I haven't seen anything about how the 4pcT5 effect is changing/working with Everlasting Affliction. Does it still stack corruption up to silly heights? Might it be worth going with 4pc T5 for locks who have them, but haven't cleared more than 4/5 MH and 2 in BT?

How does the pushback resistance of Fel Concentration really effect drain life uptime? With the new way pushback works (losing 25% of the channel time on each hit), how many ticks of drain life do you get with 0/1/2/3 pojnts here, assuming you're being hit near continuously? I'd guess that with 0 points you only get 2 ticks, and with 3 points you'd get 4, but that would say that one of those points is semi-worthless. The alternate would be that with 3 points you'd get all 5 ticks of DL no matter what, and that seems fairly interesting for a leveling/tanking build.

Does anyone know if nightfall stack with the glyph of the same proc??? (cant remember the name of the glyph)

It´s Glyph of Corruption and yes, it does.

But all in all I´m very disappointed with the WL-glyphs. -10% mana for SB for example is nothing compared with 3% crit for mages´ fireballs.

edit: fixed non-working item link. Here it is: Glyph of Corruption - Item - World of Warcraft

I'm changing the modeling of Pandemic in SimulationCraft to be an additional spell trigger as opposed to just increasing the tick damage on Corruption and Unstable Affliction.

While I'm working in that area, I wanted to get confirmation on what forms of crit buffs affect Pandemic. Is it player-only? Or do target debuffs affect it as well. Anybody have a parsed combat log that can confirm one way or the other?

EDIT: Recount data may be sufficient

I believe the general findings was a single point in fel hunter will keep him from going OOM but DPS is crap.

In addition to the life tap benefit, spirit increases your damage through fel armor. I have found that it quickly scales way better than ignoring spirit and it doesnt take much for a life tap to far out perform a dark pact. And since you are affliction, your health is never an issue either so life taps drawback is moot. If I recall, on the PTR I had somewhere around 300-350 spirit and lifetap was way better.

I would think that 6 stats would be a better overall increase, I dont think that +9 spirit is worth the loss of 6 stam/int but maybe...


When do you cast Corruption in the beginning before this macro?

And has anyone determined when we should just cast CoA and let someone else cast a non-malediction CoE? I guess it is difficult to determine since CoA procs molten better than Corr for a destro lock. I wont have a boomkin either unless we can convince one of our Fury Warr's to switch mains :-) but I think we will have more than 1 affl lock.

Yes i cast corruption as the first spell to get it up there and the shadow bolt resets it before it goes off. I have not tested this macro on live yet this was just a basic excel worksheet that i did this morning before class. when patch goes live tomorrow ill test it. not sure how well it will scale if you get more haste. On the whole CoE thing, the thing about CoE is it is for all classes so a 3% increase to Ele Shaman, Warlocks, Mages, Shadow priests, Rogues posions if they use them. I think the affliction lock using CoE is > then him doing CoA because the CoA can only count as so much dps but the improved CoE is going to boost raid dps which is > then personal DPS.

If that macro doesnt scale with haste which from my findings so far it doesnt, you would have to rework it depending on how much haste you are going to have. Ill test the macro tomorrow when it goes live because i cant DL my beta patches at school because it takes Forever on my dorm internet.

As for the lifetap, it depends on how much +9 more spirit will give you VS having 6 more stam, and int. If it gives you more +Spell damage and + more mana from life tap i think going with +15 spirit will be better then +6 of the other stats.

Also on the Fel hunter,
If this is true that his dps is just to crappy to worry about, the affliction lock might as well use imp to give everyone in the raid a Hit point boost. Because the buff that the fel hunter give is over ridden by the mages AI and the priests Fort even with the imp Fel Puppy.

Can someone advise on an Affliction build for leveling to 70 from 60 (62 really) starting tomorrow?

Or at least can you tell me what is right/wrong with THIS build...knowing I solo grind and PvP and eventually hope to PvP (read as arena) with this toon...not really likely to get into high level raiding.

(Yes I know, much like my hunter main...our lock pets have little to no survivability)

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock

Armory link --> The World of Warcraft Armory

Sure the CoE is better, but only if you dont have an oomkin in your raid. The oomkin is now going to be our best friend as it will liberate us from CoE and CoR allowing us to finaly use CoD on a regular basis. Unless you have a stupid chicken in which you will be having to put his debuffs up there for him once he dies.

So what it looks like is come tommorow testing will need to be done with 0/21/40. Some various affliction models, and some destro models.
Can we safely say Demo is out of the running?


Edit: No, multitarget tab dotting is far superior.

Shadow Bolt doesn't reset Corruption, only Haunt and Drain Life do. But, your macro will still technically work to keep it up as it looks like Haunt is being used frequently enough to not let Corruption drop off. Also, I didn't calculate the time there on your macro, but so far it seems to work best to use Haunt on CD rather than waiting for it to drop off on it's own before recasting. Really, I don't like the idea of using a macro for the rotation though. Nightfall and Glyph of Corruption procs aren't something you can factor into the macro, but they're a big part of the rotation/spell priority. Maybe the macro should be for only the DoTs and just spam SB/LT during the breaks.

/castsequence reset=10/combat/target Haunt, Siphon Life, Unstable Affliction, Haunt, Unstable Affliction, Haunt

Of course, at that point you might as well take Siphon Life off and just cast it when it fits in, and use this:

/castsequence reset=10/combat/target Haunt, Unstable Affliction

I really like Affliction over Destro in what I've tested so far. Going to try the 7/3/51 and/or 5/3/53 tonight though and see if the DPS is better than my test of 0/3/58 and how fast I go OOM. I noticed that those who have tested it so far go OOM in 2:30-3:00. Has anyone tried grabbing a healer and mixing in enough LT to go for 5 full minutes to see: A) How much does that hurt the DPS and does Affliction pass it, B) How much healing does it take to keep you up? (i.e. Is it comparable to 0/21/40 now where a HoT here and there will get you through?)

0/21/40 the standarded one button spam destro will still be decent
56/0/5 affliction
7/0/54 fire destro with imp CoA or Curroption with 2 points in IMP LT
7/3/51 fire destro with IMP CoA or Curroption with 2 points in IMP LT and 3 points in IMP imp

These are the specs i for see putting out damage.
Demo is more of PVP, Just like it was before in my mind, the numbers seem to low at the gear leveling at 70

When I was up to date on the beta sever, I was seeing affliction being a nice spec because you arent getting completely owned in mana, but with destro, it just eats your mana so fast with all the different spells you have, I wasnt using any gryphs remind you but still. Also if you think about it now you have 12k mana raid buffed 12k /400 mana per shadow bolt = 30 shadow bolts x 2.5 seconds (for longest cast time with now haste) = OOM in 75 seconds so if you think about it the destro spec now is alot better at mana if people are going oom in 2-3 minutes. Its just different and you feel it is more mana because of the simple fact you are using more spells. Also remind you if you are a gnome warlock your spells will cost more mana because of your passive racial buff.

Also on the Siphon Life, i thought the same thing thats how you had to play affliction before.

Also how much does haste effect the duration of dots, i heard that dots tick faster is this true?

You are right on the curroption thing, i forgot that it was Haunt, not Shadow bolt, but either way it would get reset easy enough.

On the Fel hunter thing again, If the fel hunter can stay alive and do 100-120 dps thats 100-120 more dps that you would do without having a pet.

Ah, well I was kind of talking about both. Things do change at 70 a bit, but it'll only be for a month, so it's not like it's gamebreaking.

Corruption/CoA/Lifetap are all thrown in on a priority system. Because of the varying DoT durations, having a fixed "rotation" is very restrictive. I put those up in place of an Incinerate whenever needed or when the DoTs end.

There's no potion sickness-type debuff with healthstones, the cooldown starts as soon as you use it. But you can only carry one at a time. No more carrying 0- 1- and 2-talent point flavors. I can't even make a rank 7 stone if I'm holding a rank 8 on beta.

I'm agreeing that Affliction will probably be king at 80, but for the last month is it a good idea to stick with a burst-heavy Destruction build? Most of the PTR testing has been on mostly Target Dummies, which compares well with a stand-and-cast fight like Brut. Thinking further along to something like M'uru, having 3 affliction warlocks in the raid probably wouldn't be that great when it came to burning down Sentinals. My concern is that since so many strategies are built around warlocks being high burst nukers, that it might be best if we retained that role for the last month of TBC.

Has anybody proven/disproven CoW having an Attack Speed Modifier?

It seems that other than a Malediction CoE (3 talents + costly DPS curse) or a 2800+ SpellDmg Demo Lock (w/ a pet criting once every 12 second), all of our utility raid curses and utilities are inferior to what other classes can provide. A fact I would be fine with except we are now no longer king of DPSing.

Note that I, too, have been mistaken before. Also, there's a lot of misinformation out there right now, but lemme see if I can confirm/refute some of these statements.

Seems likely, especially without molten core. 56/0/5 builds have so much shadow benefit, no immo benefit. I've not tried using immo in an affliction 'rotation' yet myself, though.

I see no reason not to Haunt as often as possible. If any dots tick while the debuff is gone and your new cast is in flight, they are losing 20% damage. Hopefully the Haunt CD reduction (to 8s) will go live soon, at which point it becomes more a question of whether Haunt's DPCT is high enough to warrant "spamming" it as often as possible, or only to keep the debuff from falling off.

yes

I agree about ISB, haven't tested healthstones, but as they are currently considered different from potions, I imagine they don't have a sickness effect. You could probably healthstone, potion, and HS again in one fight.

My tests show Felhunter DPS > Succy when you have a full rack of dots and shadow embrace up. Hard to say how scaling will help, but consider that the succubus lash doesn't build the way Shadow Bite does. And they both deal shadow damage and so should both get the same raid-stacking benefits. In my tests on a target dummy solo, the felhunter did about 6-6.5% of my damage, the succubus about 5%.

Don't forget glyph of shadowbolt. 10% mana reduction means fewer taps and fewer taps means more DPS time. As for a third glyph, all the good ones take northrend herbs to get to, so you're right about that.

As a lot of people pointed out when I made the suggestion that Demonic Power might be bad, you can keep the imp doing good DPS by just letting him stop until he regens. He does a lot more DPS this way because of how fast his regen is, and the fact that he'll steal Replenishment from people less since he gets back to high mana right away (which is good for your healers)

Yes and Yes. Conflag isn't working right right now, but it is still worth casting as long as you time it well. F&B Isn't the best talent in the world but if you are using conflag it's a lot of crit. i see a lot of builds sacrificing F&B points for other talents, and I think it comes down to a judgement call of what will add more DPS, but don't underestimate the value of 25% conflag crit, and 15% of 1600+ spell power (that's 240 or more damage) being added to immolate (you do lose a little of that damage to the last tick that conflag eats).

I've had more success running Corruption also, and using Chaos Bolt only on backdraft charges. Basically, Corruption itself has decent (if lackluster) DPCT even untalented, and it means much higher Molten Core uptime. As for CB, Destro falls into a very clean, rhythmic rotation if you conflag, immo, CB, Incin filler, and repeat. You end up with CB "rotting" off of cooldown for about 2 seconds every rotation, but in my opinion that cooldown is not there to tell us how often to cast CB, but rather to keep CB as a piece of a larger puzzle rather than a primary new nuke (and also for the sake of pve and pvp balance since it's so powerful). I've had more success with high DPS keeping the rotation rhytmic in terms of immo/conflag/CB, and re-applying dots/lifetapping during the incinerate filler time.

Can't answer as for the glyph of corruption yet but I do find the spell adds to MC uptime and thus to DPS. I'm not sure if the shadowbolts are worth it, but it'd be very easy to cast a few sbolts on a dummy to figure out their DPCT as a destro build (assuming the cast time is 1.5 since you are only going to actually use them when you proce a trance), then compare that to the DPCT of your incinerate. If 1.5s of incerate time is more damage potential than 1.5s of shadowbolt time, don't use it. Don't forget to consider molten core. You're looking at 80% uptime or so if you run CoA and Corruption.

You make a valid point about the lack of good lvl 70 destruction glyphs. Sbolt glyph would be useful though if you decide it's worth casting them during trances. Destruction is the most mana-intensive build we have, anything to reduce lifetap time is going to make your rotations easier (there's a natural rhythm for a lifetap right before you conflag but 2 or 3 taps in a rotation will mess things up a bit)

I question that statement only because you can "settle" for a rotation in destruction, as I have mentioned. At start of fight you Immo, CB, apply dot(s), then start nuking, then it's a simple: Conflag after 12th second of immo->Re-Immo->CB->back to fill time of incinerate/dots/lifetap.

It's very rhythmic and does solid DPS. Affliction seems to have slightly higher DPS potential but is much more hectic and harder to pull off. Both builds still leave some questions which you posed very well in your post, and we'll see if people agree with my answers.

NM please delete, kept this reply open far too long, has been answered above

Well, we have established a couple things now.

#1. 0/21/40 May still very well be the staple raid spec as Shadow Destro come 3.0

#2. Human error really needs to be a factor in future calculations. Keeping 100% uptime of all things while hitting that split second once that dot falls off 100% of the time is just not going to happen. Ie. Occam's Razor for casters, simple with a slight drop in DPS will typically win out over incredibly complex and a slight DPS increase.

What about professions then? I think that a lot of you like me are probably running Tailoring/Leatherworking. Currently Glyphs do not have a 7th slot opened for them meaning the prime benifit to the profession would be the shoulder enchants it provides.

Did enchanting gain anything that would be of great benifit to us? Not counting the DEing bonus. Alchemy I know can grant us a good bonus to our flasks as well as the stones and the extra single pot benifit.

Imo. Alchemy looks like the winner profession, tailoring im loath to drop even though atm its benifits are very minor.

yes 0/21/40 will still be very viable just a 5% decrease in the Sac % and a 10% decrease in ISB buff, so it will be a down grade but it can still put out numbers.
The only way to minimize human error in affliction is to make a cast sequence macro that may have some down time on a dot or 2, meaning Siphon life would be in this area.

If you were to make a cast sequence macro for affliction like i did earlier, would it be better to have a Siphon Life renew of the dot overlap a old one or have a down time on the dot not being up?

Just wanted to jump on the Aff raid at 70 discussion.

I did some PTR testing and found that I gained ~100 DPS using Immo vs not using it. I don't claim to have perfect uptime, but over multiple tests I clocked ~1750 vs 1850 no immo/immo on Dr. Boom (Spellstone buff only, 4 pc t6, 3 sunfire pieces, felhunter on passive, CoA, no raid buffs/debuffs). Build was more of a leveling build than a 70 raid spec.

Fire destro produced 1650 dps with Firestone, CoE and a mana pot.

Dont forget 10% from shadow weaving. I really dont see the point in staying shadow 0/21/40 in patch 3.0 since fire 0/21/40 has lost 5% from DS & 15% from imp scorch while gaining ~10% from molten core along with a small cast time reduction from emberstorm.

Shadow weaving was 15%, and yes we lost that also,

Fire destro is nice and all but i just dont see it, They have made everything scale with affliction and it hink they want it to viable.

I think 56/0/5 will out preform fire destro.

Once I hit 80 the spec I will be going is: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

On the Professions thing, I think i will be switching to Alch for the flask bonus, What profession should i get if i was to drop Tailoring? Alch, Inscription?

56/0/5 does appear to be highest dps spec but I dont see all locks in a guild going affliction due to debuff slot issues & the shadow embrace bug (if it goes live).