WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 2

Pintofbrew · 05/21/08, 1:19 PM

Pets do benefit from auras, my WE always gained totems auras.

Bismar · 05/21/08, 1:23 PM

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade

It's tough to say whether Decimate will be preempted by Demonic Sacrifice or not. Depending on functionality and the raw numbers we simply don't have at this point one can imagine a Decimate build potentially laying down some significant damage.

As it stands I haven't seen a cooldown or mana cost listed for Decimate. If we make the dangerous assumption that this is intentional, then the only limiting factor is the mana/soul shard cost of the spell you are using and blocking out the spell school.

A potential spell rotation would therefore be to, following an initial Immolate, open with a Decimated Shadow Bolt, cast Incinerate a few times and repeat. For additional chances to proc Molten Core, one might take Imp Corruption and throw it on before one of the Decimated Shadow Bolts.

This could potentially result in competitive damage to a DS build, without needing to lose out on Blood Pact and Soul Link.

Of course, any number of things could screw it up. Decimate could have a cooldown, it might invoke the global CD when used, the Chaos Damage might lose out on damage boosting effects like Imp Shadow Bolt or Curse of Elements, etc.

I myself might like a Decimate: Soulburn. Yeah, Soul Fire. How long since we've seen that spell?

Flamingcloud · 05/21/08, 1:27 PM

Decimate has a 3 minute cooldown, just looked it up. I'll edit the top post.

Also did a little checking. Top rank of shadowbolt is 27.6% better than current rank, top rank of incinerate is 31.2% better. Not a big difference but this is theorycrafting so every little bit counts.

Allanar · 05/21/08, 1:29 PM

This is a silly quick analysis based on what I've seen, but it seems to me like they're trying to get destro locks away from shadow and more into fire, possibly because....we're going to be facing a whole lot of ice mobs.

Malan · 05/21/08, 1:30 PM

Originally Posted by Allanar

This is a silly quick analysis based on what I've seen, but it seems to me like they're trying to get destro locks away from shadow and more into fire, possibly because....we're going to be facing a whole lot of ice mobs.

Why would an 'ice mob' have anything to do with shadow damage?

Flamingcloud · 05/21/08, 1:32 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Why would an 'ice mob' have anything to do with shadow damage?

Maybe they will put spell vulnerability back in the game.

Allanar · 05/21/08, 1:33 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Why would an 'ice mob' have anything to do with shadow damage?

They'd have nothing to do with shadow damage, which is why I suggested they're getting us to lean more towards fire.

koalachan · 05/21/08, 1:36 PM

I wouldn't say Destruction is out, not at all. Fire and shadow are quite competative endgame currently. Regardless of dps comparisons, Shadow has room for more fun abilities on the side. Now the new talents don't boost SB spam in any way, but Eternal Flames does boost Fire in a very significant way. Considering this big boost to fire, I don't think Death's Embrace and Everlasting Affliction are anywhere near to bringing a build that is severely behind right now to the same level. Could be as bad as it still not beating SB spam with Imp Corruption and Life Tap.

Smurrf · 05/21/08, 1:36 PM

It's not what Shadow has to do as far as Ice goes, he's saying that, well, what naturally destroys Ice? The application of Heat; in this case, a nice firey blast. Boils (heh) down to forcing people to use spells that lorewise would make more sense in a given environment.

Pintofbrew · 05/21/08, 1:42 PM

I'd wager money that fire/frost interaction is next-to-none in terms of sensitivity/immunity, because if any smartass dev starts tossing around Frost-immune mobs there'll be hell to pay from mages. The frost tree is working out to be optimized for 60ish points to make it work well.

Morwen · 05/21/08, 1:46 PM

The Molten Core / Torture talents are a good first step from a general design perspective (even though the current text of Torture makes no sense). The aim seems to be create some kind of reactive spell diversity in a typical casting cycle. Ever since pre-TBC, warlock dps cycles has been condensed to the single principle of "theorycraft the highest dpct spell and then cast it as often as possible". Shadow destruction is so prevalent today because Shadow Bolt not only has the highest dpct for the spec but acts as its own buffet through ISB, so you never cast anything else. The shadow-buffs-fire idea was tried once (original 2T4) but failed then, hopefully it can be implemented properly in the expansion with new mechanics.

Flamingcloud · 05/21/08, 1:50 PM

Originally Posted by koalachan

I wouldn't say Destruction is out, not at all. Fire and shadow are quite competative endgame currently. Regardless of dps comparisons, Shadow has room for more fun abilities on the side. Now the new talents don't boost SB spam in any way, but Eternal Flames does boost Fire in a very significant way. Considering this big boost to fire, I don't think Death's Embrace and Everlasting Affliction are anywhere near to bringing a build that is severely behind right now to the same level. Could be as bad as it still not beating SB spam with Imp Corruption and Life Tap.

Do you remember what happened at the start of TBC? Affliction was by far the best spec, because dots are far better in entry level gear than nukes are. Eradication in its current form is worth around 15% spell haste, then the spec picks up ua or ruin(roughly another 10% overall dmg increase). 4pc t6 will eventually be obsoleted giving up another advantage destro had. Corruption will be ticking without needing to be recast at 150% spell coefficient, and siphon life at 120%(changing both these spells to be far higher dpct than incinerate), and +15% crit rate at <20%. Fire destro gains.. +10% crit damage, a very minor damage from spirit buff, and no recast on immolate(which to be fair is probably worth half as much as no recast on corruption). Not to mention if fire mages aren't the best mage spec for raid dps fire lock becomes completely useless automatically.

I am not advocating that destro locks would be unviable the entire expansion, but I don't think they will be at release.

Deathwing · 05/21/08, 1:59 PM

Does this seem right for calculating Empowered Imp uptime:

1 - .4^(8*C)

Where C = imp crit chance

Gives me ~75% uptime.

Madlax · 05/21/08, 2:07 PM

While at first sight these talents make me all warm inside a deeper look is needed:

Eradication(25 point) - Your Corruption, Siphon Life, and Curse of Agony ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to increase your spell casting speed by 20% for 8 sec. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.
It is indeed a slightly overpowered from the looks.

My guess is that WotLK will remove plain 1 button(2 in case of IC) nuking and move us towards 3-4 ability fighting PvE games.

Destro tree analyzed:
Molten Core (5 point)
This sounds interesting in combination of Immolate/Corruption/Haunt

Kindling Soul (35 point)
Hm, 10% of 177 spirit? This better scale in WotLK - a 17dam talent in tier 7 would be a major joke.

Backdraft (40 point)
I don't see a use in that talent, 10% on Immolate - ye. But Conflag still is a sucky DPS spell.

Torture (40 point, 3 ranks)
With the growing amounts of spell haste, this hardly keeps any viability imho.

Eternal Flames (45 point)
This sounds very interesting actually.
10% more crit on IC. No more IM casting.
Definitly a big need on this one.

Cataclysm - 5 points
Bane - 5 points
Devastation - 5 points
Intensity/Reach - 2x2 points
Molten Core - 1 point(20 total)
Ruin - 1 point
Molten Core - 2 points
Shadowburn(my preference) - 1 point
Improved Immolate - 1 point (25 total)
Emberstorm - 5 points
Backlash - 3 points
Kindling - 2 points(35 total)
Shadow and Flame - 5 points
Kindling - 1 point
Improved Immolate - 4 points(45 total)
Eternal Flames - 5 points

21 points remaining
Same sh*t in Demo tree as before.

As much as I'd love to not use that specc - from the first head-calc it still seems like it is gonna be a or even the top DPS one..

rooj · 05/21/08, 2:07 PM

I don't understand why they have a 35pt destro talent that suddenly asks locks to go get some spirit. Why not have it tied to a different stat altogether, perhaps stam. A 5% stam converted to spell dmg with every crit temporarily increasing stamina seems to have much more of a lock flavor to me.