Did you actually visit the link because

Seems to suggest that it doesn't affect DoT's.

[edit]

Beaten to it >.<

The WotLK debuff states:
"Shadow damage increased by 15% from non-periodic spells."

The TBC debuff states:
"Shadow damage increased by 20%."

I think that pretty clearly indicates DOTs are not affected by ISB in WotLK.

As a long time Demo 'lock, I've been looking forward to Metamorphosis since I first heard it was going to be the 51 point talent for the class. That said, as the talent stands now it's cutting off most of the rest of the tree for a short term boost. As Paranon said above, we lose many of our benefits as demonologists by shifting into demon form, and I agree that the ability needs to be changed to keep the pet out while you are in demon form. I, however, don't feel that a raid-wide buff is the best way to go with the talent.

I like that the new metamorph is focused on melee damage. On paper it gives us some nice flexibility if the melee DPS is on par with or above our spell DPS. Popping into demon form during a raid, however, means that I need to shift from doing ranged dps to melee dps mid fight. This change of DPS type mid-raid means you need to consider things like availability and range of buffs as well as current threat (i.e. need to ensure you're under 110% before hitting demon form and charging into melee). These factors make it difficult to utilize a short term DPS buff that requires a change of DPS type. In order to optimize the demon form we need to either be able to choose before hand whether we want to deal ranged or melee dps, or have the demon form return to a spell damage dealer.

The solution to this dilemma came to me while reading the Beta forums. Latas and several others suggested the possibility of removing the duration from demon form, i.e. making it a stance. This immediately simplifies balancing the demon form as the target DPS needs only to match the spell dps of the 'lock out of the form (all other things being equal since the pet and lower demo talents will still apply). The only problems with this that I forsee are that we'd have almost too much mobility from demonic circle and the two charge skills (intercept/heroic leap) that the demon gets and that Blizzard would have to remove the free heal that comes with shifting. The solution to this is to have Metamorphosis have a 3 minute cooldown with no duration. This mechanism is already used in stealth for rogues, and would allow for the healing component to remain attached to the ability.

In summary, I'd like to see the following:

Metamorphosis
- Melee on par with our spell DPS, mobility and survivability
- Unlimited duration stance with a 3 minute cooldown
- Pet remains out while shifted.

This gives us the flexibility to choose to be a melee or ranged class in any given fight, both in PvE and PvP, but still forces 'locks in PvP to give heavy consideration to what situations they should activate and drop the ability in.

I don't think it would be worth making the demo lock pick up frailty. No one enjoys gimping their spec enormously to pick up marginal utility. An additional 160 armor penetration is nice, but I don't think it's going to be a huge difference in raid dps, considering the demo lock is going to lose a lot of dps doing so. The net gain is probably not worth it to make a fellow raid member feel gimped. Now if that lock doesn't mind, that's one thing. If it was for a larger amount of armor pen, it might be worth it.

If you only bring 2 locks to the raid, you have to sacrifice utility somewhere. If your raid is light on casters, a demo lock might not make much sense anyway, since their biggest utility buffs casters. You're better off using affliction/destro lock as your 2 for the sta/int/spi buffs. If your raid is caster heavy, then frailty is less important. Maybe I'm overstating affliction utility, and demo would be preferred. In that case you sacrifice felhunter buffs, malediction and shadow embrace.

I fully agree about T1 Demonic Aegis. As for Healthstones, I say they should get free 20% boost, and become Unique (3), so you don't need 3 differently specced Warlocks for 3 healthstones, but just one, any. Master Conjuror could become just another raid-wide buff, sharing Firestone and Spellstone benefits with other raid members.

On the matter of affliction raiding, it's strange that the Felhunter is the only pet that doesn't get the AoE avoidance. Furthermore, Shadow Bite currently consumes ISB charges much like Lash of Pain does, which is somewhat counterproductive considering the Felhunter is apparently meant to be the affliction pet of choice for his raid buff.

To clear up the confusion about ISB above: it currently still affects dot damage in the beta (by 15%), but imagine it can change at any time as Blizzard is balancing lock/shadow priest dps.

Is there something I'm missing? Koraa said it should get avoidance. Is it just not given to the Felhunter on the beta realm? If not I imagine its a bug.

Trouble with everyone having 3 healthstones like that would cause them to balance encounters around everyone having them. Much like the new potion sickness, unique (1) healthstones makes things easier on raiders and encounter designers.

According to Koraa, the Felhunter should learn avoidance. This is what he (she?) said in his post:

"# Avoidance (Felguard) - Now reduces damage taken from area of effect attacks by an additional 80%.
# Avoidance: Now automatically learned for the Succubus, Imp, Voidwalker and Felhunter at level 10."

Does the Felhunter not have avoidance in beta? If so, seems like a bug since it contradicts what Koraa said on the beta forum for upcoming warlock changes.

Edit: Ha, Bibdy beat me to it :P

I noticed this yesterday evening on beta. If you summon the Felhunter and open his spellbook, the avoidance skill is missing. All of our other pets have the ability. Based on what the patch notes say, I think it has to be a bug / oversight.

Not really....

I've ran at T5 level demo builds...and can say if anything, a 20/41/0 looses very little to 0/41/20... Not going to argue which one does more dps - but the marigin isn't as high at t5 level as people seem to make it to be. T6 and sunwell stuffs so much stuff pet or dots can't use (haste, crit, etc...) that demo or affliction just fall behind, and 0/41/20 becomes clearly better...

With new changes, and bane going up to tier 1 of destro, the margin is even smaller. Besides... If demo has ruin, it's not a demo... it's one of the half assed 50 (or 40) builds that exist cause ruin or DS is so damn strong. Right now, if someone does not have felguard, he's NOT a demo lock...

Hopefully they'll address issue with ruin for affliction and demo locks the way they addressed DS for destro locks.

I like that idea, actually. There's a lot of advantages. Although, Destruction is still limited to 2/3 Demonic Aegis or 1/2 Imp Lifetap after getting Imp Imp and Frailty. If CoA and Frailty were swapped (like I suggested in a thread on the beta forum) and DA was put in Tier 1, we'd be in business.

Though, I can't find your post anywhere. Are you on the beta? Do you want me to put it on the beta forum?

I've spent some more time thinking about Backdraft since the revelation that there's a difference between "cast time" and "cast speed". I had previously assumed a Con/Imm/Inc*6 rotation, but that's something of a wash as while it only takes 1.154 seconds to cast Immolate it'll still ping the GCD.

It dawned on me that as a buff Backdraft's duration, and therefore benefit, is determined by how long it takes to cast the three spells that consume it. Conceptually, casting three spells of a longer cast time increases the duration of the cast time reduction, effectively increasing its benefit. As neat as it is to fire off a couple lightning fast Incinerates, Shadow Bolt might benefit more.

I did a few rough calculations. I assumed ISB would be up enough to simulate a 10% bonus to Shadow damage, and a Con/SB*3/Imm/Inc*2 rotation. Three Shadow Bolts translates into roughly a 39% chance for Molten Core to proc, but the short duration means that the first Incinerate only benefits from 2/3rds of the procs, and the second only 1/3rd.

Doing the rough math, even with Immolate pinging the GCD and wasting a charge on Backdraft the DPS of the Con/Imm/Inc*6 cycle is significantly better than the Con/SB*3/Imm/Inc*2 cycle. Approximately 7% behind at 1000 Spell Power.

I think the inherent problem is that with ISB's nerf and Incinerate's increased DPS via the additional .25 second cast time reduction, Incinerate has pulled far ahead of Shadow Bolt in terms of scaling. There are no talents past S&F which buff Shadow Bolt, while there are quite a few that favor Incinerate (Emp Imp, for example encourages faster casts in case of back to back crits from the Imp).

Depending on what happens with Eternal Flames, Chaos Bolt, and Glyphs, Fire seems set to be the primary school of damage for Destruction. In a way it makes sense, as there isn't much impetus at all for Affliction or Demonology to use anything other than Shadow spells.

I made the post yesterday, but didn't really catch wind and only got a few replies. I really like my idea, and I really like your idea of switching imp. agony and frailty. Maybe they wanted imp agony easily reachable for destruction locks for molten core. But, I would think instant corruption is worth far more than imp. agony for pvp, and destruction locks won't be using agony in raids anyway unless you regularly bring 3 locks. Even then, 15% bigger agonies isn't going to make or break destruction dps.

Unfortunately I'm not in beta, so go ahead and post it on the beta forum along with your suggestion. I think this would help out all raid builds.

Or you could just not pick up frailty.. Is 160 ArP (assuming rank 5 CoR) for the melee really worth the loss of molten core, 4% crit, and ruin?

I don't really have a problem with a group-benefitting ability being attached to the skill. The problem I have with is the fact that switching from Ranged->Melee and back during the middle of a fight may be a serious obstacle to using the form effectively.

The real issue with Metamorphosis is whether or not it will be able to compete with Ruin. This is easily accomplished by adjusting the form to deal melee damage equal to what the 'lock would do against a single target with dots/shadowbolts ignoring crits entirely. By equalizing the DPS without crits, the demon form would automatically have Ruin's DPS bonus built in as melee attacks are already 2x the normal hit. (Note that at this point the form may still be slightly less of a benefit than Ruin due to the occasional single-target situations where you would prefer to stay at range, e.g. Prince in Kara).

Equalizing the dps of the form with your casting dps however requires that the form must be a stance because, as you stated, any boost to a short-duration form that would produce the same average dps gain would be overpowered. Furthermore, to put some limits on the flexibility gained by the 'lock in PvP from the form, I believe a cooldown is a must.

All that said, I'm not averse to tacking on some raid utility to a Metamorphosis that functions as a stance. Some of the over-all dps of the form could be traded in for a small melee-dps buff for your party or raid.

Right, which is why I'm saying the 45 second cooldown should be out the window. Instead it should have no duration and a three minute cooldown. i.e. If you shift into the form, you can stay in it as long as you like, but when you shift out you have to wait three minutes before you can activate it again.

Furthermore, I'm operating under the assumption that the form will be changed to not dismiss the pet as I feel it's absurd to negate 50+ demonology talents to use our 51 point talent.

Indeed, which is why any buff to Meta's personal dps runs the risk of really overpowering it in terms of PvP. Allowing pets to remain summoned would quite easily take care of problems 2, 3, and a portion of 1 (loss of DK, DE, MD, etc.). Giving the form some sort of raid enhancing aura could also fix problems 1 and 4 without overpowering it in PvP.

That said, I sort of like the idea of making Demon Form a true stance but giving it some sort of cooldown (ie. shifting back to normal form puts some sort of Demonic Exhaustion debuff on the lock that prevents a return to Demon Form for XX amount of time). Makes it a little similar to Moonkin if it ends up with an aura, but then a completely new set of abilities veers it far enough away to make it unique. Depending on the mana cost of your demonic abilities, there could be a sort of soft-cap on how long you can effectively DPS in Demon Form since you won't have life tap to cover your costs (further limiting it's PvP power where the plethora of raid mana regeneration skills isn't as readily available).

EDIT: And Xentik and I pretty much just said exactly the same thing.

Depends. Is your guild the min-maxing kind or not?

Demon Form does have an Intercept and we'll be getting Demonic Circle, which means you can Intercept in, deal some ass kicking and teleport straight out when the effect ends. The threat thing you mentioned might be a concern, though. Maybe it if also dropped your threat by 30% on activation? (which would be ironic, considering you just turned into a big, fuckoff demon guy).

If it became a stance, it would certainly require some changes to the rest of its mechanics. To be able to maintain 360% armour and deal out equivalent damage as when you were squishy would be pretty nutso. Like a bear form druid dealing out cat form DPS.

At the absolute extreme, where 160 Armor is all that's left to penetrate, 160 ArP is 1.52% extra damage.

So the question of whether Frailty is worthwhile comes down to whether 1.5% * Physical DPS > DPS Lost from MC, 4% Crit and Ruin.

I looked over one of SK Gaming's Brutallus kills and approximately 20k Physical DPS was being done. An extra 1.5% of that would mean 300 DPS to make up. Of course, it's hard to tell what the paradigms are going to be in WotLK.

Personally, I would hope that Frailty would be a reason for a group minded Destro/Demo Lock to go into Affliction, but not a requirement for them to do so. Destro in particular is already quite bloated, although the DPS benefit of the top tier talents is currently somewhat iffy.

Depending on model you use ruin works out to between an 8 and 13% increase in dps.

The ratio for meta is 180/ 45 seconds. or 4 times as much. damage. That means the warlock needs to see a dps increase of 32-52% while in demon form. This assume blizzard lets the pet stay out taking care of the raid buff as well as pet dps losses. I just don't see that happening when you take pvp into consideration.

The ArP is the same as giving all the melee 1 free gem slot. Unless its a meta I don't know of any single gem you can add that increases your dps more than 1%, and typically you don't get near that. Which means it increases your raid dps by what 1/2%. Taking a 10% hit to your personal dps is going to consume that to the point of irrelevance. so why make a warlock unhappy for no reason.

The armor issue is a joke I have like 1600 armor in my raid gear, I don't suspect its going up too much. Even with 360% elemental shaman will have more armor than warlocks. Oh and never mind they also get 5% block to go with their paltry 4.5% dodge

Responded to your post about meta on the beta forums. I don't want to go through the work of putting it here as I was lazy and it has tons of grammatical errors and punctuation errors and i don't want to have to fix a wall of text to avoid infractions like that. But basically it gives some ideas on fixing the early parts of the demo tree (still no idea on replacement talents for imp VW and imp Succ) and ideas on a possible fix for meta once and for all. Though i'm not sure blizz wants to rework that talent that extensively but I could see it working very well and being a solid contender to ruin.