Drundia

Calixtus, I don't quite argue about some basic burst capability, however Mage (especially Frost with Shatter) has higher burst than Destruction Warlock, and doesn't have our kind of drawbacks for using cooldowns (like Conflagrate eating Immolate and Shadowburn having poor talent support), but that's not the big problem, the problem is that by the time Destruction Warlock puts enemy to burstable range, Affliction Warlock already killed his enemy, even Demonology Warlock maybe dealt more damage by that time and is at considerably higher health. Shadowflame is instant for everyone (and again, like Shadowburn deals more damage with Affliction or Demonology, than Destruction). There isn't enough burst to compensate for not enough sustained. Considering that new talents are supposed to provide further improvements Destruction needs about 20% more DPS in itself, which would cost enough talent points to lock out DS.

Fabinas, right now Fel Armor provides plain spell power bonus (50, 100, don't remember, 180), converts 30% of Spirit to spell power AND allows 30% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. At the very least it is better for DPS than Intellect.

 

dexia

Life tap is spirit based now. No spirit? Smaller lifetap. and Bigger dps nerf.

 

PsyBomb

Forgive me if I missed something obvious, but I missed those Lifetap and Fel Armor changed. Specifically, that Spirit will apply to Spellpower while Fel Armor is up and that it will also affect Lifetap. Can someone point me to where this is said? I checked the WotLK Wiki and didn't find anything.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Aeverius

Life Tap - Spell - World of Warcraft

Fel Armor - Spell - World of Warcraft

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

PsyBomb

Thank you. Hadn't seen the changes, but now with all of that weighing in it looks like I'm going to have to start actually weighing the stat, and it looks to be better than Int all told.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

BeerBelly

Anyone wishes they'd make Metamorphosis a constant form (until canceled) similar to shadow form for priests? The current version of being active for 45 secs on a 5 min CD just doesn't strike me as that useful. At most it's a gimmick.

I'm not sure what the constant form would do but I'm sure they could come up with something that would be acceptable.
Any thoughts?

 

Fabinas

I have also missed those changes, due to the fact that i dont have the beta yet and never found spell descriptions anywhere. Thank you all for the replies.

Another question to be answered by Beta players: Does amplify curse reduces the gcd of Curses when u pick the talent or does it reduce it for the duration of amplify curse buff? the tooltip implies the first, but i´d love to know for sure, since that talent may as well provide extra dps when you are on CoT duty (30 sec refresh), or even CoR/CoW with their shortest duration. It´s gonna be a buff for CoE as well, if you are one of the locks who Curse all trash targets first and then start dps.

 

Orloth

I've been thinking about the possibility and possible usefulness of a permanent(until canceled) demonform for a while now, and couldn't pass up the opportunity to share my thoughts.

The way I would like to see it done, is to have the form grant a decent melee attack that scales with spellpower while utilizing all the usual warlock spells and keeping your pet; and to have spells like the Demonform's Immolate (possibly renamed flameskin or something similar) and Shadowcleave added to the standard list of warlock abilities. Immolate could be a useful ability to deteur melee dps by making them think twice before getting in range and the possibility of combining Immolate and Hellfire for AOE damage has the potential to out do SoC spam. I have no clue how a Shadowcleave like ability would fit in a casters book in any way, however. Though to make the spell more interesting and unique it could be changed to a combination charge and whirlwind, where you charge to your opponent and hit anything you passed by with a melee strike. If you're already in melee range the spell would function as a normal cleave. Imagine having that ability and the Demonic Circle teleport. Thats mobility.

This would make a demonologist into a melee dpsing demonic duo. Utilizing his instant cast spells to suplement his own melee attacks a demonologist should be doing dps similar to what he would do spamming shadowbolts with ruin while making his opponent more vulnerable to damage through demonic pact.

Sorry for the sales pitch, but you asked for thoughts.

 

Ellerain

Demonform currently (a) locks out most of warlock's abilities (b) transforms him into melee atacker with limited gameplay options. Neither effect is desirable as permanent.
In my humble opinion, this thread should not become a place for advocating different visions of 'new demonforms' and suggesting new abilities. Similar thing was recently done in druid thread and it made reading it a pain.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my job here is done!

 

BeerBelly

Not trying to steer this one way or the other, just discussing the current talents in beta. I myself see the talent (Metamorphosis) inappropriate in its current state and I was curious what other locks think.

On a different topic: I could see affliction becoming more viable for raiding than it is now, I just wish they'd give us a way of not having to use Shadowbolt as our filler spell. Although it probably won't happen seeing that a lot of the new talents in the affliction tree affect SB.

 

Seldric

Amplify curse is no longer a buff you activate, it's always on. GCD of every curse is reduced, and all of your curses of agony / doom do extra damage.

 

Drundia

I think I saw that somewhere. Druid feral forms? I'm sure that "permanent" was supposed to mean similar mechanic. When effect is desirable you activate it, when it isn't you deactivate it.

 

Shai

I wonder how the new Amplify Curse interacts with haste. Half a second off in addition to what haste provides or still capped at 1 sec gcd?

 

Latas

Just wondering but has anyone actually seen what talents hunter pets are getting? Their avoidance can go up to 75% and their utility tree pets can get a molten fury like talent. Frankly its nuts and it would be very nice to see our pets get something like this per pet or whatnot. Some sort of customizability for each pet would be greatly desired i would think.

Petopia: Wrath of the Lich King - Hunter Pet Talents

After going over those does anyone else feel like the odd man out?

 

Ulthwithian

Shai: I believe testing of similar talents (Resto Druid's GCD-reducing talent, specifically) shows that the GCD for them can indeed go below 1.0s with Haste. Same with Moonkin's Wrath GCD-reducer.

Therefore, I believe it would be safe to conclude that the same can be said for Amplify Curse.

 

• Playered

Hunter pets are not like Warlock pets though, nor should they be.

Warlock pets already have unique differences between them all (except having a short lifespan..) whereas Hunter ones all got normalized into stupidity and lost the majority of their unique appeal beyond cosmetics, a few % of extra damage/armor/health or some mostly minor differences in abilities.

On a more cosmetic / customizabe side... I guess it comes down to a lore point, Hunters wander around looking for a companion - Warlocks summon one from the Abyss/TN(?) and get bonded with it (hence the static name) for life without being able to choose.


Note: im not trying to say "Warlock pets are fine, l2p".

 

TheDrDroppedMe

Well, there's the thing. There will be MUCH more spirit in Wrath. In fact, it becomes a major stat for all casters and benefits locks greatly.

At 1000 spirit (not hard to imagine at 80), your Fel Armor would increase your spell damage by 180+(1000*0.33), which is a total of 651 spell damage. IN addition, you're getting passive regen which reduces the amount of Life Tapping necessary to maintain DPS.

Your life tap now scales at (Spirit*3)+base. So at that same amount of Spirit you're Life Tap will be base+3000. Currently Life Tap scales at 80% of spell damage, which means that the spirit change is actually a scaling INCREASE in Tap returns as well as a means to Tap less often.

Assume 3000 Spell damage, Life Tap would be Base + 2400.

 

Celebrimor

Btw, this just struck me, chaos bolt penetrates immunities right? Well, what happens then if you chaos bolt a bannished target? It must take damage, right? Then, aren't warlocks able to kill demon mobs with impunity?

No, a constant form have to be much weaker than a temporary so then it would have to be just a gimmick while now they can make it pretty beefy. Just look at the mages water elemental for example, just because its temporary its viable raid dps.

Anyway, demonform is more a pvp skill than pve. Since it give you full mana and health for a whopping 45 seconds, and allows you to cast shadowbolt volley, charge people, heavy armor and an insane aoe spell its defenitely worth it for pvp. PVE uses are limited though, but it would make aoe encounters much easier if a demo lock aoe tank in aoe encounters. 5 man uses are defenitely there though, if you are about to whipe due to a bad group or something, you can act as a secondary tank with it while still doing huge dps.

 

tadrinth

The latest version of chaos bolt penetrates absorption shields but not immunities, probably because of that exact issue.

 

Akj

I really dont think 1000 spirit will be easy to attain for a lock at 80. Priests & Druids socket for spirit, have loads of spirit on their gear, have talents that increase spirit and they can barely reach that mark currently.

 

Fizzlestick

I would have to agree with spirit becoming more prevalent, the further we glimpse into WOTLK. The way Blizzard has set up some of the talents and abilities now based on spirit can work, it all just depends on the amount of spirit on items, along with the balancing of other stats.

Also on a side note, what do people think about moving fel synergy up in the demo tree, aka, around the same tier as unholy power, so it could be used with empowered imp. I feel that it would be IMBA, but just a thought on empowered imp and deep destro. I keep messing with the current tree and seem to keep coming up with a 0/50/21 spec and am trying to see other raid viabilities.

 

Morwen

If a healer is able to keep up a warlock in 360% armor of cloth base and no mitigation talents (no soul link while in form), then they can keep up a non-demonform warlock just as well. Hellfire tanking is a fairly old tactic (people used it on Nefarian), so I feel this doesn't really bring much new to the table.

In the pre-beta push the demonform didn't lock out most of your spells so you could still curse/fear/immolate etc. as long as you put them somewhere not on your primary action bar, but all your spells were quite a bit weaker due to temporary loss of the buffs of Master Demonologist, Demonic Knowledge, and Demonic Pact. If some spells now snap you out of form I'd assume that's either a bug or a halfway point to some other design implementation of the talent.

 

Celebrimor

Well, it counts immunities as absorbs then since currently it still penetrates immunities, must have just changed the wording or its a bugg.

WoW Forums -> Chaos Bolt thoughts

They say that they have issues with it not penetrating a priest shield, but it penetrates divine shield fine. So maybe its just bugged and theye removed the wrong part of the penetration.

 

Waylin

The fact that Spirit is becoming an important dps related attribute is likely going to mean that TBC warlock gear will become obsolete earlier than gear for those classes who use Spirit in TBC. It will be interesting to see the gear replacement point for the various classes and gear levels in the expansion.

We've all seen posts saying that the Sunwell gear won't be replaced until level 80. I wonder if that is still going to be true for warlocks.

I guess I'd better start changing my thinking when I analyze the gear that I see on wowhead.

 

Fizzlestick

Well if you take a look at the blues that you can see on the front page of mmo-champion.com, a fully endgame geared lock destroys that gear. So I'm hoping we can go to 80 without replacing gear.