Anyone remember the change to Improved Firebolt awhile back that reduced it from a .5/1 sec reduction on the Imp's Firebolt to .25/.5? I seem to recall the reason being that the imp couldn't exceed the GCD on his spells, and that it was a limitation of the system. However, the system has been changed since then; any thought on whether or not they'll change it back?

I figure most people just forgot about it, since no one uses the talent anyway. However, with the imp imp spec I'm looking at, that would be extremely useful, effectively doubling the imp's dps. At the same time, it doubles his mana consumption rate, but 900 dps is a pretty insane tradeoff (and pretty insane dps for a pet at lvl 70, no telling what that will scale to at 80).

Also, when Emp Demon is up... [The Black Book] anyone? ~220 dps increase while Dem Emp is up, ~170 without.

Sorry for a lousy copy paste from another topic :

- Curse of Weakness rank 9: 265 mana, reduces attack power by 350 and "increases time between melee and ranged attacks by 20%".

Bringing 3 locks for CoR, CoS and CoE is understandable in TBC raids.
Bringing a 4th one would royally knock any raidbalance over IF the base skill Thunder Clap is still a static 10% modifier.

I know, it's alpha/leaks/datamining, but damn... there is even a 2/2 improved CoW in the affliction tree.
4 base curses that are so powerful in raidsettings that you either :

A ) bring 3 locks and drop CoE
B ) bring 4 locks

I know warlock/mage balance was a bit screwed up in TBC, but if this change goes live, mages better get something real good to damn overpowered ( in raidsettings ) just for balance.

PS : I am not pro lock or pro mage, but just looking at the alpha/leaks/datamining, lock's future raiding sure looks a hell lot brighter than mage's.

PSS : The improved CoW "bitch" does not even have to be affliction. 7/21/40 + 3 = destro spec...

Talented Thunder clap is 20%. Mostly I think the addition to CoW is for 10 mans, where you might be running with no warriors and need the attack speed and AP reduction on a heavy hitting boss to replace Demo Shout and TClap.

The point is not to balance mages v locks. The point is to ballance all classes against each other. This change is extremely significant, and doubly so for it's talent. We're looking at a -24% haste on bosses, which unless Imp-TC get's buffed is a must, warrior or not in the raid. But who, pray, will spec it? Will the Mal-CoS lock drop malediciton for i-CoW? Many in the mage and warlock thread alike have been lobbying for a CoE-CoS merge, also to include nature and holy in the universal CoM. Now with two substantially powerful other curses I'm starting to think Blizz didn't put the thinking-cap on during the whole of the WotLK review of "what you feel about your class" feedback.

I get what you say for the CoW bitch not having to spec deeply too much, but appreciate: while you're getting imp Corr (where's the instant Corr we all lobied for?) which may or may not help Molten Core uptime and most likely improved LifeTap, you're dropping Eternal Flame, which really should be quite a substantial nerf. Or it should when they've agreed that it's lame as it stands and done some more work, at least.

There is no point for 25 mans to be running CoW. Thunderclap is 20% and imp demo on max rank is 574 compared to 410 CoW. Extremely unlikely that CoW and TClap will stack, and a warlock probably loses more casting CoW than a warrior loses casting TClap/Demo. I agree with the sentiment that CoW would be good in 10 man no warrior group and that is probably it's intent.

Imp CoW says "Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness by 20%." Not increases the effect of CoW by 20%.

Filling out an affliction build seems very difficult now:

It's obvious, given death's embrace and everlasting affliction, that shadow bolt will remain the filler spell for affliction DPS. This means ISB, Bane, and destructive reach are all required. This leaves a fairly tough choice between devestate and cataclysm but after the ISB nerf it might not be so tough anymore.

The new AoE mechanics look interesting, Haunt and Atrocity together look very fun. Stack on top of that the fact that haunt can crit. (The haunt description in the OP is cut off so I'm not sure what the rest of the skill does). Combine this with the addtional 20% to the spell coefficent on seed of corruption and afflictoin is an AoE powerhouse. Open with atrocity, haunt, spam seed, repeat steps 2 and 3 until corruption explodes then recast atrocity.

Eradication seems like a slap in the face for two reasons. Casting speed isn't particularly useful for DoT spells, at least not as much as it is for a nuke. The primary nuke is SB for affliction but with a lower crit rate than the average destro lock an affliction casting SB more often from eradiction will result in a lower ISB uptime overall (unless all the destro locks go fire but then you've got other problems). The second reason is that it procs on CoA which no affliction lock casts in a real raid.

It would be nice if affliction was not so dependant on destruction nukes to maintain DPS on a single target. Adjusting the talents to include enough buffs for drain life and/or incenerate to become the primary affliciton filler spell would open up a lot of talent build alternatives. Presently affliction seems to be pegion holed into 50/0/21, 51/0/17+3, or 50/21/0 without any other viable options. The trees really need trimming or affliction is going to have to spec single target DPS or AoE DPS based on the fights.

I believe it's a fallback, as the talent lookup on http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php still lists the crit increase.

Looks to me like it doesn't.

Improved Curse of Weakness - Spell - World of Warcraft

"Increases the effect of your Curse of Weakness by 20%."

"Apply Aura: Add % Modifier (8)
Value: 20"

If the speed debuff remains at 20% regardless, it's not as significant. It will be a welcome tool for 10-mans, in fact, and is more than likely intended to lessen the need for a warrior tank compared to other tanks which can't do a similar effect.

Fixed Haunt, my bad. Uptime on eradication without CoA is still 58% as opposed to 78% with CoA. Regardless it seems like demo/destro locks would be the new favored casters for CoS/CoE/CoR, and the aff lock would do CoA(you can't really fit malediction in the new 50/0/21 anyways).

That isn't what it says in the alpha files.

Increasing the uptime on it and shifting the debuff curses to destro locks with higher crit rates would just further exasterbate the problem of affliction locks casting more SBs at a low crit rate resulting in more ISB uptime loss. If they really want destro/demo casting CoS/CoE then why not move malediction and give affliction locks something else?

Edit: The increased crit chance on haunt from death's embrace indicates it can crit but the spell machanics are such that it is unclear what part/parts of haunt can crit. Can the DoT itself crit or can the heal crit or both?

A. Uptime would incrase because the shadow destro lock doing a 5min curse would shoot more sb than one doing doom. Likewise the aff lock is shooting less lower crit shadowbolts. Overall it would probably change isb uptime less than 1% either way.

B. Every destro lock will be fire(assuming anyone is destro), shadowpriests won't be needed past the first unless their personal dps increases 50%, and isb uptime will barely be relevant unless destro spec is pretty much dead.

C. You are right Malediction doesn't fit into the new affliction(mainly because they designed a new talent based on CoA, and you need to get 5/5 contagion to get UA...) If malediction was a 10 point or 15 point required talent you could fit it in the 50/0/21 spec. You have to waste points in low affliction and then you don't have enough points to get all the good stuff at the bottom of the tree.

Not to be a negative nancy but if things don't shape up for Affliction in a big way I will be quite inclined to play a Deathknight or even find another game to play. It's pretty obvious they're focusing on balancing PvP first and will then get around to raiding, but until then I can't help but look at most of the new talents, Atrocity in particular, and just shake my head in resignation due the direction they have gone in.

Let's hope things change significantly and this is really alpha versions and not representative of how the talents will end up.

Well I don't know about you but the 0/21/50 build i posted earlier seems like it would still be a great if not the best build given these talents as they are now, especially since its based on % buffs it scales beautifully with the greater and greater amounts of damage.

Frankly i could be mistaken, but thats what ive come up with.

That does not really add up for me. Look at the facts:

-Fire and shadow destruction are neck and neck for personal DPS in sunwell gear on live.
-ISB is getting nerfed while deep destro talents buff fire more than shadow
-Shadow priests are getting nerfed two-fold, first the regen coefficent is down to 2% and second because personal regen is being increased for every casting class. So ISB carries much lower raid utility.

Is there something I'm missing because i just don't see the benifit of continuing to run shadow destruction with these talents and those changes especially if molten core procs from immolate ticks.

Well I think it is likely that either everyone will be affliction/demo sb spam or everyone will be fire destro. Regardless I just ran the check in the spreadsheet, isb uptime in a 1sp 1aff lock raid would be roughly 55%, of a 3 shadow destro locks 2 spriest raid 68%. Since ISB is only 15% now that would be a slightly less than 2% damage decrease. This is ofcourse if the spriest direct damage ratio stays the same.

Affliction gains from spell dmg vs crit/hit ratios being higher as well as the base spells gaining more than destruction base spells gain. Realistically there is no way to theory craft which spec is better until we get our hands on the beta and see things like how much rating is 1% at 80.

Where is this part about Immolate setting off Molten Core from? The talent description says nothing that would indicate Immolate ticks should proc it. Am I missing some piece of information posted earlier?

You can't get 3/3 soul leech with a good destruction build, and if you're fire (which is not "neck and neck with shadow", it's noticably more dps) you can only get 1/3

Just as a side note, Soul Leech procs cause threat, which sucks and really makes me hate the talent even though I take it.



@tetra: based on multiple previous tooltips (and subsequent patches to fix), Blizzard has frequently used "spells" to mean nukes. Hence the way I've read it.

Thing is, it doesn't matter. Even if it's both, the talent is designed terribly for as long as demonic sac exists because (a) demonic sac means you pretty much NEVER want to cast off your element, and (b) demonic sac prevents us from picking up the range/hit/threat utility talents in early affliction which would lessen the cost of casting off-tree (which is similar to, but different from, your off element, thanks to our screwed up design.)



And I agree in general: Imp talents and CoA talents make me want to seek out who makes our trees and hit them repeatedly until they understand.

Maybe if we could actually cast one damage curse and one debuff curse, and then you'd decide between CoA and CoD. But no.

I also interpret spells as meaning nukes which means incinerate would not proc it and shadow bolt would, a less than desierable effect. The question I have is if the 'Shadow' portion is descriptive of all the damage dealing abilities that can proc it, both nukes and DoTs, or if the 'Shadow' portion is descriptive of only the nukes and any DoT can proc the buff reguardless of school.

If it is the later case immolate could proc 10% buffs to fire damage resulting in, essentially, ISB for fire locks without ever having to go 'off element.' Immolate is also a destruction spell which would remove the range/hit/threat issues as well.

If it is the former case, and only shadow nukes and DoTs can proc it, then the only real use for the talent is in an affliction build but in an affliction build it would only be buffing immolate damage and there are several alternative that would make much better use of the talent points.

Someone who has the datafiles mind answering something for me? Or trying to, I don't know if you can... But the Emp Imp talent, that gives you a 60% chance to increase your crit chance by 100%; does this apply to the next spell cast within the 8-second window (like backlash) or is it an 8-second buff that gives you 100% crit?

I kinda expect it to be the former, but if it's the latter, that changes things considerably. Picking up ISB and SB spamming would nearly guarantee 100% ISB uptime.

[E] Found it from the spellsearch, but it doesn't answer all my questions:

I guess I'm curious to find out if it has an internal cooldown like backlash as well (can't happen less than every 8 seconds). I would assume it does, but that still makes it considerably powerful when applied to ISB uptimes.

Kyth:
Most of the warlocks here concluded that shadow is better than fire overall and the personal dps is a lot closer than some would lead us to believe. The spreadsheet only has me at 85 better personal dps in my gear as fire. Which when you factor in ISB uptime loss is 5dps less overall rdps in my raids configuration. Not to mention the loss of soul leech, nether protection, mana from spriests, incinerate hits that don't have immolate up, the extra raid debuff slot. And by your own admission your threat capped often so spreading that 100dps over the raid would benefit you. Realistically I think the spreadsheet is more favorable to firelocks than it should be, firelocks are just not putting up the Brutallus numbers one would expect if they actually had significantly higher dps.


Eternal Flames and 15% isb will obviously change this forever but I think most of us would agree that shadow is overall better at the moment.

Torq: It reads like in the post +100% crit for 8 seconds. Though I agree this doesn't make sense and is unlikely to go live like this.

Edit: Apparently it is next crit (though the talent tool tip doesn't read this way) kinda ruins this spec for raiding as it was before high risk/high reward, now it is just bad.

I wouldn't quite say it's dead yet. For one thing, a guaranteed crit every 8-10 seconds is a pretty big boost to dps. In fact, I'd see this as the sort of spec you'd want to build for less haste and crit and all into damage. You give yourself very hard-hitting non-crit nukes on a consistent interval, ~1 in 4 of which are guaranteed to crit (for 100% more damage with Ruin) and provide ISB. If you're the only shadow user, this essentially guarantees your nukes always land under the effects of ISB, regardless of your crit rate. Toss in the Soulfire funtimes with Molten Core procs (10% more damage) and you've still got yourself good dps (in spikes, much like CoD). Even with other shadow users in the raid, your own crit rate might be enough to keep the ISB rolling.

Also, there's another hidden bonus to this spec. While your nukes don't necessarily hit as hard as a full destro/sac lock, your damage is split between yourself and your pet, reducing the need for threat-reduction talents and buffs.

Every simulation I've seen and RL experience for us says the opposite. Particularly given the impact of multiple ISB destruction warlocks (which is what actually hurts shadow destro.) Certainly your 3rd shadow is not adding "100 dps." It's not that it's significantly larger dps, it's the interaction with ISB where you don't want 3 shadow locks (particularly since your argument seems predicated on "you lose 100 personal dps but spread that out to the raid.")

We run with a mix of fire and shadow for that reason.

I'm not using the spreadsheet to make my determinations, btw. I'd suggest talking to some of the folks who have simulators out there (I have one but there's no way it's close to public consumption), including the ones that model the whole raid. (Vontre's is public and the URL is posted here, I don't have it handy. His isn't quite a pure simulation, but it's the only public one I know of.)



@tetra:

Ah I see where you're going. That'd.... be very odd, but yeah, immolate procing a fire increase would indeed make it a useful talent. Especially since you can drop points off the now-useless improved immolate to pick it up (otherwise it's a bitch to grab.)

Unfortunately I think that's probably very wishful thinking, even if I really like the thinking.