Morwen

Not every talent has to be a damage increase, and not all PvE (not even all raids) is standing around nuking down a single target. Cripple would absolutely be a worthy 51-point talent, as it adds a dimension to warlocks that they would not otherwise have. Spammable CC that you can actually damage a target through and doesn't involve the target running all over the place? Who else has that kind of ability?

In talking about talent/ability design, not only should they be useful but some of the key talents should also have some additional appeal outside of theorycraft. Something like Curse Mastery for multiple curses is undeniably useful but the very opposite of a flashy talent. I'm sure the idea of a Metamorphosis came long before the implementation: designers don't start with the armor increase and AE abilities and then decide what it would look like, they decided first that it would be awesome to turn into a demon and worked from there.

 

Rebellion

As a raider my first priority is damage after all. Its not like utility like crippling doesn't have it uses from time to time, but do you see alot mages with slow running around in sunwell ? I dont think so. If there is an encounter that favors a certain specc (like lady vashj if you were damned to kite striders) and your role in that specc is a key to success, of course then it might be nice to specc like that. But lets face it, there are hardly any encounters that require you to have such talents/spells at all. Furthermore the spell like it is at the moment wont go live. Its finally an upgrade compared to CoEx but I cant believe they will give us an I-win Button after one and a half year of "warlocks are op"-bitching.
By the way; our ultimates were always kind of pvp centered. In vanilla WoW only dark pact had its uses in PvE, SoulLink and Conflag were pure PvP talents. In TBC there are hardly any situations that allow you the use of Shadowfury at all while at least UA and Felguard bring PvE usage, though both have a strong PvP part. And our future just brings 3 PvP Talents, without any PvE use at all this time. Im sorry but i just feel like PvP really takes too much place in WoW and I dont think im alone, but this is a general problem and doesnt affect Warlocks alone.

 

dexia

A lot of time a talent will have a pve and pvp use. Look at Backlash. It started with just the IC shadowbolt when struck by physical means...useless for raiding pretty much since the damage we take is predominately magic. They added 3% crit in the next revision. While the talents are being chosen and balanced around PvP, we may get PvE usuage benefits tacked on like Backlash (+hit, -mana cost, haste, or crit) if it ends up the new talents are overwhelming PvP use only.

 

zerdell

I'm hoping that the demon talents are going to see a little consolidation, much like the demon talents in destro. The strongest points of the demo tree to my mind, and what should be somewhat definitive of its style is master demonologist & the new demonic empowerment. Talents that give you specific bonuses & buffs for a fight based upon choice of demon, so you can tailor yourself more tightly to specific encounters' needs.

Hopefully along these lines the imp x talents will be merged to imp demons, and the new succubus / imp / possibly other demon buffing talents will also be merged into a single talent so we aren't forced to spec into one specific pet, and lose the wonderful flexibility of demo.

Along these lines, I was thinking that the metamorphosis could become a pretty useful raid talent if perhaps you gave a group buff on metamorphosis dependent upon what demon you had out when you metamorphed. Obviously numbers would need to be balanced to make it better than / on par with ruin, and not be hideously op, but something along the lines of:

imp-morph: Increases crit damage bonus by x% for party.
vw-morph: Reduces threat by y%
suc-morph: Increases spell damage by z%
fh-morph: Restores a% mana
fg-morph: b% haste bonus

Of course that still doesn't address the issue of making the time you're in that form useful for you too, and as fun as charging a boss, cleaving and then demon circling back when the metamorphosis wears off sounds -- I just can't imagine melee damage / cleave will be worthwhile.

It does look like with the destro changes they're trying to make playing a lot more exciting than just mindlessly spamming one rotation over and over, a lot more reactive to get the best out of it, so... I'm actually pretty hopeful that they'll cotton on to something good.

 

dexia

Chances are only the imp and felguard will be the only demons out for demo raiding lock. I would imagine you can cancel MM...I don't think the strength of MM is going to be it's DPS potential..it'll probably be less then a fully raid buffed lock. It's strength is that it's a full heal/mana with abilities that will hurt people in melee range for PvP. To make it have *any* use in PvE would require it give a group buff, otherwise it would be OP in PvP. Since you lose your pet, people in your party will lose the potential 3% damage buff from our FI, going MM has the potential to extremely counterproductive for raiding. As it stands now, it's an emergency ice-block that may or may not save you (360% armor on cloth doesn't mean bosses won't one shot you). Go get Ruin and download Omen and stop sucking..you'll be better off without it.

 

Lhivera

I can see situations where the Succubus could be a useful choice. Fights without random damage that would one-shot her shouldn't be hard to keep her alive in, with the extra stam she'll be getting and the automatic healing she'll receive as you do damage. The reset you can use on her with Empowerment will also help.

Why choose her? Well, with 4 tanking classes and 10-man raids, there's a decent chance you won't have Thunderclap available. If you don't want to use your curse slot on CoW to substitute for Thunderclap, Soothing Kiss is an alternative.

 

Drundia

It feels pretty bad idea to base your spell choice on random short buff in a raiding environment.

The problem is not so much in DS, the problem is in lack of viability of using pets for DPS in raids, and general lack of good PVE-oriented talents in Destruction or early Affliction.

Shadowfury has some basic utility usefulness in certain situations. With different levels of usefulness you can think about Hydross, Morogrim, Vashj, Solarian, all Hyjal trash.

 

Lhivera

Au contraire. In fact, Frost and Arcane mages are very much looking forward to doing just that. Frost Mages will be happily replacing the endless Frostbolt spam with a reactive shatter combo when Winter's Grasp procs (which will effectively be a 10-15% crit rate increase), and Arcane mages will be lobbing Fireballs on Netherwind Presence procs. Both are going to produce not only a more interesting (fun) DPS process, but better DPS to boot. Blizzard is clearly looking for Molten Core to do the same for Destruction Warlocks. They may not succeed, of course, but it's not a bad intent.

 

• Suggestive

For some reason, i really doubt that will work out in practice, as far as the warlock talents go anyway. I'm not sure there's any reasonable way to react to a short term buff without a loss in DPS, especially considering you're trying to chain cast. It feels about as realistic as the TC that says immolate should be a DPS increase, 'if' you maintain perfect uptime. You pretty much can't, so that's a wash. What TC says, and what you can actually accomplish in practice are 2 completely different animals.

 

zerdell

Forgive me for wanting a play style more involving than mashing (nuke) and waiting for the big crits? Ruin is a fantastic talent, but it's extremely not fun. It'd be a shame if they were unable to produce new talent points that were more fun, and have them actually able to compete.

Hence musings about possible group buffs.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. Do you find that you're unable to react to the short-term buff and dps increase of a nightfall proc?

 

Lhivera

No, they're not completely different. They are merely somewhat different. The buff lasts 6 seconds. Obviously, you don't interrupt a cast to take advantage of it, as this would indeed result in a DPS loss. But this simply means you can only take partial advantage of it.

Worst case: buff procs on cast
00.00: Cast shadow bolt 1, start casting shadow bolt 2, buff procs.
02.50: Cast shadow bolt 2, start casting Incinerate.
04.75: Cast Incinerate (+10% damage), start casting Shadow Bolt 3.
06.00: Buff expires.

Best case: buff procs on spell hit
00.00: Cast shadow bolt 1, start casting shadow bolt 2
01.00: shadow bolt 1 hits, buff procs
02.50: Cast shadow bolt 2, start casting Incinerate 1.
04.75: Cast Incinerate 1 (+10% damage), start casting Incinerate 2.
07.00: Cast Incinerate 2 (+10% damage, buff expires, start casting Shadow Bolt 3

(If you're wearing any haste whatsoever, and the buff procs on hit, you should be able to get off at least 2 Incinerates.)

Now of course for this to work, there has to be a DPS advantage to casting Shadow Bolts most of the time, yet also a DPS advantage to casting Incinerates instead when they do +10% damage, and that's where it's all likely to fall down, of course. But conceptually, it works just fine.

Regarding Immolate, I assume you're talking about the EF refresh. Of course it's a DPS increase. It's an increase even if it refreshes only once. The DD component of Immolate, even with 5/5 Imp. Immolate, isn't worth as much per second of casting time as Shadow Bolt or Incinerate is; it's only the total DD+DOT damage that makes it beat them. If the DD component were better damage per second of casting time than the two main nukes, then nobody'd be casting the nukes, they'd just be spamming Immolate nonstop.

 

• Suggestive

You don't need to 'react' to nightfall to use it, its basically a 1 second cast time reduction on your next shadow bolt, and you're free to use it within 10 seconds.

Being optimistic and assuming i react to a molten core proc ~1 second after i get it, i will have to cancel a cast, probably on the school i have demonic sacrifice up for, and try to squeeze 2 incinerates out in the 5 seconds left (remember this is without demonic sacrifice up). Accounting for lost cast time, molten core if it procs on shadow spells only, does not begin to come close to being worth it in a raiding build at this point.

Edit in response to the post above: If i'm casting shadow bolts, i have a succubus sacrificed for 15% extra shadow damage. Why would i want to switch to incinerate with demonic sacrifice active? The other issue would be that at this point, shadow bolt doesn't particularly look close to being worth it. Oh and as far as immolate goes, i wasn't referring to EF at all, i was referring to immolate as it exists right now. If i was able to maintain the perfect rotation with fire talents, leulier's shows it as a 2-3 DPS increase? That really doesn't work out though.

 

Draele

And of course we have Affliction which is already interesting to play but they haven't done anything about the scaling problems. /crosses fingers waiting for alpha patch notes to mention DoT scaling with Haste and/or Crit.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

Anedris

Lhiv is saying explicitly that you do NOT cancel your cast. Frost mages do this all the time when farming - you get a frostbite proc, you just toss an ice lance onto the end of your (already casting) frostbolt.

As has been run over and back again in this thread, the numbers aren't high enough to make it worth it - it would have to be more than DS at the very minimum. But the concept is sound - if it were a 50% increase on your incinerate, for example, it would obviously be worth it.

 

• Suggestive

For some reason i read the text as 10% haste instead of damage, and that colored my thinking a bit. It doesn't matter, either way it clearly not worth it. We're all just taking guesses, as far as what the talent is actually meant for (PvE or PvP) at this point.

 

dexia

Seems to me Molten Core is in there to encourage destro locks to use corruption. We keep getting class trinkets and set bonuses that hinge on corruption, but it's Blizzard's own anti-dot design philosophy which has removed it off the bar for destro locks. It's a class defining baseline ability like Heroic Strike, or Fireball, we had it when we were level 1.

This has been covered a million times. It's a DPS LOSS to use. You want Destro locks to use corruption, make it instant cast. Even if you unnerfed the coefficient and made it a 1.5 second cast it might find it's way back into our arsenal. Molten Core is a cludgy, useless talent in end game, and only really a leveling talent.

 

Lhivera

Well, some quick napkin math tells me that, if you're running with a sacrificed succubus, and you have Improved Scorch on the target, Molten Core works -- Incinerate is lower DPS than DS Shadow Bolt without the MC proc, and higher with it, so it makes sense to switch during the proc.

The problem, of course, is that if you have Improved Scorch on the target, you won't be running DS Shadow, you'll be running DS Fire, so you'll never get an MC proc. They need to go back to the drawing board.

 

Moander

This is exactly how I read it. Shadowbolt spam with incinerates on procs will never work for all the reasons posted above (I can't believe how long this discussion has persisted). However, a fire lock keeping corruption up while spamming incinerate should see a net dps increase from Molten Core.

Edit:
If you're allowed to CoA, it will be even better.

Just to clarify, I think the main push of this talent is to help fire destro locks get a positive return on using DoTs again (hello class-defining spells), rather than spam one button all day. A 2/21/48 or 7/21/43 (imp lifetap) build to get corruption under the gcd is likely to be close to optimal imo (wtb instant corruption standard).

 

dexia

I don't think that is true either. Incinerate is 2.25 second cast when deep fire. Corruption is 2.0 second cast when 21/50. With current game dynamics, your avg shadow bolt factoring in crits is more DPS than casting corruption with a succubus sac'd. Going deep fire will skew this even more with KS and EF and sac'd imp added to the mix. A short 6 second (10%) buff isn't going to be enough to make corruption worth casting.

 

Moander

I agree it will take some more number crunching on the final talents to see if it works out. Assuming you put 1-2 points in imp corruption to bring it to the gcd, the question is whether the damage of 0.67 of one incinerate is equal to corruption plus 0.27 incinerate (6 seconds of 10% fire damage). So really, your corruption only has to make up less than half of one incinerate in order for it to be a dps gain (assuming one proc per corruption cast, which is probably too optimistic). If you get to throw a damage curse, this may also push the balance towards using CoA instead of CoD.

Not saying its a great talent in its current form, just that I think this is much more likely to be the way Blizzard was intending its use rather than trying to weave shadowbolts and incinerates.

 

PSGarak

That 'short' buff is over two incinerates long. Depending on the frequency of the buff, the extra DPS from the incinerates could very easily push corruption into being worth casting. If it procs once per cast on average, that's .2667 incinerates per corruption. That's a good deal extra damage, and it gets better with haste. Doesn't sound like enough to make switching fire-to-shadow worth it, but bringing Corruption back on the cast bar is a welcome change.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lhivera

This could all be true, but if there's a Fire mage in the raid -- which is highly likely now that we know how Burnout works -- it's essentially irrelevant, as DS/Fire is going to produce your highest DPS. With ISB no longer affecting DOTs, and Shadow Priests being more self-reliant, switching to Fire has much lower impact on raid DPS.

 

dexia

Lhivera is right..there is no sense in hashing out the math right now because I know things are going to change, but it's plainly evident Blizzard doesn't want corruption to scale...it already has a terrible damage gain/mana cost for the new rank as is.

Dec. 2006 Blizzard: We are nerfing the coefficient on Corruption (100% to 93%), but don't worry, you can get it back by speccing deeper into affliction.

???. 2008 Blizzard: Corruption won't get a damage bonus from ISB anymore, but don't worry, you can get it back by speccing deep afflicition (everlasting afflictions..ironically, with 60% uptime ISB was a 12% boost to corruption. EA adds 20% to the damage bonuse coefficient...which will be about a 12% damage increase..how quaint).

 

Hearteater

And DS continues to screw with warlock builds. It really needs to die. And while we're at it:

• Add in pet scaling: 100% resilience, 100% of spell hit, crit and haste to pet melee and spell hit, crit and haste respectively.
• Fix pet health so imp unbuffed has around 3k at 70 in T5, Succubus and Felhunter 6k, Felguard 9k, Voidwalker 12k.
• Add 50% damage reduction from AE to all pets (leave Felguard with 50% avoidance to AE on top of that).
• Make the Succubus LoP return about 300% of the damage done in health to her.
• Change Phase Shift so it works in combat and if on auto-cast, activates in response to damage automatically allowing the imp to totally avoid taking damage unless it is on cooldown.
• Then start with a real talent tree before modifying for WotLK (War Tools :: Talent tree Warlock Cleanup Rev.2.2)
• And while we're dreaming, make crit and haste apply to DOTs.

Then I figure they would be ready to start working on WotLK talents.

 

Lhivera

Demonic Sacrifice once served the purpose of eliminating a useless pet in a raid environment that was hopelessly hostile to them, and compensating the warlock for the loss of that pet. Now, so many changes seem to be focused around making the pet useful in raids, and DS runs entirely counter to that idea. With the reshuffling that's already happened in the Demo tree, it would be feasible to:

- Eliminate DS entirely
- Move Fel Domination into the DS slot, with 2/2 Master Summoner required, give it an additional effect such as an increase to health and damage dealt for both warlock and demon for 15 seconds. Reduce the cooldown to 5 minutes. Now you've got a nice dual-purpose talent, which can be used for either a quick demon summon or as a DPS cooldown.