, as she gives out the Shirt of Uber. The Shirt will effectively increase your items' statistics so we can simulate testers having the full Ulduar gear we assume they will have for hard mode."

Did you have a rogue in the raid group that may have been giving you Tricks of the Trade? Recently in one of our Patchwerk fights our rogue was giving me ToT and I had a 16987 Lava Burst (wws - proof) so that may have given you the damage increase.

Did anyone manage to do any patchwerk testing on the PTR?If this is the case feedback would be highly appreciated.

Sigh, nothing but Mp5 and spirit badge gear...... We could use something to make mp5 a useful stat, like the treatment spirit got with some of the other casters.