Well, as internal role/balance are concerned I still say Affliction should err towards sustainability(sustained DPS sustained health/mana). Destruction as the burst DPS + AoE tree and Demonology as the durability + PvP tree. Naturally every tree should be able to perform all roles reasonably well, but each should have a certain edge to it.
Of course that's just my opinion, but I think it's moronic to give Affliction more AoE.
Whats the point of having a burst/AoE tree? For laughs? That suggestion is a bit silly.
Just in my opinion, the 3 talent trees are well-defined enough as it is. They could use tweaks here and there obviously, but i really don't have an interest in a 'burst/AoE' tree.
Whats the point of having a burst/AoE tree? For laughs? That suggestion is a bit silly.
Just in my opinion, the 3 talent trees are well-defined enough as it is. They could use tweaks here and there obviously, but i really don't have an interest in a 'burst/AoE' tree.
How about a pvp and pve role for each tree?
PVP:
affliction: battleground Havoc (in early TBC it was like this and it was very fun imo)
Demo: Survival and cc/interruption (more arena focused)
Destruction: Burst DPS (assuming team coordination) and increased ability to pick one's battles (relative to other trees)
PVE:
affliction: Raid-wide Utility and average (but self-sustained) dps
Demonology: Above average to very high DPS and party utility
Destruction: Very High dps on a short and stationary encounter, Needs superior support to perform well on medium to long encounters, and even then can only put out slightly more than demonology on a pure dps basis
Will be interesting to see if Endless Flames and Everlasting Affliction end up having the old lifebloom "bug" where you could roll the stack based on temporary spell power on the cast and not your current spellpower. I'm willing to bet that everytime you refresh the debuff through either talent that it calculates the dot on your current spell power, but it's nice to dream otherwise.
What's everyone thoughts on Soul Depletion? Seems very PVP focused (even more so when compared to other PVP focused talents) although the effect is at least interesting and new. I like that they are at least trying to move PVP away from SL/SL although it's basically impossible to tell where PVP balance will end up after a new class and a whole slew of new talents (and Blizzard's additonal experience in arena balance).
You just described exactly what those trees do right now.
pve:
Afflic: I don't consider affliction's dps average....i consider it poor. Perhaps you feel otherwise, but you'd probably be in the minority. Perhaps i should have given a measure of relativity to define what admittedly subjective measures. How about affliction does 1 dps, demo does 1.25 well played, and destro does a range from 1.15-1.3 under the conditions cited. Affliction's raid-wide utility advantage should also be enhanced. I've discussed how in a previous post in this thread.
Demo: I don't see the party utility that demonology currently provides. I like the FI-like buff in the alpha tree, but there are still problems in the talent tree and forced choices that will make the build fall short. I've described these in detail in previous posts.
Destro: Destruction puts out dps that is far superior to demonology, support or not. It's scaling with support is ridiculous.
pvp:
affliction doesn't put out the dps necessary anymore with coefficient nerfs and resilience further dampening the dmg. Lack of survivability further hurts it and forces people away from the 41pt talent that clearly has a strong pvp component.
Demo is in decent shape pvp wise. This is the only area where I'd agree that my description was of the status quo, but again, it would be nice to have the tree be fully desireable. there's a tremendous amount of fluff/garbage in there.
Destro: In what way can destro "pick its battles"?
I guess I don't really understand how you think we already have the real choices I described, especially given nearly every raiding warlock in end game is 0/21/40 and nearly every warlock feels the need to spec an SL/SL variant for arena
pve:
Afflic: I don't consider affliction's dps average....i consider it poor. Perhaps you feel otherwise, but you'd probably be in the minority. Perhaps i should have given a measure of relativity to define what admittedly subjective measures. How about affliction does 1 dps, demo does 1.25 well played, and destro does a range from 1.15-1.3 under the conditions cited. Affliction's raid-wide utility advantage should also be enhanced. I've discussed how in a previous post in this thread.
...
I guess I don't really understand how you think we already have the real choices I described, especially given nearly every raiding warlock in end game is 0/21/40 and nearly every warlock feels the need to spec an SL/SL variant for arena
leulier has as theoretical output with my current gear and full support about 2.5kdps as ds/snf and 2.1k as affli/ruin. this is a factor around 1.2. this is what you wanted. in reality you wont get full support as affliction lock because you will be in the tank group. maybe changing imp to a raid wide buff instead group wide would do the trick already
One unlikely but possible way that blizzard is planning to fix the scaling of affliction (and Shadowpriests) in the expansion would be this:
Patch 3.0: Damage over time spells and channeled spells can now crit.
That would put a whole other spin on talents like Kindling Soul and Torture.
Just throwing it out there.
Yeah, that idea has been out there for a while, and it may be time to make it a reality. Combined with a change that lets haste affect time between dot-ticks Blizzard could really remove most of the scaling problems with affliction (50% crit my have to be improved on as well). It doesn't really have any real impact on arena either, which seems to be their main issue when reviewing new ideas. I have less than 8% crit as SL/SL from the armory (still some S2 honor-pieces, but nothing that would affect my crit much), and the resilience cap of 492.5 gives 12.5 less chance to be crit. So it would be an almost non-existant dps-boost, and if it should have an impact (might have for Felguard locks I guess), an expansion is the perfect place to change mechanics and then smooth out the balance anyway.
Meh, I'm sure someone made a similar post asking for affliction-scaling pre-TBC, so who am I kidding
Originally Posted by Docjowles
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... the BB-Team.
Dot critting would help solve scaling problems, but it sounds like its a mess to balance and implement (for one the effects that proc off crit would have to be modified some how, etc).
The easy way to code it would be that your +Crit also adds +spell damage to dots in some ratio. Makes for vanilla itemization but fixes some problems and it sounds like Blizz is moving towards items that appeal to all caster classes anyway (adding spirit to appeal to all).
Current thougts on scaling:
Affliciton locks -
Need be able to SB more, or have crit affecting Dots. I thought the haste buffs proccing from dots and not having to renew Corruption would let the SB more, but Im not sure if this is a scaling fix or just my wishful thinking.
Also does it move them away from being the DoT class then? Im sure someone may feel that way.
Demo Locks - Use SB for a large section of damage and thus receive some scaling, but need pet scaling with +hit and +crit imop (Felguard ofc). Otherwise you have a pet spec whos pet becomes less useless as you progress. Basing talents on the pet hitting things gives me hope that this is being looked into though.
Destro locks -
Currently Ruin scales so well its become the unreachable standard which the other specs compair with.
Last edited by ShadowBinder : 05/30/08 at 11:02 AM.
Reason: more thoughts
Yeah, that idea has been out there for a while, and it may be time to make it a reality. Combined with a change that lets haste affect time between dot-ticks Blizzard could really remove most of the scaling problems with affliction (50% crit my have to be improved on as well). It doesn't really have any real impact on arena either, which seems to be their main issue when reviewing new ideas. I have less than 8% crit as SL/SL from the armory (still some S2 honor-pieces, but nothing that would affect my crit much), and the resilience cap of 492.5 gives 12.5 less chance to be crit. So it would be an almost non-existant dps-boost, and if it should have an impact (might have for Felguard locks I guess), an expansion is the perfect place to change mechanics and then smooth out the balance anyway.
Meh, I'm sure someone made a similar post asking for affliction-scaling pre-TBC, so who am I kidding
I have always felt not making DoTs scale with haste was a total copout. I'm not buying the "it would be overpowered" argument. If you consider someone with 10% haste (which is a lot), their corruption would do full damage in 16.2 seconds rather than 18. That 1.8 seconds is going to make affliction locks Gods in PvP? No, haste from gear effecting DoTs is not overpowered. Haste from procs and bloodlust/heroism can be OP since it is fire and forget. I suspect the real reason we don't see DoT's effected by haste is because it's too much of a programming effort to separate haste from procs/abilities and haste from gear. Something needs to be done for DoT classes so they can scale in WotLK. Look at how well hunters scale and are leading the Brutallus charts since they scale with so many stats (crit, armor penetration, hit, AP, agility, haste).
The simplest solution would be to make a 45+ affliction talent that converts haste and crit into spell power but reduces your crit and haste. Would be awesome for an affliction build because if the conversion were set up corrently it would maintain scaling even on mixed pieces of gear. Would also not be overpowered with ruin because it would actually reduce your crit and haste.
It'd work out to 187.5% up front, followed by an extra 75% as a DOT. It may sound like a lot, but:
We can of course think about Arms Warriors. They should get 200% up front + 60% as DOT over 12 sec for white crits and 220% up front + 60% of white melee as DOT over 12 sec. That of course is higher percentage in the end, but they don't have attacks dealing damage comparable to that of for example Fireball, and Deep Wounds don't stack the way Ignite does so the damage from Deep Wounds goes down as crit rate goes up, as opposed to Ignite that has its damage go up together with crit rate.
Originally Posted by Lhivera
I'm curious also why you're calling the 230% math "bugged" -- are you suggesting that the CSD isn't working properly, by being applied before other crit modification talents? (I don't mean this to sound argumentative, you could be correct.)
I don't know but it doesn't sound precisely logical when compared to other cases of modifying bonuses and totals. Resilience worked (still does?) like that, but according to patch notes should have been fixed back in 2.2 (was it? I never really tested).
Originally Posted by Fafhrd
Patch 3.0: Damage over time spells and channeled spells can now crit.
Well, channeled spells can crit as it is. As long as they aren't DOTs.
Originally Posted by tetracycloide
The simplest solution would be to make a 45+ affliction talent that converts haste and crit into spell power but reduces your crit and haste. Would be awesome for an affliction build because if the conversion were set up corrently it would maintain scaling even on mixed pieces of gear. Would also not be overpowered with ruin because it would actually reduce your crit and haste.
I mostly agree with you. That would sort out both scaling issue without requiring to design different gears. But I think only crit should be converted, because haste might not be all that good, but it isn't totally horrible.
One of the things that would help Affliction would be to return it to sane scaling coefficients for DoTs. Right now, Corruption untalented gets 94% of +dmg, CoA gets 120%, CoD gets 200% and Drain Soul gets 214%. They should get 120%, 160%, 400% and 428% respectively (although Drain Soul gets rather efficient if it scales that way, it's channeled and has craptastic DPCT regardless) if they scaled like any other DoT in the game. Of course, with FSW, this would have made Affliction ridiculously more overpowered at the beginning of TBC, but with a new expansion coming out and current levels of +dmg, they should be able to balance around that.
Affliction also has a host of little issues that reduce its dps. SM doesn't affect CoD, a longstanding bug which is magnified through the 200% multiplier it gets and Amp. Curse only affect base damage of CoA and CoD. All these little things combine to make Affliction's dps lackluster in later stages of the game.
Well, channeled spells can crit as it is. As long as they aren't DOTs.
Channeled spells such as Mind Flay, Drain Life, Hellfire, and Blizzard cannot crit. Not sure which ones can.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Seed of Corruption: +45.2% dmg Shadowfury: +58.2% Rain of Fire: +60%
Conclusions:
Mages are buffed on non-aoe spells relative to locks (everything but scorch.. nearly worst cast scenario most likely, as it will be harder to have a 1 firemage for scorch raid viable.. obviously this hurts 10man group composition more)
Base damage change:
------
GAIN
------
Firedestro
Affliction
Shadow destro
Demo(bolt/corruption reliant, corruption hit hardest)
------
LOSS
------
Of course coefficients may have been changed which would obviously change things a lot.
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 05/30/08 at 3:49 PM.
leulier has as theoretical output with my current gear and full support about 2.5kdps as ds/snf and 2.1k as affli/ruin. this is a factor around 1.2. this is what you wanted. in reality you wont get full support as affliction lock because you will be in the tank group. maybe changing imp to a raid wide buff instead group wide would do the trick already
Probably not. There would still be other classes/specs you'd want to support before the affliction lock. This is what I had in mind as far as additional raid-wide utility(from my post on page 15):
"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."
adding nature and holy dmg into debuffs into the spec or "curse mastery" talent would add even a bit more, and encourage even more class balance.
Also, i was talking about pure affliction. The power of ruin limits choices in the same way demonic sac does, and I consider this a bad thing. A reason NOT to take a 41 pt talent when you need 38pts to get currently ho-hum utility is part of the current issue.
I don't consider 0/40/21 a demonology build either (the two examples are not completely analagous, but hopefully you take my point). Hiding a pet somewhere so you can nuke is just a small variaton on a destro theme.
The difference between Affliction and Destruction isn't that big. Obviously current perception is that the damage gain outweights the utility gain of Shadow Embrace + Malediction (On a side note : this could be due to the fact that the moment an imp is arround it is put in the tank group). So either the gap must be smaller or more utility needs to be added.
My point was mainly that on live system the gap would need to be smaller than 1.2.
pve:
Afflic: I don't consider affliction's dps average....i consider it poor. Perhaps you feel otherwise, but you'd probably be in the minority. Perhaps i should have given a measure of relativity to define what admittedly subjective measures. How about affliction does 1 dps, demo does 1.25 well played, and destro does a range from 1.15-1.3 under the conditions cited. Affliction's raid-wide utility advantage should also be enhanced. I've discussed how in a previous post in this thread.
Demo: I don't see the party utility that demonology currently provides. I like the FI-like buff in the alpha tree, but there are still problems in the talent tree and forced choices that will make the build fall short. I've described these in detail in previous posts.
Destro: Destruction puts out dps that is far superior to demonology, support or not. It's scaling with support is ridiculous.
pvp:
affliction doesn't put out the dps necessary anymore with coefficient nerfs and resilience further dampening the dmg. Lack of survivability further hurts it and forces people away from the 41pt talent that clearly has a strong pvp component.
Demo is in decent shape pvp wise. This is the only area where I'd agree that my description was of the status quo, but again, it would be nice to have the tree be fully desireable. there's a tremendous amount of fluff/garbage in there.
Destro: In what way can destro "pick its battles"?
I guess I don't really understand how you think we already have the real choices I described, especially given nearly every raiding warlock in end game is 0/21/40 and nearly every warlock feels the need to spec an SL/SL variant for arena
As far as PvE goes, you vastly exagerate the difference between specs, when all things are considered. Not to say they're perfectly balanced, they're not, but the differences are minor. Which is why i said they could use minor tweaks in an earlier post. I really don't want to rehash what you give/get with each spec, when its been done a million other times.
I'm not going to comment about PvP on a lock since that's not my forte, except to make an observation. There are only 2 classes that can semi-reliably pick their battles, that's rogue's and druids. No one else can do it, so i don't get why you're bringing it up with regards to destruction. Assuming i'm right, and by picking battles you are referring to world PvP.
Of course there's a dominant spec for each facet, every other class has that (discounting hybrids to an extent obviously). It doesn't matter how tightly theey tune the difference between specs, as long as one is .1% better, almost every warlock will be specced that way.
Having a reasonable DPS difference between Affliction and Destro is fine. It's when the scaling power of the specs is so off that there's a problem. If Destro always does 20% more damage than Affliction that's fine. The problem is Affliction being godmode in Kara and a hunk of junk in full T6. If there are to be differences between specs these differences should be maintained throughout the gear progression.
I have a hypothetical question on which I would like to get raiding warlocks' opinions.
Do you believe it would be appropriate that the best warlock raiding spec throughout WotLK would be deep affliction? This would help to prevent the current issue that exists where it's significantly better to stack additional warlocks simply because there is a limited number of debuff slots available.
I'm not really sure where that leaves demonology and destruction specs, but it seems to be the most appropriate way to balance the class and still allow it to do good damage. I think we can all agree that it's probably not good for any one class to be stackable such that they push other classes away from raid spots (For example, with the current way that Winter's Grasp appears to work, stacking frost mages would achieve insane DPS.) and create imbalance.
I don't know if that makes the class more dynamic or fun to play for any of you. If nothing else it turns you from a 2 button class into more of a 5 button class. There are probably some of you who are either hellbent on playing as destruction or demonology who would reject this simply because it's not your idea play style, but from a design perspective would you agree that this makes a certain amount of sense?
If that's really the case the .1% better spec should really be the harder spec to play and maintianing DoT uptime is much harder than spamming shadowbolts.
To be honest, i'd much rather they make destruction a bit more involving by making say conflagarate and corruption viable additions to your cycle, along with one or two cooldowns maybe. Because as much as i would like a playstyle that's a bit more involving, i'm not sure having affliction being our best DPS, along with it being the superior method of delivering damage in PvP is going to turn out too well.
05/29/08, 8:17 PM
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