Ok, that sounds reasonable and explains my question. Thank you. How insane is the DS ticking when all the buffs/conditions it benefits from are up? I didn´t get the possibility do to play an level 80 warlock yet, i only heared it would dps good, but dont know how good exactly.
Another post in favor of putting SB back to Everlasting Affliction. We'll be clipping dots if they don't. The spec already has problems juggling all CDs and the removal of SB from refreshing corruption just makes it that much worse. Unless they plan on making Haunt the new filler spell, which I seriously doubt this late.
Elemental shaman and shadow priests spec off tree because they don't have anywhere else to spend the talents but they pick up buffs to on tree abilities only, never buffs to new abilities.
Druids are in a similar state as warlocks in that 13 points in resto is pretty much mandatory for cat DPS, bear tanking, and moonkin DPS. Pretty much ever druid spec is going to want to pick up Omen of Clarity and Master Shapeshifter. It is worth noting that these talents are required because of how much they buff on tree talents NOT because they buff an off tree skill set they're occasionally forced to use.
Fire mages only go off tree to buff fire skills. Frost and arcane specs are more complicated. Deep Arcane could spec heavy into frost for a massive criticals build that uses Spell Power in arcane with Ice shards/Shatter in frost for 150% critical strike damage bonus and +50% crit vs. frozen targets getting most of its damage from off tree spells. Deep frost with Brain Freeze can spec into early fire to buff Fireball procs.
Rogues almost always require points in three trees to be viable. Dual Wield spec, Relentless Strikes, and to a lesser extent vile poisons virtually require a baseline of 18/5/5 for virtually any rogue spec. Some dual tree builds have been tossed around for hemo and deep subtlety but these are largely regarded as non-raid viable builds by the community as a whole. Some rogue builds have on tree filler and some don't. Deep assassination and deep combat have on tree filler from mutilate and sinister strike respectively (shadow strike is not combat filler). Hemorrhage builds are actually 41 point combat builds that spec 21 points into subtlety for their filler skill. Deep Subtlety uses backstab as filler because shadow dance virtually requires daggers to be a DPS boost. Rogues are a bit different from casters, however, in that all three trees buff physical damage so 'off tree' is not really applicable here.
None of the other class and spec combinations, with the exception of massive critical deep arcane which I am almost certain is not raid viable, are as compartmentalized as warlocks in their off tree skills. The changes to ISB really make SB filler between affliction DoTs or Demo pet DPS and management like playing one spec for half your casting time and playing another spec for the other half.
I think everyone recognizes that there is a problem with half of our cast time being in a completely different tree than our primary chosen tree. I think 0/21/40 gave us the closest we have ever been to having a completely self sustained tree where all damage sources came from a single tree and didnt much require outside sources. Except of course the constant requisit 16% hit for demo.
The main issue with correcting our coefficients, our trees and our general play is what would it take to make our class be a "problem" class? Currently simcraft is showing us as the best caster DPS in the game. While actualy pulling off the rotation is going to hurt your hand, and require a second pair of eyes or a very well made dot timer that gives you enough info as you dance about the room, it is possible.
Muddled, mixed up and with stranger coefficients than any other caster class were still at the top, its just confusing instead of awesome.
1)Pop Meta and use intercept to get in range
2)Pop immolation aura,resume regular spell rotation, pop immolation aura again
3)Meta end, teleport back to circle and resume spell rotation
Is this just a pipe dream that only works on paper put not for most actual boss fights?
As a lock who loves Demonology I am getting frustrated at the lack of DPS Demo seems to be doing in relation to other warlock specs and at the fact demo seems to catch the brunt of any chances meant to reign in Aff or Destro. Any nerfs to shadow bolt hit Demo hard and as long as Incinerate's damage is balanced with high end Destro talents in mind it seems that it will remain a subpar choice to even nerfed shadow bolts.
It seems to me that Demo's teir 6+ talents just don't provide the scaling dps increase that the tier6+ Aff and Demo talents give. Do the demonology locks on the PTR/Beta feel this way or am I getting a distorted picture from just looking at the simulationcraft numbers?
Ok, that sounds reasonable and explains my question. Thank you. How insane is the DS ticking when all the buffs/conditions it benefits from are up? I didn´t get the possibility do to play an level 80 warlock yet, i only heared it would dps good, but dont know how good exactly.
The ticks get as high as 16k...... but please remember: We still don't know how the DS "execute-effect" will interact with Deaths Embrace. Right now, I have it coded as being multiplicative.
After following the discussion here about rotations for Destro I came up with an idea. I am probably not the first person to come up with this but I hadn't seen anything like it on the Blizz forums.
I would really appreciate any feedback from you pro theorycrafters as to if this is totally stupid or could actually be useful and if so what kind of numbers would need to be adjusted.
BTW wall of text may ruin/crit you here. Sorry, I'm not the most succinct person.
I like the idea of changing the mechanic, but the true thing that needs to be changed about Soulfire is this. 1 It needs a stun, and 2 no shard, and nothing else.
A cast that long at 50% of it's current dmg is a huge waist of a cast, it would be better to cast immolate/incinerate over that duration. The added DD from both of those would be greater than a 50% soulfire.
To be honest, and we all know this, Soulshards need to just be removed,we all know it. It would make Soulfire more viable, SB more viable/useable and allow us to have a "on the move" spell. But as has been stated (and I have been warned about) this isn't the QQ thread.
I think your idea is semi valid but just looking the wrong way.
The issue with Soul Fire depends on what one is looking for in the spell.
If what you want is an extremely efficient DPM spell, then Soul Fire's largest problem is that it costs a shard. That prevents it from being spammed to conserve Mana when DPS needs to be kept in check. If what you want is a decent DPCT spell, then Soul Fire's problem is that it doesn't do enough damage/scale well enough to be worth casting.
Personally, I think the simplest solution is to keep the shard cost and up the coefficient on Soul Fire significantly. 6/3.5 would give it a coefficient of 171.4%, making it our best DPCT spell outside of Chaos Bolt but with the obvious handicap of the shard cost. That would enable us to up our ante by blowing shards. The obvious issue being the motivation to for Destruction Warlocks to fill their bags with shards.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
I've been reading everything here and all the info you guys give is great. However, there is going to be a month of raiding at level 70 with these new talents. Which spec do you think is going to be better for level 70 raiding, destro or affliction. Which one gets hit worse not having the 10 extra talent points we'll have at 80. What spec are you going to go? Don't forget to link your proposed spec. Thanks
I think everyone recognizes that there is a problem with half of our cast time being in a completely different tree than our primary chosen tree. I think 0/21/40 gave us the closest we have ever been to having a completely self sustained tree where all damage sources came from a single tree and didnt much require outside sources. Except of course the constant requisit 16% hit for demo.
The main issue with correcting our coefficients, our trees and our general play is what would it take to make our class be a "problem" class? Currently simcraft is showing us as the best caster DPS in the game. While actualy pulling off the rotation is going to hurt your hand, and require a second pair of eyes or a very well made dot timer that gives you enough info as you dance about the room, it is possible.
Muddled, mixed up and with stranger coefficients than any other caster class were still at the top, its just confusing instead of awesome.
What we wanted, in general, was to have the potential to be at the top of the dps charts based on skill. We hated 21/40 because it allowed the former but not the latter. They have given us affliction scaling to make that possible, with the skill factor included (a difficult rotation to max/manage). Destro can also pump out the dps, but some skill is required to maintain that rotation as well.
What exactly is the problem here?
Good warlocks will figure it out and be right at the top. Bad warlocks won't and will QQ. I'm looking forward to the challenge, looking forward to seeing how well I do, and knowing that if I do well, my skill as a player will have had a lot to do with it. The tone this thread has taken with respect to semi-whining about rotations being too complex really confuses me...
What do we know so far about the talent upgrades to fel armor? Is the 30% only on the base damage increase, or does it also improve the spirit-based increase in spellpower?
With the changes to Everlasting Affliction and the nerf to ISB, I'm starting to wonder if there are builds that can basically avoid the destro tree altogether. That would avoid the need for bane, but of course it would also preclude ruin.
Improved Fel Armor would scale fairly decently if the 30% improvement also effected the spirit base portion of the spell damage buff. With 1k spirit. the additional damage from the talent would be 54 (180 times 30%) plus (9% of spirit), which at 500 spirit would be 45 additional damage.
Doing the math, I don't think there's anyway to make it add up, but I was wondering if anyone had come up with a viable SB-free affliction build.
Master Conjuror: Now affects 1% bonus from Fire/Spell Stone
Are you sure? I tested it in build 9014 and it didn't.
EDIT:
What do we know so far about the talent upgrades to fel armor? Is the 30% only on the base damage increase, or does it also improve the spirit-based increase in spellpower?
The tooltip changes to 39% of spirit with three points, but I didn't check it.
Personally, I think the simplest solution is to keep the shard cost and up the coefficient on Soul Fire significantly. 6/3.5 would give it a coefficient of 171.4%, making it our best DPCT spell outside of Chaos Bolt but with the obvious handicap of the shard cost. That would enable us to up our ante by blowing shards. The obvious issue being the motivation to for Destruction Warlocks to fill their bags with shards.
This isn't a viable solution.
If not using Soulfire puts a warlock at 100% of the DPS of any other damage dealer, and using shards increases that amount, then a full raid of warlock DPSers using Soul Shards will put enough extra damage that bleeding edge content will run with just that.
If not using Soulfire puts a warlock below 100% of the DPS of any other damage dealer, warlocks will be required to use Soulfire thereby using many more shards per attempt. This will result in a much larger delay when learning a boss for farming, and it is very likely warlocks (or at least those that must use Soulfire) will not be accepted on any non-farmable content just because no one wants them holding up the raid just so they can deal the same DPS as everyone else.
What we wanted, in general, was to have the potential to be at the top of the dps charts based on skill. We hated 21/40 because it allowed the former but not the latter. They have given us affliction scaling to make that possible, with the skill factor included (a difficult rotation to max/manage). Destro can also pump out the dps, but some skill is required to maintain that rotation as well.
What exactly is the problem here?
Good warlocks will figure it out and be right at the top. Bad warlocks won't and will QQ. I'm looking forward to the challenge, looking forward to seeing how well I do, and knowing that if I do well, my skill as a player will have had a lot to do with it. The tone this thread has taken with respect to semi-whining about rotations being too complex really confuses me...
You may have missed the point, or I just didnt make it a very clear point. I would like to see the confusion with coefficients fixed, all dot coefficients scaling is based on the time it takes a dot to run its course. Our dot coefficients are finagled from the 2.0.2 patch. I'd also like to see our tree stand on its own abilitys, a mage DPSs with fire, a Moonkin DPSs with Moonkin spells, a warlock DPSs with two different trees, three if hes demo.
Basically, a long time ago warlocks legs got broken and set but improperly. I would like to see them set properly and have us standing on a good solid foundation.
I will say, I will miss 0/21/40. Its not going to be possible to watch predator and raid anymore.
A couple of things I've been wondering about: What does Simulation Craft have to say about Incinerate as filler over Shadow Bolt for Affliction?
Also, due to the recent nerfs to Improved Shadow Bolt, this means that it's an increase of 10% to, lets say 25-35% of our damage, thus making it .5% damage per point at a 100% crit rate. Does this mean that the talent is utterly pointless now, and based on that, would a 66/0/5 (MMO-Champion's Calc) build be better?
I downloaded the Zip file, did the edit on the document and ran the application but the chart did not change. What am I doing wrong?
People are going to rack up a ton of infractions if this thread starts to fill up with generic SimulationCraft help requests. As someone who has already acquired a few, I wouldn't wish that on anybody...... and I don't want to get nailed with guilt-by-association.
If you need basic help, feel free to PM me here or post on the forum link you'll find by clicking through my sig.
To answer your question: If you are just double-clicking on the app it doesn't work that way. I'm an old-school Unix developer with absolutely no idea how to create a GUI. The tool is run from the cmd-line. The top of the config file shows an example invocation. If that is not your problem, feel free to contact me through the methods above.
A couple of things I've been wondering about: What does Simulation Craft have to say about Incinerate as filler over Shadow Bolt for Affliction?
Also, due to the recent nerfs to Improved Shadow Bolt, this means that it's an increase of 10% to, lets say 25-35% of our damage, thus making it .5% damage per point at a 100% crit rate. Does this mean that the talent is utterly pointless now, and based on that, would a 66/0/5 (MMO-Champion's Calc) build be better?
While I agree wiht your build, I heavily disagree that Incinerate could ever overtake SB as filler for Affliction. We just have too many shadow-school buffs and literally none for Fire.
To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.
The issue with Soul Fire depends on what one is looking for in the spell.
If what you want is an extremely efficient DPM spell, then Soul Fire's largest problem is that it costs a shard. That prevents it from being spammed to conserve Mana when DPS needs to be kept in check. If what you want is a decent DPCT spell, then Soul Fire's problem is that it doesn't do enough damage/scale well enough to be worth casting.
Personally, I think the simplest solution is to keep the shard cost and up the coefficient on Soul Fire significantly. 6/3.5 would give it a coefficient of 171.4%, making it our best DPCT spell outside of Chaos Bolt but with the obvious handicap of the shard cost. That would enable us to up our ante by blowing shards. The obvious issue being the motivation to for Destruction Warlocks to fill their bags with shards.
Well I'm absolutely not up on the exact numbers, the percentages I suggested were almost random picks. I probably lost myself in my words, what I meant was to have Soul Fire be sort of a default use of a backdraft proc. With the 30% + 20% haste from gear it would take it down to 2 second cast, reapplying Immo's Dot in the process and using the right numbers for damage making it at least on par or better than the wasted, GCD pinging Immolate after BD. Outside of the proc it would still be much less useful than any of the other dest spells.
I stand by my opinon that as long as the shard mechanic is the way it is, Soul Fire can never realistically be used in a boss-fight type situation. Apart from maybe on a pull (M'uru for instance).
PS: I edited the original post on the blizz forum by slashing and burning 19/20th of the BS, in the hope that someone actually responds and it starts a discussion which could lead to a change for SF
If not using Soulfire puts a warlock at 100% of the DPS of any other damage dealer, and using shards increases that amount, then a full raid of warlock DPSers using Soul Shards will put enough extra damage that bleeding edge content will run with just that.
If not using Soulfire puts a warlock below 100% of the DPS of any other damage dealer, warlocks will be required to use Soulfire thereby using many more shards per attempt. This will result in a much larger delay when learning a boss for farming, and it is very likely warlocks (or at least those that must use Soulfire) will not be accepted on any non-farmable content just because no one wants them holding up the raid just so they can deal the same DPS as everyone else.
You, and whitch, are absolutely right. I had overlooked that aspect of balance. It can obviously be said that any spell we wish to place into play for PvE DPS can not have a soul shard cost for its use. So either the shard must be removed outright, or some mechanic which removes the shard cost under certain conditions must be put into play. I enjoyed Chaotic Mind, but that's not the simpler solution.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
It's recalculated when corruption gets refreshed, so you loose the bonus the first time you refresh it after the buff expired. Corr -> Trinket -> Haunt should be possible.
Thanks. Have you looked at how Corr interacts with Haunt as far as refreshing ticks? i.e.
T = 0 Corr ticks
T = 1, Haunt hits, refreshes Corr
T = x Corr ticks
is x 3 or 4? Or does Corr tick immediately as Haunt refreshes it?
6. Will Drain Soul once again have a base coefficient of 15/3.5 = 4.29 instead of 2.25? IIRC, max rank Drain Soul was rather... efficient in TBC beta. And back then, Soul Siphon didn't affect Drain Soul.
Drain Soul always had "drain penalty", and I doubt (though not sure) it had 4.29 during TBC beta, more likely 2.25, and as I remember 0.5 pre-TBC.
Originally Posted by turturin
What we wanted, in general, was to have the potential to be at the top of the dps charts based on skill. We hated 21/40 because it allowed the former but not the latter. They have given us affliction scaling to make that possible, with the skill factor included (a difficult rotation to max/manage). Destro can also pump out the dps, but some skill is required to maintain that rotation as well.
What exactly is the problem here?
Good warlocks will figure it out and be right at the top. Bad warlocks won't and will QQ. I'm looking forward to the challenge, looking forward to seeing how well I do, and knowing that if I do well, my skill as a player will have had a lot to do with it. The tone this thread has taken with respect to semi-whining about rotations being too complex really confuses me...
How about playing a game to relax and have fun and still be able to experience content since it's part of fun. Now what about skill when addons define skill. If rotation is too complicated and requires too much attention to maintain you won't just QQ, you will bug addon authors, and addon authors who are stressed by maintaining their rotations as well will probably start to make addons that will suggest what spell to cast and what button to press. Not all that skill-based any more is it? The real result is just that more classes will absolutely require some addons. Luckily it is now possible to get rid of misses, so we can safely predict that DOT won't need recasting due to miss.
And yes the problem about too complex rotations is explained in first sentence. You want to experience all the content while being able to relax. However ability to relax and have time to make quality decisions is closer to turn-based games and pause-able single-player games. Another problem is that there is so many spells as it is, people are already "out of binds". I would add that it;s golden mean, when it requires a moderate amount of focus, and allows a moderate amount of relaxation. Requiring more focus puts more stress as if there isn't enough of it in real life.
In the end maintaining complex rotation perfectly will take more focus than it returns in damage. Example is simulated addition of Corruption in a Destruction rotation, Molten Core and Glyph of Corruption procs are nearly not worth it in damage, but are making rotation more complex up to making have no repeatable components over long period of time, while the one without Corruption has around 15-second period and is quite stable.
About Soul Shards, Soul Fire and Shadowburn: I think an effect somewhat similar to potion limitation can be used. When you use Soul Fire or Shadowburn, Soul Shards cost is removed from these spells until you leave combat, alternatively can be limited per target. So if the spells are worth using, you can use them at a cost of just 1 shard per try. So to say you can only burn shards as fast as you can drain them, that is 1 per mob.
In the end maintaining complex rotation perfectly will take more focus than it returns in damage. Example is simulated addition of Corruption in a Destruction rotation, Molten Core and Glyph of Corruption procs are nearly not worth it in damage, but are making rotation more complex up to making have no repeatable components over long period of time, while the one without Corruption has around 15-second period and is quite stable.
CoA is a great curse of Afflic, but you'll notice the rotation is a lot more unstable. Cut CoA out of the equation, as well as immolate, and the rotation is beyond easy. Sure, Sim. Craft says 198 additional dps for maintaining CoA. Is that hassle worth maintaining CoA, and how will we know that the additional stress doesn't cause the loss of that DPS? It's ~4% above the Afflic CoE rotation, so is it worth it?
What we wanted, in general, was to have the potential to be at the top of the dps charts based on skill. We hated 21/40 because it allowed the former but not the latter. They have given us affliction scaling to make that possible, with the skill factor included (a difficult rotation to max/manage). Destro can also pump out the dps, but some skill is required to maintain that rotation as well.
What exactly is the problem here?
Good warlocks will figure it out and be right at the top. Bad warlocks won't and will QQ. I'm looking forward to the challenge, looking forward to seeing how well I do, and knowing that if I do well, my skill as a player will have had a lot to do with it. The tone this thread has taken with respect to semi-whining about rotations being too complex really confuses me...
I don't think anyone is complaining all that much about the new rotations. The new destruction rotation (sans corruption confusion) is quite elegant and reasonably challenging to time accurately. What appeals to me is that the critical timing component of it is instant cast, which means that everything doesn't immediately fall down in a heap when you have to move. Affliction, on the other hand, is slightly overcomplex and could do with a slight simplification to make it more practical to do for 5 hours straight. Also, because of the radical reduction in DPS that occurs if anything gets jumbled or out of sync, it will make mobility fights pure hell. Plus, Haunt's casting time, combined with it's unforgiving cooldown, makes it extremely unlikely that Affliction will be able to match Destruction in an actual raiding environment, as opposed to in theory.
I'd like to thank everyone who gave feedback on my request regarding off-tree talents for other classes, you've improved my understanding of the situation significantly.
It now seems to me that the logical solution would be to modify Haunt to be the filler spell for affliction. Obviously some change would be required to the health-return mechanism to prevent it being absurd, but otherwise it strikes me as an elegant option:
- Rotation simplified and the 0.5 second window for maintaining haunt uptime radically extended.
- Effect of being required to be mobile on DPS reduced, although not eliminated. (Is this something which Blizzard would want to give us?)
- Points in Destruction can be moved into Demonology if desired.
- Shadowbolt remains relevant via Nightfall and Glyph procs.
It could be argued that this is restrictive during levelling, but frankly I don't find myself shadowbolting much while levelling as affliction anyway.
On the earlier subject of Lvl 70 raiding builds, I've been doing a lot of DPS testing myself on the PTR, trying to answer that very question.
So far, my base testing finds that a heavy affliction build and heavy Destruction build can both perform mostly even solo on a test dummy.
However, I think that when you begin adding raid buffs and taking scaling into account Destruction edges out affliction at 70 because of the huge gains from the 18% crit. In particular, the Empowered Imp build because much more potent because of the crit buffs on the imp.
Some other notes of interest based on my tests:
- Corruption is barely worth casting solo, maybe not worth it once you are in a group where haste and crit are increased. Jury still out.
- Demonic Power runs your Imp OOM very fast. Without it, a constant Replenishment buff (possible if you have 3 mana batteries in your raid) + Judgement of Wisdom + Improved Soul Leech will keep him going for about 4 minutes, give or take.
- Agony is a great way to keep up MC and a major contributor to DPS, so try to get someone else to cover utility curses if you go Destro.
- Backdraft and its pre-requisites are worth having as long as you time your conflagrates well.
The rotation I used was CoA->Corr->Immo->CB->Incin. Once your immolate ticks at the 12 second mark, conflag (you can safely do this while an incinerate is in "flight" to the mob, as noted earlier in this thread), then on your Backdraft you Immo, CB, refresh shadow dots if needed, then back to Incinerate spam.
It's actually a pretty easy rotation to run. You can refresh your dots whenever, the only thing you need to think about is making sure that you conflag right after the 12th second on your immolate, then immediately refresh and CB before you do anything, otherwise you run into issues with wasting your CB cooldown waiting for immolate or vice versa.
Affliction is probably close enough in DPS to this to manage for lvl 70 since there's only going to be 4 resets' worth of raiding anyway. But this build is the one I've had the most success with in terms of a stable rotation and good DPS that will react well to raid buffs.
10/06/08, 3:00 PM
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