Fizzlestick

For imp, couldn't they move fel synergy up in demo, to a point where it could be gained in conjunction with emp imp. That would allow for it to keep up in raids quite a bit I would think, however that has the potential to be broken beyond belief.

 

Burberri

Raid AoE damage now is upwards of 8.5k. Figure on 10-11k raid-wide in WotLK. How is that not going to 1-shot the imp?

 

Thordarsen

Looking at post WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion ("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.") it seems that Haunt is scaling better than typical 1.5 sec cast spell, so maybe they are changing spell power coefficients for cooldown-limited spells to something more reasonable.[/quote]

That would fit with mage testing of instant cast Arcane Barrage, which seems to be scaling with spell damage * .8 or so, or roughly as a 3 second cast, which the spell cooldown. If Haunt, and hopefully Chaos Bolt function similarly, then they would be getting double the expected benefit from spell power, which should dismiss some scaling issues with the spells.

 

Celebrimor

Hmm, you mean like separating them into short debuffs and long debuffs?
Like, CoA, CoT, CoE, CoD in one pile and CoE/S, CoW, CoR in another.

 

Seldric

edit: Sorry my post was a mess earlier.

I noticed that at 75 my Haunts are now hitting for 200-300 less damage than at 71, without any significant change in spell damage gear. Hopefully the new ranks of Haunt are coming soon, as the down ranking penalty is hurting quite a bit. It appears that Arcane Barrage has all the correct ranks in the database though.

 

Xenicore

They could rename Metamorphosis to Possession and word it akin to: "Take total control of your summoned demon, fusing your essence with your pet. Your armor is increased by 360% and your health and mana are refilled. When Possession ends, your threat on all targets within 50 yards is halved, and you return to normal form with your current health and mana."

Overly wordy, but you get the idea. This way, we could keep our demo/pet-related buffs, continue to be of utility to the raid, dump some threat, and refill our health and mana pools. For a 5 minute cooldown, this seems more reasonable. Otherwise, like others have pointed out, Metamorphosis just ends up being a PvP toy. The threat dump component would make it feasible to unload with the better demon-form attacks and not have to worry (as much) about threat. Another alternative could be to simply use a separate threat table for demon form entirely, and upon completion, revert to whatever threat levels you had prior to shapeshifting.

Demonology has the potential to be one of the truly unique and fun talent trees--but by marginalizing pet usage in our 51 point talent and limiting pet utility in raids outside of (the old) Demonic Sacrifice...well, I'm sick of slinging Shadowbolts ad infinitum--so some variety and fun would be welcome.

 

bladehawk

I'm not in the beta, and maybe I’m a pessimist, but does this look like a collection of nerfs with a few new abilities peppered on top?

Imp SB – Nerfed
DS – Nerfed
MD – Suc/imp helping crit is a probable nerf
Fel Armor change – less DPS or more healing
Forced reliance on spirit for life tap

Are any of the new skills going to make up for that many hits? To folks in the beta - is it as bad as it looks?

 

Torq

That would fit with mage testing of instant cast Arcane Barrage, which seems to be scaling with spell damage * .8 or so, or roughly as a 3 second cast, which the spell cooldown. If Haunt, and hopefully Chaos Bolt function similarly, then they would be getting double the expected benefit from spell power, which should dismiss some scaling issues with the spells.[/quote]

Someone's thought on this in a thread on the official lock forums is that it's using the DoT scaling for a 12-second DoT spell, or 12/15 = 0.8

With those numbers you posted, I get a coefficient of [(1944 / 1.1) - 699.5] / 1435 = ~.744 if you assume 5/5 Shadow Mastery. However, since Haunt is a lvl 60 spell, if this is being tested by a level 70, it gets hit with the downranking penalty, of (60 + 6) / 70 or ~.943. .744/.943 ~= .79 so pretty close to the .8 from a DoT coefficient. If he's higher than 70, say 71, it's pretty much straight on for the DoT coefficient * downranking penalty.

[E] After reviewing these formulas again, I'm not quite sure they're correct. The wording on what the "spell level" is in the downranking formula is a little ambiguous.

 

PsyBomb

ISB losing 5% sucks, but something had to be done or Shadowbolt would have outscaled everything in the game put together. Still waiting on confirmation whether or not is still affects DoTs, so I'll hold off my final judgment.
DS nerf was a long time coming and should have happened more than a year ago. I cheered when I saw it, since it means people can actually choose specs now.
MD changes work out as a slight nerf, but not all that bad of one. The case can be made that the Succubus change is better overall when combined with ISB
Spirit reliance: Nerf in the case of Demonic Embrace, but it's an enthusiastic buff in all other cases. Having even a modest 300 spirit now (granted that I'm at 205, but that's with almost nothing helping Spirit) makes for larger Lifetaps even in Sunwell gear, the 30% conversion to spell power on fel Armor is a pure buff on top of what we're already getting (and even at my paltry 205, we're taliking about 69 +power), and 30% regen from it is again a pure buff. It's not like we're losing lifetap, but current TC shows it being used far less often in Lich King, which means more DPS time for us.

The other big thing to consider is something I've been telling the Enhancement Shamans, as well: gaining reliance on new stats is NOT a bad thing once you get into gear that's itemized with that in mind. Spreading gains over more stats means that you get significantly more gains overall, due to the way item budgeting works.

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.

 

Drundia

Something like this, but I'd debate CoD category since everyone keeps mentioning CoA not being used enough.

Sadly it's a hidden Spell.dbc variable that even WOW databases don't show. I think Haunt gets "downranking penalty" past level 71, since for most spells that "spell level" is defined as (level learned + 5)

 

Feliska

The DS nerf/change was reverted back to its original. (With possible modifications in the future)
WoW Forums -> Undocumented talent changes
::
Demonic Sacrifice is going back to it's former self in the next patch, although it'll be changed slightly. We want Warlocks to gain benefit from using their pets in PvE, not destroying them for buffs. Demonic Sacrafice was originally created for situations where having a pet out wasn't as viable. Today, that situation is/should be coming less frequent. We realize that is because of issues with the pets (mana regeneration, some are too fragile, etc.) which are have/will be addressing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class Designer

 

bladehawk

I strongly suspect that, "although it'll be changed slightly" means a substantial nerf.

 

BeerBelly

I'd prefer DS being changed into something that not all highest DPS specs revolve around. Like someone before me said, I'd like to pick a spec for once.

 

Darian_TruBlade

As noted by several posts above mine, Blizzard is aiming to make pets viable. How well they'll succeed is something we won't know for a few months yet, but at this point it isn't unthinkable that a destro lock might consider a 0/20/51 build, or something else that falls short of DS.

With 33% quicker casts, and 20% * 15% * 20% more damage the Imp could represent a significant amount of DPS, particularly considering the utility it represents in dividing threat, boosting health, boosting survivability (Soul Link), boosting damage (more crits) and actually not running out of mana (Imp Soul Leech).

Without any raid buffs, napkin math (IIRC Firebolt coefficient is 45% of an Imp's SP, which is 15% of your own) puts a 70 Imp at ~200 DPS (although this is assuming level 80 talents). If we factor in Misery, Malediction, and Imp Scorch that increases to ~272. The really big buff would come if the Imp is in range for and affected by Flametongue Totem, which in addition to everything else would boost the Imp's potential DPS to ~450 DPS.

Most destro locks I know that sport ~1000 SP currently put out around 900-1100 DPS with DS. Without DS, they'd be doing 780-960, losing 120-140 DPS. Considering the potential benefits of the Imp, which include a net gain of 60-300 DPS, it would be a viable alternative to DS specs.

This, again, hinges upon Blizzard being successful in making raids friendlier to pets. At the very least that's their intent.

 

Flamingcloud

If demonic sac is restored to +15% fire dmg, a chaos bolt would need to deal around 35% more dmg than a incinerate to be better. Though that is only the case when deciding between 0/20/51 and 0/21/50, and realistically no one would ever go 0/20/51. So technically it doesn't need to quite be that much higher than an incin but you don't gain all that much more going 7/13/51 or 0/13/58 unless they make backdraft not suck(in which case you would probably want something like World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator) and ofcourse the gap needed becomes far lower on fights where your imp can dps.

Arcane Barrage has a 3/3.5 spell coefficient if chaos bolt had something similar/better and a significantly higher base dmg it is possible it might be in a raiding spec even with 15% demonic sac, but I can't really believe these instant casts will go live with such high coefficients, walking around throwing out 12k instant casts at level 70 seems kinda op.

 

bladehawk

With all the crap talents in Demo there will still only be 1-2 viable specs. It used to be SM/Ruin until 1/2 way through BWL where you were forced to spec demo for the 20% threat reduction (we had no other options Pre-TBC). It will just be a different "standard" spec.

 

Burberri

EDIT: I am aware that blizzard said they were going to do that. I am also aware that Kalgan has said they weren't. with the imp's health what it is, it really needs two things to protect itself. 1) is cheat death (the unnerfed version) and; 2) the ability to phase during combat.

The imp isn't going to scale. It gets 15% of your spell power and 45% gets applied to its fireball. That means to increase the damage of his fireball by 1 before multipliers you need 15 spell power. If we are lucky this will lead to the warlock being overpowered at 80 and underpowered at 80++.

We are all busting out napkins and doing rough calcs and then coming to conclusions that say "yeah, I guess its not a nerf, it will do more damage PROVIDED XYZ". I wish it were more like other classes. Talking to my hunter friend he looks at their changes like its Christmas in July. As a direct quote "its like being in a candy store". I wish I could point to something we have and say "wow, blizzard is going to nerf that but 3.0 to 3.1 is going to be FUN!!!"

 

Darian_TruBlade

I'd be more concerned about balance at 80, and that's probably what concerns Blizzard as well.

IIRC, everything was pretty crazy in terms of burst after patch 2.0, before the expansion actually released. Ret Paladins could burst you down in the timespan of a single HoJ, for example (which was partially responsible for the Crusader Strike nerf back in the day).

Chances are we'll see similar effects with patch 3.0. I wouldn't be surprised if some manner of xx/xx/5x became the popular multi-box setup. 5x Chaos Bolt has potential, whatever it's coefficient.

The thought had crossed my mind. A large portion of the matter is going to depend on the usefulness of Chaos Bolt. If Chaos Bolt is a worthy addition to a Firelock's DPS there's little reason to avoid buffing your Imp (assuming also that it's not going to die in an instant during the fight).

 

Flamingcloud

I don't see how instant cast spells that hit harder than shadow bolt/fireball/incin could possibly be balanaced at any level for pvp. Balancing them for pve is not difficult at all. Getting hit by a melee, then using teleport, and throwing out a backlash proc and chaos bolt is pretty insane burst.

 

bladehawk

THat is part of the Cooldown issue - if it can be used 1x per arena it's still not as OP as stunlock/CLOS/Cheat death.

 

Darian_TruBlade

All the calculators I've seen show Chaos Bolt with a 1.5 second cast.

Optimally, you'd teleport and cast Chaos Bolt before taking advantage of the Backlash proc. That way you aren't waiting for the GCD from the Backlash spell to cast Chaos Bolt. While powerful, I don't think it's overpoweringly better than when people would cast Immolate, throw down their Backlash proc and then follow it up with Conflagrate.

 

Latas

On the European blizz talent calculator haunt was reverted back to what it was but still has the 15 second cooldown instead of the 10 second one, and still has a flat mana cost.

 

Drundia

I'm not sure how smart it is to use Soul Link in raiding situation in its new state. Also a question comes about early Affliction talents which may be better than Unholy Power, while Demonic Aegis seems to become quite massive boost.

How is it balanced when cooldown limited spell has barely higher DPCT than spammable spell? They were like that at 60, but were totally screwed in TBC. And your example of burst isn't really that great, it is already possible for a cloth wearer with high resilience to lose something like 5k or 6k to a melee within 1 or 2 seconds. It's like they attack you and you already have half health gone. Shatter-Frostbolt-Ice Lance combo isn't much different either. The bursts are needed.

 

bithalver

That's good news.

BUT. Death Embrace is for Shadowbolt and shadowburn. a lvl9 talent in Affliction for 2 Destruction spell.

I am so sorry, I think we are enough of shadow bolt spamming, especially when you are affliction and want to cause damage with DoTs and drained spells (life and soul, respectively). OK, drain life heals, so it can not be as good as shadowbolt, but what about drain soul ? Why can't we have a drain soul as effective (with soul siphon and a lots of DoTs up) as shadow bolt ? Why can't we have affliction supporting talents in affliction tree and destruction supporting in destruction tree ?

 

Aggromuffin

I think most peopple are definatly tired of shadowbolt spamming, especially the people that have been a lock for longer than the duration of TBC anyway, Tbh im pretty looking forward to going full affliction for raiding and not knowing that im nerfing my dps.
After looking at all the new talents and spells it all looks pretty hot, although the one thing im confused of is Shadow Bite and if using a Felhunter in raids would be ideal taking away the massive amounts of raid dmg dealt someone mentioned previously.