Change from chaos damage to fire is quite a hit for chaos bolt. I'm not sure if this is intended or a bug but chaos bolt can get partially resisted now unlike when it was chaos damage (build 9014). I figured since the tooltip says it can't be resisted or absorbed it shouldn't get partially resisted either.
Can anyone remember before they changed it to chaos damage if it got partially resisted?
The problem I see with drain soul is that soul siphon needs 15 affliction effects on the target to give the full 60% which is a ludicrous number of debuff slots just for warlocks. The additional problem is it creates a definite raid stacking advantage to getting enough affliction locks to get 15 debuffs then unleash amazing drain souls at 25%.
At least it doesn't create an incentive to stack beyond maybe 3 affliction locks but it will be problematic. The only way I can see them letting drain soul have its sub 25% damage boost is removing it from soul siphon, so that they can scale the damage and not worry about the effect of multiple warlocks.
The problem with these Molten Core calculations is that they're based on the 12 second duration. Given the tooltip and the fact that the 12 second duration is being investigated as a bug on the PTR forums, we need to look at the tooltip being the correct duration. If that is the case, it's a horrible talent for a deep destruction build (which may be deliberate given a comment that someone made about Blizzard having intended it to be an adjunct to demo, although I haven't seen any source posted cited on this).
Even if it ends up being 12 seconds, it will still most likely become redundant at T8 and T9 gear levels with more crit and haste.
I still think Destro is a disaster in PvE terms and seems to be more structured as a PvP burst tree. Conflag was never a PvE talent/spell, and this whole business of linking it in with Backdraft and Fire & Brimstone just weakens those talents. Conflag has awful mana use and scales poorly due to its coefficient. Again, it will scale poorly with gear.
Fire & Brimstone, as has been pointed out, is a lacklustre talent. Buffing Immolate, which again scales poorly with gear due to having a DoT component and also Conflag, a talented spell with poor coefficient and mana efficiency which you'd only take if you were getting Backdraft (which has its own issues as has been pointed out with benefitting a spell which has hit the GCD).
Soul Leech is a filler (if you've ever seen WWS parses, the overheal on it is normally over 85%) and the return on Imp Soul Leech to too poor to justify spending 5 points.
Emp imp is good for the first 2 minutes of a fight until the imp goes oom (or until it gets killed).
Basically you have to waste 10 points just to get Chaos Bolt after getting Shadow and Flame, which is the last really decent talent in the tree. Is it worth it? Has destro been designed to be a PvP tree and the developers just haven't come out and said it?
My concern is, despite the nice buffs Affliction has received to improve its longevity, it will ultimately start to suffer at higher gear levels simply due to DoT mechanics, same as shadow priests. Destro in TBC was the opposite, it was weak at T4 but mid T5 started to shine. The theorycrafting on destro for higher levels doesn't seem to indicate the same trend, so unless demo shines at the top gear levels (maybe Demonic Pact will provide this boost, at least in terms of raid utility for 1 lock) then all trees suffer scaling issues. Our turn to be the mages of Wrath?
I agree with a lot of your conclusions. I think Emp Imp. will be viable with raid buffs though. The Imp can last about 2 minutes completely by himself, he will gain a lot with raid buffs. I've done beta testing at 80 with the Imp and he does go OOM. The thing is, when he's OOM he still does most of his DPS. His regen is pretty good, and he seems to be bugging and casting Firebolts for about 60% of their mana cost. Overall/average Imp DPS drops by at most 20% from "non-oom" Imp DPS by the end of any normal fight.
Conflag, Backdraft, Fire & Brimstone, and the 5 Soul Leech points are all talents I would like to see changed, or at least relegated to PVP (by providing us with PVE alternatives in the tree). If Molten Core ends up at 6 seconds, at high gear levels I see Destro dropping down to a simple Immo + Incinerate with Chaos Bolt and Life Tap thrown in.
On the subject of Chaos Bolt changes, drop down below this quote.....
Originally Posted by rogii
Change from chaos damage to fire is quite a hit for chaos bolt. I'm not sure if this is intended or a bug but chaos bolt can get partially resisted now unlike when it was chaos damage (build 9014). I figured since the tooltip says it can't be resisted or absorbed it shouldn't get partially resisted either.
Can anyone remember before they changed it to chaos damage if it got partially resisted?
It didn't get partially resisted as "chaos" damage because it counted as physical damage as well as holy and every magic school, all at once.
Was pretty nice for a 51 point talent, now it's just ANOTHER fire skill. Such a boring talent to have basically a Soulfire that casts fast and doesn't cost a Soul Shard for our 51 pointer.
I feel like destro is losing it's flexibility. I thought blizz wanted to diversify classes in the expansion, but destro is going from either shadow or fire to maybe fire and definitely not shadow. Just doesn't make sense to me, I think we'll see some buffs after Wrath launches. (It does make sense to me that blizz is using us as a scapegoat. "Look, we're nerfing those Shadowbolt Warlocks that you hate so much! Come play our game again, please!")
That spike seems so crazy OP that I feel I must be modeling it wrong. If more of the Affliction talents were stacked additively (especially Soul Siphon) it might reign in the wild horses a bit.....
My much less fancy spreadsheet predicts just shy of a +50% dps increase if a target with max afflic debuffs drops below 25%.
In my sub-25% rotation,
- immo disappears, its dpct is way below the new filler;
- I keep refreshing all affliction dots, as their dpct is still competitive with even super drain soul, and of course to keep affliction debuffs up;
- I keep refreshing haunt, the 20% buff to drain soul & corruption refresh is well worth Haunt's pathetic dpct relative to drain soul (and it's another affliction effect, no?);
- some of the dps increase comes from the mana efficiency of super drain soul halving the lifetap frequency, down to something like 10% total time...
I hope they keep this. It sounds like crazy fun, though it only increases afflic dps by something like 25% * 50% = 12.5% overall. Anyone know how this dps jump compares against warriors/mages/rogues 'executing' below 20%?
Edit: My numbers don't take into account that I'll have to constantly interrupt the 15 sec drain soul channeling to refresh debuffs, so maybe you don't get much better mana efficiency...
Last edited by nom : 10/01/08 at 3:23 AM.
Reason: Punctuation, clarity
I feel like destro is losing it's flexibility. I thought blizz wanted to diversify classes in the expansion, but destro is going from either shadow or fire to maybe fire and definitely not shadow. Just doesn't make sense to me, I think we'll see some buffs after Wrath launches. (It does make sense to me that blizz is using us as a scapegoat. "Look, we're nerfing those Shadowbolt Warlocks that you hate so much! Come play our game again, please!")
I don't really think it had any flexibility to start with. Fluff to perhaps give the appearance that it did. With cooldowns on Chaos Bolt and Conflag being so important for dps we are royally screwed on all fights that have silences and requirements to move regularly. As silly as it sounds we are more dependent on standing still and nuking than we ever were. They could have done some really cool things with instants for the destruction tree but they really dropped the ball there. Conflag being instant is not buying us any freedom because right after it we have to stand and nuke three times to get any benefit. And there isn't really any complexity to it either that makes it all that interesting. I already have all the timing down and I don't think it adds that much depth compared to 0/21/40. If I didn't have the ability to tell time perhaps I would be challenged.
For destruction, PvP looks somewhat better where there is some amount of mobility. But with the massive HP of opponents and all the instant spells doing puny damage, I think ultimately we are back to being locked down while trying to nuke targets down. Snareless as ever. But at least there the concepts are in the right place. Playing with shadowflame+conflag, shadowburn and shadowfury should be a very involving and fun way to PvP. That is if actually killing people are of less importance.
Drain Soul Is currently bugged it appears. Untalented I'm getting avg 640 dmg per tick across the board.
Talented Im getting an increase of dmg = too my talents but that's it.
The question I have is how do the (working) drain soul 400% modifier and the 12% modifier from deaths embrace work together. Is it 12% increase on 400% dmg, or is it a 400% increase on 12% + dmg?
The question I have is how do the (working) drain soul 400% modifier and the 12% modifier from deaths embrace work together. Is it 12% increase on 400% dmg, or is it a 400% increase on 12% + dmg?
Multiplication is commutative. The two situations you described are the same. The actual question (after "is DE working yet?") is, is it additive (412%) or multiplicative (448%)?
CoA+Corr+Nightfall Glyph
Imp
COA-->Corr-->Immo-->CB-->Incin to last Immo tick then Conflag
* Keep CoA+Corr always up
* Keep CB on CD
My questions:
1) While using Nightfall Glyph, value of taking two points into Nightfall? Do I increase MC up time by 1%-2%? Or just an additional %0.6? -so %0.6+%0.6= %1.2) 80% to %81.2?
2) Empowered Corruption Vs. Improved Imp value.
3) Fel Vitality + Demonic Agis + 4/5 Unholy Power Vs. I. Corruption + I. CoA + I. LT + Amp Curse + E. Corruption raid value?
4) Shadowbolts will never be in any Destruction rotation -unless its Nightfall- if we are trying to maximize our raid DPS?
5) Is there any Warlock build, in a raiding environment, that focuses on Shadowbolts?
But now in affliction spec, what will be the correct spell rotation?
Drain Soul will replace Shadow Bolt? And warlocks affliction becomes like a shadow priests spell rotation? (like apply dots, cast Haunt and spam Drain Soul waiting CD of Haunt)
Or using Shadow Bolt and replace it with Drain Soul when target is below 20%?
Multiplication is commutative. The two situations you described are the same. The actual question (after "is DE working yet?") is, is it additive (412%) or multiplicative (448%)?
True, I suppose that's what I am asking. I Will attempt to get solid numbers again on the ptr, but as I stated, the current state of the spell is it's broken.
I was considering DE to be a pvp talent mainly, but now, It could just spice up the affliction tree, and with DP being not worth while (off gcd please?) that +IF taken out of the tree gives us those extra 3 points to throw into DE.
To apply some napkin math as the saying goes:
at 70 (only on the ptr, and my biggest concern in the near future) with 1401 shadow dmg, and 20% haste yields a 12 second cast with a base dmg of 5441.1 over 12 seconds or 453.41 dps. (assuming no crit)
Assuming 3 warlocks in raid with min 2 Aff. Spells each (curse and corruption) then there are a total of 6 dots up, include your drain soul, there would be a total of 7 for a yeild of an additional 28% dmg. SM is an additional 10% , SE is 5% elements (or druid equivalent) is 13% on top of that and the 20% from haunt (by the way if DS isn't a period spell these numbers are different but I'm not sure yet from my current testing how it is being calculated any more); Would yield assuming all as additive
5441.1 *1+(.13+.28+.1+.05+.2)=9576.336 dmg over 12seconds or 798.03 dps.
Now apply the two other factors assuming addative we get an addition 412% increased dmg. or
5441.1 *1+(4.00+.12+.13+.28+.1+.05+.2) =31993.67 dmg over 12seconds or 2666.14 dps.
This would be the minimum assuming affliction talented and DS counts as dmg over time.
To be safe, assuming it does NOT count as a DoT then we are looking at
5441.1*1+(4.00+.12+.13+.1)=29109.885 over 12 seconds or 2425.82 DPS
Now 2425 baseline DPS w/ no consumables, and a decent damage and haste pool seems very reasonable, Toss in any other dots you have up (coa/corruption etc) and you should be Well over 2800 dps at 70 base line with a good affliction spec. This also doesn't take into consideration haste from Eradication which would boost dps significantly. The unfortunate part is your timing will have to be extremely precise to get the max out of Eradication.
Drain Soul Is currently bugged it appears. Untalented I'm getting avg 640 dmg per tick across the board.
Talented Im getting an increase of dmg = too my talents but that's it.
The question I have is how do the (working) drain soul 400% modifier and the 12% modifier from deaths embrace work together. Is it 12% increase on 400% dmg, or is it a 400% increase on 12% + dmg?
Drain soul's 400% modifier (currently) DOES NOT WORK when you have deaths embrace currently
Drain soul on target dummy at 1% went from 5k ticks to 900 ticks with noc hange other than 1/2/3 points in DE
I've only tested this on the level 70 target dummies but the ISB buff only seems to be affecting shadow bolt now. DoT & Drain damage does not increase regardless of when they are cast.
Bah.... I left my brain in shower. Thanks for the fast feedback.
The "weapon" that each pet seems to be wielding works out to:
Fel Guard: Speed=2.0 AvgDmg=130
Fel Hunter: Speed=2.0 AvgDmg=70
Succubus: Speed=2.0 AvgDmg=120
Voidwalker: Speed=2.0 AvgDmg=85
There is only one glaring hole left in my model: Pet Mana Regeneration
I know this info is probably a serious pain in the arse to extract so I'll take whatever I can get..... It doesn't have to be perfect.
And many, many, many thanks for helping me nail down the Demonology particulars!
EDIT: I guess I have two holes..... I need to know the mana-per-intellect and health-per-stamina ratios. For some pets they seem to be below the standard 10 health-per-stamina and 15 mana-per-intellect. Equipping one piece of gear should give us the ratios.... Thanks!
I think they tweaked base health again this patch. Felguard now has 5736 health and 3630 mana by default (with the build I mentioned before). My base health/mana is 7934/6021 respectively, with 5/5 demonic embrace. His base damage is 193-243. Also, my base stamina is 95, and base int is 187, so I don't know why the sta/int passed along seem reversed...
Or using Shadow Bolt and replace it with Drain Soul when target is below 20%?
The change to Everlasting Affliction certainly makes this easier.
Originally Posted by amz370
Assuming 3 warlocks in raid with min 2 Aff. Spells each (curse and corruption) then there are a total of 6 dots up, include your drain soul, there would be a total of 7.
It has been posted in this forum that Shadow Embrace and Haunt are also considered "affliction effects". It would be great if someone could confirm this is still true for the most recent patch.
Also.... While Drain Soul is almost certainly considered an "affliction effect", I'm not sure if you get credit for your own DS. It depends at which point they consider the effects of Soul Siphon. If it is done at cast time, then a Warlocks own DS probably won't be included. If it is done at tick-time, then it almost certainly will be included.
Last edited by dedmonwakeen : 10/01/08 at 10:07 AM.
Also.... While Drain Soul is almost certainly considered an "affliction effect", I'm not sure if you get credit for your own DS. It depends at which point they consider the effects of Soul Siphon. If it is done at cast time, then a Warlocks own DS probably won't be included. If it is done at tick-time, then it almost certainly will be included.
I can imagine it's comparable to the behavior of Drain Life (which has been stated in this thread somewhat earlier): When you cast Drain Life for the first time, it doesn't receive any Soul Siphon bonus but if you re-cast it, the debuff from the first Drain Life is taken into account, which results in another +4% damage.
(But again: It's just an assumption that it's the same effect, as I haven't done any testing in the current build yet.)
But now in affliction spec, what will be the correct spell rotation?
Drain Soul will replace Shadow Bolt? And warlocks affliction becomes like a shadow priests spell rotation? (like apply dots, cast Haunt and spam Drain Soul waiting CD of Haunt)
Or using Shadow Bolt and replace it with Drain Soul when target is below 20%?
Drain Soul, if the 4x sub 25% multiplier remains to release, would be the affliction filler of choice for only sub 25% mobs. At >25% Shadow Bolt would still be the filler of choice for better DPCT and scaling with crit than Drain Soul not to mention Drain Soul's tic mechanics making for some more difficult cast sequences.
Sub 25% isn't so much like shadow priest rotations. In practice it might be somewhat similar but the actual mechanics of it are different. Shadow priests use mind flay as a filler because all of their other DPS abilities are either DD spells with CDs or DoTs, they really don't have any choice. Affliction uses drain soul as a filler sub 25% because it's the best option among more than once choice. So yes, it looks a lot like a shadow priest rotation but it doesn't really 'feel' like it i.e. it doesn't feel like we're getting shafted by a subpar filler we have to spam because we've got nothing better to do.
However, the changes to drain soul really make death's embrace seem vestigial. This is compounded by the reports that ISB is no longer working on non-SB spells even if you refresh DoTs while it's up. ISB was already severely limited by neutering the % increase and making it a buff instead of a debuff so this change to drain soul leaves one wondering what death's embrace is for outside of an occasional damage increase in drain life when your HP is low.
Question: If the number of affliction debuffs on a target is less than the max contribution for soul siphon is it a DPS increase to cast drain soul and then recast it immediately afterward to get the 4% damage increase if you factor in the increased mana cost and cast time costs? My guess would be that there is a break point in total filler time where doing this becomes advantageous and for windows smaller than this break point it's a decrease since the effect would be to add 1 GCD to the time till the first tick and +4% damage on all ticks.
Currently LOVING Destro for the obvious reasons...rocking the meter, the big crits and the WTFPWNAGE of mobs, but I miss Affliction sometimes and it seems that the upcoming changes will lend themselves to Affliction rocking once again. I want to get the opinion of the warlock communitiy on the following build and let me know if I am missing something.
Seems to me that CoA will be useful once again. Shadow Embrace looks super sexy now, and being a DestroLock and actually having Crit and being Hit Capped makes Pandemic look worth putting 3 points into. I didn't put any points in Eradication, mostly because it looks like a nerfed version of Nightfall, and I believe that you can get a Glyph of Corruption that may give you 2 (?) chances for a Nightfall effect (is that right?) Three points in Imp Imp because he will be out all the time and of course 5 points in Bane for the pew pew Shadobolts that will make up 60 percent of our damage.
I am not really comfortable with the thought of ever having to spam Drain Life, and it looks like Blizz wants us to do that with all the talent changes coming about. Of course I never liked CoA before but now it looks pretty neat now with the changes in place. I am curious if anybody has really come up with a better spec @ 70 yet or if that build could use a bit of tweaking based on me missing something that I haven't had a chance to play around with and see how it will actually work in a combat situation.
Off topic for those of you in Beta: Have talked to a few Beta players and they mentioned that the BC gear will hold up a lot better in WotLK than Old WoW gear held up in BC. Have you found this to be the case as well for us Warlocks?
Off topic for those of you in Beta: Have talked to a few Beta players and they mentioned that the BC gear will hold up a lot better in WotLK than Old WoW gear held up in BC. Have you found this to be the case as well for us Warlocks?
Thanks in advance.
It holds up fine if you don't mind lifetapping for 1100ish.
My guess would be that there is a break point in total filler time where doing this becomes advantageous and for windows smaller than this break point it's a decrease since the effect would be to add 1 GCD to the time till the first tick and +4% damage on all ticks.
I may be wrong, but if the time between the cast start of Drain Soul and the first tick is the same as between each ticks, we would simply have to recast it right after the first tick to minimize the loss. In such case, the loss would only be mana (the cost of the first "sacrified" drain soul) and a minimal amount of time (humain reaction time+lag). In the same way, one could "clip the last tick" by recasting right after the 4th tick to minimize the "clipping effect" by having the first tick of the second drain hit right when the last tick should have ticked.
So it would look like that:
t 0: Cast drain soul (a)
t 3: drain soul (a) tick 1
t 3.1: Recast drain soul (b), boosted +4%
t 6.1: drain soul (B) tick 1
t 9.1: drain soul (B) tick 2
t 12.1: drain soul (B) tick 3
t 15.1: drain soul (B) tick 4
t 15.2: Recast drain soul (c), boosted +4%
t 18.2: drain soul (c) tick 1
... and so on
By doing so, we would boost the damage by about 4% but the mana consumption would be increased about 25% (recast every 12 seconds instead of every 15 seconds).
Is there a major flaw here ? (Yeah, I'm aware that we would have to stop Draining to refresh dots, but consider the case when you don't want to recast them because the mob will not live long enough )
You can clip our wings, but we will always remember what it was like to fly.
Drain soul's 400% modifier (currently) DOES NOT WORK when you have deaths embrace currently
Drain soul on target dummy at 1% went from 5k ticks to 900 ticks with noc hange other than 1/2/3 points in DE
It wasn't working at all on any mobs in Terokar forest last night no matter how I was Talented.
Originally Posted by dedmonwakeen
The change to Everlasting Affliction certainly makes this easier.
It has been posted in this forum that Shadow Embrace and Haunt are also considered "affliction effects". It would be great if someone could confirm this is still true for the most recent patch.
Also.... While Drain Soul is almost certainly considered an "affliction effect", I'm not sure if you get credit for your own DS. It depends at which point they consider the effects of Soul Siphon. If it is done at cast time, then a Warlocks own DS probably won't be included. If it is done at tick-time, then it almost certainly will be included.
For me the effect it received was instant on cast 1 or cast 12 of drain soul there was a 4% difference in increased dmg.
I think one of the reasons warlocks seem a bit disappointed is that we are going from Shadow Bolt crits of 10k+ to Chaos Bolts that crit 7k. Conflags that don't even seem to get a 100% crit bonus (my Conflags usually crit around 70% more or so) and has really underwhelming damage to start with is also a big part of our rotation. The imp is really underwhelming as a pet too, even if it had no mana problems. While in the end the damage may end up being around the same when 3.0 hits it really feels as if we lost lots of power. It seems Chaos Bolt will scale worse with gear than our other nukes, so it seems it will fade away as we grow more powerful too. And it is not like CB is needed for anything. Replace the CB every 12 seconds with an Incinerate and no one would care much. One firenuke replaced with another.
When our new shiny 51 pointer feels like a light fart compared to our old baseline spell, it really is a design problem. They should have given us something with a more powerful feeling, alternatively some nice buff for the raid. We have gone to being the class with the least raid utility after rogues now and destruction have needed something unique for a long time. For example a buff like Demonic Pact would make more sense as a destruction 51 pointer and giving destruction a unique dps ability deep in the tree would add some much needed flavor to that tree.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that Chaos Bolt has inferior scaling. It has the exact same Coefficient as Incinerate, a faster cast time, higher base damage and costs less mana. There is no gear level where it will be obsolete, even if it isn't a particularly interesting.
I definitely much preferred when it did Chaos Damage, just for the special feeling that conferred upon it. Nevertheless, it's still more powerful than any other nuke we have (save the instant Soul Fires we enjoyed briefly).
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that Chaos Bolt has inferior scaling. It has the exact same Coefficient as Incinerate, a faster cast time, higher base damage and costs less mana. There is no gear level where it will be obsolete, even if it isn't a particularly interesting.
I definitely much preferred when it did Chaos Damage, just for the special feeling that conferred upon it. Nevertheless, it's still more powerful than any other nuke we have (save the instant Soul Fires we enjoyed briefly).
Both Incinerate and Chaos Bolt scales worse than what we have used for 1.5 years now, Shadow Bolt. That is what I meant. I know with the cast time and mana cost, chaos bolt is actually ok. It just doesn't give off any special feeling at all. If they would have boosted Incinerate damage with 5% and just removed Chaos Bolt we would never have missed it at all. Nor would there be any reason to miss it. That is how bland it is for a 'milestone talent'.
10/01/08, 1:59 AM
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