Shadowbolt and immolate are missing too. Destruction gets 70% protection on every spell cast for only 2 points, why should affliction builds reqire 7 points to enjoy the same effects when 5 is already more than double?

OK, that raises Conflagrate cost back to stupidity.

But when you do PVP, which right now is more Affliction-favored, it affects all your spells, except Fear really.

Those 2 talent points are in the 4th tier of the tree versus second. What I don't understand is why fire mages get the same talent PLUS threat reduction in the 3rd tier for only 2 points.


SoC is usable in 5v5. It also provides some amusement in battlegrounds.

Well, compare Bane with Imp. Fireball, Imp. Frostbolt and Imp. Arcane Missiles, and compare Emberstorm with Fire Power; there are plenty of cases where a given talent for one class is immensely better than its logical counterpart for another class.

Ruin v. Spell Power is the big one for me. I'll not complain about mage talent placement with that one still in our trees.

That said, I still have not received beta confirmation/denial of whether ISB is still affecting DoT damage. Wording says it should, but half of the places I go to say it doesn't. This is pretty big in determining how a lot of builds are going to run.

Exactly, so adding every spell an affliction lock would cast in a raid environment to fel concentration would provide little to no additional benifit to PvP and at the same time afford affliction locks the same universal pushback protection in raids that destruction locks get.

They moved Improved Intercept into Arms, I'm sure they're not against moving a talent from one tree to another for the sake of improvement. Besides, now that Elements affects everything and Destruction is your elemental fire and shadow wielding nutjob, it makes more sense than it used to.

I really don't like Frailty as it stands. Its just another mandatory curse buff for raiding in a tree that already has Malediction, which means a Walock of one of the other trees is urged to get it. If you're only other Warlock wants to be Demo, is he really going to spec 7/50/13 or something equally shite just for raid buffs in Frailty and Demonic Pact? I freaking hope not. Destruction is the only other tree with it as an option. Something like 11/3/57 or 7/7/57, which misses out on Demonic Aegis.

Frailty's placement just sucks. It should really be removed to get rid of that incentive of some poor bastard having to go 7 points into Affliction just for the raid's sake.

As for Malediction's placement, I know, but I can't think of a better place for it. What deep Destruction talent could you move down to give to Demo that wouldn't make it crazy? Backlash? Soul Leech?

SL/SL variations with 5/5 Fel Conc aren't that common today, because what you end up giving up is either/or Imp CoA or Emp Corr. In terms of DPS, 3/3 Emp Corr and 2/5 Fel Conc is a whole lot more awesome than 5/5 Fel Conc, in no small part due to the simple fact that most classes who are likely to cause pushback can also interrupt.

While an Haunt based WotlK PvP build will probably have more point than that in Fel Conc, from what I've seen, I'd say that'll be more because you're not giving up the same kind of damage you are today.

Well phase shift doesn't work while in combat.

I just remember there is no macro command for move, so you would just need to link "passive" to one hotkey and manually remember to press that whenever you move and then resume attack whenever you stop to start casting again.

You won't have the same issues as a stupid melee pet running straight back to you through fire because you told it to return. As the imp, being ranged, should always be next to you, albeit a few yards in front due to lower range. Doing that means that your imp should never be taking damage unless you yourself are as well.

As always they're balancing Affliction around pvp.

Mythical PvP, where we run around willy nilly throwing full dot load outs against all 2,3 or 5 players (none of which dispel or look after their own health and safety) while being completely safe due to range and LoS and the like.

But PvP none the less.

And lets face it, against a goldfish match, an opponent who doesn't fight back, affliction would be insane if they didn't neuter it.

And so they do.

Not sure when someone over there will put down the Koolaid and realize that Affliction locks are in a unique and craptacular place. I don't think any other class is mandated (not asked, not merely given the option to use) 2 different and mutually exclusive schools/trees.

Heck, even mages are getting *serious* synergy love to merely enable cross tree play; all the while being able to solo-tree without 40+% dps hit.

Yet Blizzard is mandating both that for affliction unilaterally (thou shalt cast shadowbolts while still not getting full use out of itemizatoin for the half of your spells you spent the majority of your talents on); and attempting some minor synergy attempt for the Fire-Mage Mark II, err Fire-lock, err Destro-lock.

Bibdy, Latas, and any other beta testing locks who read this forum, how's the "new" Metamorphosis working out? Is it strong enough yet to justify the loss of the pet? Or Ruin? Has it become the PvE DPS timer that Blizz said they wanted it to be? I ask, because I haven't really seen much concrete information or analysis of it yet (aside from lots of testers screwing around with AoE). The only "new" abilities I've been able to find info on are insta-Howl, Immolation, Demonic Leap, and single-target Shadow Bolt, with 2 more unknown skills.

My main concern with the viability of this talent is the loss of the pet. I'm one of those few mentally unbalanced individuals who is currently raiding Sunwell Plateau as Demo spec. Based on my current stats, WWS, etc., if these WotLK talents were to go live right now, this is what I'd be giving up to use Metamorphosis (note: this is only from a PvE perspective):
- 20% of total damage gone from lack of Felguard
- 5% damage from Master Demonologist
- Up to 6% damage from Demonic Empathy (for now, lets assume a 50% up time for a flat 3%)
- 200+ spell damage from Demonic Knowledge
- 180+ raid wide spell damage from Demonic Pact
- My normal spells (although decent demonic abilities could compensate for this)
- Ruin (roughly 50% of my current damage is from Shadow Bolts, so Meta has to be strong enough to also overcome that)

It doesn't look like the newest beta build did much to Demon Form and I'm hoping that I'm wrong, because for it to be a PvE DPS timer, that's a LOT of setbacks it needs to overcome. In order for it to be viable it seems like it needs some help. Some ideas I came up with for it are:
- Keep the pet out. That would actually go a long way to keeping Demon Form on par with normal damage, although it seems like Blizzard is steering away from this idea for the talent.
- Add a large (40%+) damage modifier to the skill to compensate, or just up the damage of the new abilities you gain.
- Make the single-target Shadow Bolt instant cast with a 2.5s cooldown. That way you can still cast your shadow bolts normally without overly interfering with your melee swings. Immolation seems like it's on the right track with this.
- Give Demon Form some sort of group/raid-wide aura. Making the ability itself strong enough to compensate for the loss of pet/ruin/etc. might make it a tad TOO strong in PvP, but if you add in some sort of aura (maybe haste?) that benefits the entire raid then the massive increase from everyone else would be enough.

I really like the idea of Metamorphosis and I hope that Blizzard continues to tweak it to make it viable in a raid environment; it's just doesn't seem to be nearly there yet.

This might be a little bit out there, but maybe blizzard honestly believes affliction locks should be spamming drain life instead of shadowbolt?

Blood Pact has only 20 yd range. If he is standing next to you, the tank will probably not get the pact. Maybe they increase the range for WotLK. And if the range stays at 20 yd, does that mean the tank will not have the pact while we move the imp out of ae or is the imp supposed to just take all ae damage with avoidance?

Honestly? There's no chance that it can compensate for 3 straight minutes of bonus Shadowbolt crit damage in Ruin, Improved Shadowbolts and the loss of Demonic Pact from personal damage alone. Its damage potential in PvP would have to be just fucking nuts if it was. I made a thread on the beta forums suggesting a group buff or debilitating aura that benefits a raid, but doesn't help so much in small-scale group arena settings.

That's the only way I see it making it into a raid build.

For the people asking if ISB enhances periodic damage. Well at least according to the debuff placed on the target it doesnt

look here > Shadow Vulnerability - Spell - World of Warcraft (you need to click it to see the debuff)

thats the debuff and it explicit excludes dots - it has nothing to do with the wording of the talent.

With 80% AOE Damage reduction, and 5k hp unbuffed, Imp will probably just take most aoe's just fine....
He'd need to take 25000 damage to die from aoe.... more if he gets priest's hp buffs....


Also the frailty's placement is quite fine the way it is. The poor sucker that will go 7 points into affliction will be most of the destro locks. With imp giving 10%+ dps increase, there is no reason to spec DS... so extra points can go to soul link AND/OR frailty/lifetap.

Pushback protection stacks. FC+Intensity would make your Shadow Bolt and Immolate unpushbackable. You don't get many pushbacks in raids anyway, those talents are aimed for PVP and grinding, not PVE. You also get raid-wide Concentration Aura. Honestly I'm more concerned than those talents are aimed more on grinding, than PVP, because in PVP 70% is sometimes too little, and Interrupt effects are higher threat to spells with cast times.

What if you only have 2 Warlocks, 1 Affliction and 1 Demo? You run into a pretty awkward situation with Demonology sacrificing Ruin, Destructive Reach and Devastation for Frailty. That's one very frustrated Demo Warlock.

No, you are wrong. That is exactly the same as the shadow vulnerability debuff on live, except that it is 15% damage instead of 20%. The part that mentions non-periodic damage is referring to effects that will consume charges, exactly like it works on live.

It is still possible that they have changed it to exclude DoTs, but it isn't possible to tell based on that debuff description.

That to me, says no. As much as I'd love to see buffs to DL, doesn't look like they're even considering it.

I made a post on the warlock forums to help solve the frailty issue.

I think they should switch Improved Healthstone with Demonic Aegis. This allows affliction warlocks to pick it up without sacrificing key destruction talents (and they need help the most). This change doesn't really increase the dps of demo or destruction, but allows destruction locks to pick up frailty much more easily because they no longer have to sacrifice demonic aegis to do so.

Although Blizzard is improving Master Conjuror, the talent should be merged with Improved Healthstone and a new talent should take its place.

I think moving Demonic Aegis to T1 demo would solve some issues. Destruction locks can easily be the "frailty" locks and affliction locks, who need demonic aegis the most, can also pick it up. Of course, this only applies to haunt locks, but at least this gives a haunt build an additional advantage over ruin. If a lock goes 50/0/21 they forsake demonic aegis.

No, he really meant you need to click on the link and watch the buff it actually applies. The currently live entry on wowhead says

The WotlK one says;
Which... Sucks.