Demonform needs a lot more work, and really should get off the 5-minute cooldown if it is to be pve-viable. In order for a long-cooldown ability to be useful over Ruin, it needs to be extremely strong for its duration, but making it too strong would throw off pvp balance.

Shadow Bolt Volley is rather redundant since you get Immolation already in the form.

Considering that the form locks you out of all of your 'normal' abilities and and turns you into a melee-type character (you get Charge and Cleave), and the lack of precedence for switching ranged/melee roles midfight, it would make a lot of sense to just make demonform a semi-permanent effect (lasts until cancelled) with mostly melee abilities that scale with spell power.

No I didn't.


But "there's room for every spec" only works if the other specs are, in fact, valid raid specs and actually produce dps, which was the thrust of my post that led to this line of discussion.

It would be incredibly frustrating to have the strong lock raid spec dependent on fire mages and have there be no fire mages anywhere.

If DK's are too weak threat-wise but still required by fight dynamics, mages may *have* to be frost no matter what they prefer. (and DK's will be unhappy in 5-mans until it's fixed.)

In a world without external mana regen, there's no room for (current at least) arcane specs, no matter how good it looks on paper.

It's silly to look at specs in isolation and say "there's room for every spec" -- there won't be, and that may have a big influence on what some other classes can choose to be.


It's all speculation and I don't suggest we continue to far down this "if..." line with alpha talents because that's *also* silly. Although these are the general thrusts of the classes, so there's definitely room for speculation, just not hard numbers.

I just think it's something to keep in mind as both classes are looking at the trees: I wouldn't suggest locks just flat out assume they can be fire destro since mages seem to expect to be anything other than fire. (And deliciously ironic given mages saying they don't have any raid buffs, when +15% to 5 people is one of the strongest out there .)

You're right! My bad.

Right -- the question is, if you don't have a Fire Mage, can you instead produce valid DPS with Shadow? It seems to me that you can, as long as you have a Shadow Priest, but that is a problem -- you do need one or the other.

Not true, actually; Barrage/Frostbolt spam with Fireballs on NP proc are extremely reasonable DPM, easily sustainable without external feeds. Not as efficient as Fire or Frost, but its' more like 85% as efficient rather than 30% as efficient. The larger base pool and higher regen will be enough to compensate.

All the new lock talents revolve around fire. Go look at points 45-50 in destruction: that's not "and shadowbolts", it's just incinerate. Shadow was actually nerfed, not only "not-buffed".

If you are shadow, you are affliction/destruction hybrid, which means you're getting the rest of your dps from dots, which means I come back to my comment earlier about dot scaling still not being addressed effectively.

Obviously I'm not saying "omg locks will have no specs at all!" -- that's silly. And this has nothing to do with lock raid spots: there will always be two. But none of the issues that we have today with our specs have (yet?) been addressed in WotLK, and the focus of their attention in the destruction tree was to nerf shadow and boost fire. Which sounds fine until you wander over and look at what the mages are saying about their world.

(and yes, with priests we also need a specific spec of a priest. Luckily by now that spec is always in raids (and it's only 10% versus fire being 15%), but at the start of TBC that was very much not true, and I had to raid a lot without a single shadow priest in the raid.)



Sigh. I was giving an example. Figures you actually know what you're talking about and can correct me. Danm you! My general point, however, stands: not all personal dps specs are appropriate for a raid because they may remove key raid resources or require too much of a raid resource and take it away from others.

Ah. Ew. That is unfortunate. And here I typed that out myself, and forgot it. OK, I concede your point: Destruction is Fire or Nothing, and depends on a Fire Mage, and the Mage Fire tree is currently craptastic, which presents a significant problem.

It makes me wonder if, perhaps, Fire's personal DPS being craptastic may not be intentional. Perhaps it is being repositioned as a "support your Destro Warlock, and have incredibly powerful AOE" tree. I do know many mages wouldn't be happy with that, though.

Yes, that's very much true. If a spec provides no synergy, it needs to do exceptional DPS. I believe Arcane will succeed in this respect due to its ability to sustain a large percentage of its DPS while mobile, but it doesn't look like the 'lock trees will be able to claim the same. Affliction can compensate by providing +13% damage to four magic schools, and Demo can perhaps compensate with the new pet group buff, but Destro looks problematic if the Mage Fire tree isn't fixed.

+3%. All specs provide +10% so it's misleading to label affliction as +13%. And there's no equivalent for CoR.

It's also -5% damage done to the tank, but that's all it offers in terms of additional raid support. It's a very weak "support" tree as far as support trees go, particularly given the dps loss you have to accept (now, given today's talents and today's gear. WotLK remains to be seen.) Even with the curse change affliction only *barely* justifies its raid slot with malediction (with top-notch other players for caster dps), versus other support specs which bring far more to the raid than their personal dps loss is.

Poor scaling for Affliction, or any tree for that matter, is not the answer. I'd like to point out the differences in DPS and scaling. Affliction doing 10% less damage than Destruction at all stages of progression is acceptable given the level of utility it adds. Affliction starting out strong but falling further and further behind as gear gets better is not sound gameplay mechanics and needs to be fixed.

Do I really need to point out that the numbers differ a lot on 2+ targets ?

--edit
to avoid my post being misconstrued, I wanted to point out that what could be holding back affliction is multitarget dotting. If I had to make a guess, thats probably something that is always being considered as far as scaling goes, and it might have prevented the spec to scale. And possibly still does.

Do we need to talk about how few raid bosses involve more than one target consistently?


Affliction is a very odd, small niche. 4+ and you're AE'ing. 2-3 happens on occasion, but it's not exactly something worth basing a spec on.

Also keep in mind the mobs will need to live for at least 18 seconds to make it worthwhile to even put all dots up also (15+ for two dots, 18+ for the third). And you need to be able to cast on all the mobs at once (so mag channelers sort of work but aren't as good as they look)

So just looking at Sunwell:

- Kalecgos: nope
- Brutallus: nope
- Felmyst: nope (AE)
- Twins: 2nd twin heals to full when first dies:
- Muru: our sents die in 13-15 seconds so not good dotting targets
- KJ: nope (AE; orbs don't live long enough)

Yes, we *might* see dramatically different fight design in WotLK, but that seems a silly argument to make.


(edit)

So umm. Thinking over TBC 25-mans. I'm coming up with... Mag's channelers to a small degree. P2 of Vashj (strider+naga). FLK would depend entirely on your strat (many keep the mobs quite separated for most of the fight.) And... nothing else?

Oh right. Akama. *snort*

And I guess Anetheron if you kill the internals (we don't. Although even then you'd have to tank them within range of locks able to dot both the infernals and anetheron, and even then you'd probably need to move tons since that'd be right on the kite path for infernals, thus reducing your dps a bunch.)

Why do you attack my ideas. I know its absurd and that most bosses dont have multiple targets. But the fact is, blizzard could very well take multi-mob into account while balancing affliction dps.

Sorry your edit wasn't up when I posted. Your edit makes your intent clear. I thought it was a snarky "l2p" post saying that affliciton was fine because it could dot 2-3 targets effectively. Going to leave mine up anyways though just because I think it's relevant how few bosses actually have exactly 2-3 real targets that are reachable, etc.

If that indeed is the reason, it's a silly one, since AE is a far more common boss mechanic than "2-3 big guys" is. It's a very unused niche if they really think it's a role niche.

With WotLK 10/25-raid structure, will 2-3 big bosses even be very possible? While the 25-man raid version could handle tanking 3 big baddies, 10-mans very well could not. Besides having non-tank classes tank, which is gimmicky enough to not happen often, I can't see them designing many fights that way.

So as much fun as multiple biggies are for affliction, I don't think WotLK is going to bring a greater ratio of them than TBC has.

Ignoring the size of the space between multitarget DoTing and AoEing, what you're describing would explain why DoTs don't scale that well. This is not a insurmountable barrier to making affliction scale better, considering the 40% of our damage that continues to originate from Shadowbolts. Throw in a talent that improves, say, your Shadowbolt crit chance based on how many affliction effects you own on your current target. Or straight up crit damage done on your target based on number of affliction effects you own - that might actually be better, 'cause it would scale. Actually, now that I've built some mental steam, what you'd really want to do is take the number of affliction effects you own on a target, multiply by your spelldamage and a balance coeffecient with the sole purpose of preventing horrible overpowering, that would then add a buff to you ("Shadow Divination") that would increase the crit damage you do based on the maths previously performed. It wouldly be more than bit cumbersome to look at the math, but it would scale with spell damage, crit and haste as well as the number of affliction effects a warlock has up.

Or a less fanciful approach of just adding an affliction talent that adds an effect to your Shadowbolt crits that improves DoT damage *you* deal - an affliction version of the soon-to-be-old Improved Shadowbolt that only affects your own DoTs. Or adding a self-only Shadowbolt buff to Malediction based CoEs.

Point being, affliction scaling is not - under the current design - neccesarily the same thing as DoT scaling. While the undoubtly easiest way of improving affliction scaling is by improving DoT scaling, it is by no means the only way.


(Though personally, I'm a lot more keen on having affliction get a scaling utility. Right now, the crappiest of geared warlocks with Shadow Embrace, Malediction and an Imp can offer the same utility as I can. What I'd really like is to a have a filler talent that does very little damage of it's own, but increases the damage of everyone else by an amount that would scale with the various stats.)

Thats something i really would like to see blizzard do again for an encounter, the multiple boss dps. Great example of it is the Tiger boss in ZG from way back in the day. It really was a good fight for affliction, although a lot of people at that stage of raiding were affliction for obvious reasons anyway.

I agree with the 21 point talents being 'too strong'. The idea of Ruin being nerfed and recompensated higher in the tree is a good idea i think. DS should just be scrapped, or at least majorly nerfed, its really quite pointless for the tree its currently in and is holding back destruction far too much. Siphon life and CoEx are both talents you cant afford to not have in pvp. All of these talents seem to overshadow the 41/new 51 point talents and it really should be the other way around.

With scaling in the affliction tree, would making dots tick faster with more haste be a bad idea? 6 ticks of corruption in 15 seconds appeal to anyone? And to build on that, a talent in deep affliction that gives you a large boost to haste and/or damage everytime you crit with shadowbolt? (Obviously you're never going to escape using them)

Also, i remember trying to guess what the 51 point talents would be about a week after i had the 41 pointers. I picked Metamorphisis, but thought affliction would get another dot and thought shadowbolt volley for destruction, but thats part of MM so close.

Or institute some kind of scaling damage cap for dots similar to the damage cap in place for AE spells. Something along the lines of a single Corruption does full damage, two corruptions do 75% damage each, three corruptions do 66% damage each, etc. The exact scaling ratios don't matter at this point but the precedent exists. This facilitates correcting the coefficients up to a useful level and maintains PVP balance. It doesn't address the failure of affliction to scale with regard to other dps stats but it does address this balance concern.

No, scaling dots by reducing the effects like that would be over powered in pvp or break the tree. If you want corruption on 5 guys ticking for 300, then you put it on one and it ticks for 1000 - thats the overpower direction, you cant hit that hard and maintain balance. Or in the other direction where it ticks for 300 on 1 guy, but on 5 guys it ticks for 50 - thats broken spec, whats the point of being affliction if you dont dot everyone up? (Numbers are made up for example)

Or did i misinterpret your meaning?


Yes, i like that idea too. ISB (or something like it) relocated into deep affliction would give affliction more raid synergy and reason to spec that way if it was to still affect other classes and if not it would at least give more reason for crit/haste.

I think you are interrupting him just fine. Look at it this way either Healthstone got a massive buff or we are going to be running around with 20-23khp in arena. A corruption that does 6k damage over 18 seconds is in no way over powered. Particularly since its only applied to one target so there is only one person that needs healing (at least that you are responsible for doing damage to).

The problem with doing corruption this way is it is a non trivial coding addition, although I do think finding away for dots to be more effective in pve is the way to go. Of course this approach makes haunt less valuable.

Another kick in the nuts I am seeing in alpha is that we get 3 new spells and none of them enhance our pve.

haunt - is this ever going to be worth the GCD to cast in pve? A crappy heal, weak damage

shadowflame - with our crap passive threat reduction I would rather stand 10 yards out and chuck SoC so I have 130% ceiling instead of 110%.

demon circle/summon - I guess it could have some application. Like on Archimonde if you get pinned down by the fire. Or gruul for getting you into a corner with nobody in it after a ground slam. Or vashj (wonder if you can set your circle up on a generator and then port there to drop an orb in).

But all and all nothing like fel armor, incinerate, soulshatter, ritual of souls, seed of corruption

I disagree. Demon circle will be fun and an interesting small strategy element in most boss fights.

It's generally weaker than blink, but situationally stronger, and a different and interesting mechanic. I think it's a great addition. But then I think blink is a great raiding spell.

Honestly, one of the biggest problems we have is Ruin... The only other class that needs to spec 21 points for their +crit modifier is Shaman, and in that case each tree is designed with specific purpose.

The problem with requiring such a large trek down a single tree, is that it precludes the use of 51 point talents if you plan to get ANY decent scaling out of the +crit stat. And of all trees, Affliction is suffering immensely from it's lack of +crit scaling.

One possible solution is to reduce Ruin to a 5 point talent 1 tier lower in Destro, and then make Imp. Incinerate a 1 point +25% initial damage talent (lets face it, that talent is only worth one point as it is). That would open up +crit scaling to deep Demo and Deep Affliction without the preclusion of Metamorph or whatever 51point Affliction ends up being.

Good point...Blink is an amazingly useful if not situational raiding tool..just as a healthstone to some people. Sometimes you use it profusely...sometimes you don't use one all night.

But it gets back to what I was asking before...what abilities are we getting that we are excited about? I do think the Demonic Circle will be a little interesting, and very helpful in some fights. Haunt--was meant to have synergy with atrocity, but rumor is that it's headed to the bin with cripple like atrocity? Shadowflame is a much needed burst spell for PvP, limited use in PvE. It's basically another shadowburn without shard cost. Empowered Imp looked intriguing..but now that we know pets won't scale there is just no way an Imp is going to stay alive without all the deep demonology talents...and what makes it worse, if the imp dies, it's 6-10 seconds or more (with pushback) loss of dps to resummon it thanks to the changes they made to upper demonology to get DS. Basically once it dies (and it will die), it will be a huge blow.

Some interesting ideas people passed around..1) reducing Ruin's bonus by 50% and adding it back in later in the tree is intriguing. The same with Demonic Sacrifice..honestly DS ought to be nurfed to like 5-10% and made trainable, but I think Blizzard has a hard time trying to come up with "Demon" oriented talents. Something would have to be put in it's place (Dark pact?). 2) Felguard receiving the melee totems and shout benefits. I didn't have any high hopes a demonology warlock would be put in the melee, but this does fix the problem with hunters (and felguard locks). We can be in caster or melee group (preferrably caster) and our pets can still receive the important buffs. Don't hope for windfury though, BM hunter DPS was already high, feral druids needed a buff, not hunter pets.

Isn't it a quite simple choice at the moment ? Either you take your "funny" PvP Ulitmate or use Ruin instead. Our ultimates do not have a single pupose that would make them viable in any ordinary raid enviroment (beside some gimmik fights, you might end up respeccing every once in a while) and for PvP you do not care much about crits anyway, do you ? (Its quite hard to get anything with a casttime off, if a melee slogs you and lets face it: Wotllk won't change anything with that so far)

I'd like to see removal of single spell spam and not in current Affliction style with all-different-durations. As I said before Molten Core change could help encourage it with non-chance-based effect (DOTs with different durations at least have expected durations in PVE).

Then we need some better normalization of buffs Shadow Bolt and Incinerate get. Right now there is some difference between Improved Scorch and Shadow Weaving, as well as higher base Incinerate damage on one side and Improved Shadow Bolt on the other side. Bane and Emberstorm have roughly equal effects on Shadow Bolt and Incinerate respectively, and both also affect Immolate. For this I'd get rid of Incinerate haste effect from Emberstorm, but change Improved Shadow Bolt most preferably to something like this (renamed appropriately):

• Increases critical strike damage bonus of all attacks and spells done by you and your pet by 10%/rank and causes critical hits done by you and your pet to increase Fire and Shadow damage done to the target by 1%/rank for X sec.

Non-charged nature will make it less needed by everyone. One Warlock can already provide high uptime, and adding a Warlock without talent doesn't lower uptime.

For easier spec choices new ISB replacement could be swapped with Bane (assuming that Bane affects DPS of other spec more than new ISB replacement) in an attempt to reduce number of required points in Destruction talents for PVE spec all the way to 5.

I saw Ruin mentioned a few times, and this new ISB replacement could easily be swapped with Ruin (swapping number of ranks too). Suddenly Ruin becomes more of group buff and less of self-DPS, and again one Warlock can provide nearly 100% uptime.

In this way early Destruction will remind Mage Fire and Frost trees with cast time reducer in T1 and crit damage booster in T2, however it seems without it other specs simply don't work good enough.

Dealing with Fire immunities would be great thing to see as well somewhere around Eternal Flames, which could become Chaotic Flames:

• Your Immolate spell has a 20%/rank chance to ignore all resistance, immunity, and dispel mechanics and while active on the target gives your Fire Destruction spells a 20%/rank chance to refresh your Immolate on the target and deal Shadow damage if the target is more vulnerable to Shadow damage. Your Conflagrate has a 20%/rank to not consume Immolate, but prevent its damage until refreshed. Your Imp has a 20%/rank chance to keep Phase Shift after casting Firebolt on target afflicted by your Immolate and have it deal Shadow damage if the target is more vulnerable to Shadow damage.

Lastly seeing Everlasting Affliction and Eternal Flames it would be great to see periodic damage increases on Improved Corruption and Improved Immolate.