I hadn't considered that 2nd interpretation. EF makes a lot more sense if that 2nd interpretation is the correct one.

I am not sure what you are arguing in a 3/2 raid makeup with 3 shadow locks I have ISB at 68.41%, if I change my nuke to incinerate it changes to 62.75% 5.66% less shadow damage at 20% more. That would be a 0.99% dps gain for 4 for people.. Lets say the shadow locks are at 2600 & 2700 and the shadowpriests at 1500 & 1600(fairly high numbers but the spreadsheet has me at 2790 personal dps so when talking in only spreadsheet numbers we might as well be consistently high) that is 84 dps. Anyways like I said, fire destro does not in real life put up the numbers the spreadsheet says it should, I have been watching wws parses and from what I can see I am not seeing 2700 dps fire locks like I am seeing 2600 shadow ones often.

I would put odds on molten core being procced by immolate at 100:1, blizzard would not make a spell proc off shadowbolt and ALL dots and word it that way.

Someone have the aura modifier that is linked to the spell? You might be able to determine what procs it from there.

If iCoW increases the melee dehaste effect as well, I think they should roll that talent in with malediction, along with some sort of iCoR effect. Actually, I think they should do that anyways, but it's a prime example of a thematically consistent place to shave the trees a bit.

Demo Sac probably needs to be nerfed on its own anyways, but shaking its dominance in high-level raiding isn't as hard as it seems. You need to make up 15% damage (or less if they nerf it), but that damage can come from a combination of cross-element effects, pet damage, and having 21 extra talent points to spend (possibly only 8, if 9% meditation from Demonic Aegis is that important...). Because of this, I would actually kinda prefer the destro tree to be a bit bloated, although that bloat only need come from cross-element talents. In order for this to work, blizzard needs to get much better at generating cross-element effects, but the fact that they seem to want to is enough to sate me at least until the first time this rough draft tree gets major revisions.

Note also: in 25-mans, the ISB nerf is more than made up for by Shadoweaving going back to 15%. I say "more than" because I assume your ISB has less than 100% uptime.

Shadowweaving is not back to 15%. Just another revert mistake on those talent trees.

I like the idea of shadow buffing fire in destro, but lack of untalented instant corruption + the existence of demonic sac make the current implementation poor.

I tried to put together both and affliction and demonology based build last night, but both suffer the same problems of filler talents at the top of the tree and not enough points to spend in the bottom of the tree (at least compared to the obvious power of ruin.

My wish list:
1. instant corruption standard (the possibilities this opens up in play/style and spec choice are quite good)
2. A "Curse Mastery" type of talent that either combines CoE and CoS or allows the affliction warlock to stack two non-dmg curses. it could go in somwhere in Tier 4-6 of the affliction tree and has, provides tremendous raid utility, and encourages class balance in raid comp. Malediction's effects should also be combined with this talent. Affliction needs to bring real utility above and beyond the other specs if dots will continue not to scale well with haste and crit.
3. Move mana feed and demonic resilience to tier 3 in demo and trim the point cost of demonic aegis. The former two are necessary for a deep demo build but not powerful enough by themselves to warrant their placement that far down. The only reason no one complains about demonic aegis is currently is becuase there is no where else to spend points (a FG build gets demonic sac for free, the whole upper tree is full of useless stuff). The personal resilience component of demonic res may need a nerf in this case (but un-nerf demonic knowledge ffs)
4. Move nightfall to tier 1 of affliction (something has to go there and nightfall is very weak for its position and proc rate), combine empowered corruption and imp CoA, and increase the point cost, leaving it in tier4.
5. Torture and Backdraft both look terrible. I'd rather have a talent there that reduces deathcoil cooldown(even though its an affliction spell)...Destro needs a pvp ability to allow it to cast a nuke every once in a while without relying on procs like backlash. The increased stun duration for Shadowfury will help, but more needs to be done.
6. Overall, The destro tree is looking best, mostly becuase all the talents in the top part of the tree have a defined pvp or pve use (sometimes both). This is less true of affliction, and upper tier demonology is a total joke atm.
7. Also...make coex a class spell. its an underpowered snare. yes its spamable, but its also dispellable. Where the coex talent is now could be improved coex: "increases the effect of your Coex by 5/10% and its resistance to dispell by 15/30%"

just some ramblings, but the more i look at it, without some real good work and choices in lower tier afflic and demo, and the continued power of Ruin and Demonic Sac, most of us will never use the talents in deep afflictiona and demonology that have been added and seem both fun and to respect class design

Immolate's strike damage not procing-Soul Leech seemed strange to me also. The other talents could benefit greatly from some thinning down, and would be nice to see some improvements to the cross-tree talents (which I'm hopeful for since it's still only the F&F Alpha).

As I said earlier, I like the direction being taken.

Well, Ive plugged stuff into the spreadsheet, and with my current gear and the best in every slot gear fire destro is still less dps than shadow destro. Granted they are close, but shadow still beats out fire. Also remember the more % damage buffs you add the more it favors bigger numbers. As far as the deep destro talents, frankly their attempt to get us to use fire and shadow spells in the same rotation will totally screw efficiency in the long run, as they are now, the end fire talents are either too weak or to wishy washy, and the useful ones buff shadow just the same. Something tells me if they start off by mentioning shadow spells in the talent they wouldnt pretty much make that point useless by then letting it proc off of immolate, not to mention it would be a 10% chance every 3 seconds basically giving you 6 seconds of uptime every 30 seconds on average. Also for the wording to indicate immolate could proc shouldn't the wording be "Your shadow spells, and damage over time effects..." the way it reads now is "Your shadow (spells and damage over time effects)..." now the real question is, since things like fear and curses and whatnot are technically shadow, will that proc it. but either way as fire you are looking at a miserable amount of uptime.

I think what they are looking at for molten core is if you spec 21/0/50 you could do comparable damage to 0/21/50, although I think that assume you dps with your pet.

If they want warlocks doing fire & shadow damage in a raid they need to synergize it better. I would think adding corruption to the list of instant cast stuff on torture would be a start.

I have to disagree. Simulators need to take Immolate clipping into account, which is a significant dps loss. Proof that shadow currently is not only better rdps but better personal dps than fire can be found here: WWS Scoreboard

Firelocks can barely reach above 2500 dps on Brutallus. Empirical evidence ftw. (Some of the reports have expired, but they are all shadow bolt spammers.)

That said, with the new talents, reduction of ISB, Molten Core and Eternal Flame, fire will be the higher destro dps spec if the talents get to stand as they are. Which I personally like, although I would like even more to see Blizzard fix the class so we do most dps as demo or affliction, and not be so close to mages in play style.

You know, that shadow/fire comparison would be more useful in the PVE Compendium thread. For what it's worth, clipping Immolate isn't enough of a reason to dismiss fire (just don't clip it - not clipping DoTs is a requirement for playing Affliction effectively, so it's also a requirement for playing fire effectively), and it really depends on raid composition as well.



The 2nd interpretation is way too ambiguous to be likely. If they really wanted it to mean that, it'd have been much easier and clearer to word it as "Your damage over time effects and Shadow spells have a 4/7/10% chance to increase the damage of your Fire spells by 10% for 6 sec."

That is a tad wordy though, especially after listing all direct damage shadow spells.

Curse of Doom
Death Coil
Seed of Corruption
Shadowbolt
Shadowburn
Shadowfury
and the new Shadowflame

Not to mention it doesn't say shadow DD, it just says shadow spells, which as it is now, includes curses and fear and other non damaging shadow spells, but this will have to wait for confirmation as will the immolate thing. Another thing it doesn't specify, it doesn't specify that they have to be spells placed on the mob or offensive in general, which means things like life tap would proc it. While yes this is looking too deep into this and im sure it doesnt mean as such, i also am sure it doesn't include immolate being along those same lines as if we take it very literally it means damn near every spell we have.

You can get 5/5 Shadow Mastery and 5/5 Shadow and Flame, which is what I think Molten Core is aimed at. Casting Corr/Siphon Life and Immolate while spamming Incinerate. Imp Shadowbolt for Nighfall procs, or maybe Shadowbolt is the better cast spell until Molten Core procs. Point is, Molten Core is probably meant for hybrid affliction specs.

It's not the best spec but it's there, just like our 51 point talents.

I'm not sure CoD is a DD spell, you decide if it is. Note that DD spells check their size/resist/crit at moment of cast, yet CoD checks ISB when it ticks. As far as I understand, SoC is not a DD either. It has a DoT component and then detonates. I specifically left Shadowflame and Shadowfury out of the equation by virtue of them being AoE. I do not think it's reasonable to have a buff that exponentially increases it's proc rate off an AoE. At least, I think Blizz wouldn't find it reasonable, that is.

I shouldn't think the spells need to be placed anywhere specific. It looks decidedly like a self-buff that's triggered from damage assigned from you of a specific type. LT is unlikely to proc it as it doesn't cause damage, per se, rather "converts" life.

As for being wordy, behold: Arctic Reach:

"Increases the range of your Frostbolt, Ice Lance and Blizzard spells and the radius of your Frost Nova and Cone of Cold spells by 10%." That's why I assumed that listing 3-5 spells would likely be reasonable. For all intents and purposes this spell could have said "increases the range of all frost spells and the radius of Nova and CoC".

Who knows, it remains to be seen.

I would say that SoC's explosion count as direct damage, if only because it can crit. DoT's can't crit, and true AoE effects can't crit either (so far as I know.) Also, another confirmation that SoC's boom is DD is that it can be reflected.

Edited to remove the following idiocy - "both CoD's tick and"

If by True AoE you mean "channeled" then you are correct. Only Hellfire, Blizzard and Rain of Fire can't crit. Every other AoE can. And from where I'm standing it's the case that only AoEs that -can- crit are "true", heh.

My reasoning for it is any triggered-by-AoE effect will practically guarantee a proc. Perhaps that's not so bad, or perhaps it's unintended. It would certainly increase it's effectiveness as a talent if it did.

I eventually just started challenging anyone who believes CoD can crit to find a single example of it doing so in any WWS report. People just mistake the extremely large number it produces for a crit, I think.

I am fairly certain it could crit at some point in the last 4 years, but it obviously does not crit in tbc.

I played a rogue at release, and didn't roll a lock until ~1 year after release, so I can't say for sure, but... Since that point in time, anyway, CoD never crit.

It's always been classified as a DoT, and hence cannot crit.

And yeah, I'm sure it's just the fluctuation in damage that people mistake as a crit. Going from a 8k with few raid synergies to seeing a 15k with trinket+SP debuffs might lead people to believe it crit that time. Heck, even ISB fluctuation is enough to make an extremely noticeable difference. +20% on 8k is quite a bit.

I think presence of Shadow Embrace, Malediction, and Demonic Pact somewhat define what each tree is supposed to do. Seeing that the only Destruction talent that affects something except Warlock himself is Improved Shadow Bolt and that one is pretty early we may come to a conclusion that Affliction is supposed to put some handy debuffs on enemy to buff raid, Demonology is supposed to buff party, while Destruction is supposed to get all the credit for damage done.

As for having Fire beating Shadow, I think Eternal Flames might not have anything Fire-unique except saving Immolate recasts, meaning that effect of spamming Incinerate wouldn't be any better than casting it once every 15 seconds. Improved Shadow Bolt nerf isn't that big so in the end the current model may suggest spamming Shadow Bolts (in particular when ISB is up) and switching to Incinerate when Molten Core procs (and ISB is preferably down), however spell choice based on procs seems to be very player-unfriendly.

Molten Core sounds as a decent talent for middle Affliction high Destruction hybrid. It should have Siphon Life, but not Shadow Mastery in Affliction, and it should have at least Emberstorm in Destruction. Shadow Mastery would compensate for ISB nerf and Molten Core and therefore would bring Shadow above Fire.



What I would like to see as well is removal of spell spam. Some talents that would actually make it necessary to alternate between Fire and Shadow spells for maximum DPS would be very very nice. Think of "Your Shadow spells increase your Fire damage by X% for Y sec and your Fire spells increase your Shadow damage by X% for Y sec."
Also to make it more convenient ISB could be updated to something similar to what was suggested countless times: "Your Shadow Bolt and Incinerate critical strikes increase Shadow and Fire damage dealt to the target by X% until 4 non-periodic damage sources are applied. Effect lasts a maximum of 12 sec." (The difference to commonly used suggestion is that it's not SB for Shadow and Inci for Fire, but each for both), to balance Incinerate haste effect may need to be removed from Emberstorm, but to have spells different Incinerate could get its cast time reduced to begin with.

I get a nasty feeling looking at these talents and nerfs that deep destro isn't going to match mage dps in WotLK..Blizz definitely appears to be trying to hold back destro gains..only EF and KS look like DPS gains in destro, and both I suspect will be very minor. You have to weigh the benefit to the raid as affliction or demonology (demonic pact) vs personal epeen. Raids may not want us destro. There is also the very real possibility mages will raid as arcane/frost or any non fireball spamming spec, which will cause locks to lose and additional 15%. No need to panic yet, but worst case scenario elemental shaman and boomkins are buffed so they are 'must haves', mages raid as arcane or frost, and hunter dps continues to scale astronomically. Then warlock slots are determined by the raid comp and what curses are needed. Deep affliction talents that proc off CoA is especially insulting in this regard.

Ahh, then I'm mistaken in classifying CoD as a DD spell then.

To be honest, I'd never really paid much attention to it; I know that as was said above that I've seen wildly varying numbers, and always just presumed those were due to crits. Perhaps I should check on that before sticking my foot in my mouth next time.