I really hope they rework our talents, at least the destruction ones. As it is right now it doesnt really feel like it's worth keeping your warlock as a main when you have other options.
While I'm all for Affliction (and Demo) being good enough to raid with, I had hoped they'd do it by fixing Afflictions problems rather than simply Nuking Destro into dust....
The blue post gives one hope; though it once again shows the continued failures in blizzards versioning system for builds (also effects their patch notes often).
I understand the need for a few nerfs here and there, but many of the changes in the patch baffle me.
The nerf to Fel Armor is the Warlock one that confuses me. It might make sense if an accessible talent was added or changed to provide the 30% mana regen while casting. Demonic Embrace would have been an excellent option for this. Instead, we simply lose a large portion of what made Spirit worthwhile as a stat.
What remains is the +Spell Power and the effect it has on Life Tap, the latter being the trickier to calculate.
Life Tap currently grants 1490 + Spirit * 3 mana untalented. Assuming a base Spirit of 200, that puts us at 2090 base for level 80. So, if we would spend X% of our DPS time casting lifetap at that value, our effective reduction in lifetap time per point of spirit is 2090/(2090 + Spirit * 3) * 100%. Note that this equation suffers diminishing returns. It only takes 7 Spirit to reduce Life Tap time by 1%, but it takes 77.4 Spirit to reduce that by 10%. By the time you reach 50% you need 13.9 Spirit for the same 1% reduction.
So with the 697 Spirit it takes to get there we get 50% Life Tap time and 209.1 Spell Power. Alternatively, those item values could potentially have been used to acquire 813 Spell Power. Thus a 50% reduction in Life Tap time must be an equivalent DPS increase to 604 Spell Power.
Obviously the more DPS you already do, the more valuable the reduction in Life Tap time is. So we need a complex equation to calculate the difference between DPS with and without the 50% reduction in Life Tap time.
(Raw DPS * (Life Tap Time * 50%)) = DPS Difference
Assuming the 604 Spell Power is 400 DPS and we already do 2k DPS, we need to normally spend 40% of our DPS time Life Tapping for this to be an equivalent DPS upgrade. If we take a more modest estimate of 25%, we need to already be doing 3.2k DPS to break even.
This change worries me because it appears that the ideal gear for a Warlock has returned to a set as low on Spirit as possible. Given that Spirit is genuinely useful for all other cloth casters and even Druids looking to downgrade on armor, I'm concerned that we'll be at odds with our own itemization.
Actually with that change Spirit goes to the place where it is for Mages, and that's useful under certain scenarios but nowhere near a "core" stat like that of Strength of Agility for their respective melee classes.
It of course begs the question, if they're trying to prevent Spirit being too important for Warlocks and too meaningless for Mages but still maintain spirit on "caster" gear why would they weaken it for Warlocks instead of simply making it stronger for non-Arcane mages.
Actually with that change Spirit goes to the place where it is for Mages, and that's useful under certain scenarios but nowhere near a "core" stat like that of Strength of Agility for their respective melee classes.
It of course begs the question, if they're trying to prevent Spirit being too important for Warlocks and too meaningless for Mages but still maintain spirit on "caster" gear why would they weaken it for Warlocks instead of simply making it stronger for non-Arcane mages.
I don't think that's the intent....rather, i think they intend to "make" us lifetap, but compensate us with health regen to top us off. I agree with and understand the itemization issues it may create for us, but I don't think they nerfed our spirit regen to make things appear better to the non-arcane mage crowd.
Chaos Bolt - 3 New ranks added, max rank doing 990 to 1256 Fire damage.
Haunt - 3 New ranks added, max rank doing 645 to 753 Shadow damage.
Dark Pact - Rank 5 added, draining 1200 mana. Only returns 100% mana instead of 200%.
Ritual of Souls - Rank 2 added, allows for Fel Healthstones!
Backdraft - Now the cast time and mana cost of your next Destruction spell reduced by 10/20/30% instead of 10/20/30% spell haste for next 3 Destro spells.
Improved Soul Leech - Your Soul Leech effect also restores mana to you and your summoned demon equal to 1/2% of maximum mana, changed from 5/10% of the damage caused.
Improved Felhunter - Now increases the effect of your Felhunter's Fel Intelligence by 5/10%, up from 1/2%.
Demonic Empathy - Changed to when you or your pet critically hits with a spell or ability, the other's damage done by their next 3 spells or abilities is increased by 1/2/3%, down from 2/4/6%.
Fel Armor - Allows you to regain 2% of your maximum health every 5 sec instead of allowing 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
Shadowfury - Now an instant cast spell.
Unstable Affliction - Silence from dispel increased to 5 seconds from 3 seconds.
Fire and Brimstone - Now increases the damage of your Immolate spell by an amount equal to 3/6/9/12/15% of your spell power, down from 5/10/15/20/25%.
Empowered Imp - The spell critical hit chance bonus for the next spell was reduced to 20% from 100%.
Death's Embrace - Now works for all Shadow spells instead of just Shadowbolt and Haunt. Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 3/6/9% from 5/10/15%.
Eradication - 30 second cooldown for effect added.
Demonic Empowerment - Voidwalker increased threat reduced to 20 second duration. Fel Guard buff reduced to 15 second duration.
Touch of Shadow - Felguard sac increases your Shadow and Fire damage by 7%, down from 10%.
Shadow Embrace - Down to 1/2% bonus damage by warlock from 2/4%.
Amplify Curse - Now reduces the global cooldown of your Curses by 0.067%, down from .5 seconds.
Curse of Exhaustion - Now only slows by 30%, down from 50%.
Aftermath - Down to 2 ranks from 5.
Emberstorm - Now reduces the cast time of your Incinerate spell by .25 sec, down from .5 seconds.
Cataclysm - Now reduces the Mana cost of your Destruction spells by 1/2/3%, down from 2/4/6%.
Some stuff had already been mentioned, but I didn't want to pull anything just in case I missed something. Any idea what Fel Healthstones might be?
Backdraft - Now the cast time and mana cost of your next Destruction spell reduced by 10/20/30% instead of 10/20/30% spell haste for next 3 Destro spells.
Does "cast time reduction" reduce the global cooldown? I assume for Incinerate that means
2.25 * 0.7 = 1.575 s
and for Immolate
1.5 * 0.7 = 1.05s
with a reduced GCD of 1.05s? Is that correct?
Improved Soul Leech - Your Soul Leech effect also restores mana to you and your summoned demon equal to 1/2% of maximum mana, changed from 5/10% of the damage caused.
It will probably restore mana equal to 2% of my mana to me and simultaniously 2% of my pets mana to the pet? How much mana does an Imp have at 80?
Fel Armor - Allows you to regain 2% of your maximum health every 5 sec instead of allowing 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
We can hope that's the version for 3.0 and will be changed back in WotLK. They did the same with Leader of the pack where the healing was reduced by 1/3 after TBC was available (because the healing scaled with health and the new gear had a lot more sta on it).
A lot of nerfs in the new build according to mmochampion. Dark pact back to 100%. CoEx changed back to 30% snare. 30 second internal cooldown on eradication. Death's embrace down to 3% crit pet talent. Demonic empathy down to 1% per talent. Empowered imp 20% increased crit chance on proc down from 100%.
Amplify curse slightly buffed, .7 off of gcd instead of .5.
Fel armor was also changed to this:
Ruin/devastation, corruption, and metamorphosis changes don't seem to be implemented yet.
Ug. I know they nerfed almost every other class a lot, but WOW are these changes a hit to the gut. And you know the one class they DIDN'T nerf into the ground? Mages. :/ Hopefully we'll see Mages get nerfed in the next patch (I guess they wanted to isolate their whining since Mages are known to be the most vocal class about how "underpowered" they are).
And I guess we're back to not getting sh** from spirit. Didn't they learn from Voidwalker DS Sac? ANY low % health per tick buff like that is worthless in PVE. And Demon Armor is going to be the PVP Armor, so what's the point of this new Fel Armor? Leveling?
Also, Emberstorm and Empowered Imp changes are making me seriously rethink destruction. Together with Ruin and the new Meta, I'm definitely going to be trying out Demo.
Maybe there's a hybrid build we could come up with, it's not like you need more than 40 points in Destro again. Hmmm... well I played around with the trees, and I'm coming up blank. Unless you go with the nerfed DS (0/21/40 +10) build or nerfed Emp. Imp build, I don't see any reason to go more than 20 or 21 into Destro.
On the other hand, Demo seems like it's looking good to me. What do you guys think, 0/51/20 ish?
I threw together this 0/52/19 real quick, seems like it might work out.
And I guess we're back to not getting sh** from spirit.
Originally Posted by MMO-C
Fel Armor
Surrounds the caster with fel energy, increasing spell power by 180 plus additional spell power equal to 30% of your Spirit. In addition, you regain 2% of your maximum health every 5 sec. Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Warlock at any time. Lasts 30 min.
28% of base mana, Instant cast
Demon Armor
Protects the caster, increasing armor by 950, and increasing the amount of health generated through spells and effects by 20%. Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Warlock at any time. Lasts 30 min.
31% of base mana, Instant cast
30% of spirit as Spellpower isn't good? Also, remember that not every single bit of every talent or spell is designed for full raiding efficiency. This appears to be more in-line with leveling, farming, or potentially even group scenarios where perhaps you're running with a less efficient healer. Lifetapping and having your own permanent, low-scale HoT on you isn't that bad a thing. It's a nice bonus, and that's all it is. The meat of Fel Armor is going to be the spellpower boost.
And I guess we're back to not getting sh** from spirit. Didn't they learn from Voidwalker DS Sac? ANY low % health per tick buff like that is worthless in PVE. And Demon Armor is going to be the PVP Armor, so what's the point of this new Fel Armor? Leveling?
Please don't act like a +4-500 buff to spell power in a raid situation is pointless.
Destro got ~ -8% crit, -10% haste, and a minor need to user life tap. A nerf was obviously needed to make the other 2 specs worth considering, but it's not like the spec is dead - the fine tuning is still ahead. I hope they somehow make the Immolate talents worth the points and then it's all set.
After 3 years of having the 21 point Destro talent outperform every single 31, 41 and until recently, 51 point talent from Demo and Affli, I'm more than happy with the way things are shaping out right now.
"You were strong for 3 years, now be weak for 3 years" isn't going to work out. You have to ignore that something outperformed or underperformed in past and look into the future, and go towards balance and design goals. I have absolutely nothing against moving some power from powerful talents into weaker ones, but the state of weak 21-pointer is generally making me sad. Again I don't say that it should be big boost to tree, they can move some effect from other talent, I don't think I can think of something really new.
Originally Posted by Scrufola
Does "cast time reduction" reduce the global cooldown?
No, it doesn't. What I can say is that Backdraft is changed to match its tooltip. With Emberstorm nerf Incinerate doesn't get below GCD with it, but Immolate does.
As for Amplify Curse maybe they forgot multiplication by 100 or something. 0.067% makes no sense, but 67% does.
Has anyone found a talent calculator that has been updated to include the latest changes? As of this morning all of the ones I've come across, even the ones that say they were updated after yesterday's patch, still reflect the old talents =\
While I'm all for Affliction (and Demo) being good enough to raid with, I had hoped they'd do it by fixing Afflictions problems rather than simply Nuking Destro into dust....
The blue post gives one hope; though it once again shows the continued failures in blizzards versioning system for builds (also effects their patch notes often).
There's going to be a combination of nerfing and buffing of pretty much everyone before they're done. It may be that Affliction is hitting pretty close to the target DPS already, in which case everyone above Affliction needs nerfs (not just Destruction, but rogues, hunters, Arcane Blast spamming mages, etc.), and everyone below Affliction needs buffs. You can't really just assume that your highest-performing spec is the one that's hitting the DPS target.
Now that they apparently plan for every DPS spec in the game to put out very similar numbers, it pretty much by definition means that no more than one spec is currently performing as intended, and every other spec is either too high or too low.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
On the other hand, Demo seems like it's looking good to me. What do you guys think, 0/51/20 ish?
I threw together this 0/52/19 real quick, seems like it might work out.
x/51+x/18 will probably be the best dps build for Demo. the 18 are spent in isb, bane, ruin, and molten core. If fire turns out not to be worth it even with molten core (i.e. incinterate*1.10 < shadowbolt for demo), then 5/51/15 is likely where its at. Crit scaling could make it worth it at higher gear levels to eventually go 0/55/15, depending on how demonic empathy ends up...it will be interesting to see the theorycraft on these inflections once we have final numbers on the abilities (i.e. when do talents like demonic empathy become better than the passive % modifier you could get on corruption instead). Demonic Empowerment's final buff and duration will affect this as well.
Either way, demo is going to be interesting to play with multiple cooldowns to use and a pet to manage...would be really nice if they would make immolate worthwhile (always) for demo to keep up, as this would bring some modest warlock to warlock synergy (assuming your second warlock in the raid is fire-destro, even tho its been nerfed a bit)
EDIT: The math below is incorrect, please see this post.
How much mana does a Warlock typically have at 80? Depending on the answer, and how much it scales, the new Imp Soul Leech might actually be a buff.
The first thing to remember is that Imp Soul Leech only applies to damage done by the Warlock themselves; any DPS contribution from the Imp is irrelevant. So the effective Mp5 of the old Imp Soul Leech was Warlock DPS * 30% * 10% * 5. The effective Mp5 of the new Imp Soul Leech is Warlock Mana * 2% / Cast Time * 5. With a 2.25 second cast time, it looks like this.
DPS * 3% * 5 = Mana * 2% / 2.25 * 5
DPS * 15% = Mana * 4.44%
So if we do 3k DPS we only need 10135 mana for an equivalent return. If we have 20k mana we need to do almost 6k DPS to break even.
At the very least the new Imp Soul Leech will be a significant buff for leveling Destro Locks, but it would be awesome if we could get a rough figure on what to expect for mana at 80.
Last edited by Montegomery : 09/11/08 at 2:23 PM.
Reason: Incorrect Math
At the very least the new Imp Soul Leech will be a significant buff for leveling Destro Locks, but it would be awesome if we could get a rough figure on what to expect for mana at 80.
My guildmates are raiding Naxx10 with a lock of 13k max mana at the moment (meaning some int buffs but not all) so you are very likely to be right that it's going to end up a slight buff. Strange, I wonder what the developer's purpose was with the change.
It's the same change they made to hunters and paladins. Regeneration based on a flat percent is easy to balance and implement, regeneration based on damage done, while more fun, is far harder to balance for and tends to cause scaling issues.
After 3 years of having the 21 point Destro talent outperform every single 31, 41 and until recently, 51 point talent from Demo and Affli, I'm more than happy with the way things are shaping out right now.
Yeah...because that 21 point Demo talent was just aweful, wasn't it? Granted, Affliction didn't have much, but the 21 point demo talent is just as often used as the 21 point destro.
Lets refocus your statement:
"After 3 years of having the 21 point Demo talent outperform every single 31, 41, and until recently, 51 point talent from Destro and Affli, I'm more than happy with the way things are shaping out right now."
How much mana does a Warlock typically have at 80? Depending on the answer, and how much it scales, the new Imp Soul Leech might actually be a buff.
The first thing to remember is that Imp Soul Leech only applies to damage done by the Warlock themselves; any DPS contribution from the Imp is irrelevant. So the effective Mp5 of the old Imp Soul Leech was Warlock DPS * 30% * 10% * 5. The effective Mp5 of the new Imp Soul Leech is Warlock Mana * 2% / Cast Time * 5. With a 2.25 second cast time, it looks like this.
DPS * 3% * 5 = Mana * 2% / 2.25 * 5
DPS * 15% = Mana * 4.44%
So if we do 3k DPS we only need 10135 mana for an equivalent return. If we have 20k mana we need to do almost 6k DPS to break even.
At the very least the new Imp Soul Leech will be a significant buff for leveling Destro Locks, but it would be awesome if we could get a rough figure on what to expect for mana at 80.
Hmm looks like you've failed to include the 30% proc chance in your calculation
With 10k mana the new soul leech returns 10000*0.02=200 mana on 30% of the casts
Assuming each cast takes 2.25s this gives 200/2.25 * 0.3 = 26.66 mana per second which is way way lower than the old soul leech
Hmm looks like you've failed to include the 30% proc chance in your calculation
With 10k mana the new soul leech returns 10000*0.02=200 mana on 30% of the casts
Assuming each cast takes 2.25s this gives 200/2.25 * 0.3 = 26.66 mana per second which is way way lower than the old soul leech
Edit: Restructuring
You're absolutely right. My math is wrong and I'll note that in my old post.
The New Math:
DPS * 15% = Mana * 1.33%
So for 3k DPS we need 33834 mana to break even. Give the mana values stated by Zed, this means that compared to the old it's been nerfed by approximately half (possibly more, given that I doubt mana scales at the same rate as DPS).
Buffing it to 2/4% or even 3/6% would make up the difference, but that may not be what Blizzard wants. Regardless, it's now something of a dubious talent for 5 points (counting plain Soul Leech).
Drain Soul is going to do 4x damage to targets under 20% (Source)
I'm gonna try some maths here for an Haunt/ruin spec, please correct any mistakes I make. So, with 2k spell damage and 35% crit after buffs:
Drain soul exclusive modifiers: 4% per affliction effect (lets say 2 warlocks in the raid so 7 effects on the target - 2 curses, 2 corruptions, 1 siphon life, 1 UA, 1 haunt)
20% from haunt
4% from two stacks of Shadow Embrace
400% damage under 20%
Base damage on Drain Soul is 710 over 15 seconds with a 214.3% coefficient. So 4996 damage pre modifiers. 31923.24 afterwards, or 2128.21 dps.
Shadow bolt exclusive mods: Can crit with a 44% chance when under 20% health, so we can just call it 44%
Base damage is 730 on average, and a 85.71% coefficient. 1407.85 dps.
Of course, SB will refresh corruption, grants ISB and allows easier dot replacement. So will we bolt until we crit, then drain until a dot or haunt needs put back up?
Last edited by Cpt. Hammer : 09/11/08 at 8:51 PM.
Reason: Maths
Blizzard has stated that they're going to make things viable, and I'd say they will. They're probably just testing some stuff. We still barely know what the talents will do (Everlasting Affliction in it's current incarnation is a great example of vague wording). They've been doing some majour changes recently. Retadins said the same thing about their class being ruined, and with the latest changes, they gain 20% of their max mana every time they judge (about every 8 seconds + lag/latency). Things will change.
09/11/08, 2:12 AM
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