Oops, forgot about that nerf. Affliction is probably the best tree then. Just feels like the crit/spell haste on my gear will be wasted as Affliction. I will give it a try once character copy is up though.
Haunt scales with haste & crit so the stats wont feel as wasted as they are with current affliction tree. This is probably much harder to test but can you see if the debuff limit is still 40 slots?
I think the idea of the "super fragile pet" is way overblown. Yes, you actually have to monitor and control your pet, you often can't just put it on the boss to attack forever as an endless aggro free dot. But there's very few fights in BC that are exceedingly pet unfriendly. Pets catch chain heals just like melee does. The 2pT5 bonus is becoming low tier baseline, as is soul link, and every raid heal will catch your pet. Will there be pet unfriendly fights? Of course there will. Do we already have fights that silence constantly, force movement, and otherwise interrupt perfect dps?
It's not. If your Imp or Succubus gets unpredictable AOE hit they just die. There is no management possible to save them, they just die. Yes they do catch chain heals like melee, but they have no unit frames for most healers so they get no heals directly on them, and no dispels, mind that it's better to heal or dispel real person. Hunters have Improved Mend Pet that dispels, and is HOT, and with that shot model they have using 1 every 15 sec costs less than 10% personal DPS, on the other hand if Warlocks had the same model, casting 1 every 15 sec would cost almost 10% personal DPS, and would ultimately make it not worth opportunity cost.
Actually, Grid has pet unit frames built in, but they are usually hidden by default. I'm not sure what else there is to use other than Grid for raid healing, but I suspect most people use it. It's just a matter of convincing your raid healers to pay attention to pets. And Decursive includes pets by default, so people with it will probably dispel your pet without thinking about it, like they would normally do for a player.
They are removing Loyalty because they are giving hunter pets their talent trees. And as the system operates differently, loyalty is no longer needed. But that makes me wonder, will the pet get a talent that gives them a +25% increase to dmg, as if the pet were well fed?
They are removing Loyalty, not Happiness or the need to feed your pet. Loyalty levels (i.e. Rebellious, Best friend etc.) really served no purpose other than needlesly limit the amount of training points for a newly trained pet.
Healers have to heal our Life Taps, healers have to heal our pets that take as much damage as anything, so a Warlock needs about 3 times more healing than for example a Mage. Don't you think it's an overkill? And if raid healing isn't set up properly (which in fact happens quite a lot) there will be real people dying because of pet healing. Costs related to healing of pets should match their actual usefulness, but these costs are too high for the real value of pet for Affliction or Destruction Warlock.
Healers have to heal our Life Taps, healers have to heal our pets that take as much damage as anything, so a Warlock needs about 3 times more healing than for example a Mage. Don't you think it's an overkill? And if raid healing isn't set up properly (which in fact happens quite a lot) there will be real people dying because of pet healing. Costs related to healing of pets should match their actual usefulness, but these costs are too high for the real value of pet for Affliction or Destruction Warlock.
Well the Felpup shouldn't get taken out by random AoE. Presumably the imp won't be in range of most of them. With both of them you are going to have standing in fire management issues, as you might not always see them.
It would be nice if they gave us better functional control over our pet. like attack rear, attack left flank, attack right flank, retreat X yards, so you could hit one button and the pet would avoid whatever it is it needs to and you won't have to worry about it running through a fire patch or what not to get out of range.
True, Voidwalker and Felhunter have sufficient health to survive random AoE, and high resistance of latter is helping too. Succubus and Imp can be one-shotted nearly by anything, it's not just whirlwinds (which are usually on timers = predictable = not random). Many things that target random places will kill Imp. Pet health is clearly a problem once you enter heroics/raids, because until then they all are able to survive. It seems that pet health amounts were designed way before any raids, and are simply outdated (At low levels health ratio of class A to class B using similar level of gear can easily reach 3:1, but at high levels it's flattened with pets being left out). Still even if they are capable to survive (not completely avoid), they should be healable at low cost, except for really heavy pet damage fights.
From a demo raiding perspective, I think it is still a bit to early to make any calls. We have always ran the risk of pet management and the requirements on healing.
What has caught my eye is the succubus. Now I realize it is a bit "iffy" at this point, but a fully raid buffed succubus was always right up there on the damage potential but lacked the ability to soak up damage. With a full heal on a one minute cool down, it could prove to be very beneficial. Add in fel synergy plus raid heals and it becomes a bit more interesting.
At this point is more of a pie in the sky type of an idea but consider the following:
+15% critical strike (+10% for the Succubus increasing demonic pact Up time)
+5% shadow damage
Instant Full Heal for pet on a 1 minute cool down.
Pet scaling is still a very important issue but with just a slight improvement to scaling it could prove very interesting for warlocks and demon synergy. What good is it for the warlock to have 20KHP with a pet at ~5k (assuming talented scaling).
Again, I realize it is very early but it is something that caught my eye.
I guess the 9/0/51+11 build works nicely for picking up imp CoR
Ya this is important -- CoR is already more dps than CoE, if imp CoR > Malediction, it's not like having one of your two locks being deep affliction will be pressing. I will say it's depressing they didn't move malediction down (since there's too few good affliciton talents to take to get to 20-21) and made CoR so shallow, but ah well...
Although depending on how much haste conflag brings to the table it might be worth it to blow as a molten core procs.
I can't imagine how. conflag is even more odd now if you're 46-50 into destruction and picking up Eternal Flames.
They really need to sort out the sillyness that is conflag and the immolate-boosting talents.
I can't imagine how. conflag is even more odd now if you're 46-50 into destruction and picking up Eternal Flames.
They really need to sort out the sillyness that is conflag and the immolate-boosting talents.
About the only way conflag would be worth it in any situation (be it PvP or PvE) would be if Backdraft made the next two or three fire Destro spells instant. That would be about the minimum requirement for you to not lose dps from consuming your Immolate (thereby losing at least a tick) and putting it back up again. I believe someone did the math back near the beginning of TBC that even if Immolate were instant cast and retained its current coefficient, using Conflag would still be a dps loss at about 1000 spell damage due to Conflag's lousy coefficient, so you'd need the next spell after Immolate to be instant as well in order to come out ahead in dps terms if you were using Conflag.
Even then, Conflag is still at odds with Eternal Flames.
In all, Conflag is a cool idea, but is still badly flawed in execution. And they've been trying to make it work since, like, the beginning of WoW.
I'm going to reverse my analysis on destro that I posted a few pages back. I actually think it's fine, damage wise. Like Kyth mentioned, they need to fix the sillyness of immolate and conflag, but regarding DPS, I think it's equal to or better than the old fire 0/21/40 fire build, depending on how backdraft and imp survivability pan out.
I took the warlock spreadsheet and added in most of the talents. I extrapolated mana cost and damage of chaos bolt and haunt based on how much conflag scaled from 60 to 70(so yes, I'm using level 70 spells to calculate level 80 builds, I know that will have a few implications). The combination of Chaos Bolt, Improve Soul Leach, Eternal Flames, and Molten Core(!!) help to make up the difference of losing Demonic Sacrifice(so the pet itself is a bonus!)
Few things I found:
-Haunt < Ruin, it's kinda close in T6 gear, but widens considerably as you into sunwell gear.
-Chaos Bolt is still worth casting in retarded buffs(ie Destro Pots, 5 bloodlusts, 1600 OLD shadow priest) and sunwell gear, but just barely
-Improved Soul Leach is quite nice since it will rarely ever "overheal". With the change to a lot of group buffs becoming raid-wide, Soul Leach will make a destro lock automatically self sustaining(no lifetapping)
-Eternal Flames is about 5% dps improvement(that includes chopping off the initial damage from calculations)
-Molten Core is worth the points IF it is 5% chance per point(swear I saw that somewhere), even for a fire build, but only if you get Improved and Empowered Corruption
-Affliction with Ruin is pretty much equal to destro fire at T6 gear, the gap widening a bit with better gear(in favor of destro). This is with neither build utilizing their pets.
Things I can't/didn't try yet:
Spirit and Fel Armor changes(for the time being, with an imp, affliction > demo, but Demonic Aegis might change that)
Backdraft(need more information...people in beta?)
Demonic Apathy and the demo tree in general. Not enough information on pets are in the spreadsheet(or I'm missing them), and the rest of the tree is looks lackluster dps wise.
Empowered Imp
So, with Frailty, ISB getting a minor nerf, and Vampiric Touch a major nerf, I think speccing fire is fine for dps and raid utility.
Ya this is important -- CoR is already more dps than CoE, if imp CoR > Malediction, it's not like having one of your two locks being deep affliction will be pressing. I will say it's depressing they didn't move malediction down (since there's too few good affliciton talents to take to get to 20-21) and made CoR so shallow, but ah well...
..
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
I do admit that the positions of the curse boosting talents (Imp CoW/CoR, Imp CoA, Amplify Curse & Malediction) seem weird.
Edit to avoid double post: Regarding demo spec, its good that they added the T5 2pc bonus as a talent. They need to add an equivalent of the VST or make pets immune/resistant to boss abilities as the next step.
The whole Imp. Immolate -> Conflagrate -> Backdraft subtree is designed by Blizzard as purely PvP thing, it seems, judging by (a) The fact that it provides mainly burst damage and (b) Eternal flames. Not to mention Soul's damage lost estimates three posts ago, and added micromanagement overhead (detecting last Immolate ticks, using Conflag precisely in these 3 seconds).
Also, on an unrelated issue, change to CoR (which echoes changes to JoJ and thus represent design effort) mean that fearing in instances becomes a nuisance in organised groups and borderline impossible in PUGs.
Haunt looks great. I would like to see it slightly tweaked, however.
Haunt (Current Version): You send a ghostly soul into the target, dealing 645 to 754 Shadow damage and increasing all damage done by your damage-over-time effects on the target by 15% for 12 sec. When the Haunt spell ends or is dispelled, the soul returns to you, healing you for 20% of all damage done to the target.
Haunt (Proposed Tweak): You send a ghostly soul into the target, dealing 645 to 754 Shadow damage and increasing all damage done by your damage-over-time effects on the target by 10% plus 50% of your spell critical strike chance for 12 sec. When the Haunt spell ends or is dispelled, the soul returns to you, healing you for 20% of all damage done to the target.
Numbers could obviously be tweaked but the general idea would be for the base percentage to be weaker, but add in a scaling factor based off your crit chance. So at a very conservative 10% crit you'd break even at 15%. 20% crit, a reasonable number for a well geared raiding Afflock, would net you a 20% increase. Etc. This would make crit a more desirable stat and really round things out as far as itemization goes.
The Fel Armor change is good news for Spirit, Haste isn't too bad, and a change like this for Haunt would bring crit into the fold.
The whole Imp. Immolate -> Conflagrate -> Backdraft subtree is designed by Blizzard as purely PvP thing, it seems, judging by (a) The fact that it provides mainly burst damage and (b) Eternal flames. Not to mention Soul's damage lost estimates three posts ago, and added micromanagement overhead (detecting last Immolate ticks, using Conflag precisely in these 3 seconds).
Also, on an unrelated issue, change to CoR (which echoes changes to JoJ and thus represent design effort) mean that fearing in instances becomes a nuisance in organised groups and borderline impossible in PUGs.
Well, with demonic circle...you can aggro a mob, and blink 40 yrds backwards to where you set your circle in a safe spot, and chain fear from there. The AI on a feared mob is that they are supposed to run 40yds away from you, then just randomly change directions, but we have all seen them go an obscene distance far away. The flip side is who is CC'ing who? If you blink 40 yds away, you are out of range to burn down the main target. In addition, it's a pain to DPS your feared target.
To compensate us, they should make seduce last longer in PvE...like they did with repentance.
About the only way conflag would be worth it in any situation (be it PvP or PvE) would be if Backdraft made the next two or three fire Destro spells instant. That would be about the minimum requirement for you to not lose dps from consuming your Immolate (thereby losing at least a tick) and putting it back up again. I believe someone did the math back near the beginning of TBC that even if Immolate were instant cast and retained its current coefficient, using Conflag would still be a dps loss at about 1000 spell damage due to Conflag's lousy coefficient, so you'd need the next spell after Immolate to be instant as well in order to come out ahead in dps terms if you were using Conflag.
Even then, Conflag is still at odds with Eternal Flames.
In all, Conflag is a cool idea, but is still badly flawed in execution. And they've been trying to make it work since, like, the beginning of WoW.
If backdraft came out to 30% haste or more(such that it averaged out to 10% permanent haste), conflag would be worth casting. I did this calc with 12% base haste, so obviously above that number you would need more haste from backdraft. I think 50% haste from conflag would be a good idea. Not unbalanced while providing a visual difference(sometimes it's fun to see how fast the death can flow out of your character).
If backdraft came out to 30% haste or more(such that it averaged out to 10% permanent haste), conflag would be worth casting. I did this calc with 12% base haste, so obviously above that number you would need more haste from backdraft. I think 50% haste from conflag would be a good idea. Not unbalanced while providing a visual difference(sometimes it's fun to see how fast the death can flow out of your character).
I disagree...if we got 50% haste for casting an instant cast on our next three spells....people would scream. 2 second Soulfires? I could see 10 to 20% haste as that is a number that is tossed around a lot, but like Backlash it may need a secondary effect to make it PvE desirable. You don't pickup Backlash for an instant cast nuke, you pick it up for the crit % gain.
I was doing my calcs based off my altered spreadsheet. From the base one(current mechanics), conflag is actually only a bit less dps, so yes, 20-25 percent haste would be more than enough to make conflag an upgrade. I put 50% down as a rough estimation since you would also need to overcome the benefit of Eternal Flames(assumed not casting immolate).
2s soulfire? I don't have a problem with that. Soulfire's coefficient has been neutered and is on a 1 minute cooldown. In most rotations you'll be casting 1 immolate and 2 incinerates under that buff. At 50% haste, this buff saves you approximately 2s every 15s. I don't think that's overpowered.
Haunt scales with haste & crit so the stats wont feel as wasted as they are with current affliction tree. This is probably much harder to test but can you see if the debuff limit is still 40 slots?
You lose Ruin if you take Haunt, thus making your crits rather shitty anyway.
Every Haunt cast is a lost Shadowbolt cast and a lost chance to proc Imp SB and gain that 15% debuff anyway.
My guess is I'll put 7 in affliction for the CoR talent, pick up Chaos blast, and just spam an CB/Incin macro.
If your imp lives, you get a DPS boost. If it dies, it dies, but you shouldn't be reliant on it anyway.
I was doing my calcs based off my altered spreadsheet. From the base one(current mechanics), conflag is actually only a bit less dps, so yes, 20-25 percent haste would be more than enough to make conflag an upgrade. I put 50% down as a rough estimation since you would also need to overcome the benefit of Eternal Flames(assumed not casting immolate).
2s soulfire? I don't have a problem with that. Soulfire's coefficient has been neutered and is on a 1 minute cooldown. In most rotations you'll be casting 1 immolate and 2 incinerates under that buff. At 50% haste, this buff saves you approximately 2s every 15s. I don't think that's overpowered.
you are looking at it strickly from a PvE point of view. My point is that destro in WolTK already has a lot of burst with shadowflame..and its fire dot can be conflagged as well. Shadow fury/Shadowflame/shadow burn/ conflag. That's a lot of burst in 3.5 seconds! I think people are going to go ballistic if our next 3 spells are half cast. Blizzard has a long history of nerfing spell haste (metagems anybody), I just don't see them granted that kind of haste.
How are you getting 4 spells cast in 3.5s? Also, can you link source on shadowflame's dot being fuel for conflag? Lastly, I think you misunderstand haste. 50% haste does not reduce casting time by half. 66% reduction would be closer.
Ah Krazen beat me to it, I was going to say exactly the same thing.
Until DoTs scale with crit and haste at the same rate as SB/Incin then Destro stays the dominant DPS spec. Right now for full affliction crit is a largely wasted stat and haste is close to wasted, and they did nothing in WOTLK to address that.
They are clearly scared of DoTs scaling too high because of PVP and the unlimited target nature of DoTs, and for that same reason they will not scale pets to allow demo to be viable.
I'm going to reverse my analysis on destro that I posted a few pages back. I actually think it's fine, damage wise. Like Kyth mentioned, they need to fix the sillyness of immolate and conflag, but regarding DPS, I think it's equal to or better than the old fire 0/21/40 fire build, depending on how backdraft and imp survivability pan out.
I took the warlock spreadsheet and added in most of the talents. I extrapolated mana cost and damage of chaos bolt and haunt based on how much conflag scaled from 60 to 70(so yes, I'm using level 70 spells to calculate level 80 builds, I know that will have a few implications). The combination of Chaos Bolt, Improve Soul Leach, Eternal Flames, and Molten Core(!!) help to make up the difference of losing Demonic Sacrifice(so the pet itself is a bonus!)
This is where I see the problem with this though. The pet is the bonus, but does it make up for all the additional bump every other class got. Hunters, who are the #1 dps class in sunwell, get a game mechanic change that removes auto-shot cliping, AND the dps increase from their talents.
Haunt, is basically a dd spell on a 12 second cool down that gives your dots back what they lost in the ISB nerf. It also would appear to consume ISB charges diminish ISB up-time, and requiring more casting frequency than corruption did.
I suspect the firelock rotation would be incinerate spam with casting corruption and chaos blast. Increases your molten core up-time that way. You can actually go deep enough to pick up emp corruption to make it better.
It's been touched on before, but I'd like to mention again (crossposted from SA):
The Demonology tree is still probably the weakest looking of the bunch, despite the interesting changes; there's still too many useless and/or wholly PvP-centric talents (Enslave, Conjuror, Love Struck, Empathy, Metamorph), making it too easy to go 0/50/21 and pick up literally every useful DPS talent in Demonology, as well as Destruction up to Ruin. The only choices I'd have to make are which talent I want to shave a point off to maybe pick up 1/3 Mana Feed, and whether I want 5/5 Imp. Shadowbolt vs. 3/3 Cataclysm + filler.
07/19/08, 5:54 AM
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