While the idea is interesting (and has logical support from the mentioned demo talents), the backlash from the community would be of epic scale.

Demon form has been THE wanted talent for demonology for who knows how long (I remember it being speculated since BC was announced).

Right, so the total DPS boost from adding extra ArP to CoR is 160 ArP + whatever else they decide to socket instead of ArP i.e. strictly more than the 1.5% DPS boost from 160 ArP for every physical damage dealer in the raid. 2% each would be a conservative minimum boost to each physical damage dealer from frailty.

The "what stats they could get instead of the socketed ArP" is a bad argument, and the value will never eclipse "as if everyone got 160 ArP".

Let's say I'm gemming for 100 ArP, and I could have 20 crit rating in those sockets instead. Well I should choose whichever gives me more damage. If 20 crit rating was worth more than 100 ArP, then I would just socket 20 crit in the first place. Since I chose 100 ArP, then 100 ArP is the most worthwhile stat there. The 20 crit I will replace it with if a Warlock takes Frailty, just isn't as good as the 100 ArP.

The improved CoR has a maximum theoretical benefit of 160 ArP. In practice, there are things (like other people being capped out and regemming to less important stats) that make it just a little less beneficial.

This is strictly incorrect. The improved CoR has a minimum theoretical benefit of 160 ArP. Regemming to less important stats while maintaining the ArP cap results in a net benefit of 160 ArP plus the extra stats gained from regemming.

A hypothetical raid has every physical damage dealer exactly ArP capped with ArP buffs, debuffs, and gear without improved CoR. If a warlock in this raid specs into improved CoR then every physical damage dealer can replace 160 ArP from their gear with another DPS stat while still being ArP capped. So for every physical damage dealer the net benefit of +160 ArP from CoR is 160 ArP in addition to the DPS stats that are gained from regemming. If 0 physical damage dealers are ArP capped without improved CoR then the net gain is only 160 ArP, in every other case the net gain is always more than 160 ArP.

In your specific example the net gain to your hypothetical physical DPS whose next best gem option is 20 crit rating is 160 ArP + 20 crit rating from regemming i.e. more than 160 ArP alone. If improved CoR does not ArP cap them after other buffs, debuffs, and gear are taken into account then the value is 160 ArP at a minimum.

There are 0 cases where improvedCoR is worth less than 160 ArP and there are more than 0 cases where improved CoR is worth more than 160 ArP.

The fact that this would probably create a schism between Demo and Destro 'locks for the rest of eternity aside, this idea doesn't seem to be any better than the current Demo implementation. Why should they lose access to all their fire spells and talents? Even Tree form for Druids can now cast direct heals.

The easiest way to balance the form is to keep all other things equal and only compare the DPS of the form with the DPS of the caster out of the form. For the demonology version, this means:

• The pet *must* remain out. (I suppose the game could count you as your own pet, but the mechanics of such a thing are far more complex... How does the game decide which MD buff you get? What about Unholy Power? Empowerment?)
  
• Melee DPS done by the form must be equal to the Spell dps done outside of the form.

Once these two conditions are met the form is essentially a small ruin-esque buff to dps built into one of the most unique flexibility skills in the game. Add to this the stance-with-a-cooldown mechanic and appropriately balanced PvP anti-squishiness and anti-snare/stun (current form gives -50% snare/stun duration and armor).

Voila! You now have an entertaining, cool and useful 51 point talent for Demo.

The cycles I'm using are Con/Imm/Inc*6, and Imm/Inc*7. The former performs roughly 5-6% better than the latter.

My calculations are brutally simplistic, ignoring all raid buffs and game mechanics more complicated than basic damage and crit. For now I think this suffices to get a general idea of where things stand, and the truly in depth calculations can wait until the next round of changes/when we finally see our glyphs.

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong here. But let's play with a few scenarios:

A) 10 Melee DPS, all of whom have at most cap - 160 ArP. Benefit? 160 ArP x 10 people.

B) 10 Melee DPS, all of whom are ArP capped in their gear. Now, whether or not the warlock tosses out Frailty, there is no more benefit to be derived from the ArP on its own. (Similar to hit capping) In this case, the warlock's Frailty allows all melee DPS to *maintain* their current level of ArP (neutral benefit) while allowing them to regem/enchant for other stats. In this case, the pure benefit is only the extra Agi/Str/whatever other stats they gem for.

C) 10 Melee DPS, all of whom are within 160 pts of ArP cap, but haven't reached it yet. In this case, the benefit is a partial amount of 160 ArP per person (whatever the difference is for them to reach cap - if they're 100 away from cap, then their benefit is only 100 ArP) plus whatever benefit they receive from regemming.

Conclusion: If we figure that ArP is the best stat, theoretically, for Melee (otherwise, why are we debating this?), then the maximum benefit a raid can receive is the DPS gained by 160 ArP x # of melee. At no point can the benefit from Frailty go above this.

Caveat: For both B & C, it only works if they're able to get their gear at exactly 160 ArP from cap. If by swapping a gem, they actually go under the cap even with Frailty, then their gain is actually the gain from gem/enchanting differently MINUS whatever their gap to cap is. Alternately, if they end up overcap, then their gain is whatever they would have had for the scenario, minus the overcap amount.

Hopefully that came out correctly...if not, I'm sure it'll be made known.

Edited for a few changes, clarifications.

Well frailty would probably be a rdps benefit but it just seems so ridiculously minor as to not warrant destroying your demo spec so that you can pick it up. Regardless i think it will be best to have 3 warlocks per 25 man raid in most situations between curses, hs and pet buffs.


Exactly. Frailty may, and probably will, be an rDPS benefit but it will most likely be so marginal as to make it rather pointless for anything but a destruction warlock to pick up in any circumstance but an extremely melee stacked raid, in which case i really don't know why you would be bringing a demo lock since it's main benefit is essentially EW for casters and in a melee stacked raid it would probably be even better to just have your resident affliction lock pick up frailty and use CoR instead of malediction CoE.

What leads you to believe that you will actually still be able to cap ArP on a lvl 80 boss mob? We really don't even know how much armor bosses are going to have yet. It is possible that the 160 ArP will be what brings your target to 0 armor with best in slot gear on your physical dps or it could even be possible that even with all armor debuffs the bosses will still have some armor.

A and B can occur simultaneously throughout a raid because different mobs and bosses have different armor values.

A hypothetical boss encounter features a main DPS target and a moderate number of much lower HP adds that must be DPSed in addtion to the boss itself. Each add has less armor than the boss. In this scenario without improved CoR every melee must gear for the ArP cap on the boss in order to max boss DPS resulting in wasted ArP on the adds that could have been used on stats that do not have caps. With improved CoR every melee can regear for the reduced ArP cap on the boss resulting in no wasted stats on the boss and zero/fewer wasted stats on the undebuffed adds.

This scenario exists in raids currectly with the +hit% from farrie fire. Ask any raiding rogue worth their slot what they would gem for if hit is their best stat and farrie fire is in the raid and they will say 'hit cap minus farrie fire' because it's better on net to be 3% hit short of the cap when farrie fire is gone and hit capped when it's their than to be 3% over when farrie fire is there and hit capped when it isn't.

No you don't magically get extra stats from imp CoR. It isn't 160 ARP + XYZ. Its 160 ARP. I am saying that the value added by 160 ARP is only as good as the difference between it and the next best option. You only have the benefit of the next best option as you approach a cap though, which incidentally is when ArP is strongest.

The numbers were crunched over in this ratings thread . All rating requirements at 80 are basically double. In order to keep ArP in line with all these new ratings you can expect bosses to have way more armor. I doubt anybody will be capped unless they sacrifice all other stats.

You get 160 ArP +whatever melee regems for assuming melee is actually at the cap without frailty. Honestly, i don't know if this is actually a valid assumption to make without knowing how much armor lvl 80 raid bosses will actually have and whether or not it will even be possible to cap ArP without frailty or even with frailty.

The main point is that you get to keep Metamorphosis, well, Metamorphosis. What does Metamorphosis do? You temporarily turn into a demon, you shoot green fireballs on things, and then things die due to your sheer awesomeness.

"Temporarily turn into a demon" in the shape of a duration + cooldown is probably quite workable for PvP, but not for PvE, where the duration + cooldown would have to compete with the full-time effect of Ruin. To refer to that as "hard" to balanace is a gross understatement in my opinion. I'm not saying we shouldn't make it a permanent form - because that would be easier to balance - because of what is essentially "lore-related concerns"; Balance and gameplay should always trumph lore. But on the other hand, keeping it in the demo for the sake of keeping it in Demo is also a lore argument that is not neccesarily supported by balance.
In my opinion, using mana to limit time spent in the form is a good solution to keeping the form temporary, but still useful. Shifting in and out becomes situationally dependant - you're oom and you're doing shit, but those bastards are still trying to kill you so tanking them for a few seconds until a proper peel can be arranged might turn the match! - without being broken by random effects in PvE - because if you stop casting, your duration-til-normal-form essentially stops, and thus being Sacrificed or turned into the Little Red Riding Hood is not a total waste a cooldown.

"Shooting green fireballs". Again, not saying that lore should outweigh balance, but if you're going to give us something as iconic as metamorphosis, why not keep it actually iconic? Make the primary nuke Felfire, with a secondary-on-cooldown Chaos Bolt for PvP purposes. Make all the damage modifying talents in Destruction modify Felfire Bolt too, to ensure that it keeps scaling. Modify mana cost, cast time, coeffecients and base damage as appliable to ensure that Metamorphosis is a straight up increase in DPS when used. Make downtime in between uses "reasonable" in regards to the time it takes to oom yourself.

You sidestep the utility of the demon issue for PvE completely, you sidestep the Metamorphosis need to perform compared to ruin completely (if done right, it will outperform DS, no questions asked), you provide Destruction with another PvP defense - because Demo, with or without Metamorphosis, is still the best survivability tree - and you make the Destruction gameplay more diverse; One rotation out of form, lifetaplifetaplifetap, Metamorphosis, new rotation, oom, out of form and resume normal Destruction rotation.


As for Demonology warlocks... There's only two occasions when we think of ourselves as affliction, destruction or demonology warlocks; In our dreams, and when discussing upcoming changes. Everywhere else, we're going to be the warlock specc that works, whether it's the FotM PvP spec, the best PvP spec with the partnern we want to play with, the best raiding spec or the best raiding spec when you already have a warlock of a different specc. Defending the right for a certain talent - Frailty being another example - to be in a specific tree based on lore is utterly pointless because we won't specc based on what looks good in the talent trees, we'll specc on what works. On top of that, no amount of uproar over a change in beta is going to make up for six months of a totally worthless talent if they don't manage to balance it in Demonology.

And with that in mind... I still say Metamorphosis is a lot easier to make workable as the destruction 51-pointer, keeping it both iconic and useful regardless of what you're doing.

Blizzard's stated they would like Conflagrate to have a place in a raiding Warlock's rotation, so I'm working under the assumption that the refreshing effect on Eternal Flames will disappear (the entire talent is liable to change, as even without the refresh it's in some measure of conflict with Conflagrate).

I included Imp Immolate in my calculations for the Imm/Inc*7 cycle. If you want to drop Imp Immolate as well, that increases the difference to 6-7%. That's pithy for 5 talent points, and I've stated before that I think Imp Immolate is overdue for a revamp.

Without the 5 points in Imp Immolate, I think Conflagrate/Backdraft is worth it. If Imp Immolate cost fewer points or had a greater effect it would be less of an "eh" choice.

A lot still depends on Glyphs and what further changes we see to the talent tree.

I think you misunderstand what I was saying. If you'll look back at the post you quoted, you'll see I'm responding to tetracycloide. They stated that ArP is a cappable stat, and thus some benefit can be found from allowing melee/hunters to redistribute stats from ArP into other vital attributes. I was simply citing what, to a certain degree, the benefit could potentially be of doing so. In general, none of the benefits seemed capable of exceeding the 1.2-1.5% benefit of the ArP in question, so the notion that perhaps a greater than 1.5% benefit could be had wasn't plausible.

It is true that we don't know what kind of armor values will be seen on the bosses, but it's not unreasonable to think that capping may be possible. If anything, the reduced hit margin for casters would point toward any onerous increase in boss armor being overly detrimental to melee without a proportional boost in damage/scaling.

Agreed, but demonology always had that funky "later talent kills usefullness of all talents before it" feel.

Think DS before they combined the fel stamina and fell intelect (and before these 2 talents buffed your stam and int). You spent 20 points buffing demon stamina and int (or buffing imp/succy/voidy) just to sacc it with 21st point.

It just strikes me - we are the only pure dps class where crit talent exists only in one tree. Mages got crit talents spread equally between 3 trees, melee pure dps and hunters automatically get 100% crit damage, and hybrids get relevant crit damage talent in tree that enables them to do caster dps (moonkins and ele shamans). Thus problem with ruin is very unique to warlocks.

Issue that compounds this is that affliction is expected - in the words of blizzard - to spend 50% of their time casting shadowbolt - a destruction spell. Haunt better be very powerful indeed, since it has to not only face shadowbolt... but also fact that haunt/shadowbolt crits will only be 50% extra damage.

Way I see to fix that, would be to:

1. make ruin baseline (hunter solution - all crits do 100% damage).
2. make ruin much deeper in destro tree (10th tier+) and give affliction and demo similar talents deep in their trees (mage solution). Issue here is - demonology has no offensive "spells".
3. Stop stuffing our head with +crit +haste gear that forces choosing ruin. Affliction and demo only really make use of +spell damage.

Another interesting new affliction build I'm entertaining is 45/21/5. With bane moved to tier 1, getting DS and bane might be interesting for affliction. Everlasting affliction has 20% more spelldamage for dots, but DS might still outperform it given that it boosts shadowbolts as well. Everything depends on how usefull the felhunter is for affliction.

Yes, Improved Immolate is horrible as well. We are talking 5% buff per point to about 1/3 of Immolate total (DD+DOT) damage. It doesn't compare well with other similar talents for various classes, and isn't justified by Conflagrate. Also, did you account for Immolate ticking only 4 times instead of 5? Well, I think you did, but I just want to make sure.

Conflagrate itself is problematic as well. Its cost and reward don't scale with each other, like for example in situation of Swiftmend and Envenom. This gives us 2 solutions: either remove Immolate consumption for good, or make Conflagrate damage be based on periodic damage of Immolate it consumes. Looking from TBC perspective neither would make Conflagrate useful, but looking from WotLK perspective, with current Backdraft and Eternal Flames, both would provide improvement.

The former option, when Conflagrate wouldn't consume Immolate, would make its cost only its lower DPCT than that of Incinerate, however Backdraft would cover for it.

The latter option, when Conflagrate damage would be based on Immolate periodic damage would make fully stacked Eternal Flames amplify its damage by good 30% and together with Backdraft would make it worth casting.

Still, the problem stays: Improved Immolate and Conflagrate are 6 points with horrible returns which require more talent points to make them useful. Why? It shouldn't be like that. But I still say that Conflagrate needs fixing in itself to begin with, not by making 3 more talent points to make already spent 6 useful.

Also, from PVP PoV, it's stupid (with our low number of burst instants) to have a burst start with an instant spell, where naturally they are supposed to be at the end.

How about Conflag only requiring Immolate on the target, and not consuming it by default (or through a Glyph), while 5/5 Eternal Flames gives Conflag a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of refreshing it instead? Of course, if they chose to do the first via a Glyph, putting 5/5 into Eternal Flames would then make the Glyph useless for anyone going deep enough into Destruction.

But it fits the name 'Eternal Flames' and works into a rotation quite happily.

Another possibly solution would be to reduce the base damage and dramatically increase the spellpower coefficient for DOTs and pets. This way, Demo and Aff specs (which really only scale well with damage) would scale closer to how Destruction scales as gear increases. Sure we don't care about the crit as much, but that marginal increase in spellpower as you increase Tiers helping affliction more, balances it out.

Of course it's clunky, but there's pretty much nothing else game designers could do. If you have a type of attacking that values few stats, contrasted with one that values all stats either:
In early game it will be equal, but later will fall to the side.
In early game it will dominate, but later will equalize.
In early game it will dominate, but later will fall to the side. (Current state of Aff vs. Dest in BC).

Either that, or seriously find a way for Aff and Demo to scale with all stats better (crit, haste, hit, and whatever else blizzard adds as WOTLK develops).

I think Demonic Sacrifice needs an additional change to it so that the buff takes place 'when your pet dies' as well as the current activatable buff. I always thought the intent of the spell was

A) To have a means of making use of the pet if, for some reason, you can't use it (boss which insta-gibs pets)
B) Its about to die (opposing arena team is kicking its ass), you can't save it, but you can still make use of it by sacrificing it.

B isn't quite as explicit, nor does it seem worth blowing DS on the off-chance it MIGHT live, because either way you're going to try to summon a new pet again either way. But then it dies anyway and you missed out on your chance to pop DS on it. If it was automatic, it would make it a little more friendly to the Demo Warlock.

I do account for the difference in # of ticks for each rotation, so no worries there.

I like your two solutions, but I think either way Imp Immolate needs a replacement. Conflagrate would be boosted considerably if we didn't have to spend talent points on a talent that is quickly becoming the prime candidate for "Least Beneficial Destruction Talent".

Starting burst with an instant isn't so bad when we have a second instant to finish with. I'm not a PvP expert, but I'm curious what spells you'd follow the Conflagrate with. Would you save Chaos Bolt for after the hasted spells? Would you spam 3x Searing Pain during the haste or use Shadow Bolt instead?

Agreed, in reality if they decided it fit best as the 51 point in destruction it wouldn't be the end of the world, it's just quite unlikely that they would do so at this point. I would argue that it's more likely that they'd consider a pet-out stance version for Demo than a chaos-bolt chucking version for Destruction at this point.

Using mana as a soft-cap to limit DPS time in demon form is a much more effective and elegant solution to controlling the use of the form than a hard time-limit. Furthermore having it dependant on mana allows for scaling in raid situations where there will be additional means of getting mana back (JoW, Mana Tide, VE, etc...). I'd have no problem with the form being limited in this way.

This is exactly the kind of point I was trying to make. Having a Destruction version of Metamorph that cast Felfire bolts that benefit from the rest of the tree is the proper way to implement such a thing. A 51 point talent should benefit from all (or at least many of) the talents that came before it. As currently implemented, Metamorphosis works against the demonology tree instead of with it.

Well, I've been pretty dedicated to demonology since the arrival of the Felguard, and haven't had too much trouble maintaining a top dps slot in my raids. Granted we're no top-end guild, but I'm easily competitive where we are now in the progression. Since we're fairly laid back there's no requirement on spec, although if my Demo lock became as uncompetitive as an Affliction 'lock is now I'd probably play another class before switching to a Destro build.

In the end, however, I agree that if the only way Blizzard was willing to make Metamorph a useful form was to stick it in the top of Destruction, that warlocks as a whole would be better off with that option than with a weak, useless form stuck at the top of Demonology. Metamorphosis, as an iconic WC3 ability, needs to truly be a useful and entertaining skill that complements the tree it sits in.

As a Destruction-lover, I would be down with Metamorphosis at the bottom of Destruction like china town, at least in its 'oh-shit-button' form of restoring health and mana and removing the pet. I agree that it works against the tree it currently resides in, whereas it would work for Destruction, where the pet's presence isn't anywhere near as important and the personal DPS it deals during that time can be balanced a lot easier to be worthy as a PvE talent.

I think the bold move would be to make a variation of Metamorphosis the 51 point talent for every tree. There's no reason the affliction demon couldn't have haunt, the destro demon have chaos bolt, and give the demo demon something else. I'm going to find it incredibly depressing if the one thing we've wanted for so long becomes a gimmick talent that's seen as rarely as Infernals are.

The best solution would be to just make it a baseline skill. If they do that, you wouldn't have to balance around ruin, it could be a typical dps timer, maybe with a built-in heroism type effect for the raid as well, and you'd get to break it out for 45 seconds each fight no matter what your spec. If you really want the 51 point demo talent to be related, have it reduce the cooldown by like 2 minutes and add abilities.