Over recasting before the first tic you would also loose 4% damage on the first tic. So the question would then be 'Is 4% damage on one tick less damage or more damage than the loss from adding another GCD before the first tic.' I'm betting that the product of the average DPCT from an affliction lock and the GCD is going to be significantly greater than 4% damage on one tick of drain soul. However this still leaves the question of if this 4% bonus is worth chasing at all.

Has there been any modeling on how Nightfall stacks with the Glyph of Corruption? Two distinct chances at proc? additive chance? Non-stacking?

I was looking at glyph choices for Aff, and I see about 4 that look good.

ISB not affecting dots would free up 5 pts in destro. I'm finding it hard to make an Aff build with less than 53 (more like 56-59) pts in aff, so it seems both reach talents are out of the question. And if DE doesn't work on DS, and DS stays with the 400+% modifier, that's another 3 to drop.

And, a third question. The 3% spell damage from Malediction. Is that 3% spell power, or 3% total damage?

Total damage.

I read it as 3% of your spell power (making it about 40-45 spell damage or so), however the spell details in WoWhead are a bit different:
Malediction - Spell - World of Warcraft

[Apply Aura]: Mod Dmg % (126)
Value: 3

...sounds like overall damage.

On PTR it worked in the previous patch, but not in this one.
Moreover, Eradication procs don't affect my spell haste and 3/3 Malediction doesn't give me a flat 3% spell damage increase.

So I was just messing around with affliction on the Beta realm, testing on the level 70 target dummies (with my level 70 from live). It took me a while to get into a rotation and the damage is certainly lower then destruction, but you never ever have to worry about mana. With 2 points in Imp LT, Siphon Life and the Haunt change (it works on the target dummies now) I never dropped below 80% mana and max health over 10 minutes of constant fighting. Also my felhunter never dropped below max mana either with 0/2 in Improved Felhunter. If you turn off spell lock and devour magic, he seems to regen mana as fast he can use Shadow Bite.

I tested using Drain Soul as a filler spell, but it is just not viable at all. The channel time is so long that you always have to cut it short to refresh dot's. Once you get to 25% and it's doing 400% more damage maybe, but I still don't know if it will make up for all your dot's expiring.

Whoa, just noticed something, Pandemic doesn't seem to be working on Training Dummies (it is only hitting for 1) but it seems to be working on everything else. So afflictions DPS readings on them is going to be all screwed up.

Same story for the mobs in blasted lands, once they hit 1% pandemic only does 1-2 damage. Also once they hit 1% deaths embrace works with DoT's, so there is some unusual mechanics at work.

Yep. I've reported this every build for a month or so. That and the heroic training dummies not being lv73 to my lv70 warlock.

Someone over on the WoW-Europe forums did the crunching (here) and, well..

Q = 0.04, 1 point invested: 2.4%. Benefit from the first point: 2.4% spell haste.
Q = 0.07, 2 points invested: 3.3%. Benefit from the second point: 0.9% spell haste.
Q = 0.10, 3 points invested: 4.0%. Benefit from the third point: 0.7% spell haste.

~130 Rating.

It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Everything, including Shadow Bolt, has taken a significant scaling hit. We've lost the 5% from Misery, the 10% from Shadow Weaving, 10% off ISB and the entire benefit of DS (unless you're hanging on to that old spec, and even then you've lost another 5%). It's the basic fundamental result of the normalization of raid buffs.

I'll give you that 10k Shadow Bolts are more fun than 7k Chaos Bolts. Again, that's just one facet of the overall changes. I like the fun from actually making use of my Imp, I like having a quick cast, low mana, huge damage fire spell I can pound mobs with while out and about. I like having more to consider than just Immolate, Incinerate, repeat.

I, at least, would miss Chaos Bolt if they replaced it with 5% more Incinerate damage. It isn't perfect and I'd certainly like to see it be more flavorful (removing the generic fire sound for something with more oomph would go a long way), but it definitely don't see it being as bland as you say.

Curse of Doom is a DoT, technically.

Test ISB and Death's Embrace, paying attention to when the DoT was applied. The last time I did some testing, ISB affected DoTs if and only if ISB was up when the DoT was applied, and had nothing to do with when it ticked. This is generally true for all self-buffs including but not limited to spellpower clicky trinkets, and I suspect it's true for Death's Embrace.

Pandemic deals damage equal to the damage recieved by the target. Overkill no longer counts as damage, just like overhealing, which is why it tends to do 1 to our favorite testing sources. This has other ramifications that should be tested, like absorb effects and magic damage reduction. Someone should duel a priest speced into spell warding (or something like that), and also someone decked in shadow resist gear to see how it deals with partial resists.

I didn't mean flexibility in terms of being able to move more. I meant it in terms of being viable specced shadow or fire.

You're thinking about it the wrong way. You're supposed to be using Shadow bolts as filler from 100% -> 25%, at which point you start casting Drain Soul instead, keeping all dots up meanwhile. It's probable, depending on your haste rating, that you will have to cut DS short after 2 ticks to refresh dots/keep haunt on cooldown.

I can't seem to find it, but I read somewhere in the last few pages that Soul Siphon was only counting affliction effects applied by yourself, not other warlocks. Has anyone else tested this, or has it changed in the most recent build?

It's a 60 second DoT with 1 tick. It cannot crit. Isn't the fact it does it's damage over time rather than on hitting the target definitive?

Curse of Doom is debuff that is twofold. First it does damage on a one minute interval. Second, it has a special trigger if a mob dies to it.

Curse of Doom is a DoT. It's always been a DoT. It has never, ever critted. Nor did it ever eat ISB charges when ISB only accounted for Direct Damage sources. CoD always did damage taking into account debuffs on target at the time damage was applied (as opposed to when the spell was cast) — consider the Curator encounter where you time your CoD to tick off during Evocation.

Sometimes, back in the old days, CoD did (a crapload of) extra damage due to negative resistances from CoS. That was a long time ago. It was still a DoT back then.

Now, pay off my student loans.

You don't get your loans paid off until you figure out how the talents apply. It's a periodic effect so it should benefit from shadow embrace and haunt, and I think someone mentioned that it procs MC as well. The way Death's Embrace is working now it should get the benefit if it's cast after 25% and goes off before the mob dies (good luck with that). The kicker is Shadow Mastery... as far as I'm aware, it has never in the history of WoW benefited from SM. If they've fixed that, I shall applaud.

[e] Holeeey shit, that thing about Death's Embrace complicates the CoA vs CoD arguement. I assume that CoD is higher DPCT at the moment, but unless it's significantly higher there's some sort of inflection point where if you have X seconds left before the mob drops below 25% it becomes better to cast 2.5 CoAs, 1-1.5 of which will be DEd, than one CoD. If the 25% breakpoint is between 24 and 48 seconds in, you get a 2.4% boost to your CoA; if the breakpoint is between 0 and 24 you get a 7.2% boost. But, if the breakpoint is between 24 and 48 seconds and the mob has more than 1 minute to live, you'd be better off using 2 CoAs followed by a CoD. And then we get into all sorts of edge cases about how CoAs will let you fit in more full damaging curses, and how to arrange them around DE to get the full benefit. I don't look forward to untangling that pile of mess.

Version r630 (for patch 9014) is available for download.

Sample output can be found here: SampleOutput - simulationcraft - Google Code

Full list of changes here: RecentUpdates - simulationcraft - Google Code

The change to Judgement of Wisdom was crippling for many classes, requiring talent respecs and action list changes.

Deleted, for uncertainty about Curse of Doom scaling.

Woah did the imp get a big buff in mp5 while casting or is it just me? Because now I go oom and the imp still has 1/3 of its mana