Deathwing

I don't know enough about Hunter talents and mechanics to make that type of comparison Burberri. I will say in general though, they should beat warlocks in dps. CoE, CoR, and CoW(I'm suspecting that the AP value listed on wiki site is off since it's the same as the previous rank) is a whole lot of utility to go along with Soul Stones, Health Stone, Banish, and Blood Pact. And, if Haunt and Improved Soul Leach go live as they are now, we won't need much in the way of healing either.

Hunters probably shouldn't be beating rogues, that's another discussion. Anyway, remember I'm making my comparisons to the current 0/21/40 fire build, which most warlocks don't spec now. 21/40 Fire has a noticeable boost in dps over 21/40 shadow, and from my half complete analysis, the new fire destro beats 0/21/40 fire WITHOUT backlash or pet dps.

Empowered Corruption in a fire build is ok, about the same return per talent point as Eternal Flames if you're using conflag. Only problem with low level affliction is there's still a bit of garbage in the lower tiers(pve wise). For fire destro, depending totally on how Backdraft turns out, here's how I would spec:

If backdraft is good: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft The points in Eternal Flames aren't a great return in this build, but there really isn't a better place to put them.

If backdraft sucks: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

dexia

Here's a quote by Socio who was in Alpha.

WoW Forums -> NEW Beta talent/pet changes!

He/she mentions a developer telling them the fire dot could be conflagged...they had no idea. Whether it makes it to live or not is anybody's guess.

As for 3.5 seconds.

Starting with ShadowFury, 0.5 second cast, does NOT activate the GCD. Damage hits at end of .5 seconds
Shadowflame instant, 1.5 second GCD
ShadowBurn instant 1.5 GCD
Conflagrate instant 1.5 GCD--damage hits at beginning of GCD.

So I'm wrong. Your 'victim' actually experience the damage from shadowfury,shadowflame,shadowburn and conflag in THREE seconds...not 3.5...even lower with haste..all while stunned from that initial shadowfury. Don't forget you could land another 3 second stun with that last conflagrate (pyroclasm). I thought destro pvp looked real weak...but when Socio put it in those terms...it opened my eyes.

 

Burberri

I have done firelock and shadow lock, and I put out more as shadow in a normal raid environment. I have also beaten several firelocks who have out geared me. I don't know if we are doing it wrong, or maybe the mages are retarded and not keeping scorch up or something. But I can't seem to get it to work for me like sb spam. In anycase, hunters provide a number of group/raid buffs depending on spec

Misdirect (a pretty nice one for any fight with an add or requiring pull coordination, or any fight that is a dps zerg).
Scorpid Sting - mob misses with physical attacks 5% of the time
traps - of lesser use in raid, but some situations call for their use.

The talent changes basically will have the following though
BM - +3% damage to group
MM - (I don't know if this is raid viable yet) raid-wide +600 ish ap to MM hunter's target, + the ability to reduce damage done by the mobs next three swings by 60%, 40%, and then 20%.

Survival - +250ish AP raidwide, + 2% mana regen, 10 energy, 4 rage, 10 runic power every 12 seconds or so to their group. Survival also has some reasonably decent AoE with their 51 talent + traps + arcane volley. I actually wouldn't be surprised with the change listed below that they could out aoe us.


Hunters actually give quite a bit to the raid, so I would argue they really shouldn't be out damaging warlocks.

---

something that we need to be considering is our massive threat reduction nerf.

New Hand of Salvation (replacing blessing of salvation):

Considering we have crap in the way of passive reduction, and we are no longer getting the 30% from salv, and odds are tranq totem is going to go the way of the dodo being that totems are raid-wide now, we are going to be even more reliant on soulshatter. Whats more my concern though is AoE. I can pull off the paladin tank as it is now, going without salv, and the paladin having a 2 minute threat reducing ability, that is inoperable as an "oh shit" button just seems completely unworkable. I guess this is the reason every class in the game is getting an AoE ability. Looks like the only spamable AoE is going to be arcane explosion.

 

Krazen

It's questionable whether corruption is even needed. Molten Core doesn't look all that spectacular, and IMO you have to go 21/0/50 and maintain both corruption and siphon in order to use it effectively.

This loses some talents in the Destro tree.

I'd rather ditch corruption entirely.

 

Ellerain

That won't make Succubus any less of 1-shot fodder in case of early break or unlucky resist in heroics (heck, even in some normals); and as you correctly noticed - circle fidgeting means you eliminate yourself from the fight as well. Although this change won't affect raids, it is still unpleasant - to get arguably worst long PvE CC in 5-men, all warlocks will have to forsake pet suiting their build, aka a part of their playstyle.

 

Ellerain

Actually, if you are not taking the whole Backdraft subtree and ISB, then there are exactly 50 talents (with imp modifications) to take for fire destro and some of those go in fillers like Searing pain and Nether Protection - that's before Chaos Bolt.

But I completely agree with you that Molten Core is not looking so interesting.

 

Krazen

Hmm, I counted more than that; Even giving up Shadowfury (which is situationally useful), you have 51 points.

Regardless, you also lose the ability to put a point into a healthstone. Plus, nobody knows how good chaos bolt is.

 

Deathwing

Molten core is fine. Corruption alone means a 27.7% uptime, which means 2.77% more damage for 95% of your total damage. Pretty good for 3 talents points very early in the tree. What else you going to put them in?

But yes, Corruption needs molten core and 2 points in improved corr to have a noticeable dps upgrade. But most locks are going 7 deep in affliction for frailty anyway. Again, what else are you going to put the points in?

Burberri, I think your well overstating hunter utility. Survival provides a nice dps increase for the raid, and misdirect is quite nice. I do think they need to be toned down a bit, no reason for them to be doing as much dps as they are now, but I will still assert that they should be right behind rogues in dps. Also, almost all of their utility is non-stacking, ours stacks up to 2 or 3(depending on CoW).

As for threat, I believe baseline threat abilities are being changed to even that out.

Lastly, as for your expierience with firelock dps compared to shadow. I will agree that theory crafting doesn't apply as well to real life situations. Mashing shadowbolt is pretty easy and it's easy to see you won't be able to follow the spreadsheet exactly on the fire rotation.

 

Krazen

I'm not sure how you calculated that 27.7%, but I'll assume your numbers are right for a second.

The DPCT of Corruption is exceedingly poor without ISB and without a succubus sac. Plus, it costs more mana, has less range, requires a different threat reduction talent, doesn't crit, and uses a debuff slot.

You can put the points in it, since you have to. But I'm not convinced it's worth casting over another incinerate for a 2.77% dmg increase, when you have to recast it every 18 seconds.

 

Drundia

Burst damage doesn't rule any more. You should have learned it in early TBC. Sustained damage however more like does it. And all that stupid chain from Improved Immolate to Backdraft (9 points!) is about sacrificing sustained damage for some burst which isn't even all that good, mind that you have to bring the enemies to the point where you want to burst them. And what if burst fails? What if target gets healed? Burst failed, instants wasted, you have to start all over. Very sad scenario really. And talent support for Shadowburn and Shadowflame in Destruction tree isn't helping.

The stupid Conflagrate, should already just stop consuming Immolate. It could make sense pre-TBC, just like 5-point Improved Immolate (when thanks to it Immolate initial damage was above Searing Pain damage), but starting from TBC Immolate initial damage is under Searing Pain, DOTs rule and burst doesn't really, mind way more organized PVP that makes it harder to stand still and cast [something like Immolate].

After that Backdraft should become Eternal Flames and have Conflagrate refresh Immolate. Increasing Immolate periodic damage is optional, based on number of points in that new talent.

Except that you may want to do Curse of Agony for higher Molten Core uptime.

 

Lambi

Wow! It's amazing to see that they actually implented my suggestion with demonic sacrifice. What's your input on shadowfury being castable while moving?

 

Angelscream

question: if we've been told that Conflag can be used on a ShadowFlame dot... what if both shadowflame and immolate are on a target? do they both get consumed or just one? can someone test that?

in a raid you could have your immolate up, chugging away, and if you wanted, you could toss a shadowflame, incinerate for a few seconds, and then conflag off the last tic of shadowflame.

obviously theres a range limiter with shadowflame, and niether it nor conflag are particularly mana effecient, but would it not be at least higher dps? and certainly favorable over losing your immolatedot stacked 5times by EF.

going off of the Warlock - WotlkWiki - Wrath of the Lich King Information it looks to me like imp-soul leech works with emp-imp, to let us mana battery our little guy why he helps us crit away (with up to +45% more firebolt damage if you take the demonology talent also). its hard to say whether or not demonic power would help out the caster/pet damage synergy, because i cant tell if imp-soulleech is enough to counter a faster casting pet. and if he get s a few crits in a row, it might be hard for us to capitolize on each one since hes shooting so fast.

one thing to note is that the patch notes say MC is 5/10/15%, but that calc still has the 4-10%.

 

arch

Reverting sacrifice change?

WoW Forums -> Undocumented talent changes

On a slightly separate note, I'm really jealous of what the warlock class is becoming. It's looking like all three will have very distinct playing style while at the same time all being viable for both PvP and PvE.

 

BeerBelly

Going by the same forum:

WoW Forums -> Is Haunt working as intended?

says that Haunt doesn't increase dot damage unless you cast your dots after casting Haunt. Seems to be a burden doing it this way to be honest.

 

Calixtus

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. Single-person based wtfpwn burst is indeed fairly dead, regardless of PvP setting. Resilience as well as larger HP pools - and for a fair few classes, ways to temporarily mitigate bursts - put an end to that.

But burst damage itself isn't dead, but they need CC to be truly effective. Look at Rogue/Mage in 2v2, they have no outlasting abilities whatsoever, yet using Kidney Shot/Kick/Counterspell along with their collected burst damage they're still a very viable combo. The RMP combo can be played much the same way - as was neatly demonstrated in the MGL 3v3 tournament - where crowd control AND burst is used with devastating results. And those are just the most popular variations.

With Soul Link being accessible to a Destro build to increase longevity, Shadowfury getting a stun-duration increase as well as being cast while moving, shadowflame being an instant... You don't need to be left alone for more than what, 2 seconds, before the immolate is ready for your burst time. And if the target survives, none of your spells are on any kind of overwhelmingly large cooldown before you can repeat your little trick. 20 seconds?



On a different note, I think it's quite sad to see they're reversing the nerf to Demonic Sacrifice - although it was nice to see a dev confirm the thinking behind DS. It will be interesting to see how they decide to ensure that the intended purposes is kept to, as opposed to the general use it's getting now. Personally, I'm inclined to think it should be made to scale based on certain "benchmarks" in number of points in Demonology, to make it a viable alternative in pet destroying fights for deep-demo warlocks. Or as someone suggested earlier in this thread, make it an effect that activates on demon death, gives you a benefit, and after a period of time auto-resummons your demon.

 

Orqa

Nerfing Demonic Sacrifice would open up a way for a more engaging play style. Obviously there would need to be some compensation for the loss of the spell damage buff to make the warlocks worth taking for something other than just their curses.

DoTs still don't scale (well) with crit and haste so it's quite likely Affliction would be scrapped in favor of Demonology or Destruction as gear gets better.

Demonic Pact looks nice and Fire destro with Imp actually unshifted and Firebolting would be quite a welcome change. Of course, pet survivability is still an issue however sacrificing your pet when it's low on HP/Mana then using the buff as it's about to run out in conjunction with demonic circle to quickly re-summon it would be an interesting concept.

 

Deathwing

Uptime = 1 - (1 - 0.15)^(2) = .277

I put two in there for just corruption. I didn't use CoA as someone else suggested because warlocks rarely cast that in pve situations.

However, with Demonic Sacrifice reverting, I think 0/21/50 will still be the way to go. Gotta see how pet survivability pans out.

 

Drundia

But you have to bring people to burstable range again. And consumption of Immolate, Shadowburn barely dealing more damage than Searing Pain (and what if you go with Fire Mage, let's assume he's viable) don't help it. Also as I said Shadowburn and Shadowflame have very poor talent support. The only tiny advantage of those instants is that they are instants, but the costs associated with them and their actual benefits are very low especially if you can stand still and cast for whatever reason. I even think that Searing Pain is included in Eternal Flames not for PVE reason, but PVP, and then we have one talent that eats Immolate which is extremely unreasonable when looking at it.

I don't think early Soul Link will do all that much, with pet missing some important survivability talents it might be extremely easily killable even by casters.

 

◊ Kyth

Has there actually been beta testing to show that molten core can proc off dot ticks? No effect *ever* has before unless it explicitly states so.

See Eradication for a talent worded to proc off ticks and compare that to the wording on Molten Core.


Well they actually reduced the variety of the trees in that affliction is "a bunch of dots with some nukes" and destruction is "a bunch of nukes with some dots", but shrug, there's only so much variety in the world.

re "all your trees are viable for pve and pvp!" Of course it seems that way, other classes' trees always do. Don't worry, destruction still has no escapes, so it'll never be a serious tree. And your pve talents are completely distinct from your pvp talents so you're still requiring a respec even if you *do* stay in the same tree.

Officer of <Fusion>
http://www.stratfu.com/ - StratFu: Strategies, Guides, Movies, and Tips for Wrath Raiding

 

Drundia

Compare wording of Eradication and Nightfall. It's different too. Aren't DOTs spells anyway? Even Life Tap is a Shadow spell. Why do they use the wording they do on Molten Core?

I think he meant that as variety. Destruction doesn't look great for PVP since Affliction still seems to outdamage DS-less Destruction in PVE. Demonic Circle can help, but is very limited by the fact that you can only create one at your feet.

 

Burberri

I think Haunt should increase dot damage by your crit %. That would make it better than ruin, it would also make it scale nicely with crit.

Going to have to dispute that warlock will be diverse though. variety would be:
affliction playing like a shadow priest
demon playing like a hunter
destruction playing like a mage

In WotLK its all three trees play the same, with slightly different emphasis
affliction - primary damage coming from your dots, but using nuke and pet support
demo - primary damage coming from your pet + its buffage, with dot and nuke support
destruction - primary damage coming from your nukes, with pet and dot support.

When compare that with present
destruction - doesn't use a pet, shadow doesn't even use dots, fire uses 1.
affliction - uses pet only as a stat buff, 50/50 to 60/40 dots/nukes
demo - pet, dots, and nukes

 

Calixtus

Just for giggles I threw togheter this spec. I'm not well-versed enough of the coeffecients of the relevant spells, so a fair few of the exact numbers will be base values possibly coupled with numbers I make up as I go along.

You've got instant corruption and you've got CoA on a target - and as a sidenote, according the WoWhead talent calculator the tooltip of Molten Core reads "Your Shadow spell and damage over time effects..." - spread over multiple targets to wear them down. You apply an immolate, weighing in at 460 initial damage and 780 mana, in 1.5 seconds casting, you position yourself as needed. Keep the immolate up with Searing Pain, 380ish damage (and a lower coeffecient?) but at 340 mana, gradually building towards an increase of 25% off the immolate DoT.

Setup for the kill, I'd say it goes something like this; He has immolate/Corr/CoA on him, you cast Chaos Bolt (1100ish). Chaos bolt has a flight time, and then you move, Shadowfury (1000ish), Shadowburn (800ish), Shadowflame (1000ish), Conflag (800ish). Total done in burst session, counting the inital Chaos Bolt, 4700ish? In 25% of the cases, conflag will apply another 3 seconds of stun, for a new immolate. Depending on cast order, you will have your first cooldown in 10 seconds, followed within the next 5 seconds by everything but Shadowfury who will come 5 seconds after that. If the initial Chaos Bolt strikes you as a bit too ideal, throw in an initial Backlash proc, or a Deathcoil tacked on after the Stun to allow for a Chaos Bolt at the end instead. Total time spent standing still is only the immolate, the searing pain refreshes, and the Chaos Bolt (Shadowfury can now be cast while moving). All 1.5 second casts.

Is it going to be the best way to PvP? Hell no. Metamorphosis is likely to snag that position for the same reason our best PvP build today features 35+ points in Demonology; Dead men do no DPS, and no warlock - even with Demonic Circle: Teleport - stays alive like a Demo warlock. Being able to transform into 45 seconds of extra armour and full HP is just icing on the cake. Is it going to offer considerably more bite that current day destro in PvP due to it's burst? I'd say so.

 

Fabinas

I have read most of the thread and checked both the alpha and beta talent calculators. With the new Beta talents, i fail to see where is the usefulness of Spirit for WotLK warlocks. The only talent that seems to use it is Demonic Embrace and the only ability who does the same is Fel Armor. All the 70-75 lvl caster items i saw till today are itemised as: Sta, Int, Spi, Spellpower. So, it seems we will be forced to stack spirit for some extra spellpower, but that spirit will have no other use to specs without Demonic Embrace. It will probably help the mid fights regen as well, while farming or so, but so will do to all caster classes. At least on the alpha talents, the Fel Armor was giving us a 30% in combat mana regen (priest meditation), rending the spirit actually useful in combat. There were also some other spirit based talents, deep in destro and Demo (forgot their names), but they are now scrapped. As it is now, any x/0/y spec will only count spirit as spelldmg and nothing else.

Is there any info about a new ability in WotLK that will actually make use of the huge spirit stacks (it seems like) we are going to amass? Or is the change made so that fel armor will be almost useless at start of WotLK and become as strong as it is now only on 80 lvl itemisation?

 

Thordarsen

Does Haunt look... incomplete to anyone else? It is a talented spell with a cost as % base mana and has a single rank (that I can see in the DB), yet has a fixed damage range? With the exception of rezzes pretty much everything else with a %base cost completely scales as a percentage of some total, or scales with something like Weapon Damage (divine storm/Stormstrike). Everything with a fixed component in the spell, needs to have multiple ranks including other classes 51 pointers (Arc Barrage/Living Bomb/Becon of Light/Flourish) Otherwise basically casting Haunt at 80 will be like casting the level 60 Shadowbolt or Corruption. (And now that I look at it, Chaos Bolt also only has one rank currently. ) Also I'm unclear on how it actually works since it seems to have changed a few times in the alpha, and is imprecisely worded. People have implied that it does scale w/ crit and does its damage at spell hit. If so what is the point of the dispel clause in the description? The wording implies it could be a DOT, but it has a variable damage range which is unusual to unique for a DOT.

Also for theorycrafting, assuming haunt gets extra ranks, and scales from 60-80 at the same rate that corruption did, that would tack about an extra 200 damage on to it.

 

Seldric

Haunt is a little incomplete at the moment. It does a direct damage attack, then leaves a debuff which increases dot damage taken. The debuff is currently not working, but the Dispel aspect of it almost certainly refers to the debuff being removed.

I'd assume this will get another rank or two though.

The direct damage seems pretty good though. It's hitting for about the same damage as my Shadow bolts on beta. At 1435 spellpower it's hitting on average for 1944, while average Shadow bolt hits are 1999.