Shodan30

Hi guys, long time reader/player, first time poster.


Got a few questions im hoping to get solid answers on, and we might as well make it a catch up post for anyone joining the discussion and since its nearly patch day, we might as well start making assumptions/conclusions from the current test/beta about how things are going to be barring big changes.

1) Does Nightfall and Glyph of corruption stack additively or multiplicatively (or at all)?

2) I would say this is a no-brainer question, but this is blizzard after all...for the purposes of our +hit talents which affects haunt? Suppression or Cataclysm since its kinda a DD spell, but not really a dot.

3) How exactly does haste affect dots and drains. Does it deal the same damage, just in less time (bigger ticks)?

4) For Affliction , should we be picking up molten core and using immolate to add to our dot damage or is it a dps loss?

5) Malediction - Is it currently giving what it says (+ spell damage) or is it giving +% overall damage)...ive seen conflicting reports about this.

Thanks much.

 

Rockstar

1. I'd assume you add them together though and treat them as seperate proc effects which use the same mechanic to trigger the same buff.

2. Haunt is an Affliction spell, thus Suppression. It doesn't really matter what the spell does, just what part of the spell-book it's in.

3. Haste reduces the GCD on your instant dots, or reduces the cast time of your dot to below the GCD in the case of UA. As for drains, it reduces the time it takes you to channel the spell which reduces the time between ticks, increasing dps.

4. Introducing Molten Core into an already cluttered Affliction priority list with Eradication is definitely going to make someone blow a fuse and /wrists - I cannot provide any numbers or testing for you though, I'd imagine it'd be amusing to micro - however I wouldn't envy someone doing it for 5 hours a night.

5. I believe it just adds a 1.1 multiplier to your output. The wording has been "increases the spelldamage contribution from your items by 1%" if Blizzard were to follow convention.

 

tetracycloide

1) Does Nightfall and Glyph of corruption stack additively or multiplicatively (or at all)?

As far as I know, no one has tested this enough to know. Additively the proc chance would be 8% and multiplicatively the proc chance would be 7.84%. The sample size required to tell the difference between the two would be very very large, probably in the 10's of thousands.

2) I would say this is a no-brainer question, but this is blizzard after all...for the purposes of our +hit talents which affects haunt? Suppression or Cataclysm since its kinda a DD spell, but not really a dot.

The DD or DoT nature of spells is irrelevent to cataclysm and suppression. Suppression works on affliction spells, like haunt, and cataclysm works on destruction spells, like shadow bolt and immolate. Neither work on soulshatter.

3) How exactly does haste affect dots and drains. Does it deal the same damage, just in less time (bigger ticks)?

On DoTs they reduce cast time only, the ticks and duration remain unchanged. On drains, they deal the same damage but in less time and by extension less time between ticks.

4) For Affliction , should we be picking up molten core and using immolate to add to our dot damage or is it a dps loss?

Molten core is probably not worth taking over bane, ISB, ruin, and destructive reach in destruction. Immolate is a DPS gain to use but in practice can be a DPS loss if a player is not proficent and maintaining DoTs.

5) Malediction - Is it currently giving what it says (+ spell damage) or is it giving +% overall damage)...ive seen conflicting reports about this.

As far as I know it's a flat 1% damage boost, not spell damage.

My vanity is justified.

 

Shodan30

Thanks for the quick response. Here are some more topics

Glyphs... I'm trying to decide how to proceed. I'm likely going to take Inscription, so i should have a 4th major glyph socket to spend...say i decide to put immolate into a rotation, my choices are :

(for affliction)

Corruption
Curse of Agony
Unstable Affliction
Immolate.
Siphon Life.

If the numbers above are correct, then 7.84-8% definately makes corruption worth getting.
Agony would get 2 extra ticks right? it would also help space out the recast times so you could fit an extra sb in there, so likely highly worthwhile.
The unstable affliction casting time reduction is a little less clear about how much of a result it would yield.
Same with immolate i guess but 20% on top of haunts 20% certainly sounds like its worth doing.
Siphon life...While its not like i dont trust my guilds healers, I do like to be more self-sufficient and healer independant on raids, so i typically will have this in my rotation for boss fights, and 20% again, is nothing to sneeze at.

I cant have them all, i would have to not get one of them. right now unstable affliction is looking like the weakest link, but i have no numbers to back it up.

 

PyroTEK85

Is that still the case? I had been reading that as of now there is no additional glyph slot for taking the inscription profession (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

PsyBomb

No, you are correct. Blizzard switched the benefit from the extra Glyph slot to profession-unique shoulder enchants.

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.

 

Bazookatooth

Edited, beaten to it three times.

 

Shodan30

Well...crud.

It was my understanding that the skill was still buried in the code, and was just not available in beta (probably because the glyph screen doesnt really have an obvious place for a 4th major circle and would have had to be changed).

Well, now i got to find the best 3 out of 5 instead of 4/5.

 

tetracycloide

20% on SL of Immolate will still leave them as being the two worst DPCT spells an affliction lock has. This means they're the first you'd want to drop if hitting the debuff limit and they're the lowest two priorities for uptime. The other 3 glyphs look much more worth while.

My vanity is justified.

 

Halens

I'm direly confused now for talents at 70. I still concerned and will keep 80 at perspective but I still have to raid for a month so I'm looking to maintain my DPS for the remainder of Sunwell.

I'm hearing Affliction is the MAX DPS tree so far because of the nightmarish destro rotation and I've come up with this talent spec.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Any thoughts?

 

LockApologist

Any information on whether the UA glyph reduces the GCD for that cast as well, or are you simply left w/ .2 sec of GCD? I'd try this, but there were no UA glyphs on the PTR

 

Trickykid

People keep calling the "rotation" nightmarish, but it's just a priority system like every other class.

Determine your priority order and cast the highest one available. Make a separate one for backdraft (which is not even a proc, you know it's coming so you have no excuse for effing it up). Follow them. I haven't played the PTR or beta, but the priority list for affliction is actually (obviously?) longer and you have higher potential for the items on the list to end at the same time.

Keep in mind that when the patch rolls out, there may be many respecs that add to debuffs going on mobs. Affliction may well fail for this reason alone. Everyone think positive thoughts for a change to the debuff structure.

 

• Maels

It didn't when I tested it 3-4 builds ago.
I really hope this is an oversight.

 

orcspit

Just to put an end to the debate of Glyph of Corruption stacking with Nightfall I did a test and they do stack.

Casted corruption on training dummies in Org until I had 500 ticks of Corruption, every time Nightfall proc'd I would cast the shadow bolt. Ended up with 500 tics of corruption and 22 Shadowbolts (which works out to be ever so slightly better then 4%.) Next applied Glyph of Corruption and repeated the exact same test. 500 tics of Corruption yielded 43 Shadow bolts.

So yes they do stack, which makes that glyph very nice. I will keep running this test a few more times and see if I notice any change at all with the numbers but initially I only ran it once because while I was running it, it was pretty clear they were stacking. Nightfall proc'd so much more often there was a few times where I had to cast shadowbolt 1 after another right away.

 

duhwhat

What was your reasoning for ISB over maxing out Shadow Embrace? Consider an extra 4 in Shadow Embrace and 1 point in Eradication vs. 5 in ISB.

 

Soul

One of the issues with Conflag is the coefficient. Given that you lose a tick of Immolate when you cast Conflag, the effective coefficient is effectively ~30% with Conflag's coefficient of 43% for an instant cast. So what they need to do to is to increase the coefficient of Conflag to reflect the loss of a tick or two of Immolate in order for it to not be so undesirable in a dps rotation.

 

Shodan30

Here are my thoughts:

1) Grim reach. unneeded. Yes the range is nice...BUT if you dont also have the destruction varient, its pointless. Also, since its just range, and the threat reduction isnt on it, its not as good an investment as destructive reach. It's better to have both types of spells at the same range so you have to move as little as possible, even if it means you work closer.

2) Fel Concentration. Unneeded. With the pushback changes, the most casting time a spell can lose is 1 second. its not worth 3 talent points.

3) Points in Improved CoA are worth investing unless you would rather use doom to have less refreshes...but doom isnt as good anymore. especially with the glyph of CoA.

4) One point in eradication is going to give you the biggest % chance return, the other 2 points dont return as much per point, but 1 point should be squeezed in.

5) If your using CoA in your rotation, Amp curse will overall act as a .5 reduction in casting time per full rotation...so i kinda like it....its also nice if your tab dotting for leveling purposes.

6) I'm still on the fence about dark pact...i know it returns more, so ill likely at least start leveling with it to reduce downtime since my gear is going to be low on spirit until i start getting Wrath equipment.

7) Soul siphon will be useful pre-wrath for any raiding done, but i might leave it for the late 70's once my drain soul starts doing the 4x damage buff.

8) Imp HoT is nice, but more a PvP thing. then again its nice for farming when you get a little overzealous and pull too many mobs.

I like this build for 70th level :

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Imp shadowbolt is pretty dead to me at this point. unless they fixed the bug where it wasnt affecting dot damage.

 

Hellfury

Imp SB is working as intended, it reads "lasts until 4 non periodic damage sources are applied" meaning only works for 4 direct damage sources examples: SB or Haunt.

 

Trickykid

The live tooltip says the same thing but it affects DoTs. The wording implies that's how long it lasts, not what it affects.

 

PyroTEK85

I think this may be the issue I mentioned earlier in this thread, regarding the difference between it acting as a buff vs a debuff. A Dot's damage can change dynamically depending on certain debuffs. However, your spell damage and buffs are only factored in at cast time, meaning the new ISB will only effect dots that are cast while the buff is active, which is why I dislike the change.

 

SageoftheTimes

Can anyone in the beta make a post about this on the WoW beta forums? This regulates the Glyph to PvP only use.

Clams. Now. Stack. 9.11.2008 m/d/y

 

Bonestorm

On beta it just doesn't affect them at all, regardless if the buff was up during cast.

 

PyroTEK85

Really? I could have sworn it did in an earlier ptr build, though I admit I hadn't checked recently. If that's the case, the talent isn't so important for affliction in my opinion.

 

AquiziTC

Just tested in PTR and ISB does not effect DoTs as the buff tooltip states:

"Shadow damage increased by 10% from non-periodic spells."

After testing, this is true.

ISB no longer effects DoTs, period.

Which then begs the question.. is ISB really necessary anymore? We'll still need to SB to keep Shadow Embrace up, but.. how much % damage is it going to be now?

Also, in the latest PTR build, Haunt's heal is bugged again and is not working.

 

• Maels

Only reason you'd get ISB is "better than anything else" on the way to Ruin.