I don't presume to speak for all warlock mains, but we've gone through the 5-button phase already. Everyone* was affliction in T4/5 content, everyone is destruction after that. Rehashing early TBC playstyle does not seem much more dynamic to me, because there was no effective variation in the way you can hit those 5 buttons -- in every fight you just cast from the highest dpct down. What would be interesting to me are mechanics that require adaptive variation, so that to maximize dps you should react correctly to a changing situation and there is some teamwork involved.

* Not literally 'everyone', but you know how it is.

I wouldn't worry too much about the non-increase in scorch damage from the Warlock point of view. Scorch would have be really really terrible before it wasn't worth casting to keep Fire Venerability up. The main consideration from a fire warlock point of view is if fire will be a viable end-game raiding spec for mages at all, the answer to which seems to be yes from the information we have so far.

Lhivera did the warlock calcs w/mana in a post in the mage counterpart thread. I won't rehash them...but they are quite disconcerting. If you thought you would be life tapping less due to the spirit/fel armor change...think again. If you assumed a 40% on average increase in spell cost like mages have, you'd have a shadow bolt costing 620 mana. If I'm reading it right, SB is 750 mana. 130 mana / 2.5 sec = 52 mana/sec...or 260 MP/5. You would have to have 667 MP5 out of combat (based purely on spirit regen, no BoW) and 3/3 Demonic Aegis to offset the mana cost.

FYI, I took the info from here: http://elitistjerks.com/761195-post3295.html

For the sake of comparison, if you were to have 30 mana/sec while casting from spirit (this is a bit less than I have now, raid buffed with Mage Armor), it would offset 75 mana from the cost of a Shadow Bolt. Subtracting this from the cost of the level 80 Shadow Bolt and comparing the result to the current cost of a Shadow Bolt without spirit regen, the increase is ~52%, which falls in line with most of the Mage nukes.

So it almost seems as if they're aiming for a zero-sum result when they add Warlock spirit regen, which seems strange. I would have expected the intent to be to reduce dependence on Life Tap, which would have the effect of smoothing out the scaling difference between mages and warlocks when you feed mana from external sources. But apparently no.

Of course, these numbers could well change significantly.

I don't presume to speak for all warlock raiders, but it was a complaint that I had noticed more than once in this thread. I realize that some people may actually like a simple two-button class while others prefer something more involved. I suppose I should have addressed that question to those who felt as though a two-button class was bland. Of course, dissenting opinions are always welcome.

The only problem with working in Conflagrate or Corruption into a destruction build is that these spells would need to be significantly buffed so that they outweight using a shadow bolt or incinerate when the cooldowns are available. Considering that warlocks generally perform at the top of DPS meters already this would either mean reducing the effectiveness of shadow bolt and incinerate or enhancing the effectiveness of the other spells. In the first case, most people would complain about the nerf. In the second case, warlock DPS has only gotten better and makes the problem of stacking a certain class worse.

Based on the talents right now it almost appears as though deep destruction is designed for PvP more than anything else and mostly serves as the tree that deep affliction or demonology will put remaining points into in order to fill out their build. It's possible that this is also Blizzard's reasoning and I merely wanted to set what the warlock community thought about it.

Speaking for myself, i'm not married to any spec, but i always shy away from talk of making affliction the dominant PvE tree. The history of the tree speaks for itself, along with the problem people seem to have with DoT's in PvP. I would rather they did something, anything to either demonology or destruction to make them complex, if they feel that's a problem. I can't begin to see how affliction will work out again this expansion. I believe the people that want it are simply being blindly romantic, or reacting to people calling what they do easy.

And speaking from experience, i both leveled to 70 and raided till leotheras as affliction. Complexity is in the eye of the beholder, despite performing well with it, after 2 months of hitting the same buttons in the same order, it quite frankly gets old. There's nothing particularly hard about watching timers for DoT's and putting them up as they start to wear out. That's not harder, a bit more involving maybe, but its not hard at all.

They could simply make conflagrate apply x debuff for y secs to somewhat make up for the lost time, there is no end to how many creative ways they can make the spec require more than 2 buttons. It actually did require corruption and immolate to compete in kara/ssc/tk, the scaling of DoT's in general just rendered both spells obsolete. At the end of the day, the problem has always been DoT scaling. Forgive me if i'm a bit hesitant to accept even more dependence on DoT's.

And based on talents, i can make destruction look like a PvP tree on live, that doesn't mean it is.

Oh and as a note, with corruption refreshing itself on shadowbolt hits, the only DoT's you'd have to refresh in Wotlk (if things go live this way) is siphon life/UA, unless you have more than 3 locks of course.

although there are no hit talents for our demons, don't forget that winter's grasp and improved faerie fire both increase hit for all raid members. Demo raiding locks probably won't be put in the caster buff group--if you consider that one group is the tank group, one group is for healers, one group if for melee, and one group is for caster buffing, like most guilds you are left deciding what to do with the last group. Is it another melee group, a hunter group, a caster group, or do odds and ends get tossed into there? Demonology has the potential to have melee synergy with a Felguard or caster synergy. Demonic Pact I think is a step in the right direction. I still think we are going to see a lot of changes in the trees though.

Since they made resilience affect DoTs in PvP I don't really see the issue with them. They can always move the damage reduction towards DoTs around to rebalance it for PvP without worrying too much about the spells and their effectiveness in PvE. Of course if you can't dispel or remove them there's a chance that you'll die, but Blizzard has time and again stated that the game doesn't revolve around 1v1 duels. If a 5v5 arena team doesn't have a class that can remove curses or magic effects then perhaps a team structure change is needed to cope with that.

I did make the assumption in my original post that affliction would be designed to be the best spec in WotLK which to a certain extent implies that the DoTs continue to scale along with the rest of the warlock's spells. I'm not sure how much of a difference Everlasting Affliction makes in terms of scaling problems since I don't raid on my warlock, but it seems as though it's a step in the right direction. It's also possible to ensure that affliction continues to scale well by giving affliction spells further coefficient bonus as seen on the T6 sets.

Blizzard has also repeatedly said PvP isn't balanced around 2v2, and promptly proceeded to balance around that bracket anyway . Don't really want to argue any further so i'll keep this short. Everlasting affliction is a bandaid, and coefficient bonuses on sets are even bigger bandaids. I really don't see an upside to being balanced around the debuff limit, there are guilds that will have no other choice, and trying to get all warlocks to go affliction to reduce stackability just looks like a very bad play. Especially considering just how many debuffs there are you can't really control, and how many new one's we are likely to see. Being limited by the debuff limit just flat out sucks, you really need to try it sometime if you feel its a good idea.

DOTs are already scaling good enough with damage. All the talks and arguments about them taking time, being dispellable aren't sufficiently convincing. I hope they are working to make a decent solution for DOTs. I also hope they don't forget burst instants with some coefficients love because as it is they are getting more and more laughable (generally meaning that ratio Damage(Conflag) / Damage(SearingPain) and similar ones are becoming lower and lower)

Corruption would become a worthy addition to DPS rotation just if it had 0.5 sec thrown off its cast time, adding to that some basic coefficient improvement (like replacing current 0.936 with pre-TBC 1) would totally rock. Conflagrate's chances to join DPS rotation are looking a lot more grim because of Eternal Flames, so I think it isn't happening. But as for possibility of whines you mention, including those spells in rotation may yield ridiculously low returns like a net increase of DPS by something like 1% which I believe wouldn't cause whines really.

They could change base Conflagrate to not remove the immolate DoT, but still require it. It would be a massive departure from many years of a historical and spec-defining (though still not-oft-used) talent, but that's not unprecedented. It would be warlock-y enough and still spec-defining as an immolate-related burst talent. Assuming such a change, it would still be raid-inviable due to S&F and bane/emberstorm coefficient modification... unless you either gave it something stupid like 50% crit from talents, or tacked it onto Eternal Flame so it would refresh immolate for more damage than an immolate.
Yeah... conflagrate refreshing instead of consuming immolate. So crazy, it just might work. That would also push Bane out of fire builds, come to think of it, unless you weave Soulfires.

Affliction, being harder to play (not saying it's hard in a vacuum, just that it has more buttons and requires more attention compared to the other specs) "should" be the best raiding spec... that doesn't quite mean it has to be the highest damage, though. That's destruction's department anyways. One spec being 1% better than another guarantees its use at the cutting-edge of raiding, although such a small margin allows for personal preference anywhere below that. However, when you start adding intangibles it becomes harder to evaluate. And I don't mean damage-related 'utility' like Malediction--affliction already is a hell of a lot more than 1% behind destruction, and you see quite a few guilds take one Shadow Embrace bitch because its benefit is completely orthogonal to the damage loss. The idea of being 1% more or less stops applying altogether. I do think the damage gap needs to close, though, so that providing Shadow Embrace isn't a role with Bitch in its title.

I really really like that idea, frankly it seems like something that it should have been in the first place, that would have made it worth of the 31 slot. Think of it, you spec into improving immolate, and the next talent down basically becomes an instant version of the immolate burst and keeps the tick rolling, makes so much sense i dunno why they didnt do that in the first place.

As Lhivera pointed out, there seems to be a rather large jump in mana costs for our next rank of spells in the database. Compared to now, I would dispute whether it's a buff at all. Afterall, if I as a landlord decide to give you free cable, but raise your rent $70, are you really getting a better deal? So basically we lose the +20-26% healing on our fel armor and it becomes a rather substantial nerf. It appears we will be lifetapping just as much unless we have dark pact, and healers won't be gaining the 26% extra benefit.

Which depends entirely on how much spirit we're getting in our new gear.

As it stands now, I have roughly 125-175 spirit on my gear, depending on what I'm wearing at the time. Much of my gear, however, does not have Spirit at all. I'd have to do a lot of checking to see what best-in-slot pieces that have spirit as a stat are, but I could easily see that number double - and that's just in current itemization. By the time we have level 80 raiding gear, we might see a case of a good 400-450 spirit or so. Remember, this is still an alpha we're talking about, and we haven't seen two things: *Final* spell costs (they may get wildly adjusted from where they are now) and the itemization for spirit on Northrend gear.

What continues to concern me is that Demonic Embrace and Demonic Aegis directly act against each other...and they're in the same bloody tree! I would actually expect some sort of spirit reduction *in trade for spell dmg / spell crit* in the destruction tree, and have the negative effect from Demonic Embrace removed. As it is, if you take both DE and DA, you end up going from getting 30% mana regen of 100% of your spirit to 39% mana regen of 95% of your spirit while casting...and that's if you can max out DA. And Demonology locks, at the very least, are almost forced to take both of those talents.

I also am concerned that Affliction seems to be at least continuing the trend of using Shadow Bolt as much as possible. Someone else posted the idea that Drain Life should have the health gain converted to damage if you're full up on HP (for simplicity's sake, I could very well see that being checked at the start of the cast, and not change during the course of the channel). I like that a whole hell of a lot, and it gives us a reason to not have to spec halfway into Destruction to be competitive. We could, instead, choose to be a bit more creative with our talents and our spell choices, rather than be locked into one cookie cutter spec (again). It would also put more of an emphasis on actually taking and using Dark Pact, because every time we'd lifetap, it would directly affect our damage output. There's just no reason at all though, that speccing full Affliction means that anywhere from 50-70% of my damage in a raid environment should come from a Destruction spell, though...period.

Edit: I'd also like to see the same conversion from HP gain to Spell Damage dependent upon being at full HP put into place for Siphon Life. It's sad that a spell that we have to spec into generally loses half of its effectiveness in a raid scenario (when typically speaking ranged DPS'rs are topped off with HoT's). Go look at the amount of Overheal Siphon Life does in a raid setting, for all you locks out there who have it.
Edit2: Changed note to reflect my erroneous math.

I would actually be surprised if our spirit after we have replaced all our gear with northrend gear was only 450. I am thinking 750-900 raid buffed is the more likely number. We have a higher base spirit then intellect, get more from buffs, and I think there will be more spirit on the gear in wotlk than there is int on our gear now (ie 30+ most pieces).

Removing the only DOT when it's needed is quite handy feature. You need Immolate for maximum damage from Incinerates (and its own DOT), but in some cases it's desirable to clear it.

Conflagrate's problems add and add. First problem is that its damage relative to other abilities isn't all that good (mostly caused by higher bonus spell damage amounts and SnF), second is that an instant burst spell has not so good non-instant prereq, third of course is Eternal Flames.

I'd like to see Conflagrate buff next Immolate you cast in some way.


Your math is a bit off. These talents change it from 30% of 100% (30%) to 39% of 95% (37.05%)

Speaking of Demonic Aegis it's probably one of the weakest talents we have.
Demon Armor - extra armor - Armor amount is so miserable that it will provide maybe 1% extra mitigation. This is worth half point.
Demon Armor - extra healing - 6% extra healing taken for 3 points. 126% is also 105% of 120%. Some classes get 10% extra healing taken per talent point. Again this is worth half point.
Fel Armor - extra damage - right now 30 extra bonus spell damage may translate into like 1.5-2% DPS increase based on gear level, with highest rank currently known it would be 54 extra bonus spell damage which will probably be the same 2% at best by the time it is learned. This is maybe worth 1 point.
Fel Armor - extra regeneration - extra 9% while casting. Again some classes get 10% extra regeneration while casting per talent point. Worth another 1 point.

So sad Demonic Aegis reality: with DA it's worth 1 point, with FA it's worth 2 points, never 3... And most impoortantly not a single 1% dispel resistance!


I really doubt it. That's horrible waste of item budgets on stat that only affects regeneration to the point that so much regeneration might be totally not needed by anyone ever and in the end people may end up with lower bonus spell damage than now. Spirit will never get sufficiently desirable until it has some DPS/HPS effect and it would better be a nice effect. Even Intellect increases crit chance and Spirit is still just regeneration.

Patch 2.4 normalized spirit-based regeneration to coef[level]*sqrt(Int)*Spi, meaning that class no longer matters. Given the same level, Intellect and Spirit everyone will have same spirit-based mana regeneration.

These new alpha patch notes just in from the WLK thread in the EJ public discussion forums:

Affliction- Eradication: Now increases spell casting by 20% (was 1/2/3%) for 8 sec.
- Death's Embrance: No longer increases the critical strike chance of the Haunt spell, instead increases the critical strike chance of the Shadowburn spell.
- Devastate: Removed, replaced by Cripple.
- (NEW) Cripple: Instant cast, no cooldown, cost 8% base mana, 30 yd range, effect: Cripples the target, reducing movement speed by 75%, pacifying and silencing the target. Cripple causes the target to be immune to physical attacks, but still be vulnerable to spells. Lasts 20 sec. Only 1 target can be crippled at a time.

Destruction
- Decimate: Removed and replaced by Chaos Bolt.
- (NEW) Chaos Bolt: Rank 1 (lvl 60), Cost 715 Mana, 30 yd range, Instant Cast, 8 sec cooldown, effect: Sends a bolt of Chaotic Fire at the enemy, dealing 990to 1256 Fire damage. Chaos Bolt cannot be resisted, and pierces trough absorption and immunity mechanics.


Cripple is completely broke-ass overpowered and will get changed. Chaos Bolt will scale poorly as a result of being instant cast, but the base damage is so goddamn big that won't actually matter for a good long while. Remember, that's the damage at level 60, when your shadowbolt does 500ish and your spell damage gear pushed it up to maybe 1000 with SM. It'll be even better for PvP, because people tend to run with less spell damage.

*ignore, I was being an idiot*

Devastate is a warrior protection talent, so I'm guessing that Cripple is replacing Atrocity?

Chaos Bolt looks good, definitely seals the deal on destruction being fire. But it seems like such a brute force method of compensating for the earlier talents sucking so much. And for a 8s cooldown, I'm not sure if it makes up for them anyway.

And demonic sac...yeah, nevermind, still not enough.

Emberstorm will affect it in the destruction tree however. I'm assuming the devastate that got removed is actually referring to Atrocity?
Hmm, with the change to ISB, i wonder if affliction with molten core and purely incinerate fillers will be better.

Chaos Bolt makes an interesting contrast to Arcane Barrage -- 237% the base damage, 213% the cost (at rank 1 for both spells), with its penetrative effect, but 8 second cooldown vs. 3.

A very significant change is that the ISB debuff will no longer affect periodic damage.