New Round of comments from Koraa

Well if 16% +hit is true, then at least the pets aren't going to suck. Although my question is, would cataclysm or supression even effect your pet as they are not +hit in the normal sense.

Doesn't look good for affliction scaling. As it still doesn't address the fact that haste/crit only effect 50% of your dps, and as it stands your ISB crits are going to be consumed by everybody but you, and to lower damaging spells than shadowbolt.

I don't see how. You have a 2.5 incinerate versus a 2.5 shadowbolt, that gets a better spell damage coefficient in a spec that is all about large amounts of spell power. It seems to me that the +10% you get from molten core proc won't be enough to offset the damage, particularly if you have ISB up.

and lastly...

The good news is that this change makes Felguard/Ruin specs more attractive. With this change, you can make a 0/50/21 spec that gets 2/3 Improved Demonic Tactics, full Demonic Pact, and Ruin. Before the change, you had to give up 5 points of good demo talents instead of 2.

Can someone please suggest that Devastation be changed to generic crit, so that it works with Improved Demonic Tactics?

The problem with Molten Core being designed for Demonology is that it's placed oddly for Destruction. We have 3 point of DPS talents in that Tier, and nothing useful for us to fall back on.

If they swapped Demonic Power with Aftermath the problem would be remedied, and would open up an easy 0/13/57 build that wouldn't miss any key highlights for Destruction. The only issue would be Imp Immolate. Reducing the points required wouldn't be very effective as they'd have to be spent on talents like Pyroclasm, Aftermath or Molten Core. The best option would be for it to have an additional benefit, perhaps something like increasing Rain of Fire/Hellfire's damage (not that either could compete with SoC without being able to Crit).

With Eternal Flames gone, fire destruction has two choices. First, back to current rotation: cast Immolate, Incinerate until dot runs out, recast Immolate with the inherent problem that you need a lag-free environment and an exact amount of haste to fit the right number of Incinerates in between Immolates. The developers' solution for this seems to be Backdraft. Work Conflagrate into your rotation to remove Immolate and gain a haste buff to make it worth your while.

I see two problems here. The first is scaling. Immolate does not really scale that well. The dot part scales only with spelldamage and with a low coefficient. The direct damage component benefits a little from crit and the entire cast from haste. Conflagrate as an instant cast with a very high mana consumption is the worst of the bunch. You would never put it into a rotation on its own merits. As you gear up, its damage will not scale much.

So we have to cast two inefficient spells with poor scaling every 11.5 seconds (1.5 second Immolate + waiting 10 seconds for Fire & Brimstone). Then we have to waste 1/3 of the 30% haste buff on Immolate. Anybody else worried about moving up the tiers and not really benefiting from gear upgrades as we do now? I tried to come up with a viable shadow destruction build + imp but with Winter's Chill and the new Emberstorm I cannot see it as competitive.

My other concern is the number of talent points spent in deep destruction. If you want to take every damage boosting talent including the imp you are left with just enough points for Demonic Aegis and not even Unholy Power. If Chaos Bolt should be worth it, you cannot even max out your Fel Armor.


TL;DR:
The developers seem to have an idea how to get deep destruction to work with fire and implementing a more complex rotation than "spam Shadowbolt as much as humanly possible". With the current beta build we have lot of talent bloat in deep destruction with not enough points to go around. The spells chosen for the rotation - Immolate and Conflagrate - suffer from poor scaling.

The idea floating around of Conflagrate not eating Immolate is appealing for fixing the rotation but in my opinion would need to delink the Conflagrate talent from Imp. Immolate to free up points. Fire & Brimstone is also underwhelming for 5 whole talent points.

I'm just glad seduction will finally not be resisted so much. Now they just have to give it a better duration and it'll be nice (especially since fear juggling was taken away). Would be nice to have a more reliable cc (that isn't demon only).

I'm wondering if they'll scale pet crit at all with gear, considering I also remember hearing something about pets gaining resilience based off of yours.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that the Fear-breaks-on-set-dmg change is causing this. I bet if you Fear a mob, any damage dealt to him (even a single wand shot) will prevent additional Fears. I imagine they did this intentionally to prevent Warlocks from resetting the damage required to break Fear. However, I don't feel this is necessary.

On PVP targets, Fear has diminishing returns, so even if you do re-Fear, you are applying a Fear with half the duration and (I assume) half the damage required to break.

On PVE targets, they already stated the %-of-health required to break on PVE targets is different than on PVP so they can already control how easy Fear+DOTing works. We always could kill anything we could Fear, much like Mages could kill anything they could freeze or even chill. So I don't see how this change really "helps" PVE any other than make it more confusing when we can use are abilities.

Immolate scales very well given its benefits. Completely untalented, Immolate effective coefficient is 95% of your SP (20% DD + 13% * 5 Ticks). Incinerate benefits from 91.4%, but also takes an extra half second to cast. Without any talents, Immolate actually gains more from SP per time spent casting than Incinerate, enough to even balance out that Immolate doesn't benefit from Crit as well as Incinerate does. Throw in Imp Immolate and F&B and Immolate has a 112.5% coefficient (assuming both talents are multiplicative effects).

This changes if you use Conflagrate. Immolate's coefficient drops to 77% (96.25% with F&B). Conflagrate, with a paltry 42.9% coefficient, is obviously a bad spell to cast without any other benefit. However, it receives two key benefits. The 25% extra crit from F&B and Backdraft are powerful scaling factors that make using a Conflagrate rotation significantly better than sticking to Imm/Inc spam (there are a number of previous posts detailing this). In particular, if there's just one other Warlock using Immolate you don't have to spend your first Backdraft cast in Immolate, as any Immolate effect on the target will suffice to boost your Incinerate.

So both Immolate and Conflagrate will scale approximately as well as Incinerate. The only wild card is currently Chaos Bolt.

In terms of Destruction bloat, it very much exists. However, there isn't a compelling reason to take Unholy Power. It is the weakest of the Imp talents, increasing DPS by only 4% per point. Imp Imp is 10% per point with benefits to its other abilities, Demonic Power is 16.6% per point, and Emp Imp is 5% per point plus a powerful benefit to the Warlock. To try to add Unholy Power on top of those requires sacrificing talents like Backlash and F&B. That doesn't seem like a balanced choice.

I agree that Imp Immolate isn't all that great, but at this point I'm quite content with F&B. If Aftermath and Demonic Power were swapped and Imp Immolate was spruced up a bit I don't think I'd have any further complaints about the tree save for perhaps whether Chaos Bolt proves to be a useful raiding spell or not.

While Immolate doesn't scale with haste, crit and spellpower (its actually 85% coefficient - 20% + 5x13% = 85) as well as any other direct damage spell Destruction would cast, Backdraft sure as shit does. And Conflag is awesome DPM. Its probably the most efficient DPM spell Warlocks can get.

Makes sense now why they would buff CoEx and extend it's range to 36 yds (43 yds with Grim Reach?). At least that is the way it's stated on the talents, wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't on beta though and it's another typo. In PvE it will make it easier to get CoEx up because fear range is only 20/24 yds--short enough that non-slowed mobs can get close enough to hit you with a fear range of 20/24 yds unless you are really on the ball.

Koraa's comments about crit/haste and affliction vex me. Without spell damage multipliers from gear, Affliction can't ever retain it's original strength by comparison to Destro. S-Priests are also in a bind. Draele's suggestion of a 3 second +50% DoT damage buff is one of several viable fixes for this issue, but ultimately the issue must be resolved if the spec is indeed intended to remain viable at the end of the Wrath gearing cycle.

Another issue which seems to draw my attention is the inclusion of Chaos Bolt as part of the PvE spell rotation.

While Chaos Bolt does have a very high DPCT, it's mana cost is exceptionally high. Not to mention the expected coefficient of a 1.5 second cast time with an added immunity penetration (Possible coefficient penalty?).

One idea to add to it's PvE viablity would be an additional damage mutiplier vs. targets affected by Immolate. Perhaps an additional 25% to crit.

For PvP, it's main purpose seems to be it's immunity penetration mechanic - which, due to the fact that most immunity mechanics wipe negative debuffs, would make Chaos Bolt no different than it is now. For non-immunity prone classes, it would provide much more benefit and would also make it far more desirable in a raid situation where Immolate has a 100% uptime.

I think the idea is to give them so much bang for their buck in spellpower through Haunt and Everlasting Affliction, and rapid-casting Shadowbolts through Eradication, that by the time you've hit endgame, and spellpower values taper off again, the partial bonus Affliction gets from haste and crit will keep up with the full bonus Destruction gets from it.

Where Demonology fits in this is anyone's guess.

As already pointed out by Bibdy, Immolate loses 2 ticks within the Conflagrate rotation, further lowering its relative worth. The DD part of Immolate (the one benefiting from crit) scales with only 20% of your spellpower. I am not sure when Imp. Immolate is applied but as far as I remember it only affects the base damage and not end damage. As I am not in beta I cannot check how the 25% boost from Fire & Brimstone factors in but my guess is it es evenly distributed between the DD and dot part.

With a 11.5 second rotation I would not advise to rely on Immolate being on the boss. Incinerate has a flight time so even when you start casting it and the dot is up, chances are your fellow warlock is at that point in his cycle where he conflagrates. This will happen several times in a fight, making you waste your expensive haste buff. As Immolate is the most mana intensive spell you will be casting it is probably a good idea to cast it while the 30% reduction is active.

We will have real answers when tests have been made and we have calculated some simulations on what is really better. My point was really that what made warlocks strong in TBC was their scaling, benefiting from each single stat point on our gear. If the scaling might have been too much is not the point as that can be adjusted by WotLK gear and our new skillset. What worries me is that we seem to have to rely on spells with less than optimal scaling so they will become weaker with gear progression. The exact figures are not an issue as we are reduced to guesswork right now. What we can evaluate is the relative worth of the spells. And Immolate and Conflagrate are not really good compared to Incinerate.

If we keep the imp out and let it do its machine gun thing we might as well profit from it. Your argument is already that of acceptance. If given the choice between improving the imp with the other talents Unholy Power is indeed weaker. But why do we have to take on talents like Molten Core early on or have to put so many points in Imp. Immolate etc. if we could also put them elsewhere.

If the tree stays the way it is right now you will not have the points to max out Demonic Aegis or have to lose that point somewhere else. The tree is not finished yet that is why I try to point out its weaknesses. If we assume that we will have the imp out and active the best synergy seems to be 0/20/51 as all points in demonology are spent in improving you and your demon without any real waste. I cannot see where we can save the 7 points in affliction for Frailty so the "natural" choice is demonology plus destruction. If the 51 points include Chaos Bolt or not remains to be seen.

Backdraft scales to a certain point. If you want to have a safe rotation (making sure Immolate is always up without relying on external factors) 1 out of 3 hasted casts will be Immolate which you already conceded does not scale well. The cost of Backdraft is having to cast Conflagrate every 10-11.5 seconds (depending on when you count the GCD) which scales as an instant cast meaning really badly. So the excellent buff from Backdraft comes at a cost. How much the real benefit will be we cannot know right now but it will be far less than 30% haste for 3 spells every 10 seconds.

I cannot understand your DPM statement. Conflagrate rank 8 is 766 - 954 damage at 42.9% coefficient at 520 mana. Incinerate rank 4 is 582 - 676 plus 121 - 141 when Immolate is up at 650 mana with a 91.4% coefficient. At assumed 1600 spellpower (what I run around with right now - more spellpower will make it worse for Conflagrate due to bad scaling) they will deal on average:

Conflagrate: 1546.4 damage / 520 mana = 2.97 DPM
Incinerate: 2222.4 damage / 650 mana = 3.41 DPM

Affliction should simply be balanced so that whatever spell is used as filler, even if it's SB, is buffed enough so that their single target DPS is not so drasticly reduced from that of other DPS specs.

The entire argument that affliction is OP in multitarget scenarios is completly specious. Affliction on live, without the time cost of haunt factored in, requires ~40% cast time to maintain a full stack of DoTs and mana on any given target which limits their AoE scalability to no more than 2.5 targets. In situations with more than 3 targets affliction is no better vs. multipul mobs than destruction since they'd both be using seed of corruption in target rich environments anyway. Which is even assuming steady DPS throughput on multipul mobs is even desireable, most encounters call for focus fire in any multitarget situation involving 5 or fewer targets unless they're designed around some kind of 'kill at the same time' gimick.

The main problem with affliction on live is that SB scales poorly with gear without ruin and S&F and the end tree talents in affliction on beta are designed to address this issue, even if they don't do an adequate job of it yet.

You are forgetting the factors of haste and crit. Sure it scales as well with +dmg, but it does not scale as well with the others. It is very possible to have a 1.5 sec or instant cast go below the global which hurts the haste part, and the crit part is obviously not close. If your crit rate is 50-65% with empowered imp shooting, that makes immolate's damage per cast time, way lower than incinerate, so much lower you might be better off getting no immolate talents and doing nothing but spamming incin, relying on the aff or demo lock to keep immolate up for you. That is sad.


People should keep in mind that immolate is in every warlocks cycle, EXCEPT for shadow destro. Shadow destro is dead and gone, so that means if you had a demo lock, and an aff lock for their raid buffs, you could safely assume near 100% immolate uptime without ever casting it your self.

Baring fel intellect's range being a major problem, the ideal 3 lock raid atm is going to be a haunt/malediction/shadowembrace/imp fel int aff lock, demonic pact/felguard lock, and fire destro improved blood pact lock, with extra locks being fire destro. In 5 or 10 man this is going to be radically different but I think with the affliction lock buffs it is safe to assume that 3% magic dmg, 5% reduced physical, and 5% int/spirit are more than enough to warrant the loss of dps, especially early in the expansion. Demonic pact is extremely strong, strong enough where the demo lock could probably go afk all fight with his pet auto-attacking and contribute more raid dps than the average person.

Guess I'm still thinking of Pre-BC when mana costs were much lower and not much spell damage was floating around, so base damage was much more pronounced. My bad.

A few points:

1) If Imp Immolate does not have an effect on the initial damage coefficient of Immolate, it's officially the worst Destruction talent, period. 5 points for minimal damage that doesn't scale is terrible. Similarly, I did make assumptions as to how F&B works (I assumed A 25% multiplier to its coefficients), so we'll need to hear from someone in the beta whether I assumed correctly (given the number of weird mechanics other classes have been encountering, I wouldn't be surprised to hear I'm wrong).

2) I've been assuming that Conflagrate would be used after the fourth tick of Immolate. Some comparison should be done to see whether cutting it off at 3 or 4 ticks is better.

3) In regards to when to cast Immolate, benefit of the mana reduction is somewhat limited. You're spending 30% less mana, but you're also casting 30% more. The rate at which you consume mana doesn't significantly change (though there is some benefit I think). However, that point seems almost moot as it occurs to me that you want to cast Immolate as soon as possible after Conflagrate anyway. This isn't to benefit Incinerate, but to get the most out of Immolate and tighten the rotation. It's a question of whether it's better to get Backdraft off as much as possible or just let it naturally fit into the rotation.

4) I don't consider 0/20/51 to be an important build to shoot for. If we assume that without Unholy Power an Imp is 15% of our DPS (a generous assumption I think) then increasing that by 20% is only a 2.5% damage increase for 5 points. Even if I could get all of the Destruction DPS talents with only 51 points I'd probably still go 17/54 and pick up Nether Protection and Master Summoner instead. What makes the other Imp talents worth shooting for are the side benefits for the Warlock.

Well seeing as how the other trees aren't getting optimal scaling, I think Destruction deserves to be set back a bit by its rotation.

A quote from Koraa from the beta forums:
"That said, Destruction has less group utility than Affliction or Demonology has, which can warrant a slight DPS advantage."

In comparison to affliction and its Malediction, Shadow Embrace and the new fel hunter int + spirit buff and the demonology spellpower buff we only offer improved blood pact. That is a lot less raid utility than the other trees offer. What we still do not know is how much DPS (improved) demons will do so the exact numbers from demonology are just a guesstimate.

The change from vanilla WoW and its 30/0/21 or 7/21/21+2 to destruction and its scaling benefits elevated us from a curse bot in Naxxramas to a serious contender as a damage dealer. The exact position in the DPS ranking (relative to rogues and mages for example) is open for discussion but by the time we face Arthas I personally do not want to have a pity spot in the raid because I was there all the time and I provide blood pact.

Affliction still scales poorly with Haste and Crit. Demonology still scales poorly with Haste. Destruction gets double the benefit from Boomkin and Totem of Wrath because they also improve the Imp's crit chance. There's really VERY little to be concerned about on Destruction's part. So its rotation isn't perfect, and it won't get exactly 1% more DPS off 1% more haste, or crit. Big deal. Look at the other specs and see what they gain from the same 1% haste or crit. You can look at other classes, too. Everyone is complaining about something to do with scaling.

Actually Darian, CoD has double the base damage of CoA, so I imagine that it would be a better choice (due to Molten Core's current lack of power).

If you go back in the thread, you'll see that a number of people, including me, have done approximate calculations for Backdraft and found that even with haste causing Immolate to ping the GCD using Backdraft is better at all reasonable gear levels than plain Imm/Inc spam. The latter does scale better than the former, but the difference is so small that it amounts to as little as 1% per every 1k SP.

This was also before F&B was significantly improved. The Immolate increase coupled with 25% more Crit for Conflagrate makes it highly probable that even with the shortcomings of those two spells they'll scale better than Imm/Inc spam.

In any case, you are right that things are bound to change. I'm personally hoping the tree bloat will be alleviated somewhat. Consider the number of DPS talents on each tier versus the total.

Tier 1: 0/10 (Neither ISB or Bane are effective DPS talents for Fire Destruction, as we don't cast Shadow Bolts and Immolate pings the GCD with Backdraft and any haste whatsoever)
Tier 2: 3/10
Tier 3: 7/8
Tier 4: 4/7 (Counting Intensity as DPS)
Tier 5: 1/7 (I'm not counting Imp Immolate, because if my math is right it's at best 25 DPS at level 80, when people are doing 2k DPS now. That's horrendously bad)
Tier 6: 5/8
Tier 7: 7/7
Tier 8: 7/7
Tier 9: 6.5/7 (Shadowfury has usefulness in AoE situations, but it's marginal)
Tier 10: 5/5
Tier 11: 1/1 (Assuming Blizzard succeeds in their stated goal)

If you add that up, you get 46.5 DPS talents, but because of how the tree is set up we have to spent 59 talent points to get them all.

The obvious things to do are to swap Demonic Power and Aftermath (as I've recommended before, as have people on the beta boards) and make Imp Immolate affect the coefficient damage as well, but that's only the first step in a solution.

If we wanted to wildly speculate on options, we could move Imp Immolate to Tier 1, unlinking it from Conflagrate. To make up the difference, we could move Backlash to where Imp Searing Pain is now, and move Imp Searing Pain to where Imp Immolate was linking it too, and having it affect (though perhaps half as much), Conflagrate. This would easily smooth over a lot of the rough edges on the tree.

That's something of a radical suggestion, but it would mean one would only have to spend 54 talent points in the tree if you wanted all the clear DPS talents. You would get to choose between Shadowfury, Shadowburn and Nether Protection versus Soul Link, Fel Domination and Master Summoner. Unholy Power would be an option if you didn't want to finish out F&B.

In any case, I do think something should be done to address the very heavy bloat toward the end of the tree, but outside of what I've suggested here I can't think of anything that wouldn't throw strong flavor talents in reach of other specs. Perhaps I am selfish to want to keep the fun toys to myself.

*Edit*: Yes, I'd personally prefer to use CoD myself. At this point Blizzard has gone on record saying Molten Core is a talent designed for Demonology specs to pick up, so I've ceased to take it into consideration for Destruction, in which case CoD is our best Curse so long as other raiders have the CoE/CoR effects covered.

If they want to aim Molten Core at Demonology, why not have it affect the pets too, and also put in the reverse case (Fire -> +10% Shadow)? Then, you can have your Imp's DPS boost your Shadow (more reason to get Empowered Imp), and your fire can boost your Succubus/Felhunter and your Shadow can boost your Imp. In other words, Molten Core would read thus:

Fire damage you and your pet deal have a % chance to increase you and your pet's Shadow damage by 10%.
Shadow damage you and your pet deal have a % chance to increase you and your pet's Fire damage by 10%.

Then have the internal cooldown equal the duration so you're not potentially stacking both versions; commit, in other words.