Elane

I guess I shouldn't have added that last part in my post. I didn't make that post to discuss mechanics of the current warlock class, if I wanted to do that I would go to the appropriate thread, not the WotLK discussion thread.


What I meant was that if they give warlocks too much spirit then we (destro locks at least) will become even more 1-dimensional and purely a point and shoot class, especially with the new Eternal Flames talent. Heavy Destruction will be nothing more than a spam a single spell, with hardly any deviation at all. Lifetap has always been an important mechanic of the warlock class, and the spirit changes seem to want to get rid of it. I hate to mention mages in the thread anymore, but it's looking like heavy destruction will be exactly that, a mage without cooldowns. As if we weren't close enough to that already...

Optimizing lifetaps and lifetap frequency is a big part of the class, along with being a large part of the already small amount of warlock theorycrafting. Am I wrong?

 

turturin

This is true currently, but wasn't the nature of my point. It will no longer be fine if warlocks rely heavily on passive regen through spirit. Warlock dps balance will be around not having to lifetap nearly as much, which will necessitate a higher return on mana gained per lifetap for your pet. The only way to do this currently is by spending an extra talent point in deep demonology, where there is currently no room for spare talent points.

As to the possibility of an imp build for raiding....yes, the same logic would apply (even moreso for the reasons you state regarding imp - he goes OOM much faster than a FG). The reason I didn't raise it in my previous post was because I see no indication yet that imp survivability will be raised enough to make it remotely viable for the majority of raid encounters.

 

Torq

Current raid encounters. I would counter this point that other evidence (such as the introduction of a cooldown on CoH) would point towards heavy spike damage to the raid being phased out or replaced. Perhaps not eliminating raid damage entirely, but removing the massive spikes that have been built into some of the TBC encounters (Naj'entus, etc).

Also, with all the imp-buffing talents going in, I see the imp's stam:hp ratio going a little higher than 1:2.72 to maybe 1:4 or so. With the 10% increased scaling from talents, this could make him a little more viable than he currently is.

 

turturin

I would have to agree i think after seeing your math. Seems likely not a big deal unless the total stat inflation is much greater than we expect.

So you get an extra frostbolt every 4 minutes? Even if that were eventually doubled (which it won't be), I wouldn't see that as imba.

Edit so i don't double post:

"Also, with all the imp-buffing talents going in, I see the imp's stam:hp ratio going a little higher than 1:2.72 to maybe 1:4 or so. With the 10% increased scaling from talents, this could make him a little more viable than he currently is."

A really elegant solution would be to allow our imp to dps phase-shifted from our new demonic circle - I think other posters have suggested similar ideas previously. Affects strategic placement of the circle while also placing a range restriction on it and would make warlocks make some strategic preparatory decisions based on the encounter at hand. This would be a good thing for a class that was designed to be highly situational in the first place (the reason we are so good at duels).

 

Lhivera

I would tend to argue for all pets to get the hunter pet Avoidance skill (-50% damage taken from area effect attacks) as a passive skill free of charge -- remove the training point cost for hunter pets, replace the felguard Avoidance with this version, add it to all demons, give it to the Water Elemental, treants, arcanite dragonlings, everything.

 

• Playered

One way to allow the Imp to remain viable as a source of DPS while keeping its protection from raid elements would be to change Phase Shift to work like it does in Warcraft 3

"Phase Shift (Autocast)
Causes this unit to shift out of existence whenever it takes damage. While out of existence, this creature cannot: attack, move, cast spells, be attacked, or have spells cast upon it."

This mechanic means as soon as any amount of damage would hit the Imp, it would phase out (avoiding all damage including the triggering source) for a few seconds and then shift back in and resume normal activity.

Naturally this protection will eventually be voided if the Imp is beat on after it returns from Phase Shift, but that should never really happen in raid encounters and only allows its demise in PvP where being able to DPS relentlessly with no fear of death would be a bad thing.

 

• Suggestive

I'm not sure they're actually going to make the imp a truly viable pet, partly because of the level its obtained, and partly because i'm biased, since its been mostly useless since level...was it 3? I'm more interested in seeing how they're going to make the doomguard and infernal useful as they promised. If i had to pick out defining moments on my warlock, it would be going through the quest line for both those pets, especially the doomguard. Quite frankly, i'd much rather see them finally worth the effort than a revamp to a pet that already has its own niche.
Edit: I'm glad they finally added the tier 5 2-piece bonus as a talent at least, now i can finally toss out the 2 piece's i was holding on to just in case :P. Or maybe i'll be able to get 30% healing out of that...

 

turturin

this is a bit homogenous for my tastes. While I agree in principle all pets should have a dmg reduction mechanic, I would like to see a solution for each that preserves the uniqueness of the class and makes pet management uniquie for each.

 

alvinrod

Perhaps giving warlock pets some simple AI (e.g. don't stand in the blizzard stupid imp.) that would improve their survivability. Designing more encounters were pets aren't susceptible to certain types of damage would probably go a long way towards helping this as well.

Any spec that relies on the pet to do DPS should always do more than one that just uses it for utility (phase shifting the imp in a tank group, sacrificing the pet for more damage, etc.) simply because it takes more attention to manage the pet.

 

Torq

While I see your points... If they're not planning on making the imp a viable pet, why add all the new talents that are entirely imp-specific? Granted, they could be entirely filler talents like demo has been known to have (master conjuror, the previous dependence of soul link on demonic sacrifice, etc), it looks like they're trying to remove some of that fluff and change the tree to be a bit more logical in progression.

 

• Suggestive

There's only one imp specific talent i see, and i'm not too sure that talent will come close to making it live in that form. For me, a logical progression would be a talent there that improves the felguard, a pet that already has a decent chance of survival, or an improvement to the doomguard/infernal. The imp looks like a mighty giant step backwards, because it completely nullifies the felguard as a talent.

 

Torq

A lot of the talents in the demo tree nullify the felguard to some extent. In fact, there really aren't any felguard-specific talents other than the felguard talent itself; which again, is not surprising, since a lot of the talents in the demo tree tend to encourage diversity in your pet choice, to allow for some versatility depending on what the situation calls for.

I, too, would like to see some improvements on the doomguard/infernal, as they're pretty much jokes at the moment, or extremely situational at the very best. The doomguard is pretty much good for killing random people in your raid if they don't know what the portal does; the infernal, at the very best, is a dps boost on a very few specific fights.

I'm just trying to work with what I know and what I've been given. Isn't that what theorycrafting is all about?

 

Latas

Quick question, does anyone have any idea how the 10% on eternal flames is going to get calculated?

 

Flamingcloud

It's wording is closest to CSD meta, which would make ruin crits 2.3 (without CSD).. If it works like ruin than it makes you crit at 2.05 with ruin and is horrible.

 

Latas

If it works like CSD I'm thinking a build something akin to this would be best.

0/21/50

Standard DS/S&F core, with the additions of

Kindling Soul - yeah i know, spirit ick blech, but using the spirit i have on my char now, with the new divine spirit and buffed gotw with kings, i have 288 spirit. Now take into consideration there will be a lot more spirit in Wotlk and the talent also buffs spirit by a % on crits, starting from 28 spell dmg extra and going to 28+ spell dmg extra is not something to be mocked really.

Eternal Flames - Ok first thing, completely disregard the refreshing immolate part. The part that makes this talent very much worth getting is the 10% increased crit dmg. Now if it works like CSD (and it sounds like it should) with ruin, a CSD, and EF you would be getting crits of 240% which is nothing to laugh at, esp after you stack it with all the other % buffs we get.

Frankly going to S&F is going to become more and more worth it later and later in the game as since its a % buff it will scale beautifully with your gear. Skipping it in a prospective spec is not something to take lightly.

To me the current mainstay of 0/21/40 has been all about abusing the stacking of % dmg buffs which we seem to excel at, and as long as that trend is available, unless there are some huge changes with other trees (pet hit/crit scaling with the casters for one), or unless one of the key talents gets totally nerfed, i belive that the 0/21/40 core will still be running strong expansion after expansion.

Oh on a side note, i think that with the increasing spell dmg and whatnot, and our ability to abuse the % buff system, is one of the primary reason for things like dropping the % buff on ISB down by 5%, as its not a linear scale with us.

 

Emoroan

The fight is 6 minutes, Mana Pots have a cooldown of 2 Minutes. He skipped 1 mana pot and people are making a big deal about it?

 

Zed

Just a small point: a decent geared and raid buffed lock with either Soul Leech or Siphon Life doesn't require any extra healing to cover for Life Tap at all, even without a shadow priest. Perhaps the odd Lifebloom when you have an unlucky streak with procs.

 

Pintofbrew

I was thinking about penning an answer along the lines of "but if you spec deep demo you can have both and pick whichever is better/more situational" when I realized your demo tree suffers from the same thing that Ballance suffers from. Too many points needed deep into it. Past 31, unless you're dropping a number of talents, you'll be needing 50ish to have all the goodies. This leaves "not enough" for destro, which is the only natural accompaniment to Demo.

I'd like many trees in the Alpha thinned out, by quite a bit to be honest. Demonic Tactics can easily be a 3-pointer. Mana Feed a two-pointer and any of the new 3-point talents can be a 2-pointers. That way, you don't have to gimp essential talents just to get the new sin-qua-non Fel Synergy &c. I can't help thinking ballance druids have the same choice: get all the aoe goodies in ballance, or splash resto for talents they -probably- need for single-target. It's the same with our frost tree. If you get all the goodies, you're left with 7-8 points to call your own. Unless you need to go improved Blizzard for aoe snare, in which case you're left with 1-2 points...

Last time there were many point-heavy trees in WoW Blizz went hack-saw mad and chopped many talents to bits, thinning a number of 5-pointers into 2 or 3 pointers. Where's that saw now?

 

Drundia

It's true for Siphon Life, but not Soul Leech. Assuming talented Fel Armor Shadow Bolt should average 5556 damage to provide enough healing through Soul Leech. That feels like deep Sunwell gear.

In WotLK with increased mana efficiency and mana regeneration Soul Leech will of course be enough to cover Life Taps and maybe even some extra, but still as it is most of your missing health is healed by healers faster than by Soul Leeches.

So Soul Leech right now feels only as good downtime reducer while grinding. It could use some love.


Pintofbrew: speaking of saw, live trees are 57/61/66 and alpha trees are 70/76/78. If you ask me Demonology and Destruction both ask some cutting or merging.

 

Pintofbrew

By far the most annoying thing I see in destro is the same-tier 5/5 imp immo and Ruin, then 5 emberstorm, then conflag. So if you want to spec anything with JUST the fire talents and conflag you need 32... Why couldn't that be 31? There is no conceivable choice you can make between dropping conflag, dropping one point emberstorm or dropping ruin (haha, pull the other one) which satisfies, and as a consequence you have to drop a point from whatever school you're using for secondary. I thought the whole point of [(n*10)+1] talents was you could spec one but just one point short of another one. Like 0/21/40, or 30/31/0. Or the 0/40/31 I was trying to spec. But no, it's either shave Emberstorm, or lose a point in emp. imp., or ditch half of Fel Synergy. Or lose Conflag. Which is my favourite: Spec 0/40/31, note, a 31-point spec with no 31st talent.

And with that, there goes my fantastic plan to CoA, Corr, immo/incin and wait for a Molten Core proc to go "woohoo, Conflag-fresh Immo-Incin" for funky spike damage.

Guess it's back to the drawing board and yawnathon CoE-immo/incin.

 

Anexus

I wasnt questioning you point. I was actually trying to confirm it and at the same time rise the question of how the same point would apply to an imp that is dpsing.

 

Zed

By raid buffed I mean Mana Spring, BoW and Super Mana Potions (JoW is becoming more popular as well).

Feels like Blizzard wants more tokenized loot (meaning there is only one caster drop for each slot, interchangeable with healer item of the same slot), and they chose to standardize spirit on all gear. This is a step further away from optimal warlock (and shadowpriest) gear, which is all damage stats with some stamina. The spirit talents are supposed to make us easier to swallow this bitter pill. However it can be argued that warlocks need to be toned down somewhat, but it would be nice if we finally got some variety in playstyle in exchange.

 

Pintofbrew

A lot of talk of imp-raiding going around, FG as well, is it at all conceivable that Succy-raiding could be viable as demo? Not the current "leave her standing next to you" 0/40/21 spec, but rather make her attack; Demonic empowerment and Love Struck look absolutely awesome for keeping her alive. My biggest worry is you'll have to drop Lash for the obvious ISB consumption, and that effectively makes both Imp. Succy and Demonic Power useless. Which is really lame.

She does seem, however, capable of buffing Demonic Pact fairly decently. The only question is will she be better than having a FG do the same, while not eating up ISB at the same time?

 

Flamingcloud

Succubus dps will not be happening. Lovestruck is physical only, raid damage is 99% of the time magic. Succubus was reduced from +15% to +5%dmg +5% crit. There is no reason not to get the 1 more point for fel guard as the 31 point destruction is worthless.

 

Latas

Seems like they have had a history of horrible bottom tree talents for destro. I mean c'mon, conflag? shadowfury? WTH blizz, are you just trying to make the decision easy on us or something?