That is excellent point. The molten_core conditional on Chaos Bolt only checks to make sure if the buff is currently present..... but not if it will -still- be present when the cast finishes. I've checked in the appropriate change. Unfortunately, I -just- pushed out another build for download, so you'll have to wait just a bit to get an executable if you aren't building it yourself.

Would the Bracing Earthseige stack with the 2% reduction to cloak?

They stack, and I believe it is multiplicative. Yeah, used to be additive back in Vanilla, but some Shadow priest managed to abuse stacking threat reductions from their then-incredible talents plus a trinket from AQ40 to achieve 120% threat reduction on trinket use for about 20-ish seconds, dumping aggro by DPSing.

The Bracing Earthseige Diamond won't become popular for a very long time if ever, at the very least until well into T8 content. Tanks are just performing way too well relative to the other roles to have to worry about it any time soon, to the point that talents only offering only threat reduction are pretty worthless. That brings me to the next point, can someone with Wrath Raid experience tell me how much Soulshatter is used out there? It may be worthwhile to forget about capping it for now and drop 3 a few points into upping Affliction hit (especially now that we won't be taking ISB).

Could some one explain to me why Blizzard is beating our Shadowbolt down to a bloody pulp? Seriously, not a whine or a complain, not saying its bad or good, I just don't understand what is so bad about our Shadowbolts? Moreover; what use is 5/5 Improved Shadowbolt now? I mean improving crap to less crap, is still crap?

Last, at the above similation for Destruction, why are Shadowbolts shown as a percentage on the bars when -as I read it- you removed it?

thx

I believe he has the Corruption glyph, which mimics Nightfall.

What kind of DPS do you get from a Warlock when you DON'T spec into Conflag/Backdraft? Rotation is Immolate, Corr, CoA up as DoTs, use Chaos Bolt when it's up and Incinerate/Life Tap for fillers.

Don't forget you free up talent points for something like a 7/12/51 spec.

I think it was one of the realistic ways to get affliction damage down (which seems to be doing a bit to well damage wise). They can't really go after much else. They already nerfed Improved Corruption and all other talents in the tree seem about right value wise.

The only other realistic target for next round of nerfs is Haunt (bringing it down to 10-15%), and I think they really would hate to do it. Because then a 50/0/21 build would probably be realistic after a while. And making us dump the jewel of the affliction crown is probably undesired.

The real victim in the slaughter of ISB is of course Demonology. But I think that tree was never realistic until later at level 80, giving Blizzard enough time to tinker with it. I have gotten the feeling Blizzard wants us to be able to use that tree (four years without a pet class really using pets is kinda awkward), so I hope they get around to getting it right. In a similar manner they got BM right for TBC.

Okay. But it would be very nice if someone with Beta-Access could make a " (Bug)Pandemic and Meta " post at the Wotlk-Beta Forum.
Perhaps they add Pandemic.

Thanks in advance.

Infernals are doing insane damage, at level 70 i'm clocking them at around 1100 base damage per hit on test dummies, albeit the infernal only lasts 1 minute.

Doomguards are doing slightly more, but break after a few minutes

I don't think that CSD (or its upgrade) not affecting Pandemic can be considered a bug. Technically, your DoTs don't crit, they simply have a chance to deal double damage that is based on your critchance. I don't even know if you would use it over other metagems if it affected Pandemic. SB contribution to affliction damage will go down significantly and it's only two DoTs out of four or five that can "crit".

Yes, quite impressive compared to constantly missing lvl50 infernals ;-) When testing CoD mechanics I got a 1.7k hit from my doomguard and I believe it wasn't even a crit (on PTR, so lvl 70).

They give Destruction Chaos Bolt and rape Shadowbolt. They give Affliction really nice buffs but remove the iSB affecting DoT's. Demonology has no reason to use SB -unless its glyph. Is this smart? Your messing around with a spell that is so close to the class people identify Warlocks with those bolts.

Fire and Shadow defines Warlocks, am I right? How can you annihilate Shadowbolt? At the very least it should be a viable filler in some kind of rotation, its just pure poo now /sigh.

Send me the post you want made in a PM and I will post it.

regarding the changes to isb, the question we should be asking is not why they did it, but what are our alternatives? if we want ruin, and i assume we still do, is 5/5 isb the only choice or is there some combination of cataclysm/molten core or cataclysm/less isb that works more in our favor?

for that matter has anyone recalculated the value of ruin (per point) for the now smaller percentage of our damage that comes from shadowbolt? not to go against the conventional wisdom of old or anything, but it is probably worth bringing up now and then.

if there is only 1 affliction lock in the raid, and by consequence 1 isb (which would be entirely possible if blizz can make all the dps classes roughly even), or if it were a buff rather than a debuff, what would the uptime of the spell be in a standard rotation, and what would that mean in terms of real damage?

ISB is a buff now, not a debuff.

Ruin is optional. At 40% crit, ruin adds 17% damage to SB spam. That's 3.4% damage per point, which is great. However if SB is only 30% of our damage, due to DS scaling atm, then ruin is 1.02% which is good but optional.

Currently, their methodology is Triage. Quickie band aids on the problems, and move on. What they need to do is fix the root problems.

Dots play by a completely separate set of rules than nukes. Item budget use for example. Fix that and some of the multiple scaling talents can be reduced/removed, lowering the impact of whatever imbalance is left. Pandemic works in that direction for crit but doesn't completely even the playing field vs DDs. And haste, well, only GCD reduction on dots is NOT equal to what DD's get out of it due to dots non-stacking nature.

Dots (and demo) still rely on a Destro filler, not jsut that, but the same one. Any changes to the filler to try to fix one, affects the other. Heck, before Destro was chosen to be Firemage 2.0, it effected all 3 trees. Giving Demo OR Afflict their own separate filler unlinks them, stopping tweaks to one spell from causing a ripple effect through multiple trees.

If the %gains from the talent points are where they should be, and affliction is still too strong, then lower base damage of affliction spells. Monkeying with Shadowbolt affects Demo. Monkeying with Destro talents to fix shadowbolt affects Destro.

All in all, the current Warlock design spec is as close to spaghetti code taken form as I've seen in a game to date. Too many spells/abilitys tie to too many others, causing either unintended OP situations through synergy feedback, or making solutions to one problem cause another someplace else.

Has anyone done any testing on how Corruption's dmg is affected by buffs w/ Everlasting Affliction? i.e. are we the old life bloom where you stack as much + dmg to apply it then just keep up the dot? Or does the +dmg get recalced every time it is refreshed?

Scenarios:

a.) Trinket -> Corr

How long does Corr maintain the +dmg bonus? until it is refreshed outside the trinket duration? Forever?

b.) Corr -> Trinket -> Haunt

Does Corr get the trinket dmg or no?

I had said the same thing regarding spell coefficients a few pages back. There is no consistency, they selectively tweak each spell to bandaid fix individual problems, which throws everything off kilter. I would like if demo got some of their own damage spells, but at the moment the tree is a little full.

I'd love if we had a separate pet talent tree like hunters got, that dealt mostly with general stat/dmg boosts to pets, and leave more specialized talents in the demo tree itself. It would free up room for demo specific damage abilities or whatever. Affliction and destruction specs would also benefit from having stronger pets without sacrificing too many points in their respective trees.

I would think that were they to restore the pre 2.0.2 coefficients that some sever modificiations would need to be done to our talents. In time though it might result in a better situation for us. These bandaid fixes seem to cause more problems than they are worth. There has to be some point at which their spaghetti code becomes too much of a hastle for them to work with and will eventualy result in a complete overhaul.

Anyone know how to calculate the % at which crit will reach its max effectiveness in terms of Pandemic? Considering all else, there will be a point that crit reaches its max effectiveness since we can't actually reach 100% crit and be usefull. Or is no calculation necessary? Just obtain the requisite +hit, and stack + damage and crit as desired?

There seems to be something of a disconnect between the design philosophy used for warlocks and the one used for most of the other classes.

It shows up most prominently in Affliction builds, where the warlock has to struggle with two separate +hit talents, two separate range modification talents, two separate pushback reduction talents and two separate Threat reduction talents (albeit quasi-merged ones). Particularly in the case of +hit and range, taking one without the other seems to verge on the pointless.

I honestly don't understand why this obsession with Shadowbolt as the only practical filler for Affliction and demonology persists. Effectively, the developers have created a situation where 15 to 19 points in destruction is manditory for every warlock build. Surely that is contrary to the spirit of design which they have so consistently espoused throughout this beta?

On a more constructive note, I was pleased to notice that they've now uncoupled Shadowfury from Shadow and Flame. That needs to happen with Contagion and Unstable Affliction as well, in my opinion. Making 5/5 contagion non-manditory for Affliction PvE might free up 2 or 3 points that are badly needed elsewhere.

How is immolate + incinerate shaping up for affliction filler?

With all the periodic effects deep affliction has, Molten Core should be pretty equal compared to Shadowmastery in terms of a straight 10% DPS increase.

The only question I have (and I do not have access or the know-how to use spreadsheets to determine this) is whether the higher coefficient on shadowbolt + Death's Embrace and intermittent Improved Shadowbolt turn out better than Incinerate + boosted immolate.


Also, I haven't yet managed to find a consensus on the best Major Glyphs for Afflocks.

My intuition says Corruption, CoA, and Siphon Life, but I'd like to know if anything else has been tested and proven? (For Affliction only, obviously shadowbolt / imp would debatably be better for destro)

Don't forget the relative coefficient boost you get from Bane for Shadowbolt. The coefficient for Shadowbolt is 14% higher than that for Incinerate before accounting for any other modifiers and they'd have the same cast time if you take Bane.