Is it? +15% to Fire only is more noticeable than +10% to Frost/Fire or +10% to Shadow/Arcane?

The thing is, it's not quite the same, when it comes to the maginal gain of the next Warlock or Mage that you add: Fire Mage #2 isn't hardly gaining at all by not having to maintain his own Scorch, while Warlock #4, able to put up his Damage Curse, is doing markedly better DPS. Warlocks #1-3 are doing the DPS of Fire Mages #1-2, and they're doing it while improving everyone else's DPS, not their own.

In other words, most classes must put up their utility buffs to do X,000 DPS; Warlocks do that X,000 DPS despite the fact that they're putting up utility buffs, and they're improving rDPS to boot; a Warlock doing his best personal DPS must be selfish and only soak, but his best personal DPS is better than many others', simply by the numbers.

Basically, a given Warlock can take the role of the Rogue (soaking buffs and putting out fantastic DPS) OR they can take on the role of the rDPS buffer; but even when they're buffing rDPS, they're beating other DPS classes that are currently soaking (for all the rigamarole about 40/0/21, a Firelock's DPS is more, by the numbers, and easier to maintain to boot).

I can accept that perhaps we're never going to see eye-to-eye on this, but I think you're being extremely uncharitable when you characterize my ilk as being unable to see the Warlock class as a whole; this game is at its heart just a numbers game when it comes to DPS, and it's very easy to calculate the benefit of, say, the Fel Armor change. Showing that it's +97.5mp5 in level 70 Epic gear with no additional spell ranks and only the base skills available at 70 makes the Fel Armor change equal to the potency of chain-potting right out of the box, no questions asked; it's objectively good. It's when you express incredulity that Super Mana Potions are more DPS for Warlocks than Destruction Potions that I start to question your perspective on the matter, because a simple glance at the effects of each should make that evaluation completely obvious, for any DPS caster; the only time a Destruction Potion is good is when Curator is about to Evocate, for any class.

I'm still in the boat that believes that using a Destro Pot when "the planets align" as far as cooldowns are stacked(Hero, drums, trinket) is more beneficial than an extra mana pot.

The only reason I involved myself in this thread is because I read claims being made about Mages that, on their face, a little hard to justify. It's fine to want to keep the Warlock discussion sacrosanct, but spreading misunderstanding about your sister class in such a discussion just creates a place where misconceptions incubate.

I stayed in the thread because Warlocks continued to underestimate and deride SPI regen, much to my amazement, so really, despite the fact that I am a Mage, I'm not "spewing" over your thread, but rather "discussing the mechanics" of the Warlock class.

It's fairly easy to calculate; simply calculate your DPS for 15 seconds without, calculate it with, and then see if the delta is greater than the damage a Super Mana Potion could fuel (which is 5 Shadowbolts on average, rounded down)

According to my calculations Destro pot is 1 dps better than Super Mana in mid sunwell gear if and only if it is used during guldan/drums/heroism(and equal dps if just guldan/heroism). That is the only way it can get to/above super mana.


For mages running out of mana means no dps, for warlocks running out of mana means more lifetaps. It isn't comparable in the slightest. Regen = dps for us. Regen = sustainability for you. It is the reason why warlocks are a better use of spriests if mages can get by without one. Personally I am looking forward to the spirit change.

Gold Star!

Lesson learned: Super Mana Potions are OP.

Good thing I wasn't comparing, then; I keep taking pains to explicitly write that SPI Regen is *objectively* good for Warlocks, in a vacuum, completely separate from all other classes, but perhaps writing that once more won't hurt.

The problem I see with spirit-based regen for warlocks as a concept is that it does less to advance the two raiding builds that currently underperform (afflic and FG) than it does for the current dominant one 0/21/40. Affliction is dark pact reliant and FG is reliant on mana feed, which forces lifetaps. Previously this was not an issue for FG build (only pet scaling was) as lifetaps were necessary to sustain the warlocks dps. If the warlock lifetaps less, more points will be required in Mana Feed (where previously 1/3 was fine for raiding).

I don't object to any mage trying to demonstrate that spirit regen is beneficial. But please, warlocks and mages, save the arguments about who should do more dps in balance with overall utility for another thread.

But again, Dark Pact costs GCD's, so spirit-based regen will improve its DPS.

That's a legitimate problem, though. They should probably change Mana Feed to give your pet a portion of mana you receive from Life Tap, Mana Potions, and Spirit.

Like Kyth has been saying you lack a basic understanding of our mana usage.

One super mana pot gives 2400 mana back on average. An average lifetap gives 2000 mana. This means a mana pot is worth 1.2 lifetaps. Lifetaps cost 1.5/2.5 = 60% of a shadowbolt (approx 5000 dmg).

So we get one mana pot = 0.6*1.2*5000 = 3600 dmg
Divide this by 2 min to get 30 dps.

As for our super amazing spirit armor you guys are all jealous about, that gives 97 mp5 or about 30 dps, slightly more than 1% damage boost. Hardly something to moan over, both classes will get a lot of buffs/new abilities & talents in WotLK.

Unbuffed, warlock fire is now stronger than warlock shadow.

Since it also gains more from raid debuffs via scorch being +5%, yes, it's noticable.

Honestly I didn't expect to notice it, I expected it to be more of a "in retrospect, looking at wws". But I did. A loss of 150-200 dps is definitely taingible, particularly since I had the joy of an additional -50 dps since I lost my staff enchant (if I go back to shadow for KJ, I'll re-enchant my staff, but I'm more likely to drop 1% crit and lose 5% off my initial immolate damage and go fire with nether prot if I want nether prot.



Correct, and there's more to the game other than DPS, and that's where the communication breakdown occurs, because mages only want to have discussions involving DPS (unsurprisingly) and, for obvious reasons, Warlocks tend to want to broaden the scope a bit since we get the short end of the stick on some other aspects.

Both groups stick cross their arms and pout, refuse to recognize that the other is arguing deliberately and solely from their position of strenght, and conversations go nowhere and turn otherwise useful threads into back and forths about "well your curse gives you X% effective dps, and..." and "DPS isn't the whole picture, there's other considerations such as....."

Gentlemen of the Mage persuasion. Can we all come to the understanding that while in the WARLOCK thread we're all guests? We're not here to pick fights, we're not here to tell them they're all wrong, and we certainly aren't here to tell them to L2P.

I am sure there are many who can offer an insight into warlock-dom, and many of us may have lock alts, me included. Bear in mind however, just because you're on the Other Side and see the grass from a different angle doesn't mean you're in a position to show people with hundreds of days /played on their locks that they're dense and just don't get what is obvious to you.

Yes LT is not the same as Spi, yes LT costs DPS, yes Spi is getting a work-over. Do we have to cock-fence with our e-peens about it? No. Do we have to explicitly ignore a plead from someone in a thread that isn't adressed to us to tone down the hostility and aggression? No we don't. When you offer opinion or suggestion it's nice. When you come over cocky, it's dumb and earns you Infractions. This isn't WoW Forums, please show relevant decorum.

Plenty of reasons for why one would only use 2 mana potions on brutallus.

1, Mana was full when potion cooldown was up because an unexpected mana tide happened
2. Lifetapped while moving from burn and was full mana when potion cooldown was up
3. Threatcapped so wasting some time lifetapping
4. Misjudged mana at some point and already have enough mana to do the rest of the fight

Personally I am a fan of using destruction potions on the last cooldown even though I don't have guld'dan and I know even during a heroism it is a bit less dps. For Super Mana to be better you have to fully use of all that mana and end the fight at 0 mana, if you ended the fight at 800 mana you were better off using the destruction potion. Plus big numbers at the end is fun.

It's a simple solution that works well with the idea of master-pet synergy to which demonology aspires. Of course, pet scaling also has a simple and obvious solution, yet no hint yet at real implementation.

On another note: What is the future of the Human spirit racial? Do we see this getting changed completely, nerfed to 5% to be more inline with the gnome intellect bonus, etc? It appears all of a sudden to be a dominant caster pve racial, especially if nearly all caster gear will have item points spent in spirit, as seems to be the general consensus.

Discussion/Math on the impact 10% more spirit would have for one race would be interesting to me (as well as some of the other warlocks and mages reading this thread)

But that's just the thing; I notice when CoS isn't up. It's utterly obvious. I notced when CoE wasn't up. You're really all over the place here; there are fewer Fire Users in a raid than Shadow + Arcane users, and at least as many Fire + Frost users as Fire users; you can't argue Improved Scorch is going to be missed more readily or definitely adds more rDPS than CoS or CoE in today's raids. It's just not going to happen unless all your Warlocks are respecced to Fire.

Besides, the point I'm making is not who misses it, but rather the remainder personal DPS each class gets when they forgo putting up their rDPS buff; Fire Mages have nowhere to go but down if they skip their utility, Warlocks (after the one curse they want is up) have nowhere to go but up; a Fire Mage doesn't have the option to pass on putting up Scorch and instead add a more highly damaging Fire spell to boost his personal DPS.

This means Warlocks after the utility curses come into a raid with automatically higher potential DPS than Fire Mages after the first. Moreover, you need three Warlocks to begin with because of the potency of the Curses, so not only is the stacking requirement high, the marginal utility is also higher. It's just not balanced, objectively.

The problem is, these "other considerations" are inevitably couched in terms of "AI, Water, and Portals"; and I can't see how these are anything other than the weakest value-added utilities in the game; the value of INT is heavily subsumed into passive regen for all classes save the Warlock, and is of less potency than DS to begin with, anyway; Water and Portals are nothing more than vendor food and a Hearthstone, ultimately. Stacked against Healthstones and Soulstones, there's no way you can consider Mages superior in this regard; their utility isn't even stackable!

Both Mages and Warlocks tank encounters.

Both Mages and Warlocks CC during various trash pulls; Warlocks even get to CC during certain boss encounters.

Both Mages and Warlocks AoE, but with the introduction of Prot Paladins, the only true measure of raid AoE is the DPS output. That's only recently been equalized between the classes.

The only actual utility Mages have over Warlocks is the ability to Decurse allies, and that's not a unique ability in and of itself; the only thing keeping Mages as the go-to for decursing is the lack of room for raiding Moonkin, and asking a DPS class to justify its slots in a raid with none of its DPS but rather, its one debuff cleanser is pretty well unfair, objectively.

When it comes right down to it, I cannot ever see how Mages are unjustified in focusing on the DPS issue; everything else is a wash between the classes (i.e., Mage and Warlocks come out at very least equal), and telling a DPS class that he justifies himself with Remove Lesser Curse is even worse than telling a DPS class he justifies himself with CoS/CoE; at least rDPS curses are needed for every fight; if a class justifies itself with Remove Lesser Curse, it's simply not needed on non-cursing fights.

It's not that Mages insist on arguing about inferior DPS and ignoring where they're awesome; there's simply no category you can really point to where you can honestly argue Mages have awesome, stackable abilities that raids desire, whereas Warlocks simply do.

1/3 mana feed is sufficient for a felguard dps if you turn of his taunt and maybe intercept. wowwiki says cleave is 10% of base mana and on a 6second cooldown.

An imp however use 145 mana for each (current) max rank firebolt. 2 seconds cast or talented down to a 1.5sec cast. i dont have access to my WoW account until tomorrow so i wouldnt mind if someone could give me typical example felguard and imp mana pools. And correct any mistakes ive done. I'm trying to figure how often you need to lifetap because you imp goes oom and which rank of mana feed is best. Assuming having talent points to spare. This is ofc under the assumption that the imp fire cannon dont die. which is an entire discussion in itself. Inputs are appreciated.

Note to self: dont start forum disscisons after popping tonights sleepysleeppill

Reread my post. I know destro pots are better. I was pointing out that the post was contradicting itself.

Wander, please read the post from PintofBrew.

My posts are clear, they aren't "all over the place" -- I actually have multiple, separate points that I'm making in separate posts addressing separate issues. I'm not here with a specific axe to grind so I'm actually trying to talk about various aspects of the warlock class and how they're playing out with the WotLK *warlock* talents.

I'm not going to continue back and forth with you much less engage in yet another (thoroughly new and engaging I'm sure) discussion of point by point mage/lock breakdowns where mages insist their only utility is polymorph. If you'd like to discuss things further with me personally, please take it to PM's or start a new thread discussing your concerns with mage and warlock design.



Manly: Ya, you're right. (edit) unless you're saying destro pots are better for locks, they aren't.



(edit to the below) That's the nicest way of putting "I am going to get the last word in no matter what" that I've ever read.

You can reserve the right to post whatever you want. For better or worse, the forum rules don't cover offtopic posting. I'm asking, again, that the discussion be of warlock WotLK talents, not your personal belief on how underpowered mages are, how overpowered warlocks are, how you think mages would look if they had lifetap, how warlocks don't understand how amazing spirit is for mages and therefore if warlocks get spirit too it'll be jsut as amazing for us because you know warlocks are constructed exactly like mages... etc.

I understand well the value of passive mana regen and always have -- for the past two years when mages went "LOLlifetap" when locks wanted access to spriests, and we tried to explain that lifetap is not passive regen and they ignored us. But I really fail to see how your posts are anything but trolls at this point.

I can probably assure you that I'm going to read every post in the thread, not to worry.

I'm aware that you're presenting me with points that are both thick with meaning and multifaceted, but I hope you understand that I'm doing the same with you. As I've said repeatedly, my "concerns" amount to very little, as the reason I'm persisting in this thread is to continue to wave the Passive-Regen banner from an objective standpoint; but as I said to Pint, I reserve the right to respond to posts directed at me. If there's no post to respond to, then there's no response.

Destro pots are not better. There was no contradiction in anything Elane said, he didn't even mention destro pots.

Well, let me reformulate. Destro pots are better for mages. But thats not what matters. The post contradicts itself.

[the best way to increase dps is less lifetap] followed by
[2 mana potions on brut]

My current stats, raid buffed: 569 int, 454 spi. Works out to 30.3 mana/sec. with Mage Armor, 27.85% of a Frostbolt.

If I subtract my human racial: 569 int, 413 spi. Works out to 27.57 mana/sec. with Mage Armor, 25.34% of a Frostbolt.

My guess, they won't see much need to reduce the racial bonus.