WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 87

Darian_TruBlade · 08/22/08, 2:57 PM

Warlocks right now feel the same as Warriors did prior to this last patch. There are a lot of interesting talent changes and new mechanics, but it's really tough to nail down how helpful any of them really are. Overall, they feel confused and unpolished. I'm hopeful that Blizzard knows what they're doing, but the head scratch inducing nature of Blizzard's comments creates some tension in that regard.

Originally Posted by Burberri

Assuming you were a destruction warlock allowed to use CoA, you might be able to build something with

Glyph of Corruption
Glyph of Nightfall
Glyph of Siphon Life

With a 21/0/50 spec you could use the dot ticks + instant shadowbolts to keep molten core up with incinerate spam the rest of the time. That would probably work okay for you in a 10-man Naxx, but would suffer from scaling issues as 1/3rd of your damage is being brought to you from a source that can't crit.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it's ultimately self defeating as a build.

The problem lies in the tricky nature of Molten Core itself. As you cast more Shadow spells to proc Molten Core the % of your damage being done by Fire lessens. To make proper use of the buff you'll have to drop all Shadow spell casting whenever it procs for Immolate/Incinerate. Doing so, however, might very well mean losing the DoTs and ignoring the Nightfall/Glyph procs that keep Molten Core going.

What you end up with are two competing and precariously balanced needs. In order for the build to work just casting Shadow spells and just spamming Immolate/Incinerate must both be less damage overall than trying to do both. Molten Core isn't a big enough damage buff to support this. If your Fire damage is 95% of your Shadow damage you might get some small benefit, but even a 1% difference either way makes for a lot of work over extremely minimal benefit.

So again, it's an interesting idea but unless Molten Core receives a very significant damage% buff it walks too fine a line to be effective.

Drundia · 08/22/08, 3:23 PM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

For comparison, the Unstable Affliction Glyph is equivalent to 1.33% haste.

Except that bringing a spell to 0.2 sec under GCD is pretty much useless in a raid setting.

Glyph of Immolate: some people hoped that there will be one supporting Backdraft chain in Destruction tree, and instead we get opposite. It seems they still don't know what they want there (Immolate DOT or Conflagrate burst). Luckily Eternal Flames was scrapped, and hopefully this one will be changed too.

Glyph of Shadow Bolt: it all depends on Life Tap overhead. It's double old full Cataclysm, and for TBC 5/5 Cataclysm is still about 0.8% or so.

In general mana cost reducing glyphs are a bit absurd since we remain one of the least mana-limited class. Yes, Life Tap overhead, but it still sounds absurd.

Vagabond · 08/22/08, 3:40 PM

The Immolate glyph seems like a holdover from when incinerate had the 100% chance to refresh the dot.

That could indicate another attempt in that direction, or a future glyph update.

Edit: beaten the the punch!

PSGarak · 08/22/08, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by Drundia

In general mana cost reducing glyphs are a bit absurd since we remain one of the least mana-limited class. Yes, Life Tap overhead, but it still sounds absurd.

Our longevity is the least mana-limited, but on the other hand our sustained DPS is tied to our mana regen in a way that other classes aren't. It's not a poorly-designed glyph, it just turns out not amounting to much.

Drundia · 08/22/08, 4:01 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Our longevity is the least mana-limited, but on the other hand our sustained DPS is tied to our mana regen in a way that other classes aren't. It's not a poorly-designed glyph, it just turns out not amounting to much.

Mind that it also has reverse scaling because your Life Tap overhead goes down as you gear up. I think reverse scaling is a valid concern as well.

Smurrf · 08/22/08, 6:00 PM

Edit: Deleted. I apologize for dirtying up the thread.

Vagabond · 08/22/08, 6:26 PM

Originally Posted by Smurrf

Alright, so I was thinking after I wrote my previous post, about specifically how to fix PvE Affliction (and perhaps PvP as well, though that's always iffy.) (I'm ignoring Demo & Destro because I'm really not that strong in either of those.)

2 things always come to mind when dealing with Affliction: Use of Shadow Bolt as filler, which goes directly against the grain of the class, and lack of ability to use anything but a single Curse. We're given a whole bunch of toys to play with, but told we can only play with one at a time (well, per mob at least.) So how do we fix those? It seems to me like both can be fixed at the same time, by simply changing the way we work with Curses.

As of right now, all locks have access to CoA, CoD, CoW, CoT, CoR, and CoE. CoEx is also available through a talent as well, but isn't exactly cheap to obtain. Therefore, unless there's a specific reason (say, Vashj?) next to no raiding lock will actually pick it up.

What if Haunt was moved down to Malediction's spot, Malediction was removed (because with CoE & CoS combined, there's arguably no need for it anymore), and a new 51 pt talent was put in place?

There's a lot of Soul Shards being used here, admittedly, but I think the power of those spells needs something to counter it. Of course, changing Drain Soul to have a chance to give a Soul Shard per tick, with a guaranteed Shard at end of cast/target death would probably be enough to make this all work (oh, and give a purpose to actually spending time casting Drain Soul as well.) Another possibility is to give Empowered Corruption a (small) chance to award a Soul Shard per tick.

Under this, TA would then become the standard filler spell in between DoT refreshes. I'm not sure how the damage would be worked, I envision something like 15-20% of CoA's potential damage. Making it crit, as well as allowing it to benefit from Haste would fix problems associated with a dislike of those two stats for Affliction locks, provided damage was balanced properly. Which reminds me, none of the above numbers are intended to be taken as set in stone. I have done no theory-crafting with it, and it all needs to be balanced out, but I think it fits the Affliction style MUCH more than what we have now, and actually gives a benefit to taking much of the lower-tier stuff that we bypass or begrudgingly pick up because we have no choice. Incidentally, with all of this, I think Shadowburn needs to be buffed, and either have much more direct damage done for its shard cost, or allow it to, you know, burn the target as a fire DoT for a short period of time...always wondered why that spell didn't have a DoT component. Also, I think that Frailty should have an impact on TR and TW, by extending the number of attacks affected by 1 per point.

Given the sheer amount of utility this talent would offer, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to see the overall DPS numbers from the lock with this talent reduced in comparison to the other two specs, but it'd be well worth it, I think.

(PS...I know people will complain about TE...but A) it gives warlocks some form of reliable, albeit short, CC for non-demons, and B) allows for more varied group comp. Well, that, and I couldn't come up with anything better. If anyone can come up with a better fit for Tortured Exhaustion, please say so.)

I'll let it sit here for the next day or so; if the community feels that this is worth a longer look, I'll post it in the main forums; if not, I'll let it die a lonely death here. Obviously, the entire tree would have to be balanced around this talent, so this would have far reaching consequences...but since there's already so many problems with the tree as it stands, would it really hurt to shift it around some?

These proposed items are more likly to see light as "cast <curse>, cast Torture for <effect> and consuming the curse"; as that seems to be one of the hot efforts this time around (see all the work they're putting into Conflag, and several of the DK abilities). This also gets around the idea that 1 talent point gives a class 6 new spells; which would send some Wow-ites through the roof.

Under these conditions, the CoA version of this replaces a staple DoT with the 2 stage "spammable". This is ok on trash/solo content, since most things don't live to see a full 24 sec CoA; but this doesn't really do much for us in the raiding game.

PSGarak · 08/22/08, 6:37 PM

Considering what they did with Frostbolt, it would be concievable for them to Glyph drain life to do 50-100% more damage but have no healing component. And, just like the mages reacting to frostbolt, I would have to go "ehhhh... ouch." It solves the problem beautifully, but I would cringe to give up that portion of the spell (depending on re-glyphing costs).

Smurrf · 08/22/08, 6:49 PM

Edit: Deleted.

F4nt0m · 08/22/08, 7:00 PM

Originally Posted by Cpt. Hammer

Warlock glyphs have been datamined:
Glyph of Imp (Warlock): Increases your Imp's spell damage by 20%.
Glyph of Immolate - Increases the periodic damage of your Immolate by 20% but decreases its initial damage by -10%
From Worldofraids.com

Hmm, these 2 look useful. I was thinking about the talent calculators today, and decided, what if you came up with a Master Demonologist/Destro build?

0/28/43:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...20300000000000

Loses imp. soul leech, Conflag/Backdraft, Fire and Brimstone, and Chaos Bolt (assuming it's useful in PVE).

Gains Fel Dom/Master Summoner (helpful if the imp dies mid fight, you don't lose 10 seconds of dps), Unholy Power (an additional % modifier on the Imp's damage, so better scaling. And 20% will probably be significant), Master Conjurer (assuming Blizz makes the stones useful, I believe a better weapon oil is being thrown around), and 3% Fire damage AND 3% crit.

This gives you 11% crit from straight talents, AND the imp's crit chance. Remember, the imp gets MD's buff too, so you get the crit chance twice (so technically it gives you 6% crit for 3 points). Throw in your gear's crit and raid debuffs, and we could have some quite insane crit numbers. Winter's Chill is 10% to both us and our imp, Moonkin is 5% to us and our imp, Ret pallies are 3% to us and our imp, etc.....

(Honestly that much crit will probably get nerfed, or at LEAST make the imp not get those buffs, because that's just ridiculous.)

It's too bad the tiers aren't just *barely* different, so we could get 5/5 master Demonologist.

Narv · 08/22/08, 7:05 PM

First of all hi.
I'm pretty amazed of what wotlk will bring to the locks, i was sitting here playing with the talent calculator but theres so many and i mean looooads of good talents. On a first impression I must say Destruction lost his power in comparison with Affliction or Demonology but I may be wrong. Thing is I just started to read this topic and I seriously doubt I can catch up so many pages with so much info so I just want your opinion while I finish reading this topic, what specc do you think it will be the best end raiding wise?
I'll post here my 2 cents on the matter:

(0/50/21)
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

Please, feel free to criticize because thats precisely what I want in order to improve the specc.

(50/0/21)
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

Again what I said above, feel free to post your specs too.

F4nt0m · 08/22/08, 7:22 PM

Also, I really wish they'd change channeling pushback to just be .5/1 second like cast time stuff. It's still going to be ridiculous when your drain life gets pushed back in PVP or grinding. Drain life can't even sustain itself after 2 hits of pushback in the current system.

It seems like cast time spells are getting way too buffed in terms of going off faster, while channeling spells continue to be shafted. You're still going to need all the pushback resistance you can get to be able to use drain life in a pvp OR solo setting, and it seems like Fel Concentration is the ONLY pushback resistance talent to still be 5 points (instead of 2). And this is compared to ANY and ALL class trees that I've looked at. What gives, blizzard?

25% of the total duration for ONE hit (possibly just one damage) seems absurd to me. Not only does it screw up ticks, but it makes the DPM of whatever channeling spell you cast go through the roof. Nothing like this happens with cast time spells.

kysta · 08/22/08, 7:38 PM

Think the felhunter glyph might be intended to increase the mana regen it gets out of shadow bite, rather than as a DPS increase? With shadow bite restoring mana at a rate of 200% of the damage delt, a 20% increase of that means 20% faster mana regen for dark pact purposes.

Of course, if the baseline shadow bite restores mana faster than the warlock could possibly dark pact it away, this glyph is obsolete to this purpose.

Drundia · 08/22/08, 7:45 PM

Originally Posted by F4nt0m

Also, I really wish they'd change channeling pushback to just be .5/1 second like cast time stuff. It's still going to be ridiculous when your drain life gets pushed back in PVP or grinding. Drain life can't even sustain itself after 2 hits of pushback in the current system.

It seems like cast time spells are getting way too buffed in terms of going off faster, while channeling spells continue to be shafted. You're still going to need all the pushback resistance you can get to be able to use drain life in a pvp OR solo setting, and it seems like Fel Concentration is the ONLY pushback resistance talent to still be 5 points (instead of 2). And this is compared to ANY and ALL class trees that I've looked at. What gives, blizzard?

25% of the total duration for ONE hit (possibly just one damage) seems absurd to me. Not only does it screw up ticks, but it makes the DPM of whatever channeling spell you cast go through the roof. Nothing like this happens with cast time spells.

I think a change was mentioned that talents that currently provide chance to resist pushback will instead reduce amount of pushback. If current chance gets directly converted into amount reduction, mentioned Drain Life will lose a maximum of 15% of its channeling time in 2 hits. As for channeled spells I think they are supposed to be costly if they can't reach their maximum duration. I would argue which is worse: losing DPS (cast time spells) or DPM (channeled spells). Notice that 1.5 sec cast spell can be delayed by 67% in 2 hits. As for 5-point pushback resistance talents, perhaps you didn't look at Improved Arcane Missiles.

But overall I would think best system would be making all spells lose a plain amount of casting time (for example 0.5 sec like they did), but maximum amount lost should be a percentage of spell cast time (for example 50% as it is for channeled spells)

Vagabond · 08/22/08, 8:08 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Considering what they did with Frostbolt, it would be concievable for them to Glyph drain life to do 50-100% more damage but have no healing component. And, just like the mages reacting to frostbolt, I would have to go "ehhhh... ouch." It solves the problem beautifully, but I would cringe to give up that portion of the spell (depending on re-glyphing costs).

Heh, Away with thee!

Don't ask them to break a currently perfectly viable spell, when they could instead fix a currently near-worthless one instead (Drain soul) :P

Glyph of Hastened Soul
Base Duration of your Drain Soul spell is reduced by 10 seconds. Damage per tick and number of ticks on a full channel are unchanged.

P51mus · 08/22/08, 10:00 PM

Originally Posted by Drundia

As for 5-point pushback resistance talents, perhaps you didn't look at Improved Arcane Missiles.

Arcane missiles is a horrible comparison. It gets 100% pushback resistance (immunity) for 5 points, compared to the 70% fel concentration gets. Now, if you compared 70% pushback resistance talents, the vast majority of the rest are 2 or 3 points for 70%: Intensity, Focused Aim, Nature's focus, Burning soul, etc.

Looking through the talents shows one other exception: the pally reduce interuption talent for healing spells. Except it's tier 1, and basically the *only* decent choice for a holy pally to take in that tier, if they want to boost healing (the other choice boosts seal damage).

slowmo · 08/23/08, 12:21 AM

I believe that the talents were changed to being something like reduces the effect of spell push back by 70%. Which is kinda bad for casters cause then its still guaranteeing that we get our spells pushed back every time. Although against any DW class it means we wont take 2-3 times as long to get a spell off anymore.

Drundia · 08/23/08, 1:24 AM

Originally Posted by Vagabond

Don't ask them to break a currently perfectly viable spell, when they could instead fix a currently near-worthless one instead (Drain soul) :P

I don't think Drain Soul is gonig to be used as DPS anyway. I wonder why don't they change spell to something more Destruction-friendly since it's Destruction spells (Shadowburn, Soul Fire) that burn shards. Something like no damage no channel 5 second instant debuff and that's it, since it's actual behavior is about as good and as bad as that anyway.

Originally Posted by P51mus

Arcane missiles is a horrible comparison. It gets 100% pushback resistance (immunity) for 5 points, compared to the 70% fel concentration gets.

Seeing that the new system is capped, 70% is closer to 100% than to 0%, unlike previous case (meaning that with 70% now you lose almost nothing, as opposed to old system where spell would likely be interrupted after 1 tick or so anyway)

Originally Posted by slowmo

I believe that the talents were changed to being something like reduces the effect of spell push back by 70%. Which is kinda bad for casters cause then its still guaranteeing that we get our spells pushed back every time. Although against any DW class it means we wont take 2-3 times as long to get a spell off anymore.

Not every time, only 1st and 2nd time. Also since resisted interruptions didn't diminish, and if it would stay so, pushback resistance talents wouldn't affect maximum amount of pushback per spell, only make that maximum harder to reach.

slowmo · 08/23/08, 3:26 AM

Originally Posted by Drundia

Not every time, only 1st and 2nd time. Also since resisted interruptions didn't diminish, and if it would stay so, pushback resistance talents wouldn't affect maximum amount of pushback per spell, only make that maximum harder to reach.

I knew about the change to push back, however I was refering to this from undocumented changes:

Many talents which gave pushback resist changed to reduction in casting time lost.

Which means to me that everytime no matter what the first 2 hits will give you spell pushback, however through talents you reduce the amount of pushback that 1st and 2nd hit gives. So there wont be any chance to resist pushback effects anymore.

Hearteater · 08/23/08, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by slowmo

I knew about the change to push back, however I was refering to this from undocumented changes:

Which means to me that everytime no matter what the first 2 hits will give you spell pushback, however through talents you reduce the amount of pushback that 1st and 2nd hit gives. So there wont be any chance to resist pushback effects anymore.

Resisting the pushback was only ever helpful if you resisted every single attack through completion of the spell. Each time you failed to resist, you got pushed back and that gave a larger window for additional pushbacks, which gave yet more time.

The new 2 pushbacks and 70% reduction in pushback amount means a Drain Life/Mana will always tick 3 times, possibly 4 if the last hit comes late enough. That is a vast improvement over the current Fel Concentration. Meanwhile, Drain Soul will always last at least 9.75 seconds under the new Fel Concentration, even if 30 creatures are beating on you. Again, vastly improved.

On the casting front, Intensity means you only lose 0.15 seonds per hit, to a maximum of 0.3 seconds. That is better than the current system except when the interrupt resistance proc'd on every single hit, which wasn't very likely except maybe 1v1 versus a priest or paladin. And the PVP gloves 50% reduction on Fear means it gets at most 0.5 seconds added. With 4-set bonus, that means a maximum of a 1.8 second Fear. Still better than even a single unresisted pushback under the old system.

kysta · 08/23/08, 1:39 PM

Originally Posted by Hearteater

The new 2 pushbacks and 70% reduction in pushback amount means a Drain Life/Mana will always tick 3 times, possibly 4 if the last hit comes late enough. That is a vast improvement over the current Fel Concentration. Meanwhile, Drain Soul will always last at least 9.75 seconds under the new Fel Concentration, even if 30 creatures are beating on you. Again, vastly improved.

Not to mention hellfire, which is virtually unusable with any sort of agro currently unless you have earth shield or concentration aura. It's going to be nice to be able to AOE with hellfire pretty much anytime you feel like it, instead of requiring a paladin or shaman to make you uninterrupted. Rain of fire also, to a lesser degree, since it's ranged it's a little more usable currently but this is still a welcome change.

Cpt. Hammer · 08/23/08, 3:11 PM

There's a lot of commotion on the official forums right now about a dot crit talent deathknights have, Wandering Plague:

When your diseases damage an enemy, there is a chance equal to your melee critical strike chance that they will cause 33/66/100% additional damage to the target and all enemies within 8 yards. Ignores any target under the effect of a spell that is canceled by taking damage.

I'm pretty optimistic now that warlocks will get something similar.

dcpwns · 08/23/08, 3:24 PM

I'm sorry if people have discussed this before but does anyone else feel improved immolate needs to be reworked also? I mean even as a fire lock now immolates damage is very small and more so the initial damage it does so adding 25% to that seems like the biggest waste of 5 points in the tree and or any classes tree. Improved immolate feels like a teir1 move to me personally. That way other specs like demo or afflic who use it can also get the benefit of it.

Nehrak · 08/23/08, 4:30 PM

Rather than moving Improved Immolate to Tier 1 and keeping the effect generally the same (read: rank count reduction, +25% initial damage for max), I'd rather they just stick it as a 1 or maybe 2 point talent that lets you stack Immolate 1 additional time per rank. Having 2-3 Immolate stacks on your target would certainly make Destruction happy, I'll wager, and it would definitely make Conflagrate better.

TheDrDroppedMe · 08/23/08, 8:34 PM

Originally Posted by Narv

First of all hi.
I'm pretty amazed of what wotlk will bring to the locks, i was sitting here playing with the talent calculator but theres so many and i mean looooads of good talents. On a first impression I must say Destruction lost his power in comparison with Affliction or Demonology but I may be wrong. Thing is I just started to read this topic and I seriously doubt I can catch up so many pages with so much info so I just want your opinion while I finish reading this topic, what specc do you think it will be the best end raiding wise?
I'll post here my 2 cents on the matter:

(0/50/21)
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

Please, feel free to criticize because thats precisely what I want in order to improve the specc.

(50/0/21)
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

Again what I said above, feel free to post your specs too.

From my own testing on Beta, I feel like the new talents look more appealing than they actually are. (Aff. & Demo)

In actual practice, my Destro Emp. Imp build is blowing Aff/Demo out of the water. In fact, with imp. soul leach, I have as little downtime as Affliction, and can still deal with multiple mobs via the new Shadowfury. Not to mention Aftermath working on Immo ticks...

Right now I don't feel any reason at all to spec out of destro.

In fact, for some fun on bosses, if you get lucky with Emp Imp (and it happens)... You can get a Backdrafted/Emp Soulfire... Happened today actually! That was a 2.5 sec cast, auto-crit Soul Fire.