Most of the Pet books had an additional effect added to there standard abilities with BC (suffering reducing +hit, shadows giving an attack buff, fire shield got Fire resistance, soothing kiss got a meele attack slow.etc) so its not unprecidented.

I also thought about the Demon Skin / Armor thing, but didn't list it because its in fact a different spell, not an additional rank of an existing one. But referring to the other exampels you gave this Drain Soul thing is probably intended and thus the idea of DS executing not viable at level 70 yet, which is pretty sad. Lets hope the bug for rank 6 will get fixed (among the load of other bugs) for the november 13th release.

Replenishment only gave you 3k mana or so in those 2 minutes, Imp SL around the same, maybe even lower. On a basic destro cycle you use over 24k mana in those 2 minutes. Calculate again, you must have had some other help. And affliction isn't that much cheaper. Do not overestimate 3.0 regen, it's a lot lower than you're used to, around half of what it is currently.

I just finished installing 3.0.2...

From the patch notes:

Bane now reduces cast time of your Haunt spell. (I had not seen this info before)
Chaos Bolt now does Fire damage instead of Chaos damage. (We knew about this)
Conflagrate can now only be cast on targets afflicted by Shadowflame. (I dont know if this is a typo or not, but it appears that the previous poster is right. Conflag is no longer even castable until level 75 when we learn Shadowflame. This must be an error in the notes...)
Drain Soul will now cause four times the damage if the target is at or below 25% health. (again this implies we should have this effect NOW and not at rank 6. Why even have this in the notes if it isnt applicable until late 70's?)
Also ISB still does not specify non-periodic damage sources. It simply says ISB increases damage 15% on your next shadow damage spells.

Don't worry, patch notes are nowhere near correct, not for this kind of patch. And nobody said we're getting our final Wrath talents. The live patch might even be a newer build than the one last on PTR (with just bugfixing ofc).

Yeah the official patch notes probably have huge mistakes in them. Another one is that it says Emberstorm reduces Incinerate's cast time by .5 sec rather than the .25 sec we are expecting. Also for Eradication it says dot ticks have a 15% chance to proc an 8 sec haste with 10 sec cooldown.

Arcane shot. The dispel mechanic was only for ranks above level 60 or so.

Yea, we know. The tooltip is wrong:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [bug] ISB not affecting dots

(This was posted on the last page too.)

0/21/40 Destro fire Tallent Spec

Rotation = Curse -> Corruption(proc Molten Core) -> Immolate -> Incinerate

Comments? Suggestions? Harrassment?

See my post in the main warlock thread - http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17008-w...48/#post935646

My build isn't identical to your build (nether protection vs soul leech), but it's very similar. Other specs way outdo it, though it's still decent, I guess. Again, based on simulationcraft (my live stats), and what I envision my spell casts being.

Affliction is quite sick, assuming you don't run into the 40debuff limit (and the Shadow Embrace bug is fixed).

This is what I am thinking about for tonights respec and these are my thoughts after reading these threads. Affliction talents seem a little buggy yet so I want to try this spec:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I didn't take molten core because I don't want to switch to fire spells at any point...have had no luck with keeping high DPS with fire.. I took the points in Affliction to get the LT bonus and the points in Demo to get Demonic Aegis since I will be needing all the help I can get recovering the lack of my Sacd Succy. I would assume I would be running around with an imp for the stam bonus and improved HS for raids. This would still be a shadowbolt build as it sits. Am I missing something in this build? I guess I would be putting immolate on the mobs because I spent the 3 points on it...because I couldn't find any other way to get to S&F without it...

The 40 debuff limit will definitely be the biggest problem I imagine . Most 25-man raids will have 3 or 4 warlocks, and with everyone else getting new stuff as well I don't think it will be viable. Was the debuff priority system ever updated for level 70 spells as well? (And what's the SE bug? Can't find anything on it).

When I tested Corruption in the rotation (with a corruption glyph, not intended) corruption seamed to lose dps as opposed to help (0/3/58). Then again, it was also late at night and I was also having trouble forucing and not messing up my rotation.
Was too tired to test if conflag ASAP was worth doing for an almost constant 30% haste Increase though. (hence why I asked if anyone else had tested weather or not it was better to let immo take most it's effect, or keep the haste up.)

How do you think will the SE problem be treated or how do you expect it to be intended?

1) It's intended as is, meaning you as second WL have to cope with doing 10% less damage (could be a way to force the raid into not stacking classes).
2) Many warlocks feed one SE buff and thus profit all of the same buff (like the mages scorch pre 3.0).
3) Many warlocks get many SE slots.

I think all options are considerable, but 1) would of course be worst of all cases. 3) would debuffslot-wise be the smartest version. What is your guess about the solution of this?

I was just thinking about the possible benefits of swapping in a spirit stick for LTs (doubles may be required depending on swap mechanics).

Do th elatest weapon swapping mechanics allow for this type of thing. I.e. would it be possible to swap in Spirit stick, LT twice, and swap it out again without losing a GCD anywhere?

Pretty sure the weapon-swapping idea was fixed a few patches ago to prevent healers from swapping in a spellsurge weapon for the proc.

As many have stated before, Affliction is the specialization with the most complex optimal spell casting sequence in game. It depends on many variables. I recently sat down and tried to condense it into a spreadsheet. Here's a link to it:

AffSeq.xls

Note that the Spreadsheet isn't perfect, and omits three talents for reasons to be explained:

1) Death's Embrace. This talent has diffrent effects dependant on at what time the mob goes below 35%. It could be included by adding another 'below 35 time' variable, and adding another 'IF' to the base damages, that multiplies them with 1.12 after T > T35, with the latter being the condition. However, the 'below 35 time' is dependant on your own dps as well, thus reducing the model's accuracy. Just leaving it out means it'll be very accurate for the first 65%. To see the 'sequence' for after that, simply edit the spell base damages for all shadow spells to be multiplied with 1.12, and continue with your sequencing.
2) Nightfall and Eradication. These talents are RNG haste procs. There's no real way you can simulate them with a spreadsheet made like this, because the whole thing about the sheet is the assumption that haste stays approximately equal.
3) It also omits the Corruption glyph.
4) It assumes spell travel time is insignificant to the DPS outcome. This is a necessary assumption, as the first varies a lot from situation to situation.

The spreadsheet assumes that you have the following talents:

Ruin, ISB, Bane, Improved Corruption, Improved CoA, Improved Life Tap, amplify Curse, Empowered Corruption, Siphon Life, Shadow Embrace, Shadow Mastery, Contagion, Dark Pact (although you can easily leave this one out), Unstable Affliction, Pandemic, Everlasting Affliction and Haunt, all filled up.

With those assumptions, is it possible to easily experiment with rotations and dps? The answer is yes. The spreadsheet might appear daunting at first, and it works as follows:

1) There's some stats in the top-left corner of the screen. Damage, Spirit, Crit, Haste, Mana, and MPS should all be filled in with values after all talents and gear are factored in, so basically what you see on your Character sheet.
2) In the bottom-left, you might notice a table with 'action codes'. This is simply attaching a number to each spell.
3) Now the rest of the sheet mainly consists of a huge table, where the columns represent values, and the rows represent 'timestamps'. Basically, each time stamp exactly matches the casting of one spell. So if you wanted to see what your DPS, MPS, mana, etc. would become after casting corruption and then four shadowbolts with this spec, all you have to do is add '3,9,9,9,9' into the 'ACTION'-column.

Technical information: Question: What do all those values in the columns do?

Long Answer:
Note: A time frame is defined as all the time within a time stamp and the next time stamp.
Num, delta T, and T count the timestamps, their number, the diffrence between each stamp and the next, and basically the time of stamping respectively.
The plm.∂m/∂T column tells you the mana cost per second during each delta T.
The Mana column tells just how much mana you have at each time stamp.
The larger 'tick-timestamp'-section tells you exactly when which DoTs tick. Each number represents the time-stamp of a DoT tick. Notice how CoA has two rows since the largest time stamp diffrence (2.5) is larger than it's ticking time (2).
The 'damagers' section tells you how much damage each of your spell (components) deal in each time-frame.
The next three columns tell the total damage in each time stamp, the grand damage total, and the average dps so-far. Note that the latter number will tend be smaller for shorter fights because of the nature of DoTs.
The next two columns are to determine for how much of each timeframe haunt is active. Normally it's 0 or the length of the time-frame, but it might be haunt just pops off in the middle of a time-frame. When that happens, we need to know which DoT ticks within the time frame were affected by the haunt buff and which ones not.
The next six columns basically show you the time all of the DoTs have left on the target at the time of the time-stamp. So a '23' in the UA column at the '15.6' timestamp means your UA has 23 seconds left 15.6 seconds into the fight with your cast sequence.
All of the next columns are models for the uptime of ISB and Shadow Embrace similar to the haunt one.

Question: How do I actually determine my 'best sequence'?

Answer: There's no way to tell that immediately other than to enter your stats and start experimenting with spell orders. When doing that, make sure you do only legal things. (This means that you keep your mana above zero, don't cast haunt before the cooldown is off, and more such things).

Aside from 0/21/40 (which I will be testing today as well), here are a few specs I am going to test out:

7/3/51 Destro Fire with Chaos Bolt, no conflag/backdraft:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

7/3/51 Destro Fire, Chaos Bolt, with conflag/backdraft:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000

0/18/43 Destro Spec, emphasis on buffing the imp as much as possible at 70
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000



I spent a great deal of time on the PTR and had the most success on test dummies and fights where there was no AOE damage with the 7/3/51 builds, however imp survivability became a problem once I was able to test in a real raid environment.

As far as conflag/backdraft goes, mana inefficiency paired with the fact that backdraft causes GCD clipping on Immolate and Chaos Bolt will most likely rule it out, now that ISB is nerfed to the point that casting Shadow Bolt to use backdraft charges is no longer as viable as it was before.

I have a feeling that we may end up getting forced to stick with 0/21/40 for these last few weeks of TBC raiding, due to the large amounts of AOE/Raid damage in Sunwell keeping us from using the imp.

Another thing to consider, Elixirs of Draenic Wisdom + Elixir of Major Fire/Shadow Power may end up being more useful for us than flasks of pure death at this point. That and Scrolls of Spirit V.

Life tap as it is going into this patch is severely gimped, due to the fact that it now scales off of spirit rather than spelldamage. Anything we can do to buff our spirit will make a huge difference in our performance.

A few problems with affliction at 70 right now:

• the rotation is severely congested and is reliant on having perfect DOT up time for the DPS to be competitive
• too many debuffs coupled with the fact that most SWP guilds run with up to 4 warlocks and we end up with debuffs getting knocked off
• burst damage is not high enough for sentinels/shield orbs
• felhunter will not survive most of the SWP fights without constant babysitting
  

Again, I have a feeling that we might be sticking with 0/21/40 until WOTLK hits.

side note: if we end up going fire/molten core for these last few weeks, (cough) 40 spelldamage to wpn? (cough)


edits: clarity/grammar

Ok, so I don't do much high end raiding - instead largely Kara/ZA. So, not alot of significant aoe/survivability issues. As such I'm thinking of your 7/3/51 build without conflagrate and backdraft. Think that will work? What rotation is optimal with that build? (I've been affliction most of the time so still learning destro).

Immolate --> corruption

Incinerate until the last tick of immolate

Chaos Bolt --> (life tap here if needed)

repeat

or possibly start with

Chaos Bolt -> corruption, then follow with the immolate/incinerate rotation

Great, ty. You think I'm good with the 7/3/51 for soloing, heroics, and the type of raiding I'm doing or do you think I'm better off with 0/21/40?

Could anyone who knows answer if immolate is worth in a 56/0/5 build?

I guess the rotation otherwise would be

Curse of element (for me)
UA
Affliction
Haunt
Siphon Life
Shadowbolt/LT/DP untill UA is out
UA
Siphon life(every other ua)
Haunt
Shadowbolt/LT/DP

repeat, how about that or am im just out wrong here?

Edit: You Americans/Aussies who gets the patch a day in advance please tell how your raids went with wich spec and what possible pros/cons you discovered, cheers in advance!

I have always found any kind of destruction build to be excruciatingly painful for anything other than raiding, and possibly heroics.

Actually, I am really looking forward to the dual spec option so I can go back and forth to an affliction or demonology variant when I am not raiding.