Just want to quickly point out that Hunters will only take BoS in very special cases. But yes, we do need to throttle often enough given the resistrate on Feign and our possiblity for some very powerful DPS boosters early in the fight.

I have had 4 Soul Shatter resists raiding. All four times we failed to kill the boss. See, anecdotal evidence isn't very compelling, is it?

So based on this, you'd like every fight to be like the twins, but with every class's threat abilities randomly breaking/not working. Apparently because that's the direction Blizzard is going anyway and that's fun? You just let me know which games you design in the future so I know to avoid them.

And I should mention, Soul Shatter isn't 100% effective in any situation, it is at best 49.5% effective in any situation.

Lastly, if you think I (or probably nearly any other warlock) has fun being a pet class that kills our pet before the fight begins and then presses two buttons for 10 minutes, I think you are mistaken. Every single warlock should be using a fairly broad range of spells, whatever his spec. And throttling threat should definately be a part of every single DPS class, or why have threat in the first place? But to get the threat generation so tight that you must throttle carefully AND use Soul Shatter properly will only cause the 1% resist rate on Soul Shatter to become an even greater problem.

But while you are supporting a broken feature of warlocks, I will go on record as saying Invis breaking due to behind-the-scenes, AI-script-related reasons is stupid and should be fixed. And not only that, but if splash damage is too prevelent to make a 3-second interruptable Invis practical, then that needs fixing too. You're welcome.

I really think that the whole "Soulshatter is broken, it can resist" is quite panned out. Yes, there's problems. Every class has that. Yes, they should be addressed, either via talents, allowing 100% hit chance, or a statement of "Working as Intended".

Do we really need to re-hash the same points about a TBC talent in the WOTLK thread?

Ideally, we shouldn't have to. Although on a slightly related WOTLK topic, I'd really rather they ditch the +hit talents in Affliction and Destro. They just don't work for a number of reasons:

1) Soul Shatter isn't affected. Obviously the previous conversation has identified a number of ways for this to be fixed, and I'm just going to ignore those who think it shouldn't/doesn't need to be fixed. I think nearly everyone can probably agree that neither of the +hit talents affecting Soul Shatter is a problem of at least some concern.

2) Unless every raiding warlock is expected to take both +hit talents, those talents by their nature strongly push an Affliction warlock to affliction-only spells, and a Destruction warlock to Destruction-only spells. Personally, if I wanted to spec down a tree and negate two-thirds of my spells, I'd have picked Mage. I suppose it really is a design philosophy issue really. Do they want Affliction 'locks throwing destruction spells, and do they want Destruction 'locks tossing out afflictions? I suppose a Destruction warlock could live without Suppression since it should only affect his initial curse and Corruption, but I don't think the reverse is true for Affliction 'locks.

3) Our demons are not affected. Even if we get 100% scaling on +hit (which I think is pretty close to what all pet classes should get) taking a +hit talent that doesn't buff our pet means we stack less +hit gear which means our pet hits less. I suppose both could be made to add to pet hit, but that seems a poor solution to pet scaling and it seems odd that a Demo 'lock should have to go into both Affliction and Destruciton to get the most out of his pet.

1. Aye, seems true

2. It's actually something i'm thinking about, specing down affliction to nightfall/imp corruption, or even Siphon Life, depending on how well Chaos Bolt functions. If CB has higher ranks, that end up being equivilant or better than incinerate, yeah.. i'll take it. Otherwise, i'm really iffy on it. It's a 1.5second cast time, which means it scales poorly with SP, has an 8 second cooldown, so it can't be spammed, and the only real benefit it has is the no-resistance/immunity peirce. Sounds like a PvP spell to me...

3. Agreed. Pets get other stuff from us, stat-wise, I'd like to see them get some +hit/haste from us as well. Perhaps in the current implementation of hit/spellhit it's not viable (Oh look, my felguard has Spellhit! Yay, his taunt isn't resisted.. he just misses alot), but when they combine them it should be much more feasible.

Question about Shadowflame:
Does anyone have the info on the range of this spell? I'm thinking it's similar to CoC, but.. some sort of confirmation would be nice. The AOE/DoT effect is kinda confusing: If your AOEing, things tend to die *really* quick, so why add a dot component? If your soloing, most spec's won't use it, and the dot won't matter. Unless it's got some great scaling that makes the dot worthwhile to apply to a raid boss in terms of DPS/Range/Mana efficiency, i don't see where this spell fits in.

[edit]
Just looking more into Shadowflame. It's more efficient in terms of mana/damage single target, multi-target obviously looses to SoC quite quickly. If the debuff stacked more than once, i could see how it would be more useful, or if it could proc imp SBolt effects, it would be much more useable for increasing your damage. it is an insta-cast AOE, which gives mobility vs. packs of mobs/players.

I'm still not sold on the spell, unless it changes before release, except as a constant-spam AOE for the mana cost.

Shadowflame confuses me, too. It doesn't seem particularly powerful without a CC component like CoC or DF have. Its just a (long overdue) instant cast damage spell that's accessible to all Warlocks.

As for Chaos Bolt, its definately got PvP written all over it, unless it somehow scales better with SP than your average 1.5s cast or has an enormous base damage. Its not getting the SP bonus that Bane, Emberstorm and S&F give to Incinerate and Shadowbolt so there's probably not much incentive to use it in raiding and it sure as hell won't count for 15% more damage (i.e. DS) in its current form. Its looking like a 0/21/50 incinerate spammer is the way to go.

Considering that, there aren't many 51 point talents which have PvE Applications. Deep Freeze, Bladestorm, Heroic Leap, Starfall, Metamorphosis and Cripple certainly have no reason being in a raiding build. You might as well get Living Bomb, just like you get Dragon's Fire now because its not like any 21 point talents in Arcane or Frost are screaming for you to take them like DS does.

No one really needs to cap their hit. The returns from it are good, but certainly not so big to cap hit ignoring everything else. But Soulshatter situation changes it, for any threat sensitive fight it's totally necessary to cap your chance to hit, and if it still fails in threat-limited DPS race you might as well just say "OK guys, have fun, I'll go take a drink because I can't do anything due to Soulshatter resist.", or "I can't DPS any more, wipe safely.".

Your arguments are pretty much "My threat wipe is crappy, so yours should stay crappy as well.", we aren't here calling for Invisibility nerf, we are here calling for Soulshatter buff, if Invisibility has issues, or your passive threat reduction has issues, I have absolutely nothing against fixing them. Since Mages also cannot offload part of their threat onto their pet by design it sounds pretty reasonable.


There are some talents that raise this number above 3%. How reasonable it is to have in general is another question.

Lack of proper DPS-affecting blessing is throttling as well.

If you choose to mention complex mechanics, perhaps we could mention gearing towards ability to get rid of not only misses, but now also dodges and parries, also there are mechanics aimed at completely removing armor.


Also hit talents issue was raised around here, and I think that it's another poor design in a class. It is partially he reason why people want Affliction filler: to remove the need of several hit talents at once. But right now it's very poorly designed: separate range talents, separate hit talents, separate threat talents. Class (according to definition often used by its population) is designed to use a bit of everything in all situations: a bit of Affliction, a bit of Demonology, a bit of Destruction, with real ratios changing based on spec. It would be just smart to scrap either Suppression or Cataclysm, and make other increase chance to hit of all spells by 5% and reduce mana cost of all spells by 5% for 5 points.

The trouble with 11-21-31-41-51 point talents is they tend to be so powerful that they change the way you play your character which tends to make them either a cooldown, a static bonus or a CC effect. Because they're making all of the 51 pointers cooldowns and CC effects and our 21 pointers are static bonuses its pretty obvious which is going to be better for a long PvE fight.

"Critical Fumble"-style mechanics are only interesting because they force you to react creatively to the situation. There's nothing you can do in response to a soulshatter except play your class less. Point conceded that it's not quite sitting in a corner like we sometimes make it out to be, but since warlocks are a pure DPS class (which in itself is something we rail against), and we don't have any compensatory or complimentary abilities, the only response we have is doing our job less well. Crushing Blows would be a much better mechanic to add back in, assuming they don't one-shot the tank, because healers and some tanks have reactive abilities they can perform to deal with the damage spike and it makes the job more interesting, which is good game design. We just get screwed for the next five minutes and have to sit there and take it.

If CB was a 3.0 cast, talented to a 1.5, w/ an 8 second cooldown, yeah.. I'd be more inclined to use it. Right now it appears to be more powerful than the new rank of incinerate, at 990 damage vs. 676(+169). Both should get the same benefit from +fire damage talents, but Incinerate will win out in the Spellpower race. it starts off at a higher co-efficient due to it's cast time, and then it's talented even further above.

I'd be interested to know the break-even point on it. I suspect it will be a low number though, since incinerate is boosted by talents, and CB isn't.

My wish-list:
CB becomes a 3.0 second cast time.
CB gets affected by Emberstorm or Bane, .3/talent point, 1.5 total
CB gets affected by Shadow and Flame, 20% more spell damage co-efficient.
CB gets added to the list of spells on Soul Leech.

Yeah, it's unlikely that any of that will happen, but i can dream!

If there are higher ranks of CB, since it's first obtainable at level 60, it should get another rank every 10 levels (imo), which would be yet another reason to push it into your rotation. Even if at the end, it's damage is comparable to incinerate, the fact that it doesn't get resisted makes it slightly more likely to be used.

It isn't a solo situation, though. There's nothing else you can do; instead, it requires that your group try to compensate for you. It may not make your play on that particular attempt more interesting, but it can certainly make the group's play on that particular attempt more interesting. The compensation for you comes when it's somebody else who rolls a Fumble, and you're one of the people who has to try to step up your play a bit more to help overcome the resulting problems.

Admittedly, on a learning encounter where there's zero leeway for error, there's not much the group can do to compensate, but mechanics like this are what help to keep encounters challenging once you're beyond the learning stage.

Well, wouldn't you agree that 11-21-31-41-51 points should be role defining talents? Let me put it another way -- if they are role-defining talents, that means you get to chose between a 51pt talent and a 21pt talent. I think this is the ultimate goal. And also, this is also why I believe blizzard dropped the ball hard with the wotlk talents. You want the top top talents to be the most synergistic with the tree, I think. In that respect, the new talents for most classes are extremely bland and are very much not headed towards that direction, which is a real shame, since it means ultimately for min-maxers that you will probably end up not going for 51pt talents. Not going for 51 pt talents means you now get to do the same game but for 41 pt talent vs 31 pt talent.

Better talents should be deep in the tree, with role-defining stuff being the 11-21-31-41-51 stopgaps, specifically for the reason that it forces you to make a choice between 2 role defining talents.

That is the problem. Either you are learning the encounter and there is zero room for error or you are farming the encounter and it is irrelevant (you just stop DPSing and the rest of the raid out gears the encounter so /shrug). There is a very small window of time (2-4th kills or something for a serious raid boss maybe?) when this adds "interest."

So basically what you're saying is unpreventable wipes on progression encounters with zero leeway for error are acceptable because the same mechanics make almost wiping or actually wiping on farming encounters possible and therefor interesting.

I am no more interested in getting unlucky and failing then I am in getting extremely lucky and sucseeding. Luck has nothing to do with strategy, I want to execute a strategy well and be rewarded for my execution not pull a lever on a slot machine and hope luck is on my side.

How does 2,850 DPS grab ya? Best part, although he's the top warlock, he's only #4 overall. And see try #5 right before the kill when 2,585 DPS wasn't enough. (Yes I realize this particular fight threat isn't important, I was just pointing out DPS that can be pulled).

So basically your arguement is that threat itself is irrelevant. That's not the point. The point is that our only way of dealing with one aspect of the game has an irrecoverable critical fumble element. Personally, I don't care if the entire debate is academic, the system itself is still flawed (and I prefer academic debates anyways =P). I would also love it if threat became relevant again, I think it was a more interesting part of the game before it basically fell by the wayside.


And Essarhaddon hit the nail on the head: if doing my max damage matters (which is generally the assumption around here), your raid should already be giving all they have, I don't particularly see how they can step up for me, nor how I can step up for them. I'm a warlock, I can't hit my 3 button harder. And that still doesn't change that for my own character I have no possible reaction other than basically playing worse.

If you are CoD lock and you get unlucky soulshatter resist you can allways swap curses with CoE/CoS/CoR lock.

But that is the point: One spell, One percent of the time, will get resisted and it shouldn't matter, if everything is going how it should. Threat should be an non-issue, unless a boss fight specifically demands that it is, with an artificially created threat ceiling, constant aggro drops, or whatever mechanic it has.

You may not like that your 'oh shit' button can fail: guess what, no-one likes it. I don't like the fact that i'm crushable, no-matter how well geared I am (w/o going for passive uncrush), because of server latency. There is nothing i can do to compensate for that, no-matter how well i play, the connection i'm on, every time i spam my Holy Shield button, there is a .2 second gap where i can be crushed. Sure, it's unlikely to happen, but it can, and given a 5-minute interval it's got a better chance of happening that your 1% for threat reduction.

All I can do is hope that a) it doesn't wipe the raid, b) that the healers can keep me alive if i do get crushed, and c) hope that i didn't just get a parry-hasted attack after that one, resulting in excessive spike damage, which my healers can't deal with.

Alot of mechanics can fail, in uniquely annoying ways. Sometimes you just have to say "Well, that's the way the dice fall". In my last ZA run, we missed our timed chest because i took 8 consecutive hits in a row. given that i have a 47%+ chance of avoiding attacks altogether, the odds of taking 8 in a row are very very slim. And yet, it happened.

Now, i'm also partially in agreement with you. I like threat. I like the threat mechanic. I really like fights that force me to watch my threat, either as my rogue or as my pallytank. It changes the fights from 'spam rotation x' to something that I have to look and observe, watching all the time to make sure i don't screw up. Pay attention should reward you in some way/shape/or form.

Heart: I'll look at that WWS when i have access to it, currently it's blocked for me due to not being at home.

What's exactly there to "overcome"? Any DPSer worth their salt goes all out 100% on any fight where failure is an option due to something like that happening. If they are already going balls to the wall what's left to improve upon to help compensate for something like this? You can only use abilities so quickly due to the GCD and energy/mana/rage constraints.

I will say you would be right if there actually were some way to go above and beyond, but there isn't. You're either playing how you should be or you're slacking. You're essentially saying that when you have a critical fumble everyone else should stop slacking off...when they shouldn't be slacking off in the first place.

I don't like that your oh-shit button can fail either, and I'd prefer that yours couldn't than that mine could. Like how improved Shield Block increased the duration to let them overlap a bit. And this feels more unfair than invis or vanish because it's the actual design of the spell, not a normal bug caused by latency or what-have-you. And the 8-hit string is why every tank should have a Last Stand ability.

Having an RNG be an integral part of raiding is fine with me. I don't mind hot streaks and cool streaks, and I don't mind recoverable bad clusters, and I still think that outside of soulshatter hitcapping is overrated and misunderstood, and that DKs being an avoidance tank is totally viable. My issues with soulshatter being resistable is really a matter of degree rather than a matter of philosophy. Because of its large cooldown you use it once a fight, and if threat mattered the impact of that one use is huge. I'm fine with effects riding on dice rolls, I'm not fine with so much riding on one single dice roll. I'm fine with having to react to bad dice rolls, I'm not fine with not being able to react against bad dice rolls. Basically what I'm not okay with is that, through the combination of it being so meaningful and not having any other options, there is one single dice roll that has the potential to be more meaningful than any of the actions, decisions, skill, or even gear that I put into the fight. I don't get that impression of my interactions with the RNG in any other aspect of playing my class, it's always something that's either correctable with better play or something transient that will be averaged out in the next thirty seconds or so.

You again miss something important. The change from the old stupid "up to X damage" model to "+X Spell Power" model is giving better freedom at setting up coefficients. They don't have to follow any patterns. Hopefully they realise that "caster burst spells" could use better scaling.

Keeping encounters challenging once you're beyong learning stage isn't helping game, only making it more boring. Keeping encounters overly challenging isn't helping game either, because guilds die on these encounters. Once you've learned and mastered an encounter it's enough of it being challenging, time to go on.

I think someone has also mentioned pretty linear threat generation: what about Bloodlust/Heroism? If Soulshatter resist is a disaster you probably already throttled your DPS before using it. Now if it's resisted you should be out of all group buffs because you simply waste them. You won't benefit from Moonkin Aura, Totems, Blooslust, Drums, Trinkets, and so on just because you will be threat capped anyway, you can make yourself less mana intensive with such buffs, but most likely you can become self-sufficient by healing yourself up with Drain Life (for which in 0/21/40 you also lack threat reduction, which is kind of bad as well)

The arguments from other classes that 1% of the time your lock is useless or that unavoidable problems are interesting and exciting additions to raiding are really missing the point.

The main point about soulshatter is that there is no point in giving warlocks +hit talents when a lock is going to have to hit-cap anyways due to soulshatter being demonology.

The simplest solution is just to make soulshatter unresistable rather than tying it to any school, given the design of our trees. Otherwise our hit talents continue to be laughable.


Either we're the only caster without a usable +hit talent, or soulshatter needs to be affected by either one of the hit talents (i.e. both read "removes resist chance from soulshatter by X%" or not need either because it's unresistable.)

While I'm sure someone will jump into this thread and say "maybe Blizzard just doesn't want you to have hit talents!" the addition of a talent in the destruction tree would seem to suggest otherwise, and that soulshatter just continues to be a rather unfortunate oversight.