It looks like they changed Haunt back to a 1.5 second cast
kind of makes me sad, I was more then willing to put points into bane for the higher damage output. and ill still be putting points there for the quicker shadowbolts and immolates, but now Haunt will be doing less damage.
* Howl of Terror (Demon Form) cooldown has been increased from 40 seconds to 3 minutes.
Is there any conformation on this?
I was under the impression that Metamorphasis is still a 45 second duration with a 3 minute cooldown of its own. What is the point of increasing the cooldown of a Metamorphasis ability to a level that quadruples the duration of the form itself? If they wanted to ensure the ability was usable only once per transformation, wouldn't it seem more efficient or reasonable to make the cooldown 46 seconds, 50 seconds, or a minute? I'm not understanding the purpose for this change, unless they plan on changing the duration or even design of Metamorphasis itself.
I had a similar concept in mind for our "Soul" system, which was basically the result of splicing Rage and Runic Power. Basically, we'd use Drain Soul on an NPC and it would do damage and up the "Soul Energy" (for lack of a better name) towards some maximum number. Our spells would use mana (and some, like pets and Soul Fire) would use "Soul" as well. So in other words, we'd be a class that had two resources as before, but basically had a third bar or whatever, and spells that periodically consume Soul, such as pet buffs, and Soul Fire could be a 'Execute' type spell that drains all your Soul for damage.) So we're basically suggesting a similar thing, just in a different way.
A simple addition to this concept would be a spell that converted a full Soul Bar into a Soul Shard. Then using a Soul Shard (which might have a 2-3 minute cooldown) could refill our Soul Bar 50-100%. Basically every shard would equal one boss attempt. Of course in boss fights where you didn't need soul energy immediately you wouldn't even need to break a Soul Shard, just fit an early Drain Soul in to cover your future needs. I think there is a lot of potential for a meanful system, certainly something more useful and fun than the current "waste bag space" design.
Originally Posted by Nehrak
This is another reason why I'm starting to lean towards us having the "Imp Tree", and so on. It will provide a benefit to the pets that Demonology can't really do by itself. The one problem I can't work out is how to handle the talent point quantity. Too many points and ALL your pets become... powerful. Too few and it's pointless to bother.
I believe pushing Destruction towards Imp, and Affliction towards Felhunter can be done by modifying existing talents. If some talents like SnF also increased your Imp's Spell Power by 20%, that would naturally make him a good pet choice without even needing to add a talent specifically to encourage it. Same concept would work in Affliction. The question then becomes which pets should be boosted by which trees? The Succubus in particular is hard to place with a tree, and obviously the Voidwalker should have no tree to avoid having a tree that is overly seen as PVE. The Felhunter has been a strong PVP pet and so I'd be concerned about any tree buffing him too much.
In the end, I think I'd have deep Destruction buff the Imp, deep Affliction buff the Felhunter, and early (sub-21) Demo buff the Succubus. This makes the Succubus available to those not going deep down any one tree.
EDIT 2 > Demonic Empathy - Triggers off of being critically hit; provides 30% attack and spell haste 33/66/100% of the time for 8 sec. Doesn't work off of critting the target for a damage boost. Boo.
I'm 100% sure they just forgot to update metamorphosis and demonic empathy. Web team is the one in charge of the talent calculator, discrepancies like these where very common in TBC beta and still are in this beta.
Haven't seen it mentioned here but mages winters chill now gives 10% crit to both fire and arcane in addition to frost.
I'd imagine this would have a fairly large impact on destro dps both from the straight crit boost and the nifty bonus to both the imp dmg and emp imp procs.
A simple addition to this concept would be a spell that converted a full Soul Bar into a Soul Shard. Then using a Soul Shard (which might have a 2-3 minute cooldown) could refill our Soul Bar 50-100%. Basically every shard would equal one boss attempt. Of course in boss fights where you didn't need soul energy immediately you wouldn't even need to break a Soul Shard, just fit an early Drain Soul in to cover your future needs. I think there is a lot of potential for a meanful system, certainly something more useful and fun than the current "waste bag space" design.
I believe pushing Destruction towards Imp, and Affliction towards Felhunter can be done by modifying existing talents. If some talents like SnF also increased your Imp's Spell Power by 20%, that would naturally make him a good pet choice without even needing to add a talent specifically to encourage it. Same concept would work in Affliction. The question then becomes which pets should be boosted by which trees? The Succubus in particular is hard to place with a tree, and obviously the Voidwalker should have no tree to avoid having a tree that is overly seen as PVE. The Felhunter has been a strong PVP pet and so I'd be concerned about any tree buffing him too much.
In the end, I think I'd have deep Destruction buff the Imp, deep Affliction buff the Felhunter, and early (sub-21) Demo buff the Succubus. This makes the Succubus available to those not going deep down any one tree.
Pretty much, to the part about "crystallization"/storage. The whole concept was from the time just before Soul Bags were put in, when everyone was grinding their teeth about bag storage and shards. I know I could use another bag in my main inventory... stupid trinkets.
About the bolded part, I have one question: Why do that? Such a move strikes me as devaluing Demonology further (not that hard to do, apparently). What gain does it provide those who don't want to be Destruction or Affliction, at least for their talent emphasis?
About the bolded part, I have one question: Why do that? Such a move strikes me as devaluing Demonology further (not that hard to do, apparently). What gain does it provide those who don't want to be Destruction or Affliction, at least for their talent emphasis?
Well, deep destruction and affliction already sort of say "hey, use the imp/felhunter." Adding in more talents to boost them would just make it more obvious.
Right now Demonology has a massive raid dps buff in the form of Demonic Pact, so ideally one of your locks is going to spec for it. You also have two raid buffing pets (ie. the imp and felhunter). If you run with only two locks, you probably want both of those out and for one of the pets to be applying Demonic Pact. That then negates the Felguard and all the extra personal DPS he brings to the table (but the enormous raid buffs should balance out that loss). If you run with more than two locks it makes sense to have some pet buffing capability in the other trees so that Demo can be freed up to DPS at its highest potential (while providing pet-dps incentives for the others).
I've always thought that the warlock class should be (assuming 0 talent usage) equal parts pet dps, dot dps, and direct damage dps. Adding in talents would swing things one way or another depending on spec, but all three styles of dps would be present no matter what. The current changes to our class (pet talents in affliction/destro, more dot emphasis in destro, etc.) seem to be bringing that design concept back, and I for one couldn't be happier.
There is no way a Frost, Blood and Unholy DK is getting into every raid. Likewise, there is no way an Affliction, Demo and Destro warlock is getting into every raid. As I am fond of pointing out, we have 25 raid slots and 30 specs. Over the next few weeks, we are going to take a really hard look at raid buffs and debuffs. We are going to combine some when we can and give different specs alternate ways of providing the same debuff....
Ebon Plague may offer the same effect as Curse of Elements (and neither will stack). You'll want someone to bring the debuff, but you may not need both debuffers in one raid.
Source: WoW Forums -> New talents up
Trying to decide whether I like or dislike this change.
On one hand it makes it easier to form raids because more than one class can provide needed buffs.
On the other hand;the debuffs/raid utility that a class brings can determine how many slot they get in the raid.
And who is providing least utility to raid? Deep destro, bye destro locks, it's been great to raid with you for last 1 year, but you aren't coming any raids for the next year at all.
Reading that post of Ghostcrawler's makes me both happy and angry at the same time, ironically enough, particularly this part, especially the bolded part:
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
"Bloated" is one of those terms like "slap in the face" that sometimes makes me smile. Often a talent tree is considered "bloated" if it has more talent points than a player is able to get at max level. The DK talent trees have very similar number of talents and number of talent points to the mage and other trees. Yes you are going to have to make some hard choices, even within a tree. If all the choices were easy, the talent trees probably aren't very good.
The issue is that, after a while, these choices are easy. "We" (the playerbase) go through them with a fine-toothed comb until we find something that basically optimizes what we're capable of (DPS in the Warlock's case). For example, Ruin, Bane, Devastation and S&F are non-negotiable for Destruction if you're serious about going deep into it. Likewise, Aftermath is basically the talent to avoid for the purposes of PVE (Pyroclasm and Demonic Power somewhat so as well).
That post is making me suspicious about who Ghostcrawler's real-life identity is, because while it recognizes the issue that talents should be competitive even with each other, it doesn't say one whit about the fact that they hardly do that now (ideally the entire tree would be sparkly shiny pretty or whatever); we've got candle flames and bonfires sitting next to the sun in a number of trees (as mentioned above for Destruction). It will happen, sure, but so far a number of those "candles" aren't getting tossed onto the midden heap or re-envisioned so that they're not left standing in the very long shadow cast by other parts of the trees.
Destruction locks will be providing +130 stamina to the raid. They will still be around.
Honestly I think deep affliction is gone. They have haven't fixed the scaling, and in order to get the fel int you have to be within the 20 yard aura range of the felhunter who is in melee. This is not typically where casters and healers like to hang out. The buff as is, only increases AP of enhancement shaman.
Right now Demonology has a massive raid dps buff in the form of Demonic Pact, so ideally one of your locks is going to spec for it. You also have two raid buffing pets (ie. the imp and felhunter). If you run with only two locks, you probably want both of those out and for one of the pets to be applying Demonic Pact. That then negates the Felguard and all the extra personal DPS he brings to the table (but the enormous raid buffs should balance out that loss). If you run with more than two locks it makes sense to have some pet buffing capability in the other trees so that Demo can be freed up to DPS at its highest potential (while providing pet-dps incentives for the others).
I highly doubt that a very significant personal DPS drop would justify a 3% int/spirit or stam raid wide buff. Not only do you lose 5% of your own damage, but at lvl 70 in live a FG amounts to around 300-400 DPS of the demo warlocks personal DPS (I've raided as FG for most of BC till we where finished with BT). I would imagine with raidwide totems and battle shouts, a FG dps could easily reach at lvl 70 400-600 DPS, I just don't really see 3% int/spirit making that much of difference in raid DPS/sustainability or bloodpact making that much of a difference in survivability to be worth losing so much DPS. Of course the lock can remain flexible in a case by case basis, but I doubt it will actually really come to that.
Either way, you bring 2 locks, then it probably means you bring in another class that brings in another sort of synergy/dps that will be just as valuable or more than bringing a third lock, but this sort of discussion is way too premature at this point.
I highly doubt that a very significant personal DPS drop would justify a 3% int/spirit or stam raid wide buff. Not only do you lose 5% of your own damage, but at lvl 70 in live a FG amounts to around 300-400 DPS of the demo warlocks personal DPS (I've raided as FG for most of BC till we where finished with BT). I would imagine with raidwide totems and battle shouts, a FG dps could easily reach at lvl 70 400-600 DPS, I just don't really see 3% int/spirit making that much of difference in raid DPS / sustainability or bloodpact making that much of a difference in survivability to be worth losing so much DPS.
And this is the major reason why I wish they would stop dinking around with abilities just to try and pigeonhole our pets like they did with a Hunter's. The multiple species of a Hunter's allow for that: ours were, from the start, slated to be much more unique. My point is, there's no reason at this point that we can't have the following model:
- Imp provides ranged DPS and party enhancement utility, sacrificing some DPS for that utility.
- Voidwalker provides defensive melee, but can provide some DPS while performing as defensive melee (give it a Tainted Blood type ability?)
- Succubus provides melee DPS and direct combat utility (CC/debuffs), sacrificing some DPS for that utility.
- Felhunter provides anti-caster solutions and higher DPS when faced against casters.
- Felguard provides offensive melee at the cost of utility.
- Infernal provides offensive and defensive melee at the cost of personal resources.
- Doomguard provides heavy combat utility at the cost of personal resources.
We kind of have that already (I won't get into the last two here), but the current schema right now, is that they basically want to associate pets with YOUR role, not with their own intrinsic roles that were handed down to them from the beginning, my point in case being the Felhunter.
Last edited by Nehrak : 08/02/08 at 3:10 PM.
Reason: Clarity
Haven't seen it mentioned here but mages winters chill now gives 10% crit to both fire and arcane in addition to frost.
I'd imagine this would have a fairly large impact on destro dps both from the straight crit boost and the nifty bonus to both the imp dmg and emp imp procs.
I noticed this too, and it has a profound impact on the balance of destruction vs. affliction. Empowered imp + raid buffs means the destruction lock should have a very high crit rate. If your imp's crit rate can be boosted to 20% and when he crits your next spell is a guaranteed crit... that just doesn't seem balanced to me.
I kinda don't see the winters chill staying like this or fire destruction is going to get nerfed.
I noticed this too, and it has a profound impact on the balance of destruction vs. affliction. Empowered imp + raid buffs means the destruction lock should have a very high crit rate. If your imp's crit rate can be boosted to 20% and when he crits your next spell is a guaranteed crit... that just doesn't seem balanced to me.
I kinda don't see the winters chill staying like this or fire destruction is going to get nerfed.
Pretty much, kind of close to fire destro warlocks being able to double dip into winter's chill debuff... Definitely not something that will remain for long, I think.
I highly doubt that a very significant personal DPS drop would justify a 3% int/spirit or stam raid wide buff. Not only do you lose 5% of your own damage, but at lvl 70 in live a FG amounts to around 300-400 DPS of the demo warlocks personal DPS (I've raided as FG for most of BC till we where finished with BT). I would imagine with raidwide totems and battle shouts, a FG dps could easily reach at lvl 70 400-600 DPS, I just don't really see 3% int/spirit making that much of difference in raid DPS/sustainability or bloodpact making that much of a difference in survivability to be worth losing so much DPS. Of course the lock can remain flexible in a case by case basis, but I doubt it will actually really come to that.
I raid Sunwell Plateau as Demo right now, so you're preaching to the choir about Felguard DPS. Still, with the imp or felhunter out DPSing with Demo buffs, while they won't do as much as a FG, I'd imagine they'll put out decent numbers. That, combined with the raid buffing, MIGHT make up for the lost FG DPS if you're the only lock around. Until we actually get to play around with the new talents and such in a raid environment, we won't really know for sure.
Your comment about the lost 5% MD buff actually reminds me of something I've been wondering (and I'm sure this has been tested at one point or another but the answer is lost to me in this massive beast of a thread). Does anyone know if the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff actually still increases periodic damage?
Wowhead's beta site lists the Shadow Vulnerability debuff as ONLY increasing non-periodic damage, but is that a typo or an oversight of some sort? Is the actual dot buffing mechanic still in place and working as it is on live (albeit 15% down from 20%)? If not, then I can see Imp. Shadow Bolt not becoming a staple of the raiding Demo lock builds with Incinerate spam replacing Shadow Bolt. If that happens, a Demo lock forced to use a non-FG pet for the benefit of the raid would still gain 5% fire and increased crit rate from the imp's new MD buff.
I raid Sunwell Plateau as Demo right now, so you're preaching to the choir about Felguard DPS. Still, with the imp or felhunter out DPSing with Demo buffs, while they won't do as much as a FG, I'd imagine they'll put out decent numbers. That, combined with the raid buffing, MIGHT make up for the lost FG DPS if you're the only lock around. Until we actually get to play around with the new talents and such in a raid environment, we won't really know for sure.
Well then you would know enough to figure out how much of a bigger deal raid buffs is for a Fel Guard than a Fel hunter or an imp (full demonic frenzy stack synergizes extremely well with buffs). I was being extremely conservative with my numbers, especially with the numbers I pulled out for a FG with most attk power increasing buffs. Anyways, like I said, if it really came to it, if there's 2 warlocks, and the encounter really called for it, you could pull out an imp or a FH, I just doubt that it would really be needed or even optimal.
Destruction locks will be providing +130 stamina to the raid. They will still be around.
Honestly I think deep affliction is gone. They have haven't fixed the scaling, and in order to get the fel int you have to be within the 20 yard aura range of the felhunter who is in melee. This is not typically where casters and healers like to hang out. The buff as is, only increases AP of enhancement shaman.
Any Warlock can bring +130 stamina to raid, because Destruction talents aren't needed for that. It's missing utility in talents, not in intended way the spec is to be played. I can agree that other trees favor different pets, and Imp suits Destruction most, but situation is a bit sad if you look at talents. The question is still there: is missing utility in talents being compensated for in talents or not? Yes change in Winter's Chill appears to be a nice boost, since with Empowered Imp it's like applied twice towards Warlock's crit rate. Are we keeping our "leech" state when we can benefit from nearly everything (like Rogues are for 3 years), but aren't providing anything particularly good? Also I currently see Imp missing in farm raids, but all DPS buffs are still used, so a Stamina bonus isn't as necessary as it is on paper.
Surely it's interesting to provide some non-stacking debuffs, like providing all 5 <School> Vulnerability ones, which would increase damage by 2% and stack 5 times, each would be providable by several classes and at different costs, but wouldn't stack between classes.
I believe Corruption needs to be added to fel concentration. Imp Corruption isn't as powerful as it was because of everlasting affliction. The talent should be rolled into Empowered Corruption. Or they could make it instant like they should of done from the beginning of the game.
Anyways, since we are talking about FG. Does anyone who plays the beta know if there is any new abilities for FelGuard? In BC he kind of had 3 active abilities, and was missing one when compared to other 4 pets. Instead he has 2 passive abilities (avoidance + frenzy). Now felguard's passive avoidance is buffed and extended to all the pets. Any word on him getting anything new?
No, the trees should be balanced against each other, so that when you invest 50 points in one tree you look around, and face a choice of investing points in each of 3 trees, instead of looking at Destruction and seeing that you can put there 21 points and benefit from each and every of them.
I did some calculations, they include all casting time reductions, basic amount of crit (25%), and Improved Immolate and Fire and Brimstone. Highest known WotLK ranks are used. Fire and Brimstone spell power bonus is assumed to be applied to Immolate DOT fully and only. Also early-middle WotLK spell power amounts are assumed (1500 and 2500).
Rotation #1: Immolate + 7*Incinerate. Length: 15.5 sec.
At 1500 spell power deals ~24399 damage (1574.1 DPS), of those 412.5 damage (1.69%) are thanks to FnB
At 2500 spell power deals ~31526 damage (2033.9 DPS), of those 687.5 damage (2.18%) are thanks to FnB
Rotation #2: "Conflagrate as late as possible". Immolate + 7*Incinerate + Conflagrate. First 3 spells are considered to be hasted by 30%. Length: 15.73 sec
At 1500 spell power deals ~26409 damage (1678.9 DPS): this is 6.66% better than Rotation #1.
At 2500 spell power deals ~34045 damage (2164.3 DPS): this is 6.41% better than Rotation #1.
Note negative relative scaling with spell power relative to Rotation #1.
Rotation #3: "Conflagrate as early as 25% crit bonus is available". Immolate + 6*Incinerate + Conflagrate. First 3 spells are considered to be hasted by 30%. Length: 13.73 sec
At 1500 spell power deals ~22972 damage (1673.1 DPS): better than #1, but worse than #2.
At 2500 spell power deals ~29140 damage (2122.4 DPS): better than #1, but worse than #2.
Sad conclusion: Conflagrate, Backdraft, and Fire and Brimstone, together, for their 9 points contribute for less than 9% DPS increase.
Extra note to self: If talent name or description contains word "Conflagrate" it sucks.
I don't think there is going to be any realistic way to make Conflag all that great as long as it burns your immolate. They simply need to make Conflag roll your immolate over instead.
Anyways, since we are talking about FG. Does anyone who plays the beta know if there is any new abilities for FelGuard? In BC he kind of had 3 active abilities, and was missing one when compared to other 4 pets. Instead he has 2 passive abilities (avoidance + frenzy). Now felguard's passive avoidance is buffed and extended to all the pets. Any word on him getting anything new?
Still the same on the beta servers so far. Hoping they'll add something new.
Still the same on the beta servers so far. Hoping they'll add something new.
I hope so. I've been advocating them adding Slam (or Rend) to the Felguard for a while now. It's about the only ability/-ies it could get that isn't broken, off the top of my head (maybe replace its Cleave with Shadow Cleave, though?). I don't think I need to explain why Pummel and Hamstring are a bit too good for it, do I?
Well, this seems like as good a post as any. For a while now I've been kind of hoping they'd do a pet revamp of sorts for us, which is to say that each one has its quirks. Just as an example, the Felhunter:
Felhunter - Uses a "charge" system similar to a Rogue's combo points (base limit: 3), but is based on use of Devour Magic or the Warlock feeding it (with either his/her mana or Soul Shards or whatever). Abilities would be better based on the number of charges. For example: Spell Lock would silence for num_charges seconds (could be used to interrupt with 0 charges); give it a "nuke" that unleashed its stored magic energy at the target (think Eviscerate), doing more damage per charge and so on. In other words, it "fed" off of magic to become more powerful. Improved Felhunter would up the charge limit to 4/5, doing double duty to improving its abilities at the same time.
Ok So I know that it is a bit early, and that you guys have been doing alot of theorycrafting to see what is gonna be what in WotLK, but I was wondering if somebody could post some expected specs/rotations that Destro will be using during Raids. I raid 0/21/40 In Black Temple now, but obvioiusly it isnt going to be the same in the expansion. I have seen some of your guys ideas for Destro but im not sure which ones are the best for max dps.
08/02/08, 5:47 AM
I know I could use another bag in my main inventory... stupid trinkets.
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